RK fcLEY 
 
 iRARY 
 
 VERSITY 0>F 
 ill FORNfIA 
 
MEMOIE 
 
 OF 
 
 ANNIE KEAEY 
 
MEMOIE 
 
 ANNIE KEAE1 7 
 
 T 
 
 BY HER SISTER 
 
 "Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
 Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
 And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
 Love itself shall slumber on." 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO 
 
 1882 
 
SECOND THOUSAND. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 ANNIE KEAKY 
 
 719 
 
MEMOIB 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 2, line 23, delete " back." 
 
 3, 26, for "first and self," read "self and first." 
 
 3> 27, rfefcfe " comma, " after "opening." 
 
 ,, 49, 31, for "sunshine," read "beauty." 
 
 ,, 52, 23, for "teaching," read "teachings." 
 
 55 > > 5 > for "Bourdillon," read "Papillon " 
 
 55, 19, delete "at first." 
 
 57, 22, for "when," read "that." 
 
 62, 14, for " bent," read " best." 
 
 ,, 67, ,, 23, insert "comma," after "which." 
 
 67, ,, 30, insert "of," after "this." 
 
 69, 20, insert " commas," after " think and signs." 
 
 /2, ,, 13, /or "scenal," read "scenic." 
 
 86, 10, delete "of," after " taking a room." 
 
 ,, 89, ,, 1, delete "of," after "seeing." 
 
 92, ,, 1 5, for "flat bread cakes, "read" flat loaves of bread ' 
 
 1 07, , , 12, /or " the man we call, " raid ' ' a man we eall. " 
 
 ,-, 112, 1, for "Rhamses," read "Ramses." 
 
 181, ,, 22, for " unaltered," read " altered." 
 
 her works. 1 must premise that her lite was a very 
 quiet one, almost uneventful; the task before me 
 is indeed rather to trace the growth of a character 
 than to give the record of a life. I invite my 
 readers to walk step by step with the subject of 
 
 B 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 ANNIE KEAEY. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 " T WISH her gentle life were written. Her works 
 -L are not the full expression of herself; no 
 written thing could express all the wealth of her 
 gracious womanhood, and sweet human-heartedness." 
 These words, which appeared in a notice of Annie 
 Keary's writings in the pages of Macmillan's Magazine, 
 and the wishes of many friends who have said to me, 
 " You ought to tell us something more about her," 
 have made me consider whether there might not be 
 something that I ought to say, some simple record that 
 I might make, which would give pleasure to those 
 who knew Annie Keary personally, as well as to 
 those who have known her heretofore only through 
 her works. I must premise that her life was a very 
 quiet one, almost uneventful; the task before me 
 is indeed rather to trace the growth of a character 
 than to give the record of a life. I invite my 
 readers to walk step by step with the subject of 
 
 B 
 
2 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 these pages ; from gracious childhood, through peace- 
 ful useful prime, up to the sudden opening of that 
 gate through which she passed from mortal sight. 
 Perhaps some soothing influence may flow out upon 
 us in this contact with one of a gentle, unworldly 
 nature. If it should seem to some that we linger 
 unduly over the picture of Annie's early childhood, I 
 would ask them to recall how much they lived in 
 those days when every sensation was new to them, 
 and to take account of the moulding power which 
 the impressions of childhood have had upon them. 
 
 Of the persons and things that surrounded Annie 
 I wish to speak in their action upon her life, there- 
 fore any detailed description of them in their relation 
 to others is unnecessary. A few words will suffice 
 to introduce her family and parents. Annie's father 
 was William Keary, the only son of an Irish gentle- 
 man, of Clough, near Tuam. in the county of Galway. 
 Her mother was Lucy, the fifth daughter of Hall 
 Plumer, Esq., of Bilton Hall, near Wetherby, in 
 Yorkshire. Mr. Keary entered the army very early 
 in life, and served through the greater part of the 
 Peninsular war. He came back to England from the 
 Continent when he was twenty-three, and married. 
 Shortly after, on account of an entire change in his 
 prospects from the loss of his property in Ireland, he 
 was forced to sell out of the army. He then settled 
 in England, and in the course of a year or two he 
 took holy orders. He was appointed to the living of 
 Bilton, and afterwards to the perpetual curacy of 
 Sculcoates, a part of the town of Hull, with which 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 3 
 
 preferment he also held the small living of Nun- 
 nington in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Annie's 
 father was a man of great power of mind, and of 
 intellectual tastes, a patient student of theology, and 
 the author of several books upon controversial and 
 religious subjects. He was an eloquent preacher, 
 and, as a parish clergyman, he is still remembered 
 with love and reverence in the places where he 
 lived and worked. In all his labour amongst the 
 poor he had the help and sympathy of his wife, 
 who, almost equally with himself, was looked up to 
 and valued by his parishioners. During a consider- 
 able portion of his later life he was unfortunately 
 debarred by great physical suffering from under- 
 taking either active duty or literary work, or from 
 in any way making his influence publicly felt. 
 
 At the time of Annie's birth her father was the 
 rector of Bilton, her mother's own early home, and it 
 was there, on the 3rd of March, 1825 a genial third 
 of March as it chanced to be that year, when snow- 
 drops and violets were making glad the nooks of the 
 rector's quiet garden that Annie Keary was born, 
 being the sixth child in a family which already 
 numbered four sons and one daughter. One can 
 fancy how she might have pictured her surroundings 
 in after years, looking back to the small first self 
 opening, loving, wondering eyes upon the home. At 
 once the young spirit, could .it have been conscious 
 of such things, would have recognised the materials 
 out of which many of its joyous fancies were here- 
 after to be woven. First there was Annie's father, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 ANNIE KEABY. 
 
 of whom we have already spoken, and to whom she 
 was by nature more akin than were any of his other 
 children. He was somewhat broken in health even 
 as Annie first remembered him ; gentle, genial, not 
 very gay tempered, enthusiastically religious, affec- 
 tionate, sensitive, with all the outward and inward 
 graces that belong to the best of the Irish race, and 
 with some of the weaknesses also, but these of such 
 a nature as only made him the dearer to his children- 
 Between him and Annie, even the child Annie, there 
 existed always a tender affection and a full confi- 
 dence. They understood each other so well, these 
 two, who represented the Irish side of the family, 
 who both loved their books so tenderly, who thought 
 and dreamed, who lived and met in an ideal upper 
 region, exchanging sweet smiles and confidences 
 there over the heads of the drudging world below. 
 There was ever a sort of comradeship between them, 
 and when Annie was quite a small thing she would 
 sit upon her father's knee for hours while he told her 
 stories of his youth ; sometimes it might be of his 
 wild Irish home, or again of the adventures in his 
 campaigning career, when as a soldier he had lived 
 out all the dashing, gay, thoroughly Irish part of him. 
 "This and this you and I did or dared together, 
 Nannie," he would then say, humouring a favourite 
 childish fancy of hers that she had really been his 
 companion in arms, the comrade of all his early life. 
 " 'Twas you and I held fast side by side through that 
 stiff march across the common in the heat ; we two 
 stormed Badajoz together, child ; " and the child, as 
 
ANNIE KEARY. ._,:- 5 
 
 her imagination fed greedily upon such congenial food, 
 believed more firmly in the fancy which had originated 
 in her own small brain, and began already to live the 
 two lives of the dreamer, the tale-teller, taking her first 
 lesson in novel- writing at her father's knee. " Yes, 
 yes," she would dream, " it was papa and Annie who 
 fought under Wellington together, and now they sit 
 by the fire in cosy winter evenings, the two old 
 comrades, and live the campaign over again ; " or 
 letting her thoughts reach back to some dim, remoter 
 period of existence, would see sweet, misty pictures 
 of the west, hear the soft clatter of the Irish tongue, 
 run barefooted across the bog with merry little 
 foster-brothers and sisters, to fish in the blue 
 mountain lough, or to feast upon sweet milk and 
 potatoes at the foster-parents' board in the cabin 
 where papa was nursed, and where he laughed and 
 sported away so many careless hours but, somehow, 
 never without Annie, how could he ever have been 
 anywhere without her ? 
 
 I have said that the father, though genial, was not 
 gay tempered, as his younger children remember 
 him. The mother could have told of brightness in 
 the days gone by, when they had been young 
 together, and the light-hearted Irish officer had won 
 her heart ; but the mother was reserved concerning 
 her deepest feelings, and she did not often talk of 
 those days to her children. She could draw pictures 
 of her own early life for their amusement though ; 
 of the country home in which she had been so 
 happy in spite of what seemed, to our generation, 
 
6 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 the stiffness and sternness of its constitution. How 
 clearly she made us see her father before whom all 
 trembled excepting herself, his favourite child, how 
 well contrasted with his was the fainter portrait of 
 the lady of the house in the sort of state that sur- 
 rounded her. Then there were the sisters whose 
 lives she made us realise by her charming description 
 of their old-fashioned childhood, with its country 
 luxuries and amusements, the trim flower gardens, 
 the perfume distilleries, the toy spinning-wheels. 
 But better still were the stories that took us to a 
 generation yet further away, whose scene was laid 
 in a tumble-down old place called Lilling Hall, where 
 our mother's grandmother had lived, with the old 
 maiden aunt of the family, always known by the 
 name of " Little Aunt Anne." Those were almost 
 fairy tales our mother told us of the ideal days which 
 she and her sisters had been wont to pass there 
 in delicious idleness, when the heaviest burden of 
 the summer hours consisted in the picking of rose 
 leaves and lavender for the pot-pourri that little 
 Aunt Anne was so marvellously skilled in making. 
 I have some of the very stuff by me now, in its 
 old purple jar, the last relic of Lilling Hall, and 
 it is still sweet with the scent of a hundred years 
 ago. Yes, the mother could draw smiling English 
 landscapes, well ordered and beautiful, upon her 
 canvas, and portraits too, full of humour, of the 
 hearty Yorkshire folk whom she remembered, 
 around whom quaint stories clustered such as we 
 children loved to listen to, and on the recollection 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 7 
 
 of which Annie was able to draw in her writings 
 afterwards. I think that her tale-telling power 
 came in a greater degree from the mother than 
 from the father, certainly her fund of humour was 
 drawn wholly from the maternal source, but she 
 inherited imagination from both her parents. 
 
 From the parents we turn to the brothers and 
 sisters of the family. What were the young ones 
 like, amongst whom Annie found herself? What 
 were they to her, as she began to know them ? The 
 relationship between Annie and the very dear eldest 
 brother, who from the height of his greatness was 
 wont to make himself so exquisitely familiar with his 
 much- petted little sister, is pictured in that of Janet 
 to her favourite brother in Annie's novel Janet's Home 
 and also in the love that her " little Helen " is made 
 to feel for her big brother Hilary in the story of 
 Father Phim. " Hilary used to lift Helen on to his 
 shoulder," the story says, "and carry her up the 
 dark back stairs to the smallest of the lumber 
 rooms, where he kept some tame fish in an old 
 water-butt ' dear old Father Phim/ he would 
 sometimes say, quite softly, using his pet play 
 name for her, as he was carrying her up through 
 the dark, and Helen felt as if she were growing very 
 tall, such a quantity of love swelled up in her heart 
 for Hilary." 
 
 This brother, the brother next to him in age 
 (with whose life Annie's was intimately connected 
 in later years), and the sister seven years her senior, 
 stand aside as the elders of the group, for they 
 
8 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 were passing out of the nursery life as Annie was 
 growing up into it. 
 
 The eldest sister well remembers that 3rd of March 
 which gave her first sister to her. More than fifty 
 years afterwards, when on a visit to the old York- 
 shire home, she speaks of it thus in a letter written 
 to Annie, then drawing very near to death : 
 
 " How clearly I recalled that bright March morn- 
 ing," she wrote, " when I ran off by myself to this 
 sheltered corner of the dear old shrubbery to look for 
 the earliest violets of the season. It had always been 
 my great pride and delight to bring to our mother 
 the first bunch of violets from the roots that she 
 and her sisters had planted in their happy childish 
 days. How my heart beat with anxiety on that 
 particular day, how my eyes swam with foreboding 
 fear, for it was still rather an early search in that 
 cold northern home. It was the 3rd of March, 
 darling, your birthday, and early in the morning, 
 when Bella the ill-tempered nursery-maid dressed me, 
 she had said in a half-triumphant way several times, 
 ' No more fine times for you, Miss Lucy, mamma 
 won't think nothing of you now ; she's got another 
 little daughter a deal prettier than you are. I firmly 
 believed all she said, and I thought that, if added to 
 this new claimant on my mother's love, there should 
 be such a failure on my part as the want of the 
 usual spring nosegay, there could indeed be no 
 further chance for me. How strange it was that I 
 should have received with tears and sad forebodings 
 that which brought me the priceless treasure of a 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 sister's love, my first precious sister, the first link in 
 that threefold cord that bound us sisters together in 
 a bond stronger than death, sweeter and deeper than 
 any tongue can tell, and such as few hearts can 
 understand." 
 
 Loving words which brought a joy like the joy of 
 Heaven into the sick room, I remember, for love was 
 always the very bread of life to Annie's gentle soul. 
 She had found the nest well lined with it, we see, into 
 which God laid down her babyhood, and what she 
 received there she gave out to others a hundredfold. 
 
 " We," " we two," expressed the earliest loving 
 impulse of the child, " you and me," or " all of us 
 together," but the little hand was oftenest clasped 
 in comradeship of love and mirth by her brother 
 Arthur, the next above Annie in age, her first 
 faithful, untiring playmate. " We'll do what we 
 think proper," was the favourite game of these little 
 urchins, "a pastime of ever- varying moods accord- 
 ingly as it originated in one or the other audacious 
 little brain, but one which never failed to put 
 to the rout all nursery quiet and decorum, and 
 greatly to aggravate the temper of strict old Nurse 
 Bream, the tyrant of the epoch. Nurse Bream 
 had borne with the elder children ; it had been a 
 hard struggle enough, but "there was not one of 
 them who ever had inventions such as Master 
 Arthur and Miss Annie had/' Inventions yes, that 
 was the key-note. Perhaps Mrs. Bream did not 
 make sufficient allowance for the circumstances in 
 which the little ones of the second period were placed 
 
10 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 as compared with those enjoyed by the elders. Their 
 romping time had been passed at the dear old 
 Rectory, where they had had the run of field and 
 garden, ponies to ride, pet animals to look after ; but 
 all this had been changed before Annie became the 
 clever sprite in whose atmosphere the good nurse's 
 most stringent discipline found itself at once short- 
 sighted and infirm. 
 
 Before the time when Annie could remember 
 anything, the family had removed from the little 
 Yorkshire village to Hull, the large, mercantile town, 
 in which a new sphere of work had opened out to 
 the father. The ideal country times were nothing 
 better than a tradition to the younger children there- 
 fore, whose pleasures were cruelly circumscribed by 
 the conditions of town life. No roaming about for 
 them just as the fancy took them, no running out of 
 doors at all without hats on. In the house it was 
 not much better. Study and work had to be carried 
 on there ; it was necessary that there should be some 
 limit to the noise ; the whole world was, in fact, 
 nothing but a dull hole of a place, scarcely big 
 enough to turn round in. 
 
 Do not plants bring forth flowers only by reason of 
 checks applied to the wildness of their growth ? Take 
 a handful of lily-of-the-valley roots on some early 
 spring day, and crush them into a small flower-pot, 
 and by and by the flowers will bloom and fill our 
 houses with their fragrance. As it is with the 
 flowers, so it was with the children of whom Annie 
 was one; with them imagination flowered with 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 11 
 
 unwearying invention. And there were times, 
 delicious times, when the outward conditions with 
 which that imagination had to deal became trans- 
 formed as by the wand of a magician. Days when 
 the higher powers would be taken away from the 
 house by outside duties, and the small domain would 
 be untenanted save by the children. At such times, 
 if the nursery rulers also happened to be propitious 
 on some holiday afternoon perhaps when it rained, 
 and the schoolboys, the big brothers, found no 
 amusement worthy of their attention out of doors 
 it would happen that the whole elder group would 
 condescend to join us inferiors, would accommodate 
 themselves to our fancies, talk for the nonce our 
 jargon, play our plays, live in our world. 
 
 Then the house used to swell itself into a magical 
 palace. A palace did I say ? a kingdom, a region. 
 Every-day things dwindled and dwindled until we 
 could not see them any more. The elders all com- 
 bining with us to call that particular corner of the 
 nursery a den of thieves, how unspeakably delicious 
 it was ! There must be thieves there if the others saw 
 them too ; it wasn't only Arthur's nonsense then, nor 
 Annie's imagination. Thieves really did come, in 
 some mysterious manner, through the wall, in the 
 twilight of winter evenings. It was too delightful. 
 Lucy herself saw a thief's eyes twinkle in the dusk, 
 twice she felt a bony hand clutch at her from behind 
 the window curtain ; the children's hearts might well 
 beat, their steps must fly indeed if they would reach 
 a place of safety before the thieves could catch them. 
 
12 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 And at last, when the place of safety had been 
 reached, and the elders perhaps suddenly decided 
 that all the thieves were dead, what did that matter ? 
 the magic region need not fade away with them. 
 There was another story stranger and more en- 
 trancing far than the first, around which our thoughts 
 were always hanging, into which we were ready to 
 plunge at any moment and always with new delight. 
 A story, yes, a story that had no end, that seemed to 
 have grown up of itself and simply out of a name. 
 A dwarfed woman passed the house one rainy day 
 whilst two little faces were pressed against the 
 nursery window-pane, and four bright inquisitive 
 little eyes looked through, and, " That's Mrs. Calkill," 
 said Arthur to Annie. That was all, but it was the 
 beginning of endless bliss. Who was Mrs. Calkill ? 
 Annie knew, of course ; she had known all about her 
 for ever so long, only somehow she had never thought 
 of mentioning her, but now she and Arthur had seen 
 her they had both seen her by daylight in the street, 
 and they knew what her name was. It was Arthur 
 who knew her name, he must have known her too 
 then, they both knew her, there was a real Mrs. 
 Calkill. She was a fairy, very good, very clever, very 
 strict, very powerful. She could go about just as she 
 pleased anywhere, at any time ; she knew what every- 
 body was thinking about, and what all children did ; 
 she governed her kingdom (the whole world) by 
 means of a system of rewards and of dreadful 
 punishments. She never allowed any one to see her 
 in her true fairy form ; now and then she passed 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 13 
 
 down the street, on a wet day, under a green cotton 
 umbrella almost as big as herself, but ordinarily she 
 flew. She very seldom passed down the street, only 
 once in a hundred years perhaps ; certainly she never 
 passed during the lifetime of the children after that 
 one rainy day. So much the better, that showed 
 that she was a fairy and not a woman; common 
 people do the same thing over and over again, it 
 is always something you least expect that happens 
 about a fairy. Mrs. Calkill had a fairy palace, of 
 course, somewhere, and we knew exactly what it was 
 like, or, rather, we were in the course of knowing, for 
 it would have taken a lifetime to sketch even the 
 outlines of its endless, endless rooms ; but where Mrs. 
 Calkill's palace was, Annie herself did not know. 
 Great was the delight of the little ones, then, when 
 it was revealed to them upon one of those holiday 
 afternoons that the second elder brother knew. It 
 was miles and miles away, yet it was possible 
 to get there and back within the hour of blind 
 man's holiday; the road which led to it had 
 scarcely ever been trodden by human foot, yet it 
 opened from the inside of that very house in which 
 the children were living ; it led straight through their 
 everyday world into the land of magic. If Mrs. 
 Calkill should be very propitious, and should intimate 
 as much, by a sign, to the brother with whom she 
 had been secretly on terms of intimacy for a long 
 time, he would take the children there himself, 
 Annie describes one of these expeditions in her 
 story of " Little Helen," in Blind Man's Holiday. 
 
14 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 " If I were quite sure I could trust you," Cousin 
 Stephen is made to say to little Helen, " I think I 
 might perhaps introduce you to my friend Mrs. 
 Calkill. She might not be very much vexed if I 
 were to take you blindfold through the subterranean 
 passage, and let you stand for five minutes in the 
 enchanted palace garden." Then follows an account 
 of the journey Helen takes exactly like those which 
 Annie remembered to have taken, blindfolded, in her 
 childish days up and down flights of stairs, and 
 through rooms and passages of the house, whilst the 
 little girl is made to believe that she is crossing 
 streams, or scaling precipices, or walking through the 
 caverns of Mrs. Calkill's underground kingdom. 
 
 After the enjoyment of such games as these ; 
 after racing for hours from hiding place to hiding 
 place, after seeing, hearing, feeling, escaping from 
 such dangers as those of the den of thieves ; after 
 the excitement of long blindfolded journeys to 
 Magic Land, and of actual contact with the wonders 
 there, grown-up people and nurses might talk as 
 they pleased, might call things by commonplace 
 names, might scold, and trouble, and fuss, but they 
 could not rob us of our knowledge of the truth, they 
 could not shut us up in the prison-house world 
 from which we had had such escape, not for many 
 many days to come at least. 
 
 But though we younger ones could thoroughly 
 enter into these delights, and were ever ready to 
 follow into the magical land, it was Annie who sowed 
 the dream-seeds all about the home. I can fancy 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 1 5 
 
 that I see her now. The inspired child-face ponder- 
 ing at first, then smiling as at the suggestion of 
 joyous little spirits ; then, as the fancies took shape 
 in her thoughts, the sweet eyes dilating with lights 
 and depths of mystery and fun, till at last the dear 
 lips opened that had always something so delightful 
 to say to us, with " Let us suppose now," and a new 
 world grew up around us, a world that might bloom 
 and fade indeed, but whose seed lay henceforth in its 
 outer self, a power of transformation latent after the 
 first breath of those magic words. 
 
 "This house is a story house," Annie makes 
 one of the children say in her tale of Father Phim, 
 when describing just such imaginative games as she 
 remembered to have played in her own childhood. 
 " All the rooms in it have got to be so many places 
 besides themselves, one never gets tired of them ; 
 and the toys and the furniture have changed so 
 often, and done such curious things in our plays, 
 that when one looks at them, they seem to speak." 
 
 But it was not only in such a circumscribed sphere 
 that Annie's imagination busied itself; after the 
 house, the street, and, by and by, odd glimpses of 
 the town, flashed histories into the child's mind. 
 
 The town of Hull was not a very interesting 
 place as far as its natural features were concerned ; 
 that part of it which Annie inhabited was composed 
 of a series of dull-looking streets of nearly un- 
 broken uniformity. The country lay very far off; 
 the roads that led towards it were long and dreary, 
 scarcely any trees grew near them, and no flowers 
 
16 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 bloomed on the strips of grass that bordered the 
 pathways ; level ground met the eye on every 
 side : a hill, indeed, was a thing which it would 
 have needed a strong imagination in any Hull 
 child to picture to itself. Annie's walks when 
 she was a child were chiefly taken along these 
 roads, or up and down certain out-of-the-way streets 
 near a waste bit of ground that had been prepared 
 for building purposes, and afterwards deserted. 
 This last place was her favourite resort, for it 
 supplied a great deal of food to her imagination ; 
 there were rubbish-heaps and pits in it that served 
 her for valleys and mountains, and which she loved 
 to call by long-sounding names, taken hap-hazard 
 from the pages of geography books. 
 
 Yan Diemen's Land, one especially favoured part 
 of this country was christened. It was bounded by 
 a high wall of rough planks painted black, and Annie 
 thought there must be something very wonderful 
 behind those planks ; if she could but see the other 
 side of them she felt sure that some such discovery 
 as that of Columbus would fall to her share. A 
 story founded upon this reminiscence of her child- 
 hood forms one of the collection of tales spoken of 
 before as published under the name of Blind Man's 
 Holiday. 
 
 Sometimes it would be the interest in a single 
 house that would absorb her, selected from it s 
 neighbours perhaps on account of some word that 
 had been dropped about its inhabitants ; or, again, 
 it might be a passer-by, to whom one of the nursery 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 17 
 
 group had chanced suddenly to give a name, as in 
 the case of Mrs. Calkill, who would supply Annie 
 with a story; the least thing was enough to give 
 an impetus to her invention at any time. But 
 whilst things, places, and grown-up people were as 
 so many enchanted doors into the story world, 
 children were much more than any of these to the 
 child who was always longing to love as well as to 
 know, and to whom the child-sphere outside the 
 home was almost as full of tender interest as she 
 afterwards described it to have been to her little 
 heroine, Elsie, in her novel of Oldbury. 
 
 Annie's own first plunge into child-world, outside 
 the family, was made in company with her own play- 
 mate brother Arthur, when the two were sent to 
 while away a few morning hours at a small, old- 
 fashioned dame's school in the town. In one of the 
 quietest streets of the quietest quarter there stood 
 a row of narrow, three-storied houses, with flights of 
 bright yellow stone steps leading up to the front 
 doors bright green doors tha.t contrasted sharply 
 with the yellow of the stones. How dull and silent 
 all the houses seemed, how shut up they were all 
 excepting the house in which the two Miss Staintons 
 lived, whose front door with its brass plate announc- 
 ing an academy for young ladies and gentlemen, had 
 to open so often to the knocks of the children, whose 
 steps became sadly soiled by the dust of the little 
 feet. To Annie the rooms of that school-house were 
 more interesting than the palaces of Aladdin, or even 
 than Mrs. CalkiU's wonderful home. For in the 
 
 C 
 
18 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 school there were children, real children, not 
 make-believe any more acquaintances, companions, 
 friends. What a living wonder each one was to the 
 questioning new-comer, hungry to know what the 
 world was really like, or, rather, of what kind the 
 children were who inhabited it ; whether their 
 experiences were like her own, whom they loved, 
 or how lovable they were. 
 
 Some of the children, too, had true histories 
 belonging to them, which they whispered to one 
 another across copy-books and slates and primers, 
 or at standstill places in sampler-working, whilst all 
 the energies of the good-natured Miss Stainton were 
 perhaps being brought to bear upon the dulness of 
 the child christened "Little Stupid" by her com- 
 panions. Besides "Little Stupid," there was the 
 <( sugar-plum child," who gave her sweets away, and 
 always had plenty of money to buy more. She was 
 rather spoilt at home, but had the most delightful 
 stories to tell about toys, and baby-houses, and 
 pjcture story-books in her nursery; there was the 
 thin, pale girl, who always moped, and never told 
 anybody anything about herself, so her history had 
 to be invented; there was the "prim little thing," 
 who, by presence of mind, saved her grandmother 
 from being burnt " Miss Miminy-Piminy," as Annie 
 christened her afterwards in Blind Man's Holiday. 
 The time and the place were brimful of tales. 
 
 Imperceptibly, the very childish things passed 
 away. In looking back it seems as if a new picture 
 had, unnoticed, been slidden across the view, and we 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 19 
 
 suddenly see an altered home, changed atmosphere, 
 a different soil, fresh shoots beginning to be put 
 forth by the small plant, another stage of life entered 
 upon. The two elder brothers had grown up without 
 our realising it, until at last they went, as it seemed, 
 quite away their visits to the home being paid at 
 such long intervals that their lives ceased almost to 
 touch the lives of the children. The other brothers, 
 including Arthur, Annie's favourite playmate, went 
 to a boarding-school in another county, and Annie 
 only saw them at holiday times. The house 
 became very quiet then. The eldest sister was 
 occupied with teachers or friends, or paid long 
 visits away from home ; practically there were only 
 three home children left a baby brother, and 
 Annie, and her youngest sister. At that time 
 the two nearest in age began to draw close to one 
 another; they felt somewhat as two shipwrecked 
 sailors might have felt upon a desert island, and, 
 indeed, they were almost as much alone. Besides the 
 feeling of loneliness, they were conscious of a sen- 
 sation of storms ; the sky was not clear up above, 
 as it had been used to be; troubles had swept by 
 and had left cares behind. The heads of the parents 
 began to be bowed by the passing of the years ; their 
 hearts were often heavy by reason of the burdens 
 these brought them; they bore the burdens, and the 
 children knew little of them, and understood less, 
 but all the same they felt and reckoned the changes 
 made by clouds as they passed overhead and cast 
 shadows upon the ground. 
 
 C 2 
 
20 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Annie began to be delicate about this time, and 
 had to be kept indoors during many weeks of the 
 long cold springs which belong to the eastern coast. 
 East wind and twilight are words which might be 
 used to express the outward conditions of this stage 
 of Annie's child-life. Yet there were compensations ; 
 if there was very little out-door life left for the 
 children, and in the house, if there was but a silent 
 nursery, a dull school-room, and many days, weeks 
 even, dragged through in the weariness of childish 
 illnesses, there was still the world of books to explore, 
 enough in itself to compensate Annie for the absence 
 of almost every other source of enjoyment. And 
 besides the books, there was talk, interminable talk, 
 between the sisters, who had now only each other to 
 turn to for companionship, and who, as that com- 
 panionship grew longer and closer, found a treasure 
 in it which they never lost the love that gladdened 
 all their days. Heading and talking and love, these 
 were the compensations of that time ; it was then 
 that the affectionateness, the true power of loving, 
 began to be developed in Annie, for everything 
 came from her first. Annie was the reader, Annie 
 was the talker, Annie was the lover; her personality 
 was the medium through which joy shone upon the 
 life of the other. Annie was the reader of children's 
 books when she could get them. But children's 
 books were scarce in those days ; one can almost 
 count them upon one's fingers. There were Mrs. 
 Sherwood's Fairchild Family, her Infant's Progress, 
 her Henry and His Bearer, her Woodman and His 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 21 
 
 Dog Ccesar. How the modern child would sneer 
 at Mrs. Sherwood and her goody-goody tales ! One 
 sometimes wonders what the grown-up people of 
 that generation would have thought of filling little 
 heads with sensational stories of ragged London 
 depravity, like those which do duty as Sunday books 
 nowadays. But each age to its own liking. Mrs. 
 Sherwood's homely inventions came quite naturally, 
 and were very palatable food to the children of fifty 
 years ago, and s the remembrance of them is even 
 beautiful in their eyes. Annie's imagination was 
 greatly exercised at one time, I remember, by Mrs. 
 Sherwood's story of the Infant's Progress, a childish 
 version of the Pilgrims Progress of Bunyan. The 
 adventures in this tale turned chiefly upon the 
 sayings and doings of a mysterious being, " Inbred 
 Sin " by name, who was meant to be a personifica- 
 tion of the inborn depravity of human nature. Why 
 each child did not have a separate " Inbred Sin " to 
 itself, it taxed her ingenuity to determine. In spite 
 of this slight confusion of the allegory, however, the 
 story pleased us so much that Annie turned it into 
 a little play, which we acted amongst ourselves on 
 Sunday afternoons in holiday times, when the 
 brothers were at home and could help to supply the 
 characters required by the piece. Then, Annie felt 
 the great convenience of there being only one Inbred 
 Sin for the whole group. Henry, the good boy of the 
 party, always acted the tempter, and sometimes even, 
 with blackened face, would personate the evil one 
 himself, when that delightfully awful personage was 
 
22 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 called upon to take a part in the performance. The 
 evil one supplemented Inbred Sin, it must be ex- 
 plained, in the story, opportunely popping in and 
 out to tempt and ruin the innocent little ones 
 whenever their natural tempter found himself 
 insufficient for the task. 
 
 Acting, however, could only be enjoyed in holi- 
 day times, talk filled the quieter seasons. Annie 
 took up the threads of the tales where the authors 
 laid them down, and continued the adventures 
 of the several characters, whose existences became 
 so real to us, that it seems, in looking back, as if 
 the lives of these persons had gone rippling on 
 side by side with ours through many many years. 
 It was with us at the time as though we were 
 surrounded by a troop of beings from whose sayings 
 and doings our attention could not distract itself, and 
 whose personalities exercised over ours a far stronger 
 influence than did any of those belonging to the 
 outward world, in which, at any rate, our bodies 
 lived and moved. The group we lived amongst was 
 a motley one, for the people who composed it had 
 gathered round us from times and places very wide 
 apart from one another. Annie's reading extended 
 to very different regions from any which the nursery 
 book-shelf could have led her to. The child made 
 raids, unknown to parents and teachers, upon the 
 down stairs library, where she filled her pockets 
 (very large loose pockets, tied on under the dress, 
 were worn in those days) with volumes of Rollin and 
 Plutarch, which she devoured afterwards in corners 
 
ANNTE KEARY. 23 
 
 of our own domain with silent delight. Rollin and 
 Plutarch were full of people, more real and more 
 interesting by far than any of Mrs. Sherwood's 
 creations. But how meagre the histories were after 
 all ! How little they had to tell about Annie's 
 favourite characters ! How many things must have 
 happened to Themistocles, for example, that nobody 
 had ever thought of writing down. Themistocles 
 was Annie's pet hero. " Strike, but hear me," was 
 only the greatness of him gathered up into a nut- 
 shell ; in his life there had doubtless been number- 
 less crises, in which his magnanimity had been just 
 as strikingly displayed. 
 
 How well I can recall the winter twilight in 
 our low square room, the toys and books all 
 thrown aside for the moment, heaped up in corners, 
 a clear space in the middle of the floor, the red 
 fire-glow, the weird shadows upon the walls cast 
 by oil- lamps in the street outside, the kettle upon 
 the hob not even having begun its singing a 
 happy pervading consciousness that the tea-hour 
 had not nearly come, and that a long stretch of time 
 to ourselves lay before us. And then the walk round 
 and round the room amongst the changing lights and 
 shades in such companionship, holding such converse. 
 Socrates was there, he walked with us, and talked, 
 not with us, certainly, but intimately, in our hearing, 
 with his noble and beautiful friends ; Alcibiades was 
 there, and Plato and Pericles, and Themistocles was 
 there also he and Socrates met for the first time 
 in our playroom and they were friends. Socrates 
 
24 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 could find no fault, no ignorance, in the great 
 Athenian. 
 
 P. D., standing for "pleasant discourse," not for 
 " Platonic Dialogues," was the name Annie gave to 
 this sort of story conversation, and we never tired 
 of it. It came to be almost as necessary as daily 
 bread to us, and Annie was rarely behindhand with 
 the supply. She was in truth instant in season 
 and out of season, for the talks were not restricted 
 to twilight hours or to playtimes in general. We 
 were left very much alone to prepare lessons for our 
 teachers, or to practise jingling duets upon a jingling 
 piano, and whenever trusted in this manner, we 
 proved ourselves singularly unworthy of the con- 
 fidence. It was always the same thing as far as I 
 can remember ; half a sum worked out, a couple of 
 bars of music played, and then a long rest for slates 
 and pencils, and copy-books and piano. A sudden 
 end reached of all that sort of thing, and the door 
 thrown wide open into the land we loved, and then 
 our troop of friends came through and chatted de- 
 lightfully with us until the opening of some strangely 
 actual wooden door -close upon us revealed to our 
 startled gaze the daily governess perhaps, or the 
 frumpy old music-mistress, bewigged and snuffy, for 
 all the world like ghosts from some uncomfortable 
 icy region invading our gay company, as uncongenial 
 to it as any poor plague-stricken mortal could have 
 been to the ladies and gentlemen of the Decameronc. 
 Of course we were scolded, but that did not make 
 any lasting impression ; scolding and discomfort be- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 2 5 
 
 longed naturally to the outside world, and the only 
 lesson to be learned from them was that we should 
 conduct our dishonesty more discreetly another time 
 keep our ears open to knocks at the front door 
 in fact, so as to be able to assume the requisite 
 appearance of industry in the nick of time. 
 
 It would seem that Annie had not much con- 
 scientiousness at this period of her existence, and 
 yet there was a soft spot in her conscience, and 
 through all these careless hours, a chamber of reason 
 in her brain which she was prompted to enter now 
 and then, and where she counted up the sum of gain 
 or loss. Sometimes it would be the recollection of a 
 story that led her there, or it might be the haunting 
 words of some text that a preacher had used as the 
 refrain of his discourse ; such, for example, as, " Pray 
 ye that your flight be not in the winter/' or, " The 
 harvest is passed, the summer is ended, and ye are 
 not saved." Texts of this kind seemed to have a 
 sort of fitful fascination for Annie, who was subject 
 all her life to acute attacks of regret and remorse. 
 I think that the words about summer and the harvest 
 first touched her with a sense of seriousness and 
 sadness in the passing of time. There was also a 
 little story that she must have first read when 
 quite a child, which made a strong and lasting im- 
 pression upon her mind. It was called The Warning 
 Clock, and told in a sort of allegory the tale of 
 a wasted life. There was a picture at the beginning 
 of the book of a little girl lying comfortably asleep 
 in bed. A clock hung against the wall of the room 
 
26 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 in which she was, with its hands pointing to the hour 
 of morning, an old nurse was just drawing aside the 
 bed-curtain, trying to rouse the young sleeper. The 
 child is made to wake up and say, " Call me again, 
 nurse, in an hour's time, then I will get up." That 
 was the history of her day, "Call me again in 
 an hour's time." And every hour the nurse came, 
 and stood at the foot of the bed, and called the child 
 by her name, and each hour the clock struck a fresh 
 note of warning, until at last the hour of midnight 
 came. There was the picture of the dark room, the 
 clock with its warning fingers fixed at twelve, no 
 kind nurse at the bedside, but instead, in the door- 
 way, the figure of a man whose face was veiled, and 
 who held a lantern in his hand, the day's last mes- 
 senger, of whom the story affirmed that " he would 
 brook no delay." The child sat up in bed, wringing 
 her hands with a look of agony upon the little face. 
 There was a weird suggestion of horror through it 
 all. The day was over, the night had come, and a 
 life was lost. 
 
 When Annie fell into a fit of seriousness in her 
 young days, dreaming was the sin of which her con- 
 science invariably accused her of dreaming away her 
 life instead of living it. " The spring is passing, the 
 summer is coming, the harvest will soon be here," 
 the words and the images hurried through her mind, 
 and then with a sudden compelling wish to see some- 
 thing clearly, to clutch hold of some reality, she 
 would push aside all the dear fantasies, and break 
 through the shadow world. 
 
ANNIE KEAEY. 27 
 
 She announced her stern resolve to me. " I have 
 been thinking it all over," she would say, " we are 
 wasting our time, we are dreaming away our lives. 
 We won't do it any more. Let us give up our foolish 
 talking and dreaming, and begin at once to be in 
 earnest : let us be in earnest in improving ourselves, 
 and let us begin with our thoughts." Then she 
 would expound one of the papers in a collection of 
 tales and essays by Jane Taylor, on the government 
 of the thoughts, and invite me to set my face with 
 hers steadily towards better things. Of course I 
 tried to follow where my magician led, but, oh dear ! 
 it was like a dripping, rainy day, as we stumbled 
 side by side along the dreary road of self-improve- 
 ment, with the corpses of our dead delights lying 
 stark on either side. The resolution never lasted for 
 many days together, however, the dead images soon 
 springing up again into life. This habit of living in 
 the world of invention became at certain times so 
 mixed up with the outward life as to produce what I 
 may almost call events in our childhood. One such 
 period stands out from the rest. 
 
 Annie had got hold of a book written by Mrs. 
 Sherwood called The Nun, a tale of convent life, the 
 scene of which was laid somewhere in France ; the 
 two principal heroines, Pauline and Clarice, became 
 by some means converted to the Protestant faith, and 
 the plot of the book consisted in the history of the 
 persecutions they endured at the hands of the bigoted 
 Mother Superior and the sisters, their subsequent 
 adventures, and final escape from thraldom. The 
 
28 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 plot was rather a clever one, and the details were 
 graphically given ; it was as absorbing to us as any 
 sensational novel could have been. The part of the 
 tale that attracted us most was that relating to one 
 of the side characters, a very old nun, " la mere 
 Agnes," who, on account of her obstinate denial of 
 certain tenets of the Catholic faith, had, when quite 
 young, been hidden away in a cell underground, that 
 she might not contaminate the sisterhood. In this 
 concealment she had grown old, her health had been 
 broken, her intellect enfeebled. She lay upon a heap 
 of straw in a corner of her cell, and had never seen 
 or spoken to a human being since she had entered 
 her living tomb, the daily pittance of bread and 
 water being thrust in to her through a hole in the 
 dungeon's wall. It was so long since " la mere Agnes " 
 had been buried that her very existence was unknown 
 to the younger members of the community, until 
 Pauline or Clarice discovered the fearful secret, 
 and then it was passed on from sister to sister in 
 awe-struck whispers from behind their veils. There 
 was just the sort of chill about this part of the story 
 calculated to enhance enjoyment of the sunshiny end 
 of the book, where Pauline and Clarice, each meeting 
 with a gallant young Protestant deliverer, married 
 comfortably, and remained in safety and happiness 
 the rest of their days. 
 
 That any human being could be hidden away in 
 a house, and so securely hidden that, though the 
 house were full of people, the majority of them 
 should know nothing at all about it, might never 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 29 
 
 even have heard of the concealed person, was a new, 
 delightful, bewildering idea. Who could say where 
 such a hidden one might not be ? A nun might be 
 imprisoned in any house. There were several 
 Roman Catholics in the town, and very bigoted 
 ones, we knew. Father Render, the head of them, 
 had held a controversy once with our own father in 
 which, of course, he had been worsted. What more 
 likely than that he should, ever since his defeat, 
 have been burning to revenge himself upon somebody. 
 He would not go to work openly no Roman Catholic 
 ever did ; he would wreak his vengeance upon some 
 weak undefended creature ; in short, he would take 
 a nun, and shut her up in a cell or dungeon some- 
 where. He would not be particular as to the where- 
 abouts he should select, so long as he could find a 
 dungeon to his mind ; and now that we came to 
 think of it, what was there above the trap-door in 
 the housemaid's cupboard ? Where did it lead to ? 
 Nowhere, as far as we could see. And what could it 
 be that lay underneath the long passage between the 
 cupboard and the spare bed-room? Nobody could 
 make this clear to us. Those we asked either could 
 not, or would not, or dared not, say ; we decided that 
 they could not, and with the sudden thrill of a new, 
 enchanting hope, settled it that we could. A subter- 
 ranean gallery lay under the one; a prison in the roof 
 was above the other. Father Render's nun, poor 
 thing, was shifted to and fro between these ; some- 
 times she dwelt in the cold, and sometimes she was 
 shut up in the darkness. 
 
30 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The story, as Annie invented it, hung very well 
 together ; it sounded more than possible, it seemed 
 likely. We talked about it and thought about it, and 
 hoped that it was true, until, at last, we really felt as 
 if it were so, and, oddly enough, we acted as we felt. 
 We saved up our cakes and biscuits and other little 
 luxuries for the prisoner, fastening packets of these 
 to the handle of a long broom, and poking them 
 through a crevice in the trap-door, whilst we believed, 
 or tried to believe, that she could receive them. We 
 wrote notes to the nun assuring her of our sympathy 
 and of our determination to set her free ; and these 
 also we sent up by means of the friendly broom. We 
 looked, oh ! how longingly, for her replies. We re- 
 membered that she had no paper to write upon, so 
 we sent up blank sheets and a pencil. After that we 
 did find a scrap of writing-paper one day, very much 
 crumpled, and dirtied with coal-dust, in the house- 
 maid's hearth box ; there was no writing upon it, but 
 perhaps it was intended for a sign. We tried hard 
 not to be discouraged, though our friend's reticence 
 was difficult to explain ; she had grown to be suspi- 
 cious through ill-treatment, Annie thought, and who 
 could wonder ? Yet she might begin to relax a little 
 towards such red-hot Protestants as ourselves. More 
 likely it was fear which withheld her from giving the 
 desired sign mortal dread of her deadly enemy, that 
 bloodthirsty Father Render. 
 
