Mary Agnes Tincker
[5] In 1863, she procured a recommendation from Governor John A. Andrew of Massachusetts as a volunteer nurse for the wounded of the Civil War, and served in ward 6, Judiciary Square Hospital, at Washington, D. C., until she herself fell ill. On her recovery, making her residence in Boston, she was there wholly engrossed in journalistic and literary work.
[Note 2] The latter was published both in England and America, and immediately called forth such universal approbation from the critics and the reading world that she found herself famous overnight.
[2] Her Grapes and Thorns was translated into French by the Marchioness of San Carlos de Pedroso,[Note 6] By the Tiber into German by Baroness Butler, and Two Coronets, by Heusel.
That it is a personal matter has been taken for granted in some quarters, and a long communication in the Boston Advertiser, severely censuring the author for showing up real people under thin disguises, must have made the publishers chuckle.
The change in her religious views took place more than twenty years ago, about the time of the Know-Nothing excitement, while she was living in Ellsworth, Maine.
Upon the death of her father, her mother being already dead, Miss Tincker fell to writing for a livelihood, and some of her early stories were published in Harper's and Putnam's Magazines.
Several of her works which preceded Signor Monaldini's Niece have appeared in book form, among which are The House of Yorke, Grapes and Thorns, and Six Sunny Months.
It is from a letter written by Miss Tincker at Assisi, Italy, July 18, 1879, to a friend in this city: “My chief encouragement to write came from an editor of the Atlantic when it was published by Phillips, Sampson & Co.
"Our readers generally are familiar with the history of the "No Name Novels," that series of anonymous stories which Roberts Brothers, of Boston, have been publishing at intervals during the past two or three years.
Miss Ellsworth is represented as an author and a Roman Catholic, who has established herself in the Eternal City because of its varied fascinations for her religious and aesthetic nature.
Miss Ellsworth has an individuality of her own, and friction is soon excited between her and her surroundings, the dire results of which are precipitated by a domestic tragedy of which she becomes the unintentional witness.
For, tired of the jealousies and bickerings of the circle with which she is at first connected, Miss Ellsworth has taken an apartment in a dwelling overlooking the gardens of the Count and Countess Belvedere.
By-and-by there is a mysterious midnight encounter in the garden, an indistinguishable figure is stabbed to death, and the bleeding body is hustled into a hasty grave at the foot of the wall.
After what has happened, the Countess, it would seem, is suspicious of the American lodger in the apartment overlooking the garden, and a course of intolerable persecution is begun, with the aim of driving her away.
In time this plot finds support in the American colony, the impression being made that Miss Cromo and others are bought up by the Countess Belvedere in behalf of her effort to get rid of witnesses and obliterate evidence.
When at last Valeria falls ill and her fever runs into delirium, a plan is contrived by Miss Cromo to get her into an insane asylum; and this, by deceitful means, is made successful.
It is a tragic, passionate, pitiful, powerful tale, abounding with the most exquisite glimpses of Italian landscape, fiery with indignation and invective towards personal wrong, tender with a woman's heart of love and beauty, fervid in its homage toward Pope and priest and church, rough and biting in its scorn for social hypocrisies and meanness.
Bruno's flight after the murder of Vittorio, and Marco's night of grief in the boat on the Mediterranean, are described with an intensity of effect worthy of Victor Hugo.
But, whatever its foundation and history, it is a most remarkable work; like one of Turner's landscapes, tempestuous, lurid, glowing, dashed with both spray and sunshine; as worthy of being read as any novel of the past twelve-month, and destined to make a sensation, whether truth or imagination.
The story, though the simplest, is at the farthest remove from the commonplace and trivial; it is elevated and beautiful throughout by the presence of a Christian spirit and a rich imagination.
The recondite, and as it may be thought, fantastic title of the book, is suggestive of the high motive inspiring the author's work and of the influence she would fain have it exert.
Some readers will be likely to say that her literary art has suffered from the intrusion of this new element, and that such chapters as that in which Glenlyon and Father Segneri discuss the errors of Romanism mar the artistic completeness of the fiction.
"We lay great stress on the early education of children [she says by the mouth of Father Segneri] but the poet and the novelist appeal to the undying child in the heart of man.
This girl-poet, Aurora Coronari, with the starry eyes and the beautiful soul, is in one sense scarcely so prominent a figure as others in the story, and yet she is felt continually as the bright pervading presence of the whole.
The episode of Aurelia's entanglement with Don Leopoldo furnishes that melodramatic element which none of Miss Tincker's novels has been without, but which in her hands escapes degeneration into coarse sensationalism, being always more or less in keeping with the Italian scenes and characters of her books.
Moreover, in this case, it serves a purpose in making us like Aurelia the better for her temporary aberration from the way of calm, self-regarding discretion Miss Tincker's character-painting is never blotchy or vague; her personages, both principal and subordinate ones, are invariably sketched with a perfect, and fine decision of outline.
Miss Tincker is an idealist who in these days of realism is not afraid to conceive according to the inspiration of her own poetic genius, and the exquisite simplicity and delicacy with which the person of the young Italian girl is put before us is proof of her artistic strength.
The novel is full of beautiful pictures, and has certain passages we should be glad to quote, such as that descriptive of a brigand's religious faith, on page 72; but we must be content to leave these to the reader to discover.
