I myself

I MYSELF

MRS. T. P. O'CONNOR

FROM A DRAWING BY \V. STRANG

e>

o

I MYSELF

MRS T. P. O'CONNOR

WITH FOURTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

532292

NEW YORK

BRENTANO'S

1911

TO

W. GRAHAM ROBERTSON

IN APPRECIATION OF THE HAPPINESS AND PRIDE
HE HAS GIVEN ME

CONTENTS

CHAP.

I. MY FIRST MEMORY i

II. A FIRST FAMILY OF VIRGINIA . 6

III. MY FATHER ... n

IV. MY TERRIBLE SECRET . 16
V. IN TRUTH LIES FREEDOM . 20

VI. ELEMENTAL ME . . . . . 25

VII. MY FATHER IN PRISON . .30

VIII. MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE . . 35

IX. AUNT MARY THE ANGEL . . . -39

X. MY MOTHER'S DEATH ... 45

XI. FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE ... 50

XII. MY REGRET AT MY LACK OF EDUCATION . 59

XIII. THE UGLY DUCKLING . . 65

XIV. THE WORLD'S DIVINEST LOVE . 72
XV. MY FIRST EMPLOYMENT . . 79

XVI. LOVE MEANS SACRIFICE . 85

XVII. A NOBLE LIFE ..... 88

XVIII. THE JOY OF GIVING 92

XIX. AN UNQUIET GHOST . 99

XX. MY BELOVED MARY . . .104

XXI. THE MAKING OF A JOURNALIST . .109

XXII. A CHANGE OF OCCUPATION . . 115

XXIII. LOVING MEMORIES . . . .120

vii

viii I MYSELF

CHAP. PAGE

XXIV. BRER RABBIT AS THE THERMOMETER OF MY

AFFECTIONS . . . .127

XXV. THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM SOLVED. BRIGIT, THE

JEWEL OF THE WORLD . . -133

XXVI. THE TRAGEDY OF A NUN . 137

XXVII. I BECOME ENGAGED . . .141

XXVIII. A SHIPWRECK — LEAVING MY FRIENDS . 146

XXIX. I GET MARRIED . . . 153

XXX. THE UNPOPULARITY OF IRISH POLITICS . 158

XXXI. MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION . . .164

XXXII. MY FAITHFULLEST FRIEND — MAX . . 172

XXXIII. IN GERMANY — DAILY LETTERS FROM T. P. . 178

XXXIV. " MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," AND GEORGE

AUGUSTUS SALA . . . .183

XXXV. RED INDIANS AND THE MAZE . . .191

XXXVI. IN GERMANY IT is THE LAW . . .195

XXXVII. SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE BROAD DAYLIGHT . 2OO

XXXVIII. THE MEMBER FOR SCOTLAND DIVISION AND

THE UNCROWNED KING . . . 205

XXXIX. THE BIRTH OF "THE STAR" . . .210

XL. MY FIRE-ESCAPE FLIGHT. BRILLIANT LETTERS

FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW . . 215

XLI. A "STAR" PARTY. THE SHIRT OF CHARLES

I., AND NORWAY . . . .223

XLII. A FRAGRANT PRECIPICE . . .229

XLIII. THE LOST LEADER . . . .231

XLIV. AN OLD-WORLD HOUSE IN CHELSEA . . 236

XLV. FROM MY LETTER BOOK . . .241

XLVI. A LONG AGO MEMORY OF LISZT . .257

XLVII. MY DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO A GROUP OF AUTHORS 262

CONTENTS ix

CHAP. 1TAOE

XLVIII. MY STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE . .268

XLIX. THE VALLEY OF DEATH . . .273

L. THE NURSING HOME . . .277

LI. THE LITTLE JOYS OF LIFE . . . 282

LII. SATISFYING SYMPATHY .... 285

LIU. MY HUMAN GARDEN .... 290

LIV. HENRY JAMES, ELLEN TERRY, AND OLD LACE 295

LV. A LACE POCKET HANDKERCHIEF AND ST JOSEPH 301

LVI. FAITHFUL ENGLISH KINDNESS . . 306

LVII. MY SOUL is LARGE ENOUGH TO BEAR THE

WEIGHT OF GRATITUDE . . .311

LVIII. ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH . . .318

LIX. SYMPATHETIC WAITERS . . .327

LX. THE LEPRECHAUN'S POT OF GOLD . . 333

LXI. MY STEPMOTHER FATE . . . -341

INDEX . . . . . -349

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MRS T. P. O'CONNOR .... Frontispiece

From a drawing by W. Strang

FACING I'AGK

"I AM AN ABOLITIONIST" . . 21

From a drawing by Graham Robertson

"SHE is ALONE THE ARABIAN BIRD" . . -31

From a drawing by Graham Robertson

A SERIOUS CHILD OF TWELVE . . . -59

IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH, A DEBUTANTE . . 74

DISCREET TOODIE . . . . . .116

THE NUN OF THE VANDERBILT BALL . . .126

"YOU BETTER HOLLER FROM WHAR' YOU STAN*, BRER
WOLF," SEZ BRER RABBIT, " I'M MONST'OUS FULL OF
FLEAS DIS MORNIN'" . . . . .128

From a pencil drawing by Sir F. Carruthers Gould

"NOTHING BUT THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS" . , 203

From a pencil drawing by Max Beerbohm

A RARE OCCASION — T. P. AT HOME . . .236

PlOUS COAXEY AT HIS PRAYERS . . . .266

From a photograph by W. & D. Downey

"I'M A SOLDIER OF THE KING" .... 282
"'Tis ALMOST FAIRY TIME" .... 333

From a drawing by Graham Robertson

THE LEPRECHAUN AND THE GARDEN OF PINKIE AND

THE FAIRIES ...... 338

I POUR LOVES WINE AND BID THE WORLD TAKE PART
AROUND THE PURPLE ALTARS OF MY HEART."

I MYSELF

CHAPTER I

MY FIRST MEMORY

MY first memory is one of pain. I was the child of
a romantic love marriage ; my father was
desperately in love with my mother, and she
with him. She died of heart disease when I was a little
girl and he was far away, but I have never forgotten her
continued calls for him. Many years after, when his voice
had grown weak from suffering, and he was at the gates of
death, he tried to raise himself from the pillow, and called
in a loud, clear voice : " Marcia ! Marcia ! " then fell back
into unconsciousness. Her beloved name, which he had not
spoken for years, was the last on his lips.

I have a theory that the children of two people who love
profoundly have deeper affections than those whose parents
are indifferent or philosophic towards each other ; at any
rate I was born with a most loving heart, and even yet,
after years of disillusion, experience and trouble, it is still
in the power of those whom I love to hurt me bitterly.

I was an unexpected and delicate child, and was greatly
loved, and terribly indulged. According to the fashion of
the South, I had a foster-mother, a very black young negress
of twenty ; she had already become the mother of two lusty
little piccaninnies — shiny, coal-black, fat boys. I adored
my " Mammy," and my adoration was returned a thousand-
fold. Love means sacrifice : this poor slave was called upon
to make woman's supremest sacrifice for her foster-child,
and made it with the generosity of an entirely noble nature.

My two foster-brothers were much indulged and spoiled

2 I MYSELF

by my father, who loved all children, white or black. They
were continually in the front garden, rooting up flowers (my
mother was a passionate gardener), throwing stones at the
chickens, and doing other damage. At any rate, my mother,
who had been born and brought up to slavery and its in-
justice as a matter of course (I was literally born detesting
it, and I may say detesting all injustice), influenced my
father to sell my negro Mammy and her two children to a
woman who lived twenty-five miles from Austin in a little
town called Bastrop.

I woke up one morning with a sweet-faced Irish nurse,
whom I grew to love very fondly afterwards, and who lived
with us for five or six years (she is now a rich woman and
the mother of a prospective bishop), but she was a stranger,
and I was told that Mammy was gone. I immediately
dissolved into tears and wailings, and for a fortnight I cried
out by day and by night : "I want my Mammy — I want
my Mammy ! " Toys were given to me, new dolls, I was
allowed to choose my own dresses and sashes every day, but
nothing in this world mattered to me — neither dolls, nor
candy, nor ribbons. I was perfectly consistent, and I dare-
say must have wearied everybody out with my continual
cry : "I want my Mammy — I want my Mammy ! " Mary,
my nurse, said to me : " Now, will you have the pink dress
or the white dress ? " I looked at the pink and white
dresses through a rain of tears, and answered, " I want my
Mammy — I want my Mammy ! " Finally I cried myself
into a high fever ; the old family doctor was sent for, and
came jogging along on a fat white horse with saddle-bags on
each side, as was the custom in the country then ; he came
in the nursery and asked : " What is the matter with the
little girl ? " in a tone so kind and sympathetic that I fairly
wailed in anguish : "I want my Mammy — I want my
Mammy ! I must have my Mammy ! " The doctor loved
children, and when my father said : " What are we going
to do with this child, doctor ? " he shook his head and
answered, " You know, Judge, she is very delicate, she is
now in a high fever ; her nurse tells me that she has taken

MY FIRST MEMORY 3

scarcely any nourishment for the last week — she is literally
starving from grief."

" I want my Mammy — I want my Mammy ! "

The old doctor put his hand tenderly on my head and
said, " I really think there is nothing for it, Judge, except to
buy her Mammy back again."

" Very well/' my father answered, " I don't care what it
costs— I'll do it."

I was only four, not old enough to understand all the
conversation, difficult to convince of Mammy's return, and
that day I refused to eat altogether. When the shadows
were at their longest in the afternoon, my mother had per-
suaded me to go into the dining-room, an immense room
with six long windows and two doors. I had not touched
a morsel of food the entire day. She opened the doors of a
cupboard which contained cream, and curds and whey, and
cakes, and jellies, and preserves of all kinds, for my mother
was a famous cook and noted housekeeper, and she began :

" Now, if you would like a little peach preserve and a
little cream you can have it."

" I want my Mammy," I said.

"Or if you would like a little cake and some milk you
can have that."

" I want my Mammy."

" Oh, do," she said, " be reasonable, and try just a little
bit of honey and some clabber." (Milk with cream on the
top, which turns sour in a hot country in perhaps less than
an hour — it has a slightly acid taste, and is delicious.)
" Take some clabber," she said.

" I want my Mammy — I want my Mammy ! "

Suddenly a long ray of sunlight fell through the door ;
I turned, and there, with the tears running down her dusty
face, exhausted, travel-stained and bareheaded except for
her many-coloured head-handkerchief, stood my Mammy.
I gave one wild cry of delight, rushed towards her, and she
gathered me in her black, strong arms.

" Oh," I said, " I've got my Mammy ! I've got my
Mammy ! " And I began to pat her black cheeks and kiss

4 I MYSELF

her all over her face. Then I tucked my head in her neck
and almost fainted with joy.

" Why, Hester," I heard my mother say, " where have
you come from ? "

" Miss Marcia," she answered, " I have runned away.
Ever since I left my white chile I've had awful dreams — I
thought she was dyin' an* I could hear her cryin' for me, an*
cryin' for me, an' cryin' for me, an' I know'd she wuz jus'
breakin' her po' little heart — de chile got so much heart —
an' las' night at eleven o'clock I got out of bed, stole out of
the niggers' quarters, and since then I have walked twenty-
five miles in de sun. I've had nothin' to eat or drink — I
felt my baby wuz dyin', an' I jus' kep' on an' kep' on till I
got here."

And about everything Mammy possessed an extraordinary
prophetic instinct.

The next day, when we were all less emotional, my father
spoke to her and said, " Hester, I am going down to Bastrop
to buy you and your children back again."

He went and found the woman who had bought Mammy
obdurate ; she said the children were valuable, they were
healthy boys, and she had got them very cheap — that
Hester was lazy and he could buy her back if he liked, but
no price would induce her to part with the children.

My father returned, bringing the bad news. " Well,
Hester," he said, " I am very sorry, but I am afraid you
have got to decide between my child and your boys. I
won't buy you back and separate you from your children
without your own consent."

She took the night to think it over, and then she gave her
decision, saying : " Judge, Betty's a terrible, nervous,
delicate chile, an' I think it would kill her if I left her ; them
little niggers of mine are strong healthy children — they'll
grow up anyhow — so I have decided to stay with my white
chile."

From that moment I was her bond-slave much more than
she was ever mine. If I did not want to do anything Mammy
had only to say : "I might have know'd this. I done give

MY FIRST MEMORY 5

up my own childern for you, an' here you're treatin' me
without any respec'." And whatever it was, whether
reasonable or not, I at once did her bidding. As I grew
older I can remember my mother saying : "If you want
Betty to do anything, get Hester to ask her."

That was my first memory, my first grief, and my first
responsibility. Surely life began with me too soon.

CHAPTER II

A FIRST FAMILY OF VIRGINIA

MY great-grandfather, Major Duval, a proud and
very elegant, dressy old gentleman of the old
regime, was, according to the history of Virginia,
the last man in Richmond who wore satin small-clothes and
a bag wig. His ancestors were two brothers of aristocratic
family and considerable fortune who came to America from
Rouen. One of the (I think feeble) jokes of the family was,
that we had come from Rouen, and we were going back to
ruin — for we were as a family both unceasingly hospitable
and thoughtlessly extravagant. My grandfather, on my
father's side — also of French Huguenot extraction — had
been a shopkeeper, and this was considered a terrible blot
on the family escutcheon. No Duval had ever even scented
trade. My mother, the proudest and most intolerant
socially of all her family, had married a man whose father
had been a merchant. Consequently, at an early age I was
taught that I must combat the plebeian blood which came to
me from my father's side of the family. No Duval ever had
it, and no Duval had ever brought it into the family before
—and whenever I did anything my mother particularly dis-
liked she remarked to my very intolerantly aristocratic
great-aunt, Miss Polly Hynes, who from time to time lived
with us, that it was my " plebeian blood." I used as a very
young child to wonder if it was a different colour from other
blood, and I remember once asking Mammy when I cut my
finger badly not to tie it up, to let it bleed. I thought in this
way I might get rid of the awful blood that was ever pursuing
me, and getting me into bad favour and mischief. Even

A FIRST FAMILY OF VIRGINIA 7

my physical defects came from my plebeian blood. No Duval
had ever had freckles — but I had freckles, Paschal freckles —
and, what is worse, I've got them yet. Oh, that persistent
plebeian blood ! All the Duvals had small, aristocratic
ears ; mine were large, plebeian ears. And every self-
respecting Duval woman wore a No. i shoe, and was
the possessor of an Andalusian instep ; I had the Paschal
foot. If I had not passionately loved my father I might
have wished that my mother had married some one else.
And it was not, alas ! only in my ears and my feet that my
plebeian blood asserted itself ; at an early age I evinced
certain decidedly democratic tendencies that had to be com-
bated with might and main, as no Duval ever had them
(the truth being that I was a friendly, lonely, affectionate
child, longing for companionship).

A family of delightful children lived near us, but their
father was a tinsmith, and I was strictly forbidden to play
with them, for they too were plebeians. Mary and Billy,
the eldest boy and girl, were my own age, and Billy, in spite
of my freckles (he had a goodly number of his own) and my
ears, adored me. He used to give me strings of the most
wonderful birds' eggs, for Texas is the land of birds, and
once he brought me a live humming bird, but it died in an
hour — and then he gave me a white rabbit with pink eyes.
My mother was for sending it back at once, but it had
already been concealed for a week, and become attached to
me, and I cried piteously, and Mammy, and Aunt Polly
Hynes, and my father, all interceded, and my father re-
marked that Bates was a very decent man, with decent
children, and why couldn't I be allowed to be friends and
play with them now and again ? And my mother answered
if she listened to him I would know every plebeian child in
town, that Mammy was to take Billy a prize chicken the
next day, and a riding whip, which would relieve us from the
obligation of the white rabbit, and my acquaintance with the
Bateses was at an end. Years afterward, when I came back
home from boarding school, a motherless girl with the
longest trains and the most elaborately dressed hair that

8 I MYSELF

was ever seen, Billy, now rich and in the best society, was
my very first visitor. Good, broad-faced, broad-shouldered,
broad-souled, freckled-faced, Billy — not a bit put off by my
plebeian defects — was still adoring. But Austin was a
military post, there were numbers of young officers in
gorgeous uniforms, with dash and mystery about them.
Billy was just Billy of the birds' eggs and the white rabbit,
whom I had known all my life. There was no mystery
about him. His nature was as clear and pellucid as a crystal
spring. He was unpretentious, simple, honest, truthful,
straightforward, honourable, high-minded, and as hard
wearing and honest as his good father's good tin — a true
gentleman. But I infinitely preferred a long blue cloak lined
with red, a close-fitting uniform with brass buttons, and a
red sash, a military cap set jauntily on the head, a splendid
dancer (Billy got on my toes) and Swinburne read aloud.
Only eyes that have wept much can see clearly — mine had
not been cleared by tears of sorrow. I was still blind with
youth's unreal visions.

Few women have the good fortune to love Billys at six-
teen. The spurious glitter of life fills and dazzles the eyes
at that tender age.

Although my mother had been the most exclusive person
in our little town, and an aristocrat to her very small finger-
tips, she was really not so hidebound in her views as Mammy,
who preached eternally on the necessity of keeping to your
own class.

" But, Mammy," as a child I used to say, " the Bateses
are very nice, and Mary has beautiful clothes for Sunday
school."

Mammy looked imperious and disapproving. " Dem
Bates chillun ain't bad chillun — I ain't sayin' dey is — but
who dey gran 'pa ? Dey ain't nobody in de roun' worl' dat
knows, or dat wants to know. Now you's got a gran'pa,
an' what yo' gran'pa wuz, you is. An' yo' gran'pa is a gentle-
man, an' you ought to be a lady. But you ain't gwine to
be if you goes an' plays wid de Toms, Dicks an' Harrys in
dis here town."

A FIRST FAMILY OF VIRGINIA

But, dear Mammy "

" Now, don't you ' dear Mammy ' me. I seen you fishin'
wid William Bates yesterday " (no familiarity of nick-
names for Mammy), " an' I ain't tell yo' momma yit, but
jes' let me ketch you at it agin, dat's all."

The words of Mammy have come painfully and acutely
true the last few years. My " gran'pa " died with gout, and
several severe attacks have lately laid me low — and at last,
after many years, " what my gran'pa wuz, I is."

The Civil War opened my mother's really noble nature,
and the last years of her life she was too much of a humani-
tarian to be exclusive. But Mammy, who lived to be an
old woman, never relaxed, and remained a true aristocrat
to the end of her days. She had a thorough contempt for
people whom she called " half -strainers," and Yankees she
could not abide. She used to say : " Dese here Yankees
don't understand niggers — dey too polite, an' dey too
promisin', an' dey too stingy. A Southern man sing out in
de mornin' : ' Here, Dick, you old villain, take my breeches
and brush 'em, an' clean my shoes,' den he up an' cusses
'cause de shoes don't shine, but he gives Dick two dollars.
A Yankee says : ' Please brush my clothes, valet.' Den
he takes 'em an* say : ' Thank you, I'm gwine to give you
five dollars on Saturday,' an' dat's de last you hear of him.
De magnolia an' pomegranate an' jessamine won't grow in
no Yankee land. The South is de place for de magnolia
blooms, an' for de ole families an' fur niggers."

I shall never forget Mammy's scorn of me upon one
occasion, when she asked me who a young cavalry officer
who was visiting the house was.

I said, " He's Captain Maynard."

Mammy said : "I know he name — I tuk it often enough
at de door — but who is he ? Who is his pa an' his gran'pa ? "

" Oh, Mammy " — I spoke with impatience — " I don't
know, only I've heard that he belongs to one of the old
families in Ohio."

Mammy gave a great burst of sardonic laughter, and
said : " Honey, dis is something new. I know de Pages,

io I MYSELF

an' de Nelsons, an' de Dinwiddies, an' de Berkeleys, an' de
Duvals, in Virginia — dey's de ole families. I knows de
Allstons an' de Pegrams, de Pinkneys an' de Gordons, an'
other ole families in South Carolina, an' in Florida an'
Louisiana, an' in de South, but dese here ole families in
Ohio is bran' new to me. I don't know why you can't keep
to yo' kind. Miss Marcia " (my mother) " never knew any-
body from Ohio, ole or new. An' all I know 'bout Ohio
wuz dat before de war de runaway niggers went dar."

I did not argue — Mammy was too subtle and too per-
sistent for argument — and about people her instinct was
almost unerring. She scented the false, the mean, and the
meretricious from afar, and her opinions were often veritable
prophecies. She was black, and she could read no books.
Her horizon was bounded by our very small world. But
no statesman could give better, wiser or more far-seeing
advice. And in time of sickness, and sorrow, and trouble,
there was no heart so tender, so loyal, understanding and
true. How often, after the responsibilities and disillusions
of life came to me, I would go to Mammy about twilight
and say, " Mammy, I'm tired." She understood all there
was behind that. " Is you, honey ? " — and I was gathered
to her broad breast, and there was just silence and comfort
— no questions asked, no comments, no advice, no criticisms
— just pure and faithful, unquestioning, understanding love.
Oh, the infinite rest of it ! The peace of it ! There is
nothing like it in all this weary world now. I am mortally
tired. My body is tired — my heart is tired — my very soul
is tired. And in some other and better world Mammy knows
it, for she sends me oftener and oftener sweet dreams of my
childhood, of the far-away South and of her.

CHAPTER III

MY FATHER

" Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

I THINK the person of all others whom I have loved
most in my life was my father. I know I stood
spiritually closer to him than I have ever done to
any human being. I had a sort of understanding with him
as if I were a little corner of his soul. If he came into the
house apparently quite collected and cheerful, to all the
other members of the family, I recognized instantly a sort
of worried undertone in his voice, and I involuntarily
slipped my hand in his and gave it a little squeeze of sym-
pathy. Of all the men I have ever seen, he was the most
touchingly unselfish. Man is in the main so unconsciously
selfish, that there is something deeply pathetic in a manly
man with the tenderness, and self-sacrifice, of a woman.
Even in quite little things my father always thought first
of others. He was extremely fond of vegetables and fruit,
but in the early spring, when green peas first appeared on
the dinner-table, he always said he preferred peas a little
older, so that some one else might have his portion ; or if
a great bowl of new figs was brought in, and every one began
to eat greedily, he said he preferred figs a little more ripe,
and had none at all himself. He could more readily put
himself in the place of other people than any man I have ever
seen — as the French say, he could " get into the skin " of
others. He was a famous divorce lawyer, and as far as I
can recollect he never lost a divorce case ; but when people
came to him, particularly women, with a long story of

12 I MYSELF

wrongs, and their feelings at the highest tension, he listened
sympathetically, and with the greatest patience, and at the
end he said : " Yes, this is very melancholy, and I have no
doubt you have had a good deal to bear, and very likely
you will be able to divorce your husband ; but divorce is not
to be entered into any more lightly than matrimony ; and
as you have talked a good deal to your friends and your
relations, and been advised by various people (I daresay
much of it is very good advice), I want you and your husband
now to go away into the country, or by the seashore, quite
alone and talk over your affairs together without any inter-
ference or advice from anybody else for a month. At the
end of that time, if you really want a divorce, come back
and talk to me about it ; but if there is to be a reconciliation,
then, I will help you to set yourself right with your family
and friends."

I remember a case of the wife of a colonel in the army.
She roused us up at two o'clock one morning in the dripping
rain, with a delicate baby in her arms, to say that her husband
had beaten her and turned her out of his quarters. At
fifteen I was the most chivalrous, sympathetic child possible.
Her description of the colonel and his cruel and inhuman
conduct, made me blaze with rage. I could not understand
my father's coolness and, as I thought, phlegmatic indiffer-
ence over her outrages, and when she told me that my
father had made the proposition of a trip to the country
with her husband, I really lost patience with him, and he
had not only to listen to the wrongs of the wife from her,
but from me ; and to all the innocence, enthusiasm and
ignorance of a child, the wrongs were truly heartrending.
When she finally retired into the country with this awful
blackguard, this monstrous ruffian, I simply wept. How-
ever, she did retire. At the end of the month they returned.
The young lieutenant (I was too young in those days to know
anything about the lieutenant, but there was a lieutenant)
had been ordered off to another regiment stationed in
California. The colonel and his wife were entirely recon-
ciled, and many years afterwards, when he died, I never saw

MY FATHER 13

so much crepe or such heavy mourning. By that time I
had seen a good many colonels' wives, and a good many
lieutenants, and I was much less impressed with the mourn-
ing than I was with the projected divorce. According to
the convenient memory of her sex, and enveloped in velvet
blackness from top to toe, she subsequently told me, that
no woman in the world had ever had such a devoted
husband, and there had never been a difference (I don't
suppose she considered a lieutenant a difference) between
them. I did not remind her of her flight in the middle
of the night from this monster who had become such a
saint.

Of all the peacemakers I have ever seen I think my father
was the best and greatest. " Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called the children of God." Not only were
many divorces avoided by my father, but family quarrels
patched up again and again, friends reconciled, and quarrels
mended, by his just and wise advice. In the first place, no
one ever talked to him without feeling rested and refreshed.
His spirit was so broad and so great that you felt your
mental littleness and pettiness drop from you like a mantle,
as you sat down in his beautiful, uplifting presence. An old
friend of his died, leaving rather a complicated will. He
was a very rich man, and had ten children : this led to fre-
quent quarrels in the family, but they all lived together
fairly harmoniously until my father was taken very ill.
One morning seven of the children and the mother arrived,
all of them in a state of mind bordering on insanity. My
father was at this time very ill, but he insisted upon being
propped up in bed with pillows behind his back, and
the eight raging human beings entered this exalted death -
chamber. The first words were loud and angry, and I
listened with the greatest anxiety outside the door. In
half-an-hour one could hear the tones getting lower and
more gentle, and the end of it was, they all left the house in
tears, quite subdued, and with promises of a better under-
standing in the future.

My father never had an interested thought for .himself,

i4 I MYSELF

and his pitiful tenderness for humanity was inexhaustible.
He loved his kind with an instinctive sympathy derived
from a continual study of that source of all the humanities,
Christ's Sermon on the Mount. He was not a very good
business man, but his beautiful, brave face at once inspired
trust and faith.

After the Civil War, when America was in a perfectly
chaotic state, he was in New York, and walking down
Broadway he passed once or twice a tall countryman.
Finally this man came up and spoke to him, saying : " Ex-
cuse me, sir, but I have left the South and have come to
New York to make my fortune. I have got the whole of
my capital with me — three thousand dollars. Can you tell
me how to invest it ? "

" Well, my dear sir," my father said to him, " how is it
that you address a total stranger like myself and ask for such
an important piece of advice ? "

The man answered : "I have been walking up and down
Broadway the whole day looking for an honest man, as
soon as I saw you, I knew I had found one."

My father did not tell him how to invest the money, but
introduced him to a responsible banker, and the man after-
wards established a good business by buying and selling
cotton.

There was a very celebrated woman in America, a Mrs
Gaines. My father was her lawyer for thirty years. She
had a most romantic history. When a young, brilliant, and
beautiful girl, she fell in love with a young man who was
poor and not desirable : so her father thought, but she
insisted upon marrying him, and at last her father flew into a
terrible rage and said : " I don't care who you marry, as you
are not my daughter."

She asked whose daughter she was, and he said : " The
illegitimate daughter of Daniel Clark of Louisiana."

She answered : " I am too honest a woman to be anybody's
illegitimate daughter ; from this moment I devote my life
to proving my legitimacy. I don't know who Daniel Clark
was, but if he was my father, he married my mother ; and

MY FATHER 15

though you have been my father for nineteen years you shall
not reproach me with what is not true."

She did establish her legitimacy, and she was heir to per-
haps the greatest fortune in America, but, according to our
national law, her property, having been " squatted upon,"
had really passed into other hands, consequently innumer-
able and incessant law-suits were necessary in order to get
hold of the many millions. En secondes noces she married
General Gaines, and the fortunes of the first and second
husband were both swallowed up in enormous law-suits.
She read law herself, and was a very intelligent woman, a
brilliant conversationalist, but absolutely with one idea,
as she never thought or spoke of anything else than her one
great interest. When my father died she paid him a magni-
ficent tribute, after thirty years of the closest association
with him, and having become suspicious of human nature
through very many experiences. She said to me : " Your
father Judge Paschal never thought, or said, or did a mean
thing in the whole of his life."

CHAPTER IV

MY TERRIBLE SECRET

I REMEMBER the first secret that I ever had from
my father. Oh, how hideously, how terribly it
weighed upon my conscience — the tender conscience
of five ! Mammy used to tell me a great deal about the
wrongs of the negroes and about the Abolitionists, who were
looked upon as the very scum of the earth in the South, and
were often lynched. I had great sympathy with the slaves ;
I seemed to have been born to think slavery an abomina-
tion, and gradually I became an Abolitionist. It was such
an awful thing that I could take only Mammy into my con-
fidence.

I recollect when I was six years old going into the kitchen
early one morning and saying to her : " Mammy, I have got
something to tell you. It will be an awful thing for the
family when it is known — perhaps I shall have to go away
for always. I am an Abolitionist ! "

Mammy said : " Oh, lots of niggers are mighty well off,
I can tell you — all Miss Marcia's niggers are anyhow.
I don't think, if I wuz in your place, I would be an
Abolitionist."

" But," I said, " Mammy, I am — I am an Abolitionist."

Then slowly I began to prepare my father for this horrible
revelation. I said to him : " Pappy, I have got something
to tell you about myself, so awful that I can't be your little
girl."

He looked rather amused : " Oh, I don't think that is
possible."

" But," I insisted, " it is. You don't know what it is —

16

MY TERRIBLE SECRET 17

it is something so terrible that I can't tell you to-day — I
must have a few days more."

He did not press me. I was rather sorry for that, so again
I asked him : " If I had to go away from home for ever
could I take Mammy with me ? "

He said : " Well, it depends upon where you are going."

I replied : " I'm afraid I will have to go. You say I
should never have a secret from you, but I have got a most
awful, awful secret — I don't suppose any child ever had such
a secret before."

Again he repressed his curiosity and I deferred my revela-
tion. Finally one day I climbed upon his knee, put my
arms round his neck, and said : " Now, I am going to hold
you tight while I tell you something, because it may be the
last time that you will ever want me on your lap. I am
something that you think is awful, but I know it is right,
and you have always told me that I was to be brave and
have courage, and if I thought a thing was right I was to
stand by it."

He tenderly stroked my hair, saying, " Well, now I am
thoroughly prepared ; you have been talking to me for
some time, and I shall have courage for whatever revelation
you make to me."

I slipped from my knee, and stood up, held my breath for
a moment, and then gasped out : " I am an Abolitionist ! "

I shall never forget the shame and anguish that I suffered
when he laughed more heartily than I had ever heard him
laugh before. To think that I had gone through weeks of
agony and genuine mental suffering, and my well-thought-
out, martyr-like principle was to be treated with levity ! I
was thoroughly angry and disgusted, but somewhat re-
lieved at the same time, as it seemed to make no difference
whatever in my father's affection for me.

Just after this I had an opportunity of putting my prin-
ciple into practice. My father had bought a negro from the
rice plantation who was more like an animal than anything
I have ever seen. He had been brought up in a little cabin ;
he had never seen a carpet, or a pair of andirons, or a table,

18 I MYSELF

or in fact anything that belongs to civilization. He had
simply worked on a river plantation, had corn-bread and
bacon for food, and slept on a blanket in a little cabin at
night. The miasma of the low-lying river bed would have
killed a white man, but he was an enormous fellow — about
six feet high, and as black as coal, gay and always laughing,
his big mouth was filled with splendid rows of white teeth,
and he had a fascinating store of animal tales. We instantly
became great friends, and he could carry me round the place
by the hour on his back without being tired, and he was
always ready to put the saddle on my pony or to mend my
whips or to do anything to please me, but he was extremely
idle, and impertinent to my father. One day I was sitting
on the end of a waggon, and he was standing by, as usual
laughing. My father came up and said : " Eli, have you
been down in the cornfield to-day ? I told you to go this
morning at five o'clock."

" No, sir," he said, " I didn't go."

" Damn it all ! Do you dare to disobey me ? " said my
father, raising his hand to give him a blow.

Just then I leaped off the end of the waggon on to Eli's
neck, and the blow — a hard one — descended with such force
on my head that I was rendered quite blind and dazed for
a moment, and my nose began to bleed, but as the blow was
not intended for me I uttered no cry. My father was in a
terrible state of mind ; he asked my forgiveness, and said :
" I tell you what I'll do : I promise you as long as I live
I will never strike another negro." And he never did.

A man lived opposite to us who was extremely cruel to
his slaves ; he seemed to take a perfect delight in giving a
negro a beating, and he selected the lovely sunny days to
do it in, when the cries could be well carried through the
clear and ambient air. With the first blow and the first
cry I began : " Oh, pappy, please go and ask Mr Young not
to go on beating that negro. Oh, please ! Oh, please ! "
The louder her cries, the louder became mine, and the tears
rolled down my cheeks as I begged : " Oh, I can't bear it —
I can't bear it ! " It was just as if we were trying who

MY TERRIBLE SECRET 19

could cry the loudest, the woman who was being whipped
or myself. It was inadmissible in the South for one man to
interfere with another man's slaves ; but finally in despera-
tion my father would rush over to Mr Young, and I can hear
him still with his angry voice : " Good God, Young, for
heaven's sake drop that whip ! You are not only killing
your darkie, but you are killing my child — she is now in a
nervous spasm. Why the devil can't you manage your
servants without continually thrashing them ? "

Mr Young finally became so angry that he sent my father
a challenge to a duel, which was instantly accepted, as my
father had been brought up to the duelling system. He was
a splendid pistol shot : it was said that once he shot a wild
beast at night under the house simply by firing between the
two brilliant eyes. (The houses in the South are raised from
the ground, for additional coolness probably.) As Mr Young
was a very bad shot, his second came to my father and the
matter was arranged without blood being spilled, and after
that he was more considerate to his negroes.

I thought then, and I think now, that unlimited power is
one of the most terrible things in the world. The power of
one man to strike another man without his being able to
strike back, but simply to stand like a dumb animal and
take the blow, is an abomination in the sight of the just.

CHAPTER V

IN TRUTH LIES FREEDOM

" No man is free until he has been divorced from public
favour." — ELBERT HUBBARD

ABOUT this time an uncle of mine wanted to go
abroad. He wrote to my father and asked if he
would take charge of his negroes — he had a planta-
tion of about five hundred slaves. My father answered No,
it was impossible ; he was too much occupied with his law
cases. However, Uncle Marcellus was a man who did
whatever he wanted to do. and one morning we awoke to
find the place literally swarming with negroes ; nearly the
whole number had been sent down for my father to take
charge of, while Uncle Marcellus made a two years' tour in
Europe.

In a very short time they were all hired out, and one of
them, Sally — a fat, black, lazy, sweet-tempered creature —
was taken as a useful maid to some young Duval cousins of
mine. Sally had quite as good a collection of negro stories
as Uncle Remus— of which " Brer Rabbit " and the " Tar
Baby " were the first favourites — and night after night we
listened to her tales and her songs. I can hear her chanting
" De Jay Bird " yet :

" De jay bird he lived on de fork eyed dear —

Jang— my long go hay—
An' de blue bird lived a neighbour near
An' he sot one day on de top of de sawpit,
An' he saw de jay bird co'tin' de tomtit —

Jang — my long go hay.

I AM AN ABOLITIONIST!

IN TRUTH LIES FREEDOM 21

An' de blue bird he ripped, an' de blue bird swore

Dat he nebber had saw sich fun before.

Said de jay bird — " Blue coat, you be done

An' stop dat way of pokin' fun."

But de blue bird he kep' on a-lafin' still,

Said de jay bird : " Go it— have your fill."

Den de jay bird he co'ted de blue bird's sister,

An' he flew to de paw-paw bush an' he kissed her.

Den de blue bird he ripped an' de blue bird tore

An' said he nebber was so mad before.

Den de jay bird he 'loped wid de blue bird's wife,

An' it almos' took dat bluebird's life,

An' he fluttered about an' he could not res'

Till he took an' destroyed dat jay bird's nes'.

Den all de birds from de crow to de wren

Poked dey fun at de blue bird den,

An' he moved away to de Arkansaw,

But de jay bird still stuck in he crow

An' he died one day of de melancholy

Because he had committed de folly

Of laughing at de jay bird an' de tomtit

As dey sat one day on de top of de sawpit.

An' he wiped his bill, an' he writ his will,

An' his will is in dat fam'ly still.

An' he lef ' his chillun dis beques' :

Nebber to fool wid a jay bird nes'."

How we loved the line : " He wiped his bill, an' he writ
his will " ! But Sally was not much good for anything but
story telling, so Uncle Tom bought a useful maid who could
sew neatly, and Sally was hired out to a Mrs Birrell. Mrs
Birrell was a tall, angular, hard-featured Yankee from
Connecticut. Though the people of the North were all
against slavery, they often made much the more cruel and
tyrannical masters and mistresses of the negroes.

Nothing was heard of Sally for some time, when one day
about one o'clock (this was almost at the close of the war) she
appeared, seemingly very ill — I cannot say pale, as she was
as black as the ace of spades — but she looked decidedly
ashen. She said to my mother : " Miss Marcia, I have
runned away from Mrs Birrell because I can't stand it any
longer."

22 I MYSELF

My mother answered, " Well, Sally, I'll send a note to
the Judge. Take it to his office and see what he can do for
you."

She replied, " Miss Marcia, I can't walk another step. I
just want to show you something."

With this she raised up her one garment — a cotton dress
— and showed her back to my mother, and my mother, who
was a woman with strong nerves, instantly fainted. From
Sally's shoulders to her heels she had literally been flayed
alive. I was told afterwards there was scarcely an inch of
skin on her whole body ; and not only that : the woman
had rubbed salt all over the raw flesh !

We sent for the family doctor, and he thought it was
impossible for Sally to live ; but my mother, who had un-
daunted courage and undaunted kindness, said it would be
too great a satisfaction to Mrs Birrell to have her die, and
that she herself would nurse her. The finest linen sheets in
the house were taken out of a fragrant cupboard, and the
nursing began. It was impossible for Sally to wear a night-
gown ; she was covered with salves, ointments and old
linen, and rolled up in a linen sheet, and fanned all day long.
After six weeks of hard, never-ending work, with relays of
nurses — I can remember my dear father coming home tired
from his office, and sitting down with a palm-leaf fan, and
fanning Sally by the hour, to be relieved by my mother, or
one of my cousins or the cooks or housemaids — and by con-
stantly being kept cool and looked after night and day, she
was finally out of danger. My father brought a suit against
Mrs Birrell, for persistent cruelty, but only got the price of
the doctors' bills.

There was a negro whipper in town, a Mr Marsh, who was
thin and tall, and the children ran from him as if he were a
leper ; and although people sent him servants for five, or ten,
or twenty, or thirty lashes, as the case might be, Mr Marsh
was held in great contempt by the whole town, was absolutely
friendless, and was always called the negro whipper. To
me he seemed a sort of vampire, and whenever I saw him I
turned my head away as quickly as possible — and once I

IN TRUTH LIES FREEDOM 23

forgot the ladylike teachings of my Mammy, and as I passed
by I spat upon him.

We had a negro man who belonged to my brother ; he
was called William, and was a very clever man indeed ;
after the war, he made quite a fortune by patents. He
could play the violin admirably, he was a splendid carpenter,
could mend anything that was broken — a waggon, or a
window, or a door — but he was very insubordinate and
impudent, so I was told. He belonged to my eldest brother
— not to my father. He had done something ,1 don't know
what, and I heard my brother say one day to the manager
of the place, " Take William up to Marsh to-morrow and tell
him to give him twenty lashes."

I went to sleep with that horrible speech echoing in my
ears. Twenty lashes ! Twenty lashes ! William, who was
always so kind to me, and who played such pretty, gay tunes
on the violin, and who was so tall and good-looking and
proud — William was to have his spirit broken, his shirt taken
off, and on his bare back old Marsh was to administer twenty
lashes ! No ; I made up my mind that it should not happen
—if I had to die for it.

Early the next morning, about five o'clock, I woke up and
I said to my Mammy, " Mammy, William is to be whipped
to-day, but he sha'n't be whipped if I scream myself to death
for it."

As soon as Mammy dressed me, I ran to the garden and
stationed myself by William's side. When the manager
came and said, " William, I am going to take you up to
town," I gave one scream, a perfectly ear-piercing scream,
followed by another. My father ran out of the house,
thinking that I was being mortally hurt, and my mother
ran after him, only to find that my brother had given orders
for William to be whipped. I would not stop screaming
for a moment ; then I began to tremble and grow white,
but still held on to William, who was dumb. My father
turned to my mother, saying, " Good God, this child is going
drive us all mad about these negroes." Then he turned
to the manager and said, " Go and tell your Marse George

24 I MYSELF

that Betty won't let William be whipped, and, damn it all,
I won't either."

I was the thinnest wraith who has ever been seen, because
my mind and my imagination were being continually drawn
upon ; and when I see fat, stolid English children, who can
eat and sleep and live a simple unimaginative existence, I
do envy them their natural, healthy lives — no anxieties and
no responsibilities, while mine began, alas ! almost at my
birth.

My father, according to other members of the family,
spoiled me terribly. Every night after I went to bed he
always told me a story, kissed me good-night, and held my
hand until I went to sleep. And I have been told that he
gave up many dinner parties for this reason, and would
always leave his own for a short interval, saying, " Pray
excuse me, but I always tell my little daughter a story
before she goes to sleep. I will return in a few moments."

The stories were of many and various sorts. I preferred
"The Arabian Nights" (shortened and simplified) to them all.
But I loved above everything true stories, and I always
breathed a sigh of satisfaction if my father convincingly
said, " That's a true story." Even in my babyhood I had
a passion for truth. Can a woman be born into the world
with a more tragic desire ? From men especially she gets
it so rarely, and yet of all things it is the most tonic, and the
most healthy. In truth lies freedom of spirit and freedom
of mind.

CHAPTER VI

ELEMENTAL ME

" Good my lord,

You have begot me, bred me, loved me ; I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honour you."

SHAKESPEARE

I REMEMBER one night when I was about four years
old, I had a fever. It was a very warm night in
the summer time, and in my little thin nightgown
I turned and twisted on my father's serge lap, and complained
so much, and insisted so despotically on my own way that
he was finally induced to take off his woollen trousers. His
linen drawers were cooler, and we sat quite peacefully
afterward, he attired in black coat, waistcoat and drawers,
when my mother and the old family doctor made their
appearance. My mother, who was very prim, was horrified
at my father's attire, but he explained that it was my com-
mand, and my necessity, as I was ill. As they went out of
the room I heard the doctor say to my mother : " The
Judge is preparing himself for the fate of Lear, and Betty
will be a second Goneril."

I insisted then and there on the story of Lear, and we both
scouted the baleful prophecy of the future. This was my
first introduction to Shakespeare. My first successful
rebellion was shortly after this episode. Whenever the
doctor was called in for any childish ill, he always gave one
remedy — rhubarb and jalap. Oh, the black, sticky nasti-
ness of it ! To this day the odour even of rhubarb makes
me feel faint.

25

26 I MYSELF

One day when the doctor was sent for, I suddenly made
up my small, unbendable, martyr-like mind not to take the
rhubarb and jalap. When he felt my pulse and looked at
my tongue and ordered the usual prescription I was pre-
pared, and calmly announced my unalterable decision never
to take rhubarb and jalap again. My father was grieved ;
my mother was angry ; the doctor was stern — so was I.
The doctor then advised my mother and father to leave
the room while he administered the potion. He sat down
on a chair, seized me, put me on a small stool, and held my
head between his knees. I sat quite still, with hands and
teeth both clenched hard together. I have always had good
muscular strength, and my little jaws never opened, so the
doctor emptied spoonful after spoonful of jalap over my
apron and hair. My gums bled profusely from the hard
pressure of the wandering spoon, but the jaws and the spirit
remained strong and locked like a vice. Finally my father,
alarmed at the unexpected silence, rushed in, and, finding
my hair clotted with jalap and my face as pale as death and
stained with blood and medicine, picked me up in his arms,
saying to the doctor, " Good heavens, are you killing the
child, Dr Baker ? " It was then, and only then, that I
wept out my insubordinate and passionate soul. My father
understood. He always understood. And jalap was never
mentioned in the house again.

Another memory of my childhood, and a happier one, was
of a wonderful Christmas tree in the church, for all the Sunday
school scholars, with the curate, an amiable albino, dressed
as Santa Claus. It was a big cedar -tree, with a rich spicy
odour from the cedar brake, full of purple cedar berries, and
lighted with myriads of pink candles. It was hung with
beautiful toys all direct from Germany, but the toy that
filled my soul with delight, joy, envy and apprehension was
a parrot. What would I do if any other child got that
parrot ? I felt that I would die. Having seen the parrot
with its gorgeous red and green, colouring its fine tail, and
fresh kid base that promised a sonorous squeak, life with-
out it would, I knew, be worthless and unlivable. My long-

ELEMENTAL ME 27

ings even now, though I am a grandmother, are keen. As
a child, when I wanted anything, my little soul was a flame
of desire. Those are the beings born into the world to suffer
above all others. Fate loves to punish them ; she has
given them keen longings, keen joys and keen agonies.
They are the people who never do anything by halves — the
elemental ones, whose emotions are stormy and turbulent,
or joyous, but always deep and definite. And as I gazed at
that parrot, even at the tender age of four, my life presented
one long grey blank without him. Santa Glaus began to
distribute the toys. The tree was robbed of dolls, and
Noah's arks, and horses, and carts, and kites, and drums,
and flutes, and engines, and trumpets — and then a hand
took down the parrot. I shut my eyes tight, and held my
breath, for I could not have witnessed another child's
possession of that irrationally loved bird without a cry of
agony. But Fate on one of the few occasions of my life
smiled on me that night. I felt something placed in my
arms, I smelt the adorable scent of toy paint, more agree-
able to the nostrils of a child than all the mingled perfumes
of Araby. I opened my eyes. I breathed again, the blood
flowed back to my little heart. The parrot, the beautiful,
the many-coloured, the longed-for, the well-desired parrot,
was mine. That was an hour of perfect bliss.

Not so many years ago something of the same sort happened
to me in London. Buffalo Bill had his big show here, and
undertook to teach my son riding. Toodie (my boy) was
only fifteen then, and provided with the longest gloves and
the biggest sombrero, and the most brilliant shirt of all the
cowboys, he was given a kicking broncho, and told to ride.
Being an anxious mother, I was frequently at the show and
often in Colonel Cody's quarters. Hanging on the wall of
his sitting-room was a charming water-colour that I wanted
almost as badly as the parrot. It represented a brilliant
summer day, a stretch of wild prairie (probably Texas),
and sitting immovable, on an immovable mustang pony,
an Indian chief in all the bravery of his war paint, his proud
head prouder with feathers, and his hand held lightly over

28 I MYSELF

his eyes to shade them from the blinding sun. Evidently
he was looking for and scenting some distant, unseen, but
instinctively felt enemy. The subject appealed to me, and
I loved the picture and wanted it badly. But Buffalo Bill
did not know this, and one day the show was over, and
packed, and gone away.

Two days after its departure a coloured servant appeared
and brought me the envied water-colour with Colonel Cody's
compliments. He had left it for me. And if ever I have a
home again (oh, the dear heart-breaking word !) I will hang
that Indian brave the first of all my pictures.

Heredity is much stronger than we realize, and its identical
forces march along the same lines, in spite of the leavening
of many generations. Zelie de Lussan, that gifted singer
and actress, says she has never known a more decided
Frenchwoman in thought, in feeling, in sentiment, and in
taste, than myself. And yet for generations I am an Ameri-
can. But my French blood reasserts itself, and I easily
comprehend the exalted desperation which sent the men
and women of France quite gaily to the guillotine. I have
experienced this feeling more than once in my life. There
is no other emotion akin to it. The soul seems quite detached
from the body ; it leaps forth like a sword from the scabbard.
It is a monstrous flame blazing to the sky. It is the pure
spirit freed by an overmastering emotion from the dragging
flesh. And this feeling came to me first as a child through
my father. He was a Union man, a convinced constitutional
lawyer. He believed in the United States of America as a
great, magnificent and undivided whole. And though he
had the greatest love of his people, and was a Southern man
by ancestry and sentiment, he always remained true to the
constitution and to the Union, although he lived in Texas,
a state unanimous in its adherence to the Confederacy.

Toward the end of the war, when the Confederacy was
nearing its end, a small party of fanatics decided, as an
example to others, to hang my father, who was the leader of
the Union men of the state. One day my mother was on
the balcony attending to her flowers. I was in the garden

ELEMENTAL ME 29

playing. An uncle of mine suddenly appeared unannounced
and spoke to her hurriedly. My mother turned deadly
pale, put her hand to her side, and my uncle supported her
to a chair and called to a maid for a glass of water. I ran
to her, calling out, " Oh, mamma, what's the matter ? "
She exclaimed, " Your father has been arrested and put in
gaol for his opinions, as a Union man and an honourable
gentleman. But he will soon be out. Be a good little girl
and don't cry."

Uncle Matthew, who was clerk of the court, then said,
" Marcia, I've arranged for the Judge's dinner to be sent to
him. Will you order the carriage and one of the servants
to take it ? "

And " Oh, mamma," I began to beg, " let me go with
Mammy too, do let me go, do, do." And I begged and
cried with such vehemence that I was finally lifted in the
carriage and sent off with Mammy.

The gaol was overflowing with prisoners, for Texas was a
rough country in those days. Murderers, thieves, deserters
from the army were all crowded into one room. They were
dirty, unkempt, desperate, hard-looking men, some of them
with the faces of ravening beasts — and my father with his
thick thatch of silver hair, fine features, close-shaven, bene-
volent face, noble bearing, spotless linen and fine broadcloth
clothes, looked a veritable king among them. He was
sitting quite quietly and undisturbed, reading, perhaps for
the fiftieth time, " The Bride of Lammermoor." He had
taken it from the table in his office, and slipped it in his
pocket while being arrested. It is for this sweet reason I
feel as if Sir Walter Scott were a kinsman of mine, and that
Scotland is so close to my heart. It is impossible for the
old world to know the many and tender bonds between it and
the new. Some day, though God forbid, if a war is declared
between England and another power, the United Empire will,
if need be, discover our unforgotten love and loyalty to the
country of our ancestors.

CHAPTER VII

MY FATHER IN PRISON

" Life is a battle, and the successful soldier is he who wields the sword
of Knowledge and trembles not at the threatenings of Ignorance."

MY beloved father in gaol ! For a moment I was
blind with rage and terror, then I hurled myself
at him like a small catapult, gripped him around
the neck and began to cry, woman fashion, saying, " Oh, do
whatever they want you to do — only come home with me,
come home with your little daughter."

He soothed me and talked to me, until I felt, as I always
did in his presence, calm, and quiet, and reasonable, even
though I, too, was in gaol. A rough red-faced soldier sitting
on the floor in the room said to me, " Little girl, what would
you do if your father was a hundred miles away ? " I drew
very close to pappy, with the horrible idea making me quite
cold. Years afterwards when I had almost forgotten the
existence of this soldier, he wrote me a letter on my father's
death to say that he had never forgotten that tragic night
nor the strong love between us, and that he was very sorry
for me.

The night of my father's arrest, my mother, Aunt Polly
Hynes, a young lady and myself were sitting in my mother's
room, when it seemed to me I heard at a great distance a
trampling of many feet. My ears were as keen in hearing
as the ears of a Red Indian, and at once my little figure was
alert and at attention. Standing up, I gasped out the
words " Pappy ! Pappy ! " The others heard nothing,
but in a short time the room was filled with a number of

"SHE IS ALONE THE ARABIAN BIRD:*

MY FATHER IN PRISON 31

masked men, armed and terrible-looking, who surrounded
my father. He said to my mother, " Marcia, these men are
taking me away, God knows where ; give me some money
and pack my clothes as soon as you can. If they murder
me I will leave my sons to avenge my death." (Both my
brothers were away, soldiers in the Union Army.)

My mother, suddenly looking quite old and white, began
to pack a bag, and one of the men called out, " Hurry up,
madam. No trifling — do not keep us waiting."

We had a number of negroes on the place all loyal to my
father, and we always had firearms, as we lived in the country.
The negroes rushed in at this moment, carrying guns, and the
coachman asked, " Shall we shoot, Judge ? " My father
seemed to consider for a moment — he did not expect to live
an hour after leaving the house — and then replied, " No, let
there be no bloodshed — put down your rifles."

The negroes marched slowly out, but all the fearsome
tension of the atmosphere was communicated to me. My
little soul leaped to flame, and the white heat of exalted
detachment separated spirit from flesh, making the im-
possible possible. I rushed toward one of the horrible black
masks, and screamed out, " Are you going to hang my
pappy ? " The man put out his arm to ward me off. I
seized the soft part of the palm of his hand in my strong,
sharp little teeth, biting a piece of flesh almost out of the
hand — I tore the mask from his face, scratching his cheeks,
and dragging at his shirt collar with all my strength. He
swore at me, saying, " Hell and damnation ! Take this
little devil away ! " Two soldiers seized me, and carried
me to the other end of the room, but I left him a perfect
wreck, blood streaming from his wounded hand, collar torn
apart, and his mask on the floor. He was really only a mild
and servile little shopkeeper in the town, who belonged to
the militia, and who had been given a disagreeable duty to
perform. When I grew up and came back from boarding
school, although he carried a scar on his hand he served me
many a time quite amiably from his excellent shop.

My father was carried a hundred miles away to be tried

32 I MYSELF

by a court martial, but it was practically the end of the war,
so they thought it better to release him and send him home
without a trial — and after days and nights of a horrible,
heart-eating anxiety he arrived at midnight. My mother
almost died with joy, and I awakened from a sound sleep
and thought it must be a blissful dream until he spoke to me.

When I grew up and the family reproached my father
with spoiling me, saying, " If Betty told you that white was
black you would agree to it," he would place his hand
tenderly on mine and answer gently, " Well, you see, she's
the only one of my children who has ever fought for me."
Fought for him ! Oh, how willingly I would have died for
him, then or at any moment of my life afterwards.

I was a very fearless child. The dark held no terrors
whatever for me, and all animals I looked upon as my own
particular friends and trusted companions. My father had
an old race horse, an extraordinarily intelligent animal called
" Pomp." He had retired from the race-course, and indeed
from all work, and led a lazy, luxurious existence, as a
reward for his past prowess. He would not let anyone come
within a yard of his heels without kicking out, most viciously,
and the little negroes of the place were all dreadfully afraid
of him. One morning, when I was about three years of
age, I could be found nowhere. My father finally looked in
the stable and saw Pomp standing quite still, with both my
arms clasped tightly around his wicked hind leg; but he
spared me, and turned his intelligent old head and, my father
said, actually winked at him. I have always loved horses !
When I was two years old, my father had a Mexican saddle
made with a pommel about the size of a large dinner plate,
and I rode in front of him on this little seat, until I was big
enough to have a saddle, and pony, of my own. And there
was a time in my life when I could ride without any saddle
at all, but just catch a horse by his mane, and jump on his
bare back, and ride gaily away. I used to love the danger
of riding a wicked horse, something that had to be blindfolded
while I got on, and then would leap away like a wild thing,
and I have been thrown dozens of times, but never seriously

MY FATHER IN PRISON 33

hurt. One summer I got hold of one of the most foolish,
senseless horses I have ever seen. He shied at everything,
and would jump clear across the road, at a wind-blown ball
of leaves. And when I was taken suddenly ill, and the
groom heard it, he said : " Thank de good Lord for dat, if
Miss Betty had a kep on ridin' dat Bob Lee, dey would sholy
bin a corpse or a cripple befo de summer was out."

I was not only fond of horses, but of every living animal,
and as a child spent far more time on them than on my
spelling-book, and never forgot any need of theirs — food,
or water, or medicine, if necessary.

Mammy got me rather a good breed of game chickens, and
one little chick who lost its mother was brought up in the
kitchen and became as tame and intimate as a dog. He
had the greatest interest in my teeth, pecking at them with
vigour, and finding them solid, he would turn a red eye slowly
on them for a few moments, conclude he had made a mistake,
and that with greater energy they could be dislodged, and
begin vigorously pecking again. One day my two grown
brothers discovered his worth and engaged him in a cock
fight. I found him in the evening all bedraggled, his beautiful
feathers clotted with blood, and one bright eye swollen and
closed. That night when I said my prayers to my father
the names of my brothers were omitted. After the " Amen "
my father inquired, " Why haven't you asked God to bless
your brothers ? " " Because," I answered, " they have
been fighting my chickens, and my cocks are all hurt, and
blood is on their feathers. I don't want God to bless them."
" But," said my father, " you cannot be a little Christian
until you ask God to bless your brothers." So after various
arguments I was induced to kneel down, and said, " Oh,
God, bless my brothers " (a pause) " but pray don't do it on
my account." Even at a very early age my mind was a
logical one. I loved my chickens, therefore why love their
destroyers ? And even yet, after years of an older and
steadier civilization, the utmost that I can do is not to
loathe my enemies — to love them as myself is quite beyond
me. All human beings are products of their native soil.

34 I MYSELF

Texas is a country of wild storms and great tornadoes.
Nature there is oftentimes in her most savage mood. The
dusty road-bed of a river to-day, is the angry and raging
torrent of to-morrow, sweeping everything before it. It is
said of the native Texan like myself that if he loves you he
loves you all over ; if he doesn't, he would just as soon make
you cold as not. I do so truly love my friends — their ways,
their eyes, their hands, their voices, their little peculiarities.
As for my enemies — well . . .

CHAPTER VIII

MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE

" Four ducks on a pond,
A green bank beyond ;
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing :
What a little thing
To remember for years,
To remember with tears ! "

W. ALLINGHAM

A TRAVELLING menagerie came to Austin soon after
my Mammy was restored to me, and I heard much
talk of the lions, tigers, elephants, zebras, etc. The
calvacade passed just in front of our house — splendid
knights in gold, scarlet, orange and green, ladies on snow-
white horses in long velvet riding habits, hats with sweeping
feathers, and lovely saddlecloths rich in the glitter of
spangles. And then after this — agony of agonies ! — my
mother said I was too little to go to the circus. I held the
opposite opinion, but she would not relent, therefore I de-
cided to take the matter into my own hands.

There was the question of money, but this did not in the
least trouble me. The next day, after Mammy had made
me smart for the afternoon in muslin, lace, corals and blue
ribbons, as soon as her back was turned I trotted briskly off
in the direction of the shining tents. On arriving there I
asked the man at the door if I could go in, and he inquired
who I was. I drew myself up and said I was Betty Paschal,
and he smiled and lifted the curtain of the tent and said he
reckoned Betty Paschal would have to go in, and I found
myself alone, but not a bit afraid. I walked around, and
stood all admiration before the array of living curiosities —

36 I MYSELF

the Fat Woman, the Living Skeleton, the Snake Charmer,
the Knife Swallower, and the Tattooed Man. The Fat
Woman, a girl of about twenty, was lovely — I gazed at her
with eyes distended by admiration ; she was dressed in a
white flowered muslin, a pink sash, wide pink kid slippers,
and, like the old song, she wore a wreath of roses. Her hair
was a pretty nut-brown, her eyes were the same colour,
she had dimples and a wide fresh mouth filled with white
teeth. Her lips parted in a smile and the dimples deepened
when she saw me, and she said to one of the attendants,
" Say, is that little girl all by herself ? " He said I was, and
she told him to lift me up and place me on her knees. What
a roomy, capacious seat it was ! The Living Skeleton pro-
vided me with long sticks of red and white striped candy, the
Tattooed Man chucked me under the chin, and there I sat,
adorably happy, when an anxious clamour arose outside,
followed by the appearance of — my father, my mother, and
Mammy. I wept when I left the Fat Lady, and we parted
with many embraces — and the joy at my recovery was too
great for any reproaches to follow. Sawdust to this day
has an agreeable odour in my nostrils — it is connected with
my first appearance on any stage.

When I was five years old my father had spent three
thousand dollars on toys for me. How rich I should be
with that amount of money now ! And beside playthings
of tevery imaginable kind, there were innumerable dolls —
white and black, large and small, of wax, of china, and of
alabaster. I loved them all, but my heart's favourite was
a large wax doll christened " Mary Llewellen," and lovingly
shortened to " Mary Lou." I had kissed Mary Lou's once
ruddy cheeks pale, and her once scarlet lips to anaemic pink,
her abundant curls were worn away, and her hair was as
short as a boy's, but her black eyes still sparkled. Her body
was large and comfortable, and when she was in my arms
I felt as though I were holding something solid, and her arms,
and hands, and feet, were soft kid. The other dolls were laid
in neat rows in their beds at night, but Mary Lou in a ruffled
nightgown always slept with me, and to her I confided every

MY FIRST APPEARANCE ON ANY STAGE 37

secret and aspiration of my life. Every day I gave her a
nice dinner on a little pewter plate, and every morning a
thimbleful of coffee in a tiny pewter cup. Mammy made
her a delicious cake for her birthday, which I was obliged to
eat for her — and Mary Lou was my inseparable companion ;
even when I rode on the big flat pommel of the Mexican
saddle in front of my father, Mary Lou was gathered in my
arms and rode too. Her clothes went to the wash with
mine, and we wore the same coloured sashes and hair ribbons.
And when I was ill of a fever for a fortnight, Mary Lou
lay cradled in the hollow of my arm, and never left me for
a moment, night or day.

About Christmas time Mary Lou and I were constantly
sent out of the sitting-room. My mother told me that
Santa Claus was going to give me a wonderful Christmas,
and asked what he should bring me. I said a new dress and
new shoes for Mary Lou.

Christmas morning I was awakened by the servants all
calling out " Christmas gift ! Christmas gift ! " I put out
my hand for Mary Lou. She was gone ! " Mary Lou," I
cried, in great anxiety, " Oh, darling, where are you ? "

My mother caught me up, wrapped a shawl about me,
saying, " It's all right," and carried me to the fireplace,
where a wood fire sparkled and roared, and there set out
were all my wonderful toys. The best cabinetmaker in
Austin had been employed to make a little walnut bedstead
with a carved head board, a real mattress, bolster and
pillows, and Aunt Polly Hynes and my mother had sewn
little embroidered linen pillow-cases and sheets, ribbon -
bound blankets, and a satin coverlet. There was a little
dressing-table with a pretty oval looking-glass bound in
brass, a rocking chair, a washstand, with a bowl and jug of
fine china, and in the rocking-chair a large new beautiful
wax doll, who could open and shut her eyes and say " Mama
— Papa." Her fair golden hair hung to her waist, her ruby
lips were parted in a smile, disclosing four little white teeth.
The best (described by Aunt Polly Hynes as) " mantua-
maker " (such a dear old word) had made her frock, which

38 I MYSELF

was of stiff blue satin softened with blonde lace, and her hat
was of shirred white velvet trimmed in bunches of little
gold grapes and a blue feather. Her lingerie was of the most
exquisite, and she wore open-work socks and blue shoes,
while by her side stood a little blue silk parasol, and in her
lap was a tiny bouquet of roses. But none of this elegance
gave me any pleasure, and even at the age of four I delighted
in beauty and daintiness, for — horror of horrors ! — sitting
on the floor at the feet of this beautiful intruder, in a stiffly
starched pink calico frock, white apron and white cap,
degraded from her high estate into a lady's maid, was my
best beloved child, Mary Lou ! Her eyes seemed to me full
of sadness and reproach.

" Mary Lou, oh, Mary Lou," I cried, " I didn't do it !
Your mother didn't do it ! I love you the best. Oh, Mary
Lou, I'm so sorry ! " And all the time I was undressing
her with trembling fingers, and then I tore the clothes off
the intruder and gave them to Mary Lou. The hat wasn't
a bit becoming, but she wore it. Only the blue shoes were
left to the intruder — they were too small for Mary Lou's
ample feet.

My mother was grievously disappointed. There was I,
on Christmas morning, after all her work and trouble, in a
passion of tears. I remember her plaintively complaining
to my father that I was " such an odd child," and he said
very tenderly, " Forgive her, Marcia. She will suffer
enough pain through that faithful heart of hers."

How sad he would have been if he had known how much !

CHAPTER IX

AUNT MARY THE ANGEL

" Oh ! friends regretted, scenes for ever dear,
Remembrance hails you with her warmest tear !
Drooping, she bends o'er pensive Fancy's urn,
To trace the hours which never can return."

BYRON

I MUST not forget one of the cruellest disappointments
of my childhood. My aunt Mary (Mrs Matthew
Hayes) was an angel upon earth, a real, veritable
angel dropped from heaven by accident. She had married,
very young, a Dr Atkinson, who was extremely handsome,
a splendid dancer, a bold rider, the possessor of a good
baritone voice, great charm of manner, and very popular.
Consequently he was in great demand socially, and Aunt
Mary led a lonely life. A few years after their marriage he
died, and left her a widow with one beautiful little girl,
Ellen Atkinson, who inherited all her father's great charm
and good looks. What lovely arch blue eyes she had, with
dainty pencilled black eyebrows, and the most winning
ways. I adored her as a child : to go and see Cousin Ellen
was one of my greatest treats.

After Dr Atkinson's death Aunt Mary announced to the
family that if she married again it would be the ugliest man
she could find, and one day in Galveston she came back to
my mother and said, " Marcia, I've seen the man — I met
him on the street to-day, and he is ugly enough to suit even
me, and I'm sure he can't sing."

This bit of nonsense proved to be prophetic. She married
the man, and he was undoubtedly plain, but he had one of

39

40 I MYSELF

the most musical speaking voices I have ever heard, and in
spite of his ill assorted features he looked what he was — a
distinguished gentleman. He adored Aunt Mary as a saint
in a niche, and little Ellen was as dear to him as his own
children — there were five in family, three boys and two
girls. Aunt Mary had an undestroyably happy and cheer-
ful disposition and a lovely sweet face. My mother used
to call it a " how-de-do face." One of the stories told of
her was, that in a shop a man was trying on a coat, and he
observed Aunt Mary's look of solicitous interest, and turned
to her saying, " Madam, excuse me, but my wife could not
accompany me to-day — will you look and see how this coat
fits in the back ? "

Such a thing as a trained nurse was unknown to Austin
in those days, and we were not scientific or careful, so
typhoid and other fevers were constantly occurring, and
Aunt Mary was continually sent for, to nurse the sick. She
would arrange her household affairs and go for two or three
days, sitting night and day with the patient. Uncle Matthew
used to make a protest, but there was nobody like Mrs
Hayes. If anybody died a carriage was at once sent for Mrs
Hayes to comfort the afflicted family. If there was a bazaar
Aunt Mary's busy clever hands made half the objects for
the stalls. She could embroider beautifully, she was an
exquisite needlewoman, and she had a wonderfully artistic
sense of colour. She could trim hats and design dresses, and
she was a good cook — and of course never idle for one single
moment of her busy, unselfish life. Novels she loved and
devoured. Her one recreation was reading whenever she
could find the time.

Like my grandfather, Governor Duval, Aunt Mary was
the very soul of hospitality. The Atkinson house was an
odd rambling bungalow sort of affair, with a great number
of rooms. Whenever Uncle Matthew could afford it he built
an additional room — it made no difference how the room
lay — sometimes it was not connected with the main house
at all, but joined on by a covered archway. And rooms
were always occupied by Aunt Mary's kinfolks and the boys'

AUNT MARY THE ANGEL 41

friends and the girls' friends, and " the weak -hearted and
the afflicted," for being near Aunt Mary was like being
bathed in sunshine. I have never seen such a persistently
optimistic nature as hers. Hope radiated from her eyes,
and her lips were always ready to curve into a smile and to
speak words of cheerful comfort. Of course Fate bore down
upon her radiance with a malice and a cruelty rarely equalled.

I remember when my baby was a few months old I went
to Texas to spend the summer, and we occupied a sort of
wing connected with the main house by a little covered way,
one of the latest developments of the bungalow. All the
other rooms were filled, and this happened to be the quietest
place in the house. One evening, when fourteen or sixteen
people were expected to dinner, a carriage drove around the
back way, and Aunt Mary's eldest son, quite insensible, was
lifted out and carried to his own room. He was frightfully
ill, and had been drinking heavily for days. It was terribly
sad, for Frank was a dear, kind fellow, and had it in his
power to give the people who loved him a dreadfully sick
heart. In a few moments I left the parlour and went to
my bedroom, and there I found Aunt Mary on her knees,
praying, and perfectly convulsed with sobs. I closed my
door softly and went back to the parlour. A little later I
heard a splashing of cold water in her room, where the guests
were taking off their light wraps, and she came out with her
face quite fresh, dressed in a lavender muslin, and she was
by far the most cheerful person at the dinner. She had that
gift from God, a perfect faith in a future life, and in His
goodness — how indeed could she doubt it, when she possessed
so much of her own ?

Among the servants that summer were a girl named Adler,
and Willy, two young Swedes. They were very rough, and
could speak scarcely any English. Aunt Mary became sus-
picious about Adler, and soon found that her suspicions were
justified. On inquiring into the situation she found that
Willy was quite willing to marry the girl, only he would
not pay either for a marriage licence or the minister's fee.
And he was getting thirty dollars a month and Adler twenty-

42 I MYSELF

five— between them nine pounds a month. But neither
appeals nor bullying moved the thrifty William, so the end of
it was, that Aunt Mary bought the licence, paid the young
clergyman who officiated, gave Adler a wedding gown, and
the next week paid the doctor who ushered into the world,
a free-born American citizen. I hear that Adler and Willy
are now among the prosperous landholders of Austin.

Children are unerring in finding out their friends, and
when we were all little girls and boys, my cousins and myself,
Aunt Mary's house was overrun with children. There we
foregathered whenever we could, and one winter things were
planned out and done on a grand scale. There was a stage
built in one end of the drawing-room, and we were to have
one evening of wondrous tableaux. I was to do the " Sleep-
ing Beauty." The part did not appeal to me one bit, but
it was so much better than nothing that I consented.

Under Aunt Mary's guidance the girls worked for months.
They sewed great wings, and spangled dresses and silvered
slippers, and painted wands, and made tassels and caps, and
borrowed properties — and at last the night of nights arrived.
Of course all the girls wanted to be in the tableaux, conse-
quently the audience was entirely composed of boys. There
was a lovely supper prepared in the dining-room, of delicate
ham sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, big iced cakes, jellies,
ice creams, lemonade, and claret cup — and the evening
promised to be one of unalloyed bliss.

The curtain went up on " The Peri's Lament." The stage
really looked lovely — it was covered with moss and sea-
shells, and on a sort of flowered mound lay the Araby's
daughter, very pink and smiling, but drowned, of course,
and surrounded by peris — charming beings in perfectly dry
spangled dresses, with big white wings at the back — and in
their clear children's voices they sang :

Farewell— farewell to thee, Araby's daughter !

(Thus warbled a Peri beneath the dark sea,)
No pearl ever lay under Oman's green water

More pure in its shell than thy Spirit in thee.

AUNT MARY THE ANGEL 43

Oh ! fair as the sea-flower close to thee growing,
How light was thy heart till love's witchery came,

Like the wind of the south o'er a summer lute blowing,
And hush'd all its music, and wither'd its frame.

But long, upon Araby's green sunny highlands,
Shall maids and their lovers remember the doom

Of her who lies sleeping among the Pearl Islands,
With nought but a sea-star to light up her tomb.

Vociferous applause, and the curtain went down.

Tableau after tableau followed, until a good deal of
scuffling and shuffling was noticeable among the audience.
The boys were evidently getting hungry. The applause
died away, but still the tableaux followed on. I wanted
to get on my " Sleeping Beauty " dress, but nobody had any
time to help me. Finally, as we thought, the curtain went
up on a scene of surpassing beauty — the Fairy Queen, sur-
rounded by her maids of honour, one bearing a tray and
offering it to her with a cake and a small sugar ballerina in
the middle of it. With this apparition the already whetted
appetites of the boys immediately asserted themselves —
the audience en masse rose to their feet, and the ringleader
said : " We've had enough tableaux, we're going to
supper."

Nannie Hayes, the Fairy Queen, had a fiery temper. She
rushed through her cohort of handmaidens, her black eyes
flashing fire, and stood perilously close to the footlights and
said, " Oh, you wicked, ungrateful boys ! Here we've
worked the whole winter on these tableaux, and now you
don't want to see them ! Sit down this minute, or I'll go
straight and tell father, and you will none of you get any
supper. Sit down, I say."

The audience muttered, conferred together, then gloomily
sat through three more tableaux, when again there was a
strike, and Frank as the spokesman said they would rather
starve than see another tableau. By this time I was quietly
weeping, and the Fairy Queen, who had a very kind heart,

44 I MYSELF

said, " Well, will you see just one more ? Betty Paschal as
the " Sleeping Beauty " ?

" What, that torn-boy ! " Frank said. " Never ! She
isn't a beauty and we don't care to see her sleep as one. Not
if you lock the dining-room door." And the audience then
and there filed out.

I fished, and ran races, and climbed trees, and played
marbles with the boys, and they liked me as another boy,
but all the girls had sweethearts — I had none, and there
were many incipient hopes bound up in that " Sleeping
Beauty " tableau that, alas ! like so much else in my life,
was only a tantalizing, vanishing dream.

CHAPTER X

MY MOTHER'S DEATH

" 0 sir ! The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket." WORDSWORTH

ALL only children (I was the young belated one in
our family) long for little brothers and sisters, and
I, so full of affection and so eager for companion-
ship, longed for them more than most, but my nearest
approach to this relationship was a little adopted brother
who lived near us. " Miss Jenny/' as I called his mother,
put him in my arms a few days after he was born, and gave
him to me as a brother. He was very small, and always
remained frail and delicate, like a little snowdrop. " Miss
Jenny " (Mrs Scott) was a beautiful tall girl with a heavy
veil of hair that reached her knees. I loved the mother,
but I adored the child. Every moment I could spare from
lessons I spent playing with him, and he loved me, and
cooed and crowed for joy at my appearance. When he
was nine months old he sickened and died. I was allowed
to kiss the sweet little waxen face in the white-satin-lined
coffin, and when it was taken out of the house it really
seemed to me that my heart was going to be buried too,
and I grieved literally for months. Miss Jenny gave me his
little white sunbonnet, exquisitely made by herself, all
stitched with cords and delicately ruffled, and until I was
married I always carried that white sunbonnet of little
Jimmy's with me wherever I went. My own baby wore it
afterward, and I have the little bonnet still.

When I should have been beginning my lessons the war

46 I MYSELF

was ending. My brothers came home from the army, my
father went north on business, and while he was away my
mother died from heart disease. Telegraphic communica-
tion was difficult in those days, the wires were down, the
postal service was greatly disturbed, and the first intimation
my father received of my mother's death was from a news-
paper which he was reading while crossing the Gulf of
Mexico between New Orleans and Gal vest on. He told me
afterwards that his first impulse was to throw himself into
the sea, he felt life would be so valueless without her. Then
he remembered his little girl, suddenly left motherless, and
the impulse passed, leaving only a paralysing sense of loss.
But a nature so unselfish as his quite recovered in time ;
his purposes, and his efforts, and services had always been
for other people, and the unselfish and self -forgetful ones of
the earth never, in spite of grief, wholly lose their interest
in things and in people while life lasts.

My mother was, so I have been told, a woman of remark-
able force of character. She was in her youth very beautiful,
small and compact of stature, with a white skin, large blue
eyes, a straight nose, a pretty mouth, a square chin, reddish
hair, and tiny hands and feet. She had a great sense of
humour, a beautiful voice — accompanying herself on the
guitar on summer evenings when it was too hot to sit in-
doors— and she was a celebrated cook and housekeeper.
Her garden was a curiosity of the town, with its myriads of
flowers. If she had lived my habit of procrastination would
have been cured, and other traits corrected that have miti-
gated against my success in life. She insisted on my dress-
ing promptly, and not, with one stocking on, sitting dreaming
with the other in hand, a habit that pursues me even to this
day. She possessed that rarest and most valuable sense—
common-sense — to a remarkable degree, and her advice was
asked by all sorts and conditions of people. She kept her
large family of brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces,
third and fourth cousins, together in love and amity, feeling
the obligation of the tie of blood to be indissoluble. If any
disputes or worries or disagreements arose, my mother ended

MY MOTHER'S DEATH 47

the conference with these words : " He's your kin — there
is nothing else to do but stand by him " — and stand by him
they did. I have never seen in any family such a sense of
loyalty, of obligation, of affection and unselfishness, as among
my mother's people.

Just at the end of the war my Mammy came to my mother
and told her that Charlotte, a negro woman who belonged to
one of the neighbours, was in her cabin suffering from an
accident ; her mistress had thrown a flat iron at her and
broken her arm, and had then in a fit of temper ordered her
to continue her work, which she did with one arm (she was
scrubbing the floor), but when night came she ran away. I
forget what the law was for harbouring a runaway negro,
but it was very severe. My mother decided to keep
Charlotte and hide her until her arm was well. So good old
Dr Baker was sent for, Charlotte's arm was put into splints,
and no one except my mother and Mammy knew her where-
abouts, and she remained in Mammy's cabin until her arm
was quite cured. She was a big woman and as powerful as a
man.

During my mother's last illness Charlotte never left her,
all the time carrying her from her bed to a couch on the
balcony with as much ease as if she had been a child — and it
was Charlotte's black hand that closed my mother's eyes
with grief and lamentation when she died, and afterwards
she and her little black baby, Pony, became a sort of re-
sponsibility and legacy to the family. Pony, by the way,
became a mother at the tender age of fourteen, but Charlotte
said it was only an accident, " an dat Pony didn't mean
nuffin by it." Virtue was not in those days expected in the
negro, but a want of virtue in a white woman was unforgiv-
able. Everyone knows Hawthorne's story of " The Scarlet
Letter " and the terrible sentence meted out to Hester
Prynne. Really, it was no great exaggeration of the state of
affairs in Texas when I was a child. If a man compromised
the wife or daughter of another man, he knew the conse-
quence beforehand. He paid for it with his life.

There were many more men than women in Texas ; every

48 I MYSELF

woman, pretty or ugly, could marry some sort of man ; there-
fore morality was demanded of her, and after marriage her
flirtations were at an end. As for the cocottes of the town,
they were worse than lepers. They were not even spoken of.
And yet beautiful low-necked ladies, with roses in their hair,
and diaphanous, flowered dresses, came out about sunset with
fluffy parasols over their heads and paraded the town. I
used to wonder who they were. One of them I admired
exceedingly ; she was very tall, with hair like satin, lively
black eyes, and always wore white. She managed to give
me a bonny smile when she passed, though Mammy had
ordered me to turn my head directly away from these fascinat-
ing, mysterious beings. When I grew up I was told that the
tall one, called Sue Thomas, had married a young man, a
friend of the family, of good birth, means and position, who
had conceived a hopeless passion for her, and they had
started for a new life in Mexico, but had both been murdered
on the way.

One of our negroes had made an arrangement with my
mother to pay for her own hire, and do what she liked with
her time — that is, she paid my mother ten dollars a month,
and set up a laundry for herself, making much more than
this sum, as she was a genius in washing fine muslins and
Valenciennes laces and the exquisite organdies worn in the
South. One of her customers was a lady of the parasol, and
she was ill, heart-sick, home-sick and repentant. She came
from Kentucky, having been, like my mother, educated in her
innocent and happier youth at Bardstown Convent. Finally
after she became very ill, she was installed, as so many of the
lame, halt, and blind had been before her, in Mammy's cabin,
with Mammy and my mother to nurse her until she could
start for home, my mother undertaking to pay her travelling
expenses.

Wandering about the place one evening, I heard a hollow
cough in Mammy's cabin, and when I entered there was a
lovely lady with plaits of molasses-coloured hair, blue eyes,
and of a ravishing beauty to me. She wore a blue muslin
much beruffled, and prettier than any of my mother's frocks,

MY MOTHER'S DEATH 49

and I really thought she must be a princess. Mammy had
often told me of fairy princesses, and here she was concealing
one in her cabin.

My mother was vexed to find me there, and told me to
run back to the house. Very unwillingly I obeyed her, and
when next I stole away to Mammy's cabin it was empty
and silent except for the sunbeams slanting in at the door,
and a mocking bird singing in a fruit-laden fig-tree outside
the window. The lady of the parasol had gone home to
Kentucky to die ; but that I was not to hear until many
years afterward.

My mother hated show and pretension and falseness and
hypocrisy, but she had the tenderest heart in the world for
sin, poverty and misfortune. Her death was not only a loss
to her own family but a loss to the whole town where she
lived, for she had literally " clothed the naked and fed the
hungry, and been a ministering angel to the sorrowing and
afflicted."

CHAPTER XI

FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE

I love her, but tenderness obscures passion and respect holds it
at bay.

AFTER my mother's death I lived with my aunt, Mrs
Beale, until my father decided to send me to board-
ing school in the North. At this period of my life
Aunt Lizzie occupied the place next my father in my heart,
and until her death we loved each other tenderly and de-
votedly.

Love, sympathy and understanding are totally indescrib-
able and mysterious things. Two quite excellent people may
take a decided dislike to each other, and two quite un-
excellent people very often are held together by some secret
bond of sympathy throughout a long life. Between my
mother and her eldest sister was the most perfect understand-
ing I have ever seen between sisters, and they managed, except
for short periods, never to be separated. My aunt married
a gentleman who had a plantation in Kentucky, and my
mother ran away from school at the early age of fifteen and
married, as her first husband, a young surgeon in the navy.
During the winters Aunt Lizzie visited my mother, and the
summers my mother spent with my aunt at her plantation in
Kentucky ; and whatever the sorrows, troubles or anxieties
of these two ladies were, they were lightened by the love,
congenial companionship and sympathy of one for the other.
When I was born, I was named after my aunt Elizabeth,
and one of my earliest recollections is of her. She was a very
beautiful woman, and she had what I should call an old-
fashioned skin. The girls of the present day have very often

FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE 51

fresh and healthy complexions, but they are apt to be a little
tanned by the sun, or roughened by the wind, and the quality
is not always fine. My Aunt Elizabeth's complexion was
dazzlingly beautiful ; even with a magnifying glass it was as
smooth as satin ; there was not a spot or a freckle or an im-
perfection on this white and pink velvet texture. She had
large blue eyes, with black lashes, neatly marked eyebrows,
a small straight nose, a rosebud, smiling mouth and even
teeth ; her head was proudly placed upon her shoulders, and
it was covered with brown, waving hair that in the strong
sunlight showed glints of gold. She had an upright, faultless
figure, fairy feet, for she wore, I recollect, No. i shoes, and
she always had difficulty in finding 5^- gloves for her small
white hands. She took the greatest care of herself, wearing
a green veil if the sun was hot, never exposing herself to a
strong wind that would dry her skin, and when she sat down
to read, as she did for hours together, she always wore gloves.
She did not marry until, as was considered in those days, she
was quite an old maid — that is, she was twenty-six, and one of
my younger aunts had kept a list of the men who had asked
her to marry them. There were twenty-seven would-be
husbands, and all her life long she never ceased to receive
admiration. Besides her very great beauty she was witty,
well read, very large minded, and a woman of extremely
independent character. In her youth, when my grandfather
was Governor of Florida, she had spent several winters in
Washington, and her nieces were much interested in a
description which she gave of her first ball at the White
House.

She said that, although it was a cold night, and there was a
snowstorm brewing, she wore but two garments, one of them
a long linen lace-trimmed " shift," and the other a white
satin dress with a blonde lace berthe. Her hair was crowned
by a wreath of silver leaves, and my mother told me she was
the most radiant of visions that night, and the belle of the
ball.

My first distinct recollection of my Aunt Elizabeth was of
her visiting my mother late one summer evening just before

52 I MYSELF

twilight. She was dressed in a dark, magenta-coloured
organdie, flowered in white, low necked with long sleeves, and
she wore a small fichu of the same muslin trimmed with a
little white silk fringe. In her white silk belt was a bunch of
white roses, and ever since then I have loved white roses the
best of all the garden of flowers.

Between my Aunt Elizabeth and myself was the same love
and sympathy that had existed between herself and my
mother. I was very different from my mother, who had a
determined will and an imperious manner, and in my child-
hood she did not always understand me nor I her. I know,
now that I have arrived at years of maturity, that she was one
of the noblest and most generous women in the world, but as a
child there was friction between us — but never for a moment
between my Aunt Elizabeth and me. I have often felt a
sort of mingling of my spirit with hers, so close was the
sympathy between us, and yet we were absolutely opposite
to each other on many points. For instance, I was born
indifferent to dress. I notice pretty clothes on other people ;
I appreciate them, and like to see them ; but my own clothes
have always bored me to extinction, and if any toilettes of
mine have been successes it has been due to the efforts of
either kind relations, friends or dressmakers, or above all,
to that wonderful sartorial artist in Paris, Leroux, from whom
I occasionally get a gown. I find if you put yourself entirely
in the hands of people who understand the subject of dress,
and do not interfere or make suggestions to them, they will do
their very best for you. Aunt Lizzie really loved dress, and
with her beautiful figure did full justice to decoration ; and she
earnestly laboured to make me a conscientious dresser, but
never succeeded. I was always eager for baths, hot and cold,
ready to wash my hair three times a week if need be, to brush
my teeth after every meal, and I spent a large portion of
my pin money in tooth-brushes, mouth-washes, soaps and
toilet powders: then I lost interest — while Aunt Lizzie's
theory was that a woman under any and all circumstances
should be well dressed. My aunt Florida Howard told me
that when Elizabeth lived at " The Bend," her husband's

FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE 53

plantation in Kentucky, on the bend of a river, the nearest
neighbour was nine miles distant, and the visitors were few
and far between, and yet Elizabeth was always as spick and
span, as if the madding crowd surged about her. Her hair
was exquisitely done, she was well corseted, her dimity and
muslin gowns were fresh and fashionable, and her feet
faultlessly shod in openwork silk stockings and little kid
slippers. In the evening she changed her dress to fine lace
and muslin gowns, low-necked, with little capes. She always
said she dressed for her own satisfaction, whether people saw
her or not, and occasionally she became a veritable heroine
as an exponent of her theory. All her life she had suffered
agonies from headaches, so severe that temporarily they made
her almost blind. But these headaches never conquered her
toilettes. She would awake in the morning with racking
pain, that would have put any other woman to bed, but she
got up, took a bracing cold bath, powdered her face, put a dab
of rouge on each cheek and on her chin, pencilled the neat
eyebrows, dressed her hair elaborately in puffs and curls,
arranged herself in a perfectly fitting princess morning-gown
(she did not own such a thing as a loose and comfortable
wrapper), then sat down in a straight-backed chair to rest.
The only concession she ever made to a headache was a thin
cambric pocket-handkerchief folded in a neat little square
soaked in Eau de Cologne, nestling among the puffs and curls.
She was always ready to receive visitors, and I never remem-
ber her in deshabille.

During the Civil War, when any delicacies in the way of
food were almost impossible to get in the South, Aunt Lizzie
went to San Antonio, where some boxes of raisins and barrels
of sugar and coffee had been smuggled in through Galveston.
She had little money to spend, but after looking a long time
at the raisins, and smelling the coffee and sugar, she bought
a bunch of violets to freshen up a straw bonnet. Isn't it
Elbert Hubbard, that altogether original, courageous and
delightful writer, who says : " If I had but two loaves of
bread, I would sell one of them and buy white hyacinths to
feed my soul ? " The pleasures of the table never appealed

54 I MYSELF

to Aunt Lizzie, though Melinda, her cook, was a genuine
cordon bleu. She used to make a bread that I have never
seen equalled ; it was known as " salt rising bread," and is
made without yeast. It would have been possible only to a
darkie cook who could nod over the fire all night without
feeling any great fatigue in the morning, as an equal tempera-
ture was necessary, and constant watching, in order to have
the bread rise properly. " Salt rising bread " went out
with slavery, and is known to the younger generation only
in name, but no cake I have ever tasted compared to it in
delicacy.

Melinda's wedding was a quaint affair. She was going to
marry a man called Sam, the servant of a neighbour, and she
had planned a white muslin bridal gown, a veil and a big
wedding, so dear to the heart of a negro, when on a Monday
morning, while she was at the wash-tub, Sam appeared, and
informed her that as soon as she dried the soap-suds from her
arms she was to be married, as the minister was coming right
along. In vain she expostulated and pleaded for delay and
bridal attire and the wedding cake. Sam said he didn't want
" no tarnation nonsense — dat it was now or never wid him,"
so, choking with sobs and tears of disappointment, Melinda
stood at the side of her wash-tub, was married and returned to
her work. And Sam, who was very busy with the season's
crops, only appeared a day or two later, but he said he " done
had it off his mind anyway." He made an excellent husband,
and Melinda gradually recovered from her regret for the loss
of her wedding.

At forty my Aunt Elizabeth was still a fresh beauty, very
popular, and much admired. Among her suitors was a young
man who remained her devoted slave for twenty years. At
intervals during this time he proposed to her, but she always
refused him, preferring the freedom of widowhood, and finally
he married the very opposite of my aunt : a dull, colourless,
monotonous, uninteresting woman in mind and appearance.
Very often he strolled around to have a talk with his old love,
who to the very end of her life remained witty and engaging.
My aunt's speaking voice was music itself, and she was the

FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE 55

embodiment of naturalness without a vestige of either vanity
or affectation. Really beautiful women are always freer
from vanity than those of lesser pretensions to loveliness.
Perfect beauty is an accomplished fact of which there is no
doubt, and can be dismissed from the mind of the owner, and
frequently is ; while merely pretty women are oftentimes in
doubt of their good looks and need the constant bolstering up
of compliments in order to be satisfied.

When, for example, I first saw Mrs Frances Lowther she
possessed a really noble and very rare beauty. Her head
was pure Greek. Her forehead low and broad, her features
quite regular, her mouth finely chiselled, her eyes were deep
blue, and the face was mobile with an ever-changing expres-
sion. Watts has made a beautiful " Clytie " of her, Gustave
Dore painted her, Leighton has used her head for more than
one of his pictures. Prinsep, Halle, Tissot, Boldini and
other great artists asked her constantly to sit to them, and
she had no personal vanity whatever, and hasn't a picture
of herself, or even a bronze reproduction of " Clytie " ; and
yet she must have known with all the admiration she excited
that she was beautiful, but apparently she had forgotten it
and dismissed it from her mind. And her loveliness has
never spoiled her frank and honest nature, nor her sense of
humour, nor her wit, nor has it chilled her warm heart.

The world is undoubtedly getting more materialistic, and
the once-honoured ideals of self-sacrifice, loyalty and devotion
are being laid aside. Passion and the indulgence of it at
any cost, scarlet love, the realization of every complicated
and subtle emotion, is the mode and preachment of the
moment. Many a modern young man in his secret soul
admires Oscar Wilde when he says : "I remember when I
was at Oxford saying to one of my friends as we were strolling
round Magdalen's narrow, bird-haunted walks one morning
in the year before I took my degree, that I wanted to eat
of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world, and
that I was going out into the world with that passion in my
soul. And so indeed I went out and so I lived." We all
know the result of the'experiment : first the court of justice

56 I MYSELF

then the prison gate, and afterwards the prison — and even if
he had not landed there, his soul would have been seared,
and scarred, and stricken, by " the fruit of all the trees."
He learned later, poor, tragic, gifted singer, that life is sweet
only to those who themselves are sweet and tender to
humanity, and this is accomplished by self-control, self-
denial and self-sacrifice. The delight in children, and
flowers, and the country, domestic love, and romantic
friendship, are fast becoming, like faded ribbons and old-
fashioned ballads, things of the past. Sir Arthur Pinero's
touching play The Thunderbolt failed because the love
interest in it was only the deep, sweet affection and the self-
sacrifice of husband and wife. The critics voted it dry.
Would they have understood my friend Sidney Lanier's.
poem?

WEDDING HYMN

Thou God, whose high, eternal Love

Is the only blue sky of our life,
Clear all the Heaven that bends above

The life-road of this man and wife.

May these two lives be but one note
In the world's strange-sounding harmony,

Whose sacred music e'er shall float
Through every discord up to Thee.

As when from separate stars two beams

Unite to form one tender ray :
As when two sweet but shadowy dreams

Explain each other in the day :

So may these two dear hearts one light

Emit, and each interpret each.
Let an angel come and dwell to-night

In this dear double-heart, and teach !

Since my earliest youth one of the most touching love
letters in all the world to me is the one written by Comtesse de
Florae to Colonel Newcome when they were both old people

FOR LOVE'S DEAR SAKE 57

he married and the father of Clive, she the mother of children
and the wife of a very old husband. But she had loved her
first lover all the years of her life, with a patient, pathetic,
unforgetting loyal love. In her letter she says :

" Sometimes, I have heard of your career ... he informed
me how yet a young man you won laurels at Argom and
Bhartpour, how you escaped death as Laswari. I have
followed them, sir, on the map. I have taken part in your
victories and your glory. Ah ! I am not so cold but my heart
has trembled for your dangers, not so aged, but I remember
the young man who learned from the pupil of Frederic the
first rudiments of war. Your great heart, your love of truth,
your courage, were your own. None had to teach you these
qualities, of which a good God had endowed you. ... I hold
you always in memory. As I write the past comes back to
me. I see a noble young man who has a soft voice and
brown eyes. I see the Thames and the smiling plains of
Blackheath. I listen and pray at my chamber door, as my
father talks to you in our little cabinet of studies. I look
from the window and see you depart. ... I remember this was
your birthday. I have made myself a little fete in celebrat-
ing it after how many years of absence, of silence. . . .

" COMTESSE DE FLORAC

(Nee ' L. DE BLOIS ') "

This letter is as if written with a pen of sweet dried
lavender. It is from a loyal wife to the man she has always
loved, and yet what unforgetfulness, sweetness, tenderness, it
contains ! It is further endeared to me by the memory of a
long walk, and a long talk with Justin McCarthy at Westgate-
on-Sea one sunshiny, golden October afternoon. In the
discussion of various things, and various people, Thackeray
came along, and I mentioned the Newcomes and Madame de
Florae's letter, and Justin then and there quoted it almost in
entirety (he is gifted with the most wonderful memory).
His rich voice was very sweet in the lines : " I see the Thames
and the smiling plains of Blackheath. I listen and pray at

58 I MYSELF

my chamber door, as my father talks to you in our little
cabinet of studies. I look from the window and see you
depart/'

Dear Justin ! Dear Thackeray ! It is for these recollec-
tions that I once made a journey to Blackheath.

And the gentleman who loved my Aunt Elizabeth for
twenty years and remained her true friend to the end — he and
all people who are simple, and straightforward, and loyal — are
dear to my primordial heart. Thackeray himself was one of
the faithful, long-suffering, platonic and self-sacrificing lovers.
After his separation from his wife, caused by her long mental
illness, he formed a great friendship with Mrs Brookfield,
who was the wife of one of his oldest friends — and the close
intimacy resulted in his falling in love with her. But the
thought of disloyalty never entered Thackeray's mind. The
world, however, was ill-natured over the friendship. Brook-
field became cool to him, and finally Thackeray wrote him a
noble letter of explanation in which he was reputed to have
said he did love Mrs Brookfield deeply, but neither Brookfield,
nor his wife, nor he himself, need be ashamed of his love, which
was composed of tenderness and devotion, but above all of
respect. Brookfield was a generous man himself — he under-
stood, and after the letter the three friends remained intimate
and united until the day of Thackeray's death.

There is something infinitely restful and uplifting in a love
shorn of passion, but still faithful. This has often happened
through Fate's contrary mandate, but only the noble ones of
the earth can abide by it.

A SERIOUS CHILD OF TWELVE

CHAPTER XII

MY REGRET AT MY LACK OF EDUCATION

" Mankind is ignorant, a man am I,
Call ignorance my sorrow, not my sin."

BROWNING

AFTER living with my Aunt Elizabeth a short time
my father decided to take me with him to the North
and leave me at a boarding school. How inade-
quate education was at this period, particularly for girls !
At Georgetown Convent, which was such a beautiful old place,
not unlike a fourteenth-century Italian villa, with the
Potamac running through its grounds, lovely meadows and
orchards, and the best bread and butter I have ever eaten, I
learned to dance, and to embroider, a little music, and some-
thing of manners — at the other schools nothing at all. Ladies
of the Visitation (black-veiled nuns) conducted the convent.
They were mostly women of good Southern family, and dis-
tinction, who had chosen to give up the world for a cloistered
life, and at one period of the school the President of the
United States gave the medal to each graduate, and placed a
wreath on her virgin brow. It was soon enough after the
war for one of the rules read aloud by the mother superior to
be, " The discussion of politics and religion is strictly for-
bidden." I was much too young to care for either, but in
spite of this rule occasional angry discussions ensued between
girls from the North and girls from the South, and between
Catholics and Protestants.

It was an excellent school for the morals of any girl.
Without realizing it, the surveillance was constant. There

59

60 I MYSELF

was a sister everywhere in the dormitories, in the class-rooms,
in the recreation-rooms, in the playgrounds, and a tete-a-tete
between girls was practically impossible. Secrets were dis-
couraged, and frankness and truth were at a premium.
The hour for getting up was unearthly — five o'clock — and
each girl, as she left the dormitory, was obliged to have her
teeth and finger nails inspected by a keen-eyed sister at the
door. Many girls went back to use tooth brush and nail
brush more vigorously, but, small as I was, my teeth and
nails were invariably satisfactory. Scrubbing anything has
always been an agreeable occupation to me, particularly my
teeth — the consequence is that I have never had a toothache
in my life, or lost a tooth. Another thing I owe to the
convent is a love of cold water. Our most luxurious baths
for invalids and delicate girls had " the chill off " only, and a
nun's " chill off " leaves the water still quite cold. I used to
love my icy baths, freshly drawn from the chilled river, in-
ducing the warm glow that followed afterward — and only
rheumatism has ever driven me to the leisurely laziness of
warm baths.

There was a Madonna-faced nun at the convent whom I
adored. I can see her now. What blue, blue eyes she had,
with long, perfectly straight eyelashes which gave her eyes a
continually pensive expression. Her face was a pure oval,
with a transparent skin, a fine aquiline nose, and a drooping
mouth. She was a teacher of music, which in truth she knew
only superficially, but I learned " The Maiden's Prayer "
under her guidance, and Thalberg's " Home, sweet Home "
with variations, and I loved her reverently and tried to
imitate her voice and manner. It was said she had been
engaged to a young Confederate officer on General Robert
E. Lee's staff, and that after he was killed in battle she
entered the convent. We parted with many tears and em-
braces. She was to say always a little daily prayer for me,
and I was never to forget her. I have kept my promise, and
she was too unselfish ever to forget hers.

The old wardrobe sister was a beautiful needlewoman from
Ireland. She made yards of Irish crochet lace, but nobody

MY REGRET AT MY LACK OF EDUCATION 61

wanted it in those days. She used to scold me for being slow
with my mending, but I got good marks for neatness, and she
used to say that " dirt never stuck to Betty." Even as a
child I disliked dirt, except mud pies, and they are a different
sort from spots, and stains, and London fogs, which are quite
the worst of all.

My next school after the convent was at White Plains,
New York. It was kept by the sweetest, gentlest, most
worried creature I ever saw, and her sister, who gave me a
Bible that I use still. The girls all thought Mrs Stirling a
widow, but I heard later she had a bad husband who had dis-
appeared into the West.

Except for the cold, which was detestable — frost and snow
have a perfectly paralysing effect on me — I was quite
happy learning my lessons as they were given to me, but I
left school really profoundly ignorant, and all my life I have
suffered and regretted my want of education. It is not what
one knows that apparently matters so much — the topics
discussed in social life are not very abstruse. Magazines,
and newspapers, and an amiable manner, go a great way
toward agreeable conversation of the everyday sort. It is the
drudgery of study that is so steadying for the mind — the
power of application and concentration of a real education
that uplifts, and bears you beyond the pettinesses of un-
educated people — that is of such inestimable value. I wish
that even at three years of age my father had made me begin,
like John Stuart Mill, the study of Greek. I did learn a little
Latin, and liked it, but only the very beginning of Algebra,
which I have forgotten, and never Geometry — and I had a
mind that wanted something more than just the ordinary
gossip of society, which bored me, even at a very early age, to
extinction. The only true kingdom on earth is the kingdom
of a well-stored mind, that nobody can wrest away from
you. Parliaments can rob a monarch of his crown and his
possessions, but a king in exile can take his store of knowledge
and his well-disciplined mind with him. And I do most
bitterly regret my want of education, and always have and
always will, and, among my life's many failures and wants,

62 I MYSELF

this want and failure of an education I consider the greatest
of all.

After the years spent at the convent and at boarding school
we went back to Texas. It was a great joy to see my old
home again. The very root of my heart is in the South —
everything in it appeals to, soothes and comforts me. The
hot sun, the rich vegetation, the blossoming trees of oleander,
magnolia and crepe myrtle, the penetrating scent of the
jasmine, the night-blooming cereus, and the honeysuckle,
the silver nights when the moon makes luminous the deepest
shadow, the soft, full-throated trills of the mocking bird, the
caressingness of the air, the grateful freshness of early morn-
ing, the little shiny darkies, the corn bread, and rice, and rich
water-melons, and fragrant coffee and velvety peaches — all
these delightful things are mine by birth and inheritance,
for, like me, they all belong " to the land of cotton, cinnamon
seed, and sandy bottom away down South in Dixie."

We settled down in our old home, and Mammy, who had
such a pretty name — Hester — superintended the house-
keeping, and a mocking bird came every night at nine o'clock,
perched on the bough of a tree by the portico, and told us in a
gush of melody what time it was. It is a curious thing, this
habit of that particular bird, to sing at precisely the same
hour for weeks at a time.

I began going to a day school and taking music lessons
from one of the playmates of my childhood — Willie Boaz,
who had been to Germany and studied music there. I thought
to impress him by " The Maiden's Prayer " and the variations
of Thalberg's " Home, Sweet Home," but not a bit of it. He
put me on five-finger exercises, and the small amount of
music I know (which used to be one of the worst -taught
things in the world) I learned from him. Although I was
still going to school my hair was up, and I began to take
notice of the various playmates of my childhood who were
now well-grown youths, and the youngest lieutenants of the
military post were also numbered among my friends. It was

MY REGRET AT MY LACK OF EDUCATION 63

the fashion in those days to serenade the lady of your choice,
and this occurred to me so often that my father threatened
to move further into the country. Guitars, banjos, flutes,
and tenor voices were disturbing his middle-aged slumbers,
but the serenaders did not end there. When a lieutenant
serenaded he brought the entire brass band of his regiment,
and that meant a box of candles in order to see the music.
The performers were grouped around the porch, and after-
ward wine was offered, and this all in the middle of the
night. Their arrival was announced by a strident " blam-
blam ! " and a deep groan followed from my father's room,
which was next to mine. I arose, all joy and light, and
hastily dressed, and he arose, all gloom and weariness, and
slowly dressed. He did not care at all for music, and certainly
not at one or two o'clock in the morning. It irritated him
beyond measure, and I was not serenaded less than three
times a week. My father was too sweet tempered ever to be
really disagreeable, but the day after the serenade he was
greatly depressed, while I bubbled over with satisfaction.

I remember once he was defending a murder case — a woman
had killed her husband in a rather cold-blooded fashion,
and the trial was to end the next day. He said when we
went to bed, " I do trust, my dear daughter, there will be no
caterwauling to-night." But that night of all nights we
had three serenades — first a flute, then a baritone with his
guitar (we hadn't to get up for him), and no sooner had he
departed, and silence reigned again, than blam-blam ! and
the entire band of the 6th Cavalry had arrived. My father
never swore, but I fear he did that night, and the next morn-
ing, before going to court, he said to me, " Mind, if that un-
fortunate woman is hanged it will be the fault of you and your
infernal serenaders. I am worn out this morning ! " But his
logic and eloquence prevailed, and the woman got her
freedom.

He never lost but one murder case. A negro in Washington
cut off his wife's head with a cleaver while she slept, and my
father defended him, but the negro was hanged. This broke
my father's record, and he felt dreadfully about it. His

64 I MYSELF

speech in defence of the man was so fine that the papers said
he was an old slave of Judge Paschal's with a claim upon
him of long service — but this was not true. Every client
of my father made a claim upon him to do his best, and he
did it. He was a born lawyer, with an actual knowledge of
the law, to which he added thorough conscientious work, and
when occasion demanded he was passionately eloquent — and
above all he never wavered, and was as true to the interests
of his clients as they were themselves.

Business called my father north, and there he met and
married my stepmother — a handsome woman of many
accomplishments, and as she preferred living in Washington,
that delightful capital became our home. My father's
marriage was very happy. He was exceedingly proud of his
wife, she was devoted to his interests and was of the greatest
help to him in his work, " The Digest of the Laws of Texas,"
and his " Annotated Constitution of the United States." He
taught her how to make an index, and she was remarkably
quick at the work. She was a most accomplished pianist,
reading music at sight as other people read books, and,
although my father never cared for music, he used to love to
hear her play. She had faultless taste in the arrangement of
a house, and she was a genius in dress. This delighted me,
as I put myself completely in her hands, and wore with
pleasure and without argument, the clothes she chose for me.

CHAPTER XIII

THE UGLY DUCKLING

" Oh, the wild joy of living, the leaping from rock to rock,
The strong bending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver shock
Of the plunge in a pool's living water."

BROWNING

MY father was married in the spring, and I went for
the summer to Elkton, Maryland, to visit Mrs
Young, a lady for whom I always had a devoted
friendship, and although she was sixty and I sixteen we
were perfectly congenial. For one thing she was beautiful,
and I adore beauty. Her eyes were large, soft and brown,
and her hair, snow white, was worn in soft puffs on either side
of her face, and she was exquisitely, daintily neat and
clean. Her housekeeping was of the sort that has gone out
of fashion — the old-fashioned Southern housekeeping. The
cooking was renowned throughout the county, and the boy in
the kitchen who cleaned the pots and pans was required to
leave them in such a state of perfection that a cambric pocket-
handkerchief could be passed around the inside of one and
returned to the owner unsoiled. And, what is more, I have
seen it done many a time. The piece de resistance of the
house was peach ice-cream. The ripe peaches were mashed
and put in pure sweetened cream, flavoured by Mrs Young,
and Charley the pot-boy was set to work to freeze it, and in the
evening at eight or nine o'clock the neighbours came in to
partake of this celebrated dish. Many notable housekeepers
tried, but no one ever succeeded in attaining the perfection of
Mrs Young's icecream. The Misses Partridge, two aristo-
cratic maiden ladies, refined, exclusive and poor, made

C 65

66 I MYSELF

wonderful small cakes, really the most marvellous cakes I
have ever eaten, superior even to those made in Austria,
the land of cakes — and occasionally they sent Mrs Young
a panful of these envied delicacies, but the secret of just
how to make them they would never divulge. They said
they would leave the receipt to the little town of Elkton
when they died. I wonder if they did !

I returned to Washington in the autumn, and that winter
was to be my debut as a young lady. My first appearance
was made at an army and navy German (a cotillon). My
partner, a Mr Mark Severance from Boston, was singularly
handsome, but not a good dancer. I would have preferred
him plain and light of foot, for I adored dancing. Mother
dressed me in white, with scarlet geraniums in my hair and on
my dress, and she and I and Dan Gillette, a friend who did
not dance, met Mr Severance at nine o'clock.

People danced in those days, and the German began early.
I was feeling anxious about my success. After all, I was very
young, and a perfect stranger in Washington. There were
other girls, older, more experienced, prettier, better dressed ;
maybe I would have no partners, or very few. Mr Sever-
ance was agreeable, but I was not at a cotillon to sit still.
Presently Captain Mason, the smart young naval officer who
was leading the German, clapped his hands for the first figure.
We were all expectancy. My heart was beating like a trip
hammer. He looked around the pretty circle, and probably
the eagerness of my face attracted him. Anyhow I was the
girl he selected for the first figure, and after that I was never
off the floor. My feet ached at two o'clock, but still I danced
on, covered with favours from head to foot, iridescent in
tarlatan scarfs of various colours, laden with bouquets, but
blissful and tireless.

That was the happiest night of my life, because my success
was quite unexpected. The next day, by some freak of
fortune and caprice of journalism, the Washington papers
announced that I was to be the belle of the season, that " since
Miss Harriet Lane's reign at the White House the belleship
of Washington has been divided among numberless pretty

THE UGLY DUCKLING 67

girls, but this year the honour, an undivided one, is to be
given to a new debutante, Miss Betty Paschal." Of course,
this was grossly inaccurate and mere newspaper exaggera-
tion. Nevertheless, life began to take on very rosy hues,
and I had a wonderful sense of the " wild joy of living." It
was almost the story of the Ugly Duckling over again. It
had never occurred to me that I had the least claim to good
looks, and being an absent-minded, unanalytical creature, with
more than my share of humility, I had not considered myself
at all in those days except to be very grateful and apprecia-
tive of the affection which was given me. And suddenly to
burst upon the world as a pretty girl was a wonderful and
unbelievable surprise. As a matter of fact, my claim to good
looks was of the slightest ; it was only freshness and vivacity
— no one knew that better than myself — and whenever people
flattered me it gave me the sensation of having warped their
real taste and judgment. My own ideal of beauty is so high,
and so instinctive, that my eye detects at once every fault
in all physical or mechanical misconstruction. I adore
beauty in life or art. A beautiful man, woman, child, flower,
star, sea, mountain, sunset or sunrise, a picture, or mosaic, or
enamel, or tapestry, or statue, or carving, or gem — all these
things have given me indescribable pleasure, and I knew that
my face was much too irregular for beauty. There is so
much that is lovely in the world to look at if one has eyes to
see : it has been my pageant. Thank heaven always for
that inestimable boon, sight. Of all my senses my eyes
have given me the keenest pleasure — the beautiful things
they have visually photographed, priceless, unattainable
pictures all over Europe, and statues and lovely people and
beautiful faces are by every detail of an accurate remem-
brance mine. Among the pictures one I particularly love is
in Munich, by Bocklin. A midsummer azure sky of a trans-
parent sapphire blue, with a full, warm, lazy sea breaking into
frothy white waves, and floating up with and upon the curling
water, and so much a part of it that at first they are un-
noticeable, strange, glad, half-human, but wholly possible
sea-creatures.

68 I MYSELF

My first winter in Washington, a lost vision now, was
almost too good to be true.

" And the spray from the fountain of youth that clings
In May's first dew to her whispering wings,
These are the gifts that our lady brings

To the land where the dreams come true."

" The spray from the fountain of youth that clings in May's
first dew " was surely my right at sixteen — and besides that, a
rare happiness was mine : an absolutely perfect, unconscious
innocence. A complete want of curiosity, and an intense
interest in the moment, had kept my mind from inquiring
into material things, and so far as the complications of life
and evil were concerned I was a child — a radiant, believing,
vivacious, completely happy, healthy-minded, confident,
dancing child. In those far-off, more friendly days in
Washington, dancing was the principal amusement, and
indeed the constant amusement for the young. There was
either a ball or a dance every night, and at the large houses
a matinee every afternoon, where you threw off your wraps
and danced in your hat from three until six ; and at Anna-
polis what were called morning Germans were very usual. So
I danced in the morning, I danced in the afternoon and I
danced in the evening.

At first mother, who was so interested and busy in pro-
viding me with pretty (but simple) clothes, gave me tulle
dresses and silk shoes, but these were soon danced to ribbons.
Then I wore silk muslins and kid shoes. I remember for the
Annapolis ball three young officers had asked me as a partner
for the German, and I said yes to all of them — so, armed
with bouquets, they all accompanied me, and with mother
and my father we went to Annapolis. In those days it
was the custom to carry all your bouquets, or, anyhow, all you
could manage. There was the fourth bouquet waiting at the
hotel for me, so with my arms full of flowers, and my three
partners, I entered the ball-room and began the German.
My poor father (for mother it was not so bad, as she was still

THE UGLY DUCKLING 69

young and attractive, and danced herself) had to sit from nine
o'clock until five in the morning, and, almost unbelievable
now, another German was organized at ten o'clock the next
morning at the hotel, and reinforced with bouillon and biscuits
we danced steadily until two o'clock. In the afternoon we
returned to Washington, and that night there was another
ball, where I really went to sleep between the dances, but
danced all night nevertheless. I was absolutely tireless, and
could dance longer than anybody except one of the most
enduring and best dancers we had — Dick Evans, a tall, good-
looking, athletic man, who was always in urgent demand for
every occasion. We must have danced some thousands of
miles together that winter, but we never danced into each
other's affections, though the families were old friends and
were, like ourselves, Texas people, and Dick was a favourite of
my father's. Mrs Stevenson, then Tilly Evans, was one of the
sisters — she is now a distinguished scientific woman, great in
Indian lore, customs and languages. I do not remember
her in the old days as a dancer, but she was always a charm-
ing, interesting girl. Betty Evans, now Mrs Kellogg, another
sister of Dick's and of fighting Bob's — Admiral Evans — was a
perfect fairy on her feet, which were celebrated for their
minute size.

After the Annapolis ball, one of the cabinet ladies gave a
calico ball, the rule being that any costume was permissible
if made of cotton material only. Mother, who was a queen of
taste, sent me forth like a figure on a fan. A pale blue
cambric petticoat, a Watteau overdress, much puffed on the
hips, with a sharply pointed square-necked bodice, elbow
sleeves and lace ruffles. The design of the sateen was a
repetition of groups of shepherds and shepherdesses, sur-
rounded by wreaths of roses. My shoes were black, with big
paste buckles, and the black velvet on my neck and around
my wrists was fastened with antique paste clasps. With
extreme youth, a brilliant colour, black eyebrows, and the
freckles discreetly dimmed with powder, I looked my best
that night, and Mr Corcoran, who said he had not danced for
five and twenty years, gaily stepped through a quadrille

70 I MYSELF

with me. He was a very handsome, sympathetic old gentle-
man, and his snow-white hair, flashing black eyes and
regular features gave him a most distinguished appearance.

With dancing and flowers, flowers in abundance, baskets
and bouquets — sometimes a pyramid four feet high — and
laughter, and joy, the winter wore away. At the close of the
season an event happened that decided my future. Mrs
Sheppard gave a fancy ball. Her husband, Governor
Sheppard, was the Governor of the District of Columbia, and
was making and planning Washington into the beautiful
city it is now. The Sheppards had a splendid house, and she
was an ideal hostess ; very handsome and graceful and
gracious — people flocked to her house, and on this occasion
even the men did her bidding and all wore fancy dress.
There were Shakespeares and Napoleons and Raphaels and
Walter Raleighs and George Washingtons and Mexicans
and troubadours. My escort was the sweetest possible
Mephistopheles. Mother, who was dark, looked charming as
a Spanish lady, all black lace and gold bobs, and a high gold
comb. The hostess was a Venetian lady, in a long-trained
gown of mauve and pink and gold, with flowing sleeves and
ropes of pearls. My costume represented, of all things, the
moon ; feeling as I did at the time, the wonder is that it did
not represent the whole solar system.

But even at that particular moment Fate with a birch rod
was waiting to administer severe correction and make me pay
for all my triumphs. But for that night I shone resplendent.
My dress was of amethyst-blue satin strewn with stars ; it
was looped up at one side by a round, pink-cheeked, silvered
full moon. The bodice was brilliant with stars, and a silvered
crescent slanted down one side of it. In my yellow flowing
wig also glittered stars, and a crescent with the points curved
up was fastened to a diadem resting on my hair. Moonshine,
as usual, was popular, and only at half-past five o'clock did
the moon sink to rest.

Among the many dancers at the ball was an extra-
ordinarily handsome young Sir Walter Raleigh in black and
silver. He was watching the dancers when Governor

THE UGLY DUCKLING 71

Sheppard asked if he was star gazing. " No," he said, " I'm
contemplating the moon, and I'm going to be the first man in
the world to marry her," pointing in my direction.

" Do you," said Governor Sheppard, " happen to know

her?"

" No," said Sir Walter, " nevertheless, I shall marry her.
And he did, the following winter.

CHAPTER XIV

THE WORLD'S DIVINEST LOVE

" God cannot be everywhere, so He made mothers." — Egyptian Proverb

MY observation and experience in life convince me
that certainly God can trust, with very little
direction, a good mother to do His work. Men
believe the progress of humanity to be due to their energy,
but the maternal instinct is the most powerful lever in the
world. Through it children are born, loved and cared for
even though they bring disgrace. There is no man who
understands the maternal instinct so well as Barrie. In his
play of " The Wedding Guest " he made a powerful plea for
all mothers, even the unwedded mother, but somehow it
failed. Perhaps he was not bold enough. At any rate his
dormant meaning was that maternity in any form dignifies
and ennobles — and with a true mother it must do so. There
is a scene between the old maid aunt, who in her heart of
hearts had longed for children, and the artists' model, who
was the mother of the child in question. The aunt is prim,
and, even while loving children, thinks it a condescension to
offer to adopt the baby — the illegitimate child of her nephew
—but when she has made her offer the mother rises in her
wrath and says, " Go, you childless woman — go ! " That
is her reproach — the impossibility of a woman to understand
who has not borne children.

There are many women, however, who have never been
physical mothers, to whom Nature has given the mother's
heart. They are the sisters of charity who care for the aged,
and bring up and love the nameless foundling. There was a
nun in New York, a famous mendicant, courageous and plucky

THE WORLD'S DIVINEST LOVE 73

in getting money for her convent, and when she died there
were eighteen hundred orphaned .children under her roof.
What a great mother's heart beat in her breast ! There must
have been many little cherubs to welcome her directly to
Heaven, for surely when she left this world she was purged of
sin. The women who delight in nursing the sick are mothers.
The Salvation Army women who give hope to the fallen and
the criminal are mothers. The founders of convents are
mothers ; and luckily for the women of fashion many a
nurse or a governess is an ideal mother — tireless, self-
sacrificing and loving. How often have I seen in the South
an old maid sister, or aunt, mothering a whole set of fledglings,
and giving up her whole life to the service of another woman's
children, but hers by right of love . These self -elected mothers
are the most unselfish of all the race. Maternity is so
beautiful, so nearly divine, that in creating humankind it
seems to me an infinite pity not to have made all women
mothers at thirty, just as a rose-tree bursts into blossom.
Then the woman's heart, filled by this nearly divine love,
would have opened to a greater understanding of humanity.
And it is not only the love for her own child that so opens
the heart of a woman. This God-given instinct makes her
a universal mother. Catholics understand this in looking
upon the mother of God as the mother of all the world. And
through motherhood a new interest arises in all children, and
the woman is infinitely more tender and pitiful to sorrow and
trouble. It is mother love which creates understanding of
both sin and sorrow, and makes forgiveness possible.

There was an eminent judge in a certain town in America
who had an only son, who was apparently a naturally de-
praved blackguard, but he looked as unlike the accepted idea
of one as possible. Clear, brown, frank eyes met yours in an
honest, straightforward way. There were dimples in his
cheeks and chin, while a constant laugh displayed strong white
teeth. He had cordial, engaging manners, a quick intelligence
and great ability. His wife was a beauty, a pocket Venus,
and their one child, a little girl who had a touch of genius,
always reminded me of that adorable child, Marjorie Fleming,

74 I MYSELF

Sir Walter Scott's friend, who recorded in her diary that " the
most devilish thing is 8 times 8, and 7 times 7 is what nature
itself can't endure."

But all these advantages did not produce the smallest
effect on this hard, bad nature. A black-hearted villain
can laugh quite as lightly and as heartily as the best of good
fellows. This man lied and drank, and cheated at cards,
and lost caste, and finally forged his father's name. To save
him from prison, the father sold what property he had,
mortgaged his house, resigned his judgeship, and retired with
his wife and daughters to the country. The son was banished
and his name was never to be mentioned. Of course he went
from bad to worse, and finally stole the watch of a woman of
ill repute, was arrested and put into prison. Then the
divine protecting love of the mother asserted itself, and Mrs
N. came to New York, where I was living. She arrived late
in the evening and said, " Betty, I know you'll take me in and
help Bobby." Then she burst into uncontrollable weeping.

We talked until two in the morning, and when I went to
bed I heard her wearily walking in her room the whole night
through ; at dawn I went to her and she said : " His father
and the girls would be so angry if they knew I had come.
It isn't the Bobby of now that I want so much to save, it's
the baby who once lay on my breast. It's the chubby child
of four, so strong and so affectionate — why, he was the most
loving of all my children ! And though he is in gaol I love
him still — I am his mother."

We went together to the prison, and she did not utter one
reproach, but gave him money, and employed a well-known
attorney to defend him. And he got off with a light sentence.
Maybe he did better afterwards — I never heard of him again.
Truly God cannot be everywhere, so He made mothers. I
was very young when my baby's cry flooded my heart with
a warm love, an anxious love, an undying love, quite unlike
anything I had ever experienced. " Is it a boy ? " I asked
eagerly. I wanted a boy and Dr Reilly laughed and said to
the nurse, " He looks like a boy, doesn't he, Anne ? " And
when he was cradled in my arms, in all my life that was the

IN THE DAYS OF MY YOUTH

A DEBUTANTE

THE WORLD'S DIVINEST LOVE 75

very happiest moment. It must be a terrible, an unspeak-
able grief to lay a baby in his little white muslin shroud in
the earth — but rather than never to have been a mother at
all I would have undergone this bitter experience.

When my baby was about eighteen months old we had a
very hot summer in Washington, and he was taken suddenly
ill with that dread disease from which children suffer in
America — cholera inf antum — and at a moment's notice we
went to a farm in the country. How near death he was ;
how wasted away to a little pale skeleton, and eaten with
fever and nearly unconscious ! Neither night nor day did
I leave him, and except for dozing at his bedside never
felt the least need of sleep. Finally the weather became
a little cooler, and the doctor said I might carry him about
the garden on a pillow. He had not as yet taken the least
notice of anything, but as I walked under the trees in a
meadow I passed by an old white horse who lifted up his
head from the grass, and suddenly the child smiled, and put
up a poor little thin hand to stroke the animal's nose. I sat
down at the horse's feet, and had a good happy cry, for I
felt my baby was going to get well. From the farmhouse
we went to the mountains in Virginia and joined my friends,
Harriet and Henry Morgan. Toodie was quite well then,
and could toddle around, and insist upon his own way, which
Franzie Morgan and his other older playmates willingly
gave him. Franzie was one of those children, so beautiful,
appealing, intelligent, gentle and obedient, that one has an
instinctive feeling that it is impossible they can grow up to
selfishness and evil. Although too young to have a com-
prehension of what adverse criticism of a man meant, if he
heard it he lifted his noble head from his toys and said with
a heavenly smile, " But he's good, he's good." He had
given eight years of pure happiness to his mother when, in
her own language, " he went away to the beautiful country."
The wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and a clear, intense,
complete faith in a Hereafter has been given to Harriet
Morgan. She is as sure of the reality of another life as I am
of the reality of this one. The utter unselfishness of her

76 I MYSELF

grief for her one ewe lamb went to the very core of my
heart. Indeed, the unselfishness of her whole life, which she
gave up entirely to comfort the sick and lift up the weak-
hearted, kept her from being a famous woman, for she was
gifted with a perfectly original, humorous and, at the same
time, poetical mind. The veriest prose she translated into
poetry. The most sordid scandal she covered up with a soft
veil of heavenly charity. And hers was the merriest,
gayest, sunniest, most hopeful nature I ever saw ; no
circumstances daunted her optimism, or her belief in the
steady improvement and progress of the world. " From
hatred and malice, Good Lord deliver us ! " were words not
written for her. Nothing approaching those qualities was
known to her tender heart. She had entered a purified
intellectual atmosphere and left all the meannesses of life
down below. Franzie had given her the play-name of
" Rosy Pink/' which suited her to perfection ; his father,
Henry Morgan, was " Tom," and he was " Jack O'Nory."

The clouds were beginning to darken my horizon at this
time, and those three dear ones, Rosy Pink, and Tom, and
Jack O'Nory, were my constant friends and playmates, my
refuge from all that was unhappy and disquieting. But
Franzie never grew up, and his death only added to the un-
selfishness of his mother. Her letters were touchingly tender
and resigned, though the light of her life had gone out :

" 1015 L. STREET,
" WASHINGTON, Thursday.

" ELIZABESS DEAR, — Oh, the old-fashioned name. ' Eliza-
bess ' he called it. How I thank you for the dear loving
letter ; with all the kind letters that came from those who
loved little Babio Mow, little Jack, little Franzie, I missed
greatly yours, and Will went round twice to N. Street to ask
if you were still in Virginia. On the I2th August Will wrote
to you at Berkley Springs and I knew you had never received
the letter or you would have written to your poor Hallie, one
of your ' wedding guests,' who is walking about in the

THE WORLD'S DIVINEST LOVE 77

world whose sun is set, while the other is full of gladness in
the beautiful country. He had been so well this summer,
so good, so beautiful, so bright, that I have sometimes
thought it was wrong not to take him among his people
because he was so worthy of admiration, and then we thought
a simple life was the most healthy for him body and spirit.
For one week after he was taken ill we fancied he had only
a common ulcerated sore throat, and the new homoeopathic
doctor in the country said he was not really ill. He was
downstairs on the sofa, sometimes walking about, and some-
times singing, but sleeping a good deal. On the sixth day
Tom brought out a doctor from the city and the next morning
we all came into the town. From that time, dear, we began
to trouble our little one greatly, trying to make him well,
but he only stayed with us one week longer, lovely and
loving till he left us, and Tom and I are desolate. It was
diphtheria, but we have to thank the Merciful Father that the
suffering of that terrible disease was spared to us and him,
and that his little lovely noble face looked beautiful through
all. I do not think we are rebellious, Elizabess dear, I
believe that our whole hearts are turned towards that bliss-
ful day of meeting again, but the road we are travelling is
very desolate and we are so lonely for our little one. Tom
read your letter with the tears streaming. He says, ' Oh,
such a kind, dear letter. She has a good loving heart/

" Oh, Elizabeth, what can we do ? I cannot write any
more to-day. Kiss darling little Toodie for me.

" Thank you for your love and prayers. I hope you will
come soon to us. Your loving HALLIE

" Do you remember my darling's name for me, his name,
Rosy Pink, dear, dear name !

" Tom and Rosy send you love and thanks. Will is in New
York. In our time of trouble he was father and mother and
brother to us and never left us."

A beneficent providence has left me Tom and Rosy Pink.
Tom and Rosy, like myself, are older now, and when I go

78 I MYSELF

back to Washington, which is through many associations
so dear to me, by taking a train and travelling a little way in
the country I arrive at Rose Garden, where I have passed
so many happy days. They sold it once, and then Rosy
cried all night, and the next day Tom bought it back again,
by giving the owner (who vowed he loved it so, although he
had only owned it one day, he couldn't part with it) an extra
five hundred dollars more than he had paid for it. Tom and
Rosy are not good business people — every one has profited
by them. I have worn Rosy's pearl earrings for thirty
years, and by this time she has given away all her pretty
things, but she has still love, and enthusiasm and apprecia-
tion, and hospitality to give to those who ask it — this truest
and best and sweetest of all the women in my human garden
of friends.

CHAPTER XV

MY FIRST EMPLOYMENT

Work is the salvation of a tried and restless soul.

WHEN my father's health began to fail, and we with
others were dependent upon him, without con-
sulting anybody I went to the President of the
United States, General Grant then, and asked him to give
me employment. Diplomacy is all very well, but I believe
in going to the first person in power when a favour is wanted,
and stating quite frankly your necessity, Many people
love go-betweens ; I always do without them and am my
own go-between — it saves much trouble and misunder-
standing.

General Grant had gone out of his way to be polite to me
as a girl on my first appearance at a White House reception,
and had said something to my father about me which had
pleased him greatly. And my liking for him was strong and
instinctive ; he was so quiet, with steady, kind eyes, a deep,
agreeable voice, and gave an instant impression of strength
and manliness. I talked to him freely, and he said there
was some work which could be given me in the War Office
among the archives, which were then in p|ocess of being
sorted, indexed and made into books. His rugged face
softened, and he added, " Perhaps it will be as well for you
to have your work at home, you are really too young to go
to an office. I'll speak to our new Secretary for War and
see what can be done."

Don Cameron had just been made Secretary for War, and
he was not at all inclined to send the MSS. to me and to make
an exception in my case. But of course General Grant had

8o I MYSELF

his way, and I worked at home on the archives, while Toodie
by my side careered back and forth on a fine rocking horse
covered with real horseskin and with the flaring nostrils of
a racehorse, a tribute of affection to him from a wealthy
friend in New York. Subsequently I went to the War Office
for a short time, and joined the ladies there who were doing
the same work. It was a very pleasant occupation. We
arrived at nine (or for me thereabouts) o'clock in the morn-
ing, and left the office at four, and I made two friendships
which have been of lifelong duration.

My dear father was much opposed to my doing anything
at all, and himself offered to substitute my salary, but I
have always loved work — it is the greatest aid to happiness,
to steadiness of nerve, to good judgment and sanity, in the
whole world. I only hope that I shall die in harness, for
idleness to me is in my changeful life self-introspection and
grief. If only I had done this at that time, and not done
that at another time, life might be different — but all
repining is so useless and so weak. It is difficult, with
insomnia ever at my door, and unstrung nerves, to master
and dismiss thought, but these words of John Trotwood
Moore, that industrious and delightful writer of the South,
have been of infinite help and comfort to me :

1 . Throw off the curbs of thy past !

2. Fools cling to their folly, and the witless to the beaten highway.

But be thou wise to seek the new road that leadeth to the life
anew. Throw off the curbs of thy past.

3. Grieve -not over things agone. Shed not tears for past errors.

Let the penance of thy past shrive the dead of thy past and
be thou the High Priest of thine own future. Throw off the
curbs of thy past !

Wise is he who garnereth honey from the hornets' nest, and worthy
of praise who followeth the sting of bees to the bee tree. Throw
off the curbs of thy past.

Forget thou wert ever wronged ; remember not that thou wert ill-
used ; think not of the days of thy scorning, for by taking
thought of them they become part of thee, and having already
had their setting by thy fireside thou wantest them no longer
as the guests of thy soul. Throw off the curbs of thy past.

MY FIRST EMPLOYMENT 81

" Forget thou wert ever wronged." " Throw off the curbs
of thy past." The essence of a brave and gentle philosophy
is all there. It is curious this help of certain writers to certain
people. A most charming Florentine, the Marquesa Picco-
lellis, told me James Lane Allen's " The Choir Invisible "
had been to her in a time of mental conflict like the Balm of
Gilead. And this year in New York Mrs Waith gave me
Gustav Frenson's " Jorn Uhl," saying it had brought light
and peace into her life in her darkest hour. To me it is a
sad and depressing book, with only the magnificent descrip-
tion of the battle 'bf Gravelotte (which should be used as a
tract for peace) to illumine its relentless pages.

In the old days in Washington I used to see a good deal
of Walt Whitman. He was an early riser and often walked
with George Douglas — a brilliant young journalist then on
Don Piatt's fearless paper " The Capital/' — and myself to the
War Office. Walt Whitman was extraordinarily handsome
and definite in appearance. His skin was as pink and white
as a baby's. His hair, which he wore rather long, was like
spun silver, and his eyes were an intense burning blue. All
the spring and summer he was dressed from top to toe in
spotless white — a big' white slouch hat, white serge or linen
clothes, a soft white linen shirt left quite unbuttoned at the
throat, and white shoes. He was very merry and cheerful,
and often carried a roll of MS. and generally read bits of it in a
sonorous voice to us as we walked along. Douglas was one
of his warmest admirers, and was ever ready to listen. My
mind in those days was too undeveloped to appreciate the
manliness, virility and courage of his work. Now I under-
stand. The late John Bright, who was an appreciative lover
of poetry, considered Walt Whitman a great poet, and with
his fine elocution he loved to repeat whole pages from
" Leaves of Grass." Mr Labouchere once said to Bright,
" Most people have read Milton's ' Paradise Lost,' but I
wonder if anybody has read ' Paradise Regained,' " where-
upon Bright began with the first line and sonorously repeated
the greater part of it then and there ; Mr Labouchere
6

82 I MYSELF

frankly confesses this is his only experience of " Paradise
Regained."

One day Douglas and I went to Walt Whitman's room to
see him ; he had only one — he was very poor — and it was
as sparsely furnished as a monk's, but very clean and tidy,
and he made us fragrant Virginia coffee (he loved a little
cooking), and brought out some old-fashioned Southern
gingerbread for me, and then he read for quite an hour, with
an occasional glance at me. He saw I lacked enthusiasm,
but said it was the fault of youth and femininity, that he
had every hope of my growing up some day to the highest
leaf of grass, and I remember his voice, which was expressive
and full of colour, in these lines :

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking

Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle

Out of the ninth-month midnight,

Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving

his bed wander 'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot.
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they

were alive

Out from the patches of briers and blackberries
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me.

He said : '" You are from the land of mocking birds, you
know the musical shuttle of his throat all blown to roundness
by his thrilling melody." And Douglas begged him to read
" A Festival Song " :

" The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage march,
With lips of love, the hearts of lovers fill'd to the brim with love,
The red flushed cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of

friendly faces young and old,
To flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile."

It sounded really like a song from his lips ; and I wondered
why he had never been a bridegroom. Later, one delight-
ful first of May, he and Douglas, old black Sophy (Toodie's
nurse), Toodie and I went over in the boat from Washington
to Alexandria, spent the day in and around the old church

MY FIRST EMPLOYMENT 83

looking at the tombs and the English names. We made a
simple lunch of bread, fried chicken and milk on the porch
of a little hotel, and came home in the twilight, laden with
white lilac, and Toodie very tired and sleepy, but ecstati-
cally happy, holding in his hand a huge gingerbread horse
with raisin eyes, which Walt Whitman had sighted in the
window of a little shop, and, though it was an advertisement,
had bought it and triumphantly borne away.

Douglas was a budding poet too, and on the boat he read
these verses to Walt Whitman ; they were going into " The
Capital " the next Sunday, and Whitman clapped him on the
shoulder and said : " Good, good ! " with his eyes dancing
at me. " I reckon she understands that kind of poetry,
George." The MS. " Bessie " was given to me then, signed
by the author and initialled by Walt Whitman, and it is
with other relics of my youth locked in a box and labelled
" Boysie " for my grandson.

BESSIE

Where, my sweet enemy, lies your power

To move men's wills ?
You are a deadly perfumed flower

That shines and kills.
Your face is brighter than a diamond's splendour

Or any jewel ;
Swift eyed, yet sad, and seeming tender

Demure and cruel.

Thrown back in warm and mingling tresses

Your fragrant hair
Falls from a brow too chaste for love's caresses,

Too chaste and fair.
Your lips blush deeper than the roses,

Your murmuring words
Are better than the breath of violet closes

Or song of birds,

I watch you, love, my heart is trembling

To find you there.
So strangely self-same undissembling,

So fair, so fair !

84 I MYSELF

Calmer than death, a white-faced statue,

How can I move you ?
I love you dearly, wondering at you,

Hate you and love you !

Leave go my soul and let me hasten

Far from your spell.
These bonds you bind me with unfasten

While all is weU !
Why do you glisten with such beauty,

So strong and fateful,
When walking coldly down the paths of duty

You seem so hateful !

I think of treason, plot, defiance,

Your vivid presence
Comes on and holds me with a magic science

That never lessens.
You are so subtle, so magnetic,

I thrill and crave
Servile beneath you and ecstatic

Like a drugged slave.

Eyes swift like lodestars in clear winter weather,

Lids lashed and curled.
Oh, face more fair than worlds together

Than all the world.
Why will your glory ever so pursue me

With pleasant pain ?
Bright eyes that kill me with your burning through me

And quicken me again.

I ask not love — nor love's endearment

But only this ;
To kiss the hem of my lady's garment

With a soul's whole kiss.
To have you near me, waking, sleeping,

Living and dead,
To give my heart, sweetheart, into your keeping

And keep you in its stead.

Although Douglas was young enough to be Walt Whit-
man's grandson, Whitman outlived him many years, and
we wept together at the grave of our friend, who died in early
manhood too soon to fulfil the promise of his gifted youth.

CHAPTER XVI

LOVE MEANS SACRIFICE

MY vacation that year was spent with friends in
New York. I had always loved the theatre, and
everything connected with it, and I was sure,
without ever having acted even in a charade, that I could
act, and so I went to see A. M. Palmer, who was at that
time in the zenith of his success as a theatrical manager. I
told him what I wanted, and he asked me to walk across
the stage and repeat some bits of poetry, anything I could
remember. I was horribly frightened, and have always had
a memory like a sieve, but in some way I managed it, and
he then and there agreed to give me a three years' engagement
at twenty-five dollars a week, and to arrange elocution,
singing and fencing lessons for me.

I ventured to say : " Then you think I have some talent ? "

" I don't know about that," said Mr Palmer, " but you
have individuality, and some day some fellow will come along
and see it, and write a play you that will suit you, and then
you may make a big success. Now you have everything to
learn, and much hard work before you. Come to-morrow
morning and sign your contract."

The world had suddenly become a paradise to me, and
when I asked " When am I to begin work ? " " Next
week," Mr Palmer said.

It was midsummer, his excellent company was on tour,
but the Vokes were going to do a short season, and there
was a very small, unimportant part which could be assigned
to me. The next morning I signed my contract, and the
day after I returned to Washington.

My father's health was just beginning to fail ; he died
eighteen months later ; and when I showed him, with great

86 I MYSELF

pride and joy, my contract, he wept — the bitter tears of
weakness, sorrow and old age. He knew absolutely nothing
of the stage, but he considered it an abyss of wickedness and
vagabondage. He said that, much as he loved me, he would
rather see me dead than a " play actress." I called upon
mother, who was less prejudiced and had great influence
with him, to plead for me, but he was immovable, and
finally, after two days of misery for us all, I sat down and
wrote Mr Palmer a long letter, and he sent me a telegram :
" Very sorry. Quite understand. Am writing." And he
did write me such a kind letter to say that some good fortune
would attend my obedience ; but he was mistaken. " The
setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun/' I
loved my father, and made the supremest sacrifice of my
life for him, but I was not happy, for the great hope and
desire of all my life was dead — my sun had set. He did it
for the best, but it was a mistake on his part, and even on
mine to give way to him. It was necessary for me to make
my living, and I should have been allowed to choose the
work most congenial and best suited to me. We must all
live our own lives ; there are probably so many years before
us when our parents are gone that it is well for them to
recognize this in the beginning, and to let us individually
work out our own salvation. There is nothing sadder or
more depressing in life than the feeling of having missed one's
vocation — and it has always pursued me. In this respect
my father was supremely happy. He had chosen the pro-
fession of all others best suited to him. He loved the law,
he had a prodigious memory — his mind was like an en-
cyclopaedia of the statutes and the different cases which he
argued before the Supreme Court. It was scarcely necessary
for him to consult his well-stocked library. And he had an
innate love of bringing order out of chaos, and a bull-dog
tenacity of never letting go when he had once taken hold
that was unparalleled.

