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Poring over a folio edition of the State Trials at my uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and Hugh Speke for conspiracy.
Certainly he had a scholar's knowledge of the works of Miss Marie Corelli, Miss Braddon, Miss Elizabeth Glyn and Madame Sarah Grand that would have astonished and flattered those ladies enormously, and he loved nothing so much in his hours of relaxation as to propound and answer difficult questions upon their books.
That demand was met with an industry and resource rarely equalled. Every year since, Miss Braddon, who throughout retained her maiden as her pen-name, furnished the reading public with one, and for a long period two romances of absorbing interest. I. The Second Lady Audley SIR MICHAEL AUDLEY was fifty-six years of age, and had married a second wife nine months before.
Duff-Scott and her Major, the amiable pair who in the character of leaders of Melbourne society undertake to find husbands for Elizabeth King and her sisters, and whose benevolent intentions are so effectually forestalled, they are as conventionally English as though they belonged to the pages of Miss Braddon or Mrs. Henry Wood.
We have heard of some families in England who keep in use two copies of "The Scarlet Letter;" but I never dreamed of finding either of these books here. Sunday was the perfectest day in our remembrance. In the morning Mr. Hawthorne walked to Kirk Braddon, and the afternoon we spent on Douglas Head. It is quite impossible to put into words that afternoon.
"My friends, I will gladly accept your kind proposal, but I trust it will not be solely because I have used this arm of flesh in your defense. Mr. Sprague and I have but acted as humble instruments in the hands of a Higher Power." "Well, gentlemen," said Colonel Braddon, "I think we may as well get into the stage again and resume our journey."
" 'Are these the links of Forth, she said; Or are they the crooks of Dee, Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head That I so fain would see? " 'By heaven! said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad." On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission.
I remember nothing like it in all the learned pages of the London Journal and the Family Herald. Mrs. Henry Wood and Miss Braddon never dreamed of aught like this. Philippa must be told. It was too good a joke. Would she laugh? Would she be alarmed? Picture me lying on the ground, with the intelligence fresh in my mind. I felt confidence, on the whole, in Philippa's sense of humour.
"Then, if I may be permitted to ask," said Colonel Braddon, "what leads you to the Black Hills, Mr. Sprague?" "I thought I'd better see something of the country, you know. Besides, I had a bet with another feller about whether the hills were weally black, or not. I bet him a dozen bottles of champagne that they were not black, after all."
Braddon by which he was able to resign his appointment and proceed to Tasmania, where he entered political life, rising to be Premier and afterwards Agent-General for that Colony in London, and ultimately obtaining, in 1891, his K.C.M.G.
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