Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches

MAY CROMMELIN

The story of May Crommelin's life may be said to be divided into three parts. First, the period of her childish and girlish days in Ireland; next, that, when after the beginning of Irish land troubles, her family were enforced absentees, and suffering from anxieties and prolonged illness; and thirdly, during the last four years, when her London life began. The following is a brief account of her first home: —

On the east coast of Ireland there lies a long narrow neck of land, which, jutting out at the entrance to Belfast Lough, curves down by the coast of Down, and is called The Ards. Midway in it, where for an Irish mile "and a bit" the ground slopes upward from the shore, a tower rising just above the woods is a landmark for ships at sea. This is Carrowdore Castle, the home of the late Mr. de la Cherois-Crommelin, where May Crommelin (his second daughter and one of a large family) was reared.

The house, now belonging to her only brother, looks away at a dark blue belt of Irish Sea, across which on clear days after thunderstorms the Scotch coast and even houses are visible. Ailsa Craig has the appearance of a haycock on the northern horizon, and lying more southward the Isle of Man seems but a blurred mass. Behind is the salt backwater of Strangford Lough, and this arm of sea keeps the temperature so moist that snow rarely lies long, and the humid nature of the soil causes the garden of Carrowdore facing south to luxuriate in giant tree-myrtles, sweet verbenas, and even hot-house flowers growing out of doors. It is somewhat lonely in winter when the wind blows over the bare low hills that have caused The Ards to be compared to "a basket of eggs," but pleasant in summer and picturesque when its environing woods are green, when the corncrakes call from the meadows on June evenings, and the Orange drums beat along the lanes.

Such was May de la Cherois-Crommelin's early home. Her present abode is a pretty flat near Victoria Street. It seems quite appropriate that a well-filled bookcase should be the first thing that greets the eye as the hall door opens and admits you into a long carpeted passage, lined with a high dado of blue-and-white Indian matting, above which, on art paper of the same colours, hang several framed photographs, reminiscences of the Rhine, Nuremberg, and the Engadine. A little way down on the left is Miss Crommelin's writing-room, which is laid down with Indian matting, and contains an unusually large, workmanlike-looking writing-table, replete with little drawers, big drawers, and raised desk. The principal feature of this room is a carved oak fireplace, reaching nearly to the ceiling, and which is quite original in design and execution. There is a handsome old oak dower chest standing near the window, here an antique "ball-and-claw" footed table, and there a few good Chippendale chairs.

But whilst you are taking a brief scrutiny around, Miss Crommelin enters. It is very easy to describe her. She is certainly above the middle height, but looks taller than she really is by reason of her absolutely faultless figure. It is exquisitely moulded, and every movement is graceful. The good-shaped head and slender neck are well set on her shoulders, fair chestnut-coloured hair curls over a low, wide brow. The eyes, large and of the real Irish grey, are fringed with long lashes, she has a straight nose, and the expression of mouth and chin is that of dignity and repose. Her manner is peculiarly gentle and sweet, and her voice is pleasant to the ear. The long, dark blue velvet tea-gown that she wears, with its paler blue satin front folded in at the shapely waist, becomes her well, and harmonises with the artistic decorations of her pretty little drawing-room into which she has taken you. The curtains are made of some art blue fabric, the walls are pale yellow with a lighter frieze above, and are encrusted with memories of the last three or four years, when the author first set up housekeeping in London. All the woodwork is of dark walnut, as are the overmantel and étagère, the doors are panelled with Japanese raised paper, a long carved bracket has an excellent background of choice photographs, and there is a delightful little "cosy corner," draped with dark terra-cotta and blue tapestry, over which is a carved rail and shelf filled with odds and ends of china, pet bits of blue Dutch delft, and quaint little old brasses and bronzes from Munich and Florence. There is an Innocenza framed in box-wood, and on the small tables yonder are some little carved wooden stovi such as are used in Holland, an old-fashioned brass Lucernina, and many more little souvenirs, all of which she has gathered together on foreign excursions. Amongst the pictures there is one which Miss Crommelin particularly values – it is a large and beautiful etching of Joan of Arc, by Rajon, who presented it to her shortly before his death, with an inscription in his own handwriting.

