Chapter II

It has always been a matter of wonder to the writer that the affection of the public for a favourite author should stop short of observing his wishes. Michael Fairless most straitly charged those who would represent her to abstain from the publication of her identity. But demand creates supply, and the interest in her has become so extended that if authorised information about her is not forthcoming, something of an unauthorised and incorrect nature will probably be produced. Only one thing would have made Michael Fairless more vexed than the publication of the truth about her, and that thing would have been the publication of untruth. So many garbled statements, inaccurate assertions and pure fictions have appeared about her that it is time for uncertainty to be dispelled. Death has left absolutely authentic knowledge in the hands of two people only—the writers of this volume. Her eldest sister has chronicled such of the very simple happenings of Michael Fairless’s life as have left some record of her character, and save for brief mention, is confidently leaving the treatment of her work and its effect in the competent and devoted hands of Mrs Dowson, her dear friend and literary executor.

A. M. HAGGARD.

CHELSEA, _January 1913_.

HER LIFE

BY

A. M. HAGGARD

HER LIFE

Margaret Fairless Barber was born on the 7th of May 1869 at Castle Hill, Rastrick, in the W. Riding of Yorkshire, in the house that had been her grandfather’s, and where her father was also born. She was the youngest of the three daughters of the late Fairless Barber and Maria Musgrave, his wife, and was christened after the great-grandmother, whose violet eyes she inherited, eyes that had reappeared in one member of each generation, though in Margaret’s case the violet gradually turned to a most beautiful grey. It is perhaps worth recording for the curious in such matters, that this family of five members had but three birthdays. The eldest and youngest girls were born on the same day at a nine years’ interval, and the second girl on her father’s birthday: only the mother had a day to herself, a fact for which the children used to feel it appropriate to offer affectionate sympathy as being such a lonely condition. A grandchild—her eldest daughter’s first child—subsequently removed this reproach by appearing within a few hours of the anniversary. As Michael Fairless undoubtedly inherited many of their tendencies, it may not be inappropriate to give a slight description of her parents and the home in which she spent her earlier years.

Her father was educated at St Peter’s at York, where he distinguished himself in mathematics, painting, and poetry, writing the Prize Poem one year. He subsequently took up his father’s profession of the law, and acquired a large practice. All the work which this entailed did not, however, prevent him from the pursuit of his private tastes, which were antiquarian and literary. He collected old oak and books, and gradually amassed a library of his favourite subjects: archeology, topography, travels, essays, poetry; standard novels and the Cornhill Magazine, which in those days contained the work of Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Mrs Browning, and others. He was gentle, quiet, and studious, well-read, an excellent Latin scholar, and a man with a keen sense of humour, absolutely devoted to his home and family.

Her mother had received an unusually liberal education for early Victorian days, and had studied French, German, and Italian; she was a highly cultivated woman, with a fine taste in literature. Tennyson, Ruskin, Eugénie de Guérin, Schiller, Pascal’s Pensées and Jeremy Taylor recur to the memory as being amongst others on her shelves. She was also an exquisite needlewoman, and an admirable housekeeper and accountant. In her younger days Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism were being socially discussed, and she discovered herself possessed of great mesmeric power. But she never pursued the matter as a study, and mention is only made of it because it is probably from her mother’s tendencies that Michael Fairless derived the germs of her own psychic development. Parents and children were most deeply attached, and husband and wife so completely wrapped up in each other that their devotion was almost proverbial in the neighbourhood. The children used to show their mother all their various little efforts in sewing, painting, or scribbling, and due encouragement was always given. But they were never allowed to think that it was quite the best they could do, or that anything they did was at all wonderful. Thus the spirit of ambition was fostered, and any idea of precocity discouraged, for Mrs Barber had the greatest objection to anything in the nature of an infant phenomenon. The household was a very quiet one, in outward observances almost what would now be considered puritanical; in mental outlook extremely wide-minded, liberal and unprejudiced. Since environment counts for a good deal in development, this sketch will enable the reader to trace the source of some of Michael Fairless’s characteristics.

