laugh, himself strong in that virtue, she plied him with questions on Secularism of which she wished to learn all that was possible. An interview was arranged referred to in her later letters. "I can see him now so plainly sitting at his desk and telling me to write whenever I liked, ' and as I am a busy man,' he added, 'I will ask you to do it in this way—take a sheet of paper, write your question there, and leave me the opposite side of the sheet for the answer"." Again : "The other day I came across the notes written down immediately after my talk with Mr. Bradlaugh in August, 1882. To the best of my recollection they are in his own words. I was then writing We Two, and he spoke much of his own views on death because I was very anxious to represent the Secularist position quite fairly. I little thought that in a few years he himself would be 'done to death' as surely as Luke Raeburn was-only by inches. People have accused me of exaggeration in We Two, but Raeburn's story seems to me far less pathetic than the story of his prototype." It was Edna Lyall's intense love of justice, her dread of anything approaching religious intolerance or oppression and her quick sympathy for the oppressed which made her send help to the Election Fund. This was indeed a brave and unconventional thing for a girl to do, especially from the ecclesiastical atmosphere of Cathedral precincts. One does not hesitate to say she did well, but suffered for it. Writing in 1885 to Miss Picard, a friend of her childhood, she refers to this. "So that gossip has reached you! It is perfectly true that I in common with many other Christian Liberals subscribed to the expenses of the last election at Northampton, feeling very strongly that its member had been most unjustly used, and that it was the duty especially of those Christians who hate bigotry and injustice to protest in this practical way. Of course I should not have written-should not have been able to write-We Two if I had not known that Secularists are frightfully misrepresented by their orthodox opponents, and been brought into close contact with them. It is too big a subject to write about in a letter, and I can only ask you to believe that your 'Morose' acted from conscientious motives. It has perhaps been misunderstood and has certainly cost me dear in many ways, but in the words of Erica-written before I had tested the truth of them myself—-Mens conscia recti (my father's motto, by the way!) will carry me through worse things than a little slander." The name of " Morose" was given by her governess to the remarkably silent girl of those days, who at meals would scarcely say a word. In another letter Edna Lyall laughingly refers to this nickname. “I send you with my love the enclosed photograph of your 'Morose'. By-the-bye, I was so much amused in reading a play of Ben Jonson's to find that he has a character called 'Morose'-the husband of the 'Silent Woman'!" At the end of the year 1882, Edna Lyall writes: "Erica is, I hope, getting on. I do want so much to read her to you. She has just come back from Innsbruck. It was such fun describing the fire. Will you tell me of any questions which you would advise me to send to Mr. Stewart Headlam? It is wonderful how one is brought to know just the people most necessary for one's work. This has been a wonderful year altogether, and I thought it was going to be such a hard one, watching Donovan devoured by the critics! I really can't tell you what beautiful things I've heard lately about my 'Child'! Yet, nevertheless, I am sometimes sick with fright at the thought of sending Erica out into the world. Do tell me of any part in which you think I speak bitterly. It is so hard to speak strongly against bigotry and injustice and yet to avoid bitterness." We Two being finished the next thing was to find a publisher, not such an easy matter to Edna Lyall in those days. The manuscript was refused by half-a-dozen publishers. One firm from whom she had hoped great things kept the MS. for a month and then declined it with thanks, and two years later, when her fame was made, must indeed have been chagrined to learn in answer to a letter begging her to write and let them publish a novel like We Two, that they had missed the chance of bringing out that very book. Finally, in 1884, it was taken by the publishers of Donovan, both copyrights being bought by them for £50. With this step accomplished the author went with some cousins on a yachting cruise in the Mediterranean. They touched at Algiers and then put in at Gibraltar, but to their annoyance were ordered out of the harbour at once on account of one of the cholera scares. The letters that had arrived for them were handed up on board with tongs, and amongst them came a huge budget of reviews, the contents of which revealed to Edna Lyall with startling suddenness that at last she had succeeded. The book, for which she had thought her friends would cut her and which so many publishers refused, had made her name. It did not create nearly as much hostility as she had expected, the hard blows were few and the kind words. many, both from Christians and Secularists, and from that date her correspondence was large and diversified, publishers were no longer sought for but sought her, and she had no further difficulties on that score. Hitherto the MS. had been written in her own handwriting, but about this time she read an article on typewriters, by Proctor the astronomer, in his paper Knowledge, and that led her to try one, though some of her friends asked her how she could possibly write a love scene with that "tram-car bell ringing"! However, in about three weeks, when she could work at an average speed for her own composition, she was perfectly used to it, and never even noticed the bell more than one would dipping one's pen in the ink, |