 In our walks about the town we passed the good 
 priest sometimes, frocked and shaven, but of a burly, 
 good-natured, rubicund presence withal, and we only 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 31 
 
 thought the worse of him on account of his innocent 
 looks. I almost think that we formed vigorous reso- 
 lutions of standing firmly in front of his path, and 
 denouncing before all passers by the foulness of his 
 secret deeds ; but we contented ourselves with scowls 
 and whispers when the meeting-times really came, 
 and with a shuddering recoil from the contamination 
 of contact with such a black-hearted son of Belial. 
 Yet we might well have been grateful to him for 
 lending his personality to the construction of a story 
 which was certainly the source of a good deal of 
 happiness to us for a long time. How hard-hearted 
 children are ! I don't think there was anything we 
 dreaded much more than the discovery that our 
 little tragedy had no existence in fact, that there 
 was no nun after all wearing away her miserable 
 days on the very borders of our careless life. 
 
 At last Annie determined that the time had 
 come when we must strike a decided blow for the 
 deliverance of the prisoner. She had given up the 
 theory of the roof-prison just then, and was convinced 
 that the subterranean gallery concealed our unfortu- 
 nate friend. We began to consider the possibility of 
 taking up one of the planks of the floor, and as we 
 were not strong enough to accomplish this feat alone 
 we determined to take one or two friends into our 
 confidence. We had not many child companions, but 
 there were two families the grand-daughters of a 
 certain highly-respected clergyman, a patriarch among 
 the pastors of the town with whom we were allowed 
 to be intimate, and whom we met on birthdays and 
 
32 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 half-holidays, and such-like festive occasions. Just at 
 the time when the nun mania was at its height, and 
 when we had resolved to divulge our secret, it chanced 
 that one of these meetings took place. Five or 
 six little girls assembled in our play-room for tea 
 and talk. After tea the talk began ; Annie gathered 
 the children round her, told her story, and opened 
 out her plans. She made our friends understand 
 that she had selected them to be partners with us in 
 a great and glorious undertaking to be carried out 
 that very evening, the breaking of the prison- 
 doors and letting the prisoner go free. Strange to 
 say, our friends were at first hard to convince that 
 what Annie told them was actually true, and stranger 
 still, when convinced, they were far from being 
 pleased with the idea. Some said they did not like 
 to hear about the nun or Father Eender ; one or two 
 cried, and all of them declared that the story 
 frightened them very much indeed. Annie, however, 
 was not to be daunted ; she asserted, she argued, she 
 convinced. 
 
 By the time the sceptics had been talked into 
 something like the submission of their private 
 judgment, and had agreed to assist in the great act 
 of the drama, twilight had given place to darkness, 
 and a chill, eerie feeling was creeping over us all. 
 There was one sweet little girl in the group, Fanny 
 by name, who had been amongst the first to take 
 the matter seriously, and yet had not given way to 
 childish fears ; she soothed and strengthened her 
 sisters and cousins; she looked so sweet, and wise, and 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 33 
 
 reliable, that the halters began to look up to her as 
 a sort of leader, and when the darkness drew us all 
 into a closer fellowship, she made us kneel down 
 while she offered up a prayer for the success of our 
 undertaking. After this, with lighted candle, with 
 chisel and hammer, we all, Annie and Fanny leading 
 the way, proceeded to the scene of danger. 
 
 The staircase and the passage and the empty 
 room, beyond looked unusually dark that evening, the 
 atmosphere of them felt unaccountably chilly, an 
 awful stillness reigned. At last Annie broke the 
 stillness by dealing a few vigorous blows with her 
 hammer upon the floor, and then, some shrieking, 
 some weeping, all struck with mortal terror, the 
 whole party turned and fled all the followers at least 
 amongst whom there was a general sauve qui pent 
 until the play-room had been regained, and our ears 
 were safe from the sounds of those awful echoes that 
 had assailed them from the prison underground. 
 
 Meanwhile Annie and Fanny, scorning to fly with 
 the canaille, remained behind the rest long enough 
 to assure themselves that no further action could be 
 effected at that time, and then, disappointed and 
 crestfallen, they joined us below. The occasion had 
 come and gone then, and all remained as before ! 
 Alas ! no not all. Nothing could restore the 
 equanimity of our young companions ; sobs and 
 hysterics wound up the little f&te. Finally, the 
 nursemaids came, and our friends could not conceal 
 the delight they felt in quitting our company. 
 Everybody went away; we looked at each other ; 
 
 D 
 
34 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and felt very flat indeed. We did not talk much 
 about the nun the next morning, being anxious to 
 persuade ourselves that there had not been any real 
 crisis in her affairs, nor any collapse, but somehow 
 it would not do ; our inner world had been shaken, 
 and the outer world would not let us alone. Notes 
 flew about the whole of the following day between 
 the parents of the two families of cousins and our 
 parents; a messenger even called from one of the 
 houses to expostulate concerning the kind of amuse- 
 ment that had been provided for the little guests ; 
 one of them had not been able to sleep the whole 
 night, another was almost raving about a nun, and 
 a dungeon, and the priest. Could any clue be found 
 by which to unravel such strange confusion, was 
 there any foundation. in fact for the scandal, or was 
 the whole story a purposeless, mischief-making 
 invention concocted in the clergyman's household ? 
 
 Put in this way, our romance did not seem 
 interesting any longer ; it assumed an ugly appear- 
 ance, and we began to feel somewhat ashamed of it. 
 Arthur, too, happened to come home about that time, 
 and we could see that he was incredulous worse than 
 incredulous ; he counted the whole affair to have 
 been a very silly piece of business indeed. So died 
 our nun, and the clouds of our delusion rose and 
 spread away, and melted into thinnest vapour, and 
 we were left below, unclothed, as it were, for some 
 short space, of any enshrouding dream. 
 
 Arthur's presence during his holidays was gene- 
 rally unfavourable to dreams, or, rather, he brought 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 35 
 
 in such a different set of ideas, and told so many 
 marvellous histories from his experience of real 
 school-life, that he was apt to draw Annie out of her 
 world into one of his making. It was a great change 
 from thinking about the nun, or from following out 
 any of our other story talk, to listen to all the 
 curious quirks and sayings of the drill-sergeant 
 at his school, whom Arthur mimicked to us, or to 
 contemplate a picture of the French master's despair 
 when the entire class deserted his teaching for the 
 pursuit of rats and mice. In short, our lives were 
 periodically sharpened and brightened by the fun 
 which we shared with our brothers during their 
 home-comings. The youngest brother, too, was grow- 
 ing up into a playfellow, and fits of companionship 
 with him made many gaps in our dream world. 
 
 Occasionally the boys shared I was going to say 
 our instruction, but it would be more correct to say 
 our instructors, for we were all of us dead against 
 being taught. Passive resistance to the encroachments 
 which masters or mistresses made upon our time we 
 were always ready to offer ; the boys invented more 
 active measures. We tired our two French masters 
 with our idle fun ; but it was with the unfortunate man 
 supposed to teach us writing and arithmetic that we 
 chiefly exercised ourselves. Sometimes through a 
 long course of this master's visits we amused our- 
 selves by serving up for our lesson one particular 
 question in the Rule of Three, with slightly varying 
 adjuncts, but never so carefully disguised as to im- 
 pose upon a second glance ; and when the bewildered 
 
 D 2 
 
36 ANNIE KEAKY. 
 
 teacher came out with his habitual remonstrance (in 
 strong Yorkshire accent), " By the by, miss, I con- 
 ceive you've brought me fifty coos again ; the fact is, 
 you astonish me, miss ; it pricks me to the 'art, miss 
 it does indeed," we received the announcement 
 with unfailing delight, and with expressions of 
 innocent surprise in the discovery that we had ever 
 come across such a question as that touching the 
 fifty cows before. 
 
 The town we lived in had many salient points 
 and salient characters belonging to it, which Arthur 
 had the happy knack of bringing into prominence. 
 Arthur and Annie studied the manners and the 
 people of Hull together. The original of the Miss 
 Berry of Oldbury lived in Hull, as full of charming 
 simplicity and delightful little oddities and kind 
 affectionate ways as her shadow sister remains now. 
 The real Miss Berry had her great map of Scrip- 
 ture events and characters such as Annie described 
 afterwards. 
 
 The holding of religious meetings was one of the 
 most important features of life, in our town. There 
 was every possible variety of societies in whose 
 behalf these assemblies were held, but the chief 
 amongst them all was the Church Missionary Society. 
 The whole religious world of Hull combined to do 
 honour to the yearly meetings of that society, held 
 inside the largest church of the place. The towns- 
 people flocked in families to the church on those 
 occasions, when instead of the pulpit a large plat- 
 form covered with green baize faced the congregation ; 
 
ANNIE KEAKY. 37 
 
 chairs were studded over the platform, and in the 
 middle there stood a table with glasses of water upon 
 it, and a dish of delicious-looking oranges, wherewith 
 the clergymen were wont to refresh themselves when 
 wearied with their discourses. To the eyes of us 
 children, that old green baize platform was just a 
 symbol of the comfortable side of religion, saying to 
 us once every year, " Now we are going to have a 
 right pleasant time of it together," and we did have 
 decidedly amusing times, listening to queer stories 
 about the heathen, regaling ourselves with sweet 
 biscuits, of which all children were allowed a liberal 
 supply at meetings, putting money into the plate 
 at the collection, and finally going home rather late 
 in the afternoon with a consciousness of having 
 had a jolly holiday, and of having, at the same 
 time, advanced the world a stage or two towards 
 the millennium. 
 
 Next in importance to the religious meeting, in 
 children's eyes, stood the Friday party occasions on 
 which the clergymen met at one another's houses for 
 Bible reading and discussion. Certainly these good 
 priests did not fast on Fridays, at any rate not at 
 tea ; the Bible discussions were always inaugurated 
 by a meal, one of those real Yorkshire teas of which 
 a south country person can have no idea, when piles 
 and piles of hot buttered cakes are served up and 
 made away with. We children used to hang about 
 the retreating trays as the waiters came in and out, 
 for the double purpose of picking up a scrambling 
 repast, and of catching some tones from the hubbub 
 
38 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 of talk going on inside the drawing-room. Finally, 
 when the doors were closed, and the elders occupied 
 themselves with the serious part of the business, we 
 four took refuge in the empty portions of the house, 
 dressed up in the clergymen's hats and coats, and 
 held a mimic missionary meeting all to ourselves. It 
 was a happy day for us when we discovered that we 
 could amongst us reproduce almost exactly the tones 
 and manners of the several ministers, which we 
 generally did in the words of the favourite mis- 
 sionary hymn, "O'er the realm of pagan darkness," a 
 verse for each clergyman in turn all round. 
 
 Hull was distinctly a party place. The town was 
 capable of dividing itself upon any question almost 
 as to whether rice is grown upon mud or water, 
 for example ; indeed, there was a tradition that a 
 section of it did once actually fall into a position of 
 antagonism on that debatable ground. But it would 
 generally be some question of politics that set the 
 little world on fire. Conservative or Radical, that 
 was the question of questions ; blue or yellow, as the 
 distinction displayed itself before our eyes, the rival 
 colours becoming signs of great living realities. Blue 
 that meant, naturally, high breeding, good looks, 
 courage, generosity, faithfulness to country and to 
 God. Yellow that signified, deformity, degradation, 
 drunkenness, injustice, baseness of all kinds, fighting 
 and Atheism. Even a golden lily used to look quite 
 wicked beside a blue fleur de lys. 
 
 One election stands out among the rest as having 
 particularly excited the town, especially the ladies of 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 39 
 
 it, not on account of any especial question of politics 
 involved in it, but because of unusual interest that 
 attached to the persons of the candidates on that oc- 
 casion. One was a Wilberforce, the other was a young 
 baronet touchingly young, the ladies pronounced 
 him to be, and about him spinster imagination un- 
 ceasingly busied itself. He was known to be a scion 
 of the aristocracy too, and that was a fact particularly 
 commendable in Hull eyes ; whilst there was some- 
 thing plebeian in the very names of the rival candi- 
 dates, Clay and Hutt. The' general enthusiasm was 
 catching, and " Don't you think," Annie said, one day, 
 " that there must be something very remarkable in 
 the new member ? " The time just then happened 
 to be favourable for inventions ; there had been 
 a theme missing in Annie's story- talk for some 
 time, ever since the collapse of the nun romance, in 
 fact, and she readily seized upon an idea for a new 
 tale. The member became the hero of many 
 volumes of her unpublished novels, and con- 
 nected with these there grew up one of the strangest 
 fancies, I think, that Annie ever originated. " Let 
 us imagine," she said, " that there is a man called a 
 Writer, who can see into every house just as he 
 pleases, and who writes down all that he sees in 
 stories called ' scenes ' that he gives us to read." 
 " Yes well let us imagine it," and we did, until 
 the Writer became an ever-present idea in our 
 minds. He was an omnipresent kind of being 
 almost, for while he was supposed to go about to 
 distant places and bring back scenes to Annie, his 
 
40 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 partner in novel-writing, he was still always looking 
 through one particular corner of the ceiling, in 
 whatever room we happened to be, an observer 
 and recorder from whom we could never escape. 
 Occasionally when there was any remark we wished 
 to make about any one, which we did not wish to 
 be generally known, we used to feel ourselves 
 obliged to write it down upon slates or paper, and 
 pass the writing to and fro. Still we never felt the 
 Writer a gSne ; he had become so necessary to the 
 " scenes " we delighted in that we willingly put up 
 with any trifling annoyance he might cause us in our 
 everyday life. Long after we had ceased to talk 
 story-talk of any kind, the impression of that 
 mysterious personage, the Writer, sitting always over- 
 head and looking through the roof of one's house, 
 remained as a sort of slumbering belief in our minds. 
 Annie's inventions and dreaming were always 
 entirely impersonal ; she never by any chance, I 
 think, built a castle in the air about herself or her 
 own future, as many young people are in the habit 
 of doing ; all thoughts of self were crowded out by 
 an absorbing realisation of her own creations. It 
 was with her, she used to say, as if she were watching 
 the progress of one interminable tale, in which her 
 own being bore no part, and over which her own will 
 exercised no control; she just stood apart, and 
 watched perpetually, like some Lady of Shalott, the 
 passing and repassing of sweet shades, listening to 
 their converse, waiting upon their actions, grieving 
 at their sorrows, rejoicing in their joy. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 41 
 
 One or two circumstances combined to make out- 
 side life more interesting to Annie as years passed on, 
 and foremost among these was her being taught for 
 the first time by a teacher whom she could really 
 love. 
 
 The new governess, a young girl, had the happy 
 knack of making duty seem a pleasant thing ; she 
 and Annie drew together at once, and an easy kind 
 of sisterly relationship established itself between 
 them. Annie Norman was original in her methods 
 of instruction ; sometimes she would throw away all 
 books and give up entire days to talk, and Annie 
 certainly learned much more from these opportunities 
 of free intercourse with an original mind than she 
 would have done through a system of unbroken 
 routine. The young teacher had a remarkable 
 power of reading character, and as Annie had a 
 similar gift, it was both delightful and helpful to 
 her to exchange her own crude thoughts with the 
 equally fresh but more exercised deductions of her 
 companion. 
 
 When quite a child Annie had been fond of 
 expounding her views upon character; one long 
 Sunday evening's talk on such subjects I especially 
 remember, when we recorded the event in a little 
 pocket diary : " Had a real talk about real things." 
 
 Annie worked out in her own mind on that occa- 
 sion that all persons in the world must belong to one 
 of four classes : North, South, East, or West. 
 
 North hard, cold, reasonable people. 
 
 South impulsive, imaginative, sympathetic. 
 
42 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 East negative and stupid. 
 
 West sentimental and unreal. 
 
 The idea was a rough attempt at the classifica- 
 tion of people according to temperament, not very 
 unlike the theory of Jacob Boehme, set forth in his 
 Treatise of the Four Temperaments, in which he 
 speaks of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water natures. 
 Annie came upon Jacob Boehme's book in later 
 years and took great pleasure in it. 
 
 At last the shock of a great fear broke upon the 
 family, scattering for the time all Annie's absorbing 
 fancies, and clouding over the pleasure of her new- 
 found friendship. The suffering of the father had 
 been increasing year by year, until a crisis came, and 
 the word was spoken that death might be near. 
 Then there came a time in which nothing can be 
 distinguished through the mist of tears and tumul- 
 tuous fears and hopes, regrets and passionate blind 
 prayers. In all this there was a greater shock for 
 Annie than for any of the other younger ones, 
 because she, amongst them, loved the father most ; 
 besides, there was the horror of a dark reality having 
 struck into the midst of her ideal world. 
 
 The fear passed away, and the father's life was 
 given back, sunk deeper into suffering and weakness, 
 both of which were borne with such unfailing patience 
 that it was only too easy for children to forget them. 
 I doubt whether even Annie fretted much at that 
 time about any of his added pain ; still the anxiety of 
 the crisis closed an era in her inner life. She passed 
 on after that to a more pressing sense of responsi- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 43 
 
 bility, and of the contrast between living and dream- 
 ing : remorse for the one more frequently than before 
 interfered with the happiness of the other. 
 
 One result of the father's illness was the removal 
 of the home party for an entire summer to his country 
 rectory. Annie had seen very little of real country 
 life so far, nothing more than could be obtained 
 during the yearly visit to a tiny watering-place at 
 the mouth of the Humber, whose principal features 
 were -a low, flat, sandy common, and a rather muddy 
 expanse of waters. Spite of all deficiencies of the 
 place, however, Annie's life-long pleasure in the sea 
 and in all sea sights and sounds was born of her 
 sojourns there, with the family gatherings, holiday 
 excursions, and bright, windy days upon the shore. 
 But Cleathorpes was not to be compared with Nun- 
 nington, the picturesque village at the foot of the 
 Yorkshire moors, where one long perfect summer of 
 Annie's life was passed. 
 
 Annie afterwards laid the plot of her first published 
 children's tale, Mia and Charlie, at Nunnington, and 
 in it she happily describes some of the scenery and 
 characteristics of the place. It must have been a great 
 pleasure to her, one thinks, to find in the tumble- 
 down, old-fashioned rectory, a realisation of some of 
 her early fancies, a house that really had strange nooks 
 in it, and unused shadowed rooms. From the windows 
 of some of the rooms one could walk out on to the 
 side of a hill that was a garden too, from whose 
 sloping green terraces the village down below was 
 visible, with its bright little river running through ; 
 
44 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and far away the lines of softly curving hills 
 against the sky. It was there that nature first spoke 
 to Annie, with the double voice she ever afterwards 
 loved so well, listening for and trying to understand 
 the suggestion, the emotion, the thought of every 
 pictured word. 
 
 The life she lived at Nunnington was a 
 thoroughly healthy one real family life such as had 
 not been enjoyed by her for years. In the quiet of 
 the little place, removed as all were from companion- 
 ship outside the home circle, and during the leisure 
 of long summer days, it was easy for all differences 
 of age and diversities of taste to meet and mingle. 
 To the mother that season was like an epoch out of 
 the beloved past lived over again, and her whole 
 nature rejoiced in it ; the father had come to his 
 country rectory to seek health and rest, and though 
 reading was his one idea of healthy enjoyment, he 
 would sometimes pass an hour or two with his 
 children in outdoor sunshine, and at any rate there 
 was always an atmosphere of joy wherever he and 
 his books were found together. During his holiday, 
 too, there was leisure for hunting out fresh books for 
 Annie to carry away to her favourite unused garret, 
 where she feasted upon them for hours together. In 
 her walks through the country lanes, whose summer 
 roses and whose autumn hips and haws were glorious 
 treasures to town-bred children, Annie began the 
 study of botany, to which she frequently returned 
 with pleasure at other periods of her life. It was 
 one of the few amusements besides reading that 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 45 
 
 helped to soothe the pain-stricken days of her last 
 summer upon earth, when she eagerly welcomed any 
 little newly-found flower, or insignificant weed even, 
 which friends brought to her from distances she was 
 no longer able to reach. As well as botany, natural 
 history began to claim her attention, and she gave 
 many hours in her garret to the study of a book on 
 insect life by Kirby and Spence, the facts of which 
 were laid up with other heterogeneous matter in the 
 treasure house of her memory, and drawn upon for 
 the construction of many of her children's stories, 
 notably Little Wanderlin, where the characters and 
 ways of birds, and beasts, and fish, wind in and out 
 amongst the more strictly fairy-like inventions with 
 a pleasant interchange of fact and fable. 
 
 The eldest sister began to draw Annie up into 
 companionship with her about this time, from which 
 dated the true heart and mind friendship that ever 
 afterwards existed between the two, gifted with 
 almost equally strong social instincts and quick per. 
 ceptions of character. Annie interested herself in 
 studying the people of Nunnington. There were 
 farmers' families in the neighbourhood, of a pleasant 
 old-fashioned Yorkshire type rudely heal thy, shrewd, 
 yet superstitious, for a firm belief in witchcraft still 
 obtained amongst them : hard-working people, father, 
 mother, sister, and brother, sharing outdoor occu- 
 pation, sharing also, sister with brother, the same 
 uncouth ways, the same unsensitive temperaments. 
 Some of the groups formed really beautifnl subjects 
 for study : the hale old people ; the strong well-built 
 
46 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 men; the girls, not so much modest, as more than 
 usually free from self-consciousness all excepting the 
 beauties amongst them, that is to say, who would be 
 apt to find rake or hay fork irksome, and to look 
 askance during careless handling of the same, with 
 a pretty assurance in their smiling eyes that good 
 looks were a better dowry than helpfulness or riches 
 would ever prove. Of all the houses Annie visited 
 none attracted her imagination more than did Nun- 
 nington Hall itself, an old Manor House, deserted for 
 the time by its owners, which had a tale belonging 
 to it, and about whose shady avenues, and through 
 whose empty, tapestried rooms Annie loved to 
 wander and dream. The story told about the Hall 
 had a stepmother in it, and a sickly child, and some 
 horrible catastrophe, with a suspicion of murder 
 lurking round it, and a ghost a lady in silk, who 
 came and went with awful faint rustle up and down 
 the broad oak staircase, and looked with pale face 
 from an upper turreted window upon the silent 
 sward below. Annie introduced her into Mia and 
 Charlie, where she slightly sketched the legend. 
 She had a half-formed intention of working up the 
 details some day into a full-grown romance; that 
 purpose, however, she never fulfilled, but she had the 
 pleasure of seeing the story receive shape and beauty 
 at her suggestion, by the hand of a sister novelist 
 in the pages of Doris BarugJi. 
 
 Another trifling incident connected with this 
 country summer may be worth mentioning, as having 
 perhaps had some slight influence on Annie's 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 47 
 
 thoughts and character. She paid her first visit 
 from home, in company with her eldest sister, at the 
 house of some grown-up young cousins, to whom she 
 came as one of their own standing, and no longer as 
 a child. The atmosphere of the home was unlike 
 anything Annie had ever experienced before. Our 
 own family life had always been ordered very soberly, 
 almost puritanically, with its strictly kept Sunday, 
 quaker-like plainness of costume, and emptiness of 
 all amusement. That of our young relatives was set 
 up upon a very different model. The girls, just 
 eagerly entering into life, had never been enjoined 
 to renounce the world ; it could never have struck 
 them that to dress prettily and becomingly was 
 otherwise than wise and right ; the pleasures of 
 society were natural, healthful pleasures to them; 
 ball-going did not seem less innocent to them than a 
 scamper on horseback across country, or a summer 
 ramble in the fields, and certainly no pleasures they 
 had indulged in had spoiled their really unworldly 
 natures, or deadened the fresh warm-heartedness 
 which made them always ready to share their good 
 things with others, admiration amongst the rest. 
 Mrs. Sherwood's ball-going young lady had always 
 been depicted as selfish, hard-hearted, reckless, with 
 ruin for her portion in this world, and damnation as 
 her retribution in the next ; but these generous girls, 
 sunned by prosperity, seemed to be far enough from 
 the first, and nowhere within sight of the second. 
 The contradiction may well have puzzled Annie, and 
 perhaps helped to awake in her the fairness with 
 
48 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 which she was given to estimate the prejudices of 
 others. Annie fell much in love with her cousins, 
 and all, it need scarcely be said, fell much in love 
 with her ; it was they who first told her that she was 
 beautiful, and I am sure that the knowledge was 
 good for her. Although Annie was exceptionally 
 sweet-looking, her parents had always spoken to her 
 of her appearance as if she were unfortunately plain. 
 It was the habit of religious people in those days to 
 throw such dishonour upon the flesh, and the next 
 best thing to not having good looks was held to be 
 not knowing that you had them. Thus the parents 
 had striven to shield the pretty one as long as 
 possible from the evil of her fate, but one little word, 
 one admiring look, tore the veil away. 
 
 Annie was about fifteen at the time of which we 
 are speaking her beauty of a tall, fair, and aquiline 
 type which she had inherited from her father 
 with her Irish blood. Her colouring was rich, her 
 hair light brown with a golden hue in it. Her eyes 
 were very beautiful, large and blue, expressing every 
 change of thought and feeling, her broad forehead 
 giving at the same time a certain steadiness and 
 sense of power. From her childhood she had been 
 a little deaf, and this infirmity combined with her 
 natural disposition to give to her face and figure an 
 air partly pensive and partly deferential. In Annie's 
 case the effort to mislead her about her looks had 
 been ill-judged. She was naturally as far as possible 
 from being self-occupied, but it depressed her and 
 went far towards crushing her upon self-regardful 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 49 
 
 thoughts, to be told that she was personally incapable 
 of pleasing. The discovery that, after all, this was an 
 exaggeration or a mistake must have marked a stage 
 in her inner life, and may have felt something like the 
 laying aside of fettering garments, and moving plea- 
 surably in clothes that fit and are becoming. Here 
 we may say that childhood ends, here girlhood first 
 guesses at its charm ; we leave the bud to search into 
 the sweetness of the flower; here the beautiful 
 summer came to its end also, and the leisure and the 
 pause in the lives young and old that had sheltered 
 together in its sunshine and its rest. 
 
 E 
 
PART II. 
 
 BOARDING-SCHOOL life was Annie's next experience. 
 With school, the ideal school, her child imagina- 
 tion had been familiar; tales of school life having 
 taken their turn amongst scenes, P. D., and other 
 story conversation, when teachers and scholars, com- 
 panionship and talk were mapped out with great 
 clearness, set in a charming haze of indefinable pos- 
 sibilities. School real was, perhaps, not much like 
 school ideal, but the time that Annie spent there was 
 made rich by the forming of one or two friendships 
 as beautiful as any which her imagination had 
 drawn. Amongst the girls Annie soon became a 
 great favourite; with the teachers, and with the 
 modes of instruction which obtained at the school, 
 she was not so much in accord. 
 
 The week-day classes ran a curious dull little round. 
 English, Grecian, and Roman histories were read by 
 turns, half an hour being allowed for each at a time ; 
 the pupils looked at the backs of the books, to be 
 quite sure where they were. 
 
 Annie was never thought exactly clever by her 
 instructors ; out-of-the-way scraps of knowledge came 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 51 
 
 so much more readily to hand with her than did just 
 the particular things that she was expected to have 
 at her fingers' ends, and a thirst for any sort of know- 
 ledge outside the ordinary school routine was not a 
 distinguishing feature of the place. 
 
 " Lizzie, of what were you and Annie Keary talk- 
 ing so eagerly in the garden during the English 
 speaking hour ? " was asked on one occasion by the 
 head teacher in the school. 
 
 Confusedly, yet with a slight impression of new 
 and growing importance, the reply came from Lizzie } 
 " Oh, madame ! Annie Keary was telling me all 
 about gravitation and the stars." 
 
 Very long faces all round, and " H'm, it's a pity, 
 I think, that Miss Keary cannot find something 
 more edifying to say to her companions, since she 
 appears to be so fond of talking," was the freezing 
 rejoinder. 
 
 There was one subject, the subject of religion, 
 which the head of the school was never weary of 
 bringing before her pupils, and it was the only one 
 that possessed any real importance in her eyes. Her 
 influence over many of the girls, religiously, was 
 very great ; to the one mind with which I am deal- 
 ing I do not think that her teachings on this subject 
 were helpful. Our teacher thought clearly, and 
 expressed herself with great force. She spoke to 
 her household twice every day, at morning and at 
 evening prayers ; sometimes she would talk very 
 beautifully of the love of God, and then, holding 
 the shut Bible between her hands, would wind 
 
 E 2 
 
52 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 up her discourse in some such terms as the 
 following : 
 
 " Here," she would say, " between these boards is 
 shut up Eternal Life, and to-day it is offered to each 
 one of you ; take it to-day, to-morrow it may be too 
 late. For if the Spirit should cease to strive with you, 
 though you may call, He will not hear. Not one 
 of you who has heard the message here can find 
 excuse in the day of judgment. If you are lost, 
 you will see the name of this very house where I 
 have spoken to you written upon the floor of hell 
 your opportunity turned into your condemnation." 
 
 Some of the girls were brought to think seriously 
 by her means; some were hardened. Annie tried 
 simply to put the subject away from her, and so her 
 spiritual growth was arrested at this time. I say 
 arrested, because her spirit had felt some upward 
 motion of life during that summer when she had 
 come out from her dreams in the genial home, had 
 begun to look at nature with loving, understanding 
 eyes, and had first become conscious of the dim 
 longings and sweet emotions of youth. 
 
 The teaching of Mr. Baker, the pastor of the 
 school, who, conducted the Church services every 
 Sunday in the great school-room, were of a less excit- 
 ing nature than were those of the mistress. Sundays 
 gave the girls something of rest spiritually, not 
 mentally by any means. Mr. Baker's sermon was 
 the absorbing topic of the day. All the lady 
 teachers took notes of the morning discourse, and 
 at noon gathered the pupils around them to 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 53 
 
 superintend their writing out of the sermon from 
 memory. 
 
 " Miss White," one teacher would sometimes ask of 
 another, " can you help me to the ninth small head 
 \mder dear Mr. Baker's fifth large head to-day ? " 
 
 Annie, who on account of her deafness found 
 it very difficult to follow the words of the preacher, 
 was apt to draw largely upon her imagination 
 in the writing out of the sermon ; and her class 
 teacher used to wax very wroth with her on that 
 account. 
 
 "Annie Keary," she exclaimed one Monday morn- 
 ing, as she was settling herself to the task of reading 
 over a pile of sermon copy-books, " Annie Keary ^ 
 what do you think I am doing now ? Praying for 
 patience before I read your version of dear Mr. 
 Baker's precious words ! Do you know that you 
 put your own feeble expressions instead of his? 
 Listen to this (opening the book at a venture and 
 reading a paragraph) those are your words, Miss 
 Keary, put instead of the very cream of the dis- 
 course. Take the book away, and let me have 
 something to read that I can understand." 
 
 Or it might be a pathetic appeal to the neighbour- 
 ing teacher at her table seated before a similar pile 
 of books. 
 
 " My dear Miss Green, what do you think Miss 
 Keary has written down here ? " 
 
 " Oh ! my dear Miss Ewin, don't ask me ; I've 
 quite ceased to be surprised at anything which Miss 
 Keary may say or write." 
 
54 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The pleasant companionship she had, and the 
 many friendships she formed, made up to Annie for 
 any other shortcomings of school life. I can see 
 her the centre of one of the groups. There was 
 tall handsome Marion, the original of Rosamond in 
 Janet's Home; there was Catherine, with the large 
 melting eyes, brimful of self-consciousness, that were 
 so subtle, so changeful in their charm. Catherine's 
 was the only talk that used to ripple over into 
 that forbidden land where lovers obtruded them- 
 selves, whose looks and sayings were so enigmatical 
 that they had to be discussed and explained a per- 
 fectly new region this to Annie, who had no personal 
 experience of such matters, and was proportionally 
 interested in the talk of a young girl who had begun 
 to sip the real cup of life. Then there was Cecil, 
 bright, piquante, small, almost the twin of her name- 
 sake in Oldbury ; and Zebee, the cheerful burden- 
 bearer, with her mobile, tender, brave, prophetic 
 face, in her nature akin to Ruth in Annie's first 
 novel, Through the Shadows; and Fanny, the one 
 determined pedant of the school. Fanny, who was 
 thought a little odd by most of her companions, and 
 never seemed to fit in properly anywhere, made a 
 lasting impression on Annie's mind, though the 
 friendship between them did not extend beyond 
 school days. There is a remembrance of Fanny's 
 quaint, slight figure, and self-regardless manner, 
 clouded over by sudden fits of shamefacedness, of the 
 keen brain, so heavily weighted with knowledge, as 
 one realised, through the symbol of that actual 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 55 
 
 large head set upon the slim neck, so much too 
 heavy for it to bear a remembrance that gleams 
 out here and there in many persons and places 
 through Annie's writings ; in Mildred, of A Doubting 
 Heart, for example ; in Mary Bourdillon, in A York 
 and a Lancaster Rose ; a little even in the Janet of 
 Janet's Home. Annie knew the characters of all her 
 girl friends and acquaintances, imaginatively and sym- 
 pathetically. Her imaginative reading of character 
 gave her that faculty of insight which awakens 
 sympathy, and works by the force of love, which 
 sees the things that are not not yet, that is to say, 
 apparent and calls them as though they were, 
 because it sees that they are potentially there, and 
 will some day appear. It was always the potential 
 good that Annie saw ; it was revealed as by a 
 lightning-flash to her loving heart, and never faded 
 from it again. She never saw the worst side of 
 others chiefly, or first, or indeed at all. One could 
 not persuade her that any one was out and out base, 
 hypocritical, unworthy. I do not think I can remem- 
 ber her ever feeling any one to be distinctly repugnant 
 to her. Yet this beautiful habit of mind was capable 
 of becoming tiresome to more prosaic natures, to such 
 as never penetrate deeper than into the region of 
 righteousness. To one who puts himself in the 
 attitude of a judge, it cannot fail to feel tiresome 
 that the faults of others, those torturing motes which 
 chafe the spirit of condemnation, cannot get recog- 
 nition of their existence at all; but Annie's under- 
 standing gentleness was always strong to help 
 
56 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and full of healing ^power to the soul that knew 
 itself, and stumbled beneath the weight of its own 
 burden. 
 
 There was one condition of her school-life out 
 of which Annie drew much pleasure. Every elder 
 girl at the school was invited to adopt one of the 
 younger children, who became henceforth her special 
 charge. The girl took the place of mother to the 
 child, taught her her lessons in preparation hours, 
 superintended her plays, made herself the referee in 
 all difficulties. The most motherly girls were some- 
 times allowed to adopt more than one child. There 
 were many who loved to call Annie "mother." 
 The very troublesome children generally came to her 
 share, those whom everybody else had tried, and been 
 tired out by ; and she loved them quite as well as if 
 they had been so many cherubs. It might seem to 
 outsiders that they imposed upon her good nature, 
 but, after all, the unruly spirits did grow tamer with 
 her, and the weakly ones stumbled less often in her 
 company. It was astonishing how many good points 
 came to the front, how teachers and scholars alike 
 began to hope again where she had first believed. 
 
 Annie had many pleasant recollections of her 
 school- days; of long, happy communings with friends 
 in the pretty, shaded avenue of the garden, or whilst 
 walking up and down its broad sunny walk, skirted 
 by rows of old-fashioned moss and cabbage rose- 
 trees ; of the holidays, the children's days, when 
 little groups and families settled themselves in 
 pleasant nooks for story-telling and talk, or 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 57 
 
 played, once in a way, uproarious, merry games 
 upon the grass. 
 
 Life at home when Annie came back to it was not 
 exactly in a bright stage, but still it was family life 
 more really than it had been in her dream-child- 
 hood, and she found much quiet happiness in it. 
 Nothing like gaiety came near her, and there was 
 little enjoyment of society outside the home-circle. 
 It was a life which would have been thought very 
 dull by most girls, but Annie never found it so, for 
 her intellectual life was too vivid to need outward 
 excitement or stimulus. She read a great deal; 
 her education may be said to have begun then; 
 and her thoughts occupied themselves upon many 
 subjects. 
 
 The person she looked up to most in her youth, 
 and who influenced her opinions and her tastes more 
 than any one else did, was her brother Henry, the 
 next bat one to her in age, and two years older than 
 her playmate-brother Arthur. 
 
 Henry was in the midst of a distinguished college 
 career about the time when Annie returned from school, 
 and he spent many of his vacations at home, bring- 
 ing with him always some new interest or idea which 
 Annie delighted to discuss with him. This brother 
 Henry became from that period of her life a sort of 
 ideal to her, and she more earnestly desired his 
 good opinion than that of any one else. The brother 
 and sister were at the same time alike and unlike, 
 alike in root, one might say, and unlike in fruit ; 
 most alike when very young, before either was fully 
 
58 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 developed. The great meeting-ground between them 
 was imagination ; but whilst Annie's imagination 
 seemed a part of every part of her, in Henry, imagi- 
 nation chiefly influenced the moral region. Henry, 
 though highly gifted in many ways, was not an 
 inventor of any kind. He had not even any great 
 admiration for originality in others, and had no artistic 
 bias, but he was enthusiastic in his appreciation of 
 all that was great, or good, and thrilled with pleasure 
 at the record of any simple, noble deed. lie was 
 what Annie used to call extremely real, and was 
 never ashamed of being so. He was not suspicious 
 of enthusiasms ; true and simple himself, and very 
 much in earnest, he easily believed in the genuine- 
 ness of feeling in others. Annie found great pleasure 
 in the unreservedness of his nature, for Henry was 
 remarkably free from that sort of personal pride 
 which sometimes clouds over really fine characters, 
 makirjg it impossible to some persons to acknowledge 
 themselves in the wrong, or to make amends for 
 injuries done. Henry could always quite frankly 
 say, " I have been to blame, forgive me." He be- 
 came humble to any one the moment he saw that 
 he had given pain, even by a hasty word, and Annie 
 was exactly like him in this, if possible, more quickly 
 conscious even than he was of any little unkind 
 word said, and more anxious to make amends for it. 
 Singularly just in their appreciation of the rights of 
 others, they were both ready to the instant with such 
 sacrifices of self. As Henry grew older he became a 
 little sterner in his morality ; having trusted fully, he 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 59 
 
 was proportionally disappointed when he found him- 
 self mistaken ; there were no half courses with 
 him, if he admired warmly, he condemned strongly. 
 Annie was, as we have seen, positively unable to see 
 any one in deep shadow ; condemnation was foreign 
 to her nature ; her mind was more subtle, her feel- 
 ings were more complex than her brother's, so that 
 there was sometimes a difference though never a 
 discord between them ; he was apt to be disappointed 
 at her halting judgments, her cloudiness of vision 
 about the faults of those dear to her, which looked 
 simply like untruthfulness in his eyes, whilst on the 
 other hand her hunger for his perfectly approving 
 love was never in this world fully satisfied. 
 
 Yet Henry remained one of Annie's ideals, and 
 she was always prone to appreciate in men those 
 fine points which had first attracted her in him. 
 
 Two or three years passed quietly on the opening 
 years of Annie's youth without change, or any break 
 apparent in the outlook on any side. On the key 
 which these years sounded her life's music was played, 
 they were typical of its course : few events marked 
 it, no great success was ever reached, it was most 
 like some soft spring day, fair and shadowed and 
 sweet, of grey cloud above and gradual promise 
 below. 
 
 Annie never wished for change, she was in no 
 hurry to begin her experience of life, but at last a 
 change did come, and with it an influence that 
 touched her inner life and left everything a little 
 changed there for ever after. 
 
60 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The family had to leave the old home. The limit 
 of the invalid father's strength was reached ; he was 
 forced to give up all work and try what soothing to 
 his sufferings the warmer atmosphere of a southern 
 county might bring. The family removed to Clifton, 
 near Bristol. 
 
 A good deal of brightness came into Annie's life 
 during the three years that followed. She made 
 many new friends in the new place, and by the 
 influence of some of them a strong impulse was 
 given to; her love of study ; a desire to express her 
 own thoughts in writing began also to form itself in 
 her mind then. But that those three years changed 
 her more than she was changed by any other three 
 years of her life was owing to the influence of one 
 friend only, one who came nearer to her than any 
 other person ever came before or after. 
 
 It is not strange that in her youth Annie should 
 have inspired a strong and beautiful love, nor that it 
 should have been just her dream-nature, her apart- 
 ness, her own singularly unimpressionable condition 
 of mind that attracted the imagination of her lover. 
 Love is blind, people say ; sometimes it is love only 
 which can clearly see ; certainly he who loved Annie 
 read her character better than many of those who 
 had known her from her childhood even. He under- 
 stood exactly the contradiction that there was be- 
 tween her timidity and her strength ; worshipping 
 the ideal purity of her nature and the greatness of 
 which she was capable. He saw, and understood too, 
 how she had to be won by the charm and repose of 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 61 
 
 friendship, wooed out of her dream-world like some 
 rare and shy air or water creature, step by step, until 
 she came to build her house upon the common 
 ground, and fashion hopes of happiness for this actual 
 sphere. He fully appreciated her artistic power, and 
 helped to give her confidence in it, comprehending at 
 the same time her pleasure in authorship and her 
 pain in that shock of contact with the outward world 
 which even the most unpretending writer must 
 experience. He saw beforehand just how and where 
 the hardness of life would depress and hurt her, how 
 unfit she really was for any struggle, what a safeguard 
 tenderness might be to her, and fondly hoped that 
 she would be unceasingly surrounded by it. Little 
 by little, in the small events of life, by long friendly 
 converse through beautiful quiet days in the sunshine 
 of their youth, his love shone forth in its strength, 
 and her affection put gentle tendrils out, reaching, 
 towards it, struggling into joy. Mentally the lovers 
 were akin, both imaginative, both speculative, 
 speculation on religious philosophical subjects being 
 especially interesting to them both about the time 
 when they first met. In such spheres of thought he 
 was indeed freer and bolder than she was ; he led and 
 she followed. It might have been difficult to turn 
 back on such a course, but Annie was always subject 
 to the disturbance of contrary impulses ; for her lover 
 and the brother whose lead she had, until then, tried 
 to follow, were almost opposing influences as far as 
 opinions were concerned, and this was the cause of 
 not a little suffering to her. 
 
