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FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 UNIFORM EDITION 
 
 In Ten Volumes. With Vignette Title-pages. 
 Large Crown 8vo. 6s. net each. 
 
 OLD KENSINGTON. 
 
 THE VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF. 
 
 FIVE OLD FRIENDS AND A YOUNG PRINCE. 
 
 TO ESTHER, AND OTHER SKETCHES. 
 
 BLUEBEARD'S KEYS, AND OTHER STORIES. 
 
 'I HE STORY OF ELIZABETH; TWO HOURS; 
 
 FROM AN ISLAND. 
 TOILERS AND SPINSTERS, AND OTHER 
 
 ESSAYS. 
 MISS ANGEL: FULHAM LAWN. 
 MISS WILLIAMSON'S DIVAGATIONS, 
 MRS. DYMOND. 
 
 BLACKSTICK PAPERS 
 
 With Portraits, including a Portrait of W. M. 
 Thackeray, from a newly-discovered Miniature 
 Painting. 6s. net. 
 
 FROM THE PORCH 
 
 With Portrait. 6s. net. 
 
> > 
 
[Frontispiece 
 
FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 By LADY RITCHIE 
 
 (KDITF.D BY HER SISTER-IN-LAW, MISS EMILY RITCHIE) 
 
 WITH A PORTRAIT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 1920 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It was during the last months of her life that 
 my sister-in-law put together and revised the 
 writings in this volume, forming one more little 
 gallery of her vivid, far-ranging memories. 
 The sketch of Mrs. Sartoris first appeared as 
 a Preface to the republication of " A Week in 
 a French Country House," by Messrs. Smith, 
 Elder & Co., and she wished that her sincere 
 thanks should be given to Mr. John Murray 
 for permission to republish it as well as " From 
 Friend to Friend" and " Two letters from 
 W. M. T." which came out in the Comhill 
 Magazine. Her thanks were also due to 
 Messrs. Macmillan, and to the Editors of The 
 Sphere and of The Illustrated London News, 
 in which the story of " Binnie " was published 
 in 1893. 
 
 EMILY RITCHIE. 
 
 VI 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 From Friend to Friend i 
 
 Mrs. Sartoris, 1314-1879 40 
 
 Mrs. Kemble, i 809-1 893 77 
 
 A.Roman Christmas-time 93 
 
 Present Tapestries and Far-off Bells and Pome- 
 granates . . . 98 
 
 Two Letters to a Painter from W. M. Thackeray 104 
 
 In a French Village 114 
 
 Binnie • 124 
 
FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 I 
 
 A child who was, I suppose, once myself sat 
 on the stairs in an old house at Twickenham 
 with a thrill of respectful adventure, looking up 
 at the carved oaken figure of a Bishop with 
 benedictory hands standing in a niche in the 
 panelled wall. The house was Chapel House 
 in Montpelier Row, inhabited in those days by 
 a Captain Alexander who had fought in the 
 Peninsular War, and who christened his children 
 by the names of the battles, and my sister and 
 I were spending the summer there while my 
 father was in Germany. We enjoyed the old 
 house and garden, and the youthful companion- 
 ship of Vittoria Alexander, my contemporary. 
 When I read the address on some letters which 
 have been lately shown me by the present Lord 
 Tennyson, one of those wonderful mental 
 cinemas we all carry in our minds flashed me 
 back to the panelled rooms and the dark hall 
 and the oak staircase and the benedictory 
 Bishop. Among those who passed before him, 
 treading the broad steps after the Alexanders 
 had left, cam~ the Poet Laureate and his wife, 
 
2 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 who lived for a time at Chapel House, where 
 their son Hallam was born. But Tennyson 
 wished to live in the country, and they did 
 not stay very long at Twickenham. An early 
 letter written from thence introduces a whole 
 party of friends living in those days of peace. 
 It is dated June 25, 1852, and was despatched 
 by Mrs. Tennyson to Mrs. Cameron, her 
 neighbour at Sheen, 
 
 " My dear Mrs. Cameron, — Thank you. 
 It was very pleasant being at Kew Gardens, 
 still we should have liked two pleasant things 
 instead of one. . . . We are by every post 
 expecting a letter about a house which may 
 send us in another direction, but I am not going 
 to drag you house-hunting even on paper. 
 My husband would, I am sure, listen with the 
 most hearty interest to you. The East is a 
 great inspiring theme. Would that his brother 
 Horatio were doing something there ... he 
 would have made a grand soldier of the old 
 school. You would like him if he were not too 
 shy to show himself as he is. He is living with 
 his mother, but we will with all pleasure bring 
 him. I am going to let Mrs. Henry Taylor 
 know when we can say with any certainty when 
 we shall be at home. Hoping that you and 
 they will be able to come to us, 
 
 11 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 " Emily Tennyson." 
 
MRS. CAMERON 3 
 
 This was but the beginning of the long life's 
 friendship and correspondence between the two 
 friends. 
 
 They were ladies, in looks something like 
 those familiar paintings by Watts, or by some 
 of the old Italian masters he loved. Watts 
 himself has painted Mrs. Tennyson more than 
 once and recorded her beautiful spiritual aspect 
 and features, and he has also left a portrait of 
 her correspondent Mrs. Cameron ; a woman of 
 noble plainness carrying herself with dignity 
 and expression, and well able to set off the laces 
 and Indian shawls she wore so carelessly. Mrs. 
 Tennyson was more daintily attired ; she wore 
 a quaint little gimp high to the throat, her soft 
 dresses were of violet and grey and plum colour, 
 a white net coiffe fell over her brown hair. 
 Her hair never turned grey ; she remained to 
 us all, a presence sweet and unchanged in that 
 special and peaceful home-shrine to which no 
 votary ever came more warmly true and re- 
 sponsive than Julia Cameron, her neighbour in 
 the island for so many years. Mrs. Cameron 
 was one of the well-known family of Pattle 
 sisters, gifted women who were able to illustrate 
 their own theories. They were unconscious 
 artists with unconventional rules for life which 
 excellently suited themselves. 
 
 My own first meeting with Mrs. Cameron 
 was not very long after my youthful stay in 
 
4 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 Chapel House, one summer's day when my 
 father took my sister and myself to Sheen to 
 see an old friend lately returned from India. I 
 remember a strange apparition in a flowing red 
 velvet dress, although it was summer time, 
 cordially welcoming us to a fine house and 
 some belated meal, when the attendant butler 
 was addressed by her as "man," and was 
 ordered to do many things for our benefit ; to 
 bring back the luncheon dishes and curries for 
 which Mrs. Cameron and her family had a 
 speciality. When we left she came with us 
 bareheaded, with trailing draperies, part of the 
 way to the station as her kind habit was. A 
 friend of mine told me how on one occasion she 
 accompanied her in the same way, carrying a 
 cup of tea which she stirred as she walked along. 
 My father, who had known her first as a girl 
 in Paris, laughed and said : " She is quite un- 
 changed," and unchanged she remained to the 
 end of her days ; generous, unconventional, 
 loyal and unexpected. 
 
 Alfred Tennyson, writing to his wife in 
 1885, says : " I dined with Mrs. Cameron last 
 night : she is more wonderful than ever in her 
 wild beaming benevolence." 
 
 There are several mentions of this most 
 interesting, most emphatic lady in Sir Henry 
 Taylors "Autobiography." Sir Henry, who 
 was her chosen ideal among many, says ; " In 
 
SIR HENRY TAYLOR 5 
 
 India, in the absence of the Governor-General's 
 wife, she has been at the head of the European 
 Society, for Mr. Cameron was a very high 
 official, succeeding Lord Macaulay as Legal 
 Member of Council. In Lord Macaulay s Life 
 a letter is quoted addressed by him to Mr. 
 Ellis dated August 1835: 'Cameron arrived 
 here about a fortnight ago, and we are most 
 actively engaged preparing a complete Criminal 
 Code for India. He and I agree excellently. 
 Ryan, the most liberal of judges, lends us his 
 best assistance/ " 
 
 11 Does Alice," Sir Henry writes to a corre- 
 spondent, " ever tell you, or do I, how we go 
 on with Mrs. Cameron, how she keeps shower- 
 ing on us 'her barbaric pearls and gold,' Indian 
 shawls, turquoise bracelets, inlaid portfolios, 
 ivory elephants, etc., and how she writes us 
 letters six sheets long all about ourselves ? . . . 
 It was indeed impossible that we should not 
 grow fond of her, and not less so for the many 
 whom her genial and generous nature has 
 captivated since." 
 
 It is very difficult to describe Mrs. Cameron. 
 She played the game of life with such vivid 
 courage and disregard for ordinary rules ; she 
 entered into other people's interests with such 
 warmhearted sympathy and determined devo- 
 tion, that, though her subjects may have 
 occasionally rebelled, they generally ended by 
 
6 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 gratefully succumbing to her rule, laughing and 
 protesting all the time. 
 
 Sir Henry quotes her saying to some one 
 with whom she had disagreed : " Before the 
 year is out you will love me as a sister," and 
 he adds that she proved the truth of this 
 prophecy. She must have been a trying sister 
 at times, especially when her relations and her 
 adopted relations were ill. She longed to cure 
 them on the spot ; she would fly in an agony 
 from one great doctor to another, demanding 
 advice and insisting on instant prescription and 
 alleviation. " Culpable carelessness, profound 
 ignorance," were the least of her criticisms of 
 family physicians whom she had not sent in 
 herself. She would eloquently describe the 
 anxious hours she spent in waiting-rooms, 
 obtaining opinions from great authorities who 
 had not even seen the patient. Sir Henry's 
 stepmother (Mrs. Cameron had barely known 
 her) says concerning some attempted change : 
 M I think I might have found good Mrs. 
 Cameron's loving letter difficult to answer, and 
 though I have a sort of scruple about refusing 
 kindness and charitable love, yet I cannot help 
 being glad you saved me. ..." 
 
 II 
 
 The real neighbours in life do not depend 
 on vicinity only, they have a way of continuing 
 
THE TENNYSONS 7 
 
 to be neighbours quite irrespective of their 
 different addresses. The Tennysons had ever 
 a very faithful following of old friends wherever 
 they happened to be. They themselves were 
 the link binding many interests together. As 
 I have said, the first letter quoted from Twicken- 
 ham was followed by a lifelong correspondence. 
 Mrs. Tennyson had hurt her wrist in early 
 youth and writing was often difficult to her ; 
 though until her son grew up, almost the whole 
 of her husband's correspondence depended 
 upon her. 
 
 Mrs. Cameron, on the contrary, loved her 
 pen. She wrote a large and flowing hand, 
 She allowed herself in life and on paper more 
 space than is usually accorded to other people. 
 I remember her offering to write for my father. 
 " Nobody writes as well as I do," she said, 
 " let me come and write for you." 
 
 It was in 1854 that the Tennysons first 
 settled at Farringford. Those must have been 
 happy days for Mrs. Tennyson, though the 
 trial of delicate health was always there. She 
 writes to Julia Cameron, describing the sights 
 to be seen from her drawing-room windows : 
 
 " The elms make a golden girdle round 
 us now. The dark purple hills of England 
 behind are a glorious picture in the morning 
 when the sun shines on them and the elm 
 trees." 
 
8 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 Again : 
 
 "It is tantalising to have a big smooth 
 rounded down just in front of a large window 
 and to be forbidden by the bitter winter blasts 
 to climb it. It is a pity the golden furze is not 
 in bloom, for when it is it makes a gorgeous 
 contrast to the blue Solent. . . . Alfred has 
 been reading * Hamlet ' to me and since then 
 has been drawn down to the bay by the loud 
 voice of the sea. . . . There is something so 
 wholesome in beauty, and it is not for me to 
 try to tell of all we have here in those delicate 
 tints of a distant bay and the still more distant 
 headlands. These I see every day with my 
 own eyes, and so many other things with Ms, 
 when he comes back from his walk." 
 
 Of her two boys she writes : 
 
 " People say they are winning children, 
 even those who are neither poets nor mothers. 
 What should I do if I had not a poet's heart 
 to share my feelings for the children ? " We 
 get a pretty glimpse of Alfred one Christmas 
 time putting on little Hallam's coatee, a present 
 from Mrs. Cameron, needless to say. 
 
 "Thanks, thanks, thanks," said Mrs. Tenny- 
 son. " And for my frill, as Alfred calls it, and 
 for the beautiful big ball which charms Hallam 
 beyond measure and delights baby too, only 
 with so much of fear in the delight that he dare 
 
MRS. TENNYSON 9 
 
 not approach the giant without having Mother's 
 hand in his. I do hope that I shall hear that 
 you are all well and that things grow brighter 
 and brighter as Christmas comes on, for I 
 cannot accept old Herbert's gloomy version of 
 things. I will admit most thankfully that griefs 
 are joys in disguise, but not the converse 
 except as a half truth, and half truths are the 
 most dangerous of all. God wills us to be 
 happy even here . . . only let us give happi- 
 ness its most exalted sense. I often think one 
 is not told of joy as a Christian virtue as one 
 ought to be. This, however, is rather by the 
 way, for joy can subsist with sorrow, but 
 happiness cannot be without happy circum- 
 stances." 
 
 Another Christmas brings more acknow- 
 ledgments for other gifts, and also friendly 
 reproaches. " The only drawback is the old 
 complaint that you will rain down precious 
 things upon us, not drop by drop, but in whole 
 Golconda mines at once." Mrs. Cameron pays 
 little attention to such warnings, for the next 
 letter from Mrs. Tennyson begins with thanks 
 again. " Why will you send us these things 
 which are so beautiful ? " 
 
 Mrs. Tennyson was afraid of wounding her 
 friend ; she tried reprisals once, which we may 
 guess at as we read Mrs. Cameron's own 
 
jo FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 reproaches and eulogies, combined in a letter 
 concerning an Easter gift : 
 
 " It really was an Easter Day offering to 
 my spirit which seemed to tell me of ' a bride 
 in clean raiment ' and ' a glittering star ' such 
 as I may through God's grace be some day, 
 but now I am a grandmother with every vestige 
 of grace gone, not preserving, as you do, a 
 youthful figure ; and truly I am not worthy of 
 the lovely jacket and therefore I shall bring it 
 back. ... Mr. Jowett has been sitting with 
 Charles, and when he would long for the open 
 air comes to cheer and enliven him. Truly he 
 has a sweet virtue." 
 
 Her name for Jowett was, " little Benjamin 
 their ruler. " Her picture of him in her gallery 
 will be remembered. 
 
 Mrs. Cameron, the Martha friend, loved to 
 work for the Mary friend. We read of a hat 
 with a long feather and broad blue ribbons to 
 be ordered in London —then messages and 
 details about furniture from the mistress of 
 Farringford. 
 
 " I have tried many times to get some 
 violet-coloured cloth, because Alfred has always 
 admired the violet covering in your dining- 
 room. Will you do me the kindness to get 
 me some sufficiently good ? " 
 
 Then she goes on to give news of her home, 
 
MRS. TENNYSON n 
 
 of the bay-window being added to the study, 
 " that dear little room hallowed by so many 
 associations, which should scarcely be touched 
 even in improvement." 
 
 "Are you afraid of our falling leaves?" she 
 writes, urging Mrs. Cameron to come and stay 
 with them. u We sweep them up diligently 
 every day for the good of our own little ones, 
 and there would be an increased diligence for 
 the sake of your poor sick lamb. I am so glad 
 you returned thanks in Church : I am sure the 
 world would be better if we claimed our right 
 of brotherly sympathy with all, for it is only 
 those who give theirs beforehand who think of 
 claiming it. . . . " 
 
 One letter dated January i, 1885, might 
 have been written word for word to-day 
 
 (1915). 
 
 " Many, many happy New Years to you, 
 my dear Mrs. Cameron, and to all you love. 
 How vain is this wish for thousands on this 
 particular year ! It is difficult to interest one- 
 self in any common events. Only one's friends 
 can take oft one's thoughts from the war. ..." 
 
 Mrs. Tennyson envies some one who has 
 sent out a shipload of help. 
 
 '* Ah, well ! We may all do our little if we 
 will but do what we have to do, and not waste 
 our time in vain longings for that which is 
 
i2 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 given to others to do. You can never have 
 been guilty of this in all your life. . . . ' 
 
 III 
 
 Mrs. Cameron sometimes writes to Tenny- 
 son as well as to his wife. Here is a quotation 
 from a long letter written in 1855. 
 
 " Dear Alfred, — It is so tantalising to be 
 in your neighbourhood without being able to get 
 to dear Farririgford, that I must write to you 
 from this. If we stayed longer I am sure I 
 should slide away and make a run for your 
 coast, but we go home to-morrow when our 
 week will be completed. Where are we if we 
 are your neighbours ? Not near eno' and yet 
 not far. In one of the loveliest homes of 
 England, where from the Tower you can see 
 the dear Isle of Wight, Parnassian Needles, 
 and the silver thread of the outline of Alum 
 Bay. . . . 
 
 " Well, Canford is our dwelling-place during 
 this Holiday week. This Manor, this Hall 
 and the cricket ground have witnessed nothing 
 but sunshine Holiday and midnight revelry all 
 the twenty-four hours round." 
 
 u The youthful host, Sir Ivor Guest, has had 
 perfect success in his entertainment. Every- 
 body has been charming and everybody has 
 been charmed," 
 
MRS. HAMBRO 13 
 
 o 
 
 11 There has been great beauty here amongst 
 the young Wives and young Maidens. 
 
 " Amongst the young Wives 'the Queen 
 of Beauty' is Mrs. Hambro (one month younger 
 than my Juley) frolicsome and graceful as a 
 kitten and having the form and eye of an 
 antelope. She is tall and slender, not stately, 
 and not seventeen — but quite able to make all 
 daisies rosy and the ground she treads seems 
 proud of her. 
 
 " Then her complexion (or rather her skin) 
 is faultless — it is like the leaf of ' that con- 
 summate flower ' the Magnolia — a flower which 
 is, I think, so mysterious in its beauty as if it 
 were the only thing left unsoiled and unspoiled 
 from the garden of Eden. A flower a blind 
 man would mistake for a fruit too rich, too 
 good for Human Nature's daily food. We had a 
 standard Magnolia tree in our garden at Sheen, 
 and on a still summer night the moon would 
 beam down upon those ripe rich vases, and they 
 used to send forth a scent that made the soul 
 faint with a sense of the luxury of the world of 
 flowers. I always think that flowers tell as 
 much of the bounty of God's love as the 
 Firmament shows of His handiwork." 
 
 (After this digression the writer returns to 
 Mrs. Hambro.) 
 
 11 Very dark hair and eyes contrasting with 
 
i 4 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 the magnolia skin, diamonds that dazzle and 
 seem laughing when she laughs, and a costume 
 that offers new varieties every third hour," 
 completes the sketch of the heroine. 
 
 The letter also goes on to describe at length 
 each of the ten members of the Guest family 
 and many more visitors and relations, and is 
 much too long to quote in its entirety, but I 
 cannot omit the description of 
 
 "all the young men and maidens standing 
 in a circle in the High Hall, singing. 
 
 " They all have splendid voices. All the 
 boys play on flutes, violins and flageolets, singing 
 every manner of Yankee chorus, glee and song ; 
 they dance and toss india-rubber balls, but the 
 grand Hall seems almost too noble for this, 
 
 " l Storied windows richly dight 
 Casting a dim religious light,' 
 
 and its measureless roof, fitted for the organ's 
 pealing sound, for the delight of anthem, and 
 the joy of praise and prayer, and for reading 
 of great and good Poems. I did once persuade 
 them to reading in that Hall. I read your ' Ode 
 on the Duke,' and it sounded solemn and sweet 
 there. You know how dear Henry Taylor 
 valued it, and I treasured in my heart your 
 answer to his praise of it. I enclose you his 
 little note to me about ' Maud ' because you 
 said you would like to see it. I read also your 
 lines to James Spedding. I read ' St. Agnes/ 
 
CANFORD IS 
 
 too, in that Hall. Those chants are worthy of 
 that edifice. 
 
 " The house has immense capacities. Last 
 Sunday we slept ninety people here, Lady 
 Charlotte told me, tho' nothing extraordinary 
 was going on. 
 
 " We dine every evening twenty-six in 
 number. Conversation is not fertile, but the 
 young hearts don't need it." 
 
 This was the year " Maud" was published. 
 Poets always feel criticism, and the reviews of 
 the poem stung Tennyson cruelly, with their 
 misunderstanding of his personal attitude to- 
 wards the war. 
 
 "Is it not well," writes his wife, "that he 
 should speak anger against the base things of 
 the world, against that war which calls itself 
 peace, slandering the war whence there is the 
 truer peace ? Surely it was well, for he has 
 not spoken in anger only ; if he has spoken 
 against baseness and evil in the world he has 
 also sung what every loving and noble heart 
 can understand of its love and blessedness. 
 But you are right. I do hope that in more 
 unmixed and fuller tones he will one day sing 
 his song. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Cameron's daughter Julia was engaged 
 to Charles Norman in 1858. 
 
 Emily Tennyson writes her congratulations : 
 " It is like a book. All so perfectly happy, and 
 
16 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 yet I feel ungrateful for saying so, for so long as 
 one believes in love and truth, so long must one 
 believe in the possibility of happiness, and I 
 myself, having so much of the reality, should 
 most of all dare to believe in the possibility for 
 others. Let them be married soon — I may be 
 pardoned for a horror of long engagements/' 
 
 In 1859 the Camerons were still on Putney 
 Heath, but Mr. Cameron was preparing to 
 visit his estates in Ceylon, of which disquieting 
 news had reached him. 
 
 " Charles speaks to me of the flower of the 
 coffee plant. I tell him that the eyes of the first 
 grandchild should be more beautiful than any 
 flower," so Mrs. Cameron used to exclaim 
 pathetically, and she wrote to her friend about 
 the coming departure which she dreaded — 
 
 " As for me I have been fairly drowned in 
 troubles and cares, and the waters seem to pass 
 over one's soul. The 20th November is now 
 fast approaching and whilst it approaches I am 
 not at all more prepared in heart or in deed. 
 I have not had courage to make the necessary 
 preparation. To-day the portmanteaux have 
 been dragged out, and they stand, to me 
 threatening, to Charles promising, departure." 
 
 Mr. Cameron was seized with illness about 
 this time. 
 
 " I tell him this should be a warning not to 
 
MR. CAMERON'S ILLNESS 17 
 
 leave home and home care and comforts. He 
 assures me that the sea voyage is the best thing 
 for him and Ceylon is the cure for all things. 
 I looked upon this illness as the tender rebuke 
 of a friend. He requires home and its com- 
 forts. He has been having strong beef-tea 
 thickened with arrowroot six times a day !...." 
 What would nurses of to-day say to Mrs. 
 Cameron's menu when the invalid, her husband, 
 was recovering ? 
 
 " The patient has poached eggs at night, 
 gets up at eleven, has his dinner (gravy soup 
 and curry) at one, mulligatawny soup and meat 
 at five, a free allowance of port wine, averaging 
 a bottle a day. Ten drops of Jeremie's opiate 
 every morning, a dose of creosote zinc and gum 
 arabic before his meals, and a dose of quinine 
 after each meal." 
 
 Notwithstanding these home comforts and 
 all his wife's remonstrances the invalid started 
 with one of his sons, while she remained at 
 home with the younger children. To add to 
 her troubles Sir Henry Taylor was also very ill 
 at this time and suffering badly from the com- 
 plications of asthma. 
 
 Mrs. Cameron says — 
 
 " He bears what he calls a hedgehog in his 
 chest with a most divine patience, even as a 
 good husband would bear with a bad wife, and 
 
18 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 1 fear he will have his hedgehog in his chest 
 till death do them part."* 
 
 This was an eventful year for the Camerons. 
 The first grandchild, their daughter's child, was 
 born. 
 
 "May she ever be the delight of your lives !" 
 wrote Mrs. Tennyson. " I can fancy the proud 
 happiness of the little Uncles. After all this 
 excitement, sorrowful and joyful, after the 
 anxious watching of so many hours, you need 
 care yourself I am sure, so now take a little 
 thought for yourself and so best thought for 
 those who love you." 
 
 Already in 1859, not burglars on the lawn 
 such as those Horace Walpole describes, but 
 Cockneys, were beginning to appear on the 
 Farringford grounds. We read of two who 
 are sitting on one of the gates in the garden 
 watching Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson under the 
 cedars. Alfred is actually thinking of moving, 
 so averse is he to these incursions. Later on 
 he went for a change to Staffa and Iona while 
 Mrs. Tennyson stayed at home, for her nerves 
 were not able to bear the fatigue of journeys. 
 Surges of pain when she wrote are mentioned 
 and sleepless nights and weakness. Hospitable 
 as she was by nature and by a sense of duty 
 
 * He did most of his work for the Colonial Office from his 
 sick-bed, and few Secretaries of State have done more important 
 work than he. 
 
VISITORS AT FARRINGFORD 19 
 
 also, the entertaining of guests was often 
 very tiring to her. Nevertheless we hear of 
 many visitors — Lushingtons, Frank Palgrave, 
 Simeons, Edward Lear (who called his house 
 at San Remo Villa Emily after the most ideal 
 woman he had ever known), Woolner the 
 sculptor, who stays for some time, and we read 
 about portraits he was taking of his hosts. 
 
 " Alfred is charmed with the medallion of 
 me, and I think myself, if such a picture can be 
 made of my worn face, that, if Lady Somers 
 and the Queens and Princesses of Pattledom 
 were successfully done, it would set the fashion." 
 
 She goes on to say— 
 
 "Words fail Mr. Woolner, all eloquent as 
 he is, when he speaks of the Pattle sisters, 
 especially of the beautiful Mrs. Jackson and 
 her three beautiful daughters." 
 
 Among her guests Mrs. Tennyson specially 
 enjoyed visits from Jowett. She says — 
 
 11 He stays this week on condition of being 
 allowed solitary mornings for work. You know 
 this suits me well who also have work, not a 
 little, to do. In the evening Alfred or he reads 
 aloud, and we are very happy." 
 
 One year there is mention of a very 
 important personage departing/rom Farringford 
 to London — " Tithonus," the companion poem 
 
20 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 of " Ulysses," going to-day to Thackeray for 
 the Cornhill" 
 
 There had been a plan for buying a house 
 at Freshwater for the Camerons, and the 
 Tennysons are helping in the negotiation for 
 securing the land before Mr. Cameron's return. 
 Lawyers, business agents, purchases, furnishings 
 take up much of the correspondence. Some 
 people look upon business as a bore, Mrs. 
 Cameron took it as the battle of life, with all 
 interest and excitement. 
 
 " The garden is being laid out," Mrs. 
 Tennyson tells her ; " Merwood proposes that 
 you should have a hedge of black' bay and 
 copper beech which his wise man Pike tells 
 him make an evergreen hedge almost impene- 
 trable, but it is too hard a frost for planting. 
 The ice is so thick that Hallam announces an 
 iceberg." 
 
