and herself the most distinguished woman-historian of our time, joined
us in the venture. But she and I both went to Hampden to work. I set up
in one half-dismantled room, and she in another, with the
eighteenth-century drawing-room between us. Here our books and papers
soon made home. I was working at _David Grieve_; she, if I remember
right, at the brilliant book on _English Town Life_ she brought out in
1891. My husband came down to us for long week-ends, and as soon as we
had provided ourselves with the absolute necessaries of life, visitors
began to arrive: Professor and Mrs. Huxley; Sir Alfred Lyall; M.
Jusserand, then _Conseiller d'Ambassade_ under M. Waddington, now the
French Ambassador to Washington; Mr. and Mrs. Lyulph Stanley, now Lord
and Lady Sheffield; my first cousin, H. O. Arnold-Forster, afterward War
Minister in Mr. Balfour's Cabinet, and his wife; Mrs. Graham Smith,
Laura Lyttelton's sister, and many kinsfolk. In those days Hampden was
six miles from the nearest railway station; the Great Central Railway
which now passes through the valley below it was not built, and all
round us stretched beechwoods and commons and lanes, untouched since the
days of Roundhead and Cavalier, where the occasional sound of
wood-cutters in the beech solitudes was often, through a long walk, the
only hint of human life. What good walks and talks we had in those
summer days! My sister had married Professor Huxley's eldest son, so
that with him and his wife we were on terms always of the closest
intimacy and affection. "Pater" and "Moo," as all their kith and kin and
many of their friends called them, were the most racy of guests. He had
been that year pursuing an animated controversy in the _Nineteenth
Century_ with Doctor Wace, now Dean of Canterbury, who had also--about a
year before--belabored the author of _Robert Elsmere_ in the _Quarterly
Review_. The Professor and I naturally enjoyed dancing a little on our
opponents--when there was none to make reply!--as we strolled about
Hampden; but there was never a touch of bitterness in Huxley's nature,