My home, Glen, is on the border of Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire, sixteen miles from Abbotsford and thirty from Edinburgh. It was designed on the lines of Glamis and Castle Fraser, in what is called Scottish baronial style. I well remember the first shock I had when some one said: "I hate turrets and tin men on the top of them!" It unsettled me for days. I had never imagined that anything could be more beautiful than Glen. The classical style of Whittingehame—and other fine places of the sort—appeared to me better suited for municipal buildings; the beams and flint in Cheshire reminded me of Earl's Court; and such castles as I had seen looked like the pictures of the Rhine on my blotting-book. I was quite ignorant and "Scottish baronial" thrilled me.
What made Glen really unique was not its architecture but its situation. The road by which you approached it was a cul-de-sac and led to nothing but moors. This—and the fact of its being ten miles from a railway station—gave it security in its wildness. Great stretches of heather swept down to the garden walls; and, however many heights you climbed, moor upon moor rose in front of you.
Evan Charteris [Footnote: The Hon. Evan Charteris] said that my hair was biography: as it is my only claim to beauty, I would like to think that this is true, but the hills at Glen are my real biography.
Nature inoculates its lovers from its own culture; sea, downs and moors produce a different type of person. Shepherds, fishermen and poachers are a little like what they contemplate and, were it possible to ask the towns to tell us whom they find most untamable, I have not a doubt that they would say, those who are born on the moors.
I married late—at the age of thirty—and spent all my early life at Glen. I was a child of the heather and quite untamable. After my sister Laura Lyttelton died, my brother Eddy and I lived alone with my parents for nine years at Glen.
When he was abroad shooting big game, I spent long days out of doors, seldom coming in for lunch. Both my pony and my hack were saddled from 7 a.m., ready for me to ride, every day of my life. I wore the shortest of tweed skirts, knickerbockers of the same stuff, top-boots, a covert-coat and a coloured scarf round my head. I was equipped with a book, pencils, cigarettes and food. Every shepherd and poacher knew me; and I have often shared my "piece" with them, sitting in the heather near the red burns, or sheltered from rain in the cuts and quarries of the open road.
After my first great sorrow—the death of my sister Laura—I was suffocated in the house and felt I had to be out of doors from morning till night.
One day I saw an old shepherd called Gowanlock coming up to me, holding my pony by the rein. I had never noticed that it had strayed away and, after thanking him, I observed him looking at me quietly—he knew something of the rage and anguish that Laura's death had brought into my heart—and putting his hand on my shoulder, he said:
"My child, there's no contending. … Ay—ay"—shaking his beautiful old head—"THAT IS SO, there's no contending. …"
Another day, when it came on to rain, I saw a tramp crouching under the dyke, holding an umbrella over his head and eating his lunch. I went and sat down beside him and we fell into desultory conversation. He had a grand, wild face and I felt some curiosity about him; but he was taciturn and all he told me was that he was walking to the Gordon Arms, on his way to St. Mary's Loch. I asked him every sort of question—as to where he had come from, where he was going to and what he wanted to do—but he refused to gratify my curiosity, so I gave him one of my cigarettes and a light and we sat peacefully smoking together in silence. When the rain cleared, I turned to him and said:
"You seem to walk all day and go nowhere; when you wake up in the morning, how do you shape your course?"
To which he answered:
"I always turn my back to the wind."
Border people are more intelligent than those born in the South; and the people of my birthplace are a hundred years in advance of the Southern English even now.
When I was fourteen, I met a shepherd-boy reading a French book. It was called "Le Secret de Delphine." I asked him how he came to know French and he told me it was the extra subject he had been allowed to choose for studying in his holidays; he walked eighteen miles a day to school—nine there and nine back—taking his chance of a lift from any passing vehicle. I begged him to read out loud to me, but he was shy of his accent and would not do it. The Lowland Scotch were a wonderful people in my day.
I remember nothing unhappy in my glorious youth except the violence of our family quarrels. Reckless waves of high and low spirits, added to quick tempers, obliged my mother to separate us for some time and forbid us to sleep in the same bedroom. We raged and ragged till the small hours of the morning, which kept us thin and the household awake.
My mother told me two stories of myself as a little child:
"When you were sent for to come downstairs, Margot, the nurse opened the door and you walked in—generally alone—saying, 'Here's me! …'"
This rather sanguine opening does not seem to have been sufficiently checked. She went on to say:
"I was dreadfully afraid you would be upset and ill when I took you one day to the Deaf and Dumb Asylum in Glasgow, as you felt things with passionate intensity. Before starting I lifted you on to my knee and said, 'You know, darling, I am going to take you to see some poor people who cannot speak.' At which you put your arms round my neck and said, with consoling emphasis, 'I will soon make them speak!'"
The earliest event I can remember was the arrival of the new baby, my brother Jack, when I was two years old. Dr. Cox was spoiling my mother's good-night visit while I was being dried after my bath. My pink flannel dressing-gown, with white buttonhole stitching, was hanging over the fender; and he was discussing some earnest subject in a low tone. He got up and, pinching my chin said:
"She will be very angry, but we will give her a baby of her own," or words to that effect.
The next day a huge doll obliterated from my mind the new baby which had arrived that morning.
We were left very much alone in our nursery, as my mother travelled from pillar to post, hunting for health for her child Pauline. Our nurse, Mrs. Hills—called "Missuls" for short—left us on my tenth birthday to become my sister's lady's-maid, and this removed our first and last restriction.
We were wild children and, left to ourselves, had the time of our lives. I rode my pony up the front stairs and tried to teach my father's high-stepping barouche-horses to jump—crashing their knees into the hurdles in the field—and climbed our incredibly dangerous roof, sitting on the sweep's ladder by moonlight in my nightgown. I had scrambled up every tree, walked on every wall and knew every turret at Glen. I ran along the narrow ledges of the slates in rubber shoes at terrific heights. This alarmed other people so much that my father sent for me one day to see him in his "business room" and made me swear before God that I would give up walking on the roof; and give it up I did, with many tears.
Laura and I were fond of acting and dressing up. We played at being found in dangerous and adventurous circumstances in the garden. One day the boys were rabbit-shooting and we were acting with the doctor's daughter. I had spoilt the game by running round the kitchen-garden wall instead of being discovered—as I was meant to be—in a Turkish turban, smoking on the banks of the Bosphorus. Seeing that things were going badly and that the others had disappeared, I took a wild jump into the radishes. On landing I observed a strange gentleman coming up the path. He looked at my torn gingham frock, naked legs, tennis shoes and dishevelled curls under an orange turban; and I stood still and gazed at him.
