: Letters from Egypt by Duff Gordon Lucie Lady Meredith George Commentator Ross Janet Editor - Egypt Description and travel; Duff Gordon Lucie Lady 1821-1869 Correspondence

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Editor: Janet Ross

Lady Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt

Revised Edition with Memoir by Her Daughter Janet Ross

New Introduction by George Meredith

LONDON: R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON 1902

INTRODUCTION

The hospitable house at Esher gave its welcome not merely to men and women of distinction; the humble undistinguished were made joyous guests there, whether commonplace or counting among the hopeful. Their hostess knew how to shelter the sensitively silent at table, if they were unable to take encouragement and join the flow. Their faces at least responded to her bright look on one or the other of them when something worthy of memory sparkled flying. She had the laugh that rocks the frame, but it was usually with a triumphant smile that she greeted things good to the ear; and her own manner of telling was concise, on the lines of the running subject, to carry it along, not to produce an effect--which is like the horrid gap in air after a blast of powder. Quotation came when it sprang to the lips and was native. She was shrewd and cogent, invariably calm in argument, sitting over it, not making it a duel, as the argumentative are prone to do; and a strong point scored against her received the honours due to a noble enemy. No pose as mistress of a salon shuffling the guests marked her treatment of them; she was their comrade, one of the pack. This can be the case only when a governing lady is at all points their equal, more than a player of trump cards. In England, in her day, while health was with her, there was one house where men and women conversed. When that house perforce was closed, a light had gone out in our country.

The fatal brilliancy of skin indicated the fell disease which ultimately drove her into exile, to die in exile. Lucie Duff Gordon was of the order of women of whom a man of many years may say that their like is to be met but once or twice in a lifetime.

MEMOIR

'Wenn ich am deinem Hause Des Morgens voruber geh', So freut's mich, du liebe Kleine, Wenn ich dich am Fenster seh',' etc.,

was meant for her whose magnificent eyes he never forgot.

Two years later Mr. Austin was appointed Royal Commissioner to inquire into the grievances of the Maltese. His wife accompanied him, but so hot a climate was not considered good for a young girl, and Lucie was sent to a school at Bromley. She must have been as great a novelty to the school as the school-life was to her, for with a great deal of desultory knowledge she was singularly deficient in many rudiments of ordinary knowledge. She wrote well already at fifteen, and corresponded often with Mrs. Grote and other friends of her parents. At sixteen she determined to be baptized and confirmed as a member of the Church of England . Lord Monteagle was her sponsor and it was chiefly owing, I believe, to the influence of himself and his family, with whom she was very intimate in spite of her Radical ideas, that she took this step.

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