A Writers Recollections, vol 2 | Page 9

just as well! and yet,
whenever I go to my sanctum I am routed out as if I was of as much use
as plums to plum pudding, and either made to play lawn-tennis or
hide-and-seek, or to talk to a young man whose only idea of the Infinite
is the Looking-glass. All these are the trials that attend the "young
lady" of the house. Poor devil! Forgive strong language--but really my
sympathy is deep.
I have, however, some really nice friends here, and am not entirely
discontented. Mr. Gerald Balfour left the other day. He is very
clever--and quite beautiful--like a young god. I wonder if you know
him. I know you know Arthur.... Lionel Tennyson, who was also here
with Gerald Balfour, has a splendid humor--witty and "fin," which is
rare in England. Lord Houghton, Alfred Lyttelton, Godfrey Webb,
George Curzon, the Chesterfields, the Hayters, Mary Gladstone, and a
lot more have been here. I went north, too, to the land of Thule and was
savagely happy. I wore no hat--no gloves--I bathed, fished, boated,
climbed, and kissed the earth, and danced round a cairn. It was opposite
Skye at a Heaven called Loch Ailsa.... Such beauty--such
weather--such a fortnight will not come again. Perhaps it would be
unjust to the crying world for one human being to have more of the
Spirit of Delight; but one is glad to have tasted of the cup, and while it
was in my hands I drank deeply.
I have read very little. I am hungering for a month or two's silence.

But there was another lover than the west wind waiting for this most
lovable of mortals. A few days afterward she wrote to me from a house
in Hampshire, where many of her particular friends were gathered,
among them Alfred Lyttelton.
The conversation is pyrotechnic--and it is all quite delightful. A
beautiful place--paradoxical arguments--ideals raised and
shattered--temples torn and battered--temptations given way
to--newspapers unread--acting--rhyming--laughing--ad infinitum. I
wish you were here!
Six weeks afterward she was engaged to Mr. Lyttelton. She was to be
married in May, and in Easter week of that year we met her in Paris,
where she was buying her trousseau, enjoying it like a child, making
friends with all her dressmakers, and bubbling over with fun about it.
"It isn't 'dressing,'" she said, "unless you apply main force to them.
What they want is always--_presque pas de corsage, et pas du tout de
manches!_"
One day she and Mr. Lyttelton and Mr. Balfour and one or two others
came to tea with us at the Hotel Chatham to meet Victor Cherbuliez.
The veteran French novelist fell in love with her, of course, and their
talk--Laura's French was as spontaneous and apparently as facile as her
English--kept the rest of us happy. Then she married in May, with half
London to see, and Mr. Gladstone--then Prime Minister--mounted on
the chair to make the wedding-speech. For by her marriage Laura
became the great man's niece, since Alfred Lyttelton's mother was a
sister of Mrs. Gladstone.
Then in the autumn came the hope of a child--to her who loved children
so passionately. But all through the waiting time she was
overshadowed by a strangely strong presentiment of death. I went to
see her sometimes toward the end of it, when she was resting on her
sofa in the late evening, and used to leave her listening for her
husband's step, on his return from his work, her little weary face
already lit up with expectation. The weeks passed, and those who loved
her began to be anxious. I went down to Borough Farm in May, and
there, just two years after she had sat with us under the hawthorn, I

heard the news of her little son's birth, and then ten days later the news
of her death.
With that death a ray of pure joy was quenched on earth. But Laura
Lyttelton was not only youth and delight--she was also embodied love.
I have watched her in a crowded room where everybody wanted her,
quietly seek out the neglected person there, the stranger, the shy
secretary or governess, and make her happy--bring her in--with an art
that few noticed, because in her it was nature. When she died she left
an enduring mark in the minds of many who have since governed or
guided England; but she was mourned also by scores of humble folk,
and by disagreeable folk whom only she befriended. Mrs. Lyttelton
quotes a letter written by the young wife to her husband:
Tell me you love me and always will. Tell me, so that when I dream I
may dream of Love, and when I sleep dreamless Love may be holding
me in his wings, and when I wake Love may be the spirit in