Chapter III
A GARDEN OF GIRLS
IF history anywhere treasures a domestic record comparable with the record of George Browne Macdonald and his wife Hannah, its production would make a valuable addition to the volume of our real romances.
George Browne Macdonald, a Methodist minister, inherited from his remote ancestors the traditions of the Scottish highlands, and from his immediate progenitors the traditions of the Methodist parsonage. His father, James Macdonald, was a man of fine physique, striking personality, extensive learning—especially as a linguist—and intense spirituality. Entirely self-educated, he was ordained at the suggestion, and possibly at the hands, of Mr. John Wesley. Hannah, the wife of George, was a Welsh girl, the daughter of a native of the Vale of Clwyd. To this pair, George and Hannah, were born seven children, and those seven children form as remarkable a group as ever graced a single household.
I
One of the daughters, Georgina—of whom I shall presently have more to say—gives us a charming picture of the home of her girlhood. It was a Puritan home of the best kind. The father, George, was an omnivorous reader. He possessed a library of more than a thousand volumes, each of which had to be carefully packed by poor Hannah every three years when the exigencies of the itinerary system moved the family to a new parish. But, although the range of his books was so extensive, George had his own ideas as to the kind of literature in which his precious girls might indulge. They were allowed to browse among the Methodist magazines and to read such books as Quarle’s Emblems and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. But Shakespeare and sentimental romances were strictly forbidden!
The Bible, Georgina tells us, was read every day at family prayers, and the children were further instructed by their father’s preaching. But the serious work of training their young minds was left by the minister to his wife. ‘Still,’ Georgina adds, ‘he made us feel that he really loved us and, by his example, he impressed on us the love of truth and the duty of charitable speech. When our sharp young tongues erred in this respect, he was uneasy and would make us aware of his disapprobation by cutting across our conversation with an irrelevant inquiry as to the price of potatoes!’
Hannah, the mother, was a woman of singular sweetness and strength. Though never robust, she maintained the struggle for the happiness of her large family with unflagging courage. Her husband was frequently absent for long periods on circuit duty, leaving her ‘as lonely as a widow’. But she smiled and sang her way through the difficulties of each day; she never burdened the minds of her girls with the problems that must have oppressed her; indeed, as one of them afterwards confessed, it never occurred to them that, whilst everything was being done for their comfort and well-being, the family was in reality poor.
It was from Hannah that the children inherited their fondness for fun, their passion for music, and their genius for poetry. Hannah could never give one of the youngsters a birthday present without attaching to it a jingle of pretty and whimsical verses. So much for the parents: now for the children.
I
At a picnic held on the picturesque banks of Rudyard Lake near Burslem, Alice, the eldest daughter of George and Hannah met John Lockwood Kipling, Head of the Lahore School of Art. Falling in love on the spot, the young people married and went to India. Later, when a baby boy was born to them, they named him after the lake that held for them such romantic associations, It was not until his third year that the child visited England. A family re-union was arranged at Bewdley, a sequestered beauty-spot in the Severn Valley, to welcome the party from overseas. Little Rudyard impressed everybody, alike by his painful shyness and by the quaintness and novelty of such remarks as did occasionally trickle from his lips.
Whilst, for example, the grown-ups were all chattering merrily in the drawing-room, Rudyard wandered off in solitude to explore the stately old house for himself. Pitying his loneliness, a servant took him in hand, explaining to him (he character of the various apartments. The youngster listened in silence, and then, the tour of inspection completed, rushed to his mother in the drawing-room, exclaiming in fierce indignation. ‘Mummy what do you think? They’ve tooken the very best room in the house for themselves!’ Mrs. Lockwood Kipling held the reputation for many years of being the wittiest woman in India.
II
When Georgina married a young painter, Edward Burne-Jones by name, there was nothing to suggest that her struggling young husband would become, in many respects, the most commanding figure in the art world of his day. ‘At the time of our marriage’ says Lady Burne-Jones in her Memorials, ‘neither my father nor my brother had any idea of Edward’s genius, The only thing they troubled about was character.’ Yet Sir Edward Burne-Jones, largely inspired by his beautiful and brilliant wife, rose to the highest possible pinnacle of fame in his profession. The triumphs of his skill adorn the noble fanes and the classical salons of the Old World, whilst our Australian galleries proudly boast several valuable specimens of his exquisite handicraft.
As a boy, nothing excited Rudyard Kipling more than the prospect of a visit to Aunt Georgie at The Grange in North End Road. He derived an extraordinary thrill from having to stand at the iron gate, to reach up to the open-work iron bell-pull and, having rung it, to await the arrival of the servant who admitted him into the realm of so much felicity. Later on, when the author of Kim, The Jungle Book, and the Recessional set up house for himself, he craved, and obtained, that bell-pull from The Grange, in order that other boys, visiting him, might know the ecstasy that he once enjoyed.
III
In 1866 the Macdonalds tasted the excitement of three weddings within three days. These included a double wedding, each, from a historical point of view, a wedding de luxe, Agnes, far-famed for her beauty, became the bride of Edward Poynter, destined, as Sir Edward Poynter, to become President of the Royal Academy and one of the most eminent painters of all time. On the same day, Louise, the fourth daughter, allowed herself to be led to the altar by Mr. Alfred Baldwin, and lived to see the child of their union, Mr. Stanley Baldwin, twice become Prime Minister of Great Britain.
As boys, the two cousins-Rudyard Kipling and Stanley Baldwin-saw a good deal of each other. Stanley occasionally came to stay with the Kiplings at a lonely old farmhouse on the edge of Epping Forest. Rudyard enjoyed the reputation of being a particularly innocent and harmless kind of boy as long as he was by himself, but, as soon as his cousin arrived, he got into all sorts of scrapes. ‘That young Baldwin does your boy no good!’ the farmer told the Kiplings.
Rudyard cherished a wholesome dread of the penalties in which such escapades frequently involved him. On one occasion he was walking with the father of the future Prime Minister on the lawn at Bewdley. The embryo poet pointed to a gorgeous bed of geraniums. ‘Uncle Alf,’ he solemnly exclaimed, ‘if you tread on those flowers, William [the gardener] will pull your ear!’ The terrible warning was probably based on personal experience. Kipling used to say that in those days Stanley Baldwin got him into tons of trouble. The future statesman would hide in the cucumber frame, ruining the cucumbers, and leave poor Rudyard to face the music. His nurse and the gardener always said that Stanley Baldwin was mighty hard to catch.
IV
Strangely enough, most of Lord Baldwin’s biographers — Mr. Wickham Steed, Mr. John Smith, Mr. A. G. Whyte and the rest -aver that the Macdonald family consisted of four girls and two boys. Such a mis-statement does the gravest injustice to one of the most vivacious, one of the most radiant, and one of the most lovable ladies of her time. There were to be sure, two brothers—Harry who, after a distinguished career at Oxford, went to America, and Frederick, who, following the footsteps of his sires, entered the Methodist ministry. As a preacher, an ecclesiast, and an author, Frederick achieved the highest distinction. He became President of the Conference in 1899 and visited us here in Australia in 1908.
But no historian of this amazing family should lose sight of Aunt Edith, the youngest of the five girls. She was, in many respects, the most scintillating of them all. As a child, her sprightly movements and sparkling witticisms kept the entire household smiling. On one occasion she was seated on a little stool in front of the fire with her four sisters grouped around her. Surveying the four faces, one after the other, she solemnly exclaimed, ‘Oh, daughters of my father’s house!’ And it was quite common for her to burst into a room, in which her sisters were gossiping, with the exclamation, ‘What about what?’ and to insist that the conversation should, for her benefit, be recommenced.
Devoting herself to the care of her ageing patents, Edith never married. On the death of the old people, she made her home with the Baldwins at Stourport in Worcestershire. Here, from time to time, came the Burne-Jones, the Kiplings, and the Poynters, attracted in no small measure by the singular fascination of Aunt Edie. A lady of rare culture, infinite sweetness, and sterling strength of character, Edith filled every circle that she adorned with light and laughter.
Like her sisters, she inherited from her mother a passion for music and poetry. Of literature, too, thanks to Hannah, they were all enamoured. Louise, indeed, the mother of Lord Baldwin, wrote a number of popular novels-Where Town and Country Meet, Richard Dare, The Shadow on the Blind, The Story of a Marriage and the rest.
Edith, too, published a dainty little brochure entitled Thoughts on Many Themes. And in the little church near her home, in which every window was designed by Sir Edward Burne- Jones, there is an exquisite grape-vine altar frontal, perfectly worked in untarnishable gold-thread, and looking for all the world like a sheet of beaten gold, to the weaving of which Edith Macdonald devoted ten happy years of her long and lovely life. She lived to be eighty-eight.
In its obituary notice on the death of Frederick Macdonald, the brother, the London Times remarked that the home from which the greatly-gifted President and his five remarkable sisters sprang was a home in which there was very little money but any amount of goodness. As we survey the historic homes that were afterwards graced by the children of that modest Methodist parsonage-the homes of the Poynters, the Kiplings, the Burne-Jones, the Baldwins, and the Macdonalds — it is pleasant to reflect that the sweet fragrance of that simple goodness proved so penetrating and was blown so far.
-F.W. Boreham
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