The remainder of that summer between us was a very
intimate one. We were alone ; mother and her baby, my dear
youngest brother (Sam Paschal), just the age of my little son,
had gone into the country, and my father and I read and

LOVE MEANS SACRIFICE 87

worked together, and sat up late at night with a jug of iced
water between us and a little fruit, discussing all sorts of
questions. We never mentioned the stage, but he was very
tender to me, for he knew I had made my supreme sacrifice
— and I was cheerful, for my motto has always been, " If you
do a thing at all do it thoroughly." Every sacrifice, great
or small, should be made bravely or not at all. I was never
more impressed by this than when Lady Q. told me about
the marriage of her eldest son. He was the favourite of
all her children — handsome, clever, generous, sympathetic
and affectionate, but lacking in common -sense (that rarest
of all the qualities), and he married a lady who had for a
number of years spent her evenings in the Alhambra and
was, alas, too well known to the jeunesse doree of London.
Sir Q., the father, was utterly disgusted, and said of course
they must cut the son, and his name must never be men-
tioned— and for a year there was silence. Then Lady Q.
said, " Q., I must see Bobby again. We must ask him and
his wife to visit us." Sir Q. said, " Impossible," and his
wife said, " No, it isn't." Sir Q. said, " That womaii—
how shall we receive her ? " Lady Q. looked at him with
her tender, faithful eyes, and said, " We will receive her
exactly like a daughter." And she said to me, " I did ; I
made no difference between her and my own children."
And she added, " She was very sweet in many ways, and she
has made me more charitable to every other woman with a
chequered past."

This is true generosity, not only to forgive, but to do it
nobly and entirely. There is indeed no use in doing any-
thing in a petty manner. A great psychological doctor says
there are thirty-six differences between a negro and a white
man — one of them is that the negro's leg is placed in the
middle of his foot, giving him as much foot behind as before.
In a crowd on the street in Washington a little darkie was
stepping on an old white-haired negro in the rear, when the
old man turned around and said, " Boy, git off my heel —
git intirely off." So if we are going to do anything in life,
we should do it with a whole heart, and " intirely," like
getting off the darkie's heel.

CHAPTER XVII

A NOBLE LIFE

" Death meant, to spurn the ground,
Soar to the sky — die well and you do that." BROWNING

THE year after we had spent the summer so happily
alone together, my father's health began to be
seriously affected, and a long and very dreadful
illness followed, but in all his terrible insomnia, and constant
pain, I never heard him say an impatient word. He was
far more distressed at giving trouble to the nurses, and to the
family, than on account of his own suffering, and even when
his mind began to be obscured he never forgot for a moment
his beautiful consideration, and his courtly manners. When
I would go into the room in the morning sometimes he would
look at me blankly, and say to the nurse : " Robert, give
this lady a chair. I am sorry that I cannot offer you a seat
myself, madam, but as you see I am ill. Will you have a
cup of tea ? " and then I would say to him : ' Oh, dearest,
don't you know me ? " And my voice never failed to call
him back, and he would sigh and say, " I thought, my
daughter, for a moment, you were a stranger ; and it does
distress me so, not to be able to give visitors a proper
welcome." Whenever I entered his room, my father had
risen and said to me : " Will you have this chair, my
daughter ? " And when I went out he opened the
door. His politeness was as natural to him as the breath
that he drew, and even when he suffered occasionally from
delirium during the last weeks of his life he was always
courteous and always considerate. And when he died my
careless youth ended. Life was never the same to me again.

83 °

A NOBLE LIFE 89

While he lived my worries, no matter what they were, seemed
to drop naturally on his broad shoulders and he was only too
glad that they should. There was never anyone like him.
He was wise, and just, and merciful, and courageous, and
charitable, and true, and self-sacrificing, and pure in mind
and heart. The exalted and humane religion of his life
gave him as nearly divine a spirit as mortal can possess. He
believed that at the eleventh hour, by a Christ-like inspira-
tion, the wickedest sinner could turn about, repent, and be
the means of great good in the world. He believed that
the liars, hypocrites and thieves had a chance of becoming,
through a change of heart, repentant saints, and he believed
the Magdalens could all shrive their souls of uncleanness and
become pure once more. His outlook on all evil was that
of a forgiving and merciful and optimistic saint. I loved
him not only for his saintliness, but for himself, and I have
never ceased throughout my life for one moment to lament
his loss, and sorely to miss his absence.

After my father's death, at the meeting of the Washington
Bar, the Chief Justice Carter presiding, Mr Riddell said of
him in his memorial speech :

" Judge Paschal was quiet, of grave face and thoughtful
mien, but a word dispelled the seeming reserve, the features
lit with a smile, followed with pleasant words. He was a
man of the highest character, the frankest manners, of
warm impulses and temperament, full of a tender sensibility,
a true, noble child of the South, illustrating in character
and life what is best of her generous products. Nature
endowed him liberally : a life of pure morality, abstemious
habits, a rare power and will for persistent labour, these,
and his many years, made him that rare thing after all, a
very able and most accomplished lawyer. A lawyer, whom
every lawyer calls a lawyer, is in the main the result of
growth, to which much time, many years with care and much
culture are necessary. Not the care of the hothouse, nor
yet greatly the culture of the schools, or of philosophic
retirement, but that which is had in the free open atmo-
sphere of the Nisi Prius Courts, and in the never-ending

90 I MYSELF

mental contests, of strong, vigorous, sinewy minds, daily at
their best in the adjustment of the most interesting and
important affairs of individual man.

" Trained in this school, cultured in its ever varied law,
Judge Paschal was a lawyer — few men were ever more so — a
learned lawyer. This is about the highest praise lawyers
ever do or can award the leading men of their ranks. They
say an advocate's effort was ' lawyer like/ and in this they
bestow their most valued encomium. No men know better
the value of their fellows. No profession in the world is less
jealous of the fame of each other. They know the limits of
human excellence, and, save in exceptional instances, that
there is no great difference among really good lawyers. In
this sense Judge Paschal was really a great lawyer. Great
as they have anywhere. He was something more than a
mere lawyer. It has never taken the greatest human in-
tellect to make the greatest lawyer ; possibly the greatest mind
might miss that distinction. Judge Paschal was a man of
wide, liberal, enlightened views — the views of a Statesman.
He was a man of thought, of ideals, of high aspirations, and of
wide learning.

" I first met my friend here. We were not much alike — he
from the extreme South — I from the farthest North. He,
' raised ' amidst institutions of which the chief was slavery —
I, reared in the civilization of puritans. He was an exile from a
home and country in ruins ; I, with the disappointments which
all men meet, had survived the friends of my youth and early
manhood and was living on memory ; both were at a time of
life when men rarely form new attachments ; I know not what
drew us together. Our unlikeness may have helped the tie
which formed so silently that we may have been unconscious
of its strength till it was touched by death. This blow inten-
sifies the solitude of my life. I cast my eyes about to see how
lonely I stand. To my friend was given a clear steady hope
of the future ; he died with its glow on the opening pinions of
his spirit. We may not regret him. His career was com-
pleted. He lived and died a man : every inch, fibre, instinct,
was pure, manly, strong, brave, gentle, tender, loving. True

A NOBLE LIFE 91

to his generation, true to his kind, true to his country, true to
his God, true counsellor, true friend, true lover, true husband,
true father, what more can be said ? To the eager friend-
less youth I point the example of Paschal's early life. To
the timid, doubting, hesitating citizen in hours of peril and
darkness, I offer the example of his riper years. To the
lawyer, old or young, his whole career. His life was brave,
blameless. His country had his best exertions. He leaves
his name and memory to his children, the wealth of his
example, the lesson of his life, to all our children."

After my dear father was buried in the Rock Creek
Cemetery that I loved so well, Washington lost its charm for
me, and only of late years has my heart turned back to it
again.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE JOY OF GIVING

Many charities are but dreams.

Now and then a blessed dream comes true — a motherless child finds
a mother ; or a home is built for the homeless.

WHAT a beautiful everlasting monument Mr Corcoran
has given to the memory of his wife in the Louise
Home in Washington. Those poor ladies of
genteel lineage and former grandeur, who are unfitted to
work, and too proud to beg, are through his hospitality
rendered for the remainder of their lives free from care. If
Heaven ever gives me riches, my charities are all mapped out.
The first would be for governesses, those self-sacrificing
beings, who have been obliged to crush out individuality, and
subordinate themselves all their lives to other people. Two
thousand pounds annually, would support ten worthy women.
To each would be given her own little income, one hundred
pounds a year, to spend as she liked. There would be no
house with rules and regulations, but freedom at last — and
there is nothing so sweet in the whole world as freedom.
And for men, I should establish, in my father's dear name, a
Law School with a simple home attached, where poor young
men could become first-class lawyers, with a small sum of
money at the end to carry them to that big-hearted West in
America whose wide arms are encouragingly opened to the
stranger and new-comer.

My father, who was a sentimentalist, used to say that his
charity would be a bank of honour, where industrious young
men of twenty-one could borrow money to start themselves
in married life. He was a firm believer in marriage, and
above all in early marriages. He said if wild oats must be
sown, it was better after the children were born, for then they

THE JOY OF GIVING 93

would be healthy, and a comfort to the mother. But he was
always sanguine that an early marriage would deprive a
man of his oat sing appetite.

The happiest and m,ost satisfactory charity, of course, is
that which can be personally superintended. I know of such
a one. When last in New York I met Mr and Mrs Frank
Deems. They were married when he was nineteen and she
was fifteen, and they just happened to be two minds with but
a single thought — that of benefitting less fortunate humanity
than themselves. I should like to change their names from
Deems to Greatheart — it would suit them better. Mr Deems
is a genius in the railway line, receiving for his services a big
salary — and this is part of the way in which he so nobly
spends it. He selects twelve poor boys of ability and in-
vention, and educates them in whatever bent of life seems to
promise success. And he has adopted five others — one of
them, a poor delicate little child, had the offer of another
home after he had been mothered by Mrs Deems for a few
weeks, and when she told him he was going away to a
nice new mother and father she noticed the child seemed
intensely quiet, and said nothing. A little later she found
him sobbing convulsively in a room by himself, and when
she asked him what was the matter he proudly replied,
" Nothing/' And then he lost control of his little breaking
heart, and said, " I don't want a new mother — I want you for
my mother always," and he caught her closely around her
neck and cried ; and she cried, and of course he stayed, and
is now, after many years, a model, appreciative, and devoted
son. They are not childless people ; their only son, a
popular and successful doctor, sympathizes with his father's
philanthropic work.

We crossed in the " Cedric" together, and I never saw the
popularity of any two people made so manifest as that of the
Greatheart s. Their two state rooms were lined with roses.
Roses red, and roses white, roses pink, and roses yellow, gave
forth each their different fragrance, and jostled and crowded
each other in myriads. The floors were covered with large
and small baskets of fruit ; and here let me thank Mr Green

94 I MYSELF

and Mr Robinson, as their fruit and flowers were transferred
to my state rooms, cards and all. I hope the son by choice
had remembered his mother, for while she was in London we
went together and selected a beautiful carved gold ruby-set
ring for him. It was her first visit to England, and yet this
dear devoted Madame Greatheart, instead of seeing London
as she wished to do, spent the major portion of her time in
shopping for her children, and for her troop of friends, buying
for each and all some lovely souvenir. She is good to look at,
this generous lady : her healthy, handsome exterior, her sweet
eyes, and childlike smile, are indications of her warm and
tender heart. Like every natural woman, she loves pretty
clothes, jewels, laces, feathers and furbelows, but she can
always deny herself and put the vanities aside to give to
others.

Mr Greatheart has a large library of scrap books compiled
by himself. We talked and talked on the voyage, and when
we were for the moment silent, Madame Greatheart would
suggest poems of his liking to him, and with his splendid
memory, as robust as his physique, he amused us by the
hour. Does he remember, I wonder, how I wept over :

She was only a pup when I first picked her up,

One night in this town in a storm ;
But I mind that she cried like the nor'-easter sighed,

From my breast which was ragged but warm.

I'd been round the world, been battered and swirled,

In camps and in ships from a boy ;
But not one ever cared how my barque ever fared

When tossed in the storm like a toy.

I had no one to love — all I loved were above —

When I heard Lizy bark in the gale.
So I stooped and picked up the forsook little pup,

And for port with the outcast set sail.

'Twere a long time ago — ten or twelve year or so —

But we've loved and divided our hoard,
And she's been faithful as I, mate, will be by and bye,

If I'm but took up by the Lord.

THE JOY OF GIVING 95

When I come to his gate some wild night pretty late,

A castout who nobody knows,
P'raps he'll take me up, as I did the pup —

Now, maty, what do you suppose ?

Ah, that kind o' cheers and drives out the fears

I've had since the pup left my side.
She went out the same way we will all go some day —

She just licked my hand, then she died.

She were outcast, but true, and the Lord knows it too,

She deserves all up there we can win.
Now, if me and the pup at his gate, mate, fetch up,

Do you think, maty, he'll take us in ?

Rose Stahl is a valued friend of the Greathearts . They have
been to all her important first nights — twenty-nine " Chorus
Ladies " in all — and could not of course leave out London,
so they just packed, and came across with her in the " Cedric."
She, too, belongs to the Greatheart family by virtue of wisdom,
modesty and sympathy. It was my privilege, as the darkies
say, " to hope her up," for she was very doubtful and fearful
of a London audience, and that queer public who have refused
so many American successes, but I felt that the " Chorus
Lady " could not fail to appeal to and delight all English
people, and I boldly prophesied this again and again to Rose
Stahl, and my prophesy came true.

I am an American ever and always, in spite of my dear love
for England, and the first time I saw Rose Stahl in " The
Chorus Lady " was really a revelation to me, and also one of
the happiest nights of my life. In the first place I had not
been home in fifteen years, and it was hot, and I love the heat,
so I wore a thin grey muslin, and I love grey. Then I dined
with the Pages (the Thomas Nelsons) and I love the Pages, and
they gave me a real American dinner — fried chicken, green
corn, soft shell crabs, water melon and ice cream — and Charley
Bryan of my youth, now the Hon. C. F. Bryan, Minister
to Belgium and an agreeable diplomatist, whom I had not
seen since I danced with him in my girlhood, in his beautiful
mother's house in Washington — she was tall, pensive-looking,

96 I MYSELF

wore long curls at either side of her face, black velvet,
old lace, and fine jewels — joined us afterwards, and we
four went to the theatre to see Rose Stahl, who was
playing her great success of " The Chorus Lady." I had
never even heard of her, or the play, but from the moment
she appeared her incisive individuality gripped me, and she
was a revelation of naturalness, and the essence of humour.
The modern American slang was delightful to my ear,
and I understood it by instinct. What a description
Patricia O'Brian gives of the Chorus Girl's smile when she
is tired and downhearted ! " It's the smile that's hard.
Fancy standing with your foot pointing a quarter past six
and looking like the cat that's swallowed the canary ! "
I've very often seen that galvanized smile on the lips of sad
gay women, at the jolly Savoy Hotel suppers, and other de-
pressing gay places. Rose Stahl with her cameo-like features
looks like a younger Sarah Bernhardt, and she has, like her, a
beautiful golden voice — full, resonant, capable of many
variations, plaintive, gay, humorous, scornful, womanly, or
tender, and perfectly produced from a strong throat. She is
primarily an intellectual actress, and one of decided origin-
ality. Her comedy, like all true comedy, has tears at close
call. When I laughed the tears fell before I had finished. I
followed her every mood and movement, in perfect under-
standing, and I sighed with regret when the curtain came
down, and shut beloved Patricia O'Brien from my sight.
And I might have thought my admiration exaggerated owing
to the fortunate home coming, and the atmosphere surround-
ing me that particular night, but the next night I went with
another friend, good-looking, black-visaged John Savage, and
it was possible for me to regard the play less, and Rose Stahl
more, and she impressed me as a far greater actress than I
had at first thought her. When the other characters spoke —
Dan Mallory, Crawford, and her sister Norah — she listened as
intently, and with as swiftly changing an expression as if
it was reality and not make-believe. There was no smallest
detail slurred or wanting, and the whole performance
was that of a great character study by an inspired but

THE JOY OF GIVING 97

careful and sincere artist. It was my intention to
write and say how her performance had moved me, but
— procrastination — the impulse passed, and only after two
years we became acquainted, and the woman impressed
me even more than the artist. I have never known anyone
possessing greater individuality or one more free from the
weaknesses of the ordinary woman than Rose Stahl. She is
surprisingly free from vanity — she says laughingly, " My
mother says Rose has good teeth and a good disposition, but
she isn't pretty." And she is even without vanity of her
artistry, or of her wit, which is keen and trenchant — or of her
strong common-sense, which is so rare. And with all her
brilliant success she must have very many sad moments, for
her searching eyes look right through sham, falseness, pre-
tension, and deceit ; she sees life as it is, and people as they
are — not always a pleasant sight by any means. She herself
is sincere, unpretentious, straightforward, and courageous,
and yet the most feminine of women. Tenderly attached to
her family, fond of children and flowers, grateful for affection
and intuitive to a painful degree. Her father is a journalist,
and when she was a child he was poor and life was a struggle
with a big family to bring up and educate, and she noticed
when one of the children asked for a new pair of shoes his
already careworn face looked more anxious, so she resolved
to tread lightly on her shoes that they might last a long,
long time. Now Fortune showers gold upon her, and she
can buy a new pair of shoes every day if she likes, but she
treads lightly still, for fear of stepping on the susceptibilities
of those who are easily hurt. She has learned the most
difficult lesson of life for a woman — her eyes penetrate to the
root of evil, and seeing, she understands and forgives. She
leads from choice " the simple life," without falling from
grace — the life which is so much advocated and so little
followed. She eats no meat at all, and sparingly of other
food, drinks nothing but water, is reasonable and economical
in her dress, and sleeps the sleep of the just. She desires no
possessions except plenty of books, for she is a constant,
omnivorous and appreciative reader. She never goes out
7

98 I MYSELF

to suppers or dinners, and has no desire to be in evidence, or
for notoriety. Her success has not been attained by adver-
tisement, but by legitimate means — the hardest, most pains-
taking and intellectual work. She wrote me in answer to a
letter reproaching her for forgetfulness :

" No, dear, dear and beautiful Mascotte, I am not fickle —
only worn out and oh, so tired ! I am sailing to-morrow
on our ' Cedric ' and am hoping that the trip may bring me
some strength and rest. How I wish I might have gone to
Italy where you are and have a few quiet, restful weeks with
you. But I open in Boston in the middle of August and
that is why I must hurry away.

" As for the London season, I can only say with all my
heart and soul, ' God bless them — they have been far better
to me than I had ever dared to dream they might be ! ' And
I shall be waiting the opportunity to come back again.

" There is much I would like to say to you — but I hope
that we will meet soon. For your goodness to me I shall
always have an unbounded gratitude — and quite apart
from all your goodness to me, I love you very, very much. —
Auf Wiedersehn, ROSE "

And as she belongs in a measure to England for their
appreciation of her and will not rest until she returns to
reap fresh laurels, I give this letter, which was meant for
no eyes but mine, and I say to her, not " Auf Wiedersehn/'
but " Auf baldiges Wiedersehn."

CHAPTER XIX

AN UNQUIET GHOST

Let each man wheel with steady sway
Round the task that rules the day,

And do his best. GOETHE

UNTIL we lose them we never realize the stupendous
force of youth, health and hope. When I went to
New York to live — that great cormorant of a city
of noise, and din, and greed, and hardness, and struggle —
I had only fifty dollars in all the world, my little child
dependent upon me, and I do not suppose any creature on
earth was less equipped for a remorseless fight with the
world than myself.

In the first place, I was born and brought up in the South.
All my ancestors were Southern people, and their women
for generations had been protected, considered and loved,
and had never had to battle for themselves. And Nature
is meagre (unless to the Napoleons, Shakespeares, and
Gladstones, and those she lavishly endows) : in giving us one
thing she takes away another. I have what a friend of mine
calls " merciless logic," and for a woman my reasoning
powers are well developed, but I have no intuitive faculty
whatever. I know nothing about human nature, except by
a sequence of events, and a logical deduction. My first
impulse is to like everybody that I meet ; I have no instinct
of protecting myself from men or women who are either
false or untrustworthy. My judgment of people is of the
worst. But in spite of my many disillusionments and dis-
appointments in human nature, my inexhaustible well of

99

ioo I MYSELF

credulity and trustfulness can always be drawn upon, and
happily I rebound after each deception.

New York, of all places, with its cosmopolitan population
and its heartlessness, is the last place for an unprotected
woman of my temperament, and yet I had little to complain
of at that period of my life, for I was able to make warm and
valued friends there.

In the beginning I hoped to keep my little son, Toodie,
with me, and we went to live in a lodging-house in i4th
Street. I paid four dollars a week for a large bedroom,
and it served also as a sitting-room ; we went across the
street to a cheap boarding-house for our meals ; and doing
a little newspaper work and reading plays for A. M. Palmer
just kept body and soul together, but I was very young, and
hope loomed large before me.

The lodging-house was well furnished, exquisitely clean,
and I was quite comfortable there, when something
mysterious occurred which necessitated my finding other
rooms.

On going one afternoon to see a friend of mine who lived
a few doors away — a flower painter — she said to me : " You
have had a suicide in your house, haven't you ? "

Greatly surprised, I said, " No, I'm sure not — I have heard
nothing of it."

But she insisted that she had read a full account of it in
the papers, and when I went home I asked the housemaid
if she knew anything about it. She turned red and said>
Yes, — that a nephew of Jefferson Davis had shot himself a
week before. I then knew that he had occupied the room
next to mine. He was very unfortunate in business, and
it seemed that for weeks he had been making up his mind
to do the deed, for the housemaid told me that sometimes
she had found the pistol on the mantelpiece, sometimes on
the washing-stand, and sometimes on the dressing-table —
as if he had picked it up and re-considered his dire resolution
and had gone on fighting bitter Fate a little longer.

He, like myself, took his meals outside, and as he fre-
quently went away a few days on business, when his door

AN UNQUIET GHOST 101

was locked, nothing was thought of it, and when the suicide
was discovered he had been dead four or five days — and,
poor soul, unselfish to the last, he had taken his overcoat
and put it under his head, doubled it up as a pillow, and
managed in taking his life not to make the smallest bloodstain
on the bed or the carpet.

I remembered that I had often seen a sad, cavernous-eyed
man going up and down the stairs, and I had more than once
thought I would speak to him, he looked so melancholy
and despairing, but the convention of life kept me from
it — I was a young widow, and was then trying to con-
sider my dignity — but I have always regretted not having
put out a hand of fellowship and of sympathy to that pursued
and lonely creature. Convention is after all a most hateful
and unnecessary and sometimes cruel thing. The older I
grow and the more I see of life, the less sympathy I have
with it.

There is neither fear nor superstition in my composition,
and as I was getting a little more work I sent for the landlord
and told him that I would take the suicide's room as my
bedroom and turn my bedroom into a sitting-room. The
next day this arrangement was made.

The first night I slept in the room I was awakened by a
long sighing groan which seemed to be just at the side of
my bed. Curiously enough I was not in the least afraid —
I only hoped the noise would continue so that I might rouse
the servants and the landlord and his wife, and have them
listen to this strange portent, and understand that it was not
my imagination. The groans, however, continued, and I
awoke the two housemaids and a young army officer who
lodged on the same floor, and asked him to go downstairs
and request the landlord and his wife to come up to my
room. He did, and the landlord decided that it was either
a chimney-pot out of order whirling round and round, and
making an unearthly noise, or that next door the doctor, who
was a specialist for nervous diseases, had a patient who was
either very ill and suffering, or else a madman.

The groans never ceased, so the mattress was dragged off

102 I MYSELF

the bed and placed on the floor of my sitting-room, and
towards morning I dropped into a worried sleep.

Immediately after breakfast I went to see the doctor and
asked him if he had any patients. He said that no one lived
on the fourth floor of his house at all, as his family was very
small, consisting only of himself and his wife, who occupied
the second floor, and the servants had their bedrooms on
the third floor.

During the day we had a man to come and look at the
chimney-pots, but they were all in excellent order, so that
night I tried sleeping in the room again. About twelve
o'clock the groans re-commenced, and the same thing
happened the following night. Then I determined to move.
The landlord was exceedingly angry — he said that I had
taken the rooms for the winter, and threatened to sue me
for the rent, but I did move, and in a blinding snow storm
at that. I do not know whether I believe in supernatural
phenomena or not — I only relate what happened as an un-
pleasant, inconvenient and inexplicable experience.

Never in my life have I seen a harder woman than the
woman who kept this lodging-house. The unfortunate
being who committed suicide had lived in her house five or
six years, and her only thought was, that he should have
drowned himself in the East River, or gone to a hotel to
blow his brains out. And it seems to me of all lonely and
heart-breaking places in the world, without friends, New
York is the loneliest and the most relentless.

My little son seemed to realize my position at this time,
although I was always gay before him, and surely no mother
ever had a more devoted or a kinder protector. I used
sometimes to sit up writing until two and three o'clock in
the morning, and when I crept into bed, cold and tired, he
never failed to awake and put his thin little arm under my
neck and say to me, " Poor girl — poor girl ! You must be
so tired." He made friends very readily, and always had
plenty of toys and plenty of amusement, but I think he felt
the seriousness of life, nevertheless.

We used very often to go to Philadelphia and to

AN UNQUIET GHOST 103

Baltimore to visit friends there, and I remember admonish-
ing him not to talk to people in the cars, as frequently it was
only a subterfuge for some one to bore me with conversation,
and especially he was to recollect never to answer any
questions, no matter what they were. One day going to
Baltimore I noticed a man who had been talking to the
child observing me with a most peculiar expression. Not
impertinent, but certainly extremely curious, and rather
amused. When I got out of the train I said, " Toodie,
did that man ask you any questions ? "

He said, " Yes, he did, but I remembered what you told
me and I didn't answer him."

I said, " What did he ask you ? "

He said, " He asked me if you were my mother, and I told
him there were reasons why I couldn't tell him."

I have often wondered what description the man himself
gave of the interview.

After a few months, it became plain that a boarding-house
was no place to bring up a child, and so my one friend and
sweetheart had to go away to school. It was a perfectly
heart-breaking parting, both for him and for me. I took him
down to the nuns in Orange, New Jersey, and left him with
the heaviest heart in the world, and I could only stand it
two days in New York without going to see him again. I
asked him how he liked it, and he said it was dreadful, and
I said, " Well, there are lots of boys here who have left their
mothers," and his answer was, " Yes, they have, but I have
been talking to them and they are not so used to their
mothers and to their mother's friends, as I am to you. I am
so used to you that I don't think I can stay here without
running away."

This was in the early spring, and in the summer the nuns
let me come as a boarder, so that I could see him every day.

CHAPTER XX

MY BELOVED MARY

" Oh, those happy days, when we were miserable ! "

JUSTIN MCCARTHY

JUST before I went down to the convent Dr Mallory
came to see me and asked if I knew any place
where a lady could go who was in the very deepest
grief, and I recommended the convent as quiet and prettily
situated, and the nuns as being exceedingly sympathetic and
kind. I asked what the lady's grief was. He said, " Don't
laugh " — and then he told me hesitatingly that she had
lost a Pekinese Spaniel. I love animals as much as anybody
in the world, but hard work seems to give life its true per-
spective, and I must say that, in spite of his admonition, I
did laugh at her irreconcilable grief.

The lady went down to the convent a day or two in ad-
vance of myself. I discovered that she was one of the
friends of my girlhood, and the wife of a captain in the navy,
now a well-known admiral. She was dressed in deep mourn-
ing— a cashmere heavily trimmed in crepe, and a cr£pe hat
with a drooping veil. The dog during its illness had one of
the best physicians in New York and two trained nurses,
and after its death had been laid to rest under a carved
marble headstone reciting its virtues. The lady had told
an innocent sister that her grief was for a child — a Japanese
baby whom she had adopted. There is always something
of the eternal child in every nun, and this one was both
sympathetic and curious. She asked the lady the baby's
age, and whether it was a boy or a girl. The grief-stricken

MY BELOVED MARY 105

•mere adoptive said it was a girl, and when the sister asked
her if it had been baptized and she said " No," the nun was
shocked and grieved to think the adopted child would not
meet its mother in heaven.

The sister repeated this conversation to me, and said,
"It is such a curious thing that if she had wanted
to adopt an infant she should have adopted a yellow
Japanese baby, and of course her grief is mingled
with a terrible remorse that she neglected the child's
baptism."

I said, " Don't you worry about that baby. It was a
monster with a black snub nose, saucer eyes, and covered
all over with black and white hair."

The sister turned pale with horror and said, " How shock-
ing ! She adopted a hairy monster ! "

" Yes," I said, " she did, and, as you know, loved it
devotedly."

The sister tapped her forehead significantly, and after
this the convent was quite resigned to the death of the child,
and I never disclosed anything further. The poor lady is
dead long ago, and I hope buried, as she wished to be, by
her Japanese darling.

In the autumn I returned to New York and joined forces
with a friend from Virginia, and we went to live in a large
boarding-house which was comparatively comfortable. At
any rate we had each other, and I never knew a better friend
than Mary Agnew. She has the loyalty of a man combined
with the tenderness of a woman, and an unchangeableness
and intensity of affection that I have never seen equalled.
It is hard for us with our finite natures to understand every-
thing, but I have no thought in my mind, no high aspiration,
no sin, or sorrow, or joy, or hope, that my friend is not
capable of understanding, and, if necessary, of forgiving.
It is a wonderful thing to feel there is one being in the world
from whom you need have no slightest secret, and that
whatever you have said or done in your life will not lessen
the love which has been given to you in the fulness and
generosity of a truly noble soul — and neither years of separa-

106 I MYSELF

tion nor of divided interests have made the least difference
in our friendship.

We were truly in those days a mine of help and strength
to each other. I always dressed in mourning — not that I
was mourning always, but black was the cheapest and the
easiest dress, and in a sort of costume designed by myself,
which was something between that of a widow and a nurse.
It consisted of a perfectly plain black skirt and bodice, white
linen collar and cuffs, a small black close fitting bonnet, and
a long heavy black cloak. In this way even with my small
means I was enabled to look neat and clean, and for years,
with all my intense love of pretty things, I never went in a
shop or scarcely looked in a shop window.

Mary, with her generous, handsome presence, abundance
of hair and robust health, had rather the flamboyant taste
of the South in dress, and I remember one winter she econo-
mized and bought a most terrible bonnet. The whole of it
was made of huge pearl beads, and there were two or three
large white feathers nodding on the top. I really did feel
our friendship tremble in the balance with those waving
feathers, and finally I had to speak my mind, but in vain.
Mary's heart had gone out to that bonnet, and it was really
dearer than anything in the world to her except myself.
About this time the lady who kept the boarding-house had
made enough money to retire, and it was necessary for us
to find new quarters. Mary was occupied all day down
town at the post-office and left the moving to me, and one
or two old friends who used to take us to the theatre and
came very often to see us suggested my managing to lose
that pearl bonnet of Mary's in the moving. " Oh, I wouldn't
dare," I said — but somehow in spite of the care that I really did
give, that bonnet was lost. Mary always suspected me. She
said, " Elizabeth, you know you didn't like that bonnet, and
I have noticed that things of mine you particularly dislike
disappear. Now why ? You always lay it to a dishonest
chambermaid, but why should people who are dishonest
take my things that you set your face against ? " I acknow-
ledged the logic of this argument, but nevertheless my con-

MY BELOVED MARY 107

science was as clear as crystal about that pearl bonnet. I
have often wondered at its end. Luckily Mary was so hand-
some that it was impossible for her really to spoil her noble
appearance, but she did give its power of endurance continual
tests. Now she has had so much sorrow and such heart-
breaks that all the gay, youthful, gorgeous taste is gone,
and she dresses as quietly as a Quaker. Oh, dear me, as
Justin McCarthy says, " those happy, happy days when we
were miserable ! " for we had youth, and hope, and health,
and ambition, and dreams that never came true.

Desultory journalistic work in New York is perfectly
terrible, and I was kept continually on the rack, and finally
for a time I could get absolutely nothing to do. I had
knocked figuratively and literally at the door of every
editor's sanctum in New York, and I was in utter despair,
until poor David brought me luck.

Mary had a cousin whom she called " David " on account
of his tenderness and his charm, for that was not his real
name, and on telling him how worried I was he wrote me a
letter which made me cry my heart out, and sent me a cheque
for five hundred dollars. I could only return it, and tell him
that it was impossible for me to accept it even as a loan
because I saw no prospect of paying it back. I scarcely
knew him. It was such a wonderfully kind thing to
do ; and I got work that very day. Ah me, what a
tragic death he met with afterwards ! His wife had
been an invalid for some years, never leaving her room
or her couch, and he was young — not more than thirty-
two or thirty-three — full of vitality and a love of pleasure.
One night after a supper party he met a handsome woman
who belonged to the chorus of one of the theatres. He was
going to Albany, New York, for two or three days, and asked
her to accompany him. She went, and by some strange
turn of fate fell savagely in love with him. He thought it
was an experience that would last a day only, but for two
years this woman persecuted him until his life ceased to be
of any value whatever. He was a millionaire, and he gave
her £8000, but this only whetted her appetite for more money

io8 I MYSELF

and for a greater revenge. One day she went over to his
house and penetrated to the chamber of his poor little
invalid, and made such a scene that his wife was ill for weeks ;
but she understood, and forgave him with her whole heart.

Every morning when he left Brooklyn, where he lived, this
Jezebel waited, accompanied him to New York, abused him
all the way to his office, and often returned with him at night
as far as his own door, all the while making terrible threats.
He said to Mary he was sure that in the end this woman
would take his life, and Mary said, " If that is true, give her
£50,000 or £100,000 — your life is worth everything." He
was a man who had a host of poor relations in the South and
generously supported a number of them. He gave largely
to charity, and he had the tenderest and kindest heart I
have ever known, but the woman had made him hate her,
and he refused to give her another farthing — so one morning
on Broadway she came behind him and shot him several
times in the back. He staggered into a chemist's shop and
leaned on the marble counter with his life blood running
down his sleeves and over his gloves, and he died in a few
minutes. The woman was never tried as she fell ill in prison
and died pf pneumonia. Then the New York papers came
out and described this man as a leper, who had taken advan-
tage of the youth and innocence of a charming young girl,
and a fine story was made of his hardness and heartlessness
— but this is the inside truth of that unfortunate affair.
Poor David, with his generous soul, his chivalrous nature,
and his impossibility of doing a mean or ungentlemanly
thing, was killed by one of those harpies, born into the world
for the purpose of destruction. He paid for his sin with his
life. That was the end.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MAKING OF A JOURNALIST

" The soul grows by leaps and bounds, by throes and throbs. A
flash ! and glory stands revealed for which you have been groping
blindly through the years."

ABOUT this time A. M. Palmer produced the " Parisian
Romance " with Richard Mansfield as Baron Chevrial.
And he at once made himself and the play famous.
After all the critics had written about the play I sent an
article to " The New York World." Mr Hurlbert, who was then
the editor, published it, and luckily it aroused a little con-
troversy, and later on I received a short note from the editor
saying that he would like to see me — and then £ went on
" The World " at a weekly wage as an ordinary reporter. And
the work ! Mr Hurlbert never considered me any more than
if I had been a strong young man. I was sent at any time,
day or night, to this, that, and the other person for inter- \
views. I wrote a long series of articles called " Curious
Occupations," which necessitated my seeing half the crooks
of New York. And I climbed up factory stairs, went over
laundries, hospitals, shops, and manufactories of all kinds,
and wrote and wrote about working women and every sort
of subject until I had writer's cramp — and I have never
entirely escaped from it since.

At the same time I had much for which to thank Mr
Hurlbert. He was one of the people who should have been
a teacher. His father was, I believe, a professor of sorts in
the South. Mr Hurlbert himself had a lucid power of
explanation and a quick critical faculty which was unsur-
passed. He was a hard master, but a most profitable and

109

no I MYSELF

inspiring one. He would cast his eye down a column of
copy, take a blue pencil and run ruthlessly through two-
thirds of it, and say, " This is all nonsense. Now I'll give
you the names of a dozen books to read so that you will see
why." And quick as lightning he jotted down the names
of the books, and off I went to a library to get them. Now
this was most kind, as he was a busy man and a most
selfish one, but while I worked under him I felt my mind
open exactly as if it had been a bud blossoming into flower,
so helpful and so stimulating was his influence. He was at
once a ruthless critic and also an encouraging, inspiring one.
And he was always optimistic and illuminating, and I never
knew anyone who possessed such a fund of knowledge upon
every conceivable subject. He was a living, enthusiastic,
joyous, intensely interesting encyclopaedia. I remember one
dazzling evening hearing him give a complete history of
Peru, so romantic and entrancingly interesting that a
publisher present, with a pencil and half sheet of paper
drew up then and there a contract for a book. And from
Peru he transported us to Mexico, and opened up mines of
gold and silver, and finally the evening closed with half a
dozen ghost stories that were magnificently tense and
thrilling. As a conversationalist Mr Hurlbert was unsur-
passed, as a writer he should have left an immortal name.
He was unhappily indifferent, unmethodical, and lacked
concentration of purpose, but he possessed both brilliancy
and genius. My work was not confined to any one depart-
ment. He tried me at everything, as he said that in time
he would make me into a first-class journalist — and absent-
minded as I am, and even lacking in talent, if I had worked
long enough under him, so great was my diligence and so
anxious was I for success, even this would have come
to pass. I remember in a certain Sunday edition of " The
World" I had seven columns, and eight columns in another,
and I felt myself really advancing in my profession.
Then I was given by the Associated Press the description
of the Vanderbilt ball to do. It frightened me dreadfully,
for I really didn't know where or how to begin, but the happy

THE MAKING OF A JOURNALIST in

idea occurred to me of going to Richard Hunt, the architect
who built W. K. Vanderbilt's house in Fifth Avenue, and I
went. I was shown into his office, and he turned his very
clear, brilliant, intelligent, cold blue eyes on me and said,
rather curtly, " Well, what is it you want ? I am in a hurry
this morning/' And I said, " Mr Hunt, I am a struggling
journalist, and a bad one, but I have got to go on in the
profession because I have myself and my little boy to sup-
port, and I have only my pen to do it with. I don't know
a thing in the world about architecture, and I have been
given the Vanderbilt bah1 by the Associated Press to report.
Now, I ask you, as man to man, to give me an intelligent
description of the house — I believe you built it. Will you
do it ? "

" Yes," he said, " I will. I am busy this morning, but I
will put on my hat and take you up to the house now."

And in five minutes we were on a Fifth Avenue stage. As
we entered the door Mr Hunt pointed upward and said,
" Here is a pendentive dome." " What," I asked, " is a
pendentive dome ? " " Don't," he said, " ask any questions
—just put down what I tell you — but since you have
asked, a pendentive dome is one where you stand at the
bottom of the house and look straight without interruption
to the arch at the top."

Then he kindly gave me letters of introduction to various
people who were dancing the quadrilles, and the costumiers
who were making the dresses. Mrs Vanderbilt and her
husband and Lady Mandeville showed me their costumes,
and from that moment, except for the continual work and
the constant running about, my description of the great
event was made easy for me — and Mrs Vanderbilt invited
me to the ball. I told her that I could not accept, on account
of the expense, as she wished all the dresses to be so magnifi-
cent, but finally she consented to my wearing the habit of
a nun. This I could afford, because the black nun's cloth
could easily be made over into a summer dress. The white
linen bands, veil and crucifix were lent to me by a nun, and
I not only did the description for the Associated Press, but

ii2 I MYSELF

a special description for " The New York World," and many
smaller paragraphs that went the round of the provincial
press.

Some verses apropos of the nun, who was the humblest
and the least-known person at the ball, were sent to " The
World," and when I went into the office a day or two later
Mr Hurlbert read me with much amusement :

" As from the throng of moving masks

I drew a space apart,
Well known to some, unknown to me

By my imperfect art ;
One in the habit of a nun

Stopped short as in surprise,
And through her domino I saw

Two soft, regarding eyes.

Long looked we both, for half I felt

Her gaze no mischief spoke,
And then it was a woman's hand

Reached to me from the cloak ;
A voice I never heard before

But most sincere and sweet,
Said, * Ah, my love, do we once more

Touch hand to hand and meet ? ' '

The poet gave rein to his imagination, as there was na
domino, nor did the nun say, " Ah, my love, do we once
more touch hand to hand and meet ! " These things were
all " poetic licence," but at any rate there was a ball, there
was a very very tired journalistic nun, and there was a
rhymester, if not a poet.

Mr Hurlbert wrote me before the ball :

"32 WAVERLEY PLACE,
" NEW YORK.

" MY DEAR LADY FROM THE SOUTH, — Your suggestion is-
an excellent one and shall be duly worked out so that you
may see Dazien to-morrow and extract essence of his cynical
observations. If you will then write out his tales and send

THE MAKING OF A JOURNALIST 113

them to me on Friday that will be quite early enough. I
shall hope also to have your tale concerning the stage and all
the quadrilles, and in the hope once more that you will not
overdo yourself in this treacherous Northern spring weather
which smiles but to betray, — Always most sincerely yours,

" WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT

" P.S. — The portrait you were so good as to let me look at
is not only an admirable piece of technical work, but a most
interesting portrait of a singularly sweet and noble face, a
face out of keeping with the costume of our times and
belonging — if ever a face belonged it is this — to the ages of
belief. It gives me much to think of and to say."

(This was a small portrait of my father done by a friend.
I wanted Mr Hurlbert's opinion of the work. Dazien was
the costumier making many of the dresses for the Vanderbilt
ball.)

And after the ball :

" 32 WAVERLEY PLACE,
"NEW YORK, Tuesday.

" MY DEAR LADY FROM THE SOUTH, — In looking over all
the notices this morning of the ball, I see so many little
and great blunders that I think it will be worth while to use
your additional notes to-morrow. Pray see Mrs Vanderbilt
and Lady Mandeville to-day and go over the whole story
with them and make any really important corrections. The
decorations might be touched up a little bit. I hope you
will not be too tired to do this, and if you are not I shall be
very glad to have your notes as early as possible. Could
you possibly take a cab and drive down here and leave them
with the Assistant Editor should I not be here at 10 P.M. ?
I expect, however, to be here at that time, and with my best
thanks for the admirable work you have done and of which
too much cannot be said, — Believe me, yours very sincerely,

"WILLIAM HENRY HURLBERT"

Mr Hurlbert's letter amused me not a little with its polite
affectation of " taking a cab," for in those days a cab to " The

8

ii4 I MYSELF

World " office would have cost at least three dollars, and I
could no more have afforded that amount of money than I
now can afford to hire a motor. He was a perfect genius
in getting work out of people. I am sure that he kept me
employed fourteen hours out of the twenty-four while I was
on " The World/' My very spirit used to faint with fatigue,
but absolute poverty, with a child to support, is a wonderful
goad to a worn-out body. And he never had occasion to
complain of lateness, procrastination, or indifference. He
said to me once, " I believe you love drudgery." What a
sigh I stifled, before I made a brave answer, for I would
willingly have worked all night, and all day, before losing
my job.

CHAPTER XXII

A CHANGE OF OCCUPATION

" And now we believe in evil

Where once we believed in good,
The world, the flesh and the devil
Are easily understood."

AT this period Constance Fenimore Woolson, a novel
writer of excellence and of charm, was looming
on the horizon, and as our reviewer of books
suddenly disappeared to the country without leave, in addi-
tion to my more active work quantities of books arrived for
me to review, among them " The Colonel's Marriage/' by this
author, published by the Harpers.

The scene was laid in Virginia, and I wrote of the book
with keen appreciation, and a paragraph from " The World "
was much quoted, and attracted the eye of the publishers,
the Harpers, and was helpful later in getting me my place
with them as MS. reader.

When " The World " changed hands Mr Pulitzer offered me
a better salary than Mr Hurlbert, but societ}^ reporting, which
he wanted me to do, is completely out of my line. I am like
the man who said, " There are three things I never can
remember : names, faces — and I forget the third thing I
can't remember." I always forget clothes and decorations,
.and I, too, forget the third thing I can't remember — feasts,
maybe.

At any rate, I left " The World," and Mrs Bradley Fiske, a
daughter of Joseph Harper, and a most fascinating, sym-
pathetic woman (at one time we always held a weekly
symposium together, and sang duets, and talked and laughed

"5

n6 I MYSELF

and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves — I love her voice and her
ways), gave me a letter to her father. I was shown into his
office, and after placing a seat with old-fashioned courtesy,
he said, " Well, what is it ? Josie says only nice things
about you, but that isn't enough, I take it."

I said, " It's a great deal to me, Mr Harper, but I want
more — and it's work, of course."

" Ah," said Mr Harper, " can you write ? "

" No," I said, " I can't really."

His eyes twinkled. " Well, then," he asked, " what are
you going to do for us ? "

" I don't quite know," I said. " I thought maybe you
would find out. I can sweep, and dust, and wash, and clean
beautifully."

" I see that," he said, " but can't you write the least little
bit ? "

" Well," I said, " I'm a sort of incompetent writer, you
use one of my book reviews in a catalogue."

" Do we ? " he said, looking really pleased, and the cata-
logue was sent for, he read the paragraph, and said, " It's
better than I expected. Now you go home and I'll send you
the MS. of a book which our readers have disagreed about,
and on your opinion rests a tentative engagement of six
months as one of our readers is away on vacation."

So off I sped, and an hour later the MS. had arrived, and
how I loved that book ! It was so definitely bad and im-
possible. I remember but one thing in it, a young Guards-
man, a kind of curly-headed, muscular, passionate Apollo,
had been making red-hot love to a married lady, who had
on one occasion at least yielded to his fierce embraces,
although her subconscious mind really loved her husband,
who of course had neglected her ; but with repentance of
heart, a sad expression, and patches of grey on each temple,
he was returning home after a temporary separation from his
tempted wife and his che-ild. And then the question arose
what to do with the Apollo of the passionate but faithful
heart ? He was strong, but he had to die, and the author
disdained the good old wheezes of battle, heart disease, and

<

DISCREET TOOD1E

A CHANGE OF OCCUPATION 117

railway disasters. So with heart aflame, and perfect health,
the Guardsman unsuspiciously walked in the Zoo (it would
seem an innocent amusement) — the London Zoo — and there
through the carelessness of one of the keepers (how I thanked
that keeper) a magnificent lion of the jungle was trotting
around seeking whom he might devour. Oh, what a licking
of chops and swishing of tail when he saw the Guardsman,
and then the hand to paw encounter between them in a
part of the Zoo where no one ever came ! The fight was long
and terrible, keen human intelligence and trained strength
against wild beast force. But the British lion conquered,
as he always does. There was the horrible scrunching of a
human skull, the brave blue eyes were closed for ever — the
lion gave a great roar of triumph, his tail stood perfectly
upright — and the dark gentleman (who presumably never
went to the Zoo) could come home in perfect safety to the
arms of his wife. I am glad the management of the Zoo has
improved since this incident, for I have been there so very
very often, and have never met even the smallest animal
walking at large.

Could the author have made the same mistake about the
lion that the little girl did who went walking in Central
Park ? She was incurably mendacious, and coming home
she said, " Mother, I met a lion to-day walking in Central
Park."

" Now, Mary," her mother said, "you know that's a lie.
Go in your room and pray for forgiveness."

The child obediently went, returning in a few minutes
with a beatific expression, and when her mother asked if she
had prayed God to be forgiven she said, " I did, and God
said to me, ' Never mind, Miss Jones, I've often met that dog
in Central Park and have mistaken him myself for a lion.' '

My tentative engagement with the Harpers resolved itself
into two or three years, and I left them with very real regret.
The work was continual and rather trying to the eyes, as in
those days the typewriter was little used, but I could take
my own time, and everyone was very kind I used regularly

n8 I MYSELF

to ask for an increase of salary, which I never got, as Joseph
Harper always answered, " You have enough to live on,
and Dobbin will turn up soon, and then you will read no
more MSS."

At this time the broken friendship between the North and
the South was being mended, and the Harpers were display-
ing a most generous and interested spirit towards the South,
Mr Joseph Harper had sent both his sons to a Virginia
College, and Southern writers were encouraged and even
sought after. A novel dealing with the South was sent to
Franklin Square with the scene laid in Maryland. It was-
clever, but there were a good many pin pricks for Southern
people in it, and much division of opinion among the readers,
who were none of them from the South, when finally the book
was sent to me for a final decision, accompanied by a
note from Mr Conant to say I was to read it with unusual
care.

What was my horror on reading the book, to find the
author to be a man who, without my personal acquaintance,
had written some unjust and unkind newspaper paragraphs
about me. And I wished from my heart that my enemy
had not written a book. I sat down, however, and read
every line with, I hope, a dispassionate outlook.

Mr Joseph Harper had told me when I first went to them
as a manuscript reader, there were three things they required
in a book : It was to be of mercantile value, it was to be
interesting, and it was to be clean.

Well, my enemy's book was not unclean but coarse, and
I marked a good many passages and said that with these
eliminated, or at any rate greatly toned down, the book, since
it had unusual interest, and genuine cleverness, should by all
means be published. I must confess I stretched my good
opinion as far as it would go, because I really thought it some-
what dry and lacking in heart, but it seemed such a mean
thing to stab even an enemy in the back, that I could not
conscientiously give an antagonistic opinion.

When the author saw the passages, he said to Mr Conant,
" Your reader seems to strike at my very personality "; how-

A CHANGE OF OCCUPATION 119.

ever, he drastically edited the offending paragraphs and the
book was published, but in spite of all its merits was never
a success, and they always spoke of it reproachfully at the
Harpers as " your book."

Now that I have grown older and more practical, I fear
my chivalrous Southern sentiments were more useful to my
unconscious enemy than to my employers. I was over
scrupulous. I never mind a fair fight in an open field, but
I have a whole-souled horror of the stab of the assassin.

CHAPTER XXIII

LOVING MEMORIES

" BRER RABBIT (Prisoner). ' If I'm gwine to be sacaficed, Brer
Wolf, I wants to be sacaficed de right way.'

" BRER WOLF. ' What's de right way, Brer Rabbit ? '

" BRER RABBIT. ' Shut yo' eyes, fold yo' hands under yo' chin, an'
say : " Bless us an' bine us, an' put us in a place whar de ole boy can't
fine us." '

" When Brer Wolf open his eyes, whar was Brer Rabbit ? "

UNCLE REMUS

DURING my exile in the North, the stories of Uncle
Remus by Joel Chandler Harris were of the greatest
comfort to me. I remember so well the first time
that dear Uncle Remus became my friend. I was terribly
homesick and alone in New York. If I shut my eyes, I
could in imagination fairly smell the odour of the magnolia
and the oleander, and see the mimosa burst into bloom.
One night, in the midst of a heavy snowstorm, I went around
the corner for a breath of fresh air to a little circulating
library, and almost the first book I put my hand upon, was
a collection of darkey stories beginning with the Rabbit and
the Tar Baby, and at once I was transported back into the
past. I could see a big, dim room with no light in it,
except the light from the logs of a great open fire, and
sitting just in front of the hearth was a broad shouldered
negro woman with the children clustered all round her,
the youngest with its head pillowed on her broad bosom,
and there we all were, cousins and sisters and brothers,
listening to the story of the Tar Baby, and the Wolf, and
the Rabbit, and the Fox, and the animals were talking
through her in their wise and witty way until our bedtime,

LOVING MEMORIES 121

when Mammy heard our prayers, said good night, and gave
each of us her tender blessing until the morning.

I met Mr Harris once, and there was some talk between
Major Pond and myself at that time, about my giving a
few readings in negro dialect, and Mr Harris wrote me
apropos of this subject :

" CONSTITUTION,
" yth January 1881.

" DEAR AND GRACIOUS LADY, — Mr Finch turned the matter
over to Mr Howell Glen of the Lecture Committee, and I
was under the impression he had opened correspondence
with you. I should be extremely sorry not to have an
opportunity of hearing you interpret Uncle Remus. I
have my own opinion as to the absurdity of the interest
taken in the book at the North, but the interest undoubtedly
exists, and I would be overjoyed to see you reap some of
the benefits of it. There is no reason in the world why
you should not. I feel that you can do the affair more
than justice.

" I trust you will overlook or at any rate pardon any lack
of politeness on my part during our interview. The con-
sciousness of my extreme awkwardness is an affliction that
I have striven in vain to overcome, and in addition to this
you humbled me to the dust by your tributes to Uncle
Remus. These things and the fact that your face (if
I knew you better I would say your lovely face), and
your voice, and gestures are such startling reminders of
some one I knew a great while ago, must have given me
an appearance of great constraint. I really felt like one in
a dream. Well, well, we won't get in a controversy about
poor old Mr Carlyle. He has doubtless overcome you
with his plug-ugly vocabulary and his wonderful facility
of humbuggery. He never made anybody happy in this
world, and if we deny him remorse what a terrible spectacle
we set up. By all means let us consider that he was capable
of remorse. We do not deny that to the ordinary criminal.

" The Scribners, I mean the Editors of .' Scribner/ are

122 I MYSELF

pressing me to write a serial based on Slave life at the
South. It is a matter that has been worrying and fretting
me for several years, but I haven't the confidence to
undertake it.

"Is it necessary for me to add to this hasty scrawl the
statement that I would be more than glad to hear from
you again ? — Yours very sincerely,

" JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS "

And later on I sent him an article about his stories for
approval, and he wrote again :

"2tyh October 1883.

" DEAR AND GRACIOUS LADY, — I received your letter
Saturday, and I seize the first opportunity to thank you
for the sympathetic tone and intention of the MSS. you
enclose, but to tell you the truth it rather saddens me to
read it. I am perfectly sure of your appreciation as far
as its sincerity is concerned, but your article reads almost
like a burlesque on my hopes and desires. Knowing my
own limitations, knowing just where I have failed, and
where in the very nature of things I must continue to fail,
it is rather a curious sensation to be credited by you with
the very things I have longed to accomplish.

" You ask for some suggestions. I will give you one
from the newspaper point of vi?w. Your sketch is too
personal, and too enthusiastic. The literary tone of the
' Tribune ' is as high as any of the Magazines, and such
J" praise as you have given me will not fit it. The ' Tribune '
is one of the few papers I read through and through, and
you may be sure I speak by the card. The men who
make the ' Tribune ' might all have been distinguished in
literature, and some of them have already become so. Uncle
Remus has never been noticed in the ' Tribune.' The
first book, I mean. I have been told that this was because
the paper was not on good terms with the Appletons, but
I prefer to believe that the ' Tribune ' judged the book on

LOVING MEMORIES 123

its own merits. If it was what you and some other very
partial friends believe it to be, the ' Tribune ' would have
discovered it. I do not know who presides over the Literary
Department since the death of Dr Ripley, but no mistakes-
of judgment are ever made there. It thus happens that % •
the ' Tribune/ without making much fuss about it, is
one of the most influential papers in American literature.
Now the forthcoming Remus book is no better than the
first, and I question very much whether the * Tribune '
will allow anything to be said about it in its literary depart-
ment, not because the Editor and his Assistants are opposed
to Southern literature, to quote the idea of some of our
Southern lunatics, but because they are jealous of American
literature. The line must be drawn somewhere and why not
at the Remus trash.

" I am telling you this to warn you against a possible
disappointment.

" Mr Reid's note, which I return, is kind, and I have no
doubt the new book will be considered on its real merits, just
as the first one was. You must remember that a knack of
writing dialect bears about the same relation to literature
that the Negro Minstrel bears to Salvini. I know that you
really love Uncle Remus. I sincerely trust that my candour
is not disagreeable. I am simply striving to prevent you
from placing too high an estimate on our Uncle Remus in
your article for the * Tribune/ It is to be considered by
those whose judgments are not biassed by any pleasing"
or happy recollections of the old plantation system. In
other words, your article will be judged not only on its own
merits, but in relation to the merits of the new Remus h
book. You are handicapped at the start and you will find
it necessary to exercise both caution and reserve.

" I enclose a note to Mr Osgood. When you receive the'
advance sheets, I would advise that you submit them to
Mr Reid and get his instructions, not only as to the length
but as to the tone of the review. This may save you a
good deal of unnecessary labour.

" Pray don't say ever again that Friday is unlucky, since

i24 I MYSELF

you wrote your letter on that day it was a lucky day for
me at any rate.

" I am sorry that you did not send me your photograph,
but unfortunately I do not need a photograph to remember
you. I shall never forget your face, nor your voice, nor a
single word that you have said. I envy your friends.
Heaven help us all ! If I had some one near me to give
such encouragement as you can give what could I not
accomplish.

" I hope you will write to me occasionally when you have
time ; in one way and another it will do me a vast amount
of good, and I shall be very certain to make answer, and
remember that Friday is just as lucky a day as any.

" Do not please be frightened at the length of this letter,
for it is not half so long as some I can write, and if you
encourage me, probably will write. — Ever your sincere and
faithful friend, JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS "

"NEW YORK TRIBUNE,
"October ijth, 1883.

" DEAR MADAM, — If the book to which the enclosed refers
were not now so old, we might have been able to make use
of the matter. The new volume by the same Author,
however, is announced for publication in some two or
three weeks. If some of the points in this could be em-
bodied in an article or in a review of the new book, there
might be a chance of our using it, at any rate we should
be glad to see it. Certainly this does not seem to warrant
in the least the depreciating tone you use concerning it
and your work in general in your conversation the other
day. — Yours respectfully, J. WHITELAW REID."

And when I answered this letter, came the third letter
of Mr Harris to me, which somehow ended our corre-
spondence, but not my tender and faithful affection for
him and all that he has ever written.

LOVING MEMORIES 125

" 12th November 1883.

4' DEAR AND GRACIOUS LADY, — I am very sorry my letter
gave you pain. I am afraid you think I do not properly
appreciate what you said of my work, if so you are labouring
under a terrible mistake.

" The reading of the MSS. did me a great deal of good, for
I know there is no higher form of success from an artistic
standpoint than to win the sincere praise of an enthusiastic
and cultivated woman. But everything I said was dis-
connected from my own appreciation, and the opinion I
gave you was that of an Editor. I was trying to give you
a cue which would make your notice of the book available
for the " Tribune." I hope Osgood sent you the book instead
of the advance sheets, for it was already out.

" And so you know Morgan, and you ask if I know him.
Gracious Heavens ! I know every thump and wriggle of
his little mind. Did you ever sleep near enough to a
kitchen to wake up in the night and hear a mouse trying
to climb out of a dishpan, and do you remember how it
affected you ? That is the mysterious feeling I have
about Morgan. He is the only creature I ever saw whose
flatness and dullness gave him character. There is nothing
more original than his stupidity. I had been writing
some off-hand impressions of Boston, and what does Morgan
do but get the proof sheets and sell the matter to the
Philadelphia press on his own account. I had to write
and stop the publication, and then I had to interest myself
to prevent the ' Constitution ' from discharging Morgan.
You will acknowledge that this ought to be called an Ordeal.
But Morgan told you true. He is a writer on the ' Con-
stitution.' He goes out and hunts up advertisements
and writes them out. He has quite a knack of this business
and for this reason I was not willing that the paper should
sacrifice its own interests on my behalf, particularly when
I knew that Morgan was innocent of any intention to wrong
me by selling my matter and pocketing the proceeds. And
so you know Morgan ! Well, well, when circumstance

126 I MYSELF

borrows the humour of fate we may know that the
world is smaller than we have dreamed of.

" I promised Mr Alden a sketch entitled ' Blue Dave '
for the Christmas number, but the Osgood's kept pressing
me so for Remus copy that I could not finish it
in time. I doubt if it would have passed muster. Mr
Alden is a fine man. He has breadth and generosity.

" I don't know the Harpers, but I suppose they are very
keen. Take any large successful firm that has been com-
pelled to adapt itself to the emergencies of four or five
generations, and you will find a great deal of hardness and
cant tucked away under its idea of business. I have a
horror of that word and of the idea. But really I did
not start out to put myself in one of Morgan's recitation
attitudes. Pardon me. The limit to human endurance
must be at the bottom of this sheet, where I sign myself, —
Sincerely and gratefully yours,

" JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS

9

fi " Although I do not need, as I said, a Photograph to
remember your face, I still would be very grateful if you
would send me one."

Mr Harris was mistaken in his opinion of the Harpers,
there was never a more generous publishing firm than
theirs. Perhaps this accounts for their failure, and the
business of the old firm passing into new hands.

THE NUN OF THE VANDERBILT BALL

CHAPTER XXIV

BRER RABBIT AS THE THERMOMETER OF
MY AFFECTIONS

I HAVE a friend who says that my affection for people
is always determined by the circumstance whether I
have read them " Uncle Remus " or not. He often
asks, " Has she read you ' Uncle Remus ? ' " and if the
answer is " No," he shakes his head and says, " Ah, well,
she has not taken you to her heart of hearts." And
indeed there is no writer who so penetrates to the roots
of my heart as Joel Chandler Harris, and I do not at
all agree with him that the negro dialect is an easy thing
to do. Above all it is necessary in negro dialect to
write from the soul in order to have the sentiment
reach the reader. It needs absolute directness, honesty,
straightforwardness, a touch of simple homeliness and a
beautiful tenderness to make it real. Mr Harris had all
these qualities combined with a wonderful sense of both
humour and pathos. I have often wondered if Frank
Carruthers Gould is a reincarnation of some old Virginian
gentleman, so perfectly does he write negro dialect. Where
will you find greater observation or more intelligent philo-
sophy, than in this little description of Brer Rabbit when the
Wolf brings him the news of the death of Brer Fox :

" I fetch bad news, Brer Rabbit," sez Brer Wolf, sezee.

" Bad news is soon tole," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.

By dis time Brer Rabbit done come ter de do' wid his head tied
up in a red hankcher. Brer Wolf wuz gettin' nearer Brer Rabbit,
but he don't git too near.

"You better holler from whar you stan', Brer Wolf," sez Brer
Rabbit, " I'm monstous full of fleas dis mornin'."

127

i28 I MYSELF

" All right," sez Brer Wolf, sezee. " Brer Fox died dis mawnin/
sez Brer Wolf, sezee.

" Whar yo' mo'nin' gown, Brer Wolf? " sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.

" Gwine atter it now," sez Brer Wolf, sezee. " I des' call by fer
ter bring de news. I went down ter Brer Fox house a little bit eer
go, en dar I foun' 'im stiff," sezee. Den Brer Wolf lope off.

Den Brer Rabbit jump up 'en out he went. When he got to Brer
Fox house, he look in, en der lay Brer Fox stretch out on de bed
des ez big ez life. Den Brer Rabbit make like he talkin' to hisself :

" Nobody roun' fer ter look atter Brer Fox — not even Brer Turkey
Buzzard ain't come ter de funer'l," sezee. " I hope Brer Fox ain't
dead, but I speck he is," sezee. " Even down ter Brer Wolf done
gone en lef 'im. Hit's de busy season wid me, but I'll set up wid
'im. He seem like he dead, yet he mayn't be," sez Brer Rabbit,
sezee. " When a man go ter see dead folks, dead folkes allers raises
up der behime leg en hollers, wahoo ! " sezee.

Brer Fox he lay still. Den Brer Rabbit he talk little louder :

" Mighty funny ! Brer Fox look like he dead, yit he don't do
like he dead. Dead folks hists der behime leg en hollers, wahoo !
When a man come ter see um," sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.

Sno nuff, Brer Fox lif ' up his foot en holler wahoo ! En Brer
Rabbit he tear out de house like de dogs wuz atter 'im. Brer Wolf
mighty smart, but nex' time you hear fum 'im honey, he'll be in-
trouble. You des hole yo' breff 'n wait."

Brer Rabbit knew that if Brer Turkey Buzzard was not
around Brer Fox was alive. He only went in the house
to betray him and to show his cunning.

And one of the most beautiful stories in the whole world,
and certainly the most beautiful story that has ever been
written of the old South is " Marse Chan," by Thomas
Nelson Page, which is in negro dialect : it has the tender
grace of a lay that is dead, in every line.

The day after its publication he could with truth repeat
the words of Lord Byron, " I awoke and found myself
famous." For it embodies all the traits of which we of the
South are so proud : the chivalrous honour, the tenderness,
the splendid courage, the endurance, the noble pride, and
the loyalty of the Southern character are touchingly
portrayed, and it has made a whole world of lovers for
Mr Page.

"YOU BETTER HOLLER FROM WHAR' YOU STAN', BRER WOLF," SEY BRER
RABBIT, "I'M MONST'OUS FULL OF FLEAS DIS MORNIN' !"

THE THERMOMETER OF MY AFFECTIONS 129

Years after its publication the author wrote me this
modest letter :

" RICHMOND, July 22nd, 1888.

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I have only to thank you for
an added kindness. The ' Star' arrived containing your most
flattering notice of myself and ' Marse Chan/ I scarcely
can claim now to be its author, for I feel that the old life
of the South was the author of its being, and I was simply
the amanuensis who, being so fortunate as to catch its echo,
transcribed it.

" I assure you my debt to the ' Star ' as well as to its
delightful editor is very great, and I beg that you will convey
to him my acknowledgments.

"When my new story, 'Two Little Confederates,' now
running in ' St Nicholas,' appears in book form, which
will be about October, I shall send it to you, for although
your boy will probably be too old to appreciate it, I know
that his mother will not be, and it contains a fair account,
making allowances for romantic licence, of the house where
I was born. And our old Bella, and mother, and the boys,
are real, and are, thank God ! still spared to me.

" The notice of the reception was read and greatly enjoyed
by both Anne and myself. We recognized our friend Miss
Kenny among the ladies who assisted the hostess, or was
it her sister ?

" Major Reilly, our Judge at Cairo, made very pleasant
mention of Mr O'Connor to me the other day, but our con-
versation was too formal for me to learn all I wished. It is
rather a joke, I suspect, for Reilly came home to testify in a
suit I was prosecuting against him and his brother, and one
George Campbell, formerly one of Mr O'Connor's Liverpool
constituents, for fraud, and my only communication with
him was in the court room. We used to be very good
friends, and I did not charge Judge Reilly with fraud. It
is proper to say that the jury exonerated John D. Reilly also,
but found Campbell guilty.

" Mrs Page is, I am sorry to say, ill, but sends many more

i3o I MYSELF

affectionate messages than I can venture to give on crossed
paper. — With our affectionate remembrances to both you
and Mr O'Connor, yours always sincerely,

" THOMAS NELSON PAGE"

The late Henry Ward Beecher hated slavery. He passed
from State to State, and with his mighty plea for the aboli-
tion of slavery, and by his fiery eloquence he precipitated
the Civil War that cost America one million lives and freed
the slaves. But this did not prevent his admiration of the
Southern character. I did not like his politics, but I knew
and loved Mr Beecher, and when I read " Marse Chan "
to him for the first time, he was most deeply touched and
the tears ran down his cheeks.

Years afterwards when he came to England I had this
note from him :

" HAMPSTEAD, July i$th.

" MY DEAR GIRL, — When you come to Hampstead prepare
yourself for a little reading of our dear ' Marse Chan.'
You need not bring it with you as I have the volume at
hand. I could have read it again myself, but have not done
so, preferring through the absent years to wait until we met
again.

" Thanks for your Stores ticket. I went there yesterday
and bought a little fruit, for which I paid ten dollars ! It
would not do for me to live in England, I should become a
bankrupt. — Your sincere friend,

" HENRY WARD BEECHER "

I read him " Marse Chan." " It is the last time I shall
ever hear it," he said. And it was, as Mr Beecher died the
following winter.

Dr Parker, at whose house Mr Beecher was visiting,
objected. " Beecher," he said, " you are not going to listen
to a whole story this hot afternoon ? "

" Parker," Mr Beecher said, " I am ! This is my tea-party,
and I am going to sit on the floor with my head on Mother's

THE THERMOMETER OF MY AFFECTIONS 131

knee " (" Mother " was his wife), " and I am going to have a
good cry. If you don't want to listen, go out in the garden."

Dr Parker stationed himself by the door, ready to flee into
the garden, but he never stirred until the story was finished,
and even then he was unable to speak his thanks for a few
moments, while his beautiful wife, in tears, was as deeply
moved as Mr Beecher himself — that wonderful man, who was
by far the greatest orator I have ever heard : gifted with
superb eloquence, great variety and picturesqueness of
language, a deep chest, a fine throat, and a beautiful voice
perfectly trained, he was an ideal preacher. The final test
of both acting and oratory is the power of the speaker to get
a stupendous effect in a few words. I heard Mr Beecher
in one of his sermons end a peroration with " You can not
destroy God. And you can not destroy the souls that echo
to God." His voice gathered force and volume as he went
on, and the last word was like a silver trumpet calling upon
the congregation to maintain their faith. He had the
quality of being always interesting, was full of humour,
daringly original, and quite a century in advance of his time.
The day of this sermon I waited with Marshall Wilder to
speak to him, and Mr Beecher said : " Wait a minute, I
want to put on a ring," and taking out of his pocket a
wonderful opal he placed it on his stubby finger and turned
it to catch the light, with the delight of a child. He had
a perfect mania for gems : their clear and pellucid colour and
brilliancy were a continual pleasure to him, and he told me
he had forty rings. He wore them only fitfully, but carried
one or two in his pocket and occasionally refreshed his sight
by looking at them.

Quite a different preacher from Mr Beecher was Father
Ducey, who was for many years one of my staunchest friends,
and whose death has made a gap in my life never to be filled.
He, too, was a very brilliant orator, at times strikingly
dramatic, and as intimate and dictatorial with his fashion-
able New York congregation as any old Irish parish priest
laying down the law to his following of humble peasants.

He endured the huge hats as they are worn now as long as

i32 I MYSELF

he could, and then he admonished the startled ladies under
his gaze to get another headgear for St Leo's, as the church
was not built for the present mode, and he must have more
than two women sitting in a pew.

When he was preaching a sermon once, on marriage, he
said : " Marriage between a young man and a young woman
is made by God ; between an old man and a young woman is
made by man ; but between an old woman and a young man
it is made by the devil." His tongue was caustic, but his
heart was kind, and his nature was one of the most generous,
giving constantly in charity, and he was instantly touched
and moved by every tale of woe. His influence over young
men was very great, and his interest in them was truly
understanding and paternal. One of his friends was a
handsome, reckless young blackguard, who had committed
nearly every crime in the calender, and finally got such a
terrible reputation that Father Ducey told him not to visit
him in the day when he could be seen. But he received him
at night, and never failed to pray for him and to hope for a
regeneration of spirit. He was the most popular priest in
New York, and at any public meeting the mention of his
name was the signal for a great burst of applause. It is
easy to be popular with the comfortable and rich, but the
poor find out a man's inmost heart, for they demand both
patience and help. Father Ducey, through his constant
generosity, made himself one of them. And blessed are the
poor, for theirs shall be the Kingdom of Heaven.

CHAPTER XXV

THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM SOLVED. BRIGIT,
THE JEWEL OF THE WORLD

WHEN I neglected reading my MSS. for the Harpers,
as I sometimes did, a vast collection used to
accumulate, and I then farmed them out to my
various good-natured friends. Father Ducey has read
many a one for me, and Dr Walter Gillette, my kind
and good friend as well as physician, nearly always had
a number on hand.

I have often wondered if my work suffered during the
last summer that I spent in New York, but at Franklin
Square they never complained — probably they never knew
of my illness.

It was a blazing hot summer, Mary Agnew had gone to
live in the country, and I had taken a small flat and settled
myself in it with Brigit, who was one of the most remarkable
women I have ever known and a priceless gem to me. She
had lived with me off and on for a number of years, and
with her various accomplishments commanded high wages,
and I really did not expect any such good fortune as her
coming to me for what I could afford to pay her, but she
did come, and in spite of real poverty I lived like a lady.
Brigit was an accomplished cook, she could do anything,
bone turkey, make all sorts of salads, cook vegetables like
a Frenchwoman, boil rice like an Indian, and make the
lightest cakes and the most wonderful sweets I ever ate.
She was also a first-class laundress, and in those days all
my clothes were white. White dressing-gowns in the
morning, and white muslin in the afternoon, and Brigit

133

134 I MYSELF

did all the washing for the house and for me. On Monday
morning she was up at 5 o'clock (each flat had a little
laundry assigned to it at the top of the house) and by
9 o'clock she had all her clothes hung up to dry and my
breakfast ready. She kept the flat spotlessly clean and
managed the entire work, washing, ironing, cooking and
waiting on me, and when Toodie came home from school
for his vacation she looked after him as well, and yet she
had time to read " The New York Sun " and to discuss
politics with me. And I have never seen so thrifty a
servant. She never threw away even one crumb of stale
bread, but dried it, pounded it into powder, and put it aside
for breakfast cakes, and those cakes with fresh radishes and
a cup of marvellous coffee were all that she allowed me for
breakfast. I was never afraid to have the smartest people
come to see me, because everything was exquisitely done
and in such order, and Brigit always spotless in a nice
gingham dress and long white apron was quite ready to
answer the door. If I went out at night to a theatre or
a party, she always waited up for me until I came in, and
saw that I was in bed before she left me. She had many
offers, of course, to get higher wages, and my kind friends
often tried to entice her away, but her answer was " that
I had my ways and she had her ways, and they happened
to agree, and she thought she had better stay." How
fond my friends were of Brigit and that little flat ! I
entertained constantly, giving both lunches and dinners,
and was not too proud to have my friends provide them if
they liked. I remember an old friend from Maryland used
to come very often to dinner and he would say, " Don't
be alarmed, my dinner is on the stairs, and Brigit has
undertaken to cook it." And I was often sent Virginian
hams, chickens and turkeys from the South, a barrel of
flour, now and then, from Georgia, so my table cost me
very little, and I think this part of my life was almost entirely
happy, until I was struck down by the first attack of my
now vigilant and recurrent enemy, peritonitis. I went
out one hot afternoon, not feeling very well, and the weather

THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM SOLVED 135

suddenly changed, a cold rain came up, and I had no
umbrella and got soaked through to the skin. I could
not afford a cab, and came home on a crowded street car,
having to stand outside, and the draught blowing on my
soaked clothes gave me a terrible chill. That night I had
a high temperature, and when at last I sent for my doctor
he pronounced it peritonitis, and for two months I was
in bed and Brigit's labours were much increased, as I could
not afford to have a trained nurse, and she had to do all
the work of the flat as well as to nurse me. My doctor
often came at 9 o'clock at night and stayed with me until
12 o'clock so that she might have a little sleep for the first
part of the night, and during these two months I never
heard her complain of fatigue, nor was she ever impatient.
And every evening my funny shabby old carpet bag, with
various labels on it, arrived from Franklin Square full of
MSS., and the next morning the boy called on his way down
to the office to take back what I had read. My Doctor
said that if I did not stop work and give myself a chance
of rest I would certainly die, but if I lost my salary from
Franklin Square I would starve, so I had to go on. I have
never minded work, but this was unrelenting bitter poverty,
to be obliged to read and think and write with a temperature
varying from 103 to 104, and my exhausted body racked
with the most terrible pain that a woman can endure, and
my brain, dulled by opium, working fitfully and with
difficulty. Finally, the worst fears of Dr Gilette were
realized, an abscess formed which seriously threatened
my life, and did eventually give me a slight attack of blood
poisoning, but I made a most valiant effort to live, as my
death would have left my little son unprovided for and
alone. And I told the doctor that I simply could not
and would not die, although I calmly made preparations to
do so, sorting and burning my letters, and making my will,
which was, after all, only to ask an old friend to care for
my little boy and to have me buried in the South under
a magnolia tree. I felt that I wanted to be far away from
the rush, the noise, and the loneliness of New York.

i36 I MYSELF

The crisis passed and I got better, and finally Dr Gilette
told me the time had come for me to be able to bear the
pain with reduced doses of morphine, and from that moment,
although he said it was much too sudden, I refused to take
it again. I was wrong, the sudden cessation of the opiate
was a terrible wrench to my nerves, and I had not a moment's
sleep for forty-eight hours ; but I have always had a strong
will, and plenty of self-control. If it is necessary for me
to do a thing I can do it, no matter what the suffering may
be. I remember one night when the pain was uncontrollable
and my poor numb legs had been in the same position for
weeks, I asked Brigit to tell me something interesting
enough to make me forget it. " Think," I said, " of the
thing in your life which you remember most clearly and
tell me that," and Brigit said : "I'll tell you the story of
my nun."

CHAPTER XXVI

THE TRAGEDY OF A NUN

A GOOD many years ago I was a servant at a
convent in New Jersey for the cure of consumption.
Among the patients was a young married man
about thirty, very handsome, with black eyes and hair.
He looked like a Spaniard, and he may have been one. At
first he was very ill, but after a while he got better, and
he was there for a long time. The sister who nursed him
was most experienced, and he obeyed her like a child, and
always wanted her with him. She had lived all her life
in convents, being left an orphan at nine ; the sisters had
educated her, and at sixteen she became a Sister of Charity,
and ever since had nursed the sick in the hospital for con-
sumption. She was thirty-two, but looked only twenty,
and her face was lovely — a real Madonna face, with sweet
blue eyes and long eyelashes, and her smile was quite
beautiful. All the patients loved her, and everybody
wanted to be nursed by Sister Teresa.

" I noticed that she was getting thin, and she seemed
very restless and greatly troubled, and at last one night
I asked her what was the matter, and she began to
cry pitifully, desperately — I never saw such sobs — and
said, ' Brigit, can I trust you ? There is no other
creature in all the world to help me.' And I said she
could, and then she gasped out, ' The greatest trouble
that can befall a woman is mine — I am ruined, soul and
body — God will never forgive me. There is the man I
love — I do love him, but I hate myself.' She pointed to
the garden where he was sitting. It was in May, and

137

i38 I MYSELF

the Spanish-looking man was nearly well then, and as
happy and gay as possible. She went on, " I must get
away from here as quickly as I can. Take this money and
buy me a dress and a hat and shoes, and I'll go to-night."
That afternoon I went out and bought a very plain black
alpaca dress, as that was more like a nun's habit than any-
thing, and a black hat with a pink rose, but she wouldn't
wear the rose, and ripped it off with her poor, trembling,
awkward fingers, and gave it to me. I did enjoy seeing her
pretty little feet in high-heeled shoes. I got them with
buckles, but she never noticed them, she was crying so.
Every part of her habit she laid her head upon and kissed —
her crucifix, her belt, her beads, and her cap, with its white
wings like a bird, she held to her breast as if it had been a
child, the cap she had worn so long and so honourably. ' Oh,
Brigit,' she said, ' how could I have forgotten my vows,
and after sixteen years ! Oh, merciful God, help me — and
he has a wife ! That's the worst of all ! ' She was white
with despair, but she looked so sweet with her short hair
curling all over her head just like a young girl.

" At eight o'clock we stole away and went to an apartment
he had taken for us in New York. I did all the work and I
never saw any gentleman in the world love a lady as much
as he did her. He never went out or came in without kissing
her hand, and I often saw him kiss her shoe, and he always
brought her some little thing — a rose, or a bunch of violets,
or a little box of sweets, or a book, or a picture paper, or
some trifle to show her that he was thinking of her. He
said his wife drank, and he could divorce her, and he would
marry Sister Teresa the moment he could. But he saw
as well as I did that she was fretting herself to death — her
conscience never gave her a moment's rest. Finally, she
must have spoken to him about leaving him, for he called
me aside one morning and said, ' Brigit, don't, for God's
sake, help Teresa get away ! I love her, and I know I can
make her happy in time, and I can't live without her — and
let me tell you this : if you help her to get away, the first
time I see you afterward I'll shoot you like a dog.' He was

THE TRAGEDY OF A NUN 139

so fierce he frightened me terribly. That same week Sister
Teresa wrote to the Mother-house in Cincinnati, and the
Reverend Mother wrote to her to meet her in New York at
another convent, a little boys' school, and one day we stole
away. She left the man a letter that must have broken his
heart. She said in it that she loved his body, but she loved
his soul more, and she was going away to save it — and hers —
and that her every breath would mean a prayer for him, and
their child — and she prayed him to be patient and to forgive
her. I got her a little crucifix to put in the letter, and how
she kissed it and clung to it ! He was to forgive her — wasn't
that like a woman ! It was four months since we came to
New York, and this was the first time we had left the apart-
ment. She was like a poor helpless child in the world, and
afraid of the streets. We arrived at the convent about six
o'clock in the evening. The Reverend Mother from Cin-
cinnati, and the Mother of the convent were both waiting.
When the poor thing got out of the train she dropped first
on her knees and then she laid her face on the Reverend
Mother's shoes, and the Mother stooped and raised her up
in her arms, and we four women cried fit to break our hearts.

" It was decided the next day that the two Mothers should
between them adopt the baby when it came, and educate it,
and care for it, and Sister Teresa was to enter the order of
the Magdalen Nuns."

" And did you," I asked, " never hear of her again,
Brigit ? "

" Wait," Brigit answered, " I went to Brooklyn to live,
and for a while I was terribly afraid of meeting the man, but
I never did."

" I hope," I said, " the baby died, and she was spared her
second great heartbreak of parting with it. She didn't
count on that little cry, and the flood of love that comes with
it, to wedded and un wedded mothers alike."

" Yes," said Brigit, " she died when the baby was born,
and the baby died too."

" What became of the father ? " I asked.

" The Reverend Mother," Brigit said, " managed in some

140 I MYSELF

way to get the news to him of Sister Teresa's death, and he
became a Catholic and was never out of church, but only
lived two months afterwards. He must have been glad to
die, for I never saw a gentleman love a lady so much."

The dawn had come ; and with daylight all pain, physical
and mental, is easier to bear — so I sent Brigit for a little
rest, and then I slept myself.

CHAPTER XXVII

I BECOME ENGAGED

MY Mary had been married and had gone to Ireland
to live, and when I was well enough to travel, she
insisted upon my taking a vacation and coming to
Ballymena and making her a visit, and I went over and
arrived at Belfast in September (how beautiful Ireland
was, and how I loved it !), and remained abroad until
February.

The weather was bitterly cold that winter, but the absolute
quiet of the life in the country, the very early hours, and the
quiet soft air, and her beloved companionship, did every-
thing for me, and before I left Ballymena I was feeling strong
and well once more, and full of hope.

I came to London from Ireland, to join two friends of mine
from Richmond, Mrs Day and Elizabeth her daughter. How
pretty Elizabeth was ! She was just twenty-three, with
slate-grey eyes, and hair to match — I never saw hair which
had grown grey so evenly as hers, and it fell in heavy masses
down to her knees like a dove-coloured veil.

Mrs Day had been recommended to go to No. 9 George
Street, Hanover Square — it was a pension kept by Miss
Moore, an Irish-woman of excellent family, who had herself
lived a great many years in Virginia ; her brother had been
a General in the Confederate Army.

The pension had, like herself, plenty of character ; the
table was excellent and bountiful, and the food was of the
very best quality. She got up early in the morning and went
to Mass, and to market afterwards. As to furniture, there
was nothing in the house that matched anything else, as*

i42 I MYSELF

everything had been bought at sales, and at second-hand
shops. There was nothing vulgar in the house, and there
were some bits of splendour, and it had, in spite of the dirt
of a good many London fogs, an air of gentility, and Miss
Moore herself possessed the kindest and most hospitable
heart in the world. Everybody who came under her roof had
an instantaneous claim upon her consideration.

The first day that I arrived in London Colonel Mitchell,
the American Vice-Consul, came to call upon me, and as I
was going to be in London only a very few days, he pro-
posed returning after dinner and taking me to the House of
Commons to be introduced to Justin M'Carthy, whom he
knew. Great was our vexation to find that Mr Justin
M'Carthy had gone for the evening. I had myself a letter
of introduction to him, and I left it to be delivered the next
day. The big, good-natured policeman, seeing how terribly
disappointed I was at not seeing the House of Commons,
proposed that he should take Colonel Mitchell's card to Mr
T. P. O'Connor, who, he said, was always most polite to
Americans. In a few moments the genial T. P. came out
beaming. He was delighted to do the honours for Mr
M'Carthy, explained all the House of Commons most lucidly,
then disposed of Colonel Mitchell and took me up to the
Ladies' Gallery, where his native eloquence poured forth like
a torrent, and he seemed prepared to keep me any length of
time — certainly, verifying the judgment of the policeman
who said he was so kind to Americans.

When we came downstairs Colonel Mitchell was looking
quite gloomy after our prolonged absence, nor did the pro-
position of T. P. to stroll home with us seem to make him any
more cheerful. It was only at the door of my pension that
T. P.'s eloquence ceased, and both he and Colonel Mitchell
had arranged to call upon me the next day — but not together,
and this was my first meeting with T. P.

The next day Justin M'Carthy called and invited me to
dine at the House of Commons. The party consisted of his
daughter, T. P., Justin Huntly M'Carthy, and myself. I
thought I had never heard such brilliant, gay, witty con-

I BECOME ENGAGED 143

versation — they flashed together like meteors. Justin
Huntly and T. P. were like two accomplished fencers. As I
was fresh from America where, even if men can talk, they
rarely do if women are present, allowing them to absorb all
the conversation and all the attention, the dinner was a
perfect revelation to me.

Colonel Mitchell and T. P. came to see me every day, and
sometimes twice a day. They had an opportunity of
becoming better acquainted, but they were never congenial,
and when I finally announced my engagement to T. P.,
Colonel Mitchell was distinctly pessimistic about the future,
giving me an exceedingly long list of unhappy international
marriages. This was, however, a matter of six weeks later,
after I had been to Paris and again to Ireland. I remained
ten days in London before starting for America. The time
was entirely taken up by arguments between T. P. and
myself as to whether I should be married then or at all, or
the following summer when I was coming to Europe again.
Mrs Agnew had said, " If you are going to marry Elizabeth,
do it now, as she might change her mind." This enhanced
my value in the eyes of T. P., who loves uncertainty and
change, and it gave him an opportunity of using his persua-
sive powers, which are very great and of which he has every
reason to be proud. I felt like yielding more than once, but
resisted. He could not leave Parliament and his work and
accompany me to America, and it seemed so foolish to be
married one day and return to America the next, and I had
never been separated from my little son longer than a week,
until then, and was aching to see him again — so I stood firm.

One evening T. P. appeared, and was transcendentally
charming and agreeable. Presently he took from his pocket
an important looking official document, which proved to be
a special licence for our marriage the next day ! Oh, how
magnificently he talked and argued, and how I laughed !
A special licence, without one word of consultation with me !
We were to be married in St Margaret's Church, West-
minster— it was not to be announced — and later, on my
return from America, we were to be married again in the

i44 I MYSELF

Catholic Church. His chief argument for the marriage was
that he was engaged on a novel, " Dead Man's Island "
(afterwards published in an Irish paper and never a great
success, but some very brilliant writing in it nevertheless),
and that he must have no uncertainties in his life while he
was doing it- I had read the beginning of the romance —
found it too sombre in hue for success, and did not feel
that even his getting married would add gaiety to the book,
so I said, no, we must wait until my return from America.
He folded up the special licence hopefully, and put it in his
pocket, and said if I was not to wear a wedding ring at least
I must have an engagement ring, and would I meet him at
the Army and Navy Stores the next day — which I did, and
chose a modest little turquoise ring which cost, I remember,
eight pounds, and it pleased me as much as if the price had
been eighty. I knew T. P.'s income was small, and did not
allow him to carry out his wish and buy diamonds which I
was sure he could not afford.

When we left the Stores he placed my hand in his arm and
grasped it tightly with the other hand. " Now," he said,
" you must come to church with me for a moment."

I objected, and laughed so contagiously, the people we
passed laughed in sympathy. We arrived in a few moments
at St Margaret's, and interviewed a very ancient sexton.
T. P. said, " I am coming here on Friday at n o'clock to be
married — have the clergyman and witnesses ready."

The old man answered indifferently, " All right."

Then I said, "I'm afraid the gentleman won't come on
Friday as the lady he is to marry is very ill."

The old man paid no attention to me, but turned his weak
old eyes on T. P. and asked, " Are you, or are you not, going
to get married ? "

" I am," T. P. answered firmly.

I was almost suffocated with laughing, but managed to
say, disconnectedly, "If the lady is worse you can't marry
here — you will have to be married at her bedside."

" We will be here Friday," T. P. confidently replied.

The old man meantime had been examining T. P. carefully,

I BECOME ENGAGED 145

and he asked querulously, " Ain't you the gentleman as was
going to be married this morning and didn't come ? "

" I am," said T. P., unabashed.

" Then why didn't you ? " the old man grumbled.

In the middle of uncontrollable laughing I gasped out,
" The lady was so ill."

" Never mind," said T. P., " Friday " — and we went away.

I forget what I did on that particular day, but it was not
the business of getting married. I think I went with
Colonel Mitchell to buy a steamer trunk, and by way of
making myself agreeable I said to him, " What a fine figure
you have ! How tall are you ? " And he answered, " Six
feet two, but I don't look so tall, as my figure is perfectly
proportioned — have you noticed it ? "

Men are really appealing in their vanity — it is so simple,
childlike, and unafraid. Ah well ! This " perfectly pro-
portioned " being was a gallant, kind, unselfish, honourable,
high-minded gentleman, and it was only his innocent vanity
that was out of proportion.

10

CHAPTER XXVIII

A SHIPWRECK— LEAVING MY FRIENDS

A crisis reveals man's true nature, and often dissipates the myth of
his chivalry to woman.

I LEFT T. P. to deal with clergyman, witnesses and
sexton, and on Saturday I sailed for America. This
was in January, and the following June I found it very
difficult to leave my friends and to return to England again.

One of the compensations of poverty is disinterested
friendship. When you have neither money, nor hospitality,
nor time, nor service of any kind to offer your friends, and
they love you, and all the favours and advantages are on
their side, you are sure of pure, unalloyed affection. This
was my position. I had been very poor, and very busy,
and badly dressed, and often tired, and sometimes sad, but
I had my little circle of intimate, devoted friends, of whose
life I formed a part, as even in busy New York I saw them
almost every day.

Dr Walter Gillette had literally snatched me from the jaws
of death only the summer before, and there was Mrs Clark
who had been a mother to me — a woman whose heart was
pure gold — and her son, Max, who stood almost as near to me
as my own child. When Max was a baby his mother sailed
from New York to California, and the boat struck a rock
in the Pacific Ocean some hundreds of miles from San
Francisco, and the whole crew were landed on a tiny island
covered with ashes — not a drop of water or a blade of grass.
Luckily the boat did not go to pieces at once. They got the
evaporating machine for making fresh water from salt — a
sorry business at best, as the water remains brackish, and
,46

A SHIPWRECK— LEAVING MY FRIENDS 147

never water enough to quench thirst. Even on this desert
island with death staring them in the face, some ladies elected
to be exclusive, and declined lying near the filles de joie —
for the people were packed together like sardines at night.
My friend with Max, who was then a baby, surrounded her-
self with these ladies, and she said they behaved like heroines,
particularly one, who gave her share of water to the children
until her tongue was swollen, blackened and cracked from
want of it. Mrs Clark was possessed of a courage worthy of
Napoleon. She was full of hope all through the terrible ten
days or fortnight which they spent on the island — and at
dawn one morning, far, far away, she saw a thin haze of blue
smoke. At first she thought it was her imagination, but the
smoke grew bluer, and then a ship came in sight, and finally
it saw their signals of distress. She then awoke the Captain,
told the good news, and they were eventually rescued. The
Pacific Mail Steamship Company afterwards gave her a set of
silver in appreciation of her courage.

Only in a crisis is the true nature of a man or woman
revealed. Mrs Clark told me of one man, so gallant and
flirtatious to the women on board, who when the one to whom
he had shown the most compromising attentions rushed to
him after the ship struck the rock, screaming, " Save me,
save me ! " pushed her from him roughly, saying, " Go
away, woman," and swiftly leaped into the first life-boat
lowered, only to be ordered out by the Doctor, who stood
with pistol in hand calling out, " The women and children
first ! The next man who gets in the boat I'll shoot like a
dog ! " And he did shoot one sailor, and that restored
order.

Her great courage and her great heart made me cling to
my friend, and there never was a boy so lovable, so honest
and honourable, and truthful, and studious, and kind as Max,
and he occupied the place of an elder brother to Toodie. It
was really heart-breaking to leave these and other friends.
I remember going one night to a restaurant for oysters with
General Kirkland, one of my truest and most understanding
comrades, and H. S. N., whose tender friendship for me dated

i48 I MYSELF

from the days when we were both pink-cheeked youngsters.
When we sat down to supper General Kirkland looked at me
regretfully and said, " It's a pity the little woman is engaged
to an Irishman. We are going to lose her. Do you want to
marry her, N. ? "

H. S. N. flushed up, but stood to his guns like a man and
said, " Yes, General, I do."

" Then why don't you do it ? " said General Kirkland.
" You know I love her better than any woman in the world,
but I dreamed last night I was married to her, and I tell you,
sir, I woke up the whole of Fifth avenue with my screams."
He continued, " Does T. P. consider you a type ? "

I said, " Oh, I don't know — I suppose so."

" Well," he said, " will you give him a message from me ?
Will you tell him that you are the only thing of the kind in
the country ! "

I can always enjoy any amount of humour at my own
expense, even when there is a strong suspicion of truth
attached to it, and administered in generous doses, if it be
without malice. There is nothing that creates such quick
intimacy or such thorough understanding as appreciation
of the same joke, and my friends are welcome to laugh at my
peculiarities and eccentricities any day if they will only
love me.

" The world is filled with folly and sin, and love must cling where

it may,
For Beauty is easy enough to win, but one isn't loved every day."

People with a sense of humour are hungrier for affection
than those without it. For at heart they are often both lonely
and sad. Life seen through comic spectacles is an amusing,
but not an edifying sight. Tears can quiver just behind
laughter. You do not want to murder if you are a comedian,
but you can long to die. My friend, William Kirkland, was a
born humorist, but life had gone very awry with him. He
is at rest now, buried in Virginia. I am glad he sleeps in the
South, where the mocking-bird sings and the honeysuckle
blooms. Only necessity brought him to New York, and he

A SHIPWRECK— LEAVING MY FRIENDS 149

never liked the noise and the cold, and was always home-sick.
Friendship without one soupfon of sentiment between a
woman and a man rarely exists in England, but it is very
common in America, and I make bold to say, that it is a
woman's strongest inducement to virtue. If two or three men
genuinely like a woman with frankness, appreciation and trust,
she will pause before she betrays the trust. Without analysing
the position she feels she is expected to uphold an ideal. She
stands for something higher and better in womanhood than
surrender. Mrs Crawford, the brilliant Paris Correspondent
of " Truth," my good and consistent friend, says I have a
genius for friendship. If it be true, it is my only genius.
But this I do know — I have loved my friends understand-
ingly, and often there has been between us a communion of
spirit that passeth all understanding out of which has been
born an indestructible bond.

My idea of loyalty in friendship is best illustrated by three
street boys in New York. Two were preparing to fight.
One turned to the spectator and said, " Jim, before dis yer
fight begins is you fur me or agin me ? " Jim answered,
" Bill, I'm fur you — but you's in de dead wrong." Now,
when my friends are "in de dead wrong " that's the time
I'm " fur em " — and that's the time I want them to " be
fur me." Any stranger can befriend us when we are in " de
dead right." At one time, I had occasion to test myself.
It was during the period of the Beecher-Tilton trial. I
loved Mr Beecher, firmly believed him innocent of all
wrong, took my stand on that, and I never read one word
of the testimony. "If," an astute judge asked me, "he is
guilty ? " " Then," I said, " he is truly noble, for, believing
in God and practising that belief all his life, yet he has com-
mitted perjury, not to cast people out in the dark of weaker
faith than himself." " What sophistry ! " the judge said.
" But what an obdurate friend ! " According to my code
not even marriage has greater obligations than friendship.

American men like women as friends, comrades, com-
panions— as human beings quite apart from sex. The
American man likes one woman — he loves another woman.

150 I MYSELF

Very frequently his marriage does not interfere with his
friendship, which resembles in many respects the friendship
between men.

Englishmen (I am not speaking of the exceptions) like
women as wives and sweethearts, not much as mothers and
sisters, and their friendships, intellectual, personal and
political, are with other men. This is the reason doubtless
why they have such superficially bad manners with women.
In trouble they can be and are kind, helpful, and even
chivalrous, but life is not altogether made up of trouble, and
I think the forward way some Englishmen use their legs and
loll at ease, in House of Commons attitudes, before women is
most objectionable. Who would ever think of describing
the best mannered Englishman as deferential to women —
and yet many foreign and American men are.

The fact is the point of view of an Englishman and an
American is exactly opposite. The American man expects
to make his wife happy — the Englishman expects his wife to
make him happy. If he is happy, he thinks she should be so
too in the contemplation of his happiness. There is a story
vouched for in an American hotel. An Englishman travel-
ling with his wife ordered two birds to be brought for their
supper. The waiter returned saying there was only one bird
left. The Englishman then asked, " What is my wife
going to have ? "

When he falls in love, however, and while he remains in
love, an Englishman is probably more generous to the object
of his affections than an American, and by all odds more
trusting. Two of my friends, for example, without introduc-
tions, have married from the Burlington Arcade ; one of them,
a smart young officer in the Grenadier Guards, had danced
and flirted his share, but trustfully accepted the version
of her life from a russet-haired lady who casually bid him
good day, as he was going to buy silk socks. He married her,
and of course subsequently he divorced her. An American
man would have been quizzical over her story, and even if in
love, he would certainly not have married her. The other
man, a sailor, had had even a wider experience with the fair

A SHIPWRECK— LEAVING MY FRIENDS 151

sex than the Guardsman, and he is both handsome and
charming and might have married almost anybody — but a
pretty, black eyed little foreigner eating bonbons said as he
passed, " Will you have a sweet ? " And he said, " Yes,"
and married her. He is divorced also. And ridiculous as
these marriages are, both these men are possessed of an
innate generosity and chivalry, or these women would have
been passing episodes. The frank indifference, the good
looks and the manliness of the average Englishman are
valuable weapons for arousing the interest of an American
woman, but there are very few successful international
marriages, English or European. An American woman's best
chance of happiness is with one of her own countrymen. In
many things their point of view and opinions must be the
same, while with different nationalities the situation is
pithily summed up by Graham Robertson in " Pinkie and the
Fairies," when Elf Pickle is discoursing his wise philosophy.
Elf Pickle : " Point of view, you know. You see me and say,
* That's fairy Pickle of course.' Gregory stares me in the
face and says, ' Of course that isn't Fairy Pickle, that's a
grasshopper.' " It's just point of view. And that is where all
the unhappiness and misery steps in. How can two people
be happy when, looking at the same object, one sees a fairy
and the other a grasshopper ? For example, an American
woman who has been brought up to regard divorce from an
enlightened point of view marries and goes to Italy to live,
where divorce is non-existent. Her Marquis can leave her
temporarily and flaunt the most celebrated cosmopolitan
beauty in her face, and she is helpless. Her independent
soul, and her younger and more courageous civilization, are
defied and set at nought. And even in England the divorce
law, as it exists now, is an insult to all womanhood. The
man divorces his wife for unfaithfulness ; the wife must have
combined unfaithfulness and cruelty — and moral cruelty is
physical cruelty, because it leads to nervous prostration and
illnessess of divers sorts, to be borne by the woman whose
husband is unfaithful — and not only unfaithful, but gener-
ally unjust, and unkind, at the same time. Men are more

i52 I MYSELF

simple and unsuspicious than women. A clever adventuress
can play upon a man as upon a responsive instrument.
When the wife is honest and the adventuress dishonest, the
wife must inevitably go to the wall and get the worst of it,
and yet she has no redress unless her husband strikes her.
She is bound hand and foot, not only to him but to her
enemy, the third partner in the concern. Much immorality
would cease if the divorce law of England was amended
and made equal between the sexes. Now, a wife is not nearly
so well protected as an ordinary partner in an ordinary
business. There, at least, taking in a third partner, without
the consent of the other two, would dissolve the firm. But
in marriage this rank and hideous injustice is done every
day, and the law of an old and intelligent country allows it.
Certainly women in England are right in clamouring for a
vote. Many injustices are crying to them for reformation.
Lady Aberdeen, that large-minded, noble and admirable
woman, who is so deeply concerned over the advancement of
her sex, will assuredly have done much good at the Universal
Congress for Women held recently in Canada, one of the sub-
jects for discussion being the advisability of a woman keeping
her own nationality after marriage. It is a monstrous thing
that a woman should lose her country as well as her name
on her marriage. These questions had not occupied me so
deeply in America, although I became a Suffragist as soon as
I began to work for my living. When fifteen pounds a month
was paid me, for exactly the same amount of work for which
a man received twenty-five this obvious and practical
injustice instantly converted me to Woman's Suffrage. A
Republican form of government is the best, but even we have
many laws for women which need amendment. And the
women have already begun to work to amend them.

CHAPTER XXIX

I GET MARRIED

AFTER all, we in America are a young and un-
disciplined country, but we can take the very
worst elements from older civilizations and in a
few months turn them into creditable law-abiding citizens,
ready to shoulder a musket in defence of their country. Can
any other nation do as much ? We do it by optimism. We
create an atmosphere of self-respect, equality and hope,
where the hopeless become self-respecting, and the down-
trodden find equality. Give a man back his self-respect,
and his reformation has begun.

I gave up a great deal when I gave up my country, for I
love it. I love its boisterous youth and its progress and its
great possibilities. But I believed in T. P. and in Home
Rule, and I had been brought up by my father to love
England and the English, and I felt I should be happy in
England — and so one lovely May day, with a crowd of
friends to see me off, my little son and I stood on the deck
of a White Star steamer, and long before the land faded
away, my blinding tears had hidden it from my sight. It
was a happy voyage ; three old friends were on board, the
weather was lovely, and T. P. met us at Queenstown. He
paid small attention in those days to his appearance, and I
remember thinking how quickly I should change the cut of
his trousers and the cut of his hair. Toodie (who was then
ten years old) and I had many long talks about my
getting married. He had a friend in New York whom
he preferred as a stepfather. He said, " He has given
me rabbits and dogs, and anyhow, if he hadn't, I would

153

154 I MYSELF

love him, and I do love him. Why don't you marry
him ? "

I said, " Well, you see he plays cards all night long, and
we would be so tired sitting up until the morning waiting
for him to come home."

" But," said Toodie, " if we both try can't we keep him
in nights ? "

I said it would be perfectly impossible, and then the tears
rolled down his cheeks and he said regretfully, " Well, I wish
you hadn't let me get so attached to him."

Then I told him how good T. P. was, how truthful and
honourable, what a good example he would be, and that he
was very, very kind, and loved children, but I said, " If you
don't like him I wouldn't think of marrying him. You and
I are quite alone in the world — I, the only mother, and you
the only son — and somebody must give his consent to my
getting married, and nothing must ever come between us
or separate us, so if you don't like T. P. say so, and back we
go to America."

He was a most deliberate and thoughtful child, and said
he would get to know T. P. and think it over. Every day
I said, " Now mind, nothing will induce me to marry T. P.
unless you give your consent and unless you like him."

After thinking it over he said he did, and added, " He
must be a gentleman, because," he said quite seriously, " all
the O'Connors are the descendants of Kings — Pie is a born
Imperialist] — and Kings are always the first gentlemen."
After having freely given his consent he refused, however, to
go to the wedding. He said, " I do give my consent, and
I'm sure we will be happy with him, but somehow," and the
tears came in his eyes, " I don't want to see you married.
Now run along and get married, and come back and tell me
so, and I'll wait here in the flat for you."

I turned obediently to do his bidding and he called me
back and pinned a rose on my dress and said, " I want to
love you a minute, God bless you " — and after a long
squeeze T. P. and I and his sister went off to a quiet little
church in Horseferry Road, and we were married. Dear

I GET MARRIED 155

Justin M'Carthy gave me away, a few friends wished us luck,
and then we went back to the flat and to Toodie and began
housekeeping. T. P. who at the last minute was writing an
article with the boy in his study waiting for copy, had
forgotten the wedding ring, so there was a slight wait while
Mary O'Connor rushed to the Stores to get it, and really
we have been rushing to the Stores for forgotten things ever
since. Toodie had decorated the flat in our absence, and
was very tactful on our return.

And now London was to be my home. The first three
months of our married life we lived in T. P/s small flat in
Parliament Mansions, Victoria Street. How businesslike
it looks now, but twenty-five years ago it was occupied as
residential apartments. There was one large living room,
a library for T. P., and four or five bedrooms. Mary O'Connor
(now Mrs William O'Malley) T. P.'s youngest sister, formed
part of the household. She was a very amiable, attractive
girl, with the traditional Irish eyes, bright blue with black
eyebrows and lashes, a charming quality of voice, and an
ever present touch of persuasiveness in the full-flavoured
Irish brogue. She had the proud distinction of having been
in prison during the Land League struggles, and she had
behaved with great determination and valour — so she was
quite a heroine among the Irish. No one ever possessed a
sweeter or more unselfish nature than hers, or had a brighter
or more hopeful outlook on life. Among the blackest clouds
the silver lining always peeped forth for her, and she has made
life happier for all who have come into contact with her.

The flat was too small for us, and we moved in September
to 38 Grosvenor Road, a house on the river Thames. What
a constant interest the river was ! It was a pretty little
house — my first home in six years — and I loved it, and took
root at once. My household gods and books were sent
from America — among them some really valuable colonial
furniture, and silver that had been made in Virginia, quite
simple, but heavy and everlasting (now, alas, gone by the
nimble hand of the burglar !).

Feeling was still running high against Home Rule, and

156 I MYSELF

these big cases arriving from New York addressed to Mrs
T. P. O'Connor contained, the authorities conjectured,
what ? Especially as some imaginative woman in Belfast
had started the rumour that in America I was the leader of a
Fenian band — I who scarcely numbered an Irishman among
my acquaintance ! So long iron spikes were run cautiously
through the boxes to see, I suppose, if they contained
dynamite or infernal machines — and the face of " The Madre
Isabella Philomena Mehea Iturbede " was seriously injured.
This picture was a portrait given to me by a friend who had
lived in Mexico and done some service to the then President
of the Republic, for which he had been rewarded by a copy
of the original portrait of this celebrated nun. She was
the founder of an order, and was so talented that she was
known as the Tenth Muse — being a poet, a musician, a
linguist, a diplomatist and a wonderful business woman.
She died leaving the order rich in Convents and leagues of
land. The portrait had been presented to me as a con-
ventionalized likeness of myself. It was as I should have
been if Nature had been more kind. How I wept when I
saw the hole in Donna Isabella's cheek ! But a clever
restorer made it as good as new, only there was the bill to
pay, and we were dreadfully poor in those days. Every
shilling had to be counted. We had only one servant, and
I swept and dusted, and made beds, and cleaned silver, and
made salads (I am not a cook) , and hunted up a small dress-
maker who went out to work by the day, and all our dresses
were made in the house. (Neither am I a dressmaker !)
They were not conspicuous successes, but we wore them,
Mary and I, with happy hearts, for we were young and full
of hope, and poverty, with the management of a small
income, is a very engrossing occupation. The house looked
quite pretty when finished, although it was decidedly
original and somewhat incongruous. The drawing room
curtains in their day cost five hundred dollars, and had
draped immense windows in America. In our small house
they looked decidedly relics of departed grandeur, but we
came very near not having them at all. In the innocence

I GET MARRIED 157

of my heart and ignorance of London prices I sent them to
Pullar's to be cleaned, and they were returned with a bill
of five pounds to be collected on delivery ! The house
and everyone in it was guiltless of five pounds. So the man
took them away, and I wrote and formally presented them to
Pullar's Dye Works. They refused my present, preferring
the five pounds, and then ensued a lively correspondence,
in which I blithely persisted in my generosity, and in which
Pullar visibly weakened, until at last the curtains reappeared
with a quite collapsed bill. When the man brought them he
asked the " general " if he could deliver them in person, as
he wanted to see the only customer for whom the firm had
reduced a bill in his recollection. It was an encouragement
for me to go on in well-doing, and I have never forgotten it.
The drawing-room carpet, I remember, was a great
problem. I didn't want a Brussels carpet, and I could not
afford an Axminster, and my tidy soul revolted at felt, so
what was to be done ? Luckily, Henry Norman came in
to tea (now Sir Henry Norman, and somewhat grave, with
his hair thinning on the top). He was such a nice boy then,
fresh from an American College, and just settled in rooms
at the Temple ; he had been furnishing himself, and he was
interested in every possible question of life. I never saw
such an eager mind. So I confided to him the crux of the
carpet and we went upstairs and he looked at the room and
said he knew the exact thing, and he gave me the name and
the shop and said, " Mind you get a wine colour for the
curtains." The colour was to make up for lack of quality,
and I did, and this finished off the room. I've forgotten
the name of the carpet, but I saw some of it not long ago, and
it did not strike me as very pretty. I fear I have outgrown
it, but I have not outgrown Sir Henry : that is some consola-
tion. Only I see him too rarely to profit by his great know-
ledge on an infinite variety of subjects, which when he attacks
them in the different magazines are always so delightfully
and lucidly dealt with. When the little house was finished,
it was fresh and pleasant, and became very dear to me,
though the taste of its furnishing was by no means faultless.

CHAPTER XXX

THE UNPOPULARITY OF IRISH POLITICS

WHEN I was first married and came to England,
twenty-five years ago, Irish politics were neither
popular nor fashionable, and, with the exception of
Justin McCarthy, who had been in constant demand at
every great house in London, as a charming and delightful
conversationalist and famous literary man, there was
scarcely a Nationalist who had entered an English house.
Therefore it was a question whether, as the wife of an Irish
Member, I would be received by English people or not.

Justin M'Carthy was a very old friend of Lady St Helier
(who at that time was Mrs Jeune) and spoke of me in kindly
fashion to her, and she left cards and sent an invitation to
an " At Home " immediately afterwards. In those days
Lady St Helier had perhaps the best known salon in London.
She had the courage of her convictions, and asked whom she
pleased to her house — and even the great personages, who
perhaps in private life would have held themselves apart
from some of the gay Bohemians assembled there, were at
least pleased and amused to see them.

I was fresh from America at this time, and as we wore
decolletee gowns only at balls and on ceremonious occasions, I
must have looked very modest and provincial and not at all
fashionable — but in the enjoyment of the evening I quite
forgot my disadvantage. My dress had been fashioned by
most loving hands in America — an Irish dressmaker, Mary
Johnson, who had taken great pains with it. The material
was a heavy ribbed white silk made with a modest square
neck. The silk was cut out in points and softened by a little
158

THE UNPOPULARITY OF IRISH POLITICS 159

tulle ruffle — the sleeves were long, plain, very tight, and
finished in the same way — the skirt was perfectly plain, cut
out in points at the bottom, and a little frill underneath.
There was scarcely any train, and it had a narrow sash tied
at one side. I wore no jewellery (I had none at the time) and
carried no flowers, so I must have presented a very simple
effect in the midst of lovely dresses trimmed with lace and
many magnificent jewels ; but to be under-dressed is a thing
that has never troubled me. It has occurred to me so often
in my life that I suppose I have grown accustomed to it.
At any rate the evening was a delightful one, and Justin
M'Carthy and his daughter Charlotte were very kind in intro-
ducing me to various well-known people.

Miss M'Carthy was a very pretty girl, and I remember her
dress quite well, as it was rather an original one for a blonde
to have chosen. She had very white skin and amber-
coloured wavy hair. With this she wore white satin covered
with white lace and looped up here and there with amber
velvet bows. I thought I had never seen a prettier being.

One of the people to whom she introduced me was, I
remember, Oscar Wilde, and he began at once the most
brilliant talk about America and American women. He
said he had seen many very pretty dainty complete and
charming women in America, but never one of magnificent
Goddess of Liberty proportions, and he thought that, new
as the country was, we should dethrone the Goddess of
Liberty and have a French Marquise in her place, as being
more representative of the country.

I was then quite new to the carelessness of English etiquette,
and I insisted on Mr Wilde's taking me to have a few words
of conversation with my host, as in America we were par-
ticular to pay special attention to our host and hostess.
Mr Wilde assured me laughingly that Mr Jeune did not know
I was there, and I replied, " Quite true ; I don't suppose he
knows that I am here, but I know that he is there." Where-
upon Mr Wilde said my vernacular proclaimed me Irish.
I told him, however, that I had no Irish blood, but was of
French extraction, and he said that was the next best thing.

160 I MYSELF

He then presented me to Mr Jeune, who looked rather bored
and somewhat sleepy, but very, very kind — and when I told
him I was the daughter of an American Judge he asked my
father's name. I said, " Paschal," and he knew of " Pas-
chal's Annotated Constitution of the United States." I
afterwards brought him a copy from America and received
such an appreciative letter of thanks.

The evening was most agreeable and friendly, and I took
an enormous fancy to Mrs Jeune — but in all that large crowd
the person who aroused genuine tenderness in my heart and
a desire to know him better was Mr Jeune, because he had
spoken of my father. It gave me a feeling of real happiness
to find that in England his dear name was not unknown.

Soon after Mrs Jeune's party Charlotte McCarthy brought
Mrs Labouchere to see me. A little boudoir which I had
tried to furnish in the Japanese style was just finished, and
they were shown in there. The one servant brought in tea,
which Charlotte poured out and we began to talk, and in
spite of her severe scrutiny I felt that Mrs Labouchere and I
should be friends : as the fortune tellers say, " she would
cross my path." Her eyes of grey-blue were quite steady in
their gaze, and she seemed to be looking through and beyond
me. Her manner was very quiet and reserved, but she asked
us to spend the following Sunday at Twickenham. This de-
lighted me. I had never been on the river, and Pope's Villa
with its carved hall and its grotto in which Pope wrote his
" Universal Prayer " was historic, that prayer that has
contained some crumb of comfort for every distressed soul —
these two verses alone would make him immortal : —

Teach me to feel another's woe,

To hide the fault I see ;
That mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am, not wholly so

Since quickened by thy breath ;
Oh, lead me whereso'er I go,

Through this day's life or death.

THE UNPOPULARITY OF IRISH POLITICS 161

In those days Mrs Labouchere was a noted hostess, getting
just the right people together, very gay, bright and witty,
and full of humour herself, and Mr Labouchere was always
sparkling and scintillating, so whoever was asked to her
house went quite sure of being amused and having, in
Americanese, " a good time." The guests arrived at Twicken-
ham about twelve or one o'clock, sat on the lawn until lunch
was served, returned to the lawn for coffee, went through the
grotto to the other side of the garden for tea, roamed around,
smoked, told stories — Mr Labouchere always with a laughing
circle around him — and before dinner we went into the
house to brush up, morning dress being always the rule, for the
convenience of the guests. Then dinner, and later a drive
by moonlight or starlight to London. How many, many
happy, interested, amused hours I owe to Pope's Villa I
Last year when I was staying at York House, the Ratan
Tata's historic place, I walked over to the now empty
house — it seemed to echo with absent voices, and I wandered
sadly over the charming garden, so full of memories. " Mid-
summer Night's Dream " and " The Tempest " were both
given there with great beauty and success — but that was
long after my first day on the river.

There was a most interesting party of people for our first
dinner. Mr and Mrs Maxwell (Miss Braddon), the authoress
of " Lady Audley's Secret," which I thought and still think
the best novel of the kind ever written. Mrs Maxwell was
a tall, dignified woman, dressed in black and white, her face
wore a very kind expression, and she was as modest and as
feminine as a woman who had done nothing. I remember
we spoke of Mrs Labouchere, and she said she was a woman
of imagination and an excellent critic. There were some
straw chairs on the balcony that I admired very much, and
Mr Maxwell undertook to send me one, and I thought of
course he would forget, but later on he wrote to say he
regretted very much but the last chair that I wanted had
been sold.

At twilight Mrs Labouchere and I went upstairs to see
Dora, now the Marquesa di Rudini. She was two years old

162 I MYSELF

and was having her bath, and, as the darkies say, she was a
lump of sweetness, very fat and solid, quite unabashed and
unafraid, with her father's dark eyes and mischievous
glances. I begged one or two nice wet soapy kisses, which
she gave me quite willingly, and we left her with a plump
india-rubber doll-baby exactly her own shape to finish her
bath.

Beerbohm Tree and his wife were also there. She wore a
picture gown of cream lace and a Gainsborough hat, and he
was most agreeable and likable. He took me into dinner, and
I sat next Mr Labouchere, who rather damped my poetic
enthusiasm about Pope's Villa. The poet had certainly
built a villa on that site, but it had been destroyed, and a
worthy Swiss had evidently designed and built the present
one. This did not prevent the servants from showing, when
the family was absent, the bedroom as the room where the
poet died, to sightseers, and from reaping considerable benefit
from their obligingness. When Pope built the grotto he had
been sent by his admirers from all parts of the world bits of
malachite, chrysophrase, bloodstone, onyx, sardonyx, the
matrix of opal, and turquoise, and many semi-precious
stones, with which he adorned the grotto. There were only
two left : the remainder Mr Labouchere said had been plucked
by the enterprizing tourist — the American probably, as he
has a practical, acquisitive mind.

The happy day was at last ended, and having no carriage
we went home in the train. This was the beginning of my
friendship with the Laboucheres which was to form so large
a part of my life in London.

They were then living in Queen Anne's Gate, a delightful
old house looking on to St James's Park. We celebrated our
first Christmas dinner with them. Among the guests were
Whistler, Frank Miles, and George Augustus Sala. After
dinner we played like so many children, and Whistler said
that mistletoe was made for brides, and I was carried under
a big bunch of mistletoe and told to be a good little girl and
kiss everybody good night. I refused to obey, and nobody
dared to kiss me except Whistler, and some absurd punish-

THE UNPOPULARITY OF IRISH POLITICS 163

ment was devised for me by the others, and the party did not
break up until one o'clock. That was twenty-five years ago,
please remember !

Frank Miles was very handsome and agreeable, and
a better gardener than artist. He gave Mrs Langtry
the pretty name of the Jersey Lily, on account of the
way her head drooped like a flower on its stem. His
father had a fine garden, and he used often to go in the
country just for the sake of digging and planting, and was
always kind in sending me charming country nosegays. He
was also a friend of the McCarthys and I sometimes met him
there. At this time they had a house in Ebury Street.
Justin said it was a very nice little house, but there was no
furniture in it. They went in one dark evening, and saw a
pretty comfortable room, and were satisfied with this, and
confidingly engaged the house, but when they came to live
in it all the furniture had been moved for that one occasion
into that one room.

CHAPTER XXXI

MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION

" I was a princess once, and my talents were everywhere sung of.
I was indebted for my popularity not only to beauty but to whit.
Ah ! where is the destined prince that is to come to liberate and
to whoo ? " THACKERAY

JUSTIN MCCARTHY was one of the most delightful con-
versationalists I have ever known — a perfect encyclo-
paedia of information ; a wonderful memory, with any
amount of prose and verse, stored away for immediate
application ; witty, gentle, and kind, he was universally
popular. Justin Huntly was handsome and scintillatingly
brilliant, and Charlotte was very pretty, and an excellent
hostess, one of her accomplishments being that of a carver.
She could deftly divide a partridge or a duck as well as the
most accomplished maUre d'hdtel.

Soon after we were married we had a few friends to dine
with us, among them a very conventional American. Char-
lotte at my request sat at the head of the table and carved,
and very cleverly she did it. The American went to Paris
and said it was a queer household, as Miss McCarthy sat at
the head of the table and did the honours, but Mrs T. P. did
not seem to mind. If he had but known, he was lucky to
have his neat morsel of chicken cut by such capable hands,
for carving is not one of my accomplishments, nor is it T. P.'s.

The M'Carthys' household was a delightful one. They
were all humourists and determined to take life as a huge
joke. Justin was very ill at one time, and when Mr Curzon
called, the stupid little parlour-maid went upstairs and said,
" Mr Crusoe would like to see you."

MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION 165

" Would he ? " said Justin. " Ask him up. His father
was a very eminent mariner/*

One day at lunch T. P. was complaining of his chronic
ill-health. Justin Huntly laughingly said, '" T. P. you are a
remarkable speaker and a remarkable journalist, but above
and beyond all, a remarkable, indeed, a wonderful invalid —
always very ill, but at the same time perfectly well, and
absolutely robust. I shall write an article and call it ' T. P.
the Invalid.' "

At that period during a General Election T. P. could untir-
ingly make seven and eight speeches a day, and often did,
and two or three in one night, keeping up the pressure for six
weeks, and being perfectly fresh at the end of the time.
Indeed his health would improve after continual activity
and work that would have worn out another and a differ-
ently constituted man.

Not long after we moved to Grosvenor Road there was a
General Election, and T. P. was away speaking all over the
country. His speeches were highly commended and com-
plimented, and he arrived at home one night expecting more
praise, when almost my first words were, " I've made an
awful mistake in the blue wall-paper, its much too dark and
eats up all the light. You see London is so gloomy, so different
from America, I did not realize that when I chose it."

" Really," T. P. said, much irritated, " and not one word
about my speeches. Have you read them ? "

" Not all of them," I answered, " and the dado is the worst
part — it's much darker than the rest."

" What is a dado ? " said T. P. " And this is the interest
you take in my career ! "

Just then came the postman's knock, the mail was brought
in, and on opening an American paper, the first thing that
mght my eye was an article saying there were three women
in England who were intelligent politicians. The Baroness
Burdett-Coutts, Lady Randolph Churchill, and Mrs T. P.
O'Connor — that Mr O'Connor was not ashamed to acknow-
ledge how much of his success he owed to his wife, who had
indeed been of great assistance to him, in planning his present

166 I MYSELF

brilliant election tour. I handed the paper to T. P. and said,
" You see I am made a politician whether I am one or not :
the American papers always praise their absent womenkind."

T. P. read the article with rather a grim smile, and saidr
" This fellow does not know your interest in dadoes. The
American papers will say next that you wrote ' The Parnell
Movement.' '

There is nothing indeed in life that has amused me more
than my own reputation. It is a thing I have stood so apart
and away from, and it is so utterly unlike the real, less
interesting me. An Irish woman said to me once " Do you
write ' M. A. P.' ? "

I thought I had not heard her aright, and replied, " You
mean do I write in ' M. A. P.* '

" No," she said, " do you write the paper ? "

I asked, " Do you mean from cover to cover ? "

" Yes," she said, " I heard that you did."

" Oh," I said, " this is very interesting. Tell me what
else you have heard about me."

She hesitated a moment and said, " Well I did hear that
you wrote Mr O'Connor's political speeches."

" Well," I said, " I don't, but I'll tell you a secret— I did
write all of Mr Gladstone's."

The lady had, although an Irishwoman, only a small sense
of humour, and I left her looking rather bewildered.

Another friend travelling in Ireland was told that it was
I who put the dynamite in the House of Commons, and that
before I married Mr O'Connor I was in America the leader
of a Fenian band. I have never known a Fenian band (I
hope they are more in harmony than a German band, but
doubt it) and I don't believe if I had they would have
allowed me to lead them. I am not a good leader. I tried
very hard to lead a small dog once, but it ended in his leading
me, and in my most vaulting ambition I should not dream
of leading even one tame Irishman, much less a dozen, and
that dozen Fenians. I have never seen any dynamite, but
I loathe both powder and temper explosions. They are
very unnerving. A pretty house, birds, flowers, music.

MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION 167

books, and a circle of understanding friends, are more in my
line than Fenians and dynamite ; they are less exciting it is
true, but I want only peace and quiet, not noise or glory.
Henry James speaks in one of his inimitable stories of a man
who had the charm of being always at home. Well, I had
another charm, that of being even from the beginning of
my married life almost always alone. T. P. was a congenital
bachelor, he loved men, and clubs, and political meetings,
and speeches, and public dinners, and dining in the House
of Commons, and long conferences with his confreres. The
consequence was, as I once laughingly said to a friend, " I
rarely see T. P., with all that he has to do, but when I do
meet him out at dinner I still find him an agreeable man."

My cook, when I engaged her — an Irishwoman, and an
original — had given me a Roland for an Oliver. After asking
her various questions about how long she had been in her
last place, her capabilities, etc., I said, " And now, cook, in
the light of recent painful events, I must ask you a very
direct question : Do you drink ? "

" No, Madam," she answered, " and I may say as I am
looking for a place where the lady don't, as I've been very
unlucky in my last places."

We then exchanged characters for sobriety, and she came
to me the next day. She had been in the house three or
four months when one morning at nine o'clock she informed
me that a gentleman wanted to see me.

I said, " Isn't it rather early for a gentleman to call ?
Who is he ? "

" I don't know, ma'am," she said, " I never saw him
before."

" Where is he now ? " I asked.

" Using the telephone," she answered.

" What impudence ! " I said, — and when I put on my
most becoming peignoir and went downstairs it was T. P. !
Emerson, that gentle and comforting philosopher, says there
is a law of compensation in everything. Maybe so. At any
rate, when a woman marries a man who is in the strictest sense
of the word a public man, giving his time, his geniality, his

i68 I MYSELF

energy, and his life, to the multitude, he inevitably becomes
absorbed in outside interests, and his wife's compensation
for loneliness must be pride in his reputation and his popu-
larity. And of course she shines in reflected glory, and that,
although not quite so glorious as her own glory, is a thousand
times better than not shining at all. And there is another
and not a poor compensation for having her time at her
own disposal — the opportunity of forming close and devoted
friendships. Mrs Labouchere once said to me that I was better
off than most women, for I had two homes, hers and mine.
And what could be pleasanter than a home where another
woman has all the worry and responsibility and you have
only the pleasure and amusement ? And I adored Dora,
who was a most quaint and attractive little child when she
was only four, dancing prettily and reciting with great
brilliancy " Where are you going to, my pretty maid ? " hold-
ing up her skirts coquettishly, " I'm going a-milking, sir, she
said." And a little later, what an Ariel she made when Mrs
Labouchere gave " The Tempest " in the garden of Pope's
Villa ! — with her round little face, and her infantile grace, her
diaphanous garments and her wings she looked an elfin
thing just ready to fly away. Dora has fulfilled her promise
of childish beauty, and is now as the Marquesa di Rudini
one of the acknowledged loveliest women in Rome.

Naturally my first meeting with the Baroness Burdett-
Coutts made a lasting impression on my mind. It was one
afternoon in the height of the London season at Lady Jeune's.

There was only a very small gathering : Mrs Jopling Rowe,
brilliant, charming, and more beautiful than her celebrated
portrait by Millais, Lewis Morris the poet, Thomas Hardy,
that most gifted and most modest author, who had not yet
written " Tess of the D'Urbervilles," De Lara, and the
Baroness, who was dressed in a charmingly old-fashioned
manner. Her gown of deep purple silk was made with a
rather full skirt, and a simple bodice belted in with the same
material. There were lace ruffles at the neck and sleeves,
and she wore a small black cape of embroidery and lace, and
a close black bonnet trimmed in violets. Her ear-rings of

MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION 169

diamonds were long, and she carried a small silk bag of
netted purple silk — neither long earrings nor handbags were
worn at that period.

Lady Jeune presented me, and the Baroness was exceed-
ingly gracious, asked where I lived, carefully wrote down the
number, and said she would call to see me. De Lara at that
moment was the most popular tenor in London. Knowing
the Baroness's fondness for music, Lady Jeune asked him to
sing, and he gave this poem of Owen Meredith's, set to his
own characteristic music :

" As the one star that's left in the morning

Is more noticed than all night's host,
As the late lone rose of October

For its rareness regarded the most,
As the least of the leaves of December

That is loved as the last on the tree,
So sweetest of all to remember

Is thy love's latest promise to me.

For to love it is hard, and 'tis harder,

Perchance, to be loved again,
But if living be not loving

Then living is not all in vain.
To the tears I have shed and regret not

What matters a few more tears ?
i Why should love, that is present for ever,

Be afraid of the absence of years ?

When the snow's at the door and the ember

Is dim, and I far o'er the sea,
Remember, beloved, remember

That my love's latest trust was in thee."

He sang magnificently, with great passion and expression,
and both Lady Jeune and the Baroness went to the piano and
thanked him warmly. I daresay now that he composes
grand opera De Lara looks superciliously on the tuneful
music of his youth, but it was very charming nevertheless.
He was a most amiable man, and after hearing me sing a

i7o I MYSELF

little coon song, offered to cultivate my voice, but somehow,
like so much else in my life, the opportunity slipped by and
came to nothing.

With a good many visitors, the door bell to answer, and
continual errands for T. P., one servant proved terribly
inconvenient, and it was necessary to get a Buttons to open
the door, clean the boots, and make himself generally useful.
Knowing the unregenerateness of the genus boy, I deter-
mined on a nice religious one, brought up by the Christian
Brothers. William was his name. He was represented as-
all I desired, good, quiet, conscientious, obedient, and no
relatives. So the treasure came. He was a hopelessly
dirty boy. The first thing he did was to make a black
streak on the blue wall-paper from the top to the bottom
of the stairs. His face was continually like the face of a
sweep with coal dust, he broke every particle of china that
he touched, and he had an instinctive aversion to opening
the door. One afternoon I was busy, with my sleeves rolled
up, arranging a cupboard, when I heard the door bell ring
several times. Then I called " William," and after an
interval the door was finally opened, and William appeared
in my room with a navy blue face from grime and dust, and
said sulkily, " There's an ould woman downstairs."

" Where is she ? " I asked.

" On the mat," said William, and only when I had finished
the cupboard and pulled down my sleeves did I descend to
find the Baroness Burdett-Coutts standing in the hall !

I explained that William's only recommendation was his
religion, that he had neither knowledge nor manners, and I
begged her forgiveness for his rudeness. She was most
amused, made anything but a ceremonious visit, and as she
was leaving for Highgate asked me to come to tea with
her there.

A few days after her visit my little son Toodie said to mer
" If I tell you something you won't tell anybody ? " I
promised, and he said, " William says he is not going to clean
his teeth with your tooth-brush any more — it's so hard it
makes his gums bleed." And I fancy the brush had served

MY MYTHICAL REPUTATION 171

more purposes than one, for I once found a round black
object in it, which on examination proved to be a bird seed.
So I returned William, accompanied by my tooth-brush, to
the Christian Brothers. And he had relations. One of
them, a most stylish, bedizened young lady, his sister, called
to ask why he had been dismissed. I afterwards met her in a
Turkish Bath, where the attendant told me she came after
her horseback rides in the park, as she was just learning to
ride and the lessons made her rather stiff. She said she
had lovely jewellery, and that a kind old gentleman friend
always called for her, after her bath, in a carriage. So
perhaps with her good fortune she educated her brother
William.

CHAPTER XXXII

MY FAITHFULLEST FRIEND— MAX

" For never man had friend
More enduring to the end,
Truer mate in every turn of time and tide.
Could I think we'd meet again
It would lighten half my pain. . . ."

THERE are two things I remember about my visit to
the Baroness at Highgate. She gave me a sprig of
eucalyptus — it grows vigorously in Texas, and the
aromatic odour was like a breath from home — and I noticed
the portrait of a dog, a plebeian, with a stubby black
muzzle, soft, beautiful, had-been-sad, patient eyes, a square,
tenacious jaw, and an expensive collar. Of course he had a
history — one saw it in his face. It seems in his youth he
travelled in a circus, his " stunt " being to pick up live coals
with his teeth. He grew quite an adept at this inhuman trick,
curling up his lips, keeping his tongue back and taking what
care he could, but with all that he was a scarred and hopeless
performer; when the Baroness, by paying a high price,
rescued him, won his everlasting gratitude and adoration,
and gave him the happiest of homes until his death. She
had a great love of animals, and it is to her that " Bobby "
owes his handsome bronze fountain, which he surmounts
with such alluring impudence in Edinburgh. " Bobby " was
the dog of a carrier and always sat by his master and minded
the cart when the parcels were being delivered. On a
freezing day the man caught a cold and died of pneumonia.
" Bobby " watched by the body, attended the funeral, and
made the grave his future home. The sexton and the carrier's

MY FAITHFULLEST FRIEND-MAX 173

friends fed him, and there he remained in the churchyard for
several years until he died — and I hope was buried by the side
of his master. In bronze he looks a perfect comedian, with his
turned-up, cock-sure little nose, his little paws turned out,
and his woolly coat of rough hair. He evidently had a sense
of humour, but, like many comedians and humorists, his heart
became a tragedy of faithful grief. How well he deserves a
statue — this unselfish, self-sacrificing, long-suffering, best
friend of man !

In the autumn Toodie was being sent to school to Old
Hall, Ware, and just before he left home, he and T. P. went
out together to select a new suit for school. We were still
very poor, and the clothes would take about all the money
T. P. had in his pocket. I cautioned him to buy a service-
able tweed of a dark colour, and off they started. This was
in the morning. Towards dusk, I heard an excitement
downstairs and Toodie's voice saying, " Wait, I'll get milk
for him." And when I went down a very noble collie looked
up pathetically in my face, and wagged his tail. He had
been bought at the dogs' home with the money for Toodie's
clothes. They had also lunched out, and brought back a
liberal selection of chocolates and a dog whip, which that wise
and sweet creature Max Gladstone O'Connor never needed.
We named him for Max (Toodie's friend in America), and for
Mr Gladstone because his eyes were so Gladstonian ; his
mobile eyebrows black, on a tan ground, were like Sir Henry
Irving's. For the most part his eyes were limpid and
beautiful, but they could be both eager and fierce. Mr
Parnell said he had a strain of Gordon Setter, as his nose was
too blunt for a pure collie. After he had been with us a few
days, he gravely shook hands with me, and that sealed our
everlasting friendship. He loved T. P. and Toodie, but I
always remained first in his affections, and he knew my mind,
grave or gay, as well as I did myself. He had been well
trained, was obedient, and had the reasoning powers of a
human being. His coat of black and tan was long and
silky, and his tail was like a great feather. How so remark-
able a friend had ever been abandoned it was impossible

i74 I MYSELF

to guess. Probably his owners were stopping only tempor-
arily in London, and when they lost him were obliged to
leave town at once. I spoke to him about his past life,
once or twice, but it was evidently such a sore subject that
I never mentioned it again. He very often went with T. P.
to the House of Commons and used to sit in the lobby
entrance in one of the tall-hooded leather chairs. On the
second reading of the Irish Bill, in the excitement of the
moment he was forgotten, and at three o'clock in the morning
the door bell rang, and there was a policeman with Max,
who had never moved from his seat. The late Dr Wallace
gave a dinner at the House, and Max was invited, and sat
at the right hand of the host : on the floor, it is true, but there
he was. Dr Wallace had a caustic tongue, and said, " Max
is the only four-footed member of the House of Commons,
but plenty of them have long ears."

Max would wait hours in front of shops. Once I was so
long that a policeman gathered him up and led him to a
police station. That he considered a great disgrace, and it
took him some time to recover his self-respect. He loved
cabs. When I said to the maid, " Call me a cab," he darted
downstairs, and the moment the cab arrived he jumped in.
By looking dreamily straight ahead he hoped to avoid my
eye, and if I said, " Max, you can't go," a sudden deafness
overtook him. In his younger, more observant days he
could follow any omnibus with me in it through the most
crowded part of London. If I walked too long, he took a
cab without consulting me, and I have often heard a cabby
good-humouredly ask him if he had his fare with him. Once
walking in Grosvenor Square I missed him, and found him
sitting smiling on the back seat of a satin-lined landaulette
drawn up in front of one of the great houses. The powdered,
cockaded, liveried coachman and footman were looking
amused, but had not made him unwelcome, and I had the
greatest difficulty in persuading him to descend. He dis-
liked all dogs, and never spoke to one if he could avoid it.
When there was a bunch of dogs on the street he made a
wide circle around them, but if a dog was ill or in trouble that

MY FAITHFULLEST FRIEND— MAX 175

was a different matter. Then he considered it his Christian
duty to care for him. One cold, rainy night in the winter
we missed him. I called and called at the door, but he did not
come. The next morning about ten he arrived, drank a vast
quantity of water, but was too excited to eat, barked to go
out, and when I opened the front door off he rushed. I
followed him and found a very sick dog lying on the doorstep
of a near-by empty house. A policeman told me that Max
had been sitting by this dog all night, licking his face and
giving him what comfort he could. The policeman carried
the dog to the dogs' home, Max trotting at his heels ; then
Max came back and slept steadily for about fourteen hours.

His memory was extraordinary. He had been only once
to Queen Anne's Gate, to the Laboucheres, when one after-
noon Mrs Jopling was giving a musical party, and there I met
Mrs Labouchere. We left together, Max, who had been
waiting at the door, following behind. Mrs Labouchere
asked if I was dining alone ; I said yes, and she suggested
that I had better come home and dine with her. I said I
would, if she could stop a moment at my house on the way.
Soon after this Max disappeared. Three-quarters of an
hour afterwards when we arrived at her house, there was Max
waiting on the steps for us. Now, unless he understood the
conversation, why did he go there ?

When we went to " The Star " building to live, he, like
myself, loathed it. Boys were his particular antipathy, and
there were always newsboys about, and he detested noise and
commotion, loving quiet and order, so that that experience
was not a happy part of his life. The watchman used to be
relieved on Sunday, and then he went in the country to spend
the day at Brixton, taking Max with him. When he left
" The Star " and lived altogether at Brixton, every Sunday
morning for months Max spent that day with him, starting
off quite alone at seven o'clock in the morning, and coming
back about the same hour in the evening.

