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George- Somes • Iayakd
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LIBRARY
OF THE
University of California.
Class
MRS. LYNN LINTON
HER LIFE, LETTERS, AND OPINIONS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Life and Letters of Charles Keene of "Punch"
Tennyson and his Pre-Raphaelite Illustrators
George Cruikshank's Portraits of Himself
His Golf-Madness, and other Queer Stories
Society Straws
or THE
MRS. LYNN LINTON
By periniision o/ Messrs. IT. &■ D. Downey
MRS. LYNN LINTON
HER LIFE, LETTERS, AND OPINIONS
GEORGE SOMES LAYARD
WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
1901
TO
MY FRIEND OF TWENTY YEARS
WILLOUGHBY HYETT DICKINSON
I AM PROUD TO
DEDICATE
THIS BOOK
" IVe jitay ie sure (although we know not why) that ive live our lives,
like coral insects, to build up insensibly , in the twilight of the seas
of time, the reef of righteousness. And we may be sure (although we
see not how) it is a thing worth doing." R. L. Stevenson
PREFACE
IN 1885, Mrs. Lynn Linton published what was to her
friends the most interesting of all her works. Therein,
under the guise of the Autobiography of Christopher
Kirklayid, she gave a sufficiently candid account of the iirst
threescore years of her own somewhat chequered career.
Unfortunately for the success of the book, it was published
as a three-volume novel, and, as such, miscarried. Written
though it was with heart's blood, it failed to convince those
who would have revelled in an avowed " Confession."
It treated largely, as was inevitable, of persons with whom
Mrs. Linton had been brought into contact, and in an
unfortunate moment she conceived the idea of reversing her
own sex and that of many of her characters for their better
disguise. To those who could read between the lines the
effect was somewhat bizarre, while to those not in the secret
the story was in parts incomprehensible. Thus the book
enjoyed a lesser vogue than any of her three-volume novels,
and never reached a second edition. And yet it is a human
document of real importance and engrossing interest.
In a list of her works drawn out for a friend, Mrs.
Linton inserted against Christopher Kirkland the words which
Goethe had made famous, " VVahrheit und Dichtung," and to
Miss Bird in after life she wrote of it —
" It was an outpour no one hears me make by word of
mouth, a confession of sorrow, suffering, trial, and determina-
tion not to be beaten, which few suspect as the underlying
truth of my life."
And, read as the story of a soul, it is surely worthy to
rank with the most touching of self-revelations ever given
to the world.
To me, as Mrs. Linton's biographer, the failure of the
viii PREFACE
book has, of course, proved an unmixed advantage. Had it
obtained anything like a fair measure of success, I should
have been in two minds as to the extent to which it should
be used in the following pages. As it is, I have not hesitated
— indeed, I have felt it obligatory — to make copious extracts,
dotting the i's and crossing the t's where necessary. Nor
have I scrupled to readjust names and sexes in such
quotations as have been made, for the constant pulling-up of
the reader by a bracketed (he) here or a bracketed (she) there
would have proved both tiresome and offensive. No efforts
have been spared to test the accuracy of all facts which have
been thus conveyed. Particularly was I fortunate in obtain-
ing the co-operation of Mrs. Gedge, Mrs. Linton's dearly-loved
sister, who is since deceased.
If any there chance to be who put down this book with
a desire to know more of its subject, I would recommend
them to obtain a copy of Christopher Kirkland itself, and read
the three volumes from beginning to end.
I would take this opportunity of tendering my hearty
thanks to Miss Ada Gedge for the untiring and ungrudg-
ing help which she has given me in the preparation of
this book ; to the owners of the copyright of Christopher
Kirkland for their kindness in allowing me to make copious
extracts from that work ; to Mrs. Hartley, Miss Beatrice
Harraden, Mrs. Berridge, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mrs. Campbell
Praed, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, Miss Amy Murray, Miss Bird,
Lady Priestley, Lady Wardle, Sir Harry Johnston, Canon
Rawnsley, Dr. Richard Garnett, Mr. Harry Orrinsmith, Mr.
Sargent, Mr. Sidney Low, Mr. Mackenzie Bell, Mr. W. E.
Adams, Mr. A. W. Benn, Major Brickmann, Mr. J. F. Fuller,
Mr. Sinnett, Mr. Rider Haggard, Mr. John Stafford, and Dr.
Kiallmark, for their valuable notes ; to Mr. Herbert Spencer
and others, for allowing me to print their letters ; to my friends
Mr. H. A. Acworth and Mr. H. W. Smith, for their kindness in
reading my manuscript ; to Miss Hogarth, for permission to
print the letters of Charles Dickens ; and last, but not least,
to my wife, my best and most relentless critic, to whom this
work should have been dedicated had I been allowed to
have my way.
G. S. L.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
PAGE
I.
Early Years ......
I
II.
Early Years {Contmued) ....
18
III.
Eliza Lynn at Seventeen
29
IV.
From Crosthwaite to London .
41
V.
Early Life in London — 1845-1851
50
VI.
Social Life and Friendships in the "Fifties"
64
VII.
1851-1857 ......
n
VIII.
Marriage— 1858 .....
88
IX.
Marriage {Continued) — 1858-1867.
99
X.
Walter Savage Landor and E. L. L. .
no
XI.
Literary Work— 1858- 1867
125
XII.
The " Saturday Review " and the Woma>
Question— 1 866-1 868 ....
. 136
XIII.
1868-1871
• 151
XIV.
Spiritualism
165
XV.
1872-1876
179
XVI.
1877-1879
197
XVII.
1880-1885
220
XVIII.
1885-1888
246
XIX.
1 889-1 890
262
XX.
1891-1892
277
XXI.
1893-1895
289
XXII.
I 896-1 897
318
XXIII.
1898 .
• 339
XXIV.
1898 {Continued)
Appendices .
Bibliographical
Index .
355
375
• 379
. 381
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Mrs. Lynn Linton {From a Photo by Messrs. W.
&^ D. Downey) ....
Mrs. James Lynn ....
Eliza Lynn .....
William James Linton {Circa 1858)
Mrs. Lynn Linton {About the time of her Mar-
riage— 1858) .....
Brantwood {As enlarged by Ruskin)
Walter Savage Landor
Gadshill House ....
The Authoress of "the Girl of the Period"
{As imagined by Matt. Morgan) .
Mrs. Lynn Linton {From the Portrait by the Hon.
John Collier). .....
William James Linton {From the Engraviiig by
Mr. W. Biscombe Gardner)
Mrs. Lynn Linton {Fro7n a Photo by Messrs.
Elliot &> Fry) .....
Frontispiece
Facing page 8
•>■> )) 30
» „ 90
,) „ 99
» „ 105
» „ no
„ „ 128
,, 143
)) » 223
„ 2S7
» 321
\
THE LIFE OF
MRS. LYNN LINTON
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
ELIZABETH LYNN (best known to the world as Mrs.
Lynn Linton) was born at Crosthwaite Vicarage, in
the parish of Crosthwaite, Cumberland, on the loth
day of February 1822.
Her paternal grandfather was a cadet of the Lynns of
Norfolk, to whom lands were granted in the parish of
Sparham by James i. As a lad of eighteen he ran away
from home and enlisted in the Blues. He eventually obtained
his commission, and served with distinction in the Seven
Years' War.i
By his wife, a descendant of Sir John Narborough (a
distinguished naval officer, also of Norfolk origin), he had
issue James Lynn (born 17th September 1776), the father
of the subject of this memoir.
Educated at the Grammar School, Rochester, James Lynn
proceeded to Wadham College, Oxford, took his degree, and
was ordained to the curacy of Horsham, Sussex. Thence he
became successively curate of the Parish Church, Maidstone,
and minor canon of Rochester. In addition to this last
appointment, he held the offices of chaplain to the garrison
' A fropos of their Norfolk origin, Mrs. Linton remembered her father saying
that if he or his had their rights, half Norwich would have been theirs.
I
2 THE LIFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
at Chatham and to the Argonaut Hospital Ship. In 1804
he was appointed to the perpetual curacy of Strood, Kent,
and in 181 1 combined with it the perpetual curacy of
Sebergham ^
Six years before this (1805), Mr. Lynn had married
Charlotte Alicia, daughter of Samuel Goodenough, then
Dean of Rochester, and afterwards Bishop of Carlisle.
In 1 8 14 he resigned the curacy of Strood, and was
appointed by his father-in-law to the rectory of Caldbeck in
Cumberland. In 1820 he became, in addition, Vicar of
Crosthwaite" and chaplain to the bishop. Thus ended his
clerical migrations.
Whilst at Strood he purchased the Gadshill property
(afterwards famous as the residence of Charles Dickens).
This he retained until his death on ist February 1855, at the
age of seventy-eight.
So much for Eliza Lynn's paternal origin. Her maternal
grandfather was, as has been said, Samuel Goodenough,
Bishop of Carlisle. Amongst other offices he held that of
Botanist to Queen Charlotte, a fact from which the students
of heredity will doubtless trace the passionate devotion of
his granddaughter to what was to prove one of her lifelong
hobbies. It was of him that the following well - known
punning couplet was written : —
"'Twas well enough that Goodenough before the lords should preach,
For sure enough they're bad enough for Goodenough to teach."
Miss Goodenough was little more than a child when the
young minor canon of Rochester Cathedral, the Rev. James
Lynn, determined to make her his wife. The young couple
began their housekeeping in the January of 1805, the year
after Mr. Lynn's appointment to Strood. Then followed
seventeen years of married life, and twelve children were in
^ It may be mentioned as a curious coincidence, that in going over the Parish
Register for his work, llie History of Strood, Mr. Henry Smetham came across
the following entry : " Eliza Lynn was buried the 30th day of October, 1577."
^ To avoid confusion later on, it should here be stated that the town of Keswick
was part of the parish of Crosthwaite, and the two names are often used
interchangeably.
EARLY YEARS 3
due course born, of whom Eliza, as the subject of this memoir
was always called, was the last, Mrs. Lynn survived the birth
of her youngest daughter only a few months.
Thus we have it that Eliza's was practically a motherless
childhood (a circumstance, as we shall see, of the first
importance), for although Mr. Lynn married a second time,
this was not until his family was grown up, and his youngest
daughter was out in the world. His second wife was Miss
Elizabeth Coare, who died childless, 17th April 1848.
The names of the children of James and Alicia Lynn will
be found in Appendix A.
So much for the bare outlines of Elizabeth Lynn's origin.
We will now proceed to the far more important consideration
of the circumstances and influences by which she was sur-
rounded on her appearance upon what was to pi'ove a scene
of vast experience and striking vicissitudes.
Vicar Lynn, as in the Cumberland fashion he was
generally called, was, at the time of his youngest daughter's
birth, forty-six years of age. Before half a year was out
he found himself, as we have seen, a widower, with twelve
children, ranging from the eldest son of sixteen to the baby
daughter of five months.
Of him at this terrible crisis in his life, his daughter wrote
sixty years later —
" My poor dear father ! The loss of my beautiful mother,
and, a year after her death, that of the eldest girl, who seems
to have been one of those sweet mother-sisters sometimes
found as the eldest of the family, had tried him almost
beyond his strength. His life henceforth was a mingled web
of passion and tears — now irritated and now despairing —
with ever that pathetic prostration at the foot of the Cross,
where he sought to lay down his burden of sorrow and to
take up instead resignation to the will of God — where he
sought the peace he never found ! He had lost the best out
of his life, and he could not fill up the gap with what
remained."
To the heavily stricken man, the task that lay before him
4 THE TJFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
of rearing his children might well appear hopeless, and though
he set to work with a strong determination to do his duty by
them, it practically came in the end to his finding anything
like individual superintendence, for which nature had by no
means fitted him, quite beyond his powers. As Mrs. Linton
wrote —
" One of our family traditions, rounded off, of course, by
repetition and the natural desire to make a good story, tells
how that, after our mother's death, my grandfather sent for
my father and urged him to do such and such things, whereby
he might increase his income and provide for the fitting
conduct of his family. To each proposal my father found
insuperable objections. At last the bishop, losing patience,
said angrily —
" ' In the name of heaven, Mr. Lynn, what do you mean to
do for your children ? '
"' Sit in the study, my lord, smoke my pipe, and commit
them to the care of Providence,' was my father's calm reply.
" And he acted on his decision. He did emphatically
commit us to the care of Providence, and he was satisfied
with his trustee."
This, no doubt, as Mrs. Linton says, has gained in the
telling. At the same time, in effect it was true. Passionately
attached to his children, as those who are alive can testify,
often performing for them even womanly offices when they
were young and sick, it is surely not surprising that, as they
grew older, this sensitive and sorrow-laden man, " easily won
and easily wounded," scholar and lover of books as he was,
should lose touch with them, and leave his increasingly
difficult task to the Providence in whom he trusted.
No one but an enthusiast could have contemplated with
equal mind the task of being father and mother in one to the
twelve children ranging from the ages of sixteen to one year,
and no one but a genius could have grappled personally with
the problem of their education. Even Mrs. Linton herself,
writing with the natural resentment of one who felt that she
had lost so much by a lack of the advantages with which
others of like social standing in those days were usually
EARLY YEARS 5
blessed, makes but a poor case against her father on this
score. Not that it must be supposed for an instant that she
did not cherish his memory, and, as occasion offered, speak
of him with loyalty, pride, and affection, but she felt it due
to herself that the truth concerning the disabilities under
which she had laboured in early life should be clearly set
forth.
Here is what she wrote regarding this matter —
" There was one thing I have never understood : why
my father, so well read and even learned in his own person,
did not care to give his children the education proper to
their birth and his own standing. The elders among us
came off best, for the mother had had her hand on them,
and the bishop too had had his say ; but the younger ones
were lamentably neglected. I do not know why. We were
not poor. Certainly, we were a large tribe to provide for, and
my father often made a ' poor mouth ' ; but his income was
good, the cost of living was relatively small, and things might
have been better than they were. At the worst, my father
might have taught us himself. He was a good classic and a
sound historian ; and though his mathematics did not go
very deep, they were better than our ignorance. But he was
both too impatient and too indolent to be able to teach, and
I doubt if the experiment would have answered had he
tried it."
By which it is clear that she practically endorses her
father's inaction, and justifies the self-distrust which led him to
forego the role of pedagogue to his boys,^ whilst as regards
the girls, it must be remembered that he was one of the large
majority in those days who had a strong prejudice against
intellectual pursuits for women, and could not away with the
learned lady of the period. He held to the old-fashioned
ideal of " Marthas for workadays and Marys for Sundays."
The following deliberate description of her father as she
remembered him will not be without interest : —
" Naturally indolent and self-indulgent in his habits, but
'Eventually all the sons except Samuel, who went to sea, and Edmund, who
died young, were sent to college.
6 THE LIFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
a man of the strictest temperance — never once in his whole
life, in that drinking age, having exceeded the bounds of
absolute sobriety ; fond of shining in society, where he
knew how to make his mark, but almost impossible to drag
out of his study for any form of social intercourse ; flattered
by the notice of the great when it came to him, but neglect-
ing all his opportunities, and too proud to accept patronage
even when offered ; a Tory in politics and a Democrat in
action ; defying his diocesan and believing in his divine
ordination ; contemptuous of the people as a political factor,
but kind and familiar in personal intercourse with the poor;
clever, well read, and somewhat vain of his knowledge, but
void of ambition and indifferent to the name in literature
which he might undoubtedly have won with a little industry ;
not liberal as a home provider, but largely and unostenta-
tiously generous in the parish ; fond like a woman of his
children when infants, but unable to reconcile himself to
the needs of their adolescence, and refusing to recognise the
rights of their maturity ; thinking it derogatory to his parental
dignity to discuss any matter whatsoever rationally with his
sons, and believing in the awful power of a father's curse,
yet caressing in manner and playful in speech even when
he was an old man and we were no longer young ; with a
heart of gold and a temper of fire — my father was a man of
strangely complex character, not to be dismissed in a couple
of phrases.
" With a nature tossed and traversed by passion, and a
conscience that tortured him when his besetting sin had
conquered his better resolve once more, as so often before,
he was in some things like David, for whose character he
had the most intimate kind of personal sympathy. ' P'or I
acknowledge my faults, and my sin is ever before me,' was
the broken chord of his lament. But to us c4iildren, the echo
of his loud midnight prayers, waking us from our sleep and
breaking the solemn stillness of the night — the sound of his
passionate weeping, mingled in sobbing unison with the
moaning of the wind in the trees, or striking up in sharp
accord with the stinging hail against the windows — gave only
EARLY YEARS 7
an awful kind of mystery to his character, making the deeper
shadows we knew too well all the more terrible by these lurid
lights of tragic piety."
Such was Mrs. Linton's remembrance of her father, and
probably, though almost cruel in its unhesitating dissection, it
is as near the truth as we are likely to get. At the same time
it cannot be too often insisted upon that descriptions of
matters largely conjectural — as for example the reading of
character must always be — should be accepted with due
reserve. We must remember that when Mrs. Linton wrote
her veiled autobiography she had behind her forty years of
training in romance, and that although the facts are true
enough, yet the novelist is apt to lose his sense of proportion
and to allow his dramatic instinct to run riot. He is, in
particular, apt to ignore the fact that cataracts and rapids
only break up the still waters of life's stream here and there
and at long intervals. He has trained himself to summarise
and foreshorten, and he epitomises a league on a square inch
of canvas. The point of view is of such supreme importance,
and the character of the artist so creeps into his work.
Readers of TJie Egoist will remember how the same
scenes described by Sir Willoughby Patterne and Vernon
Whitford travelling together in America so contrasted that
they " might have been sketched in different hemispheres."
So it is that other available sources should also be drawn
upon. From these we gather that Mr. Lynn was consistent
in his life, uncompromising in action, and a man faithful
to his creed. He was a staunch Churchman, impatient of
extreme or party views, and unhesitatingly Tory in politics.
He was passionately attached to his motherless little ones,
and at his death his nine children who survived knew that
they had lost a friend as well as a parent. " He was a man
of far superior culture to most of the neighbouring clergy, and
in his own person was better society for his children than
they found elsewhere."
From such scraps of information we can at an}^ rate
picture, but faintly it may be, what manner of man was
Eliza Lynn's father, under whose roof and jurisdiction she
8 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
was destined to spend the first twenty-three years of her
life.
We will now try to gain some idea of the social conditions
which surrounded her childhood.
At the time of her birth, Mr. Lynn, as we have seen, held
the Rectory of Caldbeck and the Vicarage of Crosthwaite in
the county of Cumberland. He also possessed the small
property of Gadshill near Rochester.
During these early years the Lynns lived, now at one,
now at another of these three houses. The exact dates of
their several migrations are unimportant : all that need be
said is that it was at Crosthwaite that Eliza was born ; that
she was eleven years of age when they went for a long stay to
Gadshill, from about 1833 to 1838, Mr. Lynn having obtained
leave of absence for the sake of his health ; that they then
returned to Caldbeck Rectory, and by 1842 were again at the
Vicarage of Crosthwaite.
Of Caldbeck, the " Braeghyll " of Christophej' Kirkland,
the following particulars may be gathered : —
The three hundred inhabitants of the large, sparsely
populated parish were half savages. There was no school.
As a make-weight, there was a public-house or jerry-shop for
every eighteen of the population. " The man who did not
get drunk would have been the black swan which the white
ones would have soon pecked to death. . . . Not a man
would have held himself justified in marrying before the
woman had proved her capacity for becoming a mother."
The Saturday night fights were as much a matter of course
as the Sunday morning shaves, and to these fights the priest
of a neighbouring parish came more punctually than he went
to his own chapel the next day. Nor did he come as
spectator. He " stripped to the buff," took his turn like a
man, and got drunk with the best.
With these abuses Mr. Lynn endeavoured to cope, but with
little success. His wife, who was sweet and gentle and
beautiful, had her hands too full, with ever a child in the
cradle and another at the breast, to supplement his efforts in
the parish with mothers' meetings, Bible-classes, and suchlike.
MRS. JAMES LYNN
(.MRS. LYNN Linton's mothen)
FROM AN OIL-PAINTING IN THE POSSESSION OF THE REV. AUGUSTUS GEUGE
EARLY YEARS 9
And the only other lady of their own degree in the parish
was the squire's wife, Mrs. Backhouse, and she bore child for
child with the parson's.
As for the church services, twenty was a full morning's
attendance, whilst " on afternoons, when folks were late, the
old clerk would ring the bell for a short three minutes, then
shut the church door in a hurry — even if he saw some one
coming in at the lych gate — glad to be quit of his irksome
duty for that day."
" Nay, what, i' fegs, we bain't agoing to maunder through
t' service for yon," he said one day contemptuously to Mr.
Lynn, when remonstrated with for shutting the church door
right in the face of Nanny Porter.
"According to old Josh, souls counted by the gross, and
the parson's own household did not count at all ; and it was
a wicked waste of force to spend the means of grace on a
unit. So Nanny Porter had to go home again and leave her
prayers unsaid ; and old Josh took the responsibility on his
own soul, and swore a big oath that hers would be none
the worse for the lapse,"
Pecuniarily the living was valuable, what with heriots and
fines (for the rector was also lord of the manor), together
with tithes in kind, rent-charges, and compensations. " There
was always bad blood at tithing-time, when the parson's
tenth ' steuk ' was sure to be the largest of the row, the
parson's tithe-pig the fattest of the litter ; while the geese,
ducks, fowls, etc., driven into the rectory back-yard for the
service of the church and in payment of these despised and
neglected functions, were beyond compare the finest of their
respective broods."
Such was Caldbeck seventy years ago. Morally, of course,
it would not in these days recognise the description.
Physically it is still a bleak out-lying station of the Lake
country, and unattractive to any save those who appreciate
the wildest form of moorland life, and care to take their doses
of nature unadulterated.^
' For its proper eulogy see The Lake Country by E. Lynn Linton, illustrated
by W. J. Linton. (Smith Elder, 1864.)
10 THE LIFE OF JMRS. LYNN LINTON
Crosthwaite, on the other hand, was comparatively in the
world. It had a south-going coach running thrice a week
to London, which could be reached in the reasonable time
of three days and two nights. It was less ferocious and
uncouth than Caldbeck, though in morals it was no better.
It had its High School and a fair sprinkling of resident
gentry. "A letter from London cost thirteenpence half-
penny, and — as once happened to ourselves, when we were
told the contents of a brother's letter as it was handed to us
through the little window of the house in the square where
the post office stood — if of likely interest to the public, it
was quickly read by our sharp-tongued mailsetter before
delivery to those whom it concerned. As envelopes had not
then been invented, and the folded sides of the sheet were
always closely written over to get the whole worth of the
postage, a little practice in peeping made the process of
deciphering easy enough ; and the main threads of all the
correspondence afloat were in the hands of our mailsetter
aforesaid."
Much of the commerce of the place was in the hands of
pedlars, who, with the carriers, brought a breath of larger life
into the small places, and told of the great outside world
through which they had passed. Amongst these, little
Pedroni, the Swiss- Italian, who wore huge rings in his
swarthy ears, was remembered through life for the kind of
Arabian Nights' splendour of gems and jewellery, silks and
shawls and "farlies" of every description, which he brought
into their existence.
Then there were the recognised " gaberlunzies," or tramps
of either sex, who came regularly in their appointed seasons,
" and were hospitably entertained with a bed in the outhouse,
supper at the kitchen door, and sixpence or a shilling at
parting in the morning." "My father," wrote Mrs. Linton,
" always added to his generosity a little homily for the honour
of the cloth and the tradition of good things."
The church was a fine old Norman structure, choked with
barbarisms. Frescoes had been plastered over and lost,
and whitewash vulgarised the great freestone pillars. The
EARLY YEARS 11
old coloured glass had been removed, and plain squares,
interspersed with a few "bulls' eyes," substituted. The pews
were the familiar old cattle-pens born of Puritan exclusive-
ness. The choir, a rough-and-ready agglomeration of young
men and women, who practised among themselves as they
liked and when they liked. The orchestra, a flageolet, on
which the clerk, as official leader, gave the keynote. With
all this there was "a peal of bells which was the pride of
the parish and acknowledged to be the best in the county." ^
Of them Mrs. Linton wrote many years later —
" They used to give Sunday a special character to my
mind, when they broke out into their Sunday song. I
should like ' a paean from the bells ' of Crosthwaite Church
to be rung over my grave week by week, for ever ! " Indeed,
she always retained a romantic affection for her old home
and its surroundings. Writing in old age to Mr. Wilson of
the Keswick Hotel, whom she valued for his friendship and
w?.s never tired of thanking for his hospitality, she says, " It
is odd how often I dream of Keswick — of being on the road
between Portinscale and the vicarage, or in the Lime Pots
or at High Hill. And I never hear the sound of a black-
smith's hammer without thinking of Keswick and how often
I have heard that from High Hill as I stood on the top
terrace of our garden."
These were but the precincts, so to speak, of Eliza Lynn's
childhood, for of course the family life of the rectory or
vicarage, whichever it might be for the time being, formed
a sort of oasis in the rougher and ruder life of the moorland
villages. And it was only by degrees, as she grew older
and more independent, that the freer air of the neighbour-
hood would make itself felt in the more restricted atmosphere
of the manse.
At Crosthwaite there was a fair sprinkling of neighbouring
gentry. Notable amongst these was the poet Southey, with
' " The late Mr. Stanger " (Mrs. Linton's brother-in-law), "taking to heart the
degraded condition of the building, renovated and beautified it all at the cost of
a small fortune ; and now it is quite a county cathedral." — Vide " Our Lake Land,"
Tinsleys Magazine, September 1867.
12 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
whose children the young Lynns associated. Of Southey
himself Mrs. Linton knew little save from hearsay, for when
he was in health and vigour she was too young to under-
stand either manner or conversation, and when she had
expanded he was nothing more than a wreck. Of the
Southey girls, however, she retained a vivid remembrance,
and used to tell the following story as illustrating their
homeliness and hatred of what they considered superfine
" nonsense." Mrs. Hemans was staying at Greta Hall,
and the young ladies found her too lackadaisical and
superior for their somewhat robust tastes. They therefore
deliberately brought down the soiled house-linen to mend
in her presence in the drawing-room, " as a useful counter-
poise to her Rosa Matilda proclivities." As may be imagined,
the poetess fled from the room in dismay, and ever after
cherished the most profound horror for the uncompromising
Marthas who had so wounded her delicacy. Then there
were the Speddings of Mirehouse, near Bassenthwaite Lake,
for whom Mrs. Linton always cherished a high admiration.
Being contemporaries of her elder brothers and sisters, they
were not, as she was often heard to regret, amongst her own
formative influences. Their thoughtfulness and highminded-
ness, the quiet dignity of their lives, their inflexible sense of
public duty, their orderly management as proprietors and
masters, their close friendship with the best thinkers and
foremost men of the time, were all matters from which
she could not but have been a gainer in the fashioning of
her life. Other neighbours were the Dovers of Skiddaw
Bank, the Bankses of Shorley Croft, and Lady Moncriefif,
who in her widowhood had settled in Keswick with her
four young children. These were the more notable among
the playmates of the young Lynns.
There were in addition three or four other families of
like social condition, who, with a county magnate or two
(notably the Senhouses) and a few retired officers of both
services, helped to form a somewhat exclusive society.
The dissipations of the little Lynns took the form of
picnics in the summer and teas in the winter, supplemented
EARLY YEARS 13
by the birthday treats, of which there was an average of
one in each of the twelve months.
Of a somewhat exceptional tea-party Mrs. Gedge sent
me the following amusing account : — " At one house lived
two old people, husband and wife, with their old servants,
Tim and Nellie. They gave one party in the year, and
every one went, though the social standing of the host and
hostess was not quite equal to that of the guests. The
ladies sat on one side of the drawing-room in a row, and all
the gentlemen sat on the other side, and woe be to the
daring man who attempted to break the lines ! Tim and
Nellie used to bring in two well-laden trays. Tim carried
the delicious cakes and bread and butter, and Nellie had the
tea and coffee. These were solemnly carried round three
times, which fortunately took up a great part of the evening.
The remaining time was spent in talking in lowered voices to
your right and left hand neighbours — for no one moved after
being once seated. At nine o'clock two more trays were
brought in, holding jellies, blanc-manges, etc., and everything
that was nice, with wine and negus. After every one had
eaten, and been further pressed to eat as much as possible,
the party broke up, and cloaks covered up the turned-up
skirts, and all walked back again home. The other parties,
of course, were not so peculiar."
The internal economy of the Lynn household was of the
simplest. The " servants wore short woollen petticoats,
cotton bedgowns and blue-checked aprons, huge caps with
flapping borders and flying strings, and thick-soled shoes
which wore out the carpets and made a hideous clatter on
the bare boards." Oatmeal porridge was the children's
staple food, with meat twice a week. "On the 'banyan
days ' there were large tureens full of milky messes of
exquisite savour, or enormous paste puddings — ' roly-polys '
— of fruit, jam, or undecorated suet. It was simple fare, but
it made a stalwart, vigorous set of boys and girls." There
was nothing of finery in their lives. The girls wore service-
able woollen spencers, " spring clogs " clasped on the instep
with brass "hasps," sun-bonnets of quilted jean, and in
14 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
winter woollen gloves without fingers. The boys wore
velveteen and corduroy.
In the mornings the little girls "did lessons" with their
eldest sister ; in the afternoons needlework with the nurse,
of which the turn-out in one year totalled a score and a
half of shirts for their brothers ! On Sundays the catechism,
collect, and gospel had to be repeated before church, and in
the evening a dose of Doddridge's Family Expositor sent
them sleepy to bed.
With the servants and humbler neighbours, to whom,
by the way, politeness and courtesy were pre-eminently
insisted upon — indeed, any rudeness had to be followed by
humble apology — the troop of healthy, laughing, motherless
little ones were prime favourites. There are even now living
some of them or their children who talk and think of the
Lynns as belonging to them almost as closely as relations.
One man, Joe Lancaster, the gardener, was especially
dear to Mrs. Linton's memory. This is what she had to say
of him and he of her : —
" He had," she wrote thirty years afterwards, " been in the
militia, and had come out of it with a straight back and
trim, orderly, well-disciplined ways, — how we all loved him,
and how good and kind he was to us ! very seldom losing
his temper, though we tried him sorely. . . . He had names
for all of us girls ; but I only remember ' t' lily,' * t' laady o'
t' lake,' ' t' lile queen o' t' woorrld,' and my own, ' t' plague o'
t' gardin,' once extended to ' t' plague o' t' hale hoose an' t'
varsal woorrld,' when specially provoked. . . . There was
scant ceremony used towards us by our family servants ;
and even now, if we go into the houses of those who knew
us when we were young, it is, ' Why, there's Lucy ! my woord,
but ye fettle well !' ' An' hae ye heard tell o' Arthurer? an'
how's Sam ? ' ' Gude sakes, if that isn't Liza ! Laavin days,
but ye dir graw like yer father ! ' I think our eldest brother
is generally honoured with Mr. as a prefix, and the eldest
sister is given her married name ; but we of the ruck are just
what we were christened, and for the most part our husbands
and their names are clean forgotten and put out of sight."
EARLY YEARS 15
As breaks in the life at Caldbeck Rectory and Cros-
thvvaite Vicarage, there was the long stay, from 1833 to 1838,
at Gadshill ; and until the bishop's death, occasional visits
to Rosecastle. Of the Lynn girls at Gadshill we catch a
pretty glimpse from no less a personage than one whom
Mrs. Linton believed to be the prototype of Dickens's
creation, Tony Weller. His name was Chomley, and he
was driver of the Rochester coach. When passing Gadshill
House, he was wont to crack his long whip and say to the
passengers, " Now, gentlemen, I will show you the prettiest
sight in all the country." And at the sound of the well-
known crack, a bevy of bright, pretty young girls would
appear at the window, nodding and smiling and kissing their
hands to the delighted old Jehu.
It was at Gadshill, too, that the first seeds of her early
republicanism were sown in Eliza's mind. Daniel O'Connell
came down to Rochester and took her impressionable nature
by storm with his splendid oratory and reckless daring, with
the result that she seriously contemplated running away
from home to offer herself as the servant of liberty, and
good for any work its champion might give her to do.
So much for the general aspect of things in the Lynn
household. Regarding the more intimate relations of Eliza
with her father, brothers, and sisters, there will be something
to say later. This chapter may, I think, be well concluded
with the notes furnished to me by the kindness of Canon
Rawnsley, the present Vicar of Crosthwaite. There is, of
course, in this some risk of anticipating the development of
the story, but it will perhaps tend at the outset to correct the
impression which might otherwise be left from the foregoing,
that there was a lack of tenderness and reverence in one
who often obscured the loving sentimentality of her heart
with the truculence and apparent ruthlessness of her pen.
" You ask me," he writes, " for personal reminiscences of
Mrs. Lynn Linton. They are very slight, but I willingly
give them.
" Whenever it was possible, she came back for a few days'
rest at what she always called Jiome. She had never broken
16 THE I.TFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
with the old ties of affectionate remembrance and of affec-
tionate hearts among the simple Crosthwaite folk who
remembered her.
" And as one by one they passed away, she seemed to
cling more to those who remained. Hardly a Christmas
came, or a New Year passed, but she sent some little
souvenir to her old friends, the parishioners who had known
her in her young days, and could tell her the traditions of
the old Crosthwaite days.
" Then her father's beautiful voice and dramatic way of
reading the lessons at morning service attracted people from
far and near. For Vicar Lynn's fame in these matters was
so widely known, that travellers by the stage-coach to
Penrith on the main London road were known, if they heard
that Vicar Lynn was in residence, to determine they would
halt at Penrith and charter a conveyance to drive over to
Crosthwaite to hear and see the old clergyman with the
finest voice in Cumberland.
" I do not think that Mrs. Lynn Linton liked parsons in
the lump, but she would have taken to her warm heart any
Vicar of Crosthwaite for old sake's sake, and she never seemed
so bright and cheery as when she came up to the old vicarage
to lunch, and then strolled into the various rooms and gave
her remembrance of the vision of her girlhood days, not
always happy, that the associations with each room called
back to mind.
" Then she would walk into the terrace garden, visit the
lavender bed she used to know in the old days, and go to the
lime tree and look at the initials of her name she had cut
upon the trunk years ago, and returning to the terrace,
would sit down and fight all her girlhood's battles over again,
and speak of the old wild days, as she called them, when she
was the tomboy of the family, growing up to be made often
enough the scapegrace of the family, sacrificed often by
passionate brothers, who loved her well for all their passion-
ateness, upon the family altar of childish discord and childish
scrapes.
" I do not, of course, pretend to say that there was not
EARLY YEARS 17
another side of the picture, but she forgot that other side of
impulsiveness, and perhaps at times vixenish, retaliation of
her girlhood at the vicarage in the glowing, happy way of
love for her dead brothers and sisters with which she always
ended her tale.
" Then she would walk down to the church and visit her
father's grave, and speak of the time when her ashes would,
as she hoped, be laid to rest there, not with any thought in
her mind or tone in her voice other than a kind of natural
acquiescence in the immutable law of nature, and I think a
wish to rest.
" Latterly she gave me certainly to understand that the
hard life of journalism by which she earned her living was
very wearying and wearing, and all she hoped for was that
hf.r health would stand the needed wear and tear till the end.
" Now and again, not without a break in her voice, she
would say she hungered for the old days of simple faith and
certain forelooking to the land that is very far off, but she
always left me with the impression that instead of thinking
scorn of those whose faith was unshaken, after the manner
of some who have broken from old moorings, she, on the
contrary, honoured those, and was helped by them.
" And she had long got beyond the view of the cynic, and
only desired that, in the light that is unapproachable to, she
too might see light. If I were asked what it was that made
her so love the old Crosthwaite parish and church, I should
answer it was because here her early thoughts of God and
nature came back with each returning visit in strength and
fulness, and she felt here as she had felt in the old days of her
girlhood's opening power.
" I think what struck me most about her now was that
the real Mrs. Lynn Linton was not the Mrs. Lynn Linton of
her books or her newspaper and magazine articles ; that how-
ever at times she dipped her pen in gall, she kept her heart
and her tongue when in communion with her friends free of
all bitterness."
CHAPTER II
EARLY YEARS (Continued)
JUST as every moment in time is the " conflux of two
eternities," so every child is to itself the centre of the
whole universe. By some, perhaps the majority, the
fact is never intensely realised. To others there comes a
sudden and severe attack of self- consciousness, which as
often as not exhibits itself in bitter resentment against
authority and a painful and unbeautiful self-assertiveness.
If not of very active growth, the disease soon yields to
ordinary treatment, and dies away in the wholesome atmo-
sphere of activities dictated by rulers and governors. Where,
on the other hand, it is of the irrepressible sort, it must find
a legitimate outlet in strenuous and original action, or the
patient will become a rebel and a nuisance to those about
him.
Eliza Lynn took the disease badly, and for the first
conscious years of her life, in the expressive language of old
Lancaster, was " t' plague o' t' hale hoose an' t' varsal
woorrld." That her circumstances were not those which
she would have chosen for herself, goes without the saying.
We all are apt to hold that we should have been, or
accomplished, something better, had such and such been
different in our early surroundings ; but of this we are
probably the very worst judges possible. And I think it
must be admitted that in writing of her childhood, Mrs.
Linton was apt to lose sight of the fact that hers was but one
point of view, and that amongst her brothers and sisters
there were eleven other points of view from which matters
might justly have been regarded in a very different light.
EARLY YEARS 19
As a result, we find a certain vein of self-justification, which
ignores the rights of others and makes all things centre in
Eliza Lynn, running through her autobiographical writing,
for which, if proper conclusions are to be arrived at, allowance
must constantly be made. At the same time, it must be
remembered that things affect us very much as we regard
them, and it is for this reason, as well as because other sources
of information are comparatively meagre, that in the writing
of Mrs. Linton's biography we need not hesitate to draw
largely from her own descriptions of her early years.
We have in the last chapter caught some glimpses of
Eliza Lynn's surroundings, as Mrs. Lynn Linton saw them,
casting back her memory through half a century. We will
in this chapter again look at things through her spectacles,
rejecting here and qualifying there as occasion offers, and as
rebutting or modifying evidence is obtainable.
In giving these early reminiscences, consecutiveness cannot
be closely observed. Nor is strict chronology of prime im-
portance in studying the early formation of character. There
are progresses and retrogressions, there are successes and
disappointments. But it is the fact that the soldier did fight
his battles once upon a time that is of importance, and that
the fights left behind them the decorations that can be seen
and the wounds which are hidden away. It is different, of
course, when the soldier comes to take his place as a leader
of men. Then he is helping to make history, and dates, like
milestones, must mark his progress.
Which is to say that, in attempting to obtain an impres-
sion of Mrs. Linton's early days, the reader must be content
with what is rather a kaleidoscopic than a spectroscopic
display.
First, then, we will see how the moral rule that obtained
during early childhood presented itself to her retrospect.
Theoretically, as has been said, Mr. Lynn committed his
large family to the care of Providence. " Practically," Mrs.
Lynn Linton says, " this meant the control of the younger
by the elder. The eldest brother was the master of the boys,
the eldest sister the mistress of the girls, with intermediate
20 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
gradations of relative supremacy according to seniority.
Hence there reigned among us the most disastrous system
of tyranny, exercised by these unfledged viceroys of Provi-
dence over their subordinates — a tyranny for which there
was no redress, however great the wrong. It was of no use
to appeal to my father. Had he sided with the complainant,
things would have been worse in the end, and there would
then have been revenge and retaliation to add to the original
count. It was better to take things as they came, or to fight
it out for one's self. And there was always some one still
younger to whom it could be passed on ; which was so far
a comfort ! Our house, in those days, was like nothing so
much as a farmyard full of cockerels and pullets for ever
spurring and pecking at one another. It was the trial of
strength that always goes on among growing creatures —
especially among young males ; but it was bad to bear while
it lasted."
Now this sounds somewhat formidable expressed in terse
and vigorous language as it is, but after all it is not so very
unlike the tale which many a "rebel of the family" would
have to tell of the system by which he got licked into shape
and eventually became a possible member of society, and as
likely as not the one member of which the family in after
years became proudest.
Nor was it surprising that Eliza, both by the inherent
defects of her character as well as by her position as youngest,
should suffer most, and indeed far more than her surround-
ings in themselves warranted.
Hers was just such a character as was bound to get more
kicks than halfpence in a little republic of this sort. Quick
to resent, sensitive to kindness, rebellious and affectionate,
wilful and soft-hearted, she was of necessity ever in tumult
and turmoil, followed by disgrace, punishment, and repent-
ance.
Then she was different in her habits to the others — the
one apart — and the tertium quid comes so naturally to be
the sport, the butt of the rest. Her shortsightedness drove
her in upon herself. She was solitary, studious, and thought-
EART.Y YEARS 21
ful. She seemed stupid to those who did not realise her
physical defect. Children are naturally intolerant, and when
she truthfully said she could not see things, she was accused
of lying. And we who knew her sincerity and honesty in
after years realise how this must have been the bitterest
experience of all. Part and parcel of this truthfulness was
the dangerous frankness with which she expressed her likes
and dislikes, and showed her partiality for this or that
member of her family. " Easily provoked," she writes of
herself, "and daring in reprisals, but, as the youngest, the
least formidable and most defenceless, I was too good fun
to be let alone. I was like the drunken helot told off to
se.f-degradation for the moral benefit of the young Spartans,
for I was teased and bullied till I became as furious as a
small wild beast. . . . Physically (these troubles) hardened
me to pain, but morally they roused in me that false
and fatal courage which breeds the dare-devils of society
and makes its criminals die game. But I was subdued at
once when any one, by rare chance and gleam of common
sense, remonstrated with me lovingly or talked to me ration-
ally."
It is curious to find that even thus early in her life she
was looked upon by her father and others rather in the light
of a naughty boy than a weak and defenceless little girl,
naughty or otherwise. That one felt her in after life, with
all her sweet womanliness, to have so much of the man in
her, was probably due to the same alloy in her composition.
Indeed, alluding to this, she has more than once said with
something of gravity, that when she was born, a boy was
due in the family, and it was only the top-coating that had
miscarried.
Still, with all her masculinity, it was one of the delight-
ful contradictions of her nature that she insisted upon her
womanliness.
One day a baby was brought to the house, and Mr. Lynn
came upon Eliza nursing it.
" Well, Eliza," he exclaimed with surprise, " I never knew
you were so much of a woman."
22 THE LIFE OF INITIS. LYNN LINTON
The remark sounds innocent enough, but Eliza was in-
stantly up in arms, flying into a violent passion at what she
felt was a slight upon her character.
It must not, however, be supposed that there was nothing
in her family relations to relieve what she herself says was
mainly a life of turbulence, mischief, flagrant disobedience,
ungovernable tempers, and inevitable punishment. It was
during these early years that she conceived two violent
attachments which were destined to continue so long as
life lasted. The objects of her devotion were her third
brother, Arthur Thomas, and her youngest sister, Lucy, the
late Mrs. Augustus Gedge.
She had no clear remembrance of this brother Arthur
before a certain day on which she had braved the wrath of
her second brother George, the then viceroy of the family,
and had been soundly thrashed for her pains. From that
day, however, on which Arthur had turned upon the " viceroy,"
and fought him for what he considered a piece of cruelty to
the little sister, he stood out in memory from the crowd of
elders, from whom the younger children were separated as
entirely as sixth form boys from boys of the lower school.
" After the scuffle," she says, " Arthur took me on his knee
and kissed me to comfort me. From that moment there
woke up in me a kind of worship for this brother, just ten
years my senior — a worship which, old as I am — still older
as he is — I retain to this hour. We have lived apart all our
lives. In over forty years I have seen him for two at a
stretch. But when I realise the ideal of knightly honour
and manly nobleness — of that kind of proud incorruptibility
which knows no weakness for fear nor favour — I think of my
brother Arthur far beyond the seas. He who as a boy
braved his elder brother for the sake of a little girl of five
who could not defend herself — as a man calmly faced an
excited mob yelling for their blood, to place under the
shadow of the British flag two trembling wretches who had
only his courage between them and death.
" The early life and adventures of this brother are a
romance in themselves. Had he lived in mythic times he
EAHT.Y YE Alls 23
would have been another Amadis, a second Wallace. He
is like some offshoot of heroic days, rather than a man of
a commercial generation ; and in him the grand old Roman
spirit survives and is re-embodied."
In 1832, being at that time twenty years of age, he ran
away from home, burning with enthusiasm to fight for the
Poles, Taken prisoner by the Russians, he was ordered to
be hanged. The rope was actually round his neck, when the
commanding officer, riding up to the place of execution,
was so struck by his beauty that he ordered his life to be
spared. " It was a pity," he said, "to kill so fine a young
fellow." Imprisonment on an island followed. After two
o; three years he was released, and returned home in so
deplorable a condition, that his sisters, meeting him on the
road, took him for a common tramp.
Eventually he became consul at Galveston, Texas, U.S.A.,
dying at the age of seventy-six in the year 1888. He left
his small fortune to his devoted sister. Over his grave she
erected a marble tombstone bearing this legend —
"A noble of nature's own making."
Amongst her papers she has preserved his side of a
voluminous correspondence. From that we learn that, how-
ever much he may have been her lord and protector rather
than her equal and friend in early days, in after life he came
to look upon her with enough admiration and confidence to
satisfy even her ardent affection.
But if Arthur was her lord, little Lucy was her " natural
chum." The description of" Edwin " in ChristopJier Kirkland
is that of Lucy in real life, and, with the sexes changed, reads
as follows : —
" Some eighteen months younger, I was the stronger and
bigger of the two. She had always been a delicate girl ; and
the nursery tradition about her was that when she was born
she was the exact length of a pound of butter, was put into a
quart-pot, and dressed in my eldest sister's doll's clothes — the
ordinary baby-clothes were too large, and her doll was a big
one for those days. I was her slave and protector in one.
She had none of the emotional intensity, none of the fierceness
24 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
of temper, the fool-hardy courage, the inborn defiance, neither
had she the darkness of mood nor the volcanic kind of love,
which characterised me. She was sweeter in temper ; more
sprightly, as well as more peaceful in disposition ; more
amenable to authority ; of a lighter, gentler, more manageable
and more amiable nature altogether. She was the family
favourite and the family plaything. . . . My brothers would
have kissed a hedgehog as soon as me. She was never in
mischief and never in the way. She cared only to play
quiet games in the garden when it was fair, or to sit in the
embrasure of the window when it was wet and we were forced
to keep the house. . . . Her supreme pleasure was to sit on
her ' copy ' (a kind of stool), in a ' cupboardy house ' — that is,
in the midst of a ring of chairs forming a defence work
against intruders — while I told her stories ' out of my own
head.'
" Besides this constitutional delicacy, to make those in
authority tender in their dealing with her, she was the most
beautiful of us all. Arthur was incomparably the handsomest
of the boys — did not his beauty once save his life ? — but Lucy
was the loveliest of the children. She was like one of Sir
Joshua's cherubs. Her head was covered with bright golden
curls, her skin was like a pale monthly rose, and she had big
soft blue eyes which no one could resist. Every one loved
and petted her, as I have said. Our father, who saw in her
the reproduction of our dead mother, had even a more tender
feeling for her than for any of his other favourites ; my own
hero, Arthur, loved her ten thousand times more than he loved
me ; and James, our tyrannical ' kingling,' who spared no one
else, spared Lucy. But no one sacrificed to her as I did, and
no one loved her with such fanatical devotion. It was but
natural, then, that she should lord it over me with that tremen-
dous force which weakness ever has over loving strength ; and
that I, the born rebel but the passionate lover, should give to
that weakness the submission which no authority could wring
from me. Also it came into the appointed order of things
that I should bore her by my devotion and that she should
pain me by her indifference. It was a preface to the life that
EARLY YEARS 25
had to come — the first of the many times when I should make
shipwreck of my peace through love.
" Yet had it not been for this devotion to Lucy, and the
feeling that I was of use to her for all her coldness to me, my
life would have been even more painful than it was. I was so
isolated in the family, so out of harmony with them all, and by
my own faults of temperament such a little Ishmaelite and
outcast, that as much despair as can exist with childhood over-
whelmed and possessed me."
Surely, few words more pathetic were ever written than
that simple confession wrung from her by her resolute truth-
fulness : " My own hero, Arthur, loved Lucy ten thousand
times more than he loved me." But this habit of accepting
the inevitable tragedies of existence and facing them with all
available courage, was a notable characteristic which, as we
shall see, stood her in good stead through life. The useless
folly of " clutching into the wheel-spokes of destiny, and
saying to the spirit of the time, ' Turn back, I command
thee,' " was with her too self-evident to admit of a moment's
hesitation. With greater wisdom, she "yielded to the
inexorable and accounted even that the best " — not the
best for her individual happiness, but the best for that
humanity of which she considered herself so inconsiderable
a unit.
It was in these outcast days, as she felt them, that there
came to her the curious conviction, so common to children
who find themselves detached, by physical or mental differ-
ences, from their fellows, that she could not be her father's
child at all, that she was a foundling, some day to be re-
claimed and taken home by her own, who would love and
understand her.
" I had," she writes, " a favourite hiding - place in the
lime trees at the foot of the garden, where I used to lose my
time, my strength, and mental health in this fantastic idea.
Granting all the difficulties my family had to contend with in
me, I do not think the desolation of a young child could go
beyond the secret hope of one day finding herself an alien
to her own — of some day being claimed by the unknown —
26 THE IJFE OF MRS. lAT^X LINTON
strangers coming out of space sure to be more gentle and
sympathetic than those others ! But I always added, as a
codicil to this testament of despair, that if ever I did find
these unknown dear ones, Arthur should still be my king and
Lucy my beloved, and that no new tie should break these two
golden links of the old sad, heavy chain. As another proof of
my childish desolation, if also of my intemperate nature, I
remember how once, in a fit of mad passion for some slight put
on me by my eldest sister, whereat the others had laughed and
jeered at me, I first fought them all round, then rushed off to
a large draw-well we had in the coach-yard — we were not
then at Crosthwaite, but at my father's private house in Kent
— intending to throw myself down and end for ever a life
which was at the moment intolerable and emphatically not
worth living. The heavy cover was over the mouth, and I
could not move it. While I was trying, the gardener came
along ; and, seeing that I had been crying, he good-naturedly
took me to the apple loft, where he filled my pockets with
golden russets — which consoled me grandly, and lifted me
over that little stile of sorrow into a flowery field of content.
I was then ten years old."
As has been hinted, no inconsiderable part of Eliza Lynn's
early life was spent in solitude, study, and speculation. We
will here try to gain some idea of this mental life which was
now to develop itself more actively alongside the physical.
It was within a year or two of the episode described
above, that, like Maggie Tulliver, she seems suddenly to
have become conscious of the birth of a distinct mental exist-
ence. Up to that moment any book-learning that she had
assimilated was " of the pothook - and - hanger degree — the
mere elements."
It was somewhere about her eleventh year that there
woke up in her the burning desire to know. Hitherto she
had received with contentment the Moral Tales of Miss
Edge worth, and with trembling the wonders of The Arabian
Nights. She had highly approved of Roln?tson Crusoe
and ElizahetJi^ or the Exiles of Siberia, but had been
prejudiced against Tlie Pilgriuis Progress, since it was
EARLY YEARS 27
generally " improved " for her benefit. When Passion came
on the scene, every one knew that Eliza was meant. When
Patience appeared, there was an unmistakable appreciation
of Lucy.
But perhaps the best remembered literary delight was
the turning over of the coloured plates of " the battle-horse
of the study library "^ — -the Encydopcsdia Londine7isis.
Now she suddenly realised that there was something
outside her narrow circle. The exciting cause would seem
to have been the return of her brother i^rthur from his
Russian prison. There and then she became conscious that
there was something else to be looked for in life than mere
physical enjoyment. History and geography were things
that wanted knowing — and those strange books in unin-
telligible languages in her father's library which she had
peeped into with bewilderment — they too must in due
time be forced to yield the secrets which now they held
so fast.
She had already embarked upon a full-blown novel, to
be called EditJi of Poland, and had woven many " a queer
garland of doubtful rhyme and halting feet to the pretty
playmate who was at once her care and mistress." True,
the former bore a strange likeness to that thrilling romance
aforesaid, Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia, and the latter
were probably as intrinsically worthless as such things gener-
ally are, but they were the outward and visible sign of an
inward and mental activity.
From this time she set herself with dogged persistence to
learn what there was no one to teach her. Astonishing as it
may sound, she declares — and this was vouched for by Mrs.
Gedge — that from eleven to seventeen she, year after year,
attacked, absolutely unaided, one language after another,
until she could read with ease and translate aloud rapidly as
she read, French, Italian, German, and Spanish, supplementing
them with a smattering of Latin, Greek, and even Hebrew.
Nor is this merely a matter of hearsay, for I have myself
handled volumes of extracts in her delicate handwriting
made at this time in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. All
28 THE TJFE OF ISIRS. EYNN LINTON
knowledge of these languages had passed from her in later
life, and I do not think she could even decipher the Greek
or Hebrew characters. True, she scamped the grammar,
neglected rules and learnt only words ; but with an intellect
quick to understand, and a temperament impatient to pos-
sess, she made her own Les ave7?ttires dc Tclcniaqiie ; she
brought to life the conventional portraits of Petrarch and
Dante which had fascinated her in the old encyclopaedia ;
she palpitated through the tragedy of Faust, and guessed
vaguely at the underlying philosophy and the tender satire
of Don Quixote.
But we must not linger unduly over these years of pre-
paration. Suffice it to say that, whether rightly or wrongly,
she always considered that she would have gone further and
done better had she been subjected to severe discipline in her
youth instead of being left to grow up in absolute mental
unrestraint. " I have," she often complained, " never been
able to put myself into harness since."
As her biographer, however, I find myself sufficiently
convinced that this lack of early teaching was more than
compensated for by the development of other qualities which
might well have remained dormant under more systematic
instruction.
It was the lack of rigidity and pedantry in her mind that
was perhaps one of her greatest charms, and how easily she
might have lost in humanity what she would have gained in
scholarship !
CHAPTER III
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN
ELIZA LYNN was now seventeen years of age. Of
medium height (a line or so under five feet five
inches), with good figure and erect carriage, she gave
the impression of being taller than she really was. Her
eyes (half hidden behind their spectacles ^) were large and
somewhat prominent ; her mouth was beautiful. Her hair
was light brown and abundant, and her complexion brilliant.
She was a notable-looking girl. Writing to Mrs. Gulie Moss
in 1892, she says of herself, " I am not a handsome woman
and never was, even when I was young and slight, and with
my ' wealth of golden-brown hair.' " She often said that up
to this age she was totally careless of her personal appearance
— that she was unkempt and slovenly. One day some one
remarked upon the beauty of her hair and the shamefulness
of being uncleanly. From that moment she dated the
passion for order and spotlessness which all who knew her
in after life remember as an inalienable characteristic.
Nor was this crisis of self-respect the only one through
which she was destined to pass in this time of young
womanhood. It was thus early that she was nearing the
parting of the ways between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.
Hitherto, morals, religion, and politics had been to her
terms of certain application. Up till now she had been
firmly convinced that she held " the fee-simple of all great
truths in her hand." " No question could have two sides ;
no opponent could be an honest man." English men and
' Speaking of her sliortsightedness, she said that when at fifteen she was pro-
vided with spectacles it was as if a new Hfe had been given her.
29
30 THE LIFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
women were God's modern peculiar people. " The English
Protestant Church was the very Delos of Truth." " Christian
prayers said in a foreign tongue were not heard with so
much pleasure nor answered with so much precision as ours."
Englishmen were " the best gentlemen, the bravest men,
the most enlightened and most virtuous people on the face of
the earth ; and every departure from their special ways of
living and thinking was a wandering into the desert with
destruction at the far end." Such was, as with many others,
the delightful dogmatism of her youth.
Then, besides being a devout Christian, she was an ardent
Republican — the latter, indeed, because of the former ; and if
the " Sermon on the Mount " were to be literally received,
of which she had at present no doubt, there was a further
logical step — it had to be acted upon.
" I began," she says, " by renouncing all the pleasant
softnesses and flattering vanities of my youth, and made
myself a moral hybrid, half ascetic, half stoic. I accustomed
myself to privations and held luxuries as deadly sins.
Sensual by nature, I cut myself off from all sweets, of which
I was inordinately fond ; and because I was a heavy sleeper,
and fond of that warm, enervating morning doze which made
me always late for breakfast, for a whole year I lay on the
floor, and despised bed as an unrighteous effeminacy. Never
cowardly to pain, I taught myself to bear mild torture
without wincing — as when I one day dug out a tooth with
my knife as a good exercise of fortitude. Because I once
saw myself in the glass with a strange and sudden conscious-
ness of the beauty of my youth and personality, I turned
that offending bit of blistered quicksilver to the wall, and for
six months never saw my face again. During that time I
had to undergo many things from my sisters because of the
untidiness of my general appearance ; for though I had
become scrupulously clean by now, as part of the physical
enjoyment of life, — clean even to my long brown freckled
hands, — I was but a sloven in the decorative part, and never
knew the right side from the wrong, and scarcely the back
of things from the front. I gave away all the 'treasures'
ELIZA LVXN
FKOM A POKTKAIT liV SAMUEL LAWliENXE IN THE I'OSSESSION OF THE
KEV. AUGUSTUS GEDGE
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN 31
I had accumulated since my childhood, in imitation of the
apostles and according to Christ's injunctions to the rich
young man ; and no one but myself knew of that little altar
which I had built up in the waste place behind the shrubbery,
where I used to carry the first of such fruit as I specially
liked, to lay it thereon as my offering to God — to wither in
the sun or be devoured by insects and birds. I set myself
secret penance for secret sins. I prayed often and fervently,
and sometimes seemed to be borne away from the things of
tine and space and carried into the very presence of God,
as it were in a trance — a still living Gerontius. I realised
my faith as positively as if it had been a thing I could see
and touch ; my confirmation was a consecration ; and when
first I received the communion, I felt as if I had tabernacled
the Lord in my own body, and that I was henceforth His, so
that I could never sin again. ... In a word, I lived in the
Christian's sanctified egotism — believing that all the forces
of heaven and hell were mainly occupied with the salvation
or destruction of my one poor miserable little soul ; and that
the most important thing between earth and sky was, whether
a hot-blooded girl with more sincerity than judgment flew
into a rage when she should have curbed her temper, or
heroically checked her impulses of sensuality in the matter
of jam-pudding and the fruit garden.
" But during all this time of my faithful endeavours after
a higher life, I was just as intolerable to my family as before,
and my passions were still my masters. . . . The boiling
blood I called on God to calm boiled ever as madly as before,
and with all my faith in the Divine presence and power, I
was conscious that I was not answered."
Nor is it surprising that with all this extravagance of
aspiration and its failure in practice, her father was found to
have but little sympathy. To believe the Bible, obey parents,
say prayers night and morning, be regular at church, and
keep free from forbidden sins, was an intelligible, orderly,
and practical sort of religion. But the inconsistency of high
endeavour and protestations of a desire after " superior piety,"
with an acted life of passion and misconduct, meant nothing
32 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
more to him, as they have meant nothing more to scores of
fathers in every generation, than hypocrisy and moral fraud.
That it properly connoted something other than this is
of course clear enough to those who have in like manner
found shipwreck in a purely emotional faith. As a result,
Eliza Lynn was left, for all the help she could get from her
father, to face alone that sense of being fated to sin and
foredoomed to perdition which was to drive her in despera-
tion— not, of course, all at once, but by gradual and certain
steps — to a complete dissent from the creed which she had
hitherto taken for granted.
But it must not for a moment be supposed that this period
of mental stress was unrelieved by physical enjoyment of the
keenest. " Bitter-sweet" she called her life at this time.
" No one," she says, " who drew in the sweet breath of
flowers or stood against the storm-winds, glad in youth and
rejoicing in strength, enjoyed the great gift of life more than
I. And no one suffered more. My recollection of all my
young life is that of a tempest. I never knew rest, never
compassed the outermost circle of serenity. I was always
either violently elated or as violently miserable — always one
with the gods or down among the demons who people hell."
And then it was that she began to dream dreams. With
immeasurable vitality — the immortality of youth — what
could she not do ? The time must come when liberty would
be hers, and this beating of wings against the prison bars of
home would be a thing of the past. Then the great decision
must be come to. Should she be artist or author? Ultimate
success was of course certain. And the claims of one or
other were not long in the balance. Her shortsightedness
must put any rivalry with Raffaelle out of the question. It
was clear as daylight that she must compass the overtopping
of Gibbon or Scott.
About this time it was that she came across a book
on TJie Difficulties of Genius^ which greatly influenced her
mind. Youthful vanity of course told her that she was a
genius, and that the book applied directly to her. In refer-
ence to it she says, " It had given stability to my hopes, and
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN 33
as it were a practical backbone to my ambition, by the
examples of others who, as untaught as I, had yet by their
own industry and resolve risen to be the shining lights of
their generation."
It was now, too, that a curious bit of hallucination came
to her.
" It was All Halloween," she says, "and we of the North
stih believed in spells and charms. My sisters and I were
melting lead, roasting nuts, and wasting eggs — whereby the
white drawn up by the heat of the hand through water might
determine our future — when I was dared to that supreme
trial : to go upstairs into my bedroom, lock the door, and,
with the candle set on the dressing-table, deliberately pare
and eat an apple, looking at myself in the glass all the while.
I would in those days have accepted any challenge offered
me — to go into a lion's den, if need be : this bit of fantastical
bravery was easy enough ! Jauntily and defiantly I bounded
up the stairs, locked the door, pared and began to eat my
apple, with my eyes fixed on the glass. And there, suddenly
out of the semi-darkness — the eyes looking into mine — peered
a face from over my shoulder ; a dark, mocking, sinister
face, which I could draw now as I saw it then — how many
years ago ! Broad in the low flat brow, with dark hair waved
above the arched eyebrows ; the eyes deep set, dark and
piercing ; the nose long and pointed ; the thin mouth curled
into a sneer ; the chin narrow but the jaw wide — it was all
so vivid that I turned sharply round, saying, ' Who is there?'
" No one was there, of course ; and I spoke into a void
more gruesome than that grim presence would have been.
" The vision did not return, and I ate my apple to the
last pip steadily ; but when I went downstairs they all
laughed, and said I was as white as if I had seen a ghost ;
and they were sure I had ; and what was it like ?
" ' The devil," I said gruffly ; on which Laura said mildly —
" * Upon my word, Lizzie, you are more like a bear than a
girl.'
" Long after this I had in my ears the sound of rushing
wings. They were so loud that 1 used to wake from my
3
34 THE LIFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
sleep with the noise as of large wings about my bed. And
with these were mingled whisperings and voices ; but no
intelligible words ever came to me, though I made no doubt
they were the same voices as those which haunted Christian
when passing through the Valley of the Shadow. I was
studying very hard at this time, and in the full swing of all
my private penances and eccentric self-discipline ; and my
nervous system was for the moment strained, despite my
powerful constitution."
By this time the conditions of life at Crosthwaite had
considerably changed. The railway station not twenty miles
away — and the penny post in 1840 — had brought a new
influx of life and motion into that " stagnant little stretch of
backwater," and with its daily coaches to and fro it had
become one of the " favourite show-places of the kingdom,
and as luxurious and polished as the rest."
As a result, now and again such celebrities as Carlyle or
Whewell were to be met momentarily by the young Lynns
in their enlar^^ing circle of acquaintances, and it was always
with pride that Mrs. Linton recalled the special notice taken
of her at this period by that trai,nc genius. Hartley Coleridge,
who because of his besetting sin could never be kept long on
a visit anywhere, and whose comings and goings were there-
fore always fitful and unsatisfactory.
As I have hinted, Eliza Lynn's mind was now ripe for
that change in speculative thought which was to carry her
far enough away from the beliefs and presumptions of her
childhood. And in dealing with these matters, it is not my
intention — indeed, I think it outside the province of a
biograplier — to point out where I may consider her to have
been wrong in her premises, illogical in her reasoning, or
unfair in her arguments.
The biographer's views upon these subjects are of no
matter whatever. Where his subject has chosen to give
opportunity it is merely his concern to set down what were
the speculations and reflections, leaving them to commend
themselves to the reader or not, as the case may be.
Nor is there in such a course the danger to orthodoxy,
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN 35
in the highest sense of that much misused word, which there
once might have been.
As Froude says —
" The creed of eighteen centuries is not about to fade
away hke an exhalation, nor are the new hghts of science so
exhilarating that serious persons can look with comfort to
exchanging one for the other,"
It cannot surely fail to be admitted that the problems
with which Eliza Lynn's intellect found itself face to face
in its exceptional precocity are now in the air, and are
commonly to be met with in the more slowly matured minds
of all classes. And this being so, surely only good can come
of a clear statement of them. Thus by degrees may come
to be recognised the imperative need there is for that " Free
Discussion of Theological Difficulties " so powerfully advo-
cated thirty-six years ago by the author of Short Studies on
Great Subjects, and hitherto only very partially responded to.
It is only, indeed, by meeting vital difficulties in the open
that the Christian religion can hope to retain or regain its
hold upon a generation whose intellects are stimulated beyond
the point of mere acquiescence.
It must be understood that what here follows was but the
prelude to that fuller materialism which Mrs. Linton after-
wards accepted. Much of it, I am aware, will sound puerile
and unessential. But, paradoxical though it may appear, it
is for that very reason that it would seem to be of prime
importance. A little open discussion, a little intellectual
sympathy, and perchance a few unimportant admissions,
would as likely as not have disposed of difficulties which,
confined in the forcing-house of her own mind, arrived quickly
at a luxuriant and irrepressible adolescence.
Here is her own account of the first breath of disenchant-
ment which touched for her the hitherto unquestionable Bible
narrative.
" One early summer's day," she says, " I was sitting where
I had no business to be, under the hedge of the as yet
unmown hayfield at the foot of the garden. I had taken
with me to read in quietness Ovid's Metamorphoses. If my
36 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
father had seen it in my hands he would have forbidden it
to me ; which was why I went where I was not Hkely to be
found even if looked for. I was digging away at the myth of
Nisus and Scylla, and the purple lock wherein the old king's
strength lay, when, for the first time, I was struck by the
likeness of this story to that of Samson and Delilah. Hitherto
all the Bible stories had been on a raised platform apart, and
there was no analogy with them to be found elsewhere. I
knew my Ovid pretty well by now ; and immediately, on the
discovery of this point of resemblance, there flashed across
me also the likeness between the story of Myrrha and that of
Lot's daughters — of Iphigenia and Isaac for the one part,
in the substitution of a doe for the one, of a ram for the
other; and of Iphigenia and Jephthah's daughter for the
other, where the human element is alone retained. With this
my mind went off on the now familiar track of the virgin
births, when suddenly — in that strangely rapid and vivid
manner in which such things come to me, as if it were really
the quick opening of a closed door and the headlong rush
into a newly furnished and brilliantly lighted chamber — there
shot through my brain these words, which seemed to run
along the page in a line of light : ' What difference is there
between any of these stories and those like to them in the
Bible ? — between the loves of the sons of God for the
daughters of men, and those of the gods of Greece for the
girls of Athens and Sparta? between the women made
mothers by mysterious influences, and those made mothers
by divine favour? between the legends of old times and the
stories of Sara, Hannah, Elisabeth — and the Virgin Mary?'
" When this last name came, a terrible faintness took hold
of me. The perspiration streamed over my face like rain,
and I trembled like a frightened horse. My heart, which for
a few seconds had beaten like a hammer, now seemed to
cease altogether. The light grew dim ; the earth was vapoury
and unstable; and, overpowered by an awful dread, I fell
back among the long grass where I was sitting as if I had
been struck down by an unseen hand. But this physical
faintness soon passed, and my mind went on following the
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN 37
line of thought I had begun, as if I were talking aloud to
some one at hand.
" No one at the time knew anything about the miraculous
conception of Mary's child. Joseph himself was only warned
in a dream not to doubt her, for that she was with child by
the Holy Ghost, as announced to her by the Angel Gabriel-
Does any one know more now than was known then ? If this
Christian marvel is true, why not all the rest ? Why should
we say that Mary alone spoke the truth and that every one
else has lied ? But spirits do not come to women ; there were
no such beings as those old gods who were said to have come
down from Olympus to mingle in the affairs of mortals ; that
passage in Genesis about the sons of God is a mystery we
cannot fathom. And we know that there is such a being as
the Angel Gabriel — such a Divine person as the Holy Ghost.
Do we know this? Have we more certainty than had the
old Greeks when they believed in the power of Jupiter and
the divine manhood of Apollo, and in the celestial origin of
those fatherless sons brought into the world by maiden
mothers, who swore to their womanly innocence for the one
part, and their human exaltation by divine favour for the
other? Surely yes ! The Miraculous Incarnation has been
affirmed by all the churches ; and the proofs are — the star
which guided the Magi, and the song of the angels in the sky
to the shepherds watching their flocks. But who can certify
to these proofs ? Why did not others see that star as well as
the Magi ? — and who knows whether the shepherds heard the
song, or only imagined it?
" These thoughts clung to me, and left me no peace night or
day. Ever and ever the Mystery of the Incarnation became
more and more a subject of perplexity and doubt, and of
dread lest that doubt should broaden into denial. Brought
into line with these legends of former times — contrasted with
the old classic myths and the stories in the very Bible itself —
it suddenly seemed to lose its special character and to be
merely one like others. It was no longer exceptional and
divine — it had become historic and human. Therefore it fell
within the range of criticism, and might be judged of according
38 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
to its merits and the weight of evidence at its back. What
was that weight ? Outside its own assertion — absolutely nil.
No contemporaneous testimony vouched for the story of the
Virgin birth ; for the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel ;
for the star or the song ; and Mary herself alone knew the
truth of things. All, therefore, rested on her word only.
Sweet, beautiful, and pure as was her personality — Godlike
as was that Christ she bore — was that word of more intrinsic
value than that of the Greek girl who told how she had met
the god in the reeds by the riverside, or than that of the
nameless mother of the Black Child, Son to the Bones, deny-
ing human knowledge and accusing the unseen ? Was it ?
Had there been more miraculous births than one, or no
miraculous birth at all, and the laws of nature interrupted
for no one — for one no more than for another ? "
Then where doubt had crept in timidly, great crowds of
doubts came pressing on in battalions, and demanding
admittance with a boldness not to be denied. Did God in
very truth ever become man ? Why were we, the inhabitants
of only one out of such countless millions of worlds, and lower
in cosmic splendour than many, why were we singled out for
such a transcendent act of mercy ? How was it that the
Godhead, always tri-partite, only revealed Himself to the Jews
as the one lonely and indivisible Jehovah? Or did this
change in that which had been from the beginning come
about at a moment of time — when Mary conceived ? Was
heaven, in point of fact, acted on by earth and God determined
by humanity? Was the Athanasian creed wrong, and were
the Persons unequal ? Why should not the world have been
redeemed before? Why were Plato and Aristotle, Socrates
and Aristides, Buddha, Confucius, Marcus Aurelius, not as
worthy of redemption from eternal doom meted out to
ignorance, as the thousands of nameless Christians who came
after them ?
We can imagine the sort of response that she — a girl in
surroundings where original thought was ruled outside the
province of women — would get to such questions, the mere
raising of which would sound rank blasphemy to those who
ELIZA LYNN AT SEVENTEEN 39
could conceive of no reason to doubt — no object to be gained
by doubting.
These and a hundred others were the riddles which pitched
themselves headlong through her mind. Like sharpshooters
and skirmishers, no sooner was one driven off in front than on
came others in the rear. There was no general engagement
possible, and weak enough though they might be individually,
their very disorder made them the more formidable.
True, she would seem to have sought the support and
advice of a neighbouring clergyman, Mr. Myers, lately
appointed to the new ecclesiastical district of St. John's,
but his method of meeting her arguments rather increased
than relieved her difficulties. His eclecticism, — for he rejected
the doctrine of eternal punishment and the personality of
the devil, whilst he accepted equally difficult dogmas without
cavil, — curious though it may seem at first sight, weakened
his influence with her. It was now all or nothing. She
must find the structure weather-proof, brick by brick, or it
was not for her. Her religious nerves were shaken, and it
would take more than a patching up of symptoms to make
them sound again.
Indeed, the chief result of these dialectics was the suggest-
ing of other questionings and further suspicions, which might
be enumerated here had we not had enough of them for
our purpose, until finally her mentor charged her harshly
with wilful and intentional perversity. And perhaps he
was partly right. Who knows? Which of us is sure of
his motives? On the other hand, it seems likely to me that
he did her cruel wrong.
At any rate, by now, as she herself says, " the four corner-
stones of the Christian Church had loosened so much that the
slightest movement more would, as far as she was concerned,
shake them down altogether."
In the above attempt to give the genesis of Mrs. Lynn
Linton's materialism, no question has been raised which she
herself has not put on record as having agitated her at this
period, and my object has been to quote no more than is
sufficient to show the nature of her difficulties. Readers of
40 THE LIFE OF JMRS. LYNN LINTON
Christopher Kirkland may, if they choose, find many more
of a Hke nature. Further, it must be remembered that Mrs.
Linton was intentionally ignoring the obverse of the matter,
and that the whole thing was in the nature of a Devil's
Advocacy. Her mind was curiously unjudicial. She jumped
to conclusions and advocated them through thick and thin.
She was a partisan to the backbone, and had the strength
— and weakness — of those who cannot see both sides of a
question.
That her methods were crude and unphilosophic she
herself fully recognised. In her own words, she flung her
bricks on the ground without order or constructive
endeavour.
But, however insufficient her reasons may appear to
us, it is perfectly evident that she found them irresistible,
and now turned her back for ever on the peaceful regions of
unquestioning faith, and set her face towards the bristling
wilderness of intellectual doubt.
CHAPTER IV
FROxM CROSTHWAITE TO LONDON
WE must now, as briefly as possible, deal with an
episode, the importance of which lies mainly in
the fact that it was the prelude to — indeed, the
proximate cause of — the dash for freedom that Eliza Lynn
was about to make.
Her own account of the matter in Christopher Kirkland
reads perplexingly and unconvincingly. This is due to the
fact that, in strict accord with the unfortunate plan of the
book, the not unusual phenomenon of a girl's infatuation for
a woman eight or ten years her senior is metamorphosed into
the passionate devotion of a youth for a young and fascinat-
ing married woman. The result is that the whole situation
is changed, and wrong causations of necessity suggest them-
selves.
As Tennyson says, " Either sex alone is half itself," and
what should we say of Antony and Cleopatra staged for us
with both the protagonists in breeches or both in petticoats ?
The incident must as far as possible be cleared of its un-
natural atmosphere. It is sufficiently bizarre without any
eccentric additions.
It was immediately after the severe attack of speculative
troubles dealt with in the last chapter, that this very different
kind of disturbance came into Eliza Lynn's life.
There had lately settled in the near neighbourhood of the
vicarage a certain Mr. and Mrs. X .
Brilliant, clever, and beautiful with the spirituahsed
pathetic beauty of delicate health, evidently not too happy
in her marriage, a fine musician, and an artist far above the
42 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
average, what wonder that from her first appearance in the
backwater of Crosthwaite, Mrs. X , the refined and elegant
woman of the world, should take by storm the country
clergyman's family, from Mr. Lynn down to the youngest ?
To Mrs. Linton, with an imagination presumably sobered
by age and chastened by experience, this lady ever stood in
memory as something unapproachable and supreme. What
more likely, then, than that she should have seemed to the
impressionable girl "an impersonate poem or embodied
music, or a spirit half transparently incarnate, rather than a
living, solid, flesh-and-blood reality?"
At any rate, always inclined to run into extremes as she
was, it soon came to be that the day when she was not with
the X 's was to Eliza a day of deadly dulness, to be lived
through only for the hope of the morrow with its possibility
of a visit.
Away from her friends she found no pleasure, save in
the books hallowed as being loans from them, or in the
music she had heard Mrs. X play.
From the first the X 's laid themselves out to be useful
to the young Lynns. By degrees a certain special intimacy
grew up between the rough, wild, and passionate girl and
the elegant, silken, clever woman of the world, who seemed
to the Cumberland lassie queen and goddess in one.
But to Eliza the absorbing and entrancing intimacy
was at first far from bringing unalloyed happiness. Bitter-
sweet as she had found her life hitherto, so bitter-sweet
she made this friendship by the alternations of frantic
jealousy, lest Mrs. X should love her sisters better than
herself, with the triumph of assured appreciation. It was
a state of feverish unrest dotted with divinely happy hours.
After a time, however, Mrs. X 's preference for her be-
came so obvious that this state of uncertainty passed, and
she yielded herself to what seemed in retrospect a kind of
enchantment.
"The strange deifying reverence that I felt for her," she
wrote, " was due partly to my age and temperament and
partly to her own philosophy. She belonged to a school of
FROM CROSTHWAITE TO LONDON 43
thought quite unHke any I had ever met with. . . . She
was emphatically a transcendentalist, and in a certain sense
a pantheist. . . . She believed in the interfusion of souls . , .
she believed in the oneness of God with life, of God with
matter, with thought, with emotion, with the cosmic forces
of the universe. . . . She was also in a sense a metem-
psychosist, and believed that we all had known each other
in another life — all of us who loved in this."
And then she would tell the impressionable girl, more
than half confused by this new and incomprehensible talk,
and wholly fascinated by the rapt, sibyl-like look on the
beautiful face, that such was the bond which united tJiein.
'"Dearest child,' she said one day, ' God has given you
to me. You are mine in spirit now and for ever. Never
forget this moment, Eliza, when our souls have met and
recognised each other once again across the long ages which
have separated them.'
"Then she stooped her gracious face to mine, and lightly
kissed me on the eyes and forehead.
" Henceforth all things were transformed to me, and life
meant a new existence, as it had a new message. The sun-
rises and the sunsets, the song of the birds, the flowers in
the fields, the shadows of the clouds on the mountains, the
reflections in the lake and the ripple of the blue waves, the
voice of the waters making music in cascades, the budding
and the fall of the leaves of the trees — all were the circum-
stances of a more beautiful world than that in which I had
hitherto lived. Nature had a secret language which was
revealed to me, and I understood the hidden meaning of
things which hitherto had had no meaning at all. I, like Mrs.
X , felt and saw God everywhere — but when I thought of
God, she stood ever foremost at His hand,"
Forthwith, the jealousies, indignations, and fears which
had embittered her adoration for Mrs. X were things of
the past, and the " secret joy like a bird in her bosom " made
everything for a season beautiful and happy. But physically,
this state of exaltation was disastrous. As she herself says,
" The strain at this moment must have been severe, . . .
44 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Under the excitement of my present rapturous life I lost
both my sleep and my appetite, and became as thin as a
grasshopper. It was impossible not to see that I was
changing; and my sisters were always commenting on my
eyes, which they said looked as if they had been picked
out by hawks, and put in again by a chimney-sweep ; while
my face was whiter and leaner than ever. But as I was
certainly less violent and less irascible, they were too glad
of a change, which was a respite, to fall foul of the cause,
whatever it might have been."
And then by degrees the glory of her first content faded,
and the old unrest again possessed her. To be with Mrs. X
was rapture ; to be away from her was torture and despair.
" At last the strain grew too intense, and nature gave way,
I had a sharp attack of brain fever, when I was for many
days in danger. . . , When I recovered I found that the
X 's had left, and no one at Crosthwaite knew where
they had gone. Years after, I heard of them as living at
, where Mrs, X was a confirmed invalid and never
seen, and Mr. X was wholly given up to mesmerism,
opium, and poetry,"
When she had fully recovered from her severe illness, it
seemed impossible to go on living at home.
"I had," she says, "lost all that made life sweet on the
outside, and the monotony of existence within was intolerable.
If I had had the hope of a settled future and the occupation
of preparing for it, things might have been better ; but even
such lame endeavours after self-education as I had made now
failed me, and I seemed to have lost the key to all the holy
places of the past, and to have let the fire on the sacred altar
burn out.
" I was listless, inert, uninterested. All hope, all joy, all
secret ambition of future success, all passionate thrill of living,
all delight in books, all intellectual vitality, had gone from
me. . , , Everything had gone from me. I could have
shrieked for the torture given me by music. I dared not
read a poem which was associated with Mrs. X , and all
were associated with her, and the zeal with which I had dug
FRO^l CROSTHWAITE TO LONDON 45
down into the arid wells of the Encyclopcedia Londinensis^ for
that fantastic learning with which I had crammed my brain,
had gone with the rest.
" What a wretched time this was to me ! I had recovered
my life and lost that which had made it beautiful. It was
the husk without the kernel, the shell without the pearl ; and
I was like the Garden when the Lady who had been its Soul
had died. I have gone through the fire more than once since
then, but I have never had a more painful period than this
of that drear, dead winter down among the mountains, after
Mrs. X had left. . . .
" I went back to that languid acquiescence in doctrines
as they are taught, which is neither faith nor voluntary
acceptance. It is simply letting things slip and taking no
trouble. I had lost, too, my political ardour ; and from
passion and enthusiasm and turbulence all round had passed
into the silence of indifference, the quietude of death."
With the passing of winter and the return of spring, this
morbid condition of mind, no doubt largely the result of
physical debility, began to pass.
" I gradually got back," she says, " my old feeling of
power and invulnerability — my old sense of certainty in the
future, and my ability to conquer circumstances and compel
happiness, no matter what the obstacles to be overcome.
Heart-broken though I might be, I was still master of fate ;
and I had always the fee-simple of the future.
" Yet as this sense of power returned, so grew ever more
masterful that which was its reflex — repugnance to my home-
life, and desire to go out into the world on my own account,
to work for myself and be independent.
" But how ? What could I do ? I had learnt nothing
thoroughly and nothing useful. . . .
" Then it was that I returned to my old love. Literature —
that waste-pipe of unspecialised powers, which no one thinks
demands an apprenticeship, and wherein all believe that fame
and success are to be caught like wild goats, at a bound ! "
She had lately written a short poem which she resolved
should be the touchstone of her future.
46 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" At that time," she says, " the two magazines in greatest
favour among us youngsters at the vicarage were A insivorth's
Miscellany and Douglas J err old's Shilling Magazine. My
father patronised Blackivood^ of which some articles were
delightful to me and others made me rageful. With the
superstition of youthful hope and fear, I determined to do a
little bit of private vaticination for my better guidance ; and
to make the best of a certain number of catches on the point
of cup-and-ball determine the magazine to which I should
send my poem. I caught forty - nine out of the fifty for
Ainsworth, and only forty-seven for Jerrold. To the former,
then, I posted my rhymes, with a letter of entreaty which
must have amused him by its fervour.
" To my joy he accepted my poem, and sent me a
honorarium of two guineas ; together with a kind and
encouraging letter, assuring me of success if I would
persevere, and promising to accept all such work as would
suit the Miscellany. So now things were plainly ordered,
and my future was fair before me."
The verses were entitled " The National Convention of
the Gods," and appeared in AinswortJt s Magazine in 1845.
This does not seem to have been actually Eliza's first
appearance in print, for Mrs. Gedge clearly remembered a
set of verses called " The Wreath " accepted by Bentleys or
Ainswortlis before this date. "I shall never forget her de-
light," she wrote; "she was almost out of her mind with joy,"
At any rate, the fates had now decided.
Literature, i.e. bread-and-butter-earning literature, was,
we must remember, hardly a respectable profession in these
early days.
"To write in the quiet dignity of home a learned book
like Burton's Ajiatoniy of Melancholy^ or a profound one like
Locke On the Understanding, was one thing ; to depend for
bread on one's pen was another. The one shed increased
lustre on the noblest name ; the other was no better than
fiddling in an orchestra, acting in a barn, or selling yards of
silk across a counter, all of which were allied disreputabilities."
At least that was what her father said when she opened
FKOM CROSTHWAITE TO LONDON 47
fire on him one day, and propounded to him her notable
scheme for leaving home, going to London, and supporting
herself by her pen. Then ensued a stormy scene, which
ended in his ordering her to leave the room and never to
let him hear of such ridiculous rubbish again. That she, a
lady and the granddaughter of a bishop, should " write poems
for Warren's blacking, or scratch up Bow Street details for a
dinner," was nothing less than a degradation.
Of course her high ideals of literature were grossly insulted
by such suggestions, and she answered hotly and insolently.
Then there came the traditional parental ultimatum —
"If you go to London, as you propose, you go without
my consent, and the curse of God rests on disobedient
children to the end of their lives."
Here, then, she was at the cross - roads. In the one
direction lay submission to what she felt was her father's
unreasonable opposition, in the other the perfecting of her
own powers and leading the life for which she was best
fitted.
" At this moment," she says, " the two clashed and made
my choice very difficult. For underneath the fierce temper
which I could not deny, was always conscience and the desire
to know the right — and to do it when known."
