ILLUSTRATIONS

Writing. Hoppé

Original Letter from Bismarck

Hans Breitmann’s Ballad

Author’s Hand

Grapes growing on a London Balcony

Borkum of Spy fame. (Sketch by Author)

When first a Widow

Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s Writing-table

The Writer in Divided Riding-skirt in Southern Mexico

The Author, by Herbert Schmalz

Half-hour Sketch of Author, by John Lavery

Water-colour Sketch, by Percy Anderson

Walter Crane’s most famous Book-plate

Characteristic Postcard, by Bernard Shaw

Christmas Card, by Harry Furniss

Christmas Card, designed by John Hassall

Buried in Parcels, by Harry Furniss

Sketch by “Spy”

THIRTEEN YEARS OF A BUSY WOMAN’S LIFE

THIRTEEN YEARS OF A BUSY WOMAN’S LIFE

PROLOGUE

ONE day in the ’nineties I was quietly sitting in my library, when the door opened and a gentleman was announced. Standing solemnly before me, he said:

“I have come to thank you for my life.” I looked at him. Was the man sane? Was he suffering from hallucinations, or what on earth did he mean?

“Yes,” he repeated solemnly, “I have come to thank you for my life.”

“I am afraid I am at a loss to understand,” I replied, “perhaps you can explain.”

“Existence became utterly unendurable,” he continued, “worries heaped upon one another until the strain was unbearable, and then, to crown all, a terrible disease took possession of me. I knew I could not live. It might be a matter drawn out in all its hideousness for two or three years, but—the germ was there.”

“We shall none of us live for ever,” I replied cheerily. “Death is inevitable.”

“Oh yes,” he nodded, “death is inevitable; but we do not all have to face it in this way. So unendurable was the strain that I determined to end the matter in my own fashion, and a day or two ago I finally decided to take my life.”

The man talked in a perfectly rational manner, though at the same time in an extremely impressive tone.

“I did not come to the conclusion lightly,” he continued. “I weighed all the pros and cons; faced all the circumstances of the case, and I could not see that my life was of any4 value; in fact, in many ways my family would be better off without me. I had not much pluck left to face the inevitable racks of pain and disease, so after hours and days of mental torment I decided to end it all.

“Night came.

“Having determined to wait quietly until all the family were in bed, I sat in my study and read. I read and thought, and planned and argued, and the hours appeared to drag interminably. For some reason the servants seemed later than usual in retiring, and I watched the hands of the clock slowly move along. It was almost midnight. The lights had been put out in the passages. I could no longer hear the tread of people overhead; but for fear that it was still too early I returned to the book I was reading. Strangely enough, my eye fell on the word suicide. It seemed to rivet me with a weird and terrible fascination. I looked again, and that word appeared to be written in letters of blood. Was it a message, I wondered, to a man standing on the brink of the grave, on the verge of cutting the knot of life? What did that word suicide portend? I read on....

“Gradually I became interested. Here was a strange case. A man battling with blindness, a man whose circumstances seemed somewhat similar to my own; and as I read, I discovered that he had thought deeply on the same subject, he had disentangled the same problem. Yes, as I read and re-read the words they seemed to burn into my brain. I realised that this man decided that he was not justified in taking his own life, that even though blindness threatened he still had a mission to fulfil; and when I had learnt those words by heart, I banged down the book, rose from the table, clenched my fist, and determined to go on quietly and live my life to the bitter end. That page which altered the course of events was in the ‘Life’ you wrote of your father.1 Since that evening I have read the book from end to end. Clearly he was right. He had a mission to fulfil and fulfilled it. I have, I hope, now passed through the darkest hour of my life, but I could not rest until I came to tell you personally that if you had not written the book,

which chance put into my hand that night, I should have been a dead man to-day.”

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Seizing both my hands, he uttered, “God bless you and thank you! God bless you! Good-bye.”

And he was gone.

This incident set me thinking.

My father’s life had helped many men who had never seen or met him. Well if I, a woman, could in some lesser manner help some lone, struggling women who, like myself, after being reared in wealth, suddenly found themselves forced to toil for those “little luxuries” which to a refined woman are verily the necessaries of life, I too might be of use.

