Frances Horner [Footnote: Lady Horner, of Mells, Frome.] was more like a sister to me than any one outside my own family. I met her when she was Miss Graham and I was fourteen. She was a leader in what was called the high art William Morris School and one of the few girls who ever had a salon in London.
I was deeply impressed by her appearance, it was the fashion of the day to wear the autumn desert in your hair and "soft shades" of Liberty velveteen; but it was neither the unusualness of her clothes nor the sight of Burne-Jones at her feet and Ruskin at her elbow that struck me most, but what Charty's little boy, Tommy Lister, called her "ghost eyes" and the nobility of her countenance.
There may be women as well endowed with heart, head, temper and temperament as Frances Horner, but I have only met a few: Lady de Vesci (whose niece, Cynthia, married our poet-son, Herbert), Lady Betty Balfour[Footnote: Sister of the Earl of Lytton and wife of Mr. Gerald Balfour.] and my daughter Elizabeth. With most women the impulse to crab is greater than to praise and grandeur of character is surprisingly lacking in them; but Lady Horner comprises all that is best in my sex.
Mary Wemyss was one of the most distinguished of the Souls and was as wise as she was just, truthful, tactful, and generous. She might have been a great influence, as indeed she was always a great pleasure, but she was both physically and mentally badly equipped for coping with life and spent and wasted more time than was justifiable on plans which could have been done by any good servant. It would not have mattered the endless discussion whether the brougham fetching one part of the family from one station and a bus fetching another part of it from another interfered with a guest catching a five or a five-to-five train—which could or could not be stopped—if one could have been quite sure that Mary Wemyss needed her friend so much that another opportunity would be given for an intimate interchange of confidences; but plan-weaving blinds people to a true sense of proportion and my beloved Mary never had enough time for any of us. She is the only woman I know or have ever known without smallness or touchiness of any kind. Her juste milieu, if a trifle becalmed, amounts to genius; and I was—and still am—more interested in her moral, social and intellectual opinions than in most of my friends'. Some years ago I wrote this in my diary about her:
"Mary is generally a day behind the fair and will only hear of my death from the man behind the counter who is struggling to clinch her over a collar for her chow."
One of the less prominent of the Souls was my friend, Lionel
Tennyson.[Footnote: Brother of the present Lord Tennyson.] He was
the second son of the poet and was an official in the India
Office. He had an untidy appearance, a black beard and no manners.
He sang German beer-songs in a lusty voice and wrote good verses.
He sent me many poems, but I think these two are the best. The first was written to me on my twenty-first birthday, before the Souls came into existence:
What is a single flower when the world is white
with may?
What is a gift to one so rich, a smile to one so gay?
What is a thought to one so rich in the loving
thoughts of men?
How should I hope because I sigh that you will
sigh again?
Yet when you see my gift, you may
(Ma bayadere aux yeux de jais)
Think of me once to-day.
Think of me as you will, dear girl, if you will let
me be
Somewhere enshrined within the fane of your pure
memory;
Think of your poet as of one who only thinks of
you,
That you ARE all his thought, that he were happy
if he knew—
You DID receive his gift, and say
(Ma bayadere aux yeux de jais)
"He thinks of me to-day."
And this is the second: