ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY.
WRITING A NEW STORY FOR “THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER.”
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In an age when many books on every sort of subject and vexed question are being daily launched into the world, it is a relief to turn to the pure, wholesome novels of Rosa Nouchette Carey, the popular authoress, who has steadily held her ground with her public since the production of her first book, Nellie’s Memories, composed and related verbally to her sister, while yet in her teens, though not actually written until some few years later.
The youngest girl but one of a family of seven, and in her girlhood delicate in health, which caused her education to be somewhat desultory, Rosa Carey soon displayed an aptitude for composing fiction and little plays which she and her sister acted, one of her chief amusements being to select favourite characters from history and from fiction, and trying to personify them, while her greatest pleasure was to relate short stories to this same younger sister over their needlework. It is a strange fact that, during her simple, happy, uneventful girlhood, chiefly spent in reading, in writing poetry, and in other girlish occupations, Rosa Carey, who was of a somewhat dreamy and romantic disposition, feeling the impossibility of combining her favourite pursuits with a useful domestic life, and discouraged by her failures in this respect, made a deliberate and, as it afterwards proved, a fruitless attempt to quench her longing to write. This unnatural repression, however, of a strong instinct could not be conquered, and after some years she yielded to it.
She was born in London, near old Bow Church, but has no very distinct remembrances of the house and place. Later, the family moved to Hackney, into what was then a veritable country residence, and there many happy years were spent. Her mother was a strict disciplinarian, and very practical and clever, while her father was a man universally beloved and respected, by reason of his singularly amiable character, his integrity, and his many virtues.
The next move was to Hampstead, where the young girl’s schooldays began, and it was then that she met and formed a strong friendship with the late Mathilde Blind, the talented author of The Descent of Man, and translator of Marie Bashkirtseff’s Journal and other works. This attachment, mutually enthusiastic and full of interest, was only interrupted by a divergence of religious opinions. Rosa Carey, adhering to the simple faith of her childhood, could not follow Mathilde Blind, who was educated in the extreme school of modern free-thought, and the friends, with sorrow but with yet unabated affection on each side, drifted apart.
Meanwhile, the large and happy family was being gradually broken up. First the beloved father passed away. On the same day that, three years before, had witnessed his death, their mother, too, was taken to her rest, and shortly after, the two sisters went to Croydon, to superintend their widowed brother’s home. Miss Carey’s real vocation in life seemed to spring up, and the literary work was but fitfully carried on, for, on the marriage of her sister to the Rev. Canon Simpson, vicar of Kirkby Stephen, Westmoreland, and the subsequent death of her brother, the sole charge of the young orphans devolved upon her.