1909]' Meredith's Parentage 247 



the year 1866 that first determined me to write mine and at the same 

 time to have a more satisfactory life to make record of. 



" 21st May. — Meynell came to dinner and gave me an interesting 

 account of his intimacy with George Meredith and of Meredith's 

 romantic devotion to Mrs. Meynell. It began in this way. Some fif- 

 teen years ago Meredith had told a mutual friend of theirs that he was 

 curious to know who ' Autolycus ' was who wrote the literary criticisms 

 in the ' Pall Mall Gazette,' and hearing it was Mrs. Meynell, wrote her 

 a very characteristic letter complimenting her on her style of writing 

 and inviting her and him to pay him a visit. ' You will find,' he said, 

 ' my daughter to receive you, she looks at literature through an eye 

 glass.' It happened soon after that an address was being presented to 

 Meredith by the Society of Authors, and Meynell and his wife joined 

 them and went down from London to Burford Bridge where Mere- 

 dith met them, and when the presentation was over drove her 

 back with him to his house on Box Hill, while Meynell walked. Dur- 

 ing the drive Meredith asked her whether she was not the author of a 

 certain book, to which Mrs. Meynell, who has a talent for silence, said 

 simply, 'No,' at which he expressed himself disappointed, and then 

 whether she was not Francis Thompson's sister, to which she again 

 said, ' No,' at which he expressed himself doubly disappointed. Never- 

 theless they speedily made friends and from that time for two or three 

 years he wrote to her, both letters and verses (these have not been 

 published) and professed a special devotion. It was a great interest 

 for both of them and was continued, as said, for several years. Thus 

 Meynell came to know him well, amongst other things his secret trouble 

 about his parentage, which cast a shadow over the novelist's life. The 

 trouble was that his father had been in trade, in fact a tailor, a fact 

 which in his later years he kept jealously concealed, though his first 

 novel, ' Evan Harrington,' published anonymously, had been founded 

 on that very theme. His father had been the well-known naval out- 

 fitter at Portsmouth and his grandfather's name had been Melchisedech, 

 as in the novel. Mention is to be found of him in Marryat's ' Peter 

 Simple,' and again in Hardy's letters to Nelson, where Hardy men- 

 tions that he had lodging at Portsmouth with ' the tailor Meredith.' 

 It is curious that having attained to the eminence where he was he 

 should have allowed so small a thing to annoy him. Meredith's life 

 latterly was a very lonely one, though he had many friends he had no- 

 body to be quite devoted' to him. He had talked of me to Meynell and 

 had once said, which I am glad to hear, ' Blunt is one of the few honest 

 men we have in public life.' He and I had much sympathy on many 

 matters, and I bear him the reverse of a grudge in that, being Chapman 

 and Hall's literary reader, he was the cause of my first little volume 