"This is a wonderful place," he said; to which I replied:
"You like it?"
HE: "I would like to see the house. I hear there are beautiful things in it."
MARGOT: "I think the drawing-rooms are all shut up."
HE: "How do you know? Surely you could manage to get hold of a servant or some one who would take me round. Do you know any of them?"
I asked him if he meant the family or the servants.
"The family," he said.
MARGOT: "I know them very well, but I don't know you."
"I am an artist," said the stranger; "my name is Peter Graham. Who are you?"
"I am an artist too!" I said. "My name is Margot Tennant. I suppose you thought I was the gardener's daughter, did you?"
He gave a circulating smile, finishing on my turban, and said:
"To tell you the honest truth, I had no idea what you were!"
My earliest sorrow was when I was stealing peaches in the conservatory and my little dog was caught in a trap set for rats. He was badly hurt before I could squeeze under the glass slides to save him. I was betrayed by my screams for help and caught in the peach-house by the gardener. I was punished and put to bed, as the large peaches were to have been shown in Edinburgh and I had eaten five.
We had a dancing-class at the minister's and an arithmetic-class in our schoolroom. I was as good at the Manse as I was bad at my sums; and poor Mr. Menzies, the Traquair schoolmaster, had eventually to beg my mother to withdraw me from the class, as I kept them all back. To my delight I was withdrawn; and from that day to this I have never added a single row of figures.
I showed a remarkable proficiency in dancing and could lift both my feet to the level of my eyebrows with disconcerting ease. Mrs. Wallace, the minister's wife, was shocked and said:
"Look at Margot with her Frenchified airs!"
I pondered often and long over this, the first remark about myself that I can ever remember. Some one said to me:
"Does your hair curl naturally?"
To which I replied:
"I don't know, but I will ask."
I was unaware of myself and had not the slightest idea what "curling naturally" meant.
We had two best dresses: one made in London, which we only wore on great occasions; the other made by my nurse, in which we went down to dessert. These dresses gave me my first impression of civilised life. Just as the Speaker, before clearing the House, spies strangers, so, when I saw my black velvet skirt and pink Garibaldi put out on the bed, I knew that something was up! The nursery confection was of white alpaca, piped with pink, and did not inspire the same excitement and confidence.
We saw little of our mother in our youth and I asked Laura one day if she thought she said her prayers; I would not have remembered this had it not been that Laura was profoundly shocked. The question was quite uncalled for and had no ulterior motive, but I never remembered my mother or any one else talking to us about the Bible or hearing us our prayers. Nevertheless we were all deeply religious, by which no one need infer that we were good. There was one service a week, held on Sundays, in Traquair Kirk, which every one went to; and the shepherds' dogs kept close to their masters' plaids, hung over the high box-pews, all the way down the aisle. I have heard many fine sermons in Scotland, but our minister was not a good preacher; and we were often dissolved in laughter, sitting in the square family pew in the gallery. My father closed his eyes tightly all through the sermon, leaning his head on his hand.
The Scottish Sabbath still held its own in my youth; and when I heard that Ribblesdale and Charty played lawn tennis on Sunday after they were married, I felt very unhappy. We had a few Sabbath amusements, but they were not as entertaining as those described in Miss Fowler's book, in which the men who were heathens went into one corner of the room and the women who were Christians into the other and, at the beating of a gong, conversion was accomplished by a close embrace. Our Scottish Sabbaths were very different, and I thought them more than dreary. Although I love church music and architecture and can listen to almost any sermon at any time and even read sermons to myself, going to church in the country remains a sacrifice to me. The painful custom in the Church of England of reading indistinctly and in an assumed voice has alienated simple people in every parish; and the average preaching is painful. In my country you can still hear a good sermon. When staying with Lord Haldane's mother—the most beautiful, humorous and saintly of old ladies—I heard an excellent sermon at Auchterarder on this very subject, the dullness of Sundays. The minister said that, however brightly the sun shone on stained glass windows, no one could guess what they were really like from the outside; it was from the inside only that you should judge of them.
Another time I heard a man end his sermon by saying:
"And now, my friends, do your duty and don't look upon the world with eyes jaundiced by religion."
My mother hardly ever mentioned religion to us and, when the subject was brought up by other people, she confined her remarks to saying in a weary voice and with a resigned sigh that God's ways were mysterious. She had suffered many sorrows and, in estimating her lack of temperament, I do not think I made enough allowance for them. No true woman ever gets over the loss of a child; and her three eldest had died before I was born.
I was the most vital of the family and what the nurses described as a "venturesome child." Our coachman's wife called me "a little Turk." Self-willed, excessively passionate, painfully truthful, bold as well as fearless and always against convention, I was, no doubt, extremely difficult to bring up.
My mother was not lucky with her governesses—we had two at a time, and of every nationality, French, German, Swiss, Italian and Greek—but, whether through my fault or our governesses', I never succeeded in making one of them really love me. Mary Morison, [Foot note: Miss Morison, a cousin of Mr. William Archer's.] who kept a high school for young ladies in Innerleithen, was the first person who influenced me and my sister Laura. She is alive now and a woman of rare intellect and character. She was fonder of Laura than of me, but so were most people.
Here I would like to say something about my sister and AlfredLyttelton, whom she married in 1885.
A great deal of nonsense has been written and talked about Laura. There are two printed accounts of her that are true: one has been written by the present Mrs. Alfred Lyttelton, in generous and tender passages in the life of her husband, and the other by A. G. C. Liddell; but even these do not quite give the brilliant, witty Laura of my heart. I will quote what my dear friend, Doll Liddell, wrote of her in his Notes from the Life of an Ordinary Mortal:
My acquaintance with Miss Tennant, which led to a close intimacy with herself, and afterwards with her family, was an event of such importance in my life that I feel I ought to attempt some description of her. This is not an easy task, as a more indescribable person never existed, for no one could form a correct idea of what she was like who had not had opportunities of feeling her personal charm. Her looks were certainly not striking at first sight, though to most persons who had known her some weeks she would often seem almost beautiful. To describe her features would give no idea of the brightness and vivacity of her expression, or of that mixture of innocence and mischief, as of a half-child, half-Kelpie, which distinguished her. Her figure was very small but well made, and she was always prettily and daintily dressed. If the outward woman is difficult to describe, what can be said of her character?
