‘I think one marked point, physical and mental, in her, was her tireless energy. Her very walk was indicative of this; the elastic springiness of every step. Also of another point in her character, stern determination,—the resolute folding in of her arms and hands, as she paced along a road or up and down a garden,—drawing herself up to her full height the while, with sparkling eye and compressed lips. She was teeming with life and energy;—whether it were over her favourite chess, when she would wait patiently but eagerly, thinking out each move; or enjoying the small-talk of society, watching faces and reading characters, to treasure them up for painting in one of her forthcoming volumes; or teaching a niece the beauties of sound and thought in the Italian of Dante; or playing at some game of thought with young people; or reading aloud one of her two favourite dearly-loved and untiringly-studied authors, Shakespeare and Boswell’s Life of Johnson. She was very sociable, lively, and threw her whole heart into the kindly entertaining of guests of all ages. Her eldest brother used to be very much struck with the unselfish way in which she bore any interruptions and calls upon her time. Even in the midst of her literary work, she would at once rise, leave it, and give her whole attention to any subject an incomer might wish to speak to her about.
‘Clever and stern, she was not one to be trifled with. Purpose seemed woven into all her liveliness; and she tried to keep others up to her level.’
Another writes, in reference to the time when A. L. O. E. was living at Birch Hall, Windlesham, with her brother and his family, in 1870:—
‘I had just arrived on a visit, and she came into the drawing-room, kissed me, and said, “I am Aunt Charlotte.” She was not good-looking, but was always full of life. Her ready wit and charming conversational powers made her a welcome guest everywhere, and made many a dinner-party at her brother’s house go off well.... She was always thinking of others, and seemed to count time spent on herself wasted.
‘I well remember a time when I longed to see Windsor and the Queen; and Aunt Charlotte immediately said she was longing for the same thing, and gladly undertook to pioneer an expedition. I was far from strong, but could not wait for lunch in my anxiety to have a good place at the railway station, to see Her Majesty arrive. Having seen me and my young cousin safely placed, Aunt C. disappeared, and after a while made her way through the crowd, laden with cakes for us all, finally producing a glass of claret for me from under her cloak, which I was obliged to take then and there. Her enthusiastic loyalty made her enjoy the sight, no novel one to her, of our dear Queen, as much as any of us.
‘Our evenings owed much of their brightness to her presence. She could sing,—sometimes lively little songs, accompanying herself with the guitar. Her ear for music was so correct, that on one occasion she came downstairs from her room, to tell me I had played a wrong note in a chord of Beethoven, and the exact note I should have played.
‘Sometimes she thought of games for us. One was called “Statues.” We each had to pose as a statue, suggestive of some subject, such as Melancholy, Joy, Fear, etc. Whilst she, personating a visitor to the sculpture studio, would try to upset our gravity by her amusing remarks on the statues.... She also invented a geography game for us, providing us with skeleton maps, and small round counters, on which the names of towns were printed. As these were drawn and the name called out, we had to claim them and give them their places on the map. Whoever had a map filled in first was the winner.... Sometimes we read Shakespeare together, each of us taking a part....
‘I think things were only a trouble to her when she had to do them for herself. Nothing was a trouble if it helped another.... Work for the Master whom she loved was her animating motive.... She was, I think, the most unselfish character I ever knew. She lived for others; whether in the great work of her life, the use of her pen, the proceeds of which went to fill her charity purse, or in the simple act of leaving her quiet room, on a dull, rainy afternoon, to play a bright country dance or Scotch reel, and set the little ones dancing to vent their superfluous spirits.’
These slight recollections are from the pen of one among her numerous adopted nieces.
Another niece, not adopted but real, says:—