Some photographs of Carrowdore on the table close by lead you to ask her for some particulars of her people. "Mr. Smiles remarked to me," she says, "'Yours is a historical name' (he has written about us in his 'Huguenots'). I will try to think about some little family incidents, though I am afraid that to talk about my family will rather bore you, but I can briefly tell you the first that we know of them is in the archives of Ghent. In 1133 the Count of Flanders concluded an 'Accord' between the Abbot of St. Pierre de Gand and Walter Crommelin concerning the domain of Testress. In 1303, one Heinderic Crommelin was three times burgomaster of Der Kuere, near Ghent. I have been told it is strange that simple burghers had a surname in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."

Later on came those terrible times of the persecutions in the Netherlands, when women were buried alive, and men were burned at the stake for their faith. The Crommelins fled to France, and a pious ancestor of that day wrote the history of their adventures, which record is preserved in the British Museum. It begins, "Au nom de Dieu. Armand Crommelin et sa femme vivoient dans le Seizième Siécle, dans un tems de troubles, de guerres, de persécutions cruelles, etc." This was their first flight. In France they prospered exceedingly by special favour of Henri IV., until came the Edict of Nantes. But acting on the old Huguenot motto, "Mieux vaut quitter patrie que foi," they chose exile rather than renounce their religion. This time, one brother escaped with difficulty to Holland, where his descendants still reside, but another, Louis Crommelin, offered his sword to William of Orange, crossed with him to England, and finally settled in the north of Ireland, where he brought Huguenot weavers and taught the linen trade, which is one of the greatest sources of Ulster's commercial prosperity. To this day his name is honoured as a benefactor, and he received a Royal grant from William III., which founded anew the fortunes of his family.

The de la Cherois, who were of a noble family in Champagne, also fled with difficulty from France. They and the Crommelins were closely connected by marriage, and also married into other families of the little Huguenot colony in Ulster. "Perhaps this keeping to themselves preserved their foreign characteristics longer and their faith stronger," says your hostess. "Then one ancestress – we have her picture at home, taken in a flowing white gown, and piled-up curls – married the last Earl of Mount Alexander. At her death she left the present County Down estate to my great-grandfather. He first, I think, took unto himself a wife of the daughters of Heth. She was a beautiful Miss Dobbs, of the family now living at Castle Dobbs in County Antrim. I must show you a photograph of her portrait. Would it not make a lovely fancy dress? – the grey gown with puffed sleeves and neck-ruffle, and wide riding-hat and feathers. Then my grandfather married the Honourable Elizabeth de Moleyns, Lord Ventry's daughter. You see her picture is scanty skirted, with the waist under the arms. My grandfather must have been rather too splendid in his ideas. Some of these were for improving the country generally, as well as his own estate, but he lost many thousands in trying to carry them into practice. I must tell you that an ancestress, Judith de la Cherois, escaped from France with her sister by riding at night across the country, their jewels sewn in their dresses. She lived to be 113, and was quite strong to the last, and though she lived fifty years in Ireland she could never speak English, which she said, with vexation, was because people laughed rudely at her first attempts.

If it be true that the girl is mother to the woman (to change the proverb), then May Crommelin still retains some characteristics of her childhood. A shy child, sensitive to an intense degree, and shrinking from the observation of strangers, her great delight when small was to be allowed to run almost wild about the woods and fields with her little brothers and sisters, and to visit all the tenant-farmers' houses, where the children from the Castle were always warmly welcomed, and regaled with tea, and oatmeal or potato cakes, in the parlour. In these later years she still retains the intense love of nature that she had then, and her descriptions of scenery have ever been praised as word-painting of rare fidelity. Taking in her impressions early she produced them later in a book called "Orange Lily," which proved how well she knew the peasant life of Ulster, a work which was declared by good judges to be absolutely faithful, while she herself was proud to find the farmers on her father's estates in Down and Antrim had copies of the book sent home from America, where it could be bought cheap, and where the many immigrants from the "Ould Country" welcomed it.