 Then Mrs. Cameron writes — 
 
 " C. is indeed well pleased to hear that all 
 seems to prosper at Freshwater Bay for us. 
 Yes, how dear it will be for our children to 
 grow and live happy together playing mad 
 pranks along the healthy lea ! " 
 
 Then she continues — 
 
 " Two days ago, in one of those rare bright 
 days which sometimes make autumn delicious, 
 
FESTIVITIES 21 
 
 Henry Taylor walked about his own garden 
 for an hour with Lord John Russell discoursing 
 politics : he suffered in no way." 
 
 IV 
 
 It is pleasant still to remember the gaiety 
 and youth of Freshwater in the seventies. 
 The place was full of young people. Two of 
 Mrs. Cameron's five sons lived with her and 
 Hardinge, her special friend and adviser, used 
 to come over from Ceylon from time to time 
 to gladden his mother's warm heart, to add up 
 her bills, to admonish her, to cheer and enliven 
 the home. 
 
 The two Tennyson boys were at Farring- 
 ford. The Prinseps were at the Briary with a 
 following of nephews and charming girls belong- 
 ing to the family ; neighbours joined in, such 
 as Simeons from Swainston, Croziers from 
 Yarmouth ; officers appeared from the forts ; 
 and as one remembers it all, a succession of 
 romantic figures comes to one's mind, still to be 
 seen in the pictures of Mrs. Cameron's devising. 
 In those days she seemed to be omnipresent — 
 organising happy things, summoning one person 
 and another, ordering all the day and long into 
 the night, for of an evening came impromptu 
 plays and waltzes in the wooden ball-room, and 
 young partners dancing out under the stars. 
 One warm moonlight night I remember the 
 
 C 
 
22 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 whole company of lads and lasses went stream- 
 ing away across fields and downs, past silvery 
 sheepfolds to the very cliffs overhanging the 
 sea. Farringford, too, gave its balls, more 
 stately and orderly in their ways. The rhyth- 
 mical, old-fashioned progress of the poet's waltz 
 delighted us all. An impression remains of 
 brightest colour and animation, of romantic 
 graceful figures, a little fanciful — perfectly 
 natural even when under Mrs. Cameron's rule. 
 
 She was a masterful woman, a friend with 
 enough of the foe in her generous composition 
 to make any of us hesitate who ventured to 
 cross her decree. The same people returned 
 to the little bay again and again. Some 
 members of my own family, christened by her 
 with names out of Tennyson and Wordsworth, 
 or from her favourite Italian poets — Madonna 
 this, Madonna that— used to join us Easter 
 after Easter — and the friendly parties went 
 roaming to the Downs, to the Beacon or 
 towards the Briary. 
 
 The Briary, where the Prinseps from Little 
 Holland House were living, belonged to Watts 
 the painter, for whom Philip Webb had built 
 it. They were interesting people living there, 
 and curiously picturesque in their looks and 
 habits, to which the influence of the Signor, as 
 we called Mr. Watts, contributed unconsciously. 
 
 He and Mr. Prinsep wore broad hats and 
 
CORRESPONDENCE 23 
 
 cloaks, and so did Tennyson himself and his 
 brothers. People walking in the lanes would 
 stand to see them go by. 
 
 Meanwhile Mrs. Cameron's correspondence 
 never ceased — however interesting her visitors 
 were and whatever the attractions of the moment 
 might be. She would sit at her desk until the 
 last moment of the dispatch. Then, when the 
 postman had hurried off, she would send 
 the gardener running after him with some 
 extra packet labelled " immediate." Soon 
 after, the gardener's boy would follow pursuing 
 the gardener with an important postscript, and, 
 finally, I can remember the donkey being 
 harnessed and driven galloping all the way to 
 Yarmouth, arriving as the post-bags were being 
 closed. Even when she was away from Fresh- 
 water, Mrs. Cameron still chose to rule time 
 and circumstance. 
 
 She sends word to Tennyson : 
 
 " Dear Alfred, — I wrote to you from the 
 Wandsworth Station yesterday on the way to 
 Bromley. As I was folding your letter came 
 the scream of the train, and then the yells of 
 the porters with the threats that the train would 
 not wait for me, so that although I got as far 
 in the direction as your name, I was obliged to 
 run down the steps, and trust the directing and 
 despatch of the whole to strange hands. I 
 would rather have kept back my letter than 
 
24 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 have thus risked it, had it not been for my 
 extreme desire to hear of your wife. Day 
 after day I get more anxious to hear and then 
 I write again, and thus I write, not to bore you 
 by satisfying my own heart's wish, but to know 
 if I can be of any help or comfort. I have 
 been writing one of my longest letters to Sir 
 John Herschell to-day, but I won't inflict the 
 like upon you." (Then came many pages of 
 the reasons which prevented her from writing.) 
 After she came to live near the Tennysons, 
 Mrs. Cameron had no sense of ever having 
 done enough for them or more than enough. 
 She would arrive at Farringford at all hours, 
 convenient and inconvenient, entering by the 
 door, by the drawing-room window, always 
 bringing goodwill and life in her train. She 
 would walk in at night followed by friends, by 
 sons carrying lanterns, by nieces, by maids 
 bearing parcels and photographs. Hers was 
 certainly a gift for making life and light for 
 others, though at times I have known her 
 spirits sink into deepest depths as do those of 
 impressionable people. Torch-bearers some- 
 times consume themselves and burn some of 
 their own life and spirit in the torches they 
 carry. When Julia Cameron took to photo- 
 graphy, her enthusiasm was infectious and her 
 beautiful pictures seemed a revelation. She 
 was an artist at heart and she never felt 
 
PHOTOGRAPHY 25 
 
 satisfied till she found her own channel of 
 expression in these new developments. Watts 
 greatly encouraged her, and I heard him say 
 of one of her pictures of himself, that he knew 
 no finer portrait among the old Masters. 
 
 One of her admirers, F. D. Maurice, wrote : 
 
 if Had we such portraits of Shakespeare 
 and Milton, we should know more of their own 
 selves. We should have better commentaries 
 on ' Hamlet ' and on ' Comus ' than we now 
 possess, even as you have secured to us a better 
 commentary on 'Maud' and 'In Memoriam ' 
 than all our critics ever will give us." 
 
 Browning, Darwin, Carlyle, Lecky, Sir 
 John Herschell, Henry Taylor with his flowing 
 beard, were all among her sitters and still reveal 
 themselves to us through her. She photo- 
 graphed without ceasing, in season and out of 
 season, and summoned every one round about 
 to watch the process. 
 
 11 1 turned my coal-house into a dark room," 
 she wrote, " and a glazed fowl-house I had 
 given to my children became my glass house, 
 the society of hens and chickens was soon 
 changed into that of poets, prophets, painters, 
 children and lovely maidens. I worked fruit- 
 lessly but not hopelessly. ... I longed to 
 arrest all the beauty that came before me, and 
 at length the longing was satisfied/' 
 
26 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 Miss Marie Spartali, a very beautiful young 
 lady who had come over to pose as Hypatia to 
 Mrs. Cameron, described finding her absorbed 
 in another sitter, her parlourmaid, Mary Hillier, 
 draped and patient, representing some mytho- 
 logical personage. There was a ring at the 
 outer bell ; focussing in those days took long 
 and anxious minutes, and as Mary Hillier could 
 not be allowed to move, Miss Spartali went 
 to the door, where the visitor, seeing this lovely 
 apparition dressed in wonderful attire, exclaimed, 
 " Are you then the beautiful parlourmaid ? " 
 This little ancient joke is still quoted against 
 the beautiful lady. 
 
 How familiar to all, who were forced by 
 the photographer into the little studio, is the 
 remembrance of the mingled scent of chemicals 
 and sweetbriar already meeting one in the 
 road outside Dimbola ! The terrors of the 
 studio itself are still remembered, the long 
 painful waiting, when we would have trembled 
 had we dared to do so, under impetuous direc- 
 tions to be absolutely still. 
 
 This is her own description of her art, 
 writing to Mrs. Tennyson : 
 
 " I send you dear Louie Simeon's letter 
 to show how they all value the likeness of 
 the father of that house and home. It 
 is a sacred blessing which has attended 
 my photography. It gives a pleasure to 
 
LAVISH GENEROSITY 27 
 
 millions and a deeper happiness to very 
 many. . . ." 
 
 The coffee crop had failed in Ceylon several 
 years and money difficulties became very 
 serious for the Camerons. Photography might 
 have paid better if the photographer had been 
 less lavish in her gifts and ways. She was a 
 true artist in her attitude towards money.* 
 
 " I do not mean to let you ruin yourself by 
 giving the photographs away," Mrs. Tennyson 
 wrote : " I cannot pretend that I do not prize 
 a kindness done to mine, more than if it were 
 done to myself, still I feel bound to point with 
 a solemn finger to those stalwart boys of yours, 
 saying * Remember.' I see that I shall have 
 to set up a shop for the sale of photographs 
 myself all for your benefit." 
 
 To these remonstrances the photographer 
 would answer : " I have always tried to get my 
 husband to share my feelings. So long as 
 illness and death are mercifully spared us, 
 dearth is to deeper wounds only a grain." Julia 
 Cameron was not a woman of to-day. She 
 seemed to belong to some heroic past. She 
 has told me how as a girl she and her sister, 
 
 * She, the most recklessly generous of women, was able to 
 write : 
 
 ** I myself never felt humiliated at the idea of receiving 
 charities, for I always feel about friendship and love that what 
 it is good to give it is also good to take," 
 
28 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 the dearest of them all, used to wander forth 
 and kneel and pray on the country roadsides. 
 
 Once when her eldest son went through a 
 painful operation, which lasted some time, she 
 had held his hand in hers through it all, and 
 he said he could not have endured it if she had 
 not been present. " As to my bearing it," she 
 said simply, " what is there one cannot bear if 
 one can give one grain of helpful support to 
 any sufferer ? " 
 
 Of a friend in great trouble she writes : 
 
 " I am not sure that time with him will 
 soften the calamity. God grant it may, but 
 with some 
 
 " c Time but the impression stronger makes 
 As streams their channels deeper wear.' 
 
 "In the case of my absence from my boys, 
 the more it is prolonged, the more the wound 
 seems to widen." 
 
 It was during her husband's absence that 
 she wrote : 
 
 " I found when I was with you the tears 
 were too near my eyes to venture to read out 
 aloud Charles's letters. I am in very truth 
 very unhappy. I assume vivacity of manner 
 for my own sake as well as for others, but the 
 only real vivacity now at this moment in me 
 is to conjure up every form of peril, and my 
 heart is more busy when sleeping than when 
 
PEREMPTORINESS 29 
 
 waking. When waking I fag myself to the 
 uttermost by any manner of occupation, hoping 
 thus to keep the wheels of time working till 
 
 I hear again." 
 
 V 
 
 The legends are endless of Mrs. Cameron's 
 doings at Freshwater, and to this day the older 
 villagers retell of them — of the window she built 
 and equipped in the room destined for Sir Henry 
 Taylor. It was an east room ; she thought it 
 looked dark in the afternoon and she determined 
 that a western window should be there when 
 her guest arrived next day. The village 
 carpenter and his assistant builder sawed and 
 worked late into the night, in the early morning 
 the glazier was summoned; when the passengers 
 arrived from the three o'clock boat the window 
 was there, the western light was pouring into 
 the spare room through the panes, and Mrs. 
 Cameron's maid was putting the last stitches 
 to the muslin blind. Another inspiration of 
 hers was a lawn, also spread in a single night, 
 for Mr. Cameron to stroll along when he went 
 for his morning walk next day. 
 
 She used to bring wayfarers of every sort 
 in from the roads outside. We still may 
 recognise some of the models living at Fresh- 
 water — the beautiful parlourmaid, King Arthur 
 who in robes and armoured dignity appears so 
 
30 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 often in her camera, and who, till a year ago 
 still met travellers by the little steamer that 
 runs from Lymington to Yarmouth Pier. 
 Indeed wayfarers of every sort were made 
 welcome by her. After my father's death she 
 brought us to her cottage, where fires of 
 hospitality and sympathy were lighted and 
 endless kindness and helping affection sur- 
 rounded us from her and from Farringford all 
 through that cold and icy winter. When spring 
 had passed and when at last summer was over, 
 we gratefully returned to the sheltering bay 
 where such good friends were to be found, and 
 so we did for long years after. 
 
 The Camerons' departure for Ceylon in 
 1875 will long be remembered— the farewells, 
 the piles of luggage. Mrs. Cameron, grave and 
 valiant, with a thousand cares and preoccupa- 
 tions. Mr. Cameron, with long white locks 
 falling over his shoulders and dark eyes gleaming 
 through spectacles, holding his carved ivory 
 cane in his hand and looking quietly at the 
 preparations. There were animals— a cow, I 
 have been told, among them, bales and boxes 
 without number, their faithful maid Ellen and 
 their son Hardinge, that spirited prop and 
 adviser, ordering and arranging everything. 
 He travelled with them, for he was on his way 
 back to his post in the Civil Service at Colombo. 
 Many of us came down to Southampton to see 
 
DEPARTURE FOR CEYLON u 
 
 j 
 
 them off in the vast ship manned by Lascars, 
 crowded with passengers and heaving from 
 confusion into order. 
 
 I can still see Mr. Cameron in his travelling 
 dress looking quietly up and down the quay at 
 the piles of luggage, at the assembled friends ; 
 he held a pink rose which Mrs. Tennyson had 
 given him when he stopped at Farringford to 
 take leave of her. A member of Mr. Cameron's 
 family whom I had never seen before, for he 
 had lived in India, had come from London 
 with his wife and was standing taking leave 
 with the rest of us. He was strangely like 
 Mr. Cameron, with white hair and bright fixed 
 eyes ; and even then, starting though they were 
 for the great venture, Mrs. Cameron came 
 forward and said to me that I must go back to 
 town with her step-son and he would look after 
 me. ... I remember presently finding myself 
 sitting in the railway carriage, sadly flying 
 home — away from the good friends of many 
 a year, and vaguely wondering at the living 
 likeness of Mr. Cameron sitting on the opposite 
 seat. Then at Waterloo, after putting me into 
 a hansom, even the likeness departed and I 
 never saw either of the two again. 
 
 VI 
 
 It is pleasant to read of the happy progress 
 of the travellers. 
 
32 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 From Julia Margaret Cameron to Alfred 
 and Emily Tennyson, 
 
 . " 1875. 
 
 ". . . I now continue my letter in revived 
 spirits, having left the month of partings 
 behind, and having entered to-day the month 
 of meetings. I think Ewen will send forth my 
 Benjamin to greet me. My Har, endowed 
 with double my prudence, has hitherto pre- 
 vented me from telegraphing to tell my boys 
 that we had actually started. I resisted at 
 Freshwater. Resisted at Southampton. Har- 
 dinge prevented me at Gibraltar, prevented me 
 at Malta. He says Aden is the best spot, for 
 we can then announce we have got over the 
 Red Sea. 
 
 " I need not say how often and often I am 
 with you both in thought. I need not tell you 
 that amidst all this bustling world of 380 
 people, my husband sits in majesty like a 
 being from another sphere, his white hair 
 shining like the foam of the sea and his white 
 hands holding on each side his golden chain." 
 
 They Travel on to Malta. 
 
 u A real gem of the ocean ; everything 
 glittered like a fairy world, the sapphire sea, 
 the pearl-white houses, the emerald and ruby 
 boats, the shining steps, a hundred and thirty- 
 two in number, from the Ouai to the town — 
 
MALTA 53 
 
 all was delicious. As Har observed, I was 
 the most childlike and exuberant of the party 
 — only one thing disappointed me, that I did 
 not telegraph to my Ceylon boys. We visited 
 the Cathedral of St. John. How delicious the 
 silence was after the life on board ! What a 
 holy joy to kneel down in that solemn, silent 
 temple and feel oneself alone with one's God ! " 
 
 Her sympathy for the ship's captain must 
 not be omitted : 
 
 "We have daily prayers, and the Sunday 
 evening service is specially imposing, with the 
 dark ocean around, * The lamps filled with 
 everlasting oil' above and the ship lamps 
 hanging on the deck, and the one voice, like 
 St. John in the Wilderness, crying to every 
 one to repent." 
 
 She raises subscriptions for a harmonium 
 on board as a token of gratitude to the captain 
 — " one in a thousand." 
 
 Mr. Cameron would not land at Malta ; it 
 had painful memories for him ; he had been 
 there as a child with his beautiful mother, 
 Lady Margaret, and his father, who was 
 Governor of the Island. 
 
 As they glide through the Suez Canal 
 Mrs. Cameron writes : 
 
 " It is an honour to the French nation that 
 in the face of all assertions of impossibility from 
 
34 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 men of all countries, Lesseps persevered and 
 achieved this mighty enterprise. Whilst I write 
 we pass a pier, and at the end of it is a whole 
 flock of camels, with camel drivers, waiting to 
 see if any one cares to cross the Desert ; no 
 one does care, so we glide on." 
 
 " The only time I crossed, my Har was a 
 baby in my arms, whom I never for one 
 instant put down. We crossed through a 
 beautiful starlight night. I have never for- 
 gotten the rising of the morning star nor the 
 utter silence ; one seemed to lose the idea of 
 time and to feel in a land that could have had 
 no beginning and still less could have no end." 
 
 As she finished her letter the young moon 
 is hanging over the vessel. 
 
 " O what good it does to one's soul to go 
 forth ! How it heals all the little frets and 
 insect-stings of life, to feel the pulse of the 
 large world and to count all men as one's 
 brethren and to merge one's individual self in 
 the thoughts of the mighty whole ! " 
 
 Here is another letter written a year later 
 to Mrs. Tennyson : 
 
 " Easter, 1876. 
 
 "My own Beloved and Sweetest Friend, — 
 This day's post brought me your letter, so 
 strong in love, so feeble in calligraphy, in the 
 wielding of that pen which is meant to say so 
 
IN CEYLON 35 
 
 much but which now trembles in the hand which 
 used never to tire. Its very trembling is ex- 
 pressive of all that you have it in your heart to 
 say. How glad I am that your sons, that 
 Alfred's sons, should be what they are ! How 
 truly does an answer seem to be given in them 
 to your life of holy prayer ! I do so devoutly 
 wish that you could spend next winter here, the 
 air is so uplifting and so life-giving. I think 
 my illness on arrival was the result of all that 
 I suffered mentally and bodily, the hurry of 
 that decision, the worry of all minutiae, the 
 anguish of some partings, the solemnity of all, 
 the yielding to my husband's absorbing desire, 
 and the yearning need to live with my absent 
 children, all this is satisfied, and beyond all 
 this, beyond the inward content ; there is 
 certainly a strength given by the aspect of 
 nature in the Island." 
 
 After describing Ceylon and its beauties, 
 the mother returns to the theme she loves best 
 of all, that of her son Hardinge, who had just 
 paid her a visit. 
 
 " He wore for my sake his very brightest 
 looks, and you know there is no cheer like his. 
 His spirits dance with intellectual freshness 
 and buoyancy, all his talk is mirth and wide 
 pleasantry, and his voice is full of song. 
 
 " He has to travel in districts, sleeping in 
 
36 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 the open, and my imagination represents the 
 invasion of beasts and reptiles. He walks 
 through long grass where I fear snakes for his 
 beloved feet. He says alligators on the river- 
 side are the only beasts he sees, alligators ten 
 or twelve feet long." (Here many pages follow 
 partly concerning Ceylon and the people who 
 then lived there, partly concerning Freshwater 
 and its politics.) " And how is your dear 
 Alfred, dearest of all and greatest ever in your 
 heart beyond all ; above all, I hope not bothered 
 about anything ? . . . Worries, for him, are as 
 if these vast sublime mountains, instead of 
 standing steady as they do, rearing their eternal 
 heads to the sky, were to be swayed by the 
 perishable chances of the little coffee-estates 
 at their feet. 
 
 " What is time in the eyes of Him to whom 
 a thousand years are but as yesterday, and who 
 pities us when we vex our immortal souls with 
 fears of more or less gold, and good crops, one 
 year or another ? 
 
 " Think of us in a little hut with only mud 
 walls, four thousand four hundred feet above 
 the level of the sea." 
 
 It was in her youngest son's bungalow on 
 the Glencairn estate that Mrs. Cameron died, 
 early in 1879, only a short time after her second 
 return to Ceylon. She had been warned not to 
 return, but she longed to be near " her boys." 
 
THE BURIAL GROUND 37 
 
 The illness only lasted ten days. When 
 she lay dying, her bed faced the wide-open 
 window ; it was a glorious evening and some 
 big stars were shining. She looked out and 
 just said, M Beautiful" and died, her last word, 
 a fitting end to her reverent soul on earth. 
 Her body was taken in a low open cart, drawn 
 by two great white bullocks, and all covered 
 with white cloths, over two ridges of mountains, 
 and buried in the little churchyard at the bottom 
 of the valley, between Galle and Colombo, 
 where Hardinge was living. After this Hard- 
 inge took his father and his mother's maid, 
 Ellen Ottington, " old E," to live with him 
 there. It was in May of the following year 
 that Mr. Cameron died, and he too was carried 
 over the mountains and buried in the church- 
 yard where his wife was lying. 
 
 " I can't describe to you the beauty of that 
 valley," writes Mrs. Bowden Smith, who sent 
 this record. " High mountains surround it 
 and rolling green grass lands, and a great river 
 runs all along it. The little church stands on 
 a knoll not far above the river, which flows into 
 a lower river, also a dream of beauty. They 
 could not have found a more beautiful restinp-- 
 place. 
 
 Lady Tennyson survived her friend seven- 
 teen years. 
 
3 8 FROM FRIEND TO FRIEND 
 
 " Such wert thou, half a Saint and half a Queen, 
 Close in thy poet's mighty soul enshrined, 
 Lady of Farringford."* 
 
 And some one who loved her, speaking 
 lately said to me : 
 
 " Though her vocation was to be a poet's 
 wife she reminded me of a holy Abbess of old, 
 and there was something almost cloistral about 
 her." 
 
 She had a gift, we all felt, of harmonising 
 and quieting by her presence alone ; often too 
 tired to say much, she could contribute the 
 right word to the talk for which Farringford 
 was always notable. I have a special memory 
 of once dining with the Tennysons in the 
 company of George Eliot and Lord Acton, but 
 it was Mrs. Tennyson's gentle voice which 
 seemed to take the lead. 
 
 The following paper left by Lady Tennyson 
 concerning her husband might seem almost too 
 intimate to quote here, if it did not give so truly 
 the atmosphere at Farringford that one does 
 not like to omit it :— 
 
 " . . . He felt intensely the sin and all the 
 evils of the world and all its mystery, and still 
 kept an unshaken faith in the God of perfect 
 love, perfect wisdom and infinite power, with 
 that assurance of man's immortality which 
 
 * Edith Sichel. 
 
TENNYSON 39 
 
 pointed to a hereafter where all would be recon- 
 ciled. ' Be ye perfect, as your Father in 
 Heaven is perfect.' In the life of Christ he 
 found his Christianity ; undisturbed by the 
 jarring of sects and creeds. Politics were to 
 him patriotism, and passionately did he feel 
 for all that concerned the welfare of the Empire. 
 Party, as far as his own personal opinion went, 
 was unintelligible. That all should work con- 
 scientiously and harmoniously for the common 
 good, each with such differing powers as God 
 has given to each, recognising the value of the 
 difference, this was his highest idea of Empire." 
 
 Speaking of his wife Tennyson once said : 
 " I felt the peace of God come into my life at 
 the altar before which I married her." And 
 after more than forty years of marriage he 
 dedicated his last book to her. 
 
 " I thought to myself I would offer this work to you, 
 
 This, and my love together, 
 
 To you that are seventy-seven, 
 With a faith as clear as the height of the June-blue heaven, 
 
 And a fancy as summer-new 
 As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather." 
 
MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 1814-1879 
 
 1 
 
 Most children share their parents' lives long 
 before they are able to realise what these lives 
 really are ; moreover, working parents have 
 this advantage over playing parents, that their 
 efforts, successful or otherwise, form no small 
 part of their children's existence. The vital 
 events of the family belong to the nursery as 
 well as to the parlour ; they bring a certain 
 experience along with them, a sympathy, a 
 fellow-feeling, even if it is but that of infants at 
 play. 
 
 The daily life of the Kembles, their heroic 
 standard of attainment, their high aspirations, 
 their fine spirit in the front of disaster, their 
 intelligence and modesty in success, was the 
 school from which the two sisters, Frances and 
 Adelaide Kemble, came forth : accomplished, 
 competent women, with rare gifts and know- 
 ledge, and with a natural dignity to fit — and to 
 unfit — them for the world. That they should 
 have been stamped by their early surroundings 
 is but a part of the ruling of Fate, which, with 
 
THE KEMBLES 41 
 
 all its incongruities, shows so much consistency 
 and good sense, if one may venture to use such 
 an expression concerning Fate. 
 
 In this remarkable, most stormy, family 
 there must have been strange and rapid changes 
 from darkness to bright sunshine, many flashes 
 of light and lightning too. The Kembles 
 strike one somehow as a race apart when one 
 follows their story from book to book : they 
 seem divided from the rest of us by more 
 dominant natures, by more expressive ways 
 and looks ; reading of them one is reminded 
 sometimes of those deities who once visited the 
 earth in the guise of shepherds, as wanderers 
 clad in lion-skins, as muses and huntresses, not 
 as Kembles only. 
 
 The writer is glad to think her own time 
 has overlapped that of this heroic race, which 
 also possessed what the ancient gods certainly 
 had not, a sense of humour to link with 
 humanity. Common records do |not reach 
 much beyond the days of Roger Kemble, the 
 Jacob of the family; but one reads that once 
 in far distant times Kembles and Campbells 
 were one, and of Roger we learn that he, too, 
 was handsome, that he married a manager's 
 daughter, and deferred to his wife. 
 
 " Give ' The Tempest,' madam," he cried 
 " How can we give ' The Tempest' ? Who is 
 there to play Prospero ? " "I will play 
 
4 2 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 Prospero, sir," said the Mrs. Kemble of those 
 days, speaking with authority, and from this 
 definite lady came the great John, also the 
 great Sarah, born immediately after the giving 
 of "The Tempest," and twenty years later the 
 youngest son, Charles, whose looks in marble 
 effigy (shown to us by a host one day, on the 
 stairs of the Garrick Club) Apollo himself 
 might have envied. Charles Kemble, this 
 handsome gentleman, was my father's old 
 friend and the father of Fanny and of Adelaide 
 Kemble, whose looks, especially the younger 
 sisters noble outline, so much resembled his. 
 These classic brows and deep-set eyes are 
 again to be found in Mrs. Siddons' beautiful 
 portraits. 
 