62 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The intercourse between Annie and this friend 
 extended over several years, and during the course of 
 these years her life was broken in upon by a great 
 sorrow, bringing with it an unexpected responsibility. 
 The great sorrow which wrecked the happiness of one 
 of her elder brothers' homes, was the beginning of a 
 new era of life to Annie, for she was called upon to fill 
 a mother's place to three motherless children. No 
 more congenial sphere of work could possibly have 
 been found for her ; for mother-nature was stronger 
 in her than any other nature was. The six years of 
 her charge in that home were the golden years 
 of her life, in which every part of her was satis- 
 fied and her character showed its natural bent then. 
 The home she went to was a country home, in the 
 pretty village of Trent Vale in Staffordshire. There 
 Annie enjoyed plenty of leisure and freedom ; she 
 took in and gave out on all sides, renewing her 
 acquaintance with nature, and exercising her newly- 
 discovered gift of writing. But everything she did was 
 inspired by or turned towards what was the centre of 
 her life her care of the children. Whatever new 
 thing she learned of bird, or insect, or flower, what- 
 ever beauty she discovered in written book, or living 
 action, she took straight to them as a mother bird 
 carries treasure to her nest. All changes of the hours, 
 every season of the year, she set and tuned to the 
 requirements of nursery life ; in summer time, 
 the little garden and the field, the banks of the canal 
 close by, the bluebell woods further away, had each 
 their changing pleasures ; the nursery, nay, the whole 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 63 
 
 house, in winter afternoons and in the evening fire- 
 glow, were no less the inspirers of games or quaint, 
 weird fairy tales. 
 
 Some of the prettiest of her children's fairy tales 
 Little Wanderlin amongst them (not published till 
 long afterwards), were written for that nursery. In 
 writing it was always necessary for her to realise her 
 hearers, and she never gave shape to her fancies 
 more pleasurably than she did when fashioning 
 them for that one child-audience she loved so well. 
 Of the rhymes she wrote for it few ever saw the 
 light, but these two express so simply the sunshine 
 of the child-life she shared with the children that I 
 am tempted to insert them here. 
 
 Fairy Men was suggested by the summer rambles 
 in the bluebell wood ; the second, called Rocking 
 and Talking, gives an idea of the happy twilight 
 amusements and talk. 
 
 FAIRY MEN. 
 
 In Trentham woods we gathered flowers, 
 
 'Twas growing latish, when 
 Tripping between the hyacinth stalks 
 
 I spied the fairy men. 
 I wish, don't you, that you had been 
 
 Standing near me then ? 
 
 In jackets green and velvet caps, 
 
 With feather in the band ; 
 Not one of them was half so big 
 
 As Charlie's little hand. 
 I took my bonnet from my head, 
 
 And curtseying did stand 
 
64 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 To watch thorn as they tripped along 
 The hyacinth-woven bower 
 
 Beneath each fairy foot-fall 
 Sprang up a little flower, 
 
 And the mossy grass grew greener, 
 As after a spring shower. 
 
 By twos the merry hunting elves 
 Marched first to clear the way ; 
 
 They'd lances made of hornets stings, 
 And caps with trophies gay : 
 
 In deadly fight with dragon-flies 
 No braver men than they. 
 
 Then came the gentle flowers fays, 
 
 Each one an artist pale ; 
 Their business is to paint the flowers 
 
 That blossom in the vale : 
 And though they work by dim moonlight 
 
 Their colours never fail. 
 
 Next passed the elves who love to creep 
 On children's beds at night, 
 
 To whisper tales of fairy land 
 "When nurse puts out the light : 
 
 Each one carried a folded dream, 
 To spread on a pillow white. 
 
 Last the sad stooping cobbolds came, 
 Through earth-holes small they creep ; 
 
 With patient steps they struggle up 
 The under ways so steep : 
 
 For sins they are condemned to work 
 While other fairies sleep. 
 
 They carry tiny water-pails 
 Upon their shoulders small, 
 
 Toilsomely in the under world 
 Work they to fill them all : 
 
 Catching each raindrop as it drips 
 Through their dark cavern wall. 
 
ANNIE KEAKY. 65 
 
 All night through fields and lanes they go, 
 
 And deftly as they run 
 They slip a dewdrop in each flower, 
 
 On each grass-blade hang one, 
 Yet dare not wait to see them turned 
 
 To diamonds by the sun. 
 
 So winding on through Trentham woods 
 
 I watched the fairy men, 
 The tall ferns hid them from my sight, 
 
 I think you called me then. 
 Could I have dreamt that pleasant scene, 
 
 Or will they come again ? 
 
 ROCKING AND TALKING. 
 
 Gently, no pushing, there's room to sit 
 
 All three without grumbling ; 
 
 One in front, two behind well, you fit, 
 
 With your aunt to keep you from tumbling. 
 
 Rock, rock, old rocking chair, 
 
 You'll last us a long time with care ; 
 
 And still without balking 
 
 Of us four any one, 
 
 Of rocking and talking 
 
 That is what we call fun. 
 
 Curtains drawn and no candles lit, 
 
 Great red caves in the fire : 
 
 This is the time for us four to sit 
 
 Rocking and talking all four till we tire. 
 
 Rock, rock, old rocking chair, 
 
 How the fire-light glows up there 
 
 Red on the white ceiling ; 
 
 The shadows every one 
 
 Might be giants reeling 
 
 On their great heads for fun. 
 
 F 
 
66 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Shall we call this a boat out at sea, 
 We four sailors rowing ? 
 Can you fancy it, well ? as for me 
 I feel the salt wind blowing ; 
 Up, up and down, lazy boat, 
 On the top of a wave we float, 
 Down we go with a rush ; 
 Far off I see the strand 
 Glimmer, our boat we'll push 
 Ashore on fairy land. 
 
 The fairy people come running 
 
 To meet us down on the strand, 
 
 Each holding out towards us the very thing 
 
 We most wish for held in his hand. 
 
 Up again one wave more 
 
 Keeps us back from the fairy shoie, 
 
 Let's pull all together ; 
 
 Then with it up we'll climb 
 
 To the always fine weather 
 
 That makes up fairy time. 
 
 Ah I the tide sweeps us out of our track, 
 
 The glimmer dies in the fire, 
 
 There's no climbing the wave that holds back 
 
 The one thing we all most desire. 
 
 Never mind rock, rocking chair, 
 
 While there's room for us four there 
 
 To sit by the fire-light swinging, 
 
 Shut in by the nursery door ; 
 
 Birds in their own nest singing 
 
 Aren't happier than we four. 
 
 A record of those days by one of the three 
 nephews may serve to give a picture of them and 
 of Annie's part in them as they appeared in the eyes 
 of childhood, and were remembered in after times. 
 "Annie Keary," this one says, "surpassed any one 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 67 
 
 I have ever known in her capacity of sympathy with 
 children, and of penetrating behind the barriers 
 which a child's instinct teaches it to raise between 
 an indifferent outer world, and its own shy, eager 
 spirit. Wherefore it was that no children were ever 
 found who could resist her charin ; and she on her 
 side found no child whom she considered beneath 
 her interest. 
 
 " From her it was that these souls, while yet moving 
 about in a world unrealised, first found a hand 
 stretched to them as from some cloud-covered upper 
 sphere. When children have ceased crying only for 
 food, the next thing they ask is for the bread of know- 
 ledge, the satisfaction first of the mere instinct of 
 curiosity, then of some higher spiritual instincts. To 
 none of these prayers did Annie Keary reply by 
 giving the stone of indifference, of false knowledge, or 
 of barren jest. She knew, none so well, how to draw 
 from their shy hiding-places all the best faculties 
 of the child's mind faculties of thought and fancy 
 which, if dissipated then, or left unnourished, will 
 never grow again in after life : these capabilities, of 
 which while we most of us recognise them as the 
 special gift of childhood, we nevertheless too often 
 forget the delicate and fragile nature, which is the 
 reason why they do not survive to be the possessions 
 of a maturer age. Rarer, therefore, and more pres- 
 cious than many Frobel's systems, or than a thousand 
 well-ordered 'kindergartens/ is a capacity such as 
 this understanding the heart and mind of childhood. 
 
 " To us for the time that we were under this charge, 
 
 F 2 
 
68 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 it was veritably a paradisiacal age a time all too 
 short, as years in paradise are ; for with me it came to 
 an end with my sixth year. Of my whole life, which 
 has now numbered nearly six times six years, this 
 time seems still to occupy a full moiety nay, these 
 remaining years have at times seemed little else than 
 a tedious afterpiece, where all the light of life has 
 gone from out of the actors. 
 
 " The spot to which Aunt Annie came, like another 
 Ormazd, with power to turn it into a paradise, was 
 indeed in itself commonplace enough, yet, happily, 
 with no great obstacles in the way of her creative 
 faculty. That she could (and in childhood had done) 
 raise up a new world in the midst of the dirt and 
 smoke of a town street, I do not doubt, but 
 fortunately the effort was not necessary in this 
 case. A moderate-sized white house, separated by 
 some few score yards of drive from the road this 
 was the centre, our umbilicus orbis. Behind the 
 house a stable-yard, flower and kitchen gardens, 
 small plantation, &c., and then a field, which sloped 
 down to not a river, but a winding canal, at the 
 bottom of the valley. Beyond the canal the ground 
 rose in gentle slopes till it was crowned along all 
 that horizon by trees, one country house visibly 
 nestled among them. On the other side a shady 
 road, a church almost opposite the gate ; beyond the 
 church the village, and beyond the village, to give 
 the needful inferno element, one or two brick-kilns, 
 whose ministers (the ultimi Britanni of our world) 
 were evil-looking, dark-faced boys, terrible to speech 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 69 
 
 or thought. These brick-kilns were introduced into 
 one of the stories Aunt Annie wrote for us, which 
 was afterwards published under the title of Sidney 
 Grey. 
 
 " Out of these visible surroundings grew a mythic 
 world, and the chief myth-maker was Annie Keary. 
 Children can of their own power go a little way only 
 in the art of invention, their knowledge being 
 altogether too limited, and their imaginative faculties 
 though strong for reception being unequal to the 
 task of creation. Therefore it is that in all the 
 fancies in the Aberglaube, which made up the poetry 
 of life in those days, I can trace her initiative. To 
 put on record out of what airy trifles all this pleasure 
 was built up, will, I know, raise the scorn of an 
 examination-passing youth, and probably call down 
 the severe displeasure of our ' Professors of Natural 
 History' and other Smelfunguses and Dryasdusts. 
 Nevertheless something of the sort shall be at- 
 tempted. I think from certain signs that the vision 
 which first of all rises up in my memory must belong 
 to a time before I had reached my fourth year. We 
 are five of us crowded together upon a drawing-room 
 sofa ; no light in the room save what is shed by a 
 small toy lantern. This is both a sofa and not a sofa. 
 It is a sledge. On it we are driving through some 
 mountainous country alps I say now, but of course 
 gave no distinct name to it then. Only this I know 
 that the darkness upon one side is in reality a 
 yawning precipice. It is bitter cold. We huddle 
 together, with teeth chattering through cold and 
 
73 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 fear, for hark, there is a dull sound, which comes 
 from the blackness behind. It draws nearer ; it is 
 a howl the howl of wolves. Crack your whip, 
 sledgeman ; drive as you have never driven before ; 
 forget if you can the gaping precipice. It is better 
 to fall into its mouth than the mouth of the 
 wolves. 
 
 " Or be it we are playing in the garden upon a 
 summer's day; and we wander about smelling the 
 flowers, watching the bees, or the ants building up 
 their houses. Nothing here surely can tell of danger. 
 Yet even in this paradise all is not well. There is 
 as it were a lurking Ahrimanes somewhere. The 
 question is, where ? What think you of that dark- 
 looking arbour at the end of the long grass plot ? 
 Who will venture to explore its shadows, and set our 
 minds at rest ? So we take hands, and walk nearer 
 and nearer, and then very often before we get up to 
 the dreaded place a panic fear seizes us, and we run 
 wildly back to the place of safety. This was the 
 earliest form of a game which often enough degene- 
 rated into the common children's game of hide and 
 seek ; but it was an altogether superior, in fact, a 
 quite sublimated form of that game. No one was 
 really in the arbour. What form the dreadful being 
 would take when he did appear imagination might 
 decide as it chose. We called the men of the 
 arbour sometimes giants, sometimes robbers ; but we 
 never saw them with fleshly eyes. 
 
 " From these examples it may be gathered (what 
 will be a matter of blame to some, but is in my eyes 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 71 
 
 a matter of supremest praise) that in putting her 
 imagination at the service of children, Annie Keary 
 acted as a true artist, and not with a didactic purpose 
 constantly at her back, such a purpose as continually 
 militates with art. She threw her whole soul into 
 the business without reckoning too nicely the less or 
 more; she stimulated our fancies as nature herself 
 stimulates them, to pleasure or to gentle sorrow, 
 sometimes even to terror. On one occasion I can 
 remember pausing with her upon a landing to look 
 over the landscape of a summer Sunday evening (I 
 probably on my way to bed), and how she said and 
 taught me to say after her, 'Good bye, beautiful 
 Sunday, I shall never see you again,' words which 
 sank into my soul with an infinity of solemn pathos, 
 and still echo there like sounds coming over a far 
 waste of water. 
 
 " She did not scruple to show us the pictures which 
 illustrated Dickens's story of Little Nell in Master 
 Humphrey's Clock, and explain to us the whole 
 history of them, whereof that of the little dwarf had 
 and has manifold terrible associations ; or even in 
 Kenny Meadows' Illustrated Shakespeare the represen- 
 tation of Lady Macbeth in the act of saying, ' There's 
 blood upon this hand.' That Shakespeare was an 
 infinite delight ! How often have I lingered over the 
 picture of the ghost beckoning Hamlet to follow him 
 upon the battlements, or afterwards descending into 
 the earth, to sulphurous and tormenting fires; or 
 over the fairy forms in the Tempest, or Midsummer 
 Night's Dream; or again, over Falstaff, and Prince 
 
72 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Hal and Harry Hotspur. Long before we had read 
 a word of Shakespeare, Hotspur and Henry the Fifth 
 were the most favourite of all favourite heroes, and 
 the continual subjects of impersonation in our make- 
 believes of adventure. 
 
 " Special occasions, such as birthdays (or it might 
 sometimes only be a very wet afternoon), were made 
 the opportunities for more elaborate games, in which 
 many members of the household were engaged to 
 take a part. These plays, like most of the others, 
 were of a character which appealed strongly to the 
 imagination. Indeed they only emphasised with an 
 impressiveness of scenal arrangement the beliefs 
 which were the common constituents of our world. 
 They performed the part which the striking cere- 
 monies of modern religions, or which the mysteries 
 and dramas of the heathen world, were designed to 
 take. One among these great functions of the 
 nursery was the visit to Mrs. Calkill, a kind of queen 
 of the fairies, yet with something witch-like about 
 her, who had been created long before by another 
 head and in another nursery. 1 I can only remember 
 once or twice enjoying that treat (only quite dis- 
 tinctly once), but can very well recall the sensations 
 which attended it, and can still wonder at the nice 
 balance which belief and unbelief kept in my mind 
 throughout. There is some difference between a 
 case like this and those which arise in the ordinary 
 course of a child's invention. The games which they 
 themselves invent are necessarily only a matter of 
 1 See ante, p. 14. 
 
ANNIE KEAB-Y. 73 
 
 make-believe. Their mythic world exists through 
 the force of their own will, and that will prevents 
 them from criticising their feelings, although all the 
 time they secretly feel that they will not bear 
 criticism. On this occasion my critical faculty was 
 pretty well awake. Yet at the end of all I was by 
 no means sure what had been the real result of 
 my adventures. Had I really been let down through 
 a narrow opening, or was this trap-door nothing else 
 than a drawing-room chair, out of which the seat had 
 been taken ? Were those steps, which certainly did 
 feel cold and clammy, positively the way to an under- 
 ground kingdom, or only the steps of the cellar? 
 Did that trickling water find its way from far-off 
 regions of the upper air into the cavern to which I 
 had come, or was it after all nothing else than the 
 water-tap in the yard, &c. ? Some ill-advised tones 
 from the common world, as of servants' voices in the 
 kitchen, came to fight upon the side of scepticism, or 
 I scarcely believe but that belief would have gained 
 a complete victory. At the end, in a dimly lighted 
 room, our eyes were unbandaged, and Aunt Annie, 
 disguised as Mrs. Calkill, presented us with a piece 
 of sugared bread, or such like sweet reward of 
 enterprise. 
 
 " With the ideas upon education at present in vogue 
 there is much in the picture which I have drawn in 
 little sympathy. I am' quite sure that Annie Keary's 
 opinions upon the subject of education must appear 
 heterodox if they are to be judged by the standard 
 of those notions which have gained such general 
 
74 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 currency among us now. She had not an eye con- 
 stantly turned towards future examinations. To the 
 end of her life she never could be got to look with 
 any favour upon those Liebig's extracts of knowledge 
 which are designed to make smooth the way to 
 examinations. If she felt intolerance toward any- 
 thing it was toward the series of primers which in 
 ever-increasing numbers she saw flooding the world 
 of literature; and she would often say that she 
 would rather a child were taught to think in one 
 language than to talk in half a dozen. I can imagine 
 that she was not unwilling to allow those whose 
 future she cared for to go somewhat handicapped 
 into the race for life. Nevertheless her efforts were 
 not solely directed to the stimulating of the imagina- 
 tion, least of all to such stimulus in neglect of the 
 powers of observation. If those who were with her 
 did not reap the benefits of this last kind of teaching 
 as much as they might well have done, the fault lay 
 with themselves alone. She delighted especially in 
 natural history, and in telling stories of its wonders, 
 as of how the mason-bee built his house of stones 
 and mud ; of how wasps papered their underground 
 homes with paper made of wood-fibres, or varnished 
 their hanging cells to make them waterproof. 
 
 " Some of these pictures have been preserved in the 
 story of Little Wanderlin. I believe that almost the 
 first time I ever passed beyond the limits of the 
 garden (I was less than four at the time), was when 
 on one occasion she took me down to the canal to see 
 the gnats rising up out of their tiny boats. And 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 75 
 
 (alas !) perhaps of all the wonders of insect life which 
 I have in my lifetime had the opportunity of 
 perusing, this is almost the only one with which my 
 memory is furnished." 
 
 Speculation on religious subjects for the most part 
 slept in Annie's mind during these years of active 
 work ; time also was making hoped-for things seem 
 nearer, and as life began to wear a more tender and 
 serious aspect, she felt little eagerness to over- 
 turn. There were points, however, upon which 
 anxiety having been awakened could not be laid 
 to rest at will. The greatest help she got towards 
 clearing away these difficulties was from the writings 
 of Professor Maurice and Mr. Kingsley. With 
 the latter she had the privilege of a short corre- 
 spondence on the subject, which of all others had 
 disturbed her most, that namely of eternal punish- 
 ment. The doctrine of an eternal hope was only 
 just beginning to be talked about then amongst 
 Church people, almost all the orthodox holding 
 strongly the opposite view. Mr. Kingsley 's beautiful 
 words in the sympathising answer he sent to her 
 reached Annie like a bridge of light across the dark- 
 ness. His opinions sounded wonderfully bold then ; 
 but Annie at once accepted the comfort for which 
 she had longed so much. A cloud seemed to be 
 rolled away from her vision of God, she was able to 
 look up with confidence and trace a Father's image 
 everywhere. The spirit of what began to be called 
 the Broad Church School was particularly congenial 
 
76 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 to her at that time : it seemed to take away the curse 
 from the world, and lift mankind out of the darkness 
 into the light, to give free scope to human sympathies, 
 whose every impulse the young had been taught to 
 condemn by the ascetic evangelical teaching of the 
 past. It made Annie very happy to have a beau- 
 tiful idea of God, which she might present to her 
 children, and to be able to speak to them of the 
 natural order of the world as being worthy and right, 
 and leading on to other orders more beautiful and 
 worthier still. No wonder that the new and healthier 
 doctrines concerning life and death, and judgment 
 to come, found ready admittance into a mind pre- 
 pared as Annie's had been to receive them. They 
 cleared her mental vision, and prepared her for 
 deeper knowledge of God, but the spiritual force 
 which she obtained then, though it made sunshine 
 through all her happy time, did not prove strong 
 enough to pierce the clouds of sorrow when later on 
 they closed round her, nor warm enough to cherish a 
 heart bereaved of its possessions, nor firm enough to 
 sustain tired footsteps along the cheerless paths of 
 life, nor profound enough to sound the depths of 
 spiritual need for a soul tossed upon that inner sea 
 where deep calls unto deep through a darkness as of 
 the grave. . 
 
 To these, the happiest years of Annie's life, 
 succeeded the least happy. Her calm was broken 
 into by the illness and death of her childhood's dear 
 first companion, her brother Arthur ; but she was able 
 to lay aside her own selfish regrets when his suffer- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 77 
 
 ings came to an end, and she could think of him at 
 peace, gentle as he had ever been, mirthful as he had 
 been used to be, glad in the sunshine of God. The 
 second sorrow, which followed quickly after the first, 
 was more difficult to bear, and with it her will could 
 not reconcile itself. Her childhood's companion had 
 left her side without withering from her heart or her 
 life ; but when Henry was taken there came with his 
 departure a sense of loss that made an entire separa- 
 tion in her life between its past and its future. 
 Annie never saw any one else whose character she so 
 entirely admired as she did that of her brother 
 Henry, nor one whose esteem she so passionately 
 coveted as she did his ; she lost a living standard of 
 right when she lost him, and found herself short of 
 one of her chief aims in life. In a sense she never 
 recovered from this bereavement, though at the time 
 she only seemed to draw more closely to the trea- 
 sures that were left. But, one by one, others were 
 threatened or taken away. First there grew up 
 anxiety about the health of the friend who was 
 dearer to her than any other, and clouds began to 
 gather over the prospect of her future years; then 
 the change came on account of which Annie as the 
 mother was not needed any more, and a new life in 
 a new place had to be sought out and taken up. She 
 felt this going forth as a being driven out of Paradise ;. 
 it was the end of the only time in her life in which 
 all her natural instincts were satisfied, and when she 
 said good-bye to the home in the valley, protected by 
 its low surrounding hills, in its sheltered beauty, a 
 
78 ANNIE KEAKY. 
 
 symbol of peace, she took leave also of her own life's 
 sunshine and peace for many years to come. 
 
 One of the prettiest of her nursery rhymes, " The 
 Last Day of Flowers," was written upon the last day 
 she spent in the place. It was after taking a Jong 
 loving look at the little meadow near the house 
 one evening in June that she wrote it, and there is 
 a ring of sadness in the piece which suggests the 
 current of her thoughts how she was remembering 
 other summer days, and looking back regretfully to 
 the fun of hay-making she had shared so often with 
 the children there. True to her habit of many years 
 she tuned her sadness, as she had been wont to tune 
 her joy, to the notes of nursery music. 
 
 THE LAST DAY OF FLOWERS. 
 
 Brother, before we go to bed, 
 
 Let's run to the meadow gate 
 
 And pull a bunch of cuckoo flowers, 
 
 To-morrow 'twill be too late ; 
 
 For John says he must mow the grass 
 
 Before the sun is high. 
 
 I wonder do the flowers know 
 
 That to-morrow they must die ? 
 
 All day to-morrow you and John . 
 
 Will toss out in the sun, 
 
 Dead flowers and faded grass together : 
 
 You'll only think of the fun, 
 
 But I shall feel a little sad, 
 
 For you know I always say 
 
 That the glory of the year is gone 
 
 When the flowers are cut away. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 79 
 
 When all the pleasant meadow-lands 
 Are bare, and still, and green, 
 They never look so bright to me 
 As in the spring they've been. 
 I like to see the meadow-sweet 
 In the wind move to and fro ; 
 Purples growing high in the grass, 
 Red pimpernels below. 
 
 Brightly the stitchwort star-flower's shine, 
 
 Yet surely if I were near, 
 
 In every flower's heart I should find 
 
 Hidden a glittering tear ; 
 
 And, see 1 the poppies near the hedge 
 
 Each slowly bends its head ; 
 
 Can they be telling one another, 
 
 " To-morrow you'll be dead " ? 
 
 I shall not join the hay-making 
 Or play i' the hay with you ; 
 I am so sorry for the flowers 
 We have loved the summer through : 
 I'm glad the sun shone out so warm, 
 That sweetly passed the hours, 
 And that the air was bright and still 
 On the last day of flowers. 
 
 " This has been a quiet, happy year," Annie wrote 
 to a friend between the time of her brother Henry's 
 death and that of her leaving the children, "and 
 lately there have been so many sad events in our 
 family that it seems a great thing to look back on a 
 whole year that has not been disturbed by any great 
 sorrow. I wonder whether you feel the same pain as 
 I do in looking back on the gradual slipping away of 
 time. I have been feeling it just now so vividly ; I 
 
80 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 was looking out of the window, and I observed that 
 the great trees before the house had put on their 
 dark green summer colour, that the delicate spring 
 freshness was gone ; and I felt that another spring 
 was completely past and another summer rapidly 
 going, and I thought that the youth and spring of 
 my life was past, and I took just one look through 
 its possible summer and autumn and winter, and it 
 seemed a dark path to be travelling down. I don't 
 often indulge such morbid thoughts, but I tell them 
 to you because it was this train of thought that made 
 me resolve on writing to you this morning. Your 
 face rose up in my mind with the look of peace upon 
 it that it always wears in my recollection of you, and 
 I thought how much I should like to talk to you 
 about this pain, and ask if you had ever felt it, 
 and how you conqiiered it. Don't think I am a 
 melancholy person, I have generally very high spirits, 
 but there is such an awful reality to me about every- 
 thing, especially in the idea of anything being past 
 
 irrevocably. 
 
 ***** 
 
 "There is one other part of your letter I should 
 like to talk about, and that is, where you speak of 
 the love of friends who do not often meet or hear of 
 each other ; realising with respect to the living the 
 Communion of Saints. I was very glad of that 
 thought. I go on saying in the Creed that I believe 
 in the Communion of Saints, and yet I have not 
 at all a clear idea of what it is that I believe 
 about it." 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 81 
 
 Sorrow following upon sorrow after the deaths 
 of her two brothers and after her separation from 
 the children had taken place, there came another 
 change in Annie's life which was the cause of 
 still greater suffering to her than any which she 
 had yet endured. The connection was broken 
 between herself and her lover, and that communion 
 which had so enriched her youth came to an end. 
 Then had to be blotted out an image which through 
 the greater part of her busy practical years she had 
 kept in her mind of a home that would some day be 
 hers, one in which perfect understanding, and perfect 
 friendship, and equal work and love and care, should 
 fulfil her idea of perfect peace on earth. It was like 
 drifting away from a pleasant haven into a region of 
 storms. Annie was not naturally given to strong 
 emotion of any kind, but she had great tenacity of 
 affection ; for her it was use chiefly that made life 
 beautiful. A long inward conflict began then. Then 
 it was that she felt her feet failing where she had 
 hoped they firmly stood : it was then that calling 
 for strength and comfort from above she was unable 
 to obtain what she sought ; that the light was 
 clouded, and that she felt no hand stretched out 
 to her through the darkness, finding herself spirit- 
 blind in the sphere whose mysteries she was not 
 then accustomed to unravel. 
 
 Perhaps it had been foreknowledge of disappoint- 
 ment that had made her shelter herself so long 
 amongst the mists of dreaming that had concerned 
 always the lives of others, and had borne no reference 
 
 G 
 
82 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 to her own. After her awakening she never found 
 the old shelter quite sufficient to hide the world from 
 her any more ; to that extent her experience of life 
 had changed her. With Annie, however, the excess 
 and disturbance of grief could not last very long, 
 for it was a sort of necessity to her dutifully to adapt 
 herself to the conditions by which she was surrounded. 
 She was forced to build up a home somewhere in the 
 outward, or the inward, as the case might be. The 
 storm had passed over her and the flowers of her life 
 had been broken, but the sweetness of her nature 
 asserted itself still through her pain, rising up to the 
 surface, gleaming out in every look and word and 
 action, like the sun's rays in spring-time falling upon 
 a snow-covered plain, coaxing its hidden flowers up 
 again into the light. 
 
 Upon leaving the Staffordshire home in 1854, 
 Annie, with her father and mother and sister, went 
 to live in London, in the Addison Road, Kensington. 
 For two years after coming there Annie had still her 
 father to minister to. She was his dearest companion 
 through that time, his thoughts of her and his hopes 
 for her making the last gleams of natural sunshine 
 about his heart. He took the greatest interest in the 
 beginning of her literary career. His own life's work 
 was finished ; the books he had written were 
 already almost forgotten; for himself he had long 
 ceased to have a thought connected with any earthly 
 thing, but he thought a great deal of what the future 
 might have in store for his child, and hoped that her 
 gift might make her happy when he was gone. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 83 
 
 Her father's death was the last sorrow of Annie's 
 sorrowful years. After that came a long stretch of 
 uneventful time. She remained with her mother 
 and sister in the same London home, and there she 
 enjoyed the society of relations and a small circle of 
 friends. There was little variety during the first years 
 of this period of her life, and scarcely any opportunities 
 for self-development or for work; yet she seemed 
 to be able to live in several different regions, ener- 
 getic and sympathising in each, retaining her own 
 individuality through all. Looking back, one sees 
 how steadily interests developed round her, how 
 friends increased, how affection for them deep- 
 ened, how rich the time grew to be that had looked 
 poor at first. 
 
 It never seemed to put Annie out of sympathy 
 with the fulness of the life of others that her own 
 life had been forced into a narrow channel ; no 
 faintest touch of bitterness found standing-room in 
 her heart. Sorrow did not age her either, nor 
 diminish in the least her power of understanding the 
 thoughts and feelings of young people. No young 
 girl was ever afraid to tell her love-story to her ; no 
 aspirant after authorship felt shame in confiding to 
 her the most imperfect beginning; ready as she ever 
 was with just the comprehending, wise, enlightening 
 word that gave hope or patience to the disturbed 
 heart, or the unreasonable desire. 
 
 G 2 
 
PART III. 
 
 THE fifteen years which lay between her father's 
 death and her mother's were Annie's intellectually 
 active years, during which she fell by degrees into 
 the serious work of authorship. The old dream- 
 world seemed very beautiful to her still, when, turned 
 back from the action of life, she took refuge in it 
 once more a joyful world of imagination whose day- 
 light never faded, and where there was spring-time all 
 the year, as in the garden of Alcinous, or in that 
 grove of the Norse spring goddess, Iduna, which 
 Annie describes in one of her children's books. " It 
 stood on the south side of the hill and was called 
 'Always Young,' because nothing that grew there 
 could ever decay or become the least bit older than 
 it was on the day when Iduna entered it. The trees 
 wore always a tender light green colour, as the hedges 
 do in spring ; the flowers were mostly half opened, 
 and every blade of grass bore always a trembling, 
 glittering drop of early dew. Brisk little winds 
 wandered about the grove, making the leaves dance 
 from morning till night, and swaying backwards and 
 forwards the heads of the flowers. 'Blow away/ 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 85 
 
 said the leaves to the wind, ' for we shall never be 
 tired.' 'And you will never be old/ said the winds 
 in answer, and then the birds took up the chorus and 
 sang, ' Never tired and never old.' " 
 
 " Iduna," the story goes on to say, " the mistress of 
 the grove, was fit to live among young birds and 
 tender leaves and spring flowers." 
 
 It was from living so much in that grove of hers, 
 like Iduna, that Annie remained always young in 
 heart, yet, as we have said, it was not quite the place 
 of rest to her it had been used to be, never again 
 merely a golden mist of feeling, dream, and wonder. 
 
 Annie began her literary career with that up- 
 springing of the heart which all young people are 
 capable of after grief. The first shaping of her tales 
 was especially a happiness to her. The nucleus of 
 these was always some little cluster of persons whom 
 she suddenly seemed to find in her mind, and who, as 
 she lived in thought with them, became more clearly 
 known to her., whose natures unfolded themselves as 
 regularly, according to some inward law, as a flower 
 blossoms and a fruit reaches its perfection. Tales 
 were never suggested to her by events, it was always 
 character that developed plot, and it never seemed to 
 her as if she invented characters. She used to say 
 that her heroes and heroines were quite alive and real, 
 and that they spoke and acted of themselves, indepen- 
 dently of her control. As long as any tale was upon 
 the stocks, she lived in it, with a sort of double life, 
 which kept her, as only imagination can keep people, 
 from the narrowing effects of routine, or the roughen- 
 
86 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 ing of little daily cares. Yet Annie never separated 
 herself outwardly from any of these, nor grudged the 
 time and thought that she was often called upon to 
 give in carrying out housekeeping arrangements for 
 her mother at times when the latter was laid aside 
 and dependent upon a daughter's help. She made 
 no claim or provision for conditions such as would 
 have enabled her to write more easily, but might 
 have caused inconvenience to the household, never so 
 much as the taking of a room for herself even, or the 
 demanding of hours of silence anywhere. She never 
 dreamed of making her own purpose a controlling 
 power over any one else. On the contrary, she used 
 to settle herself to work in the midst of all sorts of 
 difficulties, at the mother's bedside often, writing 
 there during intervals of talk : or she would take her 
 place with her MS. before her at the common table, 
 where every one else was reading or working, or 
 even talking, as the case might be. It is true that 
 she had a wonderful power of concentrating her 
 mind on any subject, and she had besides such 
 pleasure in her gift that she really was. borne up by 
 it above petty annoyances. I can see her now, coming 
 back to her work in the little sitting-room, as would 
 happen sometimes of an evening, after she had been 
 taking an exhilarating run up stairs, perhaps to fetch 
 some book or paper, looking so bright, so thoroughly 
 joyous, that it made one happy even to look at her. 
 That she was just then conscious of some fresh 
 inspiration was clear to any one who could read her 
 face. In that little absence from us all she had 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 87 
 
 heard something, or seen something pleasant and 
 beautiful, some little difficulty of thought had been 
 cleared away, or some new light had glorified her 
 dream. It made one feel that there must be beauti- 
 ful things somewhere, since one of us, at least, could 
 see them ; the sober surroundings took a new aspect, 
 the quiet hours became pregnant with hope as the 
 evening wore on, and the hand plied its task until the 
 satisfied moment came when the happy smile upon 
 her face said that the work was finished, and set its 
 seal upon it that it was very good. 
 
 All this shows the happy side of her work ; but 
 there would come times when writing was not by 
 any means all pleasure. The act of expression was 
 often a great effort to her, she used to say that it 
 took her twice as long, and wasted twice as much of 
 her force as it need to have done, because of a certain 
 slowness of mind which her early habit of living in 
 dreams that led to no result, had engendered. She 
 never shirked the difficulties of her task, however, 
 but set herself to work as persistently on her bad 
 days as on her good ones, exacting a certain amount 
 of effort from herself. According as the day was 
 fruitful or unfruitful, she was happy or unhappy, but 
 no fear of the pain of disappointment induced her 
 to give up. On the whole, the pleasure of writing 
 itself very far outweighed the pain of it : but then 
 the making of the book is not the whole of the work, 
 and there were pains connected with the other parts 
 of it which were very real indeed to her. 
 
 At the time of the completion of any work, she 
 
88 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 always suffered a reaction, from that uplifting which 
 contact with the ideal world gives, towards self- 
 distrust. There was to her something startlingly 
 prosaic in the thing done, compared with the doing 
 of it ; it was as if there came a sudden hiding of the 
 inner world by the materialism of fact. There were 
 two sources of discontent, one in having to leave the 
 ideal companionship she had been living in so long, 
 another in the development that the characters had 
 reached ; a certain mistrust of them in the period of 
 their partition from the parent mind, as well as a 
 disappointed realisation of self in them, like the 
 distorted reflection of one's face in a mirror. 
 
 The time between the end of one novel, and -the 
 first shaping of another, when any such hiatus 
 occurred, was rather a troubled one to Annie, during 
 which everything seemed to be shaken, changed, 
 unreal, nothing more so than her own consciousness 
 of self. She used to speak of the strange feeling of 
 unreality she had about herself when she was left 
 thus alone between dream and dream ; it was almost 
 like passing through a period of non-existence, until 
 imagination led her again into some new and beauti- 
 fully ordered world. 
 
 If the realising of her own work was almost a 
 shock to her sensitiveness, the sending it out into 
 the world and watching its fortunes there was a still 
 greater one. It was, perhaps, somewhat rash, for a 
 person constituted as she was to venture into any 
 sort of publicity. She scarcely ever got enough used 
 to little rubs against the world not to suffer by them ; 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 89 
 
 even the seeing of her own name in print was some- 
 thing of an annoyance to her, and she never got over 
 an absolute dread of reading a review. 
 
 She was always diffident of her own power; as 
 one, writing of her and her works after she was gone, 
 said : " Humility, and an almost suffering unbelief 
 in her own power, were her special characteristics/' 
 Her suffering had, perhaps, another root, namely, 
 the instinct of perfection which had been given to 
 her. Some artists appear to possess this in a larger 
 degree than others do; they are impelled by it to 
 strive after what they cannot reach, and are conse- 
 quently doomed to partial failure and to a constant 
 sense of disappointment. Annie needed also to be 
 assured by a verdict outside herself that her jewels 
 were real jewels, not sham ones. She never could 
 cheat herself into fancying that her success was 
 greater than it really was, however much she valued 
 the kind appreciation of friends, but weighed her- 
 self and her position with the same impartiality 
 she would have used in estimating the deserts of 
 a stranger. 
 
 Whenever the voice from the world outside seemed 
 to confirm the mistrustful voice within, a slight recoil 
 upon herself began, which arrested, to a certain 
 extent, her progress, and drew a veil of reticence over 
 her spirit which was injurious to her as an artist. 
 It used to strike her almost with a sense of shame 
 when she saw that she had revealed any thought or 
 fancy that met with no response, and with a feeling 
 of pain akin to that of sending forth a little child 
 
90 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and seeing that it received no shelter anywhere. 
 Sympathy was almost necessary to the full develop- 
 ment of her gifts. Had she been so fortunate as to 
 receive a full measure of it earlier than she did in 
 her career, she would, perhaps, advancing towards 
 her prime more rapidly, have attained a greater one 
 than it was her actual lot to reach. Annie passed 
 through periods of really deep discouragement, when 
 she fancied that she was but a cumberer of the 
 ground ; and if she could, at these times, have seen 
 any opening for active work such as she could have 
 felt to be like a call of duty, she would have forced 
 herself to keep from writing any more. But fate did 
 not open out such a way for her. 
 
 The only change she had during her working 
 years came early in the course of them in the shape 
 of travel, and it was provided for her by the kindness 
 of a friend. 
 
 Annie's health had been a growing cause of anxiety 
 to her family ever since the time of her father's death, 
 a delicacy of the lungs having begun to make itself, 
 apparent then. In the autumn of the year 1858, 
 when she had just published the last of her early 
 children's books, The Rival Kings, and had finished 
 writing her first novel, Through, the Shadoius, this 
 delicacy seemed likely to assume a dangerous form, 
 and it was then that she was taken, by the friend 
 above mentioned, for a winter's travel in Egypt. 
 The remedy came in good time, for the disease was 
 arrested, and Annie enjoyed many years of health 
 after her return home. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 91 
 
 In spite of all the pleasure and advantage which 
 the plan offered, it cost Annie a great pang to make 
 up her mind to go away from us all. She ex- 
 perienced quite a shock of fear in the thought of it 
 a shock which foreshadows in my recollection of 
 both, another intense trembling of heart that shook 
 her twenty years afterwards, when she was told that 
 she must pass on alone to another unknown land. 
 She never regretted having taken the earthly journey 
 her one flight into the world, she used to call it ; 
 and every circumstance connected with it shone 
 brightly in her recollection to the last days of her 
 life. She certainly got all the good out of her travel 
 that it was possible to get, and more than even her 
 fancy had pictured ; images were stored up in her 
 mind to which she never wearied of recurring. The 
 scenery of the country made a great impression upon 
 her, and she always afterwards loved its peculiar 
 kind of beauty better than any other than any, at 
 least, that did not belong to " home." 
 
 In her first letter from Alexandria she wrote : " I 
 quite despair of giving you any idea of the wonders of 
 the streets. Everything is like a story. It is endless 
 amusement to look out of the window ; ever so many 
 strange things are going on. At the corner of our 
 street sits an old money-changer, with his beard 
 nearly in his lap. He has three bright brass bowls 
 before him, full of little copper coins, and he keeps 
 rattling a number of silver coins in his hand. Some- 
 body is always coming to change money, and then 
 such a scene of quarrelling and gesticulating ensues ! 
 
92 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The water-sellers are very picturesque ; they have 
 great skins of water under their arms, or else 
 graceful, long-necked pitchers, and they carry strings 
 of bright, round brass cups, into which they pour the 
 water, which people buy for a small copper coin. . . , 
 
 " There are a great many people selling things in 
 the streets. Boys, with bare brown legs, indescribably 
 dusty, and dressed in a single wide blue garment, 
 followed us to offer us cakes, a curious kind of sugar- 
 plums, fruit, and flowers. If I had had any Turkish 
 money I should have bought some of the cakes ; they 
 looked so unlike European cakes. Women with their 
 faces hidden under a corner of a blue garment, walk 
 along with large wooden trays on their heads, full of 
 flat bread cakes. 
 
 "We passed the English church. It stands in a 
 garden, full of Eastern plants and flowers, which would 
 have been beautiful if they had not been so covered 
 with dust. There is an inscription in large stone 
 letters over the porch 'The Lord our God is 
 gracious and merciful, and His truth endureth from 
 generation to generation/ I thought it looked so 
 nice to see those English words in the midst of such 
 a strange, foreign scene, and that the motto was 
 particularly well chosen for the place. There are 
 specimens here of every face under the sun ; from 
 English people, in English costume, riding frantically 
 about on donkeys, with a horde of Arabs at their 
 heels, to the darkest negroes, with no costume at all 
 but a white sheet twisted in some peculiar fashion 
 round them. , 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 93 
 
 " It is a beautiful sight, I think, to see a tall Arab 
 leading a string of camels. He walks so gracefully ; 
 his dress, white or blue, swaying about with the 
 wind, such a contrast to his bare, dusty legs; and 
 the camels, one by one, follow, stooping their long 
 necks, and walking with a curious swinging motion. 
 It is quite right to call them the ships of the desert, 
 they really do sail. There are groups of donkeys 
 quite handsome-looking animals Egyptian donkeys 
 are and mules and goats, which all add to the 
 strange appearance of the streets and squares. It 
 struck me that the people looked much merrier and 
 better off than I expected. They most of them have 
 such eager, laughing faces, and seem to be enjoying 
 themselves very much. Every one boys, girls, men, 
 and women, walk and run gracefully ; and the dress, 
 however dirty and ragged, is graceful, and gracefully 
 put on ; and the bare feet do not look so wretched 
 as bare feet do elsewhere. 
 
 " We walked down to the shore, and saw the 
 sun set on the sea, and heard the waves of the 
 Mediterranean splash upon Egyptian sands. It 
 was a lovely sunset: all manner of colours and 
 glorious lights upon the sky and sea. How I wish 
 you could have seen it; whenever I see anything 
 beautiful I long for you, and feel as if I could 
 hardly bear to wait so long before I can talk to 
 you about it. 
 