To begin with her lighter side, she had reduced fascination to a fine art in a style entirely her own. I have never known her meet any man, and hardly any woman, whom she could not subjugate in a few days. It is as difficult to give any idea of her methods as to describe a dance when the music is unheard. Perhaps one may say that her special characteristic was the way in which she combined the gaiety of a child with the tact and aplomb of a grown woman. … Her victims, after their period of enchantment, generally became her devoted friends.
This trifling was, however, only the ripple on the surface. In the deeper parts of her nature was a fund of earnestness and a sympathy which enabled her to throw herself into the lives of other people in a quite unusual way, and was one of the great secrets of the general affection she inspired. It was not, however, as is sometimes the case with such feelings, merely emotional, but impelled her to many kindnesses and to constant, though perhaps somewhat impulsive, efforts to help her fellows of all sorts and conditions.
On her mental side she certainly gave the impression, from the originality of her letters and sayings, and her appreciation of what was best in literature, that her gifts were of a high order. In addition, she had a subtle humour and readiness, which made her repartees often delightful and produced phrases and fancies of characteristic daintiness. But there was something more than all this, an extra dose of life, which caused a kind of electricity to flash about her wherever she went, lighting up all with whom she came in contact. I am aware that this description will seem exaggerated, and will be put down to the writer having dwelt in her "Aeaean isle" but I think that if it should meet the eyes of any who knew her in her short life, they will understand what it attempts to convey.
This is good, but his poem is even better; and there is a prophetic touch in the line, "Shadowed with something of the future years."
A face upturned towards the midnight sky,Pale in the glimmer of the pale starlight,And all around the black and boundless night,And voices of the winds which bode and cry.A childish face, but grave with curves that lieReady to breathe in laughter or in tears,Shadowed with something of the future yearsThat makes one sorrowful, I know not why.O still, small face, like a white petal tornFrom a wild rose by autumn winds and flungOn some dark stream the hurrying waves among:By what strange fates and whither art thou borne?
Laura had many poems written to her from many lovers. My daughter Elizabeth Bibesco's godfather, Godfrey Webb—a conspicuous member of the Souls, not long since dead—wrote this of her:
Tennyson's description of Laura in 1883:
"Half child, half woman"—wholly to be lovedBy either name she found an easy wayInto my heart, whose sentinels all provedUnfaithful to their trust, the luckless dayShe entered there. "Prudence and reason both!Did you not question her? How was it prayShe so persuaded you?" "Nor sleep nor sloth,"They cried, "o'ercame us then, a CHILD at playWent smiling past us, and then turning roundToo late your heart to save, a woman's face we found."
Laura was not a plaster saint; she was a generous, clamative, combative little creature of genius, full of humour, imagination, temperament and impulse.
Some one reading this memoir will perhaps say:
"I wonder what Laura and Margot were really like, what the differences and what the resemblances between them were."
The men who could answer this question best would be LordGladstone, Arthur Balfour, Lord Midleton, Sir Rennell Rodd, orLord Curzon (of Kedleston). I can only say what I think thedifferences and resemblances were.
Strictly speaking, I was better-looking than Laura, but she had rarer and more beautiful eyes. Brains are such a small part of people that I cannot judge of them as between her and me; and, at the age of twenty-three, when she died, few of us are at the height of our powers, but Laura made and left a deeper impression on the world in her short life than any one that I have ever known. What she really had to a greater degree than other people was true spirituality, a feeling of intimacy with the other world and a sense of the love and wisdom of God and His plan of life. Her mind was informed by true religion; and her heart was fixed. This did not prevent her from being a very great flirt. The first time that a man came to Glen and liked me better than Laura, she was immensely surprised—not more so than I was—and had it not been for the passionate love which we cherished for each other, there must inevitably have been much jealousy between us.
On several occasions the same man proposed to both of us, and we had to find out from each other what our intentions were.
I only remember being hurt by Laura on one occasion and it came about in this way. We were always dressed alike, and as we were the same size; "M" and "L" had to be written in our clothes as we grew older.
One day, about the time of which I am writing, I was thirteen; I took a letter out of the pocket of what I thought was my skirt and read it; it was from Laura to my eldest sister Posie and, though I do not remember it all, one sentence was burnt into me:
"Does it not seem extraordinary that Margot should be teaching aSunday class?"
I wondered why any one should think it extraordinary! I went upstairs and cried in a small black cupboard, where I generally disappeared when life seemed too much for me.
The Sunday class I taught need have disturbed no one, for I regret to relate that, after a striking lesson on the birth of Christ, when I asked my pupils who the Virgin was, one of the most promising said:
"Queen Victoria!"
The idea had evidently gone abroad that I was a frivolous character; this hurt and surprised me. Naughtiness and frivolity are different, and I was always deeply in earnest.
Laura was more gentle than I was; and her goodness resolved itself into greater activity.
She and I belonged to a reading-class. I read more than she did and at greater speed, but we were all readers and profited by a climate which kept us indoors and a fine library. The class obliged us to read an hour a day, which could not be called excessive, but the real test was doing the same thing at the same time. I would have preferred three or four hours' reading on wet days and none on fine, But not so our Edinburgh tutor.
Laura started the Girls' Friendly Society in the village, which was at that time famous for its drunkenness and immorality. We drove ourselves to the meetings in a high two-wheeled dog-cart behind a fast trotter, coming back late in pitch darkness along icy roads. These drives to Innerleithen and our moonlight talks are among my most precious recollections.
At the meetings—after reading aloud to the girls while they sewed and knitted—Laura would address them. She gave a sort of lesson, moral, social and religious, and they all adored her. More remarkable at her age than speaking to mill-girls were her Sunday classes at Glen, in the housekeeper's room. I do not know one girl now of any age—Laura was only sixteen—who could talk on religious subjects with profit to the butler, housekeeper and maids, or to any grown-up people, on a Sunday afternoon.
Compared with what the young men have written and published during this war, Laura's literary promise was not great; both her prose and her poetry were less remarkable than her conversation.
She was not so good a judge of character as I was and took many a goose for a swan, but, in consequence of this, she made people of both sexes—and even all ages—twice as good, clever and delightful as they would otherwise have been.
I have never succeeded in making any one the least different from what they are and, in my efforts to do so, have lost every female friend that I have ever had (with the exception of four). This was the true difference between us. I have never influenced anybody but my own two children, Elizabeth and Anthony, but Laura had such an amazing effect upon men and women that for years after she died they told me that she had both changed and made their lives. This is a tremendous saying. When I die, people may turn up and try to make the world believe that I have influenced them and women may come forward whom I adored and who have quarrelled with me and pretend that they always loved me, but I wish to put it on record that they did not, or, if they did, their love is not my kind of love and I have no use for it.
