Alice Meynell

It is but to repeat the general verdict to say that Miss Viola Meynell has written a worthy memoir of her mother. She has been wise in avoiding the expansive, exhaustive, two-volumed, official biography. Her book is a memoir, a reminder, a brief record of things memorable; her aim is nothing more pretentious than to give fleeting glimpses, lively sketches, running commentaries which enlighten by flashes the rare life and work of her subject. A daughter is not always considered the one best qualified to write the Life of her mother : family affection might stress the unimportant things, discretion might suppress essential features, filial piety might withhold a perfect portrait. But Miss Meynell has kept in an excelling manner the balance between reverence and unreserve, and one may ask— knowing well how the question would be answered—Who else could have done the work better? Love is blind—perhaps sometimes; but more often love is keen-sighted and, according to the inspired text, love rejoiceth with the truth. Anyhow, it seems clear that the intimacy of family affection, far from handicapping Miss Meynell in her task, has actually proved to be her pre-eminent qualification in revealing and interpreting her mother.Alice Meynell has been hailed as ‘beyond challenge the most eminent woman writer since George Eliot and Christina Rossetti.’ Your wife’s prose, wrote Coventry Patmore to Wilfrid Meynell, ‘is the finest that was ever written, and none but kindred genius can see how great it is .... it is the test of capacity in the reader for the understanding of what prose is ... . If I were you I should go mad with pride and joy.’