THE CIRCLE IS BROKEN
Even away from Cambridge, which in those undergraduate years was
necessarily the hot hub of the universe, life remained as highly
coloured as at the time when Lambeth and Addington first flung open
their adorable pasturages. It was thrilling to know that Robert Browning
was coming to dinner one night, to be grasped by the hearty hand that
had written the poems of which a fives competition had procured me a
copy. There was but a small party on the night that I remember, and
after dinner my father moved up to take the place next him, and beckoned
to me to close up on the other side. Somehow a mention came of a volume
of Austin Dobson’s, and Robert Browning preserved a cheerful silence
till some direct question was put to him. Then, drinking off his port,
he made a notable phrase.
“Well, some people like carved cherry-stones,” he said.
I fancy he always avoided talking of his own works, and that my father
knew this, for certainly no allusion was made to them. But, as we rose,
he volunteered a question to my father, saying, “What of my work do you
like best?” On which my father replied:
“Your lyrics.”
Robert Browning gave some great gesticulation; he seems to me now to
have rubbed his hands, or jumped or stamped a foot.
“Lyrics?” he said. “I have deskfuls of them.”
In consequence, I still faintly hope that some day there may be
discovered a great ream of lyrics by Robert Browning, for, as far as I
know, “deskfuls” have not yet appeared.
On another occasion Tennyson was there. Of his conversation I have no
sort of recollection, the reason for which lapse may be probably
accounted for by the fact that he didn’t say anything. But I had picked
his note of acceptance out of my mother’s waste-paper basket and the
envelope signed in the bottom left-hand corner, both torn across, so he
could not leave me comfortless.
How very odd these dinner-parties, great or small, would have appeared
at the present day! There was but one circulation of wine after the
ladies had rustled forth, and even when they had gone, there was nothing
in the shape of tobacco, which, combined with the indolent progression
of the decanter, surely accounted for the austerity of Tennyson. A long
sitting of abstemious gentlemen was succeeded by a short sitting in the
drawing-room, and then the bell sounded at ten, and the whole company
trooped into the chapel for a slightly abbreviated evensong. Sometimes,
this service was before dinner; otherwise, at its conclusion, round
about half-past ten, the guests departed, for after this long devotional
interlude, it was frankly impossible to resume a festive sociability.
Already the cigarette-habit had made its footing in most houses, to the
extent, anyhow, of a guest, if so decadently inclined, having
opportunity of indulging his lust, but neither at Lambeth nor at
Addington was there any parleying with the enemy. My father intensely
disliked the smell of tobacco, and once only when the present King, as
Duke of York, dined at Lambeth, was an after-dinner cigarette allowed.
On that occasion I, greatly daring, told my father that he liked a
cigarette after dinner (so it was popularly supposed), and for the first
time, the gallery of portraits was veiled behind the unusual incense.
There were many great stern houses in the eighties, which kept the flag
of no surrender flying in the dining-room, but I doubt if any except my
father’s held out till after the middle of the nineties. He knew of but
ignored the existence of a smoking-room at Lambeth and Addington, but
neither in drawing-room or dining-room, nor until the hour of bedroom
candles (electric lighting being still an exceptional illumination) was
there the chance of a cigarette.
A story, _ben trovato_, it may be, was told in this regard, as to how,
when a Pan-Anglican conference was in progress at Lambeth and the whole
house was buzzing with bishops, my father had occasion late one night to
visit the bedroom of one of the prelates, with some paper of _agenda_
for next day: He got no answer to his tap on the door, and entered, to
find the occupant on his knees before the fire-place. My father,
supposing that he was at his private devotions silently withdrew
himself, and tiptoed down the corridor again. The devotional tenant,
unaware of any entrance, but knowing the rule of the house, continued to
inhale his cigar, and puff the aromatic evidence of his crime up the
chimney.... Though my father knew that his chaplains smoked, he would
never acknowledge it, and if a letter, difficultly drafted and brought
to him for his approval, bore unmistakable evidences of this aid to
inspiration, he would sniff at the original letter and its answer, and
say, “He must have written it in a smoking-carriage.” And though, again,
he knew quite well that all his three sons smoked like chimneys, I have
heard him confidently assert that none of us ever did. He would have
liked to believe that. In fact he would have liked it so much, that his
fervour allowed him to believe it.
