VICARAGE DAUGHTERS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9408, 31 March 1909, Page 3

VICARAGE DAUGHTERS.

It seems strange bat female gennis thrives best in an atmosphere of parish teas, mother’s meetings, and Sunday school treats. Miss Lilian Wells, a distinguished young sculptor in the Academy Exhibition, is the daughter of a Wesleyan minister; and a girls’ paper following up this cine to artistic success, discovers that, setting aside crowned heads, nearly all the distinguished women you can mention have come from rectory, parsonage, or manse. Charlotte Bronte and her sisters were geniuses, 1 and we all know their mnob over-described parsonage at Haworth, Jane Austen wrote “Pride and Prejudice’ ’ in a clerical drawing room, and threw her handkerchief over the manuscripts when the parish Busy bodies came in. L. E. L,, If not directly from a vicarage, had grandfathers and great-grandfathers in the Ohnroh. Elizabeth Carter, the great exponent of female brainpower, was rectory born. Amongst examples nearer to date, the two great travellers, Mrs Bishop and Mary Kingsley, somehow developed theii intrepid spirits in the quiet clerical home. John Strange Winter, Mary Oholmnndeiey, L. T. Meade, the sisters Findlater, Lucas Malet, and “Madge” of “Truth” show thejpleasant diversity of style to be girl from a vicarage, and Irene and Violet Vanbrugh, in the front rank of their profession, are not the only example of daughters of clergymen to tase successfully to the stage. One theory explains all this in the words of the Somerset labourer. “Parson’s gnrl, yon zee, her be a most clever, pushin’ young woman I For parson’s maid her will be knowina all about everybody and everything. Her be wunnerful clever and zmait, you zee, zur, be parson’s daughter I” To know “everything about everybody, ” even in the most limited neighbourhood, is no bad preparation for a novelist: to be “clever and pushin’ ” is a useful quality in many professions. It may have been some revolt, however, against the early traditions that plunged Lnoas Malet into the dreary depths of “Sir Richard Calmady,” and drew Mary Kingsley to exchange the shining morning faces of Sunday scholars for the unkempt companionship of the African black, Mary Oholmondeley, too, in her “Bed Pottage,” only thanked the goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled, by denying any human virtue to any clergyman lower than a bishop. Charlotte Bronte spoke of curates less reverently than might be wished. But now the principle is recognised a vicarage daughter will no doubt set a right value on her environment; while parishes will respect an embryo geuius in every “parson’s maid.”