 " I wish that I could send you a little of this 
 delicious balmy air, neither too hot nor too cold, but 
 so clear and invigorating. A gentleman who has 
 
94 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 just been here says that there is no such thing 
 among the poor here as what we should call priva- 
 tion in England. Every one, even the poorest, have 
 as much as they like to eat, and as many clothes as 
 they care for. Is it not pleasant to think there are 
 places in the world where the poor do not suffer 
 hunger or cold ? " 
 
 She describes her first view of the desert near 
 Cairo : 
 
 " Yesterday we took our first ride into the desert. 
 We went to see the tombs of the Caliphs, which 
 are about two miles from Cairo. I was more 
 struck with my first view of the desert than even 
 I expected to be. I had always fancied a flat 
 uniform expanse of sand, but it is not so. There 
 are innumerable sand-heaps, of every variety of 
 shape and colour, rising up all round ; none of them 
 high enough to prevent the eye taking in the 
 immense extent of prospect, but still breaking the 
 monotony of the scene sufficiently to be a great 
 relief to the eye. The colouring, too, is wonderful ; 
 and the clearness of the air makes every object 
 stand out in clear outline, and with wonderful dis- 
 tinctness of light and shade. I think I shall never 
 forget the scene that met our eyes as we came out of 
 one of the dark tombs into the light. The sun was 
 just setting, the sky to the west was one splendid 
 belt of crimson, shaded through all the gradations of 
 deep orange and faintest lemon colour till it melted 
 into intense blue. The sand-hills seemed almost 
 on fire with the reflection of the crimson glow ; the 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 95 
 
 shadows of the ruins fell long and distinct upon the 
 sand, and in the east, wandering away into the dark, 
 there was a long string of camels and Arabs travel- 
 ling farther into the desert. A party of Arabs near 
 us were just lighting their evening fire among the 
 ruins ; and some lean, wolfish-looking dogs had con- 
 gregated on a sand-hill near, and were beginning 
 the wild baying that Egyptian dogs seem to think it 
 incumbent on them to keep up the whole night." 
 
 In another letter written from Cairo she gives 
 a description of a visit she had paid whilst at 
 Alexandria, in the company of her friend, to the 
 Hareem of the Pasha of Egypt. 
 
 " I think it would interest you to have an exact 
 description of our visit to the Hareem," she writes, 
 " which appears to me to be one of the most in- 
 teresting incidents of our journey so far. I have so 
 often read about Hareerns, and wondered about them* 
 that now I have seen one I can hardly believe it was 
 not a kind of dream. The day before we left Alex- 
 andria, the wife of the French Consul took us to 
 visit the wife of the Pasha of Egypt. We had a 
 short drive from Alexandria, and then came to a 
 large white building ; the gates were opened to us by 
 a stern-looking, ugly black man, just such an one as 
 one reads about in the Arabian Nights. . . . 
 
 " We came into a lofty and spacious room ; in the 
 middle a kind of transept opened on to it, at the end 
 of which was a very large latticed window covered 
 with white muslin curtains. There was a kind of 
 raised dais in one part of the room, furnished with 
 
96 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 crimson satin cushions. Several girls were standing 
 about this room when we came in ; they motioned to 
 us to sit down on the cushions of the dais. By and 
 by a curtain in the opposite wall was pulled aside, 
 and the princess came from an inner room, which 
 appeared from a glimpse I had of it to be as spacious 
 as the one we were in. The princess is a very tall 
 fair woman (she was a Circassian slave when the 
 Pasha married her), and she must at one time have 
 been very beautiful, but now she looks out of health, 
 and her face has the most stupid sleepy expression on 
 it that you can imagine, arising, they say, from her 
 spending the whole of her time in smoking and 
 drinking coffee. She was dressed in a very hand- 
 some primrose-coloured silk dress, embossed with 
 roses ; she had a little yellow cap on her head, with 
 pendants of large diamonds, and her hands were 
 covered with jewels. She returned our salutations 
 languidly, and then sank down on a heap of cushions, 
 and began to fan herself with a beautiful feather 
 fan. Soon after one or two other ladies came in. 
 One was a favourite slave of the Pasha's, whom 
 he really cares for more than he does for his wife, 
 though as with Sarah and Hagar, she is the wife's 
 slave. She was very pretty and sprightly-looking. 
 When all the ladies were seated, a procession of 
 beautifully dressed girls came down a staircase at the 
 end of the reception room. Each girl carried a long 
 pipe with an amber mouth-piece, and a gilded and 
 jewelled handle. These pipes were distributed to all 
 the guests. You can imagine how puzzled I was 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 97 
 
 what to do with mine. I blew down into it and 
 made a great whiff of smoke come up, which was 
 not by any means so disagreeable as European 
 tobacco is. The princess seemed to enjoy smoking 
 her pipe excessively ; she leaned back her head and 
 puffed the smoke through her nostrils, and seemed 
 quite oblivious of everything round her. Her pipe 
 was renewed about every five minutes, for she never 
 takes more than five or six whiffs out of each pipe. 
 It appeared to be one person's business to supply her 
 with fresh pipes. . . . 
 
 ''When we had sat and smoked for some time, 
 almost in silence, another procession of girls came 
 down the stairs ; they carried musical instruments in 
 their hands, and seated themselves in a row before 
 the princess. At a slight sign from her they began 
 to play the most monotonous doleful tune you can 
 imagine ; three of them played on violins, two on 
 guitars, and one on a tambourine. Every now and 
 then one who seemed to be a leader sang a verse or 
 two in a kind of recitative. When this had gone on 
 a little time a party of dancing girls came into the 
 room and began their performance. It was a strange 
 sight, not pretty or pleasant at all. I could not help 
 thinking how tired the poor creatures must be. 
 They danced as much with their arms, heads, and 
 bodies, as with their feet. They went backwards 
 and forwards in every conceivable posture, and some- 
 times stooped their heads so low that their hair 
 swept the ground, then they would bound up into 
 the air. They had castanets in their hands, which 
 
 H 
 
98 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 they constantly played in time with the other music. 
 They were all very fantastically dressed, and had 
 long scarfs in their hands which they waved round 
 their heads in parts of the dance. . . . 
 
 " We rose to go ; the princess shook hands with us, 
 and invited us to come and dine with her when we 
 returned to Alexandria. Several of the girls followed 
 us out of the room, and as soon as they had left the 
 presence of the princess they became much more 
 lively ; they chatted in Arabic, and felt our dresses, 
 and one of them showed me that she had a watch, 
 and made advances towards friendship by patting me 
 on the shoulder. The French lady told us that she 
 once asked the princess why she did not work some- 
 times. She was rather offended at the suggestion, 
 and said, ' What would be the use of my having 
 slaves if I were to do anything myself ? ' Can you 
 imagine a more wretched life ? would you not rather 
 break stones upon the road ? The princess looks 
 thoroughly wearied. I never saw a face that ex- 
 pressed such utter want of interest in life. We left 
 Alexandria the day after our visit to the Hareem, 
 and we have now been five days in Cairo. . . . 
 
 " The sunsets here are most beautiful. You cannot 
 conceive how splendid the sky is for about half an 
 hour after sunset ; it is something one cannot describe ; 
 the colours so intense, the air so exquisitely clear 
 and still, the acacia and tamarisk groves below our 
 window so wonderfully beautiful in the rosy light. 
 Then when the light has quite faded, the stars begin 
 to shine, looking so much larger than they do to us 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 99 
 
 in England, and one sees wandering lights moving 
 about among the trees. They look very mysterious, 
 but they are only lamps carried by running footmen 
 before their masters." 
 
 Her longing for letters and for news of home in- 
 terfered a little with her pleasure in the journey. 
 " At last your letters have reached me," she says, 
 writing from Cairo before starting on the voyage 
 up the Nile. "I had begun to think that all my 
 letters were lost, and to imagine how dreadful it 
 would be if I should have no news of you all the 
 time I was in Egypt. Write to me as often as you 
 can, and some of the letters will surely reach me. If 
 it were only a line to say that you are all well, I 
 should prize it so much. . . . 
 
 "I wish I could come back every evening and 
 give you an account of all my adventures. I save 
 up every little thing to tell you when we meet 
 ... I dislike to finish my letters. I always feel as 
 if I had not sent half enough love to you, and as if 
 there were hundreds of little things that I shall want 
 to tell you when they are gone. . . . 
 
 "Yesterday we arranged our things in the boat. 
 I have a little book-shelf in my room, which is a 
 great comfort, for I shall manage to have my dear 
 books at hand not all of them at once, of course, but 
 I shall change them once a fortnight or so, just as if 
 they came from Mudie's." 
 
 She describes her enjoyment of the boat life on 
 the Nile : " It is Sunday morning ; I think I cannot 
 do better than have a little talk with you just as we 
 
 H 2 
 
100 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 should have between church and dinner time if I 
 were at home. I have very little to tell you to-day, 
 but I know you will be glad to hear that I enjoy this 
 peaceful quiet life extremely. It is delightful to go 
 out the first thing in the morning, and find the air 
 so fresh, and sweet, and sunny, and to glide along 
 among palm groves, and harvest fields, and sand hills 
 perfectly radiant with light. I think I like the 
 mornings almost better than the evenings. The 
 sunsets are exquisitely beautiful, but then they are 
 so solemn ; there is a sort of glad joyous calm about 
 the mornings that I enjoy more. . . . 
 
 " I stopped in my letter to watch a party of Arab 
 women fill their water pitchers at the river, and climb 
 the bank again with them on their heads. They say the 
 Arab villagers are well off, so there is no use in pity- 
 ing them ; but their villages are most wretched-look- 
 ing places, even the sheikhs' houses are never whole. 
 
 " To-day I am staying on deck longer than usual ; 
 the sail makes a delicious screen from the sun, and 
 the air is so pleasant. I should like it to be always 
 just like this. I am in no great hurry to begin sight- 
 seeing, the sights on the banks are quite enough at 
 present. I wonder whether I shall ever be able in 
 talking to give you any idea of what this scenery is 
 like ; I am afraid I shall not, for words cannot ex- 
 press it. It is the wonderful light that is the great 
 charm. You will get this letter about New Year's 
 Day. I wonder whether the dear boys will be with 
 you. You must remember that I shall be wishing 
 you all many, many happy new years, that I shall 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 101 
 
 be thinking of you all, all day long I am 
 
 almost always thinking of you and dearest mamma. 
 I pray that you may have a happy day before you 
 are up, and a good night before you are in bed, for I 
 am two hours before you in time, remember." 
 
 After leaving Thebes she writes : 
 
 "December 27th, 1858. I must tell you of our 
 delightful visit there. I am excessively delighted 
 with all we saw. We had a very pleasant and 
 memorable Christmas Day. We read the morning 
 service in our cabin, and then set off in our little 
 boat to the Lybian side of the river. Our boatmen 
 were all dressed in their best, and seemed in very 
 high spirits they had been promised something 
 extra for supper in the evening ; a very little thing 
 pleases them, they are just like children. As they 
 rowed us over the river they sang a curious sort of 
 song. On the bank we found the usual mob of 
 donkeys and donkey boys. Almost all the Thebes 
 donkey boys know a little English, and they all 
 made a rush at us, shouting out their stock of 
 English words into our ears at the highest pitch of 
 their voices. One funny little fellow repeated 
 with great emphasis, bringing out each word slowly 
 and with great difficulty, as if it were a lesson 
 lately learned, ' If I had a don key what 
 would not go ' at least twenty times over. 
 You can't think how absurd it was, his large black 
 eyes staring anxiously and gravely at me all the 
 time. 
 
 " We rode first across the plain to the Colossi. 
 
102 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 You have read all Miss Martineau says about them. 
 I cannot say that I felt as much admiration for them 
 as she did. The first view of them from a distance 
 is very grand ; one cannot see how broken they are, 
 and their great size and their position standing 
 alone in the wide green plain has a very remark- 
 able effect on one : but as one gets nearer the 
 impression is lessened. The face of one of them 
 is entirely broken away, and the other is so de- 
 faced that you cannot see a single feature. I 
 cannot see that in their present state they have 
 any beauty. 
 
 " From the plain we rode to the ruins at Medinet 
 Haboo, and with these I was excessively pleased. 
 The sculptures and paintings on the walls are far 
 more beautiful than I expected, and the immense 
 Hall of Columns (all still standing, and most of them 
 perfect) is magnificent. I walked about it in a sort 
 of stupid astonishment, and felt that it would take 
 weeks of study to form any appreciation of its 
 wonders. The sculptures on the walls are very ex- 
 traordinary, some of them so beautiful, and some of 
 them displaying such a wild unearthly imagination. 
 The faces of the animal, or bird, or insect-headed 
 gods and goddesses are wonderfully expressive. 
 You can form no idea of them from anything you 
 have seen in the British Museum ; they must be 
 seen together, making part of one great picture, to 
 be understood. There is one enormous bird that 
 is represented constantly in different scenes that 
 struck me very much. There is a strange, human 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 103 
 
 expression in its head and eyes ; and the size of its 
 outstretched wings gives a vivid idea of strength and 
 swiftness. It put me in mind of Loki with his 
 vulture wings. The winged ball (the emblem of 
 Divine protection) is sculptured over every doorway, 
 the wings are always most carefully carved ; though 
 it is up such an immense height, one can see almost 
 every feather. Sometimes it is painted in brilliant 
 colours. It is very difficult to imagine what these 
 temples must have been when they were entire, to 
 people who understood the meaning of all the signs 
 and could read the writing. The hieroglyphs are 
 frequently painted in the most vivid possible colours 
 on a surface as smooth and white as the smoothest 
 glazed writing paper. It must have been something 
 like going into a room papered with pages from 
 illuminated books, or, rather, each wall and column 
 was an enormous page, illuminated with far more 
 elaborate and exquisite art than any of our choicest 
 manuscripts, and each illumination was in itself a 
 history or sacred maxim. . . . 
 
 "After dinner a Persian with a hand-organ (in 
 which there were two monkeys that moved their 
 heads to the music) came on board. Ellen gave 
 them something to play to our crew, and you should 
 have seen how delighted they were ! Their exclama- 
 tions were translated to us, and we found that they 
 thought the monkeys were live dwarfs, or little genii ; 
 and that they were talking to them, begging them 
 to go on when the music stopped, and making 
 salutations to them. The common Egyptians have 
 
104 ANNIE KEAKY. 
 
 no idea whatever of machinery ; nothing will persuade 
 them that any machinery they happen to see is not 
 worked by witchcraft. 
 
 " Ellen and I stood at our cabin door for a long 
 
 o 
 
 time that evening watching the view. It was a very 
 curious Christmas evening scene. I don't think any 
 party of English children were better pleased with 
 their Christmas treat than these grown-up children 
 were with theirs. When the organ-man had gone 
 they sat in a circle, and the story-teller of our crew 
 began a story, first in a low chanting voice, as if it 
 were something awful, and then getting more and 
 more eager, whilst the listeners sometimes clapped 
 their hands, and sometimes joined in repeating 
 something all together as if it were a chorus. ..." 
 
 "December 3Ist. A strong south wind has been 
 blowing to-day, which obliges us to moor to the 
 bank. We moored under a beautiful palm grove, 
 in which there is, of course, a mud village. We 
 walked in the palm grove this afternoon, followed by 
 all the women, children, and dogs in the place. 
 Boats seldom stop here so that we are great curi- 
 osities. One woman invited us into her house, and 
 as I was anxious to see the inside of one of . their 
 houses I went in. It was very little larger than an 
 English pigstye, but it really was not dirty inside. 
 It consisted of two tiny rooms; one was a store 
 closet, in which the grain is kept, the other was 
 covered with a tattered mat. The woman explained 
 to us by signs that they slept upon the mat at night, 
 and sat upon it by day. This mat, an earthenware jar 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 for water, and a pot to cook in, were all the furniture 
 the house contained. As I left the house a party 
 of women crowded round me, bringing sick and 
 blind children, whom they expected me to be able to 
 cure. There was one pretty little girl who had 
 cataracts on both her eyes, and her mother could 
 not be persuaded that I could not give her some- 
 thing to make her see. It was very sad to see the 
 expression of extreme anxiety on the poor woman's 
 face whilst Hassan (our dragoman) was translating 
 her request to me, and my answer. The little girl 
 herself took hold of my hands, and tried to make 
 me understand by signs that she wanted something 
 
 to make her see 
 
 " In the evening we had the whole village down 
 on the bank to look at us. It was a very mild 
 evening, and we sat a long time on deck. You 
 cannot think how completely I felt as if I had got 
 to the end of the world, this New Year's Eve, near 
 this quiet, grand palm grove, and with the rows of 
 dark strange faces looking down at us from the bank. 
 Ellen celebrated New Year's Eve by distributing 
 biscuits among the women and children, and slices 
 of cold meat and bread to the men. Our crew 
 finished off by giving them a concert, which was 
 much applauded by the audience on the bank. The 
 men and boys sat on the ground to listen ; the 
 women and girls all stood, half hiding among the 
 palm trees. They would not come forward to take 
 their biscuits ; I had to go on shore to hand their 
 share to them." 
 
106 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 In her account of her visit to Philse she writes : 
 "Our boat was moored to the shore between the 
 second and third rapids of the cataract, and we went 
 out to take a little walk on the bank. The men 
 persuaded us to climb a hill opposite our boat, and 
 when we got to the top we looked down on a level 
 sand-valley between two ranges of hills. A neat mud 
 village stood on the sand, shaded by an immense 
 sycamore tree and several palms. The sun had set, 
 the sand was glowing with a rich rosy colour, the 
 shadows of the palms lay so still on the sand that 
 you could see little glimmers of gold between the 
 blue shadows of the leaves. A flock of goats, preceded 
 by the goatherd with his long staff, brown robes, and 
 white turban, were just winding through a little defile 
 in the sand-hills ; some women, with water pitchers on 
 their heads, were coming from the river ; and under 
 the sycamore tree a man was spreading his garment 
 to say his evening prayers. I was so enchanted with 
 this scene that I could think of nothing else, till I 
 heard our men saying, ' Phila3, Philse,' while they 
 pointed with their fingers over the farthest hill, and 
 then I saw, first, a little thread of silvery water, then 
 a range of palm trees, and then the immense pylons 
 and gleaming white pillars of the temple standing 
 out distinct against the great black rocks on the 
 farther shore. 
 
 " It is impossible to imagine a more perfect scene, 
 it was worth coming all the way for ; I shall never 
 lose it as long as I live. We stood looking till the 
 afterglow had quite faded away, and little faint lights 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 107 
 
 were beginning to glimmer up from the village, and 
 the dogs and jackals began their nightly howling and 
 lamenting, and then we went home to our boat by 
 starlight. . . . 
 
 "Two at least of our crew always come running 
 after us when they see us step on shore, and - they 
 hand us up and down the rough places as if we were 
 babies. I should not mind going anywhere with 
 an Arab to help me. They are capital assistants 
 in climbing ; so gentle and careful, and such pleasant, 
 good-natured people. The steersmen the boy, and 
 the man we call the Egyptian are my special 
 friends. ..." 
 
 After leaving Philse she writes : 
 
 " We are now settled to our quiet sailing life 
 again. I enjoy it very much, and find plenty to 
 do. ... 
 
 " We have just had a delightful expedition to 
 the temple of Abou Simbel; we saw it first by 
 moonlight. It was a most exquisite night, the row 
 to the shore was a pleasure in itself, and I really 
 cannot describe to you the wonders of the temple 
 when we had climbed the bank and saw the four 
 immense figures of Osiris guarding the entrance. 
 They were quite distinct in the moonlight. The 
 faces are really beautiful, though so large, and the 
 whole scene the immense, high stone mountain 
 carved into a temple, the river in the moonlight, the 
 fertile bank, with its palm groves opposite was one 
 I can never forget. When I had looked at the 
 temple a long time, we, accompanied by a party of 
 
108 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Arabs, climbed up to the top of the mountain to have 
 a view of the desert. We struggled up through 
 the sand, and were well rewarded when we reached 
 the top. We overlooked the African Sea the great 
 desert which stretches out for seventeen days' 
 journey without any interruption. It stretched out, 
 wave after wave of dark stony hills rising from a 
 carpet of the brightest yellow sand as far as we could 
 see, looking so solemn and still. We sat down and 
 felt the real desert air blowing on our faces, fresh 
 and soft and warm a real tropical night air, sweet 
 with the scent of the aromatic shrubs that grow on 
 the edge of the desert, and of the mimosa trees that 
 fence the Nile valley from the sand drifts. I was 
 very sorry when I was obliged to get up and go 
 away. . . .' 
 
 " Saturday. This morning we have been inside 
 the great temple. We went quite early, that we might 
 have the light of the sun shining into the doorway 
 while the sun was still low in the east. The doorway 
 is generally blocked up with stones, but a party of 
 travellers had been in before us, so we found it open. 
 It is a most formidable-looking entrance ; you have 
 to creep in, or rather be dragged in, feet foremost. 
 It is not, however, nearly so bad as it looks. The 
 Arabs within pull you gently downwards, and in 
 two minutes you can stand, and find yourself in a 
 splendid underground temple, supported by eight 
 colossal figures of Osiris, and by two rows of square 
 pillars on each side of these, richly covered with 
 sculptures. Besides the great hall there are number- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 109 
 
 less smaller ones, and long passages and curious 
 square dark rooms that look like hiding- places. . . . 
 We have been exploring all the morning ; it is a 
 most wonderful place. It is cut out of the solid 
 rock, and the only light that ever could have got 
 into it must have been through the doorway, which 
 must, however, have been very large before it was 
 choked up with sand. 
 
 " Since I left off writing we have arrived at Wadee- 
 Halfeh. A strong north wind sprang up and carried 
 us on at a tremendous rate. The country grew 
 wilder and more desert-like as we went on. Now 
 at Wadee-Halfeh, it really seems as if we had reached 
 the end of all creation, and that a little farther on 
 Niflheim must lie." 
 
 She gives an account of their visit to Abou-Seer, 
 a day or two after : 
 
 " Before we were up in the morning our boat 
 crossed the river to the Lybian side; and directly 
 after breakfast we set off for a long ride through the 
 desert to the rock of Abou-Seer, from whence we were 
 to see the second cataract. Our road lay by the river 
 for some time, and till we had lost sight of it and the 
 opposite green bank we did not feel ourselves quite 
 in the desert. At last we turned our backs on the 
 river, and then we saw before us the Great Desert. 
 There was not a green thing to be seen, only here 
 and there a heap of very white bones, where some 
 wretched camel had lain down and died of thirst 
 just at the end of its journey. Abou-Seer rises up 
 suddenly from the level sand plain. One side is very 
 
110 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 steep, but a patli has been made round the other 
 which makes it easy to climb. The top overhangs 
 the river, and when we had reached it we had a 
 splendid view up and down the river where its course 
 is disturbed by hundreds of little black islands, 
 which form the second cataract. It was a beautiful 
 scene. "We looked across at the purple range of the 
 Mokattam Hills ; then came a strip of yellow desert, 
 then a range of palm groves, then the river, dotted 
 with black islands, where a few dwarf trees grow, 
 whose vivid green looked beautiful among the black 
 stones and the turbid water. Far to the south 
 we got a glimpse of the river where it was tranquil 
 and blue again a bend of the shore hid the inter- 
 vening part, so that it looked like a little blue lake, 
 shut in on all sides by shores of barren sand, edged 
 with one brilliant emerald ring. You cannot think 
 how wonderful the tiny bit of green is here, where 
 the desert encroaches so on the Mle valley that one 
 can see for miles and miles the exact spot where 
 desert and -verdure meet. It was getting hot by 
 the time we reached our boat. We congratulated 
 ourselves that we were really riding towards home, 
 for Abou-Seer was the farthest point of our jour- 
 ney, and when we left it we began our return. 
 In spite of all my enjoyment, coming back and 
 telling you all about it will be the best part of the 
 pleasure. . . . 
 
 " "We got back to Abou Simbel last night, and 
 have had two more delightful visits to the Giants. 
 Last night was the most lovely night possible. You 
 
ANNIE KEARY. Ill 
 
 can't think how immense the statues looked ; we had 
 the full moon upon them. Some Arabs had lighted 
 a fire in the lesser temple, and altogether I cannot 
 describe how beautiful it was. The first thing I saw 
 this morning when I drew the curtain of my window 
 was the six great statues of the lower temple staring 
 at me from each side of the immense doorway which 
 they guard. It was a thoroughly Egyptian scene. 
 Some wandering Arabs had taken up their tem- 
 porary abode in the temple. Some of them were 
 preparing their breakfast, and others breaking up 
 some of the beautiful sculptured stones to burn into 
 lime." 
 
 During her second visit to Thebes she writes : 
 " We went to visit the Tombs of the Kings. After 
 crossing the river we had a very pleasant ride over 
 the plain of Thebes ; then we passed through a 
 narrow defile in the mountains into the Valley of 
 the Dead, which lies between the high ranges of the 
 sandstone rocks. It is the most desolate arid spot 
 you can imagine. The hills are all of crumbling 
 yellow sandstone, with here and there a vein of chalk 
 among them. Nothing green has ever grown in this 
 valley; it was perfectly still, there were not even 
 birds or insects in it not a living creature but our- 
 selves. The tops of the hills were, many of them, 
 very strangely shaped, as if they had been partly 
 hewn into colossal statues and then left ; the bottoms 
 were intersected by other white paths, like that we 
 were following, which wound in and out among them 
 and led to the different tombs. We saw the tomb of 
 
112 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Rhamses the Great, an enormous excavation, with 
 great halls supported by pillars, and endless painted 
 dark chambers, in the heart of the mountain. I 
 should have to write sheets if I were to attempt 
 to describe the sculptures and paintings on these 
 tombs. . . . 
 
 " Yerterday we rode to Karnac, and spent the after- 
 noon among the ruins there. We went straight to 
 the great Hall of Pillars, and wandered about for a 
 long time. One can really hardly believe that it is 
 the work of man. One could fancy the pillars the 
 stems of gigantic trees that had been turned to stone, 
 and that one was wandering in an enchanted forest. 
 
 " Hassan came to me as I was looking up at 
 the tallest row of columns in the centre of the 
 hall, and asked me if I did not now think that 
 these buildings were the works of the giants and 
 efFreets, who had lived long ago before Solomon's 
 time ? He has asked us both the same question 
 before, and been somewhat concerned at our in- 
 credulity in insisting that they were built by men. 
 He thought that he certainly had the best of the 
 argument in Karnac, and so did I. The Hall at 
 Karnac is certainly the thing I like best of all I 
 have seen, not excepting Abou Simbel. . . . 
 
 " We spent a pleasant afternoon at the Memno- 
 nium. The ruins lie beyond the cultivated ground. 
 There is little left of it but a part of the Hall of 
 Columns. It is very difficult now to fancy what it 
 must once have been. We had a good view of the 
 backs of the great pair from the court of the 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 113 
 
 Memnonium, but I don't think I shall ever get to 
 admire them. The district behind the palace is the 
 most desolate you can conceive an immense plain of 
 half-filled-up mummy pits and broken walls stretching 
 out to the mountain. It was once entirely covered 
 with stately courts and fountains and gardens, and 
 for about a mile in front was an avenue of colossal 
 statues, all as large as the gigantic pair that are 
 still standing. . . . 
 
 " Yesterday we rode round the place where the lake 
 was in ancient times. It is easy to trace its extent 
 by the mounds of embankment that still run round 
 three sides. One can fancy how it looked when it 
 was planted round with trees and had villas and 
 gardens on its banks, and when the pylons and 
 turrets of the palaces and temples of Medinet 
 Haboo were reflected in the water. Now it is a 
 plain, green with young corn. 
 
 " We visited the ruins of the palace. I made out 
 the celebrated coronation scene described by Sir 
 Gardner Wilkinson. It occupies one wall of the 
 immense court, and part of another. The pigeons 
 are flying away with the news that the king was 
 crowned ; the scribes reading the proclamation, the 
 queen listening, &c. ; on the opposite side the battle 
 scene. . . . 
 
 " I went up to the roof and walked up and down , 
 where I have no doubt the priests used to walk in 
 the cool of the evening, and where I dare say they 
 took Herodotus and Plato in their days to show them 
 the greatness of the great city. How splendid it 
 
 I 
 
114 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 must have looked ! The Memnonium, with its guard 
 of seated giants in front, and its palm groves behind, 
 and beyond it the river, Karnac, and Luxor. As it 
 is, the immense green plain, dotted with, here and 
 there, a palm grove, or a group of dark tamarisk 
 trees, and with the great pair in the middle of it, 
 is very well worth climbing to the top of the pylon 
 to overlook." 
 
 In one of her journal letters, nearly the last of 
 those written on the Nile, she says : 
 
 "I intended to have written you a long account 
 of Belzoni's tomb, now I think I would rather keep 
 it all till we can talk about it. I will tell you 
 about one picture that I thought the prettiest. It 
 was a representation of the boat with the soul in it 
 on its way to the regions of Amenti ; it has all sorts 
 of difficulties to encounter, and in one place has to 
 get up a very steep ascent. There a number of little 
 souls, represented as birds with human heads and 
 hands, come to help, standing in a long line on the 
 top of the hill ; they are represented as drawing the 
 boat of the still unjudged soul up the hill, and calling 
 out, ' Oh, come ! oh, come ! oh, come ! ' Farther on, 
 we saw the boat safely landed in Amenti, and the 
 dead person, depicted as a mummied figure before, 
 is changed into a winged, human-headed bird, with 
 the scarabseus, the sign of immortality, in his hand. 
 In another room we saw representations of the soul 
 passing through purifying fires. At first the mummied 
 figure stands upright, and serpents spit fire at him ; 
 in the last division of the picture he is kneeling with 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 115 
 
 a star upon his head, signifying prayer, and the god 
 Thoth is standing near. All the trials and sufferings 
 of the soul appear to happen to it before it is judged. 
 
 "We were able to see and understand all these 
 pictures much better on our second visit to the tomb, 
 for it was so much better lighted than it had been 
 when we first saw it. Candles had been placed about 
 the rooms so as to show off the effect in the best 
 possible way. You can't think what a wonderfully 
 impressive scene it was when we came down never 
 shall I forget it. The colours of the painting of 
 these inner chambers are as brilliant as if they had 
 but just been painted brilliant colours on a white 
 ground ; and the strange forms of the hawk-headed, 
 ram-headed, and serpent-headed figures stood out so 
 distinctly that one could hardly help fancying they 
 were real, and that we had actually arrived in the 
 regions of Amenti ourselves." 
 
 " February 27 'tk. We found some very curious 
 fossil shells on our walk; we noticed some others 
 buried in the stone, and sent Hassan back for a 
 hammer to get them out. He returned, accompanied 
 by our boy Ishmael, who is always ready to show his 
 zeal in doing anything for us. He worked so hard 
 breaking up the rock that we had soon a basketful 
 of fossils, more than we can possibly take home. The 
 kind of thing we take a fancy to puzzles Ishmael very 
 much. He is constantly bringing me something or 
 another to see whether I shall consider it good or 
 not, and he looks so pleased when I take it that I 
 am quite sorry to disappoint him; and am getting 
 
 I 2 
 
116 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 my room quite choked up with stones, broken pieces 
 of pottery, bits of wood, &c., which Ishmael has 
 collected, in the expectation that the lady will 
 consider them curiosities. 
 
 " It is now after our dinner ; the men are shoving 
 our boat from the shore ; the sun, a great red ball, is 
 sinking slowly behind the distant Lybian hills ; the 
 river is dancing in little crimson waves ; an exquisite 
 rose-coloured glow touches the tops of the chalk cliffs, 
 the long shadows of the men and of our boat climb 
 halfway up them, growing longer every minute as 
 the sun sinks. Achmet, the devout man of our crew, 
 is performing his ablutions in the river, that is to 
 say, throwing water over his face, feet, and hands ; 
 now he has turned to Mecca ; he puts his hands to 
 his ears, and bows his head three times in the dust. 
 We shall not get off till he has finished his evening 
 prayers." 
 
 "March 1st. We landed near a village and went 
 to see the church, for this is a Coptic village. The 
 church is a curious place, built of imburnt brick. There 
 were several small chapels under the roof; one hung 
 with very rude pictures of the Baptism of our Lord 
 and some saints. A shelf with a few battered books 
 contained all the church furniture. On going out 
 we saw the village school, held in an open court 
 before the church. An old grey-headed man, with 
 a very dirty turban on his head, sat in the dust with 
 about ten children sitting in a circle round him. 
 He had a tin plate in his hand, on which he wrote 
 sentences in ink with the point of a stick, and then 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 117 
 
 held it up for the children to read. The tin plate, 
 the ink-bottle, and the stick appeared to be all the 
 apparatus for learning the school could boast of. 
 The children sat in the full blaze of the afternoon 
 sun, and they looked as thoroughly inattentive and 
 as glad of the interruption of our coming as any 
 schoolboys could have done. The schoolmaster sus- 
 pended his instructions to beg for a backsheesh from 
 us, and was much pleased at receiving a halfpenny. 
 I hope he gave his scholars a half holiday in conse- 
 quence. This is the only school we have seen in 
 any village we have come to." 
 
 "March 2nd. We have had a delightful day at 
 Beni Hassan. We rode through a palm grove and 
 then over a plain till we came to the hills where the 
 tombs are. You know that the tombs at Beni 
 Hassan are nearly the oldest in Egypt. At the 
 bottom of the hill they look like little square pigeon- 
 holes cut in the rock, but when you have got to 
 them you see they are spacious rooms, entered by 
 good-sized doorways, and some of them having the 
 roofs Supported by rows of pillars. The pictures on 
 the walls are not allegorical, they refer exclusively 
 to the actual history of the person who is buried in 
 the tomb. It is most strange to have before one's 
 eyes pictures of the doings, the amusements, the 
 work, the very furniture of the house of persons 
 who lived so very long ago. I wandered about from 
 tomb to tomb trying to bring myself into the right 
 state of mind to realise it all, and to live the life of 
 these people whose pictures I saw before me, cooking 
 
118 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 their dinners, and sowing their corn, and setting out 
 on hunting parties, and writing down on rolls of paper 
 the number of their oxen, or sitting comfortably in 
 their gardens smelling lotus flowers. All these, and 
 hundreds of other pictures I saw, and my attention 
 was taken off sometimes by liking to stand at the 
 end of the tombs and look through the openings at 
 another picture which the painters and the owners of 
 these tombs must have seen too. The Nile valley 
 spread out at the foot of the hill, the yellow strip of 
 desert, the fertile fields waving with corn and sugar 
 cane, the broad blue river dividing them ; then another 
 bordering of gold, and at last the pink Lybian hills 
 glittering in the sunshine fancy this scene dotted 
 over with palm groves and low villages, camels 
 feeding in the fields, flocks of black goats and white 
 sheep, and blue-robed shepherds walking by the side 
 of the rivers, dahabiehs with immense sails like 
 wings floating along the water, and 'you will have, 
 not a good idea of what it is, but the best I can 
 give you till we talk about it together, which I hope 
 we shall soon." 
 
 " March 3rd. My birthday. I know how you and 
 dearest mamma will have thought of me to-day. The 
 first thing I thought of when I awoke was your 
 thoughts of me. Well, there is a charming south 
 wind to-day blowing us towards home as fast as ever 
 it can a delicious wild wind. I have been sitting 
 on deck all the morning reading Tennyson, and 
 enjoying the view. It is only a quiet view now ; hills 
 and desert have retreated quite from our prospect, 
 
ANNIE KEAEY. 119 
 
 we have only the low marsh lands of Lower Egypt, 
 the raised causeways and mud villages, and endless 
 rows of palms, and white dome-shaped saints' tombs, 
 and the pigeon villages, and all the sights that we 
 thought so wonderful at first when we came on the 
 Nile." 
 
 She writes from Venice after the party had left 
 Alexandria and were en route for England " Venice 
 is like a dream, or fairy land. I keep fancying that 
 I have been here before in a dream. . . . 
 
 " We have been to see the Doge's palace in the 
 great square of San Marco. The picture there that 
 pleased me most was an immense painting by Tinto- 
 retto, representing Paradise, or rather Heaven. It 
 occupies one end of the great hall where the Venetian 
 senators used to assemble. At first sight it strikes 
 one as rather confused, like a great crowd of faces 
 and figures with a bright light in the centre. After 
 looking at it a little time the beauty and the mean- 
 ing dawn upon you. In the middle of the picture, 
 surrounded by a brilliant white light, is a most 
 divine figure of our Saviour; two angels kneel on 
 each side. One feels that this is the heaven of 
 heavens the innermost circle, Numberless roads of 
 light verge outwards from here to all parts of the 
 picture. They are thronged with figures, people of all 
 ages old men, women, children, youths^ and girls 
 all with their faces turned towards the throne. Some 
 seem as if they had just come up from the earth, 
 they look quite radiant with surprise and joy; others 
 are seated or kneeling in attitudes of adoration, as if 
 
120 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 they were quite used to heaven. Two or three 
 groups pleased me above the rest : one was an old 
 monk, who is bringing a great book up into heaven 
 as if it were the work of his life that he had got to 
 show to God. It seems too heavy for him, he can 
 hardly lift it, and he is evidently half afraid ; and so 
 five or six little angels (heads and wings without any 
 bodies) have flown under the leaves of the great book 
 and are helping to bear it up. Another very pretty 
 group is a man and a woman just flying together 
 into heaven. The man's face looks upwards with the 
 most rapturous expression of joy; the woman, who is 
 first, looks back at him as if all her joy was feeling 
 sure that he was there " 
 
 " We have just been to the most lovely quaint old 
 garden," she writes from Verona ; " I wish I could 
 give you an idea of it. It was full of very tall, 
 ancient-looking cypress trees, and at the end of a 
 long vista of trees there was a flight of steep steps 
 cut in the rock, leading up to a beautiful old church, 
 from which one overlooks the whole city. It was 
 just sunset when we entered the garden, and we 
 could see the snow range of the Alps flushed with the 
 sunset light ; the church bells all over the city were 
 ringing for vespers, the garden was quite quiet, and 
 every open spot not shaded by the gloomy old 
 trees was covered with spring flowers primroses, 
 hyacinths, and periwinkle. It was not at all grandly 
 kept, and had no rare flowers in it, but you can't 
 think how lovely it was." 
 
 She concludes the letter with the characteristic 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 121 
 
 injunction : " Get some nice books for me from 
 Mudie's by the time I come home. I want par- 
 ticularly to read Bulwer's last book, What will he 
 do with it ? and a notice of Miss Muloch's writings 
 in the North British Review; but any new book, 
 any review, will be a treat after my long fast from 
 literature." 
 
 When Annie returned from her travel she took up 
 her literary work again. She began at once upon 
 her Early Egyptian History. It was on the occasion 
 of the publication of this book that she was intro- 
 duced by a friend to Mr. Macmillan, with whose 
 house she continued to be connected through the 
 remainder of her literary career. With himself as 
 well as with his family she also entered into relations 
 of friendship, which were maintained without inter- 
 ruption until the end of her life. 
 
 Annie never wrote quickly. During the ten years 
 following the publication of the Egyptian History 
 she produced only Janet's Home, Clemency Franklyn, 
 Oldbury, and the Nations Around ; but then during 
 that time she was the almost constant nurse of her 
 invalid mother, besides being the centre of family 
 and social life. 
 
 Some of her letters to different friends will, 
 perhaps, give a better idea of her feelings and 
 of the life she led during these years than any 
 description of them could do. Annie kept up a 
 regular correspondence with the friend who had 
 made her the companion of her travels in Egypt. 
 She wrote to her on one Christmas Eve : "I want 
 
122 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 you to have one line from me this Christmas morning, 
 to give you my love, and say how much I shall be 
 thinking of you to-day. I hope you will have a 
 quiet day, and be able to enjoy, as you like to do, 
 the real deep joy of Christmas. 
 
 " I know you feel as I do that if it were not for 
 that, the outside rejoicing, coming year after year, 
 would have something almost melancholy in it. It 
 is only realising how lasting and universal that cause 
 is that makes the outside tokens of brotherhood 
 satisfying and full of meaning. I write this to you, 
 because I am seized to-day, as I always am about 
 Christmas time, with the kind of dread of anniversa- 
 ries that comes from looking back too much, and also 
 with a longing to grasp some reality in the midst of 
 tokens of happiness which one sometimes fears may 
 become almost meaningless from being too often 
 repeated. How I long to be good enough to be as 
 happy as I ought to be, because Christ has come to 
 make us all one, and bring eternal life for all. How 
 happy and free from care and full of gratitude one 
 ought to be to-day ! One thing I am very grateful 
 for, and that is for all the friends I have. I have 
 been thinking about that this morning, and especially 
 of you ; and I must tell you how grateful to you I 
 am for loving me, and that I feel it is indeed a gift 
 of God." 
 
 To the same. " We have had a very sad time since 
 I wrote last. Mamma has been very ill; her 
 breathing at times so difficult that it was sad to 
 see and hear her. We never leave her a moment 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 123 
 
 alone. I have hardly done anything in the way of 
 writing since I saw you. Janet is quite at a stand- 
 still, but now and then when I have a moment I 
 refresh myself with reading some Egyptian history, 
 and I have written a few pages of my third chapter, 
 giving a sort of general description of the country 
 between Cairo and Thebes. I find it a great relief 
 to have this project of writing on Egypt in my mind ; 
 it occupies my thoughts at times when, if I had 
 nothing of the kind to think of, I should get very 
 melancholy. However, I think the worst is over. 
 Do not be too unhappy about us." 
 
 To the same friend, who was then spending the 
 winter abroad, she writes : 
 
 (< January 1st. A very, very happy new year to 
 you. It is a cold, snowy morning with us : I wonder 
 how it is with you. Every now and then, after a 
 snow-shower, the sun makes a little effort to come 
 out, and give us a new year's greeting. Then our 
 white garden and lightly-powdered trees look pretty 
 and cheerful, but the snow clouds soon drift up again, 
 and the wind begins to wail, and the trees to swing 
 themselves backwards and forwards like people in 
 pain, and all looks sad and dreary. I hope it is 
 not an omen for the year short gleams of joy, and 
 much gloom. No, I will not think that. We are, 
 however, sad to-day, for a very bad account has 
 come to us of poor E. P. [a cousin] ; I fear she is 
 dying. I have been reading two beautiful sermons 
 by Maurice, and walking up and down the room, 
 thinking, and looking out of the window. I can see 
 
124 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 all sorts of things and read a great many allegories 
 in our little garden. The two old willows at the 
 end, and the great solemn-looking cypress in the 
 middle of the grass-plot, have been talking to me 
 now for so many years. I am now half afraid of 
 them ; for they don't say very cheerful things always, 
 especially not on windy new year's days. That 
 cypress does shake his head so ominously when- 
 ever there is an east wind ; he is the Jeremiah 
 of trees. Yet I should miss him very much if he 
 were cut down. We have had a great deal of talk 
 together, and he has told me many pathetic stories. 
 I wonder what he will say to the "next people who 
 live here." 
 