 The sons, being often away at school and 
 at college, fell less under the influence of the 
 highly wrought home atmosphere than did the 
 two daughters of the house. John Mitchell 
 Kemble was well known as an archaeologist and 
 a literary student; the younger was Henry, 
 of whom I once heard my father say, that he 
 was in early youth the most beautiful boy he 
 had ever seen. 
 
 Fanny Kemble was six years older than 
 Adelaide. In her "Records of a Girlhood " 
 there are many apparitions of "little sister" 
 Adelaide. The fanciful brilliant child, mature 
 and immature, with her many gifts, of silver 
 
FANNY KEMBLE'S -RECORDS" 43 
 
 speech, of golden music, her quick wit, her 
 sensitive, impassioned moods, appears now 
 and again and is always herself, There are 
 pretty pictures given of the children's early 
 days and love for country things, of the 
 cottage at Weybridge to which Mrs. Charles 
 Kemble, the mother, used to take them, spend- 
 ing long summers there — happy for the children 
 and soothing for the mother. She is described 
 as she stands fishing by the river, hour after 
 hour, with her family surrounding her. " We 
 were each of us armed with a rod," Fanny 
 Kemble says, t( and were more or less interested 
 in the sport. We often started after an early 
 breakfast, and, taking our luncheon with us, 
 remained the whole day long absorbed in our 
 quiet occupation." Mrs. Sartoris used to say 
 that the passionate-hearted mother needed the 
 calming rest of the tranquil waters, and flew to 
 them for peace and refreshment from the strain 
 and emotions of her London life. 
 
 Little Adelaide, whose "tender-hefted" 
 nature, says the elder sister, revolted against 
 baiting the hook, alone hated the fishing. 
 Besides these sports the children played cricket 
 when the boys came home from school, Fanny 
 being promoted to all the dignities of " long- 
 stop." We hear no details of Adelaide's 
 cricket, but I have no doubt she, too, played 
 her part : all her life long she always 
 
44 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 endeavoured to do whatever was being done 
 around her ; it was a theory which she always 
 preached and tried to carry out to the last. 
 
 After learning how to fish and how to play 
 cricket, Fanny Kemble was sent to Paris to 
 be made accomplished in other ways. Little 
 Adelaide meanwhile seems, from her own 
 account, to have been left to run about the 
 country at her own free will — neglected and 
 untaught. She used to speak of her early 
 youth with sadness not untinged with bitterness 
 — so an old friend has told me. Meanwhile 
 the parents' hopes were centred upon Fanny. 
 
 In the museum at Stratford-on-Avon there 
 is a picture connected with these youthful days, 
 when as a Juliet of seventeen Fanny Kemble 
 took the public by storm. She was attired on 
 this occasion in the traditional white satin 
 dress, and the painter represents the mother 
 herself superintending her daughter's dressing. 
 The girl is looking at herself shyly in a long 
 glass : it is an interesting representation of the 
 scene so admirably described in the " Records." 
 
 Adelaide's first teaching came from her 
 devoted aunt " Dal," her namesake and the 
 good angel of the house, whom both sisters 
 always held in tender remembrance. Mrs. 
 Charles Kemble's keen, highly strung nerves 
 could not always bear with early efforts. From 
 sheer apprehension of her mother's agonised 
 
WEBER 45 
 
 exclamations, Fanny declares she herself often 
 played false chords and sang false notes in her 
 presence ; but she describes her sister's early 
 natural and more certain gift for music steadily 
 growing. There is a ballad by Bishop, " O 
 there's a mountain palm," which Adelaide 
 sang, she says, with a " clear, high, sweet, true 
 little voice and touching expression. ..." 
 The writer can also remember her own father's 
 description of the girl making music, as indeed 
 she did all her life long. He was quite a 
 young man then, lately come to London, and 
 was living very near to Great Russell Street 
 and the corner house which had been John 
 Kemble's home, and to which Charles and his 
 family moved in 1830. 
 
 My father has told me that when he first 
 saw " Miss Totty" she was playing on a guitar, 
 the most charming and graceful figure imagin- 
 able. As I read in Fanny Kemble's memoirs 
 " that she has bought A. the guitar she had 
 promised her" from the proceeds of her first 
 play, published by John Murray, I remember 
 this early tradition. 
 
 These were the days when Weber had 
 come over to England to conduct his own 
 noble measures, when " Der Freischiitz " was 
 brought out at Covent Garden, to be followed 
 by "Oberon." It was a time of golden promise 
 — poets were young and writing their best, 
 
46 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 music was sounding; while Miss Totty was 
 studying hers, Mendelssohn and Rossini were 
 stirring a vivid and impulsive generation to 
 enthusiasm. Weber's exquisite masterpieces 
 were ringing in people's ears. 
 
 For the writer herself, the Mermaid's Song 
 from " Oberon * first came to life years after in 
 a Paris drawing-room ; where among shaded 
 lights and flowers, and in the company — so it 
 seemed at that time — of fairy troubadours and 
 princes (perhaps after all they were only 
 attaches from the Embassy close by), she 
 listened to the lovely notes floating across 
 from an inner room, where the musician stood 
 surrounded by her chivalrous young audience.* 
 Mrs. Sartoris had the instinct of a real musician, 
 and also that of a good hostess : she liked her 
 listeners to be a part of her music ; she liked 
 the same faces round her again and again ; she 
 liked an atmosphere peaceful, yet glowing and 
 vibrating with her emotion ; she liked to see 
 charming faces, young and gay, handsome and 
 
 * Mr. Hamilton Aide* was present when Rossini himself for 
 the first time heard this Mermaid's Song, which was indeed 
 almost the last utterance of the dying Weber. Rossini expressed 
 his natural and unreserved admiration, and said how much he 
 should have wished to know Weber personally. When Rossini 
 heard that Weber had hesitated to meet him because he had 
 once written severely and even contemptuously of Rossini's 
 music, "Tell him, w said Rossini, "tell him from me, that I 
 consider it an honour to have been noticed at all by him at 
 that time." 
 
EARLY SUCCESSES 47 
 
 sympathetic. Others among us she loved 
 perhaps for other reasons — for she was faithful 
 to old friends as well as to young ones. She 
 was a born artist in daily life as well as in 
 music, and she used daily life as if it were 
 music to be enjoyed and carefully guarded from 
 false notes. 
 
 II 
 
 When Adelaide Kemble came out as a 
 singer and went abroad with her father it was 
 one long progress of youth, of music, of arduous 
 achievement, of responsive applause with all 
 the horizons of Germany, of Austria, for a 
 background. Consuelo's story was not more 
 romantic than that of this young prima donna, 
 nor was the noble independence of George 
 Sands heroine more remarkable than that of 
 this English maiden, holding her own with so 
 much dignity and courage. 
 
 Sometimes she must have been very lonely 
 in her father's absences, being herself detained 
 by study or by engagements ; sometimes she 
 was surrounded by friends. She had devoted 
 friends abroad, as well as at home ; some 
 were influential, highly placed, others humbler 
 companions of her toil. 
 
 It was during these foreign tours that 
 Adelaide Kemble formed a friendship with 
 
48 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 Dessauer, the fanciful extraordinary musician 
 who was her faithful knight and follower 
 through so many difficult passes, and whom 
 she partially portrayed as Monsieur Jacques in 
 that charming story "A Week in a French 
 Country House." Some of us can still re- 
 member her singing of " Ouvrez, Ouvrez," a 
 song of his which she made to vibrate with 
 feeling. 
 
 Both Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble always 
 spoke of Dessauer affectionately, recalling his 
 oddities, his quaint simplicity. "II y a du 
 danger, je te quitte," became a family saying. 
 Mrs. Sartoris to the last loved to go back to 
 these old days. She used as a girl to corre- 
 spond with one very warm and faithful friend, 
 the Countess de Thun, and it is to this lady 
 that she writes of Mario as follows : " I found 
 on my return to London a letter from M. de 
 Candia (Mario) — telling me that he had at last, 
 in despair at the utter neglect of his family, 
 accepted an engagement at the Opera in Paris. 
 He is not to make his dtbut for five or six 
 months, and is now studying hard to prepare. 
 His lovely voice and his pretty face are alone 
 enough to ensure his success." Of Madame 
 Viardot Garcia she says, " I passed a delightful 
 evening at Brussels at de Beriots house, the 
 mother and sister of poor Malibran are both 
 living with him. Pauline Garcia and I sang 
 
CLARA NOVELLO 49 
 
 together. You cannot think how well our two 
 voices went. It is as if we had been in the 
 constant habit of practising together, and de 
 Beriot played our accompaniments." 
 
 Again, in another of her early letters to 
 Madame de Thun, she mentions a young 
 English concert singer who was meeting with 
 great success. " Her name is Novello, her 
 voice is exquisite, not so strong as mine, but 
 far sweeter and lovelier ; every note is perfect, 
 but for all that I forbid you to like it as much 
 as mine; so it is that one is tolerant in principle, 
 and tyrannical in action." Speaking of the 
 hundred useless things people insist on teaching 
 the young, she complains that they dull and 
 blunt the keen enjoyment of the very things 
 they would improve. " I think myself fortu- 
 nate," she says, " that I was never sent to 
 school. Shakespeare and Milton have given 
 me far pleasanter thoughts than the rule of 
 three, and the many accomplishments now 
 taught." But though Adelaide was never sent 
 to school, she went to Paris to study music, 
 and my own father, writing in a melancholy 
 mood long after to thank his old friend for a 
 present of game she had sent him (and which 
 he had carved as usual in company), alludes to 
 the days when she was a young girl learning 
 to sing in that dismal little room of the Rue de 
 Clichy. " Were there any cares, I wonder ? 
 
5 o MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 I suppose there were, but the enjoyments were 
 so great then to counterbalance; a five-franc 
 dinner, a play on the Boulevard, and a grenier 
 a vi7igt arts ! " . . . The Rue de Clichy of 
 which he speaks was the street in which Miss 
 Foster lived, under whose care both Fanny 
 and Adelaide Kemble were placed, when they 
 successively went to Paris. Then each in turn 
 came out and made her mark, and each in 
 turn married and left the stage for that world 
 in which real tragedies and real comedies are 
 still happening, and where men and women 
 play their own parts instinctively and sing their 
 own songs. Adelaide's short artistic career 
 lasted from 1835 to 1842, long enough to 
 impress all the subsequent years of her life. 
 With all the welcoming success which was 
 hers, there must have been many a moment of 
 disillusion, discouragement, and suffering for a 
 girl so original, so aristocratic in instinct, so 
 quick of perception, so individual. u De la 
 boheme exquise" some great lady once described 
 her. The following page out of one of her 
 early diaries gives a vivid picture of one side 
 of her artistic life : 
 
 " . . . Received an intimation that the 
 company who are to act with me had arrived 
 at Trieste, and would be here at eleven to 
 rehearse the music. At twelve came Signor 
 Carcano (the director of music), and a 
 
A REHEARSAL S 1 
 
 dirty-looking little object, who turned out to be 
 the prompter. After they had sat some time 
 wondering what detained the rest, a little fusty 
 woman, with a grey-coloured white petticoat 
 dangling three inches below her gown, holding 
 a thin shivering dog by a dirty pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, and followed by a tall slip of a man 
 with his hair all down his back and decorated 
 with whiskers, beard, and moustaches, made 
 her appearance. I advanced to welcome my 
 Adalgisa, but, without making any attempt at 
 a return of my salutation, she glanced all round 
 the room and merely said, " Come fa caldo qui ! 
 Non c e nessuno ancora? Andiamo a prendere 
 un caffe," and taking the arm of the hairy man 
 retreated forthwith. Then came Signor Gallo, 
 leader of the band, then the tenor, who could 
 have gained the prize for unwashedness against 
 them all — and after half an hour more waiting, 
 Adalgisa and the hairy one returned, and after 
 about half an hour more, arrived my bass, God 
 bless him, he came clean ! 
 
 "We then went to work — Adalgisa could 
 think of nothing but her dog, who kept up a 
 continuous plaintive howl all the time we sang, 
 which she assured me was because it liked the 
 band accompaniment better than the piano, as 
 it never made signs of disapprobation when 
 she took it to the rehearsals with the orchestra. 
 She also informed me that it had five puppies, 
 
52 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 all of which it had nursed itself, as if Italian 
 dogs were in the habit of hiring out wet- 
 nurses. . . . " 
 
 III 
 
 Adelaide Kemble returned from abroad in 
 May, 1 84 1, and there seems to have been a 
 family gathering in Clarges Street. The news 
 of her many successes had preceded her — Mr. 
 Chorley told them, as an instance, how on one 
 occasion at Milan the audience had broken out 
 cheering enthusiastically, without waiting until 
 the Royalties had given the usual signal. 
 
 " Now you want to know something about 
 Adelaide," Mrs. Kemble writes to her friend, 
 Miss St. Leger. " There she sits in the next 
 room at the piano, singing, sample-singing, and 
 giving a taste of her quality to Charles Greville, 
 She is singing most beautifully, and the 
 passionate words of love, longing, grief, and 
 joy burst through that utterance of musical 
 sound, and light up her countenance with a 
 perfect blaze of emotion ; as for me, the tears 
 stream over my face. . . . She looks very 
 well and very handsome, and has acquired 
 something completely foreign in her tone and 
 accent. She complains of the darkness of our 
 skies and the dulness of our mode of life here 
 as intolerable." 
 
 Dulness seems an epithet very little suited 
 
MUSIC 53 
 
 to the mode of life in Clarges Street, where 
 Mrs. Fanny sits writing. " Music," she de- 
 scribes, "from morning to night, the door open- 
 ing again and again to visitors, old family 
 friends, new acquaintances. Tenors, lords and 
 ladies, actors, illustrissimi hctti quanti" she 
 says. " Friday, my sister sings at the Palace, 
 and we are all enveloped in a cloud of fashion- 
 able hard work which rather delights my father, 
 which my sister lends herself to, complaining a 
 little of the trouble, fatigue, and late hours, but 
 thinking it for the interest of her future career, 
 and always becoming rapt and excited beyond 
 all other considerations in her own capital 
 musical performances." 
 
 There is a pretty story in Fanny Kemble's 
 " Records " of her little girl in bed, who sat up 
 wide awake when her mother came into the 
 room late one night, and asked her " how many 
 angels there had been in the drawing-room 
 below." Her aunt Adelaide had been singing. 
 
 It is impossible not to continue quoting 
 from Mrs. Kemble's Memoirs, so charmingly 
 do they give the atmosphere and the colour of 
 these bygone times. From Clarges Street the 
 whole party — with the exception of Charles 
 Kemble — go for a tour abroad. Mrs. Kemble's 
 children and their nurse are with them, Mary 
 Anne Thackeray, a lifelong friend, and Mr. 
 Chorley, and the great Liszt, who subsequently 
 
 E 
 
54 MRS SARTORIS 
 
 joined them in Germany. " At Mayence," says 
 the critical biographer, tt my sister sang at a 
 concert, and this was the first time I really have 
 heard her sing in public. She sings in ' Norma' 
 again to-night in Mayence, and I am going — 
 of course without any anxiety, for her success 
 is already established here — and with great 
 anticipations of pleasure ; more even— if possible 
 — from her acting than her singing." She 
 adds, " I have always had the highest opinion 
 of her dramatic powers, and I was, as I believe 
 you know, earnest with her at one time to leave 
 the opera stage and to become an actress ; I 
 thought it a better and higher order of things 
 than this mere uttering of sound and perpetual 
 representation of passion and emotion. ,, 
 
 Fanny Kemble also describes her sister at 
 Frankfort giving scenes from " Lucia" and 
 "Beatrice di Tenda." "What she does is very 
 perfect," she says; "she occasionally falls short 
 in the amount of power that I expected. Her 
 movements and gestures are all remarkably 
 graceful and easy, she impresses me even more 
 as an artist than a genius, which I did not 
 expect. Some of the things she did — I speak 
 now of her acting — were as fine as some of 
 Pasta' s great effects, and her whole performance 
 reminded me forcibly of that finest artist." 
 Mrs. Sartoris's own admiration for Pasta, under 
 whom she had studied was immense, as may 
 
LISZT 55 
 
 be gathered from her account of that great 
 singer. 
 
 Mrs. Kemble gives that amusing story of 
 Liszt which her sister used to tell, nay, to act 
 for some of us, so that the present writer has 
 always felt as if she had been present when 
 Mme. de Metternich, the grand lady, invited 
 the musician to her house, and after asking 
 various, somewhat impertinent, questions about 
 his stay in Paris, ended them with, " Enfin 
 avez-vous fait de bonnes affaires la-bas ? " 
 
 And Liszt's reply: " Pardon, madame, J'ai 
 fait un peu de musique, je laisse les affaires 
 aux banquiers et aux diplomates." The story 
 is well known, but it never will be told again 
 as it was told by Mrs. Sartoris, with all the 
 droll impersonation of the lady, and the courteous 
 malice of the great musician. 
 
 So the delightful company travelled on : 
 " Our whole expedition partook more of the 
 character of a party of pleasure than a business 
 speculation . . . the relations were those of 
 the friendliest and merriest tourists and com- 
 pagnons de voyage. Nothing could exceed the 
 charm of our delightful travelling through that 
 lovely scenery, and sojourning in those pleasant 
 antique towns where the fine concerts of our 
 two artists enchanted us even more than the 
 enthusiastic audiences who thronged to hear 
 them." 
 
56 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 It must be confessed there are very agree- 
 able moments now and again in our own lives 
 and our neighbours', and it is a real pleasure to 
 read of past happiness for people to whom one 
 has owed so much of one's own. 
 
 When Adelaide Kemble came out in 
 Norma at Covent Garden that autumn, she 
 sang the opera in English. The fortunes of 
 the theatre, ''then at the lowest ebb," revived 
 under the influence of her popularity. The 
 place was quite empty the nights she did not 
 sing, and overflowing when she appeared. 
 
 I can remember her describing to us one of 
 these performances, and her enjoyment of the 
 long folds of drapery as she flew across the 
 stage as Norma, and how she added with a 
 sudden flash, half humour, half enthusiasm, " I 
 have everything a woman could wish for, my 
 friends and my home, my husband and my 
 children, and yet sometimes a wild longing 
 comes over me to be back, if only for an hour, 
 on the stage again, and living once more as I 
 did in those early adventurous times." She 
 was standing in a beautiful room in Park Place 
 when she said this. There were high carved 
 cabinets, and worked silken tapestries on the 
 walls, and a great golden glass over her head 
 — she herself in some velvet brocaded dress 
 stood looking not unlike a picture by Tintoret. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris were married at 
 
AT ROME 57 
 
 Glasgow ; so their daughter, Mrs. Evans 
 Gordon, has told me : it seems difficult to 
 believe it ! Venice and its gondoliers and the 
 Lido ; Rome and the yellow Arno ; even Paris 
 with its golden domes and its sunset lights 
 would have seemed a more appropriate place. 
 But though Adelaide Sartoris was married at 
 Glasgow, the rest of her life was spent in 
 beautiful places, often among Southern scenes. 
 
 IV 
 
 The writer's first definite picture of her old 
 friend remains as a sort of frontispiece to many 
 later aspects and remembrances. We were 
 standing in a big Roman drawing-room with a 
 great window to the west, and the colours of 
 the room were not unlike sunset colours. 
 There was a long piano with a bowl of flowers 
 on it in the centre of the room ; there were 
 soft carpets to tread upon ; a beautiful little 
 boy in a white dress, with yellow locks all 
 a-shine from the light of the window, was 
 perched upon a low chair looking up at his 
 mother, who with her arm round him stood by 
 the chair, so that their two heads were on a 
 level. She was dressed (I can see her still) in 
 a sort of grey satin robe, and her beautiful 
 proud head was turned towards the child. She 
 seemed pleased to see my father who had 
 
58 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 brought us to be introduced to her, and she 
 made us welcome, then, and all the winter, to 
 her home. In that distant hour (there may be 
 others as vivid now for a new generation) 
 Rome was still a mediaeval city — monks in 
 every shade of black and grey and brown were 
 in the streets outside with their sandalled feet 
 flapping on the pavement ; cardinals passed in 
 their great pantomime coaches, rolling on with 
 accompaniment of shabby cocked-hats and 
 liveries to clear the way ; Americans were rare 
 and much made of ; English were paramount ; 
 at night oil-lamps swung in the darkness. 
 
 Many of the ruins of the present were still 
 in their graves peacefully hidden away for 
 another generation to unearth ; the new build- 
 ings, the streets, the gas-lamps, the tramways 
 were not. The Sartorises had mantel-places 
 with huge logs burning; Mrs. Browning sat 
 by her smouldering wood fire ; but we in our 
 lodging still had to light brazen pans of charcoal 
 to warm ourselves if we shivered. 
 
 At my request an old friend, who for our 
 good fortune has kept a diary, opens one of 
 his pretty vellum-bound note-books, and evokes 
 an hour of those old Italian times from the 
 summer following that Roman winter. He 
 tells of a peaceful Sunday at Lucca, a place of 
 which I have often heard Mrs. Sartoris speak 
 with pleasure ; Leighton and Hatty Hosmer, 
 
AT LUCCA 59 
 
 the sculptress, and Hamilton Aide the writer 
 of the diary are there ; they are all sitting 
 peacefully together on some high terrace with 
 a distant view of the spreading plains, while 
 Mrs. Sartoris reads to them out of one of her 
 favourite Dr. Channings sermons. Another 
 page tells of a party at Ostia. M Very pleasant 
 we made ourselves in a pine wood," says the 
 diarist. " I walked by A. S/s chaise d porteur 
 up the hills later in the evening. She talked 
 of her past life and all its trials, and of her 
 early youth. She said to me, ' I have suffered 
 so much from unkindness and neglect, that it 
 makes me lenient to any one who is kind. . . .' ' 
 But this complaint must be taken with a 
 reservation — it is almost a platitude to say so 
 —but those who are a little more highly strung 
 than their neighbours suffer accordingly, and 
 more than accordingly. It is they themselves 
 who respond to their own responsiveness. A 
 word wrongly said, a sympathy slowly given, 
 sets them a-quivering : this is the price of it 
 all. Some one or other of us is perhaps set to 
 a time that beats a little quicker or slower than 
 the rest, and then the notes jar ; not because 
 they are not in true accordance, but because 
 they go at a different measure. Life is a 
 concert in which crotchets and the quavers, 
 alas ! do not always wait upon one another. 
 Then comes an hour, as my father has said, 
 
60 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 when one recalls long past things, the old 
 affections start into life once more and seem to 
 smite one. 
 
 Wherever and whenever I think of Mrs. 
 Sartoris it is always in memorable surround- 
 ings, whether at Paris near the Seine, or in 
 Rome, or in the fine old house in Park Place, 
 or at Warnford, or at Warsash in Hampshire, 
 by the sweet Hamble shore, where the great 
 sorrow of their son's death fell upon her and 
 her husband, where she herself died but a very 
 few years after. 
 
 She had made the place and she loved it ; 
 so we all did, for to the charm of surrounding 
 circumstances must be added the pleasure of 
 such company as hers. It was not only the 
 welcome and the atmosphere of her home that 
 she gave us, but the romance of it all, and the 
 interests of every kind. The very people she 
 had known seemed to be there too ; the things 
 which had struck her — to be happening again, 
 with the accompaniment of her brilliant com- 
 ment, her vivacious and most memorable talk. 
 That gift of directness and incisiveness which 
 came perhaps from their foreign blood belonged 
 to both the sisters. 
 
 V 
 
 I can remember Mrs. Sartoris once laugh- 
 ing and saying that one of the noblest acts she 
 
PROTEGES 61 
 
 ever did in her life was when a poor music- 
 master had come to see her, on his way to call 
 upon some influential patrons. His shirt- 
 buttons had given way, with some untidy 
 consequences which filled her with alarm as to 
 what impression he might make upon his 
 patrons. There were other people in the room. 
 As the poor, shy man came up to take leave, 
 she held his hand and said, in a low voice and 
 not without an effort : " Good-bye, but before 
 you leave this house go into the study down 
 below and carefully examine yourself in the 
 round mirror upon the wall." 
 
 Her heart specially warmed to poor 
 musicians. There was a girl who was study- 
 ing at Paris, a charming, pretty creature, whose 
 cause she took up warmly. She invited us to 
 the play together ; she used to drive us both 
 out ; she used to ask the young singer to her 
 house, but some cruel fate threw the poor, 
 charming girl into the clutches of a villainous 
 music-master who ruined all her life, and the 
 poor child vanished. 
 
 There was another grim story I remember 
 of a beautiful stranger Mrs. Sartoris once met 
 on board a steamer on some one of the Italian 
 lakes, and with whom she made a pleasant 
 summer day's acquaintance. For two days, I 
 think, they travelled on together. Mrs. Sartoris 
 was delighted with her companion, interested 
 
62 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 by her cleverness, her beauty, her feeling for 
 art, and by a certain pathetic strain which 
 vibrated through all her gay and brilliant 
 spirits. And this is what happened quite soon 
 after, when the Sartorises came back from Paris. 
 They took up a newspaper one morning, and 
 there read the account of a suicide. A fashion- 
 able lady, living in the Quartier St. Honore, 
 had invited all her friends to an evening party, 
 and when the first guests were announced, was 
 discovered in full dress, with diamonds in her 
 hair hanging to the brilliantly lighted chandelier 
 in the centre of the drawing-room, and her 
 name was that of the mysterious lady of the 
 lake. 
 
 Trait after trait comes to one s mind, saying 
 after saying. For instance, " how the time had 
 come when it gave her infinite pleasure even 
 to meet people whom her father and mother 
 particularly disliked, so few were there left who 
 had known them at all." 
 
 Mrs. Gordon has told me that she can 
 remember a meeting between her mother and 
 George Sand in the Campagna of Rome, when 
 the great Frenchwoman came hurrying from 
 her villa, holding out both her hands in welcome, 
 with cordial warmth and excitement. She wore 
 a little cap tied under her chin, not unlike that 
 Siddons-like coiffe Mrs. Sartoris herself used 
 to wear in later days, and which became her 
 
IN PARIS 63 
 
 so well. Her beautiful head was like that of 
 some classical statue nobly set upon her 
 shoulders. But no classical statue ever looked 
 at you as she did ; her eyes and mouth spoke 
 before she uttered. She always seemed to me 
 an improvisatrice. Both she and her sister had 
 the rare power of stirring and stimulating one's 
 sleepy makeshift soul, suggesting, satisfying. 
 It was as if Mrs. Sartoris could at will compel 
 the sound and the sense and the colour into 
 that in which she was interested, she created 
 as she spoke instead of only speaking, so that 
 we were all for the time, and indeed for a life- 
 time since, illumined by her. 
 
