Fredrika Bremer calls the subject of this sketch
her “sweet Rose of Florida.” She certainly is a “Rose that all are
praising.” It would require the scope of a full biography to change this
rose into a bud, and then, petal by petal, to unfold the bud again to
the rose; after all, we might not find the dew-drop at its heart, nor be
able to trace out its blended tints and exhalations.
Only recently has Madame Le Vert appeared before
the world as an author. Long before she accepted the idea, often
suggested to her, of writing a book, she was, perhaps, more widely known
than any woman of America. Nature evidently planned her, on a large,
comprehensive scale, a social genius, and all her good gifts are cut and
polished to this end.
Thoroughly cosmopolitan in spirit, she acquires
with great facility the languages and idioms which make her at home with
different nations. We have seen her the centre of a group made up of
representatives from France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and her own country,
apparently not only in brilliant rapport with each, through the medium
of his own vernacular, but putting the whole circle in
sympathy—stringing all upon the thread of her own magnetism. With this
rare faculty, she has twice flitted through the countries of the Old
World, leaving her name playing like a sunbeam on every city and
village, and in the hearts, alike, of the titled and the lowly. She was
made up without antipathies, and, in place of them, has large adaptation
and tolerance, which, together with her womanly graces, eminently fit
her for the office of social harmonizer. There are few spheres so
malignant as to repel her utterly, and, if repelled, her sunny soul does
not seem to receive any positive shock. She is more electric than
eclectic, and something better than either—she was never known to speak
or act an unkindness.