 " January 3rd. I have no particular news to 
 write to-day, so I will talk to you about the plans for 
 writing you told me of in your last letter. Nothing 
 interests me more heartily than hearing of these. I 
 can't help being sorry that the idea of the French 
 novel has died out of your mind, though the plan 
 that has come in its place is a very beautiful one. 
 I think real autobiography must be the most difficult 
 thing in the world to write. One cannot sit in 
 judgment on the past till it is dead, yet, to write 
 ab r out it well, one must take up the dead body, and 
 galvanise it into a semblance of life again. It is a 
 sort of double labour, first to disengage one's self 
 sufficiently from bygone events so as to be able to 
 write of them justly, without morbid self-blame, or 
 self-consciousness of any kind; then to live them 
 over again with one's present self, and make them 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 125 
 
 real and alive to the reader. I think it is so much 
 easier to throw one's experience into an ideal person. 
 But I expect it is different with you ; and there is no 
 douht about its being a far more useful as well as a 
 greater thing to write a good autobiography than the 
 best of novels. I am now reading two autobiogra- 
 phies, but, so to speak, unconscious ones The 
 Journal of Eugenie de Gutrin, and The Letters of 
 Miss Comwallis. Miss Cornwallis was the authoress 
 of Small Books on Great Subjects. She was a 
 wonderful woman, and appears to have had great 
 influence. ..." 
 
 To the same friend she describes a visit to Eversley. 
 
 " A great many pleasant things happened to me 
 whilst I was from home. The most pleasant was 
 that I spent a day and a night at Eversley. I told 
 you that Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley were friends of my 
 cousins, with whom I was staying at Winchester. 
 When Mrs. Kingsley heard I was there, she wrote a 
 very kind note, asking Ellen to bring me over. She 
 said her children were fond of the Heroes of Asgard, 
 and would like to see me. . . . 
 
 " I was quite as charmed with Mr. Kingsley as I 
 expected to be, and equally charmed with Mrs. 
 Kingsley. She was very cordial ; one can see that 
 she has a wonderfully large generous nature. . . . 
 
 " Mr. Kingsley came in, and he, and I, and his eldest 
 daughter went out for a walk. It was a lovely soft 
 afternoon, and we had a delightful walk through the 
 pine wood Mr. Kingsley describes so beautifully in 
 My Winter Garden. I was very glad to see this 
 
126 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 wood, for I do so admire his description of it, and 
 have very often longed to see it. Mr. Kingsley's 
 great delight in the sort of wild forest scenery round 
 Eversley was very clear during our walk. He kept 
 stopping us to show us different views, and make us 
 admire different aspects of sky or forms of foliage. 
 He was always looking about with admiring eyes, 
 nothing escaped him. He gathered me some gorse 
 from a bush he always calls Miss Bremer's bush, 
 because it was the first gorse she had seen in flower, 
 and he showed it to her when she stayed with him. 
 After dinner we had an interesting theological con- 
 versation. It began with Newman's Apologia, and 
 ended with spiritualism. Mr. and Mrs. Kingsley 
 have asked me to come for a longer visit the next 
 time I go to Winchester. I feel I should like to see 
 more of them very much ; the atmosphere of the 
 household is just as nice and as genial and high as I 
 expected. Mr. Kingsley gave me a copy of Alton 
 Locke, and wrote rny name in it. Was not that 
 kind?" 
 
 She writes to the same friend the following winter : 
 "November I4fth. I wonder if it will make you 
 better pleased with your sunny southern garden, and 
 pretty view over the blue sea, which I suppose you 
 are having, if I make you see how things look here 
 this afternoon. It is a thorough November day, 
 raining steadily through a thick yellow fog. The 
 whole house is full of fog, the banisters of the stairs 
 are wet if one puts one's hands on them, and the 
 walls of all the passages look as if they had had a 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 127 
 
 sudden fright and burst out into a cold perspiration. 
 The only happy-looking things in the house are the 
 fire and old .Abe, our cat, whom I have just left 
 washing her face very contentedly on the kitchen 
 hearth. Mamma has been asleep all the afternoon ; I 
 have not been at all dull, for I have been writing my 
 first paper for the Monthly Packet. I have decided 
 that my contribution shall be, not a story, but 
 chapters on early Norwegian history, and I have got 
 a great many books together, and have begun writing 
 at once. To-day I have discovered in a French book 
 some delicious things about runes. I hope you don't 
 know much about runes, and that my paper may 
 teach you something. I have translated a little 
 Icelandic song in praise of runes into English verse, 
 and I am rather pleased with it just now, I don't 
 know what I shall think about it to-morrow morning. 
 Translating it has made this foggy yellow day pass 
 quite brightly to me, and now I shall walk up and 
 down in the firelight, and repeat the refrain of the 
 song till I get it quite right 
 
 u In brown elfin fingers her gold harp she took, 
 Oh ! sweetly it sounded, while from her rune book 
 
 Wise words she read slowly Ere one verse was done 
 
 The deer in the pine wood forgot how to run. 
 Oh ! the strong 
 Power of rune song ! 
 Chased, they forgot how to run." 
 
 " I find charming little bits of half mythic history 
 which I thoroughly enjoy writing about. There is a 
 king mentioned in a Saga called Frode, who has two 
 
128 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 giantesses in his house, who bring war and peace 
 upon Sweden according to the manner in which they 
 turn their millstones as they sit singing and grinding 
 corn in the mill. There is a horribly wicked king 
 too mentioned in the same Saga, who became super- 
 naturally cruel because he had had the misfortune to 
 eat a wolfs heart when he was a child. I delight in 
 these old stories." 
 
 To a young friend, the author of a series of papers 
 upon some of the French women of the Revolution, 
 she wrote, " I have been thinking that it seems along 
 time to wait till I see you, to say how very much 
 interested I have been by the last paper you sent us. 
 It is a sweet and touching record this, of the Princesse 
 de Lamballe, and one which, as you say, does cer- 
 tainly command a fuller sympathy than perhaps do 
 the other grander portraits you have already drawn. 
 Still, please try not to feel quite sure that self-reliance 
 and courage cannot be womanly. Don't think I am 
 not appreciating your princess. Indeed I do, fully. 
 I am only a little dissenting from what I see is in 
 your mind about women. I always feel that women 
 may be so much more yet than they have ever been ; 
 but they will not, if men continue to insist that they 
 should all conform strictly to one type. I like your 
 paper extremely, however, and think it is, as I have 
 said, a most beautiful and touching portrait." 
 
 It is astonishing how many lives Annie touched in 
 these quiet years. Children always found her out, 
 and some of her faithful child-lovers have pleasant 
 recollections of " Aunt Annie," by which name she 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 129 
 
 best loved to be known amongst them. One of 
 them, Stanley Lane Poole, paid a beautiful tribute 
 to her memory in Macmillans Magazine : 
 
 " My own childish recollection is very vivid of the 
 wonderful charm of Aunt Ajmie as a story teller," 
 he says. " She had the gift of fascinating children ; 
 she would draw us round her in a circle, and then 
 begin to tell us story after story, fairy tales, folk lore* 
 myths, fancies of her own, whilst we listened spell- 
 bound. It is impossible to describe the peculiar 
 charm of her story-telling, the quaint humour, the 
 naive reasoning, the rich imagination, and the rare 
 power of bringing it all home to child-minds, which 
 only comes to those who love children as Annie 
 Keary loved them. ... To make children happy 
 was a passion with her ; how successfully gratified 
 I can bear witness." 
 
 With all who had a want or a care Annie's sym- 
 pathy was almost boundless; she was much more 
 than merely benevolent ; indeed she was not apt to 
 make plans for the benefit of people in general or in 
 particular. She did not try to set others right, she 
 only listened to and loved and understood her fellow- 
 creatures. It was partly her humility that helped her 
 to understand, for it kept her from trying to make 
 others see from her outlook, and enabled her with 
 perfect suavity to adapt herself to theirs. She put 
 the glass, as it were, in the right place, and so saw 
 clearly all through ; seeing clearly she judged fairly, 
 judging fairly she could always believe in people, 
 and believing in them gave her the power that she 
 
 K 
 
130 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 had not to help merely that is too poor a 
 word to express what she did for many but to 
 save. 
 
 Another friend, Beata Francis, writing of her in 
 the Day of Best, says, " One of Annie Eeary's chief 
 characteristics was her habit of always seeing the 
 best in people, and, more than that, of drawing forth 
 whatever was best in them. Under her influence 
 people seemed to become what she expected them 
 to be. She eminently believed in goodness, and 
 almost created it by her faith." 
 
 In her youth Annie's thoughts had wandered, as 
 we have seen, from the old beaten tracks of religion 
 in -which she had been brought up, and she had 
 then found relief from her difficulties in the teach- 
 ing of the Broad Church school of theology. As 
 years went on, as she read more and thought more, 
 she found more and more to trouble her in the 
 theories of science, in speculative magazine articles, 
 in all that sort of literature that was leading steadily 
 on from question to denial She had not herself any 
 serious doubts upon the broadest articles of faith. 
 Her intuition of the spiritual side of things never 
 failed her, but she found herself warned away in 
 some directions by her intellect from the desires 
 of her heart, and whilst watching the advancing 
 tide of thought, she marked painfully how one 
 after another was being drifted farther away into the 
 gloom. 
 
 " It is the very literal, unimaginative minds/' she 
 wrote to a friend, " who are so much in danger now. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. ] 31 
 
 Their great difficulty is to believe in spirit, and all 
 the discoveries of the present day seem to increase 
 the difficulty to them. It seems as if everything 
 just now were tending to exalt matter over spirit, 
 and to proclaim that there is nothing but matter any- 
 where. I think the turn will come soon that will 
 set us all right again. All the great questioners lately 
 have been questioners only destroyers ; surely we 
 shall have some one soon to build up. Don't you 
 wish that a day of brighter light, of more fervent 
 faith would come ? If it is coming, I hope it will 
 be in our time." 
 
 Annie could not find rest in the place of those 
 who, whilst they firmly believe in the existence of 
 spirit, explain away its apparently lawless physical 
 manifestations ; she felt that they could not be the 
 " builders up " of whom she speaks, or give that new 
 impulse towards religion so much needed by the time. 
 The history of the life of Christ, for example, with 
 the miraculous elements in it explained away, 
 appeared to her inconsistent, faulty, powerless, and 
 it disturbed her very much whenever it seemed that 
 she might have to accept it in such an unaltered 
 form. She felt strongly upon the question of mira- 
 cles, because she thought that a belief in them was 
 bound up with the history of all belief, and affected 
 the value of testimony. It was a poor, despised 
 little door that opened a way first out of some of 
 her perplexities. She began to be made acquainted 
 with the facts of modern spiritualism, by means of 
 a friend who had some personal experience of them, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and afterwards Annie had the privilege of getting 
 to know a few of the most earnest and religious 
 amongst the spiritualists themselves. 
 
 The beginning of her search into spiritualisn 
 marks an era in her life. I remember the joy that it was 
 to her to get hold of that little clue, and the exhila- 
 ration she felt once after passing an evening in the 
 company of some spiritualistic friends, of whom she 
 said, " They speak of death as if it were just a door 
 leading from one room into another, and of the 
 friends they have lost as if they were as near and as 
 real to them as the living." Annie was brought by 
 spiritualism into contact with those who hoped that 
 they were approaching the dawn of a new science, 
 which might, whilst confirming the facts of miracles, 
 reveal in them the working of a spiritual law as real 
 and as predicable as the physical laws of the universe 
 had been proved to be. As the search went on, 
 she was certainly disappointed by the results ; she 
 often felt herself obliged to doubt the genuineness 
 of the phenomena ; she saw what temptation to 
 deceive the exercise of mediumship offers to weak 
 natures, as well as -the danger there might be in the 
 stance of letting evil spiritual influences flow in upon 
 our sphere. Spiritualism, it began to seem, was a 
 faith amongst whose votaries one found not martyrs, 
 but many victims. The state of feeling Annie finally 
 arrived at about it is best expressed in a letter she 
 wrote to Professor Barrett, who in an article of his 
 own upon the subject in the journal Light, October 
 29th, 1881, says : " It will be asked, Can we not find 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 133 
 
 a religion, and so rest, in spiritualism ? My own 
 strong conviction is that we cannot, and in corrobo- 
 ration of it I will quote an extract written to me 
 some time ago by one who knew much of spiritual- 
 ism in private circles, and whose broad sympathies, 
 delicate perceptions, and profound spiritual insight 
 rendered her judgment on this question singularly 
 weighty. Miss Keary writes, ' I am very variable in 
 my own feelings about spiritualism, being sometimes 
 as much repelled from it, as I arn at other times 
 drawn towards the investigation ; but I think I have 
 quite ceased to have any doubts that there is an 
 avenue to fresh knowledge opened in that direction. 
 My doubt is whether it is a right door to go in at, 
 whether through it we may not enter into spiritual 
 regions less high than we might attain in other ways 
 I mean such ways as earnest seeking to enter into 
 the higher spiritual life through prayer and medita- 
 tion ; and whether we may not be in danger of shut- 
 ting the gate of the highest way by wandering into 
 bye ways. On the whole, however, I am disposed to 
 think that scientific examination into these new 
 phenomena must be allowable, and so I don't feel 
 any scruple for such a purpose in aiding any one who 
 wishes to enter into it, as far as I have it in my 
 power. 5 " 
 
 Annie did not, it will be seen, make a religion of 
 spiritualism, but it was a help to her in some ways. 
 She felt that it was a bridge between the present and 
 the past, and valued it because it confirmed the 
 testimony which history bears to the occasional 
 
134 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 unveiling of the supernatural in the natural sphere, 
 and gave a solidarity to the belief in these pheno- 
 mena throughout the ages of the world. 
 
 Spiritualism did not seem to explain much, and it 
 led as much downwards as upwards, but at least it 
 touched the region of mystery and came within feel- 
 ing of the breath of the unseen. Annie studied the 
 writings of Swedenborg also, and of Jacob Boehme. 
 Writing to a friend about them she says, " Sweden- 
 borg's theory of correspondence makes me much 
 happier about many of the mysteries and dark riddles 
 of the world, but when I try to put into my own 
 words what I have learned from him, I find how 
 vague and shadowy my impressions are. I am read- 
 ing Boehme now, with the same feeling of vague 
 edification. It is like being lifted up to a mountain- 
 top, and seeing miles and miles of landscape indis- 
 tinctly looming through tender morning light ; one 
 can hardly say what one has seen, but one comes 
 away with the impression that there are vaster spaces 
 and more glorious floods of light than one knew of 
 before, and that stronger and more practised eyes 
 than our own may measure and enjoy them; or it 
 is like standing at the door of a lofty edifice and 
 getting glimpses of the pillared aisles crossing and 
 losing themselves in each other. I had rather had 
 not you ? be dazzled and confounded by the vast 
 thoughts of such minds as Swedenborg and Boehme, 
 than read the clear, hard cut, inadequate explanations 
 of writers who can't see any mystery anywhere." 
 
 Whilst Annie's mind was occupied by these 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 135 
 
 subjects, came the great sorrow of her mother's 
 death. It almost seemed as if the crisis had been 
 reached suddenly at last, for which the preparation 
 had been so gradual. The care of the invalid had 
 filled a large part of Annie's life, and she could 
 hardly have borne the blank it left if she had not 
 taken up at once another work of ministration that 
 had been waiting to be offered to her until she could 
 accept it. She was asked again to take the charge 
 of children, four little girls, cousins of hers, whose 
 parents were obliged to leave them in England whilst 
 they returned to India. The offer was a great conse- 
 lation to her, and she was eager for the task, more 
 eager than ever after one morning spent in making 
 acquaintance with the children. " I feel as if they 
 were knocking at the door of my heart," she said 
 when she came back from them, " and that I must 
 take them in." At the same time she knew that 
 doing so would demand a certain amount of sacri- 
 fice. She felt that it would be her duty to suspend 
 her literary work during the time that she should 
 have them, and that this might involve its being 
 resigned altogether, if the period of the charge 
 should prove a long one. She did not hesitate on 
 account of this indeed she almost fancied that the 
 sacrifice would be no sacrifice at all. 
 
 Disappointments in her work had accumulated by 
 that time : her greatest success had not been reached ; 
 she had often felt very weary, had often been wounded 
 by the roughnesses she had met with on the way ; 
 was growing increasingly distrustful of herself, or of 
 
136 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 having any power to do good by what she wrote. On 
 the other hand she had beautiful recollections of her 
 former experience of motherhood ; and the personal 
 influence she had exercised then seemed worth more 
 to her than any which the wider, looser tie between 
 author and readers can bestow. Yet when the 
 moment came to make the final resolve, it did give 
 her pain to make it. She came back from church 
 one Sunday morning, and said, " I have determined to 
 give up all my own work. I have offered it up, and 
 I feel much more sorry than I thought it possible 
 that I could feel." Whilst the children were with her 
 Annie did not miss her writing ; their lives and their 
 characters occupied her thoughts, and teaching them 
 taxed her energies fully. That she won the children's 
 love need not be said ; she gave them a large share of 
 hers, and when she died they felt they had lost in 
 her a tender and understanding friend. The time 
 during which Annie and these little cousins remained 
 together was much briefer than had been anti- 
 cipated on either side, so that no break occurred 
 in her literary career. She was very sorry when 
 the charge came to an end, when there was no one 
 left for her to wait upon or protect any more. " My 
 arms feel so empty," she used to say after the 
 childen were gone. 
 
 The year in which they left her was an especially 
 sad one to Annie for another cause. During the 
 course of it, one of the nephews to whom so large 
 a portion of her love and her thoughts had been 
 given ever since her connection with their childhood 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 137 
 
 was taken away by death, and she felt in this be- 
 reavement much more than a renewal of the pain 
 she had suffered when her six happy years with her 
 children had come to an end. The autumn and the 
 winter that followed were amongst the most sorrow- 
 ful portions of her life. 
 
PART IV. 
 
 IN the autumn of 1871, the year in which her 
 nephew died, Annie left the home in Addison Road, 
 where she had lived through many quiet, useful 
 years. 
 
 During the time that followed, the last eight years 
 of her life, she wrote Castle Daly, A York and a 
 Lancaster Rose, A Doubting -Heart, besides a few 
 short magazine stories, and children's tales. Her own 
 personal history during that time concerns itself 
 chiefly with her spiritual life. It would seem as if, 
 at the beginning of those years, her spirit had heard 
 a voice that said the harvest was not far off, and 
 in the beautiful autumn fields had begun to look 
 into the worth of the grain, and turn the ripening 
 fruits all sunwards. 
 
 Through every stage of her life Annie's spiritual 
 nature had been ripening ; she had never gone back 
 from any onward step taken, but the mists of thought 
 that from time to time had gathered round her as 
 in seasons of trial such as that of which we have 
 been speaking had no doubt prevented her having 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 139 
 
 that full consciousness of the spiritual life. which 
 transfigures all our natural conditions. 
 
 At one period, whilst she was still young, she 
 had been drawn into close intercourse with one of 
 the friends of her old school days, as s'he was passing 
 through the spiritual crisis of her life, This friend, 
 Elizabeth, the mother-superior of a Carmelite con- 
 vent now, had travelled side by side with Annie 
 through several stages of thought. Brought up in the 
 same atmosphere of religious gloom, she had passed 
 out of it to the freshness and relief of wider 
 teaching, and on to the chill that had fallen upon 
 her when she found herself unable to catch amongst 
 the voices of many teachers any distinct answer to 
 the questionings of the reason, or the unsatisfied cry 
 of the spirit. At last, thoroughly discontented with 
 all those of whom she had sought help, she had 
 been strongly moved by the eloquence of Jesuit 
 preachers abroad. To use her own words, she had 
 been converted by their means, had passed from 
 darkness into light, from spiritual death to spiritual 
 life. Elizabeth had sent for Annie at the time this 
 happened, to tell her what she had come to know. 
 The story of her long hunger and thirst after 
 spiritual things, of her wanderings, her emptiness, 
 her despair, of her sudden enlightenment, the rap- 
 ture she had just tasted, the touch of God her spirit 
 had felt, still more the calmness of certainty in 
 which she rested, was one calculated to make any 
 perplexed seeker long for a like experience. 
 
 At the time Annie heard the tale it did not move 
 
140 ANNIE KEARV. 
 
 her much, but the impression of it remained, and as 
 her own need became more imperative, she thought 
 much of the satisfaction which her friend had found. 
 At last the time came when Annie made some 
 such resolve as Elizabeth had once made (one which 
 had led her into fellowship with the Roman Catholic 
 Church), namely, that she would give herself no rest 
 until she had found the way in which she could walk 
 most nearly with God ; and just then she was brought 
 into contact with her friend again. Annie was 
 travelling southwards when the meeting took place ; 
 it was in the autumn of the year that (as we have 
 seen), had been such a sorrowful one to her, and she 
 was leaving England partly on account of a failure of 
 health. The opportunity given by a few quiet days 
 spent in Paris between two journeys, was taken 
 advantage of by her to seek the Carmelite nun in 
 her retreat, and question her of what her experience 
 had been in ten years of the religious life- 
 Annie passed a great part of two days in intimate 
 talk with her friend, during which Elizabeth spoke 
 openly to her. She did not deny the struggles she 
 had gone through ; she could not conceal the triumph 
 which she had attained, for it shone like a glory 
 through her, and one could not choose but see. 
 Five years of trial she spoke of, and five years of 
 ecstasy, during which all realisation of outward things 
 was merged in the consciousness of the presence of 
 God, and in communion with Him. Her condition 
 at that time was a miraculous one, the body was 
 actually subdued by the spirit. Fasting and weariness 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 141 
 
 she assured Annie were not only borne joyfully by 
 her, but were absolutely unfelt. Whilst she spoke 
 thus simply of what she was experiencing one felt 
 the power of the Spirit in her ; when she began to 
 expound the dogmas of her Church, the radiance 
 faded, and pain and confusion came in. At the close 
 of the last interview, Elizabeth, almost with the 
 authority of one inspired, made a solemn appeal to 
 Annie. She said that she saw her spiritual condition, 
 that she was sufficiently enlightened to be able to 
 accept true Catholic doctrine, and that she was called 
 by God to accept it It remained with her to take 
 hold of, or to reject, the hand held out to help her ; to 
 allow fancy to lead her away into endless mazes of 
 error, or to give her reason and her will into the 
 keeping of their only safe guardian, the Holy Catholic 
 Church. In turning away from the Church, she 
 would cut herself off from God. There were souls, 
 Elizabeth explained, invincibly ignorant, who could 
 not accept true teaching, and such might be kept by 
 God's mercy from mortal sin, but Annie was not one 
 of these, for her there was but one way into the fold 
 of Christ. 
 
 Annie left the convent to undertake a long night 
 journey with Elizabeth's last words in her ears, and 
 the perplexities of divers periods of unrest crowding 
 her mind. She told a friend afterwards that she 
 passed through a spiritual night then. She came 
 out of it to take up a place of patient waiting for 
 more light, yielding up her wishes more unreservedly 
 than ever before to the leading of the Divine Spirit 
 
142 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 Annie spent the winter that followed at Pegomas, 
 a beautiful secluded little village near Cannes, in the 
 south of France, in a house lent to her by the same 
 friend who had taken her to Egypt with her many 
 years before. Annie afterwards described this place 
 in her novel A Doubting Heart, under the name of 
 La Roquette. In the beginning of the winter she 
 had a painful illness w r hich prevented her getting the 
 full benefit she had hoped to get from the change of 
 climate. Writing to two very dear friends, she speaks 
 of her illness : 
 
 " My very dearest friends, Marion and Sarah, you 
 cannot tell how I have been thinking of you both 
 every minute all this time while I have been ill. It 
 has so recalled the happy time when I was ill once 
 in your house, and oh f how I have missed you all, 
 how I have longed for the sound of dearest Marion's 
 voice and the sight of dearest Sarah's face coming 
 in at the door. How good you all were to me that 
 time. How sweet it was. Was I half grateful enough ? 
 It has been a great possession to have that time to 
 look back upon and live over again during some 
 wakeful nights I have had since I came here. I have 
 been with you all, talking to you all, and loving you 
 all so intensely, with my whole heart; and I have 
 had a great deal of talk about you all to our dear 
 Saviour, and I have been comforted about you, 
 because I know He is with you, and that the unseen 
 presence of your beloved glorified one is always 
 round you. 
 
 '" Now I know you will be anxious to hear some- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 143 
 
 thing about our life here. We are still at Cannes. 
 We have not gone up to Pegomas, our mountain 
 home, yet, for I was taken ill here. This is a 
 lovely place, it overlooks the Cannes bay, and 
 has a beautiful view of the Alpes Mari times. I 
 saw a little of the garden the first day before 
 I became so ill, and I can imagine it as I lie 
 here. I have lovely nosegays of roses and orange 
 blossom and strange highly scented flowers that have 
 no English names. I can see from my window a hill, 
 which is laid out in terraces of orange trees. I don't 
 know why, but the idea of an orange grove always 
 makes me think of Mrs. Sherwood's stories, and of 
 childish visions I had of beautiful things on reading 
 some of her little allegories. Is there anything about 
 orange groves in them ? I feel as if I had seen this 
 one in my dreams centuries ago. The gold fruit 
 among the green is very beautiful and fairy-tale like. 
 
 " There are no people in this large house excepting 
 ourselves and one old Frenchwoman, who does not 
 sleep here, but goes away at night to the lodge, where 
 she lives with her son, the gardener. The old lady 
 is very attentive and kind, and makes us very 
 comfortable in her French way. 
 
 " To-day E has been obliged to go away on 
 
 business, and I and the Frenchwoman have the house 
 to ourselves. It is so strange and lonely. Far, far 
 below, while I am writing, I hear occasionally from 
 some unknown region down stairs a door slam with 
 a jerk that shakes the house, which convinces me 
 that there is some one moving about ; between times 
 
144 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 there is a great stillness. My French lady is a good- 
 hearted old body : she has just come up unexpectedly, 
 thinking I should be lonely, to show me some lovely 
 flowers her son has just gathered. Now I shall be 
 alone till she comes to light my fire at four o'clock ; 
 then I shall get up and sit for a bit by the fire. You 
 can't think how I enjoy the wood fires ; no end of 
 fairy tales seem to come out of them. I can see 
 little cobbolds and salamanders and all sorts of odd 
 things stepping down in procession from the piled-up 
 glowing logs on to the open stone hearth, and the 
 dogs, which end not in dogs' but in sphinx' heads, 
 look stolid and wise over the glow, while the odd 
 little shovel and tongs look so knowing, quite as if 
 they only waited for me to shut my eyes to begin 
 hopping about and talking French. I wished I could 
 draw a picture of them for you." 
 
 In one of the first letters, written from Pegomas, 
 addressed to an old friend of school days, Lizzie 
 
 M , Annie refers to her interview with Elizabeth 
 
 at Paris : 
 
 " Our chief object in staying in Paris was to see 
 as much as we could of Elizabeth. I know you will 
 like to hear of our visit to her. It was indeed most 
 interesting, We waited for some time behind the 
 black curtain, from the frame of which iron spikes 
 stuck out in front to prevent any one coming too 
 near, and at last we heard a voice behind.it say, ' Is 
 it really Annie and Eliza ? ' 
 
 " She did not recognise our voices at first when we 
 answered her, but we assured her we were really 
 
ANNIE KEAKY. 145 
 
 ourselves, and then she unfastened the black frame, 
 and we saw our dear old friend standing in her nun's 
 dress behind the double grating. She was just like 
 herself; not worn or altered by the ten years that 
 have passed, but somehow dignified and glorified by 
 all she has suffered and experienced in a way that I 
 cannot describe to you. One thing I am certain 
 of, whatever mistake she has made and I do feel 
 her shutting herself up is a great mistake her errors 
 have not been permitted to hinder the advance of 
 her soul towards God. She has found that intimate 
 communion with our Saviour she went into the 
 convent to seek. 
 
 " She seemed not in the least to have lost her 
 interest in and love for old English friends. She 
 was most affectionate to us, and asked warmly after 
 you and all your belongings. We told her about 
 your brother's work at the east-end, and of the 
 ' sisters of the poor,' and she said, ' Tell them we are 
 expecting them to come to us; we are praying for 
 them.' We told her how many were praying in 
 England for Church union, and for greater light 
 and love. She answered, 'We will pray for them 
 all.'" 
 
 To her friends Marion and Sarah a little later 
 Annie wrote : 
 
 " I have been long in sending you the longer letter 
 I promised. . . . We are always thinking of you and 
 of dearest Sarah. I can't tell you how dreadful the 
 distance sometimes seems to me. I think about it 
 at night, and I often feel as if I must get up at once 
 
 L 
 
146 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and set off to London again. We are very happy 
 here, and it is a lovely place ; but no scenery or 
 place makes up to me for being so very far away 
 from my friends. I felt the same, though less, when 
 I was in Egypt. I do long to see you again, and to 
 know how things are going with you and dearest 
 Sarah. I feel as if it were quite wicked to be here 
 so far away, when perhaps I could help to cheer you 
 just a little if I were near you. 
 
 " When I am writing my new book in the morning 
 I think so often of the happy old times when I was 
 writing Janet, and you and dear Sarah used to come 
 regularly to hear it read, in the dear old Addison 
 "Road. How should we ever be able to bear to think 
 of old happy times if we did not believe that happier 
 ones still were waiting for us restoration and more 
 than restoration of all we have lost. But for that 
 certainty, how dreadful all looking back would be. 
 We must stretch forward to the things that are 
 before. It is a great effort, is it not? like lifting 
 up one's arms, and struggling to get up to the top 
 of a steep place that hides the view before us. I 
 often think of that when we are climbing the hills 
 here. One sees nothing but the steep hill-side before, 
 and longs to turn back to look at the sweet valley 
 below one is leaving behind. It is such hard work 
 climbing; one thinks one will give it up, and be 
 content with the narrower, smaller view, and sit 
 down and look back at that for ever, but a step or 
 two more, when one gets to the top of the height, 
 how inexpressibly glorious and exquisite the far-away 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 147 
 
 distance is, where the hills and the heavens meet. 
 How much better than the valley. . . . 
 
 " I understand now why Solomon sang, ' The rain 
 is over and gone, the fig tree putteth forth her green 
 figs/ for the fig trees here are the only wintry looking 
 things, they stand out bare and gaunt among the 
 other green trees; when they clothe themselves it 
 will be the most conspicuous sign of winter being 
 over and gone. . . . 
 
 "To-day the bad weather seems to have passed, 
 the sky is cloudless, the sun shines brilliantly ; we 
 have had a lovely walk to see if any of the fig trees 
 in what we call our valley are putting forth their 
 leaves. We call this particular valley ours, because 
 a dear old woman lives in it who has made great 
 friends with us, and invites us, whenever she sees us 
 pass, to come into her house and taste her wine, or 
 her oranges. The whole valley belongs to her, but 
 she works like an English peasant woman. She has 
 a pretty daughter who makes me think of Renee in 
 Villemont.'' 
 
 It was at Pegomas that Annie began to write her 
 novel of Castle Daly. For some cause or other 
 she never enjoyed writing this book as she had 
 enjoyed her other novels. At first she had almost a 
 repugnance to it, and was so much discouraged after 
 she had thought through about a third of the story, 
 that she very nearly laid it aside altogether. On the 
 last day of that year she took account of her latest 
 literary effort, and summed up against it. Either, 
 she decided, the conception was a mistaken one, or 
 
 L 2 
 
148 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 she was incapable of bringing it to a fit development. 
 She consented, however, to think over the matter, 
 and pray about it, just the one night preceding the 
 new year, and then begin the fresh season by casting 
 the story quite behind her, and looking for something 
 better in her dream-world, or by taking it up again 
 and working at it diligently to the end. 
 
 She had no cause to regret the decision at which 
 she arrived on the following day ; and yet she was 
 never happy in writing Castle Daly, and could not 
 understand why it should have been the first of her 
 works which brought her full recognition. Perhaps 
 it was because her inner life was making such rapid 
 progress at the time she wrote it, that all outward 
 shows of things, the whole of human life and nature, 
 were assuming to her deeper meanings ; there was a 
 shifting of the points of view, and a difficulty in the 
 re-adjustrnent of relationships between different sorts 
 of worth. 
 
 Upon their return from the south, Annie and her 
 sister made a home in London again, in Bedford 
 Gardens, on Campden Hill, and whilst she was living 
 there Annie finished writing her Irish novel. The 
 circumstances of her life were much more favourable 
 for work then than they had been when she wrote her 
 earlier books, for without constraining any one else, 
 she could command pleasant conditions for writing. 
 
 She spared no pains that she might carry out the 
 idea of her story in the best possible way, carefully 
 learning the chief historical events that she wished 
 to work up into her description of the Irish rebellion 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 149 
 
 of '48, and collecting from books as well as more 
 directly through friends and relations in the country, 
 details of the terrible famine preceding it. 
 
 During the time that she was writing Castle Daly 
 Annie paid her first and only visit to Ireland. She 
 spent two pleasant weeks in the west, near her 
 father's birthplace, amongst the hills and lakes of 
 Connemara, which she had chosen for the scene of 
 her plot. Many of her descriptions of Irish scenery 
 were written before she had ever set foot in the 
 country, yet they scarcely required alteration after 
 her bodily eyes had seen the places which her fancy 
 already knew, aided no doubt by the impressions 
 she had received in childhood, through her father's 
 beautiful memories of his home. Annie loved 
 its fascinating kind of beauty quite as much as 
 he had loved it "the frowning mountain heads, 
 and delicate purple distances, and soft green levels, 
 shading into the blue of river and lake," as she saw 
 them at Maam, and along the shores of Lough 
 Corrib and Lough Mask. She compared the bright 
 mountain mists to Young Ireland's dreams, in 
 Castle Daly. "Who can wonder at people who 
 live here growing dreamy ? " she wrote, " for there is 
 glamour over everything." 
 
 Annie knew very few Irish people personally, yet 
 in Castle Daly she has drawn Irish character as per- 
 fectly as any novelist has ever drawn it, has even 
 shown more skilfully perhaps than any one before her 
 has done, the subtleties which separate it by such 
 a gulf from the idiosyncrasies of the Saxon. Her 
 
150 AXNIE KEARY. 
 
 perception of the difference between the two sorts of 
 character was innate; the impartiality with which 
 she surveyed them both is another proof of that 
 imaginative sympathy which was such a large part 
 of her nature. 
 
 She gives an account of her tour in Ireland to an 
 Irish cousin settled in England : 
 
 " We were just one fortnight in Ireland," she 
 writes, " but we saw and did so much that it seems a 
 much longer time. I quite despair of conveying all 
 the pleasant and painful impressions that I received 
 in a letter. It is a country of contradictions some 
 things in it so delightful and beautiful, and others 
 so utterly depressing and sad. We were immensely 
 struck with the great beauty of the country in Con- 
 nemara, and the beauty and charming manners of 
 all the people we were thrown with, rich and poor. 
 Everybody was sociable and kind, and easy to get on 
 with, and the mountain children and young girls, in 
 spite of dirt and rags indescribable, far more beautiful 
 than the girls and children we saw in Italy. They 
 looked healthy too, and must have had enough to 
 eat, or they could not have had such exquisite com- 
 plexions and figures ; yet the squalor of the dress, and 
 the dirt and bareness of the houses, were what I 
 could not have believed if I had not seen them. One 
 has read descriptions of Irish hovels, but I really did 
 not think they had been so bad. What struck us 
 most was the continual recurrence of ruined houses 
 and villages. Whole villages of roofless cabins we 
 passed continually, and we were told either that the 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 151 
 
 people had gone off voluntarily to America, or that 
 they had been obliged to leave by the landlords who 
 wanted their little holdings to incorporate into large 
 grazing farms. The poor people we talked to all 
 seem to have lost all love for their country, and to 
 have no wish or hope for themselves but to get off to 
 America as soon as they have scraped together money 
 enough to pay their passage out ; and we were told 
 they do not come back again to settle. Once out in 
 America, where they begin to get rich, they send 
 money to the old country to pay for the passage of 
 the friends they have left behind to come out to 
 them. They don't ever care to visit the old home 
 again. Is not that strange ? 
 
 " We spent several days at a very lonely little place 
 called Maam, up in the Joyce mountains, and made 
 excursions on Lough Corrib, and up into the Joyce 
 country from there. I wish I could make Katie see 
 the place ; she would make such lovely pictures of it. 
 The little country inn where we stayed was close to 
 the lake, and had a beautiful view of an island, with 
 one of the oldest ruined castles in Ireland on it 
 Castle Hen, the stronghold of the fierce O' Flaherty. 
 The place we were most pleased with after Maam 
 was Clifden, where we had beautiful views over the 
 Atlantic, and of the twelve Pin mountains. We 
 stayed a Sunday at Clifden, and went to a small 
 Roman Catholic church, and heard a very character- 
 istic sermon from the priest. The congregation was 
 worth looking at such earnest faces, listening with 
 eyes and ears to the sermon, changing with every 
 
152 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 emotion the really eloquent words called up, and 
 below the faces such rags, such squalor, and a bare, 
 damp, mud floor for the people to kneel on, a pail 
 full of holy water, and a ragged mop, such as you 
 would not have in your kitchen, to sprinkle the 
 people with." 
 
 She writes to the same cousin in answer to some 
 criticisms on Castle Daly : " I want to thank you 
 for liking my story, and for all the trouble you took 
 about the MS. I am sorry you think Anne 
 O'Flaherty is turning out weak. I don't mean her 
 to be weak in head, or in purpose, but, as I think 
 most Irish people, or, at least, most imaginative, 
 sympathic Irish people are, weak in will, so far as 
 not to be able to force their will on others. She is 
 an influencer, not a represser. I don't see how 
 sympathetic people can ever be that. They reflect 
 the feelings of all around them too much. I think 
 that is the reason that Irish people fail in ruling 
 when they have to contend : they would be great in 
 organising where all are educated up to one level. 
 They can only rule and rightly be ruled by thought 
 and sentiment. I wish we could talk it out together, 
 for I do so wish to make Anne express my thoughts 
 about the best sort of Irish people. I mean the 
 Thornleys to be the strong-willed people : Ellen and 
 Anne the sympathetic people, who alter those they 
 live near not by subduing, but by permeating them 
 with influence ; and I want to show how much more 
 really powerful that way is, though the people who 
 use it often look weak to observers who don't see far 
 
ANNIE KEAE.Y. 153 
 
 enough. I must stop now, only please go on liking 
 Anne in faith till the end." 
 
 As Annie was settling in her house in Bedford 
 Gardens she wrote to the companion of her Egyptian 
 travel : 
 
 "You have not seen our new little home yet. I 
 hope you will come some day during the autumn. 
 I shall never forget your coming to see us in the 
 Addison Road, when we first got there so many years 
 ago. You came in in the midst of the unpacking, 
 when everything felt so desolate and strange, and 
 sat down in our dear old drawing-room ; and I was 
 able to take to the room, and feel there was some 
 interest about it afterwards. I little thought that 
 I should break my heart about leaving that house 
 at last, for then I was breaking my heart about 
 leaving the Hollies (the home of her nephews). We 
 have both taken a wonderful liking to our new home. 
 I hope that is not a sign that we are not to live in 
 it long. This is one of those days with me when the 
 thoughts irresistibly fly back to old times, and you 
 know what a large and bright share you have in all 
 my old times how much of the happiness of the 
 best bits of them I owe to you. 
 
 " How are you getting on with Harris's Sermons ? 
 I am reading some of them over again, and some 
 parts strike me much more than they did on first 
 reading. The hope he expresses of some great new 
 outpouring of love and light to come soon is so 
 cheering to me ; and then his description of what 
 the new Church ought to be, the love and perfect 
 
154 ANNIE KEARY. . 
 
 union of its members, their intimate relationship with 
 Christ and the heavenly societies, with perpetual 
 realisation of Divine presences about them. All this 
 seems to me so exactly what we want and are longing 
 for. Surely we shall have more help towards living 
 in this inspired state by and by." 
 
 During the succeeding years many ways opened 
 out to Annie for searching into the spiritual things 
 which now chiefly occupied her thoughts ; in some of 
 these she felt herself led to follow, and she went 
 furthest in the direction of Anglicanism. Perhaps the 
 impression she had received from the Carmelite nun 
 inclined her towards that way. She found fellowship 
 in it also in the person of a friend, upon whose 
 character and life she saw the benefit of High Church 
 teaching. There were several things it offered of 
 which she felt herself greatly in need. There was 
 clearness of aim. It had often troubled Annie that 
 she found such difficulty in feeling quite certain 
 about anything. The real home of her spirit was, 
 no doubt, in a sphere of truths deeper than such as 
 can be formulated, but her conscience was an over- 
 scrupulous one, and her self-distrust made her wish 
 for distinct rules of life. She found in her newly 
 chosen teachers definiteness enough to give her 
 conscience rest. 
 
 Besides being drawn to the High Church teaching 
 by a wish for definiteness, Annie was led to look 
 there for a Christian grace which it gave her pain 
 to think was fading away in other directions. It 
 had been her natural shrinking from their harshness 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 155 
 
 and cruelty that had first alienated her from the 
 doctrines of the Evangelical school; the want of 
 patient human sympathy shown in them, and the 
 pitiless punishment of the wicked ascribed by them 
 to the Deity. In the Broad Church teaching, she 
 had found it a great relief to have condemnation 
 narrowed and hope extended ; yet, strange to say, 
 within that very liberty a seed of cruelty had hidden 
 which, springing up by and by, seemed likely to 
 choke the wholesome air. 
 
 An easy confidence had grown up in some minds 
 that all must be well with everybody in another 
 state of existence, that the most abject and degraded 
 person must necessarily be the better for " a breath 
 of fresh air," as one writer expresses the change of 
 condition brought about by death; and the result 
 appeared to be that the feeling of compassion for 
 present suffering was deadened ; less value seemed 
 to attach to human life here altogether, and the 
 destruction of it seemed less terrible. The horror 
 of war which the teaching of Christ appears -to in- 
 culcate, was diminished. The sweeping of human 
 refuse into the dust-bin of destruction began to be 
 counted by some as an insignificant necessity of 
 things, and a large trust in the Eternal justice 
 seemed to render needless any careful and tender 
 discrimination in this small sphere below. 
 
 Again, the re-instatement of the natural life in a 
 place of honour appeared sometimes to have been 
 made at the expense of a high valuation of the super- 
 natural. If human nature really was godlike, how 
 
156 ANfllE KEAEY. 
 
 was one to condemn its impulses ? all natural virtues 
 came into prominence whilst supernatural graces 
 began to look pale independence, courage, pride, 
 overshone gentleness, humility, self-sacrifice. "An 
 eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," being more 
 natural, began to look more right than " Turning 
 the other cheek also." 
 
