My greatest older friends were Mrs. Lynn Linton, the novelist, Browning, the poet, Lord Leighton, the painter, and Mrs. Proctor, widow of Barry Cornwall, and mother of Adelaide Proctor, the poet. All people old enough to be my parents.
I had a great admiration for Mrs. Lynn Linton's strong, cold intellect; it was so invigorating, and she was so self-reliant, an uncommon thing for a woman to be in those days. We had long arguments over matters occult, but I never could make the least impression upon her strong materialism. "I won't leave this earth even with you," she used to protest. She was a great friend and admirer of my aunt, Lady Priestley, also a woman of very fine intellect, who devoted herself to scientific pursuits. Had she been a man, or had she lived in the present day, when woman has at last come into her own, she would have made a very strong mark.
Robert Browning, whom I had known for some years, used to drop in very often to have a chat, and I rejoiced in him exceedingly as a born mystic of a high order. We often discussed the possibility of his work being directed from the other side, and we argued as to whether he received inspiration from various quarters, or whether he was the beloved of some poet of a former age, who, active still in the spirit world, expressed his great thoughts through Robert Browning on earth. So many people at that time frankly said they could not understand Browning's poetry, and this I told him was to be attributed to lack of the mystic perception. Now that mysticism has so enormously developed, his work is much more comprehensive to the world.
I had alas! only one year of really close friendship with him, for he died the year after I came to London.
One curious thing Browning told me.
He dropped in one night to see me, after dinner at a house where Millais, the painter, had been one of the guests.
"Johnnie Millais told me an odd thing to-night," he said. "He's constantly seeing figures appearing and disappearing on the face of the canvas he's working upon."
"What sort of figures?" I asked.
Browning shot out his cuff.
"Here they are. I knew you'd be interested, so I took them down for you. Better write them down for yourself, but don't mention the subject to him or any of his family."