There were two of my friends he adored — Cardinal Manning
and Monsieur Johannes Wolff, the gifted violinist. He used
very often to go quite alone to visit the Cardinal. We lived

i76 I MYSELF

a few doors from him after we left " The Star " building, and
he would wait until the door of the palace opened, walk
gravely up to his library, scratch at the door, go in, shake
hands with his Eminence, and lie down before the fire at his
feet. I remember going in one afternoon to see him, and the
Cardinal said, " One member of your family is already here,"
and there was Max beaming upon me. The Cardinal addedr
" If you ever want a home for Max, he will find one with
me."

For M. Wolff he reserved a special and individual atten-
tion that he gave to no one else, not even to me. M. Wolff
would say, " Max, show your teeth, smile at me, smile at me/'
and Max curled back his mobile black upper lip, showing
every tooth in his head. How we used to laugh at that
wonderful smile of his ! M. Wolff always rewarded him
with loud and fulsome praise, and perfect as he was, he had
a little vanity. He lived until he was nearly fifteen, and was
thoughtful and wise to the very end of his perfectly blame-
less life.

When he was too deaf and his scent too faint for him to
follow me when I walked, he took three hours' exercise every
day alone — two hours in the morning from ten until twelve
o'clock, and in the afternoon from three until four. I've
often met him going at a steady trot down the embankment,
or, if he felt in need of amusement, down the King's Road,
or the Fulham Road.

What a grief his death was, and still is ! He had suffered
greatly from gastritis, and his poor face looked troubled and
pained, but he smiled once very feebly, lifting his lip just a
little when M. Wolff came to see him. I cried then. And
they told me that he looked sweet and peaceful after he died,
like the dear old Max who had been my faithfullest friend and
closest companion for so many years. I could not bear to
look closely at him, but from a distance I saw them carry
him to the garden, and I called out, " Turn his face toward
my window, and make his grave where the morning sun will
shine upon it." And then tears hid the burying from my
sight.

MY FAITHFTLLEST FRIEND-MAX 177

I intended to put a little stone at the head of his resting-
place in Chelsea with " To the Memory of Max, beautiful.
good and gifted," carved on it, but I never did, and it is just
•a well, now that Oakley Lodge is in other hands than mine ;
and the epitaph is only in my heart, for I, who love all dogs,
know there never was, or could be one like him, so sensible,
so sweetly reasonable, so merciful, so wise, and so loving.
If I ever can, I shall do something handsome for the Dogs'
Home in the name of Max Gladstone O'Connor.

CHAPTER XXXIII

IN GERMANY— DAILY LETTERS FROM T. P.

IN the spring of this year Lawson Tait ordered me off to
Kreuznach, Germany, for a long course of baths, as my
health was very delicate. T. P. went with me, and
Harold Frederic and his wife, who were going up the Rhine,
came along, so we made a party of four. It was the month
of June and Germany was as green as Ireland that year.
We stopped in Cologne, saw the Cathedral, which with its
wonderful architecture gives a great and impressive sense of
space, and in the afternoon went to the Cemetery and looked
for the grave of Judge Keogh, the Irish traitor, who is buried
there, which T. P. wished to see, but we never found it.
Harold Frederic at that time had written no novels — these
came afterwards — was a most interesting companion. He
was a man of great natural ability, having started in life
without any educational advantages whatever. He began
by being apprenticed on a farm, and used to boast that
he could milk a cow better than he could write an article.
He was even a better journalist than novelist ; his letters
from London to " The Times " were many of them of great
brilliancy.

He had made a study of the Irish question, had travelled
in the country, and was on intimate terms with a number
of the Irish members, and his articles at the time of the
division in the party were quoted all over America. He
said to me while we were sailing up the Rhine. " When I
was in America in March, I missed a train and had to stop
the night at a small country hotel, and the only thing for me
to read was a pile of old ' Harper's Weeklies ' " (he was a

IN GERMANY— DAILY LETTERS FROM T. P. 179

great reader, but acknowledged that he never could digest
George Meredith), " and in one of the papers I read a story of
yours. It was so bad — how could a clever woman like you
do it ? " (He believed in scratches with cold cream after-
ward !)

I laughed. His candour was delightful. " Dear Mr
Frederic/' I said, " I quite agree with you. I am neither a
literary woman, nor a story-teller, but — I was poor, and had
to live. The editor of ' Harper's Weekly/ my good friend,
Mr Conant, accepted my stories, and after all they were not
worse than some of the others."

" Oh yes, they were/' Mr Frederic said, " worse than any-
body's— hopeless. I read two — they were both equally
bad. Conant had no excuse for accepting them, he was
stretching friendship too far."

Mr Conant, who was for many years connected with the
Harpers, was deservedly a most popular man. Amiable,
cheerful, optimistic, clever and handsome, his end was an
unfathomable mystery. He put his hat on, left the office
for lunch, and no trace was ever heard of him again.

He sometimes invested in a lottery ticket, and through
this source Fortune curiously enough twice slipped through
his fingers. He and Mrs Conant were in Cuba at the time
of the Grand Havana Lottery. A friend in New York had
sent him a cheque asking him to invest the money in a
lottery ticket for him, and he bought it with his own. Before
posting it he said to his wife, " One of these may be the
prize winner — I wonder which I had better send," and he
finally despatched No. 999 (the actual number I forget).
His friend promptly returned it, saying that times were hard
and if Mr Conant could conveniently dispose of the ticket
he would be grateful. Mr Conant then offered the ticket to
his wife, saying that Fate surely had something up her sleeve
in giving this particular number into his hands twice. Mrs
Conant, who was perfectly free from superstition, begged
that it might be sold, saying she would much prefer a new
dress. He did sell it, and the next day No. 999 drew the
v Grand Prize of twenty thousand pounds ! This so im-

i8o I MYSELF

pressed Mr Conant that he continued his investments in
lottery tickets, and once drew four hundred pounds.

T. P. always wrote me a daily letter the four summers
that I spent in Kreuznach. I have great numbers of them,
but select at haphazard only one or two.

" HOUSE OF COMMONS,
" Monday.

" DEAREST BESS, — I have only returned from Twickenham
and am hurrying down to the House — being already very
late. I got two letters from you to-day. The first arrived
on Saturday night, after I had left, but I got Armstrong to
send it on to me so that I had it by post early in Twickenham
to-day. And then your second letter I found on my arrival
here. I am always so glad to get one of your letters. I think
you the prettiest letter-writer I ever read. Not that your
letters are a bit clever ; but all the goodness of your heart
comes out in them so clearly. When you were in America,
I always rejoiced at a letter from you. It removed all
misgivings, and doubts, and made me feel, even more than
your presence or your talk, what precious treasures of love
there were in your nature. I rejoice that my experience of
marriage instead of decreasing has increased my affection.
I certainly love you better every day. Your health is the
one cloud that darkens our happiness ; and you are a good
deal more feverish and fretful about that than I am. I would
like you to be well and strong, of course, but I don't feel
that even ill-health continued throughout marriage would in
the least diminish my love for you. Therefore I feel worried
sometimes to see you so desperate about it. I had quite a
pleasant time at Labby's and will be out there again next
Saturday. Mrs L. sends you a long letter to-day describing
our life there. Last night we had two strange people at
dinner — the Merivales. He is a clever dramatist but wild
and eccentric, and has already been some time in an asylum.
He talked all the time in a thunderous voice ; but still he was
entertaining. I got a good London Letter out of the different
people I had seen. I ought to go out more ; and then my

IN GERMANY-DAILY LETTERS FROM T. P. 181

people would not have to complain of want of variety in my
letters. When I got here I found a letter from Mr Elaine
asking me to get his wife and daughter into the House this
•evening. I immediately despatched Armstrong with a
letter telling them to be down at eight. Mrs Jeune gives a
lunch in his honour next Thursday. She has invited me and
I will go if I can. Several people have called — including Miss
Ward of whom I have heard you talk. I was not in ; and
she leaves London immediately. There is also a letter from
a Miss Starkweather — or something like that — saying she
and her mother are here. I will write and invite them
down to the House of Commons.

" No more just now from, — Your ever loving,

" TOMSK "

" Monday.

11 DEAREST BESS, — The weather is frightfully bad in
London. Constant rain, hideous cold. I have a cold in the
head, my nose is red and swollen, and I can't speak without
snuffling. I am writing this, as I sit in the House listening
to Gladstone. The old boy is making a long speech full of
vigour, and tho' his voice is now and then feeble he is on
the whole in excellent form.

r< Your letter in ' The Star ' of to-day. It was a wild and
vehement attack on the position of women in English Society.
You took your revenge for all the weary hours you have had
of loneliness while I have been in the House and otherwise
occupied. You must have been very down in the mouth
when you wrote it. Fm rather glad that you have taken
it out on ' The Star ' instead of on me. The article will
be largely read, I think. I am trying to get up a corre-
spondence upon it. I have written a letter myself to ' The
Star ' to-day under the heading ' Are Englishmen kind
to their women ? ' It may blossom into something. I went
yesterday evening to see Mrs Govett. She was quite plump
in the face and had quite recovered from her illness. Your
Lady White came in. The weather was hideous outside.
We were all depressed and spoke outrageous cynicism.

182 I MYSELF

Govett is away in Scotland. Dined at my Club, came home
early, woke up with my cold worse, a disagreeable taste in
my mouth and a general miserableness. But I worked it off,
stuck to business hard all day ; have made arrangements in
the country which I think will help forward the circulation.
I then drove down to the House.

" Gladstone has just ended his speech in a splendid out-
burst, he has put Hartington and the other Unionists in a
great hole.

" Have sent you cartloads of papers to-day.

" No more from your much abused but deserving 'usban,

" TOMSE

" Rammie has lost his way several times lately and returned
to my room and affections."

Rammie was a most fascinating but unfaithful German
dog, that T. P. had picked up in a peasant's hut. He sub-
sequently left us entirely for the night watchman, went
with him to Brixton, and left him eventually for two wealthy
ladies who visited the watchman during an illness. They
had a carriage-and-pair, and one day he entered it, refused
to get out, so they bought him, and he ended his days with
bow-knots of ribbons on his head driving around Hyde Park.

The post in the morning was my greatest pleasure, al-
though Kreuznach itself is a pretty, delightful, healthy
little place ; and how beneficial the strong brine baths are !
Reinforced by mutterlauger (motherlye), the water in a
concentrated form, they are wonderful for all sorts of
chronic illnesses. My first year there, I took ninety baths. All
April, May and June I spent there, but interrupted my cure
to return for the month of July to London. How delightful
it was to get back home again ! Max had a regular hysteria
of joy.

CHAPTER XXXIV

" MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM," AND
GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA

THE day after my return I went to Twickenham, where
Mrs Labouchere was busy arranging for the pro-
duction of " Midsummer Night's Dream." It was
to be given in the beautiful garden of Pope's Villa, under the
light of the moon, with an orchestra to render Mendelssohn's
music — that divine fairy music, so interpretive of all the
poet's dreams. The disposition and character of the garden
lent itself perfectly to the play, and never was there a more
grassy, daisy-pied, flowery, softly-rolling background pro-
vided for Shakespeare's fascinating fantasy. Clumps of
lilies and Canterbury bells grew just where they were wanted,
and a bed of roses was not too far away. A noble old tree
with gnarled roots in the centre was chosen for the stage.
The huge branches, like a monster umbrella, dipped down
here, and there, quite low enough for Puck to swing upon.
The musicians were hidden from view behind a screen of
honeysuckle and trumpet flowers. The electric lights
glowed through blossoming foliage, and a moon was pro-
vided in case the real one, which was due, should hide her
silver face behind a cloud.

The dress rehearsal came at last. Mrs Labouchere had
admonished Mr Sala (Bottom) whose memory was unreliable,
" to take pains and be perfect," but even while wearing the
head of the ass, he clung to his book. " You can't do that,"
she said, " the night of the performance." " Give me,"
he answered, " a whisky and soda instead, and you will find
I'll rise to the occasion," and he kept his promise and was
most excellent in the part.

«*3

i84 I MYSELF

The great night followed the dress rehearsal, and the
weather was superb — a midsummer's night warm enough to
make a gentle breeze grateful, and the crickets chirped
applause even before Puck (dainty, auburn-haired Rose
Norreys) appeared under the tree. Who can forget her gay
vibrating voice, " I'll put a girdle round the earth in forty
minutes," and speeding like a bird she flew into the darkness.
And then Titania (lovely Kate Vaughan) that exquisite
fairylike vision, came floating from an emerald vista, like a
cloud of iridescent fireflies. She was clothed in a rose
gossamer garment flecked in spangles, which revealed her
classic limbs, and on her perfect head a little crown glittered
with stars. Her attendant fairies, in green and gold and
white and mauve, followed in her wake, and then Titania
listens to their song and sleeps. That plotting Oberon
comes along (Lady Archibald Campbell) as fairylike and
diaphanous as Titania, with his bewitched flower juice, and
drops it on her eyelids —

" In thine eye that shall appear,

When thou wak'st it is thy dear ;

Wake when some vile thing is near.
When in that moment — so it came to pass,
Titania wak'd, and straightway lov'd an ass."

And there was exquisite Titania weaving garlands of
natural flowers around Bottom's hairy head, and winsome
Puck, sitting on a branch of the tree, laughing to see Oberon's
magic do its mischievous work. The soft breeze stirred
Titania's sparkling draperies to the despair of Sir Frederic
Leighton, who said he could never hope in his most artistic
moments to reproduce them. It was the first appearance
of the alluring dancer in Shakespeare, but her soft caressing
voice and perfect intonation suited the poetical rhythm
as if she had spent her life studying blank verse.

Another woman of great loveliness in the caste was
Dorothy Dene, and that night was her most beauteous
moment. Sir Frederic Leighton designed and superintended
her dress, which was pure Greek, and the silver fillet binding

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 185

her curling hair, and her severely simple white draperies
embroidered in a pattern of silken thread, suited her noble
beauty as no other costume could have done.

Miss Fortescue, then in the zenith of her pink and white
beauty, was Hermia, all in glistening white, with her gold
hair bound with gold, and the men were as good-looking as
the women. Claude Ponsonby, with his straight features
and fair silky beard, was Demetrius, and Luxmore Marshall,
tall, straight and graceful, might have passed as his twin
brother. When Demetrius and Hermia, Lysander and
Helena, wandered all together, " the lovers full of joy and
mirth," with real moonlight shining upon them, for the moon
had promptly taken her cue, and was not a minute late,
the audience burst into rapturous applause. Saucy Puck,
like a silken grasshopper with flaming red hair, in her
arresting insistent voice ended the play :

" To show our simple skill, that is the true beginning of our end,
Our true intent is all for your delight."

A cloud obscured the moon. " Midsummer Night's
Dream " was over. The realities were upon us once more.
The audience, who had partaken of high tea before the moon
rose, rushed off for carriages and trains, leaving the caste and
a few friends staying in the house for supper, which was
scarcely less exciting than the play. Every one was under
the spell of fairyland still. Mr Sala made a most charming
and pretty little speech in honour of the Stage Manager,
Mrs Labouchere ; who was so touched by it that she left
her chair and gave him a fairy kiss on the top of his kind,
bald head — and we all drank her health, and the health of the
lovers and the fairies and the elves.

Puck meanwhile, contrary to history, had garbed himself
in white, lace and orange ribbons, and was flirting out-
rageously with Demetrius. Mr Labouchere, who had
possibly during the play been discussing Home Rule or the
abolition of the House of Lords with an Irish Member, was
rescued, borne to the head of the table, and beamed on us all,
drank his wife's health in champagne (which he dislikes)

186 I MYSELF

and was as merry, as young, and as full of quirks and quips
as Puck himself. The moon went to bed before we did, but
we never missed her, for that was a night when the gods were
good.

All girls have loved the novels of William Black. " The
Strange Adventures of a Phaeton," " A Princess of Thule,"
and his earlier romances, are particularly appealing to youth.
He, Thomas Hardy, and Kenneth Grahame divide the honours
in realistic descriptions of scenery, so vividly done that with
William Black you gulp draughts of the strong salt air of the
North Sea. The soft summer breeze of the English Downs
stirs your hair with Kenneth Grahame, and your hand
involuntarily reaches out to gather apples in the orchard
with Thomas Hardy. It is a wonderful gift, this bringing
the sights and sounds and odours of Nature into the dreari-
ness and dinginess of a London house on a foggy afternoon
in mid-winter.

Mr Black was one of the personalities whom I wished to
meet. He and Mrs Black (who was the veritable lady of the
Phaeton) had left London, and were living in Brighton on the
East Cliff, in a very pretty, old-fashioned house, and among
the modern pictures was a fine one by Abbey, for whom Mr
Black had a very great admiration. It was originally called
" A Bible Reading in the time of Shakespeare," but the title
was subsequently changed to " On Stormy Ground." It
was really a development of one of Mr Abbey's beautiful
illustrations of Mr Black's " Judith Shakespeare," that
delightful book jointly illustrated by Edwin Abbey and
Alfred Parsons. " McLeod of Dare," a novel that touched
me deeply, was also admirably illustrated.

Every morning William Black walked for hours on the old
pier, in solitary meditation, for scarcely anyone went there
except himself. The glasses that he always wore did not
hide the brightness of his observant brown eyes, and with
his closely cut hair, trim moustache, wind and sun tanned
face, and alert bearing, he looked an open air man rather
than a journalist or novelist.

I remember particularly one pleasant dinner we had at

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 187

his house : himself and his cheery agreeable wife, George
Augustus Sala, T. P., Mrs Nye Chart, and three or four
friends who had come down from London. The guest who
carried off the honours of the evening (for some reason or
other he was in a most scintillating mood) was George
Augustus Sala. Each person recounted the most horrible
story of his repertoire. The only one lingering in my
memory was the one told by George Augustus Sala, called
" The Blind Wife." A man met an exceedingly beautiful
girl and married her. She had been born blind, and there
was no hope of sight ever illuminating her heavenly blue
eyes. Her character did not correspond with the eyes,
as she had a waspish temper. She was mysteriously know-
ing about the shade of curtains and carpets ; if they did
not match she raged. Milliners and dressmakers also
suffered, as she was more exacting as to the perfection of
work than those who could see. Also, she knew by some
extraordinary method the whole contents of her husband's
post (which doubtless was embarrassing to him, as a blind
wife would be of great convenience to most men) and, unless
she was a witch, how did she find out things only discoverable
by sight ? The husband became suspicious and unnerved,
and consulted the greatest oculists of the day, but they said
with one accord, " Blind from birth." And still she knew
all that occurred in the house as one of keenest vision. One
night she refused to go to a ball with her husband, and he,
worrying over the paradox of his wife being able to see
and still being blind, returned home unexpectedly from the
ball, and found her sitting at his writing-table reading a
love letter. But how ? Her peignoir was unfastened and
thrown back from her shoulders ; her bosom was uncovered
and in the centre of each breast was a terrible eye ! Quelle
surprise pour Monsieur !

It would not of course entitle a man to a divorce to have
his wife's eyes in the wrong place. This state of affairs has
been known to exist many times. If a man has what he calls
" private affairs " and his wife's eyes regard them, they are
always in the wrong place — but even then, eyes for a woman

i88 I MYSELF

are not necessary. There is instinct — George Moore says
every woman knows when the wolf is at her door. But if
she does what can she do ? The wisest thing is to leave
the man to be gobbled up, for if the wolf is really at the door
it is by the man's invitation. A clever wife may, on occasion,
make her husband go her way, but never, never, if he has
begun^ to go some other woman's way. And the wolf's way
and the wife's way are so essentially different — there might
as well be a parting at once.

George Augustus Sala was a very remarkable journalist ;
he could write on almost any conceivable subject. His mind
was more assimilative than original, but he knew a great deal,
and how to apply it. Also he realized his own limitations,
and was quite without vanity. The late Mr Levy of the
" Daily Telegraph " once asked him : "Mr Sala, have you any
objection to our editing your copy in the office ? " "Mr
Levy," Mr Sala answered, " I am like a butcher. I sell you
so much meat — to me it is a matter of profound indifference
whether you serve it fried, boiled, or roasted."

This reply from a seasoned journalist might serve as a
lesson to many a budding writer. Mr Sala had, in the long
years of his service as a journalist, managed, composed and
arranged for himself a great number of books of reference.
He was very methodical, and with his superb memory it was
possible for him to turn out a readable article in a very short
space of time. His first marriage was a most fortunate one.
Mrs Sala was handsome, sensible, and a genius as a cook and
housekeeper. He was never (except for occasional spurts of
brilliancy) the same after her death. He had her head fres-
coed on the hall ceiling of their pretty, old-world house in
Mecklenburgh Square, so that he might on entering the hall
look up and be welcomed by her, and her dresses he still
kept hanging in the cupboards among his own clothes, saying
that only to see a garment she had worn gave comfort to
his grieved and lonely soul.

At the first little tea-party given after he became a widower,
his friends discovered in a little case close to his writing-
table, where by turning his eyes he could see them, his wife's

GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA 189

thimble and needles and threads, and keys, and scissors, and
watch and purse — all the small intimate things of her daily
life. It was his habit while he worked to touch them with
his hand, saying, " My dear, my poor dear ! " She had been
indeed his better, saner helpmate and friend ; for, when he
was irascible and inclined to quarrel with his editors, it was
his wife who smoothed out differences and made the peace
for him. Without knowing it he had leaned upon her strong
common-sense and her judgment, and he was never to find
rest and peace without her. His last days, in spite of the
fine income he had made, were spent in pain and humiliation,
although lightened by the kindness of disinterested friends
like Lord Burnham, Henry Labouchere and others, who
left nothing undone for him. But his valuable library had to
be sold, including his reference books. When he realized his
loss he wept bitterly and begged to have them back again,
saying, " My children, my children — my books, my dear
books that were my children ! Give them back to me !
Give them back to me ! " He wailed out this cry all through
the night and never fully recovered again.

" Who never ate his bread in sorrow,

Who never spent the midnight hours
Weeping and waiting for the morrow,
He knows you not, ye Heavenly Powers ! "

I pray that when the morrow came after his weeping
and waiting the Heavenly Powers were merciful in giving
him back his " poor, poor dear one " for all eternity !

With his exuberant health and bright spirits, William
Black looked as if he would live for years, and yet he is
sleeping in the pretty churchyard at Rottingdean, near the
sea, which he loved so well, and only a few feet away from
his friend, Sir Edward Burne- Jones — whom I met only once,
in the studio of Henry Holiday, that distinguished artist, the
executor of the beautiful stained-glass window designed by
Edward Burne- Jones which so adorns and distinguishes the
quaint little church of Rottingdean.

One of the most touching pictures in all the world to me

390 I MYSELF

is, " The Merciful Knight " by Burne- Jones. The first time I
saw it the pitiful tears came to my eyes. The rude cross is
by the wayside, with the rugged figure of Christ, which has
slightly loosened itself from the Cross and is bending over the
kneeling knight, who, with bowed head, is praying for moral
courage not to fight. How often the highest and noblest
courage is to leave the sword in its scabbard ! That turning
of the other cheek — oh dear, how difficult ! When Toodie
was about four years old, we were at the Berkeley Springs in
Virginia, and he came to me where I was sitting with a group
of friends on one of the wide porticos, crying, and said,
" Mamma, a boy hit me ! "

" Did you," I said, " hit him back ? "

" No, I didn't," the child answered.

" Then," I said, " go straight back and hit him."

Fanny Tate, a charming, fascinating woman from South
Carolina, with the heavenly accent and drawl of that dear
country . said, " It's plain to be seen this child's mother is
from Texas."

I hadn't seen " The Merciful Knight " then.

CHAPTER XXXV

RED INDIANS AND THE MAZE

WHEN Buffalo Bill brought the " Wild West " show
to London for the first time, it was a colossal
success, and he was overwhelmed by hospitality,
which he returned with a number of American lunches
cooked by his friend, Colonel James, who, like the late Sam
Ward, was a cordon bleu. The dishes were typically
American, and the menu consisted of : —

Corn beef hash, and buttered corn bread.

Chickens fried in cream, green peas and hot biscuits.

Porterhouse steak and corn fritters.

Peach ice cream.

Cheese.

Superb coffee.

Cocktails in abundance.

After the lunch, visiting the cowboys and the Indians, it
occurred to Mrs Labouchere to ask all the chiefs and their
families to spend a Sunday at Twickenham, and to see the
inside of an English house. They accepted the invitation
eagerly, and were expected about 2 o'clock on the Sunday
following, but not later than ten in the morning I ran into
Mrs Labouchere Js bedroom and cried, " Henrietta, the
Indians have come ! "

As it was Sunday morning and we were taking things in
leisurely fashion, nobody was dressed, and there they were
for a good long day — Indian braves, squaws and babies,
all in costumes befitting a visit to a great white chief, as they
were instructed Mr Labouchere was, a chief in Parliament.

191

i92 I MYSELF

We made quick toilettes, and were soon downstairs,
where they were all assembled. The interpreter said they had
been up since dawn and he had had difficulty in keeping them
from starting on the seven o'clock train to Twickenham.

A steam-launch had been engaged to convey them to
Hampton Court, and while waiting for its arrival they were
shown the garden, and Mr Labouchere told them to help
themselves to gooseberries and red currants — whereupon
they descended upon the bushes like devouring locusts, and
in a very short time there was not a berry, ripe or green, left.

The great chief, " Up the River," looked like a feathered
Gladstone. His face was fine and even noble, and he was
not the least overawed by anything he saw. He reared his
crest like a hawk and looked around the garden as if he
owned it, and leisurely seating himself with his braves all
around him in a circle, he signified to the interpreter his desire
to make a little speech to the White Chief. He said, " My
heart thanks you for remembering the Red Man and for
asking him to your wigwam. My heart is happy with the
beauty of this country and this garden, and I will never
forget this day. When the great White Chief visits my
country, my heart will be filled with joy, and I will send him
a message of welcome from my heart."

Surely this was the speech of a courtier, and Mr Labouchere
replied with equal politeness.

Their gay costumes, brilliant feathers, and brown painted
faces looked most picturesque on the launch. Nothing
escaped their bright watchful eyes, and at Hampton Court,
when they were shown the Maze, Mrs Labouchere settled
herself for a comfortable rest, but lo, they were no sooner
in at one end, than out they came at the other. They did not
even know it was a Maze — to them it was only a pleasant
simple little walk. There was quite a crowd collected by
this time, but they were apparently oblivious of everybody,
and without a turn of the head walked as proudly as if alone
in a primeval forest. Was it not Washington Irving who, in
a burst of admiration, said, " The only gentleman in America
was the Red Indian " ?

RED INDIANS AND THE MAZE 193

After the voyage back, an old English dinner, a grand
affair, was set on the leafy balcony of Pope's Villa. There was
roast beef, baked potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, chicken and
peas, and a Christmas plum pudding. The roast beef was
very popular ; they ate a few peas and drank tea and coffee,
but the pudding was carried away in a beaded bag, which
each Indian wore at his side. The bag already contained
a wonderful mixture of gooseberries, grapes, biscuits, cigar-
ettes, and cake. When Mrs Labouchere said, " More meat,"
one of the young Indians looked at her with a broad smile,
and the Interpreter explained that Moremeat was his name,
that he was a Chippeway, and then Mr Labouchere dis-
covered him to be a descendant of one of the friends of his
very earliest youth.

Nearly sixty years ago Henry Labouchere, then an
adventurous lad, made a journey in the West of America.
Minneapolis was at that time called St Anthony's Falls, and
while he was there a far-seeing young chemist begged him
to buy the land on which Minneapolis stands — it was to be
sold for a very small sum, now it is worth many millions.
He travelled still farther west with the Chippeways, who were
going to their hunting fields. The great chief, " Hole in
Heaven," was very friendly with him, and he camped in one
of their wigwams for six weeks, the sister of the Chief being
assigned to wait upon him. She cooked game to perfection,
roasting wild birds in clay and larger game before a fire.
The game in those days was very plentiful and tame, not
having found out man to be their avowed enemy. Some-
times prairie chickens came near enough to be knocked on
the head, and great herds of buffaloes still ranged the plains.
The Indians often killed a buffalo, but Mr Labouchere was not
lucky enough to get one for himself. He saw an Indian War
Dance, but discreetly from a slit in the door of his wigwam,
as " Hole in Heaven " said that, friendly as they were, at this
sacred rite a white face might infuriate them even to the use
of the tomahawk. And another most interesting custom
was seeing the youths of the tribe transformed to braves.
This is done by physical suffering, inflicted by other warriors.

13

194 I MYSELF

The greater the torture, the greater the brave. Sharpened
sticks are run through the tender skin on the breast, and
forcibly pulled out, making when healed great scarred ridges
of flesh. Leather thongs are bound round ankles and wrists
until they cut into the flesh like a knife, leaving it raw and
bleeding. These and other tortures the young Indian bears
without a murmur, but sometimes a coward is found who
utterly refuses all hurt ; even a good venomous scratch will
save him from utter disgrace, but if he refuse this much, the
penalty is an apparent change of sex. He wears a squaw's
dress until the ban is lifted. To the uninitiated eye the
difference is nothing, as women and men dress so much alike,
but to the Indian it is everything.

Mr Labouchere lingered among these American gentlemen
until the last steamer had departed from Fond du Lac, so he
was obliged to travel in a canoe until he reached the eastern
end of the lake — and these early experiences have always
kept his interest in the Red Man alive.

CHAPTER XXXVI

IN GERMANY IT IS THE LAW

ONE summer in Schwalbach a philanthropic English
woman asked a belle dame from Florida, " And don't
you like the negroes ? "

" Very much," the American answered, " in my kitchen.
I don't want them in my drawing-room."

Now this lady's attitude to the negro represents mine to
the calf. I love him in the field — I don't want him on the
dining-room table. It is hard, however, to escape him in
Germany, where he seems one of the staple products of the
country — and a tragic moment arose in my experience when
unless I resorted to extreme measures it was impossible to
get away from him at all. It grew, as these things do, out
of a thoughtless piece of advice given by a most convincing
Englishman. It was a heavenly sunshiny day and we were
walking to the station preparatory to my making a journey
to Baden-Baden, which is comparatively near Schwalbach ;
but requiring four changes, with waiting here and there, to
make connections it bade fair to be a whole day's journey.

As we passed a field a number of spotted calves frisked
gaily in the sunshine.

" Dear me," I remarked, " how surprising that so many
calves are left in Germany."

My friend replied, " That's because we've boycotted veal
in our hotel."

" Now where," I asked, " can one find a hotel in Wies-
baden where veal is boycotted, or do you know a good
restaurant there ? "

My faith in man is perennial, in spite of the many times

195

i96 I MYSELF

he has disappointed me. I go on asking for advice, taking
it, and suffering afterwards just the same, instead of using
my own better judgment. There is something so cocksure
about the way a man tells you anything that somehow,
in spite of yourself, you feel he must be right. So when
my friend answered confidently, " Don't go to a hotel or
restaurant at all — just take lunch in the station," it seemed
quite the best thing to do.

" I recollect/' he went on, " having such an appetizing
meal once in quite a small German station : fresh eggs,
broiled chicken, and green peas," — and he talked so well,
and so eloquently, about that dejeuner that I got quite hungry
before he finished, and would not have eaten lunch any-
where but in a German railway station.

On arriving at Wiesbaden I too would order chicken, peas
and fresh eggs, served in the waiting-room. I must say
the griminess of the room and the stale smell of beer was not
suggestive of a crisp meal, but still under the spell of broiled
chicken I asked cheerfully of the waiter, " Was haben Sie ? "

Waiter : " Kalbs Kotlett und Kartoffeln."

Me : " Nichts Anderes ? "

Waiter : " Nein, das Kotlett ist aber sehr gut."

I was already tired, and with the prospect of a day's travel
before me it seemed wise to eat something ; and I was
reluctant to go to the town. My luggage had yet to be
labelled and the tickets to be bought, but the ticket office
was still " geschlossen," so I succumbed to the force of
circumstances and ordered a veal cutlet and fried potatoes.

My seat at the table was by the side of a woman who had
already given her order, and presently the waiter returned
bearing her lunch. On a thick, large plate reposed a pen-
insular-shaped cutlet, the size of a small ham. It was
submerged in thick, greasy gravy ; and on another plate
a mound of fried potatoes had been carefully built up, with
bubbles of fat still sizzling on them — and I had been sent all
the way from England to Germany to cure my indigestion !
I gazed upon this stupendous sight with horror. It was not
necessary to eat to induce discomfort — the sight and the

IN GERMANY IT IS THE LAW 197

smell was enough. I was already suffering agonies. Calling
the waiter, I countermanded the order.

" I cannot eat the cutlet — I am ill," I explained.

" But you must eat it," the waiter answered. " In
Germany if you order a good kalbs cutlet you must eat
it."

" But I am ill ! "

" Es schadet nichts. You ordered it. It will be got ready.
You must pay for it."

Ah, there was the crux. " You must pay for it."

" No," I answered, " I countermanded the order at once.
I won't eat the cutlet, and I won't pay for it." Then I
got up and went to the office to buy my tickets. Presently
there was a tumult. The waiter appeared with the man who
owned the cutlet.

" There, there is the English dame who won't take the
Kotlett," the waiter was excitedly saying.

The man approached me. " Are you the lady who ordered
the Kalbs Kotlett and, won't eat it? You must. In
Germany one may not order a Kotlett and not eat it."

Receiving no answer they retired, but it was only in order
to gather a reinforcement to continue hostilities. Meantime
the luggage having been registered I had gone to the other
side of the station in the wake of my trunks. Suddenly the
waiter reappeared, his face scarlet with emotion, his hair
standing up like a cockatoo's. He was accompanied by the
man and a woman, all of them talking vociferously with the
countersign " Kalbs Kotlett." They all appealed to me.
The waiter actually wrung his hands with anguish.

The woman said, " Eine Englishe Frau die sich eine Dame
nennt und sich weigert ein schones deutsches Kalbs Kotlett
zu essen, das ist unverschamt ! " (" An Englishwoman,
calling herself a lady, to refuse to eat a good German
veal cutlet — it was shameful.")

The man said, " So, so ! We shall see."

They then laid the case before the guard of the train, who
listened with much interest, but said he could not interfere.
" Tickets," — yes, if I gave him any trouble about my

198 I MYSELF

tickets they should see. A Kalbs Kotlett was not his
province, so, reprehensible as my conduct was, they must
settle it themselves.

The restaurant man said something must be done. The
woman said, " Send for the Polizei." The waiter scuttled
off hatless and breathless, quickly returning with a big, good-
looking, steady-eyed policeman.

" What is the trouble ? " he said.

The waiter, the restaurant keeper, and the woman, all
talked breathlessly together.

" The English dame had commanded a Kalbs Kotlett ;
then she wouldn't eat it, and she wouldn't pay for it. What
was to be done ? "

The Polizei fixed me with a stern eye and began, " Warum
haben Sie das Kalbs Kotlett nicht gegessen ? "

My answer was, " I don't speak German."

The waiter interposed, " Oh, but she does — she speaks
very good German, and understands Alles."

The Polizei waved him aside. " Warum haben Sie das
gute Kalbs Kotlett nicht gegessen ? " Like Brer Rabbit,
" I laid low and said nothin'." He continued, " In Germany,
if one orders a Kalbs Kotlett, one must eat it and pay for
it, or pay for it if one eats it not. That is the law."

The waiter, the restaurant man, and the woman all
solemnly repeated, " That is the law."

The guard said, " That is the law." One or two out-
siders to whom the waiter had explained the situation said,
" That is the law."

Still the prisoner at the bar remained silent. Suddenly
the empty blue eyes of the Polizei lighted up with wonderful
intelligence. " Bring the Kotlett," he said. " Bring the
potatoes," he said.

The waiter shot by me like an arrow from a bow. In a
second he ran back, carrying a twin Kotlett to the first
peninsular-shaped one I had seen, and a second pyramid of
fried potatoes, both of which he reverently placed on my
trunk.

The Polizei began to look hungry. He looked affec-

IN GERMANY IT IS THE LAW 199

tionately at the Kotlett. " Ein sehr gutes Kotlett," he
said. " Why haven't you eaten this good cutlet ? "

A wicked plan entered my head. I would have revenge.

" Wie viel ? " I asked the waiter.

" Zwei mark fiinfzig."

I laid the money on the trunk. He pounced on it like
a hawk on a tomtit.

" So," said the Polizei.

" So," I repeated, and with a quick deftness of which I
thought myself incapable, I threw the cutlet in the middle
of the station, just grazing the leg of the law, and it was
quickly followed by a generous shower of fried potatoes.

The policeman gave a suppressed cry, as if a knife had
stabbed him to the heart. I had thrown away his dinner,
his nice greasy dinner for which I had paid.

" In Deutschland ist es nicht erlaubt Kotletts und kartof-
feln auf dem Bahnhof zu werfen. Es ist nicht erlaubt."
(In Germany it is not allowed to throw cutlets and potatoes
in the station — it is not allowed.)

For the first time since I ordered the cutlet my tongue
was loosed. " What can you throw in a station ? " I asked.

Solemnly he replied, " Not potatoes — not Kalbs Kotlett."

Again a gleam of intelligence entered his bovine eye.
" Sie miissen es aufheben." (You must pick them up.)
" In Germany if you throw potatoes and Kalbs Kotletts in a
station you must pick them up. That is the law."

" Never," I answered. " Never." (The train was just
starting — I became bold.) "I will leave you to pick them up."

This impudence was followed by a few seconds of horrified
silence, then the voice of the woman pierced it in a shrill scream.

" Ach, Gott in Himmel ! Die Englische Dame has
ordered the Polizei to pick up the cutlet and the potatoes ! "

The Polizei said, " In Germany it is the law "

Then a great clamour arose, but I jumped on the train,
which was just moving out of the station. And as far as I
could see, the brilliant sun lighted up the fine, silver helmet
of the Polizei, the bronze brown of the Kalbs Kotlett, and
the pale gold of the fried potatoes.

CHAPTER XXXVII

SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE BROAD DAYLIGHT

rail the many summers spent by me in Germany, I had
never seen Heidelberg. Hand-made scars, smooth
scars, ridged scars, manufactured by Heidelberg duels
— yes, deep red scars, purple scars, and white scars, proudly
worn on the plump cheeks of the young officers who, well
corseted, clicked their spurs together in Wiesbaden, in Hom-
burg, in Kreuznach, and in Schwalbach — all these I had
seen, but not Heidelberg. The scars were only amusing, and
Heidelberg I knew to be beautiful. So I determined, in spite
of being the loneliest and the worst traveller in the world,
always late and always anxious and distracted, to break my
journey from Schwalbach to Baden, at Heidelberg.

The weather was so lovely that I stayed at a country hotel
beyond the town, and wandered solitarily over the wonderful
romantic ruins of the Castle by moonlight. The hotel gave
me an excellent little dinner, and — an unusual thing for me —
I slept deeply and dreamlessly until late the next morning.
When the Boots knocked at my door there was barely ten
minutes for me to dress and to take a hasty cup of coffee in
my room. I asked in my best German — which as usual
miscarried — " Am I to be alone in the omnibus ? "

" Yes, yes," the porter said, " hurry if you wish to catch
the train " — and down I rushed pell-mell, thinking to finish
the details of my toilette in the omnibus. The ribbons of
my shoes were flowing, my cuffs were unbuttoned, my neck-tie
not yet tied, my hat-pins, veil and belt were in my hand,
and my gloves were stuffed in my little hand-bag. Trembling
like a leaf, I was handing out tips to the last moment, and

SHIPS THAT PASS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT 201

when I was pushed and literally fell into the omnibus, there
sat a tall, fair, composed, immaculate being with monocle,
umbrella tightly wrapped, gloves well fitting, and overcoat
neatly folded by his side, regarding my discomfiture with a
kindly wooden expression, too polite to allow even the
slightest soupQon of a smile to appear on his well-groomed
face. So I composed myself, tied my necktie and pinned it,
buttoned my cuffs, buckled my belt, put my watch in it,
straightened my hat, prodded it with hat-pins, pinned on my
veil, and was just about to descend upon my shoes, when the
Monocle said in very good authoritative English, " Pardon,
permit me," — and leaning forward, instantly the shoe-
strings were tied in good, firm, wouldn't-come-undone bows ;
then, lifting his hat, he sat up very straight again and con-
siderately looked out of the window.

I said to myself, " He's married, he's a good husband, he
ties his wife's shoes, he likes all women — and he's a nice,
safe creature." By the time my gloves were buttoned we
had reached the station. He lifted his hat again and asked
if he could attend to my luggage. I said he could, and he
did. Also at the very last moment he had to leap from the
train, dash back to the omnibus and rescue my Tiffany
umbrella — the one with a tortoiseshell handle so well known,
and so often found, at Scotland Yard. What with the
toilette, the shoes and the umbrella, by the time the train
started there was quite a domestic atmosphere between us.
At any rate he had some sort of understanding of my help-
lessness, and I of his good nature and obligingness.

He sat down beside me in the train and we began to talk.
He told me he was a Swede, a civil engineer, who had
worked for five years at his profession in London, hence his
good English. He lived in Stockholm, and was on his way
to an International Convention of Engineers at Baden-Baden.
He had married a lovely Norwegian, who had dreamed of
becoming a great singer, and had studied in Paris with Grieg's
encouragement, who said she might develop into a Christine
Nilsson in time, but the Monocle bade her choose between a
career and himself, and now she was singing lullabies to the

202 I MYSELF

first baby. He brought forth a little leather case from his
pocket, and there was Madame, a radiant blonde, and the
baby, so fat that his wrists and ankles seemed tied with
string, and his broad smile showed four fine Norwegian
teeth, and he looked altogether a credit to his parents. The
Monocle was a most fond and proud father, and when I said
his offspring looked a baby Viking he was amazingly pleased.

In the course of the conversation, which covered many
subjects, he spoke of " M. A. P.," and said he had learned
much of his English from it, and his choice of English
literature was decided by the " Book of the Week " in the
" Sunday Sun/' I informed him that my husband edited
both of the papers, and then we were completely in sympathy
and at our ease. He told me that he was arresting his
journey to Baden-Baden by stopping at Carlsruhe for a
couple of hours — he wanted to see the Castle of the Grand
Duke of Baden-Baden, as the Crown Princess of Sweden
had been born there, and in a small gallery there was a
noted collection of etchings, and the Botanical Garden
was among the celebrated small ones of Europe, containing
many rare and beautiful plants. Wouldn't I — and he was
very deferential — " make him a great pleasure and stop over
for a couple of hours at Carlsruhe : all tourists should see
Carlsruhe " — the Botanical Garden was the bait, for I will
travel any distance to see a garden — and trusting that no
tourists would be in Carlsruhe except ourselves — for how
could I introduce a man whose name I didn't know, and
was too polite to ask ? Fortune favoured me — we had the
place to ourselves, and the miniature castle and little red-
nosed soldiers were vastly amusing, and just suited our
innocent adventure. A Grand Duchess de Gerolstein with
le sabre de mon pere was alone needed to make the scene
perfect. The etchings were nothing, but the garden, with
the hot August sun shining on its wealth of flowers and
blossoming shrubs, and bringing out the myriad different
odours, was divine.

The Monocle spoke excellent German, and induced the
gardener to part with a big bunch of lemon verbena which

SHIPS THAT PASS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT 203

I tied up in my pocket-handkerchief. It was a pungent
reminder of that Arabian Nights garden of my youth
where almost everything known in botany bloomed under
the persuasive genius of my mother's hand.

We lunched on the balcony of an open-air restaurant,
with honeysuckle and purple passion-flowers dangling over
our heads. The rescued umbrella tilted against my chair,
the restaurant dog leaning his head against me, and a bottle
of Liebfrauenmilch was daintily folded in a napkin between
us. We were talking only about seeds and grafting, but the
engineer had gathered a stalk to show me how he did it,
when along came a travelling photographer and asked to
photograph us. The Monocle said " Yes, yes," and before
the lunch was finished we had two pictures of a comfortable,
highly-domestic character presented to us. I have known a
good many men in my life — I was married very young, and
have had a number of friends, some suitors, and hosts of
acquaintances, among the opposite sex — but it just so
happens I was never photographed with anyone of them
except that strange Swede. How I shook with laughter
over that group ! I didn't know the man — I didn't know
the dog — I didn't drink the wine — and yet it is said that
photographs cannot lie !

" What," asked the Monocle, " amuses you so ? "

" The unexpected," I said. " The only people who will
be more surprised than you and I over this friendly photo-
graph are your wife and my husband ! "

I shall never see the Monocle again, nor Carlsruhe, nor the
Botanical Gardens, nor the dog — nor do I regret them. And
I was advised by the First Lord of the Admiralty, then
Reginald M'Kenna, and his family, never to disclose this
dark secret of my life for fear of being " misunderstood,"
whatever that may be. But I must ever have someone to
share a secret, so I chose Max Beerbohm, dear Max, who
with his risible temperament laughed unrestrainedly, and
straightway made a free interpretation of the photograph.

" But, Max," I objected, " you've left out the dog and
put in a cupid ! "

204 I MYSELF

" Of course I have/' he said, " for in spite of your account
of the episode, I shall always think of that Swede eating his
heart out in the long future, across the seas and the years."
But that was only a pretty compliment from Max.

" And really and truly," said Mr Labouchere, who can
never quite get over the old-fashioned idea of " gallantry "
to women, " was there never a moment of sentiment ? "

" No," I said, " never — I am a modern woman, and there
was my sense of humour, the baby, his four new teeth, and
my grown-up son between us. We were only ships that pass
in the broad daylight. Maybe some day I'll come up against
a Dreadnought, but it wasn't that day anyhow."

Convention is death to spontaneity. I never repent any
action of mine which has been natural, but have many regrets
for lost opportunities of amiable human impulse.

One year in Brighton a tall, interesting, solitary woman
dressed in mourning, accompanied by a white greyhound
and a blue-tongued chow, continually sat near me on the
lawns, listening to the music. The chow unbent and became
friendly, and the greyhound treated me as a relative, but the
sad-eyed mistress I never got to know. Afterwards it came
to my knowledge that she was an American with a tragic
history — then indeed I was sorry not to have given her an
unconventional word and shake of the hand.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE MEMBER FOR SCOTLAND DIVISION AND
THE UNCROWNED KING

WHEN the next General Election occurred, Mr Parnell
decided that the numerous Irish in Scotland
Division, Liverpool, were entitled to their own
representation in Parliament, and T. P. was selected to contest
the seat. He stood as well for his old constituency in Galway
to ensure his membership in Parliament, in case the election
went against him in Liverpool.

Mr Parnell, T. P. Gill, T. P. O'Connor, and myself, occupied
one common sitting-room — at least, I occupied it, as they
were all busy and absent, organizing meetings and speaking
at various places. One day I bought three bunches of violets
and presented each gentleman with a flower for his button-
hole. T. P. and Mr Gill threw theirs aside when faded, but Mr
Parnell paid me the compliment of wearing his a week. He
had to women the manner of a man who liked them. It was
quite different from his manner to men, much more kind,
gracious, and solicitous. They all seemed to take the result
of T. P.'s election for granted, and one evening at dinner
Mr Gill asked Mr Parnell whom he should put up at Galway
in T. P/s place. There was a dead silence at the table, and
Mr Parnell answered not one word, but I saw a sort of red
glint in his eye, his mouth shut like a death trap, and I said
to myself, " It will be O'Shea."

I lay no claim to being a politician, and am generally quite
without intuition, but on this occasion it came to me force-
fully, and when we went upstairs I mentioned my suspicion
to T. P., who said it was impossible. Nevertheless, I was
right, as subsequent events proved.

206 I MYSELF

What an enormous amount of character, and courage,
it must take to be asked a direct question, and to answer
it by a direct silence. I have only seen it done on that un-
forgettable occasion, but I have been told Mr Parnell never
hesitated to take this course whenever the question was an
embarrassing one.

The night of the result of the Election of Scotland Division
was declared, T. P. was hard at work speaking in a doubtful
district, so I drove in the carriage with Mr Parnell and sat
with him on the platform. He had given me some violets
to wear, and added a little bunch of shamrock that some one
had sent him from Ireland. The large hall was packed with
a breathless, enthusiastic audience, and Mr Parnell was as
pale as death. Men kept coming and going on the platform.
Some short speeches were made. A man came in and said
softly to Mr Parnell that a goodly number of votes had been
given for T. P.'s opponent, enough to cause anxiety. There
was a pause — my heart was beating to suffocation. Mr
Parnell came over and told me not to be anxious. A few
confident people applauded ; then hurried feet outside, a
man bearing later news and greatly excited, rushed on to the
platform, and whispered to Mr Parnell, announcing T. P.'s
success. Mr Parnell reared up his head like an emperor,
got on his feet, his face paler than before, his hands clasped
behind his back so tightly they were bloodless, and stepping
to the front of the platform, he announced that T. P. O'Connor
had been elected by fifteen hundred majority. The vast
crowd rose to their feet and answered with deafening cheers.
Women waved their handkerchiefs, men shouted themselves
hoarse. My ready tears came. Never have I witnessed a
scene of wilder enthusiasm — the Irish had wrested a seat
from the Saxon.

The doors were closed, and then Mr Parnell made a speech.
You could have heard a pin drop, the tension was so great —
and he finished with these words : " We will knock at
England's door gently ; and if she refuses to hear, we will
knock again more loudly ; then if she still remains deaf we
will knock with a mailed hand." With this he raised his

THE UNCROWNED KING 207

hand as if to strike a blow. The effect was electrical. If
he had added, " We will knock now," I am sure the whole
of that audience would have followed him and gladly died
fighting for they knew not what, but imbued by the despera-
tion of his soul. That is what made him a great leader.
He inspired other men, even the timid, with his flaming
spirit. I never saw a braver man than Mr Parnell. And
Texas is a country that breeds brave men, and I know
courage when I see it. Alas, a time came when his courage
availed him nothing. The history of his downfall is one of
the most pathetic in history. There is a rumour that
Captain O'Shea said to Gambetta, " What are we going to do
with Parnell ? He is getting to be a great danger in the
country." And Gambetta replied, " Set a woman on his
track." And the woman, instead of betraying him, fell in
love with this patriot, and that was his undoing. He was the
only man who held the Irish party together for fifteen years,
and he had every quality to do it. In the first place he was
mysterious, and that appealed to the Irish imagination.
He was self-contained, and before announcing them to his
party, he made his decisions. He was self-reliant enough to
take all responsibility on his own shoulders. He could fight
for every inch of ground with his adversary, guided by
unsurpassed wariness. A member of Parliament, with a
world-wide reputation in the early days of Home Rule, had a
sort of promissory paper entrusted to him by Mr Gladstone,
merely to be read to Mr Parnell and afterwards it was to be
returned to Mr Gladstone. Mr Parnell, desiring to see some
particular phrase, held the paper for a moment, then quietly
folded it and placed it in his pocket. The member stretched
out his hand and said/" Oh, but I'm under a bond to return
that to Mr Gladstone." " No," said Mr Parnell very gently,
" oh no, it's safer hi my pocket," and in his pocket it re-
mained. Mr Gladstone was greatly disturbed when he heard
the result of the interview and fiercely blamed the inter-
mediary, who said, " Well you get it back — I can't." And
Mr Parnell remained master of the situation and possessor
of the document. He had infinite patience and could always

208 I MYSELF

bide his time. And he had a thorough knowledge of the
Irish character, and the advantage himself of possessing some
of the sterner qualities of his fighting American ancestors.
His mother's father, Admiral Stewart, was known as " Old
Ironsides," and in a way Mr Parnell was very American.
He could be as silent and as watchful as a Red Indian. He
had perfect faith in himself ; he stood alone ; and he had
the superabundant energy of the American, that fierce
energy that finally drove him to his death. In one fatal
particular, however, he resembled his countrymen. Every
Irishman has a henchman whose business it is to report all
that he hears, and to invent the rest. Mr Parnell had more
than one specimen of this particularly mischievous and
abominable type busily employed in constantly betraying
his followers and stirring up strife not only between himself
and them, but between the Irish members themselves.
There is but one thing in my now somewhat long life of which
I am thoroughly proud. I have never in the whole course of
it repeated a disagreeable thing that one human being has
said to me of another. I have said disagreeable, and I dare-
say even cruel, things myself, but always off my own bat,
and never under cover of some one whose confidence I have
betrayed. My strongest temptation to lie is to make peace,
for " one doth not know how much an ill word may empoison
liking." If every one had preserved a hard and fast rule
never to hear or to repeat disagreeable things, what a differ-
ence it would make in the whole history of the world ! And
the informer is always the betrayer afterwards. This rule is
unalterable. Mr Parnell's most dangerous henchmen were
men of no importance, of narrow intellect, and of small out-
look, and yet they were able to set the ball rolling which was
eventually to temporarily divide and ruin the Irish party
and to delay Home Rule for a decade.

If I were a great orator or a great preacher I would by
eloquence and argument make the world look with horror
upon the creatures who stir up strife in families, between
friends, and — worst of all — given the opportunity, between
nations. The futile argument advanced is, " You should

THE UNCROWNED KING 209

know your enemies," and if you do, what then ? You can
only hate them back, and make bad worse. Whereas, by I
innocently treating an enemy as a friend you may un- I
expectedly win him as one. The truth is, the person who *
brings a disagreeable story that hurts and wounds, dislikes
you. The desire to see you suffer proves that. Tale-bearers
are weak, and the weak are rarely frank — they have not
enough courage to make their dislike manifest. They can
do it only through other and more subtle means. How
often sensible people are taken in by the mischief-maker
whose pretence of friendship enables him to give a lifelong
festering wound.

Like all great leaders, Mr Parnell was inordinately selfish.
When he put Captain O'Shea up for T. P.'s seat I was visiting
in the North of Ireland, but I somehow felt he would get T. P.
to go with him to Galway, and that it was asking far too great
a sacrifice, as T. P. had represented the town and was both
trusted and beloved there. He of all the members should
not have been asked by Mr Parnell to support O'Shea. And
I wrote to T. P. imploring him not to go to Galway. But
it was in vain, and the fact that he did go made a grave
quarrel between us, but whatever Mr Parnell demanded of
his followers he got, no matter how difficult the command.
He subordinated everything and every man to himself. He
was without doubt the " Uncrowned King," but Galway was
his " Ides of March."

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE BIRTH OF " THE STAR "

I HAD gone to Ramsgate to stay with the Laboucheres,
and Mrs Labouchere and I were walking on the sands,
when she said to me, " Bessie, is T. P. always going to
be as poor as he is now ? "

I said, " I hope not. I think he would make a very good
editor," and that night we talked it over with Mr Labouchere ;
he agreed with me, and when T. P. came down at the end of
the week the idea of " The Star " was born. A prominent
politician and a remarkable judge of men wrote to me while
I was lately staying in Florence with the Laboucheres, " I
should love to see Labby again. He and I were always good
friends in the House of Commons. He should have been in
the Cabinet. I fancy his remarkable sense of humour was a
bit against him — the fools mistake it for insincerity, whereas
there were few more honest and sincere men than our witty
friend. When one plays cards with a man, sits in the House
of Commons with him, or is in business with him, he cannot
for long conceal his defects. Of course I write only of the
political game. No one ever found Labby for one moment
false to his professions, and his word was implicitly trusted,
although his jokes I'm afraid did the party little good. The
Nonconformist is totally devoid of humour, but is, au fond,
a good creature and must be considered/'

Every one believed in the judgment of Mr Labouchere ;
he had a very practical mind, and from the beginning he
predicted the success of the paper. It was a psychological
moment, there was room for it. He thought T. P. an
always- to- be-depended-upon journalist, never dull in his

THE BIRTH OF "THE STAR

211

writing, continually interesting, and indeed with a touch
of genius.

Mr Labouchere was very encouraging, helpful and active
in getting the capital together, and T. P., full of blithe
energy, worked night and day, seeing capitalists, politicians,
artists who brought advertising designs — the man with
torch aloft was his own idea — engaging his staff. Mr
Massingham, that brilliant journalist, was his chief leader-
writer, Ernest Parke was the sub-editor, George Bernard Shaw
was the Musical Critic — and many other men, then unknown,
but now famous in the world of journalism, were contributors.

But even after some of the machinery was bought there
was a moment of fear that the whole plan of " The Star "
would miscarry. Mr Carnegie offered to provide Lord
Morley with sufficient capital to start an evening paper in
support of the Liberals. " The Star " was to be a Radical
paper. I was staying in Brighton, to be near the Laboucheres,
who were at Lyon Mansion. T. P. came down from London
much depressed, and said as Home Rule was to come to
Ireland through the Liberals, and John Morley with an
evening paper could be of such service to the party, he
thought he had better drop " The Star." I simply raged.

" Good heavens ! " I said, " you can't do it. Here you are
compromised to all your staff — I never heard of such aquixotic
idea in my life — of course you must go on with the paper."

He said, " Don't say anything about this to anybody."

I looked at the clock. " In fifteen minutes," I said,
" Mr Labouchere shall know all about it." And off I rushed
to Lyon Mansion to find him a mine of strength and support ;
he helped to write a wire to Mr Morley for T. P. to sign, who
soon made his appearance, and with my bullying and Mr
Labouchere's logic a boy was sent off with the telegram.
I followed him in the hall and gave him a shilling to run.

Mr Morley abandoned the idea of his paper, and " The
Star " went triumphantly on its way. So great was
T. P.'s, enthusiasm that he said he must be on the premises
both day and night. He could not edit the paper otherwise.
So a flat was built for us at the top of " The Star " building.

212 I MYSELF

He also, to lessen the time given to dressing in the morning,
designed a time-saving costume. It was to be a flannel-
lined coat buttoned to the chin, the trousers also flannel-
lined and with socks and slippers ; he calculated not more
than two minutes for clothing himself. My suggestion was
to do away with socks and trousers, and in their stead flannel-
lined top-boots reaching well up over the knee, and a very
long, braided sort of garberdine, thus reducing his dressing
to half a minute. He said I always threw cold water on all
his valuable ideas, and neither of the costumes after this
was adopted.

Finally, the first day arrived for the publication of the
paper. I went down rather early. The machines were
going, nice new carts standing outside, newsboys were
waiting in groups. T. P. was in his editorial room, proof
was going up and down the stairs, and finally a batch of
papers were ready, and the first newsboy found his voice and
called out " Star, Evening Star " and rushed down the street
followed by other boys shouting and waving the new paper.
A lump came in my throat, and I ran upstairs to congratulate
T. P.

Before night the success of the paper was ensured. I
drove to Grosvenor Gardens to dine with the Laboucheres
and tell them all about it. Mr Labouchere had advised about
the contract, which practically made T. P. a life editor, and
at last I thought that with his splendid talent he had come
into his own. What a happy, happy night it was, in spite
of the prospect of, like poor Jo, my moving on again.

Although I had not been long in my little house on the
embankment, it was a grief to leave it. The river was full of
interest and charm to me, and it was my first home, after
being so many years without one. But I moved to " The
Star " the day after the paper started. And really the
next two years could not have been more uncomfortable.
The building was not very solidly built, and the machinery
shook it like an aspen leaf. The hangings, curtains and all
my clothes reeked of printers' ink, the noise of the carts
coming and going, the call of the drivers, the quarrelling of

THE BIRTH OF "THE STAR" 213

newsboys, and the incessant grinding of machinery, made a
perfect pandemonium of noise. A huge market was just
opposite, and the odour of stale food was continually coming
in at the windows. The one delightful thing about it was an
excellent bathroom with a generous tub and a fine shower-
bath, which had been put in expressly for T. P. Before we
left Grosvenor Road he had been speaking somewhere in the
country, and at the house of his host had taken a cold shower-
bath. When he came home he said at last he had found the
thing that would cure his every ill — a shower-bath — and he
wanted one put in at once in Grosvenor Road. I demurred
to the expense, and also suggested that he sometimes
changed his mind — perhaps after he got the shower-bath he
wouldn't like it. He said he never changed his mind — never ;
that I always discouraged him in every effort he made to
regain his health (what a splendid robust invalid he was !) ;
that evidently I didn't care for a shower-bath myself, and
that was the reason I didn't want it. So when the architect
who was designing " The Star " flat came to me with the
plans, I at once put my finger on the bathroom and said,
" Whatever you can or cannot do in this flat, give us a
vigorous shower-bath — the largest one manufactured."

One morning about nine o'clock I asked the maid where
Mr O'Connor was. She said in his bedroom, in bed — that
he was suffering from a chill. When I went in, he was
wrapped in blankets and had a hot-water bottle clasped in
his arms. The chill was the result of the shower-bath,
without which only a short time before he could not exist.
He said there was something the matter with his circulation
for the moment, but he would be better in a day or so.
Twice after he tried the shower-bath, with the same result,
and then it was left to my undisturbed possession. There is
nothing in the world I like better. That cold, invigorating
spray kept me alive during those two trying years spent in
Stonecutter Street.

One night in particular I remember. T. P. was speaking in
Scotland, where I was to join him the next day, and I was
alone on my floor, the servants all up above, when, about

2i4 I MYSELF

half-past two or three o'clock in the morning, I felt the
quiver and grind of machinery. I looked at my clock, and
was petrified with terror. It was an evening paper — the
machines never began before the morning — what could have
happened ? Had the Queen died ? I jumped out of bed,
threw on my dressing-gown, and ran barefooted into the hall.

The night-watchman met me, his lantern swinging in his
hand, followed by Max.

" What, oh, what has happened ? " I gasped out.

" Jack the Ripper/* he said, " has murdered two women
to-night — not so far away from here either — and we are
getting to press as early as anybody."

" Two ! " I said. " Horrible ! How did he manage that ? "

He told me as much as he knew, and I took Max in my
room to guard me, and waited for the daylight.

What an impenetrable mystery Jack the Ripper was !
The wretch evidently had a sardonic sense of humour, for
he used to write to the papers to say a murder would
be committed the next night, and sign his letters " The
Ripper " — and sure enough the murder, in spite of all
vigilance, would take place neatly and deftly ; and, notwith-
standing his grimly humorous letter of warning, no trace
would be found. All sorts of theories were advanced, but
there was absolutely nothing in any of them.

One night Mr Parnell came to see Mr Labouchere. He
was wearing a long rough overcoat with the collar well above
his ears, a slouch hat well down over his eyes, and he carried
a black bag just the size for instruments. Mr Labouchere
accompanied him to the door and said, " Shall I call a cab
for you ? "

" No," Mr Parnell said, " I will walk."

" Where," said Mr Labouchere, " do you live ? "

" Over there," said Mr Parnell, sweeping his arm toward
the darkness of the night into which he disappeared.

Mr Labouchere returned to his library and a group of
friends, and laughing, said, " I do believe that I've just
parted with ' Jack the Ripper ' — anyhow Parnell is the only
man who answers to the description."

CHAPTER XL

MY FIRE-ESCAPE FLIGHT. BRILLIANT LETTERS
FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

THE authorities looking over " The Star " building said
it was particularly unsafe in time of fire — that in fif-
teen minutes the building would be demolished ; and
they ordered a fire-escape to be made, one of those long canvas
bags which are hooked on to iron loops and swung down
into the yard below. You are supposed to get in it and put
your arms akimbo, and stretch your legs wide apart, thus
filling up the bag and keeping yourself from going down with
too great a velocity. It is a sort of calisthenic performance,
requiring a good deal of practice, and you begin with one
storey only. Another thing breaking the direct downward
drop are the two men who, in the yard or street below, hold
the bag out, so that it makes a slanting line.

Two firemen and the bag arrived one spring evening about
six o'clock. I was to dine out and go on to a party afterwards.
The iron loops were screwed in and firmly adjusted in my
bedroom window, which was on the fourth story ; the bag
was fixed on to the loops, and hung down to the square court
below. The firemen, both of whom had been drinking and
probably wanting a lark, urged me to go down in it. I
hesitated, and sat in the window for some moments (any
height makes me rather sick) with my legs dangling down
in the bag. They said, " You had better slide down now,
and in case of fire you can give Mr O'Connor and the servants
confidence by going down ahead of them/'

I felt very frightened and nauseated, but I said, " All
right, go down and take hold of the bag " — and after I had

215

216 I MYSELF

dangled a little while longer I suddenly let go, and down I
went. But no arms akimbo, and no legs braced against the
canvas ! Oh no — I just put my arms up above my head in
the frantic hope of grabbing something — anything that would
stay my instant death, for that is what it felt like.

However, the agony did not last long. Down I went like
an arrow shot from a bow, my skirts up about my head like
an umbrella turned the wrong side out. I shot by the men
like a catapult from a gun, and slid along the stones in the
yard as if they had been greased, leaving large patches of
skin on each one that I touched. My right foot turned,
spraining the ankle, every hairpin was out of my head, my
hair hung down like Meg Merrilees', my elbows had come
through my sleeves and my arms were skinned, but I was
to my great surprise alive. Every window in the court was
filled with a laughing, cheering crowd.

The firemen, quite sobered with fright, picked me up, and
smoothed my ruffled feathers, and then I found I couldn't
walk. My ankle began to swell at once. I was carried
tops t airs. I called for a soft cushion to sit on ; Mr Parke came
up and cut off my boot ; and we dispatched a telegram to
my hostess and my doctor.

T. P. was out. When he came in he could not believe
that I had done anything so utterly foolhardy, so absurd,
and apparently so courageous. And the unfortunate part
was that everybody who had seen the descent resolved there
and then to burn up alive rather than go down in a fire-escape.

We had a lunch party when I had sufficiently recovered,
and I remember Tim Healy, such a gay, agreeable, and witty
friend in those far-off days, looking out of the window and
down the fire-escape, and saying he wouldn't for four thousand
pounds have taken that hasty journey. As a matter of fact,
I was most horribly afraid to do it, but I thought it my duty
to be prepared for fire, and above all to set the servants an
example with the fire-escape ; but the moments of agony
I spent in the awful thing have developed in me an ever-
lasting sympathy for the criminal. On that occasion I
suffered all the pain of execution.

LETTERS FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 217

One night we went to Spencer House, to an " At Home,"
and on our return to Stonecutter Street, when T. P. gave
the cabman his fare, he got a very frank lecture on the
enormity of his ways.

" If," said the man, " I knew your families, I would tell
them who you are, bringing me down here to a newspaper
office at this time of night, and giving me half-a-crown to do
it. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

We did not explain that we were married and this was our
singular home.

Climbing up and down the four flights of stairs was very
tiresome, and another disadvantage was the number of things
that were stolen while we lived there. One thing I shall
ever regret, a genuine treasure that I had always refused
to sell, even in my poorest days : a very beautiful authentic
miniature of the Pompadour with powdered hair, dressed
with a little wreath of roses, a white pointed bodice, and
gossamer lace falling about the square neck. It was painted
in the heyday of her beauty, and the face and shoulders were
exquisite. It disappeared one day. With so many peopl^
running in and out of the flat, to trace it was impossible.
Newspaper offices and theatres are alike — things just go.

The musical criticisms of George Bernard Shaw were
among the great successes of the paper. They were bril-
liantly written, full of humour, and always amusing and
original — not entirely about music, for he gave himself great
latitude, and this was his charm : the unexpected always,
even as in his plays of the present day. I delighted in every
line that he wrote, and in him personally. He was so witty,
gay, and undaunted. He was very poor, and revelled in his
poverty as a huge joke. That is why Fate has made him
rich. He really didn't care a pin about money. The
simplicity of his life called for nothing more than the most
moderate stipend. He was the strictest vegetarian. He
wore flannel shirts, and the most inexpensive clothes ; was
active and walked great distances, spending nothing in cab
fares ; his only beverage was water — and he was perfectly
happy, living partly in his land of dreams, and partly in the

218 I MYSELF

world, where nothing escaped his sharp eye — the follies and
the motives of mortals were quite open to his penetrating
vision. Many people, chiefly unobservant ones, argue that
George Bernard Shaw's theoretical creations spring from his
brain, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, and possess no
attributes of human men and women, but I daresay :f the
truth were known, he has drawn them chiefly from his own
intimates.

There was never a more natural play than " Man and
Superman "or a more natural woman than its heroine Ann ;
and the female of the present day is continually stalking the
male all over the world. It is a reversal of nature, but then
through so-called civilization we are tending more toward
artificiality every day, and it is a long time since Eve offered
Adam the apple in the Garden of Eden and then felt
ashamed of herself. The only question now among a certain
class of women is, " Will he eat, and how soon ? " Many
women, especially the hypocritical, and those who have
played Ann's game, resent the creation ; but we all know her.
There are Anns belonging to every nationality ; they are
found in America, France, Germany, England — and I
daresay in Asia Minor.

Some years ago I met G. B. S., travelling with a party
of artists on the Lake of Como. I asked to be introduced to
one of them, saying, I was so much interested in his pictures.

" Not you," said Mr Shaw, his eyes dancing with fun.
" He's a mighty good-looking fellow, that's why you want
to know him — you neither know nor care anything about his
pictures."

I laughed and instantly forgave him — he was so near the
truth. I love beauty above everything in nature, in art, in
man, or tree, or flower, or child, and the satisfaction of my
eye is my chief est pleasure.

The boat stopped at Como just then, so I never made the
gentleman's acquaintance, but it really is not worth the
trouble of ever trying to deceive Mr Shaw. By a quick
mental process he divines the truth at once. Indeed a great
part of his wit lies in presenting the facts of life (in his own

LETTERS FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 219

inimitable style) just as they are. Unabashed and unafraid,
he exposes truth, no matter how ugly she may appear to be,
and tears from her face the falsehood with which we have
been veiling it for generations. He knows, nobody better,
that in truth lies freedom, and he is working steadily toward
that goal, and at the same time adding to the gaiety of
nations, for, thank Heaven ! his most serious efforts are
seasoned with the biting sauce of inexhaustible humour.