But I am sure it never entered his head that my mother smoked. She did:
and once after a journey of a day and a night and half a day to the
Riffel Alp, my father, absolutely unfatigued, insisted on the whole
family getting on to a glacier of some sort without delay. My mother
racked with headache, but thinking the air would do her good, came with
us, but having gained the glacier, refused to proceed, and sat down on a
rock on the moraine to wait for her family’s return. She indicated that
I should stay with her, and as soon as the family’s back was turned she
whispered, “Oh, give me a cigarette, Fred.” By some strange mischance I
hadn’t got one, and was only possessed of a small and reeking clay pipe
and some tobacco. But I filled and lit it for her, and there she sat
smoking her clay pipe like a gipsy-woman, which made me laugh so much
that the rest of the family turned round _en bloc_ to see what was
happening. Nothing appeared to be happening, because she was wise enough
to hand the pipe back to me, and on they went. Then she had a little
more, and her headache was routed....
That Riffel Alp holiday was one of the most sumptuous. Mountain-climbing
with guides and porters is an expensive pursuit, but my father “treated
me” straight off to any two first-class peaks I wanted to ascend. My
instant first choice was the Matterhorn, and after a few days’
gymnastics on less austere summits I set forth, chaperoned by the most
zealous of Alpinists, Mr. Toswill, to make this adorable ascent. We
slept in the Schwarz-See Hotel, and starting at a moonless midnight to
the light of a lantern, stumbled on in that inconvenient illumination
till the first hint of dawn made the east dove-coloured and the lantern
could be quenched. The excitement of the climb quickened the
perceptions, and that opening flower of day was the very glory of the
Lord, first shining on the earth. We still climbed in the clear dusk,
but high, incredibly high above us the top of the great cliff grew
rose-coloured, as the sun, still below our horizon, smote it with day.
The sky was clear and the stars grew dim, as the great halls of heaven
were slowly flooded with light. Step by step the day descended from peak
to shoulder of our mountain till it met us on the rocky stair. Dent
Blanche, Rothorn, Gabelhorn, Weisshorn were dazzled with the dawn:
looking down into the Zermatt valley was still like gazing into dark
clear water.
But that clarity of morning was not for long. On all sides clouds were
forming--it is a mistake as a rule to speak of clouds “coming up”: they
just happen--and before we reached the famous shoulder, it was certain
that if we were to make our peak, we must race against the thickening
weather. Already the range along the Théodul was blanketed, and
mist-wreaths were beginning to form on the east side of our mountain
below us. If they stopped there and did not form higher up they would do
us no harm, but nobody would choose to be above the shoulder of the
Matterhorn in cloud. So at high speed--duly recorded in the Visitors’
Book at the hut--we made our peak, opened the bottle of Bouvier (most of
which in that low pressure of the air rose like a geyser and intoxicated
the snows) and began the descent. The air was notably still: not a
breath of wind stirred, but somewhere below us there were boomings of
thunder not very remote.
Before we got back to the shoulder a wisp of cloud flicked round the
edge of the precipice which plunges a sheer four thousand feet on to the
Zmutt glacier, and in a moment we were enveloped by it. The sun was
expunged, the cold suddenly grew intense, and snow denser than I thought
possible that snow could be, began to fall. In five minutes we wore the
thickest white mantles, so too, which was less convenient, did the
rocks, which at this point are not only difficult by reason of their
steepness, but dangerous because of the downward slope of the strata.
The thunder moved up to meet us, in fact we were just beginning to pass
into the storm-clouds themselves. The air was highly charged with
electricity, for presently the points of our ice-axes fizzled and sang
like kettles on the boil. Then below, a light, violet and vivid, leaped
suddenly out of the murk of snow, and the thunder reverberated sharp as
the crack of a dog-whip. Once our rope got fouled, and we all had to
untie ourselves and stand perched on our steps, while the guide wrought
to release it. Forty highly exciting minutes enabled us to crawl down
through the storm, and reach clear air again, and though I am glad to
have dived through a thunderstorm on the Matterhorn, I will willingly
dispense with any further experience of the sort. Those forty minutes
rattling with ambient thunder were much too tense to allow of conscious
alarm, and I never wished I was “safe home” again. But I would never
choose to do it a second time.