The Society bride who went to Ascot on a drag; to Ranelagh, Hurlingham, or Sandown in her husband’s buggy, or drove her own Park phaeton and pair; the pampered, spoilt, well-dressed young wife, who only lived for a “good time,” at one fell swoop lost all.

A hard school—more kicks than halfpence—and yet now it is passed one is almost thankful for the experience, thankful for each link in the chain so often welded with fire and tears.

Two things made life possible—ambition for one’s children and the kindly hand of friendship—two most precious pearls in the diadem of life. These, and a mother’s devotion and encouragement.

That hard time of Egyptian slavery is over; my thirteen years’ task is ended. The widow’s cruse may run low, but need not be empty if she has health and courage to work; yes, work, work, and still keep on working.

Only let me deplore the unfortunate circumstances that allow the possibilities of widows and children left to battle with the world, without sufficient means for a home and education after being born in luxury.

I won’t attempt to write my memoirs, but just jot down a few odds and ends before they slip my memory.

Memory is an excellent institution, and often assertive until one begins to write. Then nasty little doubts have a way of creeping in, doubts about dates, spelling of names, the actual perpetrator of a certain cute act, or the inception of a particular thought. Each year fills memory’s slate more full, and the older markings become gradually obliterated as new pencillings take their place.6

Poor old slate, let me see if I cannot decipher a few stray remembrances before they are all rubbed out—and recall how I began to write.

Thirteen years.

What does the title mean? It does not refer to a prison sentence, to supposed ill-luck as a fateful sign which a modern club of thirteen members is said to have put to the test, nor to anything romantic. Like Nansen, I am not superstitious. He was the head of twelve men on his Polar expedition, and his was the most successful one ever carried through, for he never lost a man. They started a party of thirteen and they returned a party of thirteen—an antidote to the superstition originated by the treachery of Judas.

Thirteen years is a large lease of existence during which to hire one’s self out a bond-slave. But that is what I did—perforce. Necessity is a hard taskmaster; and necessity plied the lash.

A great deal of water runs in thirteen years; water that turns the mill-wheel to grind us mortals to finer—perchance more useful—issues. The various incidents in my busy life during those years of toil all doubtless had their effect on character and my outlook on the world. “Nobody simply sees; nobody simply meets, and doing, simply does this and that. Inevitably in seeing, meeting, and doing there is a certain shaping of the mind and spirit of the person principally concerned.” So Richard Whiteing wisely remarked, speaking of this—my hardest stage of life’s journey.

Certainly my outlook on the world has altered since the days of happy, careless childhood, of joyous youth as girl and bride. How I resented constraint at fifteen and appreciated it later. How the restlessness of my teens mellowed and sobered and ripened.

Although I did not experience it myself, I am sure that adversity is a fine up-bringing for youth. It makes children think, which youth nursed in luxury seldom does. Adversity only came to me in my twenties.

Youth is often spent courting time,

Middle age in chasing time,

Old age, alas, in killing time.

Reared in a soil of generous sufficiency, nourished by wisdom and kindness in the warm sunshine of love, instead7 of the human plant being blighted when the winds blew and the rains fell, it grew stronger and blossomed and bore the fruit of work.

“Oh, poor So-and-so was not brought up to work,” people often say despondingly when bad times overtake their friends; “theirs was such a happy home.” But surely the home should be happy. At least, let there be something of gladness to look back on, when one is struggling uphill under a heavy load. The influence of parents is incalculable in effect on children. The example of my father was powerful in helping me to take up my burden as he had done his.

If these pages, put together after thirteen years of constant work, seem too scrappy—disconnected even—let me ask the sympathy of those who know what it is to be interrupted again and again by illness in the midst of a task. Illness that has laid me on my sofa, in bed, even sent me to a “cure” in search of health, as often as six times in eighteen months; that makes the grasshopper a burden.

Without friendship and sympathy courage would have failed to go on struggling with what seemed a veritable burden, and yet when well, how little I thought of toil and stress when writing more important books. The offer of a friend to undertake a little of the drudgery of the task seemed to lift tons’ weight off my head. Still, though other hands may pull a sofa and shake pillows into place, the invalid’s direction is needful or her own room would not have her own individuality, and would lose the personal touch that gives the clue.

