It is a lovely day in early springtime. A gentle south-west wind is just stirring the meadows, and the young birds are chirping gaily in the hedgerows which are beginning to put forth their tiny buds. All nature seems awake and smiling; truly a fitting morn on which to visit Stratford-on-Avon, the place so fraught with memories of the immortal bard. You have been so fortunate as to make the long journey from London in the company of the well-known and popular Captain Gerard, late of the 23rd Welsh Fusiliers, and as he has been for some years a resident in these parts, he has given you the carte du pays and much useful and interesting information.
The town of Stratford-on-Avon is beautifully situated on the south-west border of Warwickshire on a gentle eminence rising from the bank of the Avon. As the train glides into the station, Mrs. Leith Adams is seen standing on the platform. She has come to meet you, accompanied by many dogs, who insist on jumping into the carriage as an escort home. On leaving the station the road runs past the hospital, down the wonderfully broad High-street of the town with its venerable houses on either side, and as the beautiful old porch of the Guild Chapel (of which Mr. Laffan is incumbent) comes into view, the pony turns down Chapel-lane and draws up at the School House.
Entering the porch into the hall you face the Head Master's study on the left, a charming room and evidently the haunt of a scholar. The next room on the same floor has two French windows opening on to the garden. In a nook by one of these windows Mrs. Leith Adams does her writing with the shades of George Eliot looking down on her, and a fine photograph of her youngest son now in Australia. Wandering about the grounds into which these windows look are six beautiful peacocks, a comical cockatoo, a seagull, so tame that it comes up when called, two white broken-haired terriers, and a wise-looking pug. On the left stands a tree with cocoanuts tied upon it, where countless blue-eyed tits congregate all day long. The wide winding staircase leads up to the drawing-room, where you find yourself among shades of olive green, and a roving glance is caught by two magnificent old china jars, standing on either side of the fire-place, once full of unguents belonging to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, and found in the vaults under the palace at Malta. The side window looks across the School gardens to the Memorial Theatre, a fine domed building on the banks of the river, and the three windows in the front look over New Place Gardens where lie the foundations of the house where Shakespeare died, and where in 1643 Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., was hospitably received and entertained for three days by Shakespeare's daughter.
It was as the wife of the late Surgeon-General A. Leith Adams, F.R.S., LL.D., M.D., that the author of "Aunt Hepsy's Foundling" (by which story the name of Mrs. Leith Adams is best known to the public) entered on her career as a novelist. Having been much struck during a visit to Scotland by the character and personality of a venerable minister of the Presbyterian Church, she resolved to attempt to make him the centrepiece of a short story. Of this resolve the result was "Keane Malcombe's Pupil," since republished under the title of "Mabel Meredith's Love Story." Her first essay in fiction met with instant success. Without any previous acquaintance with, or introduction to, the present Mr. Charles Dickens, the author offered her MS. to All the Year Round. It was at once accepted and published in the year 1876, from which time up to the present Mrs. Leith Adams has been continuously a member of Mr. Dickens's staff.
A more ambitious effort followed in the year 1877 when "Winstowe," her first three-volume novel, was brought out. It bore marks of great inexperience, but had a certain limited sale in England and a wider one in America. In the following year "Madelon Lemoine" was issued, a book which has made its way steadily among a section of the community, and is looked upon by many critics as the foremost among the author's earlier works; but it was not until the publication of "Aunt Hepsy's Foundling" that her name came prominently before the public. A remarkable notice in a leading journal resulted in a second edition being promptly called for. This has been followed by two other editions, each in one volume, also one in America and one in Germany. In writing this book Mrs. Leith Adams was inspired by the recollections of life in New Brunswick, in which country she had spent nearly five years with her husband's regiment—the 1st Battalion "Cheshire." The novelty of the scene and the freshness of its treatment secured for the work a prompt success, and it was spoken of by a weekly review as "an almost perfect novel of its kind."
The author has enjoyed very exceptional advantages as preparation for a literary career. Married at an early age, when the impression of a girl's life are peculiarly vivid, she was but six months in Ireland with the "Cheshire" when that regiment was ordered on foreign service. Her presentation at the Irish Vice-Regal Court, over which the scholarly Lord Carlisle then held sway, the brilliant festivities at the Castle, réunions at the house of Sir Henry and Lady Marsh, where she met all the men of letters in Dublin, the happy camaraderie of regimental life; all these things, so new to her, passed like a flash, and were exchanged for the troopship, and ultimately for lands and societies strangely differing the one from the other.
The sunshine, orange groves, and military pomp and glitter of life in Malta were succeeded by the sound of the sleigh bells over the snow, the wonders of the sudden springtime, and the gorgeous "fall" of New Brunswick, and, after nine years' wandering, the beautiful coast scenery of Guernsey; then once again the delights of soldiering in Ireland, this time in the South, where the lovely climate, devoted friends, and the charm of being near home once more, have, as your hostess expresses it, "all made the memories of those days most dear to me."
Mrs. Leith Adams did not begin to write whilst still a very young woman. She says of herself that although the idea may have been in her mind, she wished to wait until she had great stores of experience and observation upon which to draw. Some of these experiences have been of an intense and exceptional character. During the great cholera epidemic which visited the island of Malta in 1866—after sending home to England her only little child for safety—she devoted herself to the care of the sick and dying in her husband's regiment, in company with a band of soldiers' wives, who gladly and fearlessly gave themselves to the good work. Many of her experiences during this awful time are to be found in the pages of "Madelon Lemoine," but in one instance (not there alluded to) it may be said that Mrs. Leith Adams ran extraordinary and perilous risk, such as rendered her entire immunity from harm little short of miraculous, whilst she also had the satisfaction of seeing the woman whom she was attending gradually recover from the fell disease that so seldom spares the victim that it has once attacked.
After twenty-five years' service with the old regiment, Dr. Leith Adams obtained a Staff appointment connected with the recruiting department at the Horse Guards, and this brought himself and his wife to London, where they continued to reside for some years.