My second selection was the Dent Blanche, but after starting for it a
blizzard made the ascent impossible. So for fear of losing my second big
peak altogether--things like the Breithorn, ascents of the Riffelhorn
from the glacier, and a subsequent crossing of the eastern face of the
Matterhorn were picked up by the way--I chose the Zienal Rothhorn, and
with Nellie made an entrancing ascent. There was a huge cowl of snow on
the summit, and sheltered by this from the wind we sat for nearly an
hour in the blaze of the translucent day. Coming down an ill-fitting
boot tore the base of one of her nails, and she was in bed next day with
considerable pain. But with what scorn she answered my query as to
whether, on her part, the expedition had been worth such a payment.
Simultaneously there began a week’s bad weather, and we produced a
stupendous Swiss _Saturday Magazine_.
* * * * *
My third year at Cambridge, it may be remembered, I had resolved to
devote to a strenuous course of the classical tongues, and the autumn of
1889 saw me provided with a shelf of interleaved Latin and Greek authors
(in order to make quantities of profound notes on the opposite page);
with a firm determination to remember every crabbed phrase in case of
finding some approximate English equivalent in passages set for
translation from English into Baboo Latin or Greek, and triumphantly
dragging it in; with pots of red ink to underline them, and with an
optimistic determination of getting a first in my Classical Tripos.
Eustace Miles who could work longer and more steadily than anyone I ever
came across before or since, became the anchor to keep me moored on the
rock of industry, despite the engaging tides and currents that made me
long to drift away, and I would take my books to his room and vow that I
would remain glued to them as long as he. If I worked alone my infirmity
of purpose was something ghastly to contemplate, but the living
proximity of a friend who set so shining an example shamed me into
industry. He was bound for the same port as I, namely, a first in the
Classical Tripos, and was a master in the art of inventing ludicrous
phrases which contained the key to dates, and memorized the events of
the Peloponnesian War for me in a few unforgettable sentences. We had
intervals when we set the table on its side to serve as a back wall for
some diminutive game of squash, and then refreshed and dusty we followed
the odious symptoms that attended the plague in Athens. I quite lost
sight again of the beauty of the classical languages, for just now the
learning of them was the mere grinding of the mills that should produce
a particular grist. It was no leisurely artistic appreciation, like that
which had fitfully inspired me under Beesly and during my last year at
school; I but wanted to commit a sort of highway robbery on Sophocles
and Virgil, and take from them the purse that should pay my way for a
first-class ticket. After two terms of this, for the only time in my
life, I was considered to be in danger of growing stale from sheer
industry, and for a fortnight of the Easter vacation, in accordance with
my father’s suggestion, Monty James took two other undergraduates and
myself for a bookless tour through Normandy and Brittany. It was
nominally a walking-tour, but we went by train, visiting Rouen, Caen,
Bayeux, and Lisieux, and finishing up with Amiens and Beauvais. We
played quantities of picquet, and the Nixon saga was enriched by a
Pindaric Ode in praise of Pnyxon winner in the tricycle race against two
Divinity professors....
The last paper in the Tripos, after translations into English from Latin
and Greek verse and prose, and translation into Latin and Greek from
English, was in classical history, of which I knew nothing whatever,
and so I sat up three-quarters of the night and read through the whole
of two short history primers. In the few hours that intervened between
that degrading process and the history paper, it was impossible to
forget crucial dates or events of any magnitude, and by dragging in all
collateral information, and dishing it up with a certain culinary skill
acquired by years of _Saturday Magazine_, I produced a voluminous vamp
of information. And then after some days of waiting came the lists, and
the year of Babooism had won its appropriate reward, for, sure enough, I
had taken a first. As for the history, I had produced a paper that
caused me to be congratulated by the examiner (Dr. Verrall) on my
“grasp”--acquired the night before--and was advised by him to take up
history for a second Tripos. That, knowing better than he what the
tenacity of my grasp really was, I thought better to decline.
Having taken a first (such a first!) my father was more than pleased
that, pending the choice of a profession, which I had already secretly
registered, I should stop up another year and attempt to perform a
similar feat in some other branch of knowledge. Should that also be
accomplished, I should be of a status that could see a Fellowship at
King’s within possible horizons, and he wanted no finer threshold of
life for any of his sons than a Fellowship of his college. Here then his
scholastic sympathies were completely engaged, but infinitely more
potent than they was his desire that we should all of us enter the
priesthood of the Church to which, with a unique passion, all his life
was dedicated. Arthur at this time, had already been an Eton master for
over five years, and had not taken orders, and it was not likely now
that he would. I was the next, and when my father more than gladly let
me stop up at Cambridge with a view to a second Tripos, for another
year, he coupled with his permission the desire that I should attend
some Divinity lectures. Never shall I admire tact or delicacy more than
his upon this subject. For years while at school he had put before me,
never insistently but always potently, his hope that I should be a
clergyman, so that now I was quite familiar with it. But at the very
moment when a strongly expressed desire on his part might have
determined me, he forbore to express such desire at all: if I was to be
a clergyman I must have the personal, the individual sense of vocation,
and not take orders because he wished it. Already I knew that he wished
it, but he would not stir a finger, now that I had come to an age when
definite choice opened before me, to influence my decision. He wished me
to attend Divinity lectures in order to learn something before I either
chose or rejected, but beyond that he never said a word in argument or
persuasion, nor even asked me if I had attended these lectures. At the
very moment, in fact, when his wish, had he expressed it, that I should
take a theological Tripos with a view to ordination, would have had
effective weight, seeing that he was allowing me to spend a fourth year
at Cambridge, he, with a supreme and perfect delicacy, forbore to put a
pennyweight of his own desires into the scale, and welcomed the choice I
made of taking up archæology for a second Tripos. He merely wished me to
attend a few divinity lectures, and left it at that. Hugh, meantime,
triumphantly carrying the banner of early failure which I had so long
held against all comers, had unsuccessfully competed, after a year of
cramming, in the Indian Civil Service examination, which had been his
first choice of a profession. Having failed in that, he was to come up
to Trinity in October, unblushing and unhonoured. I passed the banner to
him with all good wishes.
There were some weeks of long vacation after the archæological decision
was made which I now know to have been loaded with fate so far as my own
subsequent life was concerned, though at the time those scribblings I
then indulged in seemed to be quite as void of significance as any
particular number of the _Saturday Magazine_ had been. For one morning,
at Cambridge, where I had returned for a few weeks before we went out to
Switzerland in August, I desisted from the perusal of Miss Harrison’s
_Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_, and wrote on the top of a
piece of blue foolscap a word that has stuck to me all my life. For a
long time there had been wandering about in my head the idea of some
fascinating sort of modern girl, who tackled life with uncommon relish
and success, and was adored by the world in general, and had all the
embellishments that a human being can desire except a heart. Years ago
some adumbration of her had occurred in the story that Maggie and I
wrote together; that I suppose was the yeast that was now beginning to
stir and bubble in my head. She must ride, she must dance, she must have
all the nameless attraction that attaches to those who are as prismatic
and as hard as crystal, and above all she must talk. It was no use just
informing the reader that here was a marvellously fascinating
personality, as Maggie and I had done before, or that to see her was to
worship her, or that after a due meed of worship she would reveal
herself as no more than husk and colouring matter. Explanations and
assurances of that sort were now altogether to be dispensed with.
Scarcely even was the current of her thought, scarcely even were the
main lines of her personality to be drawn: she was to reveal herself by
what she said, and thus, whatever she did, would need no comment. There
is the plain presentment of the idea that occupied my youthful mind when
I wrote _Dodo_ at the top of a piece of blue foolscap, and put the
numeral “one” on the top right-hand corner; and where this crude story
of mine still puts in a plea for originality, is in the region of its
conscious plan. Bad or good (it was undoubtedly bad) it introduced a
certain novelty into novel-writing which had “quite a little vogue” for
a time. The main character, that is to say, was made, in her
infinitesimal manner, to draw herself. In staged and acted drama even,
that principle--bad or good--is never consistently maintained, because
other people habitually discuss the hero and heroine, and the audience’s
conception of them is based on comment as well as on self-spoken
revelation. Also in drama there is bound to be some sort of plot, in
which action reveals the actor. But in this story which I scribbled at
for a few weeks, there was no sort of plot: there was merely a clash of
minor personalities breaking themselves to bits against the central
gabbling figure. Hideously crude, blatantly inefficient as the execution
was, there was just that one new and feasible idea in the manner of it.
What I aimed at was a type that revealed itself in an individual by
oceans of nonsensical speech.
I wrote with the breathless speed of creation (however minute such
creation was), almost entirely, but not quite, for my own private
amusement. It was not quite for that internal satisfaction alone,
because as I scampered and scamped, I began to contemplate a book
arising out of these scribblings, a marketable book, that is to say,
between covers and for sale. Eventually, for the information of any who
happen to remember the total result, I got as far as the lamentable
death of Dodo’s first husband, and that, as far as I knew then, was the
end of the story. Dodo would be thus left a far from disconsolate widow
dangling in the air like a blind-string in front of an open window. On
the last page of the book, she would remain precisely as she had been on
the first; she had not developed, she had not gone upwards or downwards
in any moral course; she was a moment, a detail, a flashlight photograph
flared on to a plate without the smallest presentment of anything,
except what she happened to be at that moment. All this I did not then
realize.... There it was anyhow, and having finished it, I bundled the
whole affair into a drawer, and with that off my mind, concentrated
again over the _Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens_.
Then followed a few weeks at the Rieder Furca Hotel, above the Aletsch
Glacier, opposite the Bel Alp. At that time it was a wooden structure of
so light and airy a build that without raising your voice you could talk
through the wall to the person next door. Maggie that year was obliged
to go to Aix for a course of treatment and my mother went with her, but,
even as it was, we nearly filled the little hotel. The weather was bad,
an ascent of the Jungfrau which I made in very thick soft snow, after
sleeping for two nights at the Concordia hut being the only big (and
that an abominable) climb, and there was a great deal of “Cotter’s
Saturday Night.” My father had a larger supply of books than usual, for
he was busy with his judgment in the Lincoln trial, to be delivered in
the autumn. For a couple of years the case had been a perpetual anxiety
to him. It was doubtful at first whether he, as Archbishop, possessed
the jurisdiction to try it, and while personally (to put the matter in a
nutshell) he was very unwilling to do so, he did not want the
jurisdiction of the See, if it possessed it, to lapse. The case was one
of illegal ritual: and the Church Association party, at whose
instigation it was started, had obtained their evidence in a manner
peculiarly sordid, for they had sent emissaries to spy on Bishop King’s
manner of celebrating the Holy Communion. As their object was to obtain
evidence on that point, it is difficult to see how else they could have
obtained it, but the notion of evidence thus obtained was revolting to
my father. On the other hand there was Bishop King, a man of the highest
character, of saintly life, an old and beloved friend of my father’s,
who was thus accused of illegality in matters which to the ordinary lay
and even clerical mind were of infinitesimal importance. But the
indictment was that he had offended against Ecclesiastical Law, which my
father as head of the Church was bound to uphold, so that when, after
innumerable arguments and discussion, the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council found that he had the jurisdiction, he decided to assume
it. That being so, he could dismiss the case as being a frivolous
indictment, but this course undoubtedly would have caused a split in the
English Church, and accordingly he decided to try it. It was heard in
February, 1890, and he reserved judgment. It was this pronouncement that
occupied him so closely all that summer, and he finished it in
September.
At the beginning of October, Hugh went up to Cambridge, for the
assembling of freshmen, and I had still some ten days which I spent at
Addington. Arthur was already back at Eton, my father and mother and
Maggie soon went off on some visit, and thus it happened that Nellie and
I for a few days were alone there. We had breakfast very late, with a
sense of complete uncontrol, we rode and we played lawn-tennis and
talked in the desultory argumentative manner that we both thoroughly
enjoyed. In particular we played at “old games,” and Beth used to join
us. That year the big cedar in the garden was covered with little
immature cones, full of a yellow powder like sulphur, and we collected
this in glass-topped pill-boxes, part of the ancient apparatus of the
moth-collections, shaking the sulphur-laden cones into them, and filling
each full to the brim. There was no design as to what we were to do with
these: there was just some reversion in our minds to childish
“treasures,” like the spa and the dead hornet in the aquarium. It was
enough to fill these little pill-boxes with the cedar-pollen, and screw
the lids on, and know that half a dozen boxes were charged to the brim.
We were quite aimless, we saw nobody but Beth, and were wonderfully
content. I did a little reading in Overbeck’s _Schriftquellen_, and
Nellie translated the German part of it to me, to save time. There was
nothing more to remember of those days except that delicious sense of
leisure and love and liberty: we did nothing except what we wanted to
do, and what we seemed to want was to be ridiculous children again.
Eventually, after some four or five days, came the afternoon when I had
to go back to Cambridge; my father and mother were coming back to
Addington that day or the next. Nellie and I parted, greatly regretting
that these silly days were done, and made plans for Christmas.
A week or so afterwards, I got a letter from my mother, saying that
Nellie had a diphtheritic sore throat. Anxious news came after that for
a few days, but on a certain Sunday I had tidings that she was going on
well. Early on Monday morning I got a telegram telling me to come home
at once, for she was very much worse. I went round to Trinity to see
Hugh, and found he had received a similar telegram. There was a train to
London half an hour later, and as I was packing a bag the post came in
with reassuring news. But that had been written the day before: the
telegram was of later date.
She had died that morning, facing death with the fearless welcome that
she had always given to any new experience. During her illness she had
not been able to speak at all, but had written little sentences on
scraps of paper; after the nature of it was declared she had been
completely isolated, but her nurse disinfected these notes and sent them
to the others. The first was a joyful little line to my mother, saying
that as she had to be in bed, she was going to have a good spell of
writing at a story she was engaged on. At the end, the last note but one
had been for her nurse; in this she had thanked her and asked, “Is there
anything I can do?” Her nurse answered her when she read it, “Let
patience do her perfect work.”... So that was off Nellie’s mind. And
then last of all she wrote to my mother who was by her bed and she
traced out, “I wonder what it will be like. Give them all my love.” Then
my mother began saying to her, “Jesu, Lover of my soul,” and while she
was saying it, Nellie died.
That afternoon, we, the rest of us, went out on that still sunny October
day and strolled through the woods together, splitting up into twos and
threes and rejoining again. My mother seemed to have her hand in
Nellie’s all the time, telling us, who had come too late, tranquilly
and serenely, how the days had gone, and how patient she had been and
how cheerful. We recalled all sorts of things about her, with smiles and
with laughter, and there was no sense of loss, for my mother brought her
amongst us, and never let go of her. Then, back in the house again,
there were other arrangements to be made: it was settled that Arthur,
Hugh and I should go back to Eton and Cambridge as soon as we could, but
after the funeral we must spend a week of quarantine somewhere. How
Nellie had got diphtheria was obscure, and it was better that we should
not sleep in the house, or run a possible risk of infection. I wanted to
see her, but my mother said that what I wanted to see was not Nellie at
all, and that I must think of her as I had known her. And as I knew her,
so she has always remained for me, collecting the cedar-sulphur, or
laughing with open mouth, or grave and eager with sympathy. The
glass-lidded pill-boxes were on a ledge of a bookcase, where we had left
them a week or two before. My mother had seen them, and thought that
there was probably some mystic significance about them, so I told her
how Nellie and I had gathered them, and she said, “What treasures: bless
her!” Golden October weather it was, with frosts at night and windless
days, and the chestnut leaves came peeling off the trees and falling in
a heap of tawny yellow below them, each leaf twirling in the air as it
fell.
She was buried in Addington churchyard and next her now lies Maggie, and
on her other side my mother.
* * * * *
My father, all the time of Nellie’s illness, had been hard at work on
the final revision of his Lincoln judgment: now the delivery of that was
postponed for a little, but not for long. Everyone had to get back
normally and naturally to the work and the play and the joy and sorrow
of life again, but at the Christmas holidays it was seen how huge a gap
had come in the circle which since Martin’s death, twelve years before,
had grown up together, critical and devoted and wildly alive. No one,
when all were so intent on the businesses in hand, had estimated when a
play, for instance, must be written and rehearsed and managed, how
largely it was Nellie’s enthusiastic energy that carried things through.
So there was no play that Christmas, and the year after four of us, my
father and mother and Maggie and I, were in Algiers, another year they
were in Florence, and another Maggie and I were in Egypt, and so that
particular blaze of young activity of which Christmas holidays had been
the type and flower came to an end. Besides we were all getting older,
and there was no Nellie; with her death some unrecapturable magic was
lost.
Of the many intimate friendships of my mother’s life none was closer
than that which had ripened during these years at Lambeth with Lucy
Tait, the daughter of the late Archbishop. She had constantly been with
us in town and at Addington, and now, after Nellie’s death, she made her
permanent home with us. Then, when the Lambeth days were over she
continued, until my mother’s death, twenty-two years later, to devote
her life to her.