 Mrs. Sartoris was once living in Paris in 
 the Rue Royale, in a very stately apartment. 
 It seemed to suit her, like all handsome and 
 beautiful things. I do not suppose the modern 
 aesthetic taste would have suited her. She 
 liked glorious things full of colour, Italian, 
 sumptuous, and she liked them used for daily 
 life and pleasure. She made a home out of her 
 lovely bric-a-brac and tapestries and cabinets. 
 Something of course must be allowed for the 
 grateful excitement of inexperience, but to us 
 in those days, her houses seemed like succeed- 
 ing paradises upon earth. I can remember on 
 one occasion gazing in admiration at a glowing 
 shaded lamp, the first I had ever seen, reflected 
 from one glass to another, and listening to my 
 
64 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 hostess as she sang Oberon's " Mermaid Song," 
 from the far end of the room. Then came 
 dinner in an octagon dining-room at a round 
 table with pink wax candles and ices, and then 
 a quick drive to the theatre where our stalls 
 were kept for us. I remember neither the 
 name of the theatre nor of the play, only the 
 look of the bright lighted stage, and the pretty 
 white house full of spectators. Mrs. Sartoris 
 was using a pair of turquoise eye-glasses, 
 through which she looked about, and presently 
 she whispered to me, " There, to your left in 
 the box on the first tier." I looked expecting 
 I know not what, and my first impression was 
 disappointment. I saw some figures in the 
 box, two men standing at the back, and a lady 
 in a front seat sitting alone. She was a stout 
 middle-aged woman, dressed in a stiff watered- 
 silk dress, with a huge cameo, such as people 
 then wore, at her throat. Her black shiny 
 hair shone like polished ebony, she had a heavy 
 red face, marked brows, great dark eyes ; there 
 was something — how shall I say it ? — rather 
 fierce, defiant, and set, in her appearance, 
 powerful, sulky; she frightened one a little. 
 "That is George Sand," said Mrs. Sartoris, 
 bending her head and makings friendly sign 
 to the lady with her eye-glasses. The figure 
 also bent its head, but I don't remember any 
 smile or change of that fixed expression. The 
 
GEORGE SAND 65 
 
 contrast struck me the more, for my hostess, 
 as I have said, scarcely needed to speak to 
 make herself understood ; her whole counte- 
 nance spoke for her even if she was silent. 
 George Sand looked half-bored, half-far-away ; 
 she neither lighted up nor awoke into greeting.* 
 
 Mrs. Kemble once said she had heard 
 George Sand described half in fun as "un- 
 amiable, very emphatic, very dictatorial, very 
 like herself, in short " ; but perhaps the descrip- 
 tion was as superficial in one case as it assuredly 
 would have been in the other. 
 
 In odd juxtaposition in the present writer's 
 mind comes the remembrance of a visit paid 
 many years later by Mrs. Sartoris to George 
 Eliot at North Bank in Regent's Park. It 
 was an interview rather than a meeting. George 
 Eliot, shy, serious, deliberate ; Mrs. Sartoris 
 also a little shy, but talking rapidly and 
 brilliantly, the acolyte present overwhelmed by 
 the importance of the situation, and therefore 
 greatly in the way. How useful it would 
 sometimes be to be able to vanish at will like 
 Prince Fortunio ! 
 
 * I like better to think of George Sand as I never saw her, 
 with grey hairs and a softened life, outcoming and helpful and 
 living in her later years among her plants, and her grandchildren, 
 and her poor people ; to imagine her as I have heard her 
 described in her age, beneficent, occupied, tending and pre- 
 scribing, distributing the simples out of her garden, healing the 
 sick, softened by time, giving to others day by day what she 
 still earned by her nights of persistent work. 
 
66 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 But how grateful one is to be there at other 
 times ! 
 
 Adelaide Sartoris was a fine critic, and 
 loved to exercise her gift. She used to make 
 me read some of my early stories to her, and 
 it is to her I owe a useful hint which I have 
 tried to pass on to many young authors. 
 " Read your MSS. aloud to yourself; " she said, 
 " many things will then strike you, which other- 
 wise you might pass over." 
 
 She loved her following of young people, 
 and was good and helpful to them all in turn. 
 " Even her intolerance of stupidity was ex- 
 pressed in witty but kindly words," says a 
 young companion of those days, now indeed 
 speaking ex cathedra. " One thing that always 
 rings in my ears is her recitation of Shelley's 
 1 Good Night ' to a low obligato accompaniment 
 on the piano ; " adds this lady, whose own 
 music Mrs. Sartoris so much enjoyed. 
 
 Into common life and its observances, its 
 engagements and decorums, Mrs. Sartoris 
 carried her sense of quick emotion. A girl 
 who had put off her coming at the entreaty of 
 another hostess describes her confusion and 
 remorse when she arrived at Warsash, and was 
 received with a certain state and grave ceremony, 
 Mrs. Sartoris sitting in full dress in the centre 
 of her big drawing-room, not rising to receive 
 her. "You should not have done it," she 
 
THEATRICALS 67 
 
 said, and then presently she melted and kissed 
 her. 
 
 A very memorable meeting should not be 
 unmentioned here. Was it yesterday only or 
 years ago ? Was it in a wood near Athens, or 
 in the forest of Arden itself, or in glades nearer 
 home that we all assembled once to make 
 merry and hold our woodland revels ? We had 
 stages and rural bowers to perform in ; Theseus 
 and Hippolyta and all the neighbouring sylphs 
 and fauns came up to see the sport ; our host 
 received I hardly know how many of us into 
 his home ; the neighbouring houses overflowed 
 with guests. Mrs. Sartoris played comedy ; 
 Mr. Sartoris, who had an extraordinary and 
 admirable gift of acting, took the leading parts. 
 Mr. Aide, our host, played the Delaunay jeune 
 premier. Surely Mr. Yates was there with 
 his two-and-thirty speeches. The sun shone, 
 there was a brilliant dazzle of sweet green 
 freshened by rain, the song of birds rang through 
 the woods, people kept arriving, driving up, 
 talking, excited, agitated ; the properties went 
 wrong, parts went astray, a whole Michaelmas 
 goose, very essential to the farce, was missing, 
 but nevertheless the plays went right and more 
 than right. I think Lord Leighton, who had 
 just finished his beautiful fresco in the Lyndhurst 
 church, was stage manager. A hostess with 
 beautiful white hair received us in the fragrant 
 
68 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 house among the woods ; charming nymph-like 
 figures came to the prompter's call, flitting 
 under the trees. Not the least charming among 
 them was " Christian Rupert," as Mrs. Sartoris 
 has called her, singing "Vado ben Spesso," in her 
 full ringing voice like the evening grace, when 
 the rehearsals were over. The girls from under 
 the trees looked like ladies out of Sir Joshua's 
 pictures, passing through the flicker of shadow 
 and sunshine. Their daughters are like them 
 now, but not quite what their mothers were, 
 and who is there to take the place of that noble 
 improvisatrice, that bountiful spirit ruling the 
 little company by right of birth and presence, 
 unconsciously imposing itself upon others and 
 carrying them along ? 
 
 The daughter, who read me the pages out 
 of her mother's diary, also gave me one or two 
 letters from an old cabinet — a cabinet where 
 Mrs. Sartoris herself had put them away. It 
 stands among the family treasures, drawings 
 and sketches by Leighton, by Mr. Sartoris and 
 Val Prinsep, among many mementoes interest- 
 ing in themselves and because of the interesting 
 people they record. One book is a fine old 
 black German Bible, on the first page of which 
 is inscribed, " F. Liszt to Adelaide Kemble." 
 Another volume touched me more nearly : it 
 was a green morocco book beautifully bound, 
 the name written in it by the giver, Edward 
 
FRIENDSHIPS 69 
 
 FitzGerald, and it contained Tennyson's 
 " Morte d'Arthur " copied out in familiar hand- 
 writing. Mrs. Kemble has told me how, as 
 a young man, Mr. FitzGerald deeply loved 
 and admired her sister, who had that special 
 gift for making lifelong friends : Mr. Henry 
 Greville and Lord Leighton are the first names 
 among Adelaide Sartoris's that come to one's 
 mind. How many more are there that one 
 might remember ? Browning, my own father, 
 Lord Lyons, Aide, Mr. Brookfield — they crowd 
 on one's memory. 
 
 Mrs. Gordon let me copy a note or two 
 from her many records stored away in order 
 and affection. Here is a letter from Dessauer 
 to Miss Adelaide Kemble, out of the cabinet. 
 
 " Ta lettre m'a fait le plus grand plaisir, elle 
 est bonne, spirituelle et a de Tembonpoint, bref, 
 c'est ton portrait. Tu me demandes la pareille* 
 Ma chere, c'est impossible ! la mienne serait et 
 sera toujours maigre, bete, et mechante, et par- 
 dessus ecrite par la main d'un homme nerveux ; 
 c'est-a-dire, pas lisible." He goes on to give 
 a sensible disquisition upon genius, upon right 
 and wrong, and the laws of justice in general : 
 " II est vrai que le genie est une qualite d'esprit 
 qui disorganise facilement nos qualit^s morales, 
 mais je ne suis pas encore a la hauteur de 
 croire que le genie a le privilege de commettre 
 des choses que Ton ne permettrait pas un 
 
 F 
 
70 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 simple mortel. La lutte, la lutte, voila, ma 
 chere, ce que je trouve admirable, et je crois 
 que le D ne s'occupera pas beaucoup a 9a/' 
 
 Here are a couple of Mr. Brookfield's notes 
 which I could not but ask leave to quote — 
 
 "Will you kindly mention in the proper 
 quarter that I think I have left two pairs of shoes 
 in my bedroom— -being Lent my going about 
 barefoot at present attracts no observation, but 
 the shoes would be convenient at Easter. . . ." 
 
 Again, Mr. Brookfield writes on some 
 subsequent occasion, inquiring whether a gold 
 locket chased with emeralds and the legend 
 "gone is gone" and "dead is dead" had been 
 found on his dressing-table, " not that I ever 
 lost such a thing," he continues, " or ever 
 possessed such a thing to lose, but you will 
 remember what I said about the old-fashioned- 
 ness of writing to announce safe arrival after a 
 visit — and this locket seems to me a competent 
 pretext on which to hang the expression of 
 gratitude for an unusually agreeable visit . . . 
 the pleasure of which by no means ceases with 
 its cessation, but abides perennially, as all things 
 worth remembering do." 
 
 There is a passage in one of Mrs. Sartoris's 
 essays which seems to me to give the keynote 
 of her deep convictions and which I will also 
 quote. " Now, to love anything sincerely is an 
 
THE TRUE ARTIST 71 
 
 act of grace, but to love the best sincerely is a 
 state of grace." 
 
 It is not for old friends who remember 
 that recollections are written, but rather to try 
 to tell people who cannot remember of some 
 of those who have gone before them, treading 
 with memorable steps towards the infinite 
 silence. 
 
 When speaking lately to one and to another 
 of those who had known Adelaide Sartoris, 
 it was like listening to a chord to hear the voices 
 recalling the well-known name, each striking 
 its special note of remembrance. A wise and 
 discerning Chatelaine, who from her youth had 
 known Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble, dwelt 
 with interest on the different gifts by which 
 the two sisters could best express what was in 
 them. Mrs. Kemble, so essentially poetic and 
 dramatic in her nature ; Mrs. Sartoris, so much 
 of an artist, musical, with a love for exquisite 
 things, and all that belongs to form and colour. 
 (Some of us can remember hearing Lord 
 Leighton say that though Mrs. Sartoris did 
 not paint, she was a true painter in her sense 
 of beauty of composition, in her great feeling 
 for art.) Another old friend, with some show 
 of reason, deprecated any attempt to record at 
 all that which was unrecordable. " Would 
 you give a dried rose-leaf as a sample of a 
 garden of roses to one who had never seen a 
 
72 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 rose ? " she exclaimed, recalling, not without 
 emotion, the golden hours she had spent, the 
 talks she had once enjoyed in the Warsash 
 Pergola. "It would be an injustice to that 
 dear and noble memory for me to attempt to 
 rake up stale recollections of such happy 
 hours. . . ." 
 
 Perhaps it might indeed be wiser to acquiesce 
 at once in the law that eventually carries all 
 into oblivion, and yet it is almost impossible, 
 while memory and imagination remain to us, 
 to leave fragments of beauty, like broken 
 temples lying neglected in a desert, unheeded 
 and unrecorded. 
 
 I think also we sometimes see others more 
 clearly, with more justice, in remembrance, 
 than we did at the moment of actual meeting, 
 of past exaggeration, and past excitement. 
 
 " You have only to speak of things as they 
 are," said a great critic who had known Mrs. 
 Sartoris in her later years. " Use no con- 
 ventional epithets : those sisters are beyond 
 any banalities of praise." 
 
 One voice speaking of Mrs. Sartoris, be- 
 longed to a lady sitting in her special corner of 
 the old brown palace which was till lately her 
 home. "That fine and original being," she 
 said, " so independent and full of tolerance 
 for the young; sympathising even with misplaced 
 enthusiasm, entering so vividly into a girl's 
 
LADY PONSONBY 73 
 
 unformed longings. . . . When I first knew 
 her," so this lady continued, " she seemed to 
 me to be a sort of revelation ; it was some one 
 taking life from an altogether new and different 
 point of view from anything I had ever known 
 before." 
 
 Lady Ponsonby, the young maid of honour 
 of bygone days, had made friends with Mrs. 
 Sartoris over a sudden burst of laughter. They 
 used to go about together rather shyly, not 
 quite familiarly at first, but on one occasion the 
 younger lady burst out laughing and the elder 
 lady caught the infection. " Can you indeed 
 laugh like that ? " said Mrs. Sartoris, laughing 
 on herself, and the friendship was made. They 
 met constantly, they used to talk and to 
 speculate on the many things in which they 
 were both interested. Once they went together 
 to see some performance in which a youthful 
 actor, lately come out, played in " Hunted 
 Down," a melodrama, and in the " Road to 
 Ruin," so admirably, that Mrs. Sartoris ex- 
 claimed : " This is the coming man ! " On 
 her return home that night, she wrote him a 
 letter of congratulation, and asked him to come 
 and see her. His name was Henry Irving. 
 
 Other voices I have heard speaking. 
 " faimais Adelaide" said Madame Viardot, 
 uttering that best of all epitaphs. A woman — 
 a well-known musician — going back to the 
 
74 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 times when Adelaide Kemble first came out 
 upon the stage, dwelt much upon the beauty of 
 the young debutante's singing and impersona- 
 tions, the full sweet tones of her utterance, and 
 still more upon her very great and remarkable 
 knowledge of music. Lady Thompson was 
 Kate Loder in earlier years, and her praise has 
 a meaning to it.* One more later friend to 
 whom I applied rather surprised me by chiefly 
 describing Mrs. Sartoris from the serious 
 country lady point of view ; visiting the 
 cottages, teaching the children, singing to the 
 villagers in the old Hampshire village. And 
 yet I have an old letter dated from Warnford 
 Court which somewhat bears out this descrip- 
 tion. The letter itself is so like her own voice 
 speaking naturally, that I quote it here. 
 
 " Have whoever you like on Monday," she 
 writes, " take me anywhere you like on 
 Tuesday. I am very well, for me, and shall 
 not be tired by anything at home ; it was only 
 the early rush out to the Popular on Monday 
 that appeared like a sort of impossibility, and I 
 also seem so happy chatting by your fireside — 
 only don't think I shall want amusement. . . . 
 I am sure to see the few people I want most 
 
 * In Cox's musical recollections of the last half-century, we 
 read of Adelaide Kemble : " She trod the stage like a majestic 
 queen ; her singing was marked by the entire absence of 
 meretricious ornament and by the quiet decision of its rhythm." 
 
LITTLE SCHOOL-CHILDREN 75 
 
 to see at some time or another during my 
 visit. I shall see Jeanie Senior and Leighton, 
 and Mrs. Brookfield and de Mussy ; and my 
 dear old Henry Greville will be sure to look 
 me up if he is in town. 
 
 11 1 am in an agitation about the examination 
 of our school-children, which comes off at 
 eleven to-morrow morning, and they are always 
 so nervous, poor little things, that they do 
 their very worst as a matter of course, and the 
 mistress works herself into a fever, and so do 
 I ! and I shall be thankful when it is Saturday. 
 I had my class up here yesterday afternoon for 
 a couple of hours, and they are coming again 
 to-day to read poetry. I have given them 
 simple little things to read which they can 
 understand. I found the poems in the regular 
 schoolbooks quite too difficult for me to explain, 
 full of ' terrestrials ' and ' ethereal firmament,' 
 and words and things I myself don't clearly 
 understand. If the inspector insists on their 
 reading to him out of the regulation lesson- 
 book we shall be done for, and disgrace our- 
 selves. Our inspector is William Warburton, 
 a brother of poor Eliot's ; he is gentle with the 
 little ones, which is everything. ..." 
 
 The notes I have been able to set down 
 are very slight, but such as they are, they 
 indicate something of that vivid life, full of 
 beauty, of impression, both reasonable, of fine 
 
76 MRS. SARTORIS 
 
 criticism, of feeling ; of that home of which the 
 master and mistress were essentially hosts of 
 mark ; ruling spirits not indeed to be forgotten 
 by the many who have turned to them, and to 
 the warming lights of their kindling hearth. 
 
MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 1809-1893 
 
 My father was a very young man when he first 
 knew the Kemble family. In 1832 he himself 
 was twenty-one, a couple of years younger than 
 Mrs. Fanny Kemble, who was born in 1809. 
 The mentions of the Kembles in a diary which 
 he kept about that time are very constant. 
 "Called at Kemble's." " Walked with Kemble 
 in the Park. (Kemble was John Mitchell 
 Kemble, Mrs. Fanny Kemble's brother.) We 
 met the Duke, looking like an old hero." 
 " Breakfasted with Kemble ; went to see the 
 rehearsal of the Easter piece at Covent Garden, 
 with Farley in his glory." Again : " Called at 
 Kemble's. He read me some very beautiful 
 verses by Tennyson." On another occasion 
 my father speaks of seeing " Miss Tot, a very 
 nice girl. Madam not visible" ; and again of 
 " Miss Fanny still in Paris. ..." 
 
 It was in the year 1851, or thereabouts, 
 that my own scraps of recollections begin and 
 that I remember walking with my father along 
 
78 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 the High Street at Southampton; and some-* 
 where near the archway he turned (taking us 
 with him) into the old i\ssembly Rooms, where 
 I heard for the first and only time in my life a 
 Shakesperian Reading by Mrs. Fanny Kemble. 
 I think it was the first time I ever saw her. 
 She came in with a stiff and stately genuflexion 
 to the audience, took her seat at the little table 
 prepared for her upon which she laid her open 
 book, and immediately began to read. My 
 sister and I sat on either side of our father. 
 He followed every word with attention ; I 
 cannot even make sure of the play after all 
 these years, but Falstaff was in it, and with a 
 rout and a shout a jolly company burst in. 
 
 Suddenly the lady's voice rose, with some 
 generous cheery chord of glorious fun and 
 jollity. I can hear the echo still and see her 
 action as she pointed outwards with both open 
 hands, and my father with a start, bursting into 
 sympathising laughter and plaudit and crying 
 " Bravo ! Bravo ! " and then again he sat back 
 listening and looking approvingly through his 
 spectacles. As we came away he once more 
 broke into praise. " Don't you see how admir- 
 ably she forgets herself ? " he said ; " how she 
 flings herself into it all ? how finely she feels 
 it ? " My father was that best of audiences, a 
 born critic and yet an enthusiast ; and to the 
 last he could throw himself into the passing 
 
FIRST MEETING 79 
 
 mood, into the spirit of the moment, while at 
 the same time he knew what he was admiring, 
 and why he admired. 
 
 Some years passed before we met Mrs. 
 Kemble again, in Rome. It was at a very 
 hard and difficult hour of her life, so I have 
 heard her say, a time when she needed all her 
 courage to endure her daily portion of suffering. 
 I was then a hobbledehoy, and (though she 
 was no less kind to me than in later years) I 
 only stared and wondered at her ways, asking 
 myself what she meant, and how much she 
 meant by the things she said, for I only half 
 understood her; when I, too, was an older 
 woman the scales fell from my eyes. 
 
 One had to learn something oneself before 
 one could in the least appreciate her. When 
 the gods touch one's hair with gray, then comes 
 some compensating revelation of what has been 
 and is still. Now I can understand the pas- 
 sionate way in which Mrs. Kemble used in 
 early times to speak of slavery ; then I used to 
 wonder only nor realise in the least what she 
 felt, often she would start to her feet in agita- 
 tion and passionate declamation ; she who with 
 streaming eyes and wrung heart had walked 
 about the plantations feeling more, perhaps, 
 than any slave could do what it was to be a 
 slave. To her free and ruling nature every 
 hour of bondage must have seemed nothing 
 
80 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 short of torture. In those far-back Roman 
 days of which I have been writing, she used to 
 take us out driving with her from time to time. 
 " Where shall I drive to ? " asks the coachman. 
 11 Andate al Diavolo" says Mrs. Kemble gaily. 
 " Go where you will, only go ! " And away we 
 drive through streets and out by garden walls 
 and garden gates to the Campagna, and as we 
 drive along she begins to sing to us. I could 
 box my own past ears for wondering what the 
 passer-by would think of it, instead of enjoying 
 that bygone song. 
 
 I can also remember Mrs. Kemble sitting 
 dressed in a black dress silently working all 
 through the evening by her sister's fireside, 
 and gravely stitching on and on, while all the 
 brilliant company came and went, and the 
 music came and went. In those days Mrs. 
 Kemble had certain dresses which she wore in 
 rotation whatever the occasion might be. If 
 the black gown chanced to fall upon a gala day 
 she wore it, if the pale silk gown fell upon a 
 working day she wore it ; and I can still hear 
 an American girl exclaiming with dismay as 
 the delicate folds of a white silk embroidered 
 with flowers went sweeping over the anemones 
 in the Pamphili Gardens. Another vivid im- 
 pression I have is of an evening visit Mrs. 
 Kemble paid Mrs. Browning in the quiet little 
 room in the Bocca di Leone, only lit by a 
 
SELF-IMPOSED LAWS 81 
 
 couple of tapers and by the faint glow of the 
 wood fire. I looked from one to the other ; 
 Mrs. Browning welcoming her guest, dim in 
 her dusky gown unrelieved ; Mrs. Kemble 
 upright and magnificent, robed on this occasion 
 like some Roman empress in stately crimson 
 edged with gold. It happened to be the red 
 dress day and she wore it. " How do you sup- 
 pose I could have lived my life," I once heard her 
 say, " if I had not lived by rule, if I had not 
 made laws for myself and kept to them ? ' Out 
 of this stress of feeling, out of this passionate 
 rebellion against fate, she grew to the tender, 
 the noble and spirited maturity of her late 
 days. In time, by habit and degrees, we learn 
 to understand a little more how to fit ourselves 
 to circumstance and life begins to seem possible, 
 and to contain certain elements of peace and 
 philosophy ; it is in mid-life, when people try 
 to accommodate their own wants and wishes 
 to those of others, that the strain is greatest 
 and the problem occasionally passes beyond 
 any powers of solution. Indeed very few 
 solutions are possible, though wise compro- 
 mises exist for all. Some natures are more 
 adaptable than others, and not having very 
 positive selves to manage, having impressions 
 rather than strong convictions to act upon, 
 they run fairly well along other people's lines ; 
 but when strong feeling, vivid realisations, 
 
82 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 passionate love of truth and justice, uncom- 
 promising faith exist, then experience becomes 
 hard indeed. When Mrs. Kemble went to her 
 rest only the other day, the critics who spoke so 
 inadequately of that great personality had not 
 felt the influence of her generous inspiration. 
 "A prouder nature never fronted the long 
 humiliation of life," said Mr. Henry Jafctes 
 who knew her intimately, touching upon the 
 more tragic side of her history.* 
 
 One should have a different language with 
 which to speak of each of those one has loved 
 and admired in turn. Such a language exists in 
 one's heart, but how can one translate it into 
 print ? Some friends seem like green places in 
 the desert ; one thinks of them, and one is at 
 rest. It is true also that there exist a certain 
 number who oppress one with nameless dis- 
 couragement, bores past and present. But the 
 Elect are those who put life into one, who give 
 courage to the faint-hearted ; hope, out of their 
 own hearts' constancy, and to these Fanny 
 Kemble belonged indeed. To the end she 
 retained the power of making new friends, of 
 being loved by them and of loving them. One 
 member of my own family, whom the elder 
 lady was pleased to christen Rosalind, only 
 knew her when she was long past seventy years 
 
 * In the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1893, 1 also read a very 
 remarkable and most interesting article about my old friend, by 
 Mr. Lee, who had known her in her youth. 
 
IN A SHOP 83 
 
 of age, but what a true and spontaneous link 
 was that which sprang up between them both, 
 one which, so wrote Mrs. Wister, added to the 
 happiness of her mother's later years ! 
 
 Mrs. Kemble returned love with love in full 
 measure, whether it came to her in the shape 
 of beautiful white azaleas from a faithful friend's 
 hand, or of music played so as to delight her 
 fine taste, or even as dwnmc Liebe with nothing 
 to say, nothing to show. 
 
 I once went out shopping with her on a 
 spring morning when she thought her room 
 would look the brighter for muslin curtains to 
 admit the light. She carried a long netted 
 purse full of sovereigns in her hand. We drove 
 to Regent Street, to a shop where she told me 
 her mother and her aunt used to go. It may 
 have been over that very counter that the 
 classic " Will it Wash ? " was uttered. The 
 shopman, who had assuredly not served Mrs. 
 Siddons, produced silken hangings and worsted 
 and fabrics of various hues and textures, to 
 Mrs. Kemble's great annoyance. I had moved 
 to another counter and came back to find her 
 surrounded by draperies, sitting on her ciiair 
 and looking very serious ; distant thunder 
 seemed in the air. u Young man," she said to 
 the shopman, "perhaps your time is of no value 
 to you — to me my time is of great value. I 
 shall thank you to show me the things I asked 
 
84 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 for instead of all these things for which I did 
 not ask," and she flashed such a glance at him 
 as must have surprised the youth. He looked 
 perfectly scared, seemed to leap over the 
 counter, and the muslin curtains appeared in a 
 moment. 
 
 Mrs. Kemble once asked me suddenly what 
 colour her eyes were, and, confused and unready, 
 I answered, " Light eyes." At the moment 
 indeed they looked amber somehow, not unlike 
 the eyes of some of those captive birds one 
 sees in their cages sitting alone in the midst 
 of crowds. Mrs. Kemble laughed at my 
 answer. " Light eyes ! Where are your own ? 
 Do you not know that I have been celebrated 
 for my dark eyes ? " she said ; and then I looked 
 again and they were dark and brilliant, and 
 looking at me with a half-amused, half-reproach- 
 ful earnestness. 
 
