‘JOHN STRANGE WINTER'S’ MEMORY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 33, 16 August 1890, Page 11

‘JOHN STRANGE WINTER'S’ MEMORY.

It is in a newly-built house in one of the Earl’s Court squares that I learnt how Mrs Stannard (John Strange Winter) has been, as a novelist, able to do for the army what Clarke Russell lias done for the navy. To her unique opportunities of observation, the young girl added an equally important power of memory. Almost from her first years of childhood her memory is a dear fountain. Unlike nearly all other novelists, Mrs Stannard has never found it necessary to keep a common-place book. Every little conversation, every trivial circumstance, leaves its impression upon her brain. As may be supposed, such a faculty is not always a blessing, for often ‘Joy’s recollection is no longer .joy. While sorrow’s memory is a sorrow still.’ ‘ My recollections are constantly troubling me,’ Mrs Stannard complains. ‘They are often so dangerous to friend ship. When I would willingly forgive I cannot forget.’ Yet it is by this power of memory that Mrs Stannard has created her prettiest situations ami finest characters. Booties lived in the tlesh ; Buttons had all the vitality which high spiritsand the air of barracks could give him. In the process of the story-telling the character is, of course, idealised ; with a novelist’s privilege, she is ‘ to his faults a little blind, and to his virtues very kind.’