(1890)
Dear and much-admired Lord Tennyson—The writer of this, an humble admirer of your Poetry,—an uneducated girl from the bogs of Ireland, has the audacity to send you her first effort in verse: whether it is poetry or not I leave you to decide, as I am entirely incapable of judging myself, as I am wholly ignorant of the art of versification, and indeed would never dream of attempting to write verse, only I was very anxious to succeed in prose writing....
(1882)
Will you kindly pardon my venturing to ask you to read some of my verses, and to tell me whether you consider me capable of ever writing poetry fit to be read? I have never had any desire to become a poet, but lately ideas have come into my head, once I seemed to see a line or two before my eyes, and in order to free myself from these fancies I wrote.
(1884)
Dear Sir—I remember your figure and attire at Shiplake Vicarage in Mrs. Franklyn Rawnsley’s house, 1852, thirty-two years ago. Does your memory travel back to a fine December morning when, the house full of guests for the christening of the latest blossom of the Rawnsley house, there drove up through the flooded meadows surrounding the low old vicarage, a cab with a young foreigner, a child of sixteen summers, all tremulous how she should be received, not speaking a word of English but her native German tongue, besides French, introduced by Miss Amélie Bodte, the authoress in Dresden, to teach music to Mrs. Rawnsley’s children? What a woeful feeling for the well-known counsellor’s daughter to be treated in a cool way as the engaged teacher of little children. However, there was an oasis in the desert. On the following morning Mrs. Rawnsley proposed to the assembled guests to take a walk in a neighbouring Squire’s park while she looked after some home duties, and a tall young gentleman with an enormous Tyrolese hat offered to walk with a solitary stranger. He spoke a little German and tried to divert the gloom of the young girl by crossing the lawn and breaking a belated rose she admired coming from snow-bound Saxony. They stopped at a turtle-dove house where he made the prettiest little German pun she never forgot hereafter, “Ich bin eine kleine Taube” (I am a little dove (deaf)?). And it began to rain, and he—it was you—took off the Spanish cloak gathered with narrow stitches on the throat, a black velvet collar falling over it, and wrapped it round the girl’s shoulders. The ladies of the company frowned, returning home, all told as with one voice to Mrs. Rawnsley what had happened during the walk, and she laughed and said to me in French, “My dear, you had all the honours as a German because you did not try for them, this is the Poet Laureate, and it displeases him that the ladies torment him for attentions.” And now do you remember, of course you know this girl was I. And the next day you read the “Ode to the Queen,” of which I did not understand a word, and you went away to the sea to meet your wife and baby son, and I never saw you again. Now after thirty-two years undergoing purification in the crucible of humble life, I come to ask you to accept kindly the dedication of one of my compositions—a song. Your name is as illustrious here as in England, and my poor song will find more eager listeners with your name attached as a patron than otherwise.... “A turtle dove” could but bring an olive branch to a lone woman and gladden the heart of your Lordship’s most respectful admirer,
Maria * * *
(1890)
Now a Transatlantic poetess:
(After excuse asked for “presumption” she says:)