I think, during those early struggles, her correspondence with Aunt Helen was her greatest help and comfort, for to that dearest of friends she could unburden all her worries and perplexities, and be sure of sympathy.
'It is so hard to do exactly right,' wrote Lilian—'to be generous without being extravagant, and economical without being stingy. Father says we must be careful, and spend as little as we can, but things to eat seem to cost such a terrible amount all the same. I wish we could live on porridge and potatoes, like the Irish do! Life would be far simpler.
'About going on with my education. You ask if I am keeping up my French and German, but there really seems no time. The two hours' practising for Herr Frankenburg is as much as I can possibly get in. I am busy with Nancy all morning, the music takes the best part of the afternoon, then the children come home, and after tea I must see that they learn their lessons and go to bed, and Father likes someone to talk to in the evenings. It is so dull for him if I am buried in a German exercise when he wants to tell me about the farm. I try to attack a few "improving" books when I can manage it, and I have begun to read Carlyle's "French Revolution" to Father in the evenings, but I am sorry to say it generally sends him to sleep. He is so tired with the threshing just now, poor darling! and, as he said one night: "You see, my dear, I have so many troubles of my own at present that the trials of the French peasantry of a hundred years ago seem an affair of quite minor importance."'
Aunt Helen's letter back was just like a little piece of her dear self.
'I can sympathize thoroughly with all your worries,' it ran, 'for I, too, was left motherless at sixteen, to manage as best I could. Of course, keep up our family standard of cleanliness and order as much as you possibly can, but you will find it a mistake to be too particular and exacting. Rather, let the children run in sometimes with dirty boots than check their confidence by continual fault-finding. I am sorry that the education must needs be somewhat neglected, but after all the other is more important. There are plenty of "blue" Girton girls in the world who do not seem to me to be of much use to anyone except themselves, while as the "little mother" of your home you are filling a place that is the sphere of every true woman. And because you have no time for reading is not any reason why your thinking powers need rust away. There is so much wisdom to be learnt from even the little ordinary incidents of life if one knows how to appreciate them. People say one is apt to grow narrow with living in the country, but I have generally found the people who do so are those who have no interests outside the round of society pleasures or social gossip, and to my mind they would be narrow anywhere. When you know a little about botany and natural history, all the common things on the farm have something to teach you. The quaint sayings of the villagers are often as full of humour as those Scotch books over which people rave so much, and many of their stories are such interesting survivals of ancient folklore that I have often longed to collect them in writing. While surely, to a thoughtful mind, the constant sight of so much loveliness around tends to have a more ennobling effect than an environment of bricks and mortar and smoky chimneys, whatever the Londoners may say.
'Do your household duties thoroughly, but don't let them absorb you entirely, for Father does not want you to be a mere domestic drudge, with no ideas beyond the potato-pan and the pepper-pot. When I was a young girl I often tilted up a volume of Tennyson and read snatches while I compounded a pudding, and found it had a wonderfully inspiring effect, and did not spoil the cooking either, for my "Tennyson" puddings generally turned out a great success.
'You will find the housekeeping comes easier as you grow older, and in the meantime remember you are not only educating yourself, but bringing up the younger ones, who look to you now instead of to me for example, and who will be far more influenced by what you do and what you are than by any amount of good advice you may bestow upon them. It is hard to write all this from a distance of so many thousand miles, when I am longing to sit over the fire in the Rose Parlour, and have a good chat with you, like we used to do sometimes when the children had gone to bed.
'I am afraid there seems very little festivity or party-going for you, dear child, and I should have been glad to hear you had been asked out rather more; but, after all, much society often means much rivalry and heartburning. I have tried both, and find there is more real pleasure to be had from the intellectual than from the social side of life, for while the latter is apt to fail us just when we most require it, the former is "warranted to wear well and improve with keeping," and, so far from being affected by the changes and chances of this world, sticks by us when health and wealth and even friends can fall away.'