Note 66 — THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO (continued 2)
Henry Yule translation
She was a woman of fine intellect and wide reading; a skilful musician, who also sang well, and a good amateur artist in the style of Aug. Delacroix (of whom she was a favourite pupil). Of French and Italian she had a thorough and literary mastery, and how well she knew her own language is shown by the sound and pure English of a story she published in early life, under the pseudonym of Max Lyle (
Fair Oaks, or The Experiences of Arnold Osborne, M.D.
, 2 vols., 1856). My mother was partly of Highland descent on both sides, and many of her fine qualities were very characteristic of that race. Before her marriage she took an active part in many good works, and herself originated the useful School for the Blind at Bath, in a room which she hired with her pocket-money, where she and her friend Miss Elwin taught such of the blind poor as they could gather together.
In the tablet which he erected to her memory in the family burial-place of St. Andrew’s, Gulane, her husband described her thus:—“A woman singular in endowments, in suffering, and in faith; to whom to live was Christ, to die was gain.”