Finally, personal ambition conquered. The leave which
her father would not give she prepared herself to take ; and
she was on the point of running away from home (for which,
by the way, there were various precedents in the family),
when, fortunately for all concerned, Mr. William Loaden, the
family solicitor, came down from London to pay a visit at
the vicarage, and proved the Deus ex Diachina by whom all
difficulties were arranged.
Mr. Loaden at once took a fancy to the bright, intelligent-
looking girl, and demanded a sight of her manuscripts.
With ample pride they were brought for his inspection, but
with ampler dismay his candid opinions of her sublimest
passages and her most high-flown phrases were received.
Finally, however, after sufficient distrust had been
expressed and sufficient pain had been inflicted to satisfy
48 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
professional dignity, he gave it as his opinion that with care
some kind of a vertebrate organism might be evoh^ed out of
the protoplastic pulp.
At any rate, there was enough promise to justify Mr. Lynn's
giving her a chance of putting to the proof her literary abilities.
It was evident that she was doing no good at home. She
was too big for the house, too vigorous for the life of a
country vicarage. Let her have a year's grace to see what
she could do. The question of permanent settlement might
come after.
" Mr. Loaden was one of the few people," Mrs. Linton
wrote, " who had a decided influence over my father. His
sharp, brisk energy ; the trenchant audacity of his theories ;
his worldly knowledge and business capacity ; his respect for
society, appearances, success ; his absolute self-confidence —
all naturally impressed a man whose indolence was his bane,
and who had to be stirred up if he were to be made to move.
And as Mr. Loaden swore by all his gods that his sisters — he
was not married — should look after me and keep me out of
the destruction into which my father made sure I should run,
the thing was at last arranged. My father gave his formal
consent to my going up to London for a year for the purpose
of studying at the British Museum and writing the book on
which I had set my heart. And he agreed to furnish me with
the funds necessary for that year's experience.
'"After that,' he said kindly, and yet severely, 'you sink
or swim on your own account. If you fail, as I fear you will,
you have your home to come back to. It will never be shut
against you, unless you disgrace yourself so that you are
unfit to enter it. If you succeed — my blessing be with you !
It will be a pleasant surprise if you do — but all things are
possible to God ; and to His care I commend you.'"
So the great step was decided upon, and it was un-
doubtedly best for everybody that she should go.
" I had," she says, " outgrown the dimensions of the old
home ; and fission is the law of families as well as of animal-
culae. I was the one inharmonious circumstance within the
vicarage walls, and all would be better without me. The die
FROM CROSTHWAITE TO LONDON 49
was cast. My choice was made. Selfish, or only self-respect-
ing, I took my place with Mr, Loaden in the coach which
was to carry us to the railway station ; and thus and for ever
broke down my dependence on the old home and set my face
towards the Promised Land — the land where I was to find
work, fame, liberty, and happiness."
CHAPTER V
EARLY LIFE LN LONDON— 1845-1851
THUS it was that the year 1845 found EHza Lynn, at
the age of twenty-three, settled in London. Mr.
Loaden, who lived with his brothers and sisters at 28
Bedford Place, had found lodging for her in a small private
boarding-house, 35 Montagu Place, close by the entrance
to the old reading-room of the British Museum. The present
cave of headaches was of course built some years later.
In the then " badly lighted, ill-ventilated, and queerly
tenanted old room, with its legendary flea and uncleansed
corners," she read daily, gathering material for her magfium
opus.
Mr. (not till later Sir Antonio) Panizzi, the astute Italian,
from whose principal-librarianship may be traced the pre-
eminence among European libraries of the printed-books
department of the British Museum, was not slow to notice
the earnest girl-student who was the first to come and the
last to leave. " He had a watchful eye over his small world
of readers and officials, and not so much as a mouse squeaked
behind the skirting-board but he heard it and tracked the run
from end to end."
So it was not surprising that, learning something of the
young woman's social position from his friend Mr. Loaden,
and seeing how young, unformed, and impulsive she was, he
felt himself justified in assuming a quasi-parental and advisory
attitude.
In particular, he would appear to have been one day
somewhat disturbed by seeing her shake by the hand one of
the attendants with whom she had struck up what seemed to
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 51
him, considering that she was a bishop's granddaughter, a
hardly suitable friendship.
" You are a lady," he said ; " he is only a servant. Make
him keep his place, and do you maintain your position.
These familiarities with low people always end badly. You
are very young, and you think that you can revolutionise
society. You will find that you cannot ; and that if you
knock your head against stone walls you will only make it
ache and alter nothing."
But he talked to the winds, and the attendant, who had
once been a gentleman-farmer in Norfolk, and his delicate
little wife continued to be Eliza Lynn's very good friends.
So it came to be a habit with her to find them out in their
humble home at Stoke Newington on Sunday afternoons.
Their simple friendship was a wholesome reward for a week
of hard work, and she was not going to relinquish them for a
hundred Panizzis.
To the end of her life it was her boast that she counted as
good friends amongst fishermen and servants as amongst
those born in the purple. It came as natural to her to kiss
her dependents as her social equals, and though she some-
times found her easy familiarity presumed upon, she never
abandoned the practice. Indeed, when in Italy many years
later with her adopted daughter, she showed such free-and-
easiness and companionableness with the domestics, that
nothing would persuade them that Miss Sichel was not the
young lady of fortune, and that Mrs. Linton was her salaried
duenna.
Of course Eliza Lynn's chief friends were the Loadens,
whose house in Bedford Place, only divided from Montagu
Place by a corner of Russell Square, was open to her at all
hours.
Her allowance was but just sufficient for her wants,
though it was a generous one considering her father's large
family and limited income. But close as the squeeze was,
she never asked for a penny more. This was with her a
strict rule through life, and, as we shall see, there came a short
period undreamed of by her family, when she really went
52 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
near to starving in Paris, and when her independence allowed
her to make no sign.
As matters turned out, the boarding-house in Montagu
Place was destined to be her headquarters for the next
thirteen years. It will be as well, therefore, to give some idea of
this curious microcosm in which she found herself established.
Coming to it as she did with the seeing eye, although in
all probability it appeared very humdrum and ordinary to its
inhabitants, it was full of colour and variety, and it more than
once provided her with "copy" both for books and news-
papers.
The house was kept by a Miss Brown, whom she at once
nicknamed " Aunt Brownie."
" She had a heart as soft as swansdown and as large as an
elephant's. She was totally unfit for any undertaking in
which she had to resist encroachments and defend her own
rights. Any one could talk her over. She was influenced by
her affections more than by her interests ; and where she
took a liking she would sacrifice her gains to please the
favoured him or her by extra liberalities. She had generous
instincts, refined tastes, indolent habits ; and she kept a
loose hand on the domestic reins. Hence she made the most
comfortable home possible for those who lived under her
hospitable roof. But our comfort was her loss ; and when
Christmas brought its bills, the two ends gaped ever wider
and wider, and were less and less able to be strained together."
And then there were the " extraordinary people who came
and went like shadows, or stayed as if they were coeval with
the foundations of the house."
There was the bull-necked, bullet-headed bon-vivant, who
kept the bill of fare up to the mark. There was the dis-
sipated young clerk, who was given over to music-halls and
late hours. There was the well-conducted young solicitor —
the best of them all. There was the loose-lipped young
fellow, who spluttered when he spoke, and asked counsel
of the girls whether he should put on his thick trousers or
his thinner. There was the uxorious couple who made love
in public, and the quarrelsome couple who were just as
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 53
embarrassing in their fierce disputes. Then there were the
girls — the pretty, tousled, mop-headed ones, who turned the
heads of all the men, and had their own loves out of doors ;
and the earnest ones, who had something else to think
about.
One there was of the vanguard of the independent
women, who did her life's work without blare or bluster or
help from the outside. She was without the weakness of her
sex which makes them cry out when they are hustled in the
crowd they have voluntarily joined, and which makes them
think themselves aggrieved because they are not aided by
the men with whom they have put themselves in rivalry.
And this one was the brave " Cumberland lassie" with whose
life we are concerned.
Then there were " the women of sixty and upwards, who
chirped like birds and dressed like brides ; the mother and
daughter who came no one knew whence, did no one knew
what, were pleasant companions and charming entertainers —
but kept at a distance ; the buxom widows of forty, smiling,
debo7inaire, and ready for their second bridal ; and the sad-
eyed ones of the same age, whose weepers were as big as
sails, and their crape of phenomenal depth and blackness.
There were the half-crazed members of well-known families,
planted out to insure that peace at home which their odd
ways disturbed; and sometimes there were people whose
antecedents would not bear scrutiny, and whose dismissal
had to be summarily given."
Such was the strange menagerie in which Eliza Lynn
found herself on her first independent entrance into the
world. To Miss Brown, who, save her old nurse, was more of
a mother to her than any woman she ever knew, she always
remained devotedly attached.
By the end of the covenanted term she had accomplished
her purpose and written her novel. Its title was Azet/i, the
Egyptian. The story had been begun at Crosthwaite, and
was founded upon information gleaned from TJie London
Eyicyclopcsdia and Moore's Epicurean. This information she
supplemented by a careful study at the British Museum of
54 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's works on Egyptian Antiquities,
and with their aid she completed her ambitious task. The
book was finished in 1846, and published in the same year by
Mr. Nevvby at her expense. The necessary fifty pounds was
advanced by Mr. Loaden, and duly repaid.
Wonderful to relate, the Titnes at once reviewed the book
most favourably, and one paper was so unstinting of praise
that it declared the " concluding pages " to be " equal to any-
thing in the Antigorie of Sophocles!" But those were the
days when a reviewer prided himself upon his scholarship,
and had at least to assume an intimacy with the classics.
It was, of course, the Times review that lifted her into the
seventh heaven of rapture. This is her own account of her
feeHngs : —
" I seemed to tread on air, to walk in a cloud of light, to
bear on me a sign of strange and glorious significance. I
felt as if I must have stopped the passers-by to shake hands
with them and tell them it was I who had written the novel
which the Times had reviewed so well that morning. I
thought all the world must be talking of it, and wondering
who was the unknown Eliza Lynn who, yesterday obscure,
to-day famous, had so suddenly flashed into the world of
letters ; and I longed to say that this veiled prophet, this
successful aspirant, was I ! I remember the sunset as I went
up Oxford Street, to what was not yet the Marble Arch.
For I could not rest in the house. I could not even go home
to dinner. I felt compelled to walk as if for ever — not like
that poor wretch, for penance, over a dreary and interminable
plain, but through an enchanted garden of infinite beauty.
To damp down the glad fever in my veins, I could only
breathe out in the open. I should have been stifled within
the four walls of that house in Montagu Place.
" Since then I have watched with breathless emotion the
opalescent skies of Venice ; the westering light which streams
like visible prayer through the windows of St. Peter's as you
stand on the Pincio ; the gorgeous sunsets of Naples, with
that burning bar drawn all across the horizon, stretching
from Vesuvius to infinitude ; but I have never seen one to
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 55
match the splendour of that sunset in London, on the
evening of the day when I first achieved success. For the
moment I was as a god among gods. My veins were filled
with celestial ichor, not human blood ; and my mind saw what
it brought — the infinity of glory because of that intensity of joy.
" I turned into the Park and sat down on a bench, look-
ing at this resplendence which was to me like a message —
a symbol of my own strength and future lustre."
And there she sat until a park-keeper, laying his hand on
her shoulder, assumed the role of the angel with the flaming
sword, and turned her unceremoniously out of paradise.
The following note referring to her appearance at this
period, kindly contributed by Captain F. Fox, will be read
with interest.
" Miss Lynn came occasionally to visit us when we v/ere
living at Stamford Hill in 1846-47.
" My mother took a great fancy to her, and they became
intimate friends. . . .
" In appearance. Miss Lynn at that time was slight and
graceful in figure, not very tall, with an oval face wearing
generally a reserved and rather grave look. I cannot recall
the colour of her eyes, but I know she wore spectacles, which
probably made her look more serious than she would
naturally. She appeared to me to be about six or seven and
twenty years of age, but she might have been younger."
Mrs. Bridell-Fox also says —
" As an artist I was charmed with Miss Lynn's appear-
ance— the pure oval of her face, her delicate and regular
features — and also with the low musical voice and exquisitely
distinct enunciation."
The following letter written to Mrs. Bridell-Fox's mother
about this time explains itself.
Eliza Lynn to Mrs. Fox (wife of Mr. W. J. Fox,
M.P. for Oldham).
" My dear Mrs. Fox, — Your kind fears about me are
pJiysically false, but what truth they may have mentally and
morally I am afraid to think of. The unexpected success of
56 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Azeth, and the flatteries and congratulations I hear every-
where, the being made a full-grown live lion of, the reviews,
and my own hopes, are almost turning my head. No, but
seriously, I bore it all very well until Monday, when four
unexpected favourable notices came to light, and as I went
to the Museum yesterday I was congratulated, and at a
party last night made a great fuss with, and I am fearful lest
I should get vain. But oh, I would give up all my success
rather than do this ! My prayer is against all conceit. But
just the first flush of triumph is rather too pleasant, like
sugar-plums which spoil one's teeth and vitiate one's taste.
" Many thanks for your dear, kind words of interest. The
approbation of a frieiid is dearer than even a public and
printed review."
When her money was exhausted and her year in London
was up, Eliza returned home ; but the life which was not
large enough for the untried girl was certainly too narrow
for the full-fledged authoress, who was more in love with
liberty than ever.
With some difficulty she again obtained her father's
consent to her returning to London, and although without
cordial approval of the plan, he finally agreed to provide ^30
a year towards her expenses.
She had in the meantime produced her second novel,
Amymone, dealing with the age of Pericles. This she
dedicated to her father. It was sold to Mr. Bentley for
;^ioo, and was published in 1848. It proved of threefold
importance. First, it roused the enthusiasm of Walter
Savage Landor, by whom a favourable review in the
Examiner is generally supposed to have been written.
Secondly, it brought her into touch with Mr. George Bentley,
with whom a lifelong personal and business friendship
ensued. Thirdly, as we shall immediately see, it greatly
impressed an editor who was second to none but Delane
in his gift for recognising journalistic talent.
Back in Montagu Place, the next point was to discover
some means of turning her literary powers to remunerative
account. Newspaper work was the first calling to suggest
itself, and forthwith down she sat, determined to flesh her
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 57
journalistic pen. The outcome was a social essay (no doubt
founded on second-hand information obtained at the British
Museum) on the wrongs of all savage aborigines. This she
despatched to the office of the Morning Chronicle as a sample
of what she could do, together with a letter asking for
employment.
Then came four days of " restlessness amounting to
agony " — of feverish alternations between hope and fear.
On the fifth a proof lay on her plate at breakfast, and with
it a letter bidding her go down to the office that very day
at four precisely.
The Morning Chronicle had lately been bought by the
Peelite party, who had placed John Douglas Cook in the
editorial chair. Though not possessed of much literary
ability himself, he had a singular instinct, says The Dictionary
of National Biography, for recognising ability in others and
judgment in directing them.
As may be imagined, the young aspirant was up to time.
This is her description of the momentous interview : —
" I was punctual to the moment, and with a beating
heart but very high head went swinging up the narrow, dingy
court into which the ' editor's entrance ' gave ; and then up
the still narrower and still dingier stairs to a room whence
I could not see the street for the dirt which made the
windows as opaque as ground glass. Here I was told to
wait till Mr. Cook could see me. In about half an hour the
messenger returned, and ushered me into the awful presence.
" For in truth it was an awful presence, in more ways
than one. It was not only my hope and present fortune,
but of itself, personally, it was formidable.
" A tall, cleanly shaved, powerfully built man, with a
smooth head of scanty red hair ; a mobile face instinct with
passion ; fiery, reddish hazel eyes ; a look of supreme com-
mand ; an air of ever-vibrating impatience and irascibility,
and an abrupt but not unkindly manner, standing with his
back to the fireplace, made half a step forward and held
out his hand to me as I went into the room.
" ' So ! you are the little girl who has written that queer
58 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
book, and want to be one of the press-gang, are you ? ' he
said, half smiling, and speaking in a jerky and unprepared
manner, both singular and reassuring.
" I took him in his humour, and smiled too.
"'Yes, I am the woman,' I said.
" ' Woman, you call yourself? I call you a whipper-
snapper,' he answered, always good-humouredly. ' But you
seem to have something in you. We'll soon find it out if
you have. I say, though, youngster, you never wrote all
that rubbish yourself! Some of your brothers helped you.
You never scratched all those queer classics and mythology
into your own numskull without help. At your age it is
impossible.'
"'It may be impossible,' I laughed; 'at the same time
it is true. I give you my word, no one helped me. No one
even saw the manuscript or the proofs,' I added eagerly.
" On which my new friend and potential master startled
me as much as if he had fired off a pistol in my ear, first by
his laughter, and then by the volley of oaths which he rolled
out — oaths of the strangest compounds and oddest meanings
to be heard anywhere — oaths which he himself made at the
moment, having a speciality that way unsurpassed, unsur-
passable, and inimitable. But as he laughed while he blas-
phemed, and called me ' good girl ' in the midst of his
wonderful expletives, he evidently did not mean mischief.
And I had fortunately enough sense to understand his want
of malice, and to accept his manner as of the ordinary course
of things.
" This pleased him, and after he had exhausted his
momentary stock of oaths he clapped me on the back with
the force of a friendly sledge-hammer, and said —
"'You are a nice kind of little girl, and I think you'll do,'
" Then he told me to go into the next room to write a
leader on a Blue Book which he would send in to me. It
was the report of the Parliamentary Commission on the
condition of the miners relative to the * truck ' system.
" ' I give you three hours and a half,' he said, taking out
his watch. ' Not a minute longer, by . By that time
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 59
your work must be done, or you'll have no supper to-night !
You must take the side of the men ; but — d'ye hear ? — you
are not to assassinate the masters. Leave them a leg to
stand on, and don't make Adam Smith turn in his grave
by any cursed theories smacking of socialism and the devil
knows what. Do you understand, young woman ? I have
had the passages marked which you are to notice, and so
you need not bother that silly cocoanut of yours with any
others. Keep to the text ; write with strength ; and don't
talk nonsense. And now be off.'
" To my great joy and supreme good luck, I seized the
spirit of my instructions, and wrote a rattling, vigorous kind
of paper, which pleased Mr. Cook so much that he called
me a good girl twenty times with as many different oaths,
and took me home to dine with him. And from that day
he put me on the staff of the paper, and my bread and butter
was secure."
For the next two years she " filled the office of handy
man about the paper — was now sent down to describe a fete ;
now given a pile of books to review; sometimes set to do
the work of the theatrical critic when this gentleman was
away ; and given certain social leaders to write — but never
political."
Thus she gained the distinction of being the first woman
newspaper writer to draw a fixed salary. She was not, as
has been stated erroneously, the first woman newspaper
writer ; for Miss Martineau, Mrs. Norton, and Mrs. Grote
certainly preceded her, and there may have been others.
She had now enough to live upon, and was supremely
happy. Once or twice she got the paper into trouble because
of her " unsound political economy and the trail of the
socialistic serpent, which made itself too visible" even for
the Peelite following. But she was a favourite with the
irascible editor, and her sins were forgiven.
All the employes of the journal did not come off so well
as she did. Some ran rough risks when hot water was
about — as for instance that poor fellow who brought in
either a wrong or an unpleasant message, and whom the
60 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
editor served as Luther served the devil. " The man ducked
in time ; but the door was cut and indented where the sharp
edge had struck, and blackened by a stream of ink from the
centre panel to the floor. Mr. Cook showed me the place
with a peal of laughter and a volley of oaths, in nowise dis-
concerted by this narrow escape from committing murder.
He made it up to the man with a couple of sovereigns, and
when the door had been scraped and revarnished, no more
was heard of the matter. The men in the office were used
to his ways, and dodged him when he let fly — waiting till
the dangerous fit was over. All forgave his violence — some
because they really loved him, and some because he paid
them handsomely for their bruises."
Miss Lynn had now her private sitting-room at Miss
Brown's, in which she wrote all the morning. It was in
these days that she adopted those methodical habits which
clung to her all her days. Not that her work was over by
midday. Indeed, Mrs. Berridge, a niece of Miss Brown's,
tells me that she would often have to hurry from her dinner
to satisfy the demands of the printer's devil who sat in the hall.
Her regular salary on the Chronicle was twenty guineas
a month, in return for which her tale of work was six long
articles, mainly on social matters. In addition to these, she
wrote book reviews, for which she received something more.
From an old account-book I find that from August 1849 to
February 185 1 she furnished eighty miscellaneous articles
and thirty-six reviews. Her income, therefore, from this
source alone, was certainly not less than ^250 a year.
Early in 1851 trouble came between Miss Lynn and her
editor, when he so far forgot himself as to shake his fist in
her face. This day saw the last of her visits to the office,
and after April the Chronicle knew her no more. Later, as
we shall see, when Cook became editor of the Sahirday
Reviezv, business relations were resumed, but the rift in their
friendship was never closed.
" All the same," she writes years after, " he had his grand,
good points. He was generous and affectionate ; utterly
devoid of all treacherous instincts ; and he bore no malice.
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 61
He was brutal, if you will ; but the core of him was sound,
and his fidelity to his friends was very beautiful. With so
much that can be said less than laudatory of this fierce
Boanerges of the press, it is pleasant to record that which
makes for his renown and claims our more tender memories,"
It was whilst under Miss Brown's roof, but probably a
few years later, that Miss Lynn was presented at Court by
her friend Mrs. Milner-Gibson, of whom we shall hear more
presently. Mrs. Berridge well remembers the amusement
caused by her practising her curtseys with a long shawl
pinned round her for a train, as she was terrified lest, with
her short sight, she might when in the royal presence make
herself ridiculous. Mrs. Berridge also remembers her being
visited by her father, "a fine, noble-looking man," and her
sisters, from which we see that she was in no sense an outcast
from her family. Indeed, her bi-annual visits paid to the
old home were pleasant to all. The " mutual affection was
strengthened, not weakened, by the loosening of the links and
lengthening of the chain."
Other visitors were Mr. Frank Beard, her friend and
doctor, and Miss Cushman, the American actress, " with a
box ticket to see her act with Macready at the Princess's
Theatre."
Notwithstanding her exacting work on the Chronicle,
she found time to write a third novel, Realities, dedicated
to Walter Savage Landor, and published in 185 1. In
addition to this we find her making sporadic contributions
to Chambers' Journal and Chambers' Miscellany of Tracts,
amongst which may be mentioned " A Picnic to Watendlath," ^
published in the former, and " Grace Ayton " and " Maud the
^ It is worthy of mention that this little study of Cumberland scenery bore
substantial fruit no less than half a century later. As treasurer of the Lynn
Linton Memorial Fund, it was a great pleasure to me to receive from Dr. C. J.
CuUingworth, ex-President of the Obstetrical Society of London and the author
of many well-known medical works, a letter enclosing a contribution and ex-
pressing his gratitude for the opportunity thus offered him of " acknowledging,
however inadequately, his personal indebtedness to Mrs. Linton for the pleasure
which he had derived from the modest article so many years before." It is not
often that an author at such an interval receives so pretty an acknowledgment
from a perfect stranger.
62 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Sorceress" in the latter. In the early fifties, too, she con-
tributed several articles to the Daily News.
The year after the publication of her third novel she made
her first visit to Italy, with Mr. Loaden. This lasted for three
months.^ At Strasburg she is much struck by two mummies
preserved in the Protestant Church of St. Thomas. " A father
and his daughter fourteen years old, dressed in the costume
of the time, four hundred years ago. They are curious and
saddening. He is preserved the best — his face varnished.
She is a mere skeleton — with faded ends of former flowers on
her breast, artificial flowers on her sleeves and in her hair,
and with gold and jewels and rich point lace. Her dress is
light blue silk, her ribbons gauzy and discoloured ; her
hands like a child's, her face a death's head. Ah ! these
things make one reflect."
Between Schafifhausen and Zurich " we passed through
many beautiful little villages, and in one saw the whole
population, ranged according to age and sex, marching in
procession headed by the banners and priests of the Church,
all praying for fine weather. Something — perhaps it was
association — touched me very deeply. I could scarcely
command my tears, superstitious though it was, yet the deep
piety and large influence that commanded the procession were
something grand."
At Zurich she was amused at " a sneeze being met with
a movement of the hat and a blessing."
From Lucerne " she had a camel of a horse up the Righi,
which carried her up the steep places like a storm."
At Milan they " underwent a severe scrutiny at the gate.
They seemed to think — these Austrian brutes — that we
might be smuggled Mazzinis."
At Como they hired a boat for ^promenade sur I'eau, but
were terrified by the crew, " Such a villainous-looking set
never got together. They looked as if murder and robbery
would have been gingerbread and nuts to them."
At Venice she writes, " There is a breadth and heroic
grandeur about the place that is more like the realisation
^ The following notes are from a diary kept at the time.
EARLY LIFE IN LONDON 63
of all one's ideas of nobleness than anything I have seen
yet. It has the dignity of a Roman senator. The whole
architecture of the place is a series of miracles. . , . The
Duomo is a wonder of richness — the whole scene is more
the perfect ideal of grandeur, majesty, dignity, and power
than I thought dumb stones could express. . . . Nothing
has been exaggerated of the place. All was as grand and
as glorious and fairylike as people have said. I stood out-
side, and dreamt standing."
After a week, in which they " saw everything," they moved
on to Padua. Here she was much put about by the way in
which she considered Titian had wasted his precious time in
depicting the grotesque miracles of St. Anthony in the frescoes
of the Scuola. Here, too, they saw "the most curious work
in marble the world holds. Sixteen devils are trying to get
up to an angel, who throws them down. The devils are in
every attitude imaginable, and some of them seem supported
by nothing. How the man ever worked them in as he did
no one knows. Canova said when he saw it that he had
worked at devils, but he must have been a greater devil
himself to have been able to have done this."
At Turin they " detected an English servant at dinner
passing off for a gentleman,"
On the 3rd of October they left Nice and crossed the
then frontier into France. " We are now Louis Napoleon's
subjects. I was very much disgusted, but what could I do ?
The baggage was searched — gently, and nothing went wrong.
For this I felt rather grateful to the red-legged scoundrels."
At Aries " went to Pierreux. . . . The gardens are large
and handsome — French — but delightful as heaven after
Marseilles. The smell of the earth, the leaves, and the
flowers make up a kind of paradise to noses saturated with
all the foulness of the towns."
At Dijon she went over the town alone. " Had an
adventure (with a young man) in the railway carriage — but
told Mr. Loaden all the next day, not liking to deceive him."
" Arrived in Paris on the 27th October, and home on the
28th."
CHAPTER VI
SOCIAL LIFE AND FRIENDSHIPS IN THE " FIFTIES "
"AT this time," she says, " I went much into society.
AA My social place was that which naturally belongs to
a young woman of good birth, who, if she has not
quite won her spurs, may yet some day do great things — who
knows ? — and who has good names at her back. The tower
of strength my grandfather the bishop and my uncle the
dean were to me ! What humiliating snobs we are ! I
became acquainted with a few of the leaders of thought
already established, and some who were still preparing for
the time when they too should lead and no longer follow."
Then she goes on to speak of Thornton Hunt, whom she
looked upon as " a chivalrous, true, perfectly sincere and un-
selfish man," admitting that he was " irregular," but maintain-
ing with vehemence that he was " not licentious." She often
in later years used unmeasured language to me concerning
what she considered the scandalous injustice meted out to
him by a world which made itself ridiculous not only by
condonation, but by sycophantic approval of the misconduct
of others.
He was, of course, a member of that curious " family
Agapemone," of which so much has been written, and which
had its quarters in Queen's Road, Bayswater.
" At the time when I first knew these people," she writes,
*' they were living in a kind of family communion that was
very remarkable. Sisters and cousins and brothers — some of
the women married and with yearly increasing families, to
which they devoted themselves ; others single and of general
domestic utility all round. Among them were some who
64
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES" 65
practised no divergence in their own lives, and allowed of
none in theory: such as Samuel Laurence,^ who was then
vainly giving his strength to discover the Venetian method
of colouring; and that handsome Egyptologist, George
Gliddon, who might have thrown his handkerchief where he
would, but who was true to his first love (his cousin Anne),
and married her when her youth and beauty had long since
gone, and only her truth and her lovely nature remained,"
Here, too, she met, amongst others, Robert Owen, Frank
Stone, Edward Pigott, Mrs. Milner - Gibson, and Amelia
Edwards. Other notabilities with whom about this time she
came in contact, and with some of whom she was on familiar
terms, were Miss Jane Porter, Miss Pardee, Mrs. Schimmel-
penninck, Mrs. Trollope, Lady Morgan, Harrison Ainsworth,
Alaric Watts, and Shirley Brooks.
Some particulars of these early London acquaintanceships
may be found in a volume lately published by Messrs.
Hodder & Stoughton, entitled Reminiscences of Dickens,
Thackeray, George Eliot, etc., by Mrs. Lynn Linton.
It will be gathered from what has gone before, that Eliza
Lynn was now brought into contact, amongst others, with a
set of persons who arrogated the right of being a law unto
themselves, and with whom freedom of discussion was carried
to its utmost limits.
Those who care to turn to the pages of Christopher Kirk-
land will there find the account of an imaginary character,
Mrs. Hulme. I have Mrs. Linton's own authority for saying
that, although the intellectual part of that representation is
fiction, the personality is that of an old acquaintance of the
Lynns, at Rochester, who had now settled in London. There
is no need to mention her real name, as Mrs. Linton merely
used her as a convenient mouthpiece for the discussion of
opinions which were rife in her circle at that period, and
which she did not wish unduly to emphasise as her own.
They are in the main such subjects as are familiar to every
^ Laurence was the only person she knew besides the Loadens on coming up
to London. She had met him at her father's house. There are portraits in
existence of Eliza and her sisters done by him.
5
66 THE LIFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
one who has used his intellectual muscles to kick over the
formularies by which he has been surrounded in youth, for
the purpose of seeing how they are propped up from
behind.
These familiar and somewhat unedifying discussions I
shall not resuscitate. They can be turned to by any who
find enjoyment in making themselves uncomfortable. How
far Eliza Lynn herself endorsed them, or whether she merely
meant to show that such inquiries were in the air at this time,
and so were exercising her and resulting in mental unrest, it
is impossible to say. The important point is, that she was
passing through another speculative phase which was to carry
her still farther away from the beliefs and, in some cases, the
prejudices of her upbringing.
From this time "euthanasia" and other such matters of dis-
cretionary morality were freely and constantly discussed. But
that she did not by any means unreservedly subscribe to the
tenets of these mental revolutionists, is, I think, evident.
Happily for her, there was so much cynicism exhibited upon
subjects which she approached with the utmost earnestness,
that she was rather repelled than attracted. Doubtless she
found these subversive doctrines dangerously interesting, and
was flattered at her inclusion in their discussion by her elders.
At the same time, there were many of them of which she
heartily disapproved, and which she as boldly repudiated.
Her religion of Humanity kept her through hfe intolerant
of lying and deceit, of selfishness, treachery, unchastity, and
the rest ; whereas, such a philosophy as that with which she
was now made acquainted, founded as it was upon contempt
for the human race, tolerated its vices because it expected
nothing better.
She herself often in after years marvelled how her belief
in goodness and right, unsupported as it was by religion,
survived the onslaughts of this time. Fortunately for her, and
for us who loved her, she never lost faith in her kind. Man
never became to her a merely irresponsible animal without
conscience, love, aspiration, and truth.
Fortunately, too, there were other friendships which Eliza
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES' 67
Lynn had by this time formed, and chiefest among these was
that with Walter Savage Lander.
She first met Byron's " deep-mouth'd Boeotian " in 1847,
when he was seventy-three years of age and she was twenty-
five. Writing in Fnxsers Magazine for July 1870, she says,
" Long before this I had learnt his Imaginary Conversations
by heart, and was his enthusiastic admirer, without knowing
whether the author was dead or alive, or where he lived, or,
in fact, anything about him. I was visiting Dr. Brabant ^ in
Bath, and we were at Mr. Empson's ' old curiosity shop,'
when we saw what seemed a noble-looking old man, badly
dressed in shabby snuff- coloured clothes, a dirty old blue
necktie, unstarched cotton shirt — with a front more like a
nightgown than a shirt — and ' knubbly ' apple - pie boots.
But underneath the rusty old hat-brim gleamed a pair of
quiet and penetrating grey-blue eyes ; the voice was sweet
and masterly ; the manner that of a man of rare distinction.
Dr. Brabant spoke to him, and his sister, Miss Hughes,
whispered to me, ' That is Mr. Landor.' I was taken by
surprise. Here stood in the flesh one of my great spiritual
masters ; one of my most revered intellectual guides, I
remember how the blood came into my face as I dashed up
to him with both hands held out, and said, 'Mr. Landor?
oh ! is this Mr. Landor ? ' as if he had been a god suddenly
revealed. And I remember the amused smile with which he
took both my hands in his, and said, ' And who is this little
girl, I wonder?' From that hour we were friends: and I
thank God I can say truthfully, that never for one hour, one
moment, afterwards were we anything else. For twelve long,
dear years, we were father and daughter. We never called
each other anything else. He never signed himself to me, or
wrote to me, as anything else ; and in the last sad clouded
days of his life, had not the circumstances of my own life
been so changed as to render it impossible, I would have gone
with him to Italy, and I would not have left him again while
^ My friend Mr. H. A. Acworth tells me that Mrs. Linton assured him that
Dr. Brabant was the original of Casaubon in Middlemarch. This is interesting in
view of the fact that Casaubon has generally been identified with Mark Pattison.
08 THE TJFE OF MRS. LYNN TJNTON
he lived. But if the circumstances of my life had not been
so changed, and I had still been able to visit him, and make
his lodgings his home, as in olden times, he would never have
needed to have gone back to Italy. Of this I am sorrowfully
convinced. I could have kept him from the pain and misery
that overtook him."
After this first meeting, until ten years later, when the
" old Roman " had to fly into exile from the consequences of
a miserable and compromising quarrel, Eliza Lynn used to
stay with him in Bath for many weeks at a time, sometimes
once and sometimes twice in the year. Even when she
visited other friends in the city, which was always to her the
" beautiful and beloved," she made it her duty to go daily to
his house punctually at twelve o'clock, and sit or walk with
him till two, when he dined. She also dined with him
regularly twice a week, when he always took care to give her
some favourite dish, " and especially to have a bottle of his
famous Malmsey Madeira on the table."
Once, in the early days of their friendship, she says, " We
had gone out for a walk to Lansdowne Crescent, for the sake
of the view thence — one of his favourite points — and when
we came back, Pomero (his dog), who had accompanied us
for a short time, and had then turned as we supposed to
go home, was not to be found. I shall never forget the
padrone's mingled rage and despair. He would not eat
any dinner, and I remember how that it was a dinner of
turbot and stewed hare, which he himself had seasoned and
prepared with wine, etc., in the little sitting-room ; for he was
a good cook in that way, and to that extent. And both of
these were favourite dishes with him. But he would not eat,
and sat in his high-backed chair, which was not an easy one,
or stamped about the room in a state of stormy sorrow, like
nothing I had ever seen before, though I saw more than one
like tempest afterwards. Now he was sure the dog was
murdered, and he should never see him again ; some
scoundrel had murdered him out of spite and cruelty, or to
make a few pounds by him stuffed, and there was no use in
thinking more about him ; then he would go out and scour
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES " 69
all Bath for him ; then he would offer rewards — wild rewards
— a hundred pounds — his whole fortune — if any one would
bring him back alive; after which he would give way to his
grief and indignation again, and by way of turning the knife
in his wound would detail every circumstance of the dog's
being kidnapped, struck, pelted with stones, and tortured in
some stable or cellar, and finally killed outright, as if he had
been present at the scene. But in a short time, after the
whole city had been put into an uproar, and several worthy
people made exceedingly unhappy, the little fellow was
brought back as pert and vociferous as ever ; and yelped
out mea culpa on his master's knee, in between the mingled
scolding and caressing with which he was received."
This was the man all over, and yet, notwithstanding his
impatience and irascibility and his young friend's natural
indocility, to the surprise of every one the curiously assorted
couple got on together in perfect accord. Indeed, we have it
on her own authority that his temper, notoriously " short in
tether and leonine in wrath," was never once ruffled during
the whole of their thirteen years of close and constant
friendship. Of course she never presumed to oppose, or the
upshot would have been different. The result was that she
always looked back on these visits as her most valuable
lessons in self-control.
Landor was of the utmost use to the young authoress in
developing her style ; and more particularly indoctrinated her
with an enduring horror of slang. A propos of which, we
may imagine how the following brief conversation with a
certain American of her acquaintance touched her.
"The subject was an underhung, wriggling terrier pup —
" ' My ! ' said this old lady, looking curiously at the dog.
' Why, it's wopper-jawed ! '
" ' Wopper-jawed ? What's that ? ' I asked.
" ' Why, don't you know? — like a wiggler ! '
'" But what is a wiggler? ' I asked again.
"'Oh my! Not know! — du tell ! A wopper-jawed wiggler
— ^just like a pollywog out of a hydrant ! ' "
She used to say that she never met with any one whose
70 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
advice was more carefully considered from the point of
view of the recipient than was Landor's. He was no mere
headstrong and unthinking literary despot, but a wise and
judicious counsellor, who often even went so far as to advise
her to abide in the old way which he himself had abandoned.
What was appropriate to a past master in the art would
be affectation in a novice, and he no more insisted on her
adoption of his special views on orthography and diction
than on her pronunciation in his manner of " woonderful,"
"goolden," "woorld," " srimp," " yaller," " laylock," and the
like.
It is pleasant to think of the great happiness brought into
the old man's life by the devoted appreciation of his young
disciple. What happy content there was in those long winter
evenings, when the master would read to her sometimes for
two hours at a stretch from one of the marvellously few books
that he kept by him, whilst she netted with gold thread and
bright silks, in the shine and colour of which he found such
undisguised delight. Then he would break off and read his
own poems in that deep, rich, musical voice of his, with the
small inartificial quiver in it when he came to the more
touching passages.
She was staying with him when he wrote that lovely
quatrain which he afterwards placed as a prefix to his Last
Fruit off an Old Tree —
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife ;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art :
I warmed both hands before the fire of Hfe ;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
This was on the morning after the anniversary of his
seventy-fifth birthday. At breakfast he would not touch his
food until he had scrawled off the lines. Then he read them
with "such exquisite pathos, such touching dignity and manly
resignation," that she fell to weeping.
Writing of him at this time, she says, " He was always
losing and overlooking, and then the tumult that would
arise was something too absurd, considering the occasion.
He used to stick a letter into a book : then, when he wanted
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES ' 71
to answer it, it was gone — and someone had taken it — the
only letter he wanted to answer — that he would rather have
forfeited a thousand pounds than have lost, and so on. Or
he used to push his spectacles up over his forehead, and then
declare they were lost, lost for ever. He would ramp and
rave about the room at such times as these, upsetting every-
thing that came in his way, declaring that he was the most
unfortunate man in the woorld, or the greatest fool, or the
most inhumanly persecuted. I would persuade him to sit
down and let me look for the lost property ; when he would
sigh in deep despair, and say there was no use in taking any
more trouble about it, it was gone for ever. When I found
it, as of course I always did, he would say 'thank you' as
quietly and naturally as if he had not been raving like a
maniac half a minute before."
Regarding his want of the critical faculty, so far as pictures
were concerned, she used to relate the following anecdote : —
" He was always buying ' for the last time ' the most
abominable rubbish possible. He used to get for half a
crown ' old masters ' that he would sell for as many hundreds
as he had given pence ! He gave me once a ' study in
brown,' a landscape, so far as one can make it out at all,
which he really taught himself to believe was the ' only
landscape Rembrandt ever painted.'
" With a strong imagination, you can make out in this
picture something that may be the roof of a house ; some-
thing that may be a boat ; also a pale brown dab that might
mean the first idea of a statue ; and a strip that you may, if
you please, believe to be a river. Well, the story was this,
as dear old Mr. Landor made it up, and repeated till he
believed. Rembrandt was out one day on the river. It
came on to rain ; he had no canvas with him, so he went
into the farmhouse — roof indicated — in the garden of which
stood the statue — the first idea sketched — and asked the
good woman for a piece of cloth whereon to paint. She had
none handy, but tore off a piece of her gown and gave it to
him. Hence the sketch, which he bought for two-and-sixpence
and gave to me."
I
72 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In his will Landor left her some really good pictures.
Browning, who was Landor's executor, requested her, on the
ground that the pictures were of considerable value, to waive
her claim on behalf of Mrs. Landor and a daughter, who were
left badly off. Mrs. Linton most generously acceded to what
certainly seems an extraordinary request. From that day to
the day of her death she received neither thanks nor any
intimation as to the destination of the pictures, notwithstand-
ing the fact that she wrote repeatedly to Browning on the
subject.
The following quotation from a letter published in Mr.
Stephen Wheeler's Letters of Walter Savage Landor is
eloquent of the old man's appreciation of their friendship.
W. S. Landor to Mrs. Graves-Sawle.
Tth May 1849.
"... Eliza Lynn comes to see me on Saturday. What
a charm it is even at the close of life to be cared for by the
beautiful and gentle, and to see them come out from the warm
sunshine and the sweet flowers toward us in the chilliness of
our resting-place. This is charity, the charity of the Graces.
They are fond of walking where Love has walked before,
although they are certain they shall not find him there again."
His high opinion of his young friend's literary talent may
be gathered from the terms in which he dedicated to her the
"Five Scenes," published in 1853, at the end of the Last
Frint off an Old Tree mentioned above. It is too long to
quote here in full. The last four lines must serve ^ —
Meanwhile let some one tell the world thy worth,
One whom the world shall listen to, one great
Above his fellows, nor much lower than thou :
He who can crown stands very near the crown'd.
In the same volume he included his " Epistle to Eliza
Lynn," on her Amy mane, first published in the Exammer
^ For the whole of this poem, and of that from which the next quotation is
taken, sec Appendix W.
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES' 73
for 22nd July 1848. After enumerating the "high names,
immortal names," borne by women, he concludes —
In our days, so sweet,
So potent, so diversified, is none
As thine. Protectress of Aspasia's fame.
Thine, golden shield of matchless Pericles,
Pure heart and lofty soul, Eliza Lynn.
As we proceed chronologically we shall come across letters
from Landor chiefly written in exile. Apart from their
intrinsic interest, they will go far to repair what was un-
doubtedly an act of great injustice done by John Forster to
the subject of this memoir. To dismiss in his biography a
friendship such as we have indicated, and of which still ampler
evidence will appear later on, in the space of a single sentence,
was in itself inexcusable ; but if we hold, as doubtless Mrs.
Linton held, and I believe had good grounds for holding,
that the omission was the deliberate outcome of jealousy, the
matter assumes the dimensions of an outrage.
We shall see later on what revenge Mrs. Linton took, and
how she involved herself thereby with another of Forster's
heroes, Charles Dickens.
Returning for a moment to the early years of their friend-
ship, it should be said that, in one of these, Landor gave her a
whole season of balls in Bath, chaperoning her as if he had
been her real father. These were perhaps the happiest
moments of her life. Writing to me forty years later, she
says, " Half my real life lies in Bath, and I never hear the
word without a sensation."
Other friends in the western city were Dr. Brabant,
mentioned above ; his wife and sister-in-law ; Mr. Empson,
" the pre-historic sesthete . . . whose bric-a-brac shop was a
favourite lounge with the best people in Bath," and hallowed
in Eliza Lynn's eyes as her first meeting-place with Landor ;
and the wife and daughters of the ill-fated actor Power, who
went down in the President.
Another there was of whom it is somewhat difficult to
speak, seeing that there are those now living who were
bound to him by the closest of domestic ties. It would be
74 THE IJFE OF MRS. EYNN LINTON
indiscreet to mention his name, and I shall do no more than
indicate his identity, for the sake of those who knew Mrs.
Linton best. He was the " Brother Edward " of whom she
spoke through life as " one of those who make the honour of
their generation, and who help to keep society sweet and pure,
because entirely governed by principle."
He it was who stirred in her the one great passion of her
life, and although circumstances made their union impossible,
their correspondence by letter never ceased until his death,
some few months before that of Mrs. Linton herself. Then
only the forty years' romance came to an end.
The bar to their marriage lay in the fact that he was a
Roman Catholic and she was at least a confessed Agnostic.
He was deeply religious ; she was " notoriously unanchored."
Do what his director would — for she submitted to the efforts
made towards her conversion — she was never, she herself has
said, stirred a hair's breadth. Though she should lose all,
she could not command belief in what seemed to her mere
fables from beginning to end — and even against love she must
be faithful to truth.
This is no mere hyperbole. Eliza Lynn's crowning
characteristic was intractability. She was incapable of
accepting aught but what commended itself to her own
judgment. Authority was of no value in her eyes, save
where she had no opportunity of making her own investiga-
tion. To quote Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins in another
connection, " with her the acid of doubt bit into every axiom."
Of course many thought her wilful, but if so, it was surely
wilfulness inconceivable which could make her surrender the
man whom she loved, and who loved her, just for the sake of
a meaningless obstinacy. And for him, a devout Roman
Catholic, there was of course no marrying without the Church's
consent.
This condition of things continued for as long as five or
six years, during which time they met at intervals, only to find
themselves, as far as convictions were concerned, drifting
farther and farther apart. Then came the final scene, when
he made a last despairing effort to win her over ; but she could
SOCIAL LIFE IN THE "FIFTIES" 75
not forswear herself. And then the realisation of love, in the
sense of total self-abandonment, went out of her life for good
and all.
More need not be said. So much was necessary to clear
the ground for the marriage, more or less of convenience,
which she was to contract later on.
Of other notabilities, prospective and otherwise, with
whom she rubbed shoulders in London in those days, some,
as we shall see, to become factors in her later life, were Mr.
Herbert Spencer ; William Smith, or " Thorndale," as he used
to be called ; Robert Owen, the social reformer, of whom
she said, " I became his ardent convert, and had there been a
' phalanstery ' founded on philosophical principles I would
have gone into it " ; Charles Bray ; Edward Pigott ; Froude,
" one of our best if most prejudiced historians, master of
style and eloquent devil's advocate " ; Lady Franklin ; Mrs.
Gaskell, " with her beautiful white arms bare to the shoulder,
and as destitute of bracelets as her hands were of gloves " ;
Carlyle ; and Emerson.
At the house of Mrs. Milner-Gibson, of whose table-turn-
ing seances more will be said later, she met Mazzini, Louis
Blanc, Kossuth, Klapka, and the Scalias.
About this time, too, she made acquaintance with the
Stricklands, of whom she writes, " Agnes, with her ringlets
and look of faded prettiness, accepting homage as one who
had been used to it all her life; Elizabeth, sturdy, plain,
devoted, self-effacing, the one who did the real work while
giving to her sister all the honour. She lived only for that
sister's pleasure and in her success ; and she really idolised
her. I shall never forget my own surprise when one day she
turned to me, with a look of supreme devotion on her good,
plain, hard-featured face, and said — every word like a caress
— ' How pretty Agnes looks to-day ! ' "
Other houses at which she was a welcome guest were
those of Sir Charles Babbage and Sergeant Talfourd. Of
the latter she says, " I remember how he kept up the tradi-
tions of the then past generation, and came into the drawing-
room with a thick speech and unsteady legs."
7G THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
I have been thus particular in grouping together the
notable persons with whom Eliza Lynn was more or less on
terms of intimacy, for the purpose of putting her early years
as an authoress in their proper setting. From which it will
be seen that not only was she in touch with all that was
mentally stimulating, but she also moved in a society befitting
her social condition. In some cases I have of course slightly
anticipated, but her surroundings during the " fifties " are here
fairly represented. Afterwards, during the years of her
marriage, there is little doubt that those of her acquaintances
who laid undue stress on class distinctions were not so cordial.
Later on, however, when she renewed her independent life,
these fastidious persons were ready enough to welcome her
back to their more exclusive circles.
CHAPTER VII
1851-1857
THE year 1851, as has appeared in Chapter V., found
Eliza Lynn severing her connection with the Morning
Chronicle. What was the actual beginning of the
breach between her and the editor is not altogether clear.
It is enough to say that she suddenly failed to please. She
" who up to this time had been a kind of cherished seedling,
who might some day develop into the very roof-tree of the
office, now could do nothing that was right." Day by day
her independent articles were rejected and her routine work
found fault with. Then came the final scene, and she was
once again " adrift on the great sea of life, with a dragging
anchor and no harbour in sight."
But her anchor did not drag long. " I was," she writes,
" too energetic to be demoralised by my first failure ; and
my fall in nowise maimed the hope and resolve which are
the best pioneers of certainty. Casting about for a continu-
ance of press-work, which was the substance, while my inde-
pendent writings were the decorations of my income, I
happened on a Parisian correspondentship just then vacant,
and went over to the Brain of the World as one of ' Our
Own.'
" Here I entered on a new set of experiences, and broke
fresh ground everywhere. I had several introductions, both
private and official ; and some to the confraternity. But I
did not find these last very useful. I do not know how these
things are managed now, when telegraphy has equalised
endeavour ; but then the whole system was one of rivalry.
In the interests of his paper, each man wished to be first in
77
78 THE LIFE OF MRS. EYNN LINTON
the field and to have the practical monopoly of private
information. Hence, brotherly kindness, and doing to others
as you would be done by, did not obtain among men whose
professional loyalty lay in misleading, tripping up the heels
of, and outstripping their competitors."
What the paper was for which she corresponded I have
been unable to discover, but it could hardly have been a very
lucrative appointment, for, as we shall see, she was now
about to feel the pinch of very narrow means.
Arrived in Paris, she soon made acquaintances and friends.
Amongst the latter she was fortunate enough to number
Madame von Mohl, wife of the distinguished Orientalist,
Julius von Mohl, who at that time held the Chair of Persian
at the College de France.
She says of him, " He was a very dungeon of learning —
I use the word intentionally — for, like a dungeon, for the
most part he kept his treasures under lock and key, away
from the daily light, and only at stated times made a grand
gaol-delivery in his books. Still, he was gentle and human,
and knew when to unbend ; and though he did not take the
initiative, he gave me valuable advice when I asked for it,
and such information as I wanted, and in all things treated
me like a rational being — though I must have been to him
terribly embryonic and inchoate."
At their house, Eliza Lynn, " then one of the vanguard of
the advanced women," but afterwards, as is well known, left
far behind in the rush of the movement, met many notable
people, and made some good friendships.
One of these, William Rathbone Greg, had already,
before they met, greatly fascinated her with his Creed of
Christendom, and now his sparkling talk and pleasant per-
sonality completed the charm already begun. Twenty years
younger than he was, she forgave " his tremendous assumption
of superiority," and thus at once gained " his goodwill, and,
as time went on, a more valuable measure of friendship."
Not that she gave in her adherence to what he considered
his satisfactory solution of the Enigmas of Life. Indeed, to
the last he counted it for blame to her that he could not
1851-1857 79
influence her more than he did. But he recognised that she
was true as steel to him and all other friends, and that her
heart was sound if her head was not.
Of that great actress Fanny Kemble, whom she also met
in Paris at this time, she writes —
" The deep voice and stage-stateliness of manner, the
assumption of supremacy and really cruel strength of this
lady, crushed me flat. The way in which she levelled her
big black eyes at me, and calmly put her foot on me, was
an experience never to be forgotten. The pitiless brutality
of her contradictions, her scathing sarcasm, her contemptuous
taunts, knowing that I was unable to answer her, the way in
which she used her matured powers to wound and hurt my
even then immature nature, gave me a certain shuddering
horror for her, such as I fancy a man would feel for one who
had flayed him in the market-place. I am thankful to Fate
which never threw us together again.
" Years after, I knew her yet more gifted sister (Adelaide
Sartoris) in Rome. She was a very different person — as
womanly as this other was virile ; as sweet and generous
and sympathetic as this other was arbitrary, insolent, and
inhuman. A characteristic little trait of the former was told
me, instancing, to my way of thinking, the stony and unyield-
ing quality of her mind. She was used to number all her
dresses and hang them up in rows. If it came to the turn
of her gold tissue to be worn, she would wear it, though she
might be going to a simple family dinner ; if it were the turn
for a morning silk, she would wear that, though she had to
appear at a stately ball. This was her method of expressing
order ; and in this apparently insignificant little habit may
be seen the germ of all she was and did, and the cause of
all she suffered and made others suffer."
In Paris, too, she first met the Brownings, of whom the
wife was in those days the more popular and famous. Her
senior by a dozen years, Mrs. Browning took up a critical
attitude towards her younger sister in letters.
" When she talked to me," writes the latter, " she used
to look at me through the dropping curtains of her long
80 THE TJFE OF INIRS. LYNN LINTON
ringlets as if she would have read my secret soul. I used
to feel as if I were oti a moral dissecting-table, while she
probed my thoughts and touched speculative tracts which
probably seemed to her hopelessly wrong and corrupt. She
did not show that she disliked nor distrusted me, but
something about me must have jarred her highly strung,
sensitive nature."
Other notabilities with whom she came in contact were
Ar)'- Scheffer, politician, soldier, and artist ; Jean Pierre
Beranger ; and Daniele Manin, the Italian politician and
revolutionary leader, who, after he had proclaimed the
Republic of Venice and driven out the Austrians in 1848,
had, on the termination of that memorable siege, with-
drawn to Paris. Here he was gaining a living by teaching
Italian.
" With him," she writes, " my relations were friendly
almost to intimacy, and I used often to go and see him at
his meagre rooms in the unfashionable quarter where he
lived. He was always wrapped in cloaks and blankets, and
complained much of the cold ; but he was ever dignified and
noble. His daughter was then in bad health. It was the
sad beginning of the sadder end ; for when she died all that
was essentially Manin died too, and the broken heart of the
father put the finishing touch to the ruined career of the
patriot,"
" At this time," she continues, " I was poor, rather than
well off, and I had to live modestly if I would live honour-
ably. Hence I had my eyrie on the fourth floor, where I
shared the apartment of a fellow-countrywoman a few years
older than myself. Her French mother and Irish father were
dead — the latter quite lately — and her sole inheritance was
the lease of this apartment for the five years it had to run.
We lived a rough kind of life; but at our age roughnesses
did not count. An old woman used to come in the morning
to /aire le minage for the day ; after which we were left to
ourselves. We had to take our meals out of doors, save for
the premier dijeilner of bread and coffee ; and we had only
two rooms — one each. But our friends used to toil up , . .
1851-1857 81
to visit us. Men of note, women of condition, . . . they all
came to make merry or to talk seriously, as the humour took
them. Among the rest I remember Mr. Thackeray coming
here to see me ; and the good-humoured way in which he
sat on the flat-topped black box, not to disturb the mass of
papers heaped on my second chair, was especially delightful.
Mr. Greg also used to come, but he generally fell foul of my
hundred and ninety steps ; and it was here that I first saw
Henry Wills, who, with his wife, afterwards became one of
my dearest friends."
That she rather understated than exaggerated her hand-
to-mouth existence at this time, is evident from the following
letters. Mr. W. H. Wills was assistant-editor of Household
Words, for which periodical Eliza Lynn was now a fairly
constant writer. In making out a list of his contributors
later on, Charles Dickens wrote against her name, " Good for
anything, and thoroughly reliable."
E. L. TO Mr. W. H. Wills.
98 Rue de la PEPiNifeRE, Paris,
i^thjitne 1853.
" My dear Sir, — Thank you very much for your extreme
kindness and thoughtfulness in sending me ;^5. You do not
know how grateful I am to you ! I will do my best, now
that it is a point of honour, to write you one of the prettiest
things I can drag out of my brains. I will try so hard to
send you something really nice ! I am very quiet in Paris,
and writing a new book, but I am intensely happy in all the
flowers I have in my room (such an artiste's room and life
altogether !) ; in my sweet, gentle, dear little hostess ; in the
gaiety of the streets and the novelty of the whole life; and
I would rather stay here on £"100 a year than live in London
on five. I have a canary that I hang amongst my flowers,
roses and mignonette, and carnations and ' laurier rose' (I
don't remember the English name), which, for want of a
flower-stand, I place on one of my boxes. My room is tiled,
beautifully clean, and slippery as glass. My curtains are
ragged and patched crimson cotton ; my bed is a small sofa
6
82 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
covered with canvas ; I have a glass about three inches square,
which gives me a wen on one side of my face ; and I am up
au quatrieme. We are both very poor, my pretty hostess and
myself, and we make ' treats ' of a few radishes or a dish of
peas or asparagus. We live very plainly, and study economy
in everything — but I am so happy, so happy ! It is a life I
love. I always hated the stiff, heavy, expensive English
mode, when all one's money went in board and lodging. I
want my books and a few old favourite ornaments I have got
in London — a ' Sabrina ' and a gold basket and a case of
birds — and I want an easy-chair, for I have not got one —
and a new bonnet ! — and I should be perfectly satisfied. But
I am ten years younger than I was last winter, and have
almost forgotten how to shed tears — which has generally
been rather a favourite occupation of mine. All, all that I
want now is just enough to go on with. I had only ' provision '
for two weeks more, when now your ^5 have made me, oh,
happier than our poor little queen is !
" God bless you for your kindness, and believe me always,
your obliged and grateful E. Lynn."
E. L. TO Mr. W. H. Wills.
98 Rue de la Pepimere, Paris,
June 1853.
" My dear Sir, — I have received your £^ note to-day,
for which I beg to return you my best thanks. You are
becoming quite my monetary Providence, for I assure you on
my word of honour I had only one franc in my purse when
your letter came. I have had five francs for ten days, but
they have dwindled into one. Now don't you feel how
grateful I must be to you, or Mr. Dickens, or HouselLold
Words — or to some one, I don't know who, in Wellington
Street North, who gets me out of my embarrassments so
pleasantly ?
" I will send you two sketches soon, one the ' Garden of the
Tuileries ' and the other ' A French Menage ' — but I hope that
you will find yourselves very, very deeply in my debt, for my
P/Iarie has a long fever, and you will find her powers of
elongation tremendous.
" I hoped to have finished the ' Gardens ' to-day, but I am
1851-1857 83
disgracefully idle. I cannot write. I mess about my flowers
and read snatches of French, and then become resolute and
brave and sit down to write — but I do nothing ! I have
taken a fitful passion for embroidery, and here do I, a
veritable bas bleu, sit for hours stitching at collars that are
not half so well done as what I might buy, and which cost
me days and days in the spoiling. But I have the em-
broidery fever on me, and I suppose it must run its course
like other fevers. The weather has been fearfully hot, but
to-day we have had a miniature deluge and a thunderstorm,
and there is more chance of surviving to the end of the
summer.
" With renewed thanks — for indeed I feel, perhaps falsely,
a certain personal kindness in my intercourse with you —
believe me, dear sir, most sincerely yours,
"E. Lynn."
It must not be supposed that Eliza Lynn's life in Paris
was spent exclusively or even mainly in the society of
celebrities. Indeed, the slenderness of her purse and her
own inclination put anything of the sort out of the
question.
There were other things which she could do and rejoiced
in doing. There were the thousand and one delights and
amusements of the fascinating city to be investigated at the
slightest possible outlay, and numberless pleasure- loving
fellow-creatures to be watched, labelled, and put by for use.
Not that her greatest pleasure was to be found in such
surroundings, stimulating and interesting though they were.
Long walks and excursions to Vincennes, Versailles, St.
Germain, Fontainebleau, Asnieres, Ville d'Avray, and the
like, were fullest of delight. For, as she has often pointed
out, it was among the contradictions of which her character
was full, that she combined the most passionate love for
nature and all its manifestations with a voluntary residence
in towns.
After a few years of this strange life, she returned to
England. Her Parisian experiences had changed her point
of view on more matters than one, and in nothing more than
84 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
on the marriage question. More than ever she had now
become convinced that " society is built up by experiments,
and that the final word has not been said on anything." She
came to the conclusion that " in Roman Catholic countries
the sublime theory of the sacramental quality of marriage is
wholly inoperative in practice, and that this is none the more
sacred because it is indissoluble. On the contrary, the
unyielding nature of the tie forces consideration for human
weakness ; and adultery is condoned because divorce is
impossible."
As a result, though she never went so far as those who
would have no bond outside inclination, she did go so far
as to commend those countries which allow of divorce by
mutual consent, and without the necessity of committing a
moral offence to obtain relief
She held that " the worst possible legislation is that which
multiplies unnecessary restrictions and thus creates artificial
offences. The best, that which leaves the individual un-
checked liberty up to the point which harms no one" but
himself.
These ideas were not, of course, peculiar to her then, and
they have become more than common since ; but they
demand passing mention, for they were destined to colour
more than one important act of her life.
In 1855 the Rev. James Lynn died, and the old homes of
Crosthwaite and Caldbeck passed into the hands of strangers.
In the following year, Gadshill, which he had left to his
daughters, was sold to Charles Dickens.
Eliza alone of all the sisters was now unmarried. So it
was that she became at this time more isolated even than she
had been before. With the breaking up of the old home, and
the forming of new relationships by those to whom it had
hitherto been the centre of family life, there was naturally a
loosening of the common tie.
By this time she had undoubtedly much moderated her
early views of men and things.
In her youth " revolt was in the air, and public events had
added fuel to the original fire " of her temperament. She had
18.51-1857 85
seen righteousness in the Rebecca Riots ; she had firmly
believed "that Sir James Graham, when he opened Mazzini's
letters, was the paid and authorised spy of the house of
Hapsburg"; " King Dan " had been her idol; she had been
an enthusiastic supporter of the Corn Law League and the
Reform Bill ; she had seen the French Republic proclaimed,
and " had believed in the formula, Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite,
as a new gospel against which the gates of hell itself would
not prevail," and she had seen " the murdered corpse of this
fair hope lying beneath the heel of Louis Napoleon, and the
empire established on the basis of perjury and murder."
And she had seen Orsini standing in the dock, and had
regarded him as the victim.
But now, political events were quieting down ; and partly
as a consequence of this, partly by reason of her own mental
development, her ideas were becoming modified and more
practical.
The condition of the poor ; the relations between capital
and labour ; the need of " levelling up " the masses by
improved education and by increased political respon-
sibilities, were the subjects which now sat nearest to her
heart.
The " Death to the Tyrants ! " phase was now giving
place to the calmer and wiser conviction " that reforms to
be lasting must be legal, and that true liberty comes by the
slower process of growth and gradual fitness, rather than
by the sudden leap into supreme power of men unused to
responsibilities and incapable of self-government."
From the point of view of the thoroughgoing Radical, she
was, no doubt, in Mr. G. J. Holyoake's words, "suffering from
the fatty degeneration of the understanding that comes to
the well-fed Liberal." She was learning that violence, ** the
ugly side of reaction against wrong," had done as much to
retard as to advance the birth hour of true liberty. She was
grasping the fact, which all must grasp whose mental develop-
ment keeps pace with the bodily, that the salvation of society
comes not by cataclysms and coups d'etat, but by the gradual
education of public opinion ; and, as a corollary, that personal
86 THE TJFE OF ISIRS. LYNN IJNTON
rancour is as powerless as the steady and sustained pressure
of argument is almighty.
Fortunately for her, there was, notwithstanding her ebulli-
ently enthusiastic temperament, just that " twopennyworth of
common sense in the midst of the intolerable quantity of
impulse with which she was handicapped," as she herself has
put it, which kept her out of any actual participation in the
insurgencies of the time.
The following account of the manner in which she received
the news of the death, in 1855, of the Czar Nicholas — the
strong man who was animated throughout his career by a
desire to crush out every spark of freedom from his country,
and to establish a rigid absolutism — is very characteristic.
" I remember," she writes, "the evening when news of the
Czar's death flashed into London. To me it was the fore-
runner of peace and the redemption of thousands of lives
through the loss of one. Therefore it was a thing rightfully
welcome to England. Yet Nicholas was a man of whom his
worst enemies must speak with respect for his person, how
much soever they may hate the system of which he was the
crowning symbol. I was in a state of boiling excitement
and could not remain at home, but dashed out in a hansom,
I did not care where. I remember driving round Regent's
Park in the aimless way of simple emotion trying to work
itself off; and then I went to the house of some pleasant
friends, with whom I was accustomed to spend many of my
evenings. I thought they would sympathise with my exulta-
tion, and share in my rejoicing over the probable speedy
settlement of the war ; and I bounded up the stairs, bursting
into the room like a whirlwind raised by laughter.
" I found the wife pale and in tears ; the young people
sitting about in mute, desponding, half-terrified distress ; the
husband pacing the room in the violent agonies of despair.
What did it all mean ? I was aghast, and not the less so
when the sweet wife sobbed out —
" ' We are ruined ! My dear, we are absolutely and
eternally ruined ! '
" Mr. was on the Stock Exchange. He had specu-
1851-1857 87
lated for a fall ; and the sudden death of the Czar had sent all
investments up like so many balloons, and swept away his
last penny.
" This was the first time I had come face to face with the
sorrow of private loss through public gain, and it made an
indelible impression on me. Natural as was the despair of
the ruined individual, in face of the general and national
good it seemed to me so strangely unpatriotic, so fatally
egotistic ! "
Here we recognise the early manifestation of that
thoroughgoing altruism by which those who knew her in
later days found her animated. Even those who did not
sympathise could not but render their tribute of admiration
to the magnanimity which saw nothing in the martyrdom of
the individual where the welfare of the race demanded it —
and this though she herself might be the victim, with no hope
of paradise to compensate for the suffering.
I shall conclude this chapter with an encounter which she
had with George Cruikshank about this time. He had now
entered upon the campaign against drink to which he was
destined to give up the last twenty-five years of his life.
"One evening," she says, "we had been to Westland
Marston's, and we walked home together. On the way we
passed a group of rowdy, drunken men and women. Suddenly
George stopped, and, taking hold of my arm, said solemnly —
" ' Vo?i are responsible for those poor wretches.'
" I answered that I did not exactly see this, and disclaimed
any share in their degradation. But he insisted on it, and
hung those ruined souls like infernal bells about my neck,
tinkling out my own damnation, because at supper I had
drunk a glass of champagne from which he had vainly tried
to dissuade me ! "
CHAPTER VIII
MARRIAGE— 1858
IN 1858, Eliza Lynn married, as his second wife, William
James Linton, the eminent wood-engraver.
Before dealing with what was to prove a far from
satisfactory union, it will be well to say a few words concern-
ing this remarkable man.^
Born in London in 1812, he had by his sixteenth year
given such artistic promise that he was apprenticed to the
wood-engraver, G. W. Bonner. Specimens of his earliest
work are to be found in Martin and Westall's Pictorial
Illustrations of tJie Bible (1833). From henceforth his talent
received ample recognition, and he soon took a foremost
place among the wood-engravers of the period.
In 1842 he went into partnership with John Orrin Smith.
The Illustrated London A^ews was just then being projected,
and the proprietors at once secured the services of the newly
constituted firm. The following year Orrin Smith died, and
Linton, who was by this time married, found himself in sole
charge of a business upon which two families were dependent.
In 1852 he took up his residence at Brantwood on Coniston
Water, the house which was later the home of John Ruskin.
All these years he had been hard at work with his graver,
not only on the London News but on books innumerable.
His artistic work alone, however, was not sufficient outlet
for his energies. When quite a young man he had imbibed
a taste for politics, and before long became a zealous Chartist.
^ For further details I would refer the reader to an article by Mr. F. G. Kitton
on "William James Linton, Engraver, Poet, and Political Writer," which
appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine for April 189 1.
MARRIAGE— 1 858 89
Later, by his marriage with the sister of Thomas Wade,
editor of Bell's Neiv Weekly Messenger, a semi-radical London
paper, he had been brought into close contact with the
practical, social, and political problems of the time. In 1838
he projected, and lost his money over, a sort of cheap library
for the people, called The National ; and in 1S40 he wrote
the Life of Thomas Paine. " Four years later," says Mr.
Kitton, "he was concerned with Mazzini in calling the
attention of Parliament to the fact that the exile's letters
had been opened in the English Post Office. This led to a
personal friendship with the great Italian, and involved Linton
in European politics which made a large demand upon his time.
" In 1848 he was deputed to carry to the French Provisional
Government the first congratulatory address of English
workmen, and in the following year . . . removed to the
North, though still engaged in engrossing political work. At
this time he edited a twopenny weekly paper, The Cause of
the People, published in the Isle of Man ; but a more im-
portant venture was the founding of a London weekly news-
paper called the Leader, advocating Republican principles.
Among those associated with him in the enterprise were
George Henry Lewes and Thornton Hunt, who, however,
disappointed him, and he withdrew from the speculation.
" In 1850 he was engaged in writing a series of articles on
Republican principles, being an exposition of the views and
doctrines of his friend Joseph Mazzini, in a weekly publication
called the Red Republican, edited by another old friend, Mr.
George Julian Harney. Not more than twelve months after
this he commenced at Brantwood a publication of his own,
first in the form of weekly tracts and then as a monthly
magazine. This was the English Republic (which was carried
on for four years, and in which everything not expressly
assigned to real names is Mr. Linton's), a work intended as a
" useful exponent of Republican principles ; a faithful record
of Republican progress throughout the world ; an organ of
propagandism and a medium of communication for the
active Republicans in England." To this Mazzini and
Herzen the Russian patriot contributed some papers.
90 THE T.IFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" Mr, Linton's friend of long standing, Mr. W. E. Adams
(present editor of the Newcastle Chrotiicle), has favoured me
with some interesting notes of other publications with which
Mr. Linton was connected. Mr. Linton appended a note to
the last of the Red Republican articles, requesting all who
sympathised with the ideas expressed in them to communicate
with him at Ravenglass, Cumberland, where he then resided.
Mr. Adams writes —
" ' I was one of the young men of the time who answered
his appeal. The result of Mr. Linton's article and action
was that " Republican Associations for the teaching of Re-
publican principles " were established in various parts of the
country — among other places at my native town, Cheltenham.
I was also one of the three young men who went to Brant-
wood in the spring of 1854, to help in the mechanical portion
of the publication of the English Republic. Here we printed
not only that work, but also a Tyneside magazine called the
Northern Tribune ; but the scheme in which we were engaged
was not financially successful, hence the English Republic
ceased, the establishment was broken up, and the little
community we had constituted had dispersed. Just previous
to the Brantwood experiment, Mr. Linton had printed for
private circulation a volume of poems entitled The Plaint of
Freedofn. It bears the date 1852. No name was attached to
the book, nor was it known, I think, till long afterwards that
he was the author. A copy of the work was sent to Walter
Savage Landor, who highly eulogised the verses in a sonnet
addressed " To the Author of The Plaint of Freedom',' begin-
ning with the lines —
Lauder of Milton ! worthy of his laud !
How shall I name thee ? Art thou yet unnamed ? ' "
To these particulars furnished to Mr, Kitton, Mr. Adams
has, for the purposes of this book, been good enough to add
the following account of the family in the days preceding
Eliza Lynn's acquaintance with the Lintons.
" The family at Brantwood in 1854 consisted of Mr. and
Mrs, Linton and their six children — three boys and three
WILLIAM JAMES LINTON
CIRCA 1858
MARRIAGE— 1858 91
girls — the youngest mere babies. The cleverest and most
promising of the boys — the second son, Lancelot — died early.
All the children were charming romps, who made things
lively for everybody about the place. Mrs. Linton was an
amiable lady — quiet, cheerful, and contented — devoted to her
children. The life at Brantwood was very secluded, Mr.
Linton, busy with his engraving, his writing, and his corre-
spondence, made few friends in the neighbourhood. I can
recall only one — Dr. Bywell, then in practice there — though
once Harriet Martineau came over from Ambleside. Indeed,
Mr. Linton, as I know from my intercourse with the villagers
in Coniston, was regarded as a considerable mystery, while
the sort of work we were doing in the printing office caused
us all to be viewed with suspicion. Mr. Linton had, however,
a friend in Keswick, Dr. Lietch, who had told him about a
young lady there, a writer of novels and an ardent Radical,
whose acquaintance he thought he ought to make. This, of
course, was Miss Lynn. Well, Miss Lynn was invited to
Brantwood. She came for the first time while I was there.
I remember her as a tall, stately, handsome young woman.
We were all captivated by her appearance and manners.
It was soon after this that Miss Lynn wrote for the Republic
an article on Mary Wollstonecraft ; also, I think, a notable
poem in the same number signed ' Agathon.' "
It is not surprising to learn from the above that the
establishment was looked on with suspicion by the villagers,
more especially when it is remembered that the first thing
Mr. Linton did on constructing an outbuilding to the Brant-
wood property was to adorn it on the outside with " God and
the People," and suchlike legends, which had at that time
been adopted as revolutionary mottoes.
Besides being suspicious of the work that was being done
at Brantwood, and probably resenting the seclusion which
Mr. Linton deemed it proper to maintain, the villagers
apparently had their doubts as to the financial stability of
the concern. As Mr. Adams writes to me —
" Only an enthusiast would have thought of setting up a
printing office in a remote quarter of the Lake District, miles
92 THE LIFE OF MRS. T.YNN LINTON
away from the nearest railvv^ay station. Paper and other
materials had all to be carted over the Fells from Windermere
to Brantwood, and the printed magazines had all to be carted
over the Fells from Brantwood to Windermere back again.
Nor did the circulation of the EnglisJi Republic warrant this
inevitable addition to the cost of production. As a matter
of fact, it never did pay at all. Mr. Linton had therefore
to finance the establishment out of his own earnings as an
engraver. When he had any money he shared it with his
comrades and assistants in the printing office. When he had
none, they had to do without. So it came to pass that I,
who was the first to leave the company, having only five or
six shillings in hand, had to tramp all the way home from
Coniston to Cheltenham — a necessity I never afterwards
regretted, however, since I thus learnt from personal ex-
perience the extraordinary kindness and sympathy which
tramps and thieves often show to one another. But the good
folks of Coniston, even before our impecunious days com-
menced, were disinclined to serve us. If we wanted to be
clothed or shod, the tailor or the cordwainer, prior to taking
our measure for suit or shoes, pointedly demanded, ' When
are ye gawin' to paay ? ' This want of faith in our honesty,
as much as the suspicion of our proceedings, prevented any
close communion between the natives and ourselves."
The English Republic^ which was issued from here, was
written mainly by Linton, but he had some financial assist-
ance from the then equally advanced Republican, Mr. Joseph
Co wen.
Linton was an enthusiast, exceedingly unpractical —
perhaps it should be said unworldly. That he should have
reached such eminence in his art as he undoubtedly did,
when he was for ever starting papers, delivering addresses,
and writing verse — verse, we must remember, hailed as poetry
by Landor — is nothing less than extraordinary.
This, then, was the remarkable man who was destined to
play so important a part in Eliza Lynn's life.
Of their first meeting, Mrs. Mather, a daughter of Mr.
Linton's, furnishes me with the following note : —
MARRIAGE— 1858 93
" The correspondence (brought about by Dr. Lietch) led to
her coming on a visit to our home ' Brantwood ' on Coniston
Water (between 1854-56). There she and our real mother
became warm and attached friends, and it was our mother,
an invalid for years, who first asked Miss Lynn to care for the
seven children she was leaving, the eldest only fourteen years
of age at the time. After the loss of our mother, in 1857 I
believe, Miss Lynn took my two youngest sisters — the baby
named Eliza, after her — to Hastings for the benefit of the
sea air. I and our eldest sister joined them towards winter,
and in December, the baby whom she had grown to love as
her very own, and whom she had taught to call her ' Mammy
Lizzie,' died."
Mrs. Mather's account given above tallies with that which
Mrs. Linton herself gave to Mrs. Bridell-Fox. It was, she
said, a promise made to the first Mrs. Linton, whom she
nursed most devotedly during a long and most painful
illness, to care for her children, that chiefly influenced her.
How in later days she preached early and late against such
quixotism as a motive for marriage, all her friends and
readers of her novels well know.
It is a fact perhaps worth mentioning, that before going
to stay with the Lintons for the first time, she told her
people that she greatly dreaded the visit, as she felt
certain that something would happen to change her whole
life.
Personally I do not believe that this was in any way a
premonition of her marriage. It is, I think, far more probable
that she felt that intimacy with Mr. Linton might result in
her being drawn actively into the service of the Republican
propaganda — a course which she had determinedly avoided
in her own most effervescent days, and which she dreaded
more than ever now that her enthusiasms were taking on a
certain modification.
We will now supplement the above somewhat fragmentary
account of events preceding the marriage from the pages of
ChristopJier Kirkland, winnowing the DicJitung from the
Wahrheit with the help of such extraneous evidence as is
94 THE IJFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
available. Concerning her first visit to Brantwood she
writes —
" I felt as if I had got into a new world — one with which
my experiences on this old earth of ours had no point in
common, and were of no use as guide or glossary. Playing
in the neglected, untrimmed garden, where never tree nor
bush was lopped nor pruned, and where the long grass of the
lawn was starred with dandelions and daisies as better flowers
than those which man could cultivate, was a troop of little
children, none of whom was more beautiful than another.
They were all dressed exactly alike — in long blouses of that
coarse blue flannel with which housemaids scrub the floors ;
and all had precisely the same kind of hats — the girls
distinguished from the boys only by a somewhat broader
band of faded ribbon, Nazarenes, even to the eldest boy of
fourteen, they wore their hair as nature ordained, in long
loose locks to their shoulders. It was difficult to distinguish
the sex in this queer epicene costume, which left it doubtful
whether they were girls bloomerised or boys in feminine
tunics ; for the only differences were — cloth trousers for the
boys, cotton for the girls, and the respective width of the hat-
ribbon aforesaid. But they were lovely as angels, and
picturesque as so many Italian studies ; so that amazement
lost itself in admiration, and one forgave the unfitness of
things for the sake of their beauty,"
From other sources I learn that the little Lintons used
to suffer much from the ridicule of the children of the
neighbourhood, who used to hoot after them and ask whether
they were boys or girls.
" The house itself was found and furnished on the same
lines. There were no carpets, but there were rare pictures
and first proofs unframed ; casts of noble cinque-cento work,
darkened with dust ; superb shells ; and all the precious
lumber of an artist's home, crowded on shelves of rough-hewn,
unvarnished deal set against the unpapered whitewashed
wall. There were not enough chairs for the family, and
empty packing-cases eked out the deficiency. For their food,
meat was a luxury, wine as rare as Olympian nectar, and
MARRIAGE- 1858 95
sweetmeats were forbidden as the analogues of vicious luxury.
Milk, bread, vegetables, and oatmeal, with treacle as the
universal sweetener, were the food-stuffs by which the Lintons
believed they should rear a family consecrated to the
regeneration of society. The boys were to be great artists
or divine poets. The girls were to be preachers or prophet-
esses. One or two might be told off as mothers to keep up
the supply of the Chosen. But, for the most part, their
sphere of activity would be the world, not the home — their
care humanity, not the family."
Of Linton himself, she said —
" No one who knew him in these early days could fail
to love and reverence him. No matter how little you sym-
pathised with his methods, you could not do other than
respect and admire his personality." She told a common
friend of hers and mine that when first she knew him his
face was the face of a Christ. His political creed was his
religion. He believed that a social revolution was at hand,
when abstract right would take the place of godless ex-
pediency, when wars would cease, when the reign of peace
and truth, of justice without flaw, and perfect purity of life
alike for men and women, would begin.
" His theological creed was a large loose jumble of
Christianity and Pantheism, the chief working tenets of which
were : belief in the direct personal superintendence of God
over the affairs of men ; faith in the power of truth and the
invincibility of the right, with the correlative belief that
falsehood would not prevail nor wrong ultimately conquer
because of this personal rule of God and the ' stream of
tendency ' in humanity."
In the third year of Eliza Lynn's intimacy in this curious
household, Mrs. Linton was struck down by a terrible illness.
For months before her death she was unable to do anything
for herself, and would have no one near her but her newly
found friend.
Miss Lynn gave up everything and devoted herself to her
service. To the last year of her life she could not speak of
that terrible time without horror and dismay.
96 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Nor was the poor victim alone dependent upon her. She
became for the time being not only the guardian of the whole
family, but to a great extent provided the means for carrying
on the establishment. Such money as she had put by and
was earning she placed freely at their disposal, constituting
herself in all respects their good providence.
Not that she ever suggested that her behaviour was
purely magnanimous. The Lintons had deeply interested her.
They had fascinated her by their very strangeness, linked as
it was to much goodness and much beauty. And what was
more, she found in their affection some sort of compensation
for the loss of him from whom she had been so lately
separated by difference of creed.
The unquestioning simplicity with which they accepted
all she did for them fitted in with her humour. They evinced
no fulsome gratitude, but took it all as a matter of course.
It was all part and parcel of the social millennium that was
beginning. She was doing the right thing in bearing their
burdens, and being a true woman she could do nothing less.
So it happened as she wrote, that "this kind of com-
munism brought about a closer intimacy and on my side
a still deeper affection — the helper always loving the de-
pendent."
At last the end came. The poor sufferer died without
regret — full of faith that her dear ones would be cared for
by her Father in heaven — working principally through her
friend to whom she bequeathed them.
It is not necessary to dwell at any length upon what
followed. It is enough to say that Eliza was in that frame
of mind which made benevolence her greatest solace, her
only happiness. As she has written —
" Full of desire to serve one whom I loved and respected
— eager to make loyal response to the poor dead friend who
had trusted me — seeing only all that was beautiful in Mr.
Linton's nature and pitiful in his condition — loving the
children like my own, and earnest to see them better cared
for, better taught, more wisely guided, than they were — my
common sense, overweighted by religious zeal and altruistic
MARRIAGE— 1858 97
pity, by affection, by principle, and by hope — I took the
irretrievable step ; and in less than two years from Mrs.
Linton's death I married Mr. Linton, and took his family for
my own."
Of course it is easy enough to prophesy after the event.
Certainly it seems to us who knew Mrs. Lynn Linton in later
life that the experiment was foredoomed to failure.
In the first place there was the fatal fact that personally
Mr, Linton failed to satisfy her fastidious taste. He was
ungraceful — careless in the matter of dress and generally
unkempt — with unstarched collars and long hair. He was
unthrifty, unmethodical, and of the two preferred disorder to
regularity. His " love of free nature which left the dandelions
on the lawn and forebore to lop the low-growing branches of
the trees, manifested itself in the house by a liberal dislocation
of hours and the want of circumscription — of apportionment
— all through."
But she was " blinded by the splendour of the Divine
handwriting on the wall which she thought bade her do this
thing ; and by her somewhat arrogant belief that she was
strong enough to remould and save."
She has often told me that she had largely returned at
this time to a belief in Providence and a personal leading by
the Divine hand. No action of her life, she both wrote and
said, was ever based on a more entire sense of duty than was
this. In none did she ever wish to do so well for others,
with so little regard for her own condition. Not that she felt
at the moment any personal repugnance, but she did marry
with more sense of duty than of attraction, and she knew full
well that she was making a sacrifice.
Of course it will be said that as she had made her bed so
she should have been content to lie on it. But it is cheap
enough for those who are pliable by nature and whose
couches are of down, with here and there a crumpled rose-
leaf, to counsel perfection. That she did loyally do her best
to perform her side of the bargain, but that the task proved
too difficult, we shall see in due course.
One sacrifice on Mr. Linton's part she insisted upon at
7
98 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
the outset. The house which he and the mother of his
children had found sufficient for their happiness would, she
said, prove the grave of hers, and she could no more live in
the neglect, disorder, unthrift, and squalor which had been
the normal condition of things, than she could live in a
wigwam with a Cherokee Indian. Hence she stipulated
for a house in London and the orderliness of a civilised
domesticity.
She also urged Mr. Linton to give her a list of his debts,
but this she could never get from him. Not because he was
ashamed, nor because he wished to conceal them, but simply
because he " could not understand the value of financial order,
and had always that trust in ravens and things coming right
of themselves which despises effort."
" I could not," she wrote, " convince him of the need of
method, regularity, foresight, or any other economic virtue.
He was sweet in word and acquiescent in manner ; smiled,
promised compliance — and indeed did much that I wished
because I wished it. But I never touched the core."
The marriage took place in London on 24th March 1858.
Before she had been a wife three months she was asking
herself the questions : " How long will this last ? Will
temperament and long usage prove too strong for the new
practice ? and will the bent bow spring back and the strained
cord break ? "
There had been no doubt a sort of intellectual fascination
about Mr. Linton which had blinded her eyes to his material
shortcomings. And the intimacy of marriage was just the
one condition which must render the ignoring of such
qualities a matter of sheer impossibility.
There were plenty of other men who had shown a desire
to marry Eliza Lynn, but she had, as she said afterwards,
" gone through the wood and picked up the crooked stick."
MRS. LYNN LINTON
ABOUT THE II.ME OF HEU MAKUIAGE (1C5C)
CHAPTER IX
MARRIAGE— 1858-1867 (Continued)
IN accordance with the stipulation mentioned above, a
house was taken in London — 27 Leinster Square,
Bayswater — and was furnished by Mrs. Linton with
such sufficiency as her means would allow.
