Margaret Fairless Barber was born on the 7th of May 1869 at Castle Hill,
Rastrick, in the W. Riding of Yorkshire, in the house that had been her
grandfather’s, and where her father was also born. She was the youngest
of the three daughters of the late Fairless Barber and Maria Musgrave,
his wife, and was christened after the great-grandmother, whose violet
eyes she inherited, eyes that had reappeared in one member of each
generation, though in Margaret’s case the violet gradually turned to a
most beautiful grey. It is perhaps worth recording for the curious in
such matters, that this family of five members had but three birthdays.
The eldest and youngest girls were born on the same day at a nine years’
interval, and the second girl on her father’s birthday: only the mother
had a day to herself, a fact for which the children used to feel it
appropriate to offer affectionate sympathy as being such a lonely
condition. A grandchild—her eldest daughter’s first child—subsequently
removed this reproach by appearing within a few hours of the
anniversary. As Michael Fairless undoubtedly inherited many of their
tendencies, it may not be inappropriate to give a slight description of
her parents and the home in which she spent her earlier years.
Her father was educated at St Peter’s at York, where he distinguished
himself in mathematics, painting, and poetry, writing the Prize Poem one
year. He subsequently took up his father’s profession of the law, and
acquired a large practice. All the work which this entailed did not,
however, prevent him from the pursuit of his private tastes, which were
antiquarian and literary. He collected old oak and books, and gradually
amassed a library of his favourite subjects: archeology, topography,
travels, essays, poetry; standard novels and the Cornhill Magazine,
which in those days contained the work of Thackeray, George Eliot,
George Meredith, Mrs Browning, and others. He was gentle, quiet, and
studious, well-read, an excellent Latin scholar, and a man with a keen
sense of humour, absolutely devoted to his home and family.
Her mother had received an unusually liberal education for early
Victorian days, and had studied French, German, and Italian; she was a
highly cultivated woman, with a fine taste in literature. Tennyson,
Ruskin, Eugénie de Guérin, Schiller, Pascal’s Pensées and Jeremy Taylor
recur to the memory as being amongst others on her shelves. She was also
an exquisite needlewoman, and an admirable housekeeper and accountant.
In her younger days Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism were being socially
discussed, and she discovered herself possessed of great mesmeric power.
But she never pursued the matter as a study, and mention is only made of
it because it is probably from her mother’s tendencies that Michael
Fairless derived the germs of her own psychic development. Parents and
children were most deeply attached, and husband and wife so completely
wrapped up in each other that their devotion was almost proverbial in
the neighbourhood. The children used to show their mother all their
various little efforts in sewing, painting, or scribbling, and due
encouragement was always given. But they were never allowed to think
that it was quite the best they could do, or that anything they did was
at all wonderful. Thus the spirit of ambition was fostered, and any idea
of precocity discouraged, for Mrs Barber had the greatest objection to
anything in the nature of an infant phenomenon. The household was a very
quiet one, in outward observances almost what would now be considered
puritanical; in mental outlook extremely wide-minded, liberal and
unprejudiced. Since environment counts for a good deal in development,
this sketch will enable the reader to trace the source of some of
Michael Fairless’s characteristics.
The house stood in a large garden and was a long, irregular building, on
the site of an ancient Danish fort. It was fronted with a large and
extremely solid porch, and its rooms were spacious and mostly lined with
books. The bedroom windows were hung from spring to autumn with white
dimity, after the old fashion, and this was replaced, when the brief
Yorkshire summer ended, by curtains of dark crimson woollen which shut
out the wild inclement weather, when the days drew in, and sent the
children clustering round the fire, and making tales, as all children
do, about the visions they saw in its glowing depths. That large snug
nursery saw many games; with the two elder girls housekeeping was a
favourite one, in the course of which the baby came in very handily as a
baby instead of the doll which had hitherto served. She was also taken
out driving and sailing—the nursery sofa serving equally well for a
steamer or a carriage.
