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A GREAT WOMAN.

(By Oliver Fry, In the Daily Mail.)

On tjje stroke of half-past 2 on Saturday afternoon she arrived in a carriage covered with flower®, and someone whispered to me that she had “always been so punctual.” It was her last journey on earth, for the carriage was a hearse, and the place of arrival was the crematory chapel at Golder’s Green, and the journeyer was Lady Oolin Campbell. The chapel was • crowded with people ranking from lords and ladies to the humble retainers of the dead woman. Dr M'Gowan began the service, while the casket (hidden by flowers) lay against the little flap-doors through which it warpresently to disappear; and beyond his voice there was no sound save that of women’s weeping and an occasional loud sob. When the clergyman came to the passage in the lesson, “For one star differeth from another star in glory,” I looked back over something like a quarter of a century, and marvelled at the apt application of the words. For here was a star who differed from all others—-a star of the first, if somewhat hidden, magnitude—a great woman dead whom I had known for more than half her life. For Lady Colin was a really great woman, whose chances in life had been handicapped by a brilliantly unhappy marriage. I have known no woman like her for° what one may call pure intellect. People said she was “clever” a stupid word; but she was much more than that. She had plumbed the abyss of unhappiness, and possibly that helped her, in a way, to exert her undoubted ability. I do not desire, after the manner of the old Athenians, to utter a panegyric over the dead ; but it is hardly top much to quote the Roman over her: “Nihil tc-Vcit quod non oxnavit.” Everything ehe did she did well; and she did a great deal. Her abilities were marked when ehe was a mere child, and we are told that her first story was accepted by a magazine when she was but 15. Perhaps ®he was at one time a little spoiled by successand commanding beauty. Certainly she was greatly admired and flattered as a young girl. But if she ever were spoiled, she had a very bitter unspoiling. She was still only a girl when she made her unhappy marriage with the youngest son of the late Duke of Argyll, from whom •she judicially separated herself (for h;s legal cruelty) within three years. _ Then began this poor lady’s life-time of distress. Then followed that ( horrible trial,” as she called it years afterwards—the only time I ever heard her refer to it. All'the world remembers that 10-day trial with the late'Sir Charles Russell at his best, and so many other Queens Counsel,-now dead, filling the front row in the crowded court. But how manv have realised the horror of it all to the lady who was the central figure of that sensational show —scared at by the whole world, as it were, for 18 days of torture? It was a dreadful ordeal for a young and magnificently beautiful girl, however spoiled she may have been. I can see her now in all her black-eyed, black-haired beauty, so black that she was known then among her relations as “Arab.” I cam see her bravely smiling, as she sat with her father and mother and Lady Miles, when she was- forced to listen to the most shocking and prepostreous allegations made against her by servants who defeated their own zeal by rendering the jury incredulous. Lady Colin s pluck was then, and to the end, marvellous. Her Western Irish oride (which to some seemed almost arrogance) allowed no sign of dismay." But she suffered intensely and though a jury acquitted her pf all the charges brought against her (in spite of the fact that one of the ■celebrated men whose name had been coupled with hers refused to go into the witness-box, because as a Roman Catholic he could not recognise any right in the Divorce Court) there was always a sort of stigma left, even though the jury censured that gallant non-witness as “ unworthy of the Queen’s uniform” for his non-appearance in a woman’s defence. The ■ fierce light that had beaten upon this young Irish beauty for those 18 worrying days made her known all over the world, hut hardly in the way that she would have chosen. A volume published in Paris under the style “ L’Affaire Colin Campbell” was scandalous enough to command an enormous sale. The American papers were, of course, full of the case. The notoriety was more than irksome. Now, those who had envied Lady Colin had their chance, and the full bitterness of her life began. Her name had been coupled with that of a great duke and others ; and though his and her repudiation of any wrong was on record, and though a British jury had believed them, mud will stick. Women are not always forgiving to women. They said that'Lady Colin was “ impossible ’’—even “ declasses,” speaking according to their lights. The jury’s verdict did not matter. Her old friends, or some of them, knew better, and so Lady Colin’s terrible life trial began. Most women in her place would have “gone under,” She came forward. She might have married again after her husband’s death. She would not, and preferred to fight under the worldknown name that she bore. There were some whom she could not forgive ; others whom she never forgot. But neither did she ever forget herself or her dignity. Her suffering cannot be realised; but she never showed it, Proudly, magnificently beautiful, she set to work to make a new

world i/c herself, and succeeded. She became known quite well in the great worlds of letters, art, and music; her drawing room was filled with leaders of those worlds.

Lady Colin wrote much and well, and prospered, as the scribes have duly recorded. Then with the aid of her cousin, Sir Vincent Caillard, she founded the Realm. The late William Earl Hodgson was its promising assistant editor, and Lord Mountmorres was. its manager. Thi first number—produced, as first numbers generally are, under difficulties—was disx tinctly good, and tho paper seemed tof be ear-marked for success. Its contributors included some of the best writers known, from the late Frederick Greenwood downwards, and it was on the cards that with the Realm Lady Colin could 1 have rivalled tho old Saturday Review, to which she had so long contributed. But the fates were unkind. Perhaps it was her own fault, She certainly overworked herself, and went, to bed ill so soon as that first number was out. Rheumatic fever kept her there for many weary, weeks, and the llealm ended its short, bright, expensive career. She never really; got over that fever. She worked on still—i almost to the end; but for the last four years or so she lived in a wheel-chair, rheumatically and most painfully crippled in her limbs ; lived bravely, all the time unconscious of defeat, always hoping, always interested, always glad to see her friends. "Look at these," she said pathetically one day of her hands on th. 3 table. " They were pretty paws once, weren't they? And I remembered how briliantly she had played on the piano with them. She suffered a martyrdom of pain during these last years. I think she is well dead. Much of what Lady Colin achieved In the way of artistic work has been already recorded. As a critical writer, as an accomplished musician, as a beautiful singer she was always in request. But it is her character that always struck one as so predominant. She was not as other women. Indeed, she had something of a contempt for the average of her own sex. She had the sense of justice and the sense of reason that are man's qualities. She could be quite judicial, and she could realise the point of an argument. Embittered as she may have been she was always kind, and until only a few days ago made everyone welcome in her beautiful drawing room. There you could never find her alone, for she had very many devoted friends. The world dealt very hardly by her; but it failed to beat her.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19111227.2.289.3

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 3015, 27 December 1911, Page 83

Word Count
1,383

A GREAT WOMAN. Otago Witness, Issue 3015, 27 December 1911, Page 83

A GREAT WOMAN. Otago Witness, Issue 3015, 27 December 1911, Page 83

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