AFTER A CENTURY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 194, 18 August 1933, Page 9

AFTER A CENTURY.

THE DAYS OF LONG AGO,

"Prince Albert, he's a fine fellow. He has two children now, you know," the old blue eyes closed for a moment as sho dreamily repeated "two children." Then .with a bewildered flutter, 'the wondering mind came back to the present.

• Mrs. Fra.ucas Mary Speakman, the oldest inhabitant of the Epsom Infirmary, celebrates her 102 nd birthday on Tuesday, August 22. Born at Appleford, near Oxford, she was married in London in 18,30. She had two sisters and two brothers, all of whom are now dead. Her husband died in the 'nineties.

Although confined to her bed, Mrs. Speakman still takes a delight in seeing visitors, and, passionately fond of flowers, keeps a vase by her bedside filled with spring flowers of every description. When Mrs. Speakman celebrated her 100 th and 101 st birthdays, she received many telegrams and congratulatory messages from a number of Auckland friends, and a telegram from the Governor-General and Lady Bledisloe. Although Mrs. Speakman's mind reveals itself as a storehouse of precious memories, she is unable now to give a coherent account of her life. There are incidents, however, which remain very deeply engraved, and now and then a chance word recalls some happening of a bygone day. Describing her arrival iiij New Zealand in 1859,. on the Matoaka, after a journey of sixteen weeks, she drew a vivid picture. "We thought we were never going to get here. We kept looking and gazing and watching and saw nothing. It was either all grey or all blue, and very, very dreary We called at Wellington and dropped some passengers and then came on to Auckland."

A merry chuckle accompanied her sudden memory of the girls who came out on tho same ship, and who were married in Auckland. Mrs. Speakman also recalled the first exhibition in London, held near the Marble Arch. Memories of Hyde Park, Kensington, and of the Duke of Wellington's-palace, flittered like sunlight through her mind. | Mrs. Speakman has seen the reign of j three monarchs, and has most vivid recolt lections of Queen Victoria, who "was not really stout when she was a young girl of ,20," she explained. The understanding sympathy and the nobility of the great Queen were mentioned by the speaker. She remembered when the young Princesses and Princes used to take their riding lessons round the Serpentine. j

"The Prince of Wales will never get married. He runs about too much, she said. He's a fine fellow; ho sees everything. He even goes down tho coal mines and works and helps the poor."

Recalling the hop-picking season in Nelson, Mrs. Speakman vowed that she could even smell the hops again, and see their great green bunches. She had also done her share of farming, and used to look forward to the haymaking season. At one time she was employed as cook in a' caßtlo in Scotland, the name of which she was unable to remember. Mrs. Speakman recalled but would not speak of the Great War, although memories of the Maori Wars, the Waikato War in particular, at first "excited and then exhausted her.

- "You know, when you can remember 1840, and 50, and 00, TO, 80, 90 and 100, it'p a long time." All those years have to pass and I have gone through all that," she said.