All of the illustrations in this volume are photogravures, and except
where otherwise stated, are from photographs taken especially for this
edition.





INTRODUCTION


Fenwick's career was in the first instance suggested by some incidents
in the life of the painter George Romney. Romney, as is well known,
married a Kendal girl in his early youth, and left her behind him in
the North, while he went to seek training and fortune in London. There
he fell under other influences, and finally under the fascinations
of Lady Hamilton, and it was not till years later that he returned to
Westmoreland and his deserted wife to die.

The story attracted me because it was a Westmoreland story, and
implied, in part at least, that setting of fell and stream, wherein,
whether in the flesh or in the spirit, I am always a willing wanderer.
But in the end it really gave me nothing but a bare situation
into which I had breathed a wholly new meaning. For in Eugénie de
Pastourelles, who is Phoebe's unconscious rival, I tried to embody,
not the sensuous intoxicating power of an Emma Hamilton, but those
more exquisite and spiritual influences which many women have
exercised over some of the strongest and most virile of men. Fenwick
indeed possesses the painter's susceptibility to beauty. Beauty comes