Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/67

Rh be held in Rother Market a Stratford Mop or Bull roast, where six oxen will be roasted whole on the occasion of servants being hired by the farmers of the neighbourhood. The inhabitants seem to be more cheerful than is generally the case in little provincial towns. They love the theatre, and every Thursday evening have dances on the green by the river-side, when the gardens are festively lit up with Chinese lanterns. Fancy! the curfew is still rung here from September to March! It is chiming at this moment from the grey old chapel of the Guild of the Holy Cross, and makes me feel like a mediæval nun."

Mathilde Blind saw, indeed, more of rural England in her latter years than ever before. She stayed near Tring with Mrs. Mona Caird, an attached friend, whose society she found especially exhilarating; joined, in 1895, a large house-party at Mrs. Hills of Corby Castle; and in 1896 spent a considerable time at Cambridge, where she especially enjoyed the acquaintance of the Regius Professor of Medicine, Dr. Clifford Allbutt. The object of her visit was a serious one; she was conscious of the. decay of her strength, and wished to provide as prudently and effectively as might be for the disposition of her property in aid of female education. After visiting several institutions she fixed upon Newnham College, Cambridge, as the one most in conformity with her ideal, and the greater part of her estate was bequeathed to it. Soon after the execution of her testamentary dispositions increasing weakness obliged her to take refuge in an invalids' home in the south of London. Conscious of the inevitable termination of her illness, she did not deem it so near at hand as was in fact the case, and bore up against disease most courageously, going out in a