At five years of age she could read fluently, and thenceforth through childhood she read so ardently that, having then defective vision, though unfortunately it was unnoticed, it probably contributed to a delicacy of eyesight that still troubles her. All the children used to improvise, and from seven years old there hardly ever was a time when May and her elder sister had not a story, written on their copybook paper, stuffed into their pockets to read to each other at night. The girls did not go to school, but were educated by foreign governesses, and Miss Crommelin has not forgotten the miseries she and her sister went through under the tuition of one whom she calls "that charming fiend," and there is somewhat of indignation in her gentle voice as she recalls her experiences.

"I believe," she says, "that one's character is greatly influenced for life by the events of one's childhood. Mine was. A boy may be made or marred at his public school, a girl likewise looks back to her governess as the mistress of her mind and manners. We had one for three or four years who was so plausible that I am not surprised in later years, our mother used to say with regretful bewilderment she could not understand how it was that she never knew our sufferings. Ulster was gay in those days, and our parents were often absent on visits of a week or so, all through the winter. Our mother was highly accomplished, and we were always anxious to be praised by her for progress in the schoolroom. Our tormentor devised a punishment for us when she was offended (and she seemed to hate us because we were children) of not correcting our lessons. For weeks we blundered at the piano or brought her our French exercises – returned with a sneer – while swallowing our indignant tears, knowing well how our dulness and inattention would be complained of on our parents' return. She poisoned our innocent pleasures, and I can still remember how our hearts stood still at that catlike footstep, but," Miss Crommelin adds, with a laugh, "I put her into one of my books, 'My Love, she's but a Lassie,' under the guise of a cruel stepmother!" A curious incident happened to this smiling hypocrite. The servants execrated her, and one day in the nursery, when the poor little girls had whispered some new woe into the ears of two or three of the warm-hearted maids, one of them exclaimed, slowly and solemnly, the while pointing out of the window to the enemy standing below: "Madam Mosel, I wish you an illness that may lay you on your back for months!" Soon afterwards the malediction was fulfilled. The governess became ailing, took to the sofa for weeks, and was obliged to leave. Both servants and children were much awed, and quite convinced that it was a "judgment."

Next came a kindly German, who found the children eager to be taught, and she was not loath to gratify them, but rather beyond their expectations. "I remember," says Miss Crommelin, "after a long morning and afternoon's spell of lessons, her idea of a winter evening's recreation was for my sister and self to read aloud 'Schiller's Thirty Years' War.' Meanwhile, the wind would be howling 'in turret and tree,' making such goblin music as I have never heard elsewhere. We were happy for two years under this good woman."

When about sixteen years of age, May and her sister began secretly to contribute to a paper which kindly offered to print beginners' tales on payment of half-a-crown. Alas! that bubble burst, as many a youthful writer has found out for herself.

Reared in the very heart of the country, and growing up with little or no society of other young people, the children were warmly attached to each other. May Crommelin describes her elder sister as clever, ardent, with flashes of genius; but never, unfortunately, finishing any tales, and exercising much of the same sort of influence over her as Emily Brontë over her sister Charlotte. By and by, when schoolroom days ended, came the usual gaieties of a young girl introduced into Irish county society, much livelier then than during later years. There were the usual three-days' visits to the country houses of Down and Antrim through the autumn, when pheasants were to be shot; or merry house-parties met by day at hunt races and steeplechases, and filled roomy carriages at night to drive courageously many miles to a ball. The canny northern farmers allowed no foxes to be reared, but still there was a good deal of sport to be had with the little pack of Ards harriers, of which Mr. Crommelin was master, and the long, cold springs were sometimes broken by a season or two in Dublin.

Her first introduction to county society inspired May Crommelin to write "Queenie." She did this secretly, and about that time she went over to England on a visit to a kind uncle and aunt, to whom she was much attached. Alone with them, she confided the secret of her literary venture, and coaxed her uncle to take her MSS. to a publisher whose name caught her eye. This he did, but declined to give the name of the young author. She waited in breathless expectation, and "thought it strange that a whole week elapsed before their reply came." It arrived on a Sunday morning – unluckily – because it was a good and wise custom of the house, that no business letters should be opened on that day. It was accordingly placed in a locked cabinet with glass doors, where she could at least gratify herself by looking at the address, and never was a letter more tantalizing. The next morning, however, her hopes were rewarded by the joyful news of the publishers' acceptance, with a substantial sum of money down and a promise of so much more if the edition sold out, which it did. On returning home she in great trepidation told her father. He was somewhat of a disciplinarian, and had rigid ideas on feminine dependence and subordination, and though he did not actually forbid her writing, he never encouraged it. Thenceforth she wrote steadily in her own room, sending her MSS. to the same publishers, who had promised to take all the future works she would send them, whilst another offered to reprint in the same way cheaper editions.