The fact is that I am not touchy or impenitent myself and forget that others may be and I tell people the truth about themselves, while Laura made them feel it. I do not think I should mind hearing from any one the naked truth about myself; and on the few occasions when it has happened to me, I have not been in the least offended. My chief complaint is that so few love one enough, as one grows older, to say what they really think; nevertheless I have often wished that I had been born with Laura's skill and tact in dealing with men and women. In her short life she influenced more people than I have done in over twice as many years. I have never influenced people even enough to make them change their stockings! And I have never succeeded in persuading any young persons under my charge—except my own two children—to say that they were wrong or sorry, nor at this time of life do I expect to do so.
There was another difference between Laura and me: she felt sad when she refused the men who proposed to her; I pitied no man who loved me. I told Laura that both her lovers and mine had a very good chance of getting over it, as they invariably declared themselves too soon. We were neither of us au fond very susceptible. It was the custom of the house that men should be in love with us, but I can truly say that we gave quite as much as we received.
I said to Rowley Leigh [Footnote: The Hon. Rowland Leigh, of Stoneleigh Abbey.]—a friend of my brother Eddy's and one of the first gentlemen that ever came to Glen—when he begged me to go for a walk with him:
"Certainly, if you won't ask me to marry you."
To which he replied:
"I never thought of it!"
"That's all right!" said I, putting my arm confidingly and gratefully through his.
He told me afterwards that he had been making up his mind and changing it for days as to how he should propose.
Sir David Tennant, a former Speaker at Cape Town and the most distant of cousins, came to stay at Glen with his son, a young man of twenty. After a few days, the young man took me into one of the conservatories and asked me to marry him. I pointed out that I hardly knew him by sight, and that "he was running hares." He took it extremely well and, much elated, I returned to the house to tell Laura. I found her in tears; she told me Sir David Tennant had asked her to marry him and she had been obliged to refuse. I cheered her up by pointing out that it would have been awkward had we both accepted, for, while remaining my sister, she would have become my mother-in-law and my husband's stepmother.
We were not popular in Peeblesshire, partly because we had no county connection, but chiefly because we were Liberals. My father had turned out the sitting Tory, Sir Graham Montgomery, of Stobo, and was member for the two counties Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire. As Sir Graham had represented the counties for thirty years, this was resented by the Montgomery family, who proceeded to cut us. Laura was much worried over this, but I was amused. I said the love of the Maxwell Stuarts, Maxwell Scotts, Wolfe Murrays and Sir Thomas—now Lord—Carmichael was quite enough for me and that if she liked she could twist Sir Graham Montgomery round her little finger; as a matter of fact, neither Sir Graham nor his sons disliked us. I met Basil Montgomery at Traquair House many years after my papa's election, where we were entertained by Herbert Maxwell—the owner of one of the most romantic houses in Scotland, and our most courteous and affectionate neighbour. Not knowing who he was, I was indignant when he told me he thought Peeblesshire was dull; I said where we lived it was far from dull and asked him if he knew many people in the county. To which he answered:
"Chiefly the Stobo lot."
At this I showed him the most lively sympathy and invited him to come to Glen. In consequence of this visit he told me years afterwards his fortune had been made. My father took a fancy to him and at my request employed him on the Stock Exchange.
Laura and I shared the night nursery together till she married; and, in spite of mixed proposals, we were devoted friends. We read late in bed, sometimes till three in the morning, and said our prayers out loud to each other every night. We were discussing imagination one night and were comparing Hawthorne, De Quincey, Poe and others, in consequence of a dispute arising out of one of our pencil-games; and we argued till the housemaid came in with the hot water at eight in the morning.
I will digress here to explain our after-dinner games. There were several, but the best were what Laura and I invented: one was called "Styles," another "Clumps"—better known as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral"—a third, "Epigrams" and the most dangerous of all "Character Sketches." We were given no time-limit, but sat feverishly silent in different corners of the room, writing as hard as we could. When it was agreed that we had all written enough, the manuscripts were given to our umpire, who read them out loud. Votes were then taken as to the authorship, which led to first-rate general conversation on books, people and manner of writing. We have many interesting umpires, beginning with Bret Harte and Laurence Oliphant and going on to Arthur Balfour, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Lionel Tennyson, [Footnote: Brother of the present Lord Tennyson.] Harry Cust and Doll Liddell: all good writers themselves.
Some of our guests preferred making caricatures to competing in the more ambitious line of literature. I made a drawing of the Dowager Countess of Aylesbury, better known as "Lady A."; Colonel Saunderson—a famous Orangeman—did a sketch of Gladstone for me; while Alma Tadema gave me one of Queen Victoria, done in four lines.
These games were good for our tempers and a fine training; any loose vanity, jealousy, or over-competitiveness were certain to be shown up; and those who took the buttons off the foils in the duel of argument—of which I have seen a good deal in my life—were instantly found out. We played all our games with much greater precision and care than they are played now and from practice became extremely good at them. I never saw a playing-card at Glen till after I married, though—when we were obliged to dine downstairs to prevent the company being thirteen at dinner—I vaguely remember a back view of my grandpapa at the card-table playing whist.
Laura was a year and a half older than I was and came out in 1881, while I was in Dresden. The first party that she and I went to together was a political crush given by Sir William and Lady Harcourt. I was introduced to Spencer Lyttleton and shortly after this Laura met his brother Alfred.
One day, as she and I were leaving St. Paul's Cathedral, she pointed out a young man to me and said:
"Go and ask Alfred Lyttelton to come to Glen any time this autumn," which I promptly did.
The advent of Alfred into our family coincided with that of several new men, the Charterises, Balfours, George Curzon, George Wyndham, Harry Cust, the Crawleys, Jack Pease, "Harry" Paulton, Lord Houghton, Mark Napier, Doll Liddell and others. High hopes had been entertained by my father that some of these young men might marry us, but after the reception we gave to Lord Lymington —who, to do him justice, never proposed to any of us except in the paternal imagination—his nerve was shattered and we were left to ourselves.
