These sketches of my dear aunt’s life were begun by her only a few years before she died. The discretion as to their publication was left to those on whose judgment she relied, and at their request I have undertaken to prepare the sketches for presentation to the public, and to add to them here and there a few explanatory notes of my own.

I have left her chapters almost exactly as she wrote them. They are well described in her Preface, and are very characteristic of herself. Like a light-winged butterfly she flits from flower to flower, resting long on none, nor caring to return to what she had apparently only quitted for a moment. As is natural to one writing after a lapse of years, she refers within the space of a page or two to events which happened at wide intervals of time.

She dwells with pardonable pride on her love for the drama and the dance. Those who knew well her proficiency in these will prefer to let their memory rest on the brilliant wit and imperturbable good nature which made her a welcome guest in many societies. As a girl she had many opportunities of sharing in the Court life of her own country and more than one continental state. Later she became intimate with literary men of the highest position. All through her life she had the entrÉe to many pleasant country houses, in which were gathered men of influence in affairs, and clever and amusing women full of knowledge of the events of the society in which they moved. She was everywhere popular, and this was not a little due to the fact that she hated scandal and eschewed gossip. She could not be ill-natured if she chose. Probably the severest thing she ever uttered was said of a young man who, seeking a greater prominence than he deserved, had somehow trodden on her toes. “Well, but, Mary, you must at any rate admit that he is a good mimic.” “Is he? then I wish he would always imitate some one else.” I have reason to believe she even repented this.

In my father’s house there was ever a room allotted to her and known by her name. It was occasionally my privilege to occupy it, and to read her collection of volumes of many sorts and many styles. It was there that I read much of Landor, Browning and Mrs Browning, and all, or nearly all, the novels of G. P. R. James, whom she called her literary godfather, and whose influence is traceable in her novels of “A State Prisoner” and “The Foresters.”

With my father’s children, when we were children, she was the object of the keenest admiration and the warmest love. She joyed in our joys, and soothed our sorrows with unfailing tact. In later years it was a source of no little regret to us that her roving life and somewhat restless disposition deprived us of some opportunities of returning the care she lavished on us when we were young.

I am probably not alone in wishing that she had written more than she did. The two novels to which I have referred have nothing to lose in comparison with those of later writers, who have had a far wider circulation than she. Graceful and graphic, they are marked by a purity of plot and a delicacy of taste which make no attempt to season pleasure with offence. She was not of those who consider it impossible to interest or amuse without the introduction if not of that which is unclean, at least of that which is bizarre. Later in life she produced a short sketch of character called “Tangled Weft,” which probably would have been more widely read had it been less refined.^[1]

A kindly critic in the AthenÆum of April 1890, immediately after her death, described her conversation as having a charm that was indescribable and perhaps unique. This was probably so. In her, judgment and good sense were as solid as her shafts of wit were keen. She never was the victim, happily for her, of the unreasoning adulation, which so cruelly affected the last years of the life of the most humorous as well as the wittiest Irishman whom it has ever been my good fortune to meet. I knew Father Healy when his life was spent among his friends. I knew him also when he was the idol of a flattering throng, who knew not what they worshipped. Often have I seen him crushed into silence by the persistence of admirers who would never let him utter three words on any subject without beginning to laugh before he could get out with the fourth. Mary Boyle, perhaps because she frequented the society of only those who were friends, was not expected to drop pearls whenever she spoke.

In her letters it is possible that an equal charm might be found. But it would require some patience in seeking; for her handwriting had undoubted peculiarities. “We had a committee on your letter, dear Mary,” once wrote an intimate friend. “We placed it on a table and sat round it, and by dint of looking at it from every point of view we really made out a good deal.” Notwithstanding the difficulty, however, some of those who, like Charles Dickens, Lord Tennyson, and Browning, loved to correspond with her, kept up an exchange of letters which ended only with death.

If my aunt had lived to finish these chapters, the title she desired to apply to them might have been appropriate. As it is, they can scarcely be considered an autobiography. There are lacking, too, references to several houses^[2] where she was a frequent guest, and to many circles of friends whose gatherings she helped to make merry. I miss, especially, allusions to Ireland, and above all to that happy shore, “washed by the farthest” lake, where to my knowledge she spent many days of unalloyed enjoyment. Her close friendship with Lady Marian Alford, the “your Marian” of Lord Tennyson’s verses, is not mentioned.^[3] But of the society which Lady Marian loved to gather around her Mary Boyle was a welcome member. It was at Ashridge that some years before the present Bishop of Ely put on Lawn there flashed forth one of those keen answers with which she often delighted her hearers. They were discussing some important point of High Church—Low Church—Moderate Church. As luncheon was announced a prudent critic of the discussion said, “Well, after all, it is very true that via media securum iter.” “You don’t know what that means, Mary?” “Oh, yes, I do! that is what Lord Alwynne says, ‘caution is the way to secure a mitre.’”

