FOUR REMARKABLE SISTERS

Evening Star, Issue 18339, 28 July 1923, Page 7

FOUR REMARKABLE SISTERS

BRITISH PREISER'S MOTHER AND ABUTS.

Their story is quite romantic. Alice married Mr Lockwood Kipling, father of Mr Rudyard Kipling. Agnes became Lady Poynter, wife of the painter (says a writer in the ‘Evening News’).

Georgians became ’Lady Burne-Jones, and her beauty inspired her husband in the painting of that saintly type of woman that is the Burne-Jones woman. Indeed, she was regarded in her own home as a saint as well "as a beauty. Louisa married Mr Alfred Baldwin, the ironfnunder, who established the great firm of Baldwin’s. Thus she is the mother of a Prime Minister.

There is a fifth sister who did not marry, and lives , with Mr Baldwin’s mother, whoso health is not vigorous.

A METHODIST PREACHER

Also there wore two brothers, and yot, though the family of the Rev. G. Macdonald was so large, they not only contrived to live happily in what would bo coiifhk.red a small house at Walpole sf but their borne was a notable meeting-place for artists and men of letters and affairs in the sixties.

All tho Macdonald girls were beautiful. Their father had a modest living as a Methodist preacher somewhere near Sloana street. Ho was the tutor as well as tho father of his children. His wife, too, was a remarkably energetic and able woman. The children were strictly brought up, to use the language of their day. Their father taught them painting and music and a good deal about literature. “ RUDYARD ” —AND WHY. Alice, when her father was in tire Potteries, met Mr Lockwood Kipling, a young designer of pottery. At Rudyard Lake, in Staffordshire, the holiday resort of the district, ho proposed to her. Then ho was offered a post in India, and she went out there to marry him. In memory of tin, place of their meeting they christened their son Rudyard. The husband became a distinguished archaeologist and designer. His fume is lost in that of his greater sou.

Mrs Kipling, say those who knew her in India, explains RudyarJ. She was a brilliant woman, extraordinarily witty, one of the most amusing talkers at tiro dinner tables of Bombay. GIFT OF THE PEN. Mr Baldwin’s mother married an engineer who was to become a millionaire, but she worked hard none the less; and she has written a novel (‘Richard Dare’), a volume (‘ Where Town and Country Meet’), a book of fairy tales (‘The Pedlar’s Pack ’), and one of the most noteworthy series of ghost stories (‘ The Shadows on the Blind ’). Mr Baldwin's father, for one, had no “influence” to set him up in life. But when he was a mere seventeen ho went tp the manager of a Worcester hank, and so ranch impressed him with his engineering and ironfounding projects that tho bank backed him through and through. It was a case of characters meeting characters—and, incidentally, handsome people mating with handsome people. Mr Baldwin’s father and his brothers were conspicuously good looking—one of the brothers posed for a painting of St. John tho Baptist. Mrs Kipling, 3 Lady Poynter, and Lady Burne-Jones are dead. Mrs Baldwin has lived to ee© her son achieve the greatest political triumph that a commoner can achieve.

M. Condurier Do Chossaigno relates in the Paris ‘ Gaulois’ a conversation which ho had a year ago with Mr Rudyard Kipling, Mr Stanley Baldwin’s cousin. At that time Mr Llovd George was still in office, and, according to M. Do Chassaigno, Mr Kipling said: “Believe me, Lloyd George won’t last much longer I know' what lam talking about. Tho other day my cousin Baldwin, tho President of tho Board of Trade, nearly I'osigued. Ho is a man of honor. His mother and mine wore sisters, and we were boys together. Stanley is a loyal man, incapable of a low action. He is not a politician, but at the same time he is true to his party. A Conservative to tho backbone, he will either rescue his party from the stranglehold of Lloyd George, or he will break his own career. Ho is full of courage, but too intelligent to be in a hurry about anything; so give him time, and when the moment tomes ho will seize it. He will win tho victory then. I back him against any odds. But ho is too much of a statesman not to bide his time.”