The house stood in a large garden and was a long, irregular building, on the site of an ancient Danish fort. It was fronted with a large and extremely solid porch, and its rooms were spacious and mostly lined with books. The bedroom windows were hung from spring to autumn with white dimity, after the old fashion, and this was replaced, when the brief Yorkshire summer ended, by curtains of dark crimson woollen which shut out the wild inclement weather, when the days drew in, and sent the children clustering round the fire, and making tales, as all children do, about the visions they saw in its glowing depths. That large snug nursery saw many games; with the two elder girls housekeeping was a favourite one, in the course of which the baby came in very handily as a baby instead of the doll which had hitherto served. She was also taken out driving and sailing—the nursery sofa serving equally well for a steamer or a carriage.

Michael was called Baba until she was four or five years old, when she became Marjorie, which name she afterwards retained. At this time she was a very pretty child with fair hair, a rather snub nose, a large but quite perfectly shaped mouth, and a pair of most beautiful eyes. An enterprising and enquiring disposition found, perhaps, its earliest manifestation in a large and surreptitious bite at the soap during a bath, in spite of her old nurse’s warnings, who had vainly tried to check an inclination for this experiment. It was the first and last bite, for a certain clear shrewdness and common sense were early developed and retained. When she was about three years old her mother went abroad for three months, and during her absence the child developed croup, terrifying her father, who was the most devoted of parents, and went far towards spoiling her. Indeed, beyond a mild scolding, he never found it in his heart to inflict a more severe punishment than shaking his closed umbrella at her on an occasion when—just ready to go out—he had been recalled to deal with some extra naughtiness; Baba howled with rage, but it is to be feared that the proceeding did not act as much of a deterrent. She always knew exactly what she wanted, and seldom regretted her proceedings in those very youthful days. Once, when in charge of an aunt, she killed a fly on the window with a dab of her little fist. The aunt sought to improve the occasion, “See what you have done, Baba; how cruel! You killed that poor little fly, and if you try and try you can never make it alive again.” “No,” returned Baba, “I know I can’t; I don’t want to.”

Later, when she was seven years old, her sisters went to school, and then came the time she speaks of as her lonely childhood. The neighbourhood was singularly wanting in children of her own age, and she was obliged to play by herself and find her own amusements. It was at this period too that she fraternised with the frog, who lived in the little brook that ran through the home-field. She was still very much of a pet, and, though independent in character, had no objection to be run after and waited on. Sometimes, however, even affectionate supervision had serious drawbacks; on one occasion, a Sunday evening, the maid who put her to bed being out, that duty was undertaken by Franklin, the cook, usually regarded as a firm friend. On this particular evening Baba did not at all wish to go to bed, and was caught for the purpose after some chasing and insistence; she was quiet, but most dignified during the disrobing process, and said her prayers with much unction, adding an additional petition, “And pray, God, forgive Franklin for being so unkind to me!”

She learnt to read when very young, and reading was always her favourite occupation; she did not care much for dolls or toys. When she was about nine her eldest sister, who had then left school, taught her the moves of chess, and she picked up the game very rapidly. Her sister, it is true, was a slow mover, and by no means a formidable opponent, and the child very soon became able to give her checkmate. She would sit at the board with a book beside her, which she read between moves, looking up when it was her turn to play and giving a rapid glance at the pieces. Then swiftly and unhesitatingly the move was made and she returned to the book. She probably won two-thirds of the games.

Although she was but a child she greatly resented what she called being made into a baby. Her eldest sister, who often undertook to give her her lessons, insisted one day on a dictation being written on a slate instead of on a piece of paper, since Marjorie was careless with ink. Like the man in Calverley’s poem, Marjorie “argued right, she argued left, she also argued round about her.” The sister, who had already been through painful experiences with Marjorie’s use of pens and ink, stood firm, and, ruling lines on the slate, placed it before her reluctant pupil, who was by this time much out of breath from the length and variety of her conversation on the subject of being treated as a baby. Seizing the slate Marjorie waved it dramatically above her head, and shouted, “Aggie! when I was a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child, but when I became a man” (here the slate was banged down upon the table), “I put away childish things.”