These letters, received so long ago in " The Star " days, I
kept for their frank and delightful wit. They are as amusing
to-day as when they were written.

" 29 FITZROY SQUARE,
ifjth May, 1888.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Decidedly the American woman
is the woman of the future, but how the American woman
contrives to get on with the Irishman of the present, without
driving him out of his senses by franknesses which strike me
as appalling indiscretion, was the second thought which
occurred to me when I met you at ' The Star ' sanctum, the
first thought being, of course, the realization of the American
woman herself personally. It is the Irishman's charm and
defect that he never loses his naivete as to woman, he never
ventures to think that she is human ; and consequently he is
eternally chivalrous, which is convenient at times, but which
on the whole makes him desperately conventional on the
woman question, and inclined to think that her place, after she
has seen to his dinner and his buttons, is a glass case, and her
chief duty to hold her tongue. I cannot help intrusively
surmising that the unfortunate T. P. is having the remnants
of this superstition ruthlessly extirpated by the aforesaid
American woman of the future. I am enviously sorry for
him.

" I admit that it was a fall for Trefusis when he married
Agatha, but it was inevitable. They were one another's
natural prey from the first, and when two people find that
out it ends always in the same way in spite of reason, unless
one or other or both is ' Bespoke ' before the meeting occurs.

220 I MYSELF

"As to the vegetarian meal, I positively refuse. I have
had considerable experience of the danger of associating
myself with experiments of that kind. When the victim is
a man he forgives me after a time, but women are not so
magnanimous ; besides, your suggestion — the most extra-
ordinary ever made by woman — that the reformed diet might
have the effect of assimilating your personal appearance to
mine, chills me to the soul. Imagine your becoming fair,
not to say green ! No, thank you ! If all the women were
made fair to-morrow I should retire to a monastery the day
after. The fact is these bean-pies and so on are not the
proper things to eat, though they are better than cow. The
correct thing is good bread and good fruit and nothing else.
At present it is impossible to get either except at odd times.

" It is superfluous to recommend M.'s ' Confessions ' to me ;
I have heard them from his own lips. I doubt if there is any
other such man in the world as he. I cannot describe him ;
he would baffle even T. P.'s descriptive talent, and I accept
your phrase as the final felicity of criticism on him.

" My book- writing days are over, unluckily ; for the last
five years I have had to live and lecture at my own expense,
and I should not know how to write a novel now if I wanted
to. At the present moment, by the by, I should be writing
notes for the mossy-headed Massingham. How I should
like to get hold of that paper just for a fortnight !

" G. B. S.

" I beg your pardon, I have such a habit of signing that
way, that I forget and do it when better manners are needed.
Pray excuse it."

" 29 FITZROY SQUARE, W.,
i6th September, 1888.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I take it that you are back from
Kreuznach by this time. I too am back — from Bath — upon
which expedition (I was three hours and a half there) I spent
a fortnight's hard work and a pound in present cash, only
to be maligned and misrepresented in ' The Star ' and to

LETTERS FROM GEORGE BERNARD SHAW 221

return in a state of destitution with my Italian Exhibition
project faded into an impossible dream. No, madam.
Share the splendour of West Kensington with the giddy
Massingham if you will, and leave to sterner, grimmer uses
the slave of the world's destiny and of his own genius.

" I walked home from my lecture at Dalston last night to
save a tram fare — think of that and blush ! Probably I
shall walk home from the New Cut to-night for the same
reason. Last month I earned £6, I2s. The month's rent
is £5. I have another paper to prepare for October 5th,
equal in difficulty to the Bath one, and equally paid in the
gratitude of posterity. I have two books commissioned,
payment by royalty after they are published — and you talk
of the Italian Exhibition ! Ha, ha ! Do you know what the
Italian Exhibition costs ? Our tickets, third class, including
admission, half-a-crown if they would cost a penny. One
programme between us, a penny. The Blue Grotto, three-
pence (for you — I should wait outside as I have seen the
imposture already) ; sixpenny seats at the Coliseum — one
shilling ; threepenny seats at the Mandolinists — sixpence ;
shilling seats at the Marionettes — two shillings ; Switchback
Railway, one turn — sixpence. Refreshments, say fourpence,
as we could be scrupulously economical. Loss of time,
reckoned at ' Star ' rates of payment — half-a-crown apiece.
Total, twelve shillings and twopence ! So that even if I
borrowed ten shillings from you to start with (which an Army
Reserve man in the S. D. Federation tells me is the cheapest
plan of managing an affair of this sort) I should still be two
shillings and twopence out of pocket. Two shillings and
twopence to gratify the whim of a giddy young woman who
proposes (monstrous conceit) to take my education in hand !
My education ! You a baby, still looking with wide-open,
delighted eyes at the glitter of West European whitewash
and advising maids, wives, and widows with the artless
wisdom of an incomparable and unique naivete — educate
me \ Stupendous project ! No, I learn from everybody,
and what I learn I teach, but I am nobody's pupil, though I
should be glad indeed to meet my master. You will find

222 I MYSELF

very few people in London who know anything, but those
who do have learnt it all from me ! All of which is as much
as to say that for the present I am tied, neck and heels,
to stump and inkpot, and mustn't introduce the statue to its
original yet awhile.

" Meanwhile, I hope you are well, as this leaves me at
present — thank God ! (if there were one) for it. This is the
Irish formula, and faultless in its way.

" I judge by a fervour in the leading article that the
editor of ' The Star ' is again at his post. Convey to him
such kind regards as can pass between two hardened
worldlings.

" Of the enclosed l I very grievously suspect Master Tighe
Hopkins — but you began it.

" G. B. S."

1 " The enclosed " was a brilliant article by Tighe Hopkins, suggested by
a paragraph in ' For Maids, Wives, and Widows ' my weekly column in
'The Star."'

CHAPTER XLI

A " STAR " PARTY. THE SHIRT OF CHARLES I.,
AND NORWAY

WHEN I returned from Scotland to " The Star" build-
ing— it never could be called home — I met Adele
Steiner in Edinburgh and brought her back with
me as a consolation. She was a very pretty, thoughtful,
intellectual, charming girl from Texas, who had been spend-
ing a year or two abroad in foreign travel, and her stay
with me was a delight. She is now the wife of the Hon.
Albert Burleson, the able leader in Congress of the able
democratic party from Texas, and her thoughtfulness and
tact have been of inestimable service to her husband.

We were soon busy preparing for a reception in " The Star "
building. The editorial department was furbished up as a
series of dressing-rooms, and as all the rooms in the flat
opened into each other and some of them had folding-doors,
it was easy to make sufficient space to accommodate many
guests. Various friends with country places sent big
baskets of flowers and foliage. Lady Ripon from Studley
Royal was particularly generous, and Lady Milbanke sent
from Yorkshire not only flowers enough to decorate the
entire dining-room, but a special bunch of pink and white
carnations — my favourite flower — for my own personal
decoration.

The four flights of stairs were covered in red felt. An
awning was provided for the door, and we looked very gay
and festive on the night of the party. The various papers
were kind in their mention of it, but I have only this extract
left :—

223

224 I MYSELF

" Mrs T. P. O'Connor, a charming American, was ' At
Home ' on Wednesday evening at ' The Star ' Office, an
immense building which also serves Mr and Mrs O'Connor
as a residence.

" It was a novel experience, I should imagine, to nineteen
out of every twenty guests to be sumptuously entertained
in a newspaper office, and for myself, I never remember
anything like it except the great party given to inaugurate
the new ' Daily Telegraph ' buildings six or seven years
ago.

" Luckily ' The Star ' ' At Home ' was on that evening of the
week when most of us can manage to steal a few hours of the
night without going into sackcloth and ashes next morning,
and the result was that some 500 accepted Mrs O'Connor's
invitation. The ' At Home ' was a kind of christening of
the Radical paper, which in five months has obtained a
circulation unprecedented in the history of journalism in
England. Everybody was there, Politicians, Artists, Actors
and Actresses, Professional Beauties, pretty young ladies
just coming out, and a large sprinkling of Society celebrities,
and what is more, everybody enjoyed himself or herself.

" Clever Mrs O'Connor had turned the rooms in which she
and her husband live, above the working part of the paper,
into a perfect fairyland, ablaze with lights and flowers.
There was Irish hospitality and some excellent Washington
punch, and the result was that all went merry as marriage
bells.

" Towards the middle of the evening there was a diversion
in the shape of the printing of the last edition of the paper,
the ladies going down to the machine-room and setting the
Marinoni and Fosters going with their own fair hands.

" There was Mr Gladstone talking to Mr John Morley.
Mr Beerbohm Tree surrounded by a circle of admirers. Oscar
Wilde and his pretty young wife. Sir Charles Russell.
And representing the Opposition Bench were Sir Lyon Play-
fair and Mr James Stansfeld, and I noticed Mr G. B. Shaw
and Lord Ashburnham, Sir Frederick and Lady Milbanke,
and Mrs Labouchere in white satin, old lace, and a parure of

A « STAR " PARTY 225

diamonds, had a smile and a cheery word for every one of her
numerous friends.

"A great many people who had dropped in for a few minutes
only and intended to hie them away to other functions,
changed their mind when they found what good entertain-
ment was in store for them and stayed at " The Star " Office.

" The party was altogether a brilliant success."

M. Johannes Wolff played divinely at " The Star " party.
He could not speak a word of English at that time, and I
offered jestingly to give him lessons. He took it seriously
and arrived the next day with grammar, dictionary, and a
little book of stories. I gave him one lesson, Adele Steiner
gave him the next, and T. P. gave him two. This was his
entire course in English, though now he speaks the language
very well. The lessons were interrupted by a short visit to
Lord Ashburnham's and never resumed. Ashburnham
Place is one of the lovely spots of England. The house is
old, and the garden is sheltered and has a great variety of
trees and shrubs brought from milder climates and thriving
well in the soil, which all about Hastings is more or less
productive. The white grapes are magnificent, and there
is okra also growing under glass, a very delicious vegetable
brought from Egypt, and, like the pomegranate, Cleopatra
ate of it, for okra is a historic vegetable and was, I have no
doubt, a favourite with the Ptolemies. It is the principal
ingredient of gumbo, the famous dish of New Orleans.

There was no house party, only Adele and I, Lord Ash-
burnham and, later on, T. P. The first evening of our
arrival Adele came down to dinner looking like a very youth-
ful Marquise. She was dressed in pink satin brocaded in
silver lilies, with her hair powdered and bound by a silver
ribbon. I said, " Why all this magnificence ? " And she
bowed toward Lord Ashburnham and answered, " In honour
of the distinguished host and the distinguished house."

He looked very pleased — it was a pretty compliment, and
we three spent such a gay evening together. I have never
seen a more courteous or thoughtful host, or a man with
more exquisite manners.

15

226 I MYSELF

He never passed a gardener without lifting his hat, and his
servants have followed his example so closely in the matter
of manners, that I wanted to know why the butler had not
been sent as Ambassador to St Petersburg. I never had quite
such pretty attentions from anybody as that butler. He
listened at table to my lightest word. If I said I liked
venison it appeared at the next meal. If I said I liked roses
I found a bunch on my dressing-table. Some artist had
visited at Ashburnham Place and made various sketches
while there, and it occurred to the butler, after looking at the
pictures, that he could paint too. So he bought himself an
easel, and various tubes of colours, and straightway became
an artist. There was a certain vista of the garden I loved,
and he painted a most creditable little picture of that view,
and subsequently sent it to me, accompanied by a ham from
Lord Ashburnham.

There was so much of interest in the house. The magnifi-
cent library which had been collected by the father of Lord
Ashburnham was then intact ; among the books was a fine
Mazarin Bible in perfect condition, and a missal set with
uncut gems and illustrated by Raphael. But of far greater
interest to me was the shirt worn by Charles I. the
day he was beheaded. It was made of very fine linen,
with the broad rufHes around the wrists and down the front
exquisitely hemstitched, and circling the neck was a faint
salmon pink stain. It seems that one of the former Ladies
Ashburnham had no regard for the blood of kings, and she
ordered a tirewoman to wash the shirt ! Fortunately the
stain was like the blood-stain of Rizzio in Holyrood, too deep
to be removed.

All pleasant things come to an end, and one day we found
ourselves back in London, and Adele departed for Germany,
leaving me to bear the ceaseless restlessness of Stonecutter
Street alone.

There was a little interregnum of peace when Walter
Ballantine, that kind and thoughtful friend, lent us his
maisonette in Victoria Street. Merely to be away from the
throb of machinery was bliss. Finally the noise and din of

NORWAY 227

Stonecutter Street got on T. P.'s nerves as well, and we
found a flat in Carlisle Place, and for a time settled there.
Then came T. P.'s resignation from " The Star," and that
summer we went with Thomas Nelson Page and Johannes
Wolff to Norway and spent a delightful few weeks there.
It was on our return that Tom Page read us his charming
story of " Elsket " which he had begun in Bergen and
finished at our house in London.

T. P. has a remarkable concentration of mind, and can
study as easily now as at eighteen. Before we started on our
trip I came in one day and found a queer-looking man in the
drawing-room.

" Who is that man ? " I asked.

" My Norwegian teacher, madam," answered T. P., and
with a novel, a grammar, and a book of verbs, he soon
mastered enough of the language to make us quite com-
fortable in travelling. He has a quick understanding of the
construction of a language, but his ear is defective — the
pronunciation is for him always difficult.

At Bergen we drove out to see the Griegs, whom I knew,
but they had gone away, and so we missed them. They had
a little place near the town, and they lived very simply.
Their quiet happiness came from within, and surely their
marriage was made in heaven, for no two people were ever
more contented together, or more congenial. They looked
exactly alike, both having wide open, childlike, heavenly blue
eyes, short, curly, grey hair, and both were small and thin.
They dressed alike in grey tweed, and when they went out
wore overcoats and little round caps made apparently by the
same tailor.

Mrs Grieg was a fine pianiste, and I have heard them play
spirited duets together, and he never found such an inter-
preter of his beautiful gay, sad, characteristic songs as she.
When he came to London, and his wife was just recovering
from a life and death operation, a well-known singer was
engaged for one of Grieg's concerts, and sang once, but he
telegraphed Mrs Grieg to come if possible. She did, and
sang like a nightingale. Her voice even at that time was as

228 I MYSELF

fresh as that of a girl of seventeen — joyous, melodious and
musical.

They were very young when first engaged to be married,
and both taught music and were hopelessly poor, and the
engagement lasted years — fifteen or seventeen — before he
made enough money to buy a little home ; but they were
always happy in each other and consequently quite in-
dependent of other people.

We all have different ideas of happiness. One woman
desires social success above all else. Another wishes to
become a great singer ; another a great actress ; another
longs to have been born a great beauty ; but my idea of
satisfying happiness is that of a close, congenial, unbreakable
companionship, such as Grieg and his wife had. It gives
that peace which passeth all understanding — the peace of
the mind and the heart. It stills restlessness, and makes the
sharpest pain bearable. And, alas, this companionship is
given to so few of us ! To me it began and ended with my
father.

When Grieg's music became popular, he was offered
concert engagements all over Europe, but he never wanted
money. His wife, his home and his piano, made him com-
pletely happy.

M. Johannes Wolff was a special favourite with the great
composer. He thought no artist could play Grieg's Sonata
with such expression and feeling, and Johannes Wolff loved
Norway, which was also a claim upon Grieg's affection.
The Norwegians are a very proud race — even the humblest
are self-respecting and independent. When we were all
travelling in the little stohlkerries, each alone with the
driver, Johannes Wolff complained to his of the slowness
of his horse, whereupon the man said he would go home —
though it was only our second day out — and home he went,
proudly refusing a penny for his services. This taught
me a lesson, and every little while, when my driver said,
" Good 'orse, good 'orse," I, looking at his sturdy steed,
enthusiastically agreed.

CHAPTER XLII

A FRAGRANT PRECIPICE

STALHEIM is the most beautiful place in Norway, with
the hotel looking down a purple gorge of mountains,
and a fragrant precipice was just at the side of my
bedroom window — it must have contained all sorts of strongly
perfumed flowers to scent the air so adorably. And I
remember Stalheim for another reason as well : it was there
T. P. and Tom Page elected to demonstrate the fact that men
are only grown-up boys. As the hotel was overflowing, they
occupied the same room, and each had retired to his separate
little bed, when Tom Page, who did all the last things at
night, said, " T. P., you open the window to-night, and hang
up your wet stockings to dry, and blow out the candle,"
but T. P. firmly declined any of the offices, and the candle
was still lighted on the table between them when I went
in the room later for some medicine. " Why." I said, " has
the candle been left burning ? "

" Because," Tom Page grumbled, " T. P. was too darned
lazy to blow it out. After this we must all strike against
waiting on him." To restore harmony, I opened the window
hung up the stockings, and blew out the light, but unless I
had gone in the room, the candle would have burned to its
socket, a torch of contention between a celebrated author
and a celebrated journalist.

In Christiania I found Grieg's world- renowned Wedding
March converted into a picture : it represents a midsummer's
day, in a dark green forest. The tall pine trees rearing their
heads to the blue sky, the hot bright sunlight slanting through
and down upon a rushing stream, over which the wedding

229

23o I MYSELF

party are crossing. The bride is in white and on a white
horse, and wears a silver crown which the sun turns to pale
gold.

The bridegroom is in green, rich in ancestral ornaments,
and the wedding guests are clad in the gay and picturesque
peasant costumes of the country. It is a happy rendering
of love, and youth, and colour, and coolness, and greenness,
by an artist of much poetical feeling, and was inspired by
Grieg's fairy-like, characteristic music. I stood long enough
before it to make it mine, and I have only to shut my eyes
to see it again.

At our hotel in Christiania every evening about six o'clock
we had a visitor with whom I longed to speak — Ibsen. He
came in the reading-room at this hour, settled himself in a
certain chair, and read the English, German and French
newspapers. He resembled strongly a retired American
farmer, with his white beard under and around his face like
a ruffle, his thick grey, wiry, upstanding hair, and his small,
inquisitive, very bright eyes. He was always dressed in
black, with a black necktie and a soft black hat, and no one
ever spoke to him, or he to anyone. I longed to tell him
what a debt of gratitude all women owed him for writing
" A Doll's House," that great play which is one of the most
powerful pleas for the emancipation of woman. It is a
tragic, unanswerable argument that they should occupy the
position of comrade and friend, instead of child or play-
thing. Nora understood the art of flattering her husband's
vanity by appealing to him as a pretty playful baby. She,
indeed, for a time, and through his attitude, believed in his
superiority, but when the final test came she was the stronger
of the two. It was her husband's latent cowardice and
her latent strength which the comedy she was playing laid
bare and converted into a tragedy.

CHAPTER XLIII

THE LOST LEADER

" Blot out his name then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more footprint untrod,
One more devil's triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God."

BROWNING

THERE is no woman, even the most unthinking, who has
read or heard Nora's words that can ever forget them,
when in answer to her husband's assertion that as a
man he cannot sacrifice his honour for her, Nora says :
" That is what hundreds and thousands of women have done,
and are still doing every day."

It is the false position which women occupy, the necessity
of subordinating an intelligence oftentimes better and
keener than that of man, simply on account of sex, which
makes so many of the heart-breaking tragedies of the world.
" I'm a man and I ought to know," is a phrase which accounts
for a number of the shipwrecks which might have been
avoided if the captain had not steered the ship alone.

Quite a different man from Ibsen was Bjornsterne Bjornson.
I saw him walking along one very hot afternoon, clothed
entirely, like Mark Twain, in pure white heavy serge. The
only spots of colour were his blue, blue eyes, and a blue
pansy pinned on his coat. He was a strikingly hand-
some man of the real Viking type, very tall and strong
looking, with glittering hair, and eyes and a rolling gait like
a sailor. He, too, had advanced ideas for women, but his
genius was of a more delicate order and much less ruthless
than Ibsen's. His studies and pictures of Norwegian life
give a most vivid impression of the country ; they are so

231

232 I MYSELF

definite, so full of vigour and virility, and he makes the rush
of the water and the clearness of the air an actuality.

In the autumn of that year we went to America. It was
necessary to raise funds for the Irish Party, and Mr Parnell
sent for this purpose T. P. O'Connor, William O'Brien and
John Dillon — if there were other members, I have forgotten.
The possibility of a divorce between Mrs O'Shea and her
husband had been spoken of, but Mr ParneU was strong in his
assurance that it would not take place, and even if it did it
would make no difference to him or his position. The first
meetings were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, and the money
came rolling in, like a tidal wave. Bishops, and priests, and
governors, and mayors, sat on the platforms and made
speeches. Theatres were not large enough to hold the
audiences, and opera houses were brought into requisition.

At that time every one in America believed in Home Rule ;
the party was undivided, working in unity and held together
by an iron hand. Parnell was looked upon as more astute
than Gladstone, and quite as great a party leader. The very
air was full of success. Irish and Americans alike put their
hands in their pockets to contribute to the funds, and many of
the Irish chambermaids gave each a solitary dollar.

Then came the news of the divorce, and the tide turned.
The Nonconformist conscience is by no means unknown in
America, and also many American men are grim and self-
controlled. They had no particle of sympathy for a man who
could ruin his own position and that of his party through Love.
There were columns upon columns in all the American news-
papers, and the Irish members were besieged by reporters,
who never left them, night or day. I remember washing my
hands and dressing my hair one evening with three in the
room. T. P. was extremely tactful and patient with them.
And at every cable, or tiny morsel of news, they made a fresh
rush, trying to thumbscrew some small opinion out of some-
body. One night, on the arrival of a certain cable, they woke
Mr Dillon and T. P. up at three o'clock in the morning. It
was always the same question : " Have you anything to say,
Mr O'Connor, on the state of affairs now ? "

THE LOST LEADER 233

The answer was invariably, " No, boys, I haven't." Then
the " boys " would invent what it seemed to them
should have been said, and we would pass on to the next
day.

Mrs William O'Brien was held up to me as a model of dis-
cretion. She never even looked in the direction of a reporter,
while I occasionally did smile at some good-looking lad, who
bade me good morning, and I was strictly commanded to hold
my tongue, and on no account to be interviewed. I slipped
away to Washington for a few days, and missing my friends
at the station, as they lived in the country, I was obliged to
go to the Arlington Hotel for the night. No sooner had I
sat down to supper than a young man appeared.

" Is this Mrs O'Connor ? "

"It is," I answered cordially, thinking, with my bad
memory for faces, he was a forgotten friend.

" I am a reporter from the "

" Don't," I said, " please don't interview me. T. P. is in
mortal terror of my saying something I ought not to say.
You see I am disturbingly frank, and I've got no political
opinions except that I'm a democrat from Texas, and anyhow
I'm not the interesting one of the family. If you will leave
me out I'll tell you all I know about T. P. Where shall we
begin ? "

The next morning there was an awful column headed :
" Mrs T. P. says what she ought not. The frankest woman
in America."

Luckily there really was nothing compromising in the
interview, but the Irish Party breathed a sigh of relief when
they heard I had retired to the country.

On my return to New York things were in statu quo — that
is, the Irish members were holding little committee meetings
from morning until, night, but could not decide whether or
not to stand by Parnell.

I am in no sense of the word, as I have said before, a
politician, but I wanted dreadfully, from the dramatic and
spectacular point of view, that the Irish Party should to a man
stand by Parnell. In vain T. P. explained the Nonccn-

234 I MYSELF

formist conscience to me. I said, " They ought to stand by
him like a solid phalanx of Roman soldiers, and go down
to history united. It would be splendid, unexpected and
intimidating. The English count on their being disunited.
They will at last fear the Irish if they rise or fall together."

I was an enthusiastic, blind, unconquerable Parnellite in
those days, and I thought, and think now, the division of the
party was a mistake. Once having been made, it was not
a matter of any consequence who became an anti-Parnellite
or a Parnellite. It was wiser to join the majority — the one
and only thing was complete unity.

One day the committee meeting lasted so long in the
Hoffman House that I finally went to look for T. P. I
knocked at the door. There was a silence, so I went in.
Sheets of scribbled paper, parts of memoranda, and mani-
festoes were scattered about. One of them blown from the
table to a chair caught my eye — it, too, was unfinished. I
picked it up, and brought it away with me, feeling that it was
ParnelTs doom. How splendidly it reads :

" HOFFMAN HOUSE,
" NEW YORK.

" We stand firmly and unitedly by the man who has brought
the Irish people through unparalleled difficulties and dangers
from servitude and despair to the very threshold of emancipa-
tion, with a genius, courage and devotion unequalled in our
history — not only in gratitude for these imperishable services
in the past, but in the profound conviction that now more
than ever ParnelTs leadership is the chief assurance of the
triumph of the Irish cause. We shall follow that leadership
loyally and unflinchingly "

It was never finished or signed, and the reading even
to-day is as sad as death. How history might have been
altered if it had been finished and valiantly upheld ! Mr
Parnell would not have died of a broken, desperate heart.
Irishmen would have proved themselves a united body of
men of steady nerve, incapable of intimidation, and, in spite

THE LOST LEADER 235

of Mr Gladstone's manifesto, Home Rule would have been
nearer at hand than now.

" And I think, in the lives of most women and men,
There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,
If only the dead could find out when
To come back, and be forgiven."

The Uncrowned King has been forgiven — the wild cheers
that enthusiastically burst forth at the magic word " Parnell "
at all Irish meetings show this. But — he will never come
back. He was ill and doomed, when at one of his last
meetings, hoping to arouse the old enthusiasm, he himself
called out hoarsely, " Cheers for the Chief ! Cheers for the
Chief ! " That proud, silent, self-contained soul, to beg of the
public for cheers ! His spirit was broken, the end was near.
A great leader of men was dying.

" Whatever he to others was

He was finer far than anyone that I have known beneath the sun,
Sinner, saint, or pharisee "

CHAPTER XLIV

AN OLD-WORLD HOUSE IN CHELSEA

ON my return from New York, after the Parnell d£Mcle,
we moved into a charming old-fashioned house in
Upper Cheyne Row, just around the corner from
Carlyle's historic old house (which has now been turned into
a museum) in Cheyne Row. The people who lived in Oakley
Lodge before us had been tenants for thirty years, and were
broken-hearted at leaving it. I can well understand, for it
was unlike other houses and had a character and an in-
dividuality of its own.

There were two friendly drawing-rooms downstairs with
low ceilings, and a pretty dining-room, and above that
T. P.'s study, and a number of bedrooms, but the great charm
of the place was the long garden with the old sundial in the
centre and a number of fine old trees.

I grew to love every inch of the place, and I shah1, 1 hope and
know, now that it is forever gone, never care so much for any
house again.

My friends found it pleasant to come and see me in the
summer, for a long balcony ran at the back of the house, and
here tea was served, and every one used to say that it was like
the country, so quiet, green, and peaceful. Every Friday
found me at home, and no one ever stood on ceremony with
me or waited for me to return their visits.

Many of my American friends found their way in the
pleasant spring days to the house at Chelsea. Mrs Louise
Chandler Moulton came every Friday. She is dead now, so it
doesn't matter if her pretty romantic story, already known
to her friends, is put into print. Philip Burke Marston, the

AN OLD-WORLD HOUSE IN CHELSEA 237

blind poet, fell in love with her voice, when she was no
longer in the first freshness of her youth, and she always
used to say that she did not mind his being blind, because he
would never see her grow old ; but he never grew old himself,
and he loved her to the end of his life, and she his memory,
to the end of hers. She was an appreciative friend, and
what affectionate letters she always wrote. This one
enclosed a little paragraph which she had sent to a Boston
paper :

" 17 LANGHAM STREET,
" August 2<\th.

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I had felt a little blue and
lonely to-night, and I said to myself when the postman
knocked, ' I do wish something pleasant would come ' —
and so it did, in the shape of your letter. Thank you for the
charming exaggeration of your paragraph. You make me
out all that I would like to be.

" I am so sorry to hear you are ill. You are too bright and
sweet for fate to give you any suffering. I hear you praised
when I go to Mrs Perkins to try on my gowns, and a dress-
maker is always a judge of character.

" I sent off the poems to my publisher to-day — thank
Heaven ; now I shall have a little more leisure. I am going,

September 3rd, to make a brief visit to Lady W , about

two hours from London, and then I shall go either to Scotland
or Paris, I am not sure which. Next time we are in London
at the same time I hope I shall have the good fortune to see
much of you.

" I met the Pages at the Hendersons', and they promised
to come and see me last Tuesday, but they were faithless and
didn't. I was sorry, because I liked them much.

" I send my sheet full of good and affectionate wishes, and
a paragraph which I clip from a Boston paper, and I am very
much yours, LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON "

This was the paragraph : —

" Americans are numerous in London just now. At a little

238 I MYSELF

breakfast, given yesterday by Mrs T. P. O'Connor, I met
Thomas Nelson Page, whose work has long been my delight,
and he is himself quite as interesting as his own books.
Harold Frederic was there also, clever and brilliant, as
became the author of ' Seth's Brother's Wife,' and several
more Americans besides — to say nothing of Mrs O'Connor,
who is an American herself, though she has been the last
sixteen or seventeen years in London. I have fallen in love
with Mrs O'Connor — young, beautiful, witty, gracious, and
graceful, one is glad to have America thus represented in
London Society. When she talked I wanted to hear her talk
for ever, and when she accompanied on her grand piano the
divine playing of Johannes Wolff on his violin, the enchant-
ment of music completed the spell which enthralled me.

" Oscar Wilde was at this pleasant breakfast, and fairly
scintillated with wit. The host was talking to a radiant
blonde, and Oscar Wilde asked Mrs T. P. if she wasn't jealous ?
She said ' No — T. P. doesn't know a pretty woman when he
sees one.' Harold Frederic said, ' I beg leave to differ —
what about yourself ? ' Mrs T. P. answered, ' Oh, I was an
accident.' ' Rather/ said Oscar Wilde, ' a catastrophe ! ' "

Lord Glenesk during the heat of the season would some-
times come and spend nearly a whole day on my little balcony.
He was never the same, poor man, after the death of his son,
and I remember driving out to Hampstead immediately
after this little note reached me :

" 139 PICCADILLY, W.
" 22nd August 1904.

" DEAREST RIVAL AND SWEET SUPPLIANT, — I will tell the
M.P. to do what it can for you, but do spare me and my
blushes and ask me not to appear as a photograph with a
phender under my pheet or in my arms.

" My poor son has been three months in bed, and is so
delicate that even the half-hour's journey to Hampstead
quite upset him. However, he is better to-day and I trust
the air up there will set him right. You may imagine what
anxiety we have had.

AN OLD-WORLD HOUSE IN CHELSEA 239

" Please come and see him when you can. He would like
it. — Sincerely yours, GLENESK "

When Frankfort Moore first lived in London he often
dropped in on Friday. Although his novels, many of them,
are immensely entertaining, T. P. thought he ought to return
to Journalism, and something was said to Lord Glenesk, who
was then Sir Algernon Borthwick, on the question of Frank-
fort Moore, and he wrote me :

" AIRDRIE LODGE, KEW GARDENS,
" February z6th, 1895.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — How good of you ! How good
of Mr O'Connor to mention my name to Sir Algernon Borth-
wick. I had no idea of returning to Journalism, my books
have lately been doing so extremely well, but so splendid a
post as Sir Algernon has at his disposal would be a tempta-
tion. I have written to Sir Algernon, but I do not know
in what terms I should write to you. Whether I get the
thing or not, my gratitude to you will be the same. It was
so singular that I should find your kind letter awaiting me
on my return from town, where I spent some profitable
minutes negotiating with a dealer for an ivory crucifix for
you. You may remember, that when I was in your bed-
room (doesn't this look like a bit from a novel by the author
who shocks people) I promised to get you a crucifix possessing
some artistic merit. I did not forget that vow. I have been
looking about me ever since, but without success until to-day.
If I can bring the Hebrew who owns it to reason to-morrow,
I shall call with it as near four o'clock as possible, but on
no account wait in to receive it, if I am fortunate enough to
get it.

" Thank you again and again. — Yours sincerely,

" FRANKFORT MOORE "

I don't know if he brought the Hebrew to reason, but he
got the crucifix, one of the most beautiful I ever saw. After

24o I MYSELF

hanging over my bed for so many years it now lies packed
away in a box waiting for me to have a home once more.

Grant Allen was an occasional visitor. I used always to
say of him, that if I was a rich woman I would give him
a salary of £2000 a year to take a walk with me every day.
He was so full of information, and had such a very lucid way
of imparting it. Only to-day I looked at a book which he
sent me with the little inscription of which he speaks :

" THE CROFT,
" HINDHEAD, HASLEMERE,
" Thursday.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — It was a great pleasure to meet
you again the other night at Dr Bird's.

" I am sending you my book. You will see a little sketch
there of American Duchesses. I have taken the liberty of
dedicating it to one of them.

" Please thank your husband most sincerely for his
generous review of ' The Woman who Did.' It is the kindest,
honestest, and truest notice the book has yet received.
What I particularly value is the fact that while differing
fundamentally from the social and ethical theories of the
book, he yet shows himself just to them and to it. I have
had so much unfair treatment in other quarters that I know
how to value this frank and fearless criticism.

" With kindest regards to you both. — Yours very cordially,

" GRANT ALLEN "

CHAPTER XLV

FROM MY LETTER BOOK

r spite of my really sincere friendship for the Baroness
Burdett Coutts, I saw her only too rarely, but some-
times she used to drive to Chelsea, and she was always
cordial, sympathetic and unforgetful, and if I was going
away she sometimes sent me a little note of farewell :

" STRATTON STREET,
" Thursday.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I very much regret to learn by
your note that you have been so ill and are now obliged to go
to Germany in order to recruit your strength. Both Mr
Burdett Coutts and myself unite in wishing that you will
return quite yourself again, and we should have been very
glad to have come to you to-day and offered you our best
wishes for a fine journey and warm weather, if there be such
a thing in this chilled world. Unluckily, however, we cannot
visit you to-day with your other friends, for my husband:
leaves London to-morrow and is overburdened with business,
and I have a meeting of ladies at my house this afternoon
interested in the Great Northern Central Hospital just
building.

" I am very sorry that I must say good-bye, and in the
best sense God speed you.

" I send these roses for your journey. — Believe me, Ever
sincerely yours, BURDETT COUTTS "

It was at Oakley Lodge that I read " The Lost Leader "
to Max Hecht and received such enthusiastic encouragement
from him. He possessed a great deal of sentiment and

16 «4'

242 I MYSELF

understood what I was trying to convey in the play. My
poor play, that has never been produced and very likely
never will be. But I had faith in it then, and I have faith
in it still, on account of the subject, with which history pro-
vided me, and because of the absolute honesty with which
I have dealt with the subject. I have endeavoured to put
into the play the relentlessness of Fate toward all the tragedies
of love that go on between a woman who is married and
a man who is unmarried, who have the misfortune to
love each other with sincerity. I believe that irregular
relations can exist between a man and a woman, and they
may truly love each other, and even respect each other, but
the greater the love and the greater the respect, the more
terrible the tragedy becomes. It is the natural province of
man to protect the woman he loves, and it is the natural
province of woman to seek this protection, but protection is
impossible except from a husband to a wife. Gladys says to
the O'Donoghue :

" Oh, do you understand me so little ? I am miserable and un-
happy with you — without you I could not eat, nor sleep, nor live.
Marriage is said so often to be a failure, but I long for its surety and its
ease. It is ten thousand times harder for a woman and man in our
situation to love and be just to each other. Bitterness must creep in.
The world is against us. Society is against us. Law and order are
against us, and, worse than all, our own conscience is against us. If I
belonged to the highest and noblest type of woman I would go away
from you. But — I love you so."

The world is always against those who break her very
wisely ordained laws, and of course the highest type of man
and of woman control themselves and never in spite of suffer-
ing make these sordid tragedies, and I have tried to convey
in my play of " The Lost Leader " the inevitable end which
must result from a tragic, wrongly placed love.

Mr Hecht tried to get Forbes Robertson to do it, and then
he wrote to Mrs Campbell about it and enclosed me this note
from her. But nothing came of it and I have almost given
up hope of seeing it done.

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 243

, " 33 KENSINGTON SQUARE, W.

" DEAR MR HECHT, — I have always admired Mrs
O'Connor's Play — Mr Robertson knows that — and I have
tried for many months to convince him it was worth doing.
I thought a provincial trial production would have been best.
— Yours Sincerely, S. P. CAMPBELL "

Another friend who came not often enough to Oakley
Lodge was Anstey Guthrie, that most delightful, modest
humourist and playwright. Can I ever forget the keen
pleasure " The Man from Blankley's " gave me, even to the
big red chrysanthemums on the wall-paper in the first scene ?

I remember one quickly arranged dinner on Sunday in the
little house, when I was fortunate enough to get Anstey on
the very shortest notice, and he wrote me :

" 16 DUKE STREET MANSIONS,
" GROSVENOR SQUARE, W.

" i8th March 1893.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I shall be delighted to dine with
you to-morrow, Sunday, at 7.30.

" I am pained that you should suspect me of making light
of ball fringe and mantel frills and turquoise blue pots.
Do you really think I have no reverence ? I am having my
rooms done up this Easter, and they are to be all ball fringe —
even my dog will be re-covered in Waring-Gillow muslin and
have a mantel frill around his tail, and he won't eat out of
anything but an art pot as it is. There is nothing Philistine
about us. — Sincerely yours, F. ANSTEY "

I remember the very first time that I ever met Anstey. It
was mid-winter, and we were both going down to stay for
a few days in the country at Lady Jeune's. I got into the
train at Euston ; Sir Henry Thompson, whom I did not know
at that time, was in a compartment alone when I, a solitary
iemale, entered. He examined me suspiciously, and reached

244 I MYSELF

for his bag preparatory to changing into another carriage,
but I saved him the trouble by saying : " Pray don't get out :
you will not be travelling with me alone : my husband will
be here in a few moments." I wished him particularly to
stay as he was taking down the most adorable bull puppy
to Lady Jeune, a blue-eyed, brindled angel, and I wanted to
make his acquaintance. Sir Henry gave his brother to Ada
Rehan, and I used often to see him in her dressing-room
when she played in London. I wonder if she has him now ?
But the blue-eyed, brindled angel grew up and developed
a perfectly maniacal hatred of horses. After biting one or
two cab horses severely in London, and giving Lady Jeune
a big bill of damages to pay, he was sent down in the country
where he lamed an inoffensive pony, and finally, I believe,
was given away.

After we had spent a few days in the country together,
Anstey Guthrie and myself became fast friends, and I have
always been grateful to him for making me like him as much
as I do his delightful humourous books ! How many times
I have sent " A Fallen Idol " and " Vice Versa " to friends
sailing for America. " The Pariah " in quite a different
and more serious vein is an exceedingly fine novel.

Paul Blouet (Max O'Rell) I knew very well. What a wit
he was, and what an inimitable speaker. I do not think I
ever heard anything so finished, and so exquisite, as his after-
dinner speeches, and he always had something pretty to say
both in conversation and in letters :

" MIDLAND HOTEL, BRADFORD,
" Nov. 20th, 1900.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Your kind note was here await-
ing me when I arrived from Manchester. I shall not be in
London, if my health permit me to work, before December
20th. We could only have that chat through the long
distance telephone, and until Edison has given to us his new
improved telephone which will enable us to see the people
we are talking to, I should not care to use the present ones. —
Sincerely yours, PAUL BLOUET "

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 245

Pett Ridge I also genuinely like. He is one of the humour-
ists who enjoy jokes against themselves. Some years ago I
was sitting next to him at a public dinner when the toast-
master came up and asked him : " Mr Pett Ridge, will you
speak now, or shall we let them enjoy themselves a little
longer ? " Pett Ridge was perfectly delighted. I never saw
anybody laugh more.

Last year I went to a dinner party given by a friend : Pett
Ridge was there. I was a trifle late, and he had proposed a
" Pool " to the men of the party on the precise moment
at which I would arrive. One man said ten minutes late,
another fifteen, somebody else twenty-five, Pett Ridge him-
self said thirty, and I am ashamed to say won the Pool ; but
it happened in this way. My friend had suddenly moved.
I had mislaid her address, and when I called up to the Lyceum
Club, they would not let me have it. I raged and stormed
at the porter through the telephone, but it did no good, and
then I told him never to refuse my address to a single human
being in the world ! Then I flew into a cab and rushed to
Mrs Greenwood's former house. There a nice, gentle, old
lady gave me the new address, and that was the reason why
I was so late, but of course nobody believed any of my
excuses.

Pett Ridge is also an excellent after-dinner speaker, and
I should think could give a delightful lecture. He should
try his luck in the American field, where they would be sure
to like him.

When Eugene Field came over from America he brought
me a letter of introduction from a very dear friend, and I was
so anxious to meet him, but never did. He wrote me twice :

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — A bad digestion aggravated
by a somewhat severe attack of influenza has prevented me
from presenting the letter which I herein send to you.

" Your acquaintance is an honour and a pleasure which
I promise myself shall be mine in the near future. I happen
to have a favour to ask you, and the righteousness of the
cause induces me to believe that you will be glad to grant

246 I MYSELF

the favour. Through the kind offices of friends I have been
able to secure one of Mr Gladstone's axes, one of the honest
and potent implements with which the Grand Old Man has
been wont to work havoc in the forest at Hawarden. It is
my purpose to give the axe to the Chicago Newberry Library,
as soon as the noble building of that important institution
is completed. The relic will create unbounded enthusiasm
in our country, for there, quite as sincerely as here, Gladstone
is venerated and beloved. Oscar Browning, M.A. of King's
College, Cambridge, has given me this epigram upon the
subject, and the key of the subjoined translation of the
epigram : —

Oceanum transit manibus trita bene securis
Indicium belli nuntia pacaverit
Eruat obscures victrix nemora avia rixse
Instaretque novse fcedus amicitise.

The woodman's axe well worn by Gladstone's hands.
Emblem of war, speaks peace to distant lands
It goes, the bush of dark mistrust to clear
And found a league of love for many a year.

" I have secured paraphrases in English of the epigram
from several well-known writers. Mr [Andrew] Lang sends
me two paraphrases. I am looking for some particularly
felicitous phrases from John Boyle O'Reilly of the ' Boston
Pilot.' Now, will you ask your distinguished husband to
graciously favour me with a paraphrase, or, if the Muse be an
individual with whom he has no dealings, will you ask him
to kindly give me a sentiment suitable for publication with
the rest of this literature upon the subject of the enclosed.

"It seems to me just at this moment that maybe he would
like to print in his newspaper an article upon this interesting
subject. If this should be the case I shall be most happy
to provide him gratuitously, as soon as I have secured all the
material I am seeking, with every detail, including versifica-
tion lines and so forth. This original manuscript will eventu-
ally pass with the axe into the possession of the library here

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 247

before referred to. I know you will be interested as an
American to assist me. — Believe me, dear Mrs O'Connor,
Yours most sincerely, EUGENE FIELD "

" 20 ALFRED PLACE,

" BEDFORD SQUARE, LONDON,

" Jany. 23rd."

<( DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Returning to my lodgings at
this unholy hour of 10-45 P.M. I found your cordial note,
and I am reproaching myself most bitterly that I chanced to
be away from home this particular evening. Still, I am a
sorry creature for a dinner just at present, and it is perhaps
just as well for your good people that I missed my bid to
your feast. Mr O'Connor writes me that he too is a dyspeptic.
I have been hoping to meet him and to organise with him
a Mutual Grievance Society. To-morrow I go to Germany
to try a season of the alleged efficacy of Teutonic Spas, and
when I return habilitated, you and I must banquet in good
old Texas fashion. Although, alas, I fear no such morsel
as ' Possum and sweet potatoes ' are to be had in this raw
cold island. For six months I have been pining for my
native dishes, but I could not eat them if I had 'em. How-
ever, in the words of the sweet singer of Michigan, ' We may
be happy yet, you bet/ And by ' we ' I mean, of course,
you and Mr O'Connor and all the rest of us, God's very elect.

" On my return from Germany I shall do myself the honour
and the pleasure of calling upon you.

" Meanwhile believe me, with every assurance of regret, —
Yours most sincerely, EUGENE FIELD "

" 20 ALFRED PLACE,
" Feby. 26th."

When he came back from Germany he was still suffering,
and sailed almost at once for America, and to my great regret
I never met this charming poet, and was unable to tell him
what exquisite pleasure his tender verses of child-life had
given me.

248 I MYSELF

George Street is another man and author for whom I have
a very great regard, and I suppose I must have read " The
Autobiography of a Boy " at least a dozen times, and I was
perfectly horrified not long ago to find out that by an absurd
contract he had made so little money out of it. What a
delightful literary man he is ! Like Max Beerbohm he has
the technique of writing at his fingers ends, and has an
immense sense of humour and is a perfect encyclopaedia
about books and literature. " Ghosts of Piccadilly," which
I loved, not only for the pictures but for the text, he sent me
the winter before last with this little note :

" 64 CURZON STREET, W.,
" February 4th, 1909.

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I do not suppose you have
seen this immortal work, but if you have you may like to have
it for the sake of the pictures.

" I enjoyed myself so much last night — the beautiful little
play, and still more the going to it with you three. — Yours
ever, GEORGE STREET "

The beautiful little play of which he speaks is " Pinkie and
the Fairies," and the three were my son and my daughter
and myself.

George Moore is another of my friends and an always
welcome one, for I know nobody who talks more brilliantly
or more wittily than he. I have often urged him to go into
Parliament, where, I am sure, his many gifts would be appreci-
ated, and if he scorns Parliament he can become a decorator.
His own house in Merrion Square, Dublin, is in the most
perfect taste. The front of the house is painted white, and
the door a bright green. By some law all the doors in
Merrion Square must be painted brown, and the solicitors
wrote at once to George Moore to request that this should be
done. Whereupon he answered with a most amusing letter,
to say that he had made his entire house a symphony in green
and white, the hall being white with a green stair carpet,
the dining-room white with green carpet and curtains, and

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 249

the drawing-room green with white curtains, so that if
the solicitors wanted to change the green front door into a
brown one, he should insist that they continued the scheme
of colour throughout the house. He was quite willing to have
a gold and white symphony at their expense but not at his
own. I do not know whether the solicitors knew what a
symphony was, but at any rate the letter remained unanswered
and the door remains green !

When I was playing in Dublin in " The Lady from Texas,"
I went over one morning and had breakfast with him. At
the time he was very enthusiastic about Ireland, which he
had recently discovered, and compelled his little nephews,
under pain of disinheritance, to study the Celtic language.
But he was very dissatisfied with the Irish cooking and Irish
chickens. " Look ! " he said, as he helped me to the wing
of a chicken, " at this skinny blue bird." (Maeterlinck's
" Blue Bird " had not been written then.) " In Ireland the
chickens are left to pick up a precarious living wherever
they can get it. The consequence is, that not even Dublin
produces anything but a scrawny and miserable fowl. Now
a chicken is an artificial production. It should be fed and
considered and cared for until a plump toothsome creature
is produced. In future," he said, " I shall send to England
for all chickens."

Just before leaving London he wrote me and I went to tea
with him and saw his flat, which, even in Victoria Street, he
•had managed to make quite original and charming.

" 92 VICTORIA STREET, S.W.,
" Saturday.

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Immediately after I left you
I remembered that I had promised Monet to go and see the
pictures he is painting at the Savoy Hotel to-morrow, so you
see I am going out to lunch after all, and at a more incon-
venient time — at twelve o'clock — but this I must do. He is
an old friend, and he is alone in London and very much
discouraged, so he says.

250 I MYSELF

" You said you would like to come to tea. Nothing would
please me more. I love a talk, and you are one of the best
talkers. I cannot only talk to you — I can even listen. Do
come or ask me to come to you soon. — Always sincerely yours,

" GEORGE MOORE "

One Christmas, Mrs Henniker, who has written many
charming stories and a clever play, asked us to spend Christ-
mas at Fryston Hall with Lord Crewe, her brother, and her-
self. It was a delightful week.

The other guests were Herbert Paul, that very brilliant
writer (and by the way why has he not written a political
novel, he could do it better than anybody else, and make it
remarkably interesting), Mrs Frances Hodgson Burnett,
and that perfectly delightful being, Bret Harte. Every
morning a little box arrived for him containing a
carnation, a rosebud, or a bunch of violets. He loved
being well dressed, and often wore a red necktie. He
delighted in brilliant colours. He was a charming con-
versationalist ; his voice was quiet and sweet, he was per-
fectly natural, very modest and full of humour. He told me
that when his last baby was born, the youngest boy, about
five, was sitting in the dining-room looking at a picture-book.
Bret Harte went in thinking to surprise and please him
and said : " Your mother has given you a little brother.'*
The child looked up, greatly disappointed, and said : " I do
wish she had asked me, and I would have told her to give
me a little donkey."

Bret Harte was not a good walker, but said he would walk
with me if I would let him make laps around the house,
keeping it in view, as if he got too far away he at once felt
tired.

One day while we were lapping our circle, he said : " Now,
you are a woman, I want you to explain to me one of the
inexplicable actions of your sex. Years ago, when I was a
very young man and living in California, a beautiful young
lady, who was separated from her husband, in order to eke
out her income took a few paying guests— I was one of them.

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 251

1 at once fell in love with her and we became rather more
than friends, and I passed one or two very happy years in her
house, when a brother of hers, a clergyman from the East,
proposed coming to California for the winter, when suddenly
her conscience woke up, and I was told that I must find a
home elsewhere. I was going to another town anyhow to edit
a small paper, and so we parted on the most affectionate
terms, and before we were to meet again her divorce would
have ended, and I had every intention of marrying her.
That winter I wrote ' The Luck of Roaring Camp/ and she
got her divorce and married a millionaire, and became a
leader of Society and eminently respectable. One day a
friend sent me a magazine, and in it, I think, was the bitterest
attack on me and on my story that I have ever read. It
simply flayed me alive ! It said I was advocating vice
instead of virtue, and that every virtuous woman should
boycott the story, and not stop there but boycott me. Now
a publisher had undertaken to make a small book of ' The
Luck of Roaring Camp ' and some of my other tales, and it
was he who called my attention to this article, and told me
that he also knew the author. I thought it was some orthodox,
extremely narrow-minded man, probably a Puritan Yankee,
so what was my surprise when he told me a lady had written
it, naming my former love. He said that at the moment
she was in town opening a bazaar, and suggested that I should
go down and muzzle her so that she would not again bite
me to the bone. I went to the bazaar ; she was there,
looking like a pure angel, and when I spoke to her she said
quite clearly : ' Mr Harte, no self-respecting woman can talk
to you after writing " The Luck of Roaring Camp " ; I must
bid you good day ! ' I lifted my hat and went out, and never
saw her again. Now, you are a woman, pray explain to me
her conduct, because I have been puzzling over it for many,
many years ? "

I said : " It's the simplest thing in the world. She was a
wolf so cunningly dressed up in sheep's clothing that every-
body in the world thought her a sheep except yourself, and
she was very angry and bitter that even one person had

252 I MYSELF

found her out. How she must have enjoyed reading that
article to her lammy lambkin of a husband/'

That Christmas Lord Crewe gave one of Jane Austen's
books to Bret Harte, and within was inscribed this
charming little verse :

" Beneath our grey unlovely skies
She wielded once her dainty pen,
With tolerant smile and wistful eyes
Calm critic of the minds of men.

Brave wizard of the brighter west,
Though life be short, yet Art endures,
Shadow or sun we love the best
That Art can give us, hers or yours."

I was much impressed by Mrs Frances Hodgson Burnett's
industry. She wrote every morning for two hours and
accomplished a great deal of work ; to write for her is as easy,
as spontaneous, and as natural, as for other people to talk.
And what a very amiable, delightful companion she is. I
saw her last winter in New York looking not one day older
and, as always, happy and successful.

We came back to London from Lord Crewe's just in time
for one of our premier dramatist's first nights. What has
become of Pinero's vein of comedy ? (How perfectly delight-
ful his first plays were ! Who will ever forget Mrs John
Wood in " Dandy Dick " ?) Of late years Sir Arthur has
grown serious and sadly cynical. The " Thunderbolt "
impressed me far more than " Iris," and I wrote an apprecia-
tion of it and received this word in reply :

" STILLANDS, NORTH CHAPEL,
" SUSSEX.

" My DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — As a big dramatist once wrote
to Bjorn Bjornson, one cannot return thanks for being
praised ; but being understood — that makes one inexpress-
ibly grateful.

" Certainly I will read ' The Lost Leader ' play again

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 253

when I return to business in the autumn. My recollection is
that it had much good in it.

" With warm regards in which my wife joins. — I am, Yours
always truly, ARTHUR W. PINERO "

As a man Sir Arthur Pinero is wonderfully attractive.
He is so large minded and kind and tender. Lady Pinero,
I am sure, is a very happy woman, for the one thing most
conducive to a woman's happiness is tenderness. If her
husband gives her that, she can be contented with very little
else, but if a husband like Sir Arthur Pinero gives her tender-
ness and fame and a charming home, she is indeed a blessed
woman.

Sir Arthur is not only unique in his genius as a playwright,
but he is unique in his genius for neatness. In his study
there is not one speck of dust to be found, or one book, or one
pen, or one paper out of its place. It is order personified.
This shows there are always exceptions to the rule, and that
a literary man can be as orderly as a soldier.

Another literary man that I knew who was very neat and
methodical was Sir Edwin Arnold. And what a very agree-
able man he was. I heard him speak the Japanese language
once, and it was pure music. I was a great admirer of his
" Light of Asia," and he sent me such a charming copy of
that work, which some kind friend borrowed and never
returned. He told me that on one occasion in America a.
newspaper reporter had extracted a long interview from him,
and just at the end said : " Now, Sir Edwin, what is your
opinion of the American woman ? " " An exhaustive
subject," said Sir Edwin, " but I can dispose of it in one wordy
Afrin." " And what," said the reporter, " does that mean ? "
" It is Turkish," said Sir Edwin, and means, " Oh Allah,
make many more of them," and then he ran away.

He used to find his way sometimes to the little house in
Chelsea, and this particular Tuesday afternoon I happened
to be alone, and he read me himself the greater part of " The
Light of Asia."

254 I MYSELF

" 45 KENSINGTON PARK GARDENS, W.,

" July 2nd, 1891.

" Best thanks, dear and sweet Mrs O'Connor ! Most
gladly would I accept your pleasant invitation, but have a
dinner party myself on Sunday, to which I was going to
invite you. I am going afterwards to Fleet Street.

" If you are free, I shall come to you for a cup of tea on
Tuesday afternoon. — Yours always most sincerely,

" EDWIN ARNOLD "

We talked of all sorts of subjects and people, and he
expressed a great admiration for Sir Frank Carruthers Gould,
and said how much he had done for the Liberal Party.
An extraordinary thing to me is the way that Sir Frank has
absolutely mastered the Negro dialect. He never makes
a mistake any more than if he had been born and brought up
way down South in Georgia. Indeed, I always associate him
in my mind with Uncle Remus, and recently I sent him a little
rabbit in a pink coat and blue shoes, with a note in Negro
dialect, and he wrote me in answer :

" 3 ENDSLEIGH STREET,

'•* TAVISTOCK SQUARE, W.C.,

" i&h October 1908.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — It is monstous good of Sis
O'Connor to say Howdy to me in such a delightful way.

" Little Rab of de Blue Shoes shall certainly have house
room, and he is now standing watching over a Japanese mouse
on a special shelf with the Combat des Trente raging in
high relief close by, while above him is a Madonna-faced
St George with a pious expression pushing a large silver knife
into a sweetly smiling green dragon.

" I am very sorry you are not well — chacun a son gout in
this climate, and I am not surprised that Virginia calls you
when you ache.

" Uncle Remus ought never to have died seeing that he
kept so many of us alive. If I had to pull down all the
existing statues in London and put up new ones, I should

FROM MY LETTER BOOK 255

begin with Chaucer and all his Canterbury Pilgrims,
and then I should start on Uncle Remus's menagerie
and the Wonderland creatures. There would be some-
thing worth looking at then.

" If you will let me know when you are in London again,
I should much like to come and have a chat. — With kindest
regards, Believe me, Yours Sincerely,

" CARRUTHERS GOULD "

It fairly warms the cockles of my heart to feel that this
great artist loves and understands my countryman as well
as I do myself.

I used to see the Duke of Marlborough occasionally at the
Laboucheres' when they lived in Queen Anne's Gate ; his
house was only a few doors away. He was a clever man with
a keen mind, and he loved to get up a subject. He knew a
great deal about electricity, and could have been an electrical
engineer, and he was immensely interested in Science. Very
likely even then he had his theories about flying machines.
After he married Lily, Duchess of Marlborough, she brought
him to see me on one of my Fridays, and he looked around my
little Chelsea house and said, " The difference between you
and me is this, I can make a pretty house only with taste and
money, while you can manage to do it only with taste."

I considered this a very great compliment as he had
wonderful taste and ingenuity as well. When he took his
house in Carlton House Terrace, the staircase was long and
narrow, and he changed the whole appearance of it by having
a wrought-iron baluster curved out very much wider at the
bottom than at the top. He never minded what trouble he
took over decoration. He would find an old piece of brocade
and wait months to have it copied on account of the design
and colour, and the whole result was beautiful.

A house is a thing to me like a friend. It requires constant
personal every-day attention to make it repay you, and love
you, but some houses of course are, with the best will in the
world, hopeless. When the Laboucheres lived in Grosvenor
Gardens, in one of those long up and down characterless

256 I MYSELF

houses, even Mrs Labouchere, with her love of home, and Mr
Labouchere, with his mania for building and changing, could
do absolutely nothing with it. But when they bought 5 Old
Palace Yard from the Duke of Marlborough, it was full of
charm and possibilities and eventually became one of the
most delightful houses in London. Mrs Labouchere was
always an excellent housekeeper, and there was an agreeable
atmosphere in their home, as she and her husband have a
thoroughly comfortable understanding together, the sort of
close understanding which means that if one of them died,
the other (I am sure) would soon follow.

Before the Laboucheres lived in Old Palace Yard, various
interesting people had owned the house, and a certain lady
who was at one time Chatelaine there, had very high
political aspirations and a desire to be exclusive. Her
husband, on the contrary, a Member of Parliament, was most
democratic in his tendencies, so there was often a great
mixture in their entertainments. One night at dinner John
Bright was sitting near his hostess, and she was rather
annoyed at having him among her smart guests and thought
to give him a direct snub, so she said during a pause in the
conversation : " Mr Bright, this rug, I understand, was made
by you, and I am very dissatisfied with it. I have only had
it a short time, and it is very shabby and badly made."

" Is it ? " said Mr Bright, getting up deliberately from the
table and taking a silver candelabrum which he put down
upon the floor, and getting on his knees, closely examined the
carpet. " You are quite right," he said, blithely getting up,
" it is a bad carpet, and I will order my firm to send you
another in its place," and then he calmly resumed his political
conversation and the dinner went on.

The house in Old Palace Yard has now been bought by the
Government and looks deserted, and I never go by it without
a pang, and Oakley Lodge is a dream of the past : so to me
London is losing its interest. I am not so old, but life's
changes have been grievous.

CHAPTER XL VI

A LONG AGO MEMORY OF LISZT

I REMEMBER long ago, at the Lytteltons', seeing Liszt,
He was a very calm and beautiful old man, with white
hair and the noblest warts I think I ever saw. They
gave his face a benign expression. There was some talk of
his playing that night, but he didn't. To me he was an
object of great interest, as the man who had been a faithful
lover for thirty years to the same woman, and had written
many hundreds of letters, four hundred being published ;
and yet the Princess Wittgenstein was not a beauty, nor
even soft or feminine, but she was ambitious, courageous
and encouraging. It was through her that he composed his
" Dante and St Elizabeth/' and he always said his best
work was due to her. I felt that Liszt was lovable, and
it would have been a pleasure to know him better.

My friends I choose entirely to suit myself. It is to their
credit if they happen to be Princes, but if they happen to be
paupers I can still love and appreciate them.

Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein is one of my friends,
and is one's ideal of a Prince ; always courteous, always kind,
perfectly simple and unassuming, a really grand old gentle-
man. In many respects he reminds me of Justin McCarthy ;
they both have the same gentleness, the same considerate-
ness, and the same power of attracting hearts.

He sent me a photograph of himself, taken in the pictur-
esque dress he wore at the Devonshire Ball. It was a correct
copy of one of his ancestors who tried to marry Queen
Elizabeth, and it was accompanied by a kind little note,
which I must not reproduce. This ancestor, the Duke,

17 257

258 I MYSELF

received the Garter from Queen Elizabeth, who flirted with
him in some sort of way, and probably gave the Garter as a
consolation to his wounded vanity. He married af terwards a
Hessian Princess.

We were staying in Bradford, and on leaving, Mrs Byles,
that clever woman and silver-tongued orator, gave me a
little yellow book to read in the train, saying it was astonish-
ingly clever ; the author's name, John Oliver Hobbes, was
unknown. I didn't read it immediately — but one day in
Chelsea picked it up and was much struck with what seemed
to be the author's experience, disillusion, brilliance, cynicism
and wit. I begged T. P. to read it, but he declined, so I
boldly read a few passages aloud although he was busy with
an evening paper. He made no remark except to beg me to
be quiet, but later in the evening I saw him become absorbed
in the book, and when he made it the book of the week, John
Morgan Richards, Mrs Craigie's father, wrote him a letter
of thanks, and this was followed by a visit from the authoress
herself. I don't know why, but " Some Emotions and a
Moral " had conjured up in my mind a vision of pearl-powder,
blonde hair, and a lady of forty. What was my surprise to
see a girl of twenty-five, with brilliant dark eyes, brown hair,
the fresh complexion of youth, a charming personality and
gowned quite like one of her own heroines. Dressed all in
purple velvet, with a bunch of parma violets fastened to her
bodice by a jewelled pin, and with her rich furs, she looked
the woman of fashion rather than the budding literary genius.
But with all this lavishness of dress, she was really indifferent
to it. I saw her later under circumstances which disclosed
the real woman. She came on a Friday in June to see me,
dressed in an exquisite gown of white chiffon embroidered in
silver fleur-de-lys, and Max, my collie, who had a perfect
passion for white, sat himseii down in front of Mrs Craigie,
and after admiring her for many minutes, got up and laid
his head in her lap, and his nose made a long wet dark mark
on the delicate fabric. She laughed like a happy child and
didn't mind a bit. All the agony and mortification was
mine, and from that day Max was never allowed to " receive "

A LONG AGO MEMORY OF LISZT 259

with me again. Mrs Craigie liked her pretty costumes only
for the pleasure they gave other people. Her mind was a
purely intellectual one, and with study, books, and her own
thoughts, she was quite independent of the material things
of life. But she was wise enough to know the store which the
world set upon them and she used them accordingly. And
how much she gave the world — brilliant books, good looks,
witty conversation, musical ability, and her fascinating,
good-humoured, delightful self ! No matter how tired she
was physically, socially she never flagged.

It is good to die young. But Pearl Craigie's death was a
tragedy, for she had not yet done her best work. She had
not yet found herself. No living author could have written
such telling comedy as she ; it was her youth, and her ambi-
tion that made her portray the too serious side of life ; and it
was a mistake, for humourists are not found every day. She
was one of the most loyal of friends. I had occasion, while
President of the Society of Women Journalists, to take a
stand in a matter of some importance, and Pearl wrote me
this letter :

" 56 LANCASTER GATE,
" Tuesday.

" MY DEAR BESSIE, — I have seen Mrs H. and she ex-
plained the raison d'etre of the Committee meeting to-morrow,
and while I like her, I told her that you were my friend, and,
without even an explanation from you, which now I have no
time to hear, that I would give my entire support to you
and would of course vote against her. I will be with you
early to-morrow at Gray's Inn. With love, — Yours affec-
tionately, PEARL MARY TERESA CRAIGIE "

Mrs Craigie was literally brought up in a house of mirth,
for her mother, Mrs John Morgan Richards, is one of the
wittiest women in the world. She is an inimitable mimic,
her mind is a purely original one, she simply bubbles over
with humour and with fun, and beneath this gay exterior
her great heart responds to both spiritual and righteous
things.

260 I MYSELF

Before the war was declared between the United States
and Cuba, and while it was being agitated, Mrs Richards was
using every argument against it, and finally she sent this
telegram : " Pope, Vatican, Rome. Stop War. Richards."
Whether it reached His Eminence or not, I do not know,
but I envy her family Mrs Richards.

Pearl said once that her father might as well have married
a strong north wind, but after all, where would the health
of the world be without a strong north wind ?

At one time Mr Richards was quite ill, and he and his wife
went to Switzerland. He was very depressed in spirits, and
one morning while talking to his wife about what he needed,
she said to him, " John, I will tell you what you need ; you
need a good course of elocution lessons, and I will give you
one myself now," and thereupon began the most amusing
recitation possible. Mr Richards laughed and laughed, and
from that moment his recovery began.

When I went to return Mrs Craigie's first visit, I
was shown up in the drawing-room by the butler, whose
hair was grey in patches (I dare say Mrs Richards' uncon-
ventional humour had had something to do with it), and
seated at the end of the very long drawing-room was a lady
busily writing, who did not turn at once as I came in. The
butler announced : " Mrs O'Connor ! " She went on writing
and said, " Mrs who ? " The butler said : " Mrs O'Connor " ;
she continued to write. Then the butler said : " Mrs T. P.
O'Connor ! " and she said, " What, the woman that has been
so good to my Pearl ? " She turned around then, and said,
" My dear, come here and kiss me at once," and I did with
the greatest pleasure, and from that time we have been
understanding friends.

Mrs Craigie had her own beautiful little house that was more
like the inside of a jewel-box than anything else, within a
stone's throw of Steephill Castle, the residence of her father,
in the Isle of Wight, but she never went there to live. She
would have missed too much the brightness and gaiety and
wide-armed hospitality of her father's home. Even in their
overwhelming sorrow at her loss these unselfish people con-

A LONG AGO MEMORY OF LISZT 261

trolled their grief for the sake of their friends. Once at
least her mother's prayers were answered, for when Pearl
was a little girl, and grievously ill, the doctor said nothing
could save her and Mrs Richards took her husband by the
hand and said : " Come into the other room, John, and pray,
pray : we will pray together." And that night the child was
out of danger.

On the whole, I cannot imagine a happier life than Mrs
Craigie's. She was always surrounded by people who loved
her, people who were considerate of her, and she had health,
and good looks, and great success, a devoted son, and troops
of friends, and she deserved them each and every one. And
she died before sadness or old age had touched her.

CHAPTER XLVII

MY DEBT OF GRATITUDE TO A GROUP OF AUTHORS

ANOTHER novelist has appeared on the horizon, who
I prophesy will make quick success — Mr A. S.
Hutchinson. His sense of humour is delicious,
irrepressible, and spontaneous. I read his first book, " Once
aboard the Lugger/' while suffering from a bout of insomnia,
certainly the most discouraging influence possible for both
the author and myself. And even toward the grey hours of
the dawn, I was gurgling with laughter, and one little bit of
philosophy took hold of my memory and remained in it.

" A sleepy maid in Mr City Merchant's suburban mansion
leaves the dustpan on the stairs after sweeping. That is the
little action she has tossed into the sea of life, and the ripples
will wreck a boat or two now snug and safe in a cheap and
happy home many miles away. Mr City Merchant trips over
the dustpan, starts for office fuming with rage, vents his
spleen upon Mr City Clerk — dismisses him.

" Mr City Clerk seeks work in vain ; the cheap but happy
home he shares with pretty little Mrs City Clerk and plump
young Master City Clerk is abandoned for a dingy lodging.
Grade by grade the lodging they must seek grows dingier.
Now, there is no food. Now, they are getting desperate.
Now pneumonia lays erstwhile plump Master City Clerk by
the heels and carries him off — consequences, consequences ;
that is one boat wrecked. Now Mr City Clerk is growing
mad with despair ; Mrs City Clerk is well upon the road that
Master City Clerk has followed. Mr City Clerk steals, is
caught, is imprisoned — consequences, consequences ; another
boat wrecked. Mrs City Clerk does not hold out long,

*6»

MY DEBT OF GRATITUDE 263

follows Master City Clerk — consequences, consequences.
Three innocent craft smashed up because the housemaid
left the dustpan on the stairs."

And gratitude impelled me to write and thank Mr Hutchin-
son for the pleasure he had given me, and he answered in
characteristic fashion :

" 53 CROFTDOWN ROAD,
" HIGHGATE ROAD, N.W.,
" December i6th, 1908.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I think you are amazingly kind.
I think it was so uncommonly good of you to write to me
about my book. I have had some very gratifying reviews,
but it was part of the writers' business to write them, and I
have had some nice letters from strangers, but those are
from admiring folk to whom I suppose the business of
writing is a thing apart from their daily lives. But it is a
portion of your life and, therefore, I think it was so good of
you to take the trouble to notice a stranger engaged in the
same business. Additional to this to me are the kind terms
in which you write to me, and to me coming from you, I
indeed value very highly. I find it difficult to tell you how
very much I appreciate your letter and you must believe,
I thank you very, very warmly. When the next book is
written, I am going to give myself the great pleasure of
sending you a copy.

