Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches

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Helen Black. Notable Women Authors of the Day: Biographical Sketches

MRS. LYNN LINTON

MRS. RIDDELL

MRS. L. B. WALFORD

RHODA BROUGHTON

MRS. ARTHUR STANNARD ("JOHN STRANGE WINTER")

MRS. ALEXANDER

HELEN MATHERS (Mrs. Reeves.)

FLORENCE MARRYAT

MRS. LOVETT CAMERON

MRS. HUNGERFORD

MATILDA BETHAM-EDWARDS

EDNA LYALL

ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY

ADELINE SERGEANT

MRS. EDWARD KENNARD

JESSIE FOTHERGILL.1

LADY DUFFUS HARDY. IZA DUFFUS HARDY

MAY CROMMELIN

MRS. HOUSTOUN.3

MRS. ALEXANDER FRASER

THE HON. MRS. HENRY CHETWYND

JEAN MIDDLEMASS

AUGUSTA DE GRASSE STEVENS

MRS. LEITH ADAMS (Mrs. Laffan)

JEAN INGELOW

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The sleepy little village of Upper Halliford, Middlesex, has one peculiar charm. Though within ten minutes' walk of Walton Bridge, it lies quite off the main line of traffic, and is consequently free from the visits of Cockney tourists, affording in this, as in many other respects, a striking contrast to Lower Halliford, which, situated on a lovely reach of the Thames, welcomes annually thousands of visitors.

There the inevitable steam-launch cuts its swift way through the water; there boating-men, clad in all the colours of the rainbow, are to be met with, on or after Good Friday, when the "season" begins; there persistent fishermen, seated in punts warily moored, angle day after day, and all day long, for the bream, roach, and gudgeon, to be found in such abundance; there furnished houses let at high rents; willows dip their branches in the river, and from thence the trees of Oatlands show well on the upland on the opposite sides of the glistening Thames.

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Gifted with much inventive genius, Mr. Riddell was also possessed of considerable general knowledge, and was deeply versed in literature, medicine, science, and mathematics. To him his wife turned for all the information she needed in her novels; the chemistry in "Too Much Alone," the engineering in "City and Suburb." He supplied all the business details in "George Geith," and "The Race for Wealth"; while in "Mortomley's Estate" Mrs. Riddell says she has "but told the simple story of what, when in ill-health and broken in spirit, he had to encounter before ruin, total and complete, overtook him." Too early in youth overweighted with a heavy burden, under which a strong man might have found it hard to stagger, she declares that, "in spite of harassing trouble and continuous misfortune, their twenty-three years of married life were happy as few lives are, simply by reason of his sweet, patient temper, and his child-like faith." Suddenly and unexpectedly, the end came, and the crowning sorrow of a much-tried life was laid upon the devoted wife when death claimed her gifted husband. Over that grief a veil must be drawn. Suffice it to say that it is a sorrow which will ever be keen in her remembrance "Until the day break and the shadows flee away."

"I never remember the time," Mrs. Riddell says, "when I did not compose. Before I was old enough to hold a pen I used to get my mother to write down my childish ideas, and a friend remarked to me quite lately that she distinctly remembers my being discouraged in the habit, as it was feared I might be led into telling untruths. In my very early days I read everything I could lay hands on, the Koran included, when about eight years old. I thought it most interesting."

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