Mrs. Butler [Anne Gilchrist's great-aunt]. Drawn by Herbert Mrs. Carwardine and Child. From the picture at Colne Alexander Gilchrist. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist from Monument of Thomas de Vere, the eighth Earl of Oxford. Brookbank. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist, 1884 William Blake. Sketched from memory by Frederick Tatham for Alexander Gilchrist, one evening at 6 Great Cheynerow, in 1860 6 1Ο 20 32 40 116 131 William Hayley. Drawn by Herbert H. Gilchrist, from a sketch in oil-colour by George Romney, at Colne Priory 154 Map upon which Walt Whitman had traced his journey to the Rocky Mountains . Anne Gilchrist. Painted by Herbert H. Gilchrist, June, 1885. . 253 280 Angel of Hope. Designed, in water-colour, by William Blake 284 (Reproduced by Walker and Boutall.) ANNE GILCHRIST. CHAPTER I. ANCESTRY. HE life of Anne Gilchrist is the life of a woman THE of letters, who in a measure renounced literature until she had reared her children, giving to each a profession; whose strength of character stemmed adverse fortune, made life a success under difficult circumstances, and enabled her to emerge through sorrow with a spirit only more finely tempered. A life too, which, when seen through family association, touched the slower pulse of the eighteenth century; that century forming a background to the scientific and political events of her own. As life itself is a fragment, a fragment albeit of greatness, how fragmentary must a biography appear! When we catch reflected in a pool a tall elm or hurrying cloud, seen at intervals through long rifts driven by the wind, our mind unconsciously completes the forms so obscured. Even such a partial reflection, the biographer perforce must set before his reader. Anne Gilchrist, whose maiden name was Burrows, was born at number seven, Gower Street, on the twenty-fifth of February, 1828-year of Schubert's 38 B death, and of Dante Rossetti's birth. She was the surviving child of three, one of whom died in infancy; she lost the other, a brother, John Burrows, twenty-one years later. The fact of death as revealed to her when a child of three, in the form of an only baby-sister shrouded in black velvet, left a lasting impression. Henrietta Burrows, née Carwardine, was a gentlewoman of the old school. Descended from a long line of small squires, she was drilled in the now despised accomplishments, being a mistress of those graceful amenities of life that a daughter learns in a family where bringing up is insisted upon, with its high traditions of conduct and unflinching obedience to self-imposed duties: traditions duly instilled into little Annie. A witty and delightful grand-dame she seemed to us, whose stately manners were reminiscent of the "grand old style." It seemed wonderful to look into Henrietta Burrows' aged face, whilst conversing about the past; for were we not face to face with one out of those very audiences held spell-bound by Mrs. Siddons, when the actress, as Lady Macbeth, in the fifth act began-" Yet here's a spot." Could we give some delineation of the Carwardines, and their environment at Earls Colne, would it not help us to appreciate the influences that most combined to mould Anne Gilchrist's character? for Colne was the background to leisure hours in early and middle life. Earls Colne, the garden of Essex, as it is called, possessed once a beautiful church and priory. From whatever point we approach the village, we see rising mid elms the church tower, encircled beneath the battlements |