Mr. Linton doubtless " thought it a pity — and more — to
spend on material the time and money which should be given
to humanity," and "could not be made to approve of that
which he regarded as the mal-administration of a trust." But
as it was her own money that she was spending, he let it pass
without active opposition.
" Also he allowed me," she wrote, " to change the ordering
of things for the children. Their epicene costume was put
off for the ordinary jackets and frocks of ordinary English
children ; the boys were sent to school, and a governess
taught the girls at home. He used to laugh at their studies,
but quite good-naturedly, without malice or bitterness — only
with a little gentle ridicule ; the ridicule of superior insight
and higher aims — finding art and literature mere waste of
precious time, and woman's work, such as sewing and the
like, degrading to the finer functions. Still he left the
governess very much to herself, and did not interfere in her
curriculum. He was, indeed, very sweet and complaisant in
those early days ; and of two threads the white is as true as
the black.
" All things in the house, and the house itself, being new
and fresh, the radical defects of my husband's character as a
master were not at first visible. Though I objected to the
children amusing themselves by carving fancy arabesques on
100 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
the sideboard, playing at ball in the drawing-room, slitting
up the oilcloth, and the like, things went on with peaceful
serenity, and for the first two months we ' stood on velvet.'
Also, the sense of security from poverty, of rest from strain,
of a stable background and a strong arm on which to lean,
won Mr. Linton to a certain amount of domesticity, and made
many things in his new life comforting and joyful. Then he
liked me in a way that had the charm of novelty. He looked
up to me as more practical than himself, and as having a
surer judgment in worldly matters ; and for the time he laid
aside his own and accepted my responsibility, which was like
taking a breath on an uphill climb."
I here insert a note kindly furnished by Mr. Harvey
Orrinsmith ^ (the son of Mr. Linton's old partner), who was
intimate with the Lintons during their married life. He
writes —
" I made the acquaintance of the late Mrs. Lynn Linton
when, as Miss Lynn, she used to come to see us in Hatton
Garden. She drove up in a hansom cab, a proceeding that
was regarded at that period as somewhat fast. She always
wore spectacles, was nearly handsome, and had a dashing
way with her that was distinctly attractive. Linton, a
thorough Bohemian, was quite fascinated by her fine-
ladyism.
" I remember her saying that she would gladly renounce
any intellectual gifts to which she might lay claim, for the
compelling power of great physical beauty. Later in life she
once said to me, ' Oh, Harvey ! how sad a thing it is when,
by the process of time, a woman feels that she is losing her
personal charm.'
" Linton and his new wife (Mrs. Lynn Linton) were very
fond ; she called him ' Manny,' and all went well for some
while. She had money, but Linton's income was precarious,
although he often made large sums by his engraving.
" They started their married life at too high a pitch : a
house was taken in Leinster Square ; Mrs. Linton was very
fond of society, and hoped to make a ' salon.' Large receptions
^ After the death of his father Mr. Orrinsmith united the names.
M ARRI AGE— 1 858-1867 101
were given, great expenses incurred, and soon the res angusta
domi set in with severity,"
If in the first place the Leinster Square house was intended
to be a well-ordered home, in the second and not less import-
ant place it was intended to be a sort of plate-glass advertise-
ment of both Linton and herself, and of the wares which they
had for sale to the public. And it cannot be doubted that,
if the former had been content to devote himself to his
profession as wood - engraver and artist, their combined
incomes would well have justified the experiment.
As it was, however, Mr. Linton's head was full of dreams
of an immediate social millennium, and as time went on he
more and more gave up to mankind the energies which his
wife considered should be devoted to the more prosaic object
of providing for the family.
The open house which was kept became the resort of two
strangely opposite sets. The one which circled round Mr.
Linton was composed of social reformers, " poor patriots and
penniless propagandists." The other, of which Mrs. Linton
was the centre, was regarded by her husband as " worldly,
fashionable, frivolous, and ungodly." And what is more, he
did not hesitate to make it clear to her friends what his
opinion of them was. The result may be imagined. Their
self-respect forbade them to return, and Mrs. Linton found
herself excommunicate.
This was bad enough, but there were other matters which,
to one of Mrs. Linton's mental and practical orderliness, were
even more intolerable.
In her own words, Mr. Linton soon " began absolutely to
disregard the times and rules without which no home-life can
go on with comfort or decency. For an eight o'clock
breakfast he Vv^ould come down at ten ; for a six o'clock
dinner he would appear at eight ; and he took it as unloving
— not disrespectful, but unkind — if we sat down without him.
This was disastrous for us all. For my own work it was
ruinous ; for the children destructive both to their health and
education. But remonstrance made matters worse, and the
only way in which I could touch my husband was by a tender
102 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
kind of coaxing flattery — beseeching him to do of his own
free, grand, loving heart, that which was the absolute obliga-
tion of his plain duty. And 1 ask, how is married life possible
under such conditions?
" Again, I had occasion to be disturbed on account of the
expense at which we lived. And yet we did not seem to live
extravagantly. The lines on which our home was based were
modest and well within our income ; but I had to draw largely
from such savings as the furnishing of the house had left, and
my hope of making provision for the future was merged in
the fear that our earnings would not cover our expenditure.
Money ran away like water in sand."
In all this Mrs. Linton did not fail to blame herself for
having undertaken a task which she only recognised as
impossible when it was too late. The temperamental weak-
nesses of Mr. Linton's character were so evident, that she was
ever afterwards astonished that she had allowed her judg-
ment to be blinded by the glamour of what she took to be
her mission.
She had had ample opportunity for seeing that, to him,
conventional propriety spelt fashionable frivolity, that fore-
thought was only another word for faithlessness in Providence,
and that any precision in dress was merely a phase of
dandyism.
Then there were the eternal discussions on money matters,
which widened the rifts and precipitated the disaster which
was bound to come. There was really no element of stability
in the marriage. To her at least there was no sacramental
character in the relationship, and unless the impossible
happened, shipwreck was bound to be made on one or other
of the many rocks ahead.
It is, I think, only fair to Mr. Linton's memory to say
that from his point of view he was quite as logical as she was
from hers.
To a man of his temperament and convictions, clean
tablecloths and the accurate adding-up of butchers' bills
were matters of only secondary importance, if indeed of
any importance at all. The highest duties of a faithful
MARRIAGE— 1858-1867 103
servant and lover of humanity were not to be found in the
observances of a decent domesticity ; and to give to the
well-being of one household only, albeit his own, the energies
meant for humanity at large, was desertion and unfaithfulness.
Hence it was that the whole burden of the home and
children was thrown upon her hands. Her literary work was
disorganised, and on its disorganisation followed the inevitable
loss of the income upon which they now mainly depended ;
for Mr. Linton, with his time and energies given up to
politics, had but little left to give to money-making.
Everything was at sixes and sevens. The house was
neglected and ill-conducted. Respectable servants could not
be found to put up with the disorder ; and inadequate servants
made matters worse.
When Mr. Linton was at home, " the place was like an
office with the coming and going" of innumerable coadjutors ;
and when he was away, as he often was, he billeted upon her
" consecrated friends who continued the work and kept up
the ball."
After two or three years, of which each succeeding one
was more intolerable than the last, it became evident that the
financial conditions demanded some drastic change in their
mode of life.
The plate-glass window had not paid its way. The goods
which it sampled were hardly, at least so far as the senior
partner was concerned, being manufactured at all. And
though the junior partner did her best, she could not, what
with the burdens and worries that distracted her, produce
sufficient to pay for the household needs.
By 1862 most of Mrs. Linton's savings were gone, and
there was nothing for it but to adopt a cheaper mode of life.
They therefore let the Leinster Square house and removed to
Gang Moor House on Hampstead Heath, not far from "Jack
Straw's Castle." Here Mrs. Craik, Sidney and Clarence Dobell
were frequent visitors.
" We like Hampstead," she writes to Mrs. Berridge's sister,
" a hundred times better for air and walks and locality than
Leinster Square ; but my pride is broken, and I do not like the
104 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
dirty, meanly furnished lodgings that we have like our
beautiful London house."
The one bright spot in the miserable business was the
devotion which Mrs. Linton showed to her stepchildren, and
the affection with which she inspired them. On this point
one of them, Mrs. Margaret Linton Mather, writes to me —
" To us Mrs. Linton wz.s from first to last the ' true friend
and mother ' she always signed herself My sister can re-
member no other mother. To her we could turn at any time,
sure of sympathy and helpful, loving counsel."
Mr. W. E. Adams, who visited ]\Ir. Linton and his children
in America in 1S82, and writes of him in his book, Gtir
American Cousins, also tells me —
" His two daughters, both in conversation and in corre-
spondence, spoke and wrote in the highest terms of Mrs.
Linton. She had been, they said, a loving mother to them.
Mrs. Linton was also, I know, a loving mother to the eldest
girl, whom she took to live with her at Hampstead, where I
remember visiting them."
To Mr. Linton the move from Leinster Square was a
positive relief. The London experiment had been at best
only a concession wrung from him on marriage. Sitting v;ith
his friend Mr. W. E. Adams in the smallest room of the big
house, he had said, " All I want is this little room — the rest
is a worry and an encumbrance " ; and he was glad to be rid
of it.
Then he fell to talking of his disenchantment. " Mr.
Linton, you know," Mr. Adams writes, " was an ardent
Republican ; and he remained so to the end of his days.
Well, he was disappointed. The explanation he gave me was
that Mrs. Linton had not the same deep and ardent faith as
he had. ' It is true,' he said, ' that she is enthusiastic about
Garibaldi ; but then she is just as enthusiastic about Lord
Palmerston.' This was the view he gave me ; but there were
other things which cannot be mentioned."
The narrative of the immediately succeeding years is set
forth in the following note by Mrs. Mather : —
" We returned," she writes, " to Bayswater in the spring of
MARRIAGE— 1858-1867 105
1863, and remained there till the lease expired. It was in this
year that Tlie Lake Country was undertaken. My father and
mother left London on May the iSth, and spent from then
till August the 14th rambling through the Lake District and
collecting material for the book. Among the many visitors
at Leinster Square I remember the Rossetti brothers, Alfred
Stevens the sculptor, W. Bell Scott, E. H. VVehnert, William
Coleman, Alfred Holiday, and ' Mrs. Alexander,' whom we
knew as Mrs. Hector. Dickens, Thackeray, Shirley Brooks,
Walter Crane, Dr. John Epps, and Peter Taylor were also
familiar names,
" In the spring of 1864, my father, to whom a city life was
always irksome, took us back to the old home at Brantwood ;
and our mother, for whose work social life was a necessity,
took rooms in Russell Place. But so long as we remained
in the Lake Country, and until my father came to America in
the autumn of 1867, she always rejoined us in the summer
months. Several of her novels were written at Brantwood.
Lizzie Lorton and Grasp your Nettle I am sure of being
written there, from little incidents associated with them. At
this time our eldest sister was about twenty years of age, and
quite capable of looking after the household ; but our mother
was always ready and came to us at any time if needed, owing
to illness among us ; and how well I remember what a comfort
she was at such a time, how untiring in her care ! She had a
wonderful magnetic power about her — I feel that it is im-
possible to express strongly enough how truly she was the
mother to us all. Naturally she had her preferences, but we
all felt that she tried not to show them, and that she was
strictly just in her dealings with us all. Owing to our own
mother's ill health, we had had but little training till she took
us in hand, and it must have been no easy task she under-
took."
Mr. Linton's retirement to Brantwood placed him out of
touch with the London world, and, as a consequence, his
business as a wood-engraver now declined even more rapidly
than before.
Mrs. Linton, on the other hand, was in a better position to
106 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
prosecute her labours than she had been for some years, and
her output again became regular.
Of the life at Brantwood we get a glimpse from some
notes of a visit in 1865 kindly furnished by Miss Gedge, a
niece of Mrs. Linton, to whom I am indebted for untiring
help in this writing.
Coming, as she and her sister did, from a quiet Lincoln-
shire village, Brantwood nevertheless struck them as curiously
lonely — no callers, no poor people about the roads. A
gloomy drive led up to the house, which overlooked Coniston
Lake. The only dwellings in sight were those of Coniston
village, nestling at the foot of the Old Man Mountain, and
half a mile away across the water. To Coniston Church by
boat, to save the three miles journey by road, made Sundays
days of remembrance. In the wild woods were raspberries
and bilberries and an occasional snake gliding quickly out of
sight, unused to disturbance. Other memories are the dinners
distributed to the thinly scattered cottagers — for there was
practical as well as theoretical sympathy with the poor neigh-
bours; the exceedingly incompetent gardener, chosen by Mr.
Linton because he had beautiful blue eyes ; and the advent
of a rare visitor — a great musician, and the gathering in the
drawing-room to hear him play. " But if you come in you
must not breathe," was the injunction. And one at least of the
long row of little Gedges and Lintons, taking the injunction
literally, came perilously near to bursting. Fortunately an
unusually crescendo passage smasheci a piano string, and the
ordeal was over.
The following is a letter written about this time. The
"new book " referred to is Sowing the Wind.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Moir.
"Brantwood, 1866.
" What to tell you of myself, dear love ? — Nothing pleasant,
nothing gracious. And is there any value in querulous com-
plaints? I could fill this sheet with them, but I doubt if your
true woman's heart would love me as much after as you did
M ARRI AGE— 1 858-1 867 107
before ! It sounds so harsh, so unwomanly, for a wife not to
feel perfect happiness in her husband's society — and especially
after such a long separation — and especially again when the
husband loves personally as much as mine loves me ; but I
am not happy here, and never shall be now as one of the
Linton family. The real main cord is broken, and all the
little threads that bind us together now are of worth only
because of their number, but not one has the strength of a
hair ! The Love, the Home, the Motherhood, the Matronship
— all, all have gone — died — and will never wake up to life
again ! and yet I long for love and I pine for a home !
" I am working at my new book, and have written three
chapters of it. The Saturday sent me down by post Mrs.
Wood's last novel, Elsters Folly, to review, and I could not
but cut it up. I have cut up every book I have had from
them, save A Life's Love, by a Scottish writer, I opine. I
cannot help it ! If they send me trash, I must in my quality
of faithful critic say that it is trash, and abuse the writers for
putting forth such rubbish. Mrs. Wood is to me a very, very
shallow writer, a shallow observer of society, and a puerile
and a vulgar one, and I have said so. But still this does not
give me a good review, which would be more to the purpose !
I wish I had had a good review, then — there has been some
reason why I have not."
At length matters became desperate, and in 1867 Mr.
Linton suddenly announced his determination to try his
fortunes in America. He first went out alone, leaving his
children at boarding-schools, and under Mrs. Linton's care.
By the next year he had settled upon a home, and they
followed.
Then came the question whether Mrs. Linton was also to
expatriate herself.
At first there had been no thought of final separation.
From the financial point of view, life in England for Mr.
Linton and his children had become an impossibility, and
remunerative work had to be found elsewhere. For some
years Mrs. Linton had only been an occasional visitor in
her husband's house. The family life to which she had
grown so pleasantly accustomed, so far as her intercourse
108 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
with the children was concerned, was ended. These children,
who had become as dear to her as if they had been her own,
had been withdrawn from her influence, and Mr. Linton had
plainly expressed his opinion that the old treatment of them
was to his taste. And, after all, they were his and not hers.
So far as they were concerned, then, it was clearly better that
they should not be again exposed to the storms and dissen-
sions which were inevitable in a household where the heads
were not at one. She felt that she had ceased to be of use
to them, and that her renewed presence would only be a
hindrance.
Concerning this time Mrs. Mather writes to me —
" There never was any definite separation between her
and my father. In regard to the matter she herself wrote to
me, ' We separated on incompatibility. Tastes, temper, and
mode of life were all contrary one to the other.' But though
they lived with the Atlantic between them, they corresponded,
and for years we hoped that she would be induced to join us
in the New World."
And again —
"... Incompatibility is the one and only word that
expresses the cause of their living apart — I will not say
separation.
" All who knew my dear mother knew her warm, impulsive
temper. She had a sharp, quick tongue, which her heart and
actions contradicted the next moment. My father was slow
to speak, and mtensely reserved."
So it was that they drifted apart, and though they both
survived for thirty years, they never met again.
Mrs. Linton put such resources as she had at her husband's
service for paying his debts before leaving England, and
although it is not true, as reported, that she made him a
regular allowance, she constantly gave him and his children
generous pecuniary assistance.
" What a little goose you are ! " wrote one of her relations,
who did not approve of what appeared to him a quixotic
generosity. " Do you intend to be a little pigeon all your
life for Skimpoles to pluck ? "
M ARRI AGE— 1 858-1867 109
But the somewhat involved metaphor did not move her
from the decision she had come to, and she would not
repudiate her obligations. She blamed herself for having
been so foolish as to incur them at all, but she would not
allow that the scantiness of the value received in any way
exonerated her.
Regarding Mr. Linton in America, Mr. Adams writes —
" I spent a few weeks with him at Appledore near New-
Haven in 1882 (as recorded in a little book I printed — Our
American Cousins). There he lived the same secluded life
he had led at Brantwood — busy with his engravings and his
books (which latter he printed and bound himself)."
CHAPTER X
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR AND E. L. L.
IN the last two chapters I have judged it best to confine
myself to Mrs. Linton's domestic affairs to the exclusion
of contemporary matters, which, though significant and
interesting in themselves, w^ere yet, by the side of her marriage,
of secondary importance.
We must now retrace our steps.
It cannot be doubted that the change which had taken
place in Eliza Lynn's condition was not without its bearing
on the crowning misfortune which, in the very year of her
marriage, came to her friend and " father," Walter Savage
Landor, a misfortune which Mrs. Linton always believed
might have been averted had she " still been able to visit
him, and make his lodgings his home, as in olden times."
" About this time," she writes, " my dear old father- friend,
Walter Savage Landor, made the second great blunder of his
life, and had to pay the penalty. The law is no respecter
of persons ; and those who vault unbidden into the seat of
justice have to suffer by the sword they have wielded without
authority,
" Into the merits of this painful case I will not enter. All
I know is the fatal result ; and the only defence I make — and
to my mind it is all-powerful — is, that age obscures the clear-
ness of the mental vision as it does that of the physical, and
that if to those who love much much may be forgiven, those
whose vigorous youth has been pure and flawless may hope
for the reverent veiling of oblivion when they make an octo-
genarian mistake.
" Mr. Landor left Bath, and went back to his own family
110
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
FROM THE BUST {-RESENTED BV HIM TO CHARLES DICKENS
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOK 111
and the old home he once loved so well at beautiful Florence ;
and I never saw him again."
This was one of the bitterest sorrows of Mrs. Linton's life,
and, coming as it did at a time when she was beginning clearly
to realise the great blunder she had made in marrying, it was
well-nigh overwhelming. Not only had she taken an irrevoc-
able step which had not been justified by the event, but by so
doing she had rendered herself incapable of averting mis-
fortune from her best and dearest friend.
Those who are familiar with Landor's Imaginary Con-
vej'sations will remember that in " Epicurus, Leontion, and
Ternissa" he assumes the role of Epicurus, who discourses,
sometimes playfully, sometimes seriously, with his two girl-
pupils. The entire subject of the dialogue is the platonic
intercourse of the "philosopher (representing Landor himself)
with two handsome young girls of twenty and sixteen (Leontion
and Ternissa), to whom he shows his newly-planted garden two
or three miles from Athens, and explains, while he practises
the principles of, his philosophy. This may have been all
very well with Greek philosophers, Greek girls, and Greek
surroundings — though that is open to question — but trans-
planted to Bath and practised amidst the surroundings of
modern proprieties and modern scandal-mongering, it was
not without disadvantages and complications.
Unfortunately, towards the end of 1857, differences arose
between the Bath representatives of Leontion and Ternissa,
and Landor flung himself headlong into the strife. " Believ-
ing here," writes Forster, " as at every quarrel in which he had
ever been engaged, that he saw on one side a fiend incarnate,
and on the other an angel of light, he permitted that astound-
ing credulity to work his irascibility into madness ; and there
was then as much good to be got by reasoning with him as
by arguing with a storm at Cape Horn. . . . He rejected
every warning, rushed into print, and found himself enmeshed
in an action for libel. On hearing this, I proceeded to Bath,
and he was extricated for a time ; but I quitted the place
with a sorrowful misgiving that the last illness of the old
man, while it had left him subject to the same transitory
fits of frantic passion, had permanently also weakened him
112 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
mentally yet more than bodily. . . . He had not now even
memory enough to recollect what he was writing from day
to day ; and while the power of giving keen and clear expres-
sion to every passing mood of bitterness remained to him, his
reason had too far deserted him to leave it other than a fatal
gift."
The danger was temporarily averted, and in the interval
the old man was not unmindful of the fortunes of his beloved
" daughter." Referring to her engagement, he writes —
Walter Savage Landor to E. L.
"[Bath,] 2nd February 1858.
" My dear Eliza, — Yesterday I met Miss Hughes and
Dr. Brabant. Both of them asked me whether I had heard
from you lately — they had not. This morning I am relieved
from anxiety by your letter from Manchester. Never was
one more welcome, even of yours. Little as I am curious
about the affairs of others, and least of all about my own, I
am somewhat more than anxious, I am deeply interested, in
everything concerning your welfare ! So I have no hesitation
in asking, and I am confident you will have none in answering,
my questions. I know that Mr. Linton's genius commands
prosperity. '^vX. c est le premier pas qui coi'ite. You must not
start but from vantage ground. Doctor Brabant told me
what grieved me : that, in accordance with your father's will,
you lose on your marriage all he left you. This is such an
excess of cruelty and injustice as I neither am willing nor
able to believe. Tell me how it really is, and also tell me
whether Mr. Linton has disposed of Brantwood to his satis-
faction. On the first of April I shall receive my quarterly
remittance, out of which I have only to pay thirty pounds for
lodgings and servants, and ten to a poor pensioner of my
sister. You see clearly that there will be something more
than I ought to spend upon myself, and more than I will.
Therefore do not be perverse and proud, but permit me to
send you twenty in the beginning of April. Stick it on the
horn of the honey-moon before it goes: I mean the moon,
not the money.
" The snow is falling fast. When it snows I find it difficult
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 113
to keep my eyes away from it, either to read or write. A
lady less polite and kind would say to herself, ' God bless the
snow, then ! ' I say quite as heartily, ' God save Eliza ! '
" Her old Father."
Sending her money again out of his slender income, he
says —
" We must not either of us be too proud on these matters.
We both have somewhat better to be proud of — I chiefly in
being called by you Father."
And again —
W. S. Landor to E. L.
"[Bath,] ig/Zz March 1858.
" Dear Eliza, — I have been waiting very anxiously for
the letter I received from you this morning. Tell me, with-
out loss of a single day, to what address I may send the
shabby trifle you at last have permitted me to offer on
your marriage. God grant it may be as happy as I believe
it will be. Everybody speaks highly of Mr. Linton. If he
should become as rich as Rothschild or Lord Westminster,
you must encourage him not to desert his noble art in ' three
or four years.' I was amused at your expression, ' He works
wickedly.' You believe you are original ; you are only
classical, Virgil steps before you with his labor improbus.
Do not be fastidious about furniture. Oh, had you seen
Ipsley Court ! ^ The chairs were Charles the Second's time
— the beds about Queen Anne's. You would have believed
them made expressly for a spaniel and her famil}^ a favourite
and fat one, unable to jump up higher than eighteen inches.
But what a width ! I suspect the whole furniture of eleven
or twelve rooms was sold for somewhat less than ;^ioo!
excepting one Chinese cabinet and one marble table. The
mirrors may have been large enough to reflect the whole of
the face — they were only in the bedrooms, eight or nine of
them. Some had been gilt, but mine was not. I confess I
like really old furniture, even if it is faded. — Ever your
affectionate Father."
" Love to my son."
^ Still the seat of the Landor family.
8
114 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
When she had been married two months he wrote —
VV. S. Landor to E. L. L.
"[Bath,] 29M Alaj' 1S58.
"My dear Daughter, — The seldomer I write to you
the more I think of you. Nothing on earth is so precious
to me as your affection. It grieves me to find by your
letter that your very interesting boy ^ is in slender health.
I was myself so at his age : and was laught (sic) at by my
Rugby schoolfellows, who were somewhat older and stronger,
until I fought two battles with my little white fists, and was
victorious over their red. Learning I hated ; but a cousin,
afterwards captain of the Calypso, one year my senior,
sometimes prompted me and sometimes quizzed me.
Suddenly I formed a resolution to get before him, and
I studdied {sic) secretly in the playhours, making it a
rule to learn a dozen Latin words in the dictionary every
day. At the end of two years I had gained a remove and
left my cousin behind. At twelve I wrote Latin verses —
one of them happened to be so good that the master took
me by the ear and asked me good-naturedly where I stole
it, really believing I had done so. I do believe that moderate
study is conducive to health. As I always slept a little
after dinner, I required less in bed and was never so perfectly
awake as during the first hours of night.
" And now let me assure you that I red {sic) with delight
your paper in the Household Words — a publication which
will give more information and delight than any ever
excited before. I have now written til {sic) I am weary.
Yesterday I drove out for two hours and felt the better
for it. I shall do the same to-day.
" God bless you and yours. W. S. L."
As I have said, the trouble which threatened Landor at
the end of 1857 was only postponed. Notwithstanding
Forster's repeated opposition, he proceeded to arrange for
the publication behind his friend's back of a collection of
the sweepings and refuse of his writing-desk. The book
was called Dry Sticks Fagotted, and in it he seized the
^ Lancelot, one of her stepchildren.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 115
opportunity of publishing in other forms the objectionable
passages on the erasure of which Forster had originally insisted,
and which he should have felt himself bound in loyalty never
to revive. The result was another action for libel.
" The blow," writes his biographer, " fell at last so suddenly
that I only heard of what had been determined after the
resolution was taken. Told by his law -advisers that the
matter complained of was such that an adverse verdict must
be expected, and that the damages would necessarily be
heavier because of the breach of an undertaking which they
had themselves given in his name upon my interference in
the previous year — a plan at that time started, and only then
at my suggestion abandoned, was at the same interview put
before Landor, and eagerly assented to. This was, that he
should place his property beyond seizure for damages, break
up his house in Bath, sell his pictures, and return to Italy.
There was no time to lose if such a scheme were to be carried
out successfully ; and it was with supreme astonishment I
received an intimation, telegraphed at midday from Bath
on the I2th of July 1858, that Landor would be at my house
in London that night, accompanied by one of his nieces.
Some friends were dining with me, among them Mr. Dickens,
who, on the arrival of the old man, too fatigued by his
journey to be able to join the dinner-table, left the room
to see him ; and from another friend, the Rev. Mr. Elwin,
who was also one of the party, I received very lately a letter
reminding me of what occurred. I thought that Landor
would talk over with him the unpleasant crisis ; and I shall
never forget my amazement when Dickens came back into
the room laughing, and said that he found him very jovial,
and that his whole conversation was upon the character of
Catullus, Tibullus, and other Latin poets." He crossed to
France four days later, on the morning of the 15th of July,
and his friends in England never saw him again.
The following letter — the only one from Forster found
amongst Mrs. Linton's papers — is interesting. Certain
portions I have suppressed, as they might prove painful to
persons now living.
116 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
John Forster to E. L. L.
"46 Montagu Square, idth August 1858.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — It is very sad — and I am as
helpless as yourself, though not less anxious than yourself to
do what yet I feel is hardly to be done.
"... If I can get any reasonable grounds on which to
make a brief public statement — I will do it. I have also
written to Mr. Landor's nieces and to Captain B , but
as yet my letters are without reply.
"... There is a peculiarity in the case which renders any
direct defence of our poor old friend impossible.
"... As soon as I saw the outcry begin (which I confess
I did not anticipate), I took measures to get a generous
promise of silence from the Globe and other papers, and
have made to-day the same appeal to the literary papers,
the Athenceum, etc., and the Examiner and the Spectator.
"... The saddest thing remains, that the occurrence
should have taken place at all. The worst evil is never-
theless not without its admixture of good in this mystery
of a world. And I pray now that our noble old Landor
(from whom everything less noble than himself will soon
fall off and be forgotten) may live quietly the rest of his
days in Italy, and die with his children.
" With kind regards to Mr. Linton and yourself (in which
my wife would join very sincerely if she were at home), I
am, my dear Mrs. Linton, ever most truly yours,
"John Forster."
One of Landor's most intimate Bath friends writes to
me —
" I may tell you there were several reasons why a defence
to the action was made so difficult, one being that after Mr.
Forster and myself had gone down on our knees to implore
Landor not to publish any more philippics or speak on the
matter to anybody, he was led into doing so by some
indiscreet tattlers, who knew both parties and doubtless
carried the sayings of one to the other ; and when his
medical advisers gave as their opinion that ' it would kill
Mr. Landor to go into court and try to justify himself,' you
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 117
will, I am sure, understand fully how complex and difficult
the whole affair was."
From this time until his death in 1864, Landor lived in
Italy. For these six years Mrs. Lynn Linton acted as
a sort of amateur literary agent for him, seeing to the
publication of a belated "Imaginary Conversation" or two,
lengthy letters on Italian politics, and the aftermath of his
poetic genius. Most of these disjecta membra have been
collected and republished in the last few years by Mr.
Stephen Wheeler.
Through Mrs. Linton and Thornton Hunt, the irrepress-
ible old man attempted to effect the printing and circulating
of the pamphlet now much sought after by Landor collectors,
entitled Mr. Landor's Remarks on a Suit preferred against
him at the Summer Assizes in Taunton, 1858, illustrating
the Appendix to his Hellenics. This was in the nature of
a defence of his conduct. Its temper may be gathered from
the following choice sentence : — " I know not whether the
husband infected the wife, or the wife the husband, with the
virulent and incurable pustules of mendacity, or whether the
distemper is in the blood of both, breaking out in all quarters
and at all seasons."
He desired them to have this precious production inserted
in the public press as an advertisement, if admission
could not be obtained on any other terms ! As far as
I can gather, they wisely refused to have anything to
do with the matter. Eventually he entrusted it to Mr. G.
J. Holyoake, who gives an interesting account of its pub-
lication in Sixty Years of an Agitators Life, 1892, vol. ii.
chap. lix.
On the face of it, it was grossly libellous, and no news-
paper would have dared to risk its publication. It was there-
fore generous, though surely unwise, of Mr. Holyoake to
abet his friend in what was nothing less than a very serious
contempt of court. Here is a sentence or two on the subject
from his most interesting book. " I had Landor's manuscript,"
he writes, " copied in my own house, so that no printer should
by chance see the original manuscript in the office. My
brother Austen, whom in all these things I could trust as I
118 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
could trust myself, set up and printed with his own hands
Landor's defence, so that none save he and I ever saw the
pamphlet until the post delivered copies at their destination.
A reward of ;z^200 was offered for the discovery of the printer,
without result. Twelve years later, Landor being then dead,
I told Lord Houghton I was the printer of his ' defence,' but
until this day I have mentioned it to no one else." A copy
of the flimsy little pamphlet was sold in 1899 for the sum
of ;6"io.
It is sad enough for us at this distance of time to con-
template the " Old Lion " in his dotage, with no one at hand
to control, no one even with whom he could in conversation
ease the dangerous effervescence of his brain.
How much more sad must it have appeared to Mrs.
Linton. It was an intolerable fortuity that her marriage,
futile as it was, should have withdrawn her from his com-
panionship just at a moment when she might have been of
incalculable service in saving him from himself.
This, too, was Landor's own feeling. He told Mr. Browning
in the first year of his flight to Italy, that he was wholly
unfit to fend for himself, and he was evidently aware that
he was hardly answerable for his actions in his less lucid
moments. " I wish," he writes to Mrs. Linton at this time,
" I wish I could be near you for the remainder of my life."
But the fates were against it, and the brave life was destined
to flicker out, tended, it is true, by those who were kindly
and disinterested, but divorced from those for whom he had
the deepest affection.
" Some fruit the old tree had yet to shed " — some intervals
of intellectual activity were yet vouchsafed to him. These
things are demonstrated in the last chapter of the Life.
Above all, he was, as will be seen from the following selec-
tion from the large number of hitherto unpublished letters
written to his " daughter," still loyal in friendship, generous
to a fault, and mindful of the difficulties and troubles of
others.
From the first it will be seen that he is still discover-
ing "masterpieces" of art and full of his old enthusiastic
credulity.
WALTEK SAVAGE LANDOR 119
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
" Florence, iS6o.
" My dear Daughter, — A Sunday can never be more
properly employed than in an expression of thanks for a
kind action. Three days have nearly elapsed since I received
your letter, and yesterday I was devising the means of paying
you for the photographs, though your delicacy would not allow
you to tell me what they cost. I must lose not a single hour
in putting the money in the hands of a correspondent of him
in whose shop I have dealings for wine and chocolate, one
Townley, desiring him to be expeditious. I intend to send
two fine pictures, a Salvator and a Bronzino, for sale in
London. Phillips, I hear, is the best auctioneer for this
purpose. Tell me where his residence is. Many good judges
have thought that the one which is attributed to Bronzino is
really by Michael Angelo. It represents the Last Judgment
— it is six feet long and four high. It was a present from
Cardinal Pacca to Bishop Baynes. The condition is perfect.
I think there is scarcely a finer 'picture in existence. I think
I will also add a picture of Carracci representing Christ and
St. Peter on the coast of Galilee. This has no frame. It
was in a very fine one, sold to a dealer from Leghorn and
sent by himi to England. It is as long as the above but not
so high by a foot. Its value is much less.
" Our winter here has been more foggy and frosty than any
one I remember in Bath during the twenty-five years I spent
there. Yesterday the rain fell in torrents.
" I know not what money the pictures will produce. What-
ever it may be, you shall have one half of it. This you must
not hesitate to accept, because it may serve to buy a few
books and playthings for the children.
" Do not tire yourself by writing a long letter for this
tedious one of mine.
" Ever your affectionate father, with kind regards to your
husband and children. Tell the auctioneer to place all the
money in your hands. You may send me my share."
And again —
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
'•' <,th June i860.
"... I told you in one of my last letters, that yours must
never be prepaid, for I am the richer of the two, and can
120 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
very well and very willingly afford a few pence. I am now
beginning to read the plays of Shakespeare for the third
time. His other works I never could read twice, and hardly
once quite through. Schleghel {sic) is the only critic worthy
of him, and Schleghel ' loves not wisely but too well '
in some places ; in others it is impossible to love him
enough.
" With kindest regards to your good husband, believe me,
your affectionate Father."
In the following extract from a letter to Mrs. Linton,
Landor refers to an Imaginary Conversation in Italian between
Savonarola and the Prior of San Marco. " It formed," says
Mr. Wheeler, " a small octavo pamphlet of seven pages ; and
the proceeds of the sale were to be given for the relief of
Garibaldi's wounded followers," The date would therefore
seem to be about May or June i860.
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
"... She (Mrs. West) will be sadly grieved to hear that
your health is failing. But you have many years before you,
and a sense of duty towards those you love will keep you
alive much longer than a dissipated life would, which happily
you never tried. However, you must not wear yourself away
with literary labours. I have done with it. My ' Savonarola '
is my last work. Field of Boston will begin to print my
writings in a complete edition next year. He will not be
able to send me any volume of them. I may perhaps live
through the winter or nearly through. Beyond that time I
neither expect nor wish to stay on earth — under it in
preference."
In July he wrote —
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
"... Thanks and thanks again for the capital work
which contains my letters to Kossuth and Garibaldi. I hope
this vigorous publication will enjoy the long life it promises.
Am I mistaken in my suspicion that I trace my own dear
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 121
daughter's hand in it? The article which relates to the
genius and powers of women is hardly fair. You know my
estimate of your writings, and not only for their purity of
style but for their vigorous intellect. What does the author
think of Madame de Stael and Mrs. Stowe? The last book
I have been reading I have read a second time ; it is The
Minister s Wooing. It should have left off at the marriage
of the young lovers, but no man alive has given the world
a novel so excellent. It is generally thought that the
ancients were less complimentary to women of genius than
the moderns. The poetry of Sappho and some others was
extolled by them. The two odes of the tawny Lesbian are
quoted by Longinus and admirably translated. ' Blest as
the immortal gods is he,' etc. Mrs. Hemans has written
much better poetry, and more kinds than one, but especially
in her ' Casa Bianca' {sic) and ' Ivan.' I doubt whether any
short pieces in our language are comparable to these, except-
ing Campbell's ' Hohenlinden ' and ' Battle of the Baltic'
Some years ago I turned over the whole of Brunck's Greek
Anthologia, and was vext at finding so little of thought or
imagination. I refreshed myself by a draught of the Anapos,
and roving with Theocritus among the fresh flowers of Enna.
The Greeks never overload, but too often drive dull oxen
yoked to an empty crate. Anacreon has composed one
exquisite song, fairly worth all the Anthologia.
" The rest are mostly inferior. An older man than old
Anacreon may be expected to write worse ; on the other side
I will give you a proof, with my blessing to all you love."
Overleaf were the poems, " The Poet who sleeps " and
" The Poet wide awake." They are published in Mr. Stephen
Wheeler's Letters and U npiiblisJied Writings of Landor, iSQ?.
From the above it will be seen that through Mrs. Linton's
agency Landor had got two of his open letters published.
Amongst other writings which she did not succeed in dis-
posing of were the poem, " To Nice, the birthplace of
Garibaldi," and the Imaginary Conversation, " Milo and Pio
Nono." Both of these have been rescued from oblivion by
Mr. Wheeler. One Imaginary Conversation I have found
amongst her papers which has never seen the light. It is
called " Mama and her son Charles." It was despatched from
Florence on October the 30th with the following note : —
122 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" My dearest daughter, I wanted to write you a long
letter, but can only send this Imaginary Conversation. Will
not your publisher give you something for it ? I have kept
no legible copy."
That the MS. went to one publisher at least and was
refused is pretty evident, for I found amongst Mrs. Linton's
papers both the original and a copy in her handwriting, the
latter much creased by passage through the post. It is, of
course, tempting to publish anything of Landor's ; but after
careful consideration I have decided in this case to forbear.
To present to mere idle curiosity so futile and inconclusive a
production of senility would, it seems to me, be no less than
an outrage on a great man's memory.
In the year 1862 was published the pamphlet, Letters of
a Canadian, which is the despair of the Landor collector.
Not a single copy is now known to be in existence. Indeed,
the only evidence of its publication at all is to be found in
three of Landor's private letters. In one of them he acknow-
ledges its receipt, and requests that copies may be sent to
Mrs. Lynn Linton, Kenneth Mackenzie, and Monckton
Milnes.
Landor's dictum in the following letter that " we are
unable to believe by wishing it," recalls to my mind a some-
what curious circumstance. Shortly before Mrs. Linton's
death, a very similar point was under discussion between us,
suggested by the remarks of a young friend, who was exceed-
ingly dogmatic upon the articles of her creed. In the course
of our conversation I happened to say, what of course is old
enough and seemed to me very obvious, that our young friend
was unable to see the difference between faith and knowledge,
and that knowledge was just the very thing which faith does
not connote. The two conditions were in fact inconsistent.
If we know, faith is superfluous. If we say we have faith we
confess in the same breath that we do not know. In the one
case we give credit on the authority of others ; in the other
we are satisfied by our own perception.^ Mrs. Linton was
^ I am aware that this is somewhat crudely put, and that it is of necessity an in-
complete statement on a difficult subject ; but it is substantially what was said, and
must stand only as a snippet of passing conversation.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 123
delighted, and said, " Well, I never thought of that before.
Of course there is all the difference in the world."
After her death I had occasion to re-read or glance over
most of her novels, and in one of them, to my surprise, I found
the very distinction drawn between faith and knowledge
which I have given above, and which she had taken from me
as something new and hitherto unappreciated.
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
" \2th May '62.
" My dearest Daughter, — I have always more to say
to you than to any other, for I am more interested in you.
Here will be enclosed a short letter which you will forward
to Mrs. West. I do wish you could spend a few weeks with
her on the Forest : it would strengthen you. Read my letter
to her before you send it. Never trouble your head about
things unintelligible. We are unable to believe by wishing
it. The first things we are taught are lies ; so are almost
all the following, through life. Children, while they are half
asleep, are to repeat a belief of things they never thought
about. They are terrified lest their tender limbs should have
to undergo a fire that no housemaid could put out. . . . It is
pleasant to believe in a future state, provided we are allowed
to sit at a good distance from the fire. But how shall we
recognise one another ? Even you in crinoline would puzzle
me. And on seeing my long grey beard ^ you would say, as
Rose's little girl said after looking at me and after my asking
her what she thought of me, * I think you are a very ugly
man.' One loved me at twenty, another at twenty-five—
none between, and none wanted I — but I think it unlikely
that either would know me again out of my Hessian boots,
short breeches^ silk stockings, and embroidered waistcoat,
having on a pointed hat an ell long."
In the winter of 1863, Lancelot, Mrs. Linton's favourite
stepson, died.
^ Referring to his having given up shaving in Italy, Mr. Browning wrote to
John Forster, " If you could only see how well he looks in his curly white beard."
And in "The Poet wide awake" he himself speaks of his "horrid brake of
wintry beard."
124 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
On hearing of the boy's death, Landor, himself not far
from the " hour implored so long in vain," wrote —
W. S. Landor to E. L. L.
" Indeed, indeed, I do partake in your affliction, my dear
daughter. It is now thirty-two entire days since I have
suffered by the bronchitis, not caring, as I never did, whether
I was to live or die. It seems I may go on living. My
cough is quieter and almost over. You will want more
money than ordinarily, and I happen to have more than I
want — so you ought to find no difficulty in accepting two
small bank notes. I do trust they will not fall into the hands
of thieves. The numbers are 53686 and 17369.
" And now take rest and repose. I need not say, tell good
Mr. Linton that I condole with him. — Your affectionate
" Father."
Towards the close of the following year, Landor is de-
scribed by those living in Italy as being but the wreck of
himself, and on the 17th of September 1864 he breathed
his last.
Of course this is not the place to attempt an appreciation
of this remarkable man. At the same time, it may not be
altogether impertinent to warn a generation of readers which
knows him not, that a grievous wrong will be done if he is
any way judged by the scant glimpses here caught of him
in his decline.
In this book he is only of importance by reason of his
friendship with Mrs. Linton, and it is with him in that
character alone that we are justified in concerning ourselves.
CHAPTER XI
I.ITERARY WORK— 1858-1867
WE will now return to the literary side ot Mrs. Linton's
life, which, for greater convenience, has been practic-
ally ignored in the last few chapters.
In 1858 she started as a regular contributor to the Literary
Gazette, of which Shirley Brooks, her firm friend to the end of
his life, was then editor.
In 1859 I fi"d from her work-book that she wrote seventy-
four book reviews for the Literary Gazette, seven articles for
the National Magazine, eleven articles for Household Words
and its successor, ^// ///^' Year Hound, three articles for the
Athenceum, in which I fancy this was the first year of her
appearance, and two articles in Chambers Edinburgh
Journal ; in all ninety-seven articles, or an average of nearly
two a week.
The following table will show at a glance her output of
articles from i860 to 1867. With the books written during
this period we shall deal separately.
Number of
Year.
Namp:s of Periodicals.
Articles,
i860
All the Year Round, London Review, Athenaeum,
Literary Gazette, Cornhill Magazine.
62
1861
All the Year Round, London Review, Temple Bar.
47
1862
All the Year Round, London Review, Temple Bar,
Monday Review.
24
1863
All the Year Round, Temple Bar.
9
1864
All the Year Round, London Society.
13
1865
All the Year Round, Temple Bar, London Society,
Daily News, Watch Tower.
21
1866
All the Year Round, Athensum, Temple Bar, Satur-
day Review.
32
1867
All the Year Round, Temple Bar, Saturday Review,
Tinsley's Magazine, Examiner, St. Paul's.
25
125
126 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
From this table it will at once be seen how disastrously
marriage and domestic cares were affecting her literary work.
From the year 1859 ^^^^^ its ninety-seven to the year 1863
with its beggarly nine articles, the descent was indeed start-
ling, and, as has been pointed out, the resulting loss of income
went far towards bringing matters to a crisis.
From it we also see that by the year 1863 she had lost
touch with all the editors for whom she had been regularly
working, with the sole exception of Charles Dickens. Indeed,
had it not been for All the Year Rounds her literary output
for this year would have been just one article in Temple Bar.
All the Year Round, it will be remembered by those
familiar with the life of Dickens, was the magazine which had
been started by him in 1859 after the dispute with Messrs.
Bradbury & Evans, which had resulted in the discontinu-
ance of Household Words. Mrs. Linton, who had been a
regular contributor to the latter, was, immediately on its
abandonment, approached by the editor of Onee a Week,
Messrs. Bradbury & Evans's new illustrated venture. Here
she found herself on the horns of a dilemma. Either she must
refuse what was a valuable offer or run the risk of appearing
disloyal to Dickens, to whom, as we have seen, she had much
reason to be grateful.
She thereupon wrote to him explaining the situation, and
asking whether he saw any objection to her writing for the
opposition periodical. Dickens, who undoubtedly felt very
bitter on the subject of the rival publication, replied that she
could not write too much for All the Year Round ; that
whatever she wrote for him would as a matter of course be
warmly welcomed ; and that her contributions should always
have precedence in his magazine. He said that he looked
upon himself as her editor of right, and made it perfectly
clear that any commerce with the opposition would be
regarded as a personal injury.
Of course such a reply was very gratifying, and forthwith
she became his faithful lieutenant and refused all the tempt-
ing offers of his rivals.
The following is one of the few letters from him that I
find amongst her papers. The book referred to is Commons
LITERARY WORK— 1858-1867 127
and King, and her review of it appeared in All the Year
Round for 26th May i860,
Charles Dickens to E. L. L.
"Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London,
Thursday, 26th April i860.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — I think you may like to write
a narrative of this book, with the general purpose of showing
that if kings will not be honest and true, and will be shifty
and shuffling, they must take the consequences (when they
fall) like mere men. You will see that Charles the First is
clearly shown to have set upon the House of Commons with
a marvellously evil and deep design. — Ever affectionately,
" C. D."
Regarding Mrs. Linton's letters to Charles Dickens, which
must have been of exceptional interest, I am disappointed
to learn from Miss Hogarth, his executrix, that they have all
been destroyed. I am indebted to this lady for her generous
permission to print one or two of the great writer's letters.
My only regret is that I cannot enrich these pages with more
of them.
The following fragment will be read with interest. The
book referred to is doubtless Mrs. Gordon's CJiristopher North:
a memoirof John Wilson compiled from family papers and other
sources, by his daughter. The review appeared in All the Year
Round on 29th November 1862.
Charles Dickens to W. H. Wills
" 11//^ November 1S62.
"... Will you tell Mrs. Linton that, in looking over her
admirable account {most admirable) of Mrs. Gordon's book,
I have taken out the references to Lockhart ; not because I
in the least doubt their justice, but because I knew him and
he liked me, and because, one bright day in Rome, I walked
about with him for some hours when he was dying fast, and
all the old faults had faded out of him, and the mere ghost
of the handsome man I had first known when Scott's daughter
was at the head of his house had little more to do with this
128 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
world than she in her grave, or Scott in his, or Httle Hugh
Littlejohn in his. Lockhart had been anxious to see me all
the previous day (when I was away in the Campagna), and
as we walked about I knew very well that he knew very well
why. He talked of getting better, but I never saw him again.
This makes me stay Mrs. Linton's hand, gentle as it is."
Notwithstanding their long literary connection, Mrs. Linton
saw but little of her great contemporary. Writing on the sub-
ject to Mr. F. G. Kitton, she said —
" I did not know him intimately, and my business relations
with All the Year Round as well as Household Words were
conducted with Mr. Henry Wills. I first saw Mr. Dickens
in private at Mr. Landor's at Bath. He and John Forster
came down to dinner when I was staying with the dear old
man, and we had, I remember, a delightful evening. Dickens
was sweet and kind and gay with me. Forster was snubbing
and satirical. I was then about twenty-four years old or per-
haps older. When my father died I sold the house, Gad's Hill
House, to Charles Dickens." (This was as executrix : she
was the only unmarried daughter at the time.) " I used to
go to Mr. Dickens's parties,etc., with all the rest of the world,
but I never saw Gad's Hill again when it was his. He used
to always say I must go down, but as no time was fixed I did
not go."
An amusing fact connected with the sale of Gad's Hill
is that Dickens disputed the charge of ;^40 for the timber.
The point was referred to an arbitrator, who valued it at £']0,
by which the " Inimitable " was ^30 out of pocket, in addition
probably to the fees of the valuer.
Mention has been made of Mrs. Linton's "work-book,"
and this will be as good an opportunity as any to refer to a
curious habit which she had at this time formed, and which
intimately connects itself with, and illustrates, the unhappy
period through which she was now passing.
At the beginning of each year she would cut out some
little engraving which took her fancy (generally a piece of
INIr. Linton's work, of which she would find proofs littered
about his rooms), and stick it on the first page of her diary.
At first she would seem to have done this merely as a
UNIVERSITY
OF
LTTTERARY WORK— 1858-1867 129
pleasant conceit, anticipating by her choice the probable
events of the year ; but by degrees, as she herself confessed,
she came to regard the little pictures with something of
superstition.
The first of these (for 1859) which lies before me is a
pretty little scene of domesticity, and round it she has written,
" The beginning of my new home and my happy motherhood,
Loughton and the first year of Leinster Square." This was
of course the obvious anticipation of the newly wedded wife.
In i860 there is a beautifully engraved vignette of the rose,
the thistle, and the shamrock, under which she has written,
" Our great hopes of fame and work." Here we have the
"plate-glass window" fully dressed. In 1861, some drooping
snowdrops with the legend, " The winter of discontent begin-
ning." In 1862, some mountaineers, with the legend, "Our
Hampstead time and projected journeying," referring to the
arrangement come to this year with her husband to collabor-
ate in the book on the Lake Country, he as illustrator and she
as writer, in preparation for which they carried out elaborate
excursions. This is the first case in which she would seem
to have discovered grounds for the superstition which she
afterwards attached to these yearly frontispieces, for the
little picture chosen at haphazard justified its selection as
the year went on, and the legend was added after it had so
justified itself
In 1863 the prophetic character of the circular wood-
engraving used is very striking. It represents Qinone weep-
ing over the dead body of Paris. Linton's name appears as
engraver. This year, as we have seen, her favourite stepson
died, and the frontispiece tragically justified its selection.
The legend runs, " Lance died, and great sorrow at home."
Here we have absolute proof that the selection of what may
be called the pictorial motto for the year was made before the
event to which it was afterwards held to refer, for Lancelot
Linton did not die until the end of 1863. Whatever Mrs.
Linton's idea had been when she started this practice in the
first instance, it is perfectly clear that from henceforth she
postponed the adding of the legend until time gave the solu-
tion. I am not suggesting for a moment that here was a
9
130 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
mystery worthy the attention of the Psychical Society.
There is nothing at all surprising in the fact that any picture
chosen haphazard should find its colourable counterpart
among the occurrences in any given year of a fairly eventful
life. What is of interest is the fact that Mrs. Linton, like
many others who fancy themselves wholly materialistic,
should have allowed herself to be credulously impressed by
what was so easily explainable. Her character was full of
glaring inconsistencies ; which inconsistencies, it may be added,
were far from making her less lovable to those who cherished
her friendship as one of their best possessions.
Here are a few more examples of these pictorial oracles.
For 1864 she has chosen a very beautifj^l little vignette
woodcut in which Robinson Crusoe sits wrapt in medi-
tation, the very picture of bereavement and isolation. The
added legend is, " W. J. L. went to Brantwood and loneliness."
For 1866, a painful engraving of the dead Christ, with
the legend, " General melancholy and disappointment. The
Christ indeed dead — the Christ of love and happiness, but
the angel of love and pity still lingers at the tomb."
For 1867, a medalHon designed and engraved by Linton,
representing a fallen knight with shattered lance and shield,
surrounded by the engraved motto, " Malo mori quam fcedari."
To this she has added the words, " Gypsey's broken life and
the ruin of all my home with W. J. L."
For 1868, a tailpiece of ravelled forest undergrowth, with
the inscription, " America and its seductions with W. J. L.
Entanglement of feeling and affairs with me."
For 1869, a woman sitting lonely and sad at a window,
inscribed, " The girls gone to America and I left alone, sitting
by the window watching, mourning, regretting — without hope."
The above are enough for our purpose, recording as they
do the moods in which she summed up the years preceding
the return to an independent existence. It need only be
added that in 1870 I find a curious confirmation of the fact
that the frontispieces were first pasted in and the legends
attached later ; for in this year the legend is written in violet
ink, whereas the book is posted up to August in black ink,
after which violet is used for the first time.
LITERARY WORK— 1858-1867 131
We must now return to the record of her literary work.
In 1861 she made a collection of " Witch Stories" from
the British Museum. Messrs. Chapman & Hall were the
publishers. Twenty years later they were found worthy
of republication by Messrs. Chatto & Windus in their
May fair Library.
For the next three years her only literary output was the
scanty supply of magazine articles shown in the table on p. 125.
This was altogether her most barren period. In 1864,
The Lake Country, in which she and her husband collaborated,
was published by Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. It is not a
guide - book in the ordinary sense, but a spirited and ex-
quisitely illustrated description of their joint tour. The
Times said it was " the best description of that part of
England ever published." The Lllustrated London News
waxed eloquent — " Its exterior is noble ; its interior, studded
with many a glorious illustration, corresponds with the outer
splendour." And to this day it is a book such as the collector
loves to handle.
In 1865, after the long interval of fourteen years, Mrs.
Linton once more made her appearance as a novelist.
Grasp your Nettle, published in three volumes by Messrs.
Smith, Elder & Co., was the new venture. ^100, with half-
profits for a year after if a second edition should be called
for, were the terms of the bargain.
The moral of the story — if you have a skeleton in your
cupboard, face it and it will lose half its terror — is trite
enough, but the book, though heavily padded, is still read-
able, and this is no mean praise of a novel more than thirty
years old. The plot — that part of her novels which Mrs.
Linton has often told me she found most troublesome — is
in this case more ingenious than usual. At the end of the
second volume a note of real tragedy is struck. This is the
more noticeable as her tragic scenes are rarely convincing.
Of the protagonists. Aura is a flesh-and-blood creation, with
something of real splendour and fascination about her, whilst
Jasper is nothing more nor less than an adumbration of
Rochester.
To those who read between the lines, the mortifications
132 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
and vexations of the writer's domestic surroundings at this
time are everywhere apparent.
However, it is not my purpose to load this biography
with lengthy criticisms of novels to which, with but few
exceptions, the general public is not likely to revert. For
Mrs. Linton's friends, of course, they will continue to have a
personal and private interest.
The following extract from a letter to the wife of Mr.
W. J. Fox, late Member of Parliament for Oldham, and
well known as one of the most brilliant orators of the Anti-
Corn Law campaign (1847), refers to the novel's reception: —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Fox.
" Brantwood, Coniston, Windermere,
\^thjuly 1865.
"... I think on the whole that my book has been very
well reviewed. I have had one or two sharp blows, but I did
not expect that I should be received with open arms by all
the critics. It is impossible to please every one, and the only
thing that any author has a right to complain of is unfairness
in criticism, which includes all personal or class enmity, and
abuse because the critic thinks you belong to this or that set.
Else, we must take the storm with the sunshine, the bad with
the good. I hope that my next will succeed. I will try and
do it so well that it must."
Mrs. Linton's reputation for dependableness in work is
proved by more than one document which I find amongst
her papers of about this date. It was, it will be remembered,
a period of pecuniary embarrassment, and the confidence of
editors and publishers is shown by several prepayments of
from fifty to a hundred pounds, which she was to work off
by articles and stories as occasion offered. This confidence
she never failed to justify.
The following year (1866) Lizzie Loj'ton of Greyrigg, a
novel in three volumes, was published by the Brothers
Tinsley. It was written at Brantwood, and the writer's
characters are placed amidst the beloved Cumberland sur-
roundings. Ainslie Forbes and Lizzie Lorton are so good
LITERARY WORK— 1858-1867 133
that one is left regretting that they are not just the little
better that would make them living creations. There is,
however, a very real value in the book for those who would
recall the astonishing ecclesiastical neglect and the rude
lives of the rustic clergy in these remote parishes during
the first half of the century. The descriptive portions are
excellent reading, but to insist upon this as the main interest
is, of course, as far as the ordinary novel reader is concerned,
to condemn the book out of hand.
I shall here insert, as belonging to this period, two letters
from George Eliot which I find amongst Mrs. Linton's papers.
"George Eliot" to E. L. L.
"The Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park,
Saturday, \^th Deceviber 1 866.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — It was very good of you to
write to me. We had thought it particularly unfortunate
for us that just the Sunday when you were able to come we
should have happened, contrary to rule, to be away. But I
hope we shall still see you before we take our longer flight,
for Mr. Lewes has some work which he cannot bear to leave
unfinished, and his wretched health hinders him so much that
we are not likely to get away till far on in January. You
know how prompt and quick a worker he is when he is well,
but he is often compelled to sit still through the whole morning.
" I assure you we both feel a strong interest in everything
of moment that befalls you, and we hope you will not keep
from us either joys or griefs in which you care for sympathy.
" Pray come to us the first Sunday you can. — Always,
dear Mrs, Linton, yours most sincerely,
" M. E. Lewes."
"George Eliot" to E. L. L.
"The Priory, North Bank, Regent's Park,
z^tk December 1866.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — By a sudden decision,
founded on Mr. Lewes's growing need of rest, we start for
the South to-morrow evening. I send you word of this lest
you should kindly come next Sunday and not find us.
134 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" I daresay we shall be at home again early in March,
and I hope we shall then have the pleasure of receiving you
with less haggard faces than we have to show now. — Always
sincerely yours, M. E. Lewes."
Notwithstanding these letters, it is notorious that there
was no very cordial feeling between the great writer and
her less celebrated contemporary. Mrs. Linton's attitude
has been ascribed to professional jealousy, but this may be
met by what she herself has put on public record : " I felt her
superiority and acknowledged it with enthusiasm. . . . But
success and adulation spoilt her and destroyed all simplicity,
all sincerity of character. She grew to be artificial, posc'e,
pretentious, unreal."
What really touched her to the quick was the difference
of treatment meted out by society to "the upholder of the
sanctity of marriage, while living as the wife of a married
man," and to her own law-abiding self, of whom nothing
worse could be suggested than that her marriage had been
ill-considered and unsuccessful. But, bitterly and often
though she has spoken to me of the injustice which she then
suffered, she was ever ready to pay to George Eliot the
homage which her intellectual superiority demanded.
As one of her contemporaries — a strenuous opponent of
Mrs. Linton on other matters with which we shall presently
deal — has written to me —
" She had one of the most generous minds — (it is much
easier to have a generous heart, for pity creeps in and assists)
— I ever met. She was generous to all, to her rivals and to all
who passed her in the race. I remember well the long talks
I used to have with her about George Eliot, whom she knew
in the Mary-Anne Evans days, when both were journalists
living in a boarding-house in Norfolk Street, Strand. It did
not suit Mrs. Lewes to keep up the acquaintance ; she dropped
Mrs. Linton, and I never failed to admire the generosity, the
appreciation with which Mrs. Linton spoke of her."
In the autumn of 1867, Mrs. Linton visited the Gedges,
who were then in Guernsey, and there made the acquaint-
ance of Victor Hugo and Paul Naftel.
LITERARY WORK— 1858-1867 135
Of the former she wrote, " I heard his touching and
eloquent speech, and looked into his noble face instinct with
the immortal life of genius, and felt myself in the presence
of a power which it was no flunkeyism to acknowledge, and
which it was self-respect to reverence."
With his white hair, black eyebrows, and deep-set eyes,
the great Frenchman was a well-known figure on the island,
as he walked about with head rather bent, wearing a soft
wide-awake and always in a "brown study." One of his
chief friends was a little French photographer, to whom it was
his amusement to sit in every conceivable attitude. He
hated the English, and would not learn a word of their
language or allow it to be spoken in his presence.
CHAPTER XII
1866-1868. THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" AND
THE WOMAN QUESTION
Ah, wasteful woman ! she who may
On her sweet self set her own price,
Knowing he cannot choose but pay,
How has she cheapened Paradise !
How given for nought her priceless gift,
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine
Which, spent with due respective thrift,
Had made brutes men, and men divine !
Coventry Patmore.
WE are now arrived at an important turning-point in
Mrs. Linton's literary career. Hitherto her work
had been well received and she had been moderately
well paid as things went in those days, but her productions
had made no great sensation. She was as yet little more to
the public than one of the great nameless band of literary
hacks. She was forty-four years of age ; she was practically
beginning life over again, and there was nothing to lead her
to expect that the near future had in store for her a success
which was in due course to make her name a household word
in every English-speaking country.
In 1855, John Douglas Cook, with whom, as editor of the
Morning Chronicle, Eliza Lynn had seriously quarrelled, had
been appointed editor of the Saturday Revieiv. Under his
rule it almost immediately took first place am.ongst the
weekly papers of the time, and for many years drew to itself
the most brilliant journalism in England. Indeed, to have
been a Saturday Reviewer in those roaring days is even now
one of the highest of literary credentials.
Cook, as has been said, had a singular instinct for recognis-
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW' 137
ing talent in others and judgment in directing them, though
not himself possessed of much literary ability ; and although
the quarrel between him and Eliza Lynn had been of the
bitterest, he was wise enough to sink personal animosities
where they clashed with journalistic enterprize, and in 1866
welcomed back his former lieutenant as a free-lance amongst
his brilliant little band of fighters.
Writing of her work on the Saturday, she says —
" I wrote what struck and made its mark on the things of
the time. But my connection with this paper brought me
more obloquy than praise. I had something to say, and I
said it with what literary force and moral vigour I possessed,
indifferent to personal consequences, as I have always been,
and as I must ever be now to the end. And those at whom
I struck were naturally indignant, and gave me back blow
for blow, sometimes hitting below the belt, with even a few
odd scratchings thrown in.
" At this time my portion was a strange mixture of literary
kudos and personal enmity. I was publicly cut by irate
partisans, and no one seemed to think it possible that I had a
conscience and was not merely an advocatiis diaboli, opposing
that which I knew to be good and bolstering up that which
I knew to be evil. But I lived through it and got good out
of it. For I do not think anything enlarges the sympathies
or humanises the mind more than undue condemnation. By
what we suffer experimentally we can measure the pain of
others ; and the injustice which we have to accept we are
careful not to pass on.
" Besides independent essays, all more or less dealing with
one social subject only, I did a great deal of reviewing for the
paper. And as I was notoriously beyond fear or favour, I
was trusted with the books of my known friends as well as
with those of strangers and new writers. My work was
always to me impersonal. I said what I honestly thought of
the book as an achievement, and no personal sympathy with
nor hostility to the writer turned me one hair's breadth to
either side. I put my honour in keeping up the high standard
of excellence for which the paper in question was then famous.
If a book reached that standard, I praised it ; if it did not, I
138 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
condemned it — and who wrote it did not count. This might
have been the work of a stranger, that of a friend — to either
circumstance I was indifferent ; and the personal favour I
have not looked for nor had shown to myself, I never gave
to others. I know no other way of dealing with things than
on their own merits ; and I should care neither to receive for
myself, nor to help others to obtain, that ephemeral reputation
which is due to private patronage and not to the worth of the
work done.
" I remember one Sunday dining at the house of a clever
woman who disbelieved in the general honesty of the press.
I had just reviewed a book which she had not read ; but she
knew the young authoress personally, and believed that she
could not have written anything worthy of these encomiums
— that no good could come out of this little corner of
Nazareth. During dinner the conversation turned on the
corruption and venality of the press, and she instanced this
notice, which had appeared in the the day before, as an
example.
" ' That review must either have been paid for, or it was
done by a personal friend,' she said. ' In neither case was it
an honest criticism.'
" ' Neither one nor the other,' I answered. ' I know who
wrote it, and I give you my word of honour that the reviewer
had never heard the name of the authoress before he received
her book, nor was the faintest indication given him of the
tone to be taken. It was reviewed on its own merits only.'
" For my own part, I can only say that I know nothing of
the venality of the press so often spoken of. One hears of
iJ"io paid for this favourable notice, and ;^io paid for that.
... So far as I know, those come worst off who attempt to
influence to their own favour the authorities in chief or the
workers in detail of any paper that respects itself."
Her initial contribution to the paper was a review of
Hester's Sacrijice, which appeared on 21st April 1866. The
total number of Saturday articles for this year was twenty-
one. In 1867 she only wrote ten, but the year 1868 found
her represented in thirty-three out of the fifty-two numbers.
It was this year that she made her great hit with " The Girl
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW' 139
of the Period," which was given a place of honour in the
issue of the 14th March.
Of course Mrs. Linton had long ere this identified her-
self with the Woman Question. But so far she had been
rightly regarded by the limited circle in which she moved
as one of the advanced guard. Now, however, she was
" finding salvation " and becoming distinctly reactionary.
Hitherto she had concerned herself more with the rights
than the duties of women, and had claimed for them the
prerogative of taking a hand in all those occupations which
had up till then been exclusively assigned to men. Now she
was beginning to realise that a natural limitation of sphere
is included in the fact of sex ; that the extreme section of
the supporters of woman's rights were making short work
of woman's inherent modesty, of her domestic duties, and of
maternity. The last they had the hardihood to look upon
as a curse and degradation — " making a woman no better
than a cow," as one of these ladies, herself a mother, once
indignantly said to Mrs. Linton. When these points came
to the front she parted company with the cause, but still her
creed was sufficiently comprehensive. She summed it up in
these three clauses —
" That women should have an education as good in its
own way as, but not identical with, that of men ; that they
ought to hold their own property free from their husbands'
control without the need of trustees, but subject to the joint
expenditure for the family ; that motherhood should be
made legally equal with paternity, so that no such miserable
scandal of broken promises and religious rancour as this
later Agar-Ellis case should be possible."
And she lived to see all these things practically accom-
plished.
Of course she was regarded as a turncoat by some, and
by others was charged with wishing to impose restrictions
where she had insisted upon freedom for herself But I
think in the one case she will be found to have had good
reason for her courageous change of front, and in the other
to have realised that emancipation had not proved such a
success in her case as to warrant its general adoption.
140 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
This is what she wrote in an evening paper replying
to certain unchivalrous strictures passed upon her in its
columns —
" I belong to the generation when women of a certain
class were absolutely secure from insult, because the educa-
tion of our brothers, as of our fathers, included that kind of
chivalrous respect for the weaker sex which was then regarded
as inseparable from true gentlehood and real civilisation.
And old traditions and associations cling close. I belong,
too, to the generation which made the first steps for the
emancipation of women ; and I was one of the most ardent
and enthusiastic of the advanced guard. I thought that
the lives of women should be as free as those of men, and
that community of pursuits would bring about a fine fraternal
condition of things, where all men would be like big brothers
and no woman need fear. I have lived to see my mistake.
Knowing in my own person all that women have to suffer
when they fling themselves into the active fray, I would
prevent with all my strength young girls from following my
mistake, and guard them with my own body from such in-
sults as you and your kind have showered on me when
differing from you in opinion.
" The whole thing seems to me more and more to be a
gigantic mistake. The women advocates themselves and
their male backers — the disregard of all old-world modesties
here and the unmanly brutality there ; the feverish love of
notoriety and excitement in both sexes alike — ought to open
the eyes of all sane people to the true character of a move-
ment which makes women hard and men hysterical, which
gives to each sex the vices of the other while destroying its
own hitherto distinctive virtues."
That seems to put the matter in a nutshell, and it is
written with the fierce indignation proper to the occasion.
Nor was the change of sides made easier by likelihood
of success. She had a shrewd suspicion that the Atlantic
would beat her in the end, but Mrs. Partington's spirit was
upon her, and she donned her pattens, trundled her mop,
squeezed out the sea-water, and vigorously set to work to
push back the ocean to the best of her ability.
THE -SATURDAY REVIEW" 141
Undoubtedly it appears something of a paradox that the
woman who had stormed and occupied one of man's strong-
holds, fighting him with his own weapons and in the face of
enormous odds, should discount her victory by declaring
before all the world that this was not the work proper to
women. But an uncommon honesty forced her to confess
that she had not chosen the better part. She did not for
a moment deny to women the right to work, but she did
preach, and that with passionate conviction and emphasis,
that the price paid was often too heavy, and that the so-
called emancipation and licence, which much of man's work
connoted, were but poor substitutes for the duties and happi-
ness of wifehood and motherhood. Nor did she ever forget
that she had herself been a " revolting daughter " before the
fact, and this made her sympathetic and tender towards her
younger " revolting " sisters, regarded as individuals.
" We all take this moral sickness in our ardent youth,"
she said, "just as we take the measles or the whooping-
cough. Experience and time bring counteracting influences,
and the fever of revolt cools down into the calmer mood of
acquiescence. It is a good thing when serene old age gives
us juster and wider views than are to be found in mere
revolt." And as she said this, there were the tears in her
voice which told how little she valued her fame in com-
parison with the ecstasy of maternity, for which she had
yearned and which had been denied her.
Of course her recantation was the signal for unmeasured
abuse. Indeed, one of the leaders of the party for the Eman-
cipation of Women has thought fit, in writing to me since
her death, to repeat on the convenient evidence of one who
is dead and therefore not to be challenged, what I do not
hesitate to characterise as, on the face of it, the basest of
libels. He told her, forsooth, that Mrs. Linton told him that
she " found it paid better to attack women than to defend
them"!
What a sweetener for Fielding's " cup of tea " ! Was
ever a slander which bore its own refutation more clearly
on its face ? But apparently any weapon is good enough to
beat a valiant and redoubtable opponent with, when there is
142 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
only the dead body to belabour. Fortunately there were
others who recognised the true nobility that may underlie
what the world calls " apostasy."
One of these wrote to her —
" Thank God for honest people, I have devoured every
word . . . with emotion and gratitude that some one still
exists who can generously and unreservedly say, ' I was
wrong.' How few can bring themselves to do so. Their
egotism is stronger than their love of truth, even when they
can see their folly. The other sex can 7iever again say that
women are too much blinded by passion to recant, and do it
as nobly as you have done."
And after her death Sir Walter Besant penned this noble
tribute —
She fought for Woman ; yet with women fought,
The sexless tribe, the "Shrieking Sisterhood";
Who made them masks of men, and fondly thought
Like men to do ; to stand where men have stood.
She fought for Woman, and for all the gifts
Which consecrate her priestess of mankind ;
Eternal priestess— she who leads and lifts
The man, who, but for her, crept dark and blind.
No doubt in the crusade she often allowed eagerness
to overrun discretion, and stated the pros and cons with
exaggeration ; but in the revolutionary stage of any move-
ment the leaders are of necessity partisans and bigots.
Later on the happy mean is struck and the matter com-
promised, but when Mrs. Linton buckled on her armour it
was war to the knife.
It had for some time been evident to readers of the
Saturday Review (and at that time all the world was reading
it), that the new woman was not going to have it all her
own way. A very trenchant pen had been found asking the
question, "What is woman's work?" and pointing out, in
course of answering it, that there was a growing class of the
emancipated, to whom the little royalty of home is the last
place where a woman cares to shine, and the most uninterest-
ing of all the domains she seeks to govern. " Fancy a high-
souled creature, capable of sesthetics, giving her mind to soup
THE AUTHORESS OF THE "GIRL OF THE PERIOD'
AS IMAGINED BV MATT, MORGAN
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" 143
or the right proportion of chutnee for the curry ! Fancy,
too, a brilliant creature foregoing an evening's conversational
glory abroad for the sake of a prosaic husband's more prosaic
dinner ! "
This and its like was bad enough, but when the " Modern
Mother " ^ was shown to be no better than she should be, and
the " Girl of the Period " was squarely told that she envied
the queens of the demi-monde for their gorgeous attire and
sumptuous appointments more than she abhorred them ; that
she did not marry for love, but looked for a banker rather
than a husband ; that men were finding out that she was only
a poor copy of a far more amusing reality, and that they
would amuse themselves with her for an evening, but would
not readily take her for life ; then all the world was set
buzzing in earnest.
Forthwith the " Girl of the Period " figured in caricatures,
comedies, and farces. The catchword was as rife then as
our "absent-minded beggar" now. A "Girl of the Period"
journal was started, in which various girls of various periods
figured in all kinds of fantastic attitudes and costumes.
" The publication," Mr. Ashby - Sterry writes to me, " first
began with the G. P. Almanack, which sold wonderfully.
Then came the Miscellany every month for a year — then
another Almanack. After that came the Period^ which I
think was not very successful and did not last very long.
The G. P. Miscellany was edited by James Vizetelly — who
I fancy was also proprietor. Among the contributors,
beside myself, were Mortimer Collins, Augustus Mayhew,
Savile Clarke, and Edward Draper. It was illustrated by
Miss Claxton, E. Barnes, William Brunton, and, I think,
Frank Vizetelly. It was one of those ephemeral publications
that are thrown away as soon as read, and I daresay I am the
only person who has a complete set of it."
Every one wanted to know who was the inventor of the
expression, and since the true author could not be found,
several obliging persons consented to replace him or her.
Punch delivered himself of the following somewhat
ponderous joke, evidently coined to meet the demand : —
^ Saturday Review, 29th February 1868.
144 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" Immediate.
" If the ' Girl of the Period ' is as she is represented, the
sooner a stop is put to her the better."
Most of those who were not behind the scenes supposed
that the writer of the article was a man/ and " one enthusiast "
(I quote this from a newspaper cutting which I cannot
identify) " suggested that a patriotic defender of the reputa-
tion of English womanhood should go to the offices of the
Saturday Review, demand the name of the writer, and there-
upon inflict upon him a good argument in the shape of a
sound thrashing."
In fact, the article produced one of those fine outbursts
of virtuous indignation of which we, as a people, are so un-
reasonably proud.
This is the account of the matter given by Mrs. Linton
herself, when, on the republication of the articles in book form
by the Bentleys sixteen years later, she formally acknow-
ledged their authorship '^ —
" The essays hit sharply enough at the time, and caused
some ill-blood. * The Girl of the Period ' was especially
obnoxious to many to whom women were the sacred sex,
above criticism and beyond rebuke ; and I had to pay pretty
smartly in private life, by those who knew, for what they
termed a libel and an untruth. With these passionate
repudiators on the one hand, on the other were some who,
trading on the enforced anonymity of the paper, took
^ Mr. Thomas Hardy was amongst those who never suspected the sex of the
writer. He was much impressed by the articles, and will point out to this day
the exact spot — a green slope in a pasture — where he first read them. Amongst
Mrs. Linton's papers, too, I find a letter from Mr. Henry Vizetelly, addressed to
the writer of " The Girl of the Period," asking whether he would be willing to
enter into an arrangement for the republication of any articles relating to the
female sex, etc. etc. Judy also, who was at that time carrying on a polemic
with the Saturday, wrote —
" Conclusive.
"Since the 'Girl of the Period,' as depicted by the writer in the Saturday
Pooh-pooh, is an entirely imaginary creation on the part of that writer, it follows
as a matter of course that he hi'mse// must be a miss-creant."
^ A selection was also published by Baron Tauchnitz.
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" 145
spurious credit to themselves for the authorship, I was
twice introduced to the writer of ' The Girl of the Period.'
The first time he was a clergyman who had boldly told my
friends that he had written the paper ; the second, she was a
lady of rank well known in London society, and to this hour
believed by her own circle to have written this and other of
the articles included in the present collection. I confess that,
whether for praise or blame, I am glad to be able at last to
assume the full responsibility of my own work."
On the second occasion alluded to, Mrs. Linton, as a
matter of fact, was momentarily stung into disclosing her
secret. It happened at an evening reception, that she and
the great lady were sitting side by side, when the conversation
turned on "The Girl of the Period." One of the men said,
" Oh, we have to thank Lady for that very able article."
Lady smiled acquiescence.
This was too much for the " real Simon Pure," and she
blurted out —
" Lady may have written the article, but I certainly
received the cheque."
It is characteristic of Mrs. Linton that the lapse of years
found her still unrepentant. " In re-reading these papers,"
she says, " I am more than ever convinced that I have struck
the right chord of condemnation, and advocated the best
virtues and most valuable characteristics of women. I neither
soften nor retract a line of what I have said. One of the
modern phases of womanhood — hard, unloving, mercenary,
ambitious, without domestic faculty and devoid of healthy
natural instincts — is still to me a pitiable mistake and a
grave national disaster. And I think now, as I thought
when I wrote these papers, that a public and professional life
for women is incompatible with the discharge of their highest
duties or the cultivation of their noblest qualities. I think
now, as I thought then, that the sphere of human action is
determined by the fact of sex, and that there does exist both
natural limitation and natural direction. This creed, which
summarises all that I have said in extenso, I repeat with
emphasis, and maintain with the conviction of long years of
experience."
lO
146 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
That she had to pay pretty smartly for her temerity, may
be gathered from the following episode.
She had one day, soon after the publication of the
notorious article, taken a friend, Miss Bird, to a meeting of
some sort at St. James's Hall. In the entry they met a still
living and celebrated authoress, who was then, as now,
prominent in the cause of the advancing woman. Mrs.
Linton held out her hand to greet her.
" I refuse," said the lady, " to take your hand unless you
first assure me you did not write that odious article, ' The
Girl of the Period.' "
This, from a journalist who must have been well aware
of the rights which attach to anonymous journalism, not un-
naturally ruffled Mrs. Linton, and drawing herself up, she
answered —
" As an authoress yourself, you must be well aware
that you are asking an unpardonable question," and passed
on.
But this was not enough, for the lady thought fit to
follow up the encounter by a letter declining further
acquaintance with Mrs. Linton unless she disavowed the
articles. She again naturally refused to be drawn, and the
acquaintanceship ceased.
Here is a sample of the many letters of remonstrance
which, from this time forward, were showered upon her by
anonymous correspondents. It refers to a signed article on
the Woman Question, and runs to seven pages. A short
extract will suffice.
" Surely you must feel sometimes for your own sex !
Why are you such an advocate for the other side — which
requires no advocate? Why, oh why help the strong? I
do not want to be unkind, but it would serve you right if
you lost your gifts and ceased to be able to write ! Even
then, I fear, your written works would live ! I don't know
what is to be done with you. I think you must be
hypnotised ! Now, touching Mrs. Jackson of Clitheroe.
Why were you in such a rage that a wife should not be
compelled by law to live with her husband, when you knew
a husband could not be made to live with his wife? Naughty
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" 147
Mrs. Linton ! What a temper you were in, to be sure.
Unfortunately it doesn't prevent you writing well.
" Good-bye, Mrs. L. L. I wish I could burn all your
writings and take away the pens from you."
Signed, " A champion of women, whether wild or
tame."
On the other hand, it must be remembered that those
with calmer judgment, who looked back upon the war which
she waged unceasingly over so long a period, were compelled
to an unwilling admiration.
The generous tribute of one of those who could not see
eye to eye with her may here be quoted : —
" Many even of her friends regarded her as a sort of
feminine Quixote, a little too ready to set her lance in rest
and ride, with waving plumes and shouts of defiance, at
some mouldering old windmill, or ragged scarecrow. But one
could not fail to respect the manful courage and directness
with which she assailed the things that seemed to her
despicable and wrong. We may think that she said too
much, and objurgated too loudly, upon those partly mythical
figures, the Girl of the Period and the New Woman. But it
is surely incorrect to assert that the unwomanly woman
formed the sole object of her satire and invective. On the
contrary, she liked and admired manliness in the one sex as
much as womanliness in the other ; and the unmanly man,
with his vices and his weaknesses, roused her indignation as
much as the woman who forgot that she was feminine. To
the true * emancipation of woman,' she was, by her own
career and action, a living witness. She had vindicated the
right of her sex to independence, to a profession, to participa-
tion in intellectual pursuits and opportunities, to a character
and soul of her own. What she always disliked was the kind
of emancipation which turned woman into a bad imitation of
man, and made man a rather offensive copy of a certain kind
of woman. ' I come of a race of strong men,' she once said to
the present writer ; and the milk-and-water male was no more
to her taste than the brandy-and-water female. Hasty she
may have been, indiscreet, unduly violent, wielding her
broadsword with more energy than precision ; but she fought
148 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
her fight through Hfe generously, and with the stimulus of
high ideals and sincere beliefs."
Probably few besides her biographer can judge how just
an estimate this is. Wading through her correspondence,
almost knee-deep, he has learnt that it was not in public only
that she harnessed herself as the champion of womanhood,
of domesticity, of modesty, of goodness, of personal character.
In season and out of season she insisted, sometimes it is true
almost despairingly, but always doggedly, that the oncoming
tide of the Wild Women and Shrieking Sisterhood must be
swept back. And who can tell how many acres of womanli-
ness she has preserved for us, just as the Dutch " polders "
have fought for and won their low-lying areas year by year
and bit by bit ? By the tourist but little of this " impoldering "
and pumping, this raising of dykes and dams, is realised. He
only sees results. He knows nothing of the struggle. Just
so it is hard for those who have not been privileged to
peep behind the scenes to realise the indomitable spirit, the
passionate enthusiasm, and the invincible determination with
which to the last Mrs. Linton continued to face the odds
which she never allowed to overwhelm her.
It must not be deduced from all this that she denied to
women the right of being strong and brave as well as sweet
and modest. Asked whether she advised us to give our small
daughter swimming lessons, she wrote —
" I have always said all women should learn (i) to swim,
(2) to load and fire a pistol or gun, (3) to climb up a ladder
without losing her head, (4) to ride — and they need not be
new women any the more for all these accomplishments ! "
And she was as opposed to petticoat government for boys
as she was to the bloomerising of girls.
I cannot, I think, do better than conclude this chapter
with two examples of her letters, one private and pro-
nouncing generally on the woman question, the other written
to the public press indignantly protesting against what most
of us feel was an improper and unbecoming public exhibition.
Extract from a private letter —
"... Tell Mrs. from me, that being the sweet and
dainty and delectable lady you describe her, she has no reason
THE "SATURDAY REVIEW" 149
whatever to fall foul of me. I am the Celebrant of such women.
Only of the revolted women ; only of the bad copies of men
who have thrown off all womanly charm and have not been
able to adopt virile virtues ; only of the fast, the immodest,
the egotistical, the self-assertive, the unwomanly, am I the
bitter and uncompromising enemy. No one in the world
honours and loves true women more than I, but then they
must be women, with the faults of women even thrown in,
certainly better than the adopted faults of men ! . . . I know
how tremendously I am misunderstood and misrepresented.
The press gave the keynote, and all people who do not know
me repeat like echoes. I am not an enemy to women — quite
the reverse ; but I do not like unwomanly, undutiful, or selfish
women."
" To THE Editor of the ' Daily Graphic'
" Sir, — The illustration you gave on 2nd March of the lady
footballers at play, is one to make all but the most advanced
of the sexless men and unsexed women who head this dis-
astrous movement pause in dismay at the lengths to which
it has gone. Has, indeed, all sense of fitness, of feminine
delicacy — not to speak of decency — left these misguided girls
and women, whose sole endeavour seems to be to make them-
selves bad copies of men, while throwing off every attribute
that constitutes the charm of women ? Say that modesty is
conditional to the age and country ; still, the sentiment is
intrinsic if the manifestations vary. The woman v/ho violates
the canons of modesty of her own times is as reprehensible
as if those canons were as essential as the elementary crimes
and obligations of organised society. The Spartan girls ran
their races naked and were not ashamed. What was accepted
then as blameless would be a police offence now. We go
about with unveiled faces and are not disgraced, but the lady
of the harem who should discard her veil would be a good-for-
nought in heart and rightly repudiated by her sisters. These
boy-girls — these worse than hoydenish football players — sin
against the laws of modesty in force at the present day, and
we look in perplexed disgust at the exhibition they make
of themselves. We wonder if any of them have fathers or
mothers or brothers, or if they are waifs and strays gathered
from the four corners of the earth, with no social standing to
150 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
lose and no inborn perception of the difference between a
degrading notoriety and honourable fame. We know where
and by whom they will be applauded and encouraged, and
how those who discountenance this immodest display will be
vilified. But the repute of English girls is too sacred to be
carelessly regarded, and every man and woman who respects
that repute should join in a powerful protest against the two
classes of girl seducers now rampant in our midst — those who
seek to pollute their minds by premature initiation, and those
who seek to destroy their delicacy by personal unseemliness
and practical indecency. — Yours faithfully,
" E. Lynn Linton."
CHAPTER XIII
1868-1871
FROM Russell Place Mrs. Linton moved to Fitzroy Street,
and later to 28 Gower Street, where she remained
from 1869 to 1 87 1.
In addition to her journalistic work on the Satwday Review
and elsewhere, she had found time to write another three-
volumed novel, Sowing the Wind, which she dedicated to her
" Beloved brother and lifelong friend, Arthur T. Lynn."
She was now again moving in the literary society of
London, which she loved.
Amongst others with whom she came in contact about
this time, and who were destined to become famous, were
those pioneers of the lady doctor, Miss Garrett, the Misses
Blackwell, and Dr. Mary Walker, to whom PuncJi put the
unkind question —
" Why ought a medical quack to be a woman ? " and
cruelly answered it —
" Because he's always a Charlotte Anne."
Of the last of these four young women, who, in her words,
" had clanked into the dissecting-room," she wrote —
" I may as well say here that the bloomer costume which
she wore, with that huge rose in her hair as her sign of sex,
did much to retard the Woman Question all round. The world
is frivolous, no doubt, but here, as in France, ridicule kills,
and you can force convictions sooner than tastes. When
that handsome barmaid in Tottenham Court Road put
on trousers as a greater attraction to gin-drinkers, not only
Bloomerism received its death-blow, but the cause got a ' shog
'maist ruined a'.' It survived, however, and now flourishes
like a green bay tree."
152 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In these years, too, Mrs. Linton became acquainted with
many of the leading scientific men of the day, and began to
frequent the meetings of learned societies. Amongst the
former the celebrated Orientalist, John Crawfurd, held a
foremost place in her affection and respect. Of him she
wrote —
" No truer soul ever lived than he ; no kinder, juster, nor
more faithful friend and father. His tall and powerfully
built figure, just touched by the hand of time, and slightly,
very slightly bent — his handsome face, with the eyes still
bright, vivacious, penetrating, where the lightning-lines of
latent passion flashed across the sweeter and more placid
tracts — his noble white-haired head, and that look of a man
who has won all along the line, and who enjoys and does not
regret — all made him one of the most striking features of the
learned societies where no one was commonplace."
Another was William Spottiswoode, the physicist and
author of TJie Polarisation of Lights who devoted " fortune
and place, beauty of person and refinement of mind, an
intelligence that somehow reminded one of polished steel,
and a character as free from base alloy as gold that has been
tried in the fire . , .to the furtherance of pure science and to
the good of his fellow-men."
Then there was James Spedding, one of the Speddings
of Mirehouse, old neighbours and friends of the Lynns, of
whom Tennyson said, " He was the Pope among us young
men, the wisest man I know," and of whom Mrs Linton
wrote —
He " was one who touched the crown of the ideal student,
whose justice of judgment was on a par with his sweetness
of nature, whose intellectual force was matched by his
serenity, his patience, his self-mastery, his purity. In the
midst of the violent clashings caused by the arbitrary- and
contradictory dogmatisms which afflict and bewilaei us,
his quiet breadth, his godlike serenity and all-embracing
liberalism, were as refreshing as silence after uproar, as
shade in the noonday heat. The way in which he died was
the crowning act of a life that had never known bitterness,
revenge, nor any strain whatever of the darker passions ; and
1868-1871 153
were the world of thought to have its saints, James Spedding
would be one of the first canonised."
He was run down by a cab on ist March 1881, and died
on the 9th. While still conscious, he was characteristically
anxious to make it clear that he considered the accident to
have been due not to the driver but to his own carelessness.
Another old and valued friend was Edward Flower, the
father of Sir W. H. Flower of the Natural History
Museum, " whose humanity went over to horses after the
issue of slavery was closed by emancipation."
" In the early days of the American Civil War, before the
introduction of emancipation by the North — the playing of
the black knave as the trump card," — Mrs. Linton was on
the side of the South. She took their part because of the
right of insurrection, which she had always upheld. One
evening she had the temerity to say this to Edward
Flower, whose opinions were well known to be so very
different, as they stood on his hearthrug before dinner was
announced,
" He very nearly ordered me out of the house," she writes,
" instead of giving me the place at his table destined for me.
I think he would have done so, had not Moncure Conway
come to the rescue. He defended me, from my own point of
view. He condemned that point of view in itself, and showed
where it was part crooked and part shortsighted, but, granted
my premises as honestly held, he could not see that I was to
be condemned. Thus he calmed down the towering wrath of
our Jupiter Maecenas, and things went on velvet from the soup
to the grapes."
Other leading scientific men with whom she was on terms
of intimacy, and for whom she had, in common with all who
knew them, the profoundest admiration, were W. K. Clifford
and Balfour, both of whom had proved their outstanding
qualities, but who " went down to the grave before they had
more than begun their assigned tasks ; and their slips of the
great Yggdrasil, by which heaven and earth are bound
together, withered in the darkness of their untimely death."
Further friendships which date from these earlier years
of her second literary period were those with Mr. (now Sir
154 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
George) Lewis and his wife, Mrs. Ben Susan, Mr. and Mrs.
Samuel Joshua, Dr. Asher, Ford Madox Brown, Henry
Morley, Edmund Yates, and WilHam Hepworth Dixon.
As will be evident from several of these names, she was at
this time brought much in contact with some of the leading
London Jews, and, with her insatiable thirst for knowledge
and her passionate desire to discover truth for herself, she
characteristically made the most of the opportunities thus
offered for studying one of the most fascinating of problems.
The net result of her investigations of the Jewish and other
religions was a profound conviction that all are of human
origin, and that the chief good and supreme end of conduct
are to be found not in any creed, but in pure devotion to the
interests of others. In other words, altruism — the love of
humanity — seemed to her to be worth all the religions in the
world.
How far her final judgment was the result of prejudice,
how far she was illogical in her reasoning, this is not the
place to discuss. All that we are concerned with are the
facts of her life and mental development, and no one who
knew her will doubt that her convictions, however erroneous,
were honestly arrived at.
I shall shortly give the main lines of her argument.
In the first place, she denied to herself the right of being
convinced of any matter whatsoever unless based on what
commended itself as proof positive. In such matters as, by
lack of education or lack of opportunity, she was unable to
investigate for herself, she of course bowed to authority,
adopting as working hypotheses the conclusions arrived at
by those in whom she felt the highest confidence.
But religion was on a different footing altogether. In its
very nature it was the one matter which every thinking
person was bound to investigate at first hand.
" By the law under which I live and suffer," she wrote,
" I have to work out my difficulties for myself; and no personal
admiration for the moral results in an individual can carry me
over to the faith from which these results have sprung. I am
like one standing in a barren centre whence radiate countless
pathways — each professing to lead to the Unseen Home."
1868-1871 155
Then she had to face the difficuhy that in every rehgion
ahke there is the belief that in it, and it alone, there is
direct Divine illumination and consequently an assumption
of God's special favour to those who hold it.
And " the correlative of this special favouritism and
enlightenment is darkness, estrangement, and eternal exile
for those who are not included." This revolted her by
its obvious partiality and consequent injustice, though in
this matter she admitted that '' our own laxer and more
liberal Protestantism " was less blameworthy than any other
religion.
With " this self-complacent trust in God's special favour "
she then contrasted " the generous humanity of those who
think that their own best happiness is to be found in the
happiness of others." And she instanced " our poor dis-
credited prophets, the Communists, with their altruistic
dreams of a universal Utopia, where there shall be no
lack and no injustice."
" For them," she continues, " is no exclusiveness of
favour — no heights where the beloved stand joyously in
the sunshine — no hollows where the disgraced cry out to
the empty night in vain — no heaven for the lambs — no
hell for the goats — no broad lands and goodly heritage
for the firstborn, with banishment and dispossession for the
rest; but a sweet and fruitful Elysium for all alike. Poor
dreamers, and yet how human ! and how far more generous
than the Covenanted !
" The parable of Lazarus and Dives synthesises the
whole matter. ' Leaning on Abraham's bosom — safe in
the arms of the Saviour — I and my beloved are happy,
no matter who else is in torment, I have made my own
calling and election sure ; and for the rest, it is not my
affair whom God in His infinite mercy and justice may
think fit to torture for all eternity. The great gulf fixed
between us cannot be passed, and Dives must call out for
water in vain.'"
It was the Jewish Litany of Thanksgiving, " which praises
God that He has made them better and more blessed than
the other sons of man — Jews and not Gentiles — freemen and
156 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
not slaves — men and not women" together with " our own
Te Deums for victories gained perhaps in unjust and cruel
wars," which gave her the final shock "and conviction of
selfishness that was as painful as physical anguish,"
And then to crown it all, there is the "volume of sup-
plication which goes up day by day and hour by hour from
man to that dread Deity behind the clouds who Can and
Does not!"
" These thoughts," she says, " haunted and overpowered
me. The sins and sorrows of humanity seemed to grow larger
as I contrasted them with the Power which could redeem
and would not. Those sins, those sorrows, claimed the
Divine as their author by reason of their very existence.
* I form the light and create darkness ; I make peace and
create evil ; I, the Lord, do all these things.' And the
mystery of spiritual darkness seeking light and not finding
it grew till it swallowed up all the rest. I cried aloud for
illumination. I prayed with the anguish which no one need
blush to feel nor be ashamed to confess, for the Divine light
which should make these dark things clear. No answer
came. No voice spoke to my soul, penetrating the thick
cloud and showing the living way of truth. None ! None !
But one night as I prayed, I prayed into the invisible dark,
the felt void ; and my words came back like a hot blast into
my face as I realised that I petitioned an immutable and
impersonal Law which neither heard nor heeded — which
wrought no conscious evil and gave no designed favour."
Whatever we may think of her line of reasoning — and of
course there are at every step answers more or less pertinent
that will suggest themselves — no one can, I think, question
its passionate honesty, its genuine pathos. " What does it,
what does it all mean?" she one day cried to me in un-
mistakable agony, as our conversation brought us for the
moment face to face with the impenetrable barrier.
And she wrote, " Who that has known the hour when
the Father is not, and Law has taken the place of Love, can
ever forget it ? The v/hole aspect of life is changed, and a
cry goes out from the soul as when the beloved has died —
a cry to which is no answer and for which is no comfort —
1868-1871 157
only the echo flung back by the walls of the grave. The
blank despair; the sense of absolute loneliness; of drifting
on a pathless sea without a fixed point to make for or a
sign by which to steer ; of floating unrooted in space ; the
consciousness of universal delusion and phantasmagoric self-
creation that it has all been — no man who has gone through
that moment of supreme anguish need fear the Schoolman's
hell. He has been down into one worse than the worst,
which terrified timid souls in those Ages of Faith which were
essentially the Days of Darkness. . . .
" And yet if this darkness, this limitation, this impene-
trable barrier, be really the truth, and all attempts at more
positive construction be delusions, the pain of the discovery,
in the desolation it brings with it, is better for the strong man
than the false comfort of a cheating hope. Before all else let
us leave things as they are. If we are in the midst of an
untilled waste, let us recognise its barrenness and its potenti-
alities ; and neither believe that it is a garden for this part,
nor unimprovable for that. In [this] case we have at least an
incentive to cultivate and amend our holding, and to go on
until we come to something better.
"... We realise with ever clearer understanding the
obligation of living for the future, not only for the present ;
for the general well-being, not only for our individual good."
These and a hundred other like considerations drove her
to the conclusion that " altruism, far from general acceptance
as it is, is at once our highest duty and our noblest con-
solation."
" To the individual," she continues, " life is too often like
a huge cynical joke, where he is led by false hopes, mocked
by illusive pleasures, pursued by phantom fears, and where
he loses the joy of his desire so soon as he gains possession.
. . . And from this suffering, this mockery, this delusion of
the senses and painful striving of thought and aspiration,
the only mode of escape is forgetfulness of self in the good
of the race."
From this it is clear that what she advocated was pure
altruism, not the " benevolence to others in subordination to
self-interest " of Comte.
158 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Nor did she shrink from the obvious questions : Why
should we be virtuous when we get nothing by it? Why
should we forego the present, which is our own, for a future
by which we shall not profit and where we shall not be
found ?
And she answered them boldly and unflinchingly —
" Because of the law of moral evolution, which is just
as irresistible as that of the physical — which indeed is the
result of the physical. ... It is the Law of Progress — the
law under which all creation lives until it changes into that
dispersion of forces we call death and disintegration, to be
followed by a nobler reconstruction. We have no explana-
tion to give. Agnosticism has no pillar of cloud by day nor
flame of fire to lead by night, marking the way and illumin-
ing each step as we go. It has only the guidance of experi-
ence and scientific truth as its waylines. But the Wherefore
and the Whither are as obscure as the Whence and the How
— as the future destinies of the race or the undetected rela-
tions of the spheres."
Notwithstanding her confessed agnosticism, which I
hope none will be found illogical enough to confound with
dogmatic atheism, she never denied that the religious
sentiment embodied in a creed and an actual God has
immense private influence. " It gives a man a force beyond
himself," she confessed, " and helps him to bear misfortune
because it leaves him always hope." Indeed, she went
further than this, and insisted that, for the average person
in the present stage of moral evolution, religion is the best
and most necessary of all safeguards. For those, however,
who possess the requisite mental endowment for the seek-
ing of first principles or fundamental truths, she denied the
necessity of such a support, and would instance the many
well-known examples of patience and self-control carried to
the last point of perfection by philosophers who have had
recourse to no strength but their own. In other words,
religion was to her but the go-cart of the infant race, to be
cast aside so soon as it could walk alone, and already dis-
pensed with by a few of the strongest.
Without the above explanation of her position, it would
1868-1871 159
be hard to reconcile with strict honesty the terms of the
following letter, written at this time to a niece. With that
explanation, the matter seems to present little difficulty.
E. L. L. TO Miss Ada Geuge.
"28 GowER Street, W.C,
M^thjuly 1870.
" As for you, my sweet darling, I do not think you have
gone very far wrong. The great thing for you to cultivate,
Ada, is a Jiabit of industry, a habit of concentration and
purpose. It is of no use only wishing to do things well — one
must t7y ; and it is of no use trying for a time — we must
persevere. If you will resolutely cultivate that, and pray
very earnestly for help in your well-doing, you will find
things grow easy that are now difficult, and help will come
to you to overcome any bad habit you may have fallen into.
I know nothing worse of you than this, and if I scolded }'ou
ever so hard I should scold you for nothing else ; but here
does lie your difficulty ; and this want of perseverance, want
of concentration, want of steady industry, and the inclination
to do things by fits and starts and not regularly, are the
' little foxes ' you must catch and turn out of the ' standing
corn ' of your soul.
" You are a dear, sweet child, and I for one love you
tenderly and warmly, and I can so thoroughly sympathise
with you in all your mental difficulties, for I remember so
well when I was your age wanting so passionately to be
good and noble and right, and finding the path so hard, not
to follow, but to find. It is so hard sometimes to know what
is right and what is wrong. It is only by the grace of God
that our sins are revealed to us. If we keep our consciences
tender we know when we are wrong, and then we find at last
how to set ourselves right ; but all this doubt and sorrow
and desire to do well and difficulty in doing it belongs to
the young, and is part of the education which God gives
them, part of the process by which the chaff is separated
from the grain, according to the earnestness with which one
tries, and the success with which one searches.
" I have no more to say, my Ada darling, and I have no
kind of doubt that you will find how to put yourself right if
you feel that you have got astray. God bless you, and God
160 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
help you, sweet child ! and what poor help or sympathy I
can give you, let me, for I have gone through all this before
— as does every earnest soul at all ages. . . . Your own
friend and lovingest AuNTY LiZA."
The year 1869 was marked by an interesting episode
arising out of the publication of Forster's Life of Landor.
In it, as has been said, the author had thought fit
practically to ignore the intimate friendship which had
existed between Mrs, Linton and the old Roman. To
quote her own words, he had used the Life as " a vehicle
for his own self-laudation — dwarfing all other friendships to
aggrandise and augment his own." He had, in her opinion,
shown a despicable " want of loyalty to the man, dead, whose
feet he had kissed while living."
Landor had been his friend and benefactor — had given
him the copyright of his works, and had trusted him with
that most sacred deposit, the story of his life. Forster repaid
his munificence by emphasising the weaknesses and faintly
depicting the grand qualities of his friend, from whom no
more was to be expected, and whose last act of generosity
had been performed.
And, as luck would have it, it was to her that Dickens,
all ignorant of her bitter indignation, sent the volumes to be
reviewed for All the Year Round !
The article which she wrote at white heat began with the
unmistakable challenge : ^'The Life of Walter Savage Landor
has yet to be written"
We may imagine the dismay with which Dickens, who was
on closest terms of intimacy with Forster, and indeed already
regarded him as his own Boswell, read the ominous words.
The article was returned, accompanied by the following
letter —
Charles Dickens to E. L. L.
"26 Wellington Street, Strand,
SaH(rday, i^fhjttne 1869.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — Although your article on our
old friend is interesting as a piece of personal remembrance,
1868-1871 161
it does not satisfy my desires as a review of Forster's book.
It could hardly be otherwise than painful to Forster that I,
one of his oldest literary friends, and certainly of all others
his most intimate and confidential, should insert in these
pages an account of Landor — or touch the subject — without
a word of commendation of a biography that has cost, to my
knowledge, a world of care and trouble. I find from your
letter to my son that you do not think well of the said book.
Admitting that the life was to be written at all, I do. And
it is because I think well of it, and wish highly to commend
it on what I deem to be its deserts, that I am staggered and
stopped short by your paper, and fear that I must turn to and
write another in its stead.
" I want you to understand the case on my own presenta-
tion of it, and hence I trouble you with this note. — Believe
me always, very faithfully yours,
"Charles Dickens."
Mrs. Linton's reply to this is not forthcoming, but Dickens's
further letter demonstrates the loyalty with which he held
himself to the bargain which had been struck with her at the
initiation of his mag^azine.
Charles Dickens to E. L. L.
"26 Wellington Street, Strand,
Monday, list June 1869.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — I had not the least intention
of returning you the enclosed paper, and had ordered it —
in right of our long association — to be placed to your credit
in the business account. That order I shall certainly not
cancel (except under compulsion), but you are perfectly free
to publish the paper, nevertheless. — Believe me, very faithfully
yours, Charles Dickens."
Where the paper was finalh- published I have not discovered.
Certainly the anonymous article in the July number of the
North British Review, which Dr. Garnett rightl>- conjectures
to have been from her pen, is not that which Dickens
rejected. There was another article in Broadivay written
II
162 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
by her, and published on ist August, but this I have not
seen. A year later (July 1870) Fraser had a long article
from her, entitled " Reminiscences of Walter Savage Landor,"
which reads as if it might have been a modification of the
rejected article.
At any rate, it is certain that a "slating" article did
appear, for two days after its publication the following
episode occurred at a dinner given by Shirley Brooks. : —
" Have you seen Mrs. Linton's review of Landor s Life
by Forster?" asked their host of Lord Houghton, who was
one of the guests. " It is the neatest thing I know. She
has taken the skin off him so — so," he added, making a
movement as if tearing strips along his arm.
So much for the polemics of the time.
The following letter, which I have permission to publish,
shows that Mrs. Linton was also taking part in its active
benevolences.
The visit to Clapton here arranged for was immediately
followed by an article on the subject in the Pall Mall Gazette
for nth December.
Mrs. Gladstone to E. L. L.
"Hawarden Castle, Chester,
&,th December 1S69.
"My dear Madam, — I have received a letter written from
you to Mrs. Malcolm, in which you kindly continue to take
interest in our Convalescent Home, and desire to write
articles in All the Year Round and in the Saturday Revieiv.
It is very good of you, and I am most desirous of thanking
you for what you have already done. If I was in town, I
should be too happy to go with you immediately to Wood-
ford and Clapton. As it is, I could easily ask Colonel
Neville to accompany you.
" I hope myself to be doing a little work the week after
next in the Convalescent Homes ; in the meantime, I will
ask Colonel Neville to communicate with you and name a
day to accompany you there. I am sure you will find many
touching scenes. My plan is to sleep there a few days on
1868-1871 163
Monday or Tuesday week ; perhaps you will pay us a visit
there. — Believe me, yours truly,
Cath. Gladstone.
" P.S. — We have just opened a Fever Convalescent
Home at Clapton, about which I am very eager. A few
words from you as to the need of it might quicken the
subscriptions."
In 1869 a volume of Mrs. Linton's Essays on Women was
published by Routledge with the title Ourselves. It was
republished by Messrs. Chatto & Windus in 1884 and
1893.
Her pen was now extraordinarily active. In the years
1870 and 1 87 1 she turned out no fewer than two hundred
and twenty-five articles, all written for such high-class publi-
cations as the Saturday Review, All the Year Round, and
the Queen. And these, it must be remembered, were not the
mere journeyman's work of the paragraph writer, but well
thought-out essays or stories, with beginnings, middles, and
ends.
On 7th January 1871 she made her first, and I fancy only,
appearance in Punch with an article entitled "On being Taken
Up and Put Down again." It ran to a column and a half, and
was dignified by a pictorial initial letter by LinleySambourne.
It recounted the experiences of one who had been a literary
lion of one season only to find his former patrons " Not at
Home" in the next.
It was signed, " A Dog who has had his Day," and the
last sentences run as follows : —
" The conclusion to which I have come is, that no honest
dog will let himself be paraded as a lion if he can help it,
first undergoing the humiliation of being put through his
tricks, and then being kicked out of doors when the showman
has had enough of him. This is not a very dignified position
according to my way of thinking. But then, I am an old
Growler, and see society through grey glasses, and have got
over the age when everything was rose-colour, and jam-tarts
the best thing out."
164 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Amongst the letters of this date I find the following from
the author of " The Ang-el in the House."
Coventry Patmore to E. L. L.
" Heron's Ghyll, Uckfield,
21 si October 1870.
" My dear Madam, — I am much gratified to hear that
my verses have found so warm a welcome from you. You
can do, and you prove, what I have striven and have failed
to do in my verse — which seems to be, like the bat's voice,
pitched in a key that the modern ear cannot catch. I
admire your self-control even more than your indignation.
If I were to try to write my thoughts in prose, it would be a
shriek and not an articulate protest, like yours, I live here,
like Ben Jonson at Hawthornden (was it not ?), ' hating all
mankind,' and conscious that the only use that I can make
of such faculties as I have is to show by utter silence that I
hold them, in the present state of things, to be of no use,
" Hoping some day to have the pleasure of making your
acquaintance, I am, my dear madam, yours very truly,
" Coventry Patmore."
In the following year (1871) Brantwood was sold by
Linton for ^^1500 to Mr, Ruskin, who described the house as
" a mere shed of rotten timbers and loose stone."
CHAPTER XIV
SPIRITUALISM
I SHALL here break off from the consecutive narrative to
deal with a matter which had now been for some years
agitating the minds of Mrs. Linton and her con-
temporaries.
In the later forties whispers had come from America of
certain mysterious phenomena which had been first observed
in the village of Hydesville, New York State. Without
going into particulars, it is sufficient to say that large
numbers of honest and upright people on the other side of
the Atlantic were now accepting as a demonstrated fact, that
the unseen or spiritual had been brought into direct com-
munication with the seen and material world, and that, by a
sort of wireless telegraphy, messages, questions and answers
were passing daily and hourly between the dead and the living.
At first the report was received on this side with derision
and incredulity as a Yankee tale. Later the persistence of
the rumours seemed to call for investigation, and finally in
1854 public interest was aroused by the appearance in
England of the American medium, Mrs. Haydon. Amongst
her earliest converts were two leading men, both friends of
Mrs. Linton, Robert Owen, the founder of English Socialism,
and Dr. Ashburner, the colleague of Dr. Elliotson in the
Mesmeric Infirmary. Later on appeared a more remarkable
medium, the notorious Daniel Dunglass Home, who went
through the whole range of " manifestations." Soon people
were talking of little else except levitations, rappings, trance-
speaking, voices in the air, visions in crystals and glasses,
and elongations of the human body. Dark seances were the
order of the day, and spiritualism was in the air.
166 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Amongst those who were at once convinced of the
genuineness and importance of these phenomena was Mrs.
Milner-Gibson, the wife of the well-known Liberal politician.
One of her friends, writing to me, says she was " a clever
woman, and enthusiastic in those practices which border upon
fraud. She was a great dabbler in table-turning, rapping,
and the spiritualism of that day. No doubt she acted with
bona fides!'
She was devotedly attached to Mrs. Linton, whom she
always addressed as " Linda," and, notwithstanding the fact
that their opinions on religious matters were as the poles
asunder, she declared that one of her highest ambitions was
to fit herself for the friendship of one so excellent and far
above her.
The following letter refers to Mrs. Milner-Gibson and the
spiritualistic movement : —
Charles Dickens to E. L. L.
"Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent,
Sjinday, i6tk Septe»iber i860.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — Pray do not suppose that I
sent you that very unspiritual magazine for any other
purpose than to keep you au courant to the subject. It has
not in the least disturbed my equanimity,
" I hold personal inquiry on my part into these proceed-
ings to be out of the question for two reasons. Firstly,
because the conditions under which such inquiries take
place — as I know in the recent case of two friends of mine,
with whom I discussed them — are preposterously wanting in
the commonest securities against deceit or mistake. Secondly,
because the people lie so very hard, both concerning what
did take place and what impression it made at the time on
the inquirer.
" Mr. Hume, or Home (I rather think he has gone by both
names), I take the liberty of regarding as an impostor. If he
appeared on his own behalf in any controversy with me, I
should take the further liberty of letting him know publicly
why. But be assured that if he were demonstrated a
humbug in every microscopic cell of his skin and globule of
his blood, the disciples would still believe and worship.
SPIRITUALISM 167
" Mrs. Gibson is an impulsive, compassionate, affectionate
woman. But as to the strength of her head ; — would you be
very much surprised by its making a mistake? Did you
never know it much mistaken in a person or two whom it
devoutly believed in ? — Believe me ever faithfully your true
friend, CHARLES DiCKENS."
From the following note, for which I am indebted to Mr.
Orrinsmith, it would appear that Mrs. Linton was an early
convert, though I am bound to say that her own account of
the matter was very different.
" She was absolutely credulous in spiritualistic matters.
She was one of a circle assembled at the house of Mrs.
Milner-Gibson, and all the tricks of the medium were there
carried on with great success. Milner-Gibson never joined
the party, but Mrs. Linton used to tell how he would open
the room door, pop in his head, and crying, ' Well, my dear,
at it again, I see ! ' would disappear.
" Mrs. Linton had met Home, and she described how she
had seen him when seated at dinner draw himself up
and kneel on the table. She thought this miraculous. I
said it was a mere clever gymnastic feat. One night I
accompanied her to a seance held by a Mrs. Marshall, a
vulgar medium of some vogue at the time, who boasted to
have command of the ' sperrits,' as she called them. The
meeting was held in a second-floor room in Red Lion Street,
Holborn. The only light we had was derived from the
reflection of the street lamp on the ceiling. We had a most
successful display, table-turning and tilting. Preposterous
answers were rapt out to idiotic questions. A small tripod
table was specially active in its vagaries ; one of its legs was
broken, and this accident certainly gave facility to its move-
ments. Mrs. Linton was fervent in her belief, and pronounced
me to be at least an agnostic if not an infidel. We saw the
phosphorescent hand, heard the guitars on the floor struck
by unseen hands or toes, and other marvels galore. I with
some difficulty persuaded Mrs. Linton to drop her notebook
pencil on the floor, in order that in picking it up I might
peep underneath the table. I saw in the semi-darkness a
quick scufffe of knees, and was ordered by the medium to
168 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
withdraw from the circle as a prying sceptic. On our way
home we had wordy strife, but I could not move her in her
belief"
In any case, her credulity was but short-lived, and the hope
that in spiritualism she might find proof of revealed religion
was quickly dispelled. She was not one of those who hold
that
The pleasure surely is as great
Of being cheated as to cheat.
This is her own account of the matter —
" With others," she writes, " I became an intimate in the
house of Mrs. Milner-Gibson, that large-hearted woman who
opened her doors to all the exiled patriots that flocked to
England as their only safe asylum, and who was as a
crowned queen wandering through Bohemia. She was one
of the most prominent features of London society in her
day, and went through the appointed phases of the widest
Liberalism, the most marked Bohemianism, the most mystical
Spiritualism, and the most fervent Catholicism, proper to her
kind. But in each and all, the generous heart, the loving
nature, the wide full charity of divine sympathy and pity
remained unchanged. . . . When the well-known floating
medium got hold of her, her salon was given up to table-
turning and seances, wherein she herself was the most
deceived and the most credulous. Great efforts were made
to convince me of the truth of the phenomena exhibited. . . .
" I was at this house when the notorious levitating medium
was said to have floated to the ceiling. The story is simply
this. Mr. Home was in his usual place at the end of the
chain of experimenters, where the circular table touched the
jamb of the window — leaving a free space between him and
mademoiselle the governess, who always sat opposite to him.
Our hostess was always on his left hand. The room was
almost pitch-dark — lighted only from the distant lamp in the
mews which this window faced. Suddenly Mr. Home left
his seat and came over to where I was sitting. He leaned
over my chair and spoke to my neighbour and me, saying
that the spirits were preparing something, he did not know
what. The next moment we heard the sound of a piece of
SPIRITUALISM 169
furniture moving across the room. It was a light chaise
longue, which stood by the wall in a line with our chairs.
" ' The spirits want me to get on this,' he said ; and forth-
with he sat down on the couch.
" There was a certain man in the company, called Smith
of Peckham, who had been an atheist, but whom Mr. Home
had converted to spiritualism and Christianity. To him this
medium was a Christ. He clasped his hands and knelt on
the ground.
" ' Let me go too ! ' he said, praying the Lord rather than
making a request to his brother man.
" His high priest gave a rather ungracious assent, and the
two moved off; but Smith of Peckham was found to be
inconvenient, so was soon sent back to his old place at the
table.
" There was a large mirror over a console table at the
end of the wall, facing the window ; and near to this was a
heavy old-fashioned ottoman, with a strong and serviceable
centre-piece.
" In a short time Mr. Home said he was floating up to the
ceiling, and in the dim light of the room we could see that
a dark body was between us and the mirror. The voice
seemed to ascend, and we heard the sound of a slight scratch-
ing. Then the voice came down. Mr. Home said he had
scratched a cross on the ceiling, and called for lights. There
was a great hunt for the small grains of plaster on the floor,
and the case was recorded in the spiritualist journal as an
undoubted instance of floating.
" There was nothing to have prevented Mr. Home from
drawing the chaise tongue to him by means of a string round
the front two legs, moving it by his own feet and muscles ;
standing on the centre-piece of the ottoman, and, with a
knife tied to the end of a stick, scratching a cross on the
ceiling. The rest was easy to ventriloquism and certain to
credulity.
" At other times he showed the hands — luminous hands
— which mademoiselle the governess said she felt forming
themselves in her dress. These hands played with the tassel
and strings of the blinds, and were phosphorescent. One,
170 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
coal-black, was the emblem of superstition ; another — covered
with what they all said was a spiritual veil or refulgent kind
of mask, and a cambric pocket-handkerchief — was the sign
of faith. But as no one was allowed to investigate, and as to
express doubt would have been impolite, things were received
with acclaim by most of those present, and only a few of us
had the honesty of silence."
Mrs. Linton would have made so useful an ally that Mr.
Home arranged a special manifestation for her benefit.
" I must," she writes, " explain the foundations. One of
my friends had had a little child of which I had been
passionately fond. It had been named after me ; I had
adopted it for my own ; and the whole story was patent to
the world. At the time of which I write the child was
dead. . . . By all my own people I had always been called
Liz or Lizzie. By our hostess and the whole group of her
friends who were mine, and by this group only, I was called
Eliza. The child had been christened Elizabeth, and was
called Lizzie.
" In the midst of the usual array of luminous hands, this
night, came a round shining thing, which mademoiselle the
governess and Mr. Home the medium both cried out at
once was a child's head. For whom ? The guests were
numbered, and the spirits rapped, when I was indicated.
This spiritual child was for me. This was my first personal
experience of a thing of this kind, and for the moment I was
overcome.
" ' This means a little child of whom I was very fond,' I
said in a half-whisper to my neighbour. ' It was called after
me and dedicated to me.'
" ' Yes,' said Mr. Home, as if speaking in a dream. He
was in a trance. ' This little child was Eliza on earth, as it is
Eliza in heaven, and its mother thanks you in heaven for your
loving care of it on earth. She is standing by you now,
blessing you and watching over you.'
" This bad shot " (the calling of the child by a totally
inapplicable name) " saved me from all after danger of
credulity, and left me with a clear mind and untroubled
senses to watch and wei^h all that I saw."
SPIRITUALISM 171
I have been fortunate enough to discover an account of the
same seance from the pen of a believer, possibly " Smith of
Peckham." It is to be found on page 142 et seq. of Home's
Incidents in my Life, First Series, and runs as follows : —
" After a short time there rose slowly in the space made
by the window a most lovely hand of a female — we saw also
part of the beautiful arm as it held it up aloft for some time.
We were all greatly amazed. This hand was so transparent
and luminous, and so unearthly and angelic, that our hearts
were filled with gratitude towards the Creator for permitting
so wonderful a manifestation. The hand was visible to us
more from the internal light which seemed to stream as it
were out of it, than from the external light of the moon. As
soon as it slowly vanished, mademoiselle — who sat next to
the open space — saw another hand forming itself close to her ;
and a man's hand was raised and placed upon the table, far
more earthly and lifelike in appearance, and one that I
thought I recognised (we were subsequently told that I was
right in conjecture). Then came a dear baby-hand ; then the
baby (Mrs. L.'s adopted child) showed its head ; and finally,
spirit hands held up the little child, so that all nine of us saw
her shoulders and waist. After this a hand and arm rose
luminous and beautiful, covered with a white transparent
drapery ; and this hand remained visible to us all for at least
five minutes, and made us courteous and graceful gestures. . , .
Then we were told they would show us ' the emblem of
superstition ' ; and a black shrivelled hand arose. On some
of us remarking that 'we could not see it well, the curtains
were at once moved aside, and the blind drawn away from
the top of the window. It was beyond the reach of any of
us ; and they then showed us the hand again, so that we all
could see it. The ' emblem of truth ' was then shown. This
was more beautiful than all the rest — a fairy-like fountain of
apparently clear sparkling water, which threw up showers of
rays, vanishing from our sight like mist, and dwelling on the
memory as perfection. After this it was rapped out, ' We
can do no more.' "
Here is the same believer's account of the " levitation."
" After a pause, Mr. Home said he felt as if he were about to
172 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
be lifted up. He moved from the table, and shortly he said, ' I
am rising ' — but we could not see him — ' they have put me
on my back.' I asked, ' Will you kindly bring him, as much as
possible, toward the window, so that we may see him ' ; and at
once he was floated with his feet horizontally into the light of
the window, so that we all saw his feet and a part of his legs
resting or floating on the air like a feather, about six feet
from the ground, and three feet above the height of the table.
He was floated into the dark ; and he exclaimed, ' They
have turned me round, and I am coming towards you.' I
saw his head and face, the same height as before, and as if
floating on air instead of water. He then floated back and
came down and walked up to, and sat on the edge of the
table we were at, when the table began to rise with him on it.
Mr. Home was then taken behind to the settee next to me,
and while there we heard sounds several times as of some-
one giving utterance to a monosyllable in the middle of the
room. Feeling a pressure against my chair, I looked and
saw that the ottoman had been brought along the floor about
six feet, no one touching it, and close to Mr. Home. He
said, ' I suppose it is for me to rest on,' — he lay down, and
the ottoman went back to its original position. ' Oh ! I am
getting excited ; let some one come and sit with me.' I went
and sat beside him ; he took my hand ; and in about a minute,
and without any muscular action, he gently floated away
from me, and was lost in the darkness. He kept talking to
let us know Vv'here he was. We heard his voice in various
parts of the farther end of the room, as if near the ceiling.
He then cried out, ' Oh ! they have brought me a cushion to
sit upon — I am sitting on it — they are taking it away.' Just
then the tassel of the cushion of another ottoman in the room
struck me on my hair and forehead as if coming from the
ceiling, and the cushion was deposited at my feet on the floor,
falling as if a snowflake. I next saw the shadow of his
body as he floated along near the ceiling. He said, ' I wish
I had a pencil to make a mark on the ceiling. I have made
a cross with my nail.' He came down near the door, and
after a pause he was taken up again ; but I did not see him,
but heard his voice as if near the ceiling. Again he came
SPIRITUALISM 173
down, and shortly returned to the table we were at ; and the
sounds on the table bade us ' Good-night,' "
Another friend, " one of the most convinced of Mr.
Home's dupes," expatiated to Mrs. Linton warmly on the
supernatural power which enabled a pencil to lie on a cling-
ing velvet cloth without rolling off when the table was tilted
to a certain angle. She tried the experiment at home, and
found that, by careful manipulation, she could tilt her own
table at even a more acute angle than the medium had done,
and that neither the pencil nor the glasses would fall.
When she told this to her friend, " he was exceedingly
angry, and what had been a very pleasant friendship came
to an abrupt and sudden end."
Another friend who had it much at heart to convert her
to the faith, was Dr. John Ashburner, the translator of
Reichenbach, and the author of Studies in the Philosophy of
Anil f ml Magnetism and Spiritualism.
" At his house," she writes, " I saw, among others, the
medium who writhed like a demoniac when the spirits were
writing in red letters on his large, white, fine-skinned arm
a name that should carry conviction to the soul of the
unbeliever.
" This man had two tricks — that of this skin-writing, which
was soon found out; and that of reading with the tips of
his fingers the names written on small pieces of paper, folded
up into pellets and flung into a heap on the table. This
sleight-of-hand was respectable ; but I caught the trick, and
told Dr. Ashburner what I had seen. The dear old man did
not believe me, and he did believe Mr. Foster, the medium, even
after he found out that he had been in prison for felony.
" I could fill a volume with my spiritualistic experiences,
suspicions, and silent detections of imposture. I have never
seen anything whatever that might not have been done by
trick and collusion, and I have seen almost all the mediums.
Never, anywhere, has there been allowed the smallest investi-
gation, nor have the most elementary precautions been taken
against imposture ; and the amount of patent falsehood
swallowed open-mouthed has been to me a sorry text on
which to preach a eulogium on our enlightenment.
174 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" Yet all the time I was yearning to believe — to be forced
by irrefragable proofs to accept one undoubted authority,
which would have ended for ever certain gnawing pains.
Those proofs never came. On the contrary, with every
seance at which I assisted came increased certainty of impos-
ture. And yet now, at the end of it all, though I have never
seen a medium who was not a patent trickster, I believe that
there is an uncatalogued and perhaps undeveloped human
force which makes what the Americans call a magnetic man,
and which is the substratum of truth underlying the false-
hoods of spiritualism, the deceptions of hysteria, and the
romances of religious fervour. We have not said the final
word yet on the development of man ; and this uncatalogued
force may be one of the chief factors in the sum of future
progress.
" So far there may be truth in what we hear ; but when
heavy women are brought bodily through the air and dropped
clean through roofs and walls, when notes fly from India to
London, and when spirits materialise themselves and put on
hair which is made up of cells and fibres and pigments like
growing human hair, and dress in clothes well cut and
stitched together with ordinary thread, beside being loaded
with Manchester dressing — then, I think, the common sense
of the world should revolt in indignation at these patent
falsehoods and frauds, and the weak should be protected
from the cruel craft of the unscrupulous.
"What will not people believe? I remember poor old
Dr. Ashburner telling me a story of how once, when he was
sitting alone at night, in sore perplexity as to ways and
means, a knock came to the street door. He opened it, and
saw on the pavement an unknown man bestriding a black
horse. Without a word, this visitor silently thrust into his
hand a packet of Bank of England notes, then dashed off
down the street, and was no more seen. The notes were to
the value of five hundred pounds, and were given by the
spirits.
" If so, were those spirits thieves or forgers ? F'or these
Bank of England notes must have been stolen, either from
the bank itself or from some private person ; or, if made by
SPIRITUALISM 175
the spirits themselves, they were forgeries, and the bank
would have to suffer. But because the transactions of the
Bank of England, like those of nature, are so large as to
appear illimitable to us, we do not realise that not one single
five-pound note is issued without the utmost accuracy of
registration and balance, and that therefore a spiritual theft
or forgery of five hundred pounds would as certainly be
detected, and would as certainly result in the loss of some
individual, as if it had been money taken out of one's own
private purse.
" It was, however, like arguing against the miracle of the
loaves and fishes, because corn is made only by translation
of material through assimilation, and is built up cell by cell,
and fishes cannot be fashioned without milt and spawn and
development, save at the cost of upsetting the whole balance
of everything. The dear old man only lamented my blind-
ness, which far exceeded his own, he said sorrowfully. But
my Sadduceeism was immovable, and I could not see my
way to the spiritual origin of those bank notes — if, indeed,
they ever existed out of the realms of fancy at all. For,
after he became blind, and his imagination was neither
checked nor controlled by his senses. Dr. Ashburner fell into
that state of mental haze where the boundary lines between
fact and fancy are clean swept away."
Thus we see that Mrs. Linton did not doubt the existence
of those " uncatalogued forces " which underlie the mesmeric
theory, from Jar-phoonk in the East to Braidism and the
latest discoveries of the electro-biologists in the West. But
she denied that there was any proof in these phenomena of a
spiritual as distinct from a material existence.
In going through her correspondence, I came across a
letter from Mr. Sinnett, of a later date, but germane to the
subject, in which, writing with perfect kindness and courtesy,
he yet straightly charged her with " resolutely turning
away from the prospect which her higher self longed to
believe."
From this it was clear that she had had dealings with the
theosophists, whom, rightly or wrongly, I take to be the latter-
day representatives of the spiritualists. I sent the letter to
176 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Mr. Sinnett, and received from him the following interesting
and frank reply : —
" 27 Leikster Gardens, W.,
i8//i May 1899.
" Dear Sir, — The letter you send me reminds me of a
time when Mrs. Linton used often to visit us and meet at our
house many people concerned with and interested in theo-
sophical study and psychic investigations. Of course I
myself constantly talked with her of such matters, endeavour-
ing to convey to her the assurance I had myself reached, that
trustworthy knowledge was to be obtained concerning other
states of human consciousness besides this (of the physical
plane), with which we are all familiar. The attitude of mind
in which I generally found her was one of keen interest in
the views I held (or the knowledge which I conceived
myself to possess), coupled with what she used to describe
as an ever-present terror lest she should be led into believing
something which in spite of all appearances might not be true.
This apprehension was emphasised in her mind by the
consciousness, of which she often spoke to me, that in her
youth she had been susceptible in a high degree to mesmeric
influence.
" 1 fancy the letter you forward me may have related to
the conversation of one particular afternoon at our house
(about the year 1884) which I remember, when Mrs. Linton
happened to meet there three or four of our intimate friends
(the late Dr. Anna Kingsford among the number), all of
whom were absolutely familiar in their personal experience
with super-physical phenomena of various kinds, and to whom
\\\'Q.fact that such phenomena took place — which was at that
time the belief Mrs. Linton feared to entertain lest it should
be false — seemed such a long-passed threshold of knowledge
that doubts on that subject had a ludicrous aspect. I re-
member Mrs. Linton asking some of our friends with impress-
ive gravity had they themselves personal experience of such
and such occurrences, and when they gave her that unqualified
assurance, I remember that at last she sprang up from her
seat, saying, * If I stay any longer I shall be mesmerised.'
Probably it was in sequence with that little incident that my
letter was written.
" As far as I know, Mrs. Linton's attitude of mind about
super-physical knowledge generally remained, up to the last,
SPIRITUALISM 177
pretty much as I have described it above, but you may be
interested in one recollection I have bearing on the subject.
During her residence at Queen Anne's Mansions, Mrs. Linton
had one specially bad illness in which she all but died. After
her recovery she told me that at the worst crisis of the illness,
when those around her thought she was actually dying, or
had died, she remembered floating away as it seemed to her
in space, borne as a child might be borne in the arms of some
great motherly creature, and bathed in a sense of wonderful
peace, contentment, and happiness. And, curiously enough,
she told me that during this period the thought crossed her
mind, ' Mr. Sinnett ought to know of this.' Remembering
this thought, she said she felt it a duty to tell me of what
had occurred or seemed to occur, but she added impressively,
' See what it was that put an end to that vision ! A dose of
brandy ! ' Of course I pointed out that the dose of brandy
had stimulated the energy of the magnetic tie between body
and soul just on the point of breaking, and that the vision
was a glimpse of reality clothed in her recollection with some
imaginary circumjacent details. I think she was more im-
pressed by the experience described than her materialistic
friends would have supposed probable, but I do not claim to
have ever drawn her away from the resolutely agnostic
position in all such matters, in which, as it seemed to her, the
only intellectual safety lay. Mind you, her mental attitude
was honestly agnostic, and removed as far from the dogmatic-
ally denying attitude of the commonplace materialist, as
from the positive knowledge of the experienced psychic
student. — Yours very truly, A. P. SiNNETT."
In describing this last incident to my wife, Mrs. Linton
gave rather a different account, saying that it was the sound
of her adopted daughter's voice calling to her, " Bones !
Bones!" (her pet name) that seemed to drag her back to
life. Mrs. Hartley, as will be seen, confirms this account of the
matter. Mrs. Linton had often declared her belief that, if she
were dying, and Mrs. Hartley used the old familiar charm, she
would be able to struggle back to consciousness.
The foregoing account of Mrs. Linton's spiritualistic and
theosophical experiences goes to confirm what I think all
who knew her easily discovered — that she was not one of
178 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
those who wantonly deny the truth of things just because
they may be outside their own experience. To the best of
her abilit\' (and none was ever humbler in estimating her
powers of logical reasoning) she would honestly investigate
the evidence for and against. Further than this she could
not go. It was with her rational belief or nescience, and by
doing her best she was satisfied that the responsibility was
at any rate shifted from her shoulders.
It might of course have been happier for her if she had
been mindful of Helps's advice, not to toil at sweeping away
the mist, but to ascend a little and overlook it altogether,
but this was foreign to her nature.
CHAPTER XV
1872-1876
IN 1872, Mrs. Linton moved to Hayter House, No. 238
Marylebone Road.
The engraved heading to this year in her work-book
consists of two hands clasped and a third laid over them
as if tightening the bond. They are labelled " Centre,"
" Revolutionaire," and " Polonaise," and underneath is the
word " Laboramus." Above and below she has written the
words, ^'■Joshua published."
This manuscript legend refers to the publication in the
following winter of what was in some respects the most
remarkable and the most successful of all her writings.
The full title was. The True History of Jos/ma Davidson,
Christian and Communist.
Writing of it after Mrs. Linton's death, the Athencsum
said it was " an exceedingly clever pamphlet disguised in the
shape of a story, and Joshua was not a creature of flesh and
blood, but an exponent of the writer's views. It was a great
success (and a welcome success, for the author's popularity
had waned since she wrote Grasp your Nettle), and she
never lost the position she (now) attained. It quite altered
her standing in the world of letters."
This of course refers to a slightly later date than the
initial publication, for the first edition (issued by Messrs.
Strahan & Co.) was anonymous. The book immediately
attracted great attention, and the author's name soon appeared
on the title-page. Within three months a third edition was
called for, and by the year 1890, when the publication was
taken over by Messrs. Methuen & Co., it had reached its tenth.
In 1896 it took its place in Mr. Stead's Penny Series.
179
180 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Amongst others to whom it particularly appealed was
Mr. Frederic Harrison, who writes, *' It afforded me new and
singular matter for reflection." Another fervent admirer was
that singularly misunderstood and grossly libelled lover of
humanity, Charles Bradlaugh, who immediately bought a
thousand copies for distribution.
Another was John Bright. The Warden of Merton, in his
lately published Memorials and Impressions, tells how " the
Tribune of the People," at one of his house parties, gave " a
short resume " of Joshua Davidson with so much fervour and
pathos as to reveal the secret of his influence over large
audiences.
A biting satire on modern Christianity, the book was, for
those days, a daring innovation. The story which is put into
the mouth of one of the protagonist's disciples is that of
a Cornish carpenter's son, " who deliberately set himself to
live and act in all respects as did that other carpenter's son
and 'David's son' — Jesus. As the book was written before
slumming was fashionable, there was nothing extravagant
in the assumption that he was scorned by society for con-
sorting with thieves and prostitutes. As toleration in
religious thought was then far behind what it is in the
present day, there was not any glaring want of probability in
presenting him as a martyr at the hands of the Church whose
dogmatic Christianity he could not accept. Joshua Davidson
was in the end kicked to death by the very men for whom he
had worked during the best years of his life."
Destructively, the book is a powerful indictment. Con-
structively, it is as weak as Seeley in the " Sixties " and
Beeby in the " Nineties." Much, however, as there is to find
fault with in it, no one can, I think, read it without realising
the burning love and sympathy for humanity by which it is
inspired. There is the true ring of righteous indignation at
the iniquities of our social conditions. There is the perfervid
hatred of shams, and there are the tears in the voice of one
crying in the dark and getting no answer.
These are the closing words —
" Like Joshua in early days, my heart burns within me
and my mind is unpiloted and unanchored. I cannot, being
1872-1876 181
a Christian, accept the inhumanity of political economy and
the obliteration of the individual in averages ; yet I cannot
reconcile modern science with Christ. Everywhere I see the
sifting of competition, and nowhere Christian protection of
weakness ; everywhere dogma adored, and nowhere Christ
realised. And again I ask. Which is true — modern society
in its class strife and consequent elimination of its weaker
elements, or the brotherhood and communism taught by the
Jewish carpenter of Nazareth? Who will answer me? — who
will make the dark thing clear? "
Amongst others she sent a presentation copy to Mr.
Voysey with the following inscription, " ' John ' " (the name of
the supposed writer of the book) " hopes that Mr, Voysey will
do him the honour of reading his Httle history. He thinks
Mr, Voysey will maybe sympathise with his dead friend,
and his own endeavour to make the truth known,"
Mr, Voysey replied, expressing great appreciation, and
asking "John" to break his anonymity to him. Her answer
was as follows : —
E. L, L. TO Rev, Charles Voysey.
"26//^ February 1873,
" My dear Sir, — I will not tell you who I am yet, because
you may not like me or my book when you know me, I
have never been more touched by anything than by your
frank and affectionate letter. It will always be to me a ray
of the purest sunshine, a dear and exquisite note of music.
Some day I hope to know you, I have seen and been
hurriedly introduced to you, but you will not remember me.
I question if you would even know my name again.
" The preface to the third edition is not yet out, I have
not had the proofs, but I have said a few words I hope boldly
and yet reverently. Neither do I think Joshua or Christ
wholly right. But if Christ is not right as a guide, an
example, why maintain his divinity? Why make us confess
what we cannot believe, and hold only to the good of the
doctrine, not to the mythology grafted on it? The book
means simply a plea for sincerity. Let us take our choice —
Christ and communism, Christ and love, Christ and charity.
182 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
— or science, and the scientific arrangement of society and
the aboHtion of all pretence of Christianity. It is the sham
of the world that I have always hated, I who have been one
of the first outspeakers.
" The New Koran I have not yet seen, nor even heard of.
I should like to read it. We do not want irreverence, nor
(for the mass of people) cold negation : and yet how little we
know, and how dark it all is ! — but we do want a faith to
which we can live up, not one that we confess on Sundays
and defy all the week after.
" I shall go and hear you next Sunday, and see my unknown
' friend and brother.' (I have heard you before, and only felt
you did not go far enough.) But I should like to send you
the preface to the third edition before you speak oi JosJiua.
" I send you my friendship, brave heart, for what it is
worth ; and I am, till further known, your brother too,
"John."
This was his reply —
Rev. Charles Voysey to "John."
"Camden House, Dulwich,
2.bth February 1873.
"My dear Friend, — I little thought of the pleasure
which I was giving you by my few most sincere words of
thanks and sympathy. I am glad you have written, and I
am deeply obliged to you for telling me the design of your
work. I will abstain from public reference to Joshua till
I read your new preface. I go heart and soul with you in
your hatred of shams. Of all shams in this world the most
shameless is that o{ professing" Christians in their sham belief
in their ' Great Example,' as he is called.
" I am sending through Strahan & Co. a copy of New
Koran and some recent sermons on Atheism. I feel as if I
had had a treasure and lost it in having been introduced
to you (among so many hundreds), and having been left
without any clue to find it.
" But I shall trust you to disclose yourself to me some day,
if even you are a Bradlaugh or an Odger. The man who
wrote that history of 'Jesus the Son of David,' A.D. 1872,
must be my friend and brother. — Most truly yours,
" Charles Voysey."
1872-1876 183
E. L. L. TO Rev. Charles Voysey.
"The Falls, Llandago, Coleford, S. Wales.
" My dear Mr. Voysey, — I .could not find even that little
moment of time before I left London in which I could write
to you with your books. I hope you have received them. I
left them to my maid to put up and send. Thank you for
them very much. I need hardly say how much I admire
them and how I sympathise with your courage ; your faith
is more robust than mine. In abandoning the dogma of
Revelation, it seems to me that we are necessarily plunged
into a sea of absolute Doubt. The immortality of the soul,
the presence of a God, the destinies of the human race, and
the part we play in the great whole — all seems to me a mere
chaos. And this is where I think we looked for you to go
further and to make confession of Doubt brightened only
by Hope. Conviction means nothing. Conviction is the
product of a man's present state, and is no proof at all.
But it is a comfortless state to feel floating in darkness un-
anchored, unrooted, only hoping that in due time the Light
will come, here or hereafter ! or if it does not, then this
burning heart and yearning thought will be stilled, and it does
not much signify to the dead in their graves what truth is !
" I write, you see, now in my own name. So many people
know that I am the author of /. D. that it would be affecta-
tion to keep up the disguise to you only. Thank you very,
very heartily for your kind words. By the bye, are yoii the
author of the Nezv Koran ? It is a most remarkable book,
and excellently done.
" I hope some day to shake hands with you again, and to
know that you respect * Mrs. Lynn Linton ' as much as you
thought you would like ' John.' — Most sincerely yours,
"E. Lynn Linton."
" I went twice to St. George's Hall, once on the ' baptism '
Sunday. I liked your service andfou very much."
The following extract is from an enormously long letter
of a later date on the same subject. It is a good example of
the trouble which she was ever ready to take for those by
whom her help was honestly sought. To one who was
spending long hours daily at her desk to produce her
184 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
necessary " tale " of work for the public, and whose private
correspondence was enormous, it was no light thing to give
the time and energy requisite to the writing, only for the eyes
of a chance stranger, of what is no less than an elaborate dis-
sertation. But she took her mission seriously, and here was
some one in the dark. It was worth while to do the best she
could for a brother-man. I can only find room here for the
closing sentences —
E. L. L. TO Mr. E. K. Francis.
" If you are still a Christian, that is, a believer in Christ's
absolute divinity, and that this man was God made manifest
in the flesh, live after his doctrines and example. Though
all the world pass you by and deride you, be faithful to your
God and Saviour. You will be a martyr in a sense, but you
will have your conscience clear. But if you find that the
divinity of Christ is a myth like other myths, that his
philosophy was partial and irregular, now fine now foolish,
now masculine now childish, now possible now impracticable,
and that when tested by your reason it is much the same as
other early philosophies founded on thought not fact, on
metaphysics not science, then accept the good and reject the
folly, as with Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and Marcus
Aurelius. See Christ as a noble, pure-hearted, enthusiastic
man, not a hair's breadth in advance of his day in knowledge
or economic wisdom. Then live your own life nobly — live
for all that you have — humanity, your best sense of truth, of
uprightness, of self-sacrifice, and unselfishness. Make your
own brick perfect in the living temple of Society ; add your
unit to the great treasury of progress and true morality, and
be content to leave in the dark those things which no man
yet has discovered. The providence of God, an after life, the
meaning of life, the final destinies of man, all these are as
dark, as much hidden as what you will be doing at this hour
^•wenty years hence. But a noble life is a fact, and the only
fa-*- %vorth living for — the only seed that bears fruit of an
imperishable kind. . . . Very faithfully yours,
"E. Lynn Linton."
From the foregoing it will be recognised, by all who
honestly try to understand her, that Mrs. Linton was no
1872-1876 185
merely fanatical opposer of Christianity. It was with the
modern misnamed Christianity, in which the spirit of Christ's
teaching was obscured, that she had her quarrel. True, she
believed that much of the original teaching itself was out of
date, that it was ante-scientific in an age of science — but she
recognised^what the essence of it really was — " Make your
brick perfect in the temple of Society ; add your mite to the
great treasury of progress and true morality, and be content
to leave in the dark those things which no man yet has
discovered."
Nor was she one of those who despised where she did
not agree. " Nothing," she wrote, " is so like insanity as that
kind of ill-temper which puts itself in opposition to all the
world ; and the man who thinks no one in the right but him-
self is, for all the practical purposes of moral life, as insane
as if he had crowned himself with straw and called himself
Emperor in Bedlam."
Tender, indeed often regretful, was her love for the old
traditions in which she had been nurtured, and real was her
admiration and perhaps envy of those whose lives, sustained
and fortified by religion, were noble and true. Though truth
to herself did not permit her to accept revealed religion, she
was not slow to admire its beauties and to be thankful for
many of its results. None ever heard her scoff at those she
believed sincere, but biting was her scorn of cant and ignorant
dogmatism.
The following extract from a letter writte i at this period is
sufficient answer to those who have charged her with intoler-
ance : —
E. L. L. TO Rosemary Crawshav.
"Hayter House, 238 Marylebone Road,
XTth May '74.
"... 1 am glad you did show that mark of respect to the
R. C. priest. I believe in tolerance as the only possible
method ; and having the courage of one's opinions as the
only weapon of which civilised folk should make use. The
tolerance we claim for ourselves we ought to be able to accord
to others, and to trust to science, education, and a free press
for the enlightenment of men's minds."
186 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
That she found it a tough matter, however, to give the
educated " R. C. " credit for honesty, is clear enough from the
following letter written many years later to my wife. She
had been reading the excellent translation of Gregorovius
lately made by her friend Mrs. Hamilton : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. G. S. Layard.
"... I do not know a sadder, a more pregnant history
than that of the early years of the Church, when she had
set before her the definite aim of universal supremacy.
Gregorovius is long and dry, but, for those who care to
wade, it is full of the richest treasures of knowledge. Every
statement is backed and supported by authorities, but it is,
as I said, a nightmiare. It is like watching some great crawl-
ing octopus slowly creeping over a living but terrified giant
and strangling him, he too much terrified to resist. In all
the quarrels between the emperors and kings with the pope,
the one great threat of eternal damnation overbore all other
considerations. Heroes became poltroons, soldiers weaker
than women, kings laid aside their royalty at the feet of the
pope, and one kicked off the crown of the king as he knelt, to
show his supremacy over all men, no matter what their rank.
And all was founded on that one doctrine — the everlasting
fires of Hell, to which the Spiritual Power had the right and
the authority to consign every living soul ! How any one
who can read can be a Roman Catholic is more than I
am able to understand. Both Gibbon and Gregorovius are
revelations, but the latter is the fuller and more precise."
On 15 th November 1874, Mrs. Linton's new novel,
Patricia Kemball, was published in three volumes. During
the year she had also found time to write eighty-six articles
for the Queen, Saturday Review, Cornhill, All the Year
Round, New Quarterly, World, and the Illustrated Sportitig
Gazette (Christmas Number).
" Dear Patricia, I have a very tender place in my heart
for her," she said to me on one of the rare occasions on which
she could be persuaded to talk of her own work, I had told
her that I had picked up for a few pence a copy of the novel,
bound up from the parts of Temple Bar, in which it had run
1872-1876 187
serially. She was much touched by this evidence of the
appreciation of her work by some one unknown. It is the
most idyllic and breezy of all her novels, and had a consider-
able success. She dedicated it to her sister, Mrs, Gedge. It
was republished as late as 1893 by Messrs. Chatto &
Windus, with a capital frontispiece by her friend, George du
Maurier.
The following letter from that artist refers to her next
novel, The Atonement of Leant Dundas, which began its
serial appearance in the August number of the CornJdll, 1875.
After it had been running for some time, she appears to have
written to du Maurier complaining of the treatment it was
receiving at the hand of its illustrator. This is his reply,
and, in view of the extraordinary success of Trilby and The
Martian in later days, it is interesting to note how little he
dreamed of the gold mine which lay ready to his hand as
author-artist.
George du Maurier to E. L. L.
"New Grove House, Hampstead Heath,
22nd I\Iarch '76.
" Dear Mrs. Linton, — I cannot attempt to reconcile
author and artist, and do not wish to stick up for my friend's
illustrations, but I can assure you that he is honestly doing
his best according to his lights. I have always done the same,
but do not think I ever succeeded in pleasing an author.
" I have once or twice begged George Smith to let me do
for him every month in the Cornhill a drawing from a subject
of my own choice, so difficult do I nearly always find it to
adapt myself to the letterpress of another, but he seems to
prefer the tale being illustrated — why, I cannot make out !
Those who are interested in the story care very little for the
illustration as a rule, and I don't think bad or good illustra-
tions ever made or marred a book, except when it came out
as a Christmas book, or an cditio7i de luxe. I hope to have a
talk with you on the subject, however ; we are always at
home of Thursday afternoons, and shall be made happy by
your coming. — With kind regards from both, yours very
sincerely,
"G. DU Maurier."
188 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Learn Dundas Mrs. Linton looked upon as the best of all
her novels, but it was by no means so well received as its
immediate predecessor. The public probably found the
character of the heroine too sombre, and resented didactics
where they looked for amusement.
Learn herself is a very remarkable creation. Her narrow-
ness and her depth, her boundless loyalty, her self-forgetting
passion, the exclusiveness of her love so nearly akin to
cruelty, and her fierce humility, are on a very high plane of
excellence, but the subsidiary characters are unconvincing
and unattractive.
The wastefulness of Nature, or perhaps we should rather
say with Carlyle, " the infinite rigour of law," must, I think,
strike every one who now reads these novels. One is astonished
that such cleverness, such excellences of workmanship, should
be destined to so short a life. Touched by genius, such a
story as Paul Ferroll still holds its place within easy reach
upon our shelves, notwithstanding the fact that its writer out-
rages all the probabilities, and is guilty of grammar beneath
the contempt of the abecedarian ; whilst here we have work
of really high technical quality, which, by lack of ever so
small a pinch of the essential salt, grows flat and stale within
a decade or two. As in others of her books, the excellent
descriptions of Cumberland scenery are of real value. But
unfortunately the public will not buy subject pictures they
do not like for the sake of the landscapes in which they are
set.
That the book possessed certain qualities generally
lacking in her work, is evident from the fact that Charles
Ross, the then editor of Judy^ was so struck by its dramatic
possibilities that he adapted it with a view to theatrical
production. Whether it was ever actually staged I have
been unable to discover.
This same year, a volume of stories, entitled The Mad
Willoughbys and Other Tales, the title - story of which had
originally appeared in the Nezv Quarterly, was published
by Messrs. Ward, Lock & Tyler.
Mrs. Linton was still on the war-path with articles on the
Woman Question. Two in Belgravia this year — "Frisky
1872-1876 189
Matrons " and " Woman's Place in Nature " — attracted par-
ticular attention and aroused keen controversy. The last
was looked upon by Dr. Anna Kingsford and others of the
opposition as a personal attack.
From 1875 to 1879, Mrs. Linton was destined to be a
wanderer. Still retaining the half of Hayter House as her
base, she spent most of her time on the Continent. The
immediate cause would seem to have been the marriage of
her valued maid, Sadler, who had been with her for many
years. This, combined with the simultaneous estrangement
of one who was very dear to her, but was not worthy of her
affection, determined her to seek distraction in change of life
and scene.
In the spring of 1876 we find her in Paris, foregathering
with Professor W. K. Clifford and his bride. This was the
beginning of a lifelong friendship by which she set great
store. The brilliant mental qualities of both at once
commanded her admiration and respect, and this admiration
soon developed into a very deep affection.
Mrs. Clifford tells me that she and her husband were
much amused at a dinner which Mrs. Linton insisted on
giving them at one of the Duval restaurants, when she
suddenly said, with a tragic air, that she had often reproached
herself for not giving them a wedding present. Professor
Clifford urged in extenuation that she had not known Mrs.
Clifford before and had only known him very slightly. But
she would not accept the excuse, and said, with characteristic
eagerness, that when public men, who are doing good work,
married, the world ought to show its interest. They did not
meet again for four or five months, when, sure enough, Mrs.
Linton produced the wedding present, which was certainly not
the less valued because it had been deferred.
Later in the year we find her at Florence, whence she
writes —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" I am trying to get as much of my book done before I move
as I can, and I give myself very little time for play. ... So
190 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
many people have called on me — half the English in Florence
— that I have spent and lost all my time in visiting. The very
thing that I thought to escape in leaving England ! . . .
Among the people who called were Ouida and the Landors.
. . . Both live about three miles out of Florence in different
directions. Ouida has the most splendid villa, magnificently
furnished and standing in large English-like grounds, with a
view that would make you happy for life. She has a huge
dog, or rather three immense creatures, horses, ponies, and
small dogs by the dozen, and she dresses magnificently.
She makes an immense fortune by her books. . . .
" The Landors' visit was of a sad interest. Old Mrs.
Landor is really not unlike the dear old man himself. Her
hair is white now, not golden, and she speaks something in
the same way as he did. She is dressed in a half-dressing-
gown of grey, and an old-fashioned cap, but very, very kind to
me. So was the daughter Julia. . . . Miss Landor bought
the house, and lives there with the old mother. ... It is full
of pictures — a beautiful place, and there were the terraces
and walks and myrtles, etc., that the dear old man used to
speak of. . . .
" I am working hard at my book,^ which is going to be
pretty. I have done only five numbers yet — that is, I am two
months only ahead. We stay here till the 8th of January, I
think, then go to Rome for six weeks, and then to Naples for
about three weeks. . . . The weather to-day is heaven, but
we have had the most uncertain and abominable weather you
can imagine. For the last week it has been damper than
England — wet and damp, as well as honest rain — a peculiar
kind of thing that goes through every part of you and the
house ; " sirocco," it is called — one can scarcely breathe in
it. . . . Then we have the tramontana or north, to which
our worst east is a baby. No, the winter climate of Florence
is not good, and very, very trying. ... As for flowers, they
do not exist London is out and out the best-supplied city
that I have ever seen. You have to pay for things, certainly,
but you can get them. Here neither love nor money can
give them to you. In the spring I believe it is a paradise for
flowers, but not now. The market is a narrow, dirty, filthy little
street, where you buy fried fish and everything else. The
side-walks scarcely hold two abreast in the broadest and
1 The World Well Lost.
1872-1876 191
finest street, and for the most part we have to walk in the
streets with the carts and carriages at our heads and heels.
I expect every day to be run over ; but they drive very
carefully, and one never sees a horse down nor hears of an
accident. But the grand old buildings and quaint narrow
streets, and the lines against the sky of roof and tower, etc.,
compensate for everything. All the streets are paved in
large slabs, and when they are covered with mud they are
like glass. How the horses keep their feet I do not know."
It was soon after the meeting with the Cliffords that
another friendship of the most intimate nature was cemented,
which was destined to colour the rest of Mrs. Linton's life.
As the lady to whom she became so devotedly attached is
now living, it would be impertinent on my part to say more
than a little, and I shall leave it to her to do most of the
telling.
Miss Beatrice Sichel, daughter of the late Mr. Julius
Sichel, was a young girl at the time of Mrs. Linton's first
visit to her father's house. On his death she was sent by
her guardians to school in Brighton. Two years later, Mrs.
Linton invited her to spend her holidays with her at Henne-
queville, and subsequently it was arranged that she should
accompany her to Italy, each paying her own expenses.
" For four years," Mrs. Linton wrote, " all went merry
as a wedding-bell. There was not a hitch anywhere ; not
a cross heavier than a shred of pith ; not a stumbling-block
bigger than a straw. We got on together in the perfect
accord proper to people whose intimacy never degenerated
into familiarity, and who respected themselves too much
not to respect one another.
" Those four years were the happiest of my life — the
only perfect years when I was free from clouds or storms.
I had as my daily companion this dear child, whom I loved
like my daughter. Our joint moneys . . . made a home of
sufficient luxury for all moderate wishes ; and I was both
happy and proud when I introduced my pretty girl to my
friends as some one claiming all men's admiration. For her
sake I once more took up the lapsed habits of society, and
went out into the world I had so long abandoned. I liked
192 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
to see how much she was admired, and how prettily she
bore herself among the youths and men who fluttered round
her, and singed their wings to no purpose save their own
pain."
In due time Miss Sichel married, and although the closest
friendship and love remained, Mrs. Linton was again alone.
The following reminiscences supplied by Mrs, Hartley will
show how fully Mrs. Linton's affection was reciprocated.
Note by Mrs. Hartley {iiee Sichel).
" Mrs. Lynn Linton came to stay with us in Dinard,
Brittany, when I was a young girl of fifteen. She told me
afterwards that she liked me from the very first moment.
I know that she was a revelation to me, and the love, admira-
tion, and devotion she inspired me with then increased as the
years went on. Much to every one's surprise, I was never in
the least afraid of her, although 1 was a timid, nervous girl
with strangers. She was very handsome then, with a beauti-
ful figure, always well dressed by an expensive dressmaker
in Germany. She had thick, dark brown hair coiled under
a dainty lace bow-shaped cap ; the style of that cap she
never changed to the very end, and for years she always
wore those I made. She cared very much for her dress and
personal appearance, and she grew more beautiful as she
grew older.
"In the year 1876, my father and mother having both
died, Mrs. Linton asked me to spend my summer holidays
with her in Normandy, and, when these were over, she wrote
to my guardians and asked permission to take me with her
to Italy for the winter. This was arranged, and we started
off, happy and wildly excited. It was here, at the beginning
of our life together, that I christened her ' Bones,' which name
she loved, saying she loved it better than any other name,
and that she felt that, if she were dying and I were to put
my arms round her and call her by that name, she would
struggle back ; which did almost happen years after when
she was very ill in Queen Anne's Mansions. She suddenly
fainted, and in my terror I clutched her and shrieked ' Bones !
Bones ! ' and she opened her eyes and smiled at me. The
name of ' Bones ' came from her habit of wearing a large
lace bow at her neck, which I, in my impertinent youth, con-
1872-1876 193
sidered like a Christy minstrel. She laughed ; the name
stuck, and she always used it herself to me and to one other
friend who was on a vi.sit to us. She used to declare that
I was the only one who dared to chaff and make fun of her,
and that also I was the only one from whom she would
stand it.
" The glorious time we had together in Florence, Sienna,
Rome, and Naples ! We were three years roaming about as
mother and daughter. And the interesting people we met !
I could fill a stout volume of my own with anecdotes of
celebrated people that gathered round Mrs. Linton — Ouida,
Sabrini, Madame Ristori and her daughter, Mrs. Sartoris
(F. Kemble), the T. A. Trollopes, to whose flat we used to
mount those ninety-eight steps with such pleasure each
Sunday evening, the \V. W. Storys, he of J^oda di Roma
fame, Rogers the sculptor. Miss Hosmer the sculptress, Mrs.
Minto Elliot, the Gallingas, and many others.
" Mrs. Linton combined work (she worked without inter-
ruption from nine to three), society, and sight-seeing in the
most masterly fashion. I have never seen any one who loved
work as she did. Her love of order and cleanliness gave
her a lot of extra work in those far from immaculate Italian
hotel rooms. As a matter of course she used to get up at
six in the morning, and give her bedroom a spring-cleaning,
as I called it. She would darn in her own dainty way all
the holes that she found in the hotel towels, and she would
say to me at the dining-table, ' Bee, I wish I dared take
this tablecloth or these dinner-napkins up to my room to
darn the holes ! ' Every sign of disorder troubled her,
and her patience and loving gentleness with my untidiness
touched me more than I can say.^
" I remember once in Naples a poor Englishwoman came
to her with a tale of woe, of unpaid rent and other troubles.
She listened to the story without speaking, then turned and
^ Mrs. Alec Tweedie, in an interesting article on Mrs. Linton in Temple Bar,
wrote: "She has always been a great needlewoman, and even now generally
sews when she is alone in the evenings. A bundle of table-napkins was lying on
the sofa, and I ventured to ask what they were.
" ' Only table-napkins. I am darning them as a little help towards keeping the
Mansions' linen in order.'
" Fancy an authoress of seventy-two darning table-napkins which are not even
her own, for the good housewife's respect for property in general and linen in
particular ! It is hardly the idea the world has of an authoress. Yet writers are
perhaps more human and often more domesticated than other people."
13
194 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
told me to fetch sixty lira out of her box in the next room.
She gave the sixty lira quite simply into the poor woman's
hands, cutting short her excited thanks with, ' One English-
woman cannot let another fail in her obligations to an
Italian ! ' Then she wrote immediately and countermanded
the new evening-dress she had already ordered. I, in my
haphazard way, had in the meanwhile never relocked the
box from which I had taken the sixty lira, and some miser-
able Italian servant walked in and stole the rest of the
money out of that box. When this dreadful state of things
was discovered, there was never a word of blame for me,
she tried only to comfort me in my great distress, saying
it was her own fault for sending a heedless lassie on such
an errand.
" We went out very much in Rome into all sorts of
society, the English and Foreign Embassies, Italian Diplo-
matic, American and English artistic and literary circles ;
into the great White (Ouirinale) and Black (Papalini) houses.
In these Papalini houses, where we met the clerical party,
all the ladies had to wear low dresses and short sleeves
covered with lace.
" At the end of three years we came back to London
in April 1879, intending to return together the next winter
to Palermo ; but that plan was never carried out, as I was
married that winter, and Mrs. Linton returned alone to
Rome and then on to Palermo. These next few years were
spent by her principally in Italy. When she finally decided
to settle in England, it was to our house in Hampstead that
she came, and stayed two months, while she and I ransacked
London to find a suitable habitation for her. She finally
decided on Queen Anne's Mansions, where she lived for eleven
years. This pretty fiat of hers came to be to me a second
home. I was early left a widow, and Mrs. Linton wrapped
me and my three young children in her protecting love,
fighting for my rights, guarding me from all harm, ever a
tower of strength and love to me. She said she felt like
a tigress when my rights were assailed, and that she could
fight for me when she would not have the courage to fight
for herself.
" She was always at home on Saturday, and I always
spent the day with her, helping her to receive and to make
the tea. My tea-table she used to laughingly call the frivolous
1872-1876 195
corner of the room, and used to bid her guests go to my end
of the room, have tea and be frivolous for five minutes, and
then come back to her for serious talk. Those were happy,
happy days for all sorts and conditions of people, who used
to flock to that pretty drawing-room high up in those monster
Mansions, overlooking the Park. The room would be crowded
from three to seven.
" Mrs. Linton loved flowers more than any one I have
ever met ; on her writing-table she always had a bunch of
some sweet-smelling flowers. On her Saturdays she filled all
her bowls, and made a point of having some very choice
blossoms in the large copper bowl that always stood near
her place on the sofa. I can see her now, with her face full
of sympathy and pleasure, coming forward to welcome her
friends. No one ever went to her for sympathy and love
and came away unsatisfied.
" The people who used to pour in on those afternoons
were oftentimes bewildering in number and identity. Mrs.
Linton always remembered faces, but could not always place
them, did not remember where she had met them, and if the
name had not been clearly announced, she was in an agony
of mind until she found out to whom she was speaking.
Scarcely a Saturday afternoon passed without her coming
across to me and whispering in my ear, ' For heaven's sake,
Bee, tell me who these people are ! ' Very often I knew ;
sometimes I did not, and would have to go out of the room,
find the servant or the visiting cards, and then scribble a
little note in pencil and have it sent in to Mrs. Linton with
' Answer wanted ' on the outside, so that it must be opened
at once, and inside, the much-desired name. I always kept
paper and pencil ready for these little episodes. But then,
of course, we had the habitues, who were the backbone of
these pleasant Saturdays. Mrs. Linton counted among her
numerous friends and acquaintances Mr. and Mrs. Oswald
Crawfurd, Mr. and Mrs. J. K. Jerome, Mr. and Mrs. Rider
Haggard, Sir William and Lady Crookes, Marie Corelli, Eric
Mackay, William Watson, Henry Savage Landor, Edward
Clodd, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, Beatrice Harraden, Mrs. Alex-
ander and her daughters, Sir Harry Johnston, Mr. du Chaillu,
Hamilton Aide, Madame Novikoff, Frank Harris, Sir William
and Lady Priestley, Mr. and Mrs. Moberly Bell, Dr. Beattie
Crozier, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Lang, Professor Herkomer,
196 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Rudyard Kipling, Anthony Hope, Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
Ellen Terry, Charles Wyndham, Genevieve Ward, Beatrice
Lamb, H. D. Traill, Swinburne, Theodore Watts - Dunton,
Mr. and Mrs. Linley Sambourne, Stacey Marks, Mr. Lilly,
George Grossmith, Sir George and Lady Lewis, and many
others.
" In these years at Queen Anne's Mansions Mrs. Linton
went out immensely and gave delightful dinners, where there
were gathered together all that was best and brightest in
London society.
" As years went on she longed to get away from all the
hurry and exhausting life in London, and finally decided to
take a house in Malvern."
CHAPTER XVI
1877-1879
THE following masterly character-sketch of Mrs. Lynn
Linton, for which I am indebted to Mr. A. W. Benn,
the author of The Greek Philosophers and TJie Philo-
sophy of Greece, may fittingly be inserted here.
" I first met Mrs. Lynn Linton about the beginning of
February 1877, in Rome. Years before this, I had formed
a very favourable idea of her personality from the courage
and eloquence with which she gave expression to advanced
or unpopular opinions ; and this impression was deepened by
her conversation. I must confess, indeed, that in appearance
Mrs. Linton did not at all agree with the fancy picture that
I had formed of the author of Joshua Davidson. I looked
for something concentrated, austere, unworldly; and found,
to my surprise, that this free - thinking Communist had
apparently taken for her model the most comfortable and
complacent type of British matron. One of her first observa-
tions was that she set her face against slang, but that
sometimes one could not express one's meaning without
using a slang word. I shall therefore make no apology for
saying that the lady struck me as being decidedly 'jolly.'
But nobody of any intelligence could talk to Mrs. Linton for
half an hour without discovering that the enthusiasm which
forms so dominant a characteristic in her writings was no
less an essential element of her individuality, where, however,
it co-existed with a sense of humour somewhat wanting in
her literary compositions. Another conspicuous trait, espe-
cially piquant in one who first won celebrity as the most
caustic of Saturday Reviewers, was a vein of childlike inno-
cence, of which she was herself perfectly conscious, and,
197
198 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
indeed, rather proud. Sometimes, though very rarely, this
innocence showed itself in print. In an article on Venice
describing Bonifazio's terrible picture of Dives and Lazarus,
she called attention to the sweet faces of two ladies who
are sitting with the sick man, and whom she supposed to be
his wife and sister-in-law. They are, in fact, Venetian cour-
tesans ; and as it rather provoked me to find that Mrs. Linton
held up such persons as examples of feminine purity to our
modern English girls, I informed her, not without some satis-
faction, of her mistake. She at once accepted my more
cynical view of the situation, but was simply delighted with
herself for not having suspected the truth.
" We were already friends of some years' standing when
this incident occurred. But from the very beginning of our
acquaintance Mrs. Linton was singularly amenable to correc-
tion— so far, at least, as matters of fact and questions of
style were concerned. In this respect she had changed in a
direction the reverse of that followed by most writers, whose
self-confidence usually increases as they grow older. 'When
I was young,' she said to me, ' criticism would have thrown
me into hysterics ; I welcome it now.'
" Like many self-taught persons, she exaggerated the
importance of systematic training, and considered that she
might have done much better if she had had the advantage
of a more regular education. It might have made her more
discriminating in the choice of those on whom her admiration
and confidence were lavished : but as a conversationalist I
think she would have lost rather than gained by passing
through such a discipline as that to which the most promising
girls are now subjected. Mrs. Linton was a charming talker,
ranging without effort over an immense variety of topics, as
well as, what all good talkers are not, a good listener, always
ready to receive information from others where her own was
incomplete, and to hear what could be said for opinions that
she did not share. Her voice, which seems to have been
carefully cultivated, was rich, sweet, and well modulated ;
and she listened with an air of rapt attention, probably
cultivated also, but at any rate very flattering to the speaker
on whom it was bestowed. As was to be expected with one
1877-1879 199
so fascinating, many people had made her the confidante of
their troubles, schemes, and adventures ; indeed, her knowledge
of human nature was perhaps derived more from such com-
munications than from direct experience of life. Her memory
was excellent, and she told stories admirably — better, I thought,
in conversation than in print, because then the narrative did
not suffer from the diffuseness and the mannerism of her
literary style. Personal gossip as such did not greatly
interest her; she valued the incidents of life in so far as
they served to illustrate or to suggest some general idea.
Of course I am only relating my own individual impressions ;
and it may be that in this respect Mrs. Linton was more or
less consciously adapting herself to what she knew was an all-
absorbing passion with myself;^ but whatever motive may
have called it out, the aptitude for ideas was there. For
philosophy in the abstract, for metaphysics, she had neither
talent nor taste, nor indeed for subtleties of any kind ; the
convolutions of her brain, she said, were like cart-ropes. But
concrete philosophy, the direct application of theory to life,
she found irresistibly attractive.
" It will not surprise any one who knows anything about
this lady, to hear that in her company all such discussions
sooner or later, and sooner rather than later, led up to the
Woman Question, or rather to what is now known under the
more general name of the Sex Problem.
" Whatever Mrs. Linton may have been or tried to be in her
youth, when I knew her she was feminine to the finger-tips ;
but she evidently thought that what was good enough for her
was good enough for her sisters ; and the necessity of keeping
them within the limits of their sex, and of drawing those limits
somewhat closely, had become a fixed idea, a fanaticism to
whose service all the resources of her picturesque and
1 That Mrs. Linton did not merely adapt herself to Mr. Benn's taste, but
was actuated by principle, is undoubted. She was for ever at war with mere
personal tittle-tattle, and held with Pascal that " if everybody knew what one says
of the other, there would not be four friends left in the world." Soon after
settling in Malvern she told my wife, with evident dismay, that she found herself
in danger of being drawn into the gossip of the place, and she was for ever saying,
" Don't let us talk about our neighbours." — G. S. L.
200 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
passionate rhetoric were devoted. In truth, the relations of
the sexes interested her above all other phenomena of life,
and she feared that the romantic complications to which
they give rise would disappear if the characters of men and
women were assimilated, or if they were arrayed against one
another in two hostile camps. It was a favourite notion of
hers that the distinction of sex extended to whole nations :
England, Germany, and Spain were masculine ; France and
Italy feminine ; and I well remember her gratification at
finding Sweden spoken of as ' the lady of the Scandinavian
family.'
" At the same time it must be mentioned that in her private'
conversation at least Mrs. Linton supported some important
items in the programme of feminine emancipation. She
thought that the rights of mothers to the guardianship of
their own children ought to be considerably extended, and
she advocated a greatly increased facility of divorce expressly
in the interest of married women, her argument being that
in the United States applications for divorce come much
more frequently from the wife than from the husband. I
believe she would have made marriage dissoluble at the
pleasure of either party; and at the very least she would
have granted a divorce in every instance where a judicial
separation can now be obtained. I may add that, while not
sparing in sarcasms at the expense of her sex, she would not
tolerate them from others even when they could not by any
possibility be applied to herself; and she could not forgive
Froude the historian for his real or supposed hostility to
women.
" This great opponent of female suffrage was herself an
ardent politician, and held very decided opinions on every
public issue. A devoted Liberal, her attachment was rather
to the Liberal party — for which she told me she would give
her life — than to the principles it was supposed to represent.
More than once in conversation she has been heard to say
that the Roman Catholic Church ought, if possible, to be put
down by main force ; and her sympathy with oppressed
nationalities was bounded to the East by the Adriatic. At
any rate she expressed much surprise at the conduct of the
1877-1879 201
English Liberals in supporting Russia during the war of
1877-78. On my referring to the precedent of 1859, when
they similarly supported the detested French emperor in his
campaign for the liberation of Italy, she replied that all good
Liberals would have supported the devil himself in such a
cause. 'Then why not Russia now?' said L 'Well/ she
retorted, ' it is very like calling in the devil.' Italy was
indeed one of her greatest enthusiasms, and long residence
among the Italians rather increased than diminished the
feeling that she brought with her from England. Nobody
could be more keenly sensible to the faults of the Italian
character than she was ; but the ingenuousness, spontaneity,
and ardour of the people, above all the pitch to which she
believed that they could carry the passion of love, appealed
to her irresistibly both as an artist and as a woman. Like
the modern Italians, too, she was all for industrial progress,
even when introduced at the expense of picturesque anti-
quities ; and I feel sure that her signature would not have been
given to the protest against the destruction of old Florence
which caused so much excitement in aesthetic circles last
winter.^
" When I first knew Mrs. Linton, she was a professed
Communist ; nor am I aware that she had ceased to be such
when I saw her for the last time in 1886. But her opinions
on this subject seemed rather the result of temperament and
accidental association than of natural conviction. ' I have
not been Mr. Linton's wife for nothing,' she once exclaimed ;
and the influence of the foreign refugees to whom her husband
introduced her, very powerful during her married life, probably
became fainter as the years passed by and the counter-
attractions of London society came into play. But the
decisive factor was, I think, something stronger than any
merely personal or social influences. Whatever disparaging
remarks Mrs. Linton might utter about her countrywomen
and even about her countrymen, she was at heart a passionate
English patriot of the old type, very easily persuaded that
the cause of England was the cause of justice and progress.