Michael was called Baba until she was four or five years old, when she
became Marjorie, which name she afterwards retained. At this time she
was a very pretty child with fair hair, a rather snub nose, a large but
quite perfectly shaped mouth, and a pair of most beautiful eyes. An
enterprising and enquiring disposition found, perhaps, its earliest
manifestation in a large and surreptitious bite at the soap during a
bath, in spite of her old nurse’s warnings, who had vainly tried to
check an inclination for this experiment. It was the first and last
bite, for a certain clear shrewdness and common sense were early
developed and retained. When she was about three years old her mother
went abroad for three months, and during her absence the child developed
croup, terrifying her father, who was the most devoted of parents, and
went far towards spoiling her. Indeed, beyond a mild scolding, he never
found it in his heart to inflict a more severe punishment than shaking
his closed umbrella at her on an occasion when—just ready to go out—he
had been recalled to deal with some extra naughtiness; Baba howled with
rage, but it is to be feared that the proceeding did not act as much of
a deterrent. She always knew exactly what she wanted, and seldom
regretted her proceedings in those very youthful days. Once, when in
charge of an aunt, she killed a fly on the window with a dab of her
little fist. The aunt sought to improve the occasion, “See what you have
done, Baba; how cruel! You killed that poor little fly, and if you try
and try you can never make it alive again.” “No,” returned Baba, “I know
I can’t; I don’t want to.”
Later, when she was seven years old, her sisters went to school, and
then came the time she speaks of as her lonely childhood. The
neighbourhood was singularly wanting in children of her own age, and she
was obliged to play by herself and find her own amusements. It was at
this period too that she fraternised with the frog, who lived in the
little brook that ran through the home-field. She was still very much of
a pet, and, though independent in character, had no objection to be run
after and waited on. Sometimes, however, even affectionate supervision
had serious drawbacks; on one occasion, a Sunday evening, the maid who
put her to bed being out, that duty was undertaken by Franklin, the
cook, usually regarded as a firm friend. On this particular evening Baba
did not at all wish to go to bed, and was caught for the purpose after
some chasing and insistence; she was quiet, but most dignified during
the disrobing process, and said her prayers with much unction, adding an
additional petition, “And pray, God, forgive Franklin for being so
unkind to me!”
She learnt to read when very young, and reading was always her favourite
occupation; she did not care much for dolls or toys. When she was about
nine her eldest sister, who had then left school, taught her the moves
of chess, and she picked up the game very rapidly. Her sister, it is
true, was a slow mover, and by no means a formidable opponent, and the
child very soon became able to give her checkmate. She would sit at the
board with a book beside her, which she read between moves, looking up
when it was her turn to play and giving a rapid glance at the pieces.
Then swiftly and unhesitatingly the move was made and she returned to
the book. She probably won two-thirds of the games.
Although she was but a child she greatly resented what she called being
made into a baby. Her eldest sister, who often undertook to give her her
lessons, insisted one day on a dictation being written on a slate
instead of on a piece of paper, since Marjorie was careless with ink.
Like the man in Calverley’s poem, Marjorie “argued right, she argued
left, she also argued round about her.” The sister, who had already been
through painful experiences with Marjorie’s use of pens and ink, stood
firm, and, ruling lines on the slate, placed it before her reluctant
pupil, who was by this time much out of breath from the length and
variety of her conversation on the subject of being treated as a baby.
Seizing the slate Marjorie waved it dramatically above her head, and
shouted, “Aggie! when I was a child, I thought as a child, I understood
as a child, but when I became a man” (here the slate was banged down
upon the table), “I put away childish things.”
On another occasion Marjorie was forbidden to bring two favourite
playthings to lessons. They were two small balls of home manufacture and
surprising powers of bounce, and she called them Winkie and Nobbs. After
considerable delay W. and N. were most unwillingly put out of sight and
reach—physical reach—and with strangely sudden docility a dictation was
begun. It concerned Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and Marjorie wrote on,
with the most praiseworthy attention. When correction time came her
sister’s feelings may be imagined, as she made the discovery that
whenever Henry VIII. was in question, he was alluded to as King Winkie,
while the unhappy Anne had become Queen Nobbs! The effect was so
ludicrous that the sisters laughed over it together until they cried.
About this time Marjorie took up hero-worship with a zest and
thoroughness which she devoted to all her pursuits, and if anyone
ventured to suggest that even her own particular heroes had their weak
points, she would wax quite fierce in their defence. In this way
Horatius Cocles (she had just been introduced to the Lays of Ancient
Rome), Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon all had their day; she cried with
anger when certain indisputable faults were pointed out to her in the
last-mentioned personage. She had now developed remarkable powers of
expression, and wrote quite interesting letters. Her father being
suddenly taken ill, and it becoming necessary to keep the house quite
quiet, she was invited by an elderly relative, who lived a few miles
away, to stay with her for a short visit. Marjorie was not at all
anxious to go, but finally consented, one of the inducements being that
she might help with the fowls which her cousin kept, and that there
would be beautiful new-laid eggs for breakfast. Her letter, after a few
days’ stay, was most amusing. It was a very old-fashioned house, and she
had been put to sleep in a four-post bedstead, which she said reminded
her of a hearse, while the newspapers, placed upon the top to keep off
the dust, “rustled like the flowers at the funeral.” “As for eggs,” she
continued, “I haven’t seen as much as the white of an egg since I came.”
Like her sisters she had read omnivorously; the nursery shelves, though
well furnished, did not last her long, and she browsed in the library.
She had got through all Dickens and most of Sir Walter Scott before she
was twelve. She read very quickly, and had the knack of mastering the
essentials of her reading with extraordinary rapidity, so that in a very
short time she could discuss her subject even when it chanced to be
rather more serious than fiction. Natural history she was extremely fond
of, and with all animals she was an instant friend. Some time later,
Whiskey, the white rat, and a tamed starling, fallen from the nest and
picked up half-fledged, were the objects of great devotion. They
involved a tiny tragedy too, for to the faithful Whiskey it appeared
that overmuch affection was bestowed upon the bird, and he, who had
hitherto lived in amity with his feathered companion, flew at him one
afternoon and fatally injured him. His mistress never quite forgave
Whiskey, though after a temporary estrangement, due to that unfortunate
fit of temper, the rat was readmitted to fellowship. In her later years
there was Trilby, a stray cat, who somehow suggested a depressed
charwoman; Phœbus, a magnificent orange Persian, who purred under his
daily brushing if she undertook it, but growled and swore in other
hands. There was also a poor dancing bear whose sore foot she dressed at
the street door, while his owner looked on expecting to see her attacked
in spite of the muzzle, but watched Bruin fawn on her instead. You can
trace her understanding of all living things whenever she writes of
them. Who can forget the anxious hen in “The Roadmender,” or “The
Follering Bürd,” or the tortoise, making “a stately meal of buttercups,”
or the sense of myriad life which came to her as she lay under the great
tree on her last day in the garden?
Her father died in 1881, when she was twelve years old; and her mother,
never a very strong woman, was completely prostrated by her loss. At
about thirteen Marjorie went to school at Torquay with a relative for a
few months, and subsequently spent a short time in another school near
London, whose principal was far from appreciating her. Except for
home-teaching and wide and constant reading this was all the education
she had.
Between 1882 and 1884 Marjorie’s health became affected by her rapid
growth, and some spinal weakness was disclosed. Her rather delicate
condition, as well as her mother’s invalidism, and the fact that one of
her sisters was already married and the other away from home, finally
decided Mrs Barber to give up the house in Yorkshire, now so much too
large for the diminished family, and settle somewhere experimentally
until a final residence could be fixed on. Marjorie’s health then
improved, and she went to a small children’s hospital on the outskirts
of London maintained by the private generosity of two ladies. Here she
began training as a sick-nurse, a profession for which she had much
natural aptitude, and here she went through the ordeal of being present
at her first operation. It did not affect her as much as she had
imagined might be the case, but she did not stay more than a few months
at the hospital as her own health was too indifferent to permit of
longer training. About this time she joined a modelling class, and her
master, when shown her work, refused to believe that it was her first
effort, and that she had never previously had a lesson. Between 1886 and
1891 she spent a certain amount of time in Torquay, where she helped to
nurse a relative in failing health, and after her death became for a
time parish nurse. She also worked in the East End for a short time, in
the district well (or ill) known as the Jago. In 1891 her mother died in
the small Suffolk town where she had taken a house; it was the Bungay so
faithfully described as the goal of the blind friar’s journey in Brother
Hilarius. Here Marjorie used to enjoy rowing herself on the river, and
here the tradespeople still remember her as ‘so nice to talk to.’ She
was intuitive to a high degree, and therefore could sympathise with
widely divergent joys and griefs. Her keen sense of humour, too,
prevented her ever being depressed or unamused, and probably in all her
life she never felt bored.
