Hastings. Frederic North, head of the house, was several times member for Hastings, generally receiving the support of voters of both parties. “Take him for all in ell” one can hope seldom to see his like again. Something of what who was may be inferred from the fact that his daughter, Marianne North, declared him to have been the “one idol and friend of her life.” That daughter, whose queenly presence and sweet charm make up one of the dearest pictures of my memory, after devoting the first forty years of her life to her father, sought solace and occupation in travelling alone over the world and painting those pictures which she afterwards so generously housed in the “North” Gallery at Kew. The compulsory leisure of her last years she employed in writing those delightful “ Recollections of a Happy Life” which were published under the loving editing of her sister, the wife - now, alas, the widow - of John Addington Symons.
Next to the Norths, the Leigh-Smiths should be mentioned, a family of remarkable boys and girls as I first remember them. When the Crimean War broke out, the sons took a leading part in the first Volunteer movement, and the daughters — fired by the example of Florence Nightingale — took lessons in sick-nursing. For ladies to take lessons in nursing was an original idea in those days; but, said Barbara Leigh-Smith, the eldest daughter (of whom more anon), “Our brothers are preparing to defend us; why should not we be prepared to nurse them?” Leigh-Smith, the eldest son, has since become one of the most ardent arctic explorers, and his name has been given to those arctic lands whence he and his comrades hardly escaped with their lives by leaving their ship, the Eira, behind them. The eldest daughter, Barbara, will long be remembered as Madame Bodichon, one of the first and most generous founders of Girton, the most intimate and the most constant friend of George Eliot, a pioneer philanthropist in many ways public and private. With the Leigh-Smiths, and particularly with Barbara, were associated more or less intimately, at different periods, Dante Rossetti, Moore (the sea-painter), and a host of other artists, besides literary men and women not a few. Among the survivors of this coterie, who are growing few, are Bessie Raynor Parkes (Madame Belloc), who began her literary career as a poet and now delights the public with her published recollections; and Miss Betham-Edwards, the interpreter of French home life and the accomplished and successful novelist.
In the society of which the men and women mentioned above were some of the most widely known representatives, conversation, -