Some weeks before Alfred's arrival, Laura had been much disturbed by hearing that we were considered "fast"; she told me that receiving men at midnight in our bedroom shocked people and that we ought, perhaps, to give it up. I listened closely to what she had to say, and at the end remarked that it appeared to me to be quite absurd. Godfrey Webb agreed with me and said that people who were easily shocked were like women who sell stale pastry in cathedral towns; and he advised us to take no notice whatever of what any one said. We hardly knew the meaning of the word "fast" and, as my mother went to bed punctually at eleven, it was unthinkable that men and women friends should not be allowed to join us. Our bedroom had been converted by me out of the night- nursery into a sitting-room. The shutters were removed and book- shelves put in their place, an idea afterwards copied by my friends. The Morris carpet and chintzes I had discovered for myself and chosen in London; and my walls were ornamented with curious objects, varying from caricatures and crucifixes to prints of prize-fights, fox-hunts, Virgins and Wagner. In one of the turrets I hung my clothes; in the other I put an altar on which I kept my books of prayer and a skull which was given to me by the shepherd's son and which is on my bookshelf now; we wore charming dressing-jackets and sat up in bed with coloured cushions behind our backs, while the brothers and their friends sat on the floor or in comfortable chairs round the room. On these occasions the gas was turned low, a brilliant fire made up and either a guest or one of us would read by the light of a single candle, tell ghost- stories or discuss current affairs: politics, people and books. Not only the young, but the old men came to our gatherings. I remember Jowett reading out aloud to us Thomas Hill Green's lay sermons; and when he had finished I asked him how much he had loved Green, to which he replied:
"I did not love him at all."
That these midnight meetings should shock any one appeared fantastic; and as most people in the house agreed with me, they were continued.
It was not this alone that disturbed Laura; she wanted to marry a serious, manly fellow, but as she was a great flirt, other types of a more brilliant kind obscured this vision and she had become profoundly undecided over her own love-affairs; they had worked so much upon her nerves that when Mr. Lyttelton came to Glen she was in bed with acute neuralgia and unable to see him.
My father welcomed Alfred warmly, for, apart from his charming personality, he was Gladstone's nephew and had been brought up in the Liberal creed.
On the evening of his arrival, we all went out after dinner. There had been a terrific gale which had destroyed half a wood on a hill in front of the library windows and we wanted to see the roots of the trees blown up by dynamite. It was a moonlight night, but the moon is always brighter in novels than in life and it was pitch dark. Alfred and I, walking arm in arm, talked gaily to each other as we stumbled over the broken brushwood by the side of the Quair burn. As we approached the wood a white birch lay across the water at a slanting angle and I could not resist leaving Alfred's side to walk across it. It was, however, too slippery for me and I fell. Alfred plunged into the burn and scrambled me out. I landed on my feet and, except for sopping stockings, no harm was done. Our party had scattered in the dark and, as it was past midnight, we walked back to the house alone. When we returned, we found everybody had gone to their rooms and Alfred suggested carrying me up to bed. As I weighed under eight stone, he lifted me up like a toy and deposited me on my bed. Kneeling down, he kissed my hand and said good night to me.
Two days after this my brother Eddy and I travelled North for the Highland meeting. Laura, who had been gradually recovering, was well enough to leave her room that day; and I need hardly say that this had the immediate effect of prolonging Alfred's visit.
On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton.
After what Mrs. Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he appeared to me in those early days.
Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent nature, even more spoilt than we were. He was as cool and as fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional. Every one adored him; he combined the prowess at games of a Greek athlete with moral right-mindedness of a high order. He was neither a gambler nor an artist. He respected discipline, but loathed asceticism.
What interested me most in him was not his mind—which lacked elasticity—but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant. His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games. There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the truth. In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool temperament and a peppery intellectual temper. Alfred would have been justified in taking out a patent in himself as an Englishman, warranted like a dye never to lose colour. To him most foreigners were frogs. In Edward Lyttelton's admirable monograph of his brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train, sucking an orange, "a small, grubby Italian, leaning on his walking-stick, smoking a cheroot at the station," was looked upon, not only by Alfred but by his biographer, as an "irresistible challenge to fling the juicy, but substantial, fragment full at the unsuspecting foreigner's cheek." At this we are told that "Alfred collapsed into noble convulsions of laughter." I quote this incident, as it illustrates the difference between the Tennant and the Lyttelton sense of humour. Their laughter was a tornado or convulsion to which they succumbed; and even the Hagley ragging, though, according to Edward Lyttelton's book, it was only done with napkins, sounds formidable enough. Laura and Alfred enjoyed many things together—books, music and going to church—but they did not laugh at the same things. I remember her once saying to me in a dejected voice:
"Wouldn't you have thought that, laughing as loud as the Lytteltons do, they would have loved Lear? Alfred says none of them think him a bit funny and was quite testy when I said his was the only family in the world that didn't."
It was his manliness, spirituality and freedom from pettiness that attracted Alfred to Laura; he also had infinite charm. It might have been said of him what the Dowager Lady Grey wrote of her husband to Henry when thanking him for his sympathy:
"He lit so many fires in cold rooms."
After Alfred's death, my husband said this of him in the House ofCommons:
It would not, I think, be doing justice to the feelings which are uppermost in many of our hearts, if we passed to the business of the day without taking notice of the fresh gap which has been made in our ranks by the untimely death of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton. It is a loss of which I hardly trust myself to speak; for, apart from ties of relationship, there had subsisted between us for thirty- three years, a close friendship and affection which no political differences were ever allowed to loosen, or even to affect. Nor could I better describe it than by saying that he, perhaps, of all men of this generation, came nearest to the mould and ideal of manhood, which every English father would like to see his son aspire to, and, if possible, to attain. The bounty of nature, enriched and developed not only by early training, but by constant self-discipline through life, blended in him gifts and graces which, taken alone, are rare, and in such attractive union are rarer still. Body, mind and character, the schoolroom, the cricket field, the Bar, the House of Commons—each made its separate contribution to the faculty and the experience of a many-sided and harmonious whole. But what he was he gave—gave with such ease and exuberance that I think it may be said without exaggeration that wherever he moved he seemed to radiate vitality and charm. He was, as we here know, a strenuous fighter. He has left behind him no resentments and no enmity; nothing but a gracious memory of a manly and winning personality, the memory of one who served with an unstinted measure of devotion his generation and country. He has been snatched away in what we thought was the full tide of buoyant life, still full of promise and of hope. What more can we say? We can only bow once again before the decrees of the Supreme Wisdom. Those who loved him—and they are many, in all schools of opinion, in all ranks and walks of life—when they think of him, will say to themselves:
This is the happy warrior, this is heWho every man in arms should wish to be.