On another occasion Marjorie was forbidden to bring two favourite playthings to lessons. They were two small balls of home manufacture and surprising powers of bounce, and she called them Winkie and Nobbs. After considerable delay W. and N. were most unwillingly put out of sight and reach—physical reach—and with strangely sudden docility a dictation was begun. It concerned Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and Marjorie wrote on, with the most praiseworthy attention. When correction time came her sister’s feelings may be imagined, as she made the discovery that whenever Henry VIII. was in question, he was alluded to as King Winkie, while the unhappy Anne had become Queen Nobbs! The effect was so ludicrous that the sisters laughed over it together until they cried.

About this time Marjorie took up hero-worship with a zest and thoroughness which she devoted to all her pursuits, and if anyone ventured to suggest that even her own particular heroes had their weak points, she would wax quite fierce in their defence. In this way Horatius Cocles (she had just been introduced to the Lays of Ancient Rome), Julius Cæsar, and Napoleon all had their day; she cried with anger when certain indisputable faults were pointed out to her in the last-mentioned personage. She had now developed remarkable powers of expression, and wrote quite interesting letters. Her father being suddenly taken ill, and it becoming necessary to keep the house quite quiet, she was invited by an elderly relative, who lived a few miles away, to stay with her for a short visit. Marjorie was not at all anxious to go, but finally consented, one of the inducements being that she might help with the fowls which her cousin kept, and that there would be beautiful new-laid eggs for breakfast. Her letter, after a few days’ stay, was most amusing. It was a very old-fashioned house, and she had been put to sleep in a four-post bedstead, which she said reminded her of a hearse, while the newspapers, placed upon the top to keep off the dust, “rustled like the flowers at the funeral.” “As for eggs,” she continued, “I haven’t seen as much as the white of an egg since I came.”

Like her sisters she had read omnivorously; the nursery shelves, though well furnished, did not last her long, and she browsed in the library. She had got through all Dickens and most of Sir Walter Scott before she was twelve. She read very quickly, and had the knack of mastering the essentials of her reading with extraordinary rapidity, so that in a very short time she could discuss her subject even when it chanced to be rather more serious than fiction. Natural history she was extremely fond of, and with all animals she was an instant friend. Some time later, Whiskey, the white rat, and a tamed starling, fallen from the nest and picked up half-fledged, were the objects of great devotion. They involved a tiny tragedy too, for to the faithful Whiskey it appeared that overmuch affection was bestowed upon the bird, and he, who had hitherto lived in amity with his feathered companion, flew at him one afternoon and fatally injured him. His mistress never quite forgave Whiskey, though after a temporary estrangement, due to that unfortunate fit of temper, the rat was readmitted to fellowship. In her later years there was Trilby, a stray cat, who somehow suggested a depressed charwoman; Phœbus, a magnificent orange Persian, who purred under his daily brushing if she undertook it, but growled and swore in other hands. There was also a poor dancing bear whose sore foot she dressed at the street door, while his owner looked on expecting to see her attacked in spite of the muzzle, but watched Bruin fawn on her instead. You can trace her understanding of all living things whenever she writes of them. Who can forget the anxious hen in “The Roadmender,” or “The Follering Bürd,” or the tortoise, making “a stately meal of buttercups,” or the sense of myriad life which came to her as she lay under the great tree on her last day in the garden?

Her father died in 1881, when she was twelve years old; and her mother, never a very strong woman, was completely prostrated by her loss. At about thirteen Marjorie went to school at Torquay with a relative for a few months, and subsequently spent a short time in another school near London, whose principal was far from appreciating her. Except for home-teaching and wide and constant reading this was all the education she had.

Between 1882 and 1884 Marjorie’s health became affected by her rapid growth, and some spinal weakness was disclosed. Her rather delicate condition, as well as her mother’s invalidism, and the fact that one of her sisters was already married and the other away from home, finally decided Mrs Barber to give up the house in Yorkshire, now so much too large for the diminished family, and settle somewhere experimentally until a final residence could be fixed on. Marjorie’s health then improved, and she went to a small children’s hospital on the outskirts of London maintained by the private generosity of two ladies. Here she began training as a sick-nurse, a profession for which she had much natural aptitude, and here she went through the ordeal of being present at her first operation. It did not affect her as much as she had imagined might be the case, but she did not stay more than a few months at the hospital as her own health was too indifferent to permit of longer training. About this time she joined a modelling class, and her master, when shown her work, refused to believe that it was her first effort, and that she had never previously had a lesson. Between 1886 and 1891 she spent a certain amount of time in Torquay, where she helped to nurse a relative in failing health, and after her death became for a time parish nurse. She also worked in the East End for a short time, in the district well (or ill) known as the Jago. In 1891 her mother died in the small Suffolk town where she had taken a house; it was the Bungay so faithfully described as the goal of the blind friar’s journey in Brother Hilarius. Here Marjorie used to enjoy rowing herself on the river, and here the tradespeople still remember her as ‘so nice to talk to.’ She was intuitive to a high degree, and therefore could sympathise with widely divergent joys and griefs. Her keen sense of humour, too, prevented her ever being depressed or unamused, and probably in all her life she never felt bored.