Marjorie was twenty-two years old when her mother died. She was very
tall, with a fair complexion, a good deal of brown hair, very large grey
eyes full of expression—an index indeed of whatever she was speaking or
thinking about. They could beam with serene pleasure, grow tenderly
sympathetic or dance with mischievous fun as the spirit moved her. Her
face and appearance were most arresting and her conversation quite
fascinating, for she was extremely witty. Quick to see the humorous side
of a thing, she yet responded to any mood of her companions. Her eldest
sister once heard her described by a bluff and frank naval officer as
‘rattling good company,’ and the words were apt.
After her mother’s death, which occurred rather unexpectedly, Marjorie
lived for a time a somewhat varied existence partly in England and
partly in Germany, where with a friend she stayed for a while in a
quaint little place on the Rhine. Their lodgings were in an old tower,
where they were one night serenaded by students to Marjorie’s great
delight and amusement. She was also for some time in Wiesbaden under
treatment for her eyesight, which was just then giving her trouble. She
was here overtaken by a sudden and serious attack of illness, during
which she was most devotedly nursed by the little Sister of Charity, a
“scant five feet” high, described in “A German Christmas Eve.”
After her recovery and return to England she again took up philanthropic
work, and it was an errand of this nature which first introduced her to
the household into which she was afterwards adopted. The family’s
interests were literary, scientific, and artistic, and they were not
slow to appreciate the combination of rare and valuable qualities which
they perceived in Marjorie. Her position at the time was an independent
but singularly lonely one. Both her sisters were married, one always
abroad, and she had no especial claim on any of her other relatives. She
was financially independent; her health was already most uncertain, and
she was subject to distressing and painful attacks of illness. Here was
a home whose doors were open for her; a circle of friends with hands
outstretched in welcome and invitation. When she decided to enter the
one and accept the other, many of her own relatives disapproved, and
when, with characteristic thoroughness of accomplishment, she dropped
her own family name and took that of her adopted one, sundry hard things
were written and spoken. To her eldest sister, however, the “adoption”
brought nothing but relief and approval; to feel that one so needing it
would for the future have every care and attention that could be given
in either sickness or health; that she would live among the most
congenial surroundings and be able to follow her artistic bent in
whatever direction it might suggest itself—these things weighed heavier
than the superficial loss of identity which the change of name entailed.
Nor was her content ever disturbed. As time passed and Marjorie’s health
grew feebler, redoubled care was exercised, and every expedient which
science could supply or affection suggest, was used in the endeavour to
ease, when, alas, it became apparent that her deathward way could only
be smoothed but by no means arrested.
Marjorie’s temperament was essentially creative; the need for expression
was so strong that as her health broke down, and one pursuit after
another became impossible, she found fresh outlets. When she could no
longer go about much she took up her modelling again, and executed,
among other things, a really wonderful crucifix. Her power of entering
into the spirit of her work was extraordinary; she became, as it were,
obsessed with it. On seeing the crucifix a good judge of mediæval work
asked its owners where they got their “14th century” work? Marjorie’s
mind, at the time she executed this, was full of Florentine work of that
period, and it set its sign on what she wrought.
When she became too ill to go on with her modelling, she began to write;
when writing could not be done in a sitting position, she propped the
paper on her chest and wrote lying down; by and by the right hand could
no longer be used, so she wrote with her left, a beautiful legible
script. When increased physical weakness made writing in every way
impossible, she dictated.
She lived in those days in an old Georgian house on Chelsea Embankment,
a house from which she could hear the gulls scream over the Thames,
recalling “Daddy Whiddon” and “The Follerin’ Bürd,” and where, under her
window, grew the grimy tree in which the sparrow brethren chattered and
squabbled. Round her room one of her adopted sisters had designed the
frieze of flowers which was “Like the Rose tree in Alice in Wonderland.”
