CHAPTER XXI
SAINT ANDREWS

For the remainder of the year ’94 the exigencies of family life kept Martin and me apart, she at Ross, or paying visits, I at home, doing the illustrations for our Danish tour, with complete insincerity, from local models. My diary says, “Impounded Mother to pose as the Hofjägermesterinde, and Mary Anne Whoolly as a Copenhagen market-woman—as Tennyson prophetically said, ‘All, all are Danes.’”

In the meantime “The Real Charlotte” continued to run the race set before her, with a growing tide of approval from those whose approval we most valued, and with steadily improving sales. In November I went to Leicestershire (a visit that shall be told of hereafter), and thence I moved on to Paris.

In January, 1895, Martin went to Scotland, and paid a very enjoyable visit to some friends at St. Andrews, a visit that was ever specially memorable for her from the fact that it was at St. Andrews, among the kind and sympathetic and clever people whom she met there, that she realised for the first time that with “The Real Charlotte” we had made a mark, and a mark that was far deeper and more impressive than had been hitherto suspected by either of us. The enjoyment of this discovery was much enhanced by the fact that Mr. Andrew Lang, whom she met at St. Andrews, was one of the firmest friends of the much-abused “Miss Mullen.”

I have some letters that Martin wrote from St. Andrews, to me, in Paris, and I do not think that I need apologise for transcribing them here, even though some of her comments and descriptions do not err on the side of over-formality. Her pleasure in the whole experience can, I think, only give pleasure in return to the people who were so kind to her, and whose welcome to her, as a writer, was so generous, and so unexpected. Brief as was her acquaintance with Mr. Lang, his delightful personality could hardly have been better comprehended than it was by her, and I believe that his friends will understand, through all the chaff of her descriptions, that he had no more genuine appreciator than Martin Ross.

V. F. M. to E. Œ. S. (St. Andrews, Jan. 16, 1895.)

“It is a long journey here from Ross, by reason of the many changes, and by reason of my back,” (she had fallen downstairs at Ross, and had hurt her back, straining and bruising it very badly,) “which gave me rather a poor time. I hurt it horribly getting in and out of carriages, and was rather depressed about it altogether.... However it is ever so much better to-day, and none the worse for the dinner last night. I don’t think I looked too bad, in spite of all. I was ladylike and somewhat hectic and hollow-eyed. The Langs have large rooms, and their dinner-party was fourteen ... an ugly nice youth was my portion, and I was put at Andrew Lang’s left. I was not shy, but anxious. A. L. is very curious to look at; tall, very thin, white hair, growing far down his forehead, and shading dark eyebrows and piercing-looking, charming brown eyes. He has a somewhat foxey profile, a lemon-pale face and a black moustache. Altogether very quaint looks, and appropriate. I think he is shy; he keeps his head down and often does not look at you when speaking, his voice is rather high and indistinct, and he pitches his sentences out with a jerk. Anyhow I paid court to my own young man for soup and fish time, and found him most agreeable and clever, and I did talk of hunting, and he was mad about it, so now! no more of your cautionary hints!

“To me then Andrew L. with a sort of off-hand fling,

“‘I suppose you’re the one that did the writing?’

“I explained with some care that it was not so. He said he didn’t know how any two people could equally evolve characters, etc., that he had tried, and it was always he or the other who did it all. I said I didn’t know how we managed, but anyhow that I knew little of book-making as a science. He said I must know a good deal, on which I had nothing to say. He talked of Miss Broughton, Stevenson, and others, as personal friends, and exhibited at intervals a curious silent laugh up under his nose.... He was so interesting that I hardly noticed how ripping was the dinner, just as good as it could be. I then retired upon my own man for a while, and Andrew upon his woman; then my youth and he and I had a long talk about Oscar Wilde and others. Altogether I have seldom been more entertained and at ease. After dinner the matrons were introduced and were very civil, and praised Charlotte for its ‘delightful humour, and freshness and newness of feeling,’ and so on. One said that her son told her he would get anything else of ours that he could lay his hands on. Then the men again. I shared an unknown man with a matron, and then the good and kind Andrew drew a chair up and discoursed me, and told me how he is writing a life of Joan of Arc—‘the greatest human being since Jesus Christ.’ He seems wonderfully informed on all subjects. To hear him reel off the historical surroundings of the Book of Esther would surprise you and would scandalise the Canon. He offered to give me a lesson in golf, but, like Cuthbert’s soldier servant I ‘pleaded the ’eadache.’ I hear that I was highly honoured, as he very often won’t talk to people and is rude; I must say I thought he was, in his jerky, unconventional way, polite to everyone.... This is a cultured house, and all the new books are here.... I wish I had been walking in the moonlight by the Seine. It is like a dream to think of it. Talking to Andrew Lang has made me feel that nothing I could write could be any good; he seems to have seen the end of perfection. I will take my stand on Charlotte, I think, and learn to make my own clothes, and so subside noiselessly into middle age.”