Ups and downs will come. Bolts will fall from the blue. The unexpected is what always happens.

Then, oh, why not be prudent, both young men and maidens? Don’t be foolish, shy, or negligent to make provision against a possible wintry time, by settlement, or insurance, and in every sound and legal way hedge round your home against those desolating intruders—Poverty or Illness.

I do not intend to enter into all my ancestral chain between these covers; and I do not mean to moralise. People don’t care a ha’penny for other people’s philosophy, although everybody must have some kind of working philosophy of his own after he has knocked about in the crowd and scrimmage of life. I’ve got mine, like other folk,8 and I’ve learnt there are only two things worth living for—love and friendship. The first is not passion, but the capacity to care for the welfare of others more than for one’s own. Passion burns itself out, love is ceaselessly unselfish.

And friendship? Why, friendship is the handmaiden of sympathy, the art of appreciation, the pleasant interchange of thought.

This is a jumble of facts and fancies, wherein memory and pen run riot.

PART I CHILDHOOD

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CHAPTER I THE GOLDEN AGE

UNLESS a book starts with some interest it finds no readers. The first page is often the key to the whole.

But how is one to be interesting about such commonplace events as being born and vaccinated, cutting one’s first tooth or having measles and whooping-cough? They are all so uneventful, and while important to the little “ego” are so dull to the public. Therefore I refuse to be either “born” or even cut a wisdom tooth within these pages anent a busy woman’s life, except to say that on the night of my birth my father and his friend, the famous surgeon John Erichsen (later Sir John), walked home from a meeting of the Royal Society together, and on reaching the old house in Harley Street a servant greeted them with the announcement that my mother was very ill.

Up the stairs my father hurried, while his colleague went off for the nurse. I was too small to be dressed, so my early days were spent rolled up in cotton wool—which fact did not deter my further development, as at fourteen years of age I stood five feet eight inches high. On my second day of existence I was introduced in my cradle to him who for nearly thirty years was as a second father to me—him whom I always called “dear Uncle John.”

What a horribly egotistical thing it is to write about one’s self!

Until now I have generally managed to keep I out of books by using that delightful editorial WE, but somehow this volume cannot be written as WE, and the hunting of the snark never afforded more trouble than the hunting out of I. There it is and there it remains. It refuses to be removed. It glares upon the pages, and spurns all attempts to be suppressed.

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Let me humbly apologise, once and for all, for

“I.”

Some people are born smart, just as others are born good—some are born stupid—and some are born haunted by the first personal pronoun. People believe they are relating the honest truth when they speak ill of themselves, and yet it is so pleasant to relate appreciative little stories of “ego.”

Why mention my early youth in a book only meant to treat of working years?—it may be asked. Well, for this friends are to blame. Folk have constantly asked, “What first made you write? Was it an inherited gift?”

Did my second baptismal name predestine my career? On this subject my father wrote in a diary:

“The next favours I received from Fortune were domestic ones—a boy and a girl. The name of Ethel was given the little maid to please her mother, that of Brilliana to please me. Brilliana, I called her, out of respect for the only woman of the name of Harley who added by her writings to the celebrity of the race. The Letters of the Lady Brilliana Harley, 1625-43, wife of Sir Robert Harley, of Brampton Bryan, Knight of the Bath, were reprinted by the Camden Society, with introductions and notes by Thomas Taylor Lewis, M.A., Vicar of Bridstow, Herefordshire.2

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“Of men authors we have had abundance: of women only one. No wonder, then, I wished our daughter to perpetuate her name.”

Thus it seems to have been my father’s wish to dedicate me to the memory of the well-known Dame Brilliana who shone in both social and literary circles in the seventeenth century. Did he, perhaps, remember that the old Romans, at the birth of a child, used to choose for it the name of some ancestor, whose career they wished to be its example, in the belief that the deceased would protect and influence the infant to follow in the same path?

This second name of mine is queer enough, and seems to have suggested penmanship, followed by a number of strange nicknames, chosen promiscuously by my friends, but all tending in two directions:

“Madame la Duchesse.”

“Liege Lady.”

“She who would be obeyed.”