Marjorie was twenty-two years old when her mother died. She was very tall, with a fair complexion, a good deal of brown hair, very large grey eyes full of expression—an index indeed of whatever she was speaking or thinking about. They could beam with serene pleasure, grow tenderly sympathetic or dance with mischievous fun as the spirit moved her. Her face and appearance were most arresting and her conversation quite fascinating, for she was extremely witty. Quick to see the humorous side of a thing, she yet responded to any mood of her companions. Her eldest sister once heard her described by a bluff and frank naval officer as ‘rattling good company,’ and the words were apt.

After her mother’s death, which occurred rather unexpectedly, Marjorie lived for a time a somewhat varied existence partly in England and partly in Germany, where with a friend she stayed for a while in a quaint little place on the Rhine. Their lodgings were in an old tower, where they were one night serenaded by students to Marjorie’s great delight and amusement. She was also for some time in Wiesbaden under treatment for her eyesight, which was just then giving her trouble. She was here overtaken by a sudden and serious attack of illness, during which she was most devotedly nursed by the little Sister of Charity, a “scant five feet” high, described in “A German Christmas Eve.”

After her recovery and return to England she again took up philanthropic work, and it was an errand of this nature which first introduced her to the household into which she was afterwards adopted. The family’s interests were literary, scientific, and artistic, and they were not slow to appreciate the combination of rare and valuable qualities which they perceived in Marjorie. Her position at the time was an independent but singularly lonely one. Both her sisters were married, one always abroad, and she had no especial claim on any of her other relatives. She was financially independent; her health was already most uncertain, and she was subject to distressing and painful attacks of illness. Here was a home whose doors were open for her; a circle of friends with hands outstretched in welcome and invitation. When she decided to enter the one and accept the other, many of her own relatives disapproved, and when, with characteristic thoroughness of accomplishment, she dropped her own family name and took that of her adopted one, sundry hard things were written and spoken. To her eldest sister, however, the “adoption” brought nothing but relief and approval; to feel that one so needing it would for the future have every care and attention that could be given in either sickness or health; that she would live among the most congenial surroundings and be able to follow her artistic bent in whatever direction it might suggest itself—these things weighed heavier than the superficial loss of identity which the change of name entailed. Nor was her content ever disturbed. As time passed and Marjorie’s health grew feebler, redoubled care was exercised, and every expedient which science could supply or affection suggest, was used in the endeavour to ease, when, alas, it became apparent that her deathward way could only be smoothed but by no means arrested.

Marjorie’s temperament was essentially creative; the need for expression was so strong that as her health broke down, and one pursuit after another became impossible, she found fresh outlets. When she could no longer go about much she took up her modelling again, and executed, among other things, a really wonderful crucifix. Her power of entering into the spirit of her work was extraordinary; she became, as it were, obsessed with it. On seeing the crucifix a good judge of mediæval work asked its owners where they got their “14th century” work? Marjorie’s mind, at the time she executed this, was full of Florentine work of that period, and it set its sign on what she wrought.

When she became too ill to go on with her modelling, she began to write; when writing could not be done in a sitting position, she propped the paper on her chest and wrote lying down; by and by the right hand could no longer be used, so she wrote with her left, a beautiful legible script. When increased physical weakness made writing in every way impossible, she dictated.

