MRS. FLORA ANNIE STEEL
[To the Editor of the. SPECTATOR.] SIR,—AS one who writes from intimate knowledge of the novelist Flora Annie Steel, may I draw your attention to the fact that she valued certain appreciations of her work in the Spectator more than any other she ever received. I cannot help regretting that, amongst the innumerable and beautiful tributes to her life and work—one of which I enclose—the Spectator should have been quite silent.—I am, Sir, &c.,
' 'J. W.
[We can assure the writer that lack of mention of Mrs. Steel was only due to exceptional pressure on our columns during the week in which her death occurred.• We like to recall the fact that in 1896 the Spectator wrote, in is review of her book On the Pace of the Waters," " We have read Mrs. Steel's book with ever-increasing surprise and admiration— surprise at her insight into people with whom she can scarcely have been intimate, admimtion for the genius ' which has enabled her to realize that wonderful welter of the East and West which Delhi must have presented just before the
Mutiny. There is many an goiter who would give his sword to write military history as Mrs. Steel has written the history of the rising, the siege, and the storm. It is the most wonderful picture. We know _that none who lived through the Mutiny will ' lay the book down without, a gasp of admiration, and believe that the same emotion will be felt by thousands to whom the scenes depicted are but lurid phantasmagoria."— ED. Spectator.]
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