And when the aims of the Liberal party or of any other party
^ This was written in 1899,
202 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
seemed to conflict with the national interests, it could not be
doubtful on which side her choice would lie. I have said that
she could not understand the pro-Russian attitude of the
Liberal leaders during the crisis of 1878. Still less could she
agree with those who thought the subsequent invasion of
Afghanistan an unjustifiable aggression. ' Has not our
Embassy been insulted ? ' was her simple reply to all
expostulations. And although her sympathy with the
agrarian movement in Ireland had been intense, after some
hesitation she threw in her lot with the Liberal Unionists in
1886. In her last conversation with me she appealed indeed
to the authority of such old and trusted leaders as John
Bright as a reason for rejecting Home Rule. But I cannot
help thinking that anxiety for the integrity and strength of
the empire was what really determined her allegiance. At
any rate, her latest contributions to the press exhibit her in
the character of an ardent Imperialist, and in the face of such
an immediate interest all communistic dreams must have
been either abandoned or relegated to a dim and distant
future.
" Mrs. Linton often talked to me about religion, and in a
remarkably trenchant manner ; but I have little to say on
this subject, as her conversation added nothing to what all
the world may read in Joshua Davidson and Under zvJiicJi
Lord. She did me the honour to submit the proof-sheets
of the latter work to my revision ; but the very small amount
of philosophy introduced did not seem to call for any
criticism, and my share in the preparation of the work was
limited to suggesting a few verbal emendations, all of which
were, to the best of my recollection, accepted with a pro-
fusion of acknowledgment far in excess of the service
rendered. This gifted lady professed Agnosticism with
complete sincerity, and at one time, I believe, to the extent
of sacrificing her dearest affections on its altar ; but it was
a creed that contrasted rather oddly with her credulous
nature. Her optimism, too, seemed more like the survival
of a discarded creed or the suggestion of a sanguine tempera-
ment than a legitimate inference from the facts of modern
science. No argument could shake her old-fashioned belief
1877-1879 203
that everything in nature existed for the use of man ; or
rather it was a dogma that she would not allow any argu-
ment to approach, any more than she could be brought to
see that female suffrage was merely a particular application
of the democratic principles that she proclaimed.
"In the spring of 1879 I saw Mrs. Linton every day for
three weeks at Mentone ; and in the summer of the following
year I spent nearly two months with her at Bex and in the
Engadine. She was at that time still a fairly good walker,
sometimes doing ten miles at a stretch, enjoyed fine scenery,
and botanised with the ardour that she threw into all her
pursuits. In the subsequent autumn we met frequently at
Florence, where she introduced me to the young lady who
at that period had already won a great literary reputation
under the name of Vernon Lee, and to her brother the poet,
Eugene Lee-Hamilton — an introduction to which I owe one
of the most valued friendships of my life. I mention this
because it was eminently characteristic of Mrs. Linton that
she should like her friends to know and appreciate one
another. After that we only met on the rare occasions
when she passed through Florence or when I visited London.
As I have already mentioned, our last interview was in June
1886. On this occasion her intellectual vitality, and what
with many is more perishable, her interest in the affairs of
her friends, seemed as vivid as when I first knew her ; nor
would it surprise me to hear that they continued in equal
freshness to the end."
Mrs. Linton's views on the necessity of systematic train-
ing in the conduct of life are set forth in the following extract
from a letter written to Mr. Benn in 1881 : —
" The more I see, the more I feel the need for scientific
training for common sense even in life. People think that
wish is will, and that a strong wish is the same as that kind
of will which works with and by its surroundings, which
seizes opportunities and is not diverted by side issues —
which is as clear as to means as it is in desires. Scientific
training and being accustomed to look to causes for results
and means for attaining ends is the only true enlightener —
the only solid basis for the pyramid of life."
204 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In the same strain she wrote to Mr. Herbert Spencer a
few years later —
"... I wish I had the brain and the time and the memory
to make good and vital use of your works ! My admiration
for a philosophic mind is in proportion to my own want of
philosophy, to my own deficiency all round in the way of
education. But my powerful and tenacious memory of old
days is becoming mud, not granite, and lets the impressions
of things efface themselves. Altogether I have come into
a phase of supreme self-dissatisfaction and consciousness of
failure, not success. . . .
" I was so glad to see you again ! If I in early life had
had such a friend, I might have done something with myself;
but I have always been among conventional or unlearned
people, I have never been in the higher circles of thought
and knowledge."
The story of Mrs. Linton's life during the years 1877 and
1878 must be mainly gathered from letters. From 15th
January until 15th April she was settled in Rome, living in
the Hotel du Sud, via Capo le Case, " with a room as big as a
barn, and one only a shade smaller for" Miss Sichel. On the
day after their arrival she writes to her nieces Lizzie and Ada
Gedge —
" I have seen some of the old part of Rome to-day, and I
cried as if I had been standing by the grave of one I loved.
It overcame me, dears, and I was quite low. If a young man
whom we know had not been there I should have cried
plentiful. As it was, I just loot down some tears and
sniffed the rest up. But I was really overcome. It was
the realisation of a life. Those grand old ruins where the
heroes of old time walked and talked and suffered and died.
The air was full of spectres ; and when I realised Cicero and
C£esar and the gladiators in the Coliseum there, and the poor
Christians cast to the lions, Christiani ad Leones thundered
out by the roar of a thousand voices, and the poor doomed
gladiators going to death walking up to the Imperial throne
with their mournful but brave Ave Ccusar, mo7'ituri te salutant^
I lived for the moment so entirely in the time and scene that
the present seemed to go and the past only to remain."
1877-1879 205
And on the 20th —
" I am waiting in all impatience for the springtime and
the flowers. I want to see the Italian flora, and am quite
looking forward to it. It is not always easy to get the
flowers ; they build such high walls round the vineyards
that one cannot see anything, still less find anything."
All through her life this passion for flowers was with her.
At the time of her marriage Landor had written to her —
" Try to get a little bit of garden. My mother and sister
were very fond and not a little proud of theirs. I often talked
to the flowers without knowing their names — neither did they
know my ignorance of them, or they would never smile at
me as they did."
And though it was only during the last few years of her
life that the possession of " a little bit of garden " became
practicable, she never lost an opportunity of adding to her
botanical knowledge. Her letters teem with allusions. In
1874 she writes, "I have the primrose hunger on me very
strongly." In 1881 she wrote to Mrs. Gedge, "I think I
shall go back to the Engadine or to the Dolomites this
summer. It is a long journey back to England, and I want
to do some botanising. The flowers there are so fine. Things
grow in the Engadine which grow nowhere else, and my visit
last summer was a disappointment in more ways than one ;
and if I can find any one who understands flowers thoroughly,
I would go where he or she might be. There is a charming
clergyman whom I met at Cadenabbia, a Mr. Heathcote, who
is a beautiful botanist. He is wanting to make a book of
wild flowers in the Engadine, drawn and described by himself.
. . . He is going back this summer, and if I can find where he
will be, and I can — I shall go to the same place. He said he
would be glad if I did, for I understood a little too about
flowers — but not so well as he does."
Again the same year she complains —
" Italy is not a good place for wild flowers. There are so
few waste bits. Every place is cultivated. Every little ledge
has its vines or potatoes or bits of maize or corn, and the
waste ground where flowers grow is conspicuous by its
absence. The Favorita or royal gardens in Palermo were
206 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
the best ' hunting grounds ' I have seen in Italy. Here
(Castellamare) there is nothing, excepting a kind of Solomon's
seal and a beautiful large flax, and that cottage flower (love
in a mist) — the nigella. The myrtles have flowered or have
no flowers here, for I have come upon bushes which had not
a bud nor blossom."
Again from the same place —
" The paths and roads are ankle-deep in dust, and there
is not a flower to be seen — perhaps occasionally one comes
upon one campanula or a labiate, but no flowers of any kind
are to be had now. I buy them to be broken-hearted. They
last a day ! "
In 1882 she wrote to Mr. Benn with Landor - like
vehemence —
" Do you know what the ' lily of the valley orchid ' is ?
I am worried nearly into the gaping doors of a lunatic asylum
by people talking to me of the lily of the valley orchid found
in abundance in the Riviera. I never heard that name for
any orchid, and no one knows any other."
In 1884 she wrote —
" I remember when I first noted the different shapes of
certain buds of trees, e.g. the difference between those of the
horse-chestnut and the lime ; I can yet put back certain
rose-bushes and honeysuckles found in the hedges ; and if it
still exists as a field, I could walk straight to that corner of
the field where I once found what I suppose must have been
an oxlip. But it is more than fifty years since I have seen
the place.
" I remember the smell of the laurestinus and the bay
trees the first evening we arrived at my father's Kentish
home ; and the kind of awe with which those two cedars in
the shrubbery opposite inspired me."
In 1898 to Mr. Oakley—
" Tell (your sister) I have a boronia, the sweetest and most
entrancing little flower that could be. It is all full of spice
and wholesome fragrance. It makes you think of the spice
breezes we read of, gives no headaches, does not cloy, does
not oppress and poison while it stupefies the senses, but is
penetrating, wholesome, fragrant, altogether delightful. This
1877-1879 207
little flower is very, very pretty, though inconspicuous, and I
feel grateful to the dear sister for all the enjoyment I have
had out of it."
To Mr. Towndrow, the well-known Malvern botanist,
within a year of her death —
" I cannot botanise now, for I cannot walk nor stoop nor
see, but I am like the old war-horse of Job when I get the
chance of a new wild flower ! . . . Once in a waste kind of
side road near Bakewell in Derbyshire, where no carts nor
people seemed to pass, I found the most beautiful hawkweed.
It was all covered with fine hairs, and each hair was tipped
with a little globule of golden sticky stuff Was that a mere
chance or was it a variety? I have also found the deep
orange hawkweed in Wales, near Llandago. It is common
enough abroad in the Engadine, but I never found it but
once in England."
And again in early spring of the same year —
"The rose trees which had put out their young leaves like
impudent little varlets without reverence or modesty, have
had their green ears boxed (by the late frost), and have sub-
sided into very melancholy penitence ! "
In Rome she was a welcome guest at the Embassy, where
Lady Paget then reigned. This lady writes to me —
" I used to see her often in Rome, and liked her much. Her
indomitable courage and her straigJitness in everything would
ensure the liking and respect of anybody who knew her well,
and her wit and sense of humour were ever delightful."
Mrs. Linton was now at work on her new serial. The World
Well Lost, and wrote, " I am very glad you like my new story.
It is quiet and simple, and miles inferior to Leant. I do not
know why people do not like Leani. It is my best bit of
work."
The World Well Lost was an enlarged version of a short
story, entitled For Love, which had appeared in the Qtieen.
This last was republished in a volume of stories — With a
Silken Thread, etc. (Chatto & Windus) — in 1880. In con-
ception it is greatly inferior to Lea-m Dundas, but in certainty
of touch and style it is second to none of its predecessors.
Like most of Mrs. Linton's novels, it is, I am bound to say,
208 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
only interesting now to those who care to study the develop-
ment of the English novel, and I shall not overload these pages
with retrospective reviews which none would wish to read.
By the middle of April Mrs. Linton and Miss Sichel had
moved on to Naples, where they spent ten days working
and sight-seeing. Thence on to Vico Equense, where they
were lodged in an old palace. This was furnished worse
than an English peasant's cottage, and the servants consisted
of a boy-cook, eighteen years of age, a little girl, and a child.
" Luigi is a pretty boy and a good cook, but we ought to dine
at half-past six, and we dine at a quarter-past seven, because
Luigi has been taking a lesson on the guitar from an old
ragged brigand up from the mountain, or playing at bowls
in the public street. Hitherto it has been dead cold, and the
cold of a comfortless old barrack like this is dreadful. To-
day it is the loveliest summer day of June. The scents of
orange blossom and acacia come up, and the view is the
most divine thing you can imagine. From one window we
look over the town on to the bay and to the islands of Ischia
and Procida. At another, the north window of my room, we
see Vesuvius and Naples. The little town of Vico Equense
goes in steps, and is the most picturesque thing to look at
possible. When you are in it, it is the dirtiest. The streets
are just wide enough to let a carriage or cart pass without
touching you if you squeeze flat up against the wall. In the
piazza, where there are fountains, there is a stand of donkey-
carriages, etc., and we are almost mobbed when we go through.
The children follow us in troops, begging. Every one begs —
men, women, and children, all are filthy in person, and in rags.
Yesterday Bee and I went for a walk up the mountain side.
The road is made in steps, that a mule could get up, but not
a carriage. We went a long way, till we came to a gang of
men making a road, and they looked such cut-throats — I
daresay they were very douce, mild, good fellows — that I got
frightened and turned back. . . . But I am a fool, nothing
would happen."
From here they moved on to Capri, and then back to Vico
Equense at the end of June. All this time she was working
hard at her novel, writing a story for the New Quarterly and
1877-1879 209
producing her weekly articles for the Queen and the Satwday
Revieiv, besides taking lessons in Italian. " Three times a
week," she writes, " we drive two and a half miles to some
baths — or rather bathing-machines — which are in a part of
the sea where there is a sulphur spring, and I am learning to
swim, and this is the sole and only pleasure of our lives."
At this time she was seriously thinking of settling in Italy.
" I love the language so much, and the winter and spring
climate, and then I could go to England, as every one does,
every summer. If I did arrange to do this, I would fix
myself in Rome. . . . My extreme opinions, political and
religious, would tell against me in a smaller and foreign
society, and I am as little likely to change as to keep silent
when called on to speak."
In October they moved on to Naples, whence she writes
on loth November —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Hotel Nobile, Napoli.
" I have been very ill for a week, but am all right now —
was as if poisoned with something. . . . Then my Bee and
I went over to the island of Ischia, which is moiintaineous (sic),
and where we lived in the purest and loveliest air, and I got
quite well and came back jolly. . . . But I am thin all over,
with a small face and quite withered hands. I am going to be
thin and I am getting quite grey, and my ' abundant hair,'
Lucy, has fallen off till it is thin hair and no longer abundant.
And all in all I am a wretch. ... I am not very strong these
later days, but never other than cheerful and perfectly re-
signed to all that comes. I see the realities of life as facts
and not to be sorrowful for. There they are and we have to
make the best of them ! It is of no use kicking against the
pricks, and all the inevitable circumstances of life — as death
and old age — we must accept cheerfully. The remediable
misfortunes are another matter. These I would strive against
to the utmost, but for the rest! — they are painful. Heaven
knows, but how can we help them ? For sickness and incom-
petence, these are remediable with more knowledge, and the
world is growing better, and will one day be, if not perfect,
indefinitely improved."
14
210 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
And on the i8th—
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Hotel Nobile, Naples.
" I have been up Vesuvius — walked the whole way, and
nearly died ! We went on a bad day, and got into the smoke.
We were nearly suffocated. It was all sulphur, and I was
sea-sick. The guide wiped my mouth and then my face with
his filthy pocket-handkerchief, and I was so humiliated by
suffering that I was grateful ! I would not be carried, and so
I suffered. And when we got to the top it was all smoke !
We could not see into the crater one bit — no more than
looking into a white plate, only the white moved ! It was
awful. The way is one mass of loose cinders or ashes, where
you sink in to your calf (coming down) and over your ankles
going up. Every step up you slide half-way back. I had
two men to pull me with ropes round them and through a
stick that then I held, and a man to push. It is almost
at times perpendicular. I had to stop ' ferma ! ' 'aspetta ! '
every six or seven steps at least, and fling myself on the
ground face downward, and I almost died! But it is done,
and was a sell all throughout ! "
On the first of December they arrived in Rome.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Hotel du Louvre, Rome,
I2tk January 1878.
" I am very glad that you liked my new book. I do not
care for it so much myself as Leam Dundas, but I expect it
will be a great deal more popular. As for the spiritualism,
dearie, I do not believe in it as anything beyond whatever
hysteria may mean. All the so-called manifestations of
hands, etc., when seen by many, are without exception
frmids — when seen by one only, are hallucinations. It is a
thing that does not bear the light of day or of reason. Look
at it — if a force is so powerful as to move a heavy table and
so material as to be able to make tangible hands — where do
you stop ?
"The jargon that is talked of the spirits being able to
materialise themselves only through the presence and outflow
1877-1879 211
of a certain medium, is all nonsense, and is taken for what it is
worth by every scientific mind. That there is a certain un-
catalogued force in man, whether we call it spiritualism or
hysteria, ecstasy — anything you like, I do not doubt for a
moment, but it has nothing to do with unseen powers extra
to himself And as for allowing a child of mine to practise
it, I would as soon give him or her such poison as I knew
would lead to madness. Hundreds of people have gone
mad over it, and the tendency to fraud becomes irresistible,
I have seen so much of it. ... I have seen nearly every
medium of note, and I have been again and again at seances,
and at every one I have detected manifest imposture. Every
person who has calmly examined it has done the same, and
every medium that I have ever talked to laughs at the pre-
tensions of the others. . . .
" There is something underneath not yet accepted as a
human faculty, but it is only human — it is not supernatural
or what we mean by spiritual. . . .
" All the city is in mourning and consternation at the death
of the poor king.^ It has been a dreadful blow to every one,
and the state of every one on Wednesday was really pitiable.
It struck me to my heart, and I was as cold and white as this
paper for hours after.
" It is a dreadful thing for Italy at this moment. Things
are not sufficiently consolidated to bear a shock of any kind,
and this is a shock ; and unless Humbert I. is wise and
moderate, on all sides there will be grave troubles ! "
E. L, L, TO Mrs, Gedge.
"Hotel du Louvre, Rome,
^th March 1878.
" Our youth has gone, beloved, and we have to face the
unpleasant fact of decadence. But much power of enjoyment
in this life is still left to us, and we can live in nature and the
love of our kind, and take interest in the great questions of
the day, which after all are greater things than the mere
physical pleasures of youth. . . . We will some day have
our Keswick trip together. It would be a g-reat pleasure to
me, quite as great as to you, I should like to go over the
old roads with you, and go back to the house where we were
^ Victor Emmanuel.
212 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
so young and so bored ! We were not happy then, sweet-
heart. Life was frightfully dull to us, and wholly without
colour or interest. Don't you remember how we flew to the
Sunday school and Bible classes for interest?"
On 2nd May she writes —
" Rome.
" True success comes only by hard work, great courage
in self-correction, and the most earnest and intense determina-
tion to succeed, not thinking that every endeavour is already
success. I have so very much to do with advising young
writers ; scarcely a week passes without my receiving letters,
and I can judge at once whether there is the true stuff in a
person or not, by their willingness to see their own short-
comings and their wish to do well rather than to have praise.
It is the whole difference between playing at work and real
work."
"Rome in 1877," in the Queen for 28th April, was one
outcome of their stay, and one more proof that as a journalist
it would be hard to find her superior. As one glances here
and there at a few of the thousands of articles which she
reeled off week by week, one is astonished at the freshness
and ebullience of her pen. She is never mechanical in her
work ; her vital resources are ready to hand on all occasions.
She is rarely dull. Her mind is always " letting off its over-
charge," not pumping up out of the dregs. She never forgets
that she is "writing for the hour, and not for posterity."
When she is composing her weekly articles for the Saturday,
the Queen, or the St. James's Budget, she knows better than to
fall into the error of using the heavier literary treatment
which is demanded by the monthly magazine. And when
she is writing for the New Quarterly or the British Review,
she throws her toga around her in proper style, and writes
with all the gravity that the occasion demands.
In a word, she was great as a journalist, and in journalism
is found her highest achievement.
And this is where I think Mrs. Linton's literary reputation
has suffered. It has been the fashion to regard her primarily
as a novelist, whereas her novel-writing, remarkable as it was,
1877-1879 213
was but a side issue, and subordinate. With the great actor
who has temporarily turned playwright, she runs the risk of
being judged by what has taken more permanent form to the
ignoring of what she has done of chiefest value, but which
was in its nature evanescent.
From Rome Mrs. Linton moved on to Zenbach in the
Austrian Tyrol, thence to Hennequeville, near Trouville,
thence to Munich and back to Scholastica near Zenbach.
By September she was in Venice. All this time she was
hard at work at her new novel, which was to start serially in
the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1879. The first title
chosen was Under which King; eventually changed to Under
which Lord.
In November she was back in Florence, whence she writes
that her new book is " going to make a noise, but yon (Mrs.
Gedge) will not like it. No orthodox person will. I cannot
help that ! I must write according to my conscience, and I
must take the blame and bear the brunt when it comes in
consequence." They were lodged in " the Palace (4 Via del
Corso) where they say Dante first saw Beatrice as a little
girl, and they show the place in the courtyard where she
stood and the garden where she was."
In December they were back in Rome, where they stayed
till March 1879. It was here that she heard of the serious
illness of Professor W. K. Clifford, and wrote —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. W. K. Clifford.
" It is not saying more than I feel when I say that willingly
— willingly would I give my life for his ! His illness is a
daily grief to me. There is not a day in which I do not
think of him and you, and grieve over the hardness of this
trial to him and you and us all. Such a man as that was
meant for the service and advancement of humanity, and I
feel as if life and the world were so much the poorer for
want of his full activity. I do hope that Madeira has been
of service to him. Oh, if he could but get back to health
and strength ! My darling ! if he could ! In writing to you
I seem to have nothing to say but love, and grief for him." ^
1 Professor Clifford died on the 4th March 1879.
214 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In her next letter to the same lady she says, " I am work-
ing hard on my book \U71der which Lord\ which is not weak
— whether artistically good is another matter. If it is, I
think the book will be a great success ; if not, it will be a
dead failure, and all the more from its audacity."
This, probably the best known and now most widely read
of all her novels, was a daring departure, and further scandal-
ised those to whom Joshua Davidson had been anathema.
Remonstrance and abuse were showered upon the devoted
editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, in which it ran serially,
for allowing his pages to be sullied with the proceedings of
the villainous Ritualistic parson. The clergyman as rascal was
new to fiction in those days, and the few who found the cap
fitted were quickly up in arms and made a terrible pother.
Others, however, were grateful for the book, and letters of
congratulation and thanks poured in from many quarters.
The following from one who, as a writer of fiction him-
self, was soon to set all the world talking, may be quoted as
a sample : —
F. Fargus (Hugh Conway) to E. L. L.
" 13 Oakfield Road, Clifton, Bristol,
2,rd December i S79.
" Madam, — I should commence this letter with an apology
for writing it, did I not feel that, had I given the world a
novel of the same description as Under zvhich Lord, a letter,
even from a stranger, thanking me for it, would not be
considered intrusive. You must not fancy I am exaggerating
when I say your work has given me more pleasure than
anything I have seen for years, and I can see in the publica-
tion of such a work, and in the popularity which awaits it, a
great step, if not towards the knowledge of truth, at least
towards the destruction of illogical creed.
" Nothing, madam, would have pleased me better than to
have told you how the different types of character struck me ;
but from a stranger this would be presumption, so I can only
thank you and congratulate you. I am sure our pastors can
have no idea of the spread of what they are pleased to call
infidelity in England, especially amongst the upper middle
class of young men. I have many friends, and find, with
1877-1879 215
scarcely an exception, those intellectually worth their salt are
agnostics, at heart if not professedly.
" I fear my name will be quite unknown to you, but, having
recently published a small volume of poems, several of which
touch on the subjects I have discussed above, I should feel
pleased to know a copy was in your hands, and if you care
to accept it, would upon hearing from you forward one. — I
remain, madam, yours obediently, Hugh Conway."
By the end of May Mrs. Linton had returned to London,
and writes from Hayter House —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"2S>th May 1879.
" I went over the largest hospital in England last night.
It was such a strange sensation being there at night, with all
the wards quiet, the lights turned down, many sleeping,
many awake, feverish and restless. There was one poor
fellow, a butcher, who had nearly killed himself unintention-
ally by a missed blow of an axe, which did not chop the
meat, and did cut his own stomach. He was getting on, but
first they thought he would not live. A baby three months
old had a broken thigh. One man, with awful abscesses on
his legs, had hundreds of small bits of healthy flesh taken
from the rest of his body to engraft into the sore places. It
was all very interesting. I went with Mrs. Priestley,^ and we
were received and carried round by the governor and one
of the young doctors. I am to write a magazine article
about it. We did not get home till twelve."
After visits to the Priestleys in Scotland and the Gedges
at Ludborough Rectory, Lincolnshire, September found her
back in London.
On 15th November she wrote to her nephew —
E. L. L. TO Mr. Ernest Gedge.
" There is one thing you must hold fast by — Duty.
That includes self-respect and ambition. Do what is right
and don't do what is wrong, for the sake of the good for
^ Now Lady Priestley.
216 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
which we ought all to live, and for that self-respect which
we ought never to outrage.
" And remember that what you have got to do in life is
to succeed — not only to enjoy yourself, but work well and
bravely and manfully to the end. ... If you want a safe
and understanding friend with whom to take counsel, come
to me. — Your loving aunt and true friend,
" Eliza Lynn Linton."
Although Mrs. Linton was now home again, she was not
settled. P^or one thing, the Sunny South was calling her
imperiously. With Walter Pater, she held that the hot
southern sun has in itself some ineffable and secret effect
on the nerve centres and makes one inclined to be pleased.
" I pine for Italy," she wrote to Madame Villari in
October of this year, " for the language which I cannot
speak, the beauty and gallantry and love of the men which
I do not share, the sky that I do not go out enough to enjoy,
the sun that I have to pull down my blind to keep out of my
eyes. But the spell has been laid on me, and I feel as if I
should die if I could not go back. I will try and let these
rooms for a year from next May, and then go back to the
Continent. I want to go south to see Capri again, and to
have another winter in Rome. Why I love it all so passion-
ately I cannot tell, but it is like a human creature into whose
eyes I want to look once more, and whose voice I yearn to
hear."
Besides this she needed distraction. The loss this year
of her young friend and companion, Miss Sichel, by her
marriage, was a heavy blow, and she found the loneliness
of London lodgings at present out of the question. I shall
give her own account of her feelings at this crisis. Those
who are cold-blooded and philosophic will no doubt find her
emotion strained and exaggerated. Those, however, who
were her friends, will know that her outpourings were as
genuine as they were vehement.
" I tried hard to be grateful for what had been, and not
to sour the past by lamentations in the present ; to be
cheerful, and to take an active interest in things and people
as I had done when my heart was at rest and I was happy
1877-1879 217
in my home. But human nature was too strong for me ; and
I had again the old conflict to go through — again to fight
with my wild beasts of sorrow and disappointment and loss,
till I had conquered them — unless I would be conquered by
them.
" The time was very dreary, very sad. I thought that all
love had died out for the rest of the years I had to live. I
promised myself I would have no more enthusiasms, make
no more close friendships, open my inner heart to no ideal
for the future ; — never again ! never again ! Love had ever
brought me pain in excess of joy ; and henceforward I would
live on the broad common- land of friendships that were
kindly, refreshing, sustaining, but not exclusive to me ;
friendships where I was one among others, and where I
made numbers stand instead of specialities. I would have
no more private gardens cultivated with my heart's blood,
to see them laid waste by disappointment, separation, death.
" What supreme folly it was to put one's happiness into
the power of others — to hang one's peace like a jewel round
another's neck ! The wise man keeps his own possessions
sure. It is only lunatics who scatter their treasures far and
wide among those who, by the law of their own life, cannot
guard them. And what was I but a lunatic, with this insati-
able need of loving — this inexhaustible power of giving?
Why had I ever let this dear child creep so far into my
heart, so that when the appointed end of a girl such as she
came, as come it must, I should suffer as I did ? For indeed
her loss was quite as severe a trial to me as the break-up of
my married life had been, when I had had to begin again the
struggle proper to youth, without the hope, the energy, the
unworn nerves of youth, and further handicapped by the
sense of disappointment and illusion. Truly I was an
unlucky investor of affection ! — but the strange law of loss
— the strange ruling of fate that I should not root — had
never pressed so hardly on me as now. For long months I
was spiritually sick, so that sometimes I despaired of my
own recovery.
" By degrees, however, the old recuperative force made
itself felt, and my vigorous vitality reasserted itself. I re-
218 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
covered my moral tone. My power of hope and love came
back to me, and life was not over for me. Struck down
again and again as I had been, I was not conquered ; and
I should continue the fight till yet later in the evening. The
sun was westering rapidly, but daylight still remained. The
present had its flowers, the future might bear its fruits ; and
neither I nor nature was exhausted. My wounds healed as
they had healed before, and 1 seemed to wake as from sleep
and to bestir myself after. It was impossible for me to live
this self-centred kind of existence — this retracted, mutilated
moral life, and not put out my feelers for that touch of my
kind which is to my soul what breath is to my body."
The following brave and kindly letter to her adopted
daughter shows that she did not allow the sense of her own
loss to intrude itself upon the innocent cause.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Hartley.
" IIayter House, 238 Marylebone Road,
(jth March 1880.
" My beloved Bee, — I cannot tell you what supreme
joy your letter has given me. ' Peace and rest ' — those two
words, darling, are worth a volume. That is the feeling to
have ! You are at peace now, you have rest. You have
your friend, your protector, your lover, your caretaker, your
home in your dear husband's arms for life. And all that
you have got to do is to be your own sweet, best, truest self,
to love him, to study him, to give to him all that he gives to
you — and that is no task, no difficulty ! It is all done with ;
your home is secured, your happiness, and no one now has
the right to bring a moment's sorrow to your dear heart.
Oh, Bee, how glad I am that it has all turned out so well !
For that engagement time was trying, and if you had both
got fretful and irritable even with each other, I should not
have been surprised. However, it is all over. Every care
and sorrow lies behind you, and we have only joy and love,
rest and peace, in the present and the future. I could let
myself cry for very joy that you are so happy and so safe ! —
I kiss your dear soft eyes as I used, like my own little bimb,
and I kiss my dear son's good face in gratitude and love
through and for you.
1877-1879 219
" The weather has been slightly less disgusting since you
left, but I cannot reconcile myself to London, and I am in
one of my blank, black moods when life seems to me empty
of all but tracasseries. I take things too much to heart. Bee !
and get so deeply wounded by people who mean nothing
offensive. I have had a fortnight's inner trouble over some-
thing that pained me, and I cannot shake it off. It is like
sunshine to turn my mind to you and Lion in your young
happiness and brightness, in the dear warm sunlight of Love
and all the first blush of your springtime. It makes me
happy to think of you — and if I have not let my rooms by
then how glad I shall be to see you return ! I think I shall
go to the station to meet you if I knew when you would
come. You are so like my own child, Bee ! I have never
taken to a girl as I have to you. No one of your own age
ever came so near to me. I never loved like my oivn child
any girl as I love you.
" Well, this letter is more a mere embrace than a piece
of news. My best love goes with you both.
" God bless you, my dear, dear child ! Keep well and
come back looking supreme! My Bee's and my dear son
Lion's loving mother, E. LYNN LiNTON."
CHAPTER XVII
1880-1885
FOR six months Mrs. Linton tried to live her old London
hfe, working hard, of course, for with her idleness
would have meant " suicidal vacancy." And though
some may perhaps be inclined to question the value of
her work to the world, there can be no question as to the
value that it was to herself. " The fox is worth nothing,"
says Sydney Smith; "it is the catching alone that is the
sport."
This year, in addition to her ordinary " darrack," she
became a regular contributor to the Pall Mall Gazette, then
under Mr. John Morley's editorship.
She was also busy with novel-writing. The Rebel of the
Family was running serially in Temple Bar, and before it
was finished My Love began its course in the Bolton Evening
News. Both were afterwards published in three-volume form
by Messrs. Chatto & Windus. The price she was now receiv-
ing for the non-serial rights of her novels was from iJ^6oo to
;^8oo.
Originally intended to bear the title, TJie Bishop's Grand-
daughter, The Rebel of the Family was the first of her
novels in which she dealt to any considerable extent with
the Woman Question. It is one of the best stories she ever
wrote. The principal characters are interesting and well
studied. Especially is " that complex and bewildering Perdita,
whom no one understood, and whom so many afflicted," a
creation not easily forgotten. And to make the reader care
for and admire such a piece of cold calculation as Thomasina
is in itself no mean triumph.
1880-1885 221
This year Messrs. Chatto & Windus also published a
volume entitled With a Silketi Tht-ead, a?td other Stories,
which she dedicated to her " dear friends of lang syne," Mr.
and Mrs. Henry Wills.
It was about this time that she made the acquaintance of
Mrs. Campbell Praed, whose first novel, An Australian Heroijte,
was just about to be published. I shall here insert the interest-
ing note with which that brilliant writer has so kindly favoured
me.
" I find to my great regret," she writes, " that I have no
note, taken at the time, of my first meeting with Mrs. Lynn
Linton, nor have 1 kept her earlier notes and letters, which
were more or less formal. The first time I ever met her was,
I think, in i88o, at a dinner-party given by the late Mr.
Frederick Chapman, the publisher. It was shortly before the
publication by him of my own first story, then in the press,
and it was my first introduction to literary society in London.
I remember being greatly struck by the kindly, dignified, and
extremely handsome woman, much older than myself and so
much thought of in the world of books — then unknown to
me as far as their authors were concerned — who talked to
me as a mother might have done about my new venture,
welcoming me so sweetly and giving me kind practical advice.
" I met her several times on the occasion of that visit to
London, and was so much attracted by her that it was arranged
that she should stay with us in Northamptonshire ; and we
were all looking forward to the visit when a bad cold sent her
abroad — to Palermo, I fancy — and it was three or four years
before I saw her again.
" Then she settled in London, and from that time we met
frequently. It was one of my great pleasures to drive with
her and listen to her talk in the intervals between her
calls. Her voice was in itself delightful, it was so sweet;
and her talk, though never exactly 'booky' to me, was so
interesting.
" The contradictions in her nature always puzzled me.
She had the reputation — founded on her Saturday Review
articles, I imagine — of being very hard on women. So she
was — on the women whom she thought unwomanly or in any
222 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
way false to themselves and to her ideal of womanhood. I
have heard her speak of such in the bitterest terms ; yet, in
actual intercourse, the only side of her I ever saw was that
in which womanly sympathy with other women seemed the
most prominent characteristic. I have never known a woman
more intensely sympathetic with all the little cares and
troubles of domestic life and with womanly weaknesses and
emotional frailties. Her tenderness with such was extra-
ordinary.
" She was such a curious mixture, too, of the man and the
woman. She liked things gracious and well-ordered. I have
seen her at the rooms where she was staying darning the
tablecloths herself because she could not bear to see them
unmended. She liked pretty clothes — was always the first to
admire and commend a becoming gown — yet when talking
on intellectual and social problems would horrify some women
by her ' masculine ' views.
" Her materialism was another puzzle. She would listen
indulgently and sweetly to me, when I talked to her of my
own hopes and beliefs ; would attribute them to weak health ; ^
would to a certain point be sympathetic with them, and would
even tell me of half-mystical experiences of her own — then
would demolish all by some unanswerable materialistic
assertion. I wasn't clever enough to argue with her, yet the
subject had a fascination and was often brought up between
us.
" I used continually to be struck with Mrs. Lynn Linton's
ever-springing youthfulness and pleasure in the mere fact
of existence. It was either her seventieth birthday or just
afterwards, and she was sitting with me one evening and
telling me of the fact, and of how she had a sort of animal
delight in nature and in the joy of life, so that when she rose
in the morning — and the expression struck me as coming
quaintly from one of her age — ' It is, my dear,' she said, 'as
though I were going forth to meet my love ; ' and in one of
^In The Rebel of the Family she makes Leslie say, "We have power over
ourselves only up to a certain point and under certain healthy conditions ; beyond
these we are no more free agents than so many stones set rolling down the hill or
so many leaves blown about in the wind." — G. S. L.
MRS. LYNN LINTON
FROM THE I'OSTIIU.MOUS POKTKAIT IN OIL HV THE HON. JOHN COI.I.IEK
1880-1885 223
her letters comes this, ' I am at the present moment ridicul-
ously well, I believe I completed my five-and-twentieth year
last week or so — at Arundel, where I have been for a fort-
night, and where I found somehow an atmospheric Castalia
that made a new woman of me.'
" In sad contrast to this is the last letter I ever got
from her — or the last that I have preserved — written in
1897-
" ' I am not strong ! I am all to pieces. I can neither rest
nor work. Do you know that terrible unrest of weakness —
the enforced idleness which you feel you must in all duty
break into activity — and, when you try, you sink back and
pant and faint ? I am in that state, and to an active person
like myself, whose desires travel fast and whose powers slink
behind, it is painful beyond measure. Well, I shall get well
in time, and I shall some day see you again. . . .'
" She often talked of her ' religion of self-respect.'
" ' I will not barter my sense of self-respect,' she writes,
' for any one or anything in the wide world, and I am too old
now to be very supple in the knee or back. Only when I
believe and respect do I bend my knee and bow my head.
Where I do not, I cannot and will not for any advantage to
be gained by subservience or loss by stiffness. . . .' She
carried her hatred of deceit and shams into everything.
Her greatest commendation for a woman was that she was
' loyal ' — that was the quality on which she prided
herself."
Mention having been made by Mrs. Campbell Praed of
her reputation for hardness, for which the articles in the
Saturday Review doubtless were mainly answerable, this
appears to be as good an opportunity as any for showing the
reverse of the medal.
Rarely, I should think, were fierceness and tenderness
more strangely mated. And the one was as native to her as
the other. With her highly vitalised and ardent nature,
swift and sudden resentment was a matter of course. When
she wrote those fiercely denunciatory letters to the papers,
people sometimes laughed and said how well she was " playing
the game." But those who knew her, knew well that hers
224 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
was no mock indignation. She took her mission with all
seriousness, and she, " the mother of the world," must whip
it into right doing, and check it in its mad career towards
Tophet.
No doubt it was hard for those who only knew her in her
public capacity, and regarded her as a sort of literary swash-
buckler, to believe that in private she was essentially lovable,
generously sympathetic, tender-hearted to a fault, and curiously
humble. And her kindness was not the weedy kindness of
an easy-going nature. It was the positive thoughtfulness of
one who looks upon kindliness as an art to be assiduously
cultivated. Take, for example, the infinite pains at which she
always was to hearten up those around her for the battle of
life. She was the very antithesis of the candid friend. She
had no patience for those who were for ever nosing out the
bad points in people for chastisement. Those who were
mortified by their shortcomings must have their good points
discovered and encouraged. People wanted setting up rather
than putting down. Provoke their self-respect, and the
morbid vices — the dead tissues of the character — would slough
away.
Here is one of her inspiriting letters, written in the album
of a worthy couple with whom she had lodged in the summer
of 1875—
"My dear Friends, — If I were a poet I would write
you a pretty little ' adieu ' in verse. Being only a writer
of prose, I must put my love and thanks into straightforward
English, as straightforward as yourselves. I am leaving you,
sorrowful at parting from such good and true people, but
glad that I have known you. I shall never forget your
kindness to me, nor how cheerfully you have gone out of
your usual ways to help and please me. I shall never either
forget the lesson of patience and self-respect learnt from
you both : the dignity with which you bear your troubles
and annoyances, the charity which penetrates all your feel-
ings. I hope that a kind fate may once more lay my hands
in yours, and that you may be happy, prosperous, and
beloved as you deserve to be. — Your obliged and affec-
tionate friend, E. LYNN LiNTON."
1880-1885 225
Here is another to her niece —
E. L. L. TO Miss Amy Murray.
"238 Marylebone Road,
"jth April 1880.
"... Remember that you may trust me implicitly with
all your thoughts and feelings, and even weaknesses and
faults. I understand human nature and youth above all,
and I can feel for even the sinfulness of men and women.
And I am safe. . . . You will do well to take up some
pleasant occupation that will interest and absorb you. I
can remember when I was young, the terrible ennui and
tedium of life. There was no happy love to make earth
a paradise, and there was no great duty to fulfil, and feel
at night a certain satisfaction in having done what ought to
be done. Life is hard in this way to the young ! Full of
unformed hopes and vague longings, dissatisfied with what
is and always wanting what is not, it is the restless trial-
time of every young heart before life has opened and cleared
itself for them. Try your strength, dear, in one direction
after another till you have found what suits you best, and
shake yourself free from all hauntings and vague regrets and
dreams. They never come to anything. Believe one who
has passed by the same way ! The happiness that will some
day come to you, dear, will be by channels unexpected and
at present unknown. You are a good, dear girl, and you
deserve to be happy, and will be some day.
"You must write to me soon again, and not mind scrubby
answers. I pack up a deal in a small compass. You must
look at my letters as Liebig or Brand's essence, meaning a
vast amount if you would only spread it out ! "
Here is what she wrote to Mr. Sargent, the hall porter
at Queen Anne's Mansions —
" I always look on you, Sargent, as one of the in-
corruptible men of the world. I would trust in your word,
your honesty, your sincerity and fidelity, as I often say of
Best's honesty — 'with my eyes shut.' Best, that little
jeweller who used to come and see me so often, is also one
of the incorruptible men. He would not do a wrong action
for any advantage to himself. Nor would you."
15
226 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
See, too, what Miss Harraden said of her in the
Bookman —
" Her influence was entirely a healthy and virile one.
She had a horror of anything which approached weak
morbidness and unwholesome introspection or self-centred-
ness. But the least sign of vigorous pluck to contend with
difficulties physical, mental, moral, called for her unmitigated
admiration, respect, and support. . . . She sent innumerable
letters — all love letters — like her letters to all those whom she
loved — to brace me up to fresh strength and endeavour."
And here we come upon a virtue which was peculiarly
hers, but which, by some curious irony, she has been so often
charged with lacking — a virtue to which a hundred witnesses
could be called to-day — a virtue in the exercise of which she
might almost be said to have spent herself unduly.
Even as I write there comes to me a letter which speaks
of her as being " hard ... on other authors," of her being
" cynical even to ill-nature," For the life of me I cannot tell
what this means.
Just read this passage from an interview published by
Mrs. Tweedie in Temple Bar: "Lying on a table in Mrs.
Linton's sitting-room was a large bundle of MSS., upon
which I naturally remarked to my hostess, ' What a lot of
work you have there on hand ; surely that means two or
three new books ! '
" ' Not one is my own. Bundles of MSS. like these have
haunted my later life. I receive large packets from men and
women I have never seen and know nothing whatever about.
One asks for my advice; another, if I can find a publisher ; a
third inquires if the material is worth spinning out into a
three-volume novel ; a fourth lives abroad and places the
MS. in my hands to do with it exactly as I think fit, etc'
" ' How fearful ! But what do you do with them all ? '
" ' One I once returned unread, for the writing was so bad
I could not decipher it, but once only ; the rest I have always
conscientiously read through, and corrected page by page, if
I have thought there was anything to be made of them. But
to many of my unknown correspondents I have had to reply
sadly that the work had not sufficient merit for publication,
1880-1885 227
and, as gently as I could, suggest their leaving literature
alone and trying something else.'
" ' You are very good to bother yourself with them.'
" ' No, not good exactly ; but I feel very strongly the duty
of the old to the young, and how the established must help
the striving. And I am so sorry for the people, and know
how a little help or advice given at the right moment may
make or mar a career, and how kindly words of discourage-
ment given also at the right moment may save many a bitter
tear of disappointment in the future.' "
So, too, have I come in upon her in later years, poring
with her nearly worn - out eyes over some hopeless and
crabbedly written MS., lest perchance she might miss
some redeeming point in the miserable affair which would
justify her in sending a hopeful word of encouragement ; and
one stout volume at least which took the world by storm in
these latter days I know she practically re-wrote from begin-
ning to end, and neither received nor looked for any other
acknowledgment than the barest of thanks.
Here are two specimens of her letters written to young
literary aspirants, the first one of general advice, the second
criticism of a MS. : —
"You had better begin by writing quite short stories.
You have not power or experience yet for a novel of any
length, and there is no use in beginning anything before
you have a clear idea of what you want and mean to write
about. A title is all very well, but the title is only a finger-
post, remember, it is not the temple itself. Get your mind
clear before you begin the actual work, and do not be afraid
of your own ideas, for you will never do anything in life, or in
literature, if you begin on no foundation, and then get sick of
this bit of froth only to begin another just the same way.
" Try your hand at quite a short story, of not more than
three actors and of a very simple plot ; write it with a
method ; know first of all what you want to write about,
and have the characters quite clear in your mind. If it is to
be a love story, devise the sorrow or obstruction, and plan the
action and the persons, before you write a word. Then jot
down the skeleton idea as you have thought it out, and
228 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
then clothe it in words, enlarge and elaborate. But always
remember to have your skeleton idea clear to your own mind
before you set down a word. As for handsome young men
and silly girls, I do not think you know enough of life, my
dear, to do without them. You are but a girl and your writ-
ing must necessarily be like a girl, and only its truth to your
own nature and experience would make it valuable.
" However, it is worth while to try ; and if you have any
stuff in you, it will come out, and if you have not, no harm
is done."
And again —
"Brougham House, Malvern,
2T,rd February 1S98.
" My Dear , — I have had your sketch. It is clever
and well done for what it means to be, but to my mind it is far
too long for the very slight story in it, and it is inconsequent
in that you make a great deal of the free thought at the begin-
ning, which ends in nothing. I am out of young society now, but
are such people as Sant and Feo possible in modern drawing-
rooms ? Would a man on a first introduction eat that half-
sandwich, drink out of the same cup, go home unasked in the
same hansom, and squeeze the ungloved hand of a girl of good
birth and morals? In earlier times he would have — per-
haps— treated a loose woman with this familiarity — but a
good girl — a lady ? And oh, my dear, would any decent girl
own to reading En Route ? I have read those two books,
and I, old with a very wide area of reading, have never
read anything so bestial, so obscene, so hideous as are the
scenes in those books. You see, clinging to the idea of
great purity and modesty in girls and young women, I think
that knowledge of vice should come gradually with advancing
age.
" Well, what can I say of your sketch more than I have
said ?
" Cleverly done, too long, far too long for the theme — a
little, and more than a little, extreme in detail — not very
vraisemblable in the man's character — and to my mind an
odious representation of the girl, unless you mean her to be
a cocotte — for she speaks and acts like one as things are.
" I know nothing of any magazines, but unless you make
the plot stronger, and considerably curtail the writing, I don't
1880-1885 229
think it will be sure of acceptance, I see, too, you use the
present tense, which I and most other writers (save Rhoda,^
the original sinner) do not admit as good style. You are
clever, and I think have it in you ; but yours is so far outside
my sphere of thought and social knowledge, that I can
scarcely judge of your truthfulness of presentation. It's not
my world as I knew it that you give, but I know nothing
now of up-to-date London young society. — Affectionately
yours,
"E. Lynn Linton."
Again, read the following letter, the first of a series of no
fewer than fifty written to one young author who was at the
time a complete stranger to her. There is hardly one of the
fifty which does not contain brave words of encouragement,
sound practical criticism, and advice or introductions to pub-
lishers or editors.
"Malvern House, Great Malvern,
31^^ August 1894.
" My dear Sir, — Your letter is just lovely. Your feet are
on the golden stair, and you have only to persevere — to
take courage — to overcome your destructive self-torturing
sensitiveness — to work out the sweet and gracious gift that
is in you, and in doing this to be so far a barrier against
the flood of vileness which is sweeping over our literature. I
think your story one of the sweetest and most touching I
have ever read, and I will not sympathise with one movement
of despair. No ! Look up and take heart, and remember
that no success in this world has been made without pain,
endeavour, and many a fall before the rise. When I go back
to London in October, come and see me. I will be your
tonic. Thank you for the magazine. I will not send it back,
because I will keep it to lend and talk about.
"If you cannot brace yourself to a three, two, or one
volumed novel, write a book of short stories ; but why not
try for at least a one-volumed book ? Get a good plot — a
good strong situation — vivid characters and 7ioble motives —
and write a beautiful book of one volume — a ' pseudonym '
or under your own name. Don't be over sensitive — don't be
lonely and cast down — make friends somehow, and live out
^ Miss Broughton.
230 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
of yourself so far as you can — and trust to your own powers.
Be glad of your young life and your future and your gifts,
and for God's sake do7it despair^
At a later stage of this correspondence the author sends
a MS. story which Mrs. Linton goes to the expense of hav-
ing type-written, by which she may the better judge how it
will look in print !
And this is the woman who was " cynical to ill-nature "
and " hard on other authors " — who writes fifty letters to one
of the many who seek her advice and criticism, and who
never passes a day without spending herself on work of this
kind, the while she is hard put to it to get forward with her
own exhausting labours.
Here is what she indignantly writes to Mr. Rider
Haggard —
"I scarcely know the feeling of jealousy — professional
jealousy not at all. I have plenty of indignation, scorn, what-
ever you like, against humbugs, touters, made reputations —
people like X , who sends me a form of subscription for her
yet unpublished novel, and a request for a review of it, etc. etc. ;
men like that puny traitor who requested an ' interview ' for
the Pall Mall, and, kindly received and treated, made his
dirty guinea by a slashing attack on me, accusing me of
selfishness and ill-will towards the younger professionals —
for all and such as these, yes, blows and lashes straight and
strong — but for the good workers, if they have leapt to fame
as you and Rudyard Kipling, and, soon will, Barrie, I have
not the faintest feeling of chagrin but only one of hearty
pleasure."
By the beginning of June Mrs. Linton had given up
Hayter House for good, and was in Paris.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" 7 Rue du Colys^e, Champs Elys^es, Paris,
2nd Jime 1880.
" I have made my grand move and broken with London
for the present. When I return I am in a dozen minds to
1880-1885 231
break with it altogether, and settle in some pretty country
place where I can have a little garden, a man and his wife
and the sunsets.
" I am growing too old for the racket and noise and
turmoil of London life. I like a Httle of it, but it is im-
possible to regulate these things, and when you are in the
rush you must keep in it."
By the middle of June she had moved on to Bex, Canton
de Vaud, Switzerland, where she was hard at work on her
novel, My Love, and enjoying the flowers and the " Osmunda-
like big bracken."
From Bex to Pontresina.
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
'■' Pontresina, lyhjufy 1880.
" I calculate that you will get this and my little parcel on
the dear old 19th with its flavour of cherry tart and the
shilling's worth of goodies we used to have. How long ago
those days seem to be. Loo ! but the childish love, with all
its quarrelling, has lasted into full-grown maturity to the
first steps into old age, without the quarrelling to keep it
company ! . . .
" My new book goes apace. My Love. I will send you
a copy of TJie Rebel of tlie Family when she comes out in three
volumes."
In August news came to her of the serious illness of her
dear friend and editor, Mr. \V. H. Wills, and of his desire to
see her. He knew he was dying, and wished to give her
instructions for the finishing of his last book. Lady Priestley,
his sister-in-law, tells me that he said that Mrs. Linton was
the only person in the world who could carry it through.
She at once started for England, but was taken ill on the
way and was delayed for two or three days. By the time
she arrived it was too late. The manuscript was brought
to his bedside and he desired her to read it aloud. Finding,
however, that he was past understanding what he himself had
written, he turned his face to the wall and never spoke again.
" My poor friend died last evening at 6.30," she writes on
232 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
2nd September, "... I am very, very much broken by the
strain and sorrow of it all."
She at once started for the Italian lakes.
At Como a very unpleasant encounter took place, which
resulted in the following interesting correspondence : —
E. L. L. TO Mr. Henry James.
" Como.
" My dear Mr. James, — As a very warm dispute about
your intention in Daisy Miller was one among other causes
why I have lost the most valuable intellectual friend I ever
had, I do not think you will grudge me half a dozen words to
tell me what you did really wish your readers to understand,
so that I may set myself right or give my opponent reason.
I will not tell you which side I took, as I want to be com-
pletely fair to him. Did you mean us to understand that
Daisy went on in her mad way with Giovanelli just in
defiance of public opinion, urged thereto by the opposition
made and the talk she excited ? or because she was simply
too innocent, too heedless, and too little conscious of appear-
ance to understand what people made such a fuss about ; or
indeed the whole bearing of the fuss altogether? Was she
obstinate and defying, or superficial and careless ?
" In this difference of view lies the cause of a quarrel so
serious, that, after dinner, an American, who sided with my
opponent and against me, came to me in the drawing-room
and said how sorry he was that any gentleman should have
spoken to any lady with the 'unbridled insolence' with
which this gentleman had spoken to me. So I leave you to
judge of the bitterness of the dispute, when an almost perfect
stranger, who had taken a view opposite to my own, could
say this to me !
" I know that you will answer me. And will you send back
this letter? I will forward it and your reply to my former
friend, for unless he saw what I had written, he would believe
that I had given you an indication of my view and that out
of personal kindness you had responded in a sense favour-
able to me.
" I write to you from lovely Lake Como, but as my time
here is uncertain, and when you receive this still more so, I
give you the only permanent address that I have.
1880-1885 233
" I hope that you are well and happy. I have read your
Confidence and The Madonna of the Future, etc., since I saw
you. My admiration of your work increases if that were
possible. — Most sincerely yours, E. LYNN LiNTON."
Mr. Henry James to E. L. L.
" My dear Mrs. Linton, — I will answer you as concisely
as possible — and with great pleasure — premising that I feel
very guilty at having excited such ire in celestial minds, and
painfully responsible at the present moment.
" Poor little Daisy Miller was, as I understand her, above
all things innocent. It was not to make a scandal, or because
she took pleasure in a scandal, that she 'went on' with
Giovanelli. She never took the measure really of the scandal
she produced, and had no means of doing so : she was too
ignorant, too irreflective, too little versed in the proportions
of things. She intended infinitely less with G. than she
appeared to intend — and he himself was quite at sea as to
how far she was going. She was a flirt, a perfectly super-
ficial and unmalicious one, and she was very fond, as she
announced at the outset, of 'gentlemen's society.' In
Giovanelli she got a gentleman — who, to her uncultivated
perception, was a very brilliant one— all to herself, and she
enjoyed his society in the largest possible measure. When
she found that this measure was thought too large by other
people — especially by VVinterbourne — she was wounded ; she
became conscious that she was accused of something of which
her very comprehension was vague. This consciousness she
endeavoured to throw off; she tried not to think of what
people meant, and easily succeeded in doing so ; but to my
perception she never really tried to take her revenge upon
public opinion — to outrage it and irritate it. In this sense I
fear I must declare that she was not defiant, in the sense you
mean. If I recollect rightly, the word ' defiant' is used in the
tale — but it is not intended in that large sense ; it is descrip-
tive of the state of her poor little heart, which felt that a fuss
was being made about her and didn't wish to hear anything
more about it. She only wished to be left alone — being her-
self quite unaggressive. The keynote of her character is her
innocence — that of her conduct is, of course, that she has a
little sentiment about Winterbourne, that she believes to be
234 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
quite unreciprocated — conscious as she was only of his pro-
testing attitude. But, even here, I did not mean to suggest
that she was playing off Giovanelli against Winterbourne —
for she was too innocent even for that. She didn't try to
provoke and stimulate W. by flirting overtly with G. — she
never believed that Winterbourne was provokable. She
would have liked him to think well of her — but had an idea
from the first that he cared only for higher game, so she
smothered this feeling to the best of her ability (though at
the end a glimpse of it is given), and tried to help herself to
do so by a good deal of lively movement with Giovanelli.
The whole idea of the story is the little tragedy of a light,
thin, natural, unsuspecting creature being sacrificed as it were
to a social rumpus that went on quite over her head and to
which she stood in no measurable relation. To deepen the
effect, I have made it go over her mother's head as well. She
never had a thought of scandalising anybody — the most she
ever had was a regret for Winterbourne.
" This is the only witchcraft I have used — and I must leave
you to extract what satisfaction you can from it. Again I
must say that I feel ' real badly,' as D. M. would have said, at
having supplied the occasion for a breach of cordiality. May
the breach be healed herewith ! . . . Believe in the very good
will of yours faithfully, H. jAMES."
In the early part of October she left Cadenabbia for
Florence. Of the stage from Milan she writes —
" At 9 I started for the train, picked up my luggage,
took my ticket, fee'd my doctor, and got into a carriage full
of Italians. They were all innocent of soap and water and
of clean linen, and smelt ! They would not have a window
open, and if they did open one at any station where we
stopped, a man was sure to lean all his whole body out and
effectually stop the fresh air. It w^as the Black Hole of
Calcutta and worse, but their good tempers and amiability
to each other and to me ! When they left — which, thank good-
ness, they did at Bologna at two in the morning ! — the fat,
frowsy, handsome, dirty lady by me shook hands and thanked
me for the grace of my company ! Their sweet smiles !
Their graciousness ! I do not wonder at people loving them
— but their dirt, their lies, and their dishonesty ! ! ! "
1880-1885 235
At Florence she was taken seriously ill, and was threatened
with brain fever and possible blindness. After several weeks
of very drastic treatment, she whites with admirable courage —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Hotel Anglo-Americano, via Garibaldi,
Florence, yd December 1880.
"... Don't be anxious about me ; my health is now quite
good. . . . My eyes are still untrustworthy and bad. I am
not quite sure of my sight ; but if I am to be blind, I shall
find philosophy and strength enough to support that trouble
and to organise my life in comfort, usefulness, work, and
dignity. So long as I can keep the clearness of my intellect
and sense of vigour and enjoyment and health and sympathy
w'ith all forms of beauty and life, of joy and of suffering such
as I have now, I shall be happy.
" I may not lose my sight, of course ; the doctor says I
am less in danger than I was, and he gives me every hope of
preserving it, so I do not worry myself or fret in any way.
I do my work, and go out and do my social duties and my
sight-seeing as blithely as ever. When I have to be bled and
go to bed in the dark for twenty-four hours, I go and don't
fret a single moment. All my old strength of will and of
patience has come back to me, and I am not more than
thirty years old ! "
The next extract from a letter of this date will be read
with interest by the members of the Incorporated Society of
Authors.
" All publishers are tradesmen ; not all are swindlers, but
they drive a hard bargain when and where they can, and care
no more for their author's 7'ights than a sharp merchant cares
for the loss to a bankrupt of goods bought below cost price
and sold at 200 per cent, advance. It is a war, but war may
be civilised — that is, strictly honest — or barbarous — that is,
dishonest. X 's are honest ; they will take the skin off
you, if you will let them, but they will not rifle your valise."
The beginning of 1881 found Mrs. Linton recovering from
a severe attack of pleurisy, through which she was tended
" with the skill of a trained nurse and the devotion of a
236 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
daughter" by Miss Johnson, whose acquaintance she was
fortunate enough to make in her exile.
By the beginning of February she was able to move on to
Rome en route for Palermo, which, in company with Miss John-
son and her friend Miss Armstrong, she reached on the 20th.
From Rome she wrote to her niece —
E. L. L. TO Miss Amy Murray.
"Hotel du Louvre, Rome,
dth February 1 88 1.
" Dearest Amy, — I have to thank you, darling, for two
sweet letters, the first of which I have been intending to answer
for a long time, but I was prevented by my illness, and this last
which came as the accusing spirit in a very sweet and gentle
and loving form, an appeal to my own conscience rather than
a rebuke ! Well, darling, I have been very ill and almost
blind, but now I am all right. I had, and have still, con-
gestion of the retina, and then I had gastric fever and pleurisy ;
but a kind, dear lady in the hotel nursed me night and day,
and I had a good doctor ; so I am all right again, save for a
certain little adhesion of the rib to the pleura or the pleura to
the rib, whichever you like to call it, which will go away in
time. Meanwhile I am all my old cheerful and energetic
self, if not quite so strong as I was. But I do not make
troubles in life — ' borrow troubles,' as the Americans say —
and I try to live down and live through all that oppresses
and worries me, and to look up into the sunlight and not back
into the darkness. It is the best way, but difficult to get at.
In early youth all troubles are so gigantic, all sorrow so
insurmountable, so eternal. By and by, as time goes on, we
feel that eternity has come to an end, and we are quite ready
to enjoy as we used, to love as we did. Then we begin to
feel that it is as well to distrust our own passionate despair,
and to try to control our anguish. It is hard, hard ! Per-
haps we only come to it when age has helped us and we have
less passion to conquer and weaker emotions all through."
In the following letter of this period she gives conditional
assent to the practice of vivisection.
" I confess frankly that this is one of the matters in which
I have chosen my captains and have not examined the thing
1880-1885 237
independently. I have neither time nor specialised know-
ledge enough, and if I did, my word would have no weight,
for, among the contradictory things said, I should only be an
echo of one, without being able to give facts and proofs by ex-
perience. I say — as you so truly put it — such men as Darwin
and Huxley know better than I. Let me see what they say.
As they pronounce so will I accept. And I see, too, that
physical pain is the law of the universe, and also that the
minority must suffer for the majority, and that all forms of
life exist by the victimisation of others. If this be so, then,
horrible as vivisection is, if the results are valuable to the
race at large, I cannot but hold it lawful, for it seems to me
impossible and illogical to say we will not get great and
incalculable gain for all ages and all generations by the
sacrifice of a few, because this sacrifice entails that suffering
under which we all must be brought. We engraft cancer,
say, to learn the course and cause of the disease. It is
frightful to the dog, but if the millions of human beings who
die of it now can be reduced to zero, is not the sacrifice law-
ful ? I must think so ! You are revolted by the methods of
vivisection and by the uselessness of some of the experiments.
But are they really useless ? //"useful, I hold them lawful. If
they are done for the mere lust of curiosity and without
practical ulterior end, I am with you heart and soul. My
contention lies all on the If useful. And that is, I think, a
specialist's question. If you or any one can prove to me that
no advance is made in science or in the alleviation of disease
by the discovery of causes and symptoms, then am I with
you. But if the race gains, then am I not. For I see only
the one fact, as I said before, the maintenance and progress
of life through sacrifice. And this of vivisection is to me
only one of other forms. The gain — if all they say is true —
is so illimitable to the race, I cannot but think the method,
however awful, a thing to be allowed. But the whole force
of my argument rests on the comparative gain to the human
race. For ive must go on whatever else has to fail. And it
is not our physical sufferings only that are to be alleviated
by the vicarious sufferings of these poor creatures, but the
greater loss, the loss of valuable life and of valuable brain
238 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
power. A dozen guinea-pigs may well be given to redeem
the life of a great leader of men, of a great statesman, a
great thinker. The world loses what it will never regain in
the life of such a man as Clifford. It is not only his pain but
the world's loss that makes the pain of a few animals lawful,
if by that pain we can redeem such a life. Physical pain is
not everything, and look how we suffer ! Look, too, at the
lifelong tortures of the Russian prisoners, of the peasantry
almost everywhere. Turn where you will, you see pain and
sacrifice — the root of the lily in the mire. It is a mystery,
if you will, but it seems to me a necessity and the absolute
all-surrounding law of life. Being so, I say then, if we gain
all that is assumed by vivisection, yes ! Prove that we do
not, and then No ! No ! No ! I too would join the crusade.
But where will you stop ? At microscopic research ? Will
you draw the line at the mammalia? or the vertebrates?
But lower creatures have nerves too, and are we to close for
ever the great book of biological science because of this
reverence to the individual ? Let there be restrictions and
protection and the denial of mere curiosity, if you can possibly
make such laws, but for the rest — and I do not see my way
to abolition — I think the moral law has to give way here as
elsewhere for the gain of the world at large ! "
After four months in Sicily she returned to Castellamare,
and by ist November was back in Rome, "Beautiful,
enchanting Rome," she wrote, " I do not think I can resist
going back. It is a nameless fascination — no one knows
what it is, but all feel it, and all who can, yield to it,"
Here she remained until the end of March.
Of the Carnival she writes —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge,
"Hotel d'Italie, Rome,
\oth February 1882.
" Carnival is beginning. It begins on Saturday. The
streets will be full of jumping, shrieking creatures, who will
yell and skip like monkeys. But I am a weak-minded thing,
and like it. All sober people hate it, but then sober people
as a rule hate the enjoyment of others."
1880-1885 239
April she spent in Florence, and in May was back in
London.
July to November was spent mainly in visiting her
friends — Mrs. Joshua in Berkshire, Mrs. Dawson Greene at
Carnforth, the Countess Ossalinsky at Penrith, Mrs. Hector
("Mrs. Alexander") the novelist, at St. Andrews, Mrs. Wills
in Sussex Gardens, and Mr. Alfred Austin at Swinford Old
Manor.
In December she returned to Rome. " It was very
pleasant," she writes, " to be met here as I was, as if I had
come back to my home. I was given my old room arranged
expressly for me, and my old place at table with a camellia
stuck into my dinner-napkin, and every one came to meet me
like an old friend. It is pleasant after an absence to feel this
hearty welcome, and makes up a little for leaving such friends
as I have in London. ... I feel much more at home in Rome
than I do in London ! The atmosphere of London is so
terrible, and the wealth oppresses and impoverishes me. I
feel such a pauper there ! "
In 1883 a collection of Mrs. Linton's Saturday articles
was published by the Bentleys in two volumes, entitled The
Girl of the Period, and Other Social Essays. She dedicated
them " to all good girls and true women."
The same publishers had also bought the serial rights of
her new novel, lone Steivart. Towards the end of the year
it was published in three volumes by Messrs. Chatto &
Windus, with the shortened title lone. It was dedicated to
Mr. Swinburne, who had honoured her with a dedication two
years before. He had also paid her a very handsome tribute
in his Note on Charlotte Bronte, published in 1877. After
speaking of "possibly the very rarest of all powers," that of
" imagination applied to actual life and individual character,"
he writes, " I can trace it in no living English authoress one-
half so strongly or so clearly marked as in the work of the
illustrious and honoured lady — honoured scarcely more by
admiration from some quarters than by obloquy from others
— to whom we owe the over-true story of Joshua Davidson,
and the worthiest tribute ever yet paid to the memory of
Walter Savage Landor."
240 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
A later generation may of course differ from the con-
temporaneous criticism of even the greatest. The point of
view is so absolutely changed. At the same time, such a
testimonial from such a contemporary has a lasting value.
Mrs. Linton did not dream of posthumous fame. She was
more than content to have it said that she had faithfully
fashioned her brick and done her day's work.
This is the dedication of lone —
" My dear Mr. Swinburne, — One of my earliest novels
was dedicated to my beloved ' father,' Walter Savage
Landor. This, which must of necessity be among my latest,
1 dedicate to you, his faithful and loyal friend — as indeed
you are the faithful and loyal friend of all to whom you have
once given your trust and affection. I deeply feel the honour
you do me in classing me among the number of those in
whose sincerity you believe and whose friendship you return.
Our original bond of union lies in the constant love and
enduring thought we both have for our revered old master ;
but we have others in our devotion to liberty, our belief in
progress, our faith in humanity, and our want of fear. I am
presumptuous in thus bracketing myself with you. You are
one of the captains of thought, and I am only a humble foot-
soldier serving in the ranks. But just as captain and private
follow the same banner and fight for the same good cause, so
I dare to place myself by your side because of our common
affection and our common aims. And you will forgive me
that I thus link myself to immortality by coupling my name
with yours. — Your sincere friend,
" E. Lynn Linton."
Reviewing lone, the Times said, " Mrs. Linton is one of
the most original of living writers of fiction. Whatever else
may be said of her works, they are stamped with an in-
dividuality which is unmistakable. It is impossible to read
any of her stories without becoming deeply interested. The
present novel is no exception to the rule. It is a love story
of profound intensity and tragic power."
The first four months of 1883 were spent in Rome.
On 3rd March she writes, " We are having a touch of
March madness. All that we used to hear and read of
1880-1885 241
English weather is now to be had in Rome. I think the
seasons must have changed immensely since history began.
How the Romans could have gone nak'd, I cannot under-
stand. We find sealskins and furs barely enough to keep
us warm. Yesterday and to-day we have a sun like a great
blazing world as he is, and a sky like a great vault of hard
metal, with a wind that is positively wolfish. . . . There is
to be a large evening party at the Embassy to-night, and I
am going. Oh, how I hate these large evening parties ! I
am always so tired and sleepy, and I want to go to bed
instead of to dress and flourish out."
In May she was at Florence, and thence moved on to
Biella, where she stayed till the middle of September. This
she was induced to do out of regard for the secretary and
director of the Hotel d' Italia, where she had stayed in
Rome — a Piedmontese who had raised himself from the
peasant classes. He owned a house near Biella, and told
her that if he could show that " a great English lady trusted
and respected him, perhaps they (the monied people of
Biella) would too, and would put him into a hotel as
manager." Admiring his energy and enterprise, she forth-
with took his house for the summer, " as a sort of decoy
duck or pioneer."
By September she was " dead sick " of her solitude. To
what straits she was reduced is shown by the following
letters. On 5th September, after a long and particular
description of a piece of embroidery upon which she is at
work, and of which she says incidentally, " I have done a bit
of the border, and it is so beautiful I could not sleep for
thinking of it," she concludes, " See what my life is when a
bit of needlework rouses my enthusiasm and engages my
thoughts ! Oh, I have had a dull summer ! Well, I leave
here Saturday the 21st, and get to Florence for a short time.
Then I go to Palermo. I am going to pay a visit at Lord
Bridport's place on Etna. He is the representative of
Nelson, and Duke of Bronte, as well as Viscount Bridport,
I am going there for the vintage, and there I shall be among
my own class again, and well fed and amused."
And again on i6th Septem.ber : " The weather is broken
i6
242 THE LIFE OF MRS. EYNN LINTON
and rainy, and I have no one to speak to in the house that
is speakable with, nor out of it, and when I cannot ramble
about the country I am lost. What I should have done
without my embroidery I do not know. It is like a
companion. I sit and stitch, and think to myself, and talk
in my head as with two people, and it refreshes and calms
my nerves in the most wonderful way. It is just like a
companion. ... I have done my mission here, and now I
am glad to be off."
In late autumn she was staying at Lord Bridport's Castle
of Maniace under the cone of Mount Etna, " about eight
miles from the dirtiest hole of a town, Bronte, which gave
the title to Lord Nelson when the King of Naples created
him Duke of Bronte. ... It is thirty miles to drive, all up-
hill, through the wildest, bleakest-looking mountainous region
you can imagine. A guard came for me from Maniace,
armed to the teeth. We live in a state of preparation, not
of fear. At sundown the gates are shut, and no one is allowed
to go out or come in without special permission and a grand
parley. They are not opened till sunrise. Men armed stand
always at the gate, and no one is allowed to enter without
he is either known or can give a good account of himself. If
we go any distance from the house we have an armed escort,
and beyond and above all the fear of brigands, rises the
great solemn mass of Etna — the cone scarred and seared
with lava streams. There is not a house, excepting one or
two little hovels, nearer than eight miles ; it is a very acme
of desolation, grandeur, and awfulness."
Early in December she was back in Palermo.
The two following letters to her great-niece contain a
fair statement of her rule of life at this period : —
E. L. L. TO Miss Amy Murray.
" Hotel de France, Palermo,
dth January 1884.
"... If you are obliged to do a thing, to fret under it
only makes it more onerous, the burden heavier. Philosophy
is a grand stand-by, dear ! It braces the mind and lends a
1880-1885 243
dignity of courage that NOTHING else does. The bravest,
most resigned people I know are pure philosophers, who
gather strength from common sense and reason, and bear
what they cannot break with equanimity and patience. My
motto in life has always been, ' Break or Bear.' What you
do not like in your life, if you can, get away from it. If you
cannot, if duty holds you or circumstances are too strong for
you, bear it bravely and do not fret under it. This is the
sequel to my first motto, ' Velle est agere ' — ' To will is to do.'
I have found out that one cannot always do all one would,
so I have adopted this other as a Coda which means even
more than the first. We must all do our best, dear. To
me, the freedom from superstition, the trutJi and reality of
science, are of greater help and value than that state of mind
which believes in things unproved and impossible, which
thinks that their religion, be it Christian, Mohammedan,
Jewish, Buddhist, or what not, is the one sole truth, and that
all the rest are false, which nourishes itself on hopes and
visions and internal convictions ! To me the external world
and the external truth of things counts for more than the
inner convictions of individuals. These change with climate,
creed, civilisation, age, education. But nature is ever the
same, and the truths of science are eternal. So, sweet child,
do not lose your time in trying in any sense to convert me,
for you might as well try to lead me back to a belief in
fairy tales. Do that and believe that which is best for
yourself, but do not think that all minds are alike and that
your truth is necessarily the truth to every one else. It is
yours ; cherish it, hold to it, live by it, believe in it, but do
not think that all others must accept it to be either happy,
strong, or good."
The first half of March 1884 was spent in a "fortnight's
knocking about on the salt sea." " I have been to Tunis,"
she writes, " the Arabian Nights Tales in person ! I have
never seen anything so interesting ! never ! It has made
me frantic to go again and to go farther."
By May she was back in London, staying with Mrs.
Wills in Sussex Gardens. She had now had enough of a
nomad life, and was desirous of settling down in England
once more, but her health seemed likely to make this
impracticable.
244 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
On loth June she writes to Mrs. Gedge —
"The doctor said that if I remain in England I shall
have to be shut up for three months, in which case, Lucy,
you may go to the joiner's to order a coffin, and when you
come back the poor dog will 7iot be laughing.
" Then I have all my interests here, pecuniary, literary,
intellectual, emotional. ... I feel I am being punished for
my sybaritism in going abroad so much. Now I cannot
live in the old cold, damp climate though I wish to do so."
Nevertheless she was determined to give it a trial, and,
after visits to the Gordon Lynns at Callander, Mrs. Purdie at
Pitlochrie, and Mrs. Wills at St. Andrews, she returned to
town, and settled upon the set of rooms at Queen Anne's
Mansions which she was destined to occupy for nearly
eleven years.
" I have found an eyrie," she writes, " eight storeys high
(with a lift, or rather two, to carry me and mine), whence I
look over St. James's Park and all London and on to High-
gate and the Infinite. If you come to London, as I hope
you will next spring, I shall expect to see you come into
my stationary balloon."
From this time forward she was a great advocate of what
our cousins call " apartment-houses." " I infinitely prefer,"
she used to say, " a flat to a house. You are well out of
the way of burglars and sneaks ; you are the proprietor of
a splendid view ; you enjoy a maximum of luxury at a
minimum of cost ; and, as my democracy is practical and
not theoretical, the servants are my friends."
And on 12th February 1885 she writes to Mrs. Gedge —
" You would be delighted with my rooms ; they are really
glorious for their pure air and expanse of horizon. I look
over everything — fancy eight tall storeys ! It is higher than
the highest of the new houses ; I scarcely hear the sound of
the horses' hoofs or the carriage wheels below. It is not
even the distant hum of London that floats up here. It is
so quiet, so light and fresh."
In August, whilst on another visit to Mrs. Purdie, she
began her new novel, Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser.
Then she went to Mr. Alfred Austin at Swinford Old
1880-1885 245
Manor, and afterwards crossed to Jersey, where she was
the guest of His Excellency General Wray at Government
House. Of this visit she writes —
" I have had the most delightful five weeks here I have
ever spent. The place is beautiful, the life tranquil, the
hours moderate, and the punctuality such that you may set
your watch by the servants' movements. We are never one
minute out of time, or, at the utmost, one minute. . , . Life
might be worse ordered than in a pretty house in Jersey or
Guernsey."
In October she was back in London, "quite well again
now, and fairly settled in my crow's nest, which is lovely.
It is the sweetest place you can imagine,"
CHAPTER XVIII
QUEEN ANNE'S MANSIONS— 1885-1888
N" OTWITHSTANDING her continental wanderings,
Mrs. Linton had not allowed her journalistic work
to sufier. Always priding herself upon the punctual
performance of her duties, the interruptions of travel and
the discomforts of temporary lodgings were never regarded
as excuses for any lapse. The stream of Queen articles,
coloured by her varying surroundings, ran as hereto-
fore.
In the early part of this year (1885), she had also finished
and sold to Mr. Bentley, her autobiographical novel, of which
something has been said in the Preface, and from which
copious extracts have been made.
In it, as we have seen, she allowed herself to write
what was to all appearances a rovian-a-clef^ a form of
novel which she often declared to be inartistic and wrong.
I say " to all appearances," because, as a matter of fact,
Christopher Kirkland was not in its essence a romance.
In its essence it was an autobiography, truly with names
and sexes changed, but still a very different thing from
a novel in which the characters are portraits but their
actions invented.
Amongst many friends who thirsted for more intimate
particulars about the book was Miss Rhoda Broughton. She
wrote that she was " burning with curiosity to know where
fiction ended and reality began," and bewailed the fact
that Mrs. Linton had " adopted the odious, conventional,
trammelling, and, in this case, eminently misleading form
of the three-volume novel."
246
1885-1888 247
This was Mrs. Linton's reply —
E. L. L. TO Miss Rhoda Broughton.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
TfOtk September 1885.
" Generous and good ! Thank you very much for your
dear letter. I wish I could see you, dear, and then we would
have a talk. I could tell you so much more than I could
write. Mrs. Hulme is a study partly true, partly evolved ; so
is Althea Cartwright, so Adeline Dalrymple. All the rest
(so far as I can remember at this speed) are real persons.
The real names given are of those who are dead — the
Machonochies, etc. etc. . . . Esther is Mr. Linton. I am
very glad the book interested you enough to make you
write to me. You are a dear girlie for that same.
" The three-volumed form was chosen by Mr. Bentley,
and I don't know the fate of the sale nor have I seen many
reviews. I have always felt that the book has a certain
vitality of its own, and that it will not have one day's
life only."
From which we see that Mrs. Linton anticipated for it
a success which certainly up to now it has not achieved.
I remember, within a year of her death, pressing her to
give her unveiled Reminiscences to the world. Her eyes
blazed at me through her spectacles as she raised her hands
and beat her knees, with a characteristic gesture, and cried,
" Oh, lor'h ! oh, lor'h ! George, my dear, I dare not ! I know
too much ; I dare not ! "
Thus, then, we have to content ourselves with Christopher
Kirkland so far as autobiography is concerned. Tragic as is
his figure, it is of course marred by the fact that it is that of
a woman masquerading as a man. It is for this reason that I
have here made it my business to strip the figure of hose and
doublet and reclothe it in the garments proper to its sex.
The following fact in connection with the writing of the
book is worthy of mention, showing as it does Mrs. Linton's
high appreciation of goodness in those to whom she found
herself in conscientious opposition. It is also a remarkable
example of a generous determination at all hazards to let
248 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
the other side be heard, even to the possible destruction of a
writer's own case.
In chapter iv., vol. iii., she had written an account of
her Jewish friends in London, and in so doing had unsparingly
criticised the religious position of the Jews generally. Con-
vinced of its illogicalness, she yet hesitated to publish the
indictment without giving an equally public opportunity for
a reply. She therefore sent a draft of it to Dr. Asher Asher,
who will always be remembered as an example of the best
type of English Jew, a man of whom so uncompromising a
Presbyterian as Dr. Alexander Macleod of Birkenhead said,
" His pilgrimage was brief but glorious."
Dr. Asher thereupon wrote her a long letter of refutation,
which she forthwith incorporated in the text of CJiristopher
Kirkland.
By the courtesy of Dr. Abraham Cohen, Dr. Asher's
son-in-law, I am enabled to publish Mrs. Linton's letter in
reply.
E. L. L. TO Dr. Asher Asher.
" Queen Anne's Mansions,
26fh March.
" My dear Dr. Asher, — Thank you very, very much for
your dear, good letter. I have incorporated it into the book,
heading it with this paragraph : ' In truth and fairness,
however, I must say that these views, which are entirely my
own, gathered from my reading and fashioned by reflection,
were emphatically denied by my Jewish friend spoken of
above ; who, after all, by his learning and position, has the
best right to pronounce on his own religion. I will give his
own words, which came in answer to a letter of mine setting
forth these views.' (Then follows the letter.) ' I give this
letter in its entirety, though it condemns what I have said,
and in the minds of many will destroy my whole chain of
reasoning. But no other course is open to me as a man ^ of
honour ; and I have, moreover, too great a respect for my
friend — for his profound scholarship, his sincerity, and his
faithful piety — not to give him the opportunity of refuting
me if he has the truth and I am in error. But my friend's
^ Written, of course, as by Christopher Kirkland. — G. S. L.
1885-1888 249
arguments did not convince me of more than mistakes in
fact, which did not touch my main point. By the law under
which I live and suffer I have to work out my difficulties for
myself; and no personal admiration for the moral results in
an individual can carry me over to the faith from which these
results have sprung. I am like one standing in a barren
centre whence radiate countless pathways, each professing to
lead to the unseen Homes. By their very multiplicity I am
bewildered, and for dread of taking the wrong way, for fear
of following after a delusion, I stand in the midst of that
barren desolation and take none. The doctrine of a central-
ised truth and therefore of God's special favour to those who
hold it, revolts me by its partiality, its egotism, its exclusive-
ness and consequent injustice' — and then the book begins
again.
" Will this meet your views ? You see I am obliged to
keep to the unity of my own mind, for the book is my own
history, travestied in the sense of sex and certain experiences,
but I cannot do other than say what I think and feel ; only
in this case I am so glad to have had the courage to ask you
for your corrections and to have the opportunity of inserting
them. I respect your kind more than you can perhaps
believe. I think the faithful constancy of the religious Jew,
through all these ages of persecution, is one of the sublimest
things in human history. What a vital faith it must be !
What a grand sustainment and consolation ! But again and
again — those others who have not got it ? And God who (if
religion is true) has the power to bring all men into the light ?
— I shall soon come to you, if I may, and worry you with
more questions and more talk. It was Benvenuto Cellini
who saw the devils in the smoke about the circle. — With love
to dear Mrs. Asher, your grateful friend, if but a heathenish
kind of creature, E. Lynn Linton."
On Dr. Asher's death in 1889, Mrs. Linton wrote of him :
" Tender as well as firm, he could discuss and dissect to
the very heart and bone any subject whatever with those
with whom he disagreed, without acrimony, heat, or partiality.
He would let no false statement pass uncontradicted. He
allowed no fallacy to slip in that he could refute. But he
always argued with such high-bred courtesy of mind and
directness of method — he was always so straight as well as
250 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
humane in his polemics — that one loved and reverenced him
even when there was no intellectual agreement. For myself,
I can speak of this with a full heart. I was a Gentile of the
Gentiles in his sight, but he was as sweet and good to me as
if I had been one of his own kindred and among the Eldest-
born. He never let me feel that he held me in other than
true human esteem. . . . He was one for whom I felt the
most entire respect, and I longed, had it been possible, for
him to give me his dying blessing — the blessing of a good,
pure-hearted, pious man, emphatically one in whom there
was no guile."
Mrs. Linton was not a subscriber to any of the newspaper-
cutting agencies, and indeed took very little interest in the
reviews of her books. An exception to the rule was the
review of Christopher Kirkland in the pages of the World.
This drew forth from her a letter of remonstrance to her
friend Edmund Yates.
The result was the following paragraph in the next issue,
in which, without receding from the position taken up by the
reviewer, the editor took the opportunity of paying a pretty
compliment to the writer of the book, under cover of correcting
a mistake of the St. James s Gazette.
" No, no, my dear St. James's, the author of Cliristopher
Kenrick {sic) is not, and never will be. Lady Linton. That
title may be claimed by the wife, if there be a wife, of Sir J,
D, Linton, President of the Institute of Painters in water-
colours. Eliza Lynn Linton, one of the cleverest and bravest
women of the day, is the wife of W. J. Linton, unsurpassed
in his time as a draughtsman and wood-engraver, and not
wholly unknown as a Radical, not to say revolutionary,
publicist, who has for many years been resident in America."
Whether the St. James's made rejoinder that the World
had better look to the beam in its own eye before troubling
about the mote in its neighbour's, as well it might have done,
I do not know.
This year (1885) Mrs. Linton also published a short novel
of Italian intrigue and revenge, entitled Stabbed in the Dark,
peculiarly refreshing, even at this date, to an appetite cloyed
with the novels of sex " in part mad, in part unclean, and for
1885-1888 251
the rest unintelligible." The story was suggested by Mr.
Rudolf Lehmann's picture of TJie Confessional, The book
was dramatised, but I can discover no trace of the play ever
having been staged.
It was this year, too, that she wrote an article on George
Eliot in Temple Bar which provoked considerable comment.
Amongst the great novelist's friends who disagreed with Mrs.
Linton in her estimate of the position which the Leweses had
taken up, was Mr. Herbert Spencer, who felt bound in loyalty
to take the writer of the article to task. This was her reply —
E. L. L. TO Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"Queen Anne's Mansions.
" My dear Mr. Spencer, — I am very sorry to know that
you are not so well as you should be for all that you have
still got to do for the world. Such men as you ought to be
made of cast-iron, never and never know a day's ill-health.
I have just been reading your church book, and delighted in
it, as I do in all you write. Thank you for the gentle tone of
your remonstrance. How quiet and generous and gentle you
are ! It was not who told me about Miss Evans,
as she was then. It was this story — for to me was more
antipathetic than any man I have ever known, and his love-
making more purely disgusting — that for years prejudiced
me against Miss Evans as a girl of infinitely bad taste, to say
nothing more. How she could have liked him was to me a
marvel ! When I saw her two or three days I did not like
her. It was only after her union with Mr, Lewes that her
beauty (in my eyes) came to the front. I remember telling
Mr. Linton once, after I had met and talked to her and
Mr. Lewes in St. John's Wood, how infinitely ennobled she
had become. But as time went on, and the falsehood of
their true position increased with the reverence of the world,
while Thornton Hunt, who was so thorough, so true to him-
self, so utterly and entirely apart from all time-serving, all
worldliness, went to the wall and was reviled by those who
worshipped these others, my soul revolted, and I went back
to my first position and despised with loathing the (as it
seemed to me) humbug and postiche of the whole matter.
As I said to you before, there were people who worshipped
252 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
these two, who cut me because I separated from Mr. Linton,
and who would have held Thornton Hunt good for stoning.
Mr. Lewes and Miss Evans were perfectly justified in their
union — perfectly — but they were not justified in their assump-
tion of special sacredness, nor was the world, in its attitude
of special reverence, which was more than condonation. It
is the sense of favouritism and consequent unfairness that
has animated me in all I have said. Had there not been so
much pretence and falsehood, I would never have told the
truth. But I feel a kind of sacred duty to Thornton, who did
no more than Mr. Lewes himself I know it was wrong . . .
to break the promise on which the connection was allowed
by the husband. I do not defend that, nor do I blame Mr.
Lewes's annoyance. I only say that his union with Miss
Evans was no other, no more, than any other of the same
kind, and that the holiness and solemnity ascribed to it came
solely from her success. Had she been exactly the woman
she was, and not the authoress she was, she would have been
left in the shade by all those who sought her in the sunlight.
"And this is the kind of thing which rouses all the
indignation of my nature.
" Forgive me ! I am a sinner, I know, and far, far too
passionate even at my age, which should have taught me
calmness. But I can reverence as well as contend against,
and I reverence you. — Yours most sincerely,
"E. Lynn Linton."
The following year (1886) found Mrs. Linton still hard at
work upon her new novel.
" I have been struggling," she writes to her sister on
25th January, " over a bit of work that would not get done
as it should, and I have put aside everything until it was
finished, as it is just this moment. It is my new story,
Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser, in Temple Bar, and I
had got into a coil ! I have written these three chapters
five times, and to-day have repatched and repieced them —
but at last they are finished and away."
At the end of the year it was published by her friends,
Messrs. Chatto & Windus.
It may interest those members of the Society of Authors
who but lately were discussing the reasonable wage of the
1885-1888 253
writer for the weeklies and monthlies to learn that Mrs.
Linton's earnings from this source alone were about ^500
a year. This included £2^, a month for the instalments of
her novels, and £^ a week for her weekly articles, the
remainder being made up of occasional contributions to
the Fortnightly, National, and other reviews. Of course, in
addition to her serial rights, she would also receive a lump
sum for the book rights.
The following letter of this year to Mr. Chambers, who
had written asking for a serial story for the Journal is
characteristically independent : —
E. L. L. TO Mr. C. E. S. Chambers.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
zoth March 1 886.
" My dear Mr. Chambers, — I should be very glad to
write a novel for your journal, but I have nothing by me.
I am still in Paston Carezv, which will not be finished by
me till the end of May. I then should try to place a novel
for 1887, and, indeed, I had already spoken to Mr. Watt^
about it. If you decided to take one from me, you would
have to assume the workmanship. I would write you the
argument of the story, and I would promise you to put in no
politics, no agnosticism, and no 'hungry kisses,' which are
not in my line, by the way. More than that I do not see
my way to, for if I did not agree with you, I should with
another magazine — and if, trusting to you, I was rejected, I
should have lost all my market. If you have the synopsis
of the story, and my promise to be very careful and reticent
on my peculiar views, cannot you trust the mere workman-
ship ? I do not fail in that, as a rule !
" That, however, is for your own consideration. Whatever
you do will be right, for of course you have your magazine
to think of first of all things ; and though I have never in
my life yet disappointed an editor, you may think it wiser
to have all the MS. in hand and under your own eyes before
you began the printing or concluded the bargain. I shall
be very, very glad to see you when you come to London.
I have always a very tender and grateful feeling for you. —
Most faithfully yours, E. LYNN LiNTON."
^ Mr. C. P. Watt, the well-known literary agent.
254 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
After some months in the country, she writes to her
sister on 8th September — " 1 go back to Babylon to-morrow.
I am very sorry for some things to leave the country . . .
but I am so devioralisingly comfortable in that apartment
up in the sky."
Like Dr. Johnson, she loved London and always longed
to get back to it when she found that vigour had returned
to her. This was so to the very last. The splendour of its
intellectual activity was ever strong in its appeal. From
time to time, when she had finally left it as a permanent
place of residence, the hankering would become irresistible.
This would be the signal for a visit, from which she would
return worn out and exhausted.
Old friends were now falling thickly around her, and on
29th September she writes —
" Death has been very busy among my friends of late.
Mrs. F. West of Newlands, Lymington, 81 ; old Mr. Robinson
of Coutts' Bank, 92, I think ; and now poor George Loaden,
74!
" They have all had a fair share of life, but the moment
never comes when it is enough. I was very much shocked
to see George Loaden's death to-day — poor old fellow ! dear
old Forge ! He was a good friend of mine in the years gone
by."
The year 1887 found Mrs. Linton hard at work on a new
novel, Through the Long Night, which, after running serially
in a weekly newspaper, was eventually published in book
form by Messrs. Hurst & Blackett. Her novels were not,
however, so suited to the columns of the weekly newspaper
as to the more leisurely pages of the monthly magazine.
Their long descriptions and philosophic interludes did not
advance the story sufficiently week by week. Her delibera-
tion compared unfavourably with the swifter march of many
of her lesser gifted contemporaries.
In addition to her weekly articles for the Queen, and
occasional articles for the Fortnightly, Temple Bar, and the
Forum, she was now turning out articles on a great variety
of subjects (sometimes as many as nine in the month) for
the Evening News, an amount of work astonishing in one
1885-1888 255
who had now passed her grand cHmacteric ; and all this not-
withstanding the fact that she was subjected to incessant
interruptions from all sorts and conditions of people, who
counted upon her kindness and generosity. Now and then
in private she would kick against the amount of time which
her complaisance allowed her to spend over the work of
others, but not a sign of impatience escaped in the presence
of the recipients of her favours.
Writing somewhat pathetically to Mrs. Gedge, she says —
" I am a kind of mother of the world now. If you knew my
life you would be amazed at all I have to do for others."
And again — " Every one comes to me for every kind of
thing — references, plans, reading MSS. — all sorts of things,
and my time is just murdered among them all." This was
all the more trying to her, as she felt that, even without
interruptions, time was all too short to do half what she
had to do, and that her strength was waning.
" I grudge this rapid flow of years," she writes ; " they are
all going too quickly, and my strength is going with them 1
I cannot do one quarter what I did ten years ago — not so
much by half as two years ago. I have tumbled off my great
strong perch on to a very slender little fellow. But there it
is, and we cannot help it."
And again, on 28th August — " I am writing a new novel.
It will, I think, be the last. I cannot write now as I did.
I get so terribly exhausted. I have been a hard writer now
for forty-two years exactly, and if I fail a little — a great
deal in strength — I have done my darrack manfully while
it lasted ! "
There was, however, more than ten years of hard work
before her, and her tale of books was not complete by half
a dozen !
The following letter of this period illustrates her unre-
strained enthusiasm of gratitude for simple acts of friend-
ship. As the recipient of the letter writes to me, " Her
unmeasured praise naturally made its object shrink. . . .
I had to protest that I could not accept the position she
gave me, though I was deeply touched by her words. The
advance of scientific thought has since shown, far more
256 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
clearly than I could hope to do, the fundamental inconsist-
encies of her position ; but her letters remain the expression
both of a warm and generous heart, and of a spiritual passion
for all that she saw, or thought she saw, as true, beautiful,
and good."
E. L. L. TO Lady .
"May 1887.
"My dearest and sweetest Woman, my most
RESPECTED Lady, — Your goodness to me touches me far
more than I have words to adequately express. The true,
pure, holy Christian charity of that white soul of yours is a
living poem, an acted prayer, a warrant for the old idea of
angels and seraphs. That is what I feel for you. But I feel
also, dear — for I am not speaking now to my social superior
but to the human being — that you are on a platform I can
never reach. The sole effect produced on me by all the
different opinions held now by such a saint as you and now
by such a moral hero as Mr. Laing, is one of utter bewilder-
ment as to what is Truth ; and the greater and greater
conviction of subjectivity as the pin to unravel the web.
But why and how this subjectivity comes ? What is its
ultimate meaning? Then I fall back on the barren little
rock of agnosticism — I do not know ; and there I cling. . . .
If I had more money and need not work so hard, I should
like to flourish about society with the best ; but as things
are, I cannot ; and my work, which is my life, suffers
through my pleasures ; so that I am waiting only to find a
tenant, when I shall be off into the quiet, still, sweet country,
where I shall know only one unintellectual and unreading,
but good and pure-hearted woman. I am more lovingly
grateful to you than you can possibly divine. There is no
one whose love and devotion and enthusiasm go out more
passionately than mine to goodness, purity. . . .
" If I cannot follow you, that does not say I do not love
you. I cannot follow that pretty pigeon just passing ; but I
admire its flight and perhaps envy it. So with such as you
who stand in a spiritual light and moral altitude I cannot
attain. The nothingness of all things weighs on me. I do
not see that the mere fact of thought — itself a traceable
product — warrants our assuming more than itself. But I
1885-1888 257
cannot stay to write. . . . My loving thanks again and
again, — embroidering the garments of esteem and admiration
in which your sweet image is shrouded. May you be blessed
and happy in all things ! — Most sincerely your grateful
"E. L. L."
By the end of May she found the rush and roar of
London insupportable — " maddening," as she expressed it —
and started off early for the country, promising herself a
visit later on to the old Keswick haunts. " It will be a little
heart-breaking to live at an hotel, but one has to break one's
heart very often in this life — once more does not count."
By the 23rd of September she was under the hospitable
roof of the late Mr. William Wilson of the Keswick Hotel.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Keswick Hotel, 2yd September 1S87.
" I have waited a day before writing to you (I came on
Wednesday evening, and this is Friday), because I wanted to
tell you all I saw and heard yesterday. ... I went through
the Limepots to the vicarage ; asked the servant to go into
the garden, and made her take me through the hall into the
kitchen ; saw the old chimney-piece in the dining-room, and
found out our old faces ; went into the study and touched the
old book-shelves and cupboards ; looked into the pantry and
the larder place where we had the flour-bin ; and then went
over the garden. The gardener gave me a bunch of flowers,
and I gave him a shilling. ... I feel half in a dream
here. It is Keswick and yet not Keswick, as I am Eliza
Lynn and yet not Eliza Lynn. I sat on the terrace wall
while the man picked my flowers. ... I heard the sounds
come up from the road, the voices of children and wheels and
dogs and cows, just as we used. It was so strange. I do
not think a resurrection of the body would be a blessing.
Loo !"
The beginning of 1888 found her in good spirits and
improved health. " I am," she writes, " quite well and as full
of life as ever — not quite so strong, and with a feeble heart
17
258 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
and scant of breath like Falstaff, but able to live in the full
enjoyment of existence."
Early this year she figured as the " Celebrity at Home '"'
in the columns of the World, with the result that she was
involved in " all manner of disagreeable and unprofitable
correspondence," and made the victim of begging letters by
the score.
At this time she was again much troubled by failing
eyesight, which was a source of anxiety for the rest of her
life. At Wiesbaden, whither she went in July, she consulted
a specialist, who would only say that he did not think she
would be blind, but would commit himself no further. " I am
fechting on," she writes, " with pain and heat and all the
pleasant troubles of getting worse before getting better. I go
to the oculist every other day, and have some fearful stuff
dabbed into my eyes, which makes them smart galore. . . .
I wear big blue spectacles, but still I have to narrow my eyes
to a mere slit ; and yesterday, when I came home, I had at
times to shut them, and walk as if I were blind, with my
hand out."
Nevertheless she did not allow her work to slacken, and
even added to her regular output by undertaking to write a
dozen " travelling articles " for the World. These appeared
during July, August, and September.
By November she was back in London, and almost
immediately fell ill.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Queen Anne's Mansions,
lytk Novembei- 1888.
" I had no sooner finished my article than I tumbled-
down-Dick into a furious attack of bronchitis, and had to go
to bed, hugging linseed poultices for dear life. I am up
again, and went out to dinner last night without much bad
result. . . . You know how I used to go out every day all
weathers ? I dare not go near the door in damp, fog, wind,
or frost, . . . but with all this I love life and enjoy it, and am
not a bit changed in intellect ; I have been doing the best
work I have done in my whole lifetime, just of late, and
1885-1888 259
every one says so too. . . . Did I tell you I had another
young link in beautiful Carlino's son — a young artist, a
Savage Landor ^ from Florence ? He came and was accepted,
and has gone over to America now, and I had a dear letter
from him. This is how I keep young in heart ; I have all
manner of young adoptions about me, and all the love I ever
had in my youth from men and girl friends is now given me
by the young. I am their friend and confidante, and they come
about me as I love young people to do, with affection and no
kind of fear or reserve ; so they brighten my life. Loo, in its
waning hours, and I am as happy as I can be. Happier than
I ever was in the days of fever and fervour and love troubles,
and strivings for name and recognition. The divine peace of
content, of philosophy, of acceptance of things as they are,
even of failing health and vanished strength, and the dark
that is creeping ever nearer and nearer ! "
Early in this month she had written an article entitled
" Adventurers " in the St. James's Gazette, which called forth
the following much - appreciated commendation from the
veteran author, Mr. Samuel Smiles. It is curiously prophetic
of the occurrences of the past year or two in South Africa.
Mr. Samuel Smiles to E. L. L.
"8 Pembroke Gardens, Kensington, W.,
(>th November i888.
" Thank you, my dearest one, for your splendid article
in last night's St. James s. It is most eloquent, and yet it
is literally true. I have said something of the same sort in
some of my manuscripts hidden away. I intend to cut
out your article and stow it away for future use. No one
who knows the English — blood, bone, and muscle, besides
brains — but must agree with you. Look at our vigour in
annexing all North America — the States and Canada ; our
conquest of India, beginning with a little shipload of men of
commerce ; our holding by the Nile, because it is the way to
Australia, Borneo, New Zealand, and the South Seas. It
is not so much the blue blood, as the mixed race of which
^ Mr. Henry Savage Landor, grandson of the poet and author of Alone with the
Hairy Aimi and In the Forbidden Land,
260 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
we consist. And the blue-blooded men have done other
valued work too. As you say, we are still the same, and
when the time comes, as come it will, you will see the
fighting blood of Englishmen in its place again, and holding
together the great united empire of which we form a part.
Thank you again, my most manly of your sex, for your
splendid article. Though too short, it contains so much, —
Ever yours most faithfully, S. Smiles,"
At the end of this year she writes to Mr. Fisher
Crosthwaite, " Oh, how I wish I was young and strong for
just a year, and could go down to Keswick, climb all the
mountains, go over all the passes, skate on the frozen lake (I
would not despise Blea Tarn, where we used to go and slide),
go along the Skiddaw Terrace Road, and row about the
lake as we used. Whenever I am not quite well I dream of
the lanes and roads about that fairest temple of nature (to
me), chiefly of walking in the Limepots or else on the road
just opposite the vicarage, I remember it all so vividly as
it was ; it is an effort to remember the changes that are.
Next year I hope to go over to Ireland, else I think I should
take shelter under my friend Mrs. Wilson's hospitable roof In
any case I hope to see the place again once more at least
before I die, and shake hands with all my dear old friends,
such as are left me.
" Good-bye, dear Mr, Crosthwaite. There comes a time
in one's life when the old, long - tried love conquers all
differences of creeds, and when we recognise the truth of
truths, that sincerity to our belief, whatever it may be, and
love for our fellow-creatures, make a creed and a practice in
themselves where we can all meet."
The next letter announces the death of her much-loved
brother Arthur,
E, L, L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
Queen Anne's Mansions,
Christmas Day, 1888.
" I did not write yesterday to disturb your Christmas
Day, but I had the letter from Galveston, telling me of the
1885-1888 261
death of that one greatest love of all the men I have ever
known.
" It has cut me up very much indeed, and all the more as
I must not carry my sorrow abroad to a lot of unsympathis-
ing people. He had an illness of only about two or three
weeks, the lawyer said who wrote to me, but he did not tell
me what his illness was. . . . He died on the 9th of this
month. . . .
" And poor Cuthbert Southey also is dead — so we drop
off — we of the passing generation, and it seems such a mere
day since we were all young and children ! "
Writing on the same subject to Mr. F. W. Banks, she
says, " It is a star out of the sky, and the heaven of my
life is so much the darker for the loss."
CHAPTER XIX
1889-1890
MRS. LINTON was now in the sixty-seventh year of
her age, with faihng eyesight, and roughly reminded
from time to time, by recurrent attacks of bronchitis,
that her hold on life was not what it had been. To most
workers possessed of a sufficiently comfortable income (for
she had put by enough in her second literary period to bring
in, with her small inheritance, some four or five hundred a
year), these would have been the signals for some slackening
of work, some acceptance of ease due to the labourer in the
evening. But this was not her way. The relish for work was
as strong upon her as ever — so strong, indeed, in this year
(1889), that, in addition to as large a production as ever of
articles and stories for the weeklies and monthlies, she
projected and carried out a visit to Ireland for the purpose
of studying Home Rule on the spot.
The picture of this lady, no longer young, more than half
blind, and as a traveller very timid, leaving the daily routine
to which she was wedded, and starting off alone to stay with
strangers in what was to her a strange land, is a not un-
pathetic one.
Up to now she had been an ardent Home Ruler, " influenced
by the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle
only." By temperament she had found herself affiliated to
the Liberal party, and she had been content to go with her
leaders so far, trusting them to judge for her in matters of
which she had not the opportunity of judging for herself.
Taught by them in the matter of Ireland, she had believed
in the accusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence
of tyranny, and, shocking though the undeniable crimes
262
1889-1890 263
committed by the campaigners were, they seemed to her
" the tragic results of that kind of despair which seizes on
men who, goaded to madness by oppression, are reduced to
masked murder as their sole means of defence — and as, after
all, but a sadly natural retaliation." ^
She knew nothing of Lord Ashbourne's Act. She shut
her eyes to the possibility of the dismemberment of the
empire. " In a word," as she herself says, " I committed the
mistakes inevitable to all who take feeling and conviction
rather than fact and knowledge for their guides."
Then there came the opportunity of going to Ireland and
judging for herself. She had read and admired an anonymous
novel by Mr. J. F. Fuller, the well-known architect and author.
Correspondence had followed, and resulted in an invitation to
Glashnacree, near Kenmare.
In accepting the invitation she wrote —
E. L. L. TO Mr. J. F. Fuller.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
\i\th /tine 1889.
"... Tell the dear wife that the slowest life is the best
for me. I am not very strong, and I cannot do much. I
cannot go long day-excursions without horrible fatigue, and
I am such a coward that I dare not go in dogcarts or rickety-
vehicles of any kind. As for an outside car, dear man 1 if
you put me into one of those, you will have to bind me with
ropes and straps and then blindfold me. I am an arrant
coward ! but I like nice, dull, simple, slow-going days, with
a little walk or a little drive, great friendliness — the supreme
of all — opening the family ranks for the moment and taking
me in as if I had been born one of you — no fuss, no change,
no more consideration than if I were an old tame tabby to
be given her place by the fire, and her bite and her sup, and
not made into an obstruction or a nuisance. I have no self-
assertion, not a bit, and I have an inexhaustible fund of
gratitude. You did not tell me you had received my photo
— that ought to show you what a tame old thing I am ! "
On 26th June she was pulling herself together for the
^ Vide Preface to About Ireland, by E. Lynn Linton. (Methuen, 1890.)
264 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
journey, and wrote, " I am like the old warhorse at the
blast of the trumpet when any exertion has to be made.
I am ' all there,' and forget the venerable years lying on my
back and head, but just stiffen my shoulders and go at it, and
then I collapse and am a tumble-down-Dick for a month."
On 2nd July she arrived in Dublin, where she was met by
Mr. Fuller, to whom I am indebted for the following account
of her visit and conversion. He writes —
" She spent a month with me at Glashnacree near
Kenmare, in the beautiful wilds of my native county of
Kerry.
" I met her, by appointment, in Dublin, on her arrival by
the evening boat ; and next day I took her about the city to
see the principal sights. I could not induce her to mount
one of those ' spidery-looking things,' as she called the outside
cars, so I had to be content with a cab. We pulled up in the
Phoenix Park at the spot where Lord Frederick Cavendish
and Mr. Burke were murdered, and here our first political
discussion took place — postponed by mutual agreement till
we got to Kerry. ^
" Two days later we travelled from Dublin to Killarney,
and at the end of the long railway journey I found her so
full of life and energy that we ' did ' the Gap of Dunloe the
same evening. On the following day we started early for
Glashnacree. This meant a carriage drive of thirty Irish
miles — there being then no nearer railway station than
Killarney ; but as the scenery on the route is indescribably
grand and beautiful, and as the day was a perfect one, she
enjoyed the journey thoroughly. We stopped half-way to
bait the horses at a spot called * Windy Gap,' the view from
which she declared to be the finest she had ever seen. I
ventured on a quotation from one of the works of Sir Arthur
Helps —
' We drew that breath
So full, so deep, that ever afterwards
There is a sense of stifling in grand palaces.'
" She knew it at once and capped it — after interviewing
* In her diary for this day she writes, "Drove round Phoenix Park and saw
the accursed spot." — G. S. L.
1889-1890 265
some native children who had gathered round us at a
respectful distance — by another quotation from the same
author —
' Ofttimes a cunning mixture of great lineages —
Great though obscure — breaks out in the humblest peasant ;
And could we trace that girl's descent, her loveliness
Would be accounted for, I doubt not.'
*' A charming blue-eyed little maiden with bare feet and
unkempt head of flaxen hair — doubtless a descendant of
Irish kings — took her fancy greatly ; but between shyness
and brogue, the child was unintelligible. They parted very
good friends, however; and no doubt the little girl had a
good deal to say, in Irish, about the interview, when she
got home to the paternal cabin among the rocks.^
" My household numbered four — our guest, myself, wife, and
daughter. There were few neighbours and fewer visitors : we
wanted none. She ceased to be a stranger on the threshold ;
and we missed her sorely when she left us. Never was there
a less exacting guest or a more delightful companion, After
breakfast, her custom was to retire to my sanctum, where she
worked till lunch time. The rest of the day was devoted to
rambles about the country with my wife and daughter.
Botanising was one of her favourite pursuits, and she found
much to interest her, as Kerry abounds in plants not found in
other parts of the British Isles. The evenings we spent in
chatting while she deftly plied her needle on some beautiful
piece of embroidery.
" The fact that she left London a pronounced Radical and
returned a Unionist has lent a peculiar interest to her month's
stay with me. She was so honest-hearted and open-minded
that it was only necessary to lay the truth before her and to
state an argument fairly. There was no prejudice in her
nature ; or if there was, her common sense got the better of
it. The result of our many talks is to be found in her
pamphlet entitled About Ireland. She did not hesitate to
come forward and boldly renounce in print the beliefs which
^ In The Queen for the 17th and 24th of August 18S9, will be found two articles
by Mrs. Lynn Linton, entitled "In the Wilds of Kerry" and "A Touch of
Paradise," which give a vivid description of all she saw and felt.
266 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
she had so long held to be sound. Her faith was shaken,
before she left Ireland, in William O'Brien, Davitt, Dillon, and
the ' separatists ' generally ; in the ' Plan of Campaign,' the
' Land League,' and in the stories of systematic oppression
practised by the landlord on the tenant-farmer ; and it was
made clear to her beyond dispute that no more favoured
class exists now in any country than the so-called ' down-
trodden Irish peasant.' "
It should be clearly stated that it was not from conver-
sations with Mr. Fuller, but from impressions gained from a
visit to Ulster in the following year, that Mrs. Linton became
a convert to the anti - Popery views of the Orangemen.
Mr. Fuller, it is well known, although a Protestant and a
landlord, is in no sympathy with those " to-hell-with-the-
Pope " sentiments which animate Belfast and pass muster in
the north for patriotism. He is no ultra-Tory, although he
believes in the mutual advantage to both England and
Ireland of the integrity of the empire, holding at the same
time that the Act of Union was the greatest misfortune that
ever fell upon his country.
The immediate results of this first visit to Ireland were
two papers which were written for the New Review. As
things turned out, however, she came to stand with the
editor " somewhat in the position," as she has expressed it,
" of Balaam with Balak, when, called on to curse the Israelites,
he was forced by a superior power to bless them." So it
came about that the first paper was only at last grudgingly
published after the lapse of several months, with the back-
bone, in the shape of extracts from the Land Acts, taken out
of it, and her own unsupported statements left to fend for
themselves.
This was too much for her, and she determined to
withdraw the second, and, with the permission of the editor,
to enlarge and publish both in a pamphlet, for which she
" alone should be responsible, and which would bind no
editor even to the semblance of endorsement."
The result was the publication in the following year, by
Messrs. Methuen & Co., of her little book About Ireland^
which attracted considerable attention as coming from a
1889-1890 267
thorough democrat and Liberal of old standing, who had the
courage to contradict her party leaders as soon as ever she
arrived at the conclusion that they had misled their followers.
The following letters refer to her conversion : —
E. L. L. TO Rev. Charles Voysey.
"9//; August 1889.
"My dear Mr. Voysey, — Your letter has found me
after many days, but not as an enemy — as a dear, kind, good,
and generous friend. I have been making a little tour in
beautiful Kerry, and am now at Dublin on my way to
London. Thank you very much indeed for all the handsome
things you say of me ; you have always been good to me.
Now I am full of Ireland and of the folly that I and other
Liberals have been indulging in. Home Rule and all that is
bound up with it means simply ruin to the country, loss to
ourselves, and the foul fiend to pay all round ! I came a
Home Ruler, I leave a strong Unionist, a strong believer in
Balfour's wisdom, and in the need of a firm front opposed to
popular clamour.
" I hope I have not chilled your friendly impulse toward
me. Dear Mr. Voysey, we Liberals are becoming riddled
through and through with unworkable sentimentality. It is
pitiable. Under this washy, treacly overflow we are losing all
the fine old force that made us what we once were.
" I should like to see and know more of you. You have
been and are a brave man, firm and faithful to yourself to
your own loss. I do not know where you stand in politics,
at least on this question, but I am afraid you are a Home
Ruler, as I was, as we all were ! We must be wise ; we must
look facts and expediency in the face. There is no sense in
abstract political principle. Good and evil are such relative
terms ! I must say no more, else I shall vex you seriously. —
Very gratefully yours, E. Lynn Linton."
Mrs. Linton need not have troubled herself, for Mr.
Voysey, as he told her in reply, was one of those who had
never seen anything but trouble in Home Rule.
In the second letter she wrote —
" Yes, I have come back a strong Unionist, having seen
268 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
the utter fallacy of the Home Rule cry — its shallowness, its
falsity. The peasants want the land without paying for it ;
the Catholics want to oppress the Protestants, and the
agitators want to aggrandise themselves. We, the good,
stupid, enthusiastic English, who are being ruined by our
sentimentality, and whose politics are all riddled with fads,
we are sincere, and we alone — no one else. ... I am writing
some papers about it. I hope I may do a little good, for, so
far as things go, and have gone, it is the landlord who is
being persecuted, 7iot the peasant. So I am now on your side,
boldly and wholly, with the proviso that Ireland ought to
have a measure of local self-government such as we have
in England ; but Imperial Government must be one and
indivisible."
Of course the old cries of " turncoat " and " weathercock "
were raised, for the man with the stiff neck always likes to
despise his neighbour who is able to look back over his
shoulder.
Like most people of original and powerful individuality,
Mrs. Linton, as we have seen, started in her generous youth
as a Radical and a righter of women. In middle age she
found herself young and enthusiastic enough to adopt the
extreme doctrine of Home Rule, But she ended as the
chartered enemy of the New Woman, as a Dame of the
Primrose League, and as the author of About Ireland and
About Ulster.
In other words, she had the courage of her opinions, and
when she was convinced of error made no hesitation in
confessing. Not that she ever lost her sympathy for the
enthusiast on the other side. She remembered to the end
her own insurgent youth, and made generous allowance,
where severity was not essential to the matter in hand.
An example of this occurred about this time. Mr.
O'Brien was condemned to wear the prison dress, with the
rather comic result that we all remember. The new
opponent of Home Rule at once wrote to an evening paper
remonstrating against the indignity put upon one to whom she
was bitterly antagonistic. This called forth a private letter
of rebuke from her friend, Mr. A. F. Walter of the Times.
1889-1890 269
This was her reply —
E. L. L. TO Mr. A, F. Walter.
" My dear Mr. Walter, — I am very sorry if I have said
anything to annoy you, my dear, good English gentleman. I
respect and like and admire you as that so heartily, that I
covet your respect as a feather. I am conscious that I am
less of a Radical than I was — oh, tell it not in Gath ! for
I have a horror of turncoats. Still the inevitable action of
life has touched me like the rest, and I am far less insurgent —
in fact, not insurgent at all now. Yet, when there comes the
same old blast, I prick up my ears like the warhorse of
tradition and respond. It does seem to me, dear man,
unworthy of an English administration that a political
prisoner should be treated with any kind of indignity. That
he should be prevented by the powers in existence from
doing that which should perhaps threaten their existence,
that I can understand. It is the game. But these things
should be free from all appearance even of spite, and that
men in the position of Mr. O'Brien, and for his offence, should
have to submit to the indignity of a prison dress — No ! That
is Russian, not English ! I will listen to you, and if you can
convince me, I will say so. ... It is the repetition of all our
action in Ireland, and what have we got by it ? Our names
are not written in light across that page ! Put all the men
into prison who offend against the law so far ; but let them be
treated as political prisoners, not criminals — prevented, not in
any way tortured. Don't be vexed with me, Mr. Walter, my
dear man ! I want to see things as they are. I know I am
not a sentimentalist, but I am an old Radical, ever since I
had two ideas in my head, and the colour lasts though it may
get somewhat washed out by time. . . .
"In haste, as you can see by the writing and the reason-
ing,— Affectionately and respectfully yours,
" E. Lynn Linton."
In the early part of this year (1889) Mr. Linton returned
to England for the purpose of writing one of his books within
reach of the British Museum. There was a mutual agree-
ment between him and his wife that they should not meet,
270 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
and they did not. On leaving for America he wrote as
follows : —
" Dear old Love, — We must not lose sight of each
other again. Now that I am leaving, and satisfied that we have
done wisely by not meeting, I may say that it has been hard
for me too, I would have been glad to hold you to my heart
again, my lips on yours — but the parting would have been
too painful. Dearest, believe me, I would knit our lives
together again if I thought it might be ; but in some things
we have been unsuited, and if in the first fervour of our love
this difference could part us, might it not occur again ? I
could dare to face it, but it would be rank unwisdom. God
bless you, darling ! It is a happiness that only good thoughts
exist between us, that we are, and shall be always, good
friends. All that can interest you, you shall always know
of from me. Let me know the same of you. I will like to
know that you are the one friend to whom I may lay my
heart bare, sure of loving sympathy. . . .
" And now farewell, still dearly loved ! You love me too.
— Your old lover, W. J. LiNTON."
This year there was a movement on foot to raise a
memorial in Keswick to Sir John Bankes, Chief Justice of
the Common Pleas under Charles I, He was the son of a
Keswick " statesman," and in his will had marked his remem-
brance of his birthplace by a generous bequest to the poor of
the district in perpetuity. A marble statue was the form
which it was at first proposed the memorial should take, and
Mrs. Linton, ever ready to serve her beloved Keswick, wrote
an eloquent article on the subject in the Times,
But Keswick became divided on the matter, and local
politics raged around the proposed glorification of a West-
moreland worthy. The nett result was the intensification of
party feeling and differences which it has taken years to heal.
Finally, the erection of a cottage hospital to the memory of
Sir John was proposed ; but Keswick was out of temper, and
the matter had to be dropped.
I cannot resist quoting from one of several of Mrs. Linton's
letters, in which she refers half whimsically and wholly regret-
1889-1890 271
fully to the hot-bloodedness of the descendants of her father's
old parishioners —
" I see the dear vale keeps up its fighting blood. What
a beloved set of fractious fighters they are ! Can they
possibly agree on anything under the sun ? I wonder they
all accept the arithmetic of the schoolmaster — that some of
them do not take off their coats for two and two making
five ! It is a great pity they have all fallen out over this
monument. They ought at least to have managed to agree
on what should have been kept quite a neutral affair, and not
have been dragged in the miserable arena of local quarrels
and local politics."
Mrs. Linton, as has been said, was the recipient of letters
from all sorts and conditions of people, inspired by the
subjects of her novels or her journalism. The answering of
these she looked upon as a duty she owed to her public — a
duty to be attended to scrupulously and punctually. Here
is an example, of this period, in which she repudiates the
meaning read into her words by one of her audience, and
further takes the opportunity of denying that the front page
of the Queen was used by her as a pulpit for the propagation
of any doctrine, system, or belief.
E. L. L. TO X .
" ZSfth February 1889.
" Madam, — I am very sorry that anything I have written
should have caused you pain — but it is pain you have given
yourself. You have read into my words a meaning they
were not intended to convey, and have fastened on to me a
declaration of opinion I had not the slightest idea of myself.
The words of which you complain were simply meant to
show the transitory nature of individual remembrance —
which lasts for the generation only. It had nothing to do
with the soul or the life beyond the grave, or any ' ism '
whatsoever. It was simply the pathetic truth, that when
those who loved and remembered an unnoted little child
had died, that child itself would be forgotten and pass into
oblivion.
" I think this very evident and undeniable truth, pathetic
272 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
as it may be, is not one to call forth any kind of animadver-
sion.
"As for your^ private opinions — I defy the most
scrutinising reader of the Queen to construct a creed, a
philosophy, a political partisanship out of anything I have
said or ever shall say. I know the extraordinarily susceptible
character of my public, and am scrupulous to the last degree
not to brush by the remotest skirts of confession.
" I thank you for your kind expressions regarding my
works. — Faithfully yours, E. Lynn Linton."
On leaving Ireland Mrs. Linton went for a "cure" to
Royat - les - Bains, returning to England at the end of
September. She then went into Norfolk to be with her
sister, Mrs. Murray, in her last illness. Here she remained
during two months, devoting herself entirely to comforting
and sustaining in her last extremity " one lived with and
loved in childhood and maturity alike."
The prolonged and painful task then proved too much
for her, and she was forced to give up her place to her niece,
Miss Charlotte Murray.
" The strain," she wrote, " has not touched my health, but
it has my nerves, and in church to-day I broke down at one
of the hymns and sobbed. I was so ashamed of myself, but
I was suddenly swept away with a rush of sorrow for all
the pain I have been witnessing and all the pain that has to
come, and so — made a fool of myself, as I used when I was
younger."
That Mrs. Linton's brain was extraordinarily active for a
woman of sixty-eight, is shown by the fact that the following
year, 1890, which was marked by a long series of contributions
to Truth in addition to her other periodical work, produced
the large sum of £6^'^ earned by journalism alone.
Early this year she seized the opportunity afforded her
by the fact that a sketch of her life was to appear in a
periodical called Men and Women of the Day, to appeal
to the editor to put her right with the public on a matter in
which she felt she had received but scant justice.
1 Probably miswritten for ' ' my. "
1889-1890 273
E. L. L. TO THE Editor of " Men and Women of the Day."
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
\2th February 1890,
"Dear Sir, — If you could, without overrunning, put in
that last little paragraph, I should be glad. I am so con-
stantly spoken of as the enemy of my own sex. I was
accused in the Pall Mall Gazette of that worst of all vices in
my mind, selfishness, having now reached my own vantage
ground, cruelly and coldly desirous of keeping back all
others — that if this one trait of my character could be
brought forward, I should feel it an act of justice. I do not
suppose any one alive has done so much for others as I have.
If I had to make an income by revising MSS., I should make
a better one than I do now by writing them ! I have a bevy
of girls about me who look on me as a mother ; who come to
me for advice and sympathy, and who are no more afraid of
me than if I were one of themselves. I have been the mother
and friend of more than one young man of letters, helping
with all manner of help, and it does pain me to be set forth
as a selfish villain who cares only for her own advantage.
This is the one accusation that stings and rankles with me.
No one can say that I have ever truckled or been a snob, or
had that low kind of trivial ambition, desiring to be ' seen '
at grand places — but the charge of hatred to my own sex,
and because of my dislike to political rights of women, the
charge of envious desires to keep them back, can be made
with more plausibility, and it hurts me terribly when made.
" This letter is one of the foolish things that I do, to imagine
that the good, true human feeling, the sympathy and solidarity
of race, will make me, a stranger, understood by a stranger. I
risk it over again, and I hope I have not been too silly in
doing so. — Very faithfully yours, E. Lynn Linton."
In July, after revisiting the old Cumberland haunts with
her sister, Mrs. Gedge, she fled to Llanwrtydd Wells for a " cure."
The following extracts are from letters of this period : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
'■'■ 2']thjiily 1890.
" I have nothing more 'musing to tell you than that
Professor Skeat is here. He is the very best philologist
274 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
we have, as far before as Herbert Spencer is before
Drummond ; but he is of the non-self-advertising kind, and
he will get his recognition only after his death, and then
only among scholars, while appeals to unscholarly and
superficially educated people, whose ignorance he just a little
enlightens and only a little.
" The science of language, Lucy, has undergone great
changes and great developments since the time when Menes
the (hypothetical) Egyptian king sent two children to a
desert island to learn what would be the primitive language.
But they had goats with them, and when they were brought
back they bleated. Last century there was a hot controversy
among bookmen as to the original language, which some
asserted must have been Hebrew, as Adam spoke Hebrew
in Paradise ! ! "
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
" l<^th September 1890.
" Mars ought to be my planet, ' Star of the unconquered
will' — if by that we may mean resolute determination not
to be overcome by the pains, the difficulties, the struggles,
the sorrows of life. ... I think the constant struggle and
anxiety I have in literature keeps me braced up. A paper
has published a portrait of me, a little notice, says I am going
on for eighty, and the portrait is more like Mrs. Brownrigg,
who whipped two 'prentices to death, than me. It has not
a trace of me, and is libellously hideous ; so that is not
pleasant."
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
\st October 1890.
" We can all remain young if we like — comparatively
young — but age is as hard to us as youth. In youth we have
to learn habits, in age to resist them. We must keep the line
as long as we can. When nature herself has decreed our
falling out of step, then we cannot help it and we lag behind ;
but so long as we can, we must resist this death of the mind
and body which creeps on and tries to overtake us."
In October she was honoured with the chief place at a
1889-1890 275
banquet given at the Mansion House to " the International
Literary and Artistic Congress,"
Referring to her invitation, she writes —
" I am going as one of the ' representatives of literature '
to a grand dinner given by the Lord Mayor on Monday to
all the first literati of the day.
" I am going alone, . . . but I cannot do anything else.
I have no one to go with me ... on Monday at ' half-past
six for seven,' all alone in a crowd, and as bold as you please
to look at, and inside all of a trimmle."
After it is over she writes —
" I went to the Lord Mayor's dinner, and was the lady
guest of the evening. I was taken in by the Lord Mayor,
and sat on his right. It was very grand and fine. ... I
wore my best dress at the Mansion House, a black striped
silk and satin with a white front covered with jet, white
facings, and an apparently open body of white covered with
jet. Eat, blesh yer? I eat some turtle soup and a very wee
bit of filetted soles and the vegetables belonging to a slice
of mutton, and that was all ; no sweets, no wine, no fruit, no
made dishes, nothing."
On 1 2th November she writes —
" I have just sent ^5 to General Booth's scheme for
Darkest England.
" If you were to read the book, I think you would
transfer your Zenana efforts to this bold, comprehensive, and
practical scheme of salvation, in every sense, for the vilest
scum and da7igerous classes of England. It has stirred me
deeply."
The following letter of this date, though of no public
importance, is so characteristic that it may well find a place
here. There had been some confusion about a clock to
which Mrs. Linton had become entitled by way of a legacy,
and she had written to her niece in a letter beginning
" My best-beloved Woolly-pate, wrong again ! " in which she
had proved to her own satisfaction that she was not in a fog
but that her niece was. A letter from Miss Gedge put the
affair in a very different light, and this was Mrs. Linton's
reply —
276 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
E. L. L. TO Miss Ada Gedge.
" Ada, I humbly beg your parding, and retract the wool.
I see now exactly how and where the fault and muddle and
confusion have been. It was the old story, Ada, of the shield
— one side red and the other blue, and the knights fought
to the death each for his own colour. Each was right for
himself as a partial truth ; each wrong for the other as a
whole truth. So there it is as so often in this life — blue and
red, and both right, though only one side seen. I have
written to Mr. J and expressed a desire for the black
clock if not given to Mrs. C -, in which case I will content
myself with the white. And never, oh, never, will I suspect
that hairy head of yours of the remotest approach to wool !
Perish the thought ! . . .
" Well, good-bye, my hair-headed maid, Ada. . . .
" Your penitent and shamed and abashed and atrocious
aunt, Elizabeth Lynn Linton."
CHAPTER XX
1891-1892
THE year 1891, though uneventful, was productive of
some interesting letters. The following tells of her
first meeting with Mr. Thomas Hardy, for whose
work she had the profoundest admiration : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
2'JthJantiafy 1891.
" Yesterday a stranger called on me. The boy said Harvey.
I was in a fume — could not make out who it was — went round
and round the central point, till the stranger said he was going
out of town to-day. 'Where?' says I. 'To Dorchester,'
says he. Then I ups with a shout and a clapping of my
hands, and says I, ' Oh, now I know who you are ! You are
Thomas Hardy and not Harvey' — (the author of Far from
the Madding Croivd, etc.). He was so pleased when / was so
pleased, and stayed here for two hours. He is a nice bit
manny, but of a sadder and more pessimistic nature than I
am. It was very nice to see him. We have missed each
other twenty times. He said his wife wants to see me, she
had heard I was so handsome ! ! ! Says I, ' Then tell her I am
not.' Says he, ' No, I certainly cannot do that, because you
are ! ' So there, Miss Lucy, compliments in one's old age ! "
The following letter from one of her heroes in real life
gave her great satisfaction. Her reply is interesting as
showing how conscious she was of her own literary short-
comings, and yet how powerless she was to keep herself from
the " pouring out," and " slopping over," which she so much
deplored.
277
278 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Mr. Herbert Spencer to E. L. L.
"64 Avenue Road, Regent's Park, N.W.,
27//^ Ma7'ch 1 89 1.
" Dear Mrs. Lynn Linton, — I have just been reading
with delight your article on ' Our Illusions.' How I envy
you your vigorous style, your telling metaphors, and your
fertility of allusion !
" Surely this essay should not be buried in the pages of
a magazine. You ought to republish a selection of your
longer essays, and first among them should come this
one. Clearly its value will be as great generations hence
as now.
" Should you republish it, there are two additions which I
would suggest. While you have given abundant illustrations
of the truth that most things are not so good as they seem,
you have not sufficiently emphasised the truth that in many
cases things are better than they seem — acts are not un-
frequently misinterpreted to the disadvantage of the actor.
One may, for example, having paid a cabman more than the
full fare, refuse to give him still more, and may be held by
him and by by-standers to be restrained by parsimony ;
whereas the motive may be entirely the desire to check the
growth of abuses — the feeling that resistance to extortion is
needful for public welfare. Or, again, one may persist in
putting down smoking in a non-smoking compartment of a
railway carriage, not from personal aversion to the smoke,
but from the desire to maintain wholesome law for the benefit
of passengers in general, and one may be regarded for doing
this as a selfish curmudgeon. You have referred to cases in
which the fact, even when known, is illusively interpreted,
but it is well to emphasise more fully the truth, that the real
interpretation may be more favourable than the interpretation
which appears probable.
" Another truth which I think you ought to point out is,
that many of the illusions under which we labour are due to
the non-adaptation of human nature to social conditions, and
that when the adaptation approaches nearer to completion,
the difference between fact and fancy will be by no means
as great as now. — Sincerely yours,
" Herbert Spencer."
1891-1892 279
E. L. L. TO Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
z^th March 189 1.
"My dear Mr. Spencer, — You know what your kind
letter is to me, one of the big honours of my life ! You are
quite right, as of course, and I might have made a point of
the illusions of condemnation ; perhaps, indeed, those are
more frequent, and surely more disastrous, than the illusions
of belief, respect, and of love ! But I am always afraid of
'summering and wintering' a subject too much, and yet, try
as I may, I cannot get to that most valuable of all literary
qualities — reserve — the quality which no writer possessed to
more perfection than my dear old 'father' Landor. He
used to say that he always left a subject before he had sated
his reader, and always left it suggested rather than explained.
In fiction, Bret Harte has this quality of suggestiveness, of
reserve, of indication rather than of exhaustive description,
but I have the tendency to ' pour out ' and ' slop over ! '
Perhaps you are surprised at my bringing in Bret Harte as
a master. To me he is, of style and treatment, of method.
His work is slight, and does not pretend to a philosophy, but
to my mind it is simply perfect in method, or, as the artists
say, technique. I hope you are fairly well, my dear master.
This bitter weather is not favourable for sensitive and
delicate organisations.
" I am greatly exercised by the Jackson verdict. Did you
hear that the wives of the two judges were on the bench ?
An eye - witness of the trial told me. They were there to
keep their lords up to the mark. But the matter will not
rest here. If this is to be the law for women, so must it be
for men, and no deserted wife should be able to claim what a
deserted husband is denied. How the old pillars are crum-
bling, and how fast the process ! My thanks and grateful
respect. — Always your faithful friend and admirer,
"E. Lynn Linton."
It will have been gathered from much that has gone
before, that Mrs. Linton was capable of that highest kind of
friendship and intercourse, which is not weakened, is not
even strained, by mere difference of opinions honestly held.
280 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
She could not only agree to differ, but enjoyed the striking
of mental flint against mental steel, recognising that individual
thought is but a dull thing in itself, and that the most
brilliant light is often caught at the moment of most violent
impact. Discourtesy in discussion she would not endure,
but " the clash of arms her spirit warmed," and she never
grew angry though her opponent got within her guard.
Her friendship with Mr. William Woodall, the well-
known member for Hanley and the champion of Woman's
Suffrage, was a case in point.
" My excellent and most worthy foe," " my very dear
enemy," " my dear old antagonist," are the terms in which
she addresses him.
Now and again, indeed, she seems inclined to distrust
herself, and shrinks from the strain which certain issues might
put upon her chivalry. " We will not talk of politics," she
writes, " as the questions on hand are too grave to admit of
joking, and as we have hitherto tilted with only straws and
peacocks' feathers, we must not come to ash-sticks or cold
steel,"
And again, when she was about to give a dinner to her
political opponents — •
E. L. L. TO Mr. William Woodall.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
1st April 1891. (This is not ^.poisson a'Avril!)
"My excellent and most worthy Foe, — Your
abominable principles are not to be paralysed for the
occasion. On the 27th /, I myself, I, will be the only
righteous person of the assembly. You will all be active
rebels or passive permitters of iniquity — all willing to dis-
integrate the glorious old empire for the pleasure of Mr. Tim
Healy and Dr. Sexton, together with the Clan-na-Gael and
the rest of the ' patriots ' — you will (not all, but some) be
willing to upset society, destroy the feminine characteristics,
and make yourselves slaves for the pleasure of a few noisy
females, who want to rule where they cannot govern. And
you shall all talk and pronounce and say what you will, and
I will be as meek as a mouse and not break even a straw by
1891-1892 281
way of lance. And I am very glad that my dear arch foe
will, and can, come, and I look upon it as a feather in my
cap as big as a whole ostrich !
" So farewell. Rebel and suicide as you are, I bend my
old head reverently before your pure and sincere nature. — The
one righteous person, E. Lynn Linton."
"Justin M'Carthy is coming, and that is a delight. The
Moultons and the Laboucheres. We shall have 2, fine party —
splendid ! I am so glad."
The following quotation from a letter to her sister describes
one of her rare visits in these later years to the theatre : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
2\st April 1 89 1.
" I went to see a play yesterday afternoon — for the first
time for a year — almost a year. It was all in dumb show,
L Enfant Pj'odigue, and the male characters were dressed as
Pierrots in white with chalked faces and scarlet clown lips.
The first two acts were very good ; the first amusing, the
second interesting. The last was pathetic to such an extent
that I sobbed — sobbed over the wonderful acting without
words, of whitewashed faces and clown-painted mouths ! It
was marvellously done. The suitable expression given to
these mask-like faces v/as simply marvellous."
In July she paid another visit to the old Cumberland
haunts in company with the Gedges. Lowwood on Winder-
mere was made their base, from which the old familiar places
were re-discovered, and old memories revived.
It was twenty-six years since she had seen Brantwood ;
and Ruskin, hearing that she was in the neighbourhood,
invited her to visit him in her old home on Coniston. But
she could not bring herself to re-open what had been so
painful a chapter in her life, and excused herself The
associations were still too poignant, and the pages shut down
had better remain so.
It was in the following year (1892) that I had the good
282 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
fortune to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Lynn Linton.
Our first meeting was at the table- d'hote of the Raven
Hotel, Droitwich. For some years she had been much
troubled with rheumatism, and did a yearly " cure," now
abroad at Royat or Spa, now nearer home at Llanwrtydd
Wells, Harrogate, Gilsland Spa, or Droitwich.
I had heard that the celebrated novelist was expected,
and recognised her at once in the handsome and somewhat
portly lady with the strong but tender mouth, the curiously
protruding eyes, half concealed by huge spectacles, and the
upright carriage of one who knew that she was a " some-
body." She sat immediately opposite to us at table, and
carried on an animated conversation with Sir Reginald
M , one of the handsomest old men in London, on her
right, and with a well-known judge at the Dublin Horse
Show, on her left. I longed to listen to what was evidently
excellent talk, but my next-door neighbour was not at the
dinner-table only to dine, and I was called on to do my
part. Our conversation dealt with magazines, books, editors,
and kindred subjects ; and, as it turned out, scraps of it
floated across the narrow table to ears which, their owner
often told me afterwards, could hear two conversations at
once.
As we filed out after dinner, I felt a touch upon my arm,
and heard a never-to-be-forgotten voice saying —
" Are you one of us ? You must bring your wife to my
room and have a talk."
It was thus that she insisted on the free-masonry of
literature — even with one of the humblest of her fellows.
What talks of books we had with her, in her bed-sitting-
room, during those three great weeks, and how we enjoyed
ourselves over the vagaries of our hotel companions.
Here are a few notes of these early conversations, which
chance has preserved.
She did not deny the existence of God ; but the goodness
of a Creator, who permits so much suffering, was inexplicable.
The old Olympian religions seemed to her much more
logical than Christianity. Morality she believed to be con-
ditional, and largely dependent upon longitude and latitude.
1891-1892 283
The resurrection and immortality of the body was to her
inconceivable. If immortal, at what stage of life is the body
revived in the next world ? One changes so entirely from
twenty to forty, from forty to seventy.
If God sympathises with us. He must be always suffering,
and this is inconceivable in One who is all-powerful.
The most exquisite thing in the world is the threefold
love of father, mother, and child. There is nothing real but
love. And what a mystery this love is ! Why do you love
one whom another passes by unnoticed ?
She loathed girls who study the nude in mixed classes.
This deliberate immodesty is far worse than the rashness
with which a girl goes astray on the impulse of the moment.
Girls should be brought up most strictly, and not given a
chance of roving. The mothers must not trust what they
say, but must watch for themselves.
Middle-aged men are more dangerous to innocence than
young men.
A European war would be a blessing, as it must be
succeeded by a long peace and lessen the taxation of the
people.
She saw no reason to suppose that people had a further
existence, but inveighed against those who believed they had
immortal souls, yet spent their whole lives in the pursuit of a
golf ball.
Nothing is so comforting as the inexorable law of nature.
(In a letter of this year I find her enlarging on the same
subject. She writes, " I find such calming power in the
acceptance of inexorable law. No personality tortures us —
no evil fate — no capricious act and deed of voluntary malice
or of voluntary chastisement, but the law by which, when an
insect lays its eggs in the bark of an oak tree we have an
oak-gall, when we pass through the country of snakes and
mosquitoes we get stung and bitten. Oh, the grand patience
that comes with that conviction ! This acceptance of the
inevitable is my salvation ! ")
Children are a luxury, and to have too many of them is as
bad as any other form of intemperance.
It is wrong to take advantage of a man's ignorance to
284 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
buy a thing from him at less than its proper value ; it is as
wrong- as for an army to pillage a town. But the present
state of civilisation has so cultivated feelings of abstract pity
that, where we may not pillage a community, we may use
our superior knowledge to best an individual in the way of
business.
On the other hand, trade would be at a standstill if the
laws of Christianity were strictly observed.
Mohammedanism has had more influence on the world
than Christianity.
How can it matter by what name we call upon God? If
a child is crying in the dark, does the mother refuse to go to
it because it is calling " Nurse"?
It is permissible to tell lies in response to a question
which the questioner has no right to put, and where to refuse
to answer would serve the questioner's turn. It is one of the
great problems of life to gauge the relative importance of the
great rules of life and, where two seem to clash, promptly to
recognise which is paramount.
Her talk was always stimulating and suggestive, and
forced one out of emptiness of phrases. It bustled one's
brains, and her companions found their mental bullion turned
by magic into current coin. She welcomed courteous dissent,
and was ever as ready to learn as she was to teach. Some-
times I think she deliberately contradicted, as one knocks at
a door ^^ pour savoir s'il y a quelqu'un a la maiso7i." She liked
to put you on your mettle and see what you were made of
This she did with those who professed to think at all.
With such she was like an eagle in her keenness. The
one drawback was that most other conversation, after hers,
seemed intolerably flat and insipid. It was like a return to
penny nap after a visit to Monte Carlo. With those not
mentally equipped she was just a kindly, gracious "old
tabby," as she often called herself, and as gentle and womanly
as she had, but just before, been vivid and assertive.
Early this year, Mrs. Gulie Moss, an enthusiastic admirer
of Mrs. Linton's work, had obtained permission from Messrs.
Chatto & Windus and Messrs. Hurst & Blackett to make
extracts from those novels of hers of which they held the
1891-1892 285
copyrights. She considered it a misfortune that much of
Mrs. Linton's best thought was lost to those who had neither
the time nor the incHnation to read fiction. She therefore
set herself to bring together the " most brilliant findings in
social and religious subjects " scattered throughout the novels,
and published them in a handbook, entitled Ft-ee Shooting.
To say that Mrs. Linton was astonished at the compli-
ment thus paid to her writings is to understate the facts.
She was staggered at the unexpected honour. That she did
a good day's work and created a passing interest with it she
was aware, but that anybody should look upon it as more
than journeyman's labour was something quite beyond her
modest estimate.
This was her letter of thanks for an advance copy of the
little volume : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gulie Moss.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
215^' May 1892.
" Dear Madam, — I was never more surprised in the whole
of my long life than when I received yesterday from the
publishers the pretty-looking book you have edited. To say
that I am gratified is to say nothing. Do you not know the
strong chaotic kind of gratitude one has when a great honour,
a great grace, comes quite unexpectedly from a hitherto
unknown and unsuspected source? It is overwhelming, and
beggars one of words by the very force of its own wealth.
" If you knew me personally, you would see how little of
the author I have in me. I write what I believe, and what I
ardently want to see others accept and live by ; but when that
is done I pass on and take up something else. I never look
back on what I have written, and never remember what has
been said for or against me — save in the case of one or two
cutting insults, which I still burn to avenge if I could !
" I do not ' carry my books ' with me expecting others to
have read them, so that, when a thing of this stupendous
honour is done me, I am lost in part amazement and part
pleasure so great as to be almost pain. I do not know how
to thank you — I cannot! What can I do to show my gratitude?
I have no house to ask you to come and stay in. I live in a
286 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
small apartment in these Mansions, and have no spare room
at all — only my own bedroom and sitting-room. But if you
come to London you would come to dine with me, which is
all the hospitality I can show ! I was once at Falmouth for
the summer. . . . Those were the days when I could zvalk
and scramble and enjoy the country and botanise, and when
I was still in the full vigour of an exceptionally vigorous
womanhood. It must be eighteen or twenty years ago. If I
had as much courage as a mouse, I would go again, but I
should break my heart over the difference between then and
now — between a walk of ten or twelve miles taken as a matter
of course, and a crawl of a mile or so with frequent stoppages
and discomfort of breathing. But indeed I should like to
shake your hand and look into your face ! Perhaps a few
tears would gather into my eyes — they come soon under the
stress of emotion — but they would be clear enough to look at
you with grateful affection, as I hope indeed some day they
may ! Thank you again ! — Most sincerely yours, and grate-
fully, E. Lynn Linton."
In June she again took her courage in her hands
and journeyed to Ireland, this time to Belfast, where she
stayed with Mr. (now Sir) James Henderson ^ at Oakley
House, Windsor Park.
Through his influence she was enabled to be present at
the monster Unionist meeting, to which no other lady was
admitted.
The outcome of this visit was her little book About Ulster,
published this year by Messrs, Methuen & Co. Amongst
other letters it called forth one from Mr, Linton, which I give
as a good example of the voluminous correspondence carried
on between husband and wife until the death of the former
in 1897.
W. J. Linton to E. L. L.
"P.O. Box 1 139, Newiiaven, Conn,,
2.2nd July 1892.
"Dearest Lizzie, — Glad enough I was to get your
Enniskillen letter, for it had seemed a long time since one of
1 Lord Mayor of Belfast in 189S.
or TME
OF
CalifoS^
WILLIAM JAMES LINTON
IN OLD AGE
FROM THE ENGRAVING BY MR. W. BISCOMBE GARDNER
By per mission of the Proprietors of the "English Illustrated Magazine"
1891-1892 287
your ever-welcome letters had brightened me. You are a
wonderful woman, and, spite of fatigue and discomfort, I can
well understand how you must have enjoyed your Irish
exploit, which I almost envy you. I wish indeed I could
have been with you, for I have lost no interest in that sad old
Irish business, holding as ever against the iniquity of even a
much moderated land system, though I do not believe in the
redemption of Ireland by any parliament of Parnell's and
Healy's, or understand the possibility of an Irish separate
nationality. Where Duffy failed, no Dillon or O'Brien has a
chance of success. I am looking anxiously for the result of
the elections, hoping even yet for Gladstone's defeat, fairly
sure, however, that though he may come into ' power ' he will
be powerless to work his will.
" Writing of Duffy, do you recollect (perhaps not) that
after years of work for the Irish Nation, I left it with hard
words to Duffy on Mazzini's account? It was a bitter
quarrel, hardly to be forgiven in a man's life ; but when I was
last in England I was surprised by a very friendly letter from
him, then at Nice, a letter which spoke much for the largeness
and generosity of the man's nature, and gave me great
pleasure. Of course I answered him in the same spirit.
Lately he has sent me his Conversations zvitJi Carlylc, taking
opportunities to speak of me there with the same heartiness.
It is pleasant, dear Liz ! to find in one's old days that one's
better parts are recollected instead of the worst.
" Your book is very good, well argued and timely. I have
not written for years on Ireland. My last, anti-Gladstone, was
in letters to the Newcastle Chronicle, and some brevities have
found place in the New York Nation. But I can only repeat
myself, and have perhaps already written too much. I bate
no jot of the hope of the future of early dreaming, but I know
how much I ante-dated it. My ultima verba are probably in
European Republicans, Recollections of Mazzini atid his Friejids,
which Lawrence & Bullen will bring out this ' fall,' if they
do not want more ameliorations than my ill-nature will
submit to.
" So you dream of the old lover ! Was it not all a dream ?
Beloved ! One looks back on life as if it were all no more
than that — the long seventy, the long eighty years only
dreams of the night. I can recollect in young hours
speculating whether the whole of a life were any more than
288 THE LIFE OF MUS. LYNN LINTON
a long dream, and then hoping for the other-world awakening.
Only another phantasy. Now I am content that I can be
alive and cheerful and trust the Lord of the past to care for
the future, mine included. What matters it? It seems to
me enough to live in good repute, and to have still so much
of love — the most, dear love, from you. Thank God for
memory. — Your old lover, your true, loving friend,
"W. J. Linton."
That she had to pay for her jaunt to Ireland is plain from
the following extract from a letter to Mrs. Campbell Praed,
written from Gilsland Spa : " For myself, I am at a queer,
roughish, provincial, and eminently one-horse place — all but
crippled with rheumatism, scarce able to stand upright for my
poor old agonised back, scarce able to go hobbling and
tripping downstairs or up, for my poor aching old knees.
My stay in Ireland, and then my dear Keswick, has done for
me, till I get set to rights by the sulphur waters here. I hope
soon to be made strong and as good as new.
" I have no news naturally that would interest you, I had
a lovely time in Ireland with one of the Irish landlords whose
name is Anathema Maranatha ^ to the English Liberal ; and I
wrote a little book about Ulster after 1 had been at the
Belfast Convention and taken Ulsteria badly. But I will not
bother you with the views you do not and cannot share. If
you went over to Ireland and saw with your own soft eyes,
you would come back ' converted,' having found salvation as
I have done ! "
^ Mrs. Linton is, of course, here guilty of a vulgar error. — G. S. L.
CHAPTER XXI
1893-1895
THE year 1893 found Mrs. Linton still at war with the
Advancing Woman. Ever quick to recognise the
weak points in the armour of her adversaries, and ever
brilliant, swift, and fearless in attack, year by year she fought
her arduous fight, to the satisfaction of editors who kept their
arenas sanded for the combatants on this side or that. Year
after year she entered the lists and never knew herself beaten.
And now in the seventy-first year of her age she buckled on
her armour for a prolonged campaign.
This time her field of operations was the Lady's Pictorial
and in her novel. The One too Many, she vigorously and, it
must be confessed, somewhat recklessly made war against
Girton and all its works. It had become with her almost an
obsession that the feminine character taken collectively was
in a state of progressive " worsement."
Much, no doubt, that she wrote was true and right, and it
was brilliantly set down. Unfortunately, she damaged her
case by betraying a good deal of ignorance concerning the
real mode of existence obtaining among those whom she
indicted. She further weakened her argument by allowing
the "dear, sweet, old-fashioned girl," whom she places in
juxtaposition to the by no means sweet " girl graduates," to
make shipwreck of her life and end her existence in a
pond !
Notwithstanding these blemishes — partly, no doubt,
because of them — the story attracted considerable attention,
and when, in the following year, it was published in book
form, with the somewhat provocative inscription, "To
19
290 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
the sweet girls still left among us, who have no part in
the new revolt, but are content to be dutiful, innocent, and
sheltered," the champions on the other side took the field.
Here is one of the skirmishes, in which, I am bound to
say, Mrs. Linton seems to me to have been worsted.
Letter from a Girton Girl to the Editor of
THE "Lady's Pictorial."
" Dear Sir, — As a constant subscriber for many years
to your paper, and as a late student of Girton College, I
write to protest against the caricature of Girton students
contained in the story you have been publishing, called The
One too Many. I left Girton ten years ago, and since then
I have kept closely in touch with college life and college
students, and I state without any hesitation and without any
reservation, that such women as are described in your story
are unknown at Girton. I have never met such characters,
I have never heard such conversation as theirs, either in
college or out of it, and I firmly believe you will never find
any one who has.
" It is evident, of course, that the writer of the story can
have had little or no acquaintance with Girton or Cambridge
women-students.
" As an example of her ignorance of facts of common
knowledge, she continually writes of ' Girton B.A.'s ' and
of ' Girton prize-girls.' But where ignorance in this case
matters little, the author's statements as to the language
and habits (I refer to the smoking and constant taking
of stimulants indulged in by these ' Girton B.A.'s ') are
calculated to create very great and unjust prejudice in
the minds of those who read your paper, and who, know-
ing nothing of the manner and life of university women,
cannot judge for themselves of the truth or falsehood of the
descriptions.
" Many foolish and ridiculous attacks on women university
students are published from time to time, but I believe that
this story, The One too Many, stands alone for its offensive
pictures of the so - called results of Girton training and
education.
" To justify the language I have used, I have only to
1893-1895 291
remind you that of the ' Girton B.A.'s ' in the story, one
marries a policeman, having first nursed him through an
ilhiess and then proposed to him ; one flirts outrageously
with a married man in the presence of his wife, the intimate
friend of her ' pal ' who marries the policeman ; the third
constantly advocates suicide, and is consequently the indirect
cause of the heroine's death by her own hand. All drink,
smoke, swear, use vulgar language, and are represented as
knowing and talking about unfitting subjects.
" And the writer does not merely indulge in generalities,
and say, ' These will be the results of the higher education of
women.'
" She takes an existing and well-known university college
and three representatives of that college, and, after painting
them in the most forbidding colours, she has the audacity to
say —
" ' These aj-e the results of the training given at Girton
College; these are the results of the higher education of
women.'
" Every one knows how strong some authors' prejudices
are, but I should like to ask the following questions : —
"(i) Has the author of The One too Many ever met any
Girton student who in the least resembles any one of her
three 'Girton B.A.'s'?
"(2) If not, can it be considered fair to depict purely
imaginary and entirely offensive characters as embodying
the results of the training and teaching given at a well-known
and existing institution ?
" I write also to you as editor to protest against such a
story as The One too Many being allowed a place in a ladies'
paper of the standing which yours occupies. The Lady's
Pictorial on the one page stabs us in this way, and on the
next gives photographs and details of training and careers
such as the editor would seem, by implication, to believe will
lead to the most disastrous results.
" I know by experience that a university scholarship or
higher examination list is no sooner published than the
successful candidates are besieged by applications for their
portraits, and their successes are chronicled in your paper as
worthy of imitation in others. — I am, yours faithfully,
"A Late Student of Girton College,
Cambridge."
292 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
E. L. L. TO THE Editor of the "Lady's Pictorial."
"Dear Sir, — I am sorry that you should have been in
any way troubled through me or my work ; sorry, too, that
I have offended others by what I have written. I am afraid,
though, that the students at Girton, etc., will not be able to
find a law that shall prevent their coming into the sphere of
fiction and its uses. As the old Laura Matildas, the Blue-
stockings, the fine ladies with spleen and vapours, the dull
drudges who 'suckled fools and chronicled small beer,' the
flirts, hoydens, gamblers, horsey women — in short, the whole
list of foils to the ideal — have been used in fiction, so will
the newer developments of womanhood, whether the set-
ting be Girton or Newnham, a London newspaper office or a
political platform.
" I wanted a link between four girls, and the best that
occurred to me was a collegiate friendship. And I wanted
to show that intellectual training may exist with (i) absence
of womanliness, though in this character are many of the
more virile virtues, as in Effie ; with (2) want of charm, as in
Carrie ; with (3) want of mental health and common sense, as
in Laura; with (4) want of right feeling, as in Julia. If your
correspondent maintains that the higher .education changes
the elemental qualities of character, and that, given such
natures and temperaments as I have described, a knowledge
of classics and mathematics will alter them, I think she is
wrong. If she maintains that no girl - graduate smokes,
drinks more than is good for her, talks slang, swears, or
knows more of the darker secrets of human life than is
fitting, I know she is wrong. If she thinks that no girl of
this higher education would come between husband and wife,
on the plea of her own greater fitness to understand and
companion him, I knozu there, too, that she is wrong. And
if she hopes to make the very name of Girton sacred, so that
it shall not be employed as a background in fiction, save
under conditions of commendation, I fear she will miss her
mark as completely as she has done in her belief that the
moral nature of women is, or can be, changed by intellectual
acquirement.
" But really, is not your correspondent a little too hasty
in thus taking up the cudgels for the honour of a place which
1893-1895 293
is only named as a locality and is not attempted to be
described? Imagine any Cambridge man writing such a
letter of an author who had made four fops, or roues^ or
forgers, or what not, former 'Varsity men ! It is this ultra-
sensitiveness of the Advanced Women under the slightest
and most good - natured ridicule which lays them open to
worse censure than mine. If they want to be treated with
the quasi-mystic and poetic respect of the days of chivalry,
when they were the property of the men of the family, and
their honour was those men's care, they must keep out of
harm's way and not come into the open to fight with men,
and like men, themselves. They cannot expect to have the
good of both states — the immunity from censure belonging
to the claustral life, and the good things picked up in the
scrimmage of an active and public one. In my own person
I have to submit to abuse of a very broad kind if I write
what chances to offend an unknown adversary; yet my worst
offence is to make caps that fit, and to hit the eyes of unseen
Efreets with a few random date stones ; for I write only
of types which mean no one in particular. When your
correspondent has been as well abused as I have been,
subjected to indecent and foul-mouthed anonymous letters
from zuoiiien as I continually am, accused of faults which, if
true, would ruin any one's claims to be considered an honest
or honourable member of society— all for the sin of preferring
the more modest and womanly type to the noisy, the un-
dutiful, and the unsexed — then perhaps she will become less
sensitive in the matter of a place taken as a setting for certain
characters in fiction, none of which is individual or photo-
graphic.
" All the same, I am sorry if I have annoyed any one, and
very sorry to have given you uneasiness, or to have cast the
smallest shade over the pages of the Lady's Pictorial. —
Faithfully yours,
" E. Lynn Linton."
Mrs, Linton was soon made aware that the terms of her
dedication were misleading. She had intended that the
Girton girls should stand as a warning, but she had not
intended that her hapless heroine should stand as a pattern.
In the following reply to a lady, who had courteously
pointed out the discrepancy, she explains the position : —
294 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
E. L. L. TO Miss Alyce Bagram.
^^ January 1894.
" Dear Miss Bagram, — I did not mean ' Moira ' to be
my idea of a perfect girl. I would not be so foolish as to
make a weak, pathetic, crushed, and invertebrate creature like
that an ideal. I wanted to show her as ruined, bruised, and
slain by circumstances — and by the impulse of the moment.
I have given a wrong note. Because I inscribed the book to
all nice girls, I had no thought that any one would take Moira
to be one, but that they would take the Girton girls as the
thing to avoid. I must say this — the incapacity for fair
judgment in the ordinary woman is the most distressing
thing about her. She takes one view, and not angels them-
selves can make her accept another. But I quite acknowledge
my own blindness in giving a wrong impulse by the dedica-
tion. No ! I cannot make a sequel.
"la member of the Pioneer Club ? By no means. Mrs.
I know slightly. Don't become an up-to-date girl. I am
sure you are very sweet and ingenuous now, but if you join
the advanced school you will lose all your intrinsic charm.
Do you think I want you to be yea-nay little pinafore misses ?
No ! but I want you to have respect for authority, and rever-
ence for your parents, and love for men who are worthy of
love — all the sweet womanly virtues, which make woman half
divine, and the true antiseptic of society. You don't find
these qualities in the Heavenly Twins, Yellow Asters, and
all the new women who set themselves to blaspheme nature
and God and good.
" I am not hard to girls — only to the new woman I am
implacable. All the girls I know like me and I love them. —
Very sincerely yours, E. Lynn Linton."
The present seems a suitable opportunity for presenting
to my readers the reminiscences of Mrs. Linton, with which
Miss Beatrice Harraden has been kind enough to favour me.
This delightful account of the friendship of the old " Viking,"
whose work was well-nigh finished, with the young "B.A.,"
whose work was but lately begun, is peculiarly apposite here,
illustrating as it does the contest that was continually going
on in Mrs. Linton between affection for the individual and
1893-1895 295
disapproval of the type — a contest in which the personal
feeling was always in the end victorious.
Note by Miss Beatrice Harraden.
" At the time of dear Mrs. Linton's death I wrote in the
Bookman a short account of my first meeting with her, and
the very precious friendship which arose out of it. I could of
course add considerably to it, but the main point on which
I could enlarge is the persistency of her robust and stimulat-
ing influence on the character of those whom she loved and
left. It is just a year^ since she passed away from us, and I
feel more than ever the abiding force of her strong individu-
ality. She was herself so gallant and brave, that it would
seem disloyalty to her memory not to make the attempt to be
brave and gallant oneself, under any circumstances whatso-
ever. She was most generous about other people's work, and
her praise and encouragement were always bracing. You felt,
after reading one of her kind letters, that you must ' pull
yourself together ' to justify what she had so generously said
of you. I think that all her friends must have felt that. She
will always remain, to quote her own words to me, ' as a silver
trumpet heartening to the strife.' Perhaps I have felt this
all the more because she never failed, during my many months
of illness, to encourage and stimulate me to get better. ' You
will recover your health and do good work, and I shall live
to be proud of my little dear,' she wrote constantly. She had
the tenderest heart imaginable, and I know she had a very
special tender love for me. Our friendship was broken into
partly by my absence abroad ; and partly by differences of
feeling and method and opinion, but she always loved me,
and when we met again after two or three years' separation,
she was still *my Viking lady,' and I was still her 'little
B.A.' Even at the risk of appearing to be sentimental, I
dwell with lingering emphasis on this gentler side of her
character, because it is as true of her as the pugilistic side.
She took me into her heart from the onset, and though she
^ This was written in the summer of 1899. — G. S. L.
296 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
distinctly gave me to understand that she did not approve
of me — for I had committed the terrible sin of receiving a
modern young woman's education — yet she was prepared
to overlook a great deal because she loved me. She writes
once —
"'In spite of all your wicked aberrations from Mrs.
Partington's ideas of the limit to which the Atlantic should
flow, I love you, and always have done, and always shall do.
I never let any abstract ideas of what is fitting or the reverse
touch a hair of the head of the person. I fight the idea, but
when it comes to the creature's self, I love quand mcme. —
My B.A.'s friend and loving old ViKlNG.'
" At an early stage of our friendship she gave me an old
brooch which she had had for forty years, and which had
been given to her at the beginning of her own literary career ;
and later on she told me that she had left me her writing-
table — godmother's gifts, she called them — for my own literary
christening. She took the greatest interest in my accepted
and rejected MSS. — generally rejected in those days ; but she
never once offered to help me to place any story, and never
once gave me any letter of introduction to any editor. I have
since thought this all the more strange, because I hear what
immense trouble in that way she took for others. I suppose
she thought that it was better if possible to fight one's battle
alone. But she sent me out to it full of hope and courage,
and buoyed up with the consciousness that she believed in
me. And that is the healthiest kind of help. Looking back
now I realise how much I owe to her in so many ways quite
apart from love and friendship. Herself a veteran writer, she
took myself, a young beginner, into her life on equal terms.
She opened her home to me at once, and I was free to come
and go and take my part in her Saturday afternoons, where I
made many delightful friendships — also her gift to me, which
will last me all my life. If any specially interesting people
came, she generally managed that I should speak with them,
and she never failed to tell them that I had taken my B.A.
degree at the London University, and yet had had the audacity
to seek her friendship, and that I was intending to become a
1893-1895 297
successful authoress. * And she will be,' she always added.
I tell all this merely to show how generous-minded and open-
hearted she was. But the greatest pleasure and interest of
those afternoons was when she got into discussion with any
one. She would become very angry and emphatic at times,
but I never thought she lost her delicate sense of courtesy and
fine sensitiveness. I have seen people show signs of incipient
rudeness to her over some hot discussion, and then the sound
of her singularly sweet voice restored them to themselves.
But of course to me the greatest pleasure of all was to get her
alone, and when she was in a non-combative mood ; when the
much-vexed question of the modern young woman was put
aside for the time, and the inferiority of woman to man was
allowed to be in abeyance for the moment ; when examina-
tions and the woman's suffrage and the bicycle and other
' abhorrences ' were safely slumbering. Then and then only
one learnt to know the real Mrs. Lynn Linton. Working
diligently at her embroidery, she would speak of her girlhood's
troubles and her passionate desire and attempts to educate
herself. Then one heard the story of her own emancipation
from a close-pressing environment ; the story of her hard work
and struggles in London ; of her successes, disappointments,
failures ; of her friendships and disillusions ; of her strong
belief in the good of human nature, and her robust delight in
life and everything which life had to offer of its best and
truest. And it was not all listening either, for Mrs. Linton
was ever most uninsistent — if I may use that word — about
herself. And that too was a lesson to be learnt from her.
So we sat and talked together, now of her past life and
present, now of my young life, my past and present ; and
we spoke of religion and philosophy and languages, and
sometimes ended up with an ode from Horace or a passage
from Homer. And once or twice she read to me. Her
favourite sonnet from Shakespeare was, 'When in disgrace
with fortune and men's eyes.' And once she told me the
story of her unsuitable marriage. The last real talk I had
with her was at the Royal Academy Exhibition. I had not
seen her for quite three years, and she was delighted to find
me looking so well again. And we sat together hand in hand
298 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
and renewed old times. She spoke of her projects and asked
me about mine, and she drifted on to the subject of religion.
I could see that her ideas had undergone a change, and that
her tone had become distinctly conventional, I saw her again
at Mrs. Hartley's, and again at the Authors' dinner. We
stood together in the reception room for some time after-
wards, she chatting now with this person now with that, but
affectionately holding my hand throughout. One of her
friends came up, and he said, ' I like to see you both
together, the old and the young authoresses. You've always
been friends, haven't you?' 'Yes,' she answered, 'in spite
of everything,' and she repeated the old joke about my
college career and my other wicked sins, and we both
went away smiling. I saw her once again at Queen Anne's
Mansions, and she was especially gentle and tender, but I, and
others who knew her much better than I did, thought she
seemed detached and impersonal. This detachment from her
old friends was thought to have been growing on her for
some time ; but I believe people did not realise that she was
full of years, and therefore subject to the limitations of senti-
ment and sensitiveness which old age invariably brings. It
was not that she cared less, but that she felt less. But as no
one ever realised that she was nearly seventy-seven, no one
ever allowed her the advantage or disadvantage of being
seventy-seven years of age. To me she always seemed a
strong-brained, strong-framed woman of about fifty. I am
sure all who cared for Mrs. Linton must be comforted to
know that in the closing days of her life she had her heart's
darling by her side, that faithful and gracious friend who had
never failed her once, Beatrice Hertz-Hartley.
" So my dear old Viking passed away to her rest after
her stormy days of stress and strife. She died as she had
lived — the very soul of honour. Honourable, self-respecting,
generous, just, and high-minded, these are some of the
words which would rise up in our minds if we were asked
to describe her. And she was naturally affectionate, and I
believe craved above all things to be loved.
"All her friends find a difficulty in choosing any letters
received from her which would be suitable for the outside
1893-1895 299
world of readers. Her letters were always so full of praise
and appreciation and kindly encouragement, that it would be
quite impossible to print the majority of them. And all I
can hope to do is to string together a few extracts and to
trust to the understanding and indulgence of the readers of
this volume to realise that I give these passages against my
own private feelings of natural reserve, for the simple sake of
illustrating Mrs. Lynn Linton's character.
" I had sent her a Christmas card in the form of a little
prose greeting, and this was her answer —
" ' Queen Anne's Mansions,
li^th December 1888.
" ' And the lady, sitting alone in her high chamber — alone
and sorrowful— sat long into the night, thinking of many
things. From the far distant past of her own childhood and
her vigorous youth, rose the ghosts of dead hopes, of slain
joys, of beautiful illusions murdered by the cruel hands of
truth, of lost loves, of friends for ever parted — all those grey-
clad phantoms, born of time and experience, which replace in
age the rosy clouds of youth. The world seemed very silent,
very sad, and life looked purposeless and dreary — merely a
retrospect now with no foothold on the present — when sud-
denly there stole on the stagnant air a low and tender melody.
" ' It came from nowhere. It was not from the Christmas
waits outside ; it was not from any indweller in the high
house ; it was not here nor there, but everywhere — something
that pervaded the whole atmosphere like a subtle perfume,
and turned what had been stillness to exquisite harmony.
And with the music came a faint light — at first diffused, like
the light of the dawn, then gathering into one point like the
morning star before the sun has risen. And this light, slowly
concentrating itself, took a form and shape, and in it the lady
saw the face of a little black-haired, bright-eyed girl. . . .
Then she knew that her life, though solitary, was not in the
past, but still in the present and the future, and that to her
had come this new sweet love — this new and golden link —
who was to be as her spiritual child, carrying on her own
work to nobler and higher issues. She knew that the music
was this child's message for this dark Christmas time, and that
it was made by the Spirit of Love himself.'
300 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" The following two letters were written after Mrs. Linton
had received copies oi Blackwood's Magazine containing two
of my little stories : —
"'The White Hart Hotel, Harrogate,
VoRKS, 7&thjuly.
" ' Dearest little B.A., — Your story is lovely, and I am
so glad your friendly editor gave it the place of honour it so
well deserved ! You have now conquered all your dif^culties,
sweet shaggy pate, barring those of health, which the happi-
ness of success should greatly help. For I will not have you
say that you do not care for your success. That is high
treason against yourself and your friends, especially against
me, who take a mother's interest in your career, and feel as
proud of you as if you were my own creation !
" * When you next write to Mr. Blackwood, give him my
thanks and best regards for the mag., and tell him I
congratulate him on having the first claim to your best
work, and love him for the patient faith he had in you
through all your " forsaken time." You have justified him,
darling. Now go on and do still better — hitch ^'om- waggon
to the stars, and hey ! for the top of the tree ! . . . Go on, go
on, go on. Your VhvIng.'
" ' Ivy Porch Cottage, Holmwood Common,
Dorking, 2g^/i April 1892.
"'Dearest little B.A., — That most pathetic, dainty,
graceful little cameo has been sent me. Thank you, my dear,
for the mag. (as of course it was you who told Black-
wood to send it), and for the great pleasure the reading of
your story has given me. It is charming — as sweet and pure
as the fairest lily, and yet so true and yet so poetic withal !
It is an excellent bit of work, and something to be proud of.
I cannot tell you how much I like it. The treatment is so
fresh and so scholarly — so dainty and so strong. It is by far
the best bit of work I have read for a long time — and the best
you have done that I know of
" ' I have finished my own fiery thunderbolt, so now if
B. A. wants to come down one afternoon we will have a leisure
time together. Bee and the children are just lovely. — B.A.'s
loving and proud old ViKlNG.'
1893-1895 301
" I do not care to print the letter which she generously
wrote on the publication of my first book ; but the following
is the answer to one of my letters in which I enclosed a few
of the press notices : —
"'Q. A. M., 2yd March.
"'Dearest Child, — These criticisms have given me in-
tense pleasure. It is exactly what I think of the book and
what all who understand good work must think of it. It now
only remains for my child to live wisely and do more splendid
work. You have the ball at your foot, B.A. beloved ! and
with the resolve, aided by common sense, you will regain
your health and strength and mental serenity. Go on and
prosper, and when I am dead I will come and spiritually kiss
your fuzzy little head. — Ever your loving old
'"Viking Lady.'
"'c/o R. Felkin, Esq., Merridale Grove,
Wolverhampton, a^h April.
"'Dearest little B.A., — I am so very, very glad about
your book, darling. It is so worthy of you, and its success is
so worthy of it 1 I have heard it much spoken of, and you
may be sure I did not damn it with faint praise nor try to
belittle it with censure. It is a real book, dear, and must
and shall be your springboard to health and happiness and
grand success.'
" Then later on we appear to have had some falling out.
She had written a new book against the modern young
woman.^ It was so full of the most absurd and unseemly
misrepresentations, that my blood was up, and I was much
tempted to write a letter to the Lady's Pictorial, where many
indignant remonstrances were appearing. However, I was
given to understand that she hoped I would not write against
her, and I contented myself with sending the following few
lines to her personally. She was vexed with them, and a
coolness sprang up between us : —
'"5 Canon Place, Hampstead Heath, N.W.
"' Dearest Viking, — Of course you know how I should
be likely to feel on the subject ; indeed, I don't remember ever
^ This was, of course, The One too Many. — G. S. L.
302 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
having been so hurt. We are all smarting, we young women
of the day, of whom you think so badly, for I range myself
on their side naturally, being one of them myself and
having had so many of them as comrades and friends.
And if any one does know about them, surely I do, having
been at three colleges. Well, there it all is, and your book
will represent us as we are not. I have met some such
characters as you describe, but they have been the untrained
ones, not those who have been through their facings, I quite
think that the modern young woman who has had no
particular training loses her balance and goes off at a
tangent ; but steady work and ambition, and the desire to
work out a career for herself, do not produce that description
of modern young woman. That is a separate class having
no point of contact with the trained and eager and brave
souls whom I call my comrades and friends. I have met such
people as you describe, but I have found them amongst the
leisured and society-loving, not amongst the workers. To
class the v/orkers with them is an injustice,
" ' My dear Viking, with always the same tenderness and
love for you, and always claiming the same from you, I am,
a very sorrowful and worked -up little B,A,'
" Here was part of her answer to a letter in which I had
written complaining of the note of strong disapproval (quite
unmerited, I think) which I had detected in one of her tirades
against modern young women and myself —
" ' If I am sorry for the results of what I think a wrongly
directed education, that does not say that I am less than your
intensely loving and respectful friend. I love and admire you
as much as any one in the world does, but you know that I
hold views different from yours on more things than one.
Naturally, I think that from the heights of age I can see
farther, I have a wider back look than you, and I can
therefore see more plainly both tendencies and results. I
never mean to be other to you than (i) as a silver trumpet
heartening to the strife, (2) as a down cushion where weary
and sore you may rest. — Your own Viking.'
" It may easily be seen, from this and other allusions, that
we were not always of accord ; and indeed I may say that
1893-1895 303
one or two of our interviews were decidedly stormy. I know
I was aggravating to her at times, especially when she was
feeling ' worked - up ' about the Woman's Movement. At
times I was quite appalled, for her ideas and conceptions
of young women were really appallingly false and unjust.
At other times I was so indignant that I could not keep
my temper. But we weathered all these storms, and, as I
look back now, I seem to remember only all her wise and
helpful words of guidance, intermingled with her angry
denunciations, but yet capable of being singled out as real
and right and noble exhortations, all making for the good.
"Beatrice Harraden."
The occasion of the appearance of TJic One too Many,
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, was felt to be a
good opportunity for reviving the volume of essays on women,
entitled Ourselves, which had originally been published in
1869. In it Mrs. Linton dealt "with the faults and follies
of women, while leaving their virtues comparatively un-
touched." Her purpose was, as she explains in the preface,
" to do the cause of women real good by showing where their
weak points lie," feeling as she did "that if women could be
brought to see their faults they would amend them." Messrs.
Chatto & Windus were the publishers.
The record of the year 1893 shall close with a selection
from the letters.
The first of these, thanking for a birthday present, is of
the "small-beer" order, but none the less valuable as show-
ing the tenderer side of her character : —
E. L. L. TO Miss Ada Gedge,
" Queen Anne's Mansions,
l\th February 1893.
" Sometimes little things are beyond all price !
"Your needle-book is just as valuable to me as if it had
been made of gold and silver and stuck about with diamonds
and pearls. I have only a dirty, shabby, broken, dilapidated,
tumbledown old fellow that makes me sick to see and use,
304 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
and this is just lovely ; so, Ada, I thank you a great many
times. I have had two lovely baskets of flowers given me
that must have cost heaps of money, but this dear little
yellow needlecase outweighs them both put together. I
should like you to see one of poor Aunt Rose's^ towels.
Mother gave me four old ones — that I darned yesterday !
It is one viass of darns — almost as much darning as material.
Not that I care to do this to save a towel, but I had the
most tender feeling for the poor dear old sister all the time I
was doing it, as if she were there, and commending me in her
surprised way that I should be so practical. She was so
surprised that I could embroider, and I know she thought
I was utterly inept as a housekeeper or caretaker of property.
I shall darn the other three, and then keep them and use
them very seldom. They will be a little proof that I am
not merely a Bluestocking of the old traditions."
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gulie Moss.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
lOtk March 1893.
"... It is hard for you to lie like this, unable to use your
hands. That would be one of the worst trials to me, for I
am a great needleworker, and love it. I do all sorts of
things — dar?i towels. (Though I say it as shouldn't) I darn
beautifully, and make the rent the occasion for something
that is really elementary embroidery ! and if I could not
use my hands, I am afraid I should be less patient than
the angelic person whose beauty of mind and of body both
fills me with admiration and something more. I hope that
you are read to by those you love — read to in that half-
dramatic way which lifts up and accentuates the meaning,
and is not too like a private lecture. That is an art so
good to possess ! If dramatic people are too broad, too
coarse, they ought to be on a stage at a distance, with
accessories to excuse and accompany the exaggeration.
Close at hand it is too overpowering. And then there are
others who read without any emphasis at all, merely mind-
ing their stops. Rice without salt or sugar has more flavour
than their flat-voiced interpretation. On the other hand,
^ Mrs. Murray, who died in 1890.
1893-1895 305
you do not want your bread covered with pepper and
mustard.
" I wonder if you get the grand consolation I get when evil
days are on me, of consciousness of law. You are suffering,
sweet woman, from some probably unknown cause, which
yet is as absolute in its effects as that fire would burn your
hand if you thrust it inside the bars. If science can find
a remedy — a counter-agent — well and good. If not, there
is no use in knocking your head against a stone wall or
praying into the void. Patience is the only dignified
attitude. ' Wearying heaven with prayers ' that are not
answered may comfort some, and it does, but to me it
would be more maddening than comforting to ask an
Almighty Power to help and not to be answered ! Then
comes in the attitude of submission, unquestioning, un-
reasoning, full of faith — ' If I am not answered, God knows
best.' Then if He knows best and gives or withholds at
His own pleasure, where is the use of asking? Does He
need to be told what is wanted ? It is all such an illogical
jumble ! and to me the old Stoics' pride of endurance in
silence and with dignity is so much grander and finer !
But, all the same, let us fight our physical enemies inch
by inch, and do what we can to overcome. I am in the
grasp of that ' foul fiend ' rheumatism, with whom I am
having a tussle. I am almost lame, and when I get up
from the chair, hobble along the first few steps bent half
double. Then slowly and by degrees I become less of an
ape and more of a human, and by the time I have gone a
few hundred yards cease to hobble. But does it not take
it out of my pride when, in the coffee-room, I go parrot-
like from chairback to chairback, limping and hobbling as
I go!"
At the beginning of June Mr. Herbert Spencer had sent
her a presentation copy of the Ethics in recognition of the
service she had rendered him in playing the part, as he
expressed it, of " Grundyometer " to certain chapters which
he fancied might shock the more susceptible. Fearing lest
she might look upon this as a hint to her to review it, he
had followed the present up with a note absolutely for-
bidding any such thing.
306 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
This was her reply —
E. L. L. TO Mr. Herbert Spencer.
"Grove Hotel, Swan age,
liine 1S93.
" My dear Mr. Spencer, — No one who knows anything
about you could imagine you doing anything whatever to
secure a press notice, still less from one so imperfectly edu-
cated as I am. Quite equal to your transcendent mental
powers is your moral straightness, that lofty independence
which contents itself with doing good work and leaving it
to fructify by its own vitality. No man could be less of
a popularity-hunter than you are. No man could have a
higher moral standard. That is one reason why I, among so
many, love and reverence you so deeply. For, to my way of
thinking, the grandeur of the moral nature, that part of the
intellect which deals with man as man, is quite as valuable as
even epoch-making thought.
" I will send to the Mansions to have your book forwarded
to me, and thank you, how many times ? a thousand if you
like ! for the honour you have done me in giving it me.
I have left London for the summer, laus Deo ! and have
come to the quietest, prettiest, most charming place you
can imagine. The garden goes down to the seashore,
and the flowers and trees and singing birds are all as
fresh and fine and full as if we were in the heart of the
country."
Early in August my wife and I had foregathered with
her for a io.^^ days at Harrogate on our way north. I was
at that time writing " Queer Stories " for Truth. The
tragical plot of one just about to be published was, I
believed, absolutely original and evolved from my inner
consciousness. What, then, was my astonishment when in
the course of conversation she told me a story of what
had just happened in real life to one very near and dear
to her — and with absolutely the same motif. My story
was already in type, and on its publication I sent her a copy.
This was her letter in acknowledgment —
1893-1895 307
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
"North Twyford, Winchester,
zbth August 1893.
"... Many thanks for the Truth and the Coincidence.
The story is very well told, if I may say so without imper-
tinence, and the coincidence is queer. To us with our limited
vision, thoughts seem to be illimitable and infinite. I w6nder
if they are ! if they are not bound by laws as exact as those
which rule the — apparently unfixed and voluntary — winds, so
that whenever the molecules of the brain are set to a certain
pattern, the same thought must of necessity be produced ?
We see this and in part acknowledge it in the beginnings of
savage consciousness. All over the world the same kind of
flint implements are found. The same method of fashioning
them revealed itself to the brains of all men. So of pottery,
so of the earliest patterns in carving and engraving, so of the
earliest ideas of religion, so of all things belonging to the
cotyledonous state of men's minds. But when we advance
in brain development we differentiate and multiply, and the
strict line of likeness gets lost and confused. And then again
every now and then come strange parallelisms which are not
plagiarisms nor half-remembered echoes, but absolutely self-
evolved in each brain alike. And I say again that thought
seems to me not infinite in fact, though to all intents and
purposes it is so to us, but that, like the remote chance of
exactly the same hands being dealt at whist in the same
room of a club card party, the thing is possible and does
happen when the cards have got mixed, or the brain particles
are set, in exactly the same fashion. I know that this reduces
the thing to the flattest materialism, and disposes of all the
dream of inspiration from without. . . .
" I have been learning by heart Sir Alfred Lyall's ' Retro-
spect.' It is as fine as any of Rudyard Kipling's, so is his
' Theology in Extremis ' — so indeed are all his Indian poems,
which are not sufficiently known.
" Well, dear, good-bye. Do you see any difference between
the first page of this and the last three? I had forgotten my
promise to write more legibly. The first page is a Borrio-
boolaga, but I maintain that the last three are superb. Best
love to the dear Queen Eleanor. — Always my blessed people's
affectionate friend, E. Lynn Linton."
308 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In December we had all been down with influenza on the
top of other illness.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. G. S. Layard.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
$th Dccc?jiber 1893.
" . . . It is just a cursed little bit of thorny road that we
are all on — you and others. We shall get over it and come
into the straighter, smoother path, and then we will snap
our fingers at the trouble we have left behind us. For myself,
I am so thankful that my heart never fails me ! In the
moment of greatest nervous exhaustion, when I can do
absolutely nothing, I am not depressed. When I cannot
fight off the malady, I just lie down quietly till I can get up
again. I tiever lose heart. Life to me is so dear, so precious,
so lovely ! I want to live and work and love and admire, and
see sunsets and flowers, and kiss sweet faces of dear friends,
and watch the progress of events."
The year 1893 had seen some falling off in the quantity of
her journalistic work. The weekly articles in the Queen had
continued without interruption, but there had not been much
besides. In 1894, however, the output was almost as large as
ever. This was mainly due to her entering into an engage-
ment to write a weekly article for the St. James's Budget,
which had now been made independent of the Gazette, and
was bidding for the suffrages of the readers of the illustrated
weeklies.
Mr. Penderel-Brodhurst has been good enough to send me
the following account of her connection with the paper which
he so ably edited : —
Note by Mr. Penderel-Brodhurst.
" I first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Lynn Linton about
1888 at the house of Mr. Sidney Low, but it was not until
years afterwards that I was so fortunate as to be admitted to
her friendship. It was early in 1894 that I began to be in
constant relations with her. She had then, for some years,
1893-1895 309
been at intervals a contributor to the St James s Ga::ctte, but
latterly her contributions had almost ceased. Early in 1894,
however, I asked her if she would write a weekly article for
the St. James's Budget, which had latterly been made a
separate publication, and of which I was editor. In an hour's
chat in her little drawing-room at Queen Anne's Mansions we
arranged the details, and she fell in readily with the scheme
I had in my mind, making no objection to my reservation
that she was not to write upon politics. This was the begin-
ning of a long series of articles full of the old acuteness and
incisiveness ; full, too, of that tender kindliness, which shone
through everything she wrote, when she was not pouring
scorn and contempt upon the things and types she hated, and
had taught so many others to hate. There is an idea that,
in her later days, Mrs. Linton had lost her fire and vigour.
But it is the eternal cliche of the hasty or ill-informed critic,
that practitioners of the art of writing must necessarily grow
feeble as they grow old. It assuredly was not so in this case.
Since the days of The Girl of the Peiiod and Patricia Kemball,
there had no doubt been time for her point of view and the
singularly direct and unmistakable way in which she enforced
it to grow familiar. Her work had necessarily lost novelty,
but it had not lost vigour. She had established a convention
of her own, which educated people admired to the end ; but
because it was a convention, the easily fatigued modern
palate was inclined to fancy that she always gave them the
same dish. As a matter of fact, the essays she wrote for me
— there must have been one hundred and fifty of them — were
singularly varied in subject. As a contributor, Mrs. Lynn
Linton was a delight. Always two articles ahead, her MS.
arrived with perfect regularity. Lacking at first sight some-
what of legibility, it was really much more easily read than
some handwritings which are apparently clearer.
" Mrs. Lynn Linton's personality was singularly vivifying.
It was impossible to be dull or moody or over-anxious in her
cheery presence. Her conversation was very different from
what might have been expected from her writing. There
was nothing about her that seemed in the least in keeping
with the mordant phrases of The Girl of the Period and other
of the papers which had won her fame as an essayist. The
soft, gentle face, mobile to the last, was youthful despite the
grey hair and the spectacles. She was an excellent talker.
310 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
full of interest in everything that was going on — full, too, of
enthusiasm, when the conversation touched upon any subject
in which she was especially interested. Her talk was
essentially kindly, full of charity and tolerance. She never
forgot a kindness or a courtesy. For any little thing that
was done for her she was almost embarrassingly grateful. It
is an abiding regret to me that I had no opportunity of
accepting her warm invitation to visit her, with my wife, at
Malvern. I always found it hard to realise her age, and I
thought there was time."
In September of this year Mrs, Linton contributed an
article to the FortnigJitly Reviezv, entitled " Professsor Henry
Drummond's Discovery." It was a scathing indictment of
that modern order of writers which takes its science at
second-hand, adulterates it with any quantity of sentiment-
ality, and serves it up as a toothsome dish of newly discovered
ingredients.
By the kindness of Mr. Herbert Spencer, I am enabled to
publish the letter which instigated what was to her a new
departure in polemics : —
Mr. Herbert Spencer to E. L. L.
"Fairfield, Pewsey, Wilts,
6th June 1S94.
" Dear Mrs. Lynn Linton, — I am in the mood of mind
of the weather-beaten old tar whose nephew proposes to
teach him how to box the compass, and who is prompted
to tweak his nose.
" The nephew is in this case Professor Drummond, who,
in his recently published work, The Ascent of Man, with the
airs of a discoverer and with a tone of supreme authority,
sets out to instruct me and other evolutionists respecting the
factor of social evolution which we have ignored — altruism.
First raising great expectations as to what he is going to tell
us, he announces altruistic action as first displaying itself
in maternal sacrifices, primarily bodily, and secondarily
mental, as being the factor which has been overlooked
and which is the essential factor in social evolution. All
this he sets forth with a flourish of trumpets as though it
1893-1895 311
were new, although in The Data of Ethics, published fifteen
years ago, in the chapter on ' Altruism versus Egoism,' this
same root of altruism was duly set forth, and its importance
as a social factor emphasised, and in subsequent chapters
enlarged upon. As you possibly — perhaps I may say
probably — know, I have in various places dwelt upon the
necessary genesis of sympathy by social life and the effect
of sympathy in qualifying the social struggle for existence
and producing a higher type of man and society. The
curious thing is, that while Mr. Drummond supposes this
factor in social evolution to have been ignored, it is the
factor which was first enunciated. For, in my first book,
Social Statics, published in 1850, increase of sympathy is
set forth as the cause of a higher form of man and a higher
form of society. Long before the setting forth of the egoistic
factor, which he thinks is alone recognised, this altruistic
factor had been recognised and its effects described.
" To return to the tweaking of the nose above indicated.
I do not, of course, like to undertake it myself, but I should
be very glad if somebody would undertake it for me, and, on
looking round for a proxy, I thought of you. With your
vigorous style and picturesque way of presenting things, you
would do it in an interesting and effective way, at the same
time that you would be able to illustrate and enforce the
doctrine yourself. Doubtless in an article entitled, say,
' Altruism,' you would have many ideas of your own to
enunciate, at the same time that you took occasion to
rectify this misrepresentation. An interesting essay in the
Nineteentli Century might be the result, and, not improbably,
you might find occasion for dealing from the same point of
view with Mr. Kidd's book on Social Evolution, now very
much talked about.
"If this project should meet with your sympathy, I will
send you a copy of the volume, and will also give you refer-
ences to the relevant passages in my books, sending you
those of them which are to be quoted from. — Very truly
yours, Herbert Spencer.
" P.S. — There is a further large subject-matter for criticism
in the assumption made by Mr. Drummond, that the recogni-
tion of this so-called missing factor would greatly advance
the process of social evolution : the truth being that no intel-
312 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
lectual change can in any appreciable degree effect a moral
change, which is the essential thing. All which a true theory
can do is to prevent the mistaken courses of conduct which
wrong theories prompt."
On the publication of the article, Mr. Spencer congratu-
lated her in the following generous terms : —
Mr. Herbert Spencer to E. L. L.
"Queen's Hotel, Cliftonville, Margate,
T,rd September 1894.
"My dear Mrs. Lynn Linton, — 'Habet!' I exclaim,
in the language of the arena. When I returned you the MS.
I thought your article vigorous and effective, and, now that
I have read it in print, I see that it is still more vigorous and
effective. The thanks I offered you before I must now offer
you in double measure.
" I knew that, with your trenchant style, you would do
it well, though you modestly thought otherwise ; and my
expectation is quite verified by the result — the verification
of my judgment being amply endorsed. I have seen only
two newspapers, and they both recognise the power of your
exposure. You may possibly have seen both the Standard
and the Chronicle, but lest you should not have done so, I
send the article from the one and the notice from the other.
" The fact that the Standard devotes an article to you is
sufficiently significant, and I join in the applause given by
the writer to your denunciation, not of Professor Drummond
only, but of the public taste which swallows with greediness
these semi-scientific sentimentalities.
" That topic is a good one to enlarge upon, and you might
reserve it for future expansion.
" I address this to Queen Anne's Mansions, presuming
that you have by this time returned to town after your long
wanderings. — Very sincerely yours,
" Herbert Spencer.
"P.S. — But for your exposure the thing would have
passed without notice, for the critics, when not ignorant,
are wanting in all sense of justice and public duty."
1893-1895 313
For other letters of this year I am indebted to Lady
Wardle. Mrs. Linton had made the acquaintance of Mr,
(now Sir Thomas) Wardle some years before, and was doing
what she could to supplement his efforts, as President of the
Silk Association of Great Britain and Ireland, to popularise a
national industry. It was in connection with this movement
that a witty but cynical friend expressed the hope that silk-
worms, and not the baser sort, would be eventually employed
to destroy Sir Thomas's body.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. (now Lady) Wardle.
" Queen Anne's IMansions, 1894.
" My dear Genius of Order, — I have been at home
since three o'clock on Thursday last, and have come into such
a scene of mistakes, confusion, breakages, mislayings, and
disoxdiOX generally that I have not had time to write to you
or any one else. Whether I am ill or well I cannot say. I
believe I am alive, but I may be a galvanised corpse, I don't
know. I know nothing but that some of my most cherished
ornaments have been broken ; that every curtain is defectively
hung ; that more than half the pictures were wrongly placed
— meandering in all manner of z^;^related places on the walls,
where they had never been before ; that the electric light put
in in my absence is unusable in the drawing-room, because
placed so low that the light is on a level with our eyes ; that
the servant assigned to me is good and willing, but utterly
stupid and unpractised, and as deaf as one of your carved
bed-posts ; and that I am altogether in a state of discomfort,
than which I could wish my worst enemy nothing more
painful. To-day is really the Sabbath, and I am writing
letters that have accumulated. To-morrow I shall have to
attack the books. Not one is where I left it, and the whole
thing was in such confusion — for I have reduced the drawing-
room and my bedroom partly into order — that I really felt,
and still feel, what can I do first? It seemed and seems
hopeless ! I have had many a ' hard row to hoe ' before now,
but never one so hard physically, and with regard to one's
patience and courage, as now. I had two things I much
prized. One was a very pretty bit of Venetian glass —
314 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
broken ; the other an old black Wedgwood vase, a wedding
present in '58, and until now without chip or scratch — cracked
and useless. If you were to be behind all the tracasseries and
worries of this present moment you would pity me.
" It is a most unpleasant little time, and I have need of all
my patience and resolution not to be conquered by circum-
stances. I have always had that feeling that I will never
be conquered by any fact of life save the unconquerable
two — Old Age and Sickness. These I acknowledge my
masters. Outside these / am my own possessor. I am
going to write a St. James's article on that phrase, ' Our
hard rows to hoe,' in this sense, how w^e ought all to feel
that Circumstance, when unfriendly, is as an enemy we have
to subdue, a wild beast, an armed man who will kill us if we
do not kill it. So good-bye, dear, good, kind and orderly
woman. Your heart would ache if you were in such a scene
of chaos and confusion as I am in now, and if you had a
weak back and could not stoop nor stand without pain ! ! ! —
Ever your grateful and affectionate friend and guest,
"E. Lynn Linton."
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
" Queen Anne's Mansions, 1894.
" I have been in a state of the most distressing trouble
about your son's book. It got damaged, scarcely by my
fault. I left it open on my desk while I went for a book
from the table — not two steps off. It was the day of the
storm, this day week. Some one must have opened a
window, or done something of the kind, for suddenly came
a gust that blew my door open, and shook the room or
table or something, so that the book fell face undermost
and cracked the page on which you had written the name.
I took it to Webster, one of the best men in London, and
only just now got it home. I have fretted and worried
about it more than I can express. It has planted acres
of grey hairs on my head, but I hope the reparation is
satisfactory, and that you will write your name and his in
the new leaf all the same as the old. The 'water' is not
quite the same, I see, but with the writing it will not show.
At all events, I have suffered for my involuntary crime —
1893-1895 315
suffered real tortures. If that will plead for pardon, do
pardon me, for indeed it was not carelessness, nor any fault
of mine, but a pure accident.
" I am glad the scare about the ' New Boss ' ^ has passed
over quickly. I really never thought of Mr. . The
cap was made for heads in the air which it would fit, I
never write from direct photographs, but rely on those
composite ' fellows ' which represent the type."
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
e^tk N'ovcnibei' 1894.
"... The girls are wrong to take to themselves what is
simply a picture in the air. If one never wrote anything
that could touch any one, the world of literature would be
rather inane ! It is my misfortune to make caps that fit.
I see a good deal of life, and I write as I see in the abstract,
but not meant for special persons. All that I do are
generalised studies, and when they touch, they do so be-
cause of their truth, not their intentional direction."
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
Wi December 1894.
"... I plunged into another cauldron of boiling water
over another St. James s Budget article, ' Young Dogs.'
That was meant, confessedly and unmistakably, as a whip
across the shoulders of the young author of The Gi-een
Caj-nation. He accepted his castigation in the ' handsomest '
manner, and wrote me a lovely letter, the letter of a frank-
hearted, high-minded young fellow, who had made more
effect with his work than he had intended. So we shook
hands on paper — he had attacked my friends and those I
hold dear, and revere, and he had flung a side sneer at
myself, and I paid him back in a paper that seems to have
made him a little ashamed of his petulant ' cleverness,' and
sorry that he had attacked people so much older and so
much more experienced than himself. So that hatchet is
^ An article of hers in the St. James's Budget.
316 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
buried, and we are good friends. He will probably call here
to-day, when I will not fly at his throat, nor will I speak of
the matter at all."
A severe and almost fatal attack of bronchitis, in the
winter of 1894-95, decided Mrs. Linton to leave Queen
Anne's Mansions and set up house for herself in the country.
Much to our delight, she settled upon Malvern, which we had
lately made our home, and, in the course of the autumn,
moved into Brougham House, which she was destined to
occupy until her death in 1898.
In addition to her weekly articles in the Queen and the
St. James s Budget, she this year, at the request of Dr.
Robertson Nicoll, began a notable series of articles on her
literary friendships in the Wovian at Home. These were
republished after her death by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton,
in a volume entitled My Literary Life, with an introduction
by Miss Beatrice Harraden.
But this was not enough for her industry. In addition
to a tale of one hundred and eleven articles for the weeklies
and monthlies of this year, she must needs produce a three-
volumed novel, written with all the old vigour. It is the old
enemy, in her newest habit, at whom she is tilting. Once it
was the Girl of the Period, then it was the Shrieking Sister-
hood, then the Girton Girl ; now it is the turn of the Wild
Women — those " initiates for whom life has no sacredness,
nature no mystery, morality no holiness." In Haste and at
Leisure is indeed a scathing criticism of the Emancipated
Woman, as Mrs. Linton, no doubt in somewhat exaggerated
perspective, saw her. Certainly she makes her revolting in
more senses than one. There is much in the book that is
unpleasant and that jars like grit between the teeth, but it is
a book which no advanced woman could read without being
the better for the reading. She slashes away as if endowed
with eternal youth. Her fierce indignation is unabated, and
pitilessly she bears down upon those " who bustle and buzz
through time and space like huge bluebottle flies." Her
righteous anger is really magnificent, and yet there are tears
in her voice as she pronounces the doom of the insufferable
1893-1895 317
and wretched Phoebe, and the noble and, but for his nobility,
equally wretched Sherard.
Perhaps the most notable thing about this novel is the
fact that in it we find this veteran, who had now been writing
continuously for half a century, deliberately changing her
methods, and adapting herself to modern breathless require-
ments. She lets her reader have no pause. Sensation trips
up the heels of sensation. The steady-going manner of fifty
years has given way to a youthlike impetuosity. The younger
generation has been met on its own ground and challenged
with its own weapons.
CHAPTER XXII
1896-1897
MRS. LINTON was now settled in her Malvern home,
and working with unabated vigour. On ist January
she writes to the Hon. Mrs. Nash —
" I have taken a pretty Httle house, which I have furnished
and made home, and here I am with my books, two servants,
a garden, a greenhouse, a vine, a table for the birds, domestic
worries of coals and oil that go as if they were snow that
melts or water that runs away, and good health in this lovely
air and perfect quiet. ... I can speak of Malvern air as of a
tonic that works wonders for the debilitated. ... I am as
well as I ever was in my life, and have not had one single
gliff oi co\d, and I do not always wear a respirator. 'Senile
cough ' and ' chronic bronchitis ' are unknown here. . . ."
That there was no falling off in the crop of articles for the
weeklies and monthlies, is shown by the grand total of 1 1 2
for the year 1896. In addition to this, she found time to
write a novel in two volumes for Messrs. Chatto & Windus,
entitled Dulcie Everton, not, however, one of her happiest
efforts.
Early this year she was much gratified by an honour done
to her by the Society of Authors, of which she had been a
member from the beginning. At the annual meeting it was
decided " that ladies be declared eligible for election to the
Council of the Society." Mrs. Linton was at once unanim-
ously elected by the committee, thus gaining the distinction
of being the first authoress to take her seat at the Board of
the Literary Federation in Portugal Street.
For further record of this year I shall practically confine
318
1896-1897 319
myself to extracts from her letters, merely prefacing them
with such notes as may appear necessary for their elucidation.
The first, written to the editor of the St. James's Gazette,
is a good example of her self-imposed mission in life to
hearten up and encourage people in the performance of
thankless or depressing duties. She had been an anonymous
leader-writer herself, and deeply sympathised with the man
who often writes his heart out, knowing well that no more
recognition will come to him personally than to the writer of
the sporting intelligence or tape prices.
E. L. L. TO Mr. Sidney Low.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
Wth January '96.
" Mrs. Lynn Linton sends her love, respect, and admira-
tion to the writer of the leaders in the St. James's Gazette,
who is, she imagines, a certain person called Sidney Low.
She does not want that writer to feel she is patting him on
the back, so that he should say, ' Mrs. L. L. approves. They
must be supreme, and I am taller by so many inches ! ' with
the same curl of the lip as the Bond Street fishmonger had,
when he turned to his man and said, ' John, put up the
shutters ! Lord Z is taking his custom from us ! ' Mrs.
L. L. is a fool, she knows, but she is an honest, enthusiastic
old fool, and if she were not, she would not bother her friend
the leader-writer with her senile admiration. She just wants
to clasp his hand across space for his manly, wise, and far-
seeing articles, which express all the very best traditions and
sentiments of Englishmen. If she were within kissing distance,
she would probably kiss the hand she clasped, for the old
heart beats a little faster, when she reads one of those leaders,
and tears come into the old eyes for gratitude and joy at the
brave, wise words.
" So, dear friend and editor, do not scorn nor laugh at
me. Living here alone, and in such almost unbroken social
silence, I get to think and feel even more and more and
more individually, and undisturbed by others' views.
" My dear love to you both, and thank you for the sweet
offer of bed and board when I go to London. I shall pro-
bably have to go to an hotel and not fasten myself on any
320 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
one. I hope you are well. I am, splendidly ! — Affectionately
yours, my dear Mr. Low and good patriot,
" E. Lynn Linton."
The first words of the following extract allude to the fact
that Mrs. Linton often wrote what were now her daily letters
to Mrs. Gedge on the backs of invitations, begging letters,
notices, advertisements, editors' letters, or any other scrap
which might prove of interest to her sister. Mrs. Gedge had
been seriously ill, but had sufficiently recovered to write the
first letter of her convalescence.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
\']th January 1896.
" You deserve a bit of decent paper as my first answer to
your first letter. Well, Lucy, I was rather glad to see it !
very truly so. It gave me a sudden cold, Lucy, so that I
had to blowsy my nose and wipe my eyes, and then I could
read it after I had done that. But those sudden colds, Lucy,
are queer, queer when one is very glad of nothing ! I am
indeed glad. Loo beloved, that you feel out of the wood.
You have come out by obedience to your doctor's orders,
and you'll stay out in the free, fresh air of security so long as
you obey and attend to him. . . . When you take the bit
into your own teeth, Lucy, I shall be miserably anxious
again. . . . Work lies ready for me to do, and the cries of
the press are many and loud."
E. L. L. TO Mrs. (now Lady) Wardle.
" Brougham House, Malvern,
Qth February '96.
"... Time passes with me like a silent, swiftly running
stream — not sluggish and not stagnant, but making no great
stir. Each day full of something, but each day the very
twin of its brother, so that, when Sunday comes round, I feel
as if it was only the day before yesterday that we had the
Sunday dinner, and the clean tablecloth, and all the little
By fer!>i:ss:on 0/ Miisrs. FdlMl &■ Fry
1896-1897 321
domestic observances that mark the first day in the week
from the last. I live here the quietest life you can imagine.
On the fine days I go out for a walk, and if I have calls to
make, I make them and find the ladies out too. A great
many people have called on me, and I see them ; but it is a
case of Taffy went to my house, and I went to Taffy's, and
neither was at home. There are several whom I have not
seen, and I do not know when I shall. The society here
seems mainly given up to afternoonities. There are very
few dinners and no luncheons, but afternoon teas answer all
the purposes of hospitality, and make a meeting-place for
friends. I like my life here very much. It is not exactly an
indolent one, yet I shrink from disturbing its smooth and
even tenor."
Mrs. Linton had asked my small daughter to write out
for her a nursery rhyme which she had forgotten.
E. L. L. TO Nancy Layard (aged 9).
"Brougham House, Malvern,
26M Ap7il 1896.
"Dearest little Nancy, — Thank you for your kind
and beautifully written ' Cock Robin and Jenny Wren.' I
shall always keep it as a sweet reminder of my dear little
friend, as a proof of her willingness to oblige and her willing-
ness to take trouble. For it is a long piece to copy, and
copying correctly is always a little difficult, demanding a
great deal of care and exactness. Indeed, nothing good can
be done without care and exactness. Some one once said
that genius — that is the greatest power of the mind — is the
faculty for taking infinite pains. I do not think this is qiiite
true, but it shows the high opinion held of that ' faculty for
taking infinite pains.' You know that when you learn a
lesson only half, just to be able to say it off and not to be
turned back, you do not know it thoroughly, and soon forget
it. When you learn it well, so that you seem to understand
it from the beginning to the end, you do not forget it. You
have taken pains, and have been careful and exact, and you
have made one step more towards being a sweet and clever
and darling girl — mother's dear help and companion, and
father's dear help and companion too ; and that is such
21
322 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
delightful happiness ! — to know that they trust you, and may
trust you, and that you are really a help to them and can
save them trouble, because you attend to what you are doing,
and so do it well.
" All this has come about because you copied ' Cock
Robin's Wedding' exactly, well, and kindly!
" I am going to London to-morrow for a few days, so
shall not see you ; but I hope when I come back that you
will often come and bring me messages from mother.
" Give my best love to John, and be kind to him and to
the dollies too ! and give my best love to dearest father and
mother, whom I love w4th all my heart. — My little Nancy's
affectionate old friend, E. Lynn Linton."
In August, whilst on a visit to Keswick with her dear
friend Mrs. Dobie, she wrote to her niece —
E. L. L. TO Miss Ada Gedge.
" Thank you for your dear, kind, and interesting letter.
" Among the unfathomed mysteries of this mysterious life
of ours is the joy we have in creation. We call it art or
we call it invention, but the motive force is the same — this
wonderful fascination to the mind of the power of making.
The artist has sensations which are too vague for formalised
thoughts. They cannot be put into words — but there is a
kind of super-sensual sense divine reaching out into far-
distant brilliant heights where the mind is too dumb — dazzled
to understand clearly what it feels, but which fills the whole
being with a kind of silent ecstasy of enjoyment. That is
true art so far as the temperament goes. The mechanical
skill of manipulation, the aptitude for technique, comes into
another category."
By October she was back in Malvern and in love with
her " quiet and active life, early hours, incessant industry."
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" How the force of what Mr. Ransford said comes home
to me, ' the slowness of all agriculturists and of all who have
1896-1897 323
to do with nature — brought about by the long, long months
of waiting in the operations of nature.'
" My lilies that I want to see in bloom and that will not
appear for months yet — the seedlings, forget-me-nots, etc. etc.
— the hollyhocks all to be waited for in patience till their
time comes.
"All people who have to do with nature must learn
patie7icer
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
r
"Brougham House,
Zth December 1896.
"Yesterday Mr. Layard brought me the first volume of
Manning s Life. It is a curious revelation of very earnest
piety and want of that kind of sturdy fidelity which makes
good men martyrs. He trimmed very much between Tract-
arianism and Anglicanism before he went over to Rome and
was one of the most uncompromising delators of Rome. The
first volume deals with him only as an English clergyman.
In the second, which I have not got yet, he is the Roman.
Newman was a much more thorough man than he, and was
as unworldly as Manning was worldly and ambitious. But
Newman never got on as Manning did, and never wished.
We shall never know the secrets of the Vatican, nor why
Newman, who was such a valuable convert to the papacy,
was so neglected by the Church. There was something we
do not know, and probably never shall — some part of his
mind had refused absolute obedience. I have just been
reading another book that would horrify you — an account
of three actual living churcJies in Paris dedicated to SATAN.
There are three separate congregations, and the account of
their doings is awful even in the little I read. Your hair
would stand on end. It seems incredible, but there are
names and chapters and verses and even a literature of the
whole thing. There are two sects, the Satanists and Luci-
ferists — and they pray to these names as Gods. ... I send
you this letter, written to the editor of the Queen, and
forwarded to me about my Christmas story. It gives a
little indication of what ar, the poor unhappy purveyors of
amusement for the public, have to put up with from our
masters.
" The wonderfullest thing, Lucy, in all human life to me,
324 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
is the small amount of sense needed for even honest and
respectable men and women ! We are very stupid, Lucy !
very amoeba-ish in our minds ! Well, dear, that's that."
E. L. L. TO THE Same.
"Brougham House,
20th December 1896.
" I have had the feeling you speak of, Loo, with Ernest,
as if the beloved was there in the room. The mind creates
its own world, and imagination is as powerful a fact as reality
of sense. We see and know and feel and are, by the brain
alone, acted on by the sense organs through the nerves. If
you act on the brain independently of the sense organs, you
bring about the same result, but weaker, as dreams are not
so vivid as realities, and waking dreams do not satisfy like
the touch and sight and moving — still the brain works and
this (weaker) result is produced, and you felt the presence
of the son you love so fondly though you could not see him.
' This earth is full of messages that Love sends to and fro,'
and we know very little yet of the possibilities of spiritual
communication.
" Who knows ? He might have been thinking of you very
intently then, for he loves you dearly, and you might have
met in the spirit if not in the body. No one knows. Loo,
what life really is — what are its possibilities. We know a
little but not all 1 . . . One must have one of two things to
get on in this life — buoyant cheerfulness that cannot be ' sub-
merged,' and that always rises to the surface like a cork, or
grim and dogged determination not to be conquered."
In the currentless backwater of her life at Malvern, Mrs.
Linton still continued her literary activities. No doubt at
times she felt like the miller who had been a sailor, and
fretted because the sails with which he had sailed about the
world were now harnessed to the comparatively stationary
service of working his windmill, but on the whole she was
in love with the quiet life.
Writing to Lady Paget this year (1897), after referring
to the old days in Italy, she exclaims: "The contrast with
my quiet life in this quiet little cottage, growing old in peace
1896-1897 325
and silence, and with some, not too, poignant regret for all
the vigour and vitality of the dead past ! ... In all prob-
ability I shall never cross the silver strip again, for I have
lost my strength and health, and have to fight off Death in
the shape of ' lung-trouble,' as the Americans say, having
had two hand-to-hand struggles with the, in the end, In-
evitable Conqueror."
But she was essentially of those who realise that
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,
and it would have taken something far less tolerable than
Malvern, which she dearly loved, and where she had regained
much of her lost vigour of body, to damp her ardent love
of life.
The early part of the year 1897 brought with it a dis-
appointment in connection with her work. For reasons
which it is unnecessary to state, the editor of the St. James's
Budget, Mr. Penderel-Brodhurst, felt it incumbent upon him
to reduce the number of her articles by one half, with the
result that they would appear fortnightly instead of weekly.
The old pay was to continue, but the work was to be less.
This arrangement, however, she refused to fall in with, gener-
ous though undoubtedly it was, feeling that she would be
sacrificing her independence in accepting pay which seemed
to her a species of dole. Fortnightly articles she would write,
but the old remuneration must be halved. Soon, however,
she decided to discontinue them, preferring to forego this
source of income altogether, rather than continue to write
on what she felt was suspiciously like sufferance. I should
add that for Mr. Penderel-Brodhurst she always retained the
highest opinion, often enlarging upon his great courtesy and
consideration, and fully recognising that his first duty was to
his paper and to his public.
On another occasion she showed the same independent
spirit when offered payment by Mr. Chambers for prospective
work on his journal : " Thank you a thousand times ; but no !
no money until it is fairly earned ! I might die one day in
your debt, and then my poor ghost would have to take to
326 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
wandering and gibbering, perhaps to knocking its empty
head against tables, and beseeching incredulous executors
to pay you back ! "
The loss of employment on the Budget caused a serious
gap in her regular income, but, nothing daunted, she at
once set to work to repair the deficiency. She was chiefly
concerned lest her private charities, which were out of all
proportion to her income, but of which I am debarred by
circumstances from giving particulars, should suffer.
The outcome of this necessity was her last and posthum-
ously published novel, The Second Youth of Theodora Desanges.
This year she also wrote for The Women Novelists of the
Reign of Queen Victoria a long and vigorous appreciation
and criticism of George Eliot, for which, I believe, she
re-read every one of the novels from beginning to end. " I
am going to put some honey and butter on the point of
my knife," she wrote to me, " but knife it will be, stuck
into the writer of Felix Holt."
From the following letter, it would appear that it was
only after she found that Mrs. Gaskell had already been
appropriated, that she, somewhat against her will, under-
took Marian Evans,
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
\']th January 1897.
" I have had a letter from Hurst & Blackett asking me
to contribute to a Queen's Jubilee kind of volume they are
going to bring out, of reviews of dead authoresses by the
living. They have given me my choice, of all the chief; but
I have set aside George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte, Mrs.
Craik (Diana Mulock) and Harriet Martineau, and if I do
any at all, have chosen Mrs. Gaskell. Not that I kjioiv
anything of her, and I have not read her books since I was
a young woman, but my impression of her is sweet. She
was such an unaffected woman — to my memory, at least.
I saw her once, and she seemed to me such a dear, and
not as affected as either George Eliot or Mrs. Craik. I
should have to read all her books again if I did her. ... I
1896-1897 327
always feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Gaskell, for, when
I was quite young and was being acrimoniously discussed at
Harriet Martineau's, she upped and defended me, though she
knew nothing of me. So, if I do her, she cast her bread upon
the waters then, and will find it to her memory after long
years. I never forget a kindness — nor an injury — Lucy, and
if 1 am tenaciously grateful, I am also tenaciously resentful."
It must not be supposed, however, that her Queen articles
and other publications made up anything approaching the
actual sum of her pen's activity — either for this or indeed
for any other year of her life. I have lying before me her
letter-book, in which she made a memorandum of every
letter written during the year 1897. The grand total is
2124, a very large number of them being replies to persons
asking for literary advice, or discussing further with her
the subjects of which she had treated in her books and
articles. No small proportion consisted, of course, of re-
quests from autograph hunters, whose cupidity I believe
she always satisfied. Indeed, she was almost excessively
scrupulous as a correspondent, and fiercely repudiated, on
the score of good manners, Lord Palmerston's dictum that
all letters answered themselves, if left unanswered long
enough.
I shall conclude this chapter with some of the more
interesting letters of the year.
In April she was the specially invited guest of the
Authors' Society at the annual dinner, and was given the
place of honour on the chairman's right hand, as doyenne
of the profession.
The following letter is in answer to an invitation from her
friend Mrs. Kelly, to stay with her for that function, Nansen's
lecture, and the private view of the Royal Academy : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Kelly.
" Brougham House, Malvern,
"jthjantiary '97.
" Dearest Ella Kelly, — Your sweet letter and the
formal invitation from the Authors' Society have thrown
328 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
me into a sea of perplexity. I should like to go immensely,
I should like to go to the Nansen lecture immensely, and
I should love to go and stay with you. The spirit is willing
all through — but the poor old flesh? Am I fit to go and
stay with any one in the winter? I want so much warmth !
— a fire to go to bed by, and a fire to get up by, and a hot
bath in the morning — not a decent, cool, tepid fellow, but
water as hot as can be borne without inconvenience — and
is not this all a nuisance beyond words to any mistress? —
not to speak of the servants ! In the summer I am not
such a bother, but February has still the chill of winter
hanging upon its shoulders, and if I get cold — well ! I am
even more unpleasant as a companion and housemate than
when I have only to take care not to be chilled.
" I scarcely know what to say. I shall have to write to
the Society to-day, yes or no, and of course to you I must
say yes or no before I finish the letter. I wish it had been
later! What a worry indecision is, darling! That shuttle-
cock of the mind, ' back and forth,' is far worse than doing
the most painful thing possible. To hesitate over a pleasure
— shall I? shall I not?— is in itself a pain. Well! I must
say one th.ng or another. / want to go, and I am afraid of
giving so much trouble, and also I am afraid of taking
cold — my grand enemy !
" For the Nansen lecture, if I felt seedy after the journey,
we could let it slip, so far as I am concerned. Shall I say
yes? I should like it so much — but I am a nuisance in a
house, with one thing and another — and the morning's work
that imist be done, wherever I may be ! I know you will not
mind all this, but / do for you. Still — still — the temptation
is too great ! Selfish or not, ' here goes ! ' — Yes, darling, on
the 8th I will go up, and I will go up by a train that will get
me into London by daylight.
" Most selfish of women as I am, I am your loving friend
all the same ! — and your dear husband's too. — Ever your
gratefullest nuisance, E. Lynn Linton."
Unfortunately her worst fears were realised, and she
promptly went down with a severe attack of bronchitis, to
which she was now terribly susceptible. " I get it," she said,
" if the wind looks at me through the window."
Many of her longest letters of this period consist of the
1896-1897 329
minutest particulars of her garden and its feathered visitors,
which would have delighted Miss Jekyll and the authoress of
A Solitary Summer. I must not allow myself more than a
specimen quotation —
" The vine is pruned now close to the stem, a mere
skeleton of a vine, not a single extraneous branchlet left.
He looks a poor polled shorn sheep, but it is necessary for
the future good of the grapes. . . . My greedy tits have eaten
almost all the other half of the cocoa-nut put up on Tuesday.
They eat it all day long. I am going to expend 2M. for
a pound of hemp-seed for the wretches. I wish I had more
than sparrows and starlings. These come in their thousands
(not quite, perhaps eight or ten or a dozen), but no others
that I can see but the tits, two of these, the ox-eyed and the
smaller {not the long-tailed)."
The following letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer, with its
interesting suggestion for the "crowning work" of her life,
presupposes a quality of mind in Mrs. Linton, with which, I
venture to think, she was not endowed. I find no evidence
in her writings, and I never discovered in private intercourse,
any outstanding quality of constructiveness. True, she
touched bottom and arrived at what might do as a founda-
tion, but she offered no systems in place of those which she
set herself to destroy and overthrow. Her function was to
raise the battle-cry, not to marshal the troops in the field.
And no one was more keenly alive to her lack of executive
ability, the result of her want of systematic education, than
she was herself Her answer to Mr. Spencer's letter is not
forthcoming, but I am inclined to think that she must have
disclaimed any capacity for " the collection of evidence and
balancing of results." At any rate, there are no signs that
she contemplated undertaking the task.
Mr. Herbert Spencer to E. L. L.
"MoLYNEUx Park Hotel, Tunbridge Wells,
lyh June 1897.
" Dear Mrs. Lynn Linton, — Let me suggest to you a
work which might fitly be the crowning work of your life — a
work on Good and Bad Women.
330 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" You have rather obtained for yourself the reputation of
holding a brief for Men versus Women, whereas I rather think
the fact is that you simply aim to check that over-exaltation
of women which has long been dominant, and which is
receiving an edatante illustration in a recent essay by Mrs.
J. R. Green, which is commented upon in this week's Spectator.
The flattering of women has been, one might almost say, a
chief business of poets, and women have most of them very
readily accepted the incense with little qualification ; and this
has been so perpetual and has been so habitually accepted
by men, as to have caused a perverted opinion.
" I think you might, at the same time that you duly dealt
with that side of the question, which you have done frequently,
deal with the other side by emphasising the goodness of
women in many illustrations and in many cases, and you
would thus re-habilitate yourself in the matter at the same
time that you would be doing an extremely serviceable thing.
" The natures of men and women are topics of continual
discussion, but entirely of random discussion, with no analysis
and no collection of evidence and balancing of results.
" If you entertain my proposal, I should like very well
by and by to make some suggestions as to modes of inquiry
and modes of comparison. — Truly yours,
" Herbert Spencer."
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Hartley.
" c/o Mrs. Mills, Newbie, Bowdon,
Cheshire, (jthjuly '97.
" My vanishing Lady, — How are you? where are you?
In heaven or in the earth? Married or single? With three
children or none ? What has happened to you ? swallowed
up in an earthquake ? Have the grace and kindness,
Beatrice Hartley, to put pen to paper and make some of
your extraordinary t's and send me a line to tell me how
things are with you, as I feel a little cold and unclothed
and not sufficiently wrapped up in heart or mind when I
miss that recalcitrant daughter's scrambly epistles for very
long together !
" I came here on Tuesday, and was really glad to travel
alone to prove that I was not the imbecile you all try to
make me out, and not such a fool as to need a mistress —
1896-1897 331
no matter who — but any one's judgment as superior to my
own.
" It is very cold here, quite winter again, and I have a fire
in my bedroom. I have taken a little cold, but not much,
only the old throat feeling of paved bricks or concrete instead
of pliable cords and muscles !
"... Good-bye, my lost star. Love to the dear
demons. — Bee's mother and friend, POOR BONES."
Mrs. Linton had boiled over with indignation at Lady
Burton's egregious " Life" of her husband, and welcomed the
prospect of TJie True Life of Captain Sir R. F. Burton, upon
which Miss Stisted was now engaged.
E. L. L. TO Miss Stisted.
"... I am very glad indeed to hear that there is to be a
truthful and rational life of dear Sir Richard Burton. I have
always resented Lady Burton's false and affected endeavour
to claim for her husband the profession of a faith which, if he
did hold, proved him the falsest and most cowardly of men.
She and I crossed swords on that point, and I said to her
roundly that Sir Richard belonged to the world, not only to
her, and that she had degraded his memory by her assump-
tions of this and that principle we all know he did not hold.
I said, and have ever said, a man must stand or fall by his
own life, and that the greatest indignity that can be done to
his memory is to interfere with the integrity of his principles
expressed and acknowledged during his lifetime. It was
only her intense vanity that made Lady Burton take the
attitude she did. Had she really loved and respected her
husband as she professed, she would have been content to
leave him to himself, and not have placed herself on the
throne of the superior and on the seat of the judge. She
would have somehow reconciled it to herself that he was an
'infidel' yet 'saved.' Love has no better toga than this of
divine partiality. ' God will save him (or her) for his good-
ness, for all his want of faith.' So Lady Burton would
have said, and would have carried out to the letter every
wish of her dead husband, and would have respected his
integrity."
332 THE LIFE OF IVIRS. LYNN LINTON
That Mrs. Linton was a past-master in the " art of grow-
ing old " was an axiom with her friends. The spirit in which
she accepted old age is shown by three letters of this period.
E. L. L. TO Lady Paget.
" Brougham House,
5^'/^ September '97.
"... Do you remember that expressive old myth of
Thor, when he was set to try his strength against the Old
Woman and could not throw her, struggle as he might? He
made a good fight of it, but, grand wrestler as he was, the
Old Woman threw him — and then the gods laughed and
said, * Small blame to him.' The Old Woman was Old Age,
and she must conquer in the end ! I do my bit of Thor
work faithfully and fight off" all I can — but — but — those feet
shod with wool creep up and up and nearer and nearer, and
a brave — not craven — acceptance is the wisest way ! "
E. L. L. TO Miss Jean Middlemass.
'■'■ 2']th December '97.
" I do not think any one realises more vividly than I the
contraction of time — the gradual lessening to nothingness of
X^Ci'dX peau de chagrin in which is inscribed our term of life —
but without dread, without repining — with a little regret that
the day has to come when I shall not see the sky and the
clouds and the fields and the flowers, and shall not hear the
song of birds or the voice of friends. Still it is the charter on
which we have held our life and enjoyed our days ! I find
old age has infinite compensations. If we have lost the
grand activities and glorious personal possessions of youth,
we have lost its disturbing passions and turbulent unrest.
We have peace, and we can give so much happiness to
others ! I feel like a cornucopia, whence I can pour out
small good gifts to the poor, and the greater gifts of sym-
pathy, wise advice, and affection for my friends. I feel a
kind of pride in saying to myself, ' No one shall be made
unhappy by me. All shall be made happier for the brief
moment of contact. All shall feel the warmth of human
1896-1897 333
love and sympathy, and the ice of selfishness shall never
form round my heart.
" Yes, old age is lovely too, love/^Vr than youth was in
its very majesty of daring — its insurgency, its enthusiasms,
its sublime beliefs and its radiant ignorance !
" So there you have a close-of-the-year page of reflections !
I wonder why I scrawled all that down to vex your eyesight !
All good be yours in '98 and onward. — Affectionately yours,
"E. Lynn Linton."
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
I'jth December 1897,
" I was thinking last night when I went to bed what a lot
of pleasure is still left to us old people ! When we are tired
and sleepy to go up to that warm, comfortable bedroom and
warm, comfortable bed and sleep — what a pleasure it is ! and
then to wake up in the morning and be ALIVE — to see the
sky and the hill and the laurels and the road and the trees,
and to be still ONE with this divine nature, and to have yet
on one's plate some of the banquet de la vie we have enjoyed
so long — what a joy that is — and then to do good and kindly
to one's fellows — to make one's servants and surroundings
happy by one's geniality and consideration, to help the cheer-
fulness of one's companions by one's own, mellowed as it is
by the consciousness of the smallness of little worries and the
nearness of the great things — all this is the joy of old age,
Lucy — to taste with lingering love the few drops left us, and
to do good and kindly by our fellows, and to be sweet-
tempered and genial and cheerful for their sakes. / have
lost much. In early youth and maturity my great joy was
in long walks, in the putting out of my strength, and in seeing
new places. Later, when that physical strength left me, I
was a social personage. If I went into a public place, I
heard people whisper my name and stare ; and if I went into
private society, I was always the main centre of the company
— always — and now I am here quite alone, without being able
to go even on the Wyche Road on my feet , . . And I am
as happy as possible. I have lost my great home amuse-
ment, embroidery, and my eyes are fearfully unserviceable —
but that too I face cheerfully. ... '98 is close on us. We are
334 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
getting very old, you and I — but we can still play our part
in life well and worthily and give the happiness which, by
giving, we receive."
The following remarkable letter, written to one who shall
be nameless, is a sufficient answer to those who charged Mrs.
Linton with reckless iconoclasm. It is, moreover, a noble
admission on her part of the weakness of the agnostic's
position, which was hers. Her own case was that of Reason
versus Experience. The former was with her too strong for
the latter. She was unable to recognise in Christianity any-
thing more than a step in the ethical ascent of the race.
Yet it was a step of the utmost importance, and the race as
a whole was not ripe for its abandonment. She admitted,
indeed, that she might be wrong in her conclusions, and that
what she regarded as only a stage might be the final platform.
And for this reason, although for herself she must abandon it
as a resting-place, she dare not take upon herself the respon-
sibility of kicking away its supports. Indeed, she felt it in-
cumbent upon her to strengthen rather than weaken them,
as was shown by the family prayers which she made it her
duty to read to her household, and by her open support of
the Established Church. And, holding the opinions she did,
she was no more acting untruly than are we when we modify
truth for our children in matters which they are not mentally
strong enough to assimilate.
"... At the risk of boring, perhaps of vexing you, I must
write out my thoughts on this late craze of yours, for it is
nothing else, against your children's religious life. You are
doing what I should not have moral strength to do — taking
on yourself the responsibility of those young souls, and
destroying one of the strongest incentives that man has to
be virtuous and to abstain from vice. / would as soon tell
the whole mysteries of life and vice and maternity,
etc., and fling her into the society of fast women. Also with
the boys. Yet I am not a moral coward, as I think my life
has proved. But the responsibility one accepts for one's own
soul I certainly would not dare to accept for the souls of
others — my own children above all. You talk of reason
being our guide — reason of what period? of what school?
1896-1897 335
Have we in the nineteenth century the fee simple of Truth
any more than any other age has had ? What do we know
of the grand mystery of hfe and death and pain, and the
why and wherefore of things — of the whence and the
whither? Can reason tell us any more than an (even so-
called) revelation ? Reason is silent. Reason leads us to
absolute agnosticism ; but do you want your children to be
without a guide to good living ? without a God in the world ?
What reason have they got? When the time of youthful
passions comes for your boys, will reason keep them out of
the haunts of evil, or may you not hope something from the
belief of the purity demanded by God for acceptance, and
taught by Christ as the model for humanity? Why throw
open the doors to them to every kind of sinful excess by
taking from them all the restraints of religion? and why
stultify yourself as you will do ? You had them baptized —
you have had confirmed — you take them to church —
and now, suddenly, because you have heard a man of whom
you know nothing, whose apparent record is bad, but of
whom you choose to assume all holiness and purity of motive
and faithfulness to truth, you are inclined to make your
children all ' rationalists ' — to destroy the only real authority
you have over them, and to open to them the way to cor-
ruption of morals and undutifulness of life. You have not
thought out the matter. You have neither studied nor been
instructed. You have given yourself tete baissee to this man,
and are now going to inflict the very w^orst injury you can on
your children for the craze you have suddenly taken against
religion. All this is not the sign of a well-balanced mind, as
little as your restlessness about , and your fidgeting
about her companions, her pleaswe — and she still under
instruction ! — and her future. All 's bodily restlessness
is repeating itself in your mental instability. You can let
nothing go on quietly — your house — your children — )^our
life — all must be in a perpetual state of change, and of
placid contentment you do not seem to me to have a trace.
I don't think I have ever known so restless a mind as yours,
one always so seeking for change of condition. But nothing
is of the same importance as this new departure of yours —
so superficially come at ! of desire to destroy your children's
faith in Christianity, when you have nothing better to give
them. Far rather than that you should do this, cultivate
336 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
your vicar, and let him talk to the children. If your own
sense of truth is so strong that you cannot conceal your
denial for the sake of their supreme good, get some one who
has no doubts to strengthen that which to young people is
their only safeguard. To the young and ignorant some
kind of positive faith is an absolute necessity^ and the best
philosophers, who have thought out the matter with long and
anxious care, will say the same thing. You call me ' mad '
and all sorts of injurious things, because I recognise this and
do all that I can to strengthen the faith — and with the faith
— the practising my ignorant servants in the Christian religion
— concealing from them my own unbelief as a thing with
which they have nothing to do — a thing which concerns my
own self only. As a member of the community I feel bound
to support so far openly the Established Church. All my
intelligent friends here know the real truth, and some of
them are in exactly the same state as myself — unbelievers in
the mythology, but conformists outwardly for the sake of the
weaker brethren — and those who have children for the sake
of the children. I remember hearing , brought up an
atheist, say it was the most cruel thing that could be done to
a child to bring him up without a definite religion. Give
him the chance of a choice, and when he is old enough to
reason and judge, then let him do so."
The last letter of 1897 dwells much on the approach of
death. It was about this time that she told me of her
doctor's verdict the last time she was in London. She had
insisted on his telling her the whole truth, and this was that
the chief organs of her body were well-nigh worn out, and
that they were in the condition he should expect to find in a
woman ten years her senior.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
The last day of'^'].
" For the New Year's Day you deserve a decent sheet of
paper, to carry you my dear, unchanging love, that has lasted
now for, say, seventy years. I was about five years old, per-
haps, when I felt that great love for you that went on into
1896-1897 337
the child's vow to be your best and most devoted, when
poor Edmund died and you had lost your then favourite
companion. That went on farther into the time when we
were both grown girls, and I was the stronger and more
robust, and carried you in my arms through the incoming
tidal puddles at Allonby, when we both had whooping-cough,
and you were delicate. So it has gone on through life, with
occasional, very occasional, little whiffs and breaths of slight
misunderstanding, when we did not agree about our estimate
of things, and we did not see 'eye to eye' but a wee bit
' cross-eyed.' And those were chiefly about the children
when they were little, and I had the reformer's fever, and
wanted to see this and that a little modified. But those were
no more than the flimsiest summer clouds in the sky of our
&OidiViX\x\^ friendsJiip, and now at the close of our lives it is as
warm and strong as ever. ... It is a comfort that we have
held together so strongly and closely, and that we are still of
the old family and with the old family memories to look
back to in concert. I am glad you like Julia. I had read
it, for Mr. Stead sent me two copies, one for myself and one
to give away. It does not matter what / think of it. I
knew it would comfort and soothe you. But I do not think
it well or wise, sweet Loot, to dwell on that which we can
never know till we experience. Nor can we in the present
state, with all the limitation of our senses and bodily ex-
perience, rightly conceive what the future will be. It is all
unprofitable speculation ; and the vague undesignated hope
and trust that it will be all well — and so leave it — is better.
While we live, our duty is plain and clear — to live for others
and to be thoughtful of others, considerate to them in all
ways, and unselfish in our endeavour to make them happy.
No one can realise the nearness of death more vividly than
I do — and for that very cause I live every hour of the day
that I can. I should think a day terribly lost where I had
not done something kind, or said or written, or in some way
felt, that I had cast a ray of sunshine, however pale and weak,
over some one's life. It is a joy to me to see how intensely
happy my servants are, and how happy even the kitten is !
Now no one who comes in contact with me leaves me with-
out a smile and a glow of pleasure somehow created. This I
take as my duty, and I fulfil it, no matter what I am suffer-
ing in my own person. For I am never out of pain. I
338 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
never know a moment's cessation from pain. ... I hold to
the duty of happiness. ' By reason of the frailty of our
flesh' we cannot be happy when under the sharp pang of
affliction ; but we can and ought to be, when we have nothing
but the ordinary little tracasseries of life to meet, and nothing
worse than the failing power of enjoyment inseparable from
old age. . . . Death is nearer to us than it was, but the other
life is not one whit more real than before. It was as real
when we were young as it is now — only a little farther off.
But we have no more right now than we had then to merge
the actual living present, and to lose the gain and good of
life, for the sake of the future and the state after death. You
say you will not be long here; so say I of myself. I have
certain symptoms which tell me I may 'drop' at any
moment ; but I keep all this in the secret recesses of my own
heart, and simply DO what I can for others. And I am as
cheerful as the sunlight on the field and lawn opposite.
Why not ? The day is drawing to its night. It must come
— and we must all like tired children go to bed at last. But
let us be happy unto the end ! It is our duty to others. . . .
My dear, dear love to you, Lucy, for '98, as for all the years
that lie behind us."
CHAPTER XXIII
1898
THE end of 1897 brought the news by telegraph of Mr.
Linton's death in America on 29th December. From
his later letters Mrs. Linton had learned that life had
become a burden to him, and it was rather a relief than
otherwise to know that the " weariness worse than pain " was
over. There was no poignant sense of personal loss, for she
had known over thirty years of practical widowhood ; but still
old memories were stirred to the depths — memories of past
youth, past hopes, past enthusiasms, and, without feigning
what she did not feel, the year 1898 opened with sadness in
her heart and tears very near the surface.
Writing to Lady Wardle, she says, " I do not know if you
have seen in the paper the announcement of poor dear Mr.
Linton's death. He was eighty-five, and quite worn out.
Life had no more to give him now but pain and sorrow, and
existence had become a burden. It is best so. He is at
peace and rest, and anyhow he is better off than when he
was groaning in that weariness which is zvorse than pain !
He either knows no more of suffering or of joy — or he is free
from the one and is full in the sunshine of the other ! "
In something of the same strain she writes to her friend
Mr. Oakley: "All great artists of whatever branch have
done well to say farewell while yet they are regretted and
desired. I remember Dejazet in her decrepitude playing her
famous piece of Richelieu. She had to hold her poor dear
feet wide apart for a better ' base of support.' She was old,
old, old, and she had been such a brilliant star ! I thought
it a tragedy at the time, and I think the same kind of thing
still a tragedy."
339
340 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
To Mr. Mackenzie Bell she writes — " No death can
happen in one's — even remote — circle without bringing with
it pain and regret and the memory of the past, I had been
separated from poor dear Mr. Linton for over thirty years —
but I bear his name and he was my husband, who once loved
me and I him ! He was a singularly gifted man, and most
charming in conversation. If he had not bitten the Dead
Sea apple of impracticable politics he would have risen
higher in the world of both art and letters. But he put out
his best strength to water the sea sand and to hunt the
snark ! In any case, he was thoroughly sincere."
And again to a Malvern friend, Mrs. Peacock — "Thank
you for your sympathy. I have been in deepish waters on
more accounts than one, but things pass, and the bad things
pass with the good ! I have such a strong feeling as to the
claims of the present and the need of living while we are
alive, that I fight my way clear — after a time — and I shall
now, as often before ! "
And to her sister — " I don't pretend for a moment that
my life is touched in the very remotest degree, but my heart
is, and I cannot help thinking of the olden time. Still I have
such a strong feeling that life is around and before us, not
behind, save as one cherishes old treasures, old rose-leaves,
old trinkets, things to keep but not to brood over, not to live
for and with, to the exclusion of all the more pressing claims
of the present — as I feel this so much, I do not let myself
gloom, and I do go on as usual."
The early part of 1898 found her engaged upon the
drastic revision of the novel, The Second Youth of Theodora
Desanges, which she had completed in 1897, but with which
she had become dissatisfied. She was now breaking it up,
putting back the action some thirty years, and re-writing
large portions. At the time of her death it had again been
structurally completed, but not finished in detail and finally
revised.
The interest of the book lies not so much in the story as
in the fact that here we have the final utterances of one whose
brain was well-nigh as active, and whose touch was almost as
certain, at seventy-five as it had been at forty.
1898 341
And that I do not overstate the case when I claim for
her an extraordinary measure of intellectual keenness, will, I
think, be evident from the last batch of letters (the most vital
part of biography, according to E. B. Browning) which it is
my privilege to lay before the reader,
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Brougham House, Malvern,
yd January 1898.
" We follow the law of our physical being so closely, and
when we are well things all look bright, and when we are
not well they look dark. But also we have a certaiii amount
of free will and a certain amount of power over ourselves,
and as we resolutely set ourselves to be and to think and to
live, so we can, up to a certain point. Hopelessness has
always been your cross. . . , Only remember, dear, that
life is exactly as it was when we were children. It is we
who have changed, not humanity. That remains constant
with a different dress, but the thing underneath is the same.
The want of respect and discipline among the children is
unpleasant to us who were brought up under a different
regime — but it is perhaps better than the deceit and slyness
and suppressed lives and crushed individuality of the older,
sterner rule.
" All things have two sides, and hopeless ruin does not
stare us in the face yet. As I told you, sweetheart, I find
my happiness in activities of small kindnesses. I cannot do
big things for any one, but I do all sorts of little things, and
the first thought I have is, what can I do to help so and so ?
What can I say ? What can I give ? Life to me is life and
has to be lived, and the preparation for the hereafter is the
now. When we grow old the imperiousness of passion and
our own individuality burns low and sinks, and then the
others are the first consideration. To live in others and for
others — to be eager to utilise the fast-fleeting time for all
good that may come in our way — to feel that 'he prayeth
best who loveth best ' — that to me is the one great law and
rule of life. Social and even literary ambitions have fallen
from me — but not the love of my kind — not the desire to
help, to solace, to brighten the lives of others. In doing so
one finds one's own happiness — and all that one can have.
342 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
with one's weakened energies and absolutely nil future for
good fortune. Prince Charming, who used to live round the
corner, is dead and buried — there are no fortunes to be made
and no legacies to come. The past and present have deter-
mined the future for ourselves, save in the possibility of
sorrow ; but love remains — love of our own — love of one's
kind, love of nature and beauty and art and goodness —
and only when love dies, then does the meaning of life
die too!"
Love had come to be with her not "merely a reality, not
merely the greatest of realities, but the only reality," as
Ruskin said religion was with Holman Hunt.
" Oh, thank God ! " she cries, " oh, thank God that we
can love, and thank God when we have loved ! Let it all go
from us, let it be stilled in death, or quenched in tears — the
past remains true and our own, and the love that has been
neither can be denied nor destroyed."
Like many old people, she was now troubled with early
wakefulness. Then, for two or three hours before she could
get up, the torment of memory would take hold of her, and
the sense of loneliness would become almost unbearable. She
has often told me that she could only keep herself from hours
of weeping by repeating the poetry with which she never
ceased to store her brain. As an example of her extra-
ordinarily accurate memory for such things, I may mention
that she gave me a copy of the Barrack - Room Ballads,
verbally restored throughout from memory to the original
form in which she had first seen them, as they appeared
from time to time in the National Observer^ St. James s
Gazette, and AtJienceum.
The keenness of her delight in nature appears in the
following letter : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Brougjiam House, Malvern,
i,ih January 1898.
" We are having some Malvern weather, so very damp and
misty — and so cold. It is a terribly cold place, but a dear,
1898 343
sweet, lovely place too ! When I get up in the morning the
world is all dark grey — a ligJit black — and the morning is
nothing but as yet a promise, * Who's der knocking at de
door ? ' — Soon it grows lighter, a light grey, then white, and
then light. It is lovely to see the transitions. ... I am so
glad to have the habit of getting up early, if it were for
nothing but to see the gradual waking of the day. I wish I
could write poetry, Lucy ! There are so many subtle and
transient thoughts — so many deep and vague feelings that
would go well in verse, but cannot be reduced to prose, and
I feel sometimes such a longing to say what I feel and
think ! "
From the following extract we learn that she was planning
further work. Two of the " Studies " were found completed
after her death.
" I have an idea for some stories, but I cannot get time to
write them — six unhappy marriages, not all the blame on him
and not all on her — some of them simply incompatibility, and
called generally Studies of Hivi and Her with sub-titles, the
first, ' Awakened, or Out of the Doll's House ' — not necessarily
crime or vice but criss-cross views and want of discipline —
want of submission. They are seething, but I cannot get
them out of the pot ! ! ! "
The next two extracts from letters of this date show that
even in old age there was still left much of the effervescence
so characteristic of her youth.
First, of her own sex — " I hate women as a race, Lucy. I
think we are demons. Individually we are all right, but
as a race we are monkeyish, cruel, irresponsible, superficial."
This love of the individual and repudiation of the type was
always asserting itself. For example, she writes in another
letter, " I hate women who hunt, but I like the women
I know who do." In the same way, towards the criminal
classes, labelled as such by social necessity, she was pitiless,
whilst for the criminal himself she had pity and pardon,
a helping hand and a loosening of the purse-strings. She
was actuated by the same wide humanity as was the present
Warden of Merton, when he " laid down the law with great
solemnity and gave private orders that it should not be
344 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
enforced." This is what she wrote in The World Well Lost :
" It is only by experience and love that we come to that
wider judgment which can see all round a thing, and which
pities as much as it condemns — which pities more than it
condemns."
So too in other matters. As her valued friend, Mr. John
Stafford, writes to me, " It was not so much against indi-
viduals that her lance was levelled, as against the literary,
artistic, and moral iniquities she conceived they represented.
The very name of one of these arch-offenders would act
as a sudden squall on a placid lake : it seemed, in other
words, to hit her like a violent blow. The hot blood would
rush to her face ; her dilated eyes would blaze through her
glasses ; her hands (she had beautiful hands) would clench
to veritable fists ; and for some moments she would sit
trembling and speechless. After that one's ears buzzed.
At times it was terrible ; but it was quickly over, and
as often as not the storm would find its end in one of her
charming little laughs, and she would turn, not without
a soupqon of shame in her comely face, to another subject.
No living man, I hope, ever dared to continue the previous
one."
In another letter she effervesces over France and the
Dreyfus case. " Of all the nations now living on the face of
the earth, the French are the most contemptible — the most
detestable, vain, hysterical, emotional, unreasonable, and
always posing — entirely without spontaneity or self-forget-
fulness. I hope Lord Salisbury will be firm about China
even to zvar."
The next letter shows how keenly she still loved nature,
life, and knowledge, even when the general conditions were
not of the cheeriest.
"The weather is certainly freezing. . . . Cold or warm,
damp or dry, it hurts us in this best of all possible worlds !
this in reality loveliest of all worlds ! — Everything hurts us —
the weather and the elements — wild beasts, insects, hidden
causes of disease, drought, deluge — we are the mere footballs
of matter, and we can make only our good out of it — the
necessity of endeavour — endeavour being supposed to be
1898 345
a finer thing than enjoyment — the fight with unfriendly
conditions, a nobler exercise of power than the more
placid and contented use of surplus energies. But we are
here, Lucy, and have to make the best of it. . . . We
are making such wonderful discoveries in the whole region
of physiology as well as in other things, that we can place
no limits. We have already such apparent miracles among
us — the Rontgen rays, the new telegraphy, the photo-
graphy of unseen stars, the limitation of the universe
(unthinkable, but still seeming to be a fact), that we cannot
say, No farther. We shall find out more and more as time
goes on, and, as I believe will be, we get deeper convolutions
of the brain, more of them, and more grey matter to w^ork
with!"
An Edinburgh reviewer lately said brilliantly and truly
that " every man according to his ability must write his own
decalogue," and those who knew Mrs. Linton best knew best
that she not only wrote hers, but worked incessantly to live
up to it. Courage, duty, and love were writ large in it, and
through all the inconsistencies of her character shone con-
spicuous in her actions. I know she was compact of
vehemence and tenderness, of hastiness and patience, of
manly strength and womanly weakness, of self-depreciation
and self-respect, of broad-mindedness and dogmatism, of
tranquillity and passion. I know that all these incongruities
appear curiously and undesignedly in her self-revelations, but
I know, too, that there were certain simple and elemental
virtues that she practised with more and more singleness of
purpose the older she grew. And these, perhaps, will not
prove the less acceptable because done
Not with the hope of gaining heaven,
Nor of escaping hell.
Here is part of her decalogue written in the next letter to
her sister : —
" Do the right is the thing to do without the smallest
reference to one's self, what one gets or what one loses, what
is repaid, or what is not repaid. ... I do believe in the law
of duty and the absolute value of unselfishness. I think one
346 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
of the blots on the Christian religion is to do good to others
that we may be rewarded — to think only of saving our own
souls. The grand impersonal duty of the Stoics was more
splendid, Lucy ! and them my heart turns with love and
reverence and desire to imitate. Sometimes a great rush of
pent-up sorrow comes over me, and I am swept in the flood —
swept down into the deep waters, Lucy, which close over
me — for a time. And then I come up again and look into
the face of the sun, and get on to dry land, and find life
very well worth the living, so long as there is a sun to
warm one and a flower to see, and a bit of human kindness
to perform and the sweet warm days of summer to look
forward to."
And how quick she was to discover the opportunities for
these " bits of human kindness," one or two examples must
suffice. On one occasion she found that her neighbour at
table-d'hote was deaf The next night she provided herself
with a tablet, and for the rest of their acquaintance kept
him posted up in the conversation from which he was other-
wise debarred.
Another phase of her kindliness which always compelled
my admiration, knowing as I did her natural impatience, was
the way in which she made it appear as though she suffered
bores gladly — a humbling enough thought, it must be con-
fessed, to many of those who prided themselves on her
unstinted intercourse and unfaltering friendship !
Here is what Mr. Sargent, the hall porter at Queen
Anne's Mansions, writes to me on the subject of her thought-
fulness —
" Of course kindness to us all, and her punctuality, were
things I noticed most in her. I don't believe she was five
minutes late once a year for dinner or other numerous en-
gagements. I well remember her first Christmas here, which
shows her frankness and kindness to us. She said, ' Sargent,
I want to make you all a little Christmas present. 1 can't
afford much, you know, for I am not rich, and I have to work
for my living the same as you do ; but if I leave any one out,
let me know, my friend, and I will rectify it.' And we miss
her very much at Easter ; every year she gave us new ties
1898 347
to be worn on Easter Day, selecting mine herself with a
request to be worn on Easter Sunday in remembrance of
her. When leaving the Mansions she thanked me for my
great kindness to her the years she had been here, and
said, ' Sargent, I have left you ;^5 in my will, but as I
shall no doubt make another one, I give you the £$ now,
as I want to know that you have it.' She did not make
another will, however, so I have received the £^ again since
her decease."
Nor was this thoughtfulness confined to the period of her
residence at the Mansions, when " tips " might have spelt
bribes for better service. After she left, and to the end of
her life, she continued these " fairings," and was instant in
asking after the welfare of the commissionaires and other
servants of the house.
But Mrs. Linton did not content herself with recognising
those humbler workers who help to grease the wheels of life
within sight and hearing. She realised that there are hun-
dreds working in what may be called the basements of our
social structure who get more kicks than ha'pence, whose
existence is only realised when they fall short of perfection,
and whose successes are accepted as mere matters of course.
And, realising their existence, they must be heartened up
with the rest. How many authors are there, I wonder, who
ever give a thought to the printers and compositors other-
wise than to anathematise their mistakes? But this was not
Mrs. Linton's way. She insisted rather upon her indebted-
ness to them, and more than one " father of the chapel " has
received from her generous sums of money for distribution
among his journeymen.
Courtesy was also written large in her decalogue, and
practised by her to the utmost. One day she had been the
victim of a bit of unmannerliness, and she wrote to my wife —
" It is not courtesy, as I hold courtesy from one gentle to
another ! So my head is rather high, and the vertebral
column on which it is supported, and of which it is the last
bone blown out into a bubbly kind of ball, is as stiff as stiff,
and I think everybody very horrid, save you two and
myself!!!"
348 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
In the next letter she enlarges on a favourite theme, and
writes of religion as mainly a geographical expression.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
" Brougham House, Malvern,
2'] th Jajiuary 1898.
" I grant the absolute need of religion as a system visible
and imperative, and I acknowledge the existence of the
spiritual life, but I think the forms we give the unseen
divine are the necessities of our own human nature, which
cannot jump off its own shadow nor travel beyond its own
experience. But I think that conscience is the sense of
duty and of right and wrong — apart from the conventional
forms which obtain according to race, faith, time, and even
latitude and longitude. I think that this is part of the
scheme of human life, just as an advanced taste in art or
dressing or manners. Morals aj'e integral to society^ and are
part of the condition of humanity. . . . We should have
them whether or not after a certain period of civilisation, and
so. Loo, I stand and zvait. Death will soon solve the
mystery one way or the other. Meanwhile, in all the multi-
plying of faiths I cannot see which is the Absolute. Here
is the R.C. who will not let his * penitent ' join in the family
worship of a Protestant — here is the Protestant who will not
use the symbols or join in the worship of an R.C. — a Church-
man who will not dance with the Salvationist — a Plymouth
Brother who thinks all the world save a very small remnant
is to be damned — a Mohammedan who does the same by all
but the Faithful — a Thug who worships his black goddess
Kali by murder — a Zoroaster who prays to the sun — and so
on, and so on ; and then above us all is the Great Incommuni-
cable First Cause to whom one is as dear a child as the
other — who never made an elder branch . . . and never
gave the Christian a charter of greater blessedness than the
heathen. We are all, all, all His children, and He does
not speak to us apart, but to us all in our own language,
equally according to our age, that is our knowledge and our
civilisation.
" To Him I live, and in Him I believe — but all the rest is
dark."
1898 349
The following letters explain themselves.
E. L. L. TO Mr. William Woodall.
" Brougham House, Malvern,
26th Jattiiary '98.
" My very dear Friend and Enemy, — Welcome back
to your native land ! where I hope you have arrived re-
splendent in health and energy, and with a noble fund of
patriotism.
" Would going down on my knees prevail on you and
your wicked comrades not to hamper the Government at
this critical time, and not to preach the doctrine of Scuttle
and Knuckle Under? Oh, let us have the war and be done
with it ! Lop off one at least of the arms of the Russian
Octopus ; strike back at that insolent stout-boy Germany ;
spurn, as she deserves, France, the most contemptible nation
of ancient or modern times. Be once more Englishmen
whom nations feared to affront, when they were united, and
before this cursed system of governing by party had killed
all patriotism on both sides alike. . . .
" We have to go through the phase in which we are at
present. We shall come to manhood suffrage and woman-
hood as well. We shall have mob rule heightened by the
hysteria of the feminine element, and then — the saviour of
society will appear with his * mailed fist,' and we shall swing
back to despotism and oppression.
" Human nature is a constant quantity, my dear W. W.,
M.P. ! You nineteenth century men and women have not got
a new charter, nor are you exempt from the logic of con-
sequences. What has been will be again, and — ' the mirror
of the prophet hangs behind him.' — Affectionately yours,
" E. Lynn Linton."
In replying to this letter, Mr. Woodall asked Mrs. Linton
to say what Lord Salisbury and his colleagues had done in
their conduct of foreign affairs, and especially in safe-guarding
British interests, to entitle them to the exceptional confidence
and abstention from criticism she demanded for them. A few
days later came the rejoinder —
350 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
"Brougham House,
"Jth February '98.
" My dear Mr. Woodall, — I am broken-hearted !
Delenda est Carthago! Ichabod ! Ichabod ! Who is to be
trusted with the honour of England ? No one ! This cursed
spirit of party government has killed all independent patriot-
ism. The 'party' comes before the country, and a man
is a Tory or a Liberal before he is an Englishman. It is
not so close a system as the papacy, but it has the same
essential defect. Depose Lord Salisbury, and where to find
a stronger man on either side? Lord Rosebery? Sir
William ? Chamberlain might do. He is not afraid of
responsibility as those others are, and I do not think would
be afraid of war as every one else is. I know the next
war will be the battle of Armageddon, and I know that
we are not sure of how our new ships will behave; still, to
recede as we do, step by step, inch by inch, to submit to
the insults of Germany and America, and to the crafty en-
croachments of Russia — surely this is far worse than one
supreme trial — a death struggle if you will — for the old
supremacy under new conditions ! We are all so afraid of
death ! What does it signify if we die to-day or to-morrow
— if the individual goes for the sake of the nation ? The
tilings of life are before and beyond the individual, and
national honour is of more value than a battalion of even
our finest and most lovely men. Woman as I am, old and
timid, I would give my life in torture to save the honour
and majesty and dominion of England ! Oh for some strong
statesman ! Some one with the wide vision of a Caesar and
the resolution of a Napoleon ! Turn where we will, we have
no one. Your party is riddled through and through with
unworkable fads and unpatriotic formulas — the Conservatives
are wooden sticks painted to look like iron — the curse of
weakness masked as humanitarianism is upon us, and the
folly of an impracticable morality has eaten into our states-
manship. Altruism does not work well in the Foreign Office.
' The problem of how to carry on a government on the
principles of the Sermon on the Mount, which has been
founded on the breach of all the Ten Commandments,' has
never been solved yet ! and never will be. So good-bye,
dear man. I am heart -sick, and as I say (patriotically)
1898 351
heart-broken at these repeated humiliations. — Ever most
affectionately yours, E. LYNN LiNTON."
In the following letter we have a cat story worthy of
the Spectator —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House,
'ipth January '98.
" We had a fright with Miss Puss on Friday. It is a little
bit of natural history for you, and one I did not know could
have happened. She caught her first mouse and was highly
delighted with it (I was not there), playing with it as cats
do. Suddenly the mouse disappeared, and she began to
cry — more like a child than a cat. I happened to go out
into the kitchen with the letters, and they told me she must
have swallowed the mouse whole and alive ! So she had.
I took her up in my arms, and her piteous face ! Then I
put her down, and she went under the table with her stomach
on the floor and all legs out. I was obliged to go away,
but they put her inside the fender for warmth and safety,
and she stayed there for hours as if dead or dying. Her
eyes were glazed, she took no notice of any one ; when put
down she was as if made of cotton-wool and could not stand,
her feet were all limp, and she was just as if dead. But I
ought to have told you that when I put her down and she
went under the table, she had a violent shivering fit, shivered
all over. Towards the evening, when the ' ladies ' who came
in had gone about six (this happened about two), I went
into the kitchen and lifted her up and spoke to her. She
opened her eyes and knew me, and I petted her and put
her on the table for a little milk. She lapped a little, but
could not stand, so we put her into the fender again, and
by the next morning she had digested her elephant and
was as well as ever. But it was a hard nut for her to crack
— a live mouse, not broken up, not masticated, fur, tail, paws,
ears, and all, all swallowed whole and alive ! No wonder
she cried, poor little thing, and no wonder she went nearly
dead with the effort of digesting such a lump of solid meat !
The gardener, who was here, said he had known of the
same thing before with young cats. They want the mother
352 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
to teach them how to deal with their mice ! But no one
knows whether she swallowed poor mouse of her own free
will, or by accident, or if mouse in her terror jumped down
the open throat. All we know is the result — and the fact."
In the next letter the reader will find some justification
for the attempt that has been made in this book to show
Mrs. Linton as she was. There has been no hesitation in
chronicling her defects as well as her virtues, nor has the
role of apologist been assumed. I have remembered what
she wrote when animadverting on Lady Burton's Life of
her husband —
" I have ever said a man must stand or fall by his own
life, and the greatest indignity that can be done to his
memory is to interfere with the integrity of his principles
expressed and acknowledged during his lifetime."
This indignity at least has not been passed upon her.
At the same time it must be admitted that, in leaving, as
far as has been possible, one so impetuous and so outspoken
to tell her own story, there may have been some lack of justice.
Passionate and enthusiastic as she was, she often gives
herself away to those pale-faced, white-livered critics who
have never known what passion and enthusiasm mean — those
moral and intellectual teetotallers who have never let the
wine of life pass their lips —
Too dull to feel depression,
Too hard to heed distress ;
Too cold to yield to passion
Or silly tenderness.
The thumbs of these of course will go down, but I am
sanguine that the majority of her judges will show a better
discrimination and read between the lines.
Her intimates know that she was noble, true, tender-
hearted, brave, and generous. These loved her, not because
her life was a piece of unswerving logic, but because she was
very woman in her inconsistencies. They loved her, not
despite, but because of the fact that she was too generous
not to be imposed upon, too open-handed to be economical,
human enough to be compact of weakness and strength.
1898 353
E. L. I.. TO Mrs. Gedge.
"Brougham House,
^rd February 1898.
" I have read Tennyson's Life, Lucy, and I told you so, and
recommended it to you. It is a very sweet picture of a very
lovely life, but of course it is imperfect because of what it
does not say. No man's character is so entirely without shade,
without even the hint of minor faults. A son could scarcely
have chronicled the defects — but the result is like Queen
Elizabeth's face, when she refused to let the painter put a
shadow to her nose. The whole is a lovely, lovely outline —
lovely — and is as good as a sermon. I do not agree with your
dislike of biographies, Loo. I love them, and history too.
We do not read half enough history. If we read more we
should have a truer sense of the continuity of human life, and
how time never causes the break of power, nature, and habits
which it has pleased people to imagine. Man has been
always man, as he is now, with improved mental and
mechanical powers, improved morals and social instincts in
excess of egotistical desires, and improved international ideas
of common rights, so that one strong nature has no right to
swallow up a weaker for the mere lust of conquest, as in the
old days before international law established itself as the
police of correction ; but beyond all this man is man as he
was in the days of Pericles and Julius Caesar, of Xerxes and
Scipio."