She lived in those days in an old Georgian house on Chelsea Embankment, a house from which she could hear the gulls scream over the Thames, recalling “Daddy Whiddon” and “The Follerin’ Bürd,” and where, under her window, grew the grimy tree in which the sparrow brethren chattered and squabbled. Round her room one of her adopted sisters had designed the frieze of flowers which was “Like the Rose tree in Alice in Wonderland.” For many, many weeks she lay, suffering acutely, yet always writing, piecing together that exquisite literary mosaic called “The Roadmender.” By and by when the summer came and the heat, when London noises wearied ear and brain alike, she sighed for the green peace of the country. Her condition was then such that no one could tell how long she might still be spared. Every precaution against fatigue or shaking could not really eliminate either from the journey, which was an awful strain on an enfeebled frame. But once among the Sussex fields, with the downs in sight, her contentment grew daily in spite of terrible pain and exhaustion. She had the clear sunshine, the clean air, the swallows that twittered from their nests above her windows, and her cup of satisfaction was full. The watchers knew their task would be but a brief one, yet none could know when the end might come. She was extremely happy with those she loved around her; her dear animal friends were there too, for Phœbus, the big cat, and Jacob, most faithful of little bull-dogs (he was of the French breed), had migrated to the country also. Marjorie was almost unable to take any nourishment of any kind by now, yet her courage and cheerfulness never failed, and she showed the keenest interest in any subject discussed. The proofs of “Brother Hilarius” were coming in daily for correction, and she weighed every word as it was read to her; she would insert a comma here, begin a fresh paragraph there, and secure the cadence of every sentence. She would sometimes add or take away even a syllable in some phrase which struck her sensitive ear as not properly balanced or harmonious. At this time she was failing very rapidly, and it seemed doubtful if she would finish the proofs. But her interest was unabated though she was in the last stages of intense weakness, and it seemed as if she could not leave her work until it was done. She lived to complete the task; and a few days later, after many hours of unconsciousness, she passed through that white gate whence her words have echoed back with such gracious insistence. Her suffering had been awful, her courage wellnigh incredible, but none could regret the peace she had won, and it was not without reason that her eldest sister, roaming the garden for flowers in the twilight of early dawn, chose out of all blossoms the heartsease that fashioned the first cross laid on her breast. She died on the 24th of August 1901, in her thirty-third year.

Looking back over the time which has elapsed since she cried her farewell, it is comparatively easy to give some idea of her marvellous development during her last six years of life, the years, that is to say, when experiment had taught relative importance, and experience had brought certainty. During her time of comparative health, when able to work and travel, to make acquaintances and friends—and how many and faithful they were—to strive after the betterment of poverty and sickness, during that time Marjorie had accumulated a magnificent series of what may be called mental photographs. All her days she had been a keen and humorous observer, with an extraordinary and retentive memory, and when ill-health narrowed the circle of physical activity her mentality asserted itself more strongly. She turned, as it were, to the portfolio of her memory and looked over its pictures, seeing them now more truly because she was their spectator, and no longer swayed or diverted by the momentary action which had made them hers. She dipped the brush of imagination into the colours of reality, and lo, they became living as they limned forth those scenes which her life and its happenings had gathered; for Michael Fairless’s art, in whatever direction, owed its rare loveliness to its absolute truth, and it is the width of appeal in the truth as she set it forth which has won her so many readers. Her subjects were never out of the way or far-fetched, yet her unerring instinct set the seal of speciality on whatever subject she touched. Page after page of her writing reveals fresh beauty in the simplest things; the busy little German nun, the child trotting with its cats to seek counsel, the London sparrows, old Gawdine, “Luvly Miss” and her owner, a pathetic little bundle in cotton wool, dying of her burns, and cheered at the last by the resurrection of her treasure; the old man on his way to the workhouse, the woman haymaking and nursing her love-child in the field-corner, the parson who stayed to talk with the roadmender and bestowed rare tobacco—they are a veritable portrait-gallery. Think, too, of that scene at the inn when Brother Hilarius guides the blind friar, and Piping Hugh of Mildenhall whistles like a bird on his oaten straw. The pictures are produced without effort; Michael Fairless saw with the inner vision, and to her expression was easy. Hers was a delicate and a subtle gift, perfect of its kind, a gift that has drawn many after her along the road she mended, ay, the gift that for many has changed a darksome portal into a white gate, framed in clustering boughs, and set in the gracious sunlight of summer.

HER WRITINGS

BY

W. SCOTT PALMER

(M. E. DOWSON)

THE ROADMENDER