It would be some poor comfort to me in my loneliness to write here some little account of Mary Charlotte Lloyd, and to describe her keen, highly-cultivated intellect, her quick sense of humour, her gifts as sculptor and painter (the pupil and friend of John Gibson and of Rosa Bonheur); her practical ability and strict justice in the administration of her estate; above all to speak of her character, “cast”—as one who knew her from childhood said,—“in an heroic mould,” of fortitude and loftiness; her absolute unselfishness in all things large and small. But the reticence which belonged to the greatness of her nature made her always refuse to allow me to lead her into the more public life whereto my work necessarily brought me, and in her last sacred directions she forbids me to commemorate her by any written record. Only, then, in the hearts of the few who really knew her must her noble memory live.
I wrote the following lines to her some twenty-five years ago when spending a few days away from her and our home in London. I found them again after her death among her papers. They have a doubled meaning for me now, when the time has come for me to need her most of all.
TO MARY C. LLOYD.
Written in Hartley Combe, Liss, about 1873.
Friend of my life! Whene’er my eyes
Beat with sudden, glad surprise
On Nature’s scenes of earth and air
Sublimely grand, or sweetly fair,
I want you—Mary.
When men and women, gifted, free,