"Black Abbey" also followed; but shortly before Miss Crommelin wrote "A Jewel of a Girl," which was the result of a visit to Holland, the head of the Crommelin family settled there wrote and asked his distant kinsman to renew the acquaintance dropped for so many years. This laid the foundation of future friendship and other mutual visits, though such little breaks were few and far between, from the island bounded by "the melancholy ocean."

As yet May Crommelin's longings from childhood had been unfulfilled. She desired to travel, to see new scenes, to become acquainted with literary-helpers, critics, or advisers. Of these she knew not one, excepting that Lord Dufferin, on his rare visits at Clandeboye, had always a cheering word of encouragement for his young neighbour. The late Amelia B. Edwards, too, a friend of some relatives in England, sent her some letters of most gratefully received advice, and the Rev. Dr. Allon, editor of the British Quarterly Review, having once, by chance, met the young writer for two hours when he was on a visit to Ireland, became an occasional kind correspondent and a lasting friend. Others there were none during these years.

But dark days were coming. What seemed apparently trifling accidents, through horses, led to bad results. First of all, Mr. Crommelin had a fall when out hunting, the effects of which prevented his following for ever after his favourite sports, and his health declined. Then a carriage accident was the beginning of his wife's later always increasing illness. Their eldest daughter had not been strong, when she, too, met with a mischance. Her horse ran away with her, and she experienced a shock from which she never wholly recovered. The Irish land troubles had begun; no rents were to be expected for two years; servants and horses had to be reduced. So, like other neighbours, they resolved to be absentees for a while in a milder climate, rather than endure the loneliness of the country, far from town or doctors, and they removed to Devonshire for two years, during which time May's eldest sister died after a summer at Dartmoor.

Meantime the young author was not idle. She wrote "Miss Daisy Dimity," "In the West Countree," and "Joy." These two last are both full of lovely descriptions of moorland scenery and air, and heather scent. Then Mrs. Crommelin became rapidly worse. She could not bear the journey to Ireland, so they moved to Clifton, where, after a long period of suffering, she passed away, followed a year later by her husband. These years of hopeless illness were a terrible strain on the family; nevertheless, during the intervals of watching and nursing, Miss Crommelin wrote "Brown Eyes," a remembrance of Holland, which little work was an immense favourite; also a sketch called "A Visit to a Dutch Country House," and this was translated into several Dutch papers. Then came "Goblin Gold" in one volume, and "Love, the Pilgrim," begun before her father's death, and finished under the difficulties of temporary homelessness. Left thus free to choose an abode on her brother's returning to take possession of his Irish home, May Crommelin at once resolved to come to London, and established herself in her present home in the cosy little flat. She describes this as "by far the happiest period of her life." Surrounded by the literary and artistic society she had always wished for, a favourite with all, enjoying also the companionship of a sister, and having opportunities for travelling when it suits her, she declares herself quite contented.

Since coming to London she has written a charming and spirited novel, "Violet Vivian, M.F.H.," of which she supplied the leading idea of the tale and two-thirds of the story, the more sporting part excepted; also "The Freaks of Lady Fortune." "Dead Men's Dollars" is the strange but true story of a wreck on the coast opposite her old home. Next came "Cross Roads," and "Midge," considered by many as her best book. Later "Mr. and Mrs. Herries," a sweet and pathetic story, and lastly "For the Sake of the Family." To the readers of May Crommelin's novels it is quite apparent that the idea of Duty is the keynote. Whilst all her works are remarkable for their refinement and purity of thought and style, she almost unconsciously makes her heroes and heroines (though they are no namby-pamby creations) struggle through life doing the duty nearest to hand, however disagreeable the consequences or doubtful the reward. She holds Thoreau's maxim that to be good is better than to try and do good; indeed, the first and greater proposition includes the latter, and from her youth up she has loved and taken for her motto the lines of Tennyson: —

 
"And because right is right, to follow right
Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence."