Notable Women Authors of the Day Part 4

She would have any special talent, whereby its possessor could, if necessary, earn her own living cultivated to the utmost; and, consistently following out her principles, she has sent her youngest daughter, who has a decided genius for painting, to work in one of the best-known studios in Paris, where she takes a fairly good place, and by her diligence and ardour for her art at least deserves success. Another daughter fulfils the onerous task of being "mother's right hand." But she has yet a third, who has found a happy career in the bonds of wedlock, and has made her home at Versailles. She is now on a visit to her mother, and whilst you are conversing, the door opens, the young wife comes in with a lovely infant in her arms, and the "first grandchild" is introduced with pride. He is a perfect cherub, and makes friends instantly.

Asking Mrs. Alexander about her early friends in literature, she mentions with grateful warmth the name of Mrs. S. C. Hall, "whose ready kindness never failed." "To her," she says, "I owe the most valuable introduction I ever had. It was to the late Mr. W. H. Wills, editor of _Household Words_. To his advice and encouragement I am deeply indebted.

His skill and discrimination as an editor were most remarkable, whilst his knowledge and wide experience were always placed generously at the service of the young and earnest wanderer in the paths of literature, numbers of whom have had reason to bless the day when they first knew Harry Wills."

Mrs. Alexander is pre-eminently a lovable woman. In the large society where she is so well known, and so much respected, to mention her name is to draw forth affectionate encomiums on all sides. You venture to make some allusion to this fact; a faint smile comes over the placid countenance, as she says inquiringly, "Yes? I believe I have made many friends. You see, I never rub people the wrong way if I can help it, and I think I have some correct ideas respecting the true value of trifles.

Yet I believe I have a backbone; at least I hope so, for mere softness and compliance will not bear the friction of life."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Helen Reeves]

HELEN MATHERS.

(MRS. REEVES.)

Although it is but two o'clock in the afternoon, the streets are black as night. With the delightful variety of an English climate, the temperature has suddenly fallen, and a rapid thaw has set in, converting the heavy fall of snow, which but two days before threatened to cover the whole of London, into a slough of mud. It is a pleasant change to turn from these outer discomforts into the warm and well-lighted house which Mrs. Reeves has made so bright and comfortable.

You have judiciously managed to arrive five minutes earlier than the hour appointed, in the hope of being able to make a few mental notes before Helen Mathers comes in, and your perspicacity is rewarded, for a bird's-eye glance around a.s.sures you that she possesses a refined and artistic taste, which is displayed in the general arrangement of the room. Lighted from above by a gla.s.s dome, another room is visible and again a glimpse of a third beyond. The quaint originality of their shape and build suggests the idea, of what indeed is the fact, that the house was built more than a century and a half ago.

The first room is very long, and its soft Axminster carpet of amber colour shaded up to brown gives the key-note to the decorations, which from the heavily embossed gold leather paper on the walls to the orange-coloured Indian scarves that drape the exquisite white overmantels (now wreathed with long sprays of ivy, gra.s.ses, and red leaves), would delight the heart of a sun-wors.h.i.+pper as Helen Mathers declares herself to be.

As she now comes in, she seems to bring an additional sense of the fitness of things. She carries a big basket of China tea-roses, which she has just received from a friend in the country, and the long white cachemire and silk tea-gown which she wears looks thoroughly appropriate, despite the inclement season. It is her favourite colour for house wear in summer or winter, and certainly nothing could be more becoming to her soft, creamy complexion, and the natural tints of the thick, bright copper-coloured hair, which, curling over her brow, is twisted loosely into a great knot, lying low on the back of her head.

The conversation turning upon the peculiar structure of the rooms, Mrs.

Reeves proposes to take you into the one innermost which is truly a curiosity. A very old cathedral gla.s.s part.i.tion opens on to a square and lofty room, used as an inner hall, with great velvet s.h.i.+elds of china and bra.s.ses on its gold leather walls, and quaint old oak chairs, cabinets, and high old-fas.h.i.+oned clock. A portrait in sepia of Mrs.