 It must have been in the early years of the 
 century that Sir Thomas Lawrence sketched 
 that well-known and very charming head of 
 Miss Fanny Kemble with which we are most 
 of us acquainted. The oval face, the beautiful 
 eyes, the wise young brows, the glossy pro- 
 fusion of dark hair, represent her youth ; she 
 was no less striking in her age, though no great 
 painter ever depicted it. She grew to be old 
 indeed, but it was only for a little while that 
 she was an old woman. Stately, upright, 
 
CHARACTERISTICS 85 
 
 ruddy and brown of complexion, almost to the 
 very last ; mobile and expressive of feature, 
 reproachful, mocking, and humorous, heroic, 
 uplifted in turn. This was no old woman, 
 feeling the throb of life with an intensity far 
 beyond that of younger people, splendid in 
 expression, vehement, and yet at times tender 
 with a tenderness such as is very rare. She 
 was indeed one of those coming from the 
 mountains, one of the bearers of good tidings. 
 As a girl I used to watch Mrs. Kemble 
 sedately at her work, and so in later days 
 we have still seen her, sitting stitching in 
 her armchair, dressed in her black silk Paris 
 dress and lace cap. She sits upright by the 
 window with flowers on the table beside her, 
 while her birds are pecking in their cage. For 
 a long time she kept and tended certain 
 American mocking birds, letting them out of 
 their cages to fly about the room, and perch 
 here and there upon the furniture. " I have 
 no right," she used to say, " to inflict the 
 annoyance of my pleasures upon my servants, 
 and therefore I attend to my birds and their 
 requirements myself." She emphasises her 
 words as she speaks, inserting the long coloured 
 threads with extra point, or again, when she is 
 interested in what she says, putting down her 
 tapestry and looking straight into your face, 
 while she explains her meaning directly and 
 
 G 
 
86 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 clearly, without fear of being misunderstood. 
 I once complained to her of something said 
 by some one else. " I do not care what any 
 one thinks of me, or chooses to say of me" — I 
 can almost hear her speak — " nay, more than 
 that, I do not care what any one chooses to 
 say of the people I love ; it does not in any 
 way affect the truth. People are at liberty to 
 say what they choose, and I am also at liberty 
 not to care one farthing for what they say, nor 
 for any mistakes that they make." What Mrs. 
 Kemble did care for, scrupulously, with infinite 
 solicitude, was the fear of having caused pain 
 by anything that she had said in the energy of 
 the moment ; she would remember it and think 
 over it after days had passed. People did not 
 always understand her, nor how her love of 
 truth, as it appeared to her, did not prevent her 
 tenderness for the individual ; she would also 
 take it for granted, that whoever it was she 
 was talking to also preferred the truth to any 
 adaptation of it. Her stories of the past were 
 endlessly interesting and various. She had 
 known everybody interesting as well as un- 
 interesting. She had always detested banalities, 
 and even as a girl she seems to have had the 
 gift of making other people speak out of their 
 hearts. Her pathetic story of Mary Shelley 
 haunts one with the saddest persistence, and 
 seems to sigh back the curtain of the past. 
 
-AS YOU LIKE IT" 8; 
 
 " Bring up a boy to think for himself," she as 
 a girl once said to Mrs. Shelley ; and to this 
 came the mother's passionate answer, " Ah ! no, 
 no, bring him up to think like other people." 
 
 Mr. Henry James instances among her 
 other social gifts, her extraordinary power of 
 calling up the representation of that which was 
 in her mind, and impressing others with her 
 own impression. Those, he says, who some- 
 times went with her to the play in the last 
 years of her life, will remember the Juliets, the 
 Beatrices, the Rosalinds, whom she could still 
 make vivid without any accessory except the 
 surrounding London uproar. 
 
 I myself fortunately once happened to ask 
 her some question concerning "As You Like It," 
 which had been Mrs. Sartoris's favourite play. 
 Suddenly, as if by a miracle, the little room 
 seemed transformed ; there were the actors, no, 
 not even actors ; there stood Rosalind and 
 Celia themselves, there stood Jacques, there 
 was Orlando. One spoke and then another, 
 Rosalind pleading, the stern Duke unrelenting ; 
 then somehow we were carried to the forest 
 with its depths and its delightful company. It 
 all lasted but a few moments, and there was 
 Mrs. Kemble again sitting in her chair in her 
 usual corner ; and yet I cannot to this day 
 realise that the whole beautiful mirage did not 
 sweep through the room, with colour and light 
 
88 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 and emotion, and the rustling of the trees, and 
 the glittering of embroidered draperies. 
 
 Mrs. Kemble told me that she herself had 
 only once heard her aunt, Mrs. Siddons, read. 
 She said the impression was very overpowering, 
 though she had been almost a child at the time. 
 It was from the witches' scene in " Macbeth " 
 that Mrs. Siddons read. She was very old and 
 broken at the time, and living in retirement, 
 but for a moment she forgot her suffering state. 
 The sense of storm and mystery and power 
 was all round about, Mrs. Kemble said. One 
 can imagine the scene, the dark-eyed maiden 
 sitting at the feet of the great actress and 
 receiving initiation from her failing hands. 
 
 The true dramatic faculty does not indeed 
 depend on footlights, or on a stage ; it is a 
 special gift from spirit to spirit. Fanny Kemble 
 was almost the very last representative of the 
 ruling race to which she belonged, and in no 
 small degree did she retain to the very end 
 their noble gift of illumination, of giving life to 
 words and feelings. She herself has defined 
 this power. " Things dramatic and things 
 theatrical are often confounded together," she 
 writes. " English people, being for the most 
 part neither one nor the other, speak as if they 
 were identical — instead of so dissimilar that 
 they are nearly opposite. That which is 
 dramatic in human nature is the passionate, 
 
THE DRAMATIC 89 
 
 emotional, humorous element, the simplest 
 portion of our composition ; that which imitates 
 it is its theatrical reproduction. The dramatic 
 is the real of which the theatrical is the false. 
 A combination of the power," she continues, 
 "of representing passion and emotion with that 
 of imagining or conceiving it, is essential to 
 make a good actor ; their combination in the 
 highest degree alone makes a great one." 
 
 I remember Mrs. Sartoris once saying, " I 
 do not know if you will think it very conceited 
 of me ; but it always seems to me that no one 
 I ever talk to is able to say anything clearly 
 and to the point, except myself and my sister 
 Fanny. When she speaks, I know exactly 
 what she means and wants to say ; when other 
 people speak, I have to find out what they 
 mean, and even then I am not certain that they 
 know it themselves." 
 
 Mrs. Kemble was dramatic rather than 
 dictatorial. Her selection of facts was curiously 
 partial and even biased ; not so her uncom- 
 promising sense of their moral value. When 
 she sat with her watch open before her, reading, 
 writing, working by rule, it was because time 
 itself was of importance in her eyes, rather 
 than her work. For her, life belonged to time, 
 rather than time to life. She carried her love 
 of method into everything, even into the game 
 of Patience with which she amused herself 
 
90 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 Evening after evening the table would be set 
 and the appointed number of games would be 
 played conscientiously whether she was tired 
 or not, inclined or not ; a beloved enchantress 
 dealing out the passing destinies to the paste- 
 board men and women on the table before her. 
 Mrs. Kemble once sent over for a neighbour 
 to teach him Patience ; one might moralise 
 over the combination — Mrs. Kemble teaching 
 Patience in her grand-seigneur fashion and 
 meekly subservient to the cards ! It was 
 indeed because she was so conscious of passion- 
 ate interests and diversities, that she tried to 
 shape her life to one recurring pattern. There 
 is an anecdote of Frederica Bremer, who was 
 not willing to see Mrs. Kemble on one occasion, 
 explaining afterwards, " I could not see so 
 many people as you are when I had a head- 
 ache." She was indeed many people, actors 
 and musicians, philosophers, teachers, and poets, 
 in one. She was eighty before she attempted 
 a novel, but her letters are models, especially 
 the earlier ones. Her poems are very lovely. 
 Her M Farewell to the Alps " was written after 
 threescore years and ten had passed over her 
 head, and I heard her read it with tears. 
 Once I asked her why she so disliked the stage, 
 loving all that belonged to it as she did. She 
 said that it was because she loved her own 
 being even more than her art ; that she found 
 
RELIGION 91 
 
 the constant simulation of emotion, in time 
 destroyed in itself the possibility of natural 
 feeling, and that she wished to keep the posses- 
 sion of her own soul ; I think she has also 
 written this somewhere in her " Records." 
 These lines are hers : 
 
 " A sacred burden is this life ye bear, 
 Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, 
 Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly, 
 But onward, upward, till the goal you win." 
 
 Her convictions were deep ; what she said 
 of her own religious faith was that it was " in- 
 vincible, unreasoning." I have heard a friend 
 describe how, as they came along the mountain 
 pass from Rosehlaui, Mrs. Kemble made her 
 bearers set her down at the summit of the 
 ascent. " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills," 
 she said, breaking out into the words of the 
 Psalm, and repeating verse after verse. She 
 used to go regularly to church when she was 
 in London, though I do not think any of the 
 steeples and pulpits which adorn South 
 Kensington exactly suited the deep and fervent 
 spirit of her faith. She was neither High 
 Church nor Low Church nor Broad Church, 
 and once after witnessing a Catholic ceremony, 
 the Fete Dieu, in some foreign city, she 
 exclaimed to her foreign man-servant, u Oh, 
 Govert, what an amusing religion you have!" 
 But her faith was a noble one, and her reverence 
 
92 MRS. KEMBLE 
 
 for what was good and great seemed to make 
 goodness and greatness nearer to us. 
 
 Of all possessions, that of the added power 
 which comes to us through the gifts of others is 
 one of the most mysterious and most precious. 
 
 Mrs. Kemble possessed to a rare degree 
 the gift of ennobling that to which she turned 
 her mind. Kindness is comparatively common- 
 place, but that touch which makes others feel 
 akin to qualities greater than any they are 
 conscious of in themselves, was, I think, the 
 virtue by which she brought us all into 
 subjection. 
 
A ROMAN CHRISTMAS-TIME 
 
 That particular Christmas-time of which I have 
 been writing which we spent in Rome in 
 1853—54 still seems to me unlike any other in 
 all my life. It began with chill winds and 
 piercing weather, but in a little while winter 
 turned to summer. The sun shone upon the 
 Roman streets, flowers bloomed in the gardens, 
 birds with their white wings crossed the windows 
 of our old palace, standing open wide all day 
 long. The music of the pifferari sounded in 
 the air, so did the voices calling and singing 
 down below. 
 
 • We were in the Via della Croce, which 
 leads to the Bocca dei Leoni, where Mr. and 
 Mrs. Browning were living. It was Mr. 
 Browning who had directed my father to our 
 palace ; on the ground floor of which, a pastry- 
 cook had established his shop, — Spilman, 
 celebrated for his cream tarts and little cakes. 
 He was a charming neighbour, so we thought 
 in those days, and so did various children who 
 used to come to see us from time to time, 
 
94 A ROMAN CHRISTMAS-TIME 
 
 climbing the stone staircase to spend an hour 
 or two. 
 
 Myfather was writing "The Newcomes" and 
 drawing the pictures for " The Rose and the 
 Ring " in those great vaulted rooms which we 
 temporarily inhabited, with the marble tables 
 and gilt armchairs and the swinging lamps and 
 lanterns. 
 
 Mr. Browning was also at work in his 
 little study, while Mrs. Browning, at hand 
 close by, sitting by her warm fire, was weaving 
 her spells and, as we read, hiding her papers 
 under the sofa cushion if anybody came in. 
 My sister and I came in at many odd times, 
 and though I can remember her little well-worn 
 inkstand and her shabby pen, with which she 
 wrote so delicately, I never saw any of her 
 manuscript. 
 
 Rome was crowded with visitors that 
 Christmas ; charming Scotch people, gracious 
 English ladies, enterprising young Americans. 
 A beautiful bride took me more than once to 
 see the gorgeous sights and functions of the 
 season ; monks in their flapping robes and 
 sandals walked the streets in those days ; so 
 did cardinals, followed by their attendant foot- 
 men : the Pope himself used to go by, blessing 
 the kneeling people, his great coach following 
 at a little distance. There were also peasants 
 in their dresses and models lining the streets, 
 
GIBSON IN HIS STUDIO 95 
 
 My father took us to the galleries and to 
 some of the studios. I can remember Gibson 
 showing us his tinted " Venus," while Miss 
 Hosmer stood by in a pinafore and with short 
 curling hair. Mr. Gibson told my father the 
 story of a couple who had just been to see him 
 with their little boy, and he seemed much 
 amused because the little boy had asked if that 
 was a ball of soap the Venus held in her 
 hand. Seeing her without her clothes he 
 naturally thought she was going to be washed. 
 " A ball of s-soap," Gibson repeated, grimly 
 chuckling ; " he called it a ball of soap." 
 
 My father's old friends, Mrs. Kemble and 
 Mrs. Sartoris, were both in Rome. Mrs. 
 Kemble ruled from the modest lodging near 
 the Piazza del Popolo. 
 
 Mrs. Sartoris's dwelling-place was very 
 different. She was established in one of those 
 charming spacious homes of hers which seemed 
 to belong to her life and nature. Interesting 
 people were always coming and going, from 
 her rooms beautiful music was sounding where 
 her flower-framed windows looked out across 
 the wide Roman view. She made us look and 
 admire — she loved to dispense and to share all 
 this beauty with others. 
 
 It was upon one of these golden days that 
 my sister and I, crossing an open piazza, saw 
 her carriage drawn up, not by the kerb but 
 
96 A ROMAN CHRISTMAS-TIME 
 
 standing well out in the sunshine, and within 
 it sat a figure wrapped in a cloak. Leigh ton 
 was waiting by the doorway of the carriage 
 and he waved his peaked hat. Almost 
 immediately Mrs. Sartoris herself came out of 
 some house near by, and as we met her she 
 said, " Look ; do you know who that is ? That 
 is Lockhart, Walter Scott's son-in-law. He is 
 very ill ; we are going to take him for a drive 
 in the Campagna." He gazed straight before 
 him like some solemn brooding eagle, silent 
 and mysterious. He was wrapped in cloaks 
 and wore a soft travelling cap, not unlike that 
 hood in which Erasmus is commonly depicted. 
 I only saw his profile and the pale clear-cut 
 features as the carriage rolled away. 
 
 The incident, trifling as it was, impressed 
 me — the sick man, the strenuous life behind 
 him, the feeling of the great Campagna outside 
 the walls, the friends' good company, the 
 glorious warmth of land and sky. The clown 
 says that youth is a stuff that won't endure. 
 But moments of youth last as long as we do 
 ourselves, and we babble of green fields to 
 the last. 
 
 After the carnage had driven away that 
 day, the pale beautiful face was still before me 
 as if it belonged not to the present but to some 
 mediaeval figure cut out of one of the galleries. 
 
 I have said that Leighton was standing by 
 
JOHN LOCKHART 97 
 
 the open door of the carriage. Long after- 
 wards I wrote and asked him if my impressions 
 were correct and if he remembered that drive. 
 He said he could not remember to which 
 particular occasion I referred, but he used 
 constantly to take long drives with Mr. Lock- 
 hart, going out into the Campagna of an after- 
 noon. 
 
 u Was he not striking ? " Lord Leighton 
 wrote. " Could any one forget him who had 
 ever seen him with his beautiful clean-cut 
 features, so pale and so fiery at the same time ; 
 those eyes of jet in a face of ivory ?" 
 
 And now I must quote one last sentence of 
 Lord Leighton's letter concerning Spilman and 
 the palazzo in which we lived and to which we 
 returned that day after seeing Lockhart. 
 
 " This stern man," so he wrote, M had one 
 very human peculiarity. He was fond of — 
 what do you call those rolled wafers full of 
 whipped cream ? You would not have expected 
 him to like goodies, would you ? " These, of 
 course, were the very cream tarts which I can 
 remember so well and which the children liked 
 when they came to see us and the pictures that 
 my father devised for them. But it was not for 
 forty years that I knew Mr. Lockhart also 
 liked them. 
 
PRESENT TAPESTRIES AND 
 FAR-OFF BELLS AND POME- 
 GRANATES 
 
 I had been asked to look at some hangings 
 which are for the present deposited at the 
 Victoria and Albert Museum, and, going there 
 accordingly, I was led by a young friend from 
 court to court until we reached the place where 
 they were displayed upon the marble floor. 
 As I looked, suddenly an old friend's voice 
 seemed to be sounding in my ears. " Yes, 
 that is the Florentine tapestry," Miss Browning 
 was saying. " Robert brought it all over with 
 the rest of the furniture from the Casa Guidi." 
 Then I remembered how the poet himself had 
 come into the room, crossing it with that alert 
 footstep of his, and how Miss Browning ceased 
 speaking and let him go on with the story. It 
 is sometimes difficult to distinguish between 
 the things one has imagined and the things 
 one has really known, but this little meeting is 
 no imagination. 
 
 The webs of life stretch on from year to 
 year, from one land to another. The tapestry, 
 
ROBERT BROWNING 99 
 
 which now seems to bring Italy itself to Crom- 
 well Road — to the " Textile Department " in 
 whose keeping it is at present — also raises for 
 some of us who used to go there, the London 
 home where the poet first dwelt when he lived 
 in Warwick Crescent forty years ago. 
 
 "He loved antiquities," says Mrs. Sutherland 
 Orr, describing it all in her biography, " in a 
 manner which sometimes recalled his father's 
 affection for old books." Most of his posses- 
 sions had been bought in Venice, where his 
 visits to the curiosity shops had been frequent. 
 He liked to match the carved oak and massive 
 gilding and valuable tapestries, all of which 
 carried something of the Casa Guidi into his 
 new home, and brass lamps which had once 
 hung inside chapels were there, and to these 
 was added, in the following years, one of silver, 
 also bought in Venice, the Jewish " Sabbath 
 Lamp." Browning had a theory which he 
 used to propound that almost all great men 
 had a strain of Jewish blood kindling in their 
 veins — where his own came from I do not 
 know. 
 
 The days are far behind us when the poet 
 lived in his house by the waterside, that peace- 
 ful place to which he had come by chance and 
 where he stayed for so many years. It was 
 London, but to many of us it seemed London 
 touched by some indefinite romance of its own 
 
ioo PRESENT TAPESTRIES 
 
 a tranquil oasis by the canal, where the waters 
 looked cool and where deep green trees shaded 
 the crescent. 
 
 The house was an ordinary house, but the 
 oak furniture and tapestry gave dignity to the 
 long drawing-room. Pictures and books lined 
 the stairs ; in the garden at the back dwelt at 
 one time two weird grey geese with quivering 
 wings and long throats who used to come 
 hissing and fluttering to their master. The 
 presence of " the man of rock and sunshine " 
 gave a soul to the four walls. It was here 
 that he accomplished some of his finest work. 
 It was here he made for himself a resting-place 
 after his great sorrow. A carved oak cabinet 
 used to stand in front of the tapestries as they 
 hung upon the wall. When I saw them again, 
 spread out upon the marble of the great hall 
 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, it seemed 
 to me that they were magic carpets to whisk 
 one away, past the past itself, even that of 
 Florence and of the Casa Guidi windows. It 
 was in 1849 that the Brownings set up their 
 home there. " Six beautiful rooms and a 
 kitchen, " Mrs. Browning writes. " Three of 
 them quite palace rooms opening on to the 
 terrace." There the poets lived their own 
 lives, seeing few English visitors ; as to Italian 
 society, she says, " One may as well take to 
 longing for the evening star." There is a little 
 
CLASSICAL FANCIES toi 
 
 story connected with the flying carpets which 
 my friends at the Victoria and Albert Museum 
 told me. Mrs. Browning had complained of 
 the cold, of the draughts from the terrace, and 
 her husband went out then and there and 
 bought these tapestries from a rag-shop hard 
 by for a few hundred francs. Now the panels 
 are said to be worth about ^2000. There are 
 two of them 6 feet in height, 17 feet or so in 
 length, enclosed in flowing borders of flowers 
 and birds and foliage. It must have all been 
 devised towards the middle of the sixteenth 
 century. In Italy these classic fancies seem to 
 keep alive in the sunshine. How vivid they 
 must have been to those who worked the web, 
 with all that special gay grace which belongs 
 to ancient Italy ! A contemporary Autolycus 
 might chant a list of the wonders depicted in 
 these charming panels. Here are mythologies 
 and metaphors and gardens and browsing 
 flocks ; the gods in Olympus are looking down 
 upon a golden age, upon an Arcady where the 
 infant Hermes lies sleeping, and a messenger 
 comes flying down from the clouds. We see 
 far away blue hills and the towers of an ancient 
 city ; and is not that a distant gibbet depicted 
 with a figure hanging to it, just outside the 
 city wall ? Then further on among the orchards 
 and meadows we see our Hermes grown to 
 man's estate, stealing the cattle and driving it 
 
im PRESENT TAPESTRIES 
 
 away,— Bacchus appears and disappears ; surely 
 music is in the air. Is that Apollo himself 
 teaching a student to play upon the flute while 
 dancers are merrily footing it? In the Brown- 
 ings' home the tapestry had an air of domes- 
 ticity, of poetic suitability. Here in the vast 
 temple of the art at Kensington it gains a 
 certain charm of its own quite apart from the 
 interest which belongs to its associations. My 
 friends at the museum can appreciate both, and 
 long to keep this treasure. They have not 
 available funds, but they dream of a golden- 
 hearted benefactor and lover of the Brownings 
 who would bestow this gift upon them or pur- 
 chase it and bequeath it to the nation. Can 
 this be the message conveyed by the flying 
 figure coming straight from Olympus ? 
 
 Mr. Birrell truly says that " Browning is 
 the most dilettante of great poets. Do you 
 dabble in arts and perambulate picture galleries ? 
 Browning must be your favourite poet ; he is 
 arts historian. Are you devoted to music? 
 So is he, and has sought to fathom in verse 
 the deep mysteries of sound. . . . Do you find 
 it impossible to keep off theology ? Browning 
 has more theology than most bishops, could 
 puzzle Gamaliel and delight Aquinas." The 
 critic quotes that noble saying, " Art was given 
 for that ; God uses us to help each other so, 
 lending our minds out." If ever a man lent 
 
M. MILSAND AND HIS WIFE 103 
 
 his mind out to help others it was the writer of 
 " Fra Lippo Lippi." 
 
 M. Milsand, of whom there is a photograph 
 by Mrs. Cameron in which he is made to look 
 like an inspired prophet out of the Old Testa- 
 ment, was Browning s chief friend and faithful 
 critic. He was also a most cheerful and human 
 companion whose barrels contained good Bur- 
 gundy. I once described a little festival to 
 which we were invited, with Mr. Browning, by 
 M. Milsand and his wife one summer when we 
 were all in Normandy together. 
 
 Now I cannot help adding a letter I have 
 lately found from Madame Milsand written as 
 a widow many years later concerning this 
 meeting : 
 
 " You do not mention when you speak of 
 that poor little feast upon the terrace which 
 you all enjoyed so kindly how Mr. Browning 
 having seized his napkin and placing it as the 
 foreign waiters do upon his arm, rose from the 
 table to wait upon the ladies who were present. 
 . . . Never had the poet seemed to me so 
 interesting as upon that day, so brilliant and 
 so delightful. Those/' says the lady, " who 
 only live in their present happiness can hardly 
 realise the pleasure of remembering. Is it not 
 a daily joy to think that God has set along our 
 road sincere and devoted friends ? " 
 
TWO LETTERS TO A PAINTER 
 FROM W. M. THACKERAY 
 
 The two letters here given, written to Mr. 
 Frank Stone, and lately sent to the Editor of 
 the Cornhill Magazine by Mr. Arthur Stone, 
 were first posted from Paris to London at a 
 time when my father had gone there to study 
 art, and when he had first taken to writing as 
 a means of earning his livelihood. My own 
 recollections do not begin till some time after. 
 
 Looking back at the vast ocean of days 
 succeeding days to which some of us can still 
 turn in wonder, I cannot quite tell where the 
 various events should be reckoned with, and 
 when it was that my sister came home after a 
 drive with my father (we were then living with 
 him in London) and told me that he had taken 
 her to a studio where he had gone to see a 
 friend of his, called Mr. Frank Stone ; that 
 they seemed very happy to meet, and talked a 
 great deal, and that before coming away my 
 father said to his friend, "Do you remember 
 painting my portrait over the picture of a lady 
 
A PORTRAIT OF W. M. T. 105 
 
 with a guitar ? " Mr. Stone said, " Of course 
 I remember — I think I have it still ! " and he 
 went into a sort of dark cupboard and pre- 
 sently came out with a half-finished picture 
 which he gave them, and they brought the 
 canvas home in triumph in our little carriage. 
 I can remember my father laughing as he looked 
 at it, and saying he could still make out the red 
 sleeves of the lady's dress through the dark 
 paint of the background. I have often tried 
 to do so. The picture now hangs on the wall 
 of my son's house in Hertfordshire. It repre- 
 sents my father as I never saw him, with curly 
 brown hair ; there are no spectacles, dark eyes 
 look out of a youthful, cheerful countenance. 
 In another picture, the same eyes are repeated. 
 It is that of my father's father, the same clear 
 eyes and falling lids, which I have seen in others 
 of the clan descended from the first William 
 Makepeace Thackeray, who lived on Hadley 
 Green and who left so many descendants. The 
 portrait by Frank Stone must have been painted 
 somewhere in the 'thirties, perhaps before the 
 first of the two letters here given was written. 
 It was as a painter that he had hoped to make 
 his way rather than as a writer, and his heart 
 always turned to the studios rather than to the 
 inkpots. He would have liked to read books 
 instead of writing them, and to paint pictures 
 instead of looking at them, with and without 
 
106 TWO LETTERS TO A PAINTER 
 
 spectacles ; and the correspondence which has 
 been kept by Mr. Arthur Stone, A.R.A., the 
 brother of Mr. Marcus Stone, R.A., shows 
 what a charm painting and painters ever had 
 for the writer of "Vanity Fair." In 1835 he 
 had gone over to study art in Paris, and he was 
 working- at the Louvre and in a studio. In 
 1837 he had married and almost fixed his way 
 of life, but he still looked backwards, and for- 
 wards too, to the time when he should be a 
 painter again, and one can realise what he felt 
 for the work and the workers. In my own 
 youth all our happiest outings and holidays 
 were when we went with him to see pictures 
 finished and unfinished on the easels of those 
 kind and friendly magicians who evoked the 
 dreams and the realities. My father was twenty- 
 four when the first of these two letters was 
 written. Mr. Stone was thirty-seven, exhibit- 
 ing at the Royal Academy, and already well 
 known. 
 
