The personal nobility with which she worked her hospital
in the Great War years brought her peace.
Frances Horner [Footnote: Lady Horner, of Mells, Frome.] was more
like a sister to me than any one outside my own family. I met her
when she was Miss Graham and I was fourteen. She was a leader in
what was called the high art William Morris School and one of the
few girls who ever had a salon in London.
I was deeply impressed by her appearance, it was the fashion of
the day to wear the autumn desert in your hair and "soft shades"
of Liberty velveteen; but it was neither the unusualness of her
clothes nor the sight of Burne-Jones at her feet and Ruskin at her
elbow that struck me most, but what Charty's little boy, Tommy
Lister, called her "ghost eyes" and the nobility of her
countenance.
There may be women as well endowed with heart, head, temper and
temperament as Frances Horner, but I have only met a few: Lady de
Vesci (whose niece, Cynthia, married our poet-son, Herbert), Lady
Betty Balfour[Footnote: Sister of the Earl of Lytton and wife of
Mr. Gerald Balfour.] and my daughter Elizabeth. With most women
the impulse to crab is greater than to praise and grandeur of
character is surprisingly lacking in them; but Lady Horner
comprises all that is best in my sex.
Mary Wemyss was one of the most distinguished of the Souls and was
as wise as she was just, truthful, tactful, and generous. She
might have been a great influence, as indeed she was always a
great pleasure, but she was both physically and mentally badly
equipped for coping with life and spent and wasted more time than
was justifiable on plans which could have been done by any good
servant.
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