Reeves, done by Alfred Ward, hangs over a paneled door on the left. It was to this picture that Mr. Frederick Locker wrote the following lines:--

"Not mine to praise your eyes and wit, Although your portrait here I view, So what I may not say to you I've said to it."

Opposite is a very wide, high door that opens into the oak-panelled room, which may well have been a banqueting hall of the last century. It is lighted from above, and each pane of gla.s.s has in its centre, in vivid colours, the initials of the royal personage who, if the coats of arms abounding everywhere are to be trusted, may have occupied this room over a hundred years ago. By the way, the harp is absent from these armorial bearings.

One entire side of the room is filled by a vast mirror, set in a magnificently carved oak frame, and supported on either side by colossal winged female figures, that are matched (and in the gla.s.s reflected) by the caryatides who appear to hold up the ma.s.sive carvings above the door, which is itself covered entirely by superb carvings of beast and bird, and laughing boys playing at Bacchus with great cl.u.s.ters of grapes. Round this unique room runs an oak paneling of about five feet in height, surmounted by a ledge, now decorated with trails of ivy, and above the oak cupboards are panels representing a boar hunt, and worth, it is said, a fabulous sum. But the glory of the room is the mantelpiece, reaching to the roof. It was probably once an altar piece, as the centre panel represents the Crucifixion. Two busts--one of Queen Elizabeth, the other of the Earl of Leicester--frown down on you from a great height, and do not please you half as well as a bronze Venus of Milo below. The hearth itself (of an incredibly old pattern, with heavy iron fender, which suggests a prison) has on either side two odd-looking figures, that are supposed to represent Joan of Arc and her keeper. He carries a knotted whip in one hand, and seems to look ferociously on poor Joan in her half-manly, half-feminine garb.

"I am very fond of these two," says Mrs. Reeves, looking affectionately at them, "and often dust their faces, but I am not at all fond of sitting in this room. I much prefer my sunny quarters upstairs, and these high carved oak chairs are uncomfortable to sit in, especially at dinner!"

But pleasant as it is, there is other business on hand, and you cannot linger over these beautiful antiquities; the afternoon is wearing on, and Mrs. Reeves leads the way to the drawing-rooms, which are also oddly shaped, and open one out of the other, like those downstairs; but those rooms are very different to look upon, and are, in your hostess's opinion, "much more cheery." You can step from the long windows on to a flower-filled balcony that looks up and down Grosvenor Street. The hangings of the first room are of yellow satin, of the second room pink; the furniture is merely of basket work, but made beautiful and comfortable by many soft cus.h.i.+ons; and a long gla.s.s set in a frame of white woodwork, its low shelf covered with rare old yellow china and flowers, reflects the gold and cream leather walls, and the overmantel crammed with a lovely litter of china, pictures, and odds and ends, in the centre of which is a horseshoe. "Picked up by my boy, Phil," says Mrs. Reeves, as you examine it, "and we always say it has brought us luck."

But when you ask to see her writing-room--for there is not a sign of pen, ink, and paper to be seen on a modest white escritoire behind the door--she shakes her head and laughs.

"I have no writing-room and no particular table," she says, "indeed I can't say in the least how my books get written. I jot down anything that I especially observe, or think of, on a bit of paper, and when I have a great many pieces I sort them out, and usually pin them together in some sort of a sequence. At home, where I had an immense room to write in over the library, the boys used to say no one must speak to me if my 'auth.o.r.ess lock' were standing up over my forehead, but if I ever display it nowadays, n.o.body," she adds, ruefully, "is deterred by it!

Often, just as I have settled down to do a good morning's work, and have perhaps finished a page, someone comes in and puts letters or account books on it, or my boy Phil rushes up and lays his air gun or his banjo on the table, or my husband brings in some little commission or a heap of notes to be answered for him. I always tell them," laughing, "that everyone combines to put out of sight the story which is being written, and often it is not touched again for a week; but my composition, when really begun, is very rapid, and my ideas seem to run out of my pen. At my old home they used to say I wrote the things that they thought, which was a good, lazy way of getting out of it."