" This is a very funny life I often think, full of tricks and
chances. Two days ago, yours was no more than a well-
known name to me. To-day, I am concerned that you suffer
from sleeplessness. It is the result of your kind letter, and
gives the obvious thought that this would be a nicer world if
there were more kindliness such as this you have shown me,
for it sets up a chain of sympathy. There is a symposium
in the current ' Review of Reviews ' on sleep and remedies
for insomnia and perhaps you might find a hint or so.

" I had considerable pleasure in writing my story, but I
think it has given me no pleasure so great as this letter from

264 I MYSELF

you. I catch myself thinking of bits and relishing the fact,
that perhaps you enjoyed them.

" Thank you and again thank you. — Yours sincerely,

" A. S. HUTCHINSON "

I not only enjoyed " bits " but every line of the book, and I
have read it twice since the first time and find in it a com-
forting, sane and joyous outlook upon life. The difference in
books upon the mind, is, indeed, as great as the difference in
people. It amazed me this summer when we were in the
Apennines to find that Mr Labouchere, who is such an om-
nivorous reader, had never read " The Golden Age," that
charming, delightful and most satisfying book by dear
Kenneth Grahame. Whenever I speak of him in connection
with " The Golden Age " I am impelled to add dear, from the
affection with which he has inspired me. In America he is
well known, but his warmest admirer is Theodore Roosevelt.
When I told the then President on New Year's Day that I
knew Kenneth Grahame, his face lighted up with enthusiasm
and he said, " Then give him a message from me. Tell him,
if he does not come to America and make me a visit at the
White House, I shall create an International War." I wrote
Mr Grahame on my return, and he had moved to the country,
but he appreciated the warm-hearted message I had brought
him from America.

" MAYFIELD,

" COOKHAM DENE, BERKSHIRE,
" 5th August 1908.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Thank you very much for your
letter and for its enclosure. It was very pleasant to receive
the President's message. Nothing could be kinder than the
way he has expressed himself from time to time. He was
so very good as to write me a letter some little time ago,
inviting me most cordially to the White House, and it was a
great grief to me that iron circumstances were too strong.

" I have disposed of the lease of my Durham Villa house,
and this is our only address at present. We could not keep

MY DEBT OF GRATITUDE 265

4 Mouse ' in town, and it was a perpetual bother finding him
fresh country quarters and bad in principle our being
separated so much. He is very happy here though his
thoughts still turn to the golden strand at Littlehampton.
I took him a row under Quarry Woods the other day, but his
highest praise was that it was something like Arundel.

" E. is picking up slightly after her bad peritonitis in the
spring. It is beautiful here, and healthy, and high, and
invalids are supposed to reconstitute themselves here, as well
as anywhere.

" We both rather wanted reconstituting. We have spent
two previous summers here, and I knew it well as a little
boy.

" I hope you and Mr O'Connor are both keeping fit and
well.

" With kindest regards from both of us, — Yours very truly,

" KENNETH GRAHAME "

" Dear * Mouse ' went to his first Theatre last winter to see
* Pinkie and the Fairies ' and was, I heard, enthralled by the
Fairy Queen and her Court. "

And there are such a number of writers who have personally
endeared themselves to me by their work. Barrie has lovers
all over the world. I remember that one of his plays — I think,
41 Little Mary " with its wonderful tenderness — appealed to
me so strongly that I wrote a letter of congratulation and
signed myself — Bessie Barrie O'Connor.

And he was quite equal to the occasion when he answered :

" LEINSTER CORNER,

" LANCASTER GATE, W.,
" October 28th, Thursday.

" DEAR MRS BARRIE O'CONNOR,— I think it is a famous
good name and thank you very heartily for your letter. I
am delighted to hear you like the play. — I am, Yours
sincerely, J. M. O'CONNOR BARRIE "

266 I MYSELF

And for many hours of breathless interest I owe Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle a debt of gratitude — and what excellent, excit-
ing plays he has written — I was staying out at Hindhead one
year with Mrs Labouchere, and wrote Sir Arthur asking him
to come and see me ; in answer he asked us to his charming
place. On every height there lies repose, and his house on
the top of a hill looked down on a wonderful purple gorge.

" UNDERSHAW, HINDHEAD,
" HASLEMERE.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I should have been delighted to
come, but I have several visitors here, and mustn't dis-
appoint them.

" Will you come across on Monday afternoon and see my
Commando, I think it is rather unique in England.

" With kind regards, — Yours very truly,

" A. CONAN DOYLE "

And we went over one afternoon, and I made acquaintance
with a great friend, his mighty bull-dog, who examined me
critically for a few moments and then licked my face all over,
my neck and even behind my ears. Sir Arthur said I was the
realization of the dog's dream : that for years he had been
hoping to find a heart leaping to his, and understanding him,
and at length he had found it in me. His appearance, for-
bidding and terrorizing, was the opposite of his big affection-
ate love-craving heart, and he spent his days in grief because
people were afraid of him. I offered him a home, and Sir
Arthur said, " Take care, he may arrive one morning," but he
never did. Perhaps it is just as well, he might not have liked
" Mr Phelan," my little Yorkshire terrier given me by James
D. Phelan of San Francisco, and named for him. A very
wise and sweet specimen of his kind, he realizes his own
limitations, which some humans never do, and he never
attacks other dogs or runs away, for he knows how helplessly
small he is. The only fault in his otherwise quite perfect
character is his effeminacy. He loves silk cushions and cats.
If other dogs are about, in compliment to them he pretends

PIOUS COAXY AT HIS PRAYERS

MY DEBT OF GRATITUDE 267

to be cool and distant to cats, but if alone with a cat he
snuggles into the same basket and is quite happy. He has
one accomplishment, he can shake hands beautifully and
will give first one paw and then the other in the most
fascinating manner. And he is wonderfully sympathetic.
Lying on my bed one day, he discovered that I was crying,
and after licking all the tears off my face he then gave me
his paw. And in all his amiable sweet little life Mr Phelan
has never done or said an ill-tempered or an unamiable
thing. Though once he told a lie. Phelan and I were walking
together on the Brighton Downs, when suddenly he gave an
ear-piercing scream, and held up a tiny paw in apparently
great agony. I thought he had stepped on a thorn, and I
carried him a few yards, when a charming toy Pomeranian
met us and Phelan leaped out of my arms perfectly cured —
the scamp, he was tired and only wanted to be carried.

Phelan's uncle, James Foster (a Grindley wonder), who had
nursed me so tenderly in Scotland, was stolen, and Phelan,
who belonged to the same family, was given me as a con-
solation. But he never had either the beauty, or the wit,
or the character of James Foster, who gave me his whole
heart until I sent him to the Veterinary Surgeon in Edinburgh
to have a wart taken off from his side, and ill as I was, he
would not speak to me, or notice me for a week. He was
even smaller than Mr Phelan, but he had a wonderful per-
sonality, and I grieved dreadfully over his loss. What
terrible punishments I would give to dog-stealers, for they not
only rob your pockets, but they so wound your affections.
He was stolen in Chelsea ; while he was walking just in front
of the house, a man was seen to pick him up, button his coat
about him, and run down Tite Street. And we heard after-
wards that he had been shipped to America. My little
faithful sick-room friend.

CHAPTER XLVIII

MY STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE

" r~iT\HE Lady from Texas/' produced at Penley's Theatre,
was one of the bitterest disappointments of my life.
I wanted success, of course, but money above all
things. I haven't a penny of my own, and absolute depend-
ence is a hurtful position for a proud and sensitive woman.
Independence is something I've longed for and dreamed of
for years. To be able to earn my own living, to eat the bread
of my making, has been the goal of my ambition, and to this
-end no task for me would have been too Herculean ; but Fate,
my unkind stepmother, has not only discouraged, but has
even denied me work. The play ran only four weeks, and
lost money. I believe it might have had a different fate
if I had, in the beginning, taken the advice of my friends and
played in it myself. Not that Miss Cheatham was not good
in the part ; she was excellent, better possibly than I with
my inexperience could have been, but there were many and
varied reasons why I should have played in it — one being, that
we would have first tried it for a few weeks in the provinces,
and in this way rubbed off the rough corners, improved it,
and presented it in a different aspect to the critics, who, on
the whole, were terribly severe on me; but I bear them not the
slightest ill-will, always standing by my craft, and believing
and advocating the freedom of the press. When the play
was taken off, a young manager offered to take it on tour
if I would play the title part. He said that with my
name it might go in the provinces. The dresses were new
and fresh, the caste was small, and he was sanguine and
thought the venture worth while. I was more than doubtful

MY STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE 269

of my ability to fill the role. I am horribly nervous of
appearing in public in any capacity, but I could not bear
the idea of my poor bantling dying without an effort of
resuscitation, and I proposed myself to rehearse on ap-
proval, and if I was impossible to retire in favour of an
understudy.

I worked with enthusiasm, taking every suggestion, and
going over my part again and again, until the Stage Manager
thought me possible, and we opened at Leamington. It
was a fearful ordeal. When the curtain went up, I stood
rooted to the stage, and could scarcely hear myself speak,
and I dared not look at the audience ; but gradually a little
confidence came back to me, and I struggled through the
three acts at any rate without breaking down. Clement
Scott kindly came down for the first night, and never was
there a more encouraging, uplifting, inspiring friend. The
papers were very kind, and the next week we went to Dublin.
It was there, on the second or third night of the week, that
I suddenly felt happy, at home, and completely at ease on
the stage. From that moment, I really loved acting, and
lived only for the night. When the notices said that I made
" the public forgive Mrs O'Fish Withers for her uncon-
ventionalities and even vulgarities, and love her in spite of
them," my cup of bliss was full, for I felt the character was
understood as I was trying with utter inexperience to convey
it. And I worked harder than ever.

After five weeks, we had a week out, and the dresses were
all sent to the cleaners, coming back fresh and lovely, and
we opened in Edinburgh. I felt really like a sure enough
actress when the public applauded me before I said a word,,
and the papers were quite wonderfully kind. This was
on Monday. That night I had a violent chill and very
threatening pains, which seemed premonitory of peritonitis..
My temperature was well up the next morning, and that night
my face was scarlet with fever, but I managed somehow to
crawl over to the theatre, to get dressed and to play. I had
always heard that a real actress played whether well or ill,,
and certainly I was ill enough.

27o I MYSELF

The next morning a doctor was called in, and my tem-
perature had gone up to 104, where it remained with varying
steadiness for weeks, and one blissful day — for then I lost
consciousness — it reached 106. T. P. was telegraphed for
and came ; we had Sir Halliday Croome in consultation, who
pronounced it a well-developed case of peritonitis, with
internal haemorrhage, and left me to the local doctor. This
was the last week in October, and I left Edinburgh only the
day before New Year. Nine weeks of mortal sickness ; but
my splendid constitution pulled me through ; and stretched
in a sleeping berth, and clothed in a flannel dressing-gown, I
was able to travel to London on December 3ist. T. P., who
was busy, could only spare a few weeks from London and had
returned there — so the rest of the time I battled with death
alone. There is no disease on earth so painful as peritonitis ;
only one position is possible, lying on the back with the knees
drawn up, as to stretch out the legs is unspeakable agony. A
pillow is put under the knees to hold them up, but even then,
after days carried in this fashion, they ache to drop off. My
sweet Scotch nurse used to hold them up for me until I could
see her turn pale with fatigue. And the long purgatorial
nights of active bodily pain, while the brain acted with
superhuman clarity, were more terrible than Dante ever
invented in his " Inferno." Was it not Sydney Smith who
said, " The view from the horizontal position is so different
from the perpendicular " ? — and Heaven knows it is.

And when my fever raged and I could sleep, again and
again a dream came to me of a garden in the South.

" There's not a flower, there's not a tree,
In this old garden where we sit,
But what some fragrant memory
Is closed and folded up in it.
To-night the dog-rose smells as wild,
As fresh, as when I was a child."

It was always the same dream, and the same dear garden —
just at the gateway a wonderful avenue of tallest cypress
trees began, and finished in the feathery cedars of Lebanon.

MY STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE 271

And at the end of the avenue was a water garden of diamond-
shaped and octagonal marble pools, and all around and
between them grew oleander trees, weighed down by blooms
of deepest pink, and white, and lemon colour, and paler
pink, and all the air was bitter sweet with the scent, and there
were statues standing here and there, very old, some with
blunted features from age and damp, but all of them light
and graceful, and there were arbours of rich datura, and the
purple wistaria and great beds of phlox, and dahlias, and
thick branched lilac trees, and musky honeysuckle growing
thickly about the trunks of the olive. And the lilies stood in
long, straight rows made whiter by a background of scarlet
pomegranates, and hollyhocks and spicy pinks, and purple
and white and pink larkspur, and beds of four o'clocks,
and scarlet salvia, and sweet william, and crepe myrtle, and
red lilies and cyclamen, all crowded each other, and at the
end of the garden a little busy, noisy stream ran, with giant
fig-trees growing on its banks, and every once in a while the
ripe fruit fell, and made a little splash in the clear water, and
the dog-roses and the crimson rambler, and the cloth-of-gold
roses all climbed and hid the wall in brilliant sheets of colour,
and an old house stood very far back in the garden and the
hill sloped down in terraces covered in rich grapes, and olive
trees, and the blue, blue of the South sky above it all, and
when night came the nightingales sang. And then I awoke
to grinding pain and looked out on Calton Hill and the
snows of the north.

As the days went by, and I was fairly eaten up by fever,
lying hour after hour by myself looking over my whole life
past and future, the psychological moment for death seemed
to me to have arrived, and I did most earnestly pray God to
let me die. I am not in the least afraid of the changelessness
of death. It is the changefulness of life that fills me with
apprehension and despair. To me there are no more com-
forting words than these :

" Oh, cool and perfect, peaceful death,
Without one painful sigh or catching in of breath."

272 I MYSELF

And I felt a whole eternity of sleep would not have been too
much to rest my hot and tired heart and restless brain.

But I rarely slept, and with a book propped on my breast,
I read day and night, and the effort of getting my mind fixed
on my book and away from acute and continual pain was so
great, that whole chapters of " Anna Karenina " and
" Kim " — oh, that great white road ! — and the poems of
Burns, are absolutely photographed in my memory, which
ordinarily, except in spots, is a sieve. And when I could
read no longer, I comforted myself with what odd verses
I could remember, whispering them to myself. This com-
forting plea recurred to me often and often :

It cannot be that this poor life shall end us !

God's words are truthful and His ways are just.
He would not here to sin and sorrow send us,

And then blot out our souls with " dust to dust."
Saving our clay, and back to nature giving
Smothering our soul ere it hath had its living, —
It cannot be !

It cannot be that One so just and perfect

Would make a perfect universe, and plan
The star of all should be at last imperfect,

Life, yet leave that life half-lived in wretched man.
Forever lives the gross — the dead material —
Forever dies the life — the spark imperial ?
It cannot be !

It cannot be, for life is more than living ;

It cannot be, for death is more than dream.
Think ye to clod, God daily life is giving,

Yet from the grave shut out the grander beam ?
Night is but day ere it hath had its dawning,
Death a brief night, and waiteth for the morning,
Which soon shall be !

CHAPTER XLIX

THE VALLEY OF DEATH

" Dusk upon the river,
And dusk upon the land —
But oh the sorrow in my heart,
Too deep to understand !

Who of my kin is dead, my heart,

That you should mourn them so ?

Or is it that you died yourself

A thousand years ago ? " DA COSTA

MY doctor believed in the old-fashioned method of
treating the disease with opium, and I took vast
quantities which scarcely eased the pain. T. P.
sent me a letter every day, and wrote from time to time
articles about me in " M. A. P." He said :

" Finally, I had an opportunity for the first time in my
life to see the stage from the inside, and it was a very satis-
factory experience. The company of ladies and gentlemen
that Mrs O'Connor had around her were like a family rather
than a mere chance association of people with no tie but
that of business, and this made their travels, labours and
experiences singularly agreeable. To Mrs O'Connor they
all acted with signal consideration. When she was rehearsing
for her first appearance on the stage, there was not one of them
that did not put their experience at her disposal, and I am
told that the night of her debut they all were trembling with
nervousness for her. She was indeed the only person fearless
and self-confident. When she came through this ordeal
triumphantly they acclaimed her with all that readiness

18 "73

274 I MYSELF

of kind emotion which is the characteristic of their pro-
fession— a profession which brings out the good and the
simple and the sympathetic in human nature, as well, of
course, as its rivalries and hatred. They all — I may say,
perhaps, who shouldn't — were profoundly attached to the
authoress of the play — as indeed is everybody who comes
to know her sweet, gentle and beautiful nature."

On my lonely bed of pain to read these paragraphs from
T. P.'s ever facile pen gave me food for reflection and a
feeling of deepest sadness. It is the woman with " the sweet
and the gentle nature " who is generally called upon for
life's supremest sacrifice — renunciation ; while the passionate
woman of ardent temperament, selfish and exigeante, gets
and keeps what is best in life.

My friends wrote constantly, and my room was literally
a bower of flowers arriving every day from London, but the
slow days dragged on like links in a convict's chain. And
towards the middle of December, I felt myself growing
gradually weaker, and hour by hour slipping away. Some-
how, crossing the dark river, although I don't mind the other
side, without a word of farewell to anybody at the very
brink, seemed bitter, so the doctor telegraphed to T. P. to
come. He was just concluding a business matter of much
importance and thought the journey unnecessary, and was a
little impatient with me at first. He said, " American
women were imaginative, and unnecessarily nervous ; that
he found me really looking better than he expected ; that I
should have more courage " — but after his dinner, when he
came to say good-night, the burning heat of my hand
frightened him, and he sent for the doctor, who said that I
was very ill, but he thought I would certainly live until the
morning. T. P. came back after speaking to the doctor, and
though I begged him not to stay, knowing how sad a sick-
room is to him, he insisted upon it, and sat down by my
bedside to wait for the morning. I believed I really was
going to die, and I felt as gently toward death as though a
friend was softly opening the door, and I wondered :

THE VALLEY OF DEATH 275

" If I should die to-night,

E'en hearts estranged would turn once more to me,
Recalling other days remorsefully ;
The eyes that chill me with averted glance
Would look upon me as of yore, perchance,
And soften in the old familiar way
(For who could war with dumb, unconscious clay ?)
So I might rest of all forgiven to-night !

Oh friends, I pray to-night,

Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow,

The way is lonely, let me feel them now.

Think gently of me ; I am travel-worn :

My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn ;

Forgive, 0 hearts estranged, forgive, I plead I

When dreamless rest is mine, I shall not need

The tenderness for which I long to-night."

The theatre where I had so hopefully and gaily trotted
about the stage was exactly opposite the hotel, and there
Dick Whittington and his Cat were disporting themselves,
and that night the whole of the chorus were invited by some
young men to the hotel to supper in a room very near mine.
When the noisy songs began, T. P. went downstairs to the
gay company and begged for me, telling them my very life
depended on a little sleep — indeed, I might die at any
moment during the night. He prayed them to be quiet,
but they were, if anything, noisier than before. The pro-
prietor said he could not have his guests interfered with,
and I fully expected my soul to depart boisterously to the
tune of " He's a jolly good fellow."

At daylight only did the riotous revellers go home. In
the morning the doctor came, and again Sir Halliday Croome
was called into consultation. He was surprised to find me
still in Edinburgh, thinking I had got well and gone back
to London. This time he seemed anxious, and said I must
be carried to a nursing home at once, and he would himself
send an ambulance and two nurses to fetch me as soon as
possible.

I was greatly opposed to the move, being quite indifferent

276 I MYSELF

then to everything, but at five o'clock the ambulance
arrived, and two nice young nurses came up to take me away.
T. P. could not bear to see me in an ambulance — it would
have filled him with depression — so I made him go out to
visit friends. The two ambulance men picked me up in my
nightgown, rolled me in blankets, strapped me on a stretcher,
and we began our downward march. My room was in the
third storey, and every step gave me pains like knives. A
number of people had assembled before the door to see me
off. I had been making such a long fight for life that many
knew of my illness. The crowd parted silently to let me
pass. The nurse threw the blanket over my face, and some
pitying soul dropped a little penny bunch of violets on what
I thought was my " mattress-grave." The men shoved the
stretcher on a long narrow shelf, and I felt without volition
cold weak tears running down my cheeks. The ambulance
driver turned to see that I was all right. He had no pocket-
handkerchief, poor man, so he doubled up his kindly fist and
with it wiped away my tears, saying, " Never mind, Mrs
O'Connor dear, I feel it an honour to have carried you
downstairs."

The ruling passion is strong in death, and I wanted dread-
fully to say, " Did you see the ' Lady from Texas ' ? " but
a solid lump in my throat kept me from speaking. The nurses
then took their places, and we began our slow march of a mile
or more — to me it seemed a great distance. When they
lifted me from the ambulance the stars were shining, and as I
looked up at them I bade them a silent good-bye. It was
many weeks since I had seen them, and I never expected
to see them again.

CHAPTER L

THE NURSING HOME

"Blessed are the merciful"

THE nursing home, sweet and clean and cheerful, and
full of air, was very different from the hotel. When
I was carried upstairs, I gathered from one of the
nurses that I was at the very portal of death with the door
wide open. The peritonitis had abated, but I was suffering
from acute opium poisoning, and from my waist down I was
quite paralysed. For weeks I had been dripping with night
sweats, that resembled nothing so much as rain ; five or six
times during the night the nurse had changed my nightgown ;
and I had become so thin my poor bones were comfortable
only on air cushions.

Very drastic remedies were given me — among them doses
of belladonna in such quantities that I became quite blind,
and it made me so hot and nervous it was with difficulty I
restrained myself from wild screams of hysteria. My opium
was suddenly left off, and I could have no fluids, or water,
only small sips of brandy and soda, and a mouthful of fish
or a morsel of toast.

For two nights the angelic night-nurse sat by me dipping
her hand in iced water, and then slowly rubbing my fore-
head ; but for this soothing process I could not have remained
quietly in bed.

With a complete reversal of my treatment, in ten days I
was sitting up and begging to go home. On Christmas Day,
T. P. came to have a Christmas dinner with me at the side of
my bed, and on December 3ist we left for London. The
doctor was terribly opposed to my travelling so soon, but I

277

278 I MYSELF

longed so desperately for my own surroundings and belong-
ings that finally he consented to my going if I promised to
lie down all the way, and get into a wheeled chair, and from
there to the carriage. Sir Halliday Croome considered my
recovery a miracle, and from the moment I got home, I began
to mend, and was soon more cheerful — but life has never
been quite the same careless affair to me since those many
weeks of a horizontal position, when through exceeding pain
I faced the great problem of existence, and put out a friendly
hand to death, only to have his dark face turn aside, and be
sent out to fight the battle of life once more.

Perhaps the prayers said for me in the Convents by
innocent children, and by my good friend the Chief Rabbi
Adler, may have helped my recovery — at any rate I expect
now to reach a quite astonishing age of longevity. When I
came back to London, what kind letters awaited me — among
them a letter from Justin M'Carthy :

" ASHLEY DENE.
" WESTGATE-ON-SEA,
" Jan. 8th 1902.

" DEAREST BESSIE, — I must send you a line to express my
heartfelt delight on reading the good news that you are at last
able to return to your London home, and that you have borne
the journey well. May your complete recovery come soon,
to the relief and joy of all who love you. — Ever your
affectionate friend, JUSTIN M'CARTHY

" Charlotte sends her love."

What a wonderful recovery Justin M'Carthy made himself
after his long and terrible illness in London. It must have
been due to the love and the nursing of Charlotte M'Carthy,
one of the noblest and most devoted daughters I have ever
seen. She was a very witty, agreeable woman, she had lived
in London all her life, and had a large circle of appreciative
friends, and yet she gave everything up, went to the country
to live on account of Justin's health, and was most cheerful
and happy in making her father's life hers. I suppose

THE NURSING HOME 279

sacrifice for a woman with the knowledge that she is entirely
necessary to the comfort and well-being of some one she loves,
always means happiness. Until women are educated not to
live entirely through their emotions they must live through
the people they love, and it is sad, for they often fail us.

I felt it so kind in Mr (now Sir Henry) Lucy to write me,
knowing how busy a man he is, and I kept his letters,
written by Mrs Lucy, the kind secretary :

" WHITE THORN,

" HYTHE, KENT,
" 4th January 1902.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — We were very glad to hear better
news of you. It must have been very hard to have been
shut up in Edinburgh, sick and in a strange room, with Sir
Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson and other desirable
people out of town.

" I hear you are coming south. If you chance to select
Folkestone for a place of convalescence we shall hope to see
you here during one of our flying visits in the Parliamentary
session. Please do not forget to let us know where you are
and how you are when you settle down.

" The kind secretary joins me in affectionate regards, —
Yours sincerely,

" HENRY W. LUCY "

I wonder if I had left Edinburgh as I expected, by the
gate of death, after my little much enjoyed triumph
there—

" But none shall triumph a whole life through,
For death is one, and the fates are three.
At the door of life, by the gates of breath,
There are worse things waiting for men than death."

If I had met Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.
I would have tried to speak with Sir Walter first, because I
was brought up to love him. The chivalry of the South came
from him. Robert Louis Stevenson is a great admiration,

28o I MYSELF

but has never excited the tender affection in me of " the stout
blunt carle " — as Sir Walter called himself. There are some
people to be loved at first sight. Sir Walter Scott must have
been one of them and Robbie Burns another. The literature
and history of Scotland have always had a peculiar fascina-
tion for the South. Carlyle is another author greatly read,
and Whistler, who was typically American, never painted
any portrait so fine as that of Carlyle. It is a great piece of
work. I saw it first in Edinburgh and it seemed to me,
seeing it unexpectedly, to be the living man. And even
Sargent, that great artist, has never painted a finer or more
characteristic portrait. I do not set myself up to be a critic of
art, but some things are very obvious. From the beginning
of his career Sargent was a great artist. Mrs Labouchere
has a letter from me written twenty- three years ago, begging
her to have Mr Labouchere, Dora and herself painted by
Sargent. He was always kind. This letter was written to
me now a very long time ago :

" i RUE TROUCHET,

" PARIS,
"April, ist.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I hope you will go to my studio
and take your son, although I won't be there to do you the
honour, but perhaps you will be so good as to come again
when I return.

" The picture of Lady Macbeth is still at the studio until
the I5th, when it goes to the New Gallery, and I should like
you to see it in the studio as there never is any telling what a
picture will look like at an exhibition.

" You really amuse me, by saying that perhaps I will not
remember you, and there is a quaint joke on my side, for you
taxed me at Parsons' studio with vagueness, and not keeping
engagements, and I weakly apologized — my bewilderment.
You were thinking of Reinhart, and then I remember the
circumstance of several years ago, when you invited Reinhart
to call, and enjoyed the comedy of errors enormously. The
facts are that I had only seen you once and can draw your

THE NURSING HOME 281

likeness from memory, and that Reinhart and I are one
formless and unreliable monster in your recollection, but
when I return to London, which will be in May, I will call and
try to disentangle myself. — Very truly yours,

" JOHN S. SARGENT "

I wish now I had asked him to paint a portrait of myself
if only from memory, but there was no one who particularly
wanted it. Now I have an adorable little love in whose long,
lashed eyes it would be lovely. He one day told me he
wanted a picture of me, and I said, " Oh, no, damma is too
old and ugly," whereupon his eyes flashed and he said,
" Damma is not ugly, not a single bit of her is ugly," — and I
determined then and there always to look my best in those
young, beautiful, and starlike eyes. No one who has seen
can ever forget them, — even George Meredith was impressed
by their singular beauty, and when I wrote to ask if I might
buy that wonderful photograph of himself, taken by Hollyer,
he wrote me in answer :

" Box HILL, DORKING,
" April 2<)th, 1908.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Here is a Bluebeard's reply to you.
No ! The permission for Hollyer to sell is not to be granted.
It might lead to the appearance of a singularly modest man
in shop windows between a bishop and a specimen of tarnished
silver, having the charm of the metal and its attractive
disfigurement. But I will send to Hollyer for copies, and
beg you, with your enthusiast, to accept them. Is it fair
of a grandmother to give her beautiful eyes to male infants ?
Women bearing the darts in their breasts complain of
treachery. We will hope that the younger Howard will be
•conscientious in the use he makes of his grandmother's gift."
— Most truly yours, GEORGE MEREDITH "

CHAPTER LI

THE LITTLE JOYS OF LIFE

The little joys of life must twinkle like small stars, and illumine the
lives of those whose background is one of sorrow.

1AM taking a course of Herbert Spencer, hoping he
may give me the peace he has given to so many others.
And I try, and succeed very often, to make a joy out
of many little things of life. If a friend sends me a bunch of
roses, that is a joy. If Helen brings me, as she so often does,
a pot of mignonette, that is a joy. If Kathleen O'Moore
makes a fairy-like darn on a beloved but elderly blouse, that is
a joy. When I visit those twenty-five years married lovers,
that is a joy. When my grandson, brave and manly in his
four years, comes in my bedroom in the early morning and
says patronisingly, " Good mornin', little dam," and kisses me
a dozen times, that is more than joy. And how well he knows
his power, the scamp. A friend met him not long ago in the
park and said to him, " Does your Damma love you ? "
And he answered, " She woshups me." And indeed I do.
For anything more beautiful or alluring or sweet never lived
upon this earth than my little love. A year ago, when he
was only three years old, we were staying with a friend in
Brighton, whose husband is paralysed, and I was advising
him to try the Christian Science principles — to say, " I will
walk and I can walk," and just walk. He tried the plan,
took one or two steps, wavered a little bit, and fell rather
heavily. He was describing the fall to Boysey, and he said,
" I tried and tried to walk and then it was terrible. I fell ! "
" Good God," said the baby, " a accident ! " And he was
so concerned and sympathetic.

I'M A SOLDIER OF THE KING1

THE LITTLE JOYS OF LIFE 283

When he was two years old, and just after he had begun to-
say his prayers, his Nannie said to me, " He is very good now,
you know, and says his prayers every night. He is a per-
fect little diplomatist and always ready to take advantage
of every situation/' So when I said, " I'll hear his prayers
to-night," he said to his Nannie, " Well, if I say my prayers
to Damma can I say them with my eyes open ? " His nurse
said he could, so arranging himself in his crib, with his little
hands clasped together and his big, dark eyes wide open, he
turned to me and called, " Ready, Damma ! " and the
prayers began. Some time ago, he asked me what had
become of a man who died — a man who was drowned — and
I said, " He has gone to heaven." He said, " My heaven ? "
I said, " I didn't know that you had a private heaven, but he
has gone to heaven." He said, " Tell me what it is like."
So I began a description of a heaven where there were whole
avenues of Christmas trees filled with toys, and cakes, and
live parrots that came when they were called, and there were
fluffy toy dogs who became real dogs when they were taken
off the tree, and angels handed down the toys and played
the most delicious music on harps — and altogether the picture
struck him as being so delightful that he said, " I want to go
to heaven now at once. Do you understand, at once ? "
I said, " But you have to die first, and you don't want to-
leave your mother, do you, and your Daddy and Damma ? "
He said, " But we can all die together, and all go to heaven
at once."

His Nannie had him photographed in his Guardsman's
uniform, and when I asked him what he thought of the
pictures, he said, " I think they are the sweetest soldiers I
ever saw." I said, " You know you are an American, and
this is an English uniform." He said, " I'm not, I'm a
Union Jack, a soldier of the King." And I know one thing,
if all the King's soldiers were such loves there would never
be any wars.

Last winter among the many games he elected to play with
me was one called " Burning Kisses." I had been writing
all the morning, and there were a good many torn scraps in

284 I MYSELF

my paper basket, and with every scrap of paper that he threw
in the fire and saw burnt up he gave me a kiss — and I am sure
they are the purest and the tenderest burning kisses that ever
woman in this world has received. Ah, my little love, if all
burning kisses were as sweet and innocent as yours, how
much easier and happier life would be, how many tragedies
avoided ! So life, if we cultivate pleasure in small things,
can never be hopeless, but sometimes it is very sad.

CHAPTER LII

SATISFYING SYMPATHY

" He has the Alchemist's secret who changes one sad note to song ;
he has the touch of Midas who makes all bright and golden some one's
day."— ELBERT HUBBARD

IS there such a thing in life as re-incarnation ? It seems
the most plausible theory for sudden and complete
sympathy and understanding between people of
different age, different nationality, different religion, and
very often a completely different point of view.

The first time I saw Helen I saw nothing of her but
her eyes ; bright, brown, laughing, foreseeing, inquisitive,
speculative, humorous, kind eyes. Doctor Patrick Murphy,
her father, is marvellous at diagnosis of the body — this
talent has come to his daughter as a diagnosis of the mind.
Born and brought up in the East, she has been surrounded
by that mystic atmosphere of the Orient which has developed
her powers of observation until she is uncanny in reading
the mind of every human being who comes near her. She
is by far the finest psychologist I have ever seen. The
future, by some occult means, is often an open book to her,
but her warm and generous heart will always close the page
when she knows it will hurt. And what a whole-souled
lover of humanity she is ! Spending herself, giving herself,
working herself, and continually for other people. She
seems to feel that everybody has a right to happiness, and
that she must contribute toward that end. Of course, with
such unselfishness as a motive power, she is always cheerful
and happy. As for me, there is no one of my friends who
has been to me in adversity what Helen has been. All

285

286 I MYSELF

satisfying sympathy between two human beings is a fore-
taste of heaven. When my spirit faints I fly to her for
comfort, and I always get it. She loves to make her affection
manifest, and if I look in a shop window and admire any-
thing she never rests until she has given it to me. The
greatest or the smallest thing in the world of my desire
would be mine if Helen was all-powerful. She is young
enough to be my daughter, but, with her mother's heart,
has constituted herself my mother, knowing that I need a
mother most of all. And how she adores children — old,
like myself, and young, like my Love — pretty, ugly, rich,
poor, clean, and dirty. Helen's face softens beautifully to
them all. One poor, plain, bandy-legged and puny baby
she entirely clothes and feeds out of her little pocket money.
May she be near me at the last, and may her dear hand hold
fast to mine, and beg for grace when my tried and restless
spirit wings its flight !

Cardinal Manning once told me that I was in for some
millions of years of purgatory more than other people, and
when I asked him why, he said, " Because you know how
to be good, and you are not good, and those are the people
who suffer the most."

I am so thorough in everything that if I once was as good
as I know how to be and am not, I should simply die. And
Helen is sure to beg to become my proxy in purgatory to
work off one or two of my million years. And I think, in
remembering all her acts of devotion and her great love for
me, her request will be granted. I shall be liberated before
my time, and wait, on the other side, until she comes.

I have done some unselfish things in my life — I suppose
every woman has been forced to do them, whether she
wanted to or not — but I hope the chiefest will be remem-
bered to my credit when the last great day comes — and its
being comic, to my mind, does not is the least lessen its
merit.

One summer, my son, Francis Howard, Johannes Wolff,
a party of friends and myself, went to Oberammergau to
the " Passion Play." The construction of my hat was such,

SATISFYING SYMPATHY 287

that it was easier to attach my " transformation " to it —
which, as a matter of convenience, I was wearing while I was
travelling — than to put it on my head ; and it was not long
after we were all seated that a man sitting behind me — a
man with a strange foreign accent — said, " Madam, I cannot
see the stage unless you take off your hat." I replied,
" I fear it is impossible." " And I have travelled seven
thousand miles to see this play," he added. That settled
it. I could not bear, after such a journey, to inconvenience
him, so I bravely took out my hatpins and deposited hat,
hair and all, in my lap. My son, sitting by me, didn't
notice at first, but presently he turned round and exclaimed,
" What on earth are you showing that noble, intimidating
forehead of yours f or ? " And I said, " On this occasion
it happens to be a Christian virtue — I have taken off my hat
and hair so the man sitting behind me shall see the ' Passion
Play.' ' Then on the other side Monsieur Johannes Wolff,
whom I had known a great many years, went into paroxysms
of laughter over my coiffure, as my hair, in order to wear
the transformation comfortably, was drawn quite flat and
tight from my forehead, and so that it might seem to be part
of the transformation was loosely dressed at the side. I
explained to M. Wolff that very few people had seen my
forehead ; that it was indeed a test of friendship. I wonder
if the man who had travelled seven thousand miles appreci-
ated my absolute unselfishness upon this occasion !

The " Passion Play " to me was a great disappointment,
and I had wanted all my life to see it — but I was almost
sorry that I had, for the Christ of my imagination is a manly
man, gentle and tender, but above all courageous, and this
character the actor did not portray at all ; the meekness
made every other trait subservient. It was only the
crucifixion that was magnificent, and that awed and touched
me to the quick, and impressed me more than anything I
have ever seen.

Going from Munich to Baden-Baden that summer I read
Dr John Brown's " Horae Subsecivae," and in the account
he gives of one of his father's friends, an old Scotch Pro-

288 I MYSELF

fessor, he records an evidence of an almost miraculous love,
which seemed to me unforgetably touching. It was this :

" His second wife was a woman of great sweetness and
delicacy, not only of mind, but, to his sorrow, of constitu-
tion. She died after less than a year of singular and un-
broken happiness. There was no portrait of her. He
resolved there should be one, and, though utterly ignorant
of drawing, he determined to do it himself, No one else
could have such a perfect image of her in his mind, and he
resolved to realise this image. He got the materials for
miniature painting, and, I think, eight prepared ivory
plates. He then shut himself up from every one, and from
everything, for fourteen days, and came out of his room,
wasted and feeble, with one of the plates (the others he had
used and burnt) on which was a portrait, full of subtle like-
ness, and drawn and coloured in a way no one could have
dreamt of, having had such an artist ; I have seen it, and
though I never saw the original, I felt that it must be like, as
indeed every one who knew her said it was. I do not, as I
said before, know anything more remarkable in the history
of human sorrow and resolve."

I once told this incident to David Murray, and he asked
me to write it down and send it to him, which I did, and
received from him this reply :

"HiLL HOUSE,
" LOWER HOLBROOK,
January.

" MY DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — Your very kind letter has
come on to me here, and I am indeed delighted to get the
actual statement of the fact you related to me. It is still
more strange when full details are before me, knowing, as
I do, the difficulties of a novice attempting drawing and
colouring, and, above all, choosing the miniature and exact
portraiture : it is quite wonderful that he could ever produce
anything to challenge criticism at all. No doubt whatever
it is attributed to the true cause, power of will under pressure
of affection, but it had to be a will of a very intelligent man.

SATISFYING SYMPATHY 289

I shall treasure the instance and thank you heartily for
taking the trouble on my account. My absence on Friday
you will see is accounted for by my being here hard at work
in bitter cold and wet weather, the most persistent I have
ever known. To-day as bad as ever, with an equally bad
promise for to-morrow. I shall now be out of town till the
ist November, but on my return I shall do myself the
pleasure of calling at once to see you ; meanwhile with my
best thanks, believe me, very sincerely yours,

" DAVID MURRAY "

CHAPTER LIII

MY HUMAN GARDEN

1 THINK there is no one of my friends who has given me
more pleasure than Max Beerbohm. In the first
instance I was somewhat jealous of him, for he succeeded
George Bernard Shaw as dramatic critic on the " Saturday
Review," and being a fanatic in my admiration of that
brilliant author, it seemed to me that no one could ever
worthily succeed him. But the editor displayed great
acumen when he replaced Mr Shaw with Max, for he is
the one and only man who would have been accept-
able to the public. His English is exquisite, his humour
is of the most subtle, delicate, and original flavour, and his
analysis, not only of plays but of the players themselves, is
often like second sight. He sees in a transatlantic comedy,
or melodrama, an actor or actress playing a character part
and therefore somewhat disguised. Yet straightway when
the weekly critique appears in " The Saturday," Max Beer-
bohm is writing of the inner self, of the man or woman
whom he has seen but once in his life. His mind was a
delight to me long before I knew him. Somehow we never
met until " Madame Delphine," my first attempt at play-
writing, was produced at Wyndham's Theatre. It was not
a professional, but a social affair, and was a delightful day
to me ; a sort of material evidence of the affection of many
friends, and was, in fact, a gift day. The clerk of the
weather presented me with a superb summer day. Sir
Charles Wyndham gave me the theatre. My friends, Mrs
Cecil Raleigh, Laurence Irving, Lettice Fairfax, Brandon
Thomas, and Amy Height, gave me their services. Mrs

ago

MY HUMAN GARDEN 291

Labouchere, my able stage manager, gave me cream and
strawberries for my tea, the audience gave me enthusiasm,
and I made the first speech of my life, beginning in a
very nervous and shaky voice, but gathering courage as
I went on, and afterwards got a number of congratulatory
letters, but only kept from them all this one :

"6 GROSVENOR PLACE, S.W.,
" Friday.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I must thank you for a very
delightful afternoon. Louisiana and the French have
always greatly interested me. I know Cable's story well,
and if anything you have rendered ' Madame Delphine ' into
a more touching and dramatic incident than the author
himself. The play is both charming and pathetic, but that
speech ! Oh that speech !! There was never anything
like it. When you make another, let me know, and I will
travel miles to hear it. — Yours sincerely,

" HENRY CAMPBELL- BANNERMAN "

And this full, happy day was the first time I saw Max
Beerbohm, and in spite of all my emotion I remember
quite clearly how he looked, and just where he stood in the
theatre. He was waiting for someone, and standing rather
back of the people who were shaking hands with Sir Charles
and myself. I said to Sir Charles, " Who is that young
man over there with eyes just the colour of the sky ? "

" Why, don't you know," said Sir Charles, " that's Max
Beerbohm."

And from that day we have been friends, such good
friends. We have the same point of view about so many
things, and so many people. And how we have laughed
together, such good understanding laughs — the sort that
promote a comfortable intimacy. Barrie knew this in
" What every Woman knows," when Maggie says, " Laugh,
John, laugh, then you will understand me. Try, oh try
to laugh. John, laugh ! " And he does, whereupon the
audience all cry, so closely do comedy and pathos

292 I MYSELF

commingle. And, indeed, it can always be said of the
people who know how to laugh, that they know how to cry.

What long walks Max and I, and " The Engineer " have
had over the Brighton Downs — " The Engineer," so called
by Max, being an agile fox terrier called for his many
fascinations Coaxy, with a fine muscular nose, which he
uses to tunnel up whole families of pink field mice. With
paws, nose, and snorting enthusiasm he ferociously digs and
digs, refusing to come when called, and in the dusk of the
evening returns home bearing proudly on the top of his
broad nose quite a small mountain of earth.

The only disadvantage about Max Beerbohm is, that he
is too popular — quite as popular as the young wit described
in a story of his own — a man who had ideals, and ideas,
and wanted seriously to work, but his witticisms, amiability,
and gregariousness all prevented it. He was invited to
lunches, dinners, bridge parties, and country houses ; in
consequence his life was too interrupted to accomplish
fame. There was nothing to do but separate himself from
the world, and no way of doing it but by a drastic measure.
He must disgrace himself. So he selected the worst possible
thing he could think of — he cheated at cards. The result :
his friends held a solemn conclave and resolved that so
witty, delightful, and amusing a companion must be freely
forgiven, and instead of being ostracized he was submerged
with fresh invitations. They fell upon him like the leaves
of Vallombrosa. Fate outwitted him after all. I wonder
if Max remembers telling me this story the day I wasn't
late just to surprise him.

"48 UPPER BERKELEY STREET, W.,
" Tuesday.

" MY DEAR BESSIE, — Saturday then by all means. And
I will be waiting you at one o'clock on the doorstep of
Jules'.

" I shan't really be there till half-past-one. But I say

One so that you will arrive not much later than .

Yours affectionately, MAX "

MY HUMAN GARDEN 293

He was obliged to be very agreeable at this time, for I had
just forgiven him for much faithlessness and a little neglect.

" 48 UPPER BERKELEY STREET, W.

" MY DEAR BESSIE, — Your charming daughter-in-law has
asked me to dine next Friday, to which I look forward with
much pleasure (and I have just written and told her so).

" Meanwhile I hope you won't have it that it is another
instance of the " faithlessness " of which you are always very
unjustly accusing me (who am the most faithful of creatures)
that I did not see your play. I had made all my arrange-
ments to go down on Saturday, but these were all bowled
over by sudden illness on the Friday and I was in bed till
the Sunday, and that was how I missed the pleasure.

" When is the play going to be done again ? Nothing
short of ' typhoid fever with complications ' shall prevent
me from being at my post.

" I hear that Graham Robertson's play is in a sense yours.
What a nice present. I wish / had a play to give you ! —
Yours affectionately, MAX BEERBOHM "

I wrote at once on the strength of this generous offer to say
I would accept a book, and have indeed decided on the
subject.

There is no one who could do an appreciation of Henry
James (that master of style and juggler of language) so
marvellously well as Max Beerbohm. He is an absolute
master of technique himself, and he loves the complete-
ness and the exquisite finish of Henry James. I do wish I
might " browbeat and bully him " (as Graham Robertson
accuses me of doing about " Pinkie ") into writing this
work, then the book, like the fairy play, would in a sense
be mine, for I too love Henry James, only my artistry is
not sufficient to explain and analyse all my many and various
reasons why. Max Beerbohm must do this for me.

Henry James is to me personally the embodiment of his
books, he is so polished, so finished, so delicate, so distin-
guished a gentleman, and withal so very human and kind.

294

I MYSELF

The first time I met him I sat next him at a dinner. I had
just come to London, and he asked me if I liked it. I said I
hadn't made up my mind, and he said I would, — that in
London you were allowed every independence of opinion
and action, only you must contribute something socially —
beauty (and he bowed very courteously to me, and I bowed
very prettily to him) or wit, or agreeableness, and then
London accepted you. I said, " History repeats itself.
In Texas, where I was born, they say a man is not asked
his nationality, his religion, or his politics, but only if he is a
good fellow."

" Ah," said Mr James, " then London is the Texas of
Europe."

A life-long friend of Henry James and a witty woman from
Boston, in speaking of him to me, said, " He has most noble
qualities, and is a sort of Massachusetts Sir Galahad." I
asked her why he had never married, and she said he never
wanted to, that he was once engaged to be married, and when
the lady broke it off he was so grateful to her that he became
her devoted friend for life. " He never," she said, " tempted
Fate again. The next time the lady might not have been so
kind."

I remember on another occasion a man saying to him,
" You knew Mrs Y. very well ? "

" Yes," said Henry James, " she was clever, a great
mathematician . ' '

" And," said the gentleman, " remarkably untruthful,
wasn't she ? "

" Well," said Henry James, " she might have been
described as mathematically mendacious."

I have known quite ordinary liars to entertain the futile
hope of rendering an acute triangle into a parallelogram,
but a mendacious mathematician would of course lie on a
more probable basis.

CHAPTER LIV

HENRY JAMES, ELLEN TERRY, AND OLD LACE

A GOOD many years ago I was an almost chronic
invalid, and a German doctor told me that I could
be cured by an operation. The doctors in England
disagreed, saying I would probably die under it, but finally
life became such a burden that I decided to take a sporting
chance with death and have it done. Lawson Tait was to
do it, I assuming all the responsibility. The time was fixed,
the nurse was engaged, and the doctor was coming the next
morning at nine o'clock, and I had told no one at all — not
even T. P. — when in the afternoon Henry James came to
call, we had an amusing hour together, and just as he was
going away I said, " I shall see you again, of course, but I
am going under an operation to-morrow and the doctors
think it rather serious. I don't know," I said, " why I've
bothered you with it, for I've told nobody, and I don't
intend to."

" What," said Mr James, coming instantly back again, —
" why, this is very sad ; " and no one could have been more
kind or sympathetic. He was greatly touched by what he
considered my " courage," which seemed to me only a natural
dislike of fussiness, and a desire to save T. P. anxiety, but
that day T. P., against my express desire, was informed of the
imminent operation by my own doctor, and at first he flatly
refused his consent, but was persuaded into it later. The
person most terribly anxious and worried was my faithful
friend and collie, Max. He always remained downstairs in
the evening to guard the house, but not that evening. He
refused to leave me, and sat with his head on my knee,

295

296 I MYSELF

rolling his eyes, until the whites were visible, at the nurse
and the various preparations, and sighing profoundly. Nor
did he leave me during the night, although he always slept
in the hall. When the doctors came in the morning he was
pulled out of the room by the collar, and when my bedroom
door was closed he sat with his head against it until the
operation was over, and when one of the doctors opened the
door he slipped quietly in the room, crawled under the bed,
and except to get food and water in the kitchen, he never
left me for a week. When I woke up from the stertorous
sleep of an anodyne, the first thing I saw was a big bunch of
white lilac and white roses from Henry James, and later on
came this note :

" 34 DE VERE GARDENS, W.,
" Saturday, P.M.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I am much touched by the kind-
ness as well as courage of your note, which is almost intoler-
ably pathetic. I rejoice exceedingly in your security and
convalescence, but disapprove still more intensely of your
pretending as yet to know anything about complicated and
remote consequences. Wait till you have been restored to
the social circle that deplores your absence — then we'll talk !
Talk meanwhile as little as possible — don't even think,
if such a feat is possible to your irrepressible mind ! Only
peacefully exist, regularly eat, abundantly sleep, and
serenely wait. Meanwhile a lot of helpful thinking will be
done for you about you ; even by yours, dear Mrs O'Connor,
most truly, HENRY JAMES "

How I prized that letter, even more than the flowers, for
*hey are withered, but the kindly words will ever be mine.

The operation was successful, and the following summer I
could walk for miles without fatigue — a thing I had not been
able to do in years.

But " to sleep abundantly," that has always been denied
me. Oh, the terrible bouts of insomnia that ever pursue
me ! Why my brain has not succumbed to this constant
torture I know not, only that I began life with the con-

HENRY JAMES, ELLEN TERRY, ETC. 297

stitution of Texas mustangs, the ponies that can stand hard
work, immense fatigue, and even a moderate amount of
starvation and yet thrive on it. And of all people Ellen
Terry is most constantly associated with my insomnia, for I
so often remember in the long, wakeful hours her unspeak-
able kindness. Some friend told her that I was suffering
from this heart-breaking malady. At the time she was on
tour under her own management and overwhelmed with
work, and what does she do but put everything aside, and
write me a long letter offering me her cottage in the country,
and making arrangements for the grocer and the butcher and
the milkman to call, telling me where I could engage " a
general " until my own servant arrived, and going into every
smallest detail for my comfort. What a sunny, kind and
generous nature she has ! I wonder if anyone has ever
known Ellen Terry without being under some sort of obliga-
tion to her of actual service or sympathy. And how delight-
fully quaint she is, and how unlike other people ! Long ago,
she and Sir Henry were dining at the Laboucheres ; they were
already a little late, when I saw her whisper something to
Mrs Labouchere, who smiled, and Ellen ran lightly upstairs
and presently came down again beaming. It seemed she
had expressed a desire to clean her teeth, and asking if there
were a new tooth brush in the house, Mrs Labouchere said
she would find one in the washstand drawer of the bath-
room. The dear ! we would all have waited dinner with
pleasure, if she had even decided on a Turkish bath.

We were neighbours in Chelsea, Ellen Terry and I, but
both busy women, and I rarely saw her, and had not heard
from her in many months, when one morning I received a
letter enclosing a lovely piece of old lace. Of course I was
mightily pleased, wrote and thanked her and heard no more.
When the summer came, a special blue muslin was bought,
and a collar embroidered in little white sprigs and finished
by the lace, and the beauty of that cerulean gown was com-
mented upon by everybody. One day I made a special
journey to see Ellen, and asked if she liked the dress, and said,
" I am wearing your lace, you see ! "

298 I MYSELF

" My lace ! " she said looking surprised, " did I give you
that lace ? "

" You did," I said.

" Why did I ? " she asked.

" I have never known," I said.

" Well anyhow," she said, " it was very sweet of me, and
the lace is sweet and so are you," and she kissed me, and I
daresay by now has quite forgotten the incident. I have the
collar still, and I hope I will be always associated in her
mind with anything so pleasant as old lace or lavender.

I had occasion to borrow her scarlet robes for a study made
by a friend of me as Portia — and she was so gracious about it,
sending this letter in reply :

" 22 BARKSTON GARDENS,
" EARL'S COURT, S.W.

" MY DEAR BESSIE, — Of course I will lend you my
' Portia ' robes, and have directed my theatre maid to pack
them off this day.

" Eight people in my household have influenza and we
have a hospital nurse, and this state of affairs means a good
deal of extra work, or else I should have answered your letter
before to-day. You will excuse me, I am sure, now I have
told you of my influenza happenings. — Yours affectionately,

" ELLEN TERRY

" P.S. — Another excuse ! I had a birthday yesterday —
that was a fierce affair, I assure you."

And shortly after she wrote me again :

" 22 BARKSTON GARDENS,
" EARL'S COURT, S.W.,
" Sunday, May 26th.

" MY DEAR BESSIE, — Will you tell me who Gertrude Hall
is ? Her lines, ' The Rival/ in this week's ' Sun,' are
rather remarkable and I should say one day, not in too great
a hurry, since most good things come stronger slowly, she
will be able to write for the stage. Do please tell me whether

HENRY JAMES, ELLEN TERRY, ETC. 299

she is young, poor, and of dark complexion ? And ' excuse
me ' for troubling you. — With love, yours affectionately,

" ELLEN TERRY "

With difficulty I unearthed Gertrude Hall's poem, which
did not strike me as anything remarkable ; it just fitted into
some mood or memory of Ellen's, and Gertrude Hall herself
I never discovered.

Ellen Terry, the woman with her gentle sweetness, has a
successful rival in Ellen Terry the actress ; for myself there is
no artist who has given me so much and such heartfelt
pleasure. When she comes dancing upon the stage like
embodied sunshine, and holds out her arms, taking every
individual in the audience, figuratively speaking, to her
large and tender heart, her words, whatever they may be,
mean the dear old doggerel of my childhood :

" If you love me as I love you,
No knife can cut our love in two."

I am always permeated with wonder that so much appeal-
ing joy and friendliness can dart so directly beyond the foot-
lights, and never do I love her more than when she hesitates
over her words, and fills them in with the most delightful
business. And occasionally she supplies even Shakespeare
with a word of her own.

In the " Merry Wives of Windsor " Mistress Page says to
Falstaff : "On my word, it will serve him ; she's as big as
he is : and there's her thrummed hat, and her muffler too :
Run up, Sir John."

Instead of muffler, Ellen sometimes substituted " thing-
um-ey."

And the audience twinkled over " thing-um-ey " and
thought it Shakespeare !

I am sure the immortal poet would have changed the word
himself, if he had seen how adorable and amusing it was
made by Ellen Terry.

Laurence Irving has a far greater sin on his soul, for in
" Coriolanus " he wrote a long, fine, high-sounding, brave,

300 I MYSELF

warlike speech for Sir Henry, who gave it with great emphasis,
and the critics never one of them discovered the clever
Irvingesque intrusion. Of all the many young men who are
his disciples Tolstoy should be proudest of Laurence Irving.
He is a very remarkable man, possessing ideality, straight-
forwardness, wonderful refinement of mind, and has a high,
and even a noble sense of duty toward his fellow men. He is
a better author than actor, and it is a pity he writes so little.
His tragedy, " Richard Lovelace," is like an old-fashioned
ballad, rendered into a charming poetic play. Mrs Irving
(Mabel Hackney) was delightful in it. She is one of the most
gifted of the younger actresses of the day.

CHAPTER LV

A LACE POCKET HANDKERCHIEF AND ST JOSEPH

ONE of my very first recollections of London is con-
nected with the stage — Wilson Barrett gave us a
dinner in his pretty house in St John's Wood. The
fashion of white and light rooms was then unknown, and the
drawing-room walls were covered in brown velvet, and silver
candelabra gave the necessary light. It was neither a cheer-
ful nor a gay room, but I must say very becoming as a back-
ground to the women. A daughter of William Morris, with
clear serious eyes that had a sort of glow within, wore a long
classic white gown tightly embroidered in a thread of green
silk, and against the rich dark background she looked like
a tall, pale lily. Olive Schriener, the author of " An African
Farm," was in London then, and I remember we spoke of 'her.
She was a little thing with bright red cheeks, much dark
curly hair, and a pleasant manner, but not at all romantic
looking. I always liked Wilson Barrett : there was some-
thing boyish about him, even in his acting, which was stagey,
but in many respects very fine. When I saw him in " The
Sign of the Cross " I actually soaked a handkerchief with
tears, and as I left the theatre, put the wet little wad in an
envelope, and wrote " My tribute " upon it, and sent it
around to the stage door.

The next day came this note :

" LYRIC THEATRE,

" SHAFTESBURY AVENUE,

" Jan. 22nd, 1896.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — This affair of the dripping
handkerchief must not be misconstrued by Mr O'Connor.

302 I MYSELF

I presume he is not an Othello ! I received your tribute
of tears, and enclosed is but a poor return for them — but
please accept it as a small token of gratitude. I am glad you
so thoroughly enjoyed yourself. When next you come to
see the play please let me shake hands with you, it is too long
a time since we met.

" Give my kindest greetings to your husband, and believe
me, ever yours, WILSON BARRETT "

The letter enclosed the loveliest possible Valenciennes
pocket handkerchief tied with emerald green ribbons — and
Wilson Barrett told me afterwards that he bought it himself,
and was so afraid it would not be as real as my tears, but I
assured him it was.

" July 2ist.

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — To-morrow is my farewell day
and night, so it will not be possible for me to come, much as I
regret it.

" The Prince of Wales and a very distinguished audience
will be present in the evening. I am so sorry that you
cannot come yourself.

" Will you bring Mrs Leslie to see the last of my London
performances ? ' Hamlet ' begins at 7.45. If you can
come let me know at once and I will send you a box. —
" With kindest regards, ever yours sincerely,

" WILSON BARRETT "

In answer to this note I saw his " Hamlet " but did not
care for it at all. I sent Agnes Vale to see " The Sign of the
Cross " and she said she felt more " at home " in it than any
play she ever saw. When I asked why, she said it reminded
her so much of the life of St Agnes.

I had a great regard for the opinion of Agnes Vale, who
lived with me five years, a dear devoted little person in
my service ; she was a housemaid in reality, but a lady in
feeling.

After she had been with me some months she said to me,

A LACE HANDKERCHIEF AND ST JOSEPH 303

" You know, dear madame, the way I came to you was this :
The nuns sent me out to my first place and it was a very
bad one, and I went back to the convent at the end of the
month, and then I told St Joseph that I was not like most
girls, I wouldn't ask him for a husband — that might be more
difficult for him — but I would ask him for a nice, kind lady ;
and then I went out and I bought his statue a new brown
dress, and I made it and put it on him, and then, dear madame,
St Joseph sent me you. Well, that wasn't so bad in him,
was it ? "

I have an idea that Agnes really established my having
a sort of claim upon St Joseph, for, after that she was
always asking him little favours for me, and once when I was
very ill, my good little friend had three Masses said for my
recovery, and, like the little lady that she was, never told me
that she had paid for them, lest I should feel under obliga-
tion to her. But St Joseph did not protect her from a most
unfortunate experience. She was very thrifty and I paid
her wages only quarterly. Just before I went abroad one
summer, I gave her her quarter's wages, seven pounds. As
ill-luck would have it, a short time afterwards a woman came
to the house and rang the door bell and Agnes opened it.

"Is this Miss ?" " Vale ?" Agnes supplied. " Yes," the

woman answered, " you are exactly the person I have come
to see. Is Mrs O'Connor in town ? "

" No," said Agnes, " she is in France."

" Oh," said the woman, " what a pity ! You know how
kind she is."

" Yes," Agnes said.

" Well ! " the woman replied, " I have £300 that Mrs
O'Connor has promised to invest for me, would you mind
taking care of it until she returns ? "

" Oh, certainly," Agnes said, " but perhaps Mr O'Connor
would be better.

" Oh, no ! " the woman answered, " this is a secret be-
tween Mrs O'Connor and myself, and I want you to take
care of the £300 only until she returns from Paris. When
will that be ? "

3o4 I MYSELF

Agnes told her that I was expected back at the end of the
week.

" Well," said the woman, " I will return with the £300 and
you will take care of it for me. The moment Mrs O'Connor
arrives please give it to her."

Agnes said she would and the woman turned to go. Then
a thought, Agnes said, seemed to come to her, and she came
back saying, " But until I get the £300 I have no money, I
wonder if you would let me have £3 ? "

" Oh ! " said Agnes confidingly, " I can let you have £7."

The woman said that would be even better, and so she
took the £7 and was to return with the £300 in a few hours.
Of course she was never heard of again.

When I came back and Agnes related the incident to me
with many flowing tears, I really could not sympathize with
her greatly and I said to her :

" Agnes, you are an intelligent human being. You know
that I have no secrets, whatever ; that my letters are always
lying about open ; that I never had seen this woman before ;
and you know that I am not a business woman."

Agnes said she knew that.

I said to her. " Why didn't you put your thinking cap
on and remember that Mr O'Connor's secretary, Mr Walker,
pays all my bills and pays all the household bills, and under
these circumstances with no command over any money
whatever for myself, and knowing nothing about invest-
ments, why in the world should an utter stranger bring me
£300 to put out at interest for her ? Really," I said,
" you have been too foolish."

Tears flowed afresh and poor Agnes retreated to the
kitchen.

Angele, a nice little French maid, was living with me at
the time and was just beginning to speak English, but her
vocabulary was most limited. She said she was very sorry
for Agnes and I said I had no patience with her, that she was
such a donkey, and in order to explain my description to
Agnes it was necessary for Angele to give fearful hee-haws
in the kitchen in imitation of the beast whose name she did

A LACE HANDKERCHIEF AND ST JOSEPH 305

not know in English. With this Agnes returned to me and
said, she would much rather have parted with the £7 than
have had me call her a " Hee-haw." Whereupon my con-
science troubled me so dreadfully that I made her a present
of £2 towards the loss of the £7, and by strict economy, before
the end of the year, she had with Christmas boxes nearly
made up the amount.

Agnes left me only on account of a long illness, and she has
been some eight or nine years now in her place, but she still
prays to St Joseph for me, and comes regularly to see me ;
and though she says her new lady is a Saint, she has confided
to me that she has never felt " at home " with her as she
did with me, and she has always the intention of some
day coming back to live with me again.

20

CHAPTER LVI

FAITHFUL ENGLISH KINDNESS

" If we sit down at set of sun
And count the things that we have done,
And counting find one self-denying act,
One word that eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind that fell like sunshine where it went,
Then we may count the day well spent." GEORGE ELIOI

WHEN I think of all the kindness I have received at
the hands of my English friends, it overwhelms
me. Years ago after introducing Thomas Nelson
Page, that most gifted author and charming of men, to Lady
St Helier, she said to me, " It was so nice of you to bring him
to see me — remember your friends are always welcome in
my house." I have not abused her generous offer, but it
greatly touched me. What a wonderful combination she is
of capability, tact, utter unselfishness, and a thorough
knowledge of the world. She and witty Mrs Louis Nixon
of New York are almost the only women I have ever
seen with all these qualities united. Worldliness generally
means hardness in a woman, with a fair slice of selfish-
ness— but there is nothing Lady St Helier enjoys more
than sacrificing herself. Her door is ever on the latch, and
oftentimes when the house is filled to overflowing with
visitors, she gives up her own room to some one — perhaps
a nurse with a convalescent child who has been undergoing
some operation — and she herself sleeps on the sofa in a
dressing-room. She is without a particle of personal vanity.
I remember after lunch one day, before her two pretty
daughters were married, going upstairs with her while she
put on her bonnet. On looking for a veil she found that her

FAITHFUL ENGLISH KINDNESS 307

girls had taken both her new ones, and she seemed rather
pleased than otherwise to have them appropriate what they
liked. She loves drudging, really working for other people,
and in her whole life she has never refused sympathy or
kindness to one in trouble or in need.

Sir Francis was equally kind ; his close proximity in the
Divorce Court to human nature, necessarily at its worst and
most untruthful on account of the unjust laws, but gave him
greater faith in the goodness of men and women. He once
said to me, " It was impossible for a Divorce Court Judge
ever to lose his faith in the inherent goodness of man,
seeing, as he did daily, revelations of long and patient
martyrdoms silently borne by men and women whose relief
oftentimes came too late."

One night at Lady St Helier's I sat next to the Right
Honble. Cecil Raikes, at that time Postmaster General.
He wanted to know what he could do to show his appreci-
ation of an Anglo-American, and I instantly asked for a pillar-
box to be put up before the front door of Oakley Lodge.
He laughingly said it should be done at once. T. P. was
surprised at my request, and going home gave me a lecture
on the freedom of my American manners. I said " Wouldn't
it be nice to have a nearer pillar box ? " He agreed that it
would, but said it was impossible. However a very few
days later a Government cart drove up, and deposited exactly
opposite our door a shining new pillar box, and when T. P.
returned at midnight from the House of Commons there was
my scarlet triumph to greet him.

When we lived in Grosvenor Road I saw a little boy
drowned in the river, just before the house — a heart-breaking
experience — and the very same day (luckily, I had gone out),
a second boy suffered a like fate. It was a favourite part of
the Thames for swimmers, so I went to the Chief of Police
and begged to have a policeman stationed there for the pro-
tection of boys — and in an hour the policeman arrived, with
orders to report to me, that I might show him the exact place
of danger. I did not get back until six o'clock, and there he
stood, and had been standing like a sentinel in front of the

308 I MYSELF

house all day. They had told him nothing at Scotland Yard
except that he was to take an order from me. T. P. wondered
why on earth a giant policeman was standing directly before
our front door, and said, when I explained, that we were
eternally compromised with the neighbours, who would
think we were under observation. (It was at a time when
there was much talk about dynamite.) Quite like a sergeant
I marched before that policeman, showed him the treacherous
eddy, and after that no more casualties occurred. Sub-
sequently I made the strangest request in the world to the
Chief of Police (I find policemen, like soldiers, very sym-
pathetic), and he was instantly kind and interested and
granted my request without a smile. A dear friend, Madame
X., sent for me to come and see her. She was in bitter
trouble : her husband, an important foreign correspondent
living in London, had written her from Austria saying
that it was impossible for him ever to return to England,
as he was being continually watched and persecuted by
Oriental Jews, who were employed for that purpose by the
British Government. Of course this was an utter delusion
from which, poor man, he suffered intermittently until his
death, and this was his first attack — and there he was, alone
and completely terrorized by his diseased imagination. His
wife, who was quite devoted to him, could not go to fetch him,
as she was hourly expecting a child. I read his letter care-
fully, and drove to Scotland Yard with it, explained all the
circumstances to the Chief of Police, and asked him to send
an official document to my friend with an official seal and to
assure him in the " Whereas, whereby, we, the under-
signed " style of literature that the British Government
loved him and desired his presence above all things in
London. A fine large cream-coloured document dangling
with seals was despatched, and it worked like a charm. My
friend returned, and for a time lost sight entirely of his
delusions, but finally, poor man, all documents and arguments
lost effect, and they plagued him out of existence.

One autumn T. P. was in a most depressed state of mind
about the lowness of his exchequer, and I said, " Why don't

FAITHFUL ENGLISH KINDNESS 309

you do some work for the ' Daily Telegraph ' ? I am sure
they would be glad to have you."

" Oh, no/' he said, " they wouldn't ; but they know where I
am, and if they wanted me to do any work they would say so."

I had just been reading an American paper, and this
admirable sentiment vulgarly but pertinently expressed
struck my fancy : " The difference between a fellow who
succeeds and one who fails is that the first gets out and
chases after the men who need him, and the second sits
around waiting to be hunted up." Now, it occurred to me
the " Daily Telegraph " needed T. P., but clearly I must do
the chasing. So I wrote Lord Burnham at Hall Barn, and
delicately advised him to invite us there for a week-end,
which he did. Then we had a long walk and talk, and I
placed my innocent scheme before his sweet and kindly
inspection, and he at once promised to help me, and it
ended in his offering T. P. " The Bar of the House " and
various other work for the " Daily Telegraph," which
tided us over what might have been a very uncomfortable
time. Why is it that so many men dislike being under
an obligation to a woman ? And yet the woman who
is capable of making an obligation is strong enough to
be generous, and to forget it. I never confided to T. P.
that I was " the fellow who chased around," and until
this fitting moment of acknowledging my many, many
obligations to various kind and generous people, I have
not spoken of Lord Burnham's responsive and practical
sympathy. But he knows I am grateful. I am always
grateful for kindness — thank Heaven, my soul is big enough
to bear the weight of gratitude — a weight that is insupport-
able to many otherwise excellent people. Too much im-
portance is given to gratitude ; personally, I don't care a
rush whether people are grateful to me or not. If, in my
small way, I can be of service to my fellow man and he forgets,
all right ! — the action has benefited my own character and
that is the best of benefits.

I owe a whole mountain of gratitude to the Society of
Women Journalists, who, quite without consulting me, and

310 I MYSELF

most unexpectedly, elected me their president. Later, a
member confided to me the secret of my having been elected
by a unanimous vote. I said " This is because you
don't know me — popularity so often comes from a want of
intimacy." But in justice to the Society, when they did
know me they re-elected me for a second term, and, what
was a great gratification, the number of members doubled
under my two years of service.

CHAPTER LVII

MY SOUL IS LARGE ENOUGH TO BEAR THE WEIGHT
OF GRATITUDE

MRS MACKAY while I was president gave the
annual party for the Society of Women Journalists,
in her beautiful house in Carlton House Terrace,
and she took as much pains in entertaining them as if they
had been princesses. Besides our own Italian Concert,
which Henry Russell furnished from his operatic company
singing in London that season, Mrs Mackay had an excellent
band, which discoursed gay music after the concert, and the
supper was quite royal, with peaches out of season, white
grapes, iced champagne and all sorts of delicacies, of which
to tell the truth I did not partake, being rather agitated
over her vexation with me, for, alas, I was late, and she
had to receive a large number of my guests alone. But
as many of them had never seen me, and took it for
granted they were speaking to Mrs O'Connor, and she has
the sweetest and most cordial manners in the world, it
was not really a matter of any moment to anyone except
herself, but she did give me such a scolding. I was
perfectly convulsed with laughter, and so was she and
eventually she forgave me.

I do not know why it is that I am always expecting a
miracle to be performed for me and time to stretch itself
longer than it ever does ; yet it is never because I am lazy
that I am late, but on account of my doing too much. Once
I was nearly dining in the wrong house, through this repre-
hensible habit of mine. Rushing off to Mr Seale Hayne's to
dine, I promised an extra shilling to the cabman if he would

3"

3i2 I MYSELF

drive very quickly, so we dashed up to the first red carpet
in Belgrave Square, I ran in, saying to the butler, " I fear
that I am late." He made no reply, but gave a haughty
sniff and showed me upstairs, whereupon a very agreeable
man came forward to meet me, whom I had never seen before ;
then I gasped out, "Oh, dear me, I'm afraid this is not the
house ; I am dining with Mr Seale Hayne, do you know where
he lives ? " " Yes," he said, " only three doors from here,"
and he escorted me downstairs. I was much relieved, for I
felt that I really needed protection from that butler, who
looked simply scandalized, and sure enough three doors
away was another red carpet, but if I had never seen Mr
Seale Hayne (and I had only seen him once) I should have
dined at the first house.

Two or three days afterwards I went to call on Miss
Roosevelt, who is now Mrs Coles, and I said, " I think I have
been here before. Didn't I come the other night to dine
when I wasn't expected ? " She said, " Oh, that was you, was
it ? My cousin told me afterwards that a greatly agitated
lady came to dinner at the last moment, and he was sure
she belonged to us and was an American, and he was sorry
he had not begged her to stay and dine." I said, " So
indeed am I."

T. P. once tried his hand at my reformation. We were
going to the theatre together. I was just a little late and he
suddenly announced that he wanted to see the curtain go up.
I said, " But you never have seen a curtain go up, and you
haven't had your dinner ! " He replied that that did not
matter : he would much rather be in time for the theatre than
eat his dinner, and full of righteous wrath he dashed off
in a cab alone, telling me to follow him later. I did, and
found him and two other people in the audience sitting
in a dimly lighted theatre at the end of a long and
stupid lever de rideau. I had had my dinner quite
comfortably and was in time to see the piece. I did
not crow over him — it would have been too cruel — but that
unhappy experience made him once and for all abandon
my reformation.

THE WEIGHT OF GRATITUDE 313

I have explained to him more than once that I am never
really late : that I only seem late, on account of my manifold
occupations.

And Mrs Bland Sutton was as kind as Mrs Mackay in
giving me her unique house for the annual party of the
Society of Women Journalists, and what a royal party it
was ! She kept saying to me " It is a big house, and we
must have enough people to furnish it," so between us
we sent out eight hundred invitations, and it just happened
that there was nothing going on that night, and everybody
came.

We blocked up the entire street in front of Claridge's, and
one friend who with great difficulty had made her way up
the stairs to ask if she might bring in her son went down
for him and was never able to get back again. It was
indeed like one of the illustrations in " Punch/' where
a severe-looking policeman standing in front of a large
crowd before a house is admonishing a well-dressed young
man to move on ; the young man answers : " I can't, I'm
at a party ! "

But the people who had got in said they had never
enjoyed themselves more, and I quite believe it. Mrs Bland
Sutton loves lavishly entertaining and filling her house with
hosts of friends ; and I owe not only her an obligation for
kindness, but her husband as well. He is one of the most
remarkable men in London. A great Shakespearian scholar,
a fine natural historian, and a genius as a surgeon. He lives
for his work and loves it, and even with the most serious
cases he is so sure of success that his patients imbibe his con-
fident spirit, and recover with astonishing rapidity. I went
into a Nursing Home a little while ago and he performed an
operation for me, and in a week I was out and at home again.
And then there is another friend whose kindness I shall
never, never be able to repay : my doctor who has attended
me for twenty-five years, Dr Septimus Sunderland. I think
I have never seen such a fine consistent character. His
friendship is as steady as a rock, and his unselfishness is so
great that he actually likes the people who exact the most of

314

I MYSELF

him and give him the least. The Christmas before last I was
in America and missed my usual Christmas present, so last
Christmas he gave me two, the one of the year before, and
the one of the present Christmas. My son asked him why
he gave me any present at all. He said, " My mother
demands your services as her natural right, and is always
bothering you about something or other. I suppose it is
your quaint English sense of humour which makes you give
presents to the people who should give presents to you." I
revel in this quaint sense of English humour and always
encourage it. And the hospitality that I have received in
England which I have never been able to return, really it has
been overwhelming, especially from my friends who are lucky
enough to have theatres. I wonder how many notes I have
written to thank Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree for his hospi-
tality, and Sir Charles Wyndham, and George Alexander,
and Cyril Maude, and George Edwardes, and that most
fascinating being Charles Hawtrey. And how am I to express
my unspeakable gratitude to my ever hospitable and most
kind friend Oswald Stoll of Hippodrome fame ? Again and
again has he been most prodigal in his hospitality to me, and
not only that, but he laughed so enormously at some of my
stories, negro and otherwise, that he decided I should have
an appearance at one of his numerous music halls, und(
another name, and in that way we would find out if a Londoi
audience could stand me. I was a fortnight getting my music-
hall manner, and apparently never got it. Graham Robert-
son was my only confidant and he wrote to give me courage

" SANDHILLS, WITLEY.

" I heard much abuse of you from Ellen Terry, which
course) I good-naturedly repeat. She said that she had s<
you as the Texas lady, and that your behaviour in not stickii
to the boards had been simply idiotic. That you had
dainty personal charm which she would not have expect(
to get over the footlights, but that to her surprise it did, anc
gave you a grip of the audience that much experience cann<
always bring. That in short you were cut out for a pla]

THE WEIGHT OF GRATITUDE 315

actress, and why you do not play-act she could not imagine.
There !

" GRAHAM "
And later :

" SANDHILLS, WITLEY.

" But I am bursting to know how went the Monologue.
It must have happened by now. I gathered from your letter
that it was imminent. Do tell me — was the ovation in the
shape of roses and lilies, or eggs and cats ? If the former,
we will rejoice in the intelligence of the public — if the latter,
we will remember its frequent lack of appreciation of genius
and the debut of Sarah Siddons. Anyhow — do tell me.

" Here it rains and rains, and Bob, and Portly, and I, are
just about sick of it. And yesterday a thunderstorm got
into the garden and I couldn't get it out. As soon as it
had cleared out at the bottom it tumbled in again at the
top — like pigs.

" And one can't sit in the cellar all day. And of course
when it went, it took the summer with it and now it's bitterly
cold, and I wish you the Compliments of the Season and a
Merry Christmas, and am. — Yours sincerely,

" GRAHAM "

I was announced as Mrs Carey from Virginia, and came on
in my own whitening hair and a pompadour dress, just after
a gentleman from my native land, a real negro, attired in a
scarlet hat, a grey suit, and scarlet gloves. He sang and
danced and showed all his fine white teeth, and the audience
loved him. But Mrs Carey from Virginia, the imitation article,
trembling and nervous, with her miserable tears just behind
her smile, and her little negro and drawing-room stories, oh
dear me, no, they were completely nonplussed and wouldn't
have her for one moment. They told her firmly but politely
to get back to Virginia as soon as possible and to stop there.
Of course the faithful Rose was with me and one of the
ushers said, " I know that Mrs Carey : she is Mrs T. P.
O'Connor. I saw her in 'The Lady from Texas/' Rose
tossed her head, and when the audience drowned my voice in

3i6 I MYSELF

satiric applause, like Peter she denied me. Whatever I am
fitted for, evidently it is not for music hall performances,
but all the same I am grateful to Mr Stoll who did his best
for me. I have so longed to make money, and the big
salaries the artists receive make even the poor amateur
desperately bold. " A fool has only one teacher : she arrives
too late, and her name is Consequences." Hammersmith
was my night of consequences. One life-long friend in the
audience wrote me this consolatory letter. I really didn't
mind much, as I half expected failure, since Fate on every
occasion disciplines her unfortunate but persevering step-
daughter.

" 4 NEVERN SQUARE,

" EARL'S COURT, S.W.,
" Thursday.

" MY DEAREST BESSIE, — I do hope that your reception
last night is not troubling you unduly. It was so easily
understood. I really think that your audience was quite
prepared to be pleased, for you looked charming and ap-
peared perfectly self-possessed, but I don't think your choice
of stories was a happy one for any music hall audience. I
have heard you tell many far better at your own table, but I
question if even the best of them would have appealed to
such an audience. ' The Gods,' from whom all the opposi-
tion came, could make nothing of the Tiara story. I thought
you wonderfully plucky to brave it out as you did — but you
always are brave. You were really most beautifully gowned,
and looked so very elegant and graceful.

" Don't worry, darling. All who really care for you only
love you the better for the ceaseless disappointments and
sorrows that have met you at almost every turn in life.
Certainly /do. I hesitated to intrude upon your dressing-
room last night, feeling sure that you were not alone, and
thinking it probable you might have immediately driven off.
You may perhaps be in town when I get back and we shall
meet. — Very lovingly yours,

" EDITH WEYLAN "

THE WEIGHT OF GRATITUDE 317

Another friend who has extended wide- armed hospitality
to me, given me much wise and sound advice, and helped
me in great difficulties, is my solicitor, Clement Locke
Smiles, a high-minded man who, like my father, never
said or did or thought a mean thing. To him I am under
never ending, happy, and grateful obligations as well as
to all my unselfish and hospitable friends who have con-
tributed to my enjoyment and pleasure for so many years.
They have kept me in England, for as I grow older the cold
and damp of the climate chills me more and more, and if it
was not that love, and affection, and friendship make
warmth and sunshine for me here, I should go back to
happier lands of sun.

CHAPTER LVIII

ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH

IN Germany, next to the Triple Alliance, the most serious
thing in the country is a mud bath — or a whole series
of mud baths are more serious still. First, you consult
a doctor ; he looks very grave and important and orders you
two mud baths a week, of ten minutes each, of a tepid tem-
perature. After two weeks, if you still survive the four, you
follow these with three mud baths a week, of a higher tem-
perature, resting much in between, until twelve, or fifteen
baths at most, complete the cure. Then you remain quiet
for a few days and round up in a high and bracing place with a
nach cure.

But I reversed the old order of things, having no doctor, and
a supreme confidence in myself and in German mud. I dashed
in, took a daily mud bath of half an hour each, had myself
wrapped in blankets afterwards, and dripped for a matter of
forty minutes, and in sixteen days I had completed my cure
with a rapidity, a courage, and a thoroughness unheard of in
all Germany. Every day a tragic result was expected — a
sudden fit of apoplexy, or heart failure — but I struggled
through the sixteen most valiantly, though towards the end
very, very weakly. Indeed, after a bath, I could scarcely
drag myself home, and my heart behaved as if I was desper-
ately in love and my lover had deserted me for the woman
I most loathed in all the world. It stood still, it beat
violently, it stopped, went on, left its moorings entirely, and
made every effort to occupy an absolutely new place in my
breast. When my nose grew pinched and my upper lip
turned a chalky white, Rose stepped in and forcibly put me
318

ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH 319

to bed, and kept me there for five days. This rest gave me
time to think and to take a still more sporting chance with
death, a gentleman of whom I am not in the least afraid.
For in the last few years of incurable torturing insomnia
how often have I longed for an unawakening sleep ! —

" I am tired of tears and laughter

And men that laugh and weep ;
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap ;
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,

And everything but sleep."

In the meantime I knew I ought to rest, that quiet was
necessary to make my heart behave itself just ordinarily well,
that my banking account was overdrawn, that I couldn't be
poorer, and could ill afford a cab ride, much less a trip in
Holland ; and these adverse reasons all decided me to take it.

I had travelled through Holland for eighteen years, and
always planned to see a bit of it, and on other occasions it
would have been convenient and easy — but all other journeys
would have lacked the salt and savour of this. A sporting
chance with death, and no money, so what fun ! And
Rose — my jewel of the world, my faithful comfort, my
secretary, my confidante, my dear, dear one. I wrote a
friend : " I am travelling in Holland and very ill, but if I die,
Rose will be equal to the occasion." And so she would, God
bless her. What a wonder she is ! She has made but one
mistake in her life, a very serious one — she has neglected to
become an English Joan of Arc. How well she would have
looked the part, and played it too. She is tall, with an
erect, soldierly, rounded figure, and a pretty, rosy, fresh face
with wonderfully clear, steady, sensible, dove-coloured eyes
and long curly eyelashes. And she loves to do things — to
organize and plan, and contrive, and work, and accomplish —
and all in the best possible manner. But what is so wonder-
ful is that she likes to work for me better than I like to work
for myself. She loves to bring order out of chaos, to answer

320 I MYSELF

dozens of letters, to return borrowed books, to send away
promised photographs, to mend and to darn, and to clean,
and to make over, and to economize, and all for me. But
not for long, else life would be too sweet — for, alas, she
belongs to another. She is the wife of a fine, smart
soldier man, an imposing picture in his bearskin, and now
and then he feels so sorry for me that he lends me
Rose, and for a little while I pretend to be rich and happy,
until she is taken away from me again, and then comes
gloom and despair. If she had only been commander
of the army, the Boer War would have been ended in a
trice. It is too late now, I fear, for the Joan of Arc role —
neither her husband nor myself could possibly spare her, even
for the good of the country. But there is no reason why
Mr Haldane should not now and then consult her. She
knows more about the army than anybody in England, her
heart is loyal, and her mind is wise, just and courageous —
three admirable qualities for a soldier, and still more admir-
able for the wife of one. Among other soldierly qualities
Rose has learned obedience — usually a cheerful obedience
without any arguing : it is only when my nose is pinched
that she admonishes me.

" Rose," I remarked, " we are going to Holland." I was
in bed and my voice was very weak.

She looked at me gravely and the dove eyes were reproachful.

Rose. " Why, do you want to kill yourself ? "

Me. " I don't mind. Anyhow with death stalking along
between us we are going to Holland — but you know how
often I've been dreadfully ill, and yet I always get well.
Death doesn't like me — you know he doesn't."

Rose. " You are a great responsibility. What would I do
if anything happened to you ? "

Me. " Have me buried in a quiet churchyard away
from motors, and put up a neat headstone with a suitable
inscription."

Rose. " And what should it be ? "

Me. " Say : ' Sacred to the memory of Betty. She loved
Hollyhocks.' "

ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH 321

Rose. " But you love all flowers. Why Hollyhocks ? "

Me. " Don't quibble. Let it stand at Hollyhocks — and
pack for Holland."

The soldier reappeared, and Rose packed.

Have you noticed that it is never possible to like a belong-
ing of your own as much as a belonging of your neighbour's ?
For example, Lady P., who has correct and beautiful taste,
when travelling in Germany picked up a basket and brought
it back to Lura, my sweet and pretty daughter. She isn't
really my daughter, she is my son's wife, but I've made myself
her mother, and she has made herself my daughter, and we
both scorn the " in law," two hateful words made for the un-
loving. It was a straw basket of charming proportions, filled
with natural flowers prepared in a cunning German fashion
to render them everlasting. The green leaves were thick,
full, and curly, and at equal distances small bunches of pink
flowers were stiffly grouped, and there was a nice pungent
odour about it like the paint that Mrs Ham, Shem and
Japheth diffused from the Noah's Arks of my childhood. I
wanted that basket badly, but Lura wouldn't give it to me.
She had several excuses : first, Lady P. had given it to her ;
second, it was convenient when other flowers were withered
to ornament the dinner-table ; and third, she said, " Mother,
you live with me and the basket is just as much yours as mine,
you are not housekeeping, you can always see the basket ,
what do you want with another ? " All the same I wanted
that basket. And I want still more her empire wreath in
small diamonds, also a gift of Lady P.'s ; but of course I've
never breathed my desire — I've only looked at the brooch.

On one of my most breathless and exhausted days, I
decided to go from Schwalbach to Wiesbaden for the after-
noon just to see how much I could stand without dropping
by the way. And there in a shop was the basket. Not of
course a pink one, and a fresh one — Fate was not kind enough
for that — but the identical Lura basket, only dusty and shop
worn, with the flowers a faded yellow. It was like seeing
the face of a friend, and the very soft-voiced and obliging
salesman promised me a new basket, in which the flowers

21

322 I MYSELF

were to be a rosy pink, and the leaves a full green, and it was
to be ready packed and delivered at the station when I next
passed through Wiesbaden. Also, I ordered the replica
of a prettily shaped gilded laurel wreath — an offering for a
friend later on — there is nothing like being prepared for an
emergency, even to a laurel wreath on hand. Also I bought
some lace cheap, effective and good, at a lace shop, and a
brown leather bag at a reasonable price, as Germany is
renowned for its " leder waaren." And the day we started
for Rotterdam a messenger awaited us with two neat pack-
ages— the wreath and the basket. How I would crow over
Lura ! Like the trusting soul that I am and will always
remain, I paid without examining my purchases, and we
proceeded on our way, unluckily by a different route, as the
Rhine is more interesting than inland scenery, so I should
not do it again.

In our carriage were two attractive German sisters. One
of them was like a Southern American — dark skin, laughing
black eyes, brilliant teeth, and an air of happiness and
vigour about her that was quite infectious. My heart felt
lighter and less tired in her agreeable presence. She wore
a brown tailor skirt and jacket, and a panama hat with a
tiny crown, evidently a German fashion, as I had seen a
number of them in Wiesbaden — it is not a pretty one. Her
sister was a regular Teuton, blue eyes, magnificent full light
hair, and a white and red skin, but she lacked the vivacity
of her sister. I wondered if the dark-eyed one was married.
She looked very young, and I was sure she had many ad-
mirers. The mystery was soon solved, for when we stopped
at a station I stood looking out of the window, and she was
met by a young officer in undress uniform, who kissed her on
both cheeks, and then held up a small man of three exactly
like her, and he too kissed her many times. Then the man
of three was admonished as to his manners, and he brought
his heels together with quite a military click and made me
the most fascinating bow. His father raised his hat, his
charming mother and aunt waved their hands, and the train
moved on. May all angels bless and guard them !

ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH 323

We arrived at Rotterdam about nine o'clock, and Rose
selected the hotel as she selects race horses, because she liked
the name. It was Leygraaffs. There were no guests, but
much linoleum. I do not like linoleum — Rose does. She
likes anything that she can wash. The luxury of washing
this was denied her — we left too soon. The linoleum on my
floor was a brilliant green, powdered with still more brilliant
green apples. The walls were papered in brown wrapping
paper, and the curtains were pale cream dimity with a blue
ribbon and pink roses appliqued on as a border. The
furniture was of oak and singularly ugly. There are no
dressing-tables in Holland, the washstand with drawers
underneath performing a sort of double duty ; the rugs
scattered about were red and yellow, and the edge of the
floor was painted orange. So far as I saw, outside of the
Old Masters, the Dutch of to-day do not in the least trouble
themselves about taste. And yet individually they make
some charming things — wall-papers for example. I saw
some charming wall-papers in the shops of Dutch manu-
facture. Another disappointment I had was through my
Dutch friend, Johannes Wolff, who has been living in London
nearly fifteen years, but has always scorned the English
language, having instead composed a delightful vernacular
of his own. " In Holland, in my country," he always assured
me, " you will have a good eat." But mine was both bad
and very dear. Rose has too much soul to care about food,
though one of her many accomplishments is cooking. But
" a good eat " pleases and cheers me. I am not one of the
women who can be happy on a rusk and a cup of tea. A feast
puts me in a good temper with the world and myself. A
famine makes me cold to both. My palate, like my sense of
smell and sense of sight, is keen. I can be and often am
deceived in people, but never in food. The most talented
and wonderful of cooks can make a most seductive sauce, but
though concealed I at once detect the ancient butter. If a
fish is not fresh I will none of him. And how people ever die
of ptomaine poison from bad fish and oysters is a mystery to
me. Knowing the danger as well as the disagreeableness I

324 I MYSELF

should undoubtedly follow the example of the man who was
invited to a public dinner, and taking his first oyster it made
an instant reappearance on his plate while he blinked and
said : " Now some fools would have swallowed that." And
he was quite right — some timid and unscientific fools would,
with the result of typhoid fever developing. I should have
coughed, looked innocent, and used my napkin as a tribute
to manners. But under no circumstances would I have
tempted Fate by swallowing that oyster. I do not know
whether the eggs in Holland were Italian or Russian, but
they were travelled eggs, and eggs, to be successful, are
distinctly stay-at-home products. If I were the maker of
the laws of a country, foreign eggs should have a huge duty
imposed upon them, then fewer stale eggs would be eaten.
Having partaken of one travelled egg (Russian I think)
and tea, I found the gods were still unpropitious, for when,
to comfort myself with a look at my basket, Rose unpacked
it and brought it to my bedside, lo, the thrifty German in
Wiesbaden had simply dyed the dusty yellow flowers of the
old basket a hot purple and sent that to me. Two had
remained undyed, so I plucked them from their stems,
enclosed them in a reproachful letter, saying I had trusted
his commercial honour, and he must take back the old basket
and give me a new one or else destroy all my deep and abiding
confidence in German shopkeepers.

At any rate the eggs and the basket could not destroy my
joy in the morning which was beautiful, cool, with sunshine,
and a gay breeze. We left the Leygraaffs Hotel, and walked
toward the park, passing a group of charming old houses on
our right. I stopped on the bridge long enough to photo-
graph one mentally. The house, built of white stone, was
old, with green shutters, and it stood on a sort of round
mound of velvety grass carpeted with daisies and dandelions,
and chequered by broken blossoms. It was separated from
the street by a canal and connected with it by a fine iron
bridge. In front of the house were two giant horse-chestnuts
laden with blossoms. I never saw such tall ones, and the
trunks of the trees were all covered in ivy. At the left side

ALL ABOUT ROSE AND THE DUTCH 325

of the house an avenue of trees continued, pink horse-chest-
nuts, amethyst lilac trees, lavender lilac trees, and white
lilac interspersed with flower-laden laburnums. When the
breeze softly moved them they waved like plumes, and the
fragrance of that delightful mass of superb colour was almost
overpowering. The door of the house stood wide open with a
hospitable smile, but there was no one in sight — only an old
white and orange setter lying on the step blinking one eye at
us, and almost snowed over by purple and white and yellow
blossoms continually drifting down on him. It made him
look like a babe in the wood. All one side of the house was
completely covered by an old laburnum tree with the
blossoms of a luxuriance great enough to make a blazing,
waving cloth of gold. At a long distance in the park it
remained with the sun striking it — a jewelled banner.
The laburnum is a dear flower to me for itself and its
memories. I remember long ago driving to a garden
party at Mrs Labouchere's when she produced " The
Tempest." In the caste were two beautiful people I
loved : my son, Francis Howard, as Sebastian ; and
Claude Lowther, in a wonderful broidered Venetian cap,
the two long feathers, silken hose, and velvet doublet, as
Ferdinand. How handsome he was, and we two friends
and mothers, Mrs Lowther and I, how vain we were of our
boys ! An American friend on whom Fortune had smiled
came with his splendid carriage and horses to drive me to
Pope's Villa, and we made a little detour to see the house of
the distinguished novelist, Miss Braddon, whom my friend
greatly admired, and in her garden was a laburnum tree
laden with blossoms, and I loved it and called his attention to
it, and said, " You can't do better than that in California,
can you ? " And he said, " No, but Miss Braddon must not
be the only one to possess laburnum trees — to-morrow you
shall have one all in bloom, growing and blowing at Oakley
Lodge." And sure enough the very next morning a cart
arrived and a glorious tree dripping with gold was conveyed
to the garden and firmly planted in memory of our golden
day. I wonder if my poor friend in the chaos of his dis-

326 I MYSELF

ordered mind ever remembers when he sees the laburnum
bloom. He was a bachelor, never having married, it was said,
because in his youth he had fallen hopelessly in love with a
fille-de-joie. He could not marry her : his good common sense,
and he had plenty of that, forbade it : and he could not make
her his friend and companion. He was a devout Catholic,
a chamberlain of the Pope, and his religion forbade that.
So he provided for her and left her, but he always loved her.
And of all the sane people I ever met he seemed the sanest,
and yet he went mad quite suddenly, raving mad, in one of
the great hotels in London. And all the people who knew him
were away, and his man, a timid foreigner, was frightened,
and by some quibble of the law he was put into the workhouse
infirmary. With all his millions to protect him, this is where
he was found by his friends. And though well and strong, he
has never recovered his reason. I saw him not long ago in
Brighton with a roll of music under his arm. His attendant
said he played the banjo a great deal, and sang the popular
songs of the day. We had a long walk, and apparently
rational talk together, but I was too sad to allude to the days
when he was free of mind and body, full of interest in his
friends, and all that concerned them, and he did not ask
about the laburnum. And I did not tell him that dear
Oakley Lodge and the laburnum tree had passed into the
hands of strangers, for, though he was mad, it would have
saddened him.

CHAPTER LIX

SYMPATHETIC WAITERS

THE parks in Holland are the loveliest I have ever seen
in any country. They are unlike those in England,
America and France, as we see them, all teased and
artificially arranged and distorted by the hand of man —
and tasteless man at that : they have the appearance of
softly rolling, grassy meadows, with groups of trees, and
irregular paths wandering through them. The Dutch
appreciate Nature and wisely leave her to manage her own
affairs, which she can do so much better than the ordinary
soulless gardener.

The park at Rotterdam breaks upon your startled vision a
perfect unexpected joy. What a lovely wonder to find a lush
quiet meadow with the wind blowing the long grass about in
waves, and a snowstorm of petals from white and red chestnut
trees showering down upon it, the birds singing a thousand
different songs, and the nice black and white cows, switching
their tails, and with the sheep, feeding quietly, and the air
scented by tall white and purple lilac, laburnum, and flower-
ing almond, and peach trees, all jostling each other for
elbow room. Think of it — a silent, sunny, apparently
remote natural country meadow not a stone's throw away
from a busy town and the great liners that come and go to and
from America. That meadow, freshly washed by the rain
and suddenly and surprisingly come upon, was a never to be
forgotten picture. We seemed, except the cows, and the
sheep, and the birds and the bees, and the butterflies, the
only living creatures in it — and yet it was exactly five minutes'
walk from our hotel.

337

328 I MYSELF

Among my many idiosyncrasies is this : I can never think
of food unless I see it. If a cook comes to me for a menu my
spirit sinks to zero. My thoughts fly off at a tangent, and I
can't even remember that a chicken crows. And to select
a meal from a card is most wearisome to me. I both like and
appreciate dainty food, but what an insufferable bore to think
about it, and above all, to dwell upon it, and to order it.
In crossing the Atlantic, if the waiter asks me what I want
I always say : " Bring me what my next door neighbour
has ordered." If this is a man, I am quite safe — it is the
best the ship offers, and it saves both time and trouble. In
a restaurant I ask the advice of the head waiter, and I
meekly eat what he brings me. Waiters I have always
found very sympathetic — porters not so much so — and cab-
men not at all. In all my long years of constant cabbing I
have only known three sympathetic cabmen. They were
delightful — but, they were exceptions.

In Rotterdam the head waiter was very sympathetic,
helpful, and solicitous, and, singularly enough, truthful. He
advised lobster salad, and said the lobsters were fresh,
although they came from Ostend ; and they were fresh, but
muscular. It was a nice lunch, however, and he did all the
thinking and waiting. Rose was meditative and silent.
Like all artists, I must have expression, and as there was no
one else to express myself to, I expressed myself to the waiter.
I told him I wanted to come to Holland and live by the park.
' You have seen it, of course," I said.

He looked so pained I was frightened, and answered :
" Seen it, Madame ! I have walked in it for four hours
every day for eight months."

" Dear me ! " I exclaimed. " How delightful ! "

" No, Madame," he said, very sadly. " I had a great
shock, a great grief, and I walked in the park to keep my
reason."

" Oh," I replied. " I am very, very sorry — but you are
better now? "

" Yes." He spoke with resignation. " I am better.
My doctor tells me I can work again, but nerve sickness is a

SYMPATHETIC WAITERS 329

terrible thing. One day I was well, and this sorrow and
shock struck me like a blow, and the next day I was ill — and
my only rest was to walk until I could walk no more. The
park ! I know every foot of ground in it, every flower and
shrub and tree, and almost every blade of grass. Grief is a
terrible thing, Madame."

I said, " I know — I know. I have had great grief too."

" And could you sleep, Madame ? "

" No, oh, no — and I sleep so badly now."

" But Madame need not stay in the place where she
remembers. I — well, I must stay here where I was once so
happy and am now so hopeless, and I always remember."

Then a brilliant idea came to me. I advised him comfort-
ingly. " Take one of the big American liners and go to
New York."

<f Ah, Madame," he spoke like one beaten and discouraged
— " they are not waiting for me in New York, and yet this
hotel is too empty for me. There are not enough people to
make me work hard and forget. I want to run here, run
there, and be busy, always hard worked and busy."

I clapped my hands with enthusiasm.

" I have it," I said. " You must go to New York at once.
It was made for you. Everybody there is running like a hare,
and you can't think for the noise."

Rose had gone to pack the bags, or I never would have
dared to say it. Here I wrote rapidly on one of my cards.

" Take that and go to the Hotel Algonquin and give it to
Mr Frank Case, the proprietor of the hotel. He is good-
looking, and you are good-looking " (not one least little gleam
of pleasure on his poor sad face — he is the one man I have
€ver seen who did not rise to a compliment — he was broken-
hearted indeed) " he is amiable and you are amiable, he has
agreeable manners, and your manners are good, and his inn is
successful and gay, and bright and clean, and hospitable and
delightful, and full of people, and you will have to run all
day. Frank Case has the kindest heart in the world — he
be a good friend to you. Will you go ? "

At last he smiled, showing such nice clean white teeth, and

330 I MYSELF

looked for a moment cheerful. " I will, Madame," he said,
" and maybe some good fairy sent you here."

' Yes." I smiled back, though he was only a waiter,
but also a man, and in grievous need. " Yes," I told him,
" a good fairy to send you across the sea." Frank Case must
do the rest of the work now in bringing back that stricken
soul to health and hope, and he will, for he too has suffered.

Then, according to his advice, we went to the weekly
market, and Rose, who rarely permits herself a remark about
her superior officer, said I always seemed to get on with a
waiter — but more particularly with the sad-hearted and the
afflicted — and I told her it was because of my great sym-
pathy with the one and my dependence on the other that, to
think for me what I should eat, created a solicitude. And
then I remembered a most kind and motherly waiter in
Venice (what French wit was it who said the only man he
ever knew who had become a mother was George Sand ?).
With my usual trustfulness I drank deeply and generously of
Venice water — a thick, cold, tasty, lemon-coloured water,
and, inured as I am to microbes, the Venetian ones brought
on a sort of Asiatic cholera, and I really was for a few days
quite alarmingly ill. My chambermaid was this motherly
waiter, who probably saved my life, for when after days of
fasting I found I was hungry again, I ordered a ripe tomato
and a fresh cucumber for my first meal. My waiter-nurse-
chambermaid knocked at the door and entered, truly pleased
to find me better, when he espied the vegetables. His face
darkened and became as tragic as did the face of Othello
when he discovered Desdemona's pocket-handkerchief.

He said, " The Signora will not eat of these after her great
seekness ? "

" Yes," I replied, reaching for the plate ; "the Signora
will."

The motherly waiter seized the plate, and carried it to the
window, saying, " If the Signora will permit me to say so,
she is the most foolish lady I have known. [A splash.] I
have trow the tomato into the canal, the cucumber has
gone with heem."

SYMPATHETIC WAITERS 331

" Oh," I said, almost crying, " and I was so hungry. I
don't care — I'll order more."

But the waiter said, " You will not be allow, Signora, to
keel your nice foolish self, because I now go to tell them in the
dining-room not to send you nothing unless I bring heem.
And I also tell your frens about the tomato and the cucumber."
And he went out and came back shortly with some dry toast
and a little beef tea. How like he was to a nice, fat, jolly,
sensible, kind, old woman ! He told me that he was very
happy with his wife. I am sure he took good care of her.

Another dark and very romantic looking waiter in Venice
I remember, who simply haunted my footsteps, undertaking
the sweeping and dusting of my room in spite of quarrels and
protestations from the chambermaid. At last my attraction
for him was solved. I came from London, but was not like
the English ladies, of whom he stood in mortal fear — my eyes
were exactly like the eyes of his grandmother who had brought
him up and been so kind — and he wanted, oh so badly, to go
to London with me, for in London lived his fiancee —
she was lady's-maid to a great lady, and she was pretty, and
he had loved her all his life, and he found the separation
unbearable, and he was sure that through me it would be
ended. I explained the smallness of my establishment, and
no men servants — he said nothing made any difference —
that to be with Madame who had the eyes of his grand-
mother, and his fiancee, would be enough. I had to put him
off with various promises, and I did try to get him a place,
and wrote to him, and he to me, but nothing came of it.
I hope by this time he is married to the sweetheart of his
childhood, and settled in some nice little wayside inn in
Italy.

We went to the Botanical Garden in the afternoon and
there I saw a most fascinating love of a white cockatoo with
the most original way of captivating hearts ever devised by
bird. When I held my hand palm up toward him, he turned
a somersault and landed on his back in my hand with his
legs kicking up in the air, and actually laughed ! We went
to the Hague the next morning and there I was ill, and

332 I MYSELF

noticed only the Dutch blankets as light as thistledown and
delightfully warm.

At Haarlem we heard the wonderful organ play, and at
Antwerp in the Rijks Museum I made a great discovery.
Golf was played in 1631, for a portrait of a young girl, by
de Geest, in a full length figure daintily dressed, holds a
golf ball in one hand, and a golf club in the other. It hangs
on the left hand side of the gallery almost at the entrance.
And the miles of pictures and my stubborn will to see them
put me in bed for several days, Joan of Arc, otherwise Rose,
saving my life by bringing me back to England and giving
me a rest cure. And I read in the lazy hours Mark Twain's
delightful life of that inspired Virgin Soldier, Rose's proto-
type. It was Lord Morris, I think, who said the only two
women of history who had saved their country were Joan
of Arc and Kitty O'Shea.

'TIS ALMOST FAIRY TIME

CHAPTER LX

THE LEPRECHAUN'S POT OF GOLD

" Our tokens of love are for the most part barbarous, cold and life-
less, they do not represent our life. The only gift is a portion of thy-
self— therefore let the farmer give his corn — the miner his gem — the
sailor coral and shells — the painter his picture and the poet his poem."

FR some occult reason, from Emerson's many pages
only this charming sentiment remains in my memory ;
maybe, that one day it was to have a deeper meaning
to me. In my childhood my belief in the fairies was absolute..
Mammy, when she said good-night, was always cautioned to
leave the window wide open, and when the moonbeams slanted
into my room, I always expected to see a cohort of fairies
sliding down them, towards my bed. During the long, warm,
summer afternoons, I often, with infinite pains and hours of
work, made a fairy garden, a little place sweetly prepared
for their midnight revels. The lake was a doll's beflowered
washbowl, well set into the earth, lined with white sand,
filled with clean spring water, and wreathed around with
forget-me-nots. There was a little avenue of crepe myrtle
on one side, a flower of enchanting appearance, the leaves like
bits of deep rose-crinkled crepe, with a downy golden centre
of sandal wood fragrance, and on the other side big stalks
of mignonette arranged with great precision, while the
avenue road was lavishly paved with pearly pebbles, and
at the end came the chef d'ouvre, the throne of the fairy
queen, a small moss-covered mound scattered over with
rose leaves red and white, the finest roses in the garden
stuck in the ground and nodding behind it, and a special
attention to the queen was a court train left in readiness for

333

334 I MYSELF

her. This regal garment was made of heartsease, taking as
my foundation a piece of thin muslin, and sewing the flat
flower in patches of purple and gold on either side, for no
self-respecting fairy queen must have her lining showing ;
and the last thing in the evening, with a small watering-pot,
I left it all bejewelled and heavy with raindrops, for of course
fairies never take cold. And the fairies never forgot.

With life's sad experience and many necessities, the fairy
queen has ceased to be my favourite. She is too prosperous
and too powerful. She has a kingdom of her own and is
independent of me, so my heart has turned to the Leprechaun,
the little Irish fairy philosopher, he who understands the
value and forgetfulness of work, and sets a practical example
himself of voluntary industry ; for knowing where all the
crocks of gold in the world are, he lets them alone, and prefers
to sit cross-legged, with his cocked hat on the side of his head,
his bit of a dudeen stuck in his mouth, and by industriously
making and mending the fairy shoes, earning his honest
bread, rather than live a life of idleness and luxury. He
scorns to belong to the vulgar rich. One day I met a
Leprechaun. He didn't in the least look like one, being a
grown-up, and in ordinary clothes. No, not quite that, for
he wore a soft slouch hat, a long old faded friendly cloak,
curious rings on handsome slender hands, and no gloves,
although the weather was cold. He was striding along
followed by a beautiful knowledgeable sheep dog, but I recog-
nized him for a fairy at once. The Leprechaun's face was
kind and gentle, and he carried all the crocks of gold, as
Johannes Wolff would say, " widout to know it " in his head.
He had inherited a few crocks, so he was in no hurry about
those lying fallow, and there they might all be hidden now,
only to use his own language, I " browbeat and bullied him "
into parting with a little crock, which took the form of a
fairy play. He has many more — his mind to him a golden
kingdom is — whenever he chooses to give to the world his
charming dreams, inspired by his closest friends, " the stars,
streams and moonbeams." Unfortunately his pen has a
powerful rival in his painter's brush, and much of his time is

THE LEPRECHAUN'S POT OF GOLD 335

passed in his studio in the lovely old-world garden of his
country home. I wanted to be his neighbour, but he frankly
discouraged me. " You at Witley ! You would bore your
head off in a fortnight. You love seeing people ; I don't
want to see people. You like brightness and variety ; I like
dullness, monotony, and silence. You like company ; I love
to be alone." But he is never alone, his satisfying poetical
thoughts are his beautiful companions, while a happy opti-
mistic nature like his knows nothing of the flight from
despair, which drives human beings like myself to the weary-
ing company of their kind. The delicious fairy play really
grew out of the seed of " Blue Bell Time," it was the first of
the many songs of Graham Robertson's which Frederick
Norton has now set to music. When he of the faded cloak
with Bob (the sheep dog) saw me off at the pretty seaside
station of Sidmouth, and I returned on a cold, wet, spring
day to London, Frederic Norton, that brilliant, versatile,
contrary, delightful, witty, original man and musical genius
dined with me the same evening, and much against his will
I read " Blue Bell Time " aloud to him. I love reading
aloud, I hate being read to. Frederic Norton is in the same
position. When I put the book down he took it up and looked
at it : that was a hopeful sign. When he went home he put
it in his pocket. When he came again he sang me the verses
set to his own sylvan melody. " The stars, streams, and
moonbeams " are indeed as completely his in music, as they
are Graham Robertson's in poetry. Then I asked the poet
to lunch, for even poets must eat, and this one is an excellent
housekeeper. The musician came too, and after the meal
I begged Frederic Norton for a song, and as the story books
say, " he struck a few chords " and began. I saw Graham
Robertson lift his head and listen, surprised, and greatly
pleased, and at the finish of the fairy-like accompaniment he
said : "Mr Norton, your music has given my little nonsense
verses a new meaning." Perhaps at that moment the happy
idea shot into my mind of these two making a musical
sylvan play together. When I spoke of it to the poet he
completely scorned my suggestion and said, " I cannot do it ;

336 I MYSELF

what put such an idea into your head ? " But I hammered
away, and every time I saw him asked, " When is the fairy
play to begin ? " It didn't begin. Then a trouble, and an
uncertainty, came to worry me, and I made an appeal to him,
" I want distraction and an interest badly, and I am much
too distracted to give it to myself. You must do it for me.
Do, do, write the fairy play." This plan worked, and one
morning he came with the beginning of the first act and read
it. I listened with delight and enthusiasm, but couldn't
help thinking all the same, how much better I could have
read it myself. From that time the play made steady
progress. He could not go to his studio to paint just then,
being occupied with a dear invalid who was very ill at home,
so he wrote, and from time to time a little bundle of manu-
script was posted to me, and " Pinkie and the Fairies "
became my greatest interest and consolation. A kind friend
lent me a little house at Littlehampton that summer, and I
went down one afternoon to find it in complete order, with
even my first dinner of a country chicken and fresh green
peas all provided. Two American friends came to share my
solitude, and one day the very last pages of Pinkie arrived.
I wrote immediately to Frederic Norton and bade him
come for the week-end. I could scarcely wait to tell him the
fairy play was finished, and to ask him if he would do the
music. He instantly and promptly refused, saying : "I
must write music for publishers, I can't afford to sit down and
write a whole fairy play that may never be produced. You
are the most unpractical, unreasonable woman, you expect
a fellow to do anything you suggest without thinking."

I listened sweetly to the lecture, never for a moment losing
heart, and got off as quickly as possible to other subjects.

The next day was warm and sunshiny. After breakfast
we sat in the garden reading the Sunday papers, when I
asked Frederic Norton to read " Pinkie " out aloud. He
swallowed the bait without suspicion, and read it from the
first line to the last. As I knew it by heart it wasn't necessary
for me to listen closely, being occupied with the same reflec-
tion with which I had heard the author read it, namely, how

THE LEPRECHAUN'S POT OF GOLD 337

much better I could have done it myself ; but I rose to the
situation and encored the poem I love the best, the sleeping
beauty's song, " The wells of sleep." (How charmingly Viola
Tree sang it and looked it !) Frederic Norton said at the
finish, " There's no doubt about it, that chap has charm in
every line he writes, he's a wonder." I agreed, but was
reticent. The next morning as Frederic Norton was start-
ing for the train he turned back and said, " Just give me the
fairy play, will you, I'll take another look at it going to town."
Singularly enough it was near at hand. I heard nothing
for a fortnight, then a friend, himself very musical, wrote
me from London, " I spent the afternoon with Norton
yesterday. He was gaunt, unshorn and unshaven, and has
not been out of the house for days, but he has written nine
numbers of the fairy play and you will love them. His
opening theme for Pinkie is a five-finger exercise with
orchestral accompaniment, while ' Day was born a daffodil,
day dies a rose ' is set to really exquisite music." When I
returned to London, Frederic Norton said : " The thing
got hold of me, I couldn't help it ; I don't care now whether
it's produced or not, I'm writing for the pure love of it," and
in that spirit it was finished. I was a bit anxious until the
poet heard it, for he had very definite ideas of the kind of
music he wanted, being musical himself; and as Frederic
Norton is more than usually sensitive to criticism, I feared a
few arguments on both sides, and then what would happen ?
But there were none. We three met one afternoon at Sand-
hills and Frederic Norton played all the music on the white
piano, which he loathes. He says a white piano has no soul.
And the poet loved the music and the musician loved the
poetry, and except for the white piano all was harmony.
But the music was only in Frederic Norton's head and
fingers : he never put down a note of it and went off to America
and stayed there for months, with it still in his head. And the
fine, large, brindled mosquitoes of my native land, who love
the stranger within their gates, stung him almost into his
grave. Anyhow they gave him a slow, low, exhausting
fever. Then Pinkie and the fairies called him back to

22

338 I MYSELF

England, and ill as he was, he had all the music to write and
orchestrate in a very short space of time ; for Elf Twinkle
had whispered in Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, and he had
suddenly and irrevocably lost his heart to Pinkie, and it was
going to be done at His Majesty's Theatre con amore with the
splendid caste and the great success that everybody knows
by now, and this is how I became godmother to the fairies,
and how at last they rewarded me for the love and faith I
had, and still have in them. When the poet refused to share
my enthusiasm for his work, I sent — " unbeknownst " to
him — a copy of the book to W. L. Courtney of the " Daily
Telegraph," that most generous and big-hearted of critics,
and later received this encouraging letter : —

" DEAR MRS O'CONNOR, — I have read ' Pinkie and the
Fairies ' and find it the most charming thing which has come
under my notice for years. But that is not enough, I place
myself at your entire disposal to assist in getting it produced.
Is it an indiscretion to ask the author's name ? With kind
regards. — Yours sincerely, W. L. COURTNEY "

How kind ! I had only asked for his opinion, he gave it
and so much more ! So the play then had a godfather, as well
as a godmother, and surely a curtain never went up on a pro-
duction so surrounded with good wishes, and love, and
tenderness, and enthusiasm, as " Pinkie and the Fairies."
Every time I read it to a friend, which was reasonably often,
Pinkie added a fresh lover to her list, and the lovers only
loved her the more when Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree added
his magic touch to that of the poet and the musician, making
a happy trilogy of genius, and on December igth, Pinkie
not only completely conquered her admirers, but the public,
and His Majesty's Theatre was filled by an apprecia-
tive, enthusiastic, laughing, applauding audience. It has
been revived, and has every appearance of becoming
like the primrose, the daisy and the buttercup, a hardy
annual.

THE LEPRECHAUN AND THE GARDEN OF PINKIE AND THE FAIRIES

THE LEPRECHAUN'S POT OF GOLD 339

BLUEBELL TIME

I thought that the grass was green,
To-day it has all turned blue,

Had anyone told me — even a queen —
I would not have thought it truee

I wonder if I'm awake,
Those trees never used to grow

Bathing their feet in a deep blue lake —
I can't make it out, you know.

I always thought of the sky

High lifted over my head,
So please can you tell me the reason why

It's under my feet instead ?

But the Bellmen of Elfin Town
Ring out their delicate chime :

The world has not turned upside down —
It is only— Bluebell Time 1

THE WELLS OF SLEEP

As I leaned over the Slumber Well

Where the wild white poppies grow,
The heart from my bosom slipped and fell

Into the depths below.
And the waters cool of that healing pool

So stilled the throb and the pain,
That my heart sank deep in the Wells of Sleep

And never came up again*

For Hushaway Honey Dew-drips 1

The slumberous Hydromel.
From wild white poppies that brush the lips
Of the way-worn pilgrim who stoops and sips

A draft from Lullabye Well,

So still I drone like a drowsy bee,
Where the wild white poppies weep,

340 I MYSELF

And my heart that is drowned looks up to me,
Up through the Waters of Sleep.

Drowned it lies with its dream-dark eyes,
And a face so like mine own,

Image of me that is held in fee
By the Dreamland King on his throne.

And the Hushaway Honey Dew-drips,

The slumberous Hydromel !
Closing the eye and sealing the lip,
Stilling the frame to the finger-tip,
As the wild white poppy leaves fall and slip
Into the Lullabye Well.

CHAPTER LXI

MY STEPMOTHER FATE

" It is not in the shipwreck or the strife
We feel benumbed, and wish to be no more,
But in the after-silence on the shore,
Where all is lost, except a little life."

BYRON

WHATEVER I most dislike in life has been freely
handed out to me by my unrelenting stepmother,
Fate. A short stature (when I wanted to be
tall), freckles (when I wanted to be plain white), irregular
features (when I wanted a classical profile), a sort of general
failure all round and a succession of tragedies (when I
wanted a quiet life), while a very moderate success in any
one direction would have filled me with gratitude and
happiness. To have been the mother of many children,
or a woman with a career : a novelist, a playwright, or an
actress of repute, or a woman with a fortune great enough
to benefit the world. But my life has been a conspicuous
failure, partly through an intermittent will, but more largely
in living through the lives of others — and when it is too
late, and husband or children find other interests, women
like myself are cast aside, and life becomes empty and
valueless. I have loved too much, and given too much,
until the value has ceased. Only the most generous and
noble natures can stand continual spoiling. I have always
felt that everybody near me — men, women, children,
servants, and dogs — should, at no matter what cost to
myself, be made happy ; and a wrong sort of pride has

341

342 I MYSELF

governed me — I have never exacted my proper due, and
have taken only that which has been voluntary. What proud
folly ! Empires, States, and families, would all come to
grief through such Arcadian sentiments.

Lady R. once discussed this question at length with me
when I dropped into tea. We lived near each other in
Chelsea — she, in a charming house on the embankment —
and I found her sitting in her boudoir. Such a pretty
room it was, the walls of dark green hung with a number
of delightful fairy pictures by the late Richard Doyle (Dicky
Doyle). One in particular I remember : a huge blackthorn
tree with a ring of fairies madly, wildly, dancing round it,
in the early glimmer of a clear bluish, greyish, whitish,
pinkish dawn, and you felt in another moment the ring
would break, and the fairies disperse with the night. The
end of the room was occupied by a white cupboard filled
with gaily decorated old china, bird cages tenanted by prize
canaries, and singing bullfinches hung from the ceiling ;
the long French windows disclosed a near-by view of the
Thames, and across the water appeared the tall trees and
the fresh greenery of Battersea Park.

Dicky Doyle, by the way, visited the R.s some twenty
years or more in the country. He was an acquired taste,
and after six months or so, Lady R. rather wished him to
go, but later on she said if he had gone she would have
asked him to come back. These long visits still exist in the
hospitable South, but even there they are growing less
frequent.

What a kind and tender heart Lady R. had. On the day
of which I speak she had been sitting with an old friend
who was dying, not in her arms, but at her neck, since the
early morning.

He was a much beloved aged bullfinch from whom she
had never been separated. Even when she made country
house visits he was taken with her, and hung in his cage in
her bedroom : he knew her step, and always called her to
hurry when he heard it. He had been growing weaker

MY STEPMOTHER FATE 343

all day, and sitting there with the poor little bunch of
stricken feathers at her throat, we both felt moved to talk
with affectionate candour of many things, and of my theory
of wanting only what was voluntary.

She said she had felt exactly the same throughout her
own life, but had lived long enough to know it was a mis-
taken view — that every woman should exact what was her
right and due. Such a woman was valued, not the one who
waited for voluntary tributes of affection. The world
eventually passed her by, and at the end she was generally
left alone and sorrowing. In her case this had not
happened, for she was surrounded by love and troops
of friends, she had escaped the result of her too generous
temperament.

I went home filled with good and dignified resolutions,
but I let two of the servants go to the theatre the same
evening ; and as the front door key had been mislaid I
sat up, though mortally tired, until twelve o'clock to let
them in.

Undoubtedly one of the healthiest tenets of Christian
science is to pay more attention to yourself, and less to
other people ; never to rely on weak human creatures, nor
to expect too much of them, but to get your happiness
through God and self-reformation. The happiest women
are those who are adored — the unhappiest those who adore.
I belong to the latter class. Mrs M'Kenna, the mother of
seven children, sons and daughters, was a notable example
of the former. She was a small, elegant-looking woman,
wearing her hair in bunches of curls at each side of her face,
which was somewhat stern unless she smiled, then it was
enchanting. Her voice was a deep contralto, like that of
Queen Victoria, and she had an air of great authority that
even her children of quite mature age never thought of
disputing. Reginald M'Kenna, now First Lord of the
Admiralty, was his mother's darling, and he decided, for
her sake, not to marry while she lived, as a separation from
her would have caused her pain — although he would not

344 I MYSELF

have left her alone, as another son, Ernest M'Kenna, of a
charming, gay disposition, and equally devoted to his mother,
formed one of the household. What is this mysterious
compelling power that to the end of a parent's long life
makes children obedient ?

I believe it to be a latent sternness, a severe and constant
force of character, that every now and then appears — the
iron hand within the velvet glove is there. I heard a mother,
who is adored and cherished by her family, say : " If one
of my children did a disgraceful thing, I would never see
him again." And she meant it. Another more tender
mother would follow her ungrateful child to the prison gate.
We all know that heartbreaking recitation of Yvette Guilbert
where the son has killed his mother at the request of his
sweetheart, and holds her dead heart in his hand. Suddenly
he slips, and the heart speaks to give warning, saying :
" Don't fall, dear son, and hurt yourself."

It is the unselfish love of a mother for her children that
gives one faith in God and the immortality of the soul.
If the love of one human being for another is so divine,
then nothing short of Divinity inspires it.

These reflections are rambling away from the blows
which my unkind stepmother, Fate, has given me. Besides
freckles, failures, and tragedies, she has dealt me a fair share
of illnesses and diseases of a singular abhorrence to me, one
of them being a closed tear-duct which caused a constant
trickling of the eye for several years (and after three opera-
tions is now quite cured by a French salve given to me in
the first instance by that greatly gifted, and wonderful
musician and charming and lovable woman, Louise Douste.
It has been in existence since the time of Louis XVI.,
and is a most remarkable remedy). Recurrent bronchitis
annoys me ; and gout, too, which I always dreaded, is my
frequent companion, though I am not nearly so great a
sufferer from it as Lady Colin Campbell, that splendid
beauty and most excellent journalist, who is now held a
close prisoner by pain. How well I recollect the first time

MY STEPMOTHER FATE 345

I ever saw her ! It was at a dinner party given by Mrs
Campbell Praed, whose very successful novel, " Nadine,"
had just created something of a sensation. It was
a thrilling book, and the interest was enhanced by the
romance of its inspiration, which was, that in her buoyant
youth a very remarkable, beautiful, and popular girl had
made one of a country house party ; her lover had suddenly
died at midnight in her room ; and she had (for she was of
tall and powerful physique) dragged her tragic burden
along the moonlit corridor, and in the morning he was
found sitting in his chair many hours dead. One of the
guests, hearing in the dead silence of the night a weird,
scraping, muffled sound, looked out and saw a tall girl with
her face set in a strange and terrible mask, dragging
along a dead and stiffening body, the moonbeams slanting
down upon the glassy, wide-opened eyes. He said he shut
his door and prayed, but apparently he talked too, for the
secret became known. Anyhow, the world admired the
young lady's stoical self-control and courage, and later she
married a great name and a great fortune, became the
mother of many children and grandchildren, and lived
happy ever after.

Lady Colin and I discussed " Nadine " and many other
things, and were from that moment friends. She saw, of
course, my very apparent admiration for her beauty, charm
and intelligence. She was very dark ; her figure was perfect —
tall, broad shoulders, a naturally lissom, slender waist,
round, sloping hips, and in all her movements the grace of
a Spaniard.

She wore a closely fitting princess dress of lace and jet,
a string of pearls around her throat, a tiny golden key
depending from it (she wears that key still, I wonder what
tender secret it guards), and on her bodice a great bunch
of mauve orchids. Now, instead of the orchids on her
breast this cheerful invalid, who never leaves her house,
should carry the Victoria Cross in recognition of life's con-
tinual battle, for she bears her suffering with a courage,

346 I MYSELF

an equanimity, and a patience that are worthy of the
bravest soldier.

We women, most of us, need all these qualities — courage,
equanimity, and patience in reserve. But I have come
to the conclusion that what we do not need is " proper
pride." How much better the world would be without
it. Many of us have more than our fair share of proper,
justifiable, or false pride. And we are all ashamed of
something or other, and contrariwise it is very often the
thing of which we should be most proud. I have never
been ashamed of poverty, but always of unhappiness.
To be bankrupt of happiness : that indeed is a poverty so
bitter, it must ever be concealed from the world.

And I have always attempted to play the r6le of a happy
and successful woman, but lately a sad independence has
come to me, and I will play my part no more.

" I will instruct my sorrow to be proud.
For grief is proud, and makes its owner stout.
Here I and sorrow sit."

And I have a hope, that by making sorrow a friend, and
not trying to run away from it, and cheat it, and defy it,
and elude it, peace may come to me at last.

And it is on its way. This present life, which used to be
the only thing, has lost its importance. For quite lately
a surety, a sign, a token, came to me of my soul's separate-
ness from the body. I felt it flutter in my breast, and know
that it will live through all eternities. . . .

Circumstances change one's tastes and desires. My
once passionate love of home, now that I am homeless,
is passing, travel takes me out of myself and the happier
past. In a hotel, when loneliness submerges me, and
even tempts me on occasion " to sleep and wake no
more," I can ring the telephone bell, and ask the hotel
clerk what's o'clock — and if insomnia, as it so often
does, keeps me in its bitter grip all through the night, and

MY STEPMOTHER FATE 347

memory, the Lord of Hell, holds full sway, the silence can
be broken. In a certain hotel where I often stay, the night
clerk is a person of imagination, and when I ask the time,
he answers comfortingly, " Twelve o'clock and all's well ! "
or " Two o'clock and all's well ! " " Four o'clock and all's
well ! "

So, good-bye to you who have skimmed these pages. May
the clock strike happy hours in your own home — blessed
word — and may all be well with you !

INDEX

ABERDEEN, LADY, 152
Adler, Dr, 278
Agnew, Mary, 105-8
Alexander, George, 314
Allen, Grant, 240
Angele, 304

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 253-4
Ashburnham, Lord, 224-6
Atkinson, Dr, 39
— Ellen, 39

BAKER, DR, 25-6, 47

Ballantine, Walter, 226-7

Barrett, Wilson, 301-2

Barrie, J. M., 265, 291

Bates, Wm., 7-9

Beale, Mrs, 50-5

Beecher-Tilden Trial, 149

Beerbohm, Max, 203-4, 290-3

Birrell, Mrs, 21-2

Bjornson, Bjornsterne, 231-2

Black, Mr and Mrs Wm., 186-7, l89

Blouet, Paul, 244

Borthwick, see Glenesk

Braddon, see Maxwell

Bright, John, 81, 256

Brigit, see M'Kenna

Brookfield, Mrs, 58

Browning, Oscar, 246

Bryan, Hon. C. F., 95

" Buffalo Bill," see Cody

Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 165, 168,

170, 172, 241

Burleson, Hon. Albert, 223
Burne- Jones, Sir E., 189-90
Burnham, Lord, 309
Byles, Mrs, 258

CAMERON, DON, 79
Campbell, George, 129

— Lady Archibald, 184

— Lady Colin, 344-5

— Mrs S. P., 243

Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 291
Carlsriihe, 202

Carlyle, Thomas, 280
Carnegie, Andrew, 211
Carter, Chief Justice, 89
Charlotte, 47

Chart, Mrs Nye, 187

Cheatham, Miss, 268

Christiania, 230

Churchill, Lady Randolph, 165

Clark, Daniel, 14

Clarke, Max, 146-7

— Mrs, 146-7

Cody, Colonel, 27-8, 191

Coles, Mrs, see Roosevelt

Conant, Mr, 118, 179

Corcoran, Mr, 69-70, 92

Courtney, W. L., 338

Craigie, Mrs, 258-61

Crawford, Mrs,. 149

Crewe, Lord, 250, 252

Croome, Sir Halliday, 270, 275, 278-

DAVIS, JEFFERSON, 100-1
Day, Mrs, 141

— Elizabeth, 141

Deems, Mr and Mrs Frank, 93
De Lara, I., 168-9
Dene, Dorothy, 184
Dillon, John, 232
Douglas, George, 81-4
Douste, Louise. 344
Doyle, Richard, 342

— Sir A. Conan, 266
Ducey, Father, 131-3
Duval, Major, 6

EDWARDES, GEORGE, 314

Eli, 1 8

Evans, Admiral, 69

— Dick, 69

FAIRFAX, LETTICE, 290
Field, Eugene, 245-7
Fiske, Mrs Bradley, 115-6
Fortescue, Miss, 185
Foster, James, 267
Frederic, Harold, 178-9, 238
Friendship, Thoughts on, 149-51

GAINES, MRS, 14-5
Georgetown Convent, 59-61
Gill, Mr, 205
Gillette, Dan, 66

— Dr Walter, 133, 135-6, 146

349

350

I MYSELF

Gladstone, W. E., 182, 207, 224,

246

Glenesk, Lord, 238-9
Gould, Sir F. C., 127, 254-5
Govett, Mrs, 181
Grahame, Kenneth, 186, 264-5
Grant, General, 79
Green, Mr, 93

Grieg, Mr and Mrs E., 227-8
Guilbert, Yvette, 344
Guthrie, Anstey, 243-4

HACKNEY, MABEL, see Irving, Mrs

Hall, Gertrude, 298-9
Hardy, Thomas, 168, 186
Harper, Joseph, 115-8
Harris, Joel Chandler, 120-7
Harte, Bret, 250-2
Hawtrey, Charles, 314
Hayes, Frank, 41, 43-4

— Matthew, 29

— Mrs, 39-41

— Nannie, 43
Hayne, Scale, 311-2
Healy, Tim, 216
Hecht, Max, 241
Heidelberg, 200
Height, Amy, 290
Henniker, Mrs, 250
Hester, 1-5
Hobbes, see Craigie
Hodgson-Burnett, Mrs, 250, 252
Holiday, Henry, 189
Holland, 318-32

Howard, Florida, 52

— Francis, 102-3, 281-6, 325
Hunt, Richard, in
Hurlbert, W. H., 109-14
Hutchinson, A. S., 262-4
Hynes, Miss Polly, 6, 30

IBSEN, H., 230

Irish Party, state of, 232-5

Irving, Sir Henry, 297, 300

— Laurence, 290, 299-300

— Mrs Laurence, 300

" JACK THE RIPPER," 214
James, Colonel, 191

— Henry, 293-6

Jeune, Lady, 158, 169, 181, 243-4,
306-7

— Sir F., 168, 307
Johnson, Mary, 158
Journalists, Soc. of Women, 309-11,

313

KELLOGG, MRS, 69
Keogh, Judge, 178
Kirkland, General, 147-8
Kreuznach, 178

LABOUCHERE, DORA, see Mar-
quesa di Rudini

— Henry, 81-2, 161-4, 210-4, 224,

— Mrs H., 160-1, 168, 183-5, I9I'3»
210,255-6,280,290-1,297

Lane, Miss Harriet, 66
Lang, Andrew, 246
Langtry, Mrs, 163
Leighton, Sir Frederic, 184
Levy, Mr, 188
Liszt, F., 257
Littlehampton, 336
Lowther, Claude, 325

— Mrs Frances, 55, 325
Lucy, Sir H. W., 279
Lussan, Zelie de, 28

MACKAY, MRS, 311
Mallory, Dr, 104
Mandeville, Lady, in
Manning, Cardinal, 175-6, 286
Mansfield, Richard, 109
Marlborough, Duke and Duchess

of, 255

Marriages, Anglo-American, 150-2
Marsh, Mr, 22-3
Marshall, Luxmore, 185
Marston, Philip Burke, 236-7
Mason, Captain, 66
Massingham, H. W., 211, 220-1
Maude, Cyril, 314
" Max Gladstone O'Connor," 172-7,

295-6

Maxwell, Mr and Mrs, 161, 325
Maynard, Captain, 9
M'Carthy, Charlotte, 159-60, 164,278

— Justin 57-8, 142-3, 155, 158,
163-5, 278

— Justin Huntly, 142-3, 165
Meredith, George, 281
Merivale, Mr and Mrs, 180
Milbanke, Sir F. and Lady, 223-4
Miles, Frank, 162-3

Mitchell, Colonel, 142-3, 145
M'Kenna, Brigit, 133-40

— Ernest, 344

— Mrs, 343

— Reginald, 203, 343
Moore, Frankfort, 239

— George, 248-50

— J. T., 80

— Miss, 141-2

INDEX

Morgan, Franzie, 75-7

— Mr and Mrs, 75-6
Morley, John, 211, 214
Morris, Lewis, 168

— Lord, 332

— William, 301
Mortimer, Rose, 315-26
Moulton, Mrs L. C., 236-7
Murphy, Dr P., 285

— Helen, 285-6
Murray, David, 288-9

NORMAN, SIR HENRY, 157
Norreys, Rose, 184
Norton, Frederic, 335-7
Norway, 227-30

OAKLEY LODGE, 236
Oberammergau, 287
O'Brien, Mr and Mrs Wm., 232-3
O'Connor, Mary, see O'Malley

— T. P., 142-5, 165, 173, 205,
229, 232, 308-9

O'Malley, Mrs Wm., 155
O'Reilly, J. B., 246
O'Rell, see Blouet
O'Shea, Captain, 205-9, 232

PAGE, THOMAS NELSON, 128-9, 227,
229, 238, 306

Palmer, A. M., 85-6, 109

Parke, Ernest, 211, 216

Parker, Dr, 130-1

Parnell, Charles, 205-9, 214, 232-5

Partridge, The Misses, 65-6

Paschal, Elizabeth, early years,
i-io ; defence of slaves, 16-24 ;
visit to a circus, 35-6 ; dolls,
36-8 ; school days, 59-62 ; dtfbut,
66-71 ; first marriage, 70-1 ;
birth of a son, 74-5 ; War Office
work, 79-80 ; the stage, 85-6 ;
New York, 93-102 ; convent
life, 103; journalism, 109-11;
literary reader, 116-8 ; illness,
135-6; meeting with " T. P.,"
142 ; New York again, 146 ;
marriage and life in London,
I53-7I ; Germany, 178-82, 195-9;
a General Election, 205 ; Stone-
cutter Street, 216-27; Chelsea,
236 ; The Lost Leader, 241-3 ;
Lady from Texas, 269 ; illness,
270-8, 313, 318; Madame Del-
phine, 290 ; the music-hall, 314-6 ;
Germany and Holland, 318-27

Paschal, Judge, 11-5, 24, 28-32,
63-4, 85-91

— Marcellus, 20

— Mrs, 46-7, 50
Paul, Herbert, 250
Phelan, James, D., 266-7
Piccolellis, Marquesa, 81
Pinerp, Sir A. W., 252-3
Pinkie and the Fairies, 335-7
Playfair, Sir Lyon, 224

" Pomp," 32

Ponsonby, Claude, 185

Pope's Villa at Twickenham, 160-2

Praed, Mrs Campbell, 345

Pulitzer, Mr, 115

RAIKES, Rx. HON. CECIL, 307
Raleigh, Mrs Cecil, 290
Rehan, Ada, 244
Reid, J. Whitelaw, 123-4
Reilly, Dr, 74

— John D., 129

— Major, 129

Richards, John Morgan, 258-61

— Mrs, 259-61
Riddell, Mr, 89
Ridge, W. Pett, 245
Ripon, Lady, 223

Robertson, Graham, 151, 293, 314-5,
33S-7

— J. Forbes, 242
Robinson, Mr, 94
Roosevelt, Miss, 312
Rose, see Mortimer
Rotterdam, 323-7
Rowe, Mrs Jopling, 168
Rudini, Marquesa di, 161-2, 168
Russell, Henry, 311

— Sir Charles, 224

ST HELIER, see Jeune

Sala, G. A., 162, 183-9

Sally, 20-2

Sargent, John S., 280-1

Schleswig-Holstein, Prince Christian

of, 257-8

Schreiner, Olive, 301
Schwalbach, 195
Scott, Clement, 269

— Sir Walter, 279-80
Severance, Mark, 66

Shaw, G. B., 211, 217-22, 224,

290

Sheppard, Governor and Mrs, 70
Sidmouth, 335
Slavery, 16-23
Smiles, Clement Locke, 317
Stahl, Rose, 95-8

352

I MYSELF

Stalheim, 229
Stansfeld, James, 224
Star, The, 210-4
Starkweather, Miss, 181
Stevenson, Mrs, 69

— R. L., 279-80
Stewart, Admiral, 208
Steiner, Adele, 223, 225
Stirling, Mrs, 61
Stoll, Oswald, 314, 316
Street, George, 248
Sunderland, Dr S., 313-4
Sutton, Mr and Mrs Bland, 313

TAIT, LAWSON, 178, 295
Tate, Fanny, 190
Telegraph, Daily, 308-9
Teresa, Sister, 137-40
Terry, Ellen, 297-9, 314
Thackeray, Wm. M., 56-8
Thomas, Brandon, 290

— Sue, 48
Thompson, Sir H., 243-4

Tree, Sir H. B. and Lady, 162, 224,
3M, 338

VALE, AGNES, 302-5
Vanderbilts, the, 1 10-1
Vaughan, Kate, 184

WAITH, MRS, 81

Walker, Mr, 304

Ward, Miss, 181

Ward-Beecher, Henry, 130-1, 149*

Weylan, Edith, 316

Whistler, J. M'N., 162, 280

White, Lady, 181

White Plains School, 61

Whitman, Walt, 81-4

Wilde, Oscar, 159, 224, 238

William (negro slave), 23-4

— (" buttons "), 170-1
Wittgenstein, Princess, 257
Wolff, Johannes, 175-6, 225, 227-8,

238, 286-7, 323
Woolson,' Constance Fenimore.,

"5
Wyndham, Sir Chas., 314

YOUNG, MR, 18-19

— Mrs, 65

TORNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

a

CO

i

* CO

o
o

PQ O

University of Toronto
Library

DO NOT

REMOVE

THE

CARD

FROM

THIS

POCKET

Acme Library Card Pocket

LOWE-MARTIN CO. LIMITED