R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Women Novelists of the 'Seventies 491879 went out with the storm ' cones' up in most districts,and in worsening weather.Last, but not least, all persons now between fifty andsixty years of age, who in our period helped to raise thepopulation of England from twenty-three to twenty-sixmillions, were then engaged in being born. Providentiallyfor many of them the average number of children in thefamilies of the professional classes in the United Kingdomhad not then sunk to what, I believe, the statistician nowshows it to be—a figure in the neighbourhood of 0-9.It is fortunate for a hazy and fragmentary historianthat this paper is concerned not with life in the world ofthe real and actual during this decade, but with its reflexin the looking-glass of fiction. None the less, any attempt,and even one so superficial as this, to recall what thoseyears 'looked like'—and to this end the trivial is asevocative as the important—may be of service in thecompany of that fiction. It vaguely presents the scene;it gives the reader his bearings. It may help to precludeprejudice.' Some Women Novelists of the 'Seventies'—the phrasehas the cadence of a lullaby, and conjures up in the fancya trim walled garden in June, bee and flaunting butterfly,pinks in bloom and tea roses, candytuft and mignonette.A closer view proves this to be a delusive picture.The walled garden leads out to where the vegetablesgrow; cherry trees and gooseberry bushes give place tothe prickling briar and the grieving thorn, cypress andyew. And at length a waste appears, no rill of livingwater musical on the ear, bindweed and viper's buglossits few clear flowers, bleached slender bones their onlycompany in its sands. And of all things in this world,what is less easily retrievable than that which oncebreathed the breath of life and has now not only passedaway but vanished out of remembrance?B 4