Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches

As she now comes in, she seems to bring an additional sense of the fitness of things. She carries a big basket of China tea-roses, which she has just received from a friend in the country, and the long white cachemire and silk tea-gown which she wears looks thoroughly appropriate, despite the inclement season. It is her favourite colour for house wear in summer or winter, and certainly nothing could be more becoming to her soft, creamy complexion, and the natural tints of the thick, bright copper-coloured hair, which, curling over her brow, is twisted loosely into a great knot, lying low on the back of her head.

The conversation turning upon the peculiar structure of the rooms, Mrs. Reeves proposes to take you into the one innermost which is truly a curiosity. A very old cathedral glass partition opens on to a square and lofty room, used as an inner hall, with great velvet shields of china and brasses on its gold leather walls, and quaint old oak chairs, cabinets, and high old-fashioned clock. A portrait in sepia of Mrs. Reeves, done by Alfred Ward, hangs over a paneled door on the left. It was to this picture that Mr. Frederick Locker wrote the following lines: —

"Not mine to praise your eyes and wit,Although your portrait here I view,So what I may not say to youI've said to it."

Opposite is a very wide, high door that opens into the oak-panelled room, which may well have been a banqueting hall of the last century. It is lighted from above, and each pane of glass has in its centre, in vivid colours, the initials of the royal personage who, if the coats of arms abounding everywhere are to be trusted, may have occupied this room over a hundred years ago. By the way, the harp is absent from these armorial bearings.

One entire side of the room is filled by a vast mirror, set in a magnificently carved oak frame, and supported on either side by colossal winged female figures, that are matched (and in the glass reflected) by the caryatides who appear to hold up the massive carvings above the door, which is itself covered entirely by superb carvings of beast and bird, and laughing boys playing at Bacchus with great clusters of grapes. Round this unique room runs an oak paneling of about five feet in height, surmounted by a ledge, now decorated with trails of ivy, and above the oak cupboards are panels representing a boar hunt, and worth, it is said, a fabulous sum. But the glory of the room is the mantelpiece, reaching to the roof. It was probably once an altar piece, as the centre panel represents the Crucifixion. Two busts – one of Queen Elizabeth, the other of the Earl of Leicester – frown down on you from a great height, and do not please you half as well as a bronze Venus of Milo below. The hearth itself (of an incredibly old pattern, with heavy iron fender, which suggests a prison) has on either side two odd-looking figures, that are supposed to represent Joan of Arc and her keeper. He carries a knotted whip in one hand, and seems to look ferociously on poor Joan in her half-manly, half-feminine garb.

"I am very fond of these two," says Mrs. Reeves, looking affectionately at them, "and often dust their faces, but I am not at all fond of sitting in this room. I much prefer my sunny quarters upstairs, and these high carved oak chairs are uncomfortable to sit in, especially at dinner!"

But pleasant as it is, there is other business on hand, and you cannot linger over these beautiful antiquities; the afternoon is wearing on, and Mrs. Reeves leads the way to the drawing-rooms, which are also oddly shaped, and open one out of the other, like those downstairs; but those rooms are very different to look upon, and are, in your hostess's opinion, "much more cheery." You can step from the long windows on to a flower-filled balcony that looks up and down Grosvenor Street. The hangings of the first room are of yellow satin, of the second room pink; the furniture is merely of basket work, but made beautiful and comfortable by many soft cushions; and a long glass set in a frame of white woodwork, its low shelf covered with rare old yellow china and flowers, reflects the gold and cream leather walls, and the overmantel crammed with a lovely litter of china, pictures, and odds and ends, in the centre of which is a horseshoe. "Picked up by my boy, Phil," says Mrs. Reeves, as you examine it, "and we always say it has brought us luck."

But when you ask to see her writing-room – for there is not a sign of pen, ink, and paper to be seen on a modest white escritoire behind the door – she shakes her head and laughs.

"I have no writing-room and no particular table," she says, "indeed I can't say in the least how my books get written. I jot down anything that I especially observe, or think of, on a bit of paper, and when I have a great many pieces I sort them out, and usually pin them together in some sort of a sequence. At home, where I had an immense room to write in over the library, the boys used to say no one must speak to me if my 'authoress lock' were standing up over my forehead, but if I ever display it nowadays, nobody," she adds, ruefully, "is deterred by it! Often, just as I have settled down to do a good morning's work, and have perhaps finished a page, someone comes in and puts letters or account books on it, or my boy Phil rushes up and lays his air gun or his banjo on the table, or my husband brings in some little commission or a heap of notes to be answered for him. I always tell them," laughing, "that everyone combines to put out of sight the story which is being written, and often it is not touched again for a week; but my composition, when really begun, is very rapid, and my ideas seem to run out of my pen. At my old home they used to say I wrote the things that they thought, which was a good, lazy way of getting out of it."

This leads to the subject of her "old home," and Mrs. Reeves imparts some interesting details of her youthful days. She was born at Misterton, Somersetshire, in the house described in "Comin' thro' the Rye," and she has always most passionately loved it. Mrs. Reeves was one of twelve children, who spent the greater part of their time in outdoor sports and amusements, in which the girls were almost as proficient as the boys. Their father was a great martinet, and never permitted any encroachment on the regular lesson hours with their governess. "When I was only eight years old," says your hostess, "our grandmamma Buckingham (after whom I take my second Christian name) sent us a biography of famous persons, arranged alphabetically. I looked down the list to see if a Mathers were amongst them. It was not, and I took a pencil, and made a bracket, writing in my name, Helen Mathers, novelist; so the ruling idea must have been in me early."