This leads to the subject of her "old home," and Mrs. Reeves imparts some interesting details of her youthful days. She was born at Misterton, Somersets.h.i.+re, in the house described in "Comin' thro' the Rye," and she has always most pa.s.sionately loved it. Mrs. Reeves was one of twelve children, who spent the greater part of their time in outdoor sports and amus.e.m.e.nts, in which the girls were almost as proficient as the boys. Their father was a great martinet, and never permitted any encroachment on the regular lesson hours with their governess. "When I was only eight years old," says your hostess, "our grandmamma Buckingham (after whom I take my second Christian name) sent us a biography of famous persons, arranged alphabetically. I looked down the list to see if a Mathers were amongst them. It was not, and I took a pencil, and made a bracket, writing in my name, Helen Mathers, novelist; so the ruling idea must have been in me early."

The colour of her hair was Helen Mathers's greatest trouble in her childhood. It was a rich red, and in the familiar home circle she was called "Carrots," to her great annoyance, until she was sixteen. She says:--"It gave me such genuine distress that before I was nine years old, I had written a story depicting the sufferings of a red-haired girl who wanted to marry a man who was in love with her golden-haired sister.

I inscribed this in an old pocket-book, looking out the names and places in the _Times_ each day, and afterwards, in agonies of shyness, I read it aloud to the a.s.sembled family, who received it with shouts of mirth!"

At the age of thirteen, she was sent to Chantry School, and, unfortunately for her, she was placed at once in the first cla.s.s, consisting of girls many years older than herself. Always ardent and ambitious, she worked so hard that quite suddenly her health broke down, and she became deaf--an affliction which has partially remained to this day. No doubt this trouble drove her more into herself, and helped her to concentrate her thoughts on literature. She wrote and wrote incessantly for pure love of it, and before she was sixteen had completed, her poem, "The Token of the Silver Lily." This she gave to a friend of her family who was acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The great man read it, and sent her a message to the effect that, if she persevered, she bid fair at some future day to succeed. This highly delighted the girl, who was always working while the others played in the beautiful place to which her parents had removed when they left Misterton. This later home is described as "Penroses" in her late novel, "Adieu!" which previously ran as a serial in a monthly magazine.

Her first appearance in print is thus described:--"It was hay-making time, and everybody, boys and girls, children, servants, and all, were down in the hayfield, when someone brought me a shabby little halfpenny wrapper with the magic word 'Jersey' at the top. I gave a sort of whoop, and fled down the lawn and across the orchards, and into the bosom of my family like one possessed. 'Boys, girls!' I cried; 'it's _accepted_--it's here in _print_! Look at it!' And never did a prouder heart beat than the heart under my white frock that day for my first-born bantling of the pen. I had been yachting with my brother-in-law, Mr. Hamborough, a short time previously, with this result, that I wrote a sketch of him and his wife and the place, and, signing it 'N.'--short for 'Nell'--I took counsel with Mr. George Augustus Sala, whom I did not know in those days, but who was very kind in replying to me, and he despatched it to _Belgravia_. When it _did_ appear Jersey was very angry, and declared it was libelled, and I should not have ventured to go over there again for a long while!"

About three years later she produced her first novel, "Comin' thro' the Rye." It proved a great success, and was rapidly translated into many languages; indeed, a copy in Sanscrit was sent to her. This work was written unknown to her family. "My poor father," says Mrs. Reeves, sadly, "I got him into the story, and though I did not mean to be unkind or disrespectful, I could not get him out again. I hardly drew a free breath for months afterwards, fearing someone would tell him I had written it, and that he would be grievously offended; but I was young and foolish, too young a great deal I often think to succeed, but it makes me feel a sort of Methuselah now."

A story is told that many years ago a very youthful writer supplemented a story of her own with several pages of this book, and wrote to Messrs.

Tillotson, saying she had written the twin novel to "Comin' thro' the Rye," and would they buy it? The publishers told Mrs. Reeves of this application. She was much amused, and in high good humour wrote back to say that she had always understood twins appeared about the same time, and that she had never heard before of one arriving seven years after the other.

