The outstanding fact, as it seems to me, among women who live by their brains, is friendship. A profound friendship that extends through every phase and aspect of life, intellectual, social, pecuniary. Anyone who has experience of the life of independent and artistic women knows this; and it is noteworthy that these friendships of women will stand even the strain of matrimony for one or both friends. I gravely doubt that had Jonathan outlived Uriah he would have seen much of David.
However, controversy, and especially controversy of this complexion, is a bore. As Martin said, in a letter to me,
“Rows are a mistake; which is the only reason I don’t fight with you for invariably spelling ‘practice,’ the noun, with an ‘s.’”
Martin had a very special gift for friendship, both with women and with men. Her sympathies were wide, and her insight into character and motive enabled her to meet each of her many friends on their own ground, and to enter deeply and truly into their lives, and give them a share in hers.
In spite of the ordinance of silence, I feel as if she would wish me to record in this book the names, at least, of some of those whom she delighted to honour, and, with all diffidence, I beg them to understand that in the very brief mention of them that will be found in the Appendix, I have only ventured to do this because I believe that she desires it.
I suppose it was the result of old habit, and of the return of the hounds, but, for whatever reason, during the years that followed the appearance of “Dan Russel the Fox,” Martin and I put aside the notions we had been dwelling upon in connection with “a serious novel,” and took to writing “R.M.” stories again. These, six couple of them (like the first draft of the re-established pack), wandered through various periodicals, chiefly Blackwood’s Magazine, and in July, 1915, they were published in a volume with the title of “In Mr. Knox’s Country.”
We were in Kerry when the book appeared, or rather we were on our way there. I remember with what anxiety I bought a Spectator at the Mallow platform bookstall, and even more vividly do I recall our departure from Mallow, when Martin, and Ethel Penrose, and I, all violently tried to read the Spectator review of Mr. Knox at the same moment.
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I will say nothing now of the time that we spent in Kerry; a happy time, in lovely weather, in a lovely place. It was the last of many such times, and it is too near, now, to be written of.
I will try no more. Withered leaves, blowing in through the open window before a September gale, are falling on the page. Our summers are ended. “‘Vanity of vanities,’ saith the Preacher.”