Apr., 1890 . 
CONSTANCE C. W. NADEN. 
75 
idolised by the grand-parents, who religiously kept every 
scrap of her writing and drawing, but they never 
spoiled her. Nothing remarkable is remembered of her 
uneventful childhood, except her extremely retentive memory 
and her absolute veracity. A writer in a contemporary truly 
says:—“ So intense was her love of truth that deception or 
prevarication were simply impossible to her.” She was 
baptized in St. Mary’s Church, Birmingham, but while she 
resided with her grand-parents she attended—as I am informed 
by a relative—the Wycliff, Mount Zion, and Church of the 
Redeemer Baptist places of worship. She was first taught 
to read by her grandmother, a lady of refined culture, the 
method adopted being that of a little book called “Reading 
without Tears,” where she learned the words at sight without 
first learning her letters. The method commends itself as 
being in harmony with that procedure, “ from the simple to 
the complex,” laid down by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his 
“ Education,” as illustrated by “the modern course of placing 
grammar not before language but after it.” 
Her old nurse and foster mother (Mrs. Pratt) affection¬ 
ately treasures (and recently exhibited to me with natural 
pride) a series of seven photographs taken at various periods 
during the life of her “ dear lamented darling,” from that of 
a lovely baby in arms of twelve months until the age of 
thirty-one years, which show most interestingly the evolution 
of the features from the earliest commencement up to the 
highly intellectual face brought out by the well-known 
Whitlock portrait, taken in 1887. 
When eight years old she was sent to a small private day 
school in Frederick Road, kept by the Misses Martin, two 
Unitarian ladies of considerable culture, with whom she re¬ 
mained until the age of 16 or 17 years, about which period her 
intellect began to make rapid progress. Mrs. F. T. S. Houghton, 
a life-long friend and schoolfellow, to whom I am greatly 
indebted, thus writes to me of these days:—“The teaching 
was thorough as far as it went, but entirely lacking in incen¬ 
tives to mental effort. There were no examinations and little 
competition, so that although in many subjects Miss Naden 
enjoyed the distinction of a class to herself, her schoolfellows 
scarcely realised that there was anything remarkable about 
the quiet unassuming girl who never paraded her talents, 
and entered with simple enjoyment into all school games 
and interests. Much time and enthusiasm were given 
in the school to flower painting, and Miss Naden’s first 
laurels were won in this art, her patient brush producing 
