Mrs. General Talboys

The narrator of Mrs. General Talboys says it was never clearly understood why Mrs. General Talboys first made up her mind to pass the winter of 1859 at Rome. The narrator says she explained her purposes, soon after her arrival at the Eternal City, by declaring in her own enthusiastic manner that she was inspired by a burning desire to drink fresh at the still living fountains of classical poetry and sentiment. Mrs. Talboys is called an enthusiastic woman, and the text names ambition and enthusiasm as two qualities to which the best of mankind are much subject.

The narrator thinks that enthusiasm leans to virtue’s side, or at least, if it be a fault, of all faults it is the prettiest. The narrator says it was understood at Home that Mrs. Talboys had a considerable family, four or five children, but that she brought with her only one daughter, a little girl about twelve years of age. The narrator describes a party of some dozen or fifteen persons, with a hamper with luncheon in it left on the grassy slope at the base of the tomb of Cecilia Metella.