“Where thou hast touched, O wondrous Death!
Where thou hast come between,
Lo, there for ever perisheth
The common and the mean.
No little flaw or trivial speck
Doth any more appear,
And cannot, from this time, to fleck
Love’s perfect image clear.”[327]
Hard to those in her own class, and with them ever occupied in asserting and insisting upon her own little imaginary dignities, Mary Stanley did more unselfish work for the poor than almost any one, and hundreds of whom nothing is known in the society in which she lived miss and mourn her. Probably only the poor knew the best, the really beautiful side of Mary Stanley’s life, which was most beautiful.
I often wish, as regards her, I could have profited more by words of Mrs. Kemble which I read too late to apply them—“Do you not know that to misunderstand and be misunderstood is one of the inevitable conclusions, and I think one of the especial purposes, of our existence? The principal use of the affection of human beings for each other is to supply the want of perfect comprehension, which is impossible. All the faith and love which we possess are barely sufficient to bridge over the abyss of individualism which separates one human being from another; and they would not, or could not, exist, if we really understood each other.”
In December I went abroad to join the two Miss Hollands—my Norwegian companions—at Ancona, and go on with them to Sicily, a journey through deep snow and agonising cold. After I met the Hollands and their friend Miss Lily Howard, we went rapidly south, with Sir George Baker, his wife and daughter, semi-annexed to our party, and at Reggio we found summer—palms, bananas, blue skies and sunshine.
