The pedigrees of our county families, arranged in diagrams on the pages
of county histories, mostly appear at first sight to be as barren of any
touch of nature as a table of logarithms. But given a clue--the faintest
tradition of what went on behind the scenes, and this dryness as of dust
may be transformed into a palpitating drama. More, the careful
comparison of dates alone--that of birth with marriage, of marriage with
death, of one marriage, birth, or death with a kindred marriage, birth,
or death--will often effect the same transformation, and anybody
practised in raising images from such genealogies finds himself
unconsciously filling into the framework the motives, passions, and
personal qualities which would appear to be the single explanation
possible of some extraordinary conjunction in times, events, and
personages that occasionally marks these reticent family records.
Out of such pedigrees and supplementary material most of the following
stories have arisen and taken shape.
I would make this preface an opportunity of expressing my sense of the
courtesy and kindness of several bright-eyed Noble Dames yet in the
flesh, who, since the first publication of these tales in periodicals,
six or seven years ago, have given me interesting comments and
conjectures on such of the narratives as they have recognized to be
connected with their own families, residences, or traditions; in which
they have shown a truly philosophic absence of prejudice in their regard
of those incidents whose relation has tended more distinctly to dramatize
than to eulogize their ancestors. The outlines they have also given of
other singular events in their family histories for use in a second
"Group of Noble Dames," will, I fear, never reach the printing-press
through me; but I shall store them up in memory of my informants' good
nature.