After my father’s death in 1868 Mary Boyle established herself in a small house in South Audley Street. James Russell Lowell, one of the many brilliant men who both got and gave pleasure by a visit to her tiny rooms, says of it: “No knock could surprise the modest door of what she called her bonbonniÈre, for it opened and still opens to let in as many distinguished persons, and what is better, as many devoted friends as any in London.” This was written in 1888, the last year of her occupancy, and two years before her death. “Miss Mary Boyle,” he goes on to say, “bears no discoverable relation to dates. As nobody ever knew how old the Countess of Desmond was, so nobody can tell how young Miss Mary Boyle is. However long she may live, hers can never be that most dismal of fates to outlive her friends while cheerfulness, kindliness, cleverness, and all the other good nesses have anything to do with the making of them.” She certainly had the faculty, a somewhat rare one, of making as well as keeping friends. I have met in the wee chamber, which she was wont to call a drawing-room, men of three generations all coming within the category to which Mr Lowell refers.

Nor were her guests all of one sex. Neither her cleverness nor her kindliness alone would have sufficed to keep the friendship of the many women who loved her till her death. Together they did. So her rooms were filled with those who were lovely and brilliant as well as those who were learned and clever. The friendship which Mary Boyle maintained with men of distinction in many spheres of life lasted for a long period of years. Mr Lowell in the passage I have quoted was preparing for publication some letters which were written to her by Walter Savage Landor.^[4] Those who wish to read these letters in full may find them in the Century Magazine for February 1888. “They are most interesting,” says Lowell, “and have more clearly the stamp of the writer’s character than many of Goethe’s to the Frau von Stein. They give an amiable picture of him without his armour and in an undress, though never a careless or slovenly one.” They are too long to be set out at length here, but I may cite a few brief passages. The opening sentence of the first especially commends itself to me. Lowell thinks it was written in 1842:

“Your letter is a most delightful ramble. I believe I must come and be your writing-master. Certainly if I did nothing else by drilling, I should make rank and file stand closer.”... “You ask me if I have ever seen Burleigh? Yes, nearly half a century ago. Nevertheless I have not forgotten its magnificence. No place ever struck me so forcibly. And then the grounds!”...

“And so, Carissima, you want to know whether I shall be glad to see you or sorry to see you on the twentieth. Well then—sorry—to have seen you, glad, exultingly glad, to see you. And now I am resolved not to tell you which I love best, Melcha or Mora.^[5] Melcha colpisce fortemente—Mora piu ancora s’innamora: I have broken my word to myself all through you.”... “You see I have learnt to write from you—only I can sometimes get three or four words into a line—which you can never do for the life of you. But there are several in which I find two entire ones. I do not like to spoil the context, otherwise I would order them to be glazed and framed in gold.”...

“It is only this evening that I received the Bridal of Melcha. I do not like to be an echo, but I am certain that I must be one in expressing my admiration of it. To-night is our Fancy Ball. You should be at it crowned with myrtle and bay. If I had opened the volume, but at the very hour of meeting my friends there, I could not have refrained from reading it through before I set out. It is indeed already late enough, and I suspect past the post-office hour, adieu, Musa Grazia! and call me in future anything but Dottissimo. Remember, you have a choice of Issimi.”...

“It would grieve me to see religion and education taken out of the hands of gentlemen and turned altogether, as it is in part, into those of the uneducated and vulgar. I would rather see my own house pulled down than a Cathedral. But if Bishops are to sit in the House of Lords as Barons, voting against no corruption, against no cruelty, not even the slave-trade, the people ere long will knock them on the head. Conservative I am, but no less am I an aristocratic radical like yourself. I would eradicate all that vitiates our constitution in Church and State, making room for the gradual growth of what altering times require, but preserving the due ranks and orders of society, and even to a much greater degree than most of the violent Tories are doing.”

... She was associated with Tennyson, Wordsworth, and Landor in a small miscellany which Lord Northampton encouraged and edited in aid of the surviving family of Edward Smedley. Her contribution, “My Father’s at the Helm,” attracted a considerable amount of attention, and achieved some popularity. Better judges than myself encourage me to reproduce it:

Later in life she printed, for a limited circulation only, Historical and Biographical Catalogues of the Pictures at Longleat, Hinchingbrooke, Panshanger and Westonbirt, to which Lowell was probably right in attributing a serious value.

Of all her writings it may be said that their chief charm consists in their reproduction of herself. Standing alone they would have stood strongly. They were meant for her friends, and to her friends, who were many, they conveyed a pleasure which was largely due to connection easily traceable between what was written and her who wrote.

The marriage in 1884 of her niece Audrey, the only daughter of my uncle Charles, with Hallam Tennyson, increased the already keen friendship between her and our last great poet. How intimate it was and how much he valued it, may be gathered even by him who runs, from the stanzas which he sent to her with one of his latest poems. She received them in the spring of 1888 when still mourning the death of her friend Lady Marian Alford.

Close indeed were they both “to that dim gate.” She died in April 1890—and in 1892 the great writer, and the still more kindly man, answered the “one clear call,” and embarked to “meet his Pilot face to face.”

Thus far Sir Courtenay Boyle had written his Introduction to the Memoirs when to him also came the “one clear call,” and he too embarked to “meet his Pilot face to face.”^[6]

The papers which now form the Supplementary Chapter arrived too late. It was his intention to have incorporated them in the book, and they would doubtless have necessitated some slight modification in his Introduction. I have preferred to leave his work as he left it, and keep the supplementary papers separate.

September 1901.