On 6th February she again refers to Tennyson, evidently
in answer to something Mrs, Gedge has remarked about the
portraits.
" I do not think Tennyson's face is discontented. Loo, so
much as thoughtful. A thoughtful face is never a jocund
one. It is always grave and sad. He was a striver after
better work and still better, but though deeply thoughtful
and keenly alive to the moral and mental difficulties of life,
he had made the whole thing so far clear to himself that he
could say. All is for the best. Well for those who can double
down the blood-red edges and say this, Lucy ! who can with
one breath say benevolence and love and fatherhood, with
the next recount the massacres and horrors of the past, the
354 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
cruelty of nature all through, and recognise the dominion of
pain and sorrow, suffering and death. I prefer the riddle
unsolved and insoluble, but I could not say, All is for the
best. I can only say the mystery of life, as we have it, is a
mystery I, for one, cannot solve nor explain away into the
rule of mercy and love."
The next letter shows how hard she still was upon herself
in the matter of work. The article referred to was published
posthumously and anonymously in Temple Bar.
" Lucy dear, I can write only a shabby note to-day, for
my head is swimming, and I am almost blind. From 9.30
until now, Lucy, 4.30, have I been finishing my article on
Parallels for the Fortnightly to look at. I took only twenty
minutes for my luncheon, and I wrote two letters. ... I
should have gone out had not this paper pressed. It is a
very curious paper, / think — the sweepings up of all my
readings this last winter — the parallels of character and
events and literary passages such as I came across. It is
very fragmentary, of course. It could be nothing else for a
maeazine article ! "
CHAPTER XXIV
1898 (Continued)
AT this time it was my privilege to pass on to Mrs,
Linton such books as I was finding particularly
interesting. Her appetite for them was unappeasable.
She devoured them with the voracity of one in the prime of
life and mental digestion. It hardly mattered what it was.
Whilst she was reading all that I could provide her with, she
was puzzling her friend, Mr. A. R. Waller, the publisher, by
asking for information about the most out-of-the-way books
on the most abstruse questions. Just now she was eager for
anything on the subject of Greek philosophy and mysticism.
Other books which she was tackling with enthusiasm and
carefully annotating were Polybius's History of the Roman
War zvith Carthage and Sicily, Procopius's Secret History of
the Time offnstinian and Theodora, her friend Mrs. Hamilton's
masterly translation of Gregorovius's History of Rome in the
Middle Ages, and Romanes's Animal Intelligence.
She was an extraordinarily rapid reader, and, like Lord
Macaulay, seemed to grasp the meaning of a page without
differentiating the words.
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
"8M February 1898.
" I knew there was something I wanted to say to you
yesterday, and in the intervals of silence I was routing about
the wool of my brain, but the thought was lost — overlaid,
hidden — and I could not unearth him. When you had gone,
he leapt out and mocked me. It was to say how much I
enjoyed your storiettes.
356 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
" How strange those old trials are ! but in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries we had more justice, and a finer,
clearer sense of evidence and legality, than the French have
to-day. And how history repeats itself! That trial of the
brother-in-law for the poisoning of his wife's brother is just
the original for the same kind of thing of late — Lampson, do
you remember ? The evidence given would not have hanged
him to-day. And this trial shows what we owe to vivisection
and experiments on the living animal (especially in toxicology),
by the wonderful advance we have made in medical science.
The Grey trial I had never come across at all. How strange
it was ! I wonder how it ended for Jier. Her marriage with
that Thomas man was evidently a blind, and he was thought
to be a complaisant husband. No wonder her father called
her ' hussy,' poor thing ! and no wonder she did not want to
go home. The mother's wisdom is very pathetic and natural.
But how I love the stately old forms of speech ! Not for my-
self— I should hate to have to use them — but to read them all
rustling with brocade and stiff with gold lace ! . . . Your friend
and book-leech, E. L. L."
Again, I had lent her The Ballad of Reading Gaol, just
published anonymously, and had suggested that the author
was Oscar Wilde.
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
" It does not read like Oscar Wilde in method — only one
word, ' wine-red,' seems to point at him. The diction is
simpler and less sensuous — more direct and more manly — than
his in general, though of course the subject is as perverted as
ever. It is all pity for the man who murdered the 'thing he
loved ' — who took from her love of the sunlight and the glory
of the free breath of heaven — all excuse for crime, and pity
for the criminal, but none for the victim — like Pater's moan
over ' those two poor young boys ' whose brief lives had been
chronicles of crime, but for the respectable man — husband,
father, master, citizen, and they so cruelly murdered, let them
go ! It may be Oscar's — but I do not recognise the affected,
artificial, Assyrian-monarch kind of touch he used to affect."
Again I had sent her a volume of State Trials.
1898 357
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
"Dearest Rex and King of Hearts, — I am more
sorry than I can say that the foul fiend Flue has got you,
and I need not say how earnestly, lovingly, anxiously I hope
your fytte will be a short one and soon over, leaving no
sequelse, which always looks a misprint for squeals ! I shall
hear of you as the days go by, and E. knows that if there is
anything I can say or do that will pleasure you, she has but
to give me a hint — anything, Rex, short of walking up to the
top of the Beacon, or standing on my head like some one in
Alice in Wonderland^ but I forget who — oh, old Father
William !
" I send back the Trials. ... I remember so well the
Ferrers trial, and how our father improved the occasion and
lectured us girls on the iniquity of the whole proceeding, till
I felt as if I had just escaped falling into the same abyss of
lies and deception. I remember it so well ! and the tracasscrie
about the bonnet. It is all very interesting, every trial, and
I think poor Beau Fielding, for all that he was a scamp, had
very hard lines dealt out to him.
" I have begun a Queen article to-day, ' That Cap and
Belt.' Did you know, what I have only just learnt, the
tradition that, after he had escaped from the cave of
Polyphemus, Ulysses wanted to go back for his cap and
belt left behind ? I found it in Polybius. When the one
thousand Achaean hostages had dwindled down to three
hundred, after sixteen years' exile and imprisonment, they
had their freedom granted them chiefly by a sarcastic word
of Cato in the Senate, ' Are we to sit here all day, debating
whether a few old Greek dotards are to be buried by Italian
or Achasan hands ? ' After their full release Polybius wanted
a few more concessions, whereon Cato significantly reminded
him of ' Ulysses who wanted to go back to the cave of the
Cyclops for his cap and belt.' We often lose the greater for
the less — the dog and the shadow and the bit of meat — the
lion's mouth and the safe exit and fatal return, etc. etc.
But the legend was new to me. I wish we had a book
of old Greek and Latin proverbs, and their meaning and
when they arose. ' Nothing without Theseus ' is one, ' Tell
it to the Twelve Powers,' another. Who were the Twelve
Powers ?
358 THE LIFE OF MKS. LYNN LINTON
" Tell E. she may tear her hair with envy. I have three
loads of gravel in my back garden, and two men at work on
the same. I feel baronial, George ! and also a new spiraea
bought at the door for is. gd.
" Good-bye, George, beloved and best. — Yours and E.'s
loving friend, E. L. L."
It is with some hesitation that I have allowed Mrs.
Linton's terms of endearment to stand, but it would, I think,
be false modesty to suppress them. At the same time, it
should be understood that she addressed most of her friends
and acquaintances with like superlatives.
The following extract shows her passion for tidiness : —
" I was out in the front garden and on the roadw^ay,
Lucy, at 8.30. Our new neighbours opposite had the dust-
cart early. ... So the wind was blowing, and it blew off
some of the papers, and the Betsey Trotwood woke up in
me like a Hon on the prowl, and I busked and bounced, and
I went downstairs like a flash, and out of the garden stalks
I and on to the road and up to the cart, and I says, ' My
men, you'll be very careful, won't you, of all the paper and
mess, and pick it all up and sweep the roadway clear?' So
they says, says they, ' Yes, m'm ; there's a lot of this here
mess, and we have to come with another cart.' All the
neighbours . . . are so much obliged to me for my Betsey
Trotwoodism — for I look after the bits of paper like a tiger ! "
The following letter to the Vicar of Malvern was dictated
by a determination not to sail under false colours. Deeply
as Mrs. Linton valued Mr. Felly's friendship, she felt bound
to risk its loss by fearlessly stating her position, though, I
need hardly say, any anxiety on that score was quite un-
necessary. In the same way I know she had dared to risk
the loss of Mr. W. E. Henley's friendship, which she highly
valued, by remonstrating with him for publishing Mr. Murray
Gilchrist's " Basilisk " in the Natmial Observe}'. Not that
she was by any means straitlaced, but she was quick to
draw the line where publication of anything seemed to her
harmful to the public. It was part of her religion never to
shrink from having the courage of her opinions. Sometimes,
1898 359
no doubt, her enthusiasm for truth made her appear more of
an irreconcilable than she really was.
E. L. L. TO Rev. Raymond Felly.
"Brougham House, Malvern,
1st March 1898.
" Dearest Mr. Felly, — I was so very sorry when I
came in yesterday to find that you had been. I was not
able to go to church on Sunday, for the carriage did not
come, and I was so sorry, for I knew you preached ! I do
not pretend to be a hypocrite, and say I agree with your
sermons intellectually. I do not think my intellectual doubts
will ever be laid to rest; they seem part of the very fibre
of my brain ; but I feel the value of that inner striving after
truth and good that you rouse in me, to the highest point
any clergyman has ever done. I cannot reconcile the facts
of Judaism and Christianity with my idea of a Great Father.
All religions are so unjust to others, and so partial to their
own. Why, even the genial Greek gave the best place in his
melancholy Hades to the initiated — and see what Mohammed
preached, and the Roman Catholics, and the Calvinists, and
the Plymouth Brethren ! It is all so human — so ' made on
earth' — like this proposed beatification of Cardinal Newman,
whom the papacy neglected for his lifetime, and now wants
to make one of the blessed. Was it not Wicliffe who said,
' God does not force men to believe what they cannot under-
stand ' ? and I cannot understand a one religion as the sole
claim to eternal life. Would you cast off one of your sons
because he made himself an artist, say, when you wanted
him to be something else? I have two servants, of whom I
love one far, far, far more than the other, but I make no
difference between them, and never let the one I do not love
so much feel out in the cold, and I am only a poor, weak,
passionate woman !
" Gratefully, respectfully, with my whole heart of hearts,
lovingly, your unworthy parishioner,
"E. Lynn Linton."
Again, I had sent her Burke's Vicissitudes of Families.
The beginning of the letter reminds one irresistibly of
3G0 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Jasper's pronouncement in Lavetigro — " Life is sweet, brother.
. . . There's day and night, brother, both sweet things ; sun,
moon, and stars, all sweet things ; there's likewise a wind on
the heath."
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
" Brougham House,
ifih March '98,
" George Rex, — Life is very lovely ! I am so glad that
I have that strain of mindless enjoyment in me which finds
a real pleasure in a flower, a ray of sunlight across the hills,
the changing colours of the trees, the glory of a sunset and
sky, or the snap-song of a bird ! I think the faculty for
enjoyment must be a special thing, like capacity for art or
music, poetry or literature. Still, I never feel it to be a very
respectable faculty, George ! It is a low, mean, sensual,
superficial kind of thing — a mere love for mental and
intellectual lollipops and toys ! All the same, it is a
valuable item in one's possession, a real talisman when
packed up in life's wallet, though made out of rags and
bones, and sticks and stones, and snippets of all sorts, like
an African Greegreeman's medicine.
" George, have you seen the discovery of the tomb of
Osiris ? I am immensely interested in it — excited in my
secret soul. It makes for one of my central principles —
the continuity of human nature — the likeness of human
inventions, and the sameness of thought — the old circle
traversed again and again on the exact lines, but by way-
farers dressed in different colours and speaking different
languages. There was a great mystery hidden in the death
of Antinous. His moral character was vilified, and his name
and influence were feared by the Christians of the second
and third centuries ; for his history came too near to their
idea of sacrifice to be spiritually comfortable. But this
tomb of Osiris and all that it reveals of the same idea are
instructive, G. R. !
*' Thank you for the Burke ; I have read the first volume,
but I have sundry extracts to make which will take another
day. Then will come the second, out of which I shall probably
have to extract more marrow — like Rabelais's dog — and then
you will have them back. Some of the men who ruined
1898 361
themselves by their brutal extravagance were surely mad —
Jack Mytton one of them ! The Irish, too, have only them-
selves to thank for their ruin — that Wm, Wray who made the
road over the mountain and horsed his friend's carriage with
his own bullocks — and those two dear girls, the laundresses !
They were angels. I am always glad when women come out
nobly as women, in a womanly way. Then I bend my knee
and kiss their hands and gladly own their sweet supremacy.
But the New Hussies! No, George — not for this Joseph!
Here are two toads celebrated in to-day's paper as having
cycled in knickerbockers to the polling booth, to be jeered at
by the rabble — and then there is the case of the maidservant
and her cigarettes. . . . Your loving subject and grateful
"Book Leech."
On sending back the book, she wrote —
" Herewith I return the Burke with many, many thanks
and a few quite unnecessary heartaches over the vicissi-
tudes of the great. It is heart - aching reading ! and one
feels so thankful for one's own bite and sup and wobbly old
roof-tree. As for me, I am cocky-whoopy beyond measure,
for my banker wrote to me on Saturday and told me he had
invested iJ^200 in Marshall and Snelgrove's 4^ debentures.
Now I did not know I had iJ^200 at my back unwanted, and
I did not know till to-day that M. and S.'s debentures
were scarce to be had for love or money, and that I
might hold myself lucky to possess them. So far, you see,
I am not on the high road to vicissitudes as per examples
cited ! . . .
" Mr. Felly's sermon yesterday had no mythology in it,
no debatable bits, but was a pure bit of pure religion, the
word of a leader of souls pointing out the best way for
those souls to follow in their search for truth, light, and
God.
" My church yesterday cost me 6s. — 2s. to go, is. 6d. offer-
tory, 25. 6d. to come back in the snow, the extra 6d. a thank-
offering to Allsop (the coachman) for his care and thought of
me!!!
" My reading to - night will be a few pages of the
Koran and a few pages of Voltaire. The Koran is very
362 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
interesting — but oh, the milk in the cocoanut ! It is so
queerly disjointed and non - sequential, far more so than
the Epistles, and they have their full share of that milk in
the cocoanut."
Of her physical condition and surroundings at this time
she writes to her friend Mrs. Moir —
"Of myself all I can say is that I am here in complete
solitude, old, without strength, but in fairly good health,
and quite content and happy. I left the world before it
left me, and I am glad I took my resolution as I did. I
live in a small house with a small, costly, and unpicturesque
garden, and I regret nothing but my lost friends and my lost
youth."
And again to Miss Ada Gedge —
" I have had to give up one thing after another of
old habits and old enjoyments. Fight as long as we
may, Ada, Old Age at last conquers us, and we have to
submit.
" My little pussie is my great plaything here. She does
not now dare to scratch me as Mary lets her scratch and bite
Jier. If she forgets herself, she puts back her ears and
crouches down her head, knowing that she will be spatted
vigorously. I have made her let me quietly stroke her closed
claws by saying ' Gently ! gently ! ' else if I touched her feet
out came her diabolical little claws, which in a jiffy she would
have dug into my flesh. ... I pet her a good deal. I have
nothing else to pet ! and she at least is happy. And oh, it is
a joy to me to see and know that any one or anything is happy
in this ' life of error, ignorance, and strife.' "
Twelve years before, she had written in Christopher
Kirkland —
" Old, grey-headed, alone — my passions tamed, my energy
subdued, my hope dead, my love futile — I sit in the darkening
twilight and think over the problem of existence and what it
has taught me. So far, all my sorrows and disappointments
have been of this good to me : They have broken down the
masterful passion of my temperament, and crushed out of me
the egotistical desire of personal happiness with which I began
my career. Life has shown me that this personal happiness
1898 363
comes to us in fullest quantity when we give most and ask
least ; and that in the pain of renunciation itself is the con-
solation which is born of strength. It is only the weak who
demand ; the strong give — and in that giving shape for them-
selves the diadem which others ask from a beneficent fate
and a generous fortune.
" No age is too old for this outflowing of love. When the
day is spent aud the sun has gone down, the lustreless earth
radiates its stored energy of heat into the night. And the old,
who need care, can return gratitude, and while they accept
consideration can bestow sympathy. I, who say this, say it
with full knowledge of all that my words imply. I, who
advocate the generous gift of love and the patient tenderness
of altruism, speak from the door of no full storehouse, but
rather from among the ruins of an empty and dismantled
home. I do not, like some wealthy woman, married to the
man she loves and the mother of children she adores, preach
content with poverty and ascetic self-suppression to the poor
wretch shivering and starving in the streets — to the heart-
broken lover burning in the fever of despair on the other side
of that impassable gulf The catalogue of my possessions
holds very little from which to gather joy or on which to
found content. And yet I have both."
And now here she was twelve years later living up to
her ideal, prodigal of love and helpfulness to all around
her, patient under her sufferings, overflowing with gratitude
for the smallest kindness which others would have taken
thanklessly as their justly due, and, most wonderful of all,
contented and happy in herself and still eagerly in love
with life.
To those who saw most of her in these last years, she
seemed anything but old. Hers was no " dreary maturity "
which set one regretting that " in these ruins a flower had
once flourished." We did not think of her as one who had
grown old gracefully, but as one who had never grown old at
all. We did not love her for what she had been, but for what
she was. She lived in the present, not in the past, and hid
from us the useless regrets of age, as another would hide its
wrinkles.
364 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
Towards the end of April she journeyed up to London,
and we in Malvern never saw her again.
E. L. L. TO Mrs. G. S. Layard.
"ill Inverness Terrace, Bayswater, W.,
Sunday, I'^th April '98.
"This is just a word to tell you that I am here, and
already more than half dead. I think this will be my last
visit to London. I know too many people, and they are all
too kind to me, and I am torn to pieces — and I cannot stand
it, dear ! Willing is the spirit, and the old warhorse neighs
and pricks up her ears at the familiar sound of the trumpet ;
but the flesh is very weak, and the poor old limbs fail, and the
poor old spirit has to own itself beaten.
" I am beaten to-day — after the private view of the New
Gallery and all the people. I am going out to lunch with
Lady Lewis, and then to make a round — oh dea' me ! If I
were but at home in my little shanty, and the dear Queen
and Rex came in for a wee talky ! — and here I am unable to
sleep for fatigue and excitement, and without enough resist-
ing power to bear and recover ! ! ! —
" To-morrow I am going to Kate Reilly about a dress ! ! ! —
I shall be lovely. God bless dear, dear people. — Their loving
old Rag,
" E. Lynn Linton."
On 3rd May she moved on to Queen Anne's Mansions.
At the Authors' dinner of this year she was again given
the place of honour, and the spectacle of the authoress of
Under which Lord hobnobbing on the best of terms with
the late Bishop of London was not without humour and
significance.
E. L. L. TO G. S. Layard.
" Q. A. Mansions,
(jth May 1898.
"... My dinner, Authors', went off fine. I looked like
the Queen of Sheba. I had another one yesterday. Mr.
1898 365
and Mrs. Gully, Mr. and Mrs. Labouchere, and Zangwill. I
was between Mr. Labouchere and Zangwill, and talked
politics to the one and philosophy to the other, and I had a
fine time of it. Zangwill is going to convert 7ne to some form
of religion through my intellect. To-day I have been to see
Father K . He would convert me to Romanism if he
could. He is a very dear fellow, with the waxen skin of an
ascetic.
" The bishop was very nice at the dinner, and so was
Lord Welby. I was between both, and the bishop did not
seem to think me a pariah. 'Col. John Hay' was on his
other side, so I sent him a message by my lord to say that
I knew by heart all fim Bludsoe and Little Breeches. He
bowed and smiled, and after dinner shook hands with me ;
and I said, ' I shake hands with the author of fim Bhcdsoe,
not the Ambassador. I care most for " Col. John Hay," ' and
he laughed and looked pleased. Best love to you all. — The
faithful Leech and Lover.
" P.S. — The Dreamers of the Ghetto is sublime, but what
a frightful inheritance of cruelty, tyranny, and narrowness the
Ghetto has left us ! What a martyrdom man has gone
through for the sake of the Myth of Eden and the responsi-
bility with which he has been saddled — the responsibility for
all the sin and suffering of the world inherent in the very
nature of things ! I told Father K to - day that my
religion was the self-respecting, magnanimous, large religion
of the Stoics — those men with a stiff backbone who neither
grovelled nor truckled — 'the religion of ethics.' He said
' Yes '—
" I shall have such lots to tell you and talk about when I
am once more at home and all this swirl and rush and excite-
ment are over ! "
Her account of the function is well supplemented by the
following valuable note which I have been fortunate enough
to obtain from Mr. Rider Haggard : —
" The last time I met her," he writes, " was at the ' Authors'
Dinner,' I think in the year of her death. After the speeches
we sat together in a corner of the room, and I asked her how
she was. To this she replied that in health she felt quite
well, but that a wonderful change had taken place in her
366 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
mind, for now she seemed no longer to belong to the world.
If I remember right, the metaphor she used was that she felt
like one seated on a precipice watching a torrent brawling
beneath her — the torrent of humanity, which for her had no
longer any meaning, but was a mere confusion of voices and
of battling desires, hopes, and fears — wherein she had no
share.
" At this time she seemed to know that she would not
live long ; to realise with extraordinary distinctness the utter
vanity of human life, of success and failure, and all we strive
to reach ; and to face its ending without fear.
" That long and, considering its gay surroundings, curious
conversation impressed me much, and when I said good-night
to her it was for the last time.
" In my long friendship with her I always found her a
most honourable and upright lady, very kind - hearted,
though at times she could be bitter with her pen, rather con-
tradictory in her views, or in the expression of them ; and
somewhat undiscerning in her estimate of acquaintances.
She was, in my opinion, one of the very ablest and keenest
intellects of her time, and will, I think, be reckoned in its
history."
On 13th May she wrote to Mrs. Pelly —
" All of my own generation are passing into the ' Great
Beyond,' and a very few years now will see us laid to rest for
ever. I do not fear death myself — not the least in the world
— but I do not like to see the fine vigorous intellects and
bodily powers of my dear friends lose in volume and strength.
Still it has to be, if we live long enough ; but the dregs come
badly after the rich wine ! "
From London she went for a short visit to her friend
Mrs. Mills at Newbie, Bowdon, Cheshire. From there she
wrote —
E. L. L. TO Rev. W. Duthoit.
" May '98.
" My dear Mr. Duthoit, — I was in London when your
dear letter came, and I was too hurried and worried and
1898 367
tossed and torn to answer it. 1 am now at a friend's house in
Cheshire, where I have come for a fortnight; then I go back
to London for another fortnight, and then to my own Httle
home, which is my Httle haven of rest and quiet and (now)
domestic peace and affection, and where I am completely
happy in a way which makes my friends open their eyes with
wonder how, after such a brilHant social life, I can subside
into solitude without a murmur or a regret. But age brings
philosophy, when it does not bring religion. All life seems
to me so transitory, and the things we strive for when young
are so intrinsically valueless, save when of the highest degree,
by which we secure an immortality of fame and influence !
But for us of the mere floating crowd of undistinguished
individuals, what does it all matter? Nothing lasts for long,
and nothing solves the mystery. All I care for now is to
do my duty to my neighbour; to be generous and kindly and
charitable in thought, word, and deed ; to make peace where I
can, and to be scrupulous as to my speech ; not to say one
unkind word of others ; to live the ethical life as sincerely
as if I believed it would result in conscious individual good ;
and to do my duty as I conceive it, for duty's sake alone.
More than this I cannot get to ! There is such a thing as
duty ; we evolve it as we go on in civilisation and the
increase of the moral sense and social virtues, just as we
evolve a higher taste in colours, in architecture, in music.
Why, or to what ultimate end independent of the well-being
of society, I, blind and dark as I am, cannot pretend to say.
I only feel in my inner being that I MUST be faithful to
my sense of duty. It is a higher law somehow or some-
where laid on me ; and I obey it as a blind man is led by the
hand of the seeing guide. For the rest it is all blank and
dark! I see no light behind 'that terrible curtain.' I do
not think one religion better than another, and I think the
Christian has brought far more misery, crime, and suffering,
far more tyranny and evil, than any other. From Constan-
tine's time and the massacres of Arians here and Athanasians
there; from the popes and their lies, aggressions, forgeries,
and murders ; from the Inquisition and the Smithfield
burnings, the persecution of heretics and witches, the
Spaniards in South America, and the determined opposition
of the Church to all advancement in knowledge ; from the
earliest days to the present moment, when Rome is foment-
368 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
ing the troubles in Italy, and the poor dear Queen of Spain
puts her trust in the blessing of the pope and in prayers, I
see no divinity. The morality of the Christian religion is
impracticable, and the definite promises have not been fulfilled.
And so I stand and wait till the final act, when I shall see
or I shall sleep for ever, and become one with the dumb, blind,
unconscious forms of the world whence I and all of us came
into conscious life. Meanwhile I love and reverence those
who have faith ! — and I love and reverence you. My dear,
good, valued friend, all happiness be yours. — Affectionately
your grateful and sincere E. Lynn LiNTON."
From much that has gone before it will be apparent that
Mrs. Linton had a genius for friendship, and that friendship
with her was by no means a " matter of streets." Unfortun-
ately this great quest of her later years was too often
destined to disappointment. She had to pay the penalty
for her impulsiveness, her warm-heartedness, her capacity
for seeing the best side of people at first. The incarnation
of loyalty herself, she looked for the same in those to whom
she became attached. Wishing to pass the highest encomium
upon an eminent poet, one of her dearest friends, she one day
said to Mr. Mackenzie Bell, " He doesn't change his opinion
of friends after they are dead."
So long as she found in them this one essential, it hardly
mattered what they said or did, whether their boots creaked
or their gloves or morals misfitted. But let them fail in
loyalty, and there was no reprieve, " I must kill my sorrow
or it will kill me," she would say. And then, to the accom-
paniment of Landor-like denunciations, the offensive thing
was swept from her life — wiped off the slate.
Emotion she held higher than art. Intellect she wor-
shipped ; love and friendship she adored. And, adoring
them as she did, she preferred to be found guilty of " gush-
ing" rather than forego its undoubted advantages. Early
in life she had learnt by bitter experience that " we are not
so transparent as we imagine ourselves to be, and that what
we do and not what we feel is the rule by which we are
measured." With Robert Louis Stevenson, she felt that
we are all apt to be too sparing of assurances, and that
189B 369
" Cordelia is only to be excused by Regan and Goneril in
the same nursery." Thus it was that where she felt affec-
tion, she was deliberately and sometimes disconcertingly
affectionate.
Here is what she says of friendship in her next letter
to her sister —
"215/ May.
" People say old people make no new friends. It is a
pity when they do not. It is the only thing to stave off
senility of mind, to make new friends and to keep one's
sympathies alive and sharp for all that goes on."
Which reminds one unavoidably of Dr. Martineau's fine
saying, " God only lends us the objects of our affections ; the
affections themselves He gives us in perpetuity."
In the same letter is an appreciation of Mr. Gladstone,
whose prolonged agony was just over.
" His personality will always remain a national splendour.
He was a rarely gifted man intellectually and physically.
He got a twist of late years, and he was a very bad patriot,
a slack imperialist, but as a man he was magnificent. We
have no such masterly intellect left among us now. Better
statesmen, better patriots, yes — but finer intellects, No ! —
I wonder if the family will consent to the Westminster
Abbey interment. With all his faults of government he was
no snob, and not in the least self-seeking. His hands were
emphatically clean, and he perpetrated no job nor the shadow
of one for his family's sake. He aggrandised no one belong-
ing to him, and made no money by the back stairs. It is
all very interesting at present, the war and all that happens
about us. Life is lovely to me yet, and full of interest
and love."
By the end of May she was back in London, occupying
the rooms of her friend Mrs. Dobie in Queen Anne's Man-
sions, The following extract from a letter to my wife refers
to the purchase of a brougham : —
" I saw to my carriage — or rather a carriage. It is not
so light or smart or fly-away or superior as I had dreamt of
24
370 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
It is a solid, handsome-looking, heavy, dowager old fellow,
with a broad step — so broad that you can put your two
feet on it — and was built for an ancient lady and one who
had stiff joints, and it is £6o — all done up — new tyres to the
wheels, a strong break, revarnished, the crest painted out and
my illustrious monogram painted in — but before I close with
it Mrs. More and I are to drive in it on Wednesday to see
how it runs. The coachbuilders (they are those large Oxford
Street fellows, Laurie & Marner) build for Lady Emily
Foley, and know the Malvern country very well. They have
also built two carriages for Mr. More and one for his son.
But I shall know more when I have tried the carriage on
Wednesday. ... I hope to return on the 9th, and shall
go and see you hot-pot. I shall not have ' my carriage '
by then, so I can afford to be 'umble. When I am
carriage company on my own account ! la ! oh, la ! the
world won't hold me ! My crest will reach up to the
stars ! "
On the evening of the 9th we walked over to Brougham
House to welcome her home, but were met by the disappoint-
ing news that she had postponed her return. Her little house
had got a clean face, and her little garden was brighter than
ever before, but, alas ! its dear mistress was never to see
it again.
Here are extracts from some of her last letters : —
E. L. L. TO Mrs. Swann.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
^thjiiiic 1S98.
" I have allowed myself to be persuaded into staying till
Friday the 17th. There is to be a large dinner given by the
(young) New Vagabonds to the Old Stagers (Mr. Traill the
guest of the evening), and as I am the oldest woman stager
of all, they wanted me, especially as I have been such
an enemy to so many of the classes in the New School ;
so I am staying, but on Friday I hope to see my dear
little home once more, and my garden and flowers, and my
pusskin."
1898 371
E. L. L. TO Mrs. G. S. Layard.
"Queen Anne's Mansions,
(jthjuiie 1898.
" I am sorry to say I shall not be at home till to-morrow
week, the 17th. I have been persuaded to stay till the 17th,
to go to the dinner given by the New Vagabonds to the Old
Stagers. But I have caught a cold, of course, and I have
been ill and in bed, and coughing and horrid since Sunday
night. It came on all in a minute, and I have been quite
ill. But I got up on Tuesday and went out to a dinner
made for me, and I had some friends here yesterday to tea.
And now I am shut up and not allowed out in a ' kerridge '
even. I was asked to the Royal Society Soiree last evening.
Sir William and Lady Crookes would have taken me, so I
should have been well companioned ; but Lord love ye ! my
dear doctor would have murdered me if I had gone, and I
should have died of cold if he had not ! But to have heard
and seen and realised this new disintegration of the once
compacted element, the atmospheric air ! It was a cruel
temptation ! "
On the nth she wrote to Mrs. Gedge —
" It is such a lovely day, but I do not feel very well able
to enjoy it, Lucy. I am weak and wankle with night cough.
I get on in the day, but the cough at night is apeish. I do
nothing but cough — cough — cough — all through the long
hours, and then in the day I am done for — as to-day. It is
such a lovely day, too, and I have no energy to go out, and
no desire to go, but has just been here and wishes
me to go, so I must hire a kerridge, as I have no more power
in my feet than a sick kitten. ... I am very forlorn at the
present moment, and wish I was at Malvern. Oh, don't
I just ! "
Later in the day she drove out for the last time, and on
her return felt so ill that she went straight to bed. She
was attended by her friend Dr. Kiallmark, who had been
her medical adviser for twenty years. The illness had
originated with a chill taken at the Private View of the
Royal Academy, and now developed into an attack of
372 THE LIFE OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
bronchial pneumonia. Through this she was devotedly-
nursed by Mrs. Hartley and Mrs. Dobie. But the vital
powers were exhausted, and she succumbed on Thursday,
the 14th July 1898, to a general failure of the system.
From the beginning she seems to have realised that her
illness would prove fatal, and she faced the inevitable with
admirable stoicism.
" When one has to die," she had once said, " let it be
with decorum. To fight for the reprieve which will not come,
to cry out for the mercy which will not be shown, advantages
no one. Better the silent acceptance of the blow — and for-
giveness of the executioner."
Often had she held her breath, listening to the Juggernaut
wheels of fate as they drew nearer and nearer, and now when
they were upon her there was never a sign of flinching. It
was the price that had to be paid for the joy of life that
had been hers — and it was rest, too, after the sorrow.
Her remains were cremated, and on the 30th September
were interred, in the presence of many of her friends, in the
churchyard of her beloved Crosthwaite at the foot of her
father's grave, north-east of the church.
At the conclusion of the service, in which the Rev.
Augustus Gedge, Mrs. Linton's brother-in-law, took part.
Canon Rawnsley gave an address concluding with these
words —
" Her desire to get people to work whilst it is called
to-day, and to do rather than dream, in some measure made
her less firm to believe with a sure and certain hope in the
great Beyond. But
There lives raore faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
" It was an article of her faith that man's thirst for know-
ledge was a thing Divine, a gift of God Himself. Now she
has entered that fuller light, and is wise with that larger
knowledge, and we leave her ashes in peace, with a sure
and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life."
She herself, we know, had not the "sure and certain
1898 373
hope" which comforted her friends. To quote her own
written words —
" Pain, grief, joy, sickness and heahh, the glad day and
the perfumed night — she knows them no more. Alone with
herself she has passed the dread barrier, and now knows what
no man knoweth — or she sleeps in the eternal sleep of that
' nirvana ' where the things of time and space are not."
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A
NAMES OF THE CHILDREN OF JAMES AND ALICIA LYNN
James Narborough Glasse, born 1806.
Charlotte Elizabeth, born 1807.
George Goodenough, born 1809, married (i) Hon. Mrs. Fraser,
(2) Miss Henrietta Naters.
Sophia Anne, born 1810, married (i) Captain William Murray,
(2) Mr. James Stanger.
Arthur Thomas, born 1812, married.
John Magnus, born 1813, married (i)Miss Mary Ann Ford, (2) Miss
Mary Hume Thompson.
Rose Cecilia, born 1814, married Rev. James Murray.
Samuel Goodenough, born 181 5, married.
Laura, born 18 17, married Captain Zachery Mudge Mallock.
Edmund Goodenough, born 1819.
Lucy Fakenham, born 1820, married Rev. Augustus Gedge.
ELIZABETH, born 1822, married William James Linton.
376
APPENDIX B
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
TO
ELIZA LYNN ON HER "AMYMONE"
High names, immortal names have women borne ;
In every land her amaranthine crown
Virtue hath placed upon the braided brow ;
In many, courage hath sprung up and shamed
The stronger man's unbrave audacity ;
In many, nay in all, hath wisdom toucht
The fairer front benignly, and hath kist
Those lids her lessons kept from their repose.
Only for Hellas had the Muses dwelt
In the deep shadow of the gentler breast,
To soothe its passion or repeat its tale.
They lived not but in Hellas. There arose
Erinna, thej-e Corinna, there (to quench
The torch of poesy, of love, of life.
In the dim water) Sappho. Far above
All these, in thought and fancy,'^ she whose page
The world's last despot sei/c'd and trampled on.
Casting her forth where summer's gladden'd sun
Shone o'er the nightless laurel from the Pole.
Before her advent, England's maidens heard
The Simple Story: other voices since
Have made their softness sound thro' manly tones
And overpower them. In our days, so sweet,
So potent, so diversified, is none
As thine. Protectress of Aspasia's fame,
Thine, golden shield of matchless Pericles,
Pure heart and lofty soul, Eliza Lynn I
^ Savary, by order of Bonaparte, seized the whole impression of Madame de
Stael's Geri/mny, and forced her to take refuge in Sweden.
376
APPENDIX C
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
TO
ELIZA LYNN WITH THE "FIVE SCENES"
Eloquence often draws the mind awry
By too much tension, then relaxes it
With magic fires round which the Passions stand
Crazed or perverse ; but thine invigorates,
By leading from the flutter of the crowd.
And from the flimsy lace and rank perfume
And mirror where all faces are alike,
Up the steep hill where Wisdom, looking stern
To those afar, sits calm, benign ; the Gods
But just above, the Graces just below,
Regarding blandly his decorous robe :
There are, my lovely friend, who twitch at thine ;
Suffer it ; walk straight on ; they will have past
Soon out of sight. The powerfullest on earth
Lose all their potency by one assault
On Genius or on Virtue. Where are they
Who pelted Milton? Where are they who raised
Fresh Furies round Rousseau? Where he accurst,
Thrice a deserter, thrice a fugitive.
Always a dastard, who by torchlight shed
A Conde's blood ? His march the wolf and bear
Most signalised ; he gorged them till they slept,
And howled no longer ; men alone howled there.
Under sharp wounds and Famine's sharper fang.
He ridged the frozen flats of Muscovy,
And bridged the rivers, paved the roads with men.
Men in the morning, blocks of ice at noon.
Myriads of these are less than one he threw
To death more lingering in a dungeon's damp.
The sable chief who made his brethren free.
377
378 APPENDIX C
Malevolence in guise of flattery
Will bow before thee. Men I know of old
In whose wry mouths are friendships truthftihtess.
And gentle)iess, and geniality^
And good old customs, sound old hearts. Beware
Lest they come sideling, lest they slily slip
Some lout before thee whose splay foot impedes
Thy steps, whose shoulder hides thee from thy friends
Leave such behind ; let pity temper scorn.
With this encouragement, with this advice,
Accept my Christmas gift, perhaps my last.
Behold Five Scejtes, scenes not indeed most fit
For gentle souls to dwell in ; but the worst
Lie out of sight, dark cypresses between ;
Another dared pass thro' them, I dare not.
Askest thou why none ever could lead forth
My steps upon the stage ? . . . I would evoke
Men's meditation, shunning men's applause.
Let this come after me, if come it will ;
I shall not wait for it, nor pant for it.
Nor hold my breath to hear it, far or nigh.
Orestes and Electra walkt with me,
And few observ'd them : then Giovanna shedd
Her tears into my bosom, mine alone.
The shambling step in plashy, loose morass.
The froth upon the lip, the slavering tongue.
The husky speech interminable, please
More than the vulgar, tho' the vulgar most.
How little worth is fame when even the wise
Wander so widely in our wildering field !
Easy it were for one in whose domain
Each subject hath his own, and but his own.
Easy it were for him to parcel out
A few more speeches, filling up the chinks ;
Difficult, far more difficult, to work
Wards for the lock than hinges for the gate.
I who have skill for wards have also strength
For hinges ; nor should they disgrace the door
Of noblest temple Rome or Athens rear'd.
Content am I to go where soon I must ;
Another day may see me, now unseen ;
I may perhaps rise slowly from my tomb
And take my seat among the living guests.
Meanwhile let some one tell the world thy worth,
One whom the world shall listen to, one great
Above his fellows, nor much lower than thou :
He who can crown stands very near the crown'd.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL
Works of Mrs. Lynn Linton, with dates of first publication in book form.
1846. Azeth, the Egyptian.
1848. Amymone.
1 85 1. Realities.
1 86 1. Witch Stories.
1864. The Lake Country.
1865. Grasp your Nettle.
1866. Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg.
1867. Sowing the Wind.
1869. Ourselves : Essays on Women.
1872. The True History of Joshua Davidson.
1875. Patricia Kemball.
,, The Mad Willoughbys, and other Tales.
1876. The Atonement of Learn Dundas.
1877. The World Well Lost.
1879. Under which Lord.
1880. The Rebel of the Family.
,, With a Silken Thread, and other Tales.
1 88 1. My Love.
1883. lone.
,, The Girl of the Period, and other Essays from the Saturday Review
1885. The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland.
,, Stabbed in the Dark.
1886. Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser.
1 888. Through the Long Night.
1890. About Ireland.
1891. An Octave of Friends (short stories).
1892. About Ulster.
1894. The One too Many.
1895. In Haste and at Leisure,
1S96. Dulcie Everton.
,, 'Twixt Cup and Lip, etc.
POSTHUMOUS
1899. Reminiscences of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, etc.
1900. The Second Youth of Theodora Desanges (to be published).
.W9
INDEX
About Ireland, 265, 266.
About Ulster, 268, 286.
Acworth, Mr. H. A., 67 n.
Adams, Mr. W. E., 90, 91, 92, 104,
109.
"Adventurers," 259.
" Agathon," 91.
Aide, Mr. Hamilton, 195.
Ainsworth, Harrison, 65.
Ainsiuortlis Miscellany, 46.
Alexander, Mrs., 195.
All the Year Round, 125 ct scq., 160
et scq,, 186.
Altruism, 157 et passim.
Amymone, 56, 72, App. C.
Arabian Nights, 26.
Armstrong, Miss, 236.
Ascent of Alan, The, 3 10.
Ashburner, Dr. John, 165, 173 ct scq.
Ashby-Sterry, Mr., 143.
Asher, Dr., 154, 248-250.
Atheuieitin, 7 he, 125, 179.
Austin, Mr. Alfred, 239, 244.
Authors' Society, The, 318, 327, 364,
365-
Azeth, the Egyptian, 53, 56.
Babbage, Sir Charles, 75.
Bagram, Miss Alyce, 294.
Ballad of Reading Gaol, The, 356.
Bankes, Sir John, 270.
Banks, Mr. F. W., 261.
Barnes, E., 143.
Barrack-7'oo/i! Ballads, The, 342.
Barrie, Mr. J. M., 230.
Bath, 67 et seq.
Beard, Frank, 61.
Belgravia, 188.
Bell, Mr. Mackenzie, 340, 368.
Bell, Mr. Moberley, 195.
Belts New Weekly Messenger, 89.
Ben Susan, Mrs., 154.
Benn, Mr. A. W,, note by, 197-203,
206.
Bentley, George, 56.
Bentley's Miscellany, 46.
Beranger, J. P., 80.
Berridge, Mrs., 60, 61.
Besant, Sir Walter — tribute to Mrs.
Linton, 142.
Biella, 241.
Bird, Miss, 146.
Blackwell, The Misses, 151.
Blackwood^ s Magazine, 300.
Blanc, Louis, 75.
Bolto7t Evening Neivs, 220.
Bonner, G. W., 88.
Bookman, The, 295.
Booth, General, and Darkest England,
275-
Brabant, Dr., 67, 112.
Bradlaugh, Charles, 180.
"Braeghyll," 8.
Brantwood, 88 et seq., 105, 106, 164,
281.
Bray, Charles, 75.
Bridell-Fox, Mrs., 55.
Bright, John, 180.
British Museum, The, 50, 53.
Broadway, 16 1.
Brooks, Shirley, 65, 105. 125.
" Brother Edward," 74.
Broughton, Miss Rhoda, 246, 247.
Brown, Miss, 52, 53.
Brown, F. Madox, 154.
Browning, Mrs., 79, 80.
Browning, Robert, 72, 79, iiS, 123 n.
Brunton, William, 143.
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 196.
Burton, Sir Richard, 331.
Burton, Lady, 331.
Bywell, Dr., 91.
Caldbeck, 2, 8, 9.
Campbell, Thomas, 121.
Carlyle, Thomas, 34, 75.
"Casaubon," in Middlernarch , The
original of, 67 n.
331
S82
INDEX
Cat Slovy, A curious, 351.
Cause of the People, The, 89.
Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, 350.
Chambers, Mr. C. E. S., 253, 325.
Chambers' Journal, 61, 125.
Chambers' Miscellany of Tracts, 61.
Chatto & Windus, Messrs., 303, 318 ^/
passim.
Chomley, prototype of Tony Weller, 15.
Christopher Kirkland, 23, 40, 41, 93,
246-250.
"Christopher North" (John Wilson),
127.
Clarke, Savile, 143.
Claxton, Miss, 143.
Clifford, W. K., 153, 189, 213.
Cliff"ord, Mrs. W. K., 189, 213.
Clodd, Mr. Edward, 195.
Coare, Elizabeth, 3.
Cohen, Dr. Abraham, 248.
Coleman, W., 105.
Coleridge, Hartley, 34.
Collins, Mortimer, 143.
Coiiiiiions and King, 1 26.
Como, Lake, 232.
Conversations with Carlylc, 2S7.
Conway, Sir Moncure, 153.
Cook, John Douglas, 57, 61, 136, 137.
Corelli, Miss Marie, 195.
Coriihill Magazine, 125, 186, 187.
Cowen, Mr. Joseph, 92.
Craik, Mrs., 103.
Crane, Mr. Walter, 105.
Crawfurd, John, 152.
Crawfurd, Mr. Oswald, 195.
Crawshay, Rosemary, 185.
Creighton, Bishop, 364.
Crookes, Sir William, 195, 371.
Crosthwaite, i, 2, 8, 10 et seq., 34, 41
ei seq., 372.
Crosthwaite, Fisher, 260.
Crozier, Dr. Beattie, 195.
Cruikshank, George, 87.
Cullingworth, Dr. C. J., 61 n.
Cushman, Miss, 61.
Daily Graphic, The, 149.
Daily News, The, 62, 125.
Daisy Miller, A dispute about, 232-234.
Data of Ethics, The, T,ii.
Dickens, Charles, 2, 73, 81, 84, 105,
115, 126, 127, 128, 160, 161, 166.
Difficulties of Genius, The, 32.
Dixon, William Hepworth, 154.
Dobell, Clarence, 103.
Dobell, Sidney, 103.
Dobic, Mrs., 322, 369, 372.
Don Quixote, 28.
Draper, Edward, 143.
Dreamers of the Ghetto, The, 365.
Droitwich, 282.
Drummond, Professor, 274, 310-312.
Dry Sticks Fagotted, 1 14.
du Chaillu, P. B., 195.
du Maurier, George, 187.
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, 287.
Dulcie Everton, 318.
Duthoit, Rev. W., 366.
Edith of Poland, 27.
Edwards, Amelia, 65.
Elizabeth, or the Exiles of Siberia, 26,
27.
Elliot, Mrs., 193.
Elliotson, Dr., 165.
Elster's Folly, 107.
Emerson, R. W., 75.
Empson, Mr., 67, 73.
En 7-oute, 228.
Encyclopcedia Londinensis, 27, 45j 53-
English Republic, The, 89 et seq.
Epicurean, The, 53.
"Epistle to Eliza Lynn," Landor's,
72.
Epps, Dr. J., 105.
European Republicans, Recollections of
Mazzini ajjd his Friends, 287.
Evening Neivs, 254.
Examiner, The, 72, 125.
, review of Azeth by Landor in, 56.
Fargus, F. (Hugh Conway), 214.
Faust, 28.
Fitzroy Street, 151.
"Five Scenes," dedicated to Mrs.
Linton by Landor, 72.
Florence, 189-191, 213, 234, 235, 239.
Flower, Edward, 153.
Forster, John, 73 (quoted), 115, 116,
128 ; his Hfe of Landor, 1 60, 162.
Fortnightly, 254, 310.
Forum, 254.
Fox, Captain F., 55.
Fox, Mrs., 55, 132.
Francis, Mr. E. K., 184.
Franklin, Lady, 75.
Eraser's Magazine, Article on Landor
in, 67, 162.
Free Shooting, 285.
"French Menage, A," 82.
"Frisky Matrons," 188.
Froude, J. A., 35, 75.
Fuller, Mr. J. F., 263; note by, 264-
266.
INDEX
385
Gadshill, 2, 15, 26, 84, 12S.
Gang Moor House, Hampstead Heath,
103.
" Garden of the Tuileries," 82.
Garnett, Dr., 161.
Garrettj Miss (Mrs. Garrett Anderson),
151-
Gaskell, Mrs., 75, 326.
Gedge, Rev. Augustus, 372.
Gedge, Mrs. Augustus, 13, 22 et seq.,
187, 189, 205, 209, 210, 211, 215,
235, 238, 244, 255, 258, 260, 273,
277, 281, 320, 322 et seq., 333, 336,
341, 342, 348, 351, 353, 371.
Gedge, Miss Ada, 106, 159, 204, 275,
276, 303, 322, 362.
Gedge, Mr. Ernest, 215.
Gentleman! s Magazine, The, 213, 214. i
"George Eliot," I33-I35. 251, 252,
326.
Gilchrist, Mr. Murray, 358.
Girl of the Period, The, 138 et seq.,
145, 146, 239.
Girl oj the Period Almanack, The, 143.
Girl of the Period Miscellany, The,
.143-
Girton College, 290-294.
Gladstone, W. E., 369.
Gladstone, Mrs., 162.
Gliddon, George, 65.
Goodenough, Bishop, 2.
Gower Street, 151.
" Grace Ayton," 61.
Grasp your Nettle, 105, 131.
Graves-Sawle, Mrs., 72.
Green Carnation, The, 315,
Greene, Mrs. Dawson, 239,
Greg, W. R., 78, 81.
Grossmith, Mr. George, 196.
Guernsey, 134.
Haggard, Mr. Rider, 195, 230 ; note
by, 365-366.
Hamilton, Mrs., 186.
Hardy, Mr. Thomas, 144 n., 277.
Harney, G. J., 89.
Harraden, Miss Beatrice, 195, 226 ;
note by, 295-303, 316.
Harris, Mr. Frank, 195.
Harrison, Mr. Frederic, 180.
Harte, Mr. Bret, 279.
Hartley, Mrs. {nee Sichel), 51, 177 ;
note by, 191-196, 204, 208, 216,
218, 298, 330, 372.
Hay, Colonel John, 365.
Hayter House, 179.
Heathcote, Rev. Mr., 205.
Hector, Mrs. ("Mrs. Alexander"), 105,
239-
Helps, Sir Arthur, 264.
Hemans, Mrs., 12, 121.
Henderson, Sir James, 286.
Henley, Mr. W. E., 358.
Herkomer, Professor, 195.
Hester'' s Sacrifice, 138.
Hogarth, Miss, 127.
Holiday, Alfred, 105.
Holyoake, Mr. G. J., 85, 117.
Home, D. D., 165 et seq.
Home Rule, 262-269.
Hope, Mr. Anthony, 196.
Hosmer, Miss, 193.
Houghton, Lord, 118, 122, 162.
Household Words, 81, 82, 1 14, 125,
126, 128.
Hughes, Miss, 67, 112.
Hugo, Victor, 134.
Hunt, Thornton, 64, 89, 117, 251, 252.
Illitst rated London News, 88.
II histrated Sporting Gazette, 186.
Imaginary Co?tversations, III, 120,
121.
In Haste and at Leisure, 316.
hicidents in my Life (quoted), llict seq.
lone, 239, 240.
Ireland, 262-269, 286.
Irish Nation, The, 287.
Italy, 62, 63, 189-194, 216.
James, Mr. Henry, 232, 233.
Jerome, Mr. J, K., 195.
Jersey, 245.
Jews in London, 154, 155.
Jim Bludsoe, 365.
Johnson, Miss, 236.
Johnston, Sir Harry, 195.
Joshua Davidson, The True History of,
179-183.
Joshua, Samuel, 154.
Joshua, Mrs., 154, 239.
Jtidy, 144 n.
Kelly, Mrs., 327.
Kemble, Fanny, 79, 193.
Keswick, 257, 260, 270, 271 (also sec
Crosthwaite).
Kiallmark, Dr., 371.
Kingsford, Dr. Anna, 176, 189.
Kipling, Mr. Rudyard, 196, 230, 307.
Kitton, Mr. F. G., 88 n., 89, 128.
Klapka, 75-
Koran, The, 361.
Kossuth, 75.
384
INDEX
Labouchere, Mr., 365.
Lady's Pict07-ial, The, 289-294, 301.
Lake Coiinlry, The, 105, 129, 1 3 1.
Lamb, Miss Beatrice, 196.
Lancaster, Joe, 14.
Landor, Mr. Henry Savage, 195, 259.'
Landor, Walter Savage, 56, 61, 67-73,
90, 1 10-124, 160, 161, 162, 205, 240,
279, App. B, App. C ; his letters to
Mrs. Linton, 112, 113, 114, 119,
120, 123, 124.
Landor, Mrs., 190.
Landor, Miss, 190.
Landor Pamphlet, A rare, 117.
Lang, Mr. Ajidrew, 195.
Lasi Fruit off an Old Tree, Landor's,
70, 72.
Laurence, Samuel, 65.
Layard, Mr. G. S., 307, 355, 356, 357,
360, 364.
Layard, Mrs. G. S., 186, 308, 364,
371-
Layard, Miss Nancy, 321.
L.eader, The, 89.
Learn Diaidas, The Atonement of, 187,
188.
Lee-Hamilton, Mr. Eugene, 203.
Lehmann, Mr. Rudolf, 251.
Leinster Square, 99, 100, loi, 104,
105.
V Enfant Prodigue, 281.
L.es Aventures de Tcleinaqtie, 28.
Letters from Mrs. Linton to —
Bagram, Miss Alyce, 294.
Broughton. Miss Rhoda, 247.
Chambers,' Mr. C. E. S., 253.
Clifford, Mrs. W. K., 213.
Crawshay, Rosemary, 185,
Duthoit, Rev. W., 366.
Editor of The Daily Graphic, 149.
Editor of Men and Women of the
Day, 273.
Fox, Mrs., 55, 132.
Francis, Mr. E. K., 184.
Fuller, Mr. J. F., 263.
Gedge, Mrs., 189, 209, 210, 211,
215, 23s, 238, 257, 258, 260, 273,
274, 277, 281, 320, 322, 323, 324,
326, 333> 336, 341, 342, 348, 351,
353-
Gedge, Miss Ada, 159, 276, 303,
322.
Gedge, Mr. Ernest, 215.
Hartley, Mrs., 218, 330.
James, Mr. Heniy, 232.
Kelly, Mrs., 327.
, Kitton, Mr. F. G., 128.
I Layard, Mr. G. S., 355, 356, 357,
360, 364.
Layard, Mrs., 186, 308, 364, 37 1.
Layard, Miss Nancy, 321.
Low, Mr. Sidney, 319.
Middlemass, Miss Jean, 332.
Moir, Mrs., 106.
Moss, Mrs. Gulie, 285, 304.
Murray, Miss Amy, 225, 236, 242,
Paget, Lady, 332.
Pelly, Rev. Raymond, 359.
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 251, 279.
Stisted, Miss, 331.
Swann, Mrs., 370.
Voysey, Rev. Charles, 181, 183, 267.
Walter, Mr. A. F., 269.
Wardle, Lady, 313, 314, 315, 320.
Wills, W. H., 81, 82.
Woodall, Mr. William, 280, 349,
350.
Letters to Mrs. Linton from —
Dickens, Charles, 127, 160, 161,
166.
du Maurier, George, 187.
Fargus, F. (Hugh Conway), 214.
Forster, John, 116.
"George Eliot," 133.
Gladstone, Mrs. W. E., 162.
James, Mr. Henry, 233.
Landor, Walter Savage, 112, 113,
114, 119, 120, 123, 124.
Linton, W. J., 270, 286,
Patmorc, Coventry, 164.
Smiles, Mr. Samuel, 259.
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 278, 310, 312,
329-
Voysey, Rev. Charles, 182.
Letters and Unpublished Writings of
Landor, 121.
Letters of a Canadian, 122.
Lewes, G. H., 89, 133, 251, 252.
Lewis, Sir George, 154, 196.
Lewis, Lady, 364.
Lietch, Dr., 91, 93.
Life of Thomas Paine, 89.
Lifers Love, A, 107.
Lilley, Mr., 196.
Linton, Lancelot, 91, 114, 123, 129.
Linton, Mrs. Lynn — early years, i-
28 ; personal appearance, 29, 55 ; at
seventeen, 29-40 ; adventure on All
Halloween, 33 ; theological diffi-
culties, 34-40, 74, 154-158, 305,
353, 359 ; her break with home,
41-49 ; brain fever, 44 ; first appear-
ance in print, 46 ; early life in
London, 50-63 ; as journalist, 57-61,
INDEX
385
212, 213, 253, 272 ; social life and
friendships in the "Fifties," 64-76;
life in Paris, 77-83 ; marriage, 88-
109 ; reviewing, 107 ; literary work
(1858-68), 125-150; curious super-
stition, 128 et seq. ; Saturday
Review and Woman Question, 136-
150; literary society (1868-69), 151-
154 ; on Roman Catholicism, 186 ;
needlework, 193 and note, 241, 242 ;
political opinions, 200-202, 349-35 1 ;
love of flowers, 205-207 ; help to
young authors, 226-230 ; opinion of
publishers, 235 ; threatened with
blindness, 235, 236, 258 ; views on
vivisection, 236-238 ; on the Jews,
248-250 ; as " Celebrity at Home "
in I'he World, 258; " literary short-
comings," 277 ; as friend, 279, 280,
368, 369 ; notes of some conversa-
tions with, 282-284; as "Grundyo-
meter," 305 ; courage and intense
love of life, 308, 360 ; leaves Queen
Anne's Mansions, 316 ; large corre-
spondence, 327 ; love of nature, 329,
342, 343; on "the art of growing
old," 332-334, 341, 362, 363 et seq. ;
on the religious education of children,
334-336; on death, 338; her re-
ligion and rules of life, 345, 348,
358, 365, 366-368 ; voracious reader,
355-362 ; love of order, 358 ; last
illness and death, 371-373-
Linton, W. J., 88-109, 1 13, 130, 250,
268, 269, 270, 339, 340.
Linton, Mrs. W. J., 93, 95, 96.
Literary Gazette, The, 125.
Lizzie Lorton of Greyrigg, 105, 132.
Llanwrtydd Wells, 273.
Loaden, William, 47-51, 54, 62, 63.
Lockhart, J. G., 127, 128.
London Review, The, 125.
London Society, 125.
Low, Mr. Sidney, 308, 319.
Lyall, Sir Alfred, 307.
Lynn, Alicia, 2.
Lynn, Arthur Thomas, 22 et seq., 151,
260.
Lynn, Edmund, 5 n.
Lynn, George, 22.
Lynn, Rev. James, i, 2, 3-8, 16 et
seq., 46, 47, 84 ; family of, App. A.
L3Tin, James, 24.
Lynn, Samuel, 5 n.
Mackay, Eric, 195.
Mackenzie, Kenneth, 122.
25
Mad Willonghbys, The, 188.
Malvern, 316, 318 ^'^ seq.
Manin, Daniele, 80.
Manning, Cardinal, 323.
Mansion House Dinner, 275.
Marks, Stacy, 196.
Marshall, Mrs., 167.
Martineau, Harriet, 91, 326.
Mather, Mrs. Margaret Linton, 92, 93,
104.
" Maud the Sorceress," 61.
Mayhew, Augustus, 143.
Mazzini, 75, 85, 89.
M'Carthy, Mr. Justin, 281.
Meviorials and Impressions, 180.
Me7i and Women of the Day, 272.
Metamorphoses, Ovid's, 35.
Middlemass, Miss Jean, 332.
Mills, Mrs., 366.
Milner-Gibson, Mrs., 61, 65, 166 et
seq.
Minister's Wooing, The, 121.
Mohl, Julius von, 78.
Moir, Mrs., 362.
Moncrieff, Lady, 12.
Montagu Place, 50, 56.
Moral Tales, by Miss Edgeworth, 26.
More, Mr., 370.
Morgan, Lady, 65.
Morley, Henry, 154.
Morley, Mr. John, 220.
Mornittg Chronicle, 57, 77, 136.
Moss, Mrs. Gulie, 29, 284-286, 304.
Murray, Mrs., 272.
Murray, Miss Amy, 225, 236, 243.
Murray, Miss Charlotte, 272.
My Literary Life, 316.
My Love, 320, 331.
Myers, Rev. — , 39.
Naftel, Paul, 135.
Naples, 209, 210.
Napoleon, Louis, 85.
Narborough, Sir John, i.
Nash, Hon. Mrs., 318.
" National Convention of the Gods,
The," 46.
Natio7ial Library, The, 89.
National Magazine, The, 125.
National Observer, The, 358.
Needlework, 304.
"New Boss, The," 315.
New Quarterly, The, 186, 188, 2o8.
New Review, The, 266.
New Vagabonds' Club, The, 370, 371.
Newby, Mr., 54.
Newcastle Chronicle, The, 287.
386
INDEX
Nicholas, Czar, 86.
Nicoll, Dr. Robertson, 316.
North British Review, The, 161.
Northern Ti-ibune, The, 90.
Novikoff, Madame, 195.
Oakley, Mr., 206, 339.
O'Brien, Mr. Wm., 268.
O'Connell, Daniel, 15, 85.
" On being Taken Up and Put Down
again," 163.
Once a Week, 126.
One Too Many, The, 289-294, 30 1.
Orr, Mrs. Sutherland, 195.
Orrinsmith, Mr. Harvey, 100, 167.
Orsini, 85.
Ossalinsky, The Countess, 239.
" Ouida," 190, 193.
Our American Cousins, 104, 109.
" Our Illusions," 278.
Ourselves, 163, 303.
Owen, Robert, 65, 75, 165.
Paget, Lady, 207, 324, 332.
Pall Mall Gazette, The, 162, 220,
273-.
Panizzi, Sir Antonio, 50.
Pardoe, Miss, 65.
Paris, 77-83, 230.
Paston Carew, Millionaire and Miser,
244, 252.
Patmore, Coventry, 136, 164.
Patricia Ketnhall, 186.
Peacock, Mrs., 340.
Pelly, Rev. Raymond, 358, 359, 361.
Pelly, Mrs. Raymond, 366.
Penderel-Brodhurst, Mr., note by, 308-
310, 325,
Period, The, 143.
" Picnic to Watendlath, A," 61.
Pictorial Illustrations of the Bible, 88.
Pigott, Edward, 65, 75.
Pilgrim^ s Progress, The, 26.
Plaint of Freedom, The, 90.
Porter, Jane, 65.
Praed, Mrs. Campbell, note by, 221-
223, 288.
Press, Incorruptibility of, 138.
Priestley, Lady, 195, 215, 231.
Priestley, Sir William, 195.
" Professor Henry Drummond's Dis-
covery," 310-312.
Punch, 143, 163.
Purdie, Mrs., 244.
Queen, The, 163, 186, 212, 246, 254,
265 n., 271, 308, 316, 357.
Queen Anne's Mansions, 194-196, 244,
245-
Rawnsley, Canon, note by, 15-17,
372.
Realities, 61.
Rebel of the Family , The, 220, 222 n.
Red Republican, The, 90.
Reminiscences of Dickens, Thackc7'ay,
George Eliot, etc., 65.
Ristori, Madame, 193.
Robinson Crusoe, 26.
Rome, 193, 194, 204, 210, 211, 238 et
seq.
"Rome in 1877," 212.
Rosecastle, 15.
Ross, Charles, 188.
Rossetti, The Brothers, 105.
Royal Academy, Private View of the,
371-
Royal Society Soiree, 371.
Ruskin, John, 88, 164, 281.
Russell Place, 105.
St. James's Budget, 308-310, 315,
316, 325-
St-Jatneis Gazette, 250, 259, 309, 319.
St. PaiiPs, 125.
Sambourne, Mr. Linley, 163, 196.
Sargent, Mr., 225, 346.
Sartoris, Adelaide, 79.
Saturday Review, The, 107, 125, 136-
150, 162, 163, 186,
Scalias, The, 75-
Scheffer, Ary, 80.
Schimmelpenninck, Mrs., 65.
Scott, W. B., 105.
Second Youth of Theodora Desanges,
The, 326, 340.
Senhouses, The, 12.
Sichel, Miss. See Hartley, Mrs.
Sicily, 242.
Sinnett, Mr. A. P., 175-177.
Sixty Years of a>i Agitator s Life, 1 1 7.
Skeat, Professor, 273.
Smiles, Mr. Samuel, 259.
Smith, J. Orrin, 88.
Smith, William {" Thorndale"), 75.
Social Statics, 3 1 1 .
Southey, Cuthbert, 261.
Southey, Robert, 11, 12.
Sowing the Wind, 106, 1 5 1.
Spedding, James, 152, 153.
Speddings of Mirehouse, The, 12.
Spencer, Mr. Herbert, 75, 204, 251,
274, 278, 279, 305, 306, 310-312,
329.
INDEX
387
Spiritualism, 165-17S, 210, 211.
Spottiswoode, Wm., 152.
Stabbed in the Dark, 250.
Stafford, Mr. John, 344.
Stanger, James, 11 n.
State Trials, 357-
Stead, Mr., 337.
Stevens, Alfred, 105.
Stisted, Miss, 331.
Stone, Frank, 65.
Stor}', W. W., 193.
Strickland, Agnes, 75.
Strickland, Elizabeth, 75.
St}Vod, History of, 2 n.
Swann, Mrs., 370.
Swinburne, Mr., 196; tribute to Mrs.
Linton, 239, 240.
Talfourd, Sergeant, 75.
Taylor, Peter, 105.
Temple Bar, 125, 126, 135, 186, 193
n., 220, 254, 354.
Tennyson, Lord, 353.
Terry, Miss Ellen, 196.
Thackeray, W. M., 81, 105.
" That Cap and Belt," 357.
Through the Long Night, 254.
Times, The, review of Azeth, 54.
Tinsley's Magazine, 125.
Towndrow, Mr., 207.
Traill, Mr. H. D., 196, 370.
Trollope, Mrs., 65.
Trollope, T. A., 193.
Truth, 272.
Tunis, 243, 270.
Tweedie, Mrs. Alec, 193 n., 226.
Under which Lord, 202, 213, 214.
"Vernon Lee," 203.
Vicissitudes of Families, The, 359.
Vico Equense, 208, 209.
Victor Emmanuel, death of, 211.
Villari, Madame, 216.
Vivisection, 236-238.
Vizetelly, Frank, 143.
Voysey, Rev. Charles, 181 -183, 267.
Wade, Thomas, 89.
Walker, Dr. Mary, 151.
Waller, Mr. A. R., 355.
Walter, Mr. A. F., 268, 269.
Ward, Miss Genevieve, 196.
W^ardle, Sir Thomas, 313.
Wardle, Lady, 313-316, 320, 339-
Watson, Mr. William, 195.
Watt, Mr. C. P., 253.
Watts, Alaric, 65.
Watts-Dunton, Mr. Theodore, 196.
Wehnert, E. H., 105.
Welby, Lord, 365.
Wheeler, Mr. Stephen, 72, 117, 120,
121.
Whewell, Dr., 34.
Wilde, Oscar, 356.
Wilkinson, Sir J. G., 54.
Wills, W. H., 81, 82, 127, 128, 221,
231.
Wills, Mrs., 239, 243, 244.
Wilson, William, II, 257.
Witch Stories, 13 1.
With a Silken Thread, etc., 207,
221.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 91.
Woman at Home, The, 316.
"Woman's Place in Nature," 189.
Woman Question, The, 136-150,
188, 189, 220, 289-294, 316, 343,
361.
Women Footballers, 149.
Women Novelists of the Reign of
Queen Victoria, 326.
Wood, Mrs., 107.
Woodall, Mr. William, 280, 349, 350.
World, The, 186, 250, 258.
World Well Lost, The, 190, 207,
344.
Wray, General, 245.
"Wreath, The," 46.
Wyndham, Mr. Charles, 196.
Yates, Edmund, 154, 250.
"Young Dogs," 315.
Zangwill, Mr., 365.
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Marie Oorelli's Novels
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TWO
A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS,
T%venty- Fourth Edition.
VENDETTA. Nineteenth Edition.
THELMA. Twenty-Eighth Edition.
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SELF, Fourteenth Edition.
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6.y, each.
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32
Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue
THE SORROWS OF SATAN. Forty-
Sixth Edition.
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The conception is magnificent, and is likely
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. . . This interesting and remarkable romance
will live long after much of the ephemeral
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pf Reviews.
THE MASTER CHRISTIAN.
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manner which shows the inevitable disaster
heaping up . . . The good Cardinal Ronpr^
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[150/A Thousand.
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of the book are an attack on conventional
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pounding of theories for the improvement
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jintliony Hope's Novels.
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yet allows itself to be enjoyed by readers
to whom fine literary method is a keen
pleasure.'— The World.
A CHANGE OF AIR. Sixth Edition.
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human nature. The characters are traced
with a masterly hand.' — Times.
A MAN OF MARK. Fifth Edition.
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Mark" is the one which best compares with
"The Prisoner of Zenda." ' — National Ob-
server.
THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT
ANTONIO. Fifth Edition.
'It is a perfectly enchanting story of love
and chivalry, and pure romance. The
Count is the most constant, desperate, and
modest and tender of lovers, a peerless
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PHROSO. Illustrated by H. R. Millar.
Sixth Edition.
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SIMON DALE. Illustrated. Sixth Edition.
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ol his women with marvellous subtlety and
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THE KING'S MIRROR. Fourth Edition.
' In elegance, delicacy, and tact it ranks
with the best of his novels, while in the wide
ranse of its portraiture and the subtilty
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ventures. ' — Spectator.
QUISANTE. Third Edition.
' The book is notable for a very high liter-
ary quality, and an impress of power and
mastery on every page.' — Daily Chronicle.
W. W. Jacobs' Novels.
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MANY CARGOES. Twenty-Sixth Edition.
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A MASTER OF CRAFT. Illustrated.
Fifth Edition.
' Can be unreservedly recommended to
all who have not lost their appetite for
wholesome laughter.' — Spectator.
' The best humorous book published for
many a day.' — Black and White.
LIGHT FREIGHTS. Illustrated. Fourth
Edition.
' His wit and humour are perfectly irresis-
tible. Mr. Jacobs writes of skippers, and
mates, and seamen, and his crew are the
jolliest lot that ever sailed.' — Daily News.
' Laughter in every page." — Daiiy Mail.
Fiction
33
New
COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE.
Edition.
A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION
Edition.
LITTLE PETER. Second Edition, zs. 6d.
THE WAGES OF SIN. Thirteenth Edition.
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THE GATELESS BARRIER. Fourth
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evident that, whilst Lucas iSIalet has pre-
served her birthright of originality, the
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the high level of the books that were born
before.' — Westtninster Gazette.
Lucas Malet's Novels.
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Third THE HISTORY OF SIR RICHARD
CALINIADY. Seventh Edition. A Limited
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In the strength and insight in which the
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pathos throughout, " Sir Richard Calmady"
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' The ripest fruit of Lucas Malet's genius.
A picture of maternal love by ttu"ns tender
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PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
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MRS. FALCHION. Fourth Edition.
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THE TRANSLATION OF A SAVAGE.
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THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD. Illus-
trated. Seventh Edition,
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WHEN VALMOND CAME TO PONTIAC:
The Story of a Lost Napoleon. Fi/th
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living romance. The character of Valmond
is drawn unerringly.' — Pall Mall Gazette.
Gilbert Parker's Novels
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Fifth Edi-
AN ADVENTURER OF THE NORTH :
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THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY. Illus-
trated. Twelfth Edition.
' Mr. Parker has produced a really fine
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THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG: a
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THE POMP OF THE LAVILETTES.
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MEAN STREETS. Fifth
TALES OF
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ACHILDOFTHE J AGO. Fourth Edition.
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TO LONDON TOWN. Second Edition.
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CUNNING IMURRELL.
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THE HOLE IN THE WALL. Third
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'An absolute masterpiece, which any
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_' " The Hole in the Wall" is a masterly
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— Daily Telegraph.
34
Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue
Eden Phillpotts' Novels
Crown 2>vo. 6s. each.
LYING PROPHETS.
CHILDREN OF THE UlST.Fi/ihEdition.
THE HUMAN BOY. With a Frontispiece.
Fourth Edition.
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most thoughts ; likewise he shows an all-
pervading sense of humour.' — Academy.
SONS OF THE MORNING. Second
Edition.
_ ' A book of strange power and fascina-
tion.'— Morning Post.
THE STRIKING HOURS. Second Edition.
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volume.' — World.
' The whole book Is redolent of a fresher
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FANCY FREE. Illustrated. Second Edi-
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' Of variety and racy humour there is
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THE RIVER. Third Edition.
' "The River '_' places Mr. Phillpotts in the
front rank of living novelists. ' — Punch.
'Since " Lorna Doone" we have had
nothing so picturesque as this new romance. '
Birtninghain Gazette.
'Mr. Phillpotts's new book is a master-
piece which brings him indisputably into
the front rank of English novelists.' — Pall
Mall Gazette.
' This great romance of the River Dart.
The finest book Mr. Eden Phillpotts has
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S. Baring-Gould's Novels.
Crown Zvo. 6s. each.
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U R I T H . Fifth Edition .
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. Sevefith
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MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGENVEN.
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CHEAP JACK ZITA. Fourth Edition.
THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fifth Edition.
MARGERY OF QUETHER. Third
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JACQUETTA. Third Edition.
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NOEMI. Illustrated. Fourth Edition.
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GUAVAS THE TINNER. Illustrated.
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DOMITIA. Illustrated. Second Edition.
PABO THE PRlEST.
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THE MUTABLE MANY. Second Edition.
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THE COUNTESS TEKLA. Third Edition.
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Robert Ban's Novels
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Third
Illustrated. Second
THE STRONG ARM.
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THE VICTORS.
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Pilot.
' Good writing, illuminating sketches of
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F. Anstey, Author of 'Vice Versa. A
BAYARD FROM BENGAL. Illustrated
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Fiction
35
Andrew Balfour. BY stroke of
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VENGEANCE IS MINE. Illustrated.
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FROM THE EAST UNTO THE WEST.
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See also Fleur de Lis Novels.
Robert Barr. See page 34.
J. A. Barry. IN THE GREAT DEEP.
Crown 8r'(7. 6s.
George Bartram, Author of ' The People of
Clopton.' THE THIRTEEN EVEN-
INGS. Crown Svo. 6s.
HaroldBegbie. THEADVENTURESOF "
SIR JOHN SPARROW. Croiun Svo. 6s.
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E. F. Benson. DODO : A Detail of the
Day. Crown Svo. 6s.
THE CAPSINA. Crown Svo. 6s.
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Margaret Benson. SUBJECT TO
VANITY. CrownZvo. 3s. 6d.
Sir Walter Besant. A five years'
TRYST, and Other Stories. C'-ownSvo. 6s.
J. Bloundelle Burton, Author of 'The
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DENOUNCED. Crown Svo. 6s.
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6s.
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Ada Cambridge, THE DEVASTATORS.
Crcavn Svo. 6s.
PATH AND GOAL. CrownSvo. 6s.
Bernard Capes, Author of 'The Lake of
Wine.' PLOTS. Crown Svo. 6s.
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THE FOUNDERED GALLEON.
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6s.
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Mrs. W. K. Clifford. A WOMAN ALONE.
Croivn Svo. 39. 6d.
See also Fleur de Lis Novels.
J, Maclaren Cobban. THE KING OF
ANDAMAN : A Saviour of Society.
Croivn Svo. 6s.
WILT THOU HAVE THIS WOMAN?
Crown Svo. 6s.
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT.
Crown Svo, 6s,
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market.' A FOOL'S YEAR. Crown Svo. 6s.
Julian Corbett. A BUSINESS IN
GREAT WATERS. Croivn Svo. 6s.
Marie Corelli. See page 31.
L. Cope Cornford. CAPTAIN JACOBUS:
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Stephen Crane. WOUNDS IN THE
R.'ilN. Crown Zvo. 6s.
S. R. Crockett, Author of ' The Raiders,' etc.
LOCHINVAR. Illustrated. Seco^id
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Bartons.' ANGEL. Third Edition.
Crown Svo. 6s.
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PEGGY OF THE BARTONS. Crown
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A STATE SECRET. Croivn Svo. 3s. 6d.
Hope Dawlish. A SECRETARY OF
LEGATION. Crown S--o. 6s.
C. E. Denny. THE ROMANCE OF UP-
FOLD MANOR. CrownSvo. 6s.
Evelyn Dickinson. A VICAR'S WIFE.
Croum Svo. 6s.
THE SIN OF ANGELS. Croivn Svo.
3s. 6d.
36
Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue
Harris Dickson. THE BLACK WOLF'S
BREED. Illustrated. Second Edition.
Crown Zvo. ds.
A. Conan Doyle, Author of 'Sherlock
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ROUND THE RED LAMP. Eighth
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scenes of the consulting-room.' — Illustrated
London Neivs.
Sara Jeaimette Duncan (Mrs. Everard
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AMERICANS. Illustrated. Third Edi-
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THE PATH OF A STAR. Illustrated.
Second Edition. Crown %vo. 6s.
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C. F. Embree. A HEART OF FLAME.
Crown ivo. 6s.
G. ManviUe Fenn. AN electric
SPARK. Crown Zvo. ts.
ELI'S CHILDREN. CrownZvo. 2S.6d.
A DOUBLE KNOT. Crown Svo. 2S. 6d.
See also Fleur de Lis Novels.
J. H. Findlater. THE GREEN GRAVES
OF BALGOWRIE. Fourth Edition
Cro^tin ^vo. 6s.
' A powerful and vivid story.' — Standard.
'A beautiful story, sad and strange as
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' A singularly original, clever, and beauti-
ful story.' — Guardian.
A DAUGHTER OF STRIFE. Crown
?,vo. 6s.
See also Fleur de Lis Novels.
Mary Findlater. over the HILLS.
Second Edition. Crcnun ?>vo. 6s.
BETTY MUSGRAVE. Second Edition.
Crown 8r'<7. 6s.
A NARROW WAY. Third Edition.
Crown ?>7'0. 6s.
J. S. FletClier. THE BUILDERS. Crown
Svo. 6s,
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M. E. Francis. MlSS ERIN. Second
Edition. Crown Zvo. 6s.
Tom Gallon. Author of 'Kiddy.' RICK-
ERBY S FOLLY. Crown Zvo. 6s.
Mary Gaunt. DEADMAN'S. Crown Zvo.
6s.
THE MOVING FINGER. Crown Zvo.
3i. 6d.
See also Fleur de Lis Novels.
Dorothea Gerard, Author of ' Lady Baby. '
THE MILLION. Crown Zvo. 6s.
THE CONQUEST OF LONDON.
Second Edition. Croivn Zvo. 6s.
THE SUPREME CRIME. Cr. Zvo. 6s.
HOLY MATRIMONY. Second Edition.
Crozvn Zz'O. 6s.
' The love story which it enshrines is a
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' Distinctly interesting.' — Athenaeum.
THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED.
Crown Zvo. 6s.
R. Murray GUclirist. WILLOWBRAKE.
Crown Zvo. 6s.
Algernon Gissing. THE KEYS OF THE
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George Gissing, Author of ' Demos,' ' In the
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TRAVELLER. Second Edition. Crown
Zvo. 6s.
THE CROWN OF LIFE. CrownZvo. 6s.
Ernest Glanville. THE KLOOF BRIDE.
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THE LOST REGIMENT. Crown Zvo.
2,s. 6d.
THE DESPATCH RIDER Crown Zvo.
3J. 6d.
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Crozvn Zvo. y. 6d.
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' Most thrilling and exciting.' —
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Charles Gleig. BUNTER'S CRUISE.
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Julien Gordon. MRS. CLYDE. Crown
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S. Gordon. A HANDFUL OF EXOTICS.
Crozvn Zvo. 3^. 6d.
0. F. GOSS. THE REDEMPTION 01"
DAVID CORSON. Third Edition.
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jMomin^ Post.
Robert Hichens, Author of ' Flames,'
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6s.
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orous.'— Birmingham Gazette,
TONGUES OF CONSCIENCE. Second
Edition. Crozvn Zz'O, 6s,
FELIX. Fourth Edition, Crown Zvo. 6s.
' Firm in texture, sane, sincere, and
Fiction
37
natural. "Felix" is a clever book, and in
many respects a true one.' — Daily Chronicle.
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38
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Fiction
39
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Andrew Balfour.
To Arms!
Jane Barlow.
A CREEL OF IRISH STORIES.
E. F. Benson.
The Vintage.
J. Bloundelle-Burton.
IN THE Day of adversity.
Mrs. CaflF3m (Iota).
ANNE M.iULEVHRER.
Mrs. W. K Cliflord.
.\ FLASH OF SUMMER.
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SONS OF Adversity
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D.ANIEL WHVTE.
Menie Muriel Dowie.
THE Crook of the Bough.
Mrs. Dudeney.
THE Third Floor.
Sara Jeannette Duncan.
A Voyage of Consolatijx.
G. Manville Fenn.
THE Star Gazers.
Jane H. Findlater.
R.achel.
Jane H. and Mary Findlater.
Tales th.at .\re Told.
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THE Paths of the prude.nt.
Mary Gaunt.
Kirkham's Find.
Bobert Hichens.
40
Messrs. Methuen's Catalogue
Emily Lawless.
HURRISH.
Maelcho.
W. E. Norris.
Matthew Austin.
Mrs. Oliphant.
Sir Robert's fortune.
Mary A. Owen.
The D.vughter of Alouette.
Mary L. Pendered.
An Englishman.
Morley Roberts.
The Plunderers.
R. N. Stephens.
An Enemy to the King.
Mrs. Walford.
Successors to the Title.
Percy White.
A PASsio.MATE Pilgrim.
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Zhz IRovelist
Messrs. Methuen are issuing under the above general title a Monthly Series
of Novels by popular authors at the price of Sixpence. Each number is as long as
the average Si.x Shilling Novel. The first numbers of ' The Novelist ' are as
follows : —
By
w.
I. Dead Men Tell no. Tales.
Hornunsr.
II. Jennie Baxter, journalist. By Robert
Barr.
III. The INCA'S Treasure. By Ernest Glanville.
IV. A SON OF THE STATE. By W. Pett Ridge.
V. FURZE BLOOM. By S. Barintr-Gould.
VI. BuNTER's Cruise. By C. Glei.?.
vn. THE Gay Deceivers. By Arthur Moore.
VIII. Prisoners OF V/AR. By A. Boyson Weekes.
IX. Onto/ print.
X. Veldt and Laager: Tales of the Transvaal.
By E. S. Valentine.
XI. THE Nigger Knights. By F. Norreys
Connel.
XII. A Marriage AT SEA. By W. Clark Russell.
XIII. The Pomp of the Lavilettes. By
Gilbert Parker.
XIV. A Man of Mark. Bv Anthony Hope.
XV. THE CARISSIMA. By Lucas Malet.
XVI. THE Lady's Walk. By Mrs. Oliphant.
XVII. Derrick Vaughan. By Edna Lyall..
XVIII. In the Midst of Alarms. By Robert
Barr.
XIX. His Grace. By W. E. Norris.
XX. Dodo. By E. F. Benson.
XXI. CHEAP Jack ZITA. By S. Baring-Gould.
XXII. WHEN VALMOND came TO PONTIAC. By
Gilbert Parker.
XXIII. The Human Boy. By Eden Phillpotts.
XXIV. THE Chronicles of Count Antonio.
By Anthony Hope.
XXV. By Stroke of Sword. By Andrew
Balfour.
XXVI. Kitty alone. By S. Barina--Gould.
XXVII. GILES INGILBY. By W, H. Norris.
XXVIII. URITH. By S. Baring-Gould.
XXIX. THE Town Traveller. By George
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XXX. Mr. SMITH. By Mrs. Walford.
XXXI. A CHANGE of air. By Anthony Hope.
XXXII. THE Kloof bride. By Ernest Glanville
-XXXIII. ANGEL. By B. M. Croker.
XXXIV. A COUNSEL of Perfection. By Lucas
Malet.
XXXV. The BABY'S Grandmother. By Mrs.
L. B. Walford.
XXXVI. The COUNTESS TEKLA. By Robert Barr
i^ctbucn's Sijpcnng OLtbrar^
By Major-General
By Major-General
THE MATABELE CAMPAIGN.
Baden-Powell.
The DOWNFALL OF PREMPEH.
Baden-Powell.
My Danish Sweetheart. By W. Clark Russell.
IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. By S. Baring-
Gould.
Peggy of the Bartons. By B. M. Croker.
The Green Graves of Balgowrie. By Jane
H. Findlater.
The Stolen Bacillus. By H. G. Wells.
Matthew Austin. By AV. E. Norris.
The Conquest of Londo.'m. By Dorothea
Gerard.
A Voyage of Consolation. By Sara J. Duncan.
The Mutable Many. By Robert Barr.
Ben HUR. By General Lew Wallace.
SIR Robert's Fortune. By Mrs. Oliphant.
The Fair God. By General Lew Wallace.
Clarissa Furiosa. By W. E. Norris.
Cranford. By Mrs. Gaskell.
NOEMI. By S. Baring.Gould.
The Throne of David. By J. H. Ingraham.
Across the salt seas. By J. Bioundeii
Burton.
The mill on the Floss. By George Eliot.
Peter Simple. By Captain Marryat.
Mary barton. By Mrs. Gaskell.
Pride and Prejudice. By Jane Austen.
North and South. By Mrs. Gaskell.
Jacob Faithful. By Captain Marryat.
Shirley. By Charlotte Bronte.
Fairy Tales Re-Told. By S. Baring Gould.
THE TRUE History of Joshua Davidson.
Mrs. Lynn Linton.
By
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