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“Grande Dame.”

“Esmeralda.”

“Carmen.”

“Vixen.”

Do these denote character?—for they apparently run from the sublime to the ridiculous.

My parents seem to have been less careful about choosing me a nurse of a literary turn, however otherwise excellent the woman was, for the following quaint letter to my mother from my old attendant, who was for nearly forty years in the family, is not exactly a model of epistolary art:

“I am wrighting to thank you for Papers you so kindly sent Mrs. B—— she wished me to do so i told her i would do so but there was plenty of time for doing it but on Monday morning she very quietly took her long departyer not being any the worse the Delusions was to much for her and she just went off hoping you are quite well also your four Gran children and there parents the wether is very cold for May i remain your Obident

“S. D.”

Apart from the undoubted virtues of my illiterate old nurse, my education proceeded on the usual infantile lines. My father taught us children a great deal about natural history, which we loved, as most children do, and many odds and ends of heterogeneous information picked up from him in those early days proved a mine of “copy” in years to come.

A sage once said the child should choose its own parents. He might have gone farther and said that the child should choose its own school, because if school-fellows have often had as much influence as mine did on me, then school companions are a matter of importance. Youth is the time of selfishness and irresponsibility. How cruel we are through thoughtlessness! How we stab and wound by quick, unmeditated words! The journey onwards is a stony one, but we all have to pass along if we are to attain either worldly success or, greatest of all blessings, mastery of self. I often wonder why people are so horrid at home. We know it, we deprecate it, but we don’t seem to have the pluck or the courage to change it. We suffer the loneliness of soul we all endure at times, even more than we need, because of our own foolish pride and want of sympathy with our surroundings. We could be so much nicer and more considerate15 if we really tried. We mean to be delightful, of course; but we signally fail.

In those far-away kindergarten days in Harley Street there were a little boy and three grown-up gentlemen with whom I made friends. The little boy grew up and went to Mexico, where I met him after a lapse of twenty-five years, a merchant in a good position. He was able to do a great deal for me during my stay there, and proved as a brother in occasions of difficulty.

Sir Felix Semon became a great physician, and Dr. von Mühlberg a German Ambassador. The more elderly gentleman was studying at the British Museum, and only lodged at the house. Dr. von Rottenburg was also a German, and he used to pat my head every morning on the stairs and talk to me about my playthings, calling me “leetle mees.” When I grew up this famous philosopher, diplomat, and writer never forgot the little black-eyed girl going to school with her doll, and was one of my dearest and best friends in Germany.

On his return to Berlin he published, in 1878, a book called Begriff des Staates. It was a learned volume and created much sensation in Germany. One day he was sitting in the Foreign Office when he received an invitation to dine with the great Bismarck. He was amazed, but naturally accepted. At the dinner were only two other men, the Imperial Chancellor and his son Herbert. The former talked to von Rottenburg about his book in most flattering terms. On his return home that night his wife asked him how he had got on.

“Not particularly well,” he replied. “I was so awe-stricken by the wondrous capacity, the bulk of both body and mind of Bismarck, that I seemed paralysed of speech and said practically nothing.

“Why were you invited?” enquired his spouse.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” was his reply. “Anyway, I am afraid I made but a poor impression.”

A week later von Rottenburg was again sitting in his room when Count Wilhelm Bismarck was announced.

“My father wishes to see you to-morrow,” he said.

“Indeed, and may I ask what for?”

“That is his business, not mine. Be pleased to call at such an hour16.”

Perplexed as to the repetition of the invitation the young diplomat called as desired. Bismarck was sitting at his table writing. The man who held the destiny of Europe in his hands looked up and nodded.

“Sit down,” he said, and went on signing letters.

When he had finished blotting the last bold signature, turning to von Rottenburg, he said:

“Do you wonder why I sent for you?”

“To tell the truth, I do.”

“I wish to make you Chief of the Chancellery.”

Von Rottenburg was naturally amazed, but said nothing.

“Do you understand what I say?” repeated Bismarck. “I wish to make you Chief of the Chancellery.”

“Well—er—but——”

“There is no well or but about it.”

“But, you see, I am rather ambitious.”

“Are you? I am glad to hear it.”