 Again, the sense of pleasure that had been 
 awakened in all that is healthful and comely, the 
 beauty and glory of the natural order, had shown 
 itself apt to engender dislike for the ill-favoured, 
 the unfortunate, the helpless. If somebody was to 
 blame that such an one was born blind, then in 
 the readily awarded condemnation the emotion of 
 pity would be expended, or turned aside from the 
 sufferer; and still more this would be apparent 
 where moral infirmity was the cross which the victim 
 had been selected to bear. It was the Christian grace 
 of pitifulness that Annie longed to find again, up- 
 held, in its right place, and she naturally looked for 
 it amongst those whose especial devotion is towards 
 the manifestations of God in the helplessness of an 
 infant, and in the defeat of the Cross, with whom 
 weakness is reverenced, sorrow worshipped, sacrifice 
 glorified. 
 
 Annie's acquaintance with Swedenborg's and 
 Boehme's theories of correspondences prepared her to 
 value ritual, and to understand a doctrine which 
 in a different stage of thought might have seemed 
 materialistic to her. There was another point on 
 which the writings of Swedenborg impressed her. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 157 
 
 She felt the force of his teaching upon the spiritual 
 nature and the power of sin (something different 
 she held it to be from mere infirmity), and on the 
 solemnity and importance that attaches to the life of 
 the soul upon earth. Swedenborg is not (as every 
 one knows) a universalist, but his teachings about 
 evil in a future state do not militate against the 
 goodness of God. Annie did not follow him to the 
 dark side of his creed. She kept a firm hold on the 
 hope which she had accepted so joyfully in her young 
 days, and which had first enabled her to look up to 
 God as to a Father the hope of the eventual 
 triumph of love in the salvation of all. 
 
 What Annie was seeking more earnestly than 
 any assertion of doctrine or any definiteness of aim 
 was to have a clearer vision of Christ ; to feel His 
 power in her heart. Her difficulties of thought 
 had for the most part cleared away by that time ; 
 her mind was calm, and in a condition to perceive 
 this vision. One might say that the first dawn the 
 white dawn had come, and the sun was very close 
 to the horizon, but He had not yet sent joy into the 
 heart as the rose-coloured morning touches earth 
 and sky with gladness. 
 
 The sermons she heard from a parish priest at the 
 East End of London, a devoted worker amongst the 
 poor there, were very helpful to her at this time, and 
 still more so was the being brought into contact with 
 a band of workers whom he inspired and directed. 
 Annie was taken by the friend mentioned above 
 to visit these Sisters in their Home. The first 
 
158 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 time she went was on Sunday, after attending 
 divine service in the parish church, and on that 
 occasion she and her friend were invited to dine with 
 the Sisters. They were not the only guests; they 
 sat down to table with a group of the poor neigh- 
 bours gathered together from the back streets, asked 
 to come, each on account of some special need ; the 
 aged, the weakly, the destitute ; and no distinction 
 was recognised between the different members of the 
 company rich and poor were all equally welcome. 
 It was like being transported to the old religious 
 days when such community was common ; and every 
 thing was quite simply done, it was the habit of the 
 Sisters to do it. Annie went often to see the Sisters 
 after this. Their work on certain afternoons particu- 
 larly interested her, when the poor people of the 
 neighbourhood, men, women, and children, came 
 flocking in for help and counsel and friendly words. 
 She marked the patience and care which the Sisters 
 expended impartially upon them all, the ready, 
 unconventional sort of kindness they showed. A 
 Sister would go out at any moment, when such 
 ministry was needed, and with her own hands make 
 the bed of some sick person, or feed a cripple in his 
 miserable room, or scour down her house for some 
 overworked mother. The life which the Sisters 
 led appeared quite an ideal one to Annie, and by 
 and by they allowed her to become a lay associate 
 of their community, and help them in their work. 
 The work which she took a small share in was the 
 care of a hospital for sick children. It was a duty 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 159 
 
 especially congenial to her. The Sisters sought out 
 the saddest and most forlorn cases to help little 
 deserted children ill of incurable diseases, some of 
 them, loathsome cases it might be ; they despaired of 
 none, they tried to help all. 
 
 Annie used to take regular days of charge at the 
 hospital, and she never seemed more happy than on 
 those days, setting off to her work generally with a 
 large basket on her arm containing biscuits or toys to 
 distribute, and with the prospect before her of pass- 
 ing a long afternoon in the company of the little sick 
 children. 
 
 She was often found fault with for being a too 
 indulgent playfellow, and for bringing too many 
 inventions with her, to fall in with the necessary 
 routine of the place, but the children did not love 
 " Sister Keary," as they called her, the less on that 
 account, one may feel sure. 
 
 It was the acquaintance which she made there 
 with East End poverty that suggested to her the 
 story of A York and a Lancaster Rose. She respected 
 and loved the Sisters, and the more she saw of them 
 and of their work, the stronger her love and respect 
 grew. She said, that in their lives they presented 
 Christ to her. 
 
 One evening Annie came back from a visit to her 
 friends with a face expressive of deep inward content ; 
 she had made her first confession, and she spoke of 
 the comfort and strength that she had received. Like 
 Christian at the Wicket-Gate, she said it was as if 
 she had left a burden behind her; she felt drawn 
 
160 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 into closer communion with her friends, and reckoned 
 upon having always the help of an authorised 
 strength to lean upon. 
 
 She writes to her Irish cousin on the subject of 
 her connection with the Sisters : " I should very 
 much like to tell you of this year's intercourse with 
 the Sisters, and where it has taken me in thought, 
 yet many of my impressions are so vague that I 
 scarcely dare to write them. One thing first of all, 
 you must not, whatever I say, think that I am 
 getting further from you, for I don't feel that at 
 all; on the contrary, I feel more and more every 
 month the wonderful variety of teaching that the 
 Spirit brings to all who seek, and the presumption 
 there would be in any arrogating to themselves 
 more than a very limited range of sight into the 
 mysteries that are being revealed in part to all. For 
 myself, I think I am learning to distrust reasoning 
 about these mysteries not reason, but reasoning. I 
 think there is no way of knowing anything about 
 God, except through personal revelations of Himself 
 to the soul, and so I hope most to get light and help 
 from those who seem, by the wonderful joy and light 
 and strength that I see in them, to have this know- 
 ledge in a special way. I don't know why it comes 
 to some more than to others of those who truly and 
 earnestly seek, but when I see evidences of this 
 mystic union of a soul with the Unseen I am glad, 
 for it is a wonderful revelation to me that He is there 
 and that there is a way of reaching up to the Divine. 
 I don't mean to say that my High Church friends have 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 161 
 
 more of this joy and strength than is to be found 
 among Low Church, or Broad Church, or Quakers, or 
 any other Church ; I have seen it in all, and I am not 
 sure that this gift of mystical communion is the best 
 gift that human creatures can have. I think it 
 would be given to all if it were. But those who 
 have it, whatever their distinctive creeds, seem to me 
 candles set in candlesticks, to show us that the light 
 is to be had, that it is real. I tell you this to explain 
 what it is in the High Church people I have joined 
 that I value. They happen to be just now the most 
 fervent, loving, joyful people I have been thrown 
 among ; and so going to them is always a help to my 
 weak faith, it is like going to a fire to be warmed. 
 As far as actual doctrine goes, I. think I do get more 
 and more to cling to and believe in the Incarnation 
 and Resurrection. I find it easier to believe them as 
 facts than I used to do ; if I could talk to you I 
 could tell you why, but it is difficult to write on such 
 subjects. It is by thinking about them a great deal 
 that they seem to have sunk into my mind and 
 become truer and more real to me. I cling to them 
 in my heart, because without belief in the Incarnation 
 I should find it so difficult to love God ; He would 
 seem so far off, so dissociated from suffering creatures. 
 Then again it is only by believing in the Incarnation 
 and the Resurrection that I can hope for individual 
 immortality. 
 
 " Unless human nature has been taken up into 
 the Godhead, I don't see what grounds we can have 
 ever to expect to be more than we are now. I look 
 
 M 
 
162 ANNIE KEAEY. 
 
 upon the Incarnation as the last great act of Creation 
 when mankind received the seal of Divinity, took 
 the last step in its long course of climbing up to 
 union with the Creator. I tell you all this because you 
 asked me where I was now. I want to feel that I 
 pour out all my crude thoughts to you as freely as in 
 old times. I am as far as ever from being satisfied. 
 I am seeking still, only more sure than I used to be 
 that the Divine light and love are there, and that 
 prayer and waiting and hoping in God are roads 
 to them." 
 
 A letter written about the same time to one of her 
 young friends shows the help she was finding in 
 definite religious exercises : 
 
 " I think you will find having a plan and dividing 
 your thoughts under certain heads a real help in the 
 effort to keep the mind profitably fixed for some 
 time on a sacred subject : take either a passage of the 
 Bible or some act in the life of our Lord. I think 
 you will find such efforts useful, and gain from them 
 a real and happy sense of nearness to our Blessed 
 Lord, and actual communion with Him. When 
 one is wishing to love God more and more one often 
 feels as if one was hindered by want of know- 
 ledge. We feel gratitude, but love and gratitude 
 are different things. Now I think that meditating 
 on words or deeds of our Lord makes one feel more 
 as if 6ne knew Him like a friend, and were getting 
 nearer to loving Him and adoring Him for Himself, 
 just for being so tender, and loving, and gracious, and 
 beautiful, and for having let mankind hear and see 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 163 
 
 words and deeds that satisfy our utmost longing for 
 what is high and beautiful in character. In that 
 way Jesus Christ comes to be the Ideal of excellence, 
 and sweetness, and friendliness in one's mind, and we 
 can never be chilled or embittered by disappointments 
 in our fellow-creatures, or ourselves, because we 
 always have Him to turn to, and we know that He 
 Avills us to be like Him, and will make us all like 
 Him if we ask Him and have patience/' 
 
 One feels it sad sometimes that life has no resting 
 places, no moment in which one can cease to change. 
 Annie was very happy for some time in the com- 
 panionship and under the guidance she had found, 
 but because, perhaps, it was necessary for her to 
 be thrown upon still more direct dependence on 
 the Spirit of God she was not allowed to rest in 
 them. Circumstances at last made it apparent to 
 her that she had come to lean too much upon an 
 outside conscience ; she became perplexed as internal 
 and external standards of right conflicted, the rules 
 that she had taken for a help began to feel something 
 like a yoke of bondage. 
 
 It was during a short but rather serious illness 
 which she had after finishing writing Castle Daly 
 that she became fully aware of the position she had 
 reached, and that she began to fear lest the very means 
 which had been of such use to her might not become 
 hindrances, lest the revealers of Christ themselves 
 might not become as veils between her soul and Him. 
 When in the loneliness that illness makes round one 
 she looked for Christ to be near, it seemed to her as 
 
 M 2 
 
164 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 if a little cloud had risen ; she had been meeting Him 
 through a medium, hearing about Him, and His will, 
 instead of listening for His voice in her own heart. 
 Some thoughts from the teachings of her childhood 
 awoke from long slumber in her mind, bringing with 
 them new meanings, reviving old sacred influences. 
 From that time she discontinued the practice of con- 
 fession. She never spoke against it generally, how- 
 ever ; but on the contrary, said that she was glad to 
 have made use of it, that it had helped her to a 
 clearer perception of duty, and given her strength 
 for the performance of it. 
 
 It was a great sorrow to Annie to have to return 
 the Associate's cross which she had felt it such an 
 honour to possess. A break took place in the personal 
 tie between herself and her Anglican friends, but her 
 feelings of regard for them never altered, nor was 
 there any diminution in the gratitude that she felt 
 towards them for all that they had done for her. 
 Through all the influences of her life, she was pass- 
 ing on from stage to stage, and always into clearer 
 light. Her faith was all the stronger for the hin- 
 drances it had met with ; her trust in God was the 
 firmer for the anxiety she had felt concerning His 
 love to all ; her surrender to the guidance of the Holy 
 Spirit was the fuller for her experience of the weak- 
 ness that bondage to human direction may engender. 
 
 A history of the development of Annie's spiritual 
 nature would be incomplete without allusion to the 
 sympathy of one friend in particular, who was her 
 nearest spiritual companion during her last years. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 165 
 
 Emelia and Annie had been drawn into communion 
 during a time when first one and then the other had 
 been in sorrow for the death of friends. They had 
 felt the same yearning to follow after them into the 
 unseen world, to draw aside the veil, and to know 
 certainly of the things that are hidden. They had 
 been equally attracted by the hopes that the pheno- 
 mena of spiritualism seemed to hold out, and had 
 carried on their investigations into them together ; 
 they had equally suffered some amount of disappoint- 
 ment in the search. Together they had endeavoured 
 to gain a larger knowledge of Divine truths, and to 
 enjoy deeper experiences of them. Emelia had indeed 
 always been further on upon the way than her friend. 
 "You don't know how much I am longing to see 
 you/' Annie wrote to her once during a period of 
 separation. " It seems such a long time since we 
 saw you and had our souls refreshed with the news 
 of God you always bring us. I know that is an odd 
 phrase to use, but it is just what I mean. I have so 
 often felt that you brought us tidings from the higher 
 sphere which my grovelling soul only reaches to 
 when loved ones can tell me of their own expe- 
 rience that they have had a glimmer of the light 
 coming from thence, or when I can read it in 
 their faces." Emelia's sympathies were very wide, 
 and her influence was of that kind which soothes 
 and strengthens. It was not in her nature to 
 attempt to dominate the individuality of another, 
 and she was especially helpful as a friend to Annie 
 on that account. 
 
166 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 On the occasion of the first visit of Mr. and Mrs. 
 Pearsall-Smith (religious teachers from America) to 
 England in the year 1874, Annie was brought into 
 the way of hearing them by means of this friend. 
 Their especial teaching about faith did not come 
 exactly as a new thing to her, but she had been 
 growing into the condition of mind that enabled her 
 to receive it. Years ago she would not have found 
 any help from such teaching, now it was especially 
 suited to her needs. 
 
 The time came at last for which she had longed and 
 waited, the full bright dawn in which she saw the 
 face of Christ and knew Him for her Friend. The 
 spiritual night passed quite away and never came back, 
 and the daylight grew brighter and gladder to the 
 end. Inwardly Annie seemed to be perfectly happy 
 during the last years of her life ; not that she was less 
 sympathetic than before with the troubles of other 
 people, on the contrary, every breath of sorrow moved 
 her. As the surface of the sea is broken into waves 
 by storm-winds, so her heart was disturbed by the 
 presence of suffering ; but the depth of the spirit was 
 at rest as the depth of the sea rests. And when no 
 especial call for sorrowing sympathy was at hand, 
 then the joyfulness shone out, and gave to her 
 presence the charm that brings rest to the heart 
 and gladness to the sight, as the gladness of a sunlit 
 summer sea. " We are almost too happy," she used 
 to say upon bright tranquil days such as we enjoyed 
 together then. 
 
 In a letter written about this time to one of her 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 167 
 
 nephews, one sees something of the rest of heart 
 to which she had attained. It is dated New Year's 
 Day, and begins by referring to Lamb's essay on the 
 last day of the year. 
 
 " I hope another year," she writes, " we shall read 
 our essay together, for I remember with so much 
 pleasure the year we did, and I should like us always 
 to be together to compare notes over the year's 
 experiences if we could. I want to tell you of one 
 piece of experience that I found in looking back had 
 come to me gradually through this year, and made 
 me much happier than I have been all my life before. 
 It is a sort of growing clearness in realising that God 
 is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all. I think 
 1 have believed this all my life, but I have never, 
 so to speak, known it. I have always had fears and 
 horrors, and always felt as if I could not trust those 
 I loved best to God, for fear He should not be as in- 
 dulgent to them as I should like Him to be ; but now 
 I feel more as if I had got down to the bottom and 
 felt the groundwork under our feet, the substance 
 out of which all our existence is woven, and I can 
 feel, as I never did before, that there is infinite love 
 all round us, and that joy, and peace, and victory, are 
 to be the issues of all struggles, the end that we are 
 all to come out into, and this has given me more peace 
 and joy in my new year's prayers for you all than I 
 have ever had before. I don't know why I tell you 
 this, except that I like you to know what is passing in 
 my inmost self; and perhaps it may not be uncheering 
 to young people to know that as one gets older one does 
 
168 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 really get happier instead of sadder, that there is light 
 opening out brighter and brighter towards the end. 
 
 " I have been thinking about your literary career 
 to-day, looking on to the future. It is always such 
 a comfort to me to think of God as the Great Artist, 
 the Great Maker, for I think the instinct of making 
 that we have is, in a special way, a portion of His 
 Spirit moving in us ; and He who has given that 
 gift, that extra relationship to Him, will not let 
 His gift be quenched, or fail of its true use and 
 development in the end." 
 
 The friend who wrote of her in The Day of Best, 
 says, referring to this period of her life : 
 
 "There come before me two pictures of Annie 
 Keary, so vivid and so beautiful that I would fain, 
 if it were possible, reproduce them in the minds of 
 those who had not the privilege of knowing and 
 loving her personally. 
 
 "The first represents her as I knew her in her 
 quiet London home, where she was the centre of a 
 happy family circle, reverenced by all around her as 
 much for her sweet and gentle nature as for her 
 great intellectual power. I can see her presiding 
 over little ' pen-and-pencil ' meetings in her own 
 home, always appreciative of the literary efforts 
 of others, warmly encouraging to beginners, and as 
 modest and unassuming about her own productions 
 as if she had been a beginner herself." 
 
 Alluding to the infirmity from which Annie had 
 suffered all her life this writer says : 
 
 " It would seem at first sight as if deafness must 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 169 
 
 be a decided disadvantage to an authoress, but I do 
 not think it was so in her case. Being unable to 
 join much in general conversation was no doubt a 
 deprivation to her, but wherever Miss Keary found 
 herself there were always those present who thought 
 it a privilege to converse especially with her. Feeling 
 that her amount of communication with her must 
 necessarily be limited made her companion for the 
 moment anxious to keep to subjects of real interest, 
 and not waste the valuable time in trifling remarks- 
 I think that anything worth repeating always came 
 to her ears sooner or later, and that what she lost 
 was chiefly desultory talk, during which she was free 
 to abstract her mind. 
 
 " Perhaps some of her happiest ideas for her stories 
 may have been conceived at such times. It seemed 
 to me as I watched her as though her infirmity kept 
 her just a little apart from the commonplace world, 
 always within reach when wanted, and yet in a 
 certain serene seclusion of her own, suited to one 
 with whom all who came in contact regarded with 
 reverence. Like 'Little Silver Ear,' in one of her 
 own fairy tales, she seemed to hear only the good 
 voices and not the bad ones. . . . 
 
 " The other picture of her which I recall, is in 
 a Home for young servant-girls out of employment, 
 of which she occasionally took charge, giving her 
 time with the utmost patience to the smallest 
 details concerning the domestic duties of rough, 
 untrained girls, or the complaints of exacting 
 mistresses ; but however she appears before me 
 
170 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 in these, the bright working years of her life, it 
 is always with the same gentle manners and move- 
 ments, never too hurried or too important to attend 
 to other people's affairs, however tedious or trivial, 
 or to give a helping hand when it was wanted." 
 
 The Servants' Home mentioned above is in 
 Bessborough Gardens, and is supported by a lady 
 who was an intimate friend of Annie's, for the 
 especial object of befriending young workhouse girls. 
 The first time Annie undertook the duties of the 
 place was in the year 1875, and during that year 
 she remained seven months in the Home. The work 
 was, in many respects, well suited to her, and she 
 performed it admirably. It came naturally to her to 
 occupy herself with the interests of others ; it cost 
 her no effort to remember exactly the sort of situation 
 that the young nursery girls, or the kitchen maids, or 
 the poor little " generals " might wish to obtain. Her 
 sympathy with them all was unfailing, she was full 
 of pity for the hardness of their lives, and bore their 
 burdens upon her heart in a wonderful way. For her 
 own ease she was somewhat too anxious about them, 
 too fearful of making the least mistake and of bringing 
 trouble upon any girl by inexpertness on her part in 
 the selection of a place for her. She would lie awake 
 at night pondering over the affairs of the young 
 servants, and planning their lives. When the more 
 serious business of the day was over, she used to give 
 easy instruction to the girls in the work-room, or 
 read aloud, or play games with them. On Saturday 
 afternoons it was her great pleasure to take the 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 171 
 
 younger ones into her own little sitting-room, and 
 give them all a lesson in some sort of needlework, 
 telling them stories meanwhile, or encouraging 
 them to talk to her about their homes their 
 fathers and mothers and costermonger uncles, who 
 promised that they should never want for a " happle 
 or a pear." 
 
 If she got some desponding thoughts from the 
 histories of the children, she found plenty of food for 
 her sense of humour in the confidences of the 
 mistresses. The mistresses confided in her quite as 
 much as the children did : one day it would be the 
 scandalised mistress whose maid had presumed to 
 remove the " centre-piece " from the drawing-room 
 table who claimed her sympathy ; another time she 
 would have to condole with the lady whose " general " 
 was unfailingly to be found, drabbled with soap-suds, 
 attempting to wash the kitchen floor whilst her grate 
 was full of dust and dead cinders, within half an hour 
 of dinner-time, and whose husband was that kind of 
 man that he could not be kept waiting for his dinner, 
 but was obliged always to have it "just so." 
 
 Kathleen O'Meara (Grace Ramsay), in a portrait 
 which she drew of Annie after her death in the 
 Catholic World, thus speaks of her during the time 
 she passed in this Home : 
 
 " Her love for each girl was peculiar and unfailing ; 
 her sympathy was ever ready ; her hope even for the 
 most hopeless amongst her charges was Christ-like in 
 its power, giving strength to the faltering, guiding 
 the double-minded into straighter paths, drawing out 
 
172 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 the best in all. Her belief in goodness seemed almost 
 to create it in those whom she so perseveringly tried 
 to help." 
 
 The same writer says : 
 
 " And it was not to the poor only that Annie Keary 
 gave her sympathy. It was especially drawn out 
 towards young writers, many of whom sought counsel 
 and help from her in the beginning of a literary 
 career. From no one of these did she turn away 
 uninterested ; often finding some little service that 
 she could render, and never failing to speak a word 
 of encouragement to the traveller on that up-hill 
 road which she had often found difficult to climb in 
 her own early years. She had that rare and gracious 
 gift of discerning the ore amongst the dross; an>l 
 where many a less sympathising counsellor would 
 have found nothing to praise, she was able to draw 
 one or another good point forward into the light, and 
 show the young beginner how to do the best that 
 was in him." 
 
 When the time of her charge in Bessborough 
 Gardens came to an end, Annie went again to the 
 south of France, and with her sister and a young 
 friend spent the following winter and spring in the 
 same little country home at Pegomas where she 
 had stayed four years before. Her descriptions of 
 the place in the letters she wrote to her friends, 
 show the loving care with which she studied 
 its natural beauties, and the pleasure she found 
 in them. There had been times in Annie's life 
 when she had not been able to meet the outward 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 173 
 
 joy of nature with that quick response which makes 
 harmony with it ; when its glory and abundance had 
 seemed to her almost like a senseless mockery of 
 human want and pain ; but feelings such as these 
 were hushed then in the peace of God which rilled 
 her heart. " Oh ! Lamb of God that taketh away the 
 sins of the world, grant us Thy peace," was the 
 ejaculatory prayer that rose to her lips whenever 
 anything especially beautiful pleased her in our 
 walks under the olives and in the valleys. The 
 delicacy of no flower escaped her, she used to spend 
 hours in studying the flowers, and would sometimes 
 say that she could scarcely wish for greater happiness 
 than in learning the delicate forms and colours that 
 made each one so beautiful. " I could spend a long 
 life contentedly here," she used to say, " with you, 
 amongst the flowers." One day, after she had been 
 making a careful painting of the lovely wild pink 
 gladiolus that grows amongst the corn at Pegomas, 
 she said, " I have been thinking how much goes to 
 the making of that one little flower how important 
 each curve of every leaf is, how necessary every shade 
 of colour to its perfection ; and I see in it a symbol of 
 the making of a soul, of the need that there is for 
 the unfolding of each natural beauty and for the 
 ripening of every grace ; it may compel infinite 
 labour, it may take millions of years to make one 
 soul perfect the mills of the gods grind slowly but 
 the work, we may be sure, will have no flaw in it 
 when the time is complete." 
 
 Annie makes us see the scenery of Pegomas, in 
 
174 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 her novel of A Doubting Heart, as her heroine, 
 Emmie West, saw it. 
 
 " Emmie remained for a moment, shading her eyes 
 with her hand, to refresh herself with as much sun- 
 shine as possible. . . . Madam e's Valley, with all its 
 scattered dwellings, lies spread out like a panorama 
 at her feet. The groups of houses she spies from 
 her high station, here, by a red roof in a bosquet of 
 grey olives, there, by a thin volume of smoke rising 
 through the thick, high canes that border the river ; 
 these all contain friends and have associations for 
 Emmie now. She knows who owns that group of 
 fig-trees, whose branches hold up buds like delicate 
 green cups, high in the air ; whose is the orchard of 
 quince and almond at the opening of the valley; 
 and to whom belongs the vineyard on the other side 
 of the winding road, where the dwarf vines have 
 clothed themselves promisingly with downy leaves 
 and clusters of a good smell. Ah, the winter is over 
 and done indeed ! . . . . 
 
 " Emmie ran down the steep steps into the flower- 
 garden, then swiftly down the garden path between 
 rows of sweetly smelling beans, till she reached the 
 point where the hill dipped steeply towards the 
 ravine, and there she stood still to listen. The 
 cicalas and the green frogs were making a little less 
 noise than usual. Above their harsh voices, and 
 above the tinkle of the distant rivulet, Emmie 
 distinguished three clear liquid notes coming from 
 an almond-tree half way down the near side of the 
 hill. Ah ! and now three other notes, liquid, sweet, 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 175 
 
 answer from beyond the river. Again the call and 
 the loving sweet reply. Emmie had never heard a 
 nightingale's voice in her life, but she does not 
 doubt their identity to-day, for Madelon had told 
 her that nightingales would sing all day and all 
 night in the valley when spring had really come. 
 She smiled to think how many quotations would 
 have risen to Mildie's lips on such an occasion. 
 ' Most musical, most melancholy/ Oh ! no, not 
 melancholy at all. English nightingales might be 
 melancholy singing at night in solemn cathedral 
 closes, but that one in the almond-tree on the hill, 
 singing in the hot, hot sunshine, with a cloudless sky 
 overhead and countless flowers below, was so happy, 
 and had so much to say to his love in the orange 
 grove on the opposite slope, that he did not know 
 how to hurry out his notes fast enough. Emmie 
 would not disturb the sweet talk by walking through 
 the coppice, so she turned up the hill and determined 
 to take another and longer ronte to the Orange-tree 
 house, where she had promised Madelon to call that 
 afternoon. . . . 
 
 " By the time she reached the path leading down 
 into Madelon' s valley, she had lost sight of the 
 village and gained a wider horizon. More and 
 more valleys, more and more olive-crowned hills ; 
 farther and farther away patches of party-coloured 
 fields, showing like fairy gardens in the golden after- 
 noon light ; and farthest of all, between the opening 
 heights on the far horizon, another blue, deeper 
 more dazzling than the blue overhead, a moving 
 
176 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 living radiance, the blue of the Mediterranean, 
 melting and losing itself in the trembling sky-line. 
 
 " It was almost a rest to turn into the green dark- 
 ness of the pine-wood after looking at so much 
 light, and Emmie made her way quickly to the head 
 of the valley, where a tiny mountain rivulet burst 
 from the rocky hill-side and began its course through 
 the ravine. A flock of sheep and goats conducted 
 by a young shepherdess followed her down the 
 steep ; and for years afterwards whenever Emmie 
 thought of La Roquette, it was that particular 
 scene and its accompanying sounds and sensations 
 that came vividly back to her. The tinkling of the 
 sheep bells, the gurgle of the rivulet, the rough ferns 
 and mosses that choked its shallow bed, the little 
 shepherdess's shrill voice calling her dog ; deep 
 evening stillness but for those sounds, and a sense of 
 solitude greater even than had been felt on the 
 lonely road with its wide views. Here there was 
 only the dark vista of the pine-wood she had passed 
 through, the sheltering hill-sides all around her, the 
 depths of shadowy verdure at her feet, and, above 
 all, a flowing line of crimson light where the height 
 from whence she had descended caught the rays of 
 the setting sun. Her heart echoed back the peace, 
 the joyful calm, with which the little valley, from its 
 crowning crimson height to its cool emerald depths, 
 overflowed. All within her was in harmony with 
 the outside serenity." 
 
 It was with Annie just as she describes it to have 
 been with Emmie West in the story. She knew who 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 177 
 
 owned each group of fig-trees, and to whom every 
 vineyard on the terraced slopes belonged, whose red 
 roofs showed in the bosquets of grey olives; and 
 almost all the dwellers in the houses and the owners 
 of the fields were intimate friends of hers ; she made 
 herself acquainted with all that concerned them. 
 The Madelon of the Doubting Heart is a portrait of 
 a real little Marie of the real La Roquette who 
 told Annie her true love-story under the orange-trees. 
 
 Writing to a sister-in-law, Annie gives a slight 
 picture of the sort of life she led in her southern 
 home : 
 
 " I have so much to tell you that I hesitate to 
 begin. I know I cannot do justice to this place, or 
 give you any idea of the odd kind of life we live here, 
 under several sheets. The one drawback to it is 
 that we are so much out of the world that the cares 
 of housekeeping take up more time than is con- 
 venient. We have only got a little peasant girl out 
 of the village to cook for us, and she has no notion of 
 cooking according to our English ways. I really 
 have to cook every single thing we eat. . . . 
 
 "We have made a great many friends in the 
 village, which is at the foot of the hill on which our 
 house stands, and in some of the scattered farm- 
 houses in the little valleys all about. There is a 
 lovely valley at the back of our house, which we 
 always call ' the Orange -tree Valley,' because in its 
 centre there is a group of houses with orange and 
 lemon trees in front. The inhabitants of these 
 houses are very great friends of oars we made 
 
 N 
 
178 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 acquaintance with them the last time we were here ; 
 and now whenever we walk through this valley 
 which is our most beautiful walk we are sure to be 
 waylaid and obliged to come into one house or 
 another to take refreshment, consisting generally of 
 a peculiar sort of wine, very thick and sweet, manu- 
 factured for home consumption by the people here, 
 raisins dried and steeped in oil, also of home manu- 
 facture, sourish home-made bread, sometimes a 
 delicious slice of melon. All the houses of this 
 group belong to four families, brothers and sisters 
 and cousins of each other, and as they have very few 
 children between them, a great part of the valley 
 will eventually belong to a very pretty girl, called 
 Marie Mill (Marie du Vallori), of whom we have seen 
 a great deal. She is the great partie of the village, 
 and has a private little romance of her own touching 
 a poor young man who has been drawn for a soldier, 
 but who is to return to the village this spring, in 
 time, I hope, for the third volume of her novel to be 
 enacted before our eyes. She has confided in us all 
 through the winter, and promises to bring Stanislas 
 (that is the hero's name) to see us as soon as he 
 comes back. Of course this private choosing is 
 greatly out of rule in a French family, but Marie 
 excuses herself by explaining that she and Stanislas 
 when boy and girl of ten went up together for their 
 first communion a circumstance which is considered 
 to constitute a strong tie of friendship here. Ever 
 since, they have loved each other, Marie says. 
 Marie's father and mother are indulgent, and will 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 179 
 
 most likely give in. Don't you think this romantic 
 story will have to come into a novel, with all the 
 lovely Pegomas scenery and the odd ways of the 
 people for a background ? I don't know that I shall 
 have time for it, but won't you come here next 
 winter and work it out ? How I wish you and Anne 
 could see the flowers here ; what a treat it would be 
 to see you paint them. I have been trying to paint 
 a little. Do you remember a time in the dear old 
 Addison Eoad when we did some studies of pots and 
 pans together ? The pots and pans of this country 
 are perfectly enchanting. I don't know what you 
 would feel if you were to see the criiche in which my 
 hot water comes up every morning ; but I think if 
 it popped into your room instead of mine by chance, 
 you would jump out of bed for your paint-box and 
 make a picture of it on the spot. 
 
 " We have been having some bad weather lately 
 rain, and one fall of snow. We set off after dinner 
 to-day in a gleam of fine weather to get a little air 
 and warm ourselves, but the rain came on and swept 
 out all the hills before we had got many yards on the 
 Grasse Koad. We met two forlorn little children, 
 and with some difficulty made out that they had set 
 off to walk to Grasse five miles up the mountain ; 
 their mother had gone there earlier in the day to 
 buy potatoes and bread, and, tired, I suppose, of 
 being alone in the house (they live in a lonely little 
 cabin on our hill-side), the two little things had set 
 off to find her. We persuaded them to come back 
 with us to the chateau, as they call this cottage, and 
 
 N 2 
 
ISO ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 now they are very happy in the kitchen, chattering 
 patois to our little servant, after having had a 
 good meal, wound up with the French children's 
 luxury, confiture and bread. We gave a children's 
 party on New Year's Day but I must not begin to 
 tell you about it at the end of my letter, but keep 
 the story of the Pegomas children's attempt to play 
 English games and eat plum-pudding till another 
 time. I must now thank you for all the kind, 
 sympathising things you say about Castle Daly, and 
 congratulate you on your own work. I am just now 
 writing my Christmas story for the Monthly Packet, 
 on the proverb ' Noblesse Oblige.' " 
 
 The following is part of a letter, also written from 
 Pegomas, to a young girl in a house of business in 
 America, who had formerly attended some classes 
 at a night school in Kensington the Aubrey Insti- 
 tute, where Annie had been in the habit of teaching. 
 Annie was very much attached to this girl, Emma, 
 and corresponded regularly with her : 
 
 "DEAREST EMMA, 
 
 " I am afraid it will seem long to you before 
 you receive an answer to your dear letter, but it 
 was made a longer journey than even you expected 
 it to make. It has followed us to the south of 
 France, where we are spending the winter. You 
 know we had left Bedford Gardens before I wrote 
 last, and were taking charge of a Servants' Home. 
 We stayed there seven months, and had a good deal 
 of hard, but very interesting, work there. Last 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 181 
 
 November we came to France. A great friend of 
 mine has a little farm for olives and vines near 
 Cannes, and on the farm there is a pretty little 
 ch.dlet t which she has lent us for the winter. I 
 wish J could make you see* what a lovely place 
 it is in which I am sitting writing to you. The 
 window is wide open, and I look down (for our 
 house stands on the side of a hill) on to a plain all 
 laid out in olives and gardens; on each side of it 
 are beautiful mountains, some dotted all over with 
 olive-trees, but the higher ones are clothed thickly 
 with dark pines, and the highest and most distant are 
 bare and purple. Between the furthest hills we have 
 a glimpse of the Mediterranean. This is our front 
 view. Behind the house it is still more lovely. We 
 overlook exquisite green valleys, with orange gardens 
 and plantations of fig, and quince, and peach, and 
 almond trees ; then corn, and vines, and olives on the 
 slopes of the hill, rising higher and higher to bare grey 
 rocks, and above these the snow range of mountains, 
 looking oh ! so dazzlingly pure and white against the 
 dark blue sky. We have had lovely weather nearly 
 all the winter ; we shall go home with a fresh stock of 
 health, and with all sorts of lovely and happy pic- 
 tures in our minds, to be a store of joy that we 
 may rejoice in even when we are too old to go out 
 and see anything fresh. I wish I could hand on 
 some of this pleasure and peace to you, it would 
 do you so much good in your hard life. Don't 
 you think it is a help to know that there are 
 beautiful, peaceful places on the earth ? One sees 
 
182 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 in them what God is, and catches a glimpse of 
 the kind of joy He means us all to have one day. 
 You can't think how sorry we are for all the sadness 
 and all the trouble your letter tells us of; but, do 
 you know, it does not altogether make me sad for 
 you. The thought it chiefly brought to me was, 
 ' Oh ! how precious the soul of that dear child is in 
 her heavenly Father's sight, that He lets it be tried 
 in such a fire, that it may be brought to the per- 
 fection He means it to have,' moulded and graven, 
 as the most exquisite silver and gold images have to 
 be moulded and graven, through heat and by blows, 
 till it is wrought into the beautiful and perfect like- 
 ness it is meant to wear. You are a beloved child of 
 God, a sister of Christ, and there is an eternal life 
 of happiness and glory before you ; don't mind if you 
 can't feel it or even think it now, it is true all the 
 same. I know that our dear Lord is just teaching 
 you and leading you by the hand, and that your 
 doubts will end in peace. Won't you take this as 
 a message from Him to you through me ? I prayed 
 that He would tell me what to say to you, and 
 this message of love is what He sends. You will 
 see the truth about the eternal life soon ; I don't 
 think it is possible to live up to the highest point of 
 duty and of happiness without this. I know one can 
 go on doing one's duty thoroughly under clouds of 
 doubt, and even in complete unbelief; there are 
 many who do, and they are dear to God, but the 
 duty is done sadly or deadly, without the spring of 
 life and joy that we are meant to have. That 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 183 
 
 fountain of life and strength is hid in God. Christ 
 showed us the way to it, and we get it into 
 our souls when we utterly trust Him and give up 
 our hearts, and our lives, and our aspirations to Him 
 as to a faithful Creator, who will not leave unsatis- 
 fied any of the longings of the souls He has made ; 
 who will not let love die, or disappoint finally the 
 cravings for joy, for perfection, for light and know- 
 ledge that He has implanted, and that are parts of 
 Himself, immortal as He is. You say, How am I to 
 be sure ? When I get back to England I will 
 send you some books that I hope may help you to 
 be satisfied of it in your reason there is reason 
 enough. 
 
 " It is a great comfort to have our reasons con- 
 vinced, and study and thought will help to that ; 
 but I believe the great thing to be sought is a direct 
 word of God to the heart, not to the reason. He 
 can show us His light, and feed our hearts with His 
 
 strength and love He feels for you in all your 
 
 grief for your mother, and she too yearns over you 
 still with deeper and holier yearnings than any she 
 ever felt in her earth-life ; but there is no pain in 
 them now, for she sees the end, and knows that the 
 darkness and suffering are only for a little while 
 that it is through this loneliness and darkness you 
 are being prepared for eternal joy, and love, and 
 bright companionship." 
 
 To a girl whom she had known in Bessborough 
 Gardens, an invalid, she wrote : 
 
184 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 "MY DEAR MAEY ANN, 
 
 ' We are very glad to have news of you, and 
 to hear that you are getting through the winter 
 tolerably well ; I wish we could send you some of the 
 delicious ~ soft air and the glorious sunshine we are 
 having here. Sometimes when I am looking at all 
 the beautiful things about us, the mountains with 
 their pure white snow-peaks, and the hills crowned 
 with olives and vines, and then down into the green 
 valleys enamelled with flowers of all colours, I feel 
 as if it were a foretaste of heaven, and I should be 
 almost sorry to have so much to enjoy without 
 sharing it with all whom I love in England, if I did 
 not know that all this is but a glimpse, a faint show, 
 of the glory, and the joy, and the beauty, which is 
 reserved for us all by and by. No words but words 
 from the Psalms can express the exaltation one feels 
 in seeing such beautiful works of God as are all 
 round us. f Lord, our Governor, how excellent 
 are Thy ways in all the earth/ one keeps saying 
 sentences like these as one walks along. I wish 
 I could show you the way we went this morning. 
 We set off directly after breakfast, and first climbed 
 up a steep road which winds between two valleys, 
 with a view of purple and snowy mountains in the 
 distance. The sky was much bluer than it ever is in 
 England, and when we looked back, we saw the sea 
 showing like a purple lake between the mountains. 
 When we had gone some distance, we turned into a 
 side road which led us into a beautiful pine-wood, so 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 185 
 
 fresh and dark and shady ; we followed a narrow 
 wandering path that took us first to a little place in 
 the hills, from which a bubbling stream bursts out, 
 then down into a lonely, sloping olive grove, which 
 made us pause and stand silent for some time, to 
 think of Mount Olivet and of what happened there. 
 You cannot think what beautiful things olive-trees 
 are, and how full of light and sunshine they are, seen 
 from above, and yet what a solemn peaceful shade 
 there is below when one gets among them. The 
 olive grove we were in to-day made us so well under- 
 stand why an olive garden should be a favourite 
 resort of our Saviour's, for it seemed a place made 
 for prayer. This one was on a hill-side too, so we 
 could really think it like that one. 
 
 " From our olive grove we went on and on, always 
 down by little winding .paths, and at almost every 
 step we came upon some lovely flower, purple and 
 white violets in hundreds, anemones, white narcissus, 
 aconites, rare kinds of ferns. I send you a little 
 nosegay of them, to give you a faint idea what it 
 was like. At last we came to a group of houses 
 standing at the bottom of this lovely valley. The 
 people who inhabit these Bouses are well off and 
 happy on the whole, but some trial comes into every 
 lot, and amongst them there is one poor invalid 
 whom we had come to see. She has something the 
 matter with her chest, and she coughs as badly as 
 you do in spite of the sunshine, which indeed she 
 does not much profit by, for she hardly ever gets out. 
 She was very much obliged to us for a pot of English 
 
186 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 preserve, but what she cares for most is for people 
 to come in and talk a bit to break the dulness of 
 the day. She cannot read, and has no books, and 
 no one to read to her. The little room she lives in 
 is such a curious dark place, with a wooden shutter 
 instead of a window, and an open fireplace ; over it 
 there hung a pot with all sorts of strange herbs in 
 it, from which she was making a medicine for her 
 cough. From her house we went to another little 
 place, where an old man, also an invalid, sits nearly 
 all day in a dark shed making baskets ; and then a 
 girl called Marie Mill came out, and begged us to 
 come in and rest a little in her mother's house. She 
 took us up to a cheerful upper room, where she had 
 been sewing. Oh ! dear Mary Ann, I should like 
 to show you that upper room, and for you to sit and 
 sew there sometimes with Marie Mtil. The window 
 was open, and looked out into a group of orange and 
 lemon trees, on which the sun was shining so 
 beautifully that the fruit looked really as if it were 
 made of gold. Just by putting out your hand, you 
 could gather as many ripe oranges as you wanted. 
 And such a delicious scent of violets came in at the 
 window. Marie is very happy, I think, sitting work- 
 ing there, but there is one thing you would not like 
 in her lot, she never reads, has no books, and had 
 never even had a Testament till we gave her one. 
 They have a -great many things in their valley that 
 we have not, but they want the pleasure of reading, 
 which you and I think more of, perhaps, than any 
 other that comes into our lives. We would not 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 187 
 
 change our books for oranges, or even flowers and 
 sunshine, would we ? 
 
 " As we were going home, we found a very curious 
 insect called the praying mantis. It has a face like 
 a wizened old man's face with a night-cap on his 
 head, and it has two things just like hands in front, 
 which it holds up and clasps as if it were praying. 
 The people here whenever they see one, call out, 
 1 Pray thou for me, good little fellow/ . . . 
 
 " I hope I shall soon hear again a good account of 
 your health. . . . 
 
 " Your affectionate friend, 
 
 " A KEARY." 
 
