THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS MARIANNE NORTH.*
"THE recollections of a happy life," which Miss North gathered together not long before that life came to an end, are also the recollections of a very busy and a very useful one. Even the compressed matter of the two volumes now before .us gives but an inadequate record of the labours and adven- tures that she underwent during some fifteen years of ceaseless toil' and wandering. The labour was one that she delighted in, and even the hardships and misadventures through which she passed were not altogether uncongenial experiences. The work that she did in painting and classifying the most remarkable flowers and vegetation of almost every country in the world can hardly he estimated too highly ; and her countrymen owe much to the generosity which prompted her not only to make a present to the nation of her unique collection, but also to build a house at her own expense in the gardens of Kew, where it might be suitably lodged and com- fortably studied. No one who has ever visited her collection of pictures could doubt for a moment of the value of her work, or could fail to admire the extraordinary and indomitable in- dustry that such a monumental undertaking displays. Her sister, Mrs. John Addington Symonds, by whom this Life is edited, says of her that she was no botanist in the technical sense of the term, but that her love of plants " in their beauti- ful living personality was more like that which we all have for human friends. She could never bear to see flowers uselessly gathered—their harmless lives destroyed." That feeling is one that is evinced in every page in her book, and it is probably owing to it that her descriptions of flowers are interesting in a way in which more exact and scientific de. scription would never be. We should add, however, that her contributions to scientific botany were not limited to her flower-painting, but that she also discovered and introduced into Europe five new species, to which her name has been given.
The first chapter of the book, and in some ways the most interesting, deals with the whole of her early life, from 1830 to 1871, the year in which her wanderings began. The records of those forty years of happy home-life and journeys in Europe and Egypt, have been ruthlessly cut down and compressed, to make room for the more busy fifteen years that followed upon her father's death. With the loss of that loved com- panion, there seems to have come upon her an imperative desire to fill her life with work and constant movement, and from that date until 1886 we hear of nothing but perpetual travelling from one country to another, all over the habitable globe. In 1886, broken down in health, and with shattered nerves, she sought for peace and rest in a quiet English home in Gloucestershire ; but her untiring spirit had tried and overtaxed her bodily powers too far, and her rest in her own country was not for long. There is some- thing very pathetic in the reading of the last two chapters of her life, which comprise her two last journeys to the Seychelles and to Chili. The • indomitable spirit is still there, and hardly a word of complaint escapes her; but it is not difficult to see that weariness and physical suffering were slowly conquering her, in spite of the brave face that she turned to her foes. The pluck and perseverance
*MO& Zocollectioas of a Happy Life. By Marianne Borth. London: Macmillan
that she displayed under all the discomforts and difficulties of her self-imposed task are those of no ordinary woman, and it is manifest that she inherited from her ancestors, the Norths, far more than that share of their eccentricity with which some people chose to credit her. Indeed, the family eccentricity in her case only consisted in her determination to overcome the natural weakness of her sex, and to let no such consideration stand in the way of her doing a man's work. In the per- formance of that work she showed not only unusual ability, but abundant good sense. If she could fairly be called eccentric, then should every man and woman who stand out from the ruck of their fellow-creatures be called eccentric also. She had unusual qualifications to fit her for the life that she had chosen, and first among them, we should think, was the power of making herself loved by all whom she came across. It is not given to every one to have dear friends in every quarter of the globe, and Miss North in her last journeys could hardly have visited any country on either side of the Equator without meeting some one or other who had become tenderly attached to her, and deeply interested in her work. It is easy to realise that she must have been a guest of the rarest kind, whose memory will probably live for a long time yet in many distant lands. As was natural, she had the best of introductions everywhere, and the most powerful influence placed at her disposal; but she seems to have owed far more to the personal friendships which she created for herself. It is impossible, in the limited space of this review, to give any idea of the ground over which Miss North travelled. Even her earliest journeys, made with her family, were not without interesting incidents ; for she barely escaped from the revolu- tion of Vienna, to fall into the revolution of Dresden. Her first long journey, alone, was to Canada and the United States. While at Washington, she was most hospitably entertained and made much of by General Grant, then President,—a re- ception which her modesty found it difficult to account for, until she heard herself being introduced as a daughter of Lord North, ex-Prime Minister of England, a degree of anti- quity for which she was hardly prepared. Her next journey was in the steps of Marled Kingsley, to the West Indies ; and then to Brazil, in the highlands of which she spent eight delightful months. The description of travelling over Brazilian roads is as amusing and spirited as it is faithful. But of the drawbacks of travel in Brazil and elsewhere she makes very light indeed, and it is pleasant to read her frequent commenda- tion of food and lodging which other travellers have described as abominable. After a short interval at home, she started again, and this time to complete the whole circuit of the globe, stopping for some time and working at her painting in Teneriffe, California, Japan, Singapore, Borneo, Java, and Ceylon. This long flight was followed by some six months of busy life in London, and then she returned to India, to revel at her leisure not only in its gorgeous vegetation, but also in the splendours of its ruined palaces and ancient temples. One more visit to Java, and then, in obedience to a hint given her by Charles Darwin, she turned to the Antipodes, to study the vegetation of Australia and New Zealand. South Africa still remained unvisited, and thither she made her next voyage, winding up her many journeyings with two more yet, one to the Seychelles, and another to Chili.
Truly a well-filled life. And yet all this only represents the labours of some fifteen years, and there is every reason to suppose that the other years were equally well filled. The record, as it stands, is interesting to every class of reader. Miss North's powers of description are not confined to her brush alone, and some of the descriptive work of her pen is of a very high merit. She wrote always with a clear conciseness, with a very full power of expression, and with an abundance of quiet humour. Wherever she went, she met and made friends of the most notable people, and her shrewd but kindly descrip- tion of themselves and their foibles is not the least charm of her reminiscences. Her good-nature and powers of endurance seem to have been proof against almost all trials, and hardly ever is she betrayed into an expression of com- plaint or impatience. One gathers, rather, that she was very liberal-minded, and that any narrowness of view was irritating to her ; but even of the most narrow-minded people she says nothing that is not kindly. If any fault is to be found with the book, it is that it contains too much that is compressed into too smalls space ; also, that it says too little of Miss North herself, and her personal likes, dislikes, and characteristics.
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