“Last Sunday’s sermon was full of ‘jewels five words long.’ I noticed first an allusion to Jacob’s perfidy to Esau. ‘Which of us, Beloved, would not have blushed if we had been in—in—in the shoes in which Jacob was then living? Or if we had been his mother?’
“There was something in this so suggestive of the tale of the Old Woman, who with her family, lived in a shoe, that I found my seat in the front row of the choir inconvenient, more especially when one recollected that in Jacob’s time sandals were the usual wear. Mr. B. then proceeded to tell us of ‘The Greek Chap’ who held the gunwale of the boat and ‘when his right hand was chopped off, held it with his left, and that being cut off, caught it in his teeth. Then his head was cut off! Think of him, Beloved, who, when his head was cut off, still with his teeth held the boat impossible!’
“The last word was doubtless the nearest he could get to ‘immoveable.’ At this two prominent members of the choir laughed, long and agonisingly, as did many others. I never smiled. Had you been there I might have been unequal to the strain, but I felt sorry for poor Mr. Brown, as it was only a slip to say ‘head’ for ‘hand.’ He got through the rest pretty well, only saying, a little later, that we should not ‘ask the Almighty for mercies to be doled out to us, like a pauper’s gruel, in half-pints.’ He gave us another striking metaphor, a few Sundays ago. ‘Dear friends, to what shall I liken the Day of Resurrection, and the rising of us, miserable sinners, from the grave? Will it not be like poor, wretched, black chimney-sweeps, sticking their heads up out of chimneys!’”
Martin’s pitifulness to incapacity, whether mental or physical, could be almost exasperating sometimes in its wide charity. Failure of any kind appealed to her generosity. Her consideration and tenderness for the limitations and disabilities of old age were very wonderful and beautiful things, and no one ever knew her to triumph over a fallen foe. For myself, I am of opinion that, with some foes, this is a mistake, akin to being heroic at a dentist’s. However, the question need not now be discussed.
That “An Irish Cousin” had satisfied Messrs. Bentley’s expectations was evidenced by a letter from Mr. R. Bentley in October, 1889, in which he suggested that we should write a three-volume novel for them, and offered us £100 down and £125 on the second 500 copies. We were then at work on a short novel that we had been commissioned to write. This was “Naboth’s Vineyard,” which, after various adventures, was first published by Spencer Blackett, in October, 1891. The story had had a preliminary canter in the Lady’s Pictorial Christmas number as a short story, which we called “Slide Number 42.” It was sufficiently approved of to encourage us to fill it up and make a novel of it. As a book it has had a curious career. We had sold the copyright without reservation, and presently it was passed on to Mr. Blackett. We next heard of it in the hands of Griffith and Farran. Then it appeared as a “yellow-back”
E. Œ. S. CANDY. SHEILA. V. F. M.
E. B. C.