MRS. WALFORD
SIR,—Your correspondent, "Bewildered," enquires in The Specter of March 20th, "Who was Mrs. Walford?"—and, as one of daughters, I propose to enlighten him.
My mother's first novel, Mr. Smith, appeared in serial form Blackwood's Magazine for October, 1874, and received the immedia attention of Coventry Patmore, who, in an article in the St. Gazette, referred to her writing in the following words: 'No get lion has known so well how to paint itself as our own. living writers are two whose work of this kind can scarcely be sut passed, namely Thomas Hardy and L. B. Walford."
Mr. Smith was followed by The Baby's Grandmother, Cousins, many other novels, all of which (or most of which) ran thin Blackwood's, and were eagerly read by a very large and very entb siastic public. Amongst her most ardent admirers I recollent particular, Edmund Gosse, J. M. Barrie, jean Ingelow and Levit Carroll, who frequented our home, and animated our hearth with pungent and brilliant talk, and whose own writings will realaill a lasting memorial to the nineteenth century.
I cannot think that my mother's name has really "disaP from memory." More than this I need not say ; less, I could not- Yours, &c., OLIvE MONTAGUE KINDERSLEV. Birdbrook, Wash Common, Newbury.
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