Mrs. Hungerford married first when very young, but her husband died in less than six years, leaving her with three little girls. In 1883 she married Mr. Henry Hungerford. He also is Irish, and his father's place, Cahirmore, of about eleven thousand acres, lies nearly twenty miles to the west of Bandon. 'It may interest you', she says, 'to hear that my husband was at the same school as Mr. Rider Haggard. I remember when we were all much younger than we are now, the two boys came over for their holidays to Cahirmore, and one day in my old home "Milleen" we all went down to the kitchen to cast bullets. We little thought then that the quiet, shy schoolboy, was destined to be the author of "King Solomon's Mines"'.
Nothing less than a genius is Mrs. Hungerford at gardening. Her dress protected by a pretty holland apron, her hands encased in brown leather gloves, she digs and delves. Followed by many children, each armed with one of 'mother's own' implements—for she has her own little spade and hoe, and rake, and trowel, and fork—she plants her own seeds, and pricks her own seedlings, prunes, grafts, and watches with the deepest eagerness to see them grow. In springtime, her interest is alike divided between the opening buds of her daffodils, and the breaking of the eggs of the first little chickens, for she has a fine poultry yard too, and is very successful in her management of it. She is full of vitality, and is the pivot on which every member of the house turns. Blessed with an adoring husband, and healthy, handsome, obedient children, who come to her for everything and tell her anything, her life seems idyllic.
'Now and then', she remarks laughing, 'I really have great difficulty in securing two quiet hours for my work'; but everything is done in such method and order, the writing included, there is little wonder that so much is got through. It is a full, happy, complete life. 'I think', she adds, 'my one great dread and anxiety is a review. I never yet have got over my terror of it, and as each one arrives, I tremble and quake afresh ere reading'.
April's Lady is one of the author's lately published works. It is in the three volumes, and ran previously as a serial in Belgravia. Lady Patty, a society sketch drawn from life, has a most favourable reception from the critics and public alike, but in her last novel, very cleverly entitled Nor Wife Nor Maid, Mrs. Hungerford is to be seen, or rather read, at her best. This charming book, so full of pathos, so replete with tenderness, ran into a second edition in about ten days. In it the author has taken somewhat of a departure from her usual lively style. Here she has indeed given 'sorrow words'. The third volume is so especially powerful and dramatic, that it keeps the attention chained. The description indeed of poor Mary's grief and despair are hardly to be outdone. The plot contains a delicate situation, most delicately worked out. Not a word or suspicion of a word jars upon the reader. It is not however all gloom. There is in it a second pair of lovers who help to lift the clouds, and bring a smile to the lips of the reader.
Mrs. Hungerford does not often leave her pretty Irish home. What with her incessant literary work, her manifold domestic occupations, and the cares of her large family, she can seldom be induced to quit what she calls, 'an out and out country life', even to pay visits to her English friends. Mrs. Hungerford unhesitatingly declares that everything in the house seems wrong, and there is a howl of dismay from the children when the presiding genius even suggests a few days' leave of absence. Last year, however, she determined to go over London at the pressing invitation of a friend, in order to make the acquaintance of some of her distinguished brothers and sisters of the pen, and she speaks of how thoroughly she enjoyed that visit, with an eager delight. 'Everyone was so kind', she says, 'so flattering, far, far too flattering. They all seemed to have some pretty thing to say to me. I have felt a little spoilt ever since. However, I am going to try what a little more flattery will do for me, so Mr. Hungerford and I hope to accept, next Spring, a second invitation from the same friend, who wants us to go to a large ball she is going to give some time in May for some charitable institution—a Cottage Hospital I believe; but come', she adds, suddenly springing up, 'we have spent quite too much time over my stupid self. Come back to the drawing-room and the chicks, I am sure they must be wondering where we are, and the tea and the cakes are growing cold'.
At this moment the door opens, and her husband, gun in hand, with muddy boots and gaiters, nods to you from the threshold; he says he dare not enter the 'den' in this state, and hurries up to change before joining the tea table. 'He is a great athlete', says his wife, 'good at cricket, football, and hockey, and equally fond of shooting, fishing, and riding'. That he is a capital whip, you have already found out.
In the morning you see from the library window a flower garden and shrubbery, with rose trees galore, and after breakfast a stroll round the place is proposed. A brisk walk down the avenue first, and then back to the beech trees standing on the lawn, which slopes away from the house down to a river running at the bottom of a deep valley, up the long gravelled walk by the hall door, and you turn into a handsome walled kitchen garden, where fruit trees abound—apple and pear trees laden with fruit, a quarter of an acre of strawberry beds, and currant and raspberry bushes in plenty.
But time and tide, trains and steamers, wait to for no man, or woman either. A few hours later you regretfully bid adieu to the charming little author, and watch her until the bend of the road hides her from your sight. Mr. Hungerford sees you through the first stage of the journey, which is all accomplished satisfactorily, and you reach home to find that whilst you have been luxuriating in fresh sea and country air, London has been wrapped in four days of gloom and darkness."
Complement:
Helen C. BLACK, In memoriam The late Mrs. Hungerford from The
Englishwoman April 1897 pp. 102-105