Miss Kate Field has been so exclusively identified with artistic and
literary success that her new departure as a lecturer on existing
political evils has excited no little surprise and comment. An
exceptional degree of public interest as well as of purely private and
personal regard has followed her almost, indeed, from childhood; partly
due, it may be, to a certain indefinable magnetism of temperament which
always makes the place where she chances to be at the time seem a social
centre, and somewhat, too, from a life that has not been without its
picturesque setting of scenery and circumstance. "Kate Field was started
right,"--remarked Miss Frances E. Willard of her one day. "As a child
Walter Savage Landor held her on his knee and taught her, and she grew
up in the atmosphere of Art." The chance observation made only _en
passant_, never the less touched a salient truth in that vital manner
in which Miss Willard's words are accustomed to touch truth. She was,
indeed, "started right." The only child of gifted parents, endowed with
a rare combination of intellectual and artistic talent; with a nobility
and genuineness of nature that has ever been one of her most marked
characteristics; attuned by temperament to all that is fine, and high,
and beautiful,--it is little wonder that her life has presented a series
of advancing achievements. She has studied, and read, and thought; she
has travelled, and "sipped the foam of many lives;" and a polished and
many-sided culture has added its charm to a woman singularly charming by
nature and possessed of the subtle gift of fascination. When very young
she studied music and modern languages abroad in Florence, and in
London. To music she especially devoted herself studying under Garcia
and under William Shakespeare, the great English tenor, whose favorite
pupil she is said to have been. Walter Savage Landor conceived a great
fondness for her, gave her lessons in Latin, and left her at his death a
valuable portfolio of old drawings. In some verses addressed "To K.F."