On the occasion of Alfred Lyttelton's second visit to Glen, I will quote my diary:
"Laura came into my bedroom. She was in a peignoir and asked me what she should wear for dinner. I said:
"'Your white muslin, and hurry up. Mr. Lyttelton is strumming in the Doo'cot and you had better go and entertain him, poor fellow, as he is leaving for London tonight.'
"She tied a blue ribbon in her hair, hastily thrust her diamond brooch into her fichu and then, with her eyes very big and her hair low and straight upon her forehead, she went into our sitting-room (we called it the Doo'cot, because we all quarrelled there). Feeling rather small, but, half-shy, half-bold, she shut the door and, leaning against it, watched Alfred strumming. He turned and gazed at the little figure so near him, so delicate in her white dress.
"The silence was broken by Alfred asking her if any man ever left Glen without telling her that he loved her; but suddenly all talk stopped and she was in his arms, hiding her little face against his hard coat. There was no one to record what followed; only the night rising with passionate eyes:
'The hiding, receiving night that talks not.'
"They were married on the 10th of May, 1885. "In April of 1886, Laura's baby was expected any day; and my mother was anxious that I should not be near her when the event took place. The Lytteltons lived in Upper Brook Street; and, Grosvenor Square being near, it was thought that any suffering on her part might make a lasting and painful impression on me, so I was sent down to Easton Grey to stay with Lucy and hunt in the Badminton country. Before going away, I went round to say good-bye to Laura and found her in a strange humour.
"LAURA: 'I am sure I shall die with my baby.'
"MARGOT: 'How can you talk such nonsense? Every one thinks that.Look at mamma! She had twelve children without a pang!'
"LAURA: 'I know she did; but I am sure I shall die.'
"MARGOT: 'I am just as likely to be killed out hunting as you are to die, darling! It makes me miserable to hear you talk like this.'
"LAURA: 'If I die, Margot, I want you to read my will to the relations and people that will be in my bedroom. It is in that drawer. Promise me you will not forget.'
"MARGOT: 'All right, darling, I will; but let us kneel down and pray that, whether it is me or you who die first, if it is God's will, one of us may come to the other down here and tell us the truth about the next world and console us as much as possible in this!'"
We knelt and prayed and, though I was more removed from the world and in the humour both to see and to hear what was not material, in my grief over Laura's death, which took place ten days later, I have never heard from her or of her from that day to this.
Mrs. Lyttelton has told the story of her husband's first marriage with so much perfection that I hesitate to go over the same ground again, but, as my sister Laura's death had more effect on me than any event in my life, except my own marriage and the birth of my children, I must copy a short account of it written at that time:
'On Saturday, 17th April, 1886, I was riding down a green slope in Gloucestershire while the Beaufort hounds were scattered below vainly trying to pick up the scent; they were on a stale line and the result had been general confusion. It was a hot day and the woods were full of children and primroses.
"The air was humming with birds and insects, nature wore an expectant look and all the hedge-rows sparkled with the spangles of the spring. There was a prickly gap under a tree which divided me from my companions. I rode down to jump it, but, whether from breeding, laziness or temper, my horse turned round and refused to move. I took my foot out of the stirrup and gave him a slight kick. I remember nothing after that till I woke up in a cottage with a tremendous headache. They said that the branch was too low, or the horse jumped too big and a withered bough had caught me in the face. In consequence I had concussion of the brain; and my nose and upper lip were badly torn. I was picked up by my early fiance. He tied my lip to my hair—as it was reposing on my chin— and took me home in a cart. The doctor was sent for, but there was no time to give me chloroform. I sat very still from vanity while three stitches were put through the most sensitive part of my nose. When it was all over, I looked at myself in the looking- glass and burst into tears. I had never been very pretty ("worse than that," as the Marquis of Soveral [Footnote: The Late Portuguese Minister.] said) but I had a straight nose and a look of intelligence; and now my face would be marked for life like a German student's.
"The next day a telegram arrived saying: "'Laura confined—a boy— both doing well.'
"We sent back a message saying: "'Hurrah and blessing!'
On Sunday we received a letter from Charty saying Laura was very ill and another on Monday telling us to go to London. I was in a state of acute anxiety and said to the doctor I must go and see Laura immediately, but he would not hear of it:
"'Impossible! You'll get erysipelas and die. Most dangerous to move with a face like that,' he said.
"On the occasion of his next visit, I was dressed and walking up and down the room in a fume of nervous excitement, for go I WOULD. Laura was dying (I did not really think she was, but I wanted to be near her). I insisted upon his taking the stitches out of my face and ultimately he had to give in. At 6 p.m. I was in the train for London, watching the telegraph-posts flying past me.
"My mind was going over every possibility. I was sitting near her bed with the baby on my arm, chattering over plans, arranging peignoirs, laughing at the nurse's anecdotes, talking and whispering over the thousand feminine things that I knew she would be longing to hear. … Or perhaps she was dying… asking for me and wondering why I did not come… thinking I was hunting instead of being with her. Oh, how often the train stopped! Did any one really live at these stations? No one got out; they did not look like real places; why should the train stop? Should I tell them Laura was dying? … We had prayed so often to die the same day. … Surely she was not going to die… it could not be… her vitality was too splendid, her youth too great… God would not allow this thing. How stiff my face felt with its bandages; and if I cried they would all come off!
"At Swindon I had to change. I got out and sat in the vast eating- room, with its atmosphere of soup and gas. A crowd of people were talking of a hunting accident: this was mine. Then a woman came in and put her bag down. A clergyman shook hands with her; he said some one had died. I moved away.
"'World! Trewth! The Globe! Paper, miss? Paper? …'
"'No, thank you.'
"'London train!' was shouted and I got in. I knew by the loud galloping sound that we were going between high houses and at each gallop the wheels seemed to say, 'Too late—too late!' After a succession of hoarse screams we dashed into Paddington.
"It was midnight. I saw a pale, grave face, and recognised Evan Charteris, who had come in Lady Wemyss' brougham to meet me. I said:
'"Is she dead?' "To which he answered: "'No, but very, very ill.'"We drove in silence to 4 Upper Brook Street.
Papa, Jack and Godfrey Webb stood in the hall. They stopped me asI passed and said: 'She is no worse'; but I could not listen. Isaw Arthur Balfour and Spencer Lyttelton standing near the door ofAlfred's room. They said: "'You look ill. Have you had a fall?'
"I explained the plaster on my swollen face and asked if I might go upstairs to see Laura; and they said they thought I might. When I got to the top landing, I stood in the open doorway of the boudoir. A man was sitting in an arm-chair by a table with a candle on it. It was Alfred and I passed on. I saw the silhouette of a woman through the open door of Laura's room; this was Charty. We held each other close to our hearts… her face felt hot and her eyes were heavy.