In 1876 Helen Mathers married Mr. Henry Reeves, the well-known surgeon and specialist on Orthopaedics. He has been on the staff of the London Hospital for nearly twenty years, and he, too, is an author, but his works bear more stupendous and alarming names than those of his wife, such as "Human Morphology," "Bodily Deformities"--sad, significant t.i.tle! But not only as the skilful surgeon, the renowned specialist, the student, and author, is Henry Reeves known. There is another section of the world--amongst the poor and suffering, the over-worked clerk, the underpaid governess, the struggling artist, where his name like many another in his n.o.ble profession, is loved and revered, and where the word "fee" is never heard of, and the "left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth." Did you not know all this from personal experience, it is almost to be read in the kind, benevolent face. His wife says, laughing, that "he is so unselfish, he never thinks of himself, and I have always to be looking after him to see that he gets even a meal in peace"; and she adds, in a low and tender tone, "but he is the kindest and best of husbands." They have but one child--"Phil"--a bright, handsome boy of fourteen. He is the idol of their hearts, and like quicksilver in his brightness. His mother says when he was only three, he was found sitting at her desk, wielding a pen with great vigour, and throwing much ink about, as he dipped his golden curls in the blots he was making. "What are you doing?" his mother asked. "Writing "Tory of a Sin,'" he said, with great dignity; and now that he is older he composes with great rapidity.

"He is at school now," says Mrs. Reeves, "and the house is like a tomb without him. If it were not for my needlework (my especial vanity) I could not get through the long weeks between his holidays. Children, flowers, needlework--these are my chief delights; and as I often have to do without the first two, my needle is often a great comfort to me."

Shortly after her marriage, Mrs. Reeves again took up her pen, and during the next few years she wrote several novels and novelettes, selecting peculiarly attractive t.i.tles. Amongst these books are "Cherry Ripe," "As He Comes up the Stair," "The Story of a Sin," "The Land of the Leal," "My Lady Greensleeves," "Eyre's Acquittal," etc., etc.

Referring to a character in the last of these, you ask to see the book; but there is not a single volume visible; they are all conspicuous by their absence.

Mrs. Reeves remarks that she "has done nothing to speak of lately, feeling she has had nothing to say." Some months ago the inclination to begin a new story came back to her, and she set diligently to work while it lasted. A great catastrophe occurred. The first volume was finished when, having occasion to go on other business to her publisher, she had the ma.n.u.script put into the hansom which was to convey her to his office. After a long conversation, she suddenly remembered that the parcel had been left in the cab, and from that day to this she has never recovered it. At the time she did not take the matter seriously, feeling sure the precious packet would be found at Scotland Yard; but, though rewards were offered and handbills circulated by the thousand, all was of no avail. Mrs. Reeves adds, "the Press most kindly a.s.sisted me in every possible way. Either the cabman threw it away, in total ignorance of its value, and then was afraid to come forward and confess it, or some dishonest person who next got into the cab may have sold, or used the story, in America probably, or elsewhere. _Nous verrons!_ I have written it over again. It took me a few weeks only, without notes, without a sc.r.a.p of anything to help me, save my memory, and never in my life did I sit down to a harder task."

The author is very modest in her own opinion of this last book, and adds ruefully, "I feel miserable over it, but I never _am_ at all satisfied with my work, and when I sent it to my publishers, I told them that they had much better put it into the fire--it fell so entirely short of what I had intended." They however, happily took quite a different view of its merits, and the novel will shortly be brought out in three volumes.

Helen Mathers is a great needlewoman. Not only are the long satin curtains, the pillows, cus.h.i.+ons, and dainty lamp shades all made by her own hands; but she can cut out and sew any article of feminine apparel.

She has, indeed, a very pretty taste in dress, and many of her friends are in the habit of consulting her in that line--from the designing of their smartest gowns to the little economies of "doing up the old ones to look like new." "And yet," says Mrs. Reeves plaintively, "people call me extravagant. Why! I have not even got a fas.h.i.+onable dressmaker. All my makings and mendings and turnings are done at home by a clever little workwoman, under my own superintendance, and I am most careful and economical. When a child, I was never taught the value of money, but I learnt it later by experience, and experience, after all, is the best teacher. I look upon myself as a sort of 'Aunt Sally,' at whom Fate is always having a 'shy,' chipping off a bit here, and a bit there, but never really knocking me off my perch."

A great solid silver donkey with panniers which must hold a pint of ink, stands on a table close to an oval Venetian gla.s.s framed in gold and silver. Mrs. Reeves observes that though she has no writing-table, that is her especial ink-stand, which is carried about from room to room. It was given to her when very young, and, she laughingly adds, "You can imagine all the complimentary remarks the boys at home made to me about it." She goes on to say, "I always loved a good laugh, even though it were against myself. We were such a happy united family in the big old house. We are all scattered now," she remarks sadly; "some are dead, some are abroad, and one sister, who married a son of Dr. Russell, of _Times_ renown, is in China with her husband."

Mrs. Reeves is essentially a domestic woman. She cares comparatively but little for society, and is never as happy as when at home, with her husband sitting on the other side of the fire-place, like "Darby and Joan." She is excellent company, and a brilliant conversationalist. She possesses that good gift, a low, sweet voice, which glides on from topic to topic--now gay, with flashes of wit and mirth, now subdued to gravity or pathos. Albeit, she is a good listener, and has the happy knack of drawing out talk. Yet, though constantly conversing on people and social matters, not one unkindly word or suspicion of scandal escapes her lips.

She has a good word to say for all, and speaks with affectionate grat.i.tude of many. She prefers the company of woman, and says that her best friends have been those of her own s.e.x. But the charm of her society has beguiled you into a long visit, and whilst bidding her good-bye the feeling arises that if a friend in need were wanted, a friend indeed would be found in "Helen Mathers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Florence Marryat]

FLORENCE MARRYAT.

Battling with a fierce snowstorm, and a keen east wind, which drives the flakes straight into your face like repeated stings of a small sharp whip, a welcome shelter is presently found in Florence Marryat's pretty, picturesque little house in St. Andrew's Road, West Kensington. Two bright red pots filled with evergreens mark the house, which is built in the Elizabethan style of architecture, with a covered verandah running along the upper part. By a strange coincidence, the famous author has settled down within a stone's throw of the place where her distinguished father--the late Captain Marryat, R.N.--once lived. Until three months ago, there stood in the Fulham Palace Road, a large, handsome building enclosed in ten acres of ground, which was first called "Brandenburg Villa," and was inhabited by the celebrated singer Madame Sontag. It next fell into the hands of the Duke of Suss.e.x, who changed its name to Suss.e.x House, and finally sold it to his equerry Captain Marryat, who exchanged it with Mrs. Alexander Copeland for the Manor of Langham, in Norfolk, where he died. For some years past Suss.e.x House has been in Chancery, but now it is pulled down; the land is sold out in building plots, and the pleasure grounds will be turned into the usual streets and rows of houses for the needs of the ever-increasing population. The study--or as Florence Marryat calls it, her "literary workshop"--is very small, but so well arranged that it seems a sort of _multum in parvo_, everything a writer can want being at hand. It has a look of thorough snugness and comfort. The large and well-worn writing table is loaded with books of reference and a vast heap of tidily-arranged ma.n.u.script, betokening the fact that yet another new novel is under weigh. A ma.s.sive bra.s.s inkstand, bright as gold, is flanked on each side by a fierce-looking dragon. Two of the walls are lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, filled with books which must number many hundreds of volumes. Over the fireplace hangs an old-fas.h.i.+oned round mirror set in a dull yellow frame, mounted on plush, around whose broad margin is displayed a variety of china plates, picked up in the many foreign countries which Miss Marryat has visited, and the effect is particularly good. The room is lighted at the further corner by gla.s.s doors opening into an aviary and conservatory, which is bright with many red-berried winter plants; this little gla.s.s-house opens on to the big kennels where Miss Marryat's canine pets are made so comfortable.

But the door opens. Enters your hostess with two ringdoves perched familiarly on her shoulder. She is tall in stature, erect in carriage, fair in complexion: she has large blue eyes--set well apart--straight, well-formed eyebrows, and an abundance of soft, fair fluffy hair. She is dressed very simply in a long black tea-gown with Watteau pleat, very plainly made, but perfect in cut and fit, and looking quite unstudied in its becoming graceful simplicity.

Florence Marryat is the youngest of the eleven children of the late well-known author, Captain Marryat, R.N., C.B., F.R.S. Her mother, who died at the good old age of ninety--in full possession of all her faculties--was a daughter of Sir Stephen Shairp, of Houston, Linlithgow, who was for many years H.B.M. Consul-General and _Charge d'Affaires_ at the Court of Russia. One side of the little study is dedicated to the relics of her father, and in the centre hangs his portrait, surrounded by trophies and memories. The picture is painted by the sculptor Behnes, in water-colours, and represents a tall, fair, slight, though muscular-looking man leaning against the mast of his s.h.i.+p, _Ariadne_, dressed in the full uniform of those days, a long-tailed coat, white duck trousers, and c.o.c.ked hat held under his arm. Two smaller pictures of him are pen-and-ink drawings by Count D'Orsay and Sir Edward Belcher respectively.

Entering the service at a very early age, and in troublous times, Captain Marryat gained rapid promotion, and had been in no less than fifty-nine naval engagements before he was twenty-one, and with the single exception of Lord Nelson he was the youngest Post Captain ever known, having indeed attained that rank at the age of twenty-four. After the first Burmese war, in which he took so distinguished a part, he was offered a baronetcy as a reward for his services, but refused it, choosing instead a crest and arms to commemorate the circ.u.mstance, with the stipulation that the arms should be such as his daughters might carry. This was accordingly done, and at the present moment there are only eleven women in England who possess the same right, of which number Miss Marryat and her sisters make five. The crest, with arms (a fleur-de-lis and a Burmese boat with sixteen rowers on an azure ground, with three bars argent and three bars sable) is framed, and hangs close to what she calls her "Marryat Museum." Just below the portrait is an oval ebony frame containing an etching of a beaver done on a piece of s.h.i.+p's copper by her father, a morocco case close by holds all his medals, which were bequeathed to her, including the Legion of Honour bestowed on him by the Emperor Napoleon, and the picture of the dead Emperor, sketched by the gallant sailor, and published by Colnaghi, which is considered the best portrait of him ever taken. His daughter remarks:--"It was always said of my father that he ever displayed to perfection that courage, energy, and presence of mind which were natural to his lion-hearted character. Unlike the veteran who 'shouldered his crutch to show how fields were won,' he never voluntarily referred to exploits of which any man might have been proud. He was content to _do_, and know that he had _done_, and left to others the pride which he might justly have felt for himself."

Independent of his nautical career, Captain Marryat had other great talents. His writings will never be forgotten, from "Peter Simple" and "Mids.h.i.+pman Easy" down to "Masterman Ready," the much-beloved books of children. His "Code of Signals" is so celebrated that reference must just be made to it. Shortly before he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, he invented and brought to perfection the code which was at once adopted in the Merchant Service, and is now generally used by the British and French navies, in India, at the Cape of Good Hope, and other English settlements, and by the Mercantile Marine of North America. It is also published in the Dutch and Italian languages, and, by an order of the French Government, no merchant vessel can be insured without these signals being on board. Rising, Miss Marryat puts the original work into your hands, and you observe, with something like awe, that it is all written in the deceased sailor's own hand; the penmans.h.i.+p is like copper-plate, the flags and signals are painted, and each page is neatly indexed. Needless to say, it is regarded as a priceless treasure by his daughter.

Born of such a gifted father, it is small wonder that the child should have inherited brilliant talents. She was never sent to school, but was taught under a succession of governesses. "On looking back," she says with compunction, "I regret to remember that I treated them all very badly, for I was a downright troublesome child. I was an omnivorous reader, and as no restriction was placed on my choice of books, I read everything I could find, lying for hours full length on the rug, face downwards, arms propping up my head, with fingers in ears to shut out every disturbing sound, the while perpetually summoned to come to my lessons. I may be said to have educated myself, and probably I got more real learning out of this mode of procedure than if I had gone through the regular routine of the schoolroom, with the cut-and-dried conventional system of the education of that day."

Florence Marryat has been twice married: first at the age of sixteen to Captain Ross Church, of the Madras Staff Corps, and secondly to Colonel Francis Lean of the Royal Marines. By the first marriage she had eight children, of whom six survive.