wife, thirty-one and very plain. "I escorted her to Jas. King's
to tea the other evg. . . . I afterwards took Mr. Gallatin to see
her so that I have first & last seen a gt deal of her & like her
extremely maugre her entire neglect to return any part of my
admiration. . . ." Mrs. Sedgwick, on holiday in Newport,
wished him all the pleasure he could get from the visitor before
she came back: "It is not at all likely that the friend of the Lord
Chancellor would be tenderly disposed towards an American
Counsellor who numbered at least two score summers." The
plainness could be taken less gently than in this domestic joke.
The wife of a former governor of Louisiana, visiting in Baltimore
in January, 1835, went down to the harbour one afternoon to
watch the skating, "and to her dismay, was taken to be Miss
Martineau, whom Mrs. Grimes thinks the ugliest woman in the
world. The boys probably had grounded their supposition upon
Mrs. G's wearing a very remarkable cloak, which they in their
wisdom thought would suit the authoress." ¹

Plain is a juster word than ugly. She was of average height,
perhaps taller than most American women; and when Henry
Clay tried to guess her weight, he was very close to the correct
figure, 116 pounds. Her complexion, recalled her friend Mrs.
Chapman, was neither fair nor sallow, rather "the hue of one
severely tasked, but not with literary work". Her hair, low on
the forehead, was brown and abundant. Her eyes were "grayish
greenish blue". Her head was small--one phrenologist later
wondered how so small and ordinary-looking a head could have
done so much. ² The features too were small and set in a char-
acteristically Victorian square-jawed frame. Studying a portrait
carefully, one can scarcely fail to be impressed by her confidence,
determination, and tradition.

As she grew older, she gained weight. " . . . A large, robust
(one might almost say bouncing) elderly woman," Hawthorne
found her, "very coarse of aspect, and plainly dressed; but withal,

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