For many, many weeks she lay, suffering acutely, yet always writing,
piecing together that exquisite literary mosaic called “The Roadmender.”
By and by when the summer came and the heat, when London noises wearied
ear and brain alike, she sighed for the green peace of the country. Her
condition was then such that no one could tell how long she might still
be spared. Every precaution against fatigue or shaking could not really
eliminate either from the journey, which was an awful strain on an
enfeebled frame. But once among the Sussex fields, with the downs in
sight, her contentment grew daily in spite of terrible pain and
exhaustion. She had the clear sunshine, the clean air, the swallows that
twittered from their nests above her windows, and her cup of
satisfaction was full. The watchers knew their task would be but a brief
one, yet none could know when the end might come. She was extremely
happy with those she loved around her; her dear animal friends were
there too, for Phœbus, the big cat, and Jacob, most faithful of little
bull-dogs (he was of the French breed), had migrated to the country
also. Marjorie was almost unable to take any nourishment of any kind by
now, yet her courage and cheerfulness never failed, and she showed the
keenest interest in any subject discussed. The proofs of “Brother
Hilarius” were coming in daily for correction, and she weighed every
word as it was read to her; she would insert a comma here, begin a fresh
paragraph there, and secure the cadence of every sentence. She would
sometimes add or take away even a syllable in some phrase which struck
her sensitive ear as not properly balanced or harmonious. At this time
she was failing very rapidly, and it seemed doubtful if she would finish
the proofs. But her interest was unabated though she was in the last
stages of intense weakness, and it seemed as if she could not leave her
work until it was done. She lived to complete the task; and a few days
later, after many hours of unconsciousness, she passed through that
white gate whence her words have echoed back with such gracious
insistence. Her suffering had been awful, her courage wellnigh
incredible, but none could regret the peace she had won, and it was not
without reason that her eldest sister, roaming the garden for flowers in
the twilight of early dawn, chose out of all blossoms the heartsease
that fashioned the first cross laid on her breast. She died on the 24th
of August 1901, in her thirty-third year.
Looking back over the time which has elapsed since she cried her
farewell, it is comparatively easy to give some idea of her marvellous
development during her last six years of life, the years, that is to
say, when experiment had taught relative importance, and experience had
brought certainty. During her time of comparative health, when able to
work and travel, to make acquaintances and friends—and how many and
faithful they were—to strive after the betterment of poverty and
sickness, during that time Marjorie had accumulated a magnificent series
of what may be called mental photographs. All her days she had been a
keen and humorous observer, with an extraordinary and retentive memory,
and when ill-health narrowed the circle of physical activity her
mentality asserted itself more strongly. She turned, as it were, to the
portfolio of her memory and looked over its pictures, seeing them now
more truly because she was their spectator, and no longer swayed or
diverted by the momentary action which had made them hers. She dipped
the brush of imagination into the colours of reality, and lo, they
became living as they limned forth those scenes which her life and its
happenings had gathered; for Michael Fairless’s art, in whatever
direction, owed its rare loveliness to its absolute truth, and it is the
width of appeal in the truth as she set it forth which has won her so
many readers. Her subjects were never out of the way or far-fetched, yet
her unerring instinct set the seal of speciality on whatever subject she
touched. Page after page of her writing reveals fresh beauty in the
simplest things; the busy little German nun, the child trotting with its
cats to seek counsel, the London sparrows, old Gawdine, “Luvly Miss” and
her owner, a pathetic little bundle in cotton wool, dying of her burns,
and cheered at the last by the resurrection of her treasure; the old man
on his way to the workhouse, the woman haymaking and nursing her
love-child in the field-corner, the parson who stayed to talk with the
roadmender and bestowed rare tobacco—they are a veritable
portrait-gallery. Think, too, of that scene at the inn when Brother
Hilarius guides the blind friar, and Piping Hugh of Mildenhall whistles
like a bird on his oaten straw. The pictures are produced without
effort; Michael Fairless saw with the inner vision, and to her
expression was easy. Hers was a delicate and a subtle gift, perfect of
its kind, a gift that has drawn many after her along the road she
mended, ay, the gift that for many has changed a darksome portal into a
white gate, framed in clustering boughs, and set in the gracious
sunlight of summer.