The colour of her hair was Helen Mathers's greatest trouble in her childhood. It was a rich red, and in the familiar home circle she was called "Carrots," to her great annoyance, until she was sixteen. She says: – "It gave me such genuine distress that before I was nine years old, I had written a story depicting the sufferings of a red-haired girl who wanted to marry a man who was in love with her golden-haired sister. I inscribed this in an old pocket-book, looking out the names and places in the Times each day, and afterwards, in agonies of shyness, I read it aloud to the assembled family, who received it with shouts of mirth!"

At the age of thirteen, she was sent to Chantry School, and, unfortunately for her, she was placed at once in the first class, consisting of girls many years older than herself. Always ardent and ambitious, she worked so hard that quite suddenly her health broke down, and she became deaf – an affliction which has partially remained to this day. No doubt this trouble drove her more into herself, and helped her to concentrate her thoughts on literature. She wrote and wrote incessantly for pure love of it, and before she was sixteen had completed, her poem, "The Token of the Silver Lily." This she gave to a friend of her family who was acquainted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The great man read it, and sent her a message to the effect that, if she persevered, she bid fair at some future day to succeed. This highly delighted the girl, who was always working while the others played in the beautiful place to which her parents had removed when they left Misterton. This later home is described as "Penroses" in her late novel, "Adieu!" which previously ran as a serial in a monthly magazine.

Her first appearance in print is thus described: – "It was hay-making time, and everybody, boys and girls, children, servants, and all, were down in the hayfield, when someone brought me a shabby little halfpenny wrapper with the magic word 'Jersey' at the top. I gave a sort of whoop, and fled down the lawn and across the orchards, and into the bosom of my family like one possessed. 'Boys, girls!' I cried; 'it's accepted– it's here in print! Look at it!' And never did a prouder heart beat than the heart under my white frock that day for my first-born bantling of the pen. I had been yachting with my brother-in-law, Mr. Hamborough, a short time previously, with this result, that I wrote a sketch of him and his wife and the place, and, signing it 'N.' – short for 'Nell' – I took counsel with Mr. George Augustus Sala, whom I did not know in those days, but who was very kind in replying to me, and he despatched it to Belgravia. When it did appear Jersey was very angry, and declared it was libelled, and I should not have ventured to go over there again for a long while!"

About three years later she produced her first novel, "Comin' thro' the Rye." It proved a great success, and was rapidly translated into many languages; indeed, a copy in Sanscrit was sent to her. This work was written unknown to her family. "My poor father," says Mrs. Reeves, sadly, "I got him into the story, and though I did not mean to be unkind or disrespectful, I could not get him out again. I hardly drew a free breath for months afterwards, fearing someone would tell him I had written it, and that he would be grievously offended; but I was young and foolish, too young a great deal I often think to succeed, but it makes me feel a sort of Methuselah now."

A story is told that many years ago a very youthful writer supplemented a story of her own with several pages of this book, and wrote to Messrs. Tillotson, saying she had written the twin novel to "Comin' thro' the Rye," and would they buy it? The publishers told Mrs. Reeves of this application. She was much amused, and in high good humour wrote back to say that she had always understood twins appeared about the same time, and that she had never heard before of one arriving seven years after the other.

In 1876 Helen Mathers married Mr. Henry Reeves, the well-known surgeon and specialist on Orthopædics. He has been on the staff of the London Hospital for nearly twenty years, and he, too, is an author, but his works bear more stupendous and alarming names than those of his wife, such as "Human Morphology," "Bodily Deformities" – sad, significant title! But not only as the skilful surgeon, the renowned specialist, the student, and author, is Henry Reeves known. There is another section of the world – amongst the poor and suffering, the over-worked clerk, the underpaid governess, the struggling artist, where his name like many another in his noble profession, is loved and revered, and where the word "fee" is never heard of, and the "left hand knoweth not what the right hand doeth." Did you not know all this from personal experience, it is almost to be read in the kind, benevolent face. His wife says, laughing, that "he is so unselfish, he never thinks of himself, and I have always to be looking after him to see that he gets even a meal in peace"; and she adds, in a low and tender tone, "but he is the kindest and best of husbands." They have but one child – "Phil" – a bright, handsome boy of fourteen. He is the idol of their hearts, and like quicksilver in his brightness. His mother says when he was only three, he was found sitting at her desk, wielding a pen with great vigour, and throwing much ink about, as he dipped his golden curls in the blots he was making. "What are you doing?" his mother asked. "Writing ''Tory of a Sin,'" he said, with great dignity; and now that he is older he composes with great rapidity.

"He is at school now," says Mrs. Reeves, "and the house is like a tomb without him. If it were not for my needlework (my especial vanity) I could not get through the long weeks between his holidays. Children, flowers, needlework – these are my chief delights; and as I often have to do without the first two, my needle is often a great comfort to me."

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