 Letter folded without envelope, addressed to Frank 
 Stone, Esqre. y 84, Newman Street, Oxford 
 Street, With postmark ; 7, at Night, 
 April 20, 1835. 
 
 Your letter was the first of the batch, my 
 dear Stone, and was more welcome to me even 
 than the hot-cross buns, which, on this day, our 
 religion ordains that we should devour. I have 
 
IN A STATE OF DESPAIR 107 
 
 been a little spooney ever since the perusal of 
 the letter, but my tears (and there were one or 
 two upon my honour) were those of a pleasant 
 content, when I thought of the half-dozen good 
 fellows who felt so kindly for me. God bless 
 all the boys and watch over the liquors they 
 drink and the pictures they draw. As for my- 
 self — I am in a state of despair — I have got 
 enough torn-up pictures to roast an ox by — the 
 sun riseth upon my efforts and goeth down on 
 my failures, and I have become latterly so 
 disgusted with myself and art and everything 
 belonging to it, that for a month past I have 
 been lying on sofas reading novels, and never 
 touching a pencil. 
 
 In these six months, I have not done a 
 thing worth looking at. O God, when will 
 Thy light enable my fingers to work, and my 
 colours to shine ? — if in another six months, I 
 can do no better, I will arise and go out and 
 hang myself. 
 
 We have an exhibition here with 2500 
 pictures in it, of which about a dozen are very 
 good, but there is nobody near Wilkie or Etty 
 or Landseer; lots of history pieces or what 
 they call here " ecole anecdotique " — little facts 
 cut (out) of history and dressed in correct 
 costumes ; battles, murders and adulteries are 
 the subjects preferred. Of costumes, I have 
 amassed an awful collection, and this in truth 
 
108 TWO LETTERS TO A PAINTER 
 
 is all I have done, except some infamous 
 water-colour copies perpetrated at the Louvre 
 when it was open. Now the old pictures are 
 covered up until June by the performances of 
 the modern men; there are lots of six-and- 
 thirty feet canvases, but not a good one among 
 them. Here is as good a portrait painter as 
 ever I saw, one Champ Marlin, who has been 
 abused by the Athenaeum man. No good 
 water-colours this year, though I have seen 
 some by Roqueplan (who is a little snob who 
 condescended to do me out of a five-franc 
 piece) that are as fine as Reynolds', most noble 
 in point of colour, sentiment, force and so forth. 
 I wish you would tell me how you used to 
 make that nice grain. I have tried all ways 
 in vain. I had hoped to have gone into 
 Germany for the summer, and on to Italy in 
 autumn, but my governors and the rest of our 
 tribe are to come here in a month and I shall 
 not be sorry to stay, and have a little more 
 copying at the Louvre. Have you been asked 
 to a tea-party by my Mamma? I wish you 
 would call there some day, for you are a great 
 favourite, and if you talk about the son of the 
 house, you can't talk too much or stay too 
 long. Mahony gives me great accounts of you 
 and Mac. O happy men, you are on the high- 
 road to fame and fortune — et moi, moi, pauvre 
 jouet de la fortune, voyant jour par jour les 
 
AFTER MARRIAGK 109 
 
 esperances du matin moquees par les horribles 
 realites du soir. Je n'ai qu'a lutter, a me 
 resigner, a. me consoler de mes propres malheurs 
 dans les succes de mes amis. With this flare 
 up in the French tongue for the grammar of 
 which I do not vouch, I must conclude my 
 letter. 
 
 God bless you, my dear fellow. I thank 
 you very much for your letter and for your 
 feelings towards I who is most sincerely your 
 friend, 
 
 W. M. T. 
 
 Two years later, my father writes again. 
 He is married by this time and living in Paris, 
 and one may share his wistful leanings towards 
 that peaceful life of art, and that tranquil ex- 
 perience of effort after beauty, which was never 
 to be quite his, though never quite denied to 
 him all his life long. 
 
 15 bis, Rue Neuve St. Augustin, Paris, 
 
 20 January, 1837. 
 
 My dear Stone, — I have sent some draw- 
 ings to London, which I want to be submitted 
 to your Committee, and for which I hope you 
 will act as the God-Father or Patron. I fear 
 very much that my skill in the art is not 
 sufficiently great to entitle me to a place in 
 your Society, but I will work hard and, please 
 God, improve. Perhaps also the waggish line 
 
no TWO LETTERS TO A PAINTER 
 
 which I have adopted in the drawings may 
 render them acceptable for variety's sake. 
 There is no man, I think, except Hunt who 
 amuses himself with such subjects. I hope 
 you and Cattermole will say a good word for 
 an old friend and here I leave the business ; 
 confiding in friendship ; trusting in Heaven ; 
 and pretty indifferent about failure, because I 
 don't think I deserve success as yet. 
 
 I have sent the drawings to my Mother in 
 Albion Street ; will you, like a bold fellow, 
 take them under your charge and present them 
 on the first Wednesday in February before the 
 astonished Board ? I wish I had had more time 
 to work, but the newspaper takes up most part 
 of my time, and carries off a great deal of my 
 enthusiasm. Mahony, who brings me news of 
 the boys, says that you are all flourishing, and 
 rich— Maclise with a fine house in Fitzroy 
 Square, and Cattermole in possession of 
 Windsor Castle, I think. 
 
 Cannot you manage a trip here ? Only 
 twenty-five shillings and I promise you dinners, 
 breakfastses and every delicate attention on 
 Mrs. T's part and mine. Lewis was here, 
 and very much to my disappointment, I never 
 knew of it until his departure. My letter is 
 very incoherent, and yet I am sober, but the 
 fact is three women are chattering at my elbow 
 and I can scarcely write or think. 
 
A POPULAR PAINTER in 
 
 Goodbye, my dear Stone, here is a very 
 short letter, all about my own interests, but 
 
 I have to write so hard for money, that I can't 
 write for love. Send me a line about the lads 
 and yourself, and salute them all for the sake 
 of your old friend, 
 
 W. M. Thackeray. 
 
 There is a letter from Edward FitzGerald 
 in 1845 to Frederick Tennyson : " If you want 
 to know something of the exhibition, read 
 Frasers Magazine for this month, Thackeray 
 has a paper on the matter full of fun. I met 
 Stone in the street the other day, and he told 
 me with perfect sincerity and increasing warmth, 
 how though he loved old Thackeray, these 
 yearly out-speakings of his sorely tried him." 
 
 The author of l( Vanity Fair " had not yet 
 succeeded in climbing far upon the ladder of 
 success, but Mr. Stone was now a painter to 
 be looked to. From careful pencil drawings 
 for the " Book of Beauty " (how often in early 
 youth has the writer pored admiringly over 
 these lovely ladies !), he had been elected 
 Associate to the Water Colour Society, and 
 then to the Royal Academy; then Associate 
 to the Royal Water Colour Exhibition. His 
 early works were engraved and very popular. 
 
 II The Last Appeal" will be remembered. It 
 is a touching and a dramatic appeal. The 
 
ii2 TWO LETTERS TO A PAINTER 
 
 young man looks at the hesitating maiden ; 
 there are other companion pictures of the same 
 sort, " The Old, Old Story," " Cross Purposes," 
 all engraved and admired for their graceful 
 sentiment. The " Dictionary of National 
 Biography ' writes of Frank Stone with 
 courteous appreciation as the intimate friend 
 of Dickens, the associate of the poets Campbell 
 and Rogers, and of my father. He seems to 
 have been one of the celebrated company of 
 amateur players organised by Dickens, who 
 went on tours, travelling north in the steps of 
 Shakespeare and his companions. About 1850 
 Frank Stone exhibited various scenes from 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Mr. Arthur Stone remembers, as I do, a 
 summer which we were all spending at Boulogne, 
 we of the ancienne garde of the present, being 
 then in cheerful prime as boys and girls, 
 frequenting the shores and ramparts of Boulogne 
 and the gardens of acacia and monthly roses 
 round the charming, somewhat mouldy houses 
 and pavilions we inhabited, from which I can 
 remember the Dickens family and the Stones 
 issuing somewhat tumultuously, and Mr. Stone 
 himself also standing there, portly, benevolent, 
 tall, round-faced, surrounded by young people. 
 
 " Why, of course, I remember him," writes 
 my old friend, Mrs. Perugini; "I remember him 
 from very early days, even before the Boulogne 
 
F. STONE AND HIS DAUGHTER 113 
 
 time. He always seemed to me a most delight- 
 ful and most amiable giant, specially sent into 
 this world for the amusement of my sister and 
 myself, and 'the boys.' He had a way of 
 shaking out a beautiful mop of brown waving 
 hair that was perfectly irresistible." 
 
 Mr. Stone's youngest daughter inherited a 
 crown of burnished gold which I can still see 
 shining in the doorway of Messrs. Colnaghis' 
 shop, one day when my father had crossed over 
 to speak to her and to her brother; she was 
 married not long after to a son of John 
 Sterling's. Her daughter still lives on Campden 
 Hill, in the house her parents built there. 
 
IN A FRENCH VILLAGE 
 
 Saturday. — I wonder when the English landed 
 in France with Henry V. upon this very coast 
 if it was as green and sweet to look upon as it 
 is now. All along the way the hedges of 
 clipped oak and nut trees and glowing maple 
 are garlanded by travellers' joy in profuse 
 abundance, by triumphant sprays of blackberry 
 with red and purple fruit ; ivy creeps in and 
 out, and convolvulus is turning to gold. The 
 autumn tints glow in harmony, every now and 
 then some shrill note of colour strikes beyond 
 the rest. Cattle are grazing in the fertile 
 fields, among sturdy apple trees studded with 
 crimson birds fly in autumnal flights ; we pass 
 pretty chateaus with their trim gardens, odd 
 little wayside dwellings, fine old timbered farms 
 with great barns and open yards. M. has 
 been sketching one of these all day, and the 
 rest of us — N., the musician, in her straw hat, 
 and P. M. and A. M. — have driven up to bring 
 the artist away. She is in no haste to leave ; 
 she loves her work; she is painting the old 
 barns; the cattle are in the fields. She has 
 
A PEASANT WOMAN'S SONG 115 
 
 been hospitably received by the owners of the 
 farm; it is called La Ferme de Carabas. A 
 pretty young woman with a child in her arms 
 is standing by watching as M. packs up her 
 implements ; the old farmer's wife comes and 
 goes from the open doorway of the house. " I 
 wish you would sing to these ladies before 
 they leave," says M., looking up from her port- 
 folio at the young mother. " Yes, I will sing 
 if the ladies would like it," says the girl, and 
 she sits down on a bench by the doorway, 
 tucking the child conveniently upon her knee 
 and motioning to us to sit beside her. Then 
 she begins in a sweet shrill tone with a touch- 
 ing cadence in it ; the baby tries to sing too 
 and struggles ; the mother pays no heed but 
 goes on with her song. There is something 
 dramatic and pathetic too in her rendering, a 
 French quality very unmistakable. The grand- 
 mother who has come up carries the child off 
 and the song goes on. The ballad is very 
 long, very sad, about a young man who dies 
 on the scaffold and gives his life for her he 
 loves. Only two days ago we were in England, 
 where the farmers' wives are silent for the most 
 part. It is an odd experience to be sitting 
 here listening as a matter of course to the 
 sweet monotonous plaint which seems still 
 sounding in our ears as we drive down the hill 
 to our lodging by the sea. 
 
n6 IN A FRENCH VILLAGE 
 
 Sunday. — Hearing strains of military music 
 I went out upon my balcony this morning and 
 saw other people also looking out from balconies 
 and doorways and terraces, gazing up the street 
 in the direction of the sounds. At the same 
 time prettily dressed ladies in white dresses 
 and bright colours, whole families — fathers, 
 mothers, children, babes in perambulators- — all 
 in their Sunday best, were streaming towards 
 the sea. The music came from the hill-top ; 
 none sounded from the blue waters, in dead 
 calm, but flashing with their thousand lights. 
 Havre de Grace across the great bay seemed 
 strangely near, so did the long line of cliffs all 
 delicately painted and stretching by Trouville 
 and Deauville and all the other " villes " which 
 lead to our little Villers-sur-Mer. 
 
 Our hotel is in a pleasant street leading to 
 the bay, while at the other end of it the road 
 brings you to the church of St. Martin, whence 
 so many chimes come all day long, calling to 
 prayer or marking the passing hours — seven- 
 teen o'clock, eighteen o'clock, as time goes 
 here. Our hostess, the landlady of the Hotel 
 de Paris, was standing in the doorway as we 
 came out, and when asked what was happening 
 she said it was a service in the church in 
 memory of those who had died for their country. 
 " Had we not seen the monument in the Place 
 de l'Eglise ? Very surely we ought to go," 
 
A CELEBRATION 117 
 
 And accordingly we started, two of us — say 
 A. M. and P. M. When we reached the Place 
 other people already were waiting in the 
 sunshine, and N. and M., our companions, 
 among them. 
 
 There are trees and pleasant shadows in 
 the Place de l'Eglise, and benches where 
 women are resting, and children are at play. 
 In the centre of the square stands a monument 
 carved with an inscription of grateful remem- 
 brance, and with the names of those belonging 
 to the district who have died for their country 
 — men of Trouville, men of Cabourg, men of 
 Azy, men of Villers and elsewhere. I could 
 read of F. Coullas at Tonquin, of A. Ameline, 
 of J. Lemonnier ; one could scarcely make out 
 the names for the wreaths which were hanging 
 over them. There were also flags and tri- 
 colour ribbons and those strange wire garlands 
 which the French are in the habit of putting 
 up in memory of those whom they would 
 honour. " La France Reconnaissante," " Sou- 
 venir Francais," and other inscriptions were 
 marked upon them. An effigy surmounts the 
 stone slab, and down below on a lower step 
 stands a bronze figure which I admired very 
 much. It is that of a young soldier leaning 
 forward with eager attention listening for the 
 call, courageous, determined. 
 
 Then came the notice of a banquet and of 
 
 1 
 
n8 IN A FRENCH VILLAGE 
 
 a dance and of the christening of a boat down 
 by the sea. 
 
 Meanwhile more and more people were 
 coming up, most of them wearing the medal 
 of the society; a certain number were also 
 decorated with long striped green ribbons. I 
 asked a handsome, very erect, old gentleman 
 who was wearing one what it represented. "It 
 is the ribbon w T hich we all wear who fought in 
 the war of 'jo" said he, looking a little sur- 
 prised ; " the war with Germany." Presently 
 I saw an elderly lady wearing the same decora- 
 tion pinned on her black dress; she had served 
 in an ambulance I was told. Then at last 
 Mass was over ; the great doors were flung 
 open, the peasant people came out, the towns- 
 folk, the visitors in their festive clothes. One 
 ancient couple of peasants touched me as I 
 saw them tottering out arm in arm through 
 the crowd in their old-fashioned country dress 
 with sad eager faces ; no need to be told what 
 a personal feeling was theirs. Meanwhile more 
 soldiers from outside had come marching up, a 
 white-haired drummer was playing the drum 
 in a spirited fashion ; the band was very old 
 though the privates seemed mere boys. Then 
 issued a fresh procession from the interior of 
 the church itself — more veterans — and the 
 choir in red and the priests in their berrettas 
 and surplices, followed by the vicar in his lace 
 
A SALE u 9 
 
 vestments, while the cross was carried high 
 and the flags followed and the drum struck up 
 loudly, and the whole company marched down 
 the hill to their banquet. There was some- 
 thing strangely moving in this assemblage 
 come to do such cheerful honour to those whose 
 memory was still present. Some soldierly- 
 looking Englishmen were standing by, who 
 took off their hats till the procession had 
 passed. 
 
 In the afternoon, coming back from our 
 Sunday drive, we found another assemblage 
 in our street standing in front of an old 
 furniture shop which we often had looked into 
 as we passed. " Vente a TEnchere " was 
 written up on a board, and every one was 
 assembling. Certainly the most irresistible of 
 auctioneers in a straw hat was dispensing china 
 ornaments, bonbonnieres, Normandy crosses, 
 Titians, and Rembrandts. A gentleman M. 
 met afterwards had bought one of each, he told 
 her. The company stood around, many were 
 seated on chairs, making an afternoon of it, and 
 the pretty shabby gimcracks were passed from 
 hand to hand. " Only ten francs for the 
 charming little object," says the salesman ; 
 "I am sure that madame there will give four- 
 teen for it ; at twenty it is a bargain. You 
 take it, sir. Thank you." And as the enter- 
 prising purchaser leans forward to receive his 
 
120 IN A FRENCH VILLAGE 
 
 prize he drops it with a crash upon the 
 pavement. The whole company bursts out 
 laughing, including the victim. 
 
 But at this moment suddenly everybody 
 stands up ; the auctioneer takes off his straw 
 hat, all the rest uncover, and again the choir 
 boys in red and the tall cross, and the flags and 
 the priests in their order, and M. le Vicaire, 
 come up from the seashore, and our little 
 assemblage makes way for them. They have 
 been christening the boat and blessing it before 
 it starts on its long journeys, and they are now 
 passing on to the church for vespers. Then 
 immediately our friend the auctioneer resumes 
 his spirited monologue, and as we came away I 
 could see the old owner of the shop, doubled 
 up by age, anxiously watching from his door- 
 way. We went down to look at the sea ; the 
 people were crowding on the jetty and the 
 steps, the newly christened boat moored high 
 up on the sands decorated with its flags and 
 with flowers ; the crowds, mostly country 
 people who had come from their distant 
 villages by long hilly roads and green lanes, 
 stood admiring. Some laughing boys and 
 girls, also trimmed up with tricolour ribbons, 
 went about in couples hand in hand shyly 
 collecting for the czuvre of the day. Then the 
 carts and chars-a-banc began to drive away 
 across the hills; the sky turns to dull gold, 
 
WAR AND PEACE 121 
 
 while a noble clouded storm comes rolling up 
 from the west. 
 
 This was written in August, 191 3. Was it 
 some presentiment which so impressed us as 
 we stood by during the village-gathering, of 
 the far more terrible war which was to over- 
 shadow the old one ? 
 
 Lady Ritchie was at Freshwater when she 
 added these words, the last she ever wrote for 
 publication. She had just witnessed another 
 village-gathering in the little grey church held 
 immediately on the news of the signing of the 
 Armistice. The following letter from J. G. R., 
 telling of the great day in London, she wished 
 printed as a fitting conclusion. 
 
 7. G. R. to A. I. R. 
 
 November 12, 1918. 
 
 When the news came, it was choking was 
 it not ? I saw the Times letter with the most 
 apposite quotation from your father about the 
 Stuarts, which applied to Wilhelm very nearly. 
 And so he has run away into Holland ! It is 
 as bad as James II. flying across the Thames 
 and dropping his seal into the water. I cannot 
 help wishing Wilhelm had been stopped by the 
 Belgian crowd, as James was by the fishermen 
 on the coast, and brought back and presented 
 to the Tommies of the most forward British 
 Regiment. 
 
122 IN A FRENCH VILLAGE 
 
 Though we had expected the news, when it 
 did come, one could hardly believe it. I had 
 been prowling about, getting various accounts, 
 and was coming back to 55, when suddenly 
 the maroons went off, and I saw our door 
 open with M. and P. and the maids all 
 looking as if they were stunned. Then I went 
 and got on to a bus to go to Westminster 
 and see what was happening. Servants in 
 groups at every door, the school - children 
 assembling with broad grins in the play- 
 grounds, everybody rushing to get out flags, 
 half laughing, half crying, people beaming and 
 shaking hands. I managed to get on the 
 front place of the roof, and as I went up 
 Victoria Street, realised that I should see the 
 most wonderful sight in the world. And indeed 
 it was. The people of London giving way to 
 the first rush of joy and wonder, and living 
 again and being themselves, after four years of 
 rigorous self-suppression. By the time we 
 reached Trafalgar Square we were fairly stuck 
 in a mass of vehicles trying to pass in different 
 directions, and able to watch the marvellous 
 sights on every side. Down came a band, 
 marching to Buckingham Palace, but one could 
 hear nothing but the big drum because of the 
 roar of the crowds. It was a roar of laughter, 
 of people whacking tin plates, shouting, singing, 
 waving flags at each other, forming processions, 
 
ARMISTICE DAY IN LONDON 123 
 
 crowding into every lorry, till one thought the 
 whole world was mad with joy. We all talked 
 to each other, as if we had been old friends 
 for years. I finally got down at Liverpool 
 Street, where all the buses stopped as they 
 said there would be no room at all to drive 
 back. Then I went to St. Paul's, packed 
 every inch by a serious-minded congregation, 
 old people, nurses, families out for the day with 
 their children, and was glad to rest for an hour 
 before the thanksgiving service began. It 
 seemed as if all the people inside joined with 
 one voice. It was dark and drizzling when I 
 came out, but all the city churches were ringing 
 their bells like mad, and one felt that the dark 
 cloud that had been hanging over us for four 
 years had been suddenly cleared away, thank 
 God, and we have all emerged, sadder and 
 wiser. 
 
 I can just imagine what you are feeling. 
 King Albert in one fortnight having all Belgium 
 back again. The Strasburg statue wreathed 
 in French colours, after forty-eight years of 
 crape, Christopher returning from captivity in 
 Turkey, these and a thousand more ideas are 
 suggested, and our A. and G. and so many 
 others. 
 
 Yr. most affecte. 
 
 J. G. R. 
 
BINNIE 
 
 I 
 
 " I don't like him," said the poor lady anxiously. 
 "Not that he isn't very clever, and of course 
 he is very persuasive and very handsome — 
 don't you think so ? — but he has nothing besides 
 his curacy, except what his old mother allows 
 him, and I do think it is a pity that he is going 
 to refuse the naval chaplaincy. It seems such 
 a chance, though the ship is stationed in the 
 West Indies ; — my dear Albert was out there 
 for years and years before he ever thought of 
 marrying, dear fellow ; he must have known 
 how much I . . . " 
 
 " Has Alberta anything of her own ? " I 
 interrupted. 
 
 " She has her pension of ^ioo a year from 
 the Fund, but she loses that if she marries, and 
 of course she couldn't go on board ship," said 
 the anxious mother nervously, trying to pull 
 her right-hand glove on to her left-hand fingers, 
 "and indeed Mr. Balsillie often tells the girls 
 it would be dishonourable to marry, and he 
 feels that his call is here among his flock, and 
 
AN ANXIOUS MOTHER 125 
 
 not on board ship at all. He wishes to be a 
 lifelong friend to them both, to Binnie especi- 
 ally, and she wishes it too and so does Dickie. 
 Oh, I don't know what to wish, and I can't 
 bear to seem cruel and unkind, and I thought I 
 would come and talk to you," said the poor 
 lady in the crumpled bonnet, fixing her wistful 
 watery eyes upon me. " Dear Miss William- 
 son, you have so much experience, and you 
 must know so much about him, living in the 
 same house. And you are so much older than 
 I am. Oh, tell me what I ought to do," she 
 repeated, as if the fact of four or five years' 
 seniority endowed one with omniscience as 
 well as with a few extra wrinkles, and enabled 
 one to solve all the riddles of life straight off. 
 And surely of all the riddles of life none are 
 more difficult than those of fond parents whose 
 children are bent upon making fools of them- 
 selves ! Perhaps it is more difficult for mothers 
 than for fathers to refuse their consent to hope- 
 less entanglements; — men maybe more inclined 
 to romance, but sentiment has an attraction 
 for women, against which all the experiences 
 of impecunious life and threadbare difficulties 
 speak in vain. 
 
 ..." She says I am breaking her heart 
 when I try to interfere," Mrs. Willoughby went 
 on. " I am sure it is the last thing I should 
 wish to do. My dear Binnie was so happy 
 
126 BINNIE 
 
 and sweet until this horrid friendship began. — 
 Dickie is almost as much upset as Binnie her- 
 self, and I know if their dear father was alive 
 he would entirely disapprove of it and be so 
 much annoyed with me for having allowed it 
 at all." As Mrs. Willoughby sat there, a meek 
 big woman in her shabby black gown and red 
 Indian scarf, she reminded me of some picture 
 I had once seen hung up in a National School, 
 of a devoted old pelican with a bleeding breast. 
 
 The little Pelicans, Alberta and Cordelia, 
 inappropriately curtailed into Binnie and Dickie, 
 had been old pupils of mine. Dickie was dark 
 and concentrated, and took, I suppose, after 
 her late father ; Binnie was a simple-minded 
 creature who favoured her mother's side of the 
 house. She had the prettiest fair curls imagin- 
 able, pinned up in shining ripples like sunbeams 
 round her face with all the pretty blushes 
 coming and going and the soft grey appealing 
 eyes. 
 
 " I think you are perfectly right to object 
 to such an indefinite engagement," said I, 
 adjusting myself to my character of impartial 
 justice and experienced oracle. " You are only 
 doing your duty as a wise and sensible mother. 
 I like Mr. Balsillie well enough, but he certainly 
 ought not to marry upon his income, and he 
 shouldn't have said anything at all about his 
 rubbishy friendship. " 
 
MR. BALSILLIE 127 
 
 Mr. Balsillie was lodging on the ground 
 floor under my rooms in West Kensington. 
 He was a broadset, active man in a round 
 clerical hat, usually with a book under his arm. 
 He had a neat profile. He wore spectacles. 
 I used to meet him when I was starting of a 
 morning on my round or again as I was coming 
 back wearily after my day's teaching, when he 
 was going off once more, brisk and energetic, 
 to spend an evening among the mothers and 
 grandmothers of the parish. He was a forward 
 young man I used to think, rather too familiar 
 as he would take off his wideawake with a 
 friendly preoccupied air when he met me. He 
 was dignified in manner, a trifle mysterious, 
 but not a bad fellow. He was what is called 
 a powerful preacher. He used to begin in a 
 low voice, and suddenly he would shout at his 
 congregation (many of the ladies were rather 
 deaf and they certainly preferred Mr. Balsillie 
 as a preacher to Archdeacon Meakin), Mr. 
 Balsillie used to suggest all sorts of exciting 
 possibilities — Pitfalls, Unruly Passions, Worldly 
 Ambitions; while he warned us against the 
 Temptations of the Flesh, the wiles of the 
 Devil, Drunkenness, Infidelity. ... As Mrs. 
 Willoughby said, one felt quite adventurous 
 and prepared for anything, when one came 
 away from one of his sermons. 
 
 All this time my poor old pelican has been 
 
128 BINNIE 
 
 sitting with her eyes fixed on my face waiting 
 for a further oracle, and after consideration I 
 produce my verdict. 
 
 " I think a change of scene would be the 
 best thing for Binnie," said I. "She must be 
 influenced by degrees. One can't do every- 
 thing all at once/' 
 
 " Oh yes, oh yes. How wise and right you 
 are ! " cried the poor lady — " if only the girls 
 will agree to it. If only I could afford. . . . 
 Would Margate be change enough, do you 
 think, or Southend ? — there is such a nice pier 
 and we might try for lodgings. I do wish Dickie 
 could be persuaded . . . but expense is the 
 difficulty." 
 
 Then I held out a straw which Mrs. 
 Willoughby eagerly clutched at. I told her I 
 was going north to stay with my old friend, 
 Lady Frances Neville, in her Scotch manse, 
 and I was almost sure I might take Binnie 
 with me. I would write by that evening's post. 
 
 "If you don't think Dickie will mind being 
 left," said the poor soul rather anxiously. 
 
 " Of course she won't," said I. 
 
 Kind Lady Frances made no difficulty and 
 agreed at once to my request. But as for 
 Binnie she was as cross as such a good little 
 creature could well be. When we told her of 
 the plan she looked stony, stormy, grumpy, in- 
 different by turns, even her curls seemed to 
 
A PROPOSED VISIT 129 
 
 lose something of their shine, and Dickie wildly 
 protested, " Oh, mamma, you are always fuss- 
 ing. We only want you to leave us alone. 
 Poor Binnie, it is so hard upon her." 
 
 The whole plan was almost given up in 
 despair, when to my surprise and relief Mr. 
 Balsillie, to whom Mrs. Willoughby impulsively 
 appealed on the doorstep, took our side. 
 
 " It will do her good/' he said in his clerical 
 tone. M My little friend evidently needs a 
 change. I know Lady Frances Neville and 
 the country round Aviemore well — I have 
 friends in that neighbourhood. Pray urge Miss 
 Binnie to go, Mrs. Willoughby — advise her 
 from me," he said. There was something 
 peculiarly patronising in his tone and most 
 irritating, I thought, but one had to be thankful 
 for small mercies and to take them when they 
 came in one's way. Binnie and Dicky doubtfully 
 consented, and thus it happened that Alberta 
 and I started off together on our northern 
 journey, comfortably tucked up in our two 
 railway corners with our luncheon overhead in 
 a basket. Mrs. Willoughby was on the plat- 
 form to see us off in her usual black. She had 
 left the red scarf at home, but her spider-like 
 veil and her limp jet trimmings, her shabby 
 fingers and galoshes seemed to tell the history 
 of this most unselfish, incapable lady. Her 
 clothes hung limper than other people's clothes, 
 
130 BINNIE 
 
 her ribbons drooped feebly, her watery blue 
 eyes appealed to the very rails for sympathy, 
 as she stood struggling with her emotion, while 
 Dickie beside her, trim, cross, indignant, stood 
 looking daggers at me through the carriage 
 window. 
 
 I had influenced Mrs. Willoughby, I was 
 carrying Binnie away, I was crushing her heart 
 under my foot, to say nothing of Dickie's 
 sisterly sympathies. Just at the last moment, 
 when the guard was banging the doors of the 
 carriages, there was a sudden scuffle, a third 
 figure with flying coat-tails holding up a 
 clerical hat darted forward and was immediately 
 pulled back again by the brute force of a couple 
 of porters. Mrs. Willoughby at the same 
 moment threw up both her hands and burst 
 into tears, the engine gave a shriek, the train 
 moved off. Binnie, who had started up, not 
 speaking but trembling very much, fell back 
 in her seat deadly pale as the train slid away. 
 
 The only other passenger in the carriage 
 was a fashionable lady of a certain age, with 
 jingling bracelets and many accessories, who 
 came to my help and produced so many 
 restoratives from her various bags and re- 
 ceptacles ; flasks, salts, vinagrettes, that I felt 
 it was an embarras de richesses. Little Binnie 
 gradually recovered as we travelled on, 
 languidly returning the various objects which 
 
A JOURNEY NORTH 131 
 
 had been handed to her. By degrees stifled 
 sobs succeeded to her faintness and when at 
 last she quieted down, I realised that my holiday 
 had begun. The train was travelling past 
 Hatfield and across the wide Hertfordshire 
 plains. The country was looking radiant in its 
 autumn robes of brown and crimson pranked 
 with gold. The sun broke out. It seemed as 
 if the hour were one sent from beyond the 
 skies. What a contrast was this delightful 
 landscape with its drifting clouds, to the weary 
 roads and terraces along which I had been 
 trudging all through the summer months ! My 
 little companion sat silent, averting her eyes 
 from mine when they chanced to meet, with a 
 shy reproachful look. It was my unkind con- 
 duct which caused the train to fly so quickly 
 —my cruel persuasions which had induced her 
 mother to send her away so far, putting all 
 these counties, these fields and palings and 
 villages, these church steeples and cottages and 
 fruit trees and hay stacks between her and that 
 well-loved place — that West Kensington road 
 leading to the iron church with the clanging 
 bell, whither all her thoughts were bound. 
 
 We passed from fields to wolds, from valleys 
 full of smoking factories to streams and dales 
 and hedgerows ; we came to stately York with 
 it minster towers against the clouds and its 
 spreading trees reflected in the river, but Binnie 
 
i 3 2 BINNIE 
 
 hardly raised her head. At Newcastle, where 
 rocks and men meet like flint and steel, a faint 
 colour began to glow in the girl's soft cheek, 
 she seemed interested at last, and an exclama- 
 tion broke from her pretty lips. " How like " — 
 she began, but the words died away, while a 
 stout figure in spectacles, in clerical attire, crossed 
 the platform carrying a small portmanteau. 
 
 " It is not Mr. Balsillie," said I drily. My 
 patience was coming to an end, and I felt — 
 Heaven forgive me — as if I should like to box 
 the poor child's ears. Then we started off 
 again. Towards six o'clock we came puffing 
 and panting into Edinburgh, where the sky was 
 crimson and the lights on each side of the 
 great rocky defile were beginning to shine. 
 As we slowly proceeded, Arthur's Seat, Holy- 
 rood, Scott's monument, began all in turn to 
 oust the wearisome phantom of the everhaunt- 
 ing curate — Binnie (she was but nineteen) 
 seemed to revive, to wake up, to look out 
 of window, first on one side and then on the 
 other. We were bound for Perth, and still 
 through the sunset we travelled on, across 
 the open Firth and its wondrous bridge where, 
 what with the beauty of Scotland and the 
 fresh air from the ocean, I could see Binnie's 
 eyes happily shining once more. She was 
 a provoking, silly little girl, and had done 
 her best to seem indifferent, but the joys of 
 
SCOTCH SUNSHINE 133 
 
 travel, the powers of youth combined with the 
 invigorating northern breezes, came to my help 
 and for the next few hours I do believe the 
 tiresome Balsillie obsession was exorcised. 
 Alas ! that people can't always expect to have 
 express trains at their command, to be carried 
 straight away from their preoccupations, and 
 whirled from one historic and romantic spot to 
 another ; nor can they always have cheerful 
 and expensive hotels brilliantly lighted up to 
 receive them at the journey's end, such as that 
 one which was waiting for us at Perth, where 
 we found our table ready spread before us. 
 Fresh fruit, scones and hospitable Scotch 
 dainties of every description were set out, and 
 Binnie's appetite certainly returned. She once 
 burst out laughing at nothing at all, just as she 
 used to do before Mr. Balsillie came upon the 
 scene. Nor indeed did her pleasant humour 
 desert her the next morning, when we started 
 again in the early sunshine. 
 
 Italian sunshine may have its own special 
 attributes, Scotch sunshine always seems to 
 me to have a quality of its own. It is Hope 
 and Joy combined, something moral as well as 
 physical. It played upon us all that day, while 
 we travelled from Perth towards Inverness; 
 along hill-sides of which the fragrant crests 
 were just breaking into purple bloom, while 
 the railway faithfully follows the stream as it 
 
 K 
 
134 BINNIE 
 
 rushes across the moors to the sea. Has not 
 Ruskin written of that peculiar sense of freedom 
 which comes to us from these spontaneous, 
 unpolluted places ? M I took stones for bread," 
 he says, speaking of this very country, "but 
 not certainly at the Devil's bidding." 
 
 II 
 
 The carriage was closely packed and indeed 
 all along the way there were crowds of holiday 
 people waiting for the train. Somewhere about 
 Blair Athol a woman got in^with some children, 
 and after setting them all down in their places, 
 she pulled out a stocking and immediately began 
 to knit. She was a decent Scotswoman of 
 the middle class and seemed ready to talk, 
 being apparently something of an oracle, while 
 the children sat swinging their legs and staring, 
 respectfully taking in every word she uttered. 
 She was on her way to John of Groat's land 
 for sea air for her little nephews and nieces, 
 she told us all. She addressed herself first to 
 one and then to another. An elderly Scotch 
 couple who had started with us from Perth 
 received her confidences with prosaic sympathy. 
 Then an American joined in. He had a valise 
 and a little boy travelling in neatly buttoned 
 gloves such as only little American boys would 
 consent to wear, and carrying a cane. The 
 
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS 135 
 
 little boy was called Putnam, and every now 
 and then the elder man would impress upon 
 Putnam the importance of making mental notes 
 of the passing facts and places. 
 
 "You have got to remember all this," said 
 the mentor, "and carry it back to Nashville." 
 The boy didn't seem so much impressed as his 
 tutor by the value of statistics, but he listened 
 willingly enough, together with the other 
 children, to the stories the old lady was telling 
 over her stocking, concerning John of Groat's 
 land and the seven brothers who each wanted 
 to be first ; so that their father had to build a 
 house with seven doors by which every man 
 entered separately and took his place at the 
 round table where seven places were set. 
 
 "Ye can see the verra place where the 
 hoose once stood," she said, M they hae built an 
 hotel now at the farthest point of the land and 
 that point is whaur we are bound for. There's 
 mony a tale I could tell ye o' all this countryside. 
 D'ye mind the stories of the Grants of Rothie- 
 murchus ? " And then in an eerie and awestruck 
 voice she told us of the phantom Highlander 
 who wanders the woods there — " meets you 
 suddenly and tears ye an' ye flee, but stand 
 up to him and he fades awa'. Ye must aye 
 stan' up to him," said the story-teller, emphati- 
 cally. There was a pause after this. I saw 
 little Putnam clutch his cane and look uneasily 
 
136 BINNIE 
 
 out of the carriage window. The silence was 
 broken by the American. 
 
 u Your prospects would be greatly improved 
 by a few gums, ma'rm," said he. "I find I 
 miss the gums in this country. Pray," continued 
 my traveller conversationally, as the sun broke 
 out upon a beautiful curve of the road, " what 
 might be the market price of one of those hills 
 — that shiny purple one over yonder for 
 instance ? " 
 
 Was he going to pack it up and take it 
 back to America in his valise ? — I almost for- 
 gave him when I saw Binnie trying to suppress 
 a faint giggle which seemed to me like some 
 sign of her returning sanity. As for the 
 Scotchman he answered gravely without a 
 smile, that the hillside, heather and all, might be 
 worth perhaps one shilling and sixpence to two 
 shillings an acre. The American again desired 
 Putnam, who had been sucking a peppermint, to 
 note this, and then went on to ask how many 
 strawberries were reckoned to a pound — <c Five 
 was the average in America," so he assured us. 
 The Scotchman said that in Scotland three straw- 
 berries to a pound was the general computation. 
 
 Meanwhile, the woman with the knitting, 
 was rambling on and I was quite sorry to part 
 from the little company when the train stopped 
 at Aviemore. A carriage came to meet us 
 bringing a kind note from our hostess, who had 
 
SCOTLAND 137 
 
 been called away for the day, but who promised 
 to be back by dinner-time. 
 
 " There is a cart for the luggage," said the 
 footman. " Her ladyship hopes you will not be 
 afraid of an open carriage." 
 
 Afraid ! My spirits were so refreshed and 
 lively that I think if Lady Frances had sent a 
 pair of eagles instead of a comfortable victoria 
 I should have started in perfect faith. In a few 
 minutes we found ourselves agreeably progress- 
 ing across the countryside into a new heaven 
 and a new earth of landscape. We came to 
 the house at last after crossing a bridge and a 
 rushing river. It was a lonely white house on 
 the slope of a hill in sight of the range of the 
 Cairngorm Mountains and overlooking the 
 Spey and the Durie, those eager streams. 
 Woods spread to the east. In a clearing, 
 where the trees had been cut down, stood a few 
 sheds and low cottages round the church and 
 the school and a blacksmith's forge, where from 
 early morning to late at night tall dark men 
 with shaggy heads clinked and clanked horse- 
 shoes and where all the day long the horses 
 from miles around seemed to be waiting their 
 turn to be shod. 
 
 This then was Scotland ! These thick stone 
 walls, these sturdy windows, these vivid tints. 
 We came into a low hall with rooms on either 
 side in which fires were burning brightly. 
 
138 BINNIE 
 
 There was a broad staircase leading to the floor 
 above. Several letters brought in by the 
 carriage were already lying on the hall-table — 
 The whole pile was for Lady Frances, with the 
 exception of one large envolope, addressed in a 
 neat straight hand to " Miss A. Willoughby." 
 I recognised the writing, even without the 
 "J. B." in the corner. Binnie also knew the 
 writing, and in a moment all the colour was 
 gone out of her little round cheeks. I looked 
 away discreetly, hoping that her disturbing 
 agitation might pass, but neither cups of tea 
 nor the pleasure of unpacking and settling down 
 nor even the radiant arrival of our hostess later 
 in the evening had any effect on my little 
 companion. The light was gone again, — that 
 dull, sullen expression, half sad, half sulky, had 
 returned to dim her pretty face. It was ex- 
 asperating to find all the good effects of the 
 journey undone by a few scratches from that 
 curate's pen. There she sat listless, gazing at 
 the fire. 
 
 " You have had a long day — you are tired, 
 my dear. Go and lie down till dinner," said 
 Lady Frances kindly, looking at her. 
 
 "Lady Frances is right," said I, "a little 
 rest will do you good. Go, my dear child." 
 My words were kind enough, but I found 
 myself speaking in that acid tone of cheerful 
 encouragement by which people who are getting 
 
A KIND HOSTESS 139 
 
 cross try to soothe others who are dull and who 
 don't mind being dull, and who won't look up, 
 and who don't want to be cheerful to please you. 
 
 Binnie left the room, carrying away her 
 letter and her candle and her Medusa face. 
 Lady Frances, to whom I confided my troubles, 
 only laughed at my irritation. 
 
 " You take it too much to heart," she said. 
 "It will all come right, if you only leave the 
 child alone and let her run about with the 
 other young folks. And now that I think of 
 it," said she thoughtfully, " there is an old 
 lady here — a Mrs. Balsillie lodging at Mrs. 
 Glass's at the Loch-an-Eilean Farm. Miss 
 Donaldson from the saw-mills was speaking to 
 me about her only the other day. Could she 
 — can she be ? We must see about this," said 
 Lady Frances, wrapping her velvet cloak round 
 her slender shoulders more closely. 
 
 Lady Frances Neville had also been my 
 pupil in former days and we had many a mutual 
 interest. Our talk wandered off from Binnie 
 and her concerns to our own, as we sat com- 
 fortably in our armchairs by the fire spinning 
 our yarns. I remember a sleepy comfort and 
 happiness, a general sense of the torrents of 
 the many moors and the deer forests all round 
 us, of the warmth of the wood fire, of the kind- 
 ness of the welcome. After a time I found 
 myself waking with some faint sound just 
 
140 BINNIE 
 
 outside the house. The dog barked, a latch 
 creaked. The flame on the hearth leapt up 
 and at that moment the sitting-room door 
 opened wide and stooping under the doorway 
 appeared a stately figure, who advanced silent, 
 awe-inspiring. 
 
 All the travellers' tales rushed back into my 
 mind, as the figure of a gigantic Highlander 
 advanced into the room. He seemed some 
 six or seven feet high, dressed in full Highland 
 garb, carrying his bonnet in his hand and ap- 
 proaching with a swinging slow step. His 
 plaid fell in long lines from his shoulder and 
 his kilt swayed as he walked. I saw dirks 
 and chains and brooches, all the indescribable 
 tags and ornaments of a Highland dress. It 
 seemed as if a sound of bagpipes filled the air. 
 Who was this ? Was it the Rothiemurchus 
 apparition already on the spot coming to greet 
 the new-comer ? I glanced at the handsome 
 dark face. Its benevolent expression reassured 
 me. Lady Frances exclaimed with pleasure : 
 
 " Why, David, is this you ? This is my 
 cousin, Miss Williamson, Colonel David Hamil- 
 ton. He is home on leave and staying up at 
 the Castle with my uncle and aunt." The 
 figure sank into an armchair of which the 
 cushions did not show through any visionary 
 plaid, and Lady Frances rang the bell for more 
 tea and talked on. asking in turn after every 
 
AN INVITATION 141 
 
 single member of an apparently innumerable 
 family. It seemed that the whole clan was 
 assembled at the castle, and in the neighbour- 
 ing shooting-lodges, and in the houses on the 
 estate. 
 
 The Colonel presently explained that he 
 had been sent up by Lady Grantown to arrange 
 for some dancing in the big hall that day week 
 to which the neighbours were to be bidden. 
 
 " My mother wants them all to come," he 
 said, "the farmers, the people from the saw- 
 mill, the tenants and the servants as well as 
 the masters and mistresses. Nobody to be 
 left out — and would Lady Frances bring some 
 music and come and help to play the reels ? 
 
 " I can play the Pin Reel, David," she said, 
 "and a Strathspey or two, and the Rant of 
 Rothiemurchus," she added, smiling and begin- 
 ning to beat a step on the carpet with her 
 pretty embroidered slipper. "And here is Miss 
 Williamson, she is always to be depended on." 
 
 Ill 
 
 All that phase of existence into which we 
 had suddenly drifted seemed to me then, as it 
 does now, more like an idyll or a fantastic and 
 delightful dream than a commonplace family 
 gathering in an old Highland home. The 
 various members came from London streets 
 
142 BINNIE 
 
 and squares, from townlets and villas, lads and 
 lassies from college and school disporting 
 under the golden boughs and across the moors 
 and along the brawling burns and waterfalls. 
 The free sylvan life was stirring one's very 
 veins with that happy touch of nature which 
 makes us all akin, — strangers, and highlanders 
 in their homes, or grazing beast or wayside 
 weed, breathing in the same pure mountain 
 air and mysteriously linked by the intangible 
 sympathy of the present. 
 
 Grantown Castle stands at the foot of a 
 chain of hills leading to Balmoral by unknown 
 passes and deer forests and within sight of a 
 great rushing stream : as for its guests and 
 inhabitants, who should attempt to count their 
 numbers? Besides the present inhabitants, 
 out of the past rose visionary and romantic 
 figures, also making signs to us. MacGregors 
 by twos and threes, Rob Roy himself arriving, 
 as was his way, by the postern through which 
 he used to come at all hours of the day and 
 night to visit his old friend, the Laird of 
 those days, and along with him came other 
 heroes of wild delightful tales and ballads. 
 And for the present ! — merry sons and 
 daughters, children and grandchildren, 
 nephews and nieces, all dwelling within the 
 ancient walls or in the various dependencies. 
 There were schoolboys and schoolgirls home 
 
A LAKE AND AN ISLAND 143 
 
 for the holidays, sailors, hardworked officials. 
 For a moment everybody was at play, dis- 
 porting in this far-away Highland encampment. 
 On fine days I have seen the whole patriarchal 
 family out under the trees of the Park. Lord 
 Grantown in his library perhaps, Lady Gran- 
 town in her dainty coiffes and warm satin 
 wrap, sitting in her big wicker chair, while her 
 grandsons perched in the trees like crows, and 
 daughters and daughters-in-law sat with their 
 children at their knees. At other times, the 
 clan would repair by various ways and passes 
 to the pretty little house on the shores of 
 Loch-an-Eilean. The house adjoined an old 
 farm, where Mrs. Glass, the farmer's wife, 
 dwelt ready to bring out hospitable scones and 
 teacups for her lady's guests. It seems an easy 
 tenure upon which to hold so lovely a home. 
 An old castle, which had held out against so 
 many onslaughts (had not the lady of the 
 tower herself, in her lord's absence, driven off 
 the Mackintosh's fierce attacks ?) still stands 
 on the rocky island in the centre of the lake, 
 tottering a little after its many battles and 
 storms, its thousand years or so of existence. 
 
 On one occasion the kind young folks, when 
 tea was over, and Mrs. Glass had brought 
 forth her last instalment of girdle cakes, insisted 
 on hurrying us off with them to see the dungeon, 
 cut into the rock on the island ; the island, now 
 
i 4 4 BINNIE 
 
 standing in the full light of the sunset, where 
 the trees and the creepers were growing and 
 the golden berries hanging among the tangling 
 branches in the keep. 
 
 We crossed the lake enclosed in its purple 
 fold of mountain. Binnie, who at my request, 
 had put on her new white frock and her big 
 shady hat, was perched in the bow of the boat, 
 a light aerial figure ; by her side sat Maggie, 
 a sweet Highland lassie, grey-eyed, quick- 
 witted, who had taken Binnie under her 
 protection. A General took the rudder, .a 
 Colonel was our oarsman ; David Hamilton 
 made little of the load and conveyed some 
 dozen of us, big and small, with careful strokes 
 from one sunny landing to the other. The 
 thousand-year-old castle was reflected in the 
 water as well as the hundred-thousand-year- 
 old rocks and hills beyond it, now fragrant 
 with purple flowers and clothed with soft 
 verdure. All this had once — so said the 
 General, — been a glacier wrapped in eternal 
 snow. There were two little boys on board 
 our barge, Charlie and his friend Davy, from 
 the saw-mills, nephews of young Mr. Donald- 
 son. Davy was a charming little fellow, at 
 school with some foundation scholarship which 
 he had won for himself. Indeed the boys who 
 go out from these valleys mostly seem to come 
 back in time clothed in purple like their 
 
SCRAMBLINGS 145 
 
 native mountains, ornamented with K.C.B.'s, 
 K.C.M.G.'s, and decorations of every sort, 
 Notwithstanding his scholarly distinctions 
 Davy as well as Charlie still belonged to the 
 tribe of Imps, not the least attractive of the 
 many varieties of urchin. These two were 
 for ever on the go, at one moment dancing on 
 to the seat and leaning over the side of the 
 boat or suddenly rolling back and sprawling 
 over one another until called to account by the 
 Colonel with a sternness not untempered by 
 sympathy. Needless to say, Davy and Charlie 
 were the first to scramble on shore, and once 
 there, they held on manfully to the chain, 
 pulling and lugging the heavy boat with all 
 their might and main. 
 
 The Island stood high above the water. 
 We had to climb up a stiff bit of cliff to a 
 raised gateway which led into a wilderness of 
 light and briars. There was the wild Barberry 
 with the golden fruit the girls had promised 
 me, and scrambling rose-bushes starting through 
 the masonry. As for the dungeons — they also 
 were overgrown by briar roses and defended 
 by a mountain ash — Rowan, as the Scotch call 
 it, of which the berries flashed crimson. The 
 old castle itself seemed chiefly held together 
 by ivy and wild clematis. 
 
 " Don't touch the walls more than you can 
 help," said the Colonel, laughing, as he made 
 
146 BINNIE 
 
 his way. " The stones are apt to come down 
 with a crash. The Ivy Tower fell only last 
 winter." We did as we were told, and avoided 
 the wall, though we skirted the edge of the 
 island, peeping through the branches into the 
 depths of the waters at the foot of the cliff, 
 picturing to ourselves the bygone feuds and 
 battles that once raged in this luxuriant laby- 
 rinth of silence. 
 
 It always seems to me that children's spirits 
 rise in proportion to the ruins around them. 
 All ours to-day were wild with fun and enjoy- 
 ment, pursuing one and another, shouting, 
 creeping through impossible places. 
 
 "Come this way," cried Davy madcap, 
 dashing ahead, and Binnie herself caught the 
 spirit of the hour and raced gaily after him. 
 
 " A ghost ? — of course there is a ghost," 
 said the Colonel gravely in answer to my 
 question (was he not a Highlander?). "The 
 castle has been standing here since King 
 Stephen's time, and it would be strange indeed 
 if it had not its legend." 
 
 " I could only imagine a very happy 
 peaceful ghost," said I, "haunting this pretty 
 place." 
 
 As I spoke there came a cry from some not 
 distant spot, a strange frightened cry which 
 startled me. I looked up. The Colonel was 
 already breaking through the adjoining branches 
 
AN ACCIDENT 147 
 
 to see what it could mean. Voices, exclama- 
 tions broke forth on every side. Every one 
 was calling out, running hither and thither. 
 " Help, help, oh ! help ! " it was not the spirit 
 of the lake, it was Binnie's voice in sad 
 distress. 
 
 The Colonel reappeared looking anxious. 
 " I can see nothing, the branches are too 
 thick. The boat, Maggie," he shouted, running 
 to the edge of the cliff, from which he could 
 see the landing-place. <c Row round the point." 
 And Maggie, who by chance had gone back 
 with Charlie to the landing-step understood in 
 a moment, and she and Charlie between them 
 got the boat off and were coming round the 
 point. These two children settled down to 
 their work as if they were experienced water- 
 men, and meanwhile the Colonel slid over the 
 side of the terrace and clinging, limpet fashion, 
 advanced from rock to rock in the direction of 
 the cry. When the cliff became too steep for 
 progress, he boldly splashed into the water, 
 kilt, dirk, tags and all, stepping carefully on 
 the submerged rock round the foot of the 
 island and holding by the crags and roots of 
 overhanging branches. Then we heard a 
 tremendous splash. I could see the rest of 
 the party who had remained on the opposite 
 shore running down to the water's edge. I 
 myself could see nothing else for the hanging 
 
i 4 8 BINNIE 
 
 branches. All this may have taken some 
 sixty seconds. To me it seemed more like an 
 hour than a minute. I did not know what 
 had happened but I heard the Colonel calling, 
 " Well done. I'll get you off directly, hold on." 
 
 This is what had happened, — so I heard 
 afterwards from a dozen different people. A 
 portion of the masonry had given way and 
 Binnie and Davy were only kept from falling 
 by the branches of an ash-tree to which they 
 were clinging. The boy was safe enough, but 
 Binnie, frightened and exhausted, could hardly 
 hold on. Then the Colonel came to her help, 
 rising like a dripping sea-god from the waters 
 of the lake. He climbed by the rocks into the 
 tree and hauled her up by sheer strength into 
 a position where she could help herself just at 
 the very moment when Maggie, a second Lady 
 of the Lake, shot up with her boat, somewhat 
 wildly rounding the point. The unfeeling 
 Davy, seeing relief at hand, gave a cock-like 
 crow of triumph and kicked his legs. 
 
