MRS. RATE OF MILTON COURT
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—May I be allowed to write a few lines about one who for many years was a keenly interested reader of your paper and who never lost an opportunity of widening its influence ?
The death of Mrs. Rate, of Milton Court, Surrey, which took place recently, has come, in spite of her ninety years, as a shock to all who loved her, for there was nothing of age about her except its grace and its dignity. She was so vividly alive, so unchanged by passing years that it seemed as if death could not touch one whom youth had never left. With the closing upon her of the invisible gates there comes an emptiness not easy to express in words, nor is it easy to convey an idea of her rare personality.
Life had given to her richly, and to all who came near her
she gave with both hands ; it was her one idea to share with others the good and the beautiful things that were hers. I see her now, standing in her flower-filled drawing room, a gay and gracious presence, and choosing from her vases the loveliest flowers for her visitor to carry away. It was a charac- teristic action, symbolic of her whole attitude to life. She was always trying to put fresh colour into drab lives, new interests into minds less eager than her own. Those who came near her could not fail to catch something of her enthusiasms, to be stimulated by her vital quality.
Right to the end she kept the spontaneousness of youth, its capacity for joy, its passionate convictions, even perhaps its intolerance. She was unswerving in her allegiance to all that is high and good, unfailing in her response to every claim made upon her, public or private, unlimited in her capacity for love.
The end came in a flash, unheralded by illness, in the midst, of her ordinary everyday life, with nothing in it of sadness or. of pain. Joy accompanied her to the last, it was fitting that• it should be so for one who had put so much joy into her world. To those who-are left behind, stunned by the suddenness of her going, it seems impossible to realize that they will not find her, as of old if they open the familiar door, a vision in black velvet and delicate lace, with face alight with love, and with out.- stretched arms.—I am, Sir, &e., ONE OF HER FRIENDS.
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