"'Don't look at her to-night, sweet. She is unconscious,' she said.
"I did not take this in and asked to be allowed to say one word to her. … I said:
"'I know she'd like to see me, darling, if only just to nod to, and I promise I will go away quickly. Indeed, indeed I would not tire her! I want to tell her the train was late and the doctor would not let me come up yesterday. Only one second, PLEASE, Charty! …'
"'But, my darling heart, she's unconscious. She has never been conscious all day. She would not know you!'
"I sank stunned upon the stair. Some one touched my shoulder:
"'You had better go to bed, it is past one. No, you can't sleep here: there's no bed. You must lie down; a sofa won't do, you are too ill. Very well, then, you are not ill, but you will be to- morrow if you don't go to bed.'
"I found myself in the street, Arthur Balfour holding one of myarms and Spencer Lyttelton the other. They took me to 40 GrosvenorSquare. I went to bed and early next morning I went across toUpper Brook Street. The servant looked happy:
"'She's better, miss, and she's conscious.'
"I flew upstairs, and Charty met me in her dressing-gown. She was calm and capable as always, but a new look, less questioning and more intense, had come into her face. She said:
"'You can go in now.'
"I felt a rushing of my soul and an over-eagerness that half- stopped me as I opened the door and stood at the foot of the wooden bed and gazed at what was left of Laura.
"Her face had shrunk to the size of a child's; her lashes lay a black wall on the whitest of cheeks; her hair was hanging dragged up from her square brow in heavy folds upon the pillow. Her mouth was tightly shut and a dark blood-stain marked her chin. After a long silence, she moved and muttered and opened her eyes. She fixed them on me, and my heart stopped. I stretched my hands out towards her, and said, 'Laura!'… But the sound died; she did not know me. I knew after that she could not live.
"People went away for the Easter Holidays: Papa to North Berwick, Arthur Balfour to Westward Ho! and every day Godfrey Webb rode a patient cob up to the front door, to hear that she was no better. I sat on the stairs listening to the roar of London and the clock in the library. The doctor—Matthews Duncan—patted my head whenever he passed me on the stair and said, in his gentle Scotch accent:
"'Poor little girl! Poor, poor little girl!'
"I was glad he did not say that 'while there was life there was hope,' or any of the medical platitudes, or I would have replied that he LIED. There was no hope—none! …
"One afternoon I went with Lucy to St. George's, Hanover Square. The old man was sweeping out the church; and we knelt and prayed. Laura and I have often knelt side by side at that altar and I never feel alone when I am in front of the mysterious Christ- picture, with its bars of violet and bunches of grapes.
"On my return I went upstairs and lay on the floor of Laura's bedroom, watching Alfred kneeling by her side with his arms over his head. Charty sat with her hands clasped; a single candle behind her head transfigured her lovely hair into a halo. Suddenly Laura opened her eyes and, turning them slowly on Charty, said:
"'You are HEAVENLY! . . .'
"A long pause, and then while we were all three drawing near her bed we heard her say:
"'I think God has forgotten me.'
"The fire was weaving patterns on the ceiling; every shadow seemed to be looking with pity on the silence of that room, the long silence that has never been broken.
"I did not go home that night, but slept at Alfred's house. Lucy had gone to the early Communion, but I had not accompanied her, as I was tired of praying. I must have fallen into a heavy sleep, when suddenly I felt some one touching my bed. I woke with a start and saw nurse standing beside me. She said in a calm voice:
"'My dear, you must come. Don't look like that; you won't be able to walk.'
"Able to walk! Of course I was! I was in my dressing-gown and downstairs in a flash and on to the bed. The room was full of people. I lay with my arm under Laura, as I did in the old Glen days, when after our quarrels we crept into each other's beds to'make it up.' Alfred was holding one of her hands against his forehead; and Charty was kneeling at her feet.
"She looked much the same, but a deeper shadow ran under her brow and her mouth seemed to be harder shut. I put my cheek against her shoulder and felt the sharpness of her spine. For a minute we lay close to each other, while the sun, fresh from the dawn, played upon the window-blinds. … Then her breathing stopped; she gave a shiver and died. … The silence was so great that I heard the flight of Death and the morning salute her soul.
"I went downstairs and took her will out of the drawer where she had put it and told Alfred what she had asked me to do. The room was dark with people; and a tall man, gaunt and fervid, was standing up saying a prayer. When he had finished I read the will through:
My Will [Footnote: The only part of the will I have left out is a few names with blank spaces which she intended to fill up.], made by me, Laura Mary Octavia Lyttelton, February, 1886.
"I have not much to leave behind me, should I die next month, having my treasure deep in my heart where no one can reach it, and where even Death cannot enter. But there are some things that have long lain at the gates of my Joy House that in some measure have the colour of my life in them, and would, by rights of love, belong to those who have entered there. I should like Alfred to give these things to my friends, not because my friends will care so much for them, but because they will love best being where I loved to be.
"I want, first of all, to tell Alfred that all I have in the world and all I am and ever shall be, belongs to him, and to him more than any one, so that if I leave away from him anything that speaks to him of a joy unknown to me, or that he holds dear for any reason wise or unwise, it is his, and my dear friends will forgive him and me.
"So few women have been as happy as I have been every hour since I married—so few have had such a wonderful sky of love for their common atmosphere, that perhaps it will seem strange when I write down that the sadness of Death and Parting is greatly lessened to me by the fact of my consciousness of the eternal, indivisible oneness of Alfred and me. I feel as long as he is down here I must be here, silently, secretly sitting beside him as I do every evening now, however much my soul is the other side, and that if Alfred were to die, we would be as we were on earth, love as we did this year, only fuller, quicker, deeper than ever, with a purer passion and a wiser worship. Only in the meantime, whilst my body is hid from him and my eyes cannot see him, let my trivial toys be his till the morning comes when nothing will matter because all is spirit.
"If my baby lives I should like it to have my pearls. I do not love my diamond necklace, so I won't leave it to any one.
"I would like Alfred to have my Bible. It has always rather worried him to hold because it is so full of things; but if I know I am dying, I will clean it out, because, I suppose, he won't like to after. I think I am fonder of it—not, I mean, because it's the Bible—but because it's such a friend, and has been always with me, chiefly under my pillow, ever since I had it—than of anything I possess, and I used to read it a great deal when I was much better than I am now. I love it very much, so, Alfred, you must keep it for me.