 " How are you now ? " said the Colonel to 
 Binnie. u Can you manage to slide down ? I 
 will help you." 
 
 " You have saved my life," she said, with a 
 hysterical gasp. 
 
 " I may have saved you a ducking," said 
 the heartless Colonel. 
 
 Binnie never quite knew how she got out 
 
A RESCUE 149 
 
 of that tree. Her descent was ignominious, 
 but the Colonel superintended her helpless slides 
 with cheerful and unconcerned politeness, as 
 though he were guiding an awkward partner 
 through a country-dance. Davy gave a flying 
 leap which very nearly overturned the boat. 
 Binnie's shoes were wet and her pretty white 
 dress was draggled as the Colonel lifted her 
 over from the shore, and then quickly getting 
 in himself, without so much as shaking the 
 water off his plaid, he took the sculls and began 
 to row as if nothing whatever had happened. 
 
 When Binnie was landed, crumpled, damp 
 and exhausted, I could see Lady Grantown 
 appear from the tea-house with her large white 
 parasol and many Indian shawls on her arm, 
 followed by Mrs. Glass with jugs and re- 
 storatives. The barge recrossed the lake for 
 those of us who were waiting on the shore of 
 the Island, and as we crossed the lake I could 
 watch the distant figures and felt altogether 
 reassured about my little charge. The Colonel 
 and the rest of them appeared to be escorting 
 the small heroine of the hour to the gate of 
 the garden in front of the farmhouse. Then the 
 farm-door opened. A little dumpy figure 
 appeared with extended hands and finally 
 Binnie vanished into the kitchen of the farm, 
 followed by Lady Grantown and one or two 
 more. 
 
 L 
 
ISO B1NNIE 
 
 Mrs. Glass was there to receive us when we 
 landed, helping to pull in the boat. 
 
 " Mrs. Balsillie, she that lodges wi' me," 
 said Mrs. Glass, " sent a message. There was 
 a fire and a quiet room for the young leddy to 
 rest in, and so my leddy saw her up at once 
 and my leddy begged you to go straight home 
 with Lady Frances and she will bring the rest 
 of the party." 
 
 Lady Grantown is a beneficent autocrat, 
 directing all the doings for miles round about 
 the Castle, implicitly obeyed by the devoted 
 and kindly clan. I would fain have objected 
 to having Binnie at the farm, as the name of 
 Balsillie was alarming to me. But it was too 
 late, though I could see Lady Frances smiling 
 at my agitation. Among the other people still 
 standing by was Mr. Donaldson from the saw- 
 pit, who seemed extraordinarily concerned by 
 the accident. 
 
 " Those lads are for ever in mischief/' said he. 
 " I shall speak to Master Davy on our return." 
 
 " There's very little harm done," said Lady 
 Frances in her pretty peremptory way. " I 
 know you don't mind a walk, Mr. Donaldson. 
 I shall carry you off at once, Miss Williamson, 
 and send the carriage back for the others ; my 
 aunt has her brougham, I know, waiting in the 
 yard. ... I suppose David is drying himself 
 by Mrs. Glass's fire." 
 
MRS. BALSILLIE 151 
 
 David was not the Colonel but little Davy 
 Donaldson. The Colonel appeared suddenly as 
 we were starting in the victoria. His little 
 niece, Maggie, was following him. 
 
 " Here is Maggie wants to come with you, 
 Frances," he said. " I shall walk and get dry." 
 Then he added, " I must say I never have 
 seen a sillier performance than that one just 
 now of Miss Willoughby's. She could easily 
 have got off, but she only screamed and so 
 bewildered poor Davy that he did not attempt 
 to move. I told him he had behaved like a 
 duffer, that he should have scrambled down at 
 once, and then he explained that he didn't like 
 to leave her, she was in such a state of fright." 
 
 IV 
 
 Mrs. Balsillie's advent was anxiously con- 
 sidered by me. It was certainly not a sympa- 
 thetic part which had been forced on me by 
 circumstances. Anybody enjoys helping people 
 to be happy ; but very few people care for 
 throwing cold water upon the natural aspira- 
 tions of youth, its emotions and ready affinity. 
 One would as soon wish to prevent the birds 
 from building their nests. If I had thought 
 Binnies curate in earnest, I might have taken 
 a very different course, but when a man says 
 that marriage is out of the question and offers 
 
i 5 2 BINxNIE 
 
 lifelong friendship, and when a young woman 
 is nineteen and accepts the bargain enthusi- 
 astically, surely it is right for the elders to 
 interfere. There may be exceptional cases, 
 but, as a rule, it seems to me that these Friend- 
 ships with big "F's " are miserable makeshifts 
 and only deserve to be put into the wastepaper 
 basket, but then this may be only an old maid's 
 cut-and-dried conclusions. 
 
 I could not quite tell what was passing in 
 Binnie's own mind for the next few days. She 
 was certainly changed after her little adventure. 
 She went through so many varying moods that 
 it would be impossible for anything but an 
 agile young chamois to follow them. To the 
 reproachful phase would succeed the grateful 
 or the ecstatic, the appealing, the sulky again. 
 I asked her about her interview with Mrs. 
 Balsillie, but she w T ould not tell me much or 
 perhaps she could not. After all the gift of 
 description is a special one, and it is not in 
 everybody's power to recount events as they 
 occur. 
 
 "Mrs. Balsillie was very kind — very kind 
 indeed " (full stop). " Had she ever heard of 
 you ? " (note of interrogation on my part). " Of 
 course she had," said Binnie (a second full 
 stop). " She is Mr. Balsillie's mother." 
 
 The girl was standing by the lavender bush 
 in Lady Frances' pretty old garden which 
 
IN A HIGHLAND GARDEN 153 
 
 slopes uphill from the back of the house. It is 
 a sweet old Scotch garden whose lichen-grown 
 walls are hung with grey pear-trees, whose 
 borders straggle with bushy autumn plants 
 and violet tufts, reflecting the colours of 
 the hills beyond. Taciturnity and blue eyes 
 harmonised with the silence, and I could not 
 but admire Binnie as she stood there holding 
 her broad hat in one hand. She wore a pretty 
 blue cotton frock and a white kerchief pinned 
 with a heart, an old-fashioned pearl heart, such 
 as our mothers and Grandmothers all affected. 
 
 11 Where did you get that pretty little orna- 
 ment ?" I said, though, to tell the truth, it was 
 the wearer I was admiring. 
 
 " Mrs. Balsillie gave it to me yesterday," 
 said Binnie, turning crimson and breaking off a 
 lavender head. " Do you like it ? I think it is 
 a horrid little thing," she cried, losing her head. 
 " I didn't want to take it, but she would have 
 it. She began to tremble all over when I 
 refused." 
 
 Then I saw that Binnie herself was trem- 
 bling as she spoke. 
 
 " I suppose Mrs. Balsillie wishes for you as 
 a daughter," I said, taking the child's hand. 
 
 "She can't bear his going away," Binnie 
 answered incoherently and looking aside, "she 
 says she knows it will all come right, if only I 
 will wait. He is the best of sons and she will 
 
154 BINNIE 
 
 try to increase his allowance — but, oh dear," 
 said the girl, pulling her hand away, "I am sure 
 she can't afford it. It is such a dull, damp, 
 little lodging. No wonder she is rheumatic, 
 and Mr. Balsillie is quite right to say he won't 
 let her send him any more money. I only 
 
 wonder he ever " Binnie stopped short 
 
 and turned crimson once more. 
 
 " It makes a great difference if he has 
 spoken openly to his mother," I said gravely, 
 " if he has told her he is in earnest." 
 
 " I don't know what he has said or what he 
 hasn't," Binnie flung out angrily. " Mrs. 
 Balsillie cried and kissed me and told me that 
 I must help her to keep him at home. That 
 she longed to see him happily married. And I 
 couldn't answer a single word, and I do wish 
 people would leave one alone," cried the girl. 
 " Real gentlemen don't talk and talk about one 
 and make one feel wretched, not even if they 
 have saved one's life." 
 
 I, with my own guilty conscience, could not 
 attempt to follow what wild disenchantments 
 and new comparisons were floating through 
 Binnie's little brain. 
 
 We were a timid race in my day and did 
 not formulate ideas with the audacity of the 
 young people of the present, but I confess I 
 was glad that we were interrupted at that 
 minute before I had said anything I might 
 
A CHANGE OF MIND 155 
 
 have regretted. A servant in livery came from 
 the house towards us. u Her Ladyship says, 
 * will you please come to the drawing-room. 
 Lady Grantown and Mrs. Balsillie for Miss 
 Willoughby.' " 
 
 Binnie looked at me and began shaking her 
 curls in great agitation — " No, no, no. I don't 
 want to see her," and before I could say a single 
 word she was off, darting along the path and 
 out by the wicket-gate. I saw a flash of blue 
 and she was gone. She had vanished beyond 
 the trees, while I went upstairs with such polite 
 fictions on my lips as are in use in civilised 
 society. 
 
 I found the three ladies at tea. Lady 
 Grantown wrapped in her beautiful Indian 
 shawl, Lady Frances in serge prepared for a 
 walk, and Mrs. Balsillie in a black dress and 
 poke bonnet. She was a kind, stout, apple- 
 cheeked old lady, who had evidently passed 
 her time in the by-ways of life. She was 
 looking at the door and anxiously inquiring 
 after my young friend and hoping she was none 
 the worse for her fright. 
 
 "You were very kind, everybody is very 
 kind. 1 , Mr. Donaldson also came up to inquire," 
 said I. " Binnie is perfectly recovered." 
 
 u I think your young friend is very charm- 
 ing," Mrs. Balsillie gravely answered. " Miss 
 Willoughby is a flower, as I said to Mrs. Glass, 
 
156 BINNIE 
 
 Just one in a thousand ; and so indeed my son 
 John told me when I asked him about her, and 
 he is very hard to please, as I know full well." 
 
 " Well, my dear Mrs. Balsillie, there are 
 many thousands of flowers in London for 
 fastidious young gentlemen to choose from," 
 said Lady Grantown. She spoke kindly, 
 though her eyes looked amused and sparkling. 
 
 " I never was there, my lady," said Mrs. 
 Balsillie. " I never went further south than 
 Edinburgh." 
 
 After a short time Mrs. Balsillie took her 
 leave. 
 
 V 
 
 The night of the ball arrived at last. Binnie 
 had greatly cheered up in the last two days, 
 and the more she bloomed and smiled, the 
 more our neighbour, Mr. Donaldson, seemed 
 to think it necessary to come up to enquire 
 after her health. She was for ever practising 
 her reel step and Davy used to run up from 
 the saw-mills to teach her. On the evening 
 before the ball, the boy brought her a pretty 
 bunch of white heather. He seemed shy about 
 it and mysterious. 
 
 u Where did you gather it, Davy ? " said 
 Lady Frances. But Davy only grinned and 
 shook his head, and Lady Frances asked no 
 more. 
 
AT THE CASTLE 157 
 
 We started for the castle betimes, for we 
 were to dine in the big dining-room before the 
 dance began. When we came up the sweep to 
 the front door we found the Colonel and little 
 Charlie who were looking out for us and waved 
 their caps as we passed. The fire in the hall 
 was ablaze, lighting up the antlers, the spear- 
 heads and the tiger skins with which the hall 
 was decorated. There were stuffed owls also 
 looking alive on their perches and gulls with 
 outstretched wings : each commemorating its 
 own story of past adventure. 
 
 The Colonel welcomed us cordially. " They 
 are all expecting you," he said. " Charlie and 
 I have been riding over to Aviemore and we 
 have brought back the letters. Here are some 
 for you, Miss Williamson," he said, as he 
 distributed the parcel. Lady Frances went off 
 with hers, and the girls also disappeared their 
 different ways and, finding myself alone for ten 
 minutes with no other company than that of the 
 ancestors peacefully hanging in the firelight, I 
 opened my correspondence. One wavering, 
 straggling handwriting was familiar. 
 
 " Dear Miss Williamson," wrote Mns 
 Willoughbyon her broad mourning paper — she 
 had been a widow for years, but she clung to 
 her black margin and seemed to find some 
 moral support from the funereal emblems, 
 
158 BINNIE 
 
 " You must first of all let me thank you deeply 
 for your more than motherly kindness to my 
 poor child. My heart bleeds for her." (Hearing 
 a burst of laughter on the staircase, I looked 
 round — it was only a little skirmish between the 
 girls and Charlie, who had produced a banjo 
 and was executing some nigger antics for their 
 edification.) " I have just seen John Balsillie. 
 He told me— I can scarcely believe him, — 
 that he had heard from my Binnie— -that, at her 
 own wish the tender friendship between them 
 was at an end. He begs me to say that he 
 feels no resentment. His friendship would still 
 be hers, though she turned against him. He 
 says he would send his love, but he thinks it is 
 best not ; nor will he allow himself to write. 
 I fear he is somewhat wounded and hurt, though 
 I am glad to say that he knows that Binnie's 
 mother and sister understand him and do him 
 justice. Poor fellow, we do indeed feel for him. 
 He has accepted the ship's chaplaincy. He 
 tells me that he had determined to do so, even 
 before Binnie's letter arrived. He preached 
 his farewell sermon to us yesterday. There 
 was scarcely a dry eye in. the congregation. 
 The ship sails in three weeks, of which he 
 intends to spend at least one with his aged 
 parent, devoting these precious remaining days 
 to her before he leaves. I envy you the chance 
 of meeting him again. Poor fellow, how I 
 
A FOOLISH LETTER 159 
 
 honour his spirit of determination ! He tells 
 me the pay is far better than the salary he has 
 been receiving ; that he can do much for his 
 mother's comfort, though marriage is out of the 
 question. Ah, how one mourns to think 
 of these young hearts, — blighted, innocent 
 creatures suffering so cruelly for want of that 
 dross we all despise. Dickie feels it too deeply 
 to speak on the subject. My tender love to 
 my Binnie. Tell her whatever others may say 
 I am certain she acted nobly and for the best. 
 Ever, dearest Mary, if I may call you so, for 
 indeed I feel as if you were Mary, the sister, 
 rather than Miss Williamson, the friend — 
 M Yours most affectionately and gratefully, 
 <f Cordelia Willoughby." 
 
 " P.S. — I asked him if his determination was 
 final, and if he could not make up his mind to 
 a long engagement. He turned, murmuring 
 words I, alas, could not catch." 
 
 The silly woman was quite capable of trying 
 to bring the stupid entanglement all on again, 
 so I thought, as I tore her foolish epistle into 
 small pieces, which I threw into the fire ; nor, 
 did I feel myself bound to deliver Mrs. 
 Willoughby's messages to her heart-broken 
 child, who was still busy practising her reel- 
 steps with Miss Maggie and her uncle, the 
 Colonel, looking very pretty and attentive 
 
i6o BINNIE 
 
 as she pointed her white toes and kept her 
 place among the merry group of boys and girls. 
 Lady Jane — a daughter of the house — seeing 
 them all lining up, sprang to the piano and 
 began playing reels and rants, as they call 
 them, with marvellous brightness and accuracy, 
 nor did she cease till dinner was announced by 
 a warlike personage with a moustache. It was 
 not till nine o'clock that, the eating being over, 
 the real business of the evening began. The 
 lights were brought, the tables were wheeled 
 away, the doors taken off their hinges. The 
 servants came in, followed by the neighbours, 
 farmers and craftsmen from their various 
 homes in the adjoining villages, valleys and 
 mountain passes. The farmers from the Tay 
 farm, Mr. Donaldson in his kilt, the stable-boy 
 in a smart volunteer uniform ; the gardeners 
 and gamekeeper from the moors and the loch 
 hard by. I watched them as they entered the 
 big room, a stalwart, self-respecting set of men, 
 making their dignified bows to her Ladyship 
 and to the ladies of the castle and immediately 
 falling to work and beginning to dance with an 
 active gravity, which did not intermit nor relax 
 till the evening was far advanced. Their wives 
 and daughters followed in their steps, pretty 
 fair-haired women for the most part, doing 
 credit to their mountain homes. Mrs. Glass 
 was there. 
 
A BALL 161 
 
 11 1 tried to persuade Mrs. Balsillie to 
 come wi' us, milady, but she went off into 
 such a fit of laughing at the suggestion I 
 thought she would ha dropped, and she just 
 stayed behind to keep the home — and indeed 
 she expected company. Mr. Glass has gone 
 to meet the nine o'clock train at the station." 
 
 Mr. Donaldson handed out Lady Grantown 
 to open the ball, then the volunteer marched 
 up in his turn in his grand red tartan kilt and 
 politely invited Miss Maggie to join in the set. 
 It was a reel which could be danced in couples 
 or on opposite sides. 
 
 " Will ye hae it grappit or lous, Miss 
 Maggie ? " said he. 
 
 " Oh, lous by all means," said Miss Maggie 
 with a droll twinkle, and away they go stepping, 
 pousetting and jigging and bobbing opposite 
 to one another. It was a delightful sight to 
 behold. 
 
 The Colonel had been dancing w r ith great 
 dignity and spirit for the last quarter of an 
 hour at the rate of some fifty or sixty steps 
 a minute. His magnificent dress set off his 
 stately figure ; his kilt was of the well-known 
 tartan of the great clan to which he belonged. 
 By day it was green, but of an evening it 
 turned to red with crisscross of various colours 
 and with lines of white unintelligible to southern 
 eyes, but not without their meaning. You 
 
i62 BINNIE 
 
 can tell all their history by the colour of the 
 plaids. 
 
 On his shoulder the Colonel wore a cairn- 
 gorm in a silver setting, which was an heirloom. 
 He also had big silver shining buttons and 
 glittering ornaments and every step he took 
 seemed an event to me. He advanced with 
 an air of romantic ease, which must have 
 carried conviction to the most sceptical. 
 
 It was not without some pardonable elation 
 that I discovered that the partner dancing with 
 the stately figure was no other than my own 
 little Alberta in her white muslin skirt and 
 white satin ribbons. She also wore a bunch 
 of white heather in her bodice. She blushed 
 with pleasure, looking very sweet and modest 
 all the time. The musician, Lady Jane, played 
 on and on with endless spirit and courage. I 
 had been sitting alone for a few minutes and 
 enjoying myself in my own way, when I chanced 
 to look up at the doorway at the further end of 
 the hall, and whom should I recognise, of all 
 unexpected guests, standing among the specta- 
 tors, somewhat dusty and without a wedding 
 garment, but Mr. Balsillie, the late curate of 
 the Medina Row Chapel -of- Ease, and beside 
 him was Mr. Glass of the Loch-an-Eilean 
 Farm. 
 
 In a moment I realised that the curate was 
 the company they had expected and that he 
 
AN UNINVITED GUEST 163 
 
 must have come on in the farmer's gig. He 
 stood staring over at the dancing with an 
 idiotic and offended simper upon his handsome 
 countenance. Binnie had not seen him yet ; 
 she was too busy minding her steps to look 
 about, but my late fellow-lodger having dis- 
 covered me in my corner and knowing no one 
 else, presently came up to speak to me, skirting 
 the wall so as to avoid the dancers. 
 
 "So you too have come north, Mr. Bal- 
 sillie ?" I said, not over-graciously, as he arrived. 
 "You see we are all well employed, and how 
 do you find your mother ? " 
 
 " I have not yet seen her," said Mr. Balsillie, 
 with an important air. ' ' Farmer Glass proposed 
 to bring me straight here. I did not like to 
 refuse. How delightful these patriarchal gather- 
 ings are, to which one can come uninvited and 
 sure of a welcome ! What a merry scene ! 
 How charming our little friend is looking ! " he 
 continued, following Binnie with half-approving 
 glances, and then as the girl came up panting 
 and breathless after her set, he rose and held 
 out his hand. I saw reproach in his eye 
 tempered by forbearance, superiority, affability. 
 Binnie looked a little scared, stopped short, 
 shook hands hastily, fluttering, fanning herself. 
 The light of the dance was still in her face, 
 dismay on her lips, it was certainly a most 
 curious little concatenation of events. " Mr. 
 
1 64 BINNIE 
 
 Balsillie has looked in on his way to his 
 mother's," said I. "You must be tired after 
 your long journey ! " 
 
 " I need not ask you if you are well and 
 enjoying yourself," said the chaplain, ignoring 
 me and looking earnestly at Binnie. I could 
 see that he had never before thought of her as 
 he was thinking of her then. 
 
 " Reels are very delightful," Binnie answered 
 confusedly. " Every one has been so kind about 
 teaching me." 
 
 " But you must not mind giving up one 
 dance for an old friend, for the sake of an old 
 friendship," said Balsillie in his most irresistible 
 tones. " I must have a few words now that 
 I have come all these miles to see you." 
 
 Binnie, tremulous, undecided, looked up 
 to me. I looked anxiously round, turning over 
 things in my mind and trying to find some 
 excuse to get rid of my importunate curate. 
 Some people certainly possess the gift of 
 reading at a glance the events which are 
 happening round about them in the world. 
 As I was still hesitating, a voice beside us 
 exclaimed — 
 
 " What, Binnie settling down already ! 
 This cannot be allowed." There stood Lady 
 Frances in a shining satin gown and jewels 
 and falling laces. " Here is Mr. Donaldson, 
 who wants to have the pleasure of dancing 
 
DISCOMFITURE 165 
 
 with you in this next set, and as she spoke 
 she laid one hand upon the arm of the hand- 
 some young Highlander in his kilt, who stood 
 there with a smiling ready mien. " Unless you 
 are engaged for this dance by Mr. Balsillie. 
 Am I right — are you not Mr. Balsillie ? " said 
 her ladyship, with a faint soupgon of fun, for 
 she knew that the chaplain's accomplishments 
 did not include the Scotch reel. He gravely 
 and at some length explained to Lady Frances 
 that he avoided dancing on principle. " Not 
 that I think it wrong, far from it/' he remarked, 
 with some unnecessary solemnity. 
 
 " Quite right, quite right/' said the lady 
 brightly. u I quite understand, and you shall 
 come with me and help me to look after our 
 guests in the tea-room" — as she spoke she 
 motioned him to give her his arm, and so led 
 him off in the most charming and natural way, 
 and kept him fully employed for the next half- 
 hour. Not another word could Balsillie get 
 with Binnie, though he waited long in the hope 
 of a chance. She danced away, handed on 
 from one partner to another by her ever- 
 watchful chaperone, Lady Frances. It was 
 like the story of the King's daughter who 
 danced on and on while they brought her the 
 news of her father's murder and her mother's 
 death. My heroine was no King's daughter, 
 but an impressionable little girl who had for the 
 
 M 
 
1 66 BINNIE 
 
 first time escaped from the narrow bounds of 
 her small conventionalities and felt her wings 
 and flitted away for ever from the mystic 
 glamour of Medina Row. I could have laughed, 
 only that it was so unkind to laugh when I 
 came upon John Balsillie some time later in the 
 evening, in an enclosed background, and sulk- 
 ing among the tea-pots. I asked him to hand 
 me a cup filled with the useful tonic, then I 
 asked him for milk, then for sugar, then for 
 bread and butter. And as he held the plate, a 
 sudden burst of music reached us. 
 
 "There she goes," said he sarcastically, 
 and then a sudden impulse made me speak 
 quite frankly to the poor fellow, for whom I 
 was at last feeling a little bit sorry. 
 
 "When I brought Binnie away with me, 
 she was not well or happy," I said. "She 
 seemed quite drooping and wasting away. 
 This has been a really delightful change for 
 her. She has found kind friends, natural 
 interests and — well, I know you too are a kind 
 friend, and I will tell you — here is young Mr. 
 Donaldson immensely interested in her. He 
 has a house all ready and is only wanting a 
 mistress for his home. Lady Frances has set 
 her heart on the match, and you must wish us 
 well and forgive me for confiding in you. I 
 wouldn't speak so plainly, but I know you 
 are a gentleman as well as a chaplain, and it 
 
AN ENGAGEMENT 167 
 
 would be such a pity if everybody was dis- 
 appointed." 
 
 I hardly dared look at him as I spoke. He 
 turned black, crimson, yellow in turn. 
 
 " I think I understand," he said with a 
 bilious laugh. " Well, good evening, Miss 
 Williamson, I suppose my mother will be 
 sitting up for me." He was gone. . . . 
 
 Two days passed, and on the evening of 
 the second day Binnie and Mr. Donaldson 
 came in to tell us their news. 
 
 Was this the same little oppressed change- 
 able creature who had plagued me so often ? 
 I had an accident that very evening. My foot 
 caught in a rug and I fell heavily as I was 
 carrying a lamp and the spirit ran over my 
 dress, which was of thin material and soon 
 blazed up. Things would have gone badly 
 indeed with me, if Binnie, who happened to be 
 near by had not sprung to my help. — She seized 
 a bear-skin rug, which was spread loose on the 
 tiled floor and flung it over the smouldering 
 flames, then helped me to rise, all shaken and 
 startled and ashamed as I was, and led me to 
 my room. She summoned help. Lady Frances 
 soon came, followed by maids with remedies, 
 but not one of them was more deft and helpful 
 than Binnie herself, who insisted on sitting with 
 me through the night notwithstanding all I 
 could say, and left me when at about six o'clock 
 
1 68 BINNIE 
 
 in the morning, Lady Frances appeared and 
 sent her away to bed. I was stiff and scorched 
 for many days, but I thoroughly enjoyed my 
 dignity as an invalid, and my gratitude to my 
 kind nurses. Binnie seemed wistfully anxious 
 to show by every means in her power how 
 unlike she was in reality to the trying little 
 being I had known hitherto, how transformed 
 from her former fancies. 
 
 When Binnie's engagement to Mr. Donald- 
 son was announced the little pearl brooch came 
 back to her with Mr. Balsillie's compliments 
 and kind wishes. Dickie 'keeps up an occasional 
 correspondence with the naval chaplain who 
 seems to like South America better than he 
 expected. Mrs. Willoughby still beats her 
 breast and flutters down the wilds of West 
 Kensington. 
 
 As for me, I am at home again. As I 
 write from my lodging in Medina Road, the 
 hills and the widespread moors, the saw-mill 
 beyond the bridge, and the echoing forge 
 among the pines aremany hundred miles away. 
 But I can hear the hammers falling, and the 
 Spey dashes through my little sitting-room in 
 sparkling fury, and I can lift up mine eyes to 
 the line of light which bounds the circling hills 
 of Aviemore. What wondrous visionary estate 
 do I not owe to my good friend ! How many 
 many acres of moor and deer-forest, skies, 
 
A GATE OF HEAVEN 169 
 
 almost beyond the ken of human eyes, aspects 
 of such changing beauty that, again and again, 
 I find myself wondering what radiant, un- 
 imagined gate of heaven is open upon earth 
 from those distant horizons. 
 
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