The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-05-07
Interesting Career of Katherine
lyman, the Novelist.
As a Child She Was Slow to
Learn.
BEGAN WITH POETRY.
Her First Book of Verse Caused
Comment.
I" The French Wife," just Pub
lished in America.
BEGAN WITH POETRY.

Katharine lyman. the novelist, whose
latest book, "The French Wife, is re-
ceiving much attention was born in
Dublin in the early sixties. Her home
from early youth was a low matched
farmhouse under the Dublin noun
tains, with wide. lonely fields about it,
and as cut off from city life as though
it had been five hundred instead of
five miles from town. The farmhouse
was and is a delightful place, irregular,
wandering. AS she remembers it there
was tangled orchard at the back, a
garden with a sun-dial, summer
house, a labyrinth of little fower-b beds
with box-borders, a privet hedge a
great walnut tree, which. alas, came
down IN the big wind of February, 1903,
tnat destroyer Of the souls and actual
landmarks. There were many SQUAT
ana gnarled apple trees encroaching
on the flower garden, plums by the
southern wall, a row of hOllyhocks,
many clumps of laurestinas and portu-
gal laurelS. Outside there was a duck
pond, which she always thought to be
the pond of Hans An6ersen'S Ugly
Duckling, where the SpOrtsmen's shots
came to put an end to the foolish
chatter of wild geese. There was an
island in the midst with a water-hen's
nest-there was a well to which one
descended by three green and Shiny
steps, from which one brought up in
ones pitcher q shining minnOw or
two. All the fields were bordered by
bitches where the little clear streams
from the mountain side ran over gold
en- sands, singing all day. Wonderful
things those fields had, blackberrieS,
mushrooms, brilliant little crab-appIes,
the red fruit of the quicken sloes, what
not.
She was a child slow to learn at
school but engrossed in learning after
her own fashion. A few years at the
Dominican convent of st. Catharine of
Sienna, at Brogheda, brought her little
fruits of solid learning, although some
fruits of the imagination. In fact she
would learn her own way or not at
all.
Her own way was to suck honey
from the most unlikely sources. She
must have been a very naughty child,
for she could have been no more than
eight years old when she carried her
forbidden readings-very light litera-
ture of the penny-I aper Order-to a
safe place, stuffed up under the bodice
of her small frock till she went stiffly
as in a corselet. Her place of refuge
was in a loft over stable the crisis
cross window Of which looked into a
sycamore tree. There. doubtless, she
carried too Aurora Floyd, of which
her pious mother bereft her one day Of
Lent when she rnay have seen seven
She read the oldest things. ''The
Mysteries of Paris by Eugene Sue,
in three VOLUMES with innumerable
illustrations. some lurid romances of
G. w. Reynolds, a set of Maria Edge
worth, the Poets of the Nation-a
queerly assorted lot indeed She had
fellow Kavahagh" and Hyper
ion" as well as the pOems-and re-
members bits from them as though she
had read them in another world. Her
father let her read everything. He at
home old bundles of books. from THE
Wide, Wide World" to "Tristram
Shandy," from Faber's tTales of the
Angels" to "The Near and the Heaven
ly Horizons" of Madame de Gesparin.
She had a Burns" OF the most COM
plete and unexpurgated, a Milton, a
Moore, of course: and the first two
volumes of the COrnhill, where she
revealed in Owen Meredith and The
Great God Pam of Mrs. Browning.
However, nothing pointed to a lit
erary career for her till one day of
her seventeenth year, feeling herself
sighted, she constructed some verses,
and got them printed in a Dublin pa
per. Very soon afterwards she act
ualiy got a sonnet into the London
SpectatOr. The London Graphic pub
lished several of her little poems and
paid her half-a-guinea for them. The
first half-guinea check her father
wished to have framed: but she cash
ed it and bought stuff for frock, and
very shoddy stuff it was, as may well
be believed. She was almost twenty
before she made any literary friends
The first was Father RuSSell, OF the
Irish Monthly, the brother of him who
was afterwards Lord Russell of Kill
Iowen, lord chief justice of England
Through him she made various liter
airy friendships and acquaintanceships
Lady RusselIs sister Miss Rosa Null
holland. now Lady Gilbert, was the
object Of her young girls worship. In
1884 she went to London for the first
time. was most kindly received by
Lord and Lady Russell-he was Sil
Charles then; and made almost the
most abiding friendship OF her hIe
when she met Mrs. MeyneH.
The following year Wilfred Meynel
arranged for her the publication OF
her first volume of poems, Louise de
Ia VALERIE" The book brought hel
new friends. William Rossetu sen
her. for sake Of his brother whom she
adored and initiated, a number OF
photographs of d. G. RS picture
and Christiana wrote her kind letters
and sent her the first of many in
scribed volumes of her poems. Car
dinal Newman also sent her a little
letter with his blessing; and Carolina
Manning sent her THE Internal Mis-
sion of the Holy Ghost" with the mos
fatherly OF letters. Imagine such hap
autumn, on her way up to London
dear old friend, the Rev. Henri.
Stuart Pagan, the Anglican rector o
Great Cressingham, who was Away
saying a word for Ireland all over tn