"Then the prayer book Francie [Footnote: Lady Horner, of Mells.] gave me is what I love next, and I love it so much I feel I would like to take it with me. Margot wants a prayer book, so I leave it to her. It is so dirty outside, but perhaps it would be a pity to bind it. Margot is to have my darling little Daily Light, too.
"Then Charty is to have my paste necklace she likes, and any two prints she cares to have, and my little trefeuille diamond brooch —oh! and the Hope she painted for me. I love it very much, and my amethyst beads.
"Little Barbara is to have my blue watch, and Tommy my watch— there is no chain.
"Then Lucy is to have my Frances belt, because a long time ago the happiest days of my girlhood were when we first got to know Francie, and she wore that belt in the blue days at St. Moritz when we met her at church and I became her lover; and I want Lucy to have my two Blakes and the dear little Martin Schongaun Madonna and Baby—dear little potbellied baby, sucking his little sacred thumb in a garden with a beautiful wall and a little pigeon-house turret. I bought it myself, and do rather think it was clever of me—all for a pound.
"And Posie is to have my little diamond wreaths, and she must leave them to Joan, [Footnote: My niece, Mrs. Jamie Lindsay.] and she is to have my garnets too, because she used to like them, and my Imitation and Marcus Aurelius.
"I leave Eddy my little diamond necklace for his wife, and he must choose a book.
"And Frank is just going to be married, so I would like him to have some bit of my furniture, and his wife my little silver clock.
"I leave Jack the little turquoise ring Graham gave me. He must have it made into a stud.
"Then I want Lavinia [Footnote: Lavinia Talbot is wife of the present Bishop of Winchester] to have my bagful of silver dressing-things Papa gave me, and the little diamond and sapphire bangle I am so fond of; and tell her what a joy it has been to know her, and that the little open window has let in many sunrises on my married life. She will understand.
"Then I want old Lucy [Footnote: Lady Frederick Cavendish, whose husband was murdered in Ireland] to have my edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress," that dear old one, and my photograph in the silver frame of Alfred, if my baby dies too, otherwise it is to belong to him (or her). Lucy was Alfred's little proxy-mother, and she deserves him. He sent the photograph to me the first week we were engaged, and I have carried it about ever since. I don't think it very good. It always frightened me a little; it is so stern and just, and the 'just man' has never been a hero of mine. I love Alfred when he is what he is to me, and I don't feel that is just, but generous.
"Then I want Edward [Footnote: The late Head Master of Eton] tohave the "Days of Creation," and Charles [Footnote: The presentLord Cobham, Alfred's eldest brother] to have my first editions ofShelley, and Arthur [Footnote: The late Hon. Arthur TempleLyttelton, Bishop of Southampton] my first edition of Beaumont andFletcher; and Kathleen [Footnote: The Late Hon. Mrs. ArthurLyttelton.] is to have my little silver crucifix that opens, andAlfred must put in a little bit of my hair, and Kathleen must keepit for my sake—I loved her from the first.
"I want Alfred to give my godchild, Cicely Horner,[Footnote: The present Hon. Mrs. George Lambton.], the bird-brooch Burne Jones designed, and the Sintram Arthur [Footnote: The Right Hon. Arthur Balfour.], gave me. I leave my best friend, Frances, my grey enamel and diamond bracelet, my first edition of Wilhelm Meister, with the music folded up in it, and my Burne Jones ''spression' drawings. Tell her I leave a great deal of my life with her, and that I never can cease to be very near her.
"I leave Mary Elcho [Footnote: The present Countess of Wemyss.] my Chippendale cradle. She must not think it bad luck. I suppose some one else possessed it once, and, after all, it isn't as if I died in it! She gave me the lovely hangings, and I think she will love it a little for my sake, because I always loved cradles and all cradled things; and I leave her my diamond and red enamel crescent Arthur gave me. She must wear it because two of her dear friends are in it, as it were. And I would like her to have oh! such a blessed life, because I think her character is so full of blessed things and symbols. …
"I leave Arthur Balfour—Alfred's and my dear, deeply loved friend, who has given me so many happy hours since I married, and whose sympathy, understanding, and companionship in the deep sense of the word has never been withheld from me when I have sought it, which has not been seldom this year of my blessed Vita Nuova—I leave him my Johnson. He taught me to love that wisest of men—and I have much to be grateful for in this. I leave him, too, my little ugly Shelley—much read, but not in any way beautiful; if he marries I should like him to give his wife my little red enamel harp—I shall never see her if I die now, but I have so often created her in the Islands of my imagination—and as a Queen has she reigned there, so that I feel in the spirit we are in some measure related by some mystic tie."
Out of the many letters Alfred received, this is the one I liked best:
April 27th, 1886. MY DEAR ALFRED,
It is a daring and perhaps a selfish thing to speak to you at a moment when your mind and heart are a sanctuary in which God is speaking to you in tones even more than usually penetrating and solemn. Certainly it pertains to few to be chosen to receive such lessons as are being taught you. If the wonderful trials of Apostles, Saints and Martyrs have all meant a love in like proportion wonderful, then, at this early period of your life, your lot has something in common with theirs, and you will bear upon you life-long marks of a great and peculiar dispensation which may and should lift you very high. Certainly you two who are still one were the persons whom in all the vast circuit of London life those near you would have pointed to as exhibiting more than any others the promise and the profit of BOTH worlds. The call upon you for thanksgiving seemed greater than on any one—you will not deem it lessened now. How eminently true it is of her that in living a short she fulfilled a long time. If Life is measured by intensity, hers was a very long life—and yet with that rich development of mental gifts, purity and singleness made her one of the little children of whom and of whose like is the Kingdom of Heaven. Bold would it indeed be to say such a being died prematurely. All through your life, however it be prolonged, what a precious possession to you she will be. But in giving her to your bodily eye and in taking her away the Almighty has specially set His seal upon you. To Peace and to God's gracious mercy let us heartily, yes, cheerfully, commend her. Will you let Sir Charles and Lady Tennant and all her people know how we feel with and for them?
Ever your affec.
Matthew Arnold sent me this poem because Jowett told him I said it might have been written for Laura:
Strew on her roses, roses,And never a spray of yew!In quiet she reposes;Ah, would that I did too!
Her mirth the world required;She bathed it in smiles of glee.But her heart was tired, tired,And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,In mazes of heat and sound,But for peace her soul was yearning,And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin'd, ample spirit,It flutter'd and fail'd for breath.To-night it doth inheritThe vasty hall of death.