 Annie's old friend of school-days, Lizzie M., had 
 died a short time before this second visit was paid to 
 Pegomas. She writes from there to Lizzie's only 
 child, a dear young friend of hers, whom she always 
 called her niece : 
 
 " DARLING KATIE, 
 
 " I don't like to realise that we have been nearly 
 a month here and have not written to you. I hope 
 you have not been thinking that your aunt was 
 forgetting you. We are now settled in our little 
 home. It was very strange at first, plunging into 
 the extreme quiet of this life, after the bustle we 
 -had lived in at Bessborough Gardens. You re- 
 member how hard it was to get a room to be 
 quiet in there, between the girls and the visitors, 
 and now we have this house all to our four selves, 
 
188 ANNIE KEAEY. 
 
 Eliza, Clara, our little maid, and myself; and the 
 advent of a visitor is such a rare event that it throws 
 our little Marie into ecstasies, and it is necessary for 
 her to find an excuse for going down into the village 
 immediately > to tell her friends all about it. She is 
 such an odd contrast to our Bessborough Gardens' 
 maidens, our stray Mary Annes and Marthas so 
 much better mannered in some ways, and yet on the 
 whole more confidential and familiar. She will come 
 into our sitting-room any time in the day that she 
 finds herself dull in the kitchen, and enter on some 
 long story ; she thinks nothing of coming behind us 
 to see if the books we are reading have any pictures 
 in them, . . . 
 
 " By dint of watching us and asking questions, she 
 has learned to do a great many things, and she can't 
 bear us to do what she has learnt to do. She 
 delights in setting out the table very elaborately for 
 tea. She puts everything she can lay her hands on 
 upon it; once she served up a little sauce of pepper- 
 corns and allspice as a new delicacy. She is so 
 pretty and picturesque-looking in her homespun 
 coarse striped petticoat, and bright coloured shawl 
 crossed over her shoulders, and gold earrings and 
 high-heeled shoes, her head on one side, as she stands 
 looking at us out of her pretty brown eyes. . . . 
 
 " They have a very pretty custom here of each 
 child, when she makes her first communion, choosing 
 a friend to go up with her, and then the two girls 
 remain close friends, communion friends, through life. 
 So we find that if we make acquaintance with a girl 
 
AXXIE KEARY. 189 
 
 one day and ask her to the chateau, she is pretty sure 
 to bring her communion friend with her; and in 
 this way our acquaintance spreads quickly. As I 
 was coming over the bridge just now, from our 
 kitchen to the house (for the kitchen of the chalet 
 is a separate building, connected with the house by 
 a sort of bridge), I saw two of the communion 
 friends sitting up above in the hayloft ; they called 
 out to me to wish me good evening. They had each 
 got an orange, and they were eating and chatting 
 side by side in the hay, as happy and loving as two 
 pigeons. They are quite inseparable, one is hardly 
 ever to be seen without the other. 
 
 "You know how much I am thinking of you, 
 and wishing to be with you at this time of the year. 
 I shall be with you in thought and prayer on Christ- 
 mas day, at the holy feast. You know that your 
 precious mother was my communion friend. I love 
 so to think that this tie is closer now than ever, 
 that we can all meet together at these holy happy 
 times." 
 
 In another letter to Katie, she says : " The orange 
 trees are in flower now. Marie Mul has promised us 
 some branches from the tree near her window ; when 
 they come we are going to pack them up with some 
 roses and send them to you. Perhaps you may be 
 able, to lay them with a greeting from us on 
 the dear, dear grave, I do so think of her when I 
 see all these lovely flowers, and when I am trying to 
 paint them. Nothing brings her back so much to 
 me as looking at lovely things, such as I know she is 
 
190 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 among now. You and I must be a great deal to- 
 gether in future, and I must tell you all the sweet- 
 ness and goodness that your mother showed me in 
 the early days when we were so much to each other. 
 Every little word I can recollect about her I will 
 treasure up for you, for everything about her 
 is so precious, and is an inheritance that belongs 
 to you. In my life her loss makes such a dreadful 
 blank. . . . 
 
 "I wish you could have been with me at church 
 at Cannes on Easter Sunday. The church was so 
 lovely with palm branches and roses, and we had, I 
 think, the most beautiful sermon I ever heard 
 preached on an Easter Day. The text was, ' Till the 
 day dawns and the shadows flee away.' It was all 
 about the joy of resurrection, and the strength that 
 the certainty of that joy ought to give us while we 
 are still dwelling among the shadows. Separation 
 from those who have passed before us into the full 
 daylight was spoken of as one of the shadows, and I 
 wish I could give you the sweet, brave words in 
 which the preacher encouraged the bereaved ones to 
 bear it, bidding them dwell on the joy of meeting 
 again, and cherish all the tender thoughts and 
 remembrances that would make the meeting not like 
 a fresh beginning, but just a taking up of the love- 
 life where it had paused for a little while. The 
 shadow was only on our side, he said, we were to 
 remember there was no break, no want on the other. 
 They were living in union with us, even when we 
 could not feel it. Then he went on to say how every 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 191 
 
 trouble was only a shadow that the dawn would 
 dispel, and that we should find an answer to all our 
 doubts and troubles in remembering constantly that 
 death was in no sense an end, and that this life was 
 only as it were a school, in which we were being 
 prepared for what was to follow, when all our ideals 
 would be realised, and all our loves perfected, and 
 our yearnings after happiness and goodness receive 
 the fullest satisfaction. 
 
 " I don't know who the preacher was; he looked as 
 if he had known a great deal about the shadows and 
 was getting near to the dawn." 
 
 On her return to England Annie devoted herself 
 to the writing of her novel, A Doubting Heart, the 
 greater part of which was written at Brighton, where 
 she spent the winter of 1876-77. 
 
 She was happier whilst engaged upon this book 
 than she had been in her work on any previous 
 one, for she had begun to feel greater confidence 
 in her vocation, on account of the kindness with 
 which Castle Daly had been received. 
 
 She writes to a young friend, whose acquaint- 
 ance she had made in the south, whose mind and 
 character interested her very much, and whose 
 literary sympathy she greatly valued : 
 
 " I have had an industrious summer, and am 
 enjoying my story more than is usual with me. I 
 think it must be all the kind things said about 
 Castle Daly, and the pleasant knowledge of old and 
 new friends being interested about my work, that 
 
192 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 cheers me on. I have got my four heroines well 
 advanced in their histories, and I hope they will 
 interest other people as much as they do me just 
 now ; though really I ought not to expect that ; it is 
 like a mother hoping that strangers will care about 
 her children as much as she does. The child of my 
 four I like best is called Christabel ; she is a dreamer, 
 and something of a genius. I find it very interest- 
 ing to try to show how the inside world of her 
 dream shrouds her from the outside world, till the 
 shock of a great love comes, shattering unrealities, 
 and leaving her bare of experience to meet the new 
 power that has come into her life. I am sadly afraid, 
 however, that I have not skill enough to show other 
 people all or half of what I mean." 
 
 " I am getting on fairly with my book," she wrote 
 to one of her nephews about the same time. " I 
 have now thought out a long way ahead of my 
 writing, and if I can only write it as I see it, I think 
 I shall be far better satisfied with this book than 
 with anything I have written yet. But there is a 
 long way between seeing and writing ; it is like 
 looking over an unconquered country that has to 
 be won inch by inch." 
 
 Annie was not so much taken up with her work 
 during these winter months as to be forgetful of the 
 concerns or the interests of her friends. Some of 
 her most characteristic letters were written at this 
 time to several of them ; and they show how much 
 her thoughts and her feelings concerned themselves 
 with the lives of others. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 193 
 
 To the friend mentioned above she writes in 
 January, 1877 : 
 
 " I want to wish you a very happy New Year. 
 I wonder how you feel about New Year's wishes. 
 I am sorry to say that I remember a time when I 
 used not to like them, and when they made me sad 
 and despondent instead of hopeful. I know that it 
 was because I was in a wrong state of mind : too 
 much set upon one way of being happy. I now see 
 how happy I have been, though I have not had the 
 life I wanted ; and my wish for all I love, particularly 
 for the young, who are looking forward to their lives, 
 would be, first of all, that they might begin with the 
 knowledge I am ending with that all things work 
 together for good to all, though it is only when they 
 love God that they can see the working 
 
 " I was really enjoying my writing more than I 
 had ever done before ; but just now there has come 
 rather an uphill time. Shall I tell you about it? 
 Yes, I think I will ; for it is not fair, since your 
 thoughts are turning in the direction of authorship 
 yourself, to show you only the pleasures of it. Well, 
 there are times of great discouragement, when one 
 feels almost to hate one's self for living in a world of 
 shadows, while one's dearest friends, are living through 
 actual heart agonies. One knows one can do no 
 good by turning heart-sick from one's own task, that 
 it is cowardly and weak to do so, and that one's duty 
 is, as Macaulay says, ' to go on writing doggedly ' ; 
 but the difficulty of getting really interested in the 
 shadows is all the same. Actual life looks so real,. 
 
 
 
194 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 and its reflection so dim, when anything has hap- 
 pened to awake a very vivid feeling. As I have 
 begun to write a melancholy letter, I will tell you a 
 piece of news that has helped to sadden us. Do you 
 remember that Pegomas girl, Marie Mill, who showed 
 us the linen she had spun and the stockings she had 
 prepared for her trousseau ? I told you, I think, 
 that she had confided her love-story to us, and that 
 it was a very pretty one. Marie reckoned securely 
 upon her lover coming back exactly what he had 
 been when he left the village, and was perfectly 
 happy, showing a very simple confident sort of affec- 
 tion, which struck us as promising a great deal of 
 happiness in her tranquil, sheltered life. Well, we 
 have heard from her, and she tells us that her lover 
 has just married another woman, a person a great 
 deal older than herself, whom every one knows that 
 he does not love. I suppose she has money, but 
 Marie does not say so. The Marie in my story tells 
 her love-tale to my heroine in a chapter called 
 ' Red Anemones/ I feel quite ashamed of the dis- 
 crepancy between fact and the ideal of it now ; but 
 I suppose it would be very miserable if fiction did 
 not give the beautiful side of life." 
 
 In a letter to the same friend, on the subject 
 of writing, she says : 
 
 " I think nothing good comes easily, often facility 
 in composition only proves that the thoughts are 
 commonplace, or there is no struggle to find expres- 
 sion for them, or a facility of composition may come 
 from the faculity of imitation, which enables beginners 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 195 
 
 to catch other people's styles, and serves very well for 
 a time, but is really a hindrance in the end, as it 
 interferes with the formation of a natural style of 
 the writer's own. If there are thoughts worth giving 
 from one mind to another, I think there will also be 
 somewhere, for them, the outside form of words 
 which only can properly fit them, and which ought 
 not to be adopted, but drawn out of the writer's soul 
 if the mind-children are to be complete, not aliens. 
 I think it is best when the thoughts come first and 
 clamour for expression (like souls seeking bodies) till 
 they find it. There is a great deal of pain about it as 
 about all births. We don't all grow up alike or evenly ; 
 sometimes the shaping power lags far behind the 
 thinking and feeling part of the creative faculty." 
 
 To the same young friend, who had been telling 
 her of a literary scheme of her own, she writes : 
 
 " I am not surprised to hear that you have a feel- 
 ing of discouragement ; that was only to be expected, 
 and what I believe no first book was ever written 
 without its writer experiencing scores and scores of 
 times. But I am grieved that you should have 
 worked so hard as to be really ill. It does not 
 really matter how slowly a book grows ; I am sure 
 that the best books have been built slowly, and I can 
 tell you for your comfort that I have often found 
 when I have been stopped in the middle of a book, 
 and had to wait doing nothing at it, perhaps for 
 months, and not even thinking of it, that it had 
 grown with gigantic strides in the dark, as it were 
 in my mind, and that I could write it twice as 
 
 2 
 
196 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 quickly and as well, when I turned to it again. I 
 had two long breaks in Castle Daly, and I am very 
 glad of both now as I look back, for I am sure I 
 wrote better for the enforced resting times. I con- 
 sider that you have got your story quite formed 
 enough in your mind for it to grow by itself, without 
 your troubling about it when you can't work. The 
 plan of it will be like the piece of thread that is let 
 down into a cauldron of boiling sugar to make sugar 
 candy. The crystals will form round it while the 
 liquid is still, and when it is looked at all the 
 beautiful shapes will be seen to have arranged them- 
 selves ready for use. So your thoughts will gather 
 and take shape round the thread of your story while 
 you are not even thinking about it ; so the waiting 
 time instead of being a hindrance, will, I venture to 
 predict, be a time of growth and enrichment only 
 have faith to wait. . . . 
 
 " Have you ever noticed the motto Mrs. Gaskell 
 chose for the title-page of Mary Barton a motto 
 from Carlyle look at it. It is my chief consolation to 
 remember it whenever I begin a book, and I mentally 
 affix it to every title-page I write out, though I 
 cannot adopt it, as Mrs. Gaskell has made it hers. . . . 
 
 " No, I do not want you to make your story end 
 miserably, you had better not ; but you must not 
 fix it to one life. The use and the charm of writing 
 is that it helps one to help others to get outside one's 
 own experience. Writers can do this better than 
 their readers, it is a real escape into a life one 
 fashions for one's self for a time, and if one does not 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 197 
 
 let it hinder one from action in the actual, I think it 
 is a healthy escape from the imperfect present, to the 
 ideally perfect future. I know I have not said quite 
 what I mean." 
 
 To the same : 
 
 " I cannot help feeling sure that your impulse to 
 write must come sooner or later, and that it will 
 bring a great joy to you. There is so much pleasure 
 in expression pleasure that outweighs all the 
 struggle. I do not think your thoughts will let you 
 rest till you have begun to make word clothes for 
 them. I have drifted into saying this to-night 
 because we (that is, my nephew Charlie and myself) 
 have been sitting by our window this rainy afternoon 
 looking out on a melancholy little leafless windy 
 Brighton Square garden, and have been thoroughly 
 enjoying a long talk about the pleasures and pains 
 of writing, and the right way to seize and make 
 permanent the impressions and suggestions that 
 crowd upon one at times (oftenest when least ex- 
 pected, on dreary outside days like this) in vague 
 fleeting forms that are scarcely recognisable from an 
 emotion, till one tries in some way or other to make 
 them speak. 
 
 " I am very glad to hear that you are so enjoying 
 your English winter, and that you have got such 
 good work to do in teaching in the school. I do not 
 think anything is really more satisfactory than the 
 sort of work a person like you can do among girls of 
 a different class drawing out the real refinement 
 and womanliness that is so often kept down by 
 
198 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 circumstances in rougher life. There is so much 
 more in every one than they know how to bring 
 out, and the sort of help a cultivated person can 
 give to one less advanced is like helping to set a 
 soul free. If it is only giving them greater power of 
 expression, making the meanings of a greater number 
 of words clear to them, it is opening the way for the 
 soul to grow. Then if one does chance upon a 
 starving intellect to which the scraps of knowledge 
 one can give are real food and drink, how delightful 
 it is, and what touching love and gratitude is some- 
 times drawn out in this way. Such a happy chance 
 came to us once in a pupil we had in a night-school 
 in London. Of all the young girls I have ever had 
 to do with in the way of teaching, rich or poor, she 
 was the one who loved learning most, and was most 
 thirsty for every bit of knowledge she could get 
 She used at last to come to me alone, she got so far 
 beyond her class, and read Milton and a book on 
 optics which delighted her beyond anything. It was 
 so pleasant to read the delight in her face when a 
 new thought came to her, or when she began to take 
 in some description or comparison in the poetry that 
 had been dark to her at first, from her having lived 
 all her life among the sort of things which gave her 
 no recollections to compare it with. She has gone to 
 America since, and the letters she writes to us are 
 still full of gratitude for that little bit of teaching ; 
 it makes me quite ashamed. I believe if it only gets 
 to the right people, there is no gift in the world that 
 wins such love as the gift of culture which a lady 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 19.9 
 
 can give to a girl who has a nature that wants it, and 
 circumstances that hinder her getting it." 
 
 To the same 'she wrote in answer to some questions 
 of speculation upon religious subjects : 
 
 " May I tell you what I think is the real danger 
 of reading books of doubtful theology, and that is, if 
 you read them before you have sufficiently studied 
 the evidences in favour of your own belief, to feel 
 that you are standing on sure ground, and that 
 you can judge whether the writers have arrived 
 at their negation after due search and fair reasoning, 
 or if they have merely taken up the negative side 
 from foregone conclusions because it suited the 
 condition of their minds, or because they had been 
 shocked at some aspects of popular teaching and 
 chose to consider them bound up in the teaching of 
 the Bible, without searching the Bible for themselves 
 to see if this is so. What gives one pain and 
 disturbs one's mind in reading sceptical books is the 
 tone of certainty which the writers take in speaking 
 of the articles of faith they have rejected, as if the 
 facts on which these rest really had been disproved, 
 and could no longer be held by fair minds. The best 
 way to cure this pain is to go into the questions of 
 evidence for one's self as far as one can. You will 
 then see how very unfair the assumption of certainty 
 is, and that the people who assume it, often without 
 meaning to be unfair, have not arrived at this 
 certainty from study of evidence, but from some 
 metaphysical or scientific assumption, which to their 
 minds appears more certain than any evidence, as, 
 
200 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 for example, that no miracle ought to be believed, or 
 that revelation from God to man is an impossibility. 
 To me it has always been the greatest help to turn 
 back to the facts as history shows them, and to try 
 to get a firm hold on the reasons for and against 
 their having actually taken place. Westcott's Canon 
 of Scripture is a book that helped me much. One 
 gets so puzzled by the tone taken by sceptical writers 
 with respect to the gospels, as if their authority had 
 been almost disproved, that it is a comfort to go back 
 and find how very strong the evidence in favour of 
 all the canonical books being genuine really is. 
 
 " Perhaps all this is not at all what you want, and 
 the questions that fascinate you may be of a much 
 more spiritual and metaphysical kind. I only 
 suggest, in case in pursuit of thought on the more 
 inward sort of spiritual problems you should sud- 
 denly find that you had not made your foundation 
 sufficiently sure, and should tumble into a sea of 
 perplexity that a little previous study might have 
 saved you from." 
 
 To the same : 
 
 " I want very much to have a talk about H. 
 Martineau's Life with you. I have not had it yet, 
 but years ago I read her letters to Mr. Atkinson, 
 and I think I understand the sort of painful impres- 
 sion her life must have made on you. She was a 
 wonderful, noble woman, and I can't tell you how I 
 admire a great deal of her writing. She was a sort 
 of ideal to me, and for years it was my most cherished 
 castle in the air to get to know her ; but I have felt 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 201 
 
 more and more through her later writings that there 
 was something about her sort of imagination that 
 made her no rule for other people something 
 abnormal in her character which caused her on some 
 subjects to take a distorted view. I think it was 
 this peculiar sort of imagination which accounts for 
 her being able to be happy after giving up all belief, 
 and that therefore it was more an intellectual than 
 a moral defect. No, I am wrong ; the defect in her 
 was neither intellectual, nor moral, it was spiritual. 
 The imagination somehow concerned itself only with 
 the intellectual and the moral, and left the spiritual 
 in everything out. Do not you feel that in her imagi- 
 native writings there is no spiritual imagination, and 
 that her people are all more or less qualities or 
 opinions ? I am sure you will not struggle out of 
 your spiritual difficulties on that same barren side, 
 I should be sorry if I feared that for a moment. 
 H. Martineau could be happy while all the spiritual 
 side of her slept ; but what a loss it was ! How great 
 she would have been if she had been developed all 
 round ; and now that she knows the truth, how sorry 
 she must be that she missed the chance of teaching 
 it here. Do you remember what Maurice says about 
 ' being ashamed at His appearing ' ? About really 
 good and noble people who had not accepted Christ 
 on earth, when they saw Him and found that it was 
 He who had been inspiring them, and loving and 
 guiding them, and giving them the eternal life they 
 had come into without expecting how they would 
 be ashamed of their want of love and trust, and feel 
 
202 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 as a child feels who has distrusted a parent who has 
 been working for it, and loving it all the time. So 
 sorry to have lost the chance of trusting while they 
 did not know. 
 
 " Do you know, I can sympathise with what you 
 say about want of liberality. It is very difficult to 
 combine fervour, a real strong grasp of what you 
 believe with perfect liberality to doubters. It is only 
 the strongest faith that can do that, such faith as 
 Macdonald or Maurice have the faith of people who 
 having had a vision of God themselves, and being 
 as sure of Him and of His mercy (nay, a thousand 
 times surer than of their own existence), can leave 
 those who appear to be working against Him, with 
 the utmost serenity, to His leading, not even dreading 
 the harm they may do others." 
 
 To the same : 
 
 "I do not know why you should wish you were 
 not interested in theology. What is there more in- 
 teresting, or worthy of a soul made for God, than the 
 study of how to know Him ? As for the puzzles, 
 what else can we expect? Would it be God that 
 could be found out easily, by a few of His creatures' 
 faculties in a short life-time ? We have all eternity 
 to learn God in ; it would be a poor prospect if we 
 could get very far into our lesson here. We must 
 expect to be puzzled and baffled again and again, 
 only do not let us get impatient and weary of the 
 search, or feel tempted to think that He is nowhere 
 because we cannot yet reach to the height of His 
 vision. We are perhaps not using all our faculties 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 203 
 
 in the effort to see. You say the great question is, 
 how far we are to give our reason free play? I 
 think we cannot give it too free play, but we 
 must not trust to it alone, or use it in the wrong 
 way, that is, I think, in speculation instead of in 
 looking at facts. We can't reason without some 
 premises to reason on. We must jknow something 
 about God before we can reason on His nature or 
 doings. Reason does not, I think, in this search 
 come first. God must speak to us Himself; we 
 must look for Him in our own hearts in answer to 
 our prayers ; we must wait, and wait, and hope, and 
 trust till He draws the veil and gives us a glimpse of 
 His countenance, then let us speak of what we have 
 seen. I believe that inward road is the best road to 
 God. Whilst we are waiting to see Him ourselves, 
 let us listen to those who do see, and trace what 
 the knowledge of God has done in other souls. It 
 may not always be knowledge that we shall find, but 
 it will be love and moral height, and there, as in a 
 mirror, we shall see God. Do not you think that after 
 all it is only the heart of God that we can expect or 
 need want to see much of here ? It is so manifest 
 that we can never in this state know much of His 
 ultimate purposes or designs, except that they must 
 be in accordance with His heart must be loving. 
 Then about teaching others ; it is the heart-love we 
 want to give them, the certainty that love is at the 
 centre of the universe, and that our business here is 
 to subdue all in ourselves to love." 
 
204 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 To the same : 
 
 " I am glad you did not change your mind about 
 sending me that dear letter, for indeed you do not 
 know how much I like to hear your real thoughts 
 and how deeply interesting they are to me, nor how 
 ardently I wish I had light enough to be a helper to 
 you. Never mind, however, God is His own inter- 
 preter, and He is only waiting his own time the 
 right time to show you Himself, and to fill your 
 hungry and thirsty soul with a satisfying knowledge. 
 What I should like to say lovingly to you is to go on 
 as you are doing now, teaching your Sunday class, 
 and going to the Holy Communion, and continuing 
 your usual services, and prayers, and readings, wait- 
 ing patiently for the good in them that will come. 
 I know how hard it is, I lived very long under such 
 a cloud myself, but I am so very glad now that I 
 never let quite go my hold on the outward ordin- 
 ances, for I think I might never have come to under- 
 stand them, as I do now, if they had ever grown 
 unfamiliar. I think while you are going on attend- 
 ing to them for the sake of others, the light of God's 
 face will dawn upon you through them, and bring 
 you full certainty and peace. I do not believe that a 
 satisfying knowledge of God often comes to the soul 
 by soundings of the intellect. It is right to search, 
 and try and satisfy the reason and it can be satisfied 
 and give a glad, complete consent to all that 
 inward illumination brings ; but I think it is only a 
 dry, outward kind of knowledge of God that can be 
 proved. The Spirit must speak to the spirit before 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 205 
 
 that knowledge of God which is life, and joy, and 
 power, can come to us. And God speaks in His own 
 time. "We are not always ready for that light. 
 Perhaps there are times when the soul may need a 
 certain twilight and doubtfulness for its growth, just 
 as we put hyacinth bulbs into the dark for their 
 roots to grow downwards before we let them feel the 
 sunshine, and begin to stretch up their stems and 
 blooms to the sun. You know what feeble flowers a 
 hyacinth bulb has when it is brought to the light 
 too soon, before it has struck down long fibres into 
 the water. May it not be that the souls which are 
 meant to flower most gloriously towards God, have to 
 grope about a long time in doubt and uncertainty ? 
 Would it not be a pity for them to turn despairing 
 and leave off growing roots of patience and hope, and 
 self-knowledge, to conclude that there is no light 
 because they have not been lifted up into it ? I hope 
 I am not saying anything that will sound to you 
 arrogant. It is not arrogant in my meaning, because 
 I am so sure that God is teaching and leading even 
 when we seem to be unsuccessful in our search after 
 Him. Joyful certainty of His inward presence and 
 His personal love is only another stage of His teach- 
 ing, a further showing of the gift that is given when 
 the soul first sends out a cry of longing after some- 
 thing higher than itself. I am glad you feel that to 
 have a high view of the manhood of Christ one must 
 believe in His Divinity. To me, all hope for the 
 human race lies in my belief in the fact that the 
 Divine became human, and has made it possible for 
 
206 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 us, for all humanity, to share His Divinity. How 
 shall I ever be able to tell you what I think and feel 
 about this, in letters ? To me it is just the key-note 
 of everything, and sums up all philosophy and all 
 hope. I don't feel as if I could understand anything 
 on any other supposition, neither God, nor man, nor 
 nature, nor history. It would all be chaos if I did 
 not believe in the last grand act of creation the 
 adoption of our human nature into the divine. It ex- 
 plains development, it explains all past mythologies 
 and revelations, and the yearning of all nations after 
 God, as, so it seems to me, nothing else could explain 
 them. But, in a short space, how can I give you my 
 reasons for saying this ? I cannot go beyond asser- 
 tions, and to state one's own standpoint is not by any 
 means to justify one's having got there. May I tell 
 you a few books to read that will show you the road 
 by which some people at least have come to a belief 
 in the divinity of Christ after a great deal of trouble ? 
 Have you ever read any of Coleridge's Aids to Re- 
 flection ? If you do not know anything of Coleridgej 
 and find a plunge into him rather formidable, I wish 
 you would get Professor Shairp's Essays on Poetry 
 and Philosophy, and see there what he says of 
 Coleridge, and of the phases of mind through which 
 he passed. Shairp has written two more books that 
 I want you to read. One on Eeligion and Culture, 
 and one on the Aspects of Nature. Do get Religion 
 and Culture, I know that you will like it, and that it 
 will help you. Have you ever read any of Hinton's 
 books ? Man and His Dwelling Place I think you 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 207 
 
 would like ; and may I send you a little book, now 
 out of print, called God and the Sacraments ? It is 
 written by Mr. Farquhar, a mystic, and is full of 
 most wonderful teaching. I think it says more 
 helpful things about the real meaning of Communion 
 than any other book I ever came across." 
 
 Writing to a cousin about some books she had 
 been interested in, she concludes : 
 
 " Have you read the Symposium in the Nineteenth 
 Century? Don't you always feel as if you should 
 like to put an oar in, for that everybody goes wide of 
 the mark, and that the arguments on all sides are 
 left unanswered, more or less ? I suppose no one can 
 really on these subjects put into words the thought 
 down at the bottom which convinces him, and is the 
 real root of his opinion. The roots of our convictions 
 lie so deep, and belong so entirely to the nature of 
 our souls, that I suspect we never can really explain 
 them in words to each other. We think so and so 
 because that is the only mould for thought we have 
 within us, and we can't turn out anything in a 
 different shape." 
 
 To her young friend in America she wrote several 
 times during this winter and spring : 
 
 "DEAREST EMMA, 
 
 "I am afraid you have had a very sad time 
 and that your faith and patience have been sorely 
 tried. It is our faith and patience that are precious 
 to God. I believe that if we could only see before- 
 hand what it is that our Heavenly Father means us 
 
208 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 to be the soul beauty and perfection and glory, the 
 glorious and lovely spiritual body that this soul is to 
 dwell in through all eternity if we could have a 
 glimpse of this, we should not grudge all the trouble 
 and pains He is taking with us now to bring us up 
 to that ideal which is His thought of us. We know 
 that it is God's way to work slowly, so we must not 
 be surprised if He takes a great many years of 
 discipline to turn a mortal being into an immortal 
 glorious angel. When you write again tell me still 
 more about yourself; I am so glad that you have 
 found some friends among Mrs. Pearsall-Smith's 
 friends. I have often prayed that you might, and I 
 do thank God for having put it into your heart to 
 persevere in going to the meetings, and for having 
 raised up this friend to you. If you ever have a 
 chance of seeing Mrs. Pearsall- Smith herself, do take 
 advantage of it, and if you speak to her, give her a 
 message of love from me. Say it is from a grateful 
 heart, whom her words in England helped to trust 
 God a little better than before. . . . 
 
 " I know you will like to know a little of what we 
 are doing this winter. . . . 
 
 "We keep up our connection with the girls we 
 knew in Bessborough Gardens, and often have such 
 touching letters from them this, you can imagine, 
 increases our correspondence. I am also writing 
 again, and as I feel that I want my books to be 
 letters to those I love, to make up for the scantiness 
 of my real letters, I am having sent to you two books 
 of mine that have been written since you left 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 209 
 
 England. One is called Castle Daly. I was writing 
 it that winter when you used to come to us in 
 Bedford Gardens, and we had such nice French 
 readings together ; the other I have written since. 
 It is a children's book called A York and a Lancaster 
 Eose. I hope you will accept them both, as a visit 
 from me, and that you may find some thoughts in 
 them that may make you feel as if we were talking 
 together again. I wish they were worth more, and 
 that I had the power of writing more from my in- 
 most heart, and that it were given to me to bring 
 out higher teaching. I find I can only speak a word 
 here and a word there, and I do not aspire to much 
 more than amusing people, and giving them a rest, 
 after perhaps some difficult bit of work or hard part 
 of life. To do this for people like yourself, dearest 
 Emma, is a great joy to me, and I hope you may find 
 these books useful in soothing away some tired 
 evening. Do you get Mr. Macdonald's books in 
 America? I have just been reading one called 
 Thomas Wingfold, which I like better than any 
 other of his I have ever seen. There are such 
 beautiful, beautiful words in it about God's love to 
 all, and about the sunshine that a knowledge of Him 
 can make in the soul, even when outward circum- 
 stances are dark. And besides these words to the 
 heart, there is a great deal of help to puzzled heads, 
 a great deal to clear away doubts and difficulties such 
 as one cannot help hearing about in this age of the 
 world." 
 
210 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 To the same : 
 
 " MY DEAKEST EMMA, 
 
 u Here is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, 
 and I have still to wish you a Happy New Year. 
 
 " I am at the Servants' Home in Bessborough 
 Gardens now, taking charge for a fortnight, whilst 
 the Lady Superintendent is away, and a very busy 
 time I am having. I am so sorry for some of the 
 girls here now ; one is a poor, forlorn, sad-looking girl 
 of nineteen, no father or mother, brought up in the 
 workhouse, and unlucky in having got a very hard 
 place the first time she went out ; she was absolutely 
 ill-used, and became very ill. She says she has 
 never slept in a comfortable bed in her life before 
 she came here ; think of that, and she is nineteen, 
 and she has seldom since she left the workhouse 
 school had enough to eat. She looks starved in 
 every way, body, soul, and mind; I am so sorry 
 for her. . . . 
 
 " Thank you for writing such a nice letter and for 
 loving us so much. Oh ! you are very much mis- 
 taken if you think it is not a great joy to us to be 
 so much loved by you. What is there so beautiful 
 as love, and such love as we have for each other is 
 the most beautiful kind, because it is founded on 
 real sympathy, and tends I trust to draw us both 
 nearer God who is Love. How can you, with your 
 loving heart, say you do not know God. Do not you 
 know that 'Every one that loveth is born of God 
 and knoweth God,' for love is of God. Jesus says 
 that the second commandment to love the neighbour 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 211 
 
 is like the first, to love God. All that is good, and 
 high, and pure in our neighbour, is of God ; and in 
 loving that we love God, and all that is bad in our 
 neighbour we must pity and forgive in the spirit of 
 God, and in so loving and pitying and helping, we 
 experience the love of God in ourselves and learn 
 God. Yet there is something more, a yet more 
 individual way of knowing and loving God, and I 
 expect that is what you are yearning for. I do not 
 think myself, it is so important as the other way of 
 loving God which is like the love of the neighbour. 
 This individual love of God, as a personal friend and 
 guide and helper, only comes through a habit of 
 prayer, and the experience of help and guidance one 
 gets from bringing everything to Him, and asking 
 for His light upon it. It is a great blessing and 
 gift, and like nearly all other great blessings and 
 gifts cannot be had without seeking. Can we know 
 a friend if we never go to see him, and never take 
 the trouble to talk to him, and listen for his 
 answer ? 
 
 " ' Ah ! ' you say, ' but how am I to listen ? ' 
 " Answer to God's saying, * Seek ye my face,' 
 ' Thy face, Lord, will I seek ; ' and see if He does 
 not show you His face and let you hear His voice. 
 I cannot tell you how or where, for He has a different 
 way of speaking to each of His children. Perhaps 
 it will be down in the depths of your own soul, by 
 the opening out of a new joy and peace, that you 
 will find Him ; perhaps the knowledge will come in 
 a new sense of His nearness in the beauties of 
 
 p 2 
 
212 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 nature ; you will see His love and His mind written 
 all over the spring skies, and lettered in spring 
 flowers about the earth. Remember that every 
 beautiful thing, and far more, every beautiful soul, 
 is a thought of God; by which He reveals Him- 
 self to you ; the most perfect revelation having 
 been made in the beloved Son, who came to 
 show His glory in a life of lowly deeds of love and 
 self-sacrifice. Cannot you admire and love that sort 
 of glory ? Is it not really what your soul loves and 
 would fain be ? .... I am so glad at what you say 
 about the Church services ; I love to think each 
 Sunday that we have joined in the same prayers, and 
 read the same Epistle and Gospel and Lessons. Is not 
 the Epistle beautiful for to-day (2nd Sunday after 
 Epiphany), and don't you like to think that Christ 
 showed forth the Father's creative power and glory 
 first in such a kind act as saving some poor simple 
 people from being shamed and hurt in their hospi- 
 tality by having no wine to give their guests ? " 
 
 To one of the little servant-girls whom she had 
 known in Bessborough Gardens she wrote : 
 
 " MY DEAR LITTLE KATIE, 
 
 "I was very glad indeed to get a letter 
 from you, and to hear that you are well and happy. 
 I hope you are trying hard to do all your duties. I 
 am glad to hear that you sew so much, for you know 
 you had a good deal to learn in that way. I hope 
 you will get to be a real good needlewoman, and that 
 you will take a great pleasure in your needle. I am 
 
ANNIE KEAE,Y. 213 
 
 very fond of sewing myself, and I think there is so 
 much pleasure in learning to do anything with one's 
 fingers really well and beautifully. Do you remember 
 my showing you the beautiful way in which the little 
 wild flowers I brought home one day were made ? all 
 the little leaves finished off with such delicate fringes 
 of soft hairs, and the blossoms so carefully fastened 
 on to the stalks, and the seed vessels fitted so neatly ; 
 and we said it was a lesson in finishing off work well 
 which God gives us in every little flower and leaf. 
 He never leaves anything half done ; not the tiniest 
 little moss or weed has an end or an edge that is not 
 most beautifully ornamented and finished off. It 
 is the same with shells, even with rocks and stones. 
 God makes everything perfect to its last little atom, to 
 show us how carefully we should work. We should 
 not be satisfied with the things we make looking well 
 in a rough, outside way; we should find pleasure in 
 turning out work that will bear looking at all 
 through, as His work will. I have been staying at 
 Bessborough Gardens. There are two little girls 
 there now who did just the same work that you used 
 to do. Their names are Nellie and Rosie, and they 
 are very nice children. They used to have lessons 
 with me in the afternoons ; and on Saturday after- 
 noon I let them have a treat of guessing riddles 
 while they mended their stockings, as you used to 
 do when you were with us. I am sending you some 
 of the riddles I told them. I have put the answers in 
 the corner, folded over. Are you getting too old for 
 riddles, dear Katie ? I think of you always as ' my 
 
214 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 little woman/ as I used to call you; but you are 
 getting quite grown-up now. Do you ever get any 
 flowers where you are, I wonder ? Some day, when 
 spring has quite come, I will send you a little box of 
 flowers, that you may see again how beautifully they 
 are made, and take another lesson about the way in 
 which we must do our work to please God. 
 " Your affectionate friend, 
 
 "A. KEARY." 
 
 To a young girl in a Reformatory, whom she had 
 known as a servant-girl, she wrote : 
 
 "We have got some pretty hyacinths out in our 
 room just now ; I wish you could see them. I will 
 tell you a little thing that happened to one of them, 
 because it seems to me a sort of parable. It is a 
 white hyacinth, and one day when all the little buds 
 were on the stalk folded tight together, ready to 
 unfold in the sun, the hyacinth-glass was put upon 
 the window-ledge that it might get more light. A 
 little while after I came into the room, and, not see- 
 ing the flower, I opened the window, and, in doing 
 so, knocked the top of the hyacinth against the 
 blind, and broke off five or six of its buds, and 
 bruised the green leaves. We were so sorry, you 
 cannot think. We said, ' Here is our dear hyacinth 
 quite spoilt ; it will never be worth anything now, 
 all one side of the stalk will be bare and ugly, and 
 there will be scarcely any flowers at all. It is hardly 
 worth while to give it fresh water, or put it in 
 the sun. However,' we said, 'it will perhaps turn 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 215 
 
 out better than we think, so we will go on putting it 
 in the sun and see what will happen/ Shall I 
 tell you what has happened ? It is the best of all 
 our hyacinths now. The kind loving light healed 
 the bruised leaves, and drew one of them close to the 
 stalk, so as quite to hide the bare part under a green 
 veil ; then the buds that were left, having plenty 
 of room to grow, got larger and larger, and curled 
 round the stalk and spread into beautiful, large 
 white bells, the fairest and sweetest of all our 
 flowers now. Do you want me to explain the mean- 
 ing of the hyacinth's history to you ? No ; I think 
 you have read already the lesson God has been teach- 
 ing us in that flower. Is it not that love, which is 
 like sunlight, can heal sin and sorrow? and that 
 people who have sinned and suffered may become 
 even better, stronger, more beautiful in their souls, 
 than if they had not suffered or done wrong ? that is 
 to say, if, like the hyacinth, they turn to God's love 
 and light and let it heal them. I will send you one 
 of our hyacinth bells to keep in your prayer-book, 
 and put you in mind of its story." 
 
 To a young friend, on the subject of judging 
 others, she writes : 
 
 " Do you not see that nearly all anger comes from 
 misunderstanding ? If we could get inside any one, 
 our greatest enemy, the person who disgusts and 
 wounds us most, we should get revelations that 
 would surprise us, and that would melt all our dis- 
 like into tenderest pity and love. Pray for God's 
 light in which to see others, and then you will be at 
 
216 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 peace, for you will love. The great thing to help 
 against irritation is always to try to get out of your 
 own point of view into other people's, and find out 
 how things look to them, then you will always be 
 able to make excuses for them." 
 
 To a young girl, who had just left school, she 
 wrote : 
 
 " I think this is such an important year of your 
 life, and such a difficult year : the getting into regu- 
 lar employment when you have to plan for yourself. 
 I used always to be getting more to do than I could 
 manage; there is great fret and worry in always 
 running after work, it is not good intellectually or 
 spiritually. I wish I could help you ; but I am so 
 often in this state myself that I hardly know how. 
 I think I find most help in trying to look on all 
 interruptions and hindrances to work that one has 
 planned out for one's self as discipline, trials sent by 
 God to help one against getting selfish over one's 
 work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true 
 work -one's work for God consists in doing some 
 trifling, haphazard thing that has been thrown into 
 one's day. It is not waste of time, as one is tempted 
 to think, it is the most important part of the work 
 of the day the part one can best offer to God. After 
 such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work, 
 trust that the time to finish it well will be given 
 some time, and keep a quiet heart about it." 
 
 In the year 1877, after two winters spent at a 
 distance from her friends, Annie returned to London, 
 and made a home there, at Campden Hill Gardens, 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 217 
 
 in the home of the two nephews with whose lives 
 her own had been so closely interwoven. She seemed 
 to be floating in a sunny sea towards a safe and 
 pleasant harbour at the end of her life ; the doubts 
 and struggles were over, and she was reaping the 
 fruit of conscientious seeking and of careful work. 
 In A Doubting Heart she makes Mrs-. Urquhart talk 
 of having reached the last stage of her life's journey, 
 the state which Bunyan describes in the Pilgrims 
 Progress under the name of the Land of Beulah, 
 " where sweet breaths from the heavenly hills blow 
 tranquillity and peace about the heart." Annie felt 
 as if she had reached her Land of Beulah, when the 
 greatest happiness of her life seemed about to renew 
 itself. She would have been content to remain a 
 long time there, with a heart at leisure from itself, 
 and thoughts occupied with the future of the younger 
 generation, waiting for the summons to go over and 
 possess the larger life if such a lot had been in 
 store for her. 
 
 From the new home she wrote to her young friend 
 in America on the 14th October, 1877 : 
 
 " This is a lovely day. I think St. Luke's little 
 summer has begun, and I hope you will enjoy your 
 longer and more beautiful fall-summer where you 
 are. I was thinking this morning when we were 
 walking up and down Netting Hill Square, looking 
 at the half-stripped trees in the garden, where the 
 leaves are quite brown and sere, or, at best, a dull 
 yellow, of what you told me about the exquisite 
 crimson and gold of your American trees in autumn. 
 
218 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 I do hope that you will enjoy them this year, and they 
 will give you some beautiful, hopeful thoughts. We 
 have just been getting some little rhododendron 
 trees for our balconies, which are to flower next 
 spring, and I do so like looking at the already fully 
 formed buds, next year's flowers, getting ready now, 
 showing through the old leaves that will fall off 
 before their beauty begins. The leaves have nursed 
 the future flowers all the year, and they will die 
 when the flowers are ready to bloom, just as our 
 bodies fall off and die when our souls are ready to 
 flower in the spiritual world. One sees this clearly 
 with the rhododendron buds, because they are large 
 in autumn, but I believe every single leaf has a 
 bud in its charge which it shelters all the summer, 
 and then it dies to give its nursling air and space to 
 grow in. The law of sacrifice and of hope is read to 
 us, you see, by every autumn leaf that the wind blows 
 in our faces, whether they are brown, or, like yours, 
 crimson and gold. Yes ! but I like the crimson and 
 gold ones best, they are like contented, happy old 
 people, who understand that the end is better and 
 more glorious every way than the beginning just a 
 going on from better to better. 
 
 " This has been the harvest festival at our church ; 
 we thought of you, and I gave thanks for your love 
 as one of the precious things that I have to be 
 thankful for. I wondered whether you were re- 
 joicing in a sweet autumn Sunday. . . . 
 
 " I have got a thought for you that I will tell you 
 here. Swedenborg says, that in the spiritual world 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 219 
 
 love constitutes nearness, and hate distance. A 
 spirit, he says, must always be near what it loves. 
 Love draws love to itself in the spiritual world by the 
 same sort of attraction as matter draws matter here. 
 So we may say there is no space with God, because 
 He loves all, and so is near to all. Those who do not 
 love Him, however, put Him far from them, for you 
 know, spiritually, hate and dislike make distance. 
 In proportion as we love much we partake of the 
 nature of God, and get rid of space ourselves. Our 
 bodies do not hold us if we are loving, for we are 
 always sending out our souls to our friends and 
 loved ones. A selfish, unloving person is shut up in 
 a little space in self and is so much nearer to 
 being an animal, so much further from the nature 
 of God." 
 
 Before the buds of the rhododendron she speaks 
 about in this letter flowered, " the already fully- 
 formed buds, next year's flowers, getting ready now," 
 the whole aspect of the future was changed for 
 Annie. 
 
 A little anxiety about her health had been grow- 
 ing up all the winter, so slight that it scarcely 
 seemed to forewarn danger ; but, unknown to herself, 
 or to any one else, she was the victim of a disease 
 from which recovery is very rare, and which had 
 been secretly sapping her strength for some time. 
 Only a little cloud on the horizon, and in one day 
 the whole heaven was overcast. 
 
PART V. 
 
 ANNIE went out quite cheerfully on the morning of 
 the 2nd of March, 1878, with her sister and her friend 
 Emelia, to take advice upon the symptom that had 
 roused the indistinct fear mentioned above ; before she 
 turned to go home again her friend knew that she had 
 only one year more to live ; Annie knew too that a 
 sentence of death had been passed upon her. All her 
 life she had dreaded more than anything else what was 
 unexpected : it was more difficult to her than it is to 
 many people to turn the gaze quite away from one 
 aspect of the future to another. She was just then 
 so happy too ; she counted up all her treasures, those 
 that she had won, all that had been given her, whilst 
 other conditions of being, untried paths, loomed 
 pale and ghostlike on before. Relations and friends 
 had already passed on there, it is true, but she was 
 clinging with fonder affection than ever to those who 
 remained, and in the harmony to which her nature 
 had attained was giving out in greater abundance 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 221 
 
 than before the divine spirit of joy and love. Her 
 pale face showed the anguish that she felt, but she 
 did not complain, she only prayed for help to lay 
 down her life contentedly at the call of God, and the 
 help was not denied to her for which she asked ; if 
 there was mortal suffering, there was as certainly 
 divine peace. She told Emelia afterwards that the 
 first words which came into her mind upon awak- 
 ing the morning after her visit to the physicians 
 were, "Accepted in the Beloved/' and it is quite 
 true to say that the comfort those words brought 
 with them never left her through all the suffering 
 she had subsequently to bear, nor during all the 
 fluctuations of hope and fear she passed through in 
 the year that lay between that morning and the 
 morning of her death. Within a few days after she 
 heard the opinions of the doctors she prepared to 
 undergo an unusually painful operation the only one 
 possible in her case that she might give herself the 
 chance of a prolonged life, it seemed as if there were 
 a possibility of reprieve for some years, and she 
 clung to the hope of this. Emelia, who was with her 
 during the whole of the long day of suffering on 
 which the operation took place, wrote of it to a 
 friend : " It is wonderful how she has been supported 
 through her sufferings. Her look of calm and perfect 
 peace I shall never forget, and there is not the 
 slightest effort or exaltation. It was just as if it 
 were the most natural thing in the world to lie still 
 in a Father's arms." 
 
 Shortly after the operation, which appeared to have 
 
222 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 been fairly successful, she wrote to one of her 
 friends : 
 
 " I must send you a line in pencil of warm love 
 and thanks for your sympathy. I feel to-day as if 
 a new wave of strength had come, as if I had come 
 to a turning-point, and the currents were setting 
 towards life again. Dear, will you pray for me, that 
 this experience may not be lost to me, but that the 
 life given back, if please God it is given back, may 
 be more instinct with the true life than the 
 previous years. I long to tell you a little about 
 this experience. It was such a sudden being brought 
 face to face with death. I ought to learn a great 
 deal from it, and I have been wonderfully shown the 
 tender Fatherly love that appointed every step of 
 the way. You know too, don't you, dear, that it is 
 worth while to suffer to learn Him ? . . . 
 
 "The first proof of my new book came just 
 when I was most ill, and now I am able to enjoy 
 correcting it." 
 
 To her little Katie, also, she wrote about the same 
 time : 
 
 " You cannot think how pleased I was to get your 
 letter. I am writing to you in pencil because I am 
 not yet strong enough to sit at a table and write 
 with ink, but I am getting much better. It has 
 pleased God to restore me after a very serious illness. 
 Dear Katie, you too last year were very near death, 
 and I think you must know how solemn it is to feel 
 that God has given one's life back to one. How 
 careful we must be to use the years to come 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 223 
 
 altogether in our blessed Saviour's service. To have 
 had a very serious illness, and to be brought back from 
 it, is like a second gift of life, and should make us feel 
 doubly that we owe all our time and all ourselves, 
 body, and soul, and spirit, to God. I shall not be able 
 to write you a long letter to-day, but I am sending 
 you the little writing-case I promised you a long 
 time ago." 
 
 One of the greatest trials of Annie's illness to 
 her was her being obliged to leave the home in 
 which she had only spent a few months, instead of 
 the years to which she had looked forward. It was 
 considered necessary that she should be removed 
 to Eastbourne, both for the sake of the sea air 
 there, and for the opportunity the place offered 
 of her being put under specially skilful medical 
 treatment. No place could be quite like a home to 
 her away from her family and friends. Yet she 
 always tried to feel contented and restful wherever 
 she was forced to be. Several changes had to be 
 made from one part of Eastbourne to another, 
 during the changes of the seasons as they came 
 round. On the first evening of settling in a tiny 
 cottage close to the sea, she said, looking round upon 
 the little room, made pleasant to her already by the 
 presence of a row of books upon the sideboard, 
 " What a little place contents us ! How much I 
 shall enjoy the quiet here ! " 
 
 " We have just moved to a tiny little cottage," she 
 wrote to a friend, " close to the sea ; it is quite a nut- 
 shell, but so pleasant, and the view we have from 
 
224 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 our sitting-room window is a continual feast. . . . 
 Our end of the parade is the old-fashioned end, so 
 we have the advantage of being quiet and free from 
 bands. I really think I am getting stronger, and 
 mending week by week, though the progress seems 
 slow, and the pain very lingering, and apt to return 
 with the least fatigue." 
 
 Her love of nature seemed to be as great and 
 almost as joyful as it had ever been. The colours 
 of the sunset upon the shore, the moonlight ways 
 across the water, the launching of some little pleasure 
 boat at evening, the trailing of the fisherman's net 
 along the sand, as she watched them from the window 
 of the little cottage during quiet hours after days of 
 pain, brought just the same contented smile to her 
 face, and the same whispered prayer to her lips, as 
 the sunlight, and the flowers, and the rich colours of 
 the south had been wont to do in her days of hope 
 and pleasure. She was very fond of those evening 
 sights upon the shore, and used to lean forward in 
 her chair watching them for long times together. 
 The window commanded a view of Hastings, and 
 she liked to see the lights of the town spring up in 
 the twilight, when the colours had faded from the 
 nearer part of the picture. She seemed very happy, 
 looking and admiring a little dreamy, too. Perhaps 
 it was not only the things she saw with her outward 
 eyes that soothed her and made her smile. 
 
 Writing to the friend of her Egyptian travel, with 
 whom she had corresponded for so many years, she 
 says : 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 225 
 
 "I confess I am rather disheartened to find that 
 my doctor wishes me to remain here longer. I 
 thought I should have been at home, or perhaps for 
 a little while with you again, before this. It seems a 
 long banishment. . . . 
 
 " We have just heard of Ellen T 's death from 
 
 her sisters. It was so beautiful and peaceful. Just at 
 the last it was given her to feel the joy of the life on 
 which she was entering, so vividly, that the pain 
 of parting with her husband and little children, 
 terrible as that had been in prospect, was, when the 
 time came, quite swallowed up. Her sister wrote 
 that on leaving her death-bed she could feel nothing 
 for a few hours but a triumphant sense that it was 
 life, the true life, on which she had entered. . . . 
 
 "I wish I could show you the view from our 
 window just now ; the sea is like glass, the sky a 
 soft tender grey, with all sorts of wonderful pearly 
 lights in it reflected in the sea; and two or three 
 little boats are in sight, one with a bright red sail 
 glowing so beautifully on the cold sea and against 
 the grey sky. In the foreground we have a strip of 
 tawny-coloured beach, with three Martello towers in 
 sight, lessening in the distance, and a stretch of 
 distant coast, purple and dark grey to-day. You would 
 make a lovely sketch of it. Before I end I must say 
 how glad I am that you are reading Richter's Flower, 
 Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. There are some parts of 
 that book I am so fond of. Have you noticed a 
 piece about the ' Last Day of Spring/ and the f Dream 
 of the Dead Christ'?" 
 
226 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 The following letters written from Eastbourne to 
 two of her young girl-friends (adopted nieces, not 
 nieces by relationship), show that personal suffering 
 had not deadened her powers of sympathy with the 
 sorrows or the joys of others : 
 
 " My darling child," she writes to the daughter of 
 
 her old friend Lizzie M , " how I wish I could see 
 
 you ; but, alas f I am still being kept on here. I can 
 only tell you by letter how I long to comfort you. 
 How much I should like to have you here, that you 
 might put your dear golden head upon my shoulder 
 and talk out all the troubles and puzzles. I might not 
 be able to help you much, but you would feel how 
 I love you, and I could at least assure you from ex- 
 perience that all these morning clouds that hang about 
 your life just now will pass away, and that sunshine and 
 peace will come. Do not for one moment think that 
 either your Father in heaven, or your precious mother, 
 is in the least degree vexed with you for your doubts 
 or your troubles of mind, whatever form they may 
 take. They feel nothing but the tenderest sympathy 
 and the most utter love; and, what is more, you 
 must receive the troubles, yes ! even the perplexities 
 and doubts, as tokens of love. God is leading you 
 up through them to a higher stand-point, educating 
 you to know Him better and trust Him in a more 
 thorough way by and by. Only, do not let go your 
 hold on prayer. Have no reserves with God; ask 
 Him with confidence to lead you every step of the 
 way. Then do not be anxious, for all will come right. 
 Wonderful things are wrought by prayer. It is the 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 227 
 
 hand stretched out into the region of miracle which 
 brings the power of God, and the help of God, about 
 us. He is always longing to help, but prayer is the 
 means by which the help comes. And you must 
 carry your cross, not let it drag on the ground. 
 I am thinking of a little picture in a French book. 
 There are two figures, each with crosses of the same 
 size, climbing a hill ; one figure has taken his cross 
 on his shoulders and is marching bravely and lightly 
 on, his head lifted up to the blue sky overhead, and 
 scarcely seeming to know that he has a cross to carry 
 at all. The other figure is letting his cross drag 
 behind him, pulling it up after him with, oh ! such 
 tugs and strains over each little stone on the road, 
 always obliged to look behind him, never able to take 
 his eye off the cross for a moment, and feeling its 
 burden and its hindrance at every step. The 
 motto to that picture is, 'II ne faiit pas trainer ses 
 croix.' 
 
 " You will take yours up bravely, looking upward 
 and thinking of your mother, who carried her cross 
 in her youth, and, I am sure, knows what you feel. 
 I think she is telling me to bid you take courage 
 now. . . . 
 
 " Do not grudge if you have to give a great deal 
 for a little to your fellows ; for God is an ocean of 
 love, and is ready to give Himself to you." 
 
 The following is to another adopted niece, the 
 Clara who was her companion at Pegomas during her 
 second visit there : 
 
 4 2 
 
228 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 "MY DEAREST NlECE, 
 
 " Alas this is our address still, and I see no 
 immediate prospect of being allowed to go back to 
 our dear home. I should so much like to see you. 
 Your bright happy letter has done us good, like 
 a sunbeam on a dark day. It is very pleasant to 
 hear of all the happiness that has come to you, and 
 of the delightful holiday you are having. . . . 
 
 " I must tell you a little about ourselves. I have 
 not been so well lately, I have been suffering a great 
 deal of pain. I am obliged to keep very quiet, and 
 am hardly allowed to do anything ; a short letter now 
 and then to a very dear niece or nephew is the limit 
 of my tether. It is so odd to lead such an idle life, 
 and to look back to the dear, active days at Pegomas, 
 when you and I did all the cooking together. Shall 
 I ever make a pudding or a pie again ? Oh, how 
 nice it would feel to be strong enough to do it to 
 have two free hands again ! I often blame myself 
 now for not having been all my life thankful enough 
 for health and strength. These by themselves are 
 great gifts to be thankful for ; yet when they are 
 taken away, God gives us other tokens of His love 
 and His nearness, and thus turns our losses into 
 gains. I have had so many things to make my 
 illness sweet, so much love and kindness shown 
 to me, that I should indeed be ungrateful if I 
 complained." 
 
 To a very dear old friend, the young teacher whom 
 she had loved so much in her childhood, Annie 
 
ANNIE KEAEY. 229 
 
 wrote from Eastbourne during one of her suffering 
 times : 
 
 " What you tell me of all your dear ones interests 
 me so much. Dear little Tattie ! I can see her just 
 as she was when we met her in Geneva a young 
 edition of yourself and I can imagine her now 
 exactly like that bright, sweet friend when she used 
 to let us have conversation days. I fancy her with 
 just that dear light on the face, and the little 
 red smiling mouth, and eyes full of humour and 
 sweetness. How I should like to hear all about your 
 children .... 
 
 " I am grieved to think of your suffering. Ah ! I 
 know what the suffering of ill-health is now as I 
 never understood it before, and you have known the 
 trial so long, and struggled under it so bravely. I 
 think that you will find there is a lovely crown of 
 joy for you in your next state. Will you let me 
 come and see you in the heavenly house you will 
 have ? Shall we talk over old times there, and will 
 you show me this treasure and that ? Each one will 
 be the outcome of some one of your struggles and 
 labours, or of some painful, tearful day on earth. I 
 do not mean in the way of reward. Still our Lord 
 unites the sufferings of His people with His own, and 
 I cannot but think that every pang borne with Him 
 in our earth-life will be found to have borne some 
 lovely fruit when we get into the land of realities, 
 and see the end of all the discipline. I must not 
 write any more. I am glad to hear you have a nice 
 early service ; I cannot get to early services now, but 
 
230 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 I manage to go every Sunday to the Holy Com- 
 munion." 
 
 Annie was too weak to remain through the whole 
 of the morning prayer, so she used to go to church 
 about the time when that was nearly over, and wait 
 in the porch in her chair listening to the closing 
 hymns of the service until the Celebration be- 
 gan. She said sometimes that she felt being there 
 listening to the voices and the music inside the 
 church was like getting close to the door of 
 heaven. 
 
 When Annie was first taken ill, or rather, when 
 she first knew of the danger that lay before her, 
 some parts of her novel, A Doubting Heart, still re- 
 mained to be written, and all that was written 
 needed revision. She was much disturbed at first, 
 thinking that she might never be able to make her 
 book complete, and she had always felt great remorse 
 at the thought of time wasted, or of anything left 
 unfinished. To find a way out of the trouble, she 
 applied to her friend Mrs. Macquoid, whom she 
 asked kindly to promise that if she should never be 
 able to do anything more at her work, she would 
 take it up just as it then was, and finish it for her. 
 " The great favour I had to ask of you," she wrote, 
 " was nothing less than that if I did not live to 
 write the three last chapters of my book, you would 
 write them for me, so that all should not be quite 
 wasted. You do not know what a consolation it has 
 been to me during this illness to tli nk that I could 
 ask this favour of you, and to reflect on your good- 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 231 
 
 ness which made me think that you would grant it. 
 You will understand better than perhaps any of my 
 other friends how much I wish I had quite finished 
 my story before all this happened, but if, please God, 
 I do live to write the last chapters, they ought 
 to be better ought they not ? for what I have 
 experienced." 
 
 Annie was able to attend to her writing again 
 during the year that succeeded the operation, but 
 when she died there was still a task left for the 
 friend to perform without which the work would 
 have been incomplete. Mrs. Macquoid used to write 
 to her each month as the parts of her story came 
 out in Macmillan's Magazine, kind letters of comment, 
 which showed with what care she was following the 
 development of the characters and the plot ; she was 
 anxious to get into the spirit of the book so as to be 
 able to carry out Annie's intentions faithfully if the 
 necessity for her help should arise. 
 
 These letters were a great comfort to Annie, and 
 the discriminating tenderness that was shown in 
 them touched her with the deepest gratitude. 
 
 It interested her to read her story month by 
 month, and she cared very much to finish it in the 
 best possible way. 
 
 "I want to know," she wrote to a friend, "how 
 you like the last two numbers of A Doubting Heart. 
 I hope you like Katherine Moore. I am getting 
 near the end now, but it is slow work. I cannot 
 dictate, as some people can, straight out of my head. 
 I have to scribble it all out in pencil first in the 
 
232 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 rough, so it is a double process, and I am never able 
 to go on long at anything now." 
 
 To her nephew she writes : 
 
 " I am leading an almost entirely idle life here, 
 though Wynyard is actually in the middle of reading 
 the fateful letters that have been shut up so long in 
 the cork drawer, and Madame de Florimel, who has 
 left him to read them in the orange-tree valley, is 
 waiting dinner for him at the chateau. I have pro- 
 gressed so far, and got to the most exciting part of 
 the story, but I am leaving it almost untouched, 
 and am sacrificing my mornings to sitting out on the 
 beach ; generally listening, and with pleasure, to a 
 bad band. . . ." 
 
 Through all her suffering time Annie was very much 
 like what her father had been in his, exceptionally 
 patient and cheerful, and grateful for the least service 
 done, careful for the rest of the nurses, never seeming 
 to think that pain or weakness made the least excuse 
 for selfishness or impatience, or that any one else's 
 comfort ought to be put aside for hers on account of 
 what she was suffering ; she was like her father, too, 
 in being able to enjoy her usual pursuits and pleasures 
 to the last. The writer in the Day of Rest, who draws 
 a picture of Annie in her little London home, adds 
 another picture, as she remembers her at this time. " It 
 rises in my mind as distinctly as the first," she says, 
 " but is painted in purer, tenderer colours. The bright, 
 ness has faded, but there is a holy calm and sweetness 
 about it which more than compensates for the loss. 
 This is as I last saw Miss Keary during her long, 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 233 
 
 painful illness, when she sat on the shore at East- 
 bourne, day after day, reaching it with increasingly 
 feeble steps, till as she grew weaker, even the sea 
 breeze, which had revived her at first, exhausted her 
 failing powers. I see her with the same calm ex- 
 pression and interested smile upon her face, finding 
 constant pleasure in the changing colour of the sea, 
 in the close inspection of a flower, or a shell, never 
 losing her graciousness of manner however she might 
 be suffering, always grateful for the most trifling 
 services of those around her." 
 
 As long as she could get out upon the beach, or 
 drive along the roads and downs, she carried on her 
 habit of shell and flower collecting almost with her 
 old zest. She was quite eager to find her favourite 
 shells, and used to make up little collections of them 
 to send to some of the young servant-girls she had 
 known at the Servants' Home, and with whom she 
 still corresponded. 
 
 To Katie she writes : 
 
 " I am afraid it is a long time since I wrote to 
 you, but as you will see by my writing, I am still 
 an invalid, and writing is one of the things that tries 
 me most, and brings on the pain from which I suffer. 
 I can think of you, however, dear little Katie, and 
 pray for you, when I cannot write to you, and I do 
 think of you a great deal. I am sending you by this 
 post a little box of shells that I 'picked up for you on 
 the shore here in the summer. One day when I was 
 feeling stronger than usual, I got down on to the 
 sands, and I found a good many shells, and I thought 
 
234 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 of you as I picked them up. I thought, ' These sunny 
 blue waves have washed these shells to my feet for 
 Katie. They are a message of God's love to her, and 
 they will tell her the same story about Him that the 
 flowers told her ; she will see how lovely and com- 
 plete all God's smallest works are, even those that 
 are hidden in the depths of the sea, and it will 
 encourage her to think that God's eye of love is over 
 all His works, that He wants them all perfect, that 
 He wants her to be quite good and loving and true 
 in her soul, and to do her work in her degree, what- 
 ever it is, as carefully and beautifully and with as 
 nice a finish as He does His.' Look, dear, at the 
 lovely marks and colours of these shells, and at the 
 beautiful little hinges which bind the pairs together ; 
 each shell is a lovely little house made by God for 
 some tiny sea-creature to live in. . . . 
 
 " I send two pairs to you to show you how they fit 
 together ; and now I must say good-bye, dear Katie. 
 I am better on the whole, but not nearly well yet I 
 do not think I shall ever again be as strong and well 
 as I used to be, but, thank God, I suffer less pain." 
 
 When Annie could no longer walk about to 
 gather shells or flowers herself, but could yet spend 
 a little time out of doors resting, she used to talk 
 to her attendant in a way that made the time of 
 service full of amusement to her, giving her short 
 lessons, in botany it might be, one day, or at another 
 time drawing a story out of her endless treasure- 
 house of tales. 
 
 " I have been reading a paper in the Cornkill on 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 235 
 
 the origin of flowers," she wrote to a friend. " Head- 
 ing it seems to open to me a wonderful glimpse into 
 the loving, educating character of God's providences. 
 If flowers and insects through such long processes 
 are brought to suit and beautify each other, and to 
 bring out ever new powers and joys for each other, 
 does it not give us a wonderful hope of what may be 
 going on in ourselves ? How we are being educated 
 for new glories and powers? The little germs, the 
 longings that we feel in ourselves, are to meet their 
 development in conditions necessary to draw them 
 out into fulness and satisfaction, somewhere, some 
 time, in the length of eternity. I cannot half 
 express what I mean, but read the paper in last 
 May's Cornhill, and it will bring the thought to you, 
 though the writer of the article speaks as if the 
 flowers and the insects adapted themselves to each 
 other, and there were no loving intelligence guiding 
 the processes to their perfect end." 
 
 When there were no outdoor pleasures left to 
 Annie of any kind, and she had grown too weak for 
 change, reduced to just the invalid's round between 
 bed, and couch, and chair, from sunny window place 
 to warm fireside corner, her love of reading re- 
 mained as strong as ever ; a book was always able to 
 soothe her in pain, or amuse her in weariness, as long 
 as she had strength to prop one up before her, or 
 power to concentrate her sight upon the printed 
 words. All sorts of books interested her ; she 
 almost wondered at herself for being so much 
 absorbed in so many different subjects. Books on 
 
236 ANNIE KEAUY. 
 
 science, history, light literature, all had their turns 
 with her ; she used to fear sometimes that she could 
 not be very spiritually minded, as she was not able 
 to confine herself to the reading of religious books. 
 It comforted her to remember that it had been just 
 the same with her father all through his illness, that 
 he had read as discursively as she did, and that up 
 to the last month of his life the most important 
 moment of time for him was that in which he 
 inspected the supply of books from Mu die's that was 
 to last him for a week. He and Annie were more 
 afraid of being left without a book, than of any 
 other small misfortune that could befall them. 
 
 Writing to one of her nephews, she says : 
 
 " The books you got for me were all right, and I 
 think will prove sufficient for the month. The only 
 drawback to the volumes of Fraser and the Cornhill 
 is, that they are too heavy for my lame hand, and I 
 can on]y read them when I can prop them on a 
 table. I have been reading a most touching Saga 
 written by a modern Icelander. It is a sort of 
 journal kept by an Icelandic farmer, in English, and 
 given to a traveller by his widow, who publishes it 
 in Fraser. I call it touching, because the poor man 
 was an intense lover of books, and had taught him- 
 self English in order to profit by the stray volumes 
 he could pick up from English visitors to Iceland. 
 
 " Such entries as these occur. 
 
 " * Saw Mr. , who kindly gave me an Illustrated 
 
 London News] or ' a number of Household Words' 
 or ' Mr. has promised to bring me a handsome 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 237 
 
 book next spring.' The handsome book, I am afraid, 
 proved to be the Adventures of Mr. Ledbury, by Albert 
 Smith. The account of the monotonous life and 
 the long winters, and the occasional feastings and 
 quarrellings at weddings, remind one very much of 
 the old Sagas. You must read this when we are 
 at home together." 
 
 And again 
 
 " If you should ever chance to have half an hour 
 to spare at your club, I advise you to read a paper 
 in the September Cornhill, called ' Child's Play.' As 
 a contrast to Pater's paper, I think it is worthy of 
 attention. I am quite charmed with it ; it strikes 
 me as beautifully written, and as showing a real un- 
 derstanding of an imaginative child's way of looking 
 at things. The writer takes a different view of 
 child life from Pater, and I think a much truer one. 
 He considers that children are defective in sensation, 
 that all their perceptions of outward things are far 
 less vivid than those of a grown person, and that 
 they live almost altogether in a world of phantas- 
 magoria, which is much more important to them 
 than anything outward, and which cuts them off 
 from the grown-up people's world. 
 
 " There is a good remark at the end about the folly 
 of expecting rigid matter-of-fact under the name of 
 truthfulness from children. The writing strikes me 
 as very good, quite like Charles Lamb, here and 
 there. Of course there are as great differences 
 between children and children, as between men and 
 men. but yet I think there is a mental atmosphere 
 
238 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 common to all children which changes so gradually, 
 that only a few observers (or rather a few ima- 
 ginative people who have lived vividly the child 
 life, and so kept a good deal of its atmosphere 
 embedded in their memory), ever succeed in bring- 
 ing it back. 
 
 " Pater is far too self-conscious, and has, I am sure, 
 mixed his recollections with afterthoughts. I did 
 not mean to write so much about this, but reading a 
 paper that pleases me as much as this one has done, 
 makes me long for a talk with you over it." 
 
 The summer and the autumn passed, and the 
 winter drew near. Then Emelia, whose companion- 
 ship had strengthened Annie during the early period 
 of her illness, and whom the stress of personal afflic- 
 tion had separated from her through the succeeding 
 months, came to Eastbourne on purpose to be with 
 her, took a house for herself and her friends, made 
 it as homelike as she could for the invalid, and 
 stayed there and helped her to bear the darkening 
 days of that saddest year. Annie had many weeks 
 of comfort, some even of hope, in the home of the 
 friends ; she was unusually well at the beginning of 
 the time she passed there. To a dear god-daughter 
 she wrote from this house in October : 
 
 " I am so much obliged to you for your dear letter ; 
 it was like a drop of water on a thirsty ground. I 
 was just hungering to hear of you all, but wanting 
 an excuse to write. I have had a great many ups 
 and downs since I came to Eastbourne, and at times 
 I felt, I confess, deeply disheartened, almost as if I 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 239 
 
 ought to resign the hope of getting well, and look 
 only towards the other exit from suffering at the end 
 of an illness. But, dear, I do wish to stay, if it so 
 pleases God. I am very very happy here in this 
 world, and I love these seen things (books, &c.), to 
 say nothing of people, so dearly, that I cling to the 
 hope of getting better very closely, and I think now 
 that I may do so without presumption, or setting 
 my will against the apparent purpose of God for 
 me. I have really made progress lately. 
 
 " We like so much to think of you at Bessborough 
 Gardens, and we thank you with all our hearts for 
 throwing yourself into the work so dear to us. I am 
 very glad to see that the amusing side of it is as 
 great a help to you as it was to us ; for I do not think 
 any one who does not get a little bit of fun out of 
 the display of character constantly showing itself, can 
 bear up for long against all the anxiety and hard 
 work, without suffering. If you can laugh at the 
 mistresses now and then, as well as cry with the poor 
 little maids, your sympathies will right themselves 
 and not be too much drawn upon. I am glad those 
 two forlorn girls came to you, for I am sure you have 
 made them very happy, and given them the remem- 
 brance of a warm sympathy to look back upon and 
 light them over their future struggles. . . . 
 
 " Once more thank you for your sweet letter. 
 Yes, it does help me more than you can have any 
 idea of to think of your loving thoughts and prayers 
 for me. You do not know how precious it is, or 
 how it fills my heart with gratitude to God, who 
 
240 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 has given me so many sweet young ones in this 
 generation to love and to make the world beautiful 
 to me." 
 
 To her young friend in America she says, in the 
 last letter she ever wrote her : 
 
 " Though I am not any more able to write than I 
 was, I am on the whole better. What I have to do 
 is to be patient, and content to lead an invalid life 
 for some time to come. I do not suffer so much as 
 I did ; one of my chief privations is not being 
 allowed to write as much as I like to my friends. 
 I trust you never think I am forgetting you, or 
 loving you less, when you do not hear from me ; and 
 I trust you not to forget our compact to read the 
 Epistle and Gospel each Sunday, with thoughts and 
 prayer for each other in our hearts. I wonder 
 whether the Epistles and Gospels have been saying 
 such wonderful things to you lately as they have to 
 me. I wish I could tell you how fresh and new 
 many parts of the Bible, especially St. Paul's Epistles, 
 have grown to me since I was ill. I see so much 
 more meaning, and such joyful meanings, in what I 
 thought I understood quite well before, but which 
 now shows itself to me larger and sweeter, and more 
 full of comfort than I found it till I needed more. 
 There would be no use in my telling you, for God 
 Himself will open out the meanings to you as you 
 want them. The Bible has some special teaching for 
 each one of us a word of joy and tender love from 
 God to each individual soul ; and if we go on reading 
 in faith, patiently waiting for it, that special word 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 241 
 
 will find us and thrill our souls with the certainty 
 that God Himself is speaking to us, arid that He 
 knows all our wants, and cares, and needs. 
 
 " It is only defect in us that makes it seem strange 
 to us that God should love us and think of us every 
 minute. If we knew more what love was, we should 
 not be surprised ; what we have got to realise is that 
 love is at the root of life, and that the sorrow and 
 sufferings are passing illusions that we shall wake up 
 from by and by. 
 
 " I want to tell you about some books I have been 
 reading since I have been ill. The ones I cared for 
 most are three biographies of very good men Camp- 
 bell, Erskine, and Hinton. The two first lived to 
 be very old men, and what I felt so encouraging 
 in their lives was to trace the growing peace and 
 almost overpowering sense of the love of God which 
 marked their lives to the very last. The truth 
 which was dearest to Mr. Erskine, was the univer- 
 sality of the love of God. He never liked it to be 
 said that this life was a life of probation. He said 
 that was a mistaken view of God's dealing with us, 
 for that God was not trying us to see if we were 
 worth anything, but educating us through all the 
 trials of this life till we were brought into a knowledge 
 of Him, and so saved. 
 
 " I remember telling you about Hinton's book, The 
 Mystery of Pain, when we were coming home together 
 from the College in Fitzroy Street. His theory was 
 that self-sacrifice is the true law of life for eternity as 
 well as for time, and that we only find it painful here 
 
 R 
 
242 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 because of imperfection and deadness in ourselves. 
 When we have got rid of our mortal bodies, and our 
 souls are healthy and strong, we shall enter on a life 
 of constant service for others which will be intense 
 joy ; it is the sickness and deadness of our souls 
 which makes us feel pain. He believed that all pain, 
 the pain of illness, the pain of over-fatigue or of 
 mental sorrow all these pains, he thought were 
 effecting some good, not to the sufferer, but to man- 
 kind in general ; for Hinton thinks it is only through 
 pain and suffering that progress is made, and that 
 new truths and new blessings are won for the world. 
 We cannot see the connection now between our 
 sufferings and any sort of good to any one, for here 
 we only see such a very little bit of the whole. We 
 hardly know that we are part of the whole, and 
 consider each life as a separate thing; but in our 
 spirit life we shall see the meaning of every pain, 
 we shall see that no pang was in vain, but that all 
 was being used for bringing in good to the world. 
 I know you will like this thought, and I hope it 
 will help you to bear all that over-fatigue you tell 
 me of. It will make you happier next time you are 
 very tired if you can say ' This pain does not end 
 with me, it is to do good to some one else.' ' We 
 know God/ Hinton says, ' as the Kedeemer of 
 the world. We are glad, not because we are well 
 off or good, but because the world is to be saved and 
 all men are to be made good and to acknowledge 
 Christ.'" 
 
 Sometimes her letters have a sadder note in them. 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 243 
 
 "You do not know," she writes to a friend in 
 Brighton, " with what regrets we look back to those 
 happy, happy days [the winter spent at Brighton] 
 when we could come in to you any afternoon and 
 have a delightful talk, and when we were nearly sure 
 of a morning glimpse of your face. Oh ! if we could 
 transport ourselves into such good times again. Your 
 list of books makes me very jealous ; we are very 
 badly off as to a library here, and my last batch of 
 books from Mudie's was unsatisfactory." 
 
 Annie used to read aloud in the evening, some- 
 times passages from a selection of Swedenborg's 
 writings. She liked to dwell upon the condition of 
 the soul after it leaves this earthly state, and upon 
 the renewal of old dear ties in the sphere where 
 love makes nearness, so that to think of one dear 
 to us is to surround ourselves with the presence of 
 the beloved. 
 
 Yet she did not speak of leaving us then, it even 
 seemed possible that, the winter once over, there 
 might come a renewal of strength. In reality, life 
 was slowly ebbing away, the world was less and less 
 with her, and the spirit shone more brightly through 
 the gradually withdrawing veil of the flesh. It was not 
 that any change in her likings or pursuits appeared. 
 She read the same kind of books, and talked the same 
 sort of intellectual cheerful talk she had been used 
 to do, but all the time her gentleness was becoming 
 more perfect, her patience sweeter, her love more 
 expansive. She wished very much that she could say 
 comforting words to other sufferers, and thought that 
 
 E 2 
 
244 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 she should perhaps write something some day that 
 might be helpful to sick people, about her own 
 experience, and the spiritual consolations which she 
 had found. Any life that touched hers, in however 
 slight a degree, interested her. She had a view from 
 her bed, in the house where she passed the winter, 
 of a part of the cliff where a new road was being 
 made, and she could see a workman engaged in 
 carrying stones from one place to another, every 
 morning at a certain time. With a relic of the habit 
 that she had in childhood of making up stories about 
 people whose appearance she got to know from seeing 
 them regularly (as she makes little Walter do in 
 Johnny and Nayum) she looked for the workman 
 daily at the appointed hour, as she lay in bed, and 
 prayed for him that he might have a good day 
 that day. 
 
 To an invalid sister-in-law she wrote in December : 
 " I hope to be better soon, and meanwhile I feel such 
 fellowship with you in your sufferings. I feel we are 
 one now in even a closer way than we ever could be 
 while I did not know what it was to lead a life when 
 the ' grasshopper is a burden,' and each little thing, 
 getting up and going to bed and eating, involves an 
 effort hard to make. I now do so feel for you in all 
 you have gone through, and, as I said, we have fellow- 
 ship one with another. I think of you when I am 
 very weary ; and the thought of all your sweetness 
 and goodness, and of how you work and think of 
 others in the midst of your pains, helps me to take 
 courage. I want to tell you some of my times for 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 245 
 
 thinking of special things, that we may be together 
 sometimes in thought as we cannot exchange many 
 words. I try to make the twilight time my time for 
 thinking of and praying for all the members of our 
 family. First, for all who are suffering much or 
 little from bodily weakness, or need of fuller health, 
 we pray for strength and healing to be poured in, 
 and for spiritual nourishment and strength and joy, 
 the wine of joy to be given, of which the sacramental 
 wine is the symbol. After the invalids we pray for 
 all the brothers and sisters, specially that we may all 
 be prepared gradually and happily for the great 
 change, and helped down the steep last downward 
 paths of life, that those who are to linger to old age 
 may have a happy sojourning in the Land of Beulah. 
 Then we pray for all the young people, asking for all 
 sorts of spiritual and temporal blessings for them, 
 according as we know their needs, and where we do 
 not, commending their wants to Him who sees into 
 their hearts." 
 
 The last enemy of Annie's peace was a fear she 
 had of the physical pains of dying. She never spoke 
 of this to those nearest to her, fearing to increase 
 their pain by letting them know of hers, but she 
 confided it to a very dear friend who came to see her 
 constantly, and asked her to pray that the dread 
 might be taken away. 
 
 The winter passed, and Annie still lingered. Every 
 day another downward step was taken, until at last 
 she could only be wheeled from her bed to her 
 sitting-room. The latter half of the last chapter of 
 
246 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 her book had been written in pencil by Annie 
 during the winter. It was copied out for her, she 
 dictating, during this time of weakness, about a 
 fortnight before the end, when it had become diffi- 
 cult to her to speak more than a few sentences at 
 a time. 
 
 " Let us put it aside for to-day," her amanuensis 
 said upon one occasion, seeing how much the effort 
 tried her. " No, no," the hasty reponse came, " let 
 us work while it is day, the night cometh when no 
 man can work." It is pleasant to think that she did 
 persevere that day, and that we have the last sentences 
 she ever strung together in a tale. No other day 
 came in which even that slight labour would have 
 been possible to her ; and her pencil writing at that 
 time it was almost impossible to decipher. Annie 
 used to sleep for hours at a time upon her couch in 
 the sitting-room. The room was always made bright 
 for her by offerings of flowers from near and distant 
 friends; a little vase of the flowers stood near her couch 
 once or twice it was filled with snowdrops that had 
 been transplanted from the garden of the country 
 rectory where she was born. Her frame was almost 
 exhausted, but her mind remained perfectly clear, and 
 her spirits were still bright. She generally awoke 
 from her long sleeps saying "I have had such a 
 beautiful dream." Sometimes it would be a dream 
 of reminiscence that sleep brought, a flower from her 
 own spring laid upon the death-pillow, and the sight 
 of it had power to gladden her still. Spiritualists 
 tell us that the souls of dying people are really taken 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 247 
 
 whilst the body sleeps, to visit the spheres to which 
 they are going, in order that they may feel at home 
 there when the change comes. That is a pleasant 
 fancy, but one does not need it to feel sure that it 
 was some soothing spiritual influence which made 
 our sleeper awake so joyfully. 
 
 Once more Emelia had to leave her friend, to part 
 with her for ever in this world. After she went a 
 cousin of Annie's came to be near her, and remained 
 with her during the last weeks of her life, one whom 
 she had not seen for some years, and to whom she was 
 tenderly attached. One day, on awaking from a long 
 rest, Annie said to her cousin (referring to a book 
 she had just read), " I wonder what new names we 
 shall have, Emily, in the other life," and then she 
 began to name some of her friends according to her 
 idea of their characters. One was to be called 
 " Mother-Sister," and another " Sister-Mother." 
 " And you, Emily," she said, " you must be called 
 * Lover/ because you love so warmly. And I," she 
 added after a pause, " if I should be found worthy of 
 any name, I should like mine to be ' Sister- Aunt/ " 
 She was thinking of the two strongest affections of 
 her life when she spoke. 
 
 The last days came ; her brothers and sisters 
 visited her, one by one, as she was able to see them. 
 A week before she died she received the Holy 
 Communion with her sister and her cousin, and the 
 one of her nephews who happened to be with her 
 on that Sunday. The prayer of her heart for weeks 
 had been that she might not be taken until those 
 
248 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 who loved her best could bear to let her go; for 
 herself, she had no pleasure left in this state, and 
 personally would have liked the time to be shortened. 
 There was no breath of doubt or fear of any kind 
 to disturb her then. It seemed as if she only waited 
 for love to release her. " I am so afraid," she used to 
 say, " that you love me better than you love Christ/' 
 for she would fain have seen the Comforter come 
 into the place that she was soon to leave empty. 
 On the morning of the 2nd of March, the very day 
 year on which she had been told of her danger, she 
 was taken from bed as usual, and laid upon her 
 couch in the sitting-room, not seeming much weaker 
 than she had done any day during the last ten days. 
 She was able to talk to her friends, and admired 
 some of her favourite shells, that one of her 
 nephews brought her from the shore. She gave a 
 slight sketch that day of a little Irish story which 
 she thought might be written for a children's paper, 
 " Molly Malony " it was to be called, and was to be 
 about one of the times of rebellion, when an old 
 man and a little girl were to be engaged together in 
 hiding arms for the rebels. It opened in this way : 
 An old man, employed by the society called " Molly 
 Malony," very old, and very feeble, and half silly, 
 is sitting on the side of a hill, repeating over and 
 over to himself the name of the secret society for 
 which he has been working. " Molly Malony," he 
 keeps calling, and at last a little girl runs up to him 
 and says, " I am Molly Malony " (for that happened 
 to be her name); "what do you want with me?" 
 
ANNIE KEARY. 249 
 
 The old man, interrupted in his dreamy thoughts, 
 takes it into his head that the little maiden is a 
 fairy, come out of Good People's Hollow to help 
 him in the task for which his strength is scarcely 
 sufficient. After a good deal of talking at cross 
 purposes, and after several meetings, a tie of friend- 
 ship is established between the two, who work 
 together, collecting and hiding arms in the early 
 mornings and late at evening all through the 
 autumn into the winter months. At last, one 
 morning, about Christmas time, the little girl finds 
 her old friend stretched upon the hill- side dying. 
 Then he tells her to do no more work of hiding the 
 arms ; he says she is to love Ireland, for that is the 
 true meaning of her name, and for him, he cannot do 
 any more work either, he is going to the land of 
 peace and good will, good will and peace. 
 
 The idea of the story seemed to interest her a 
 little, and she gave the sketch of it when it had 
 already become difficult to her to pronounce her 
 words distinctly. The morning and the afternoon 
 passed, and towards evening a change began ; Annie 
 asked to be taken to bed again, and said to her 
 attendant : " I am going home soon, Fanny, and 
 I am very happy." 
 
 During the night consciousness failed, and she fell 
 into a state of torpor from which she never awoke. 
 Four hours after her spirit passed away, early on the 
 morning of her birthday, the 3rd of March. As she 
 was lying down, the last night, she said to her 
 cousin, "Now I will say a baby hymn," and then 
 
250 ANNIE KEARY. 
 
 she repeated a verse which she had been used to say 
 to the children at the hospital 
 
 (( ' Whether I wake, or whether I sleep, 
 I give my soul to Christ to keep, 
 Sleep I now, wake I never, 
 I give my soul to Christ for ever ; ' ' 
 
 adding, "Your soul, Emily; yours and mine." 
 
 With the words of little children on her lips, and 
 with joy and tenderness in her heart, she was taken 
 home. Home she called that life of which we can 
 form no image. It revealed itself to her by the 
 name that was dearest to her ol any name on earth. 
 
 THE END 
 
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