It is at 41, Hans Place, a delightful old-1 fashioned Chelsea house, replete with artistic treasures and antiquities, that Lady Lindsay, one of the most talented women poets of to-day, has resided for a number of years. Here it was that Shelley once lodged, and here Lady Lindsay has written the greater part of the ten volumes of poems which have been published under her name, and which have earned for her considerable distinction in the world of letters.

Lady Lindsay frankly confesses that she was born with a passion for poetry. She was scarcely five when she earned the remonstrances of her parents through writing verses after she had gone to bed; but even the removal of the light failed to suppress her juvenile versifying effouts, for she recalls with considerable amusement how she solved the difficulty by pricking out rhymes with a pin on the white cartridge paper lining a chest of drawers. Her precocity, indeed, caused her parents no little anxious thought, for it was feared that her studious temperament might affect her health. These fears were belied, however, and little

Blanche F i t z r o y Lady Lindsay is the daughter of the late

R t. Hon. Henry

Fitzroy, M.p. - gained strength while acquiring knowledge.

She was taught to read and write in French be fore

English, and at fifteen taught herself Greek.

An omnivorous reader, she also found time to study art as well as literature.

And her success with brush and palette has been almost equal to that which she has won with her pen. She became a prominent member of the Royal Institute of Water Colour?, and several of the pictures which adorn the walls of her charming house were greatly admired by her friends Sir John Millais and Sir Edward

Burne-Jones.

Mention of these two famous artists recalls me fact that Lady Lindsay has always moved in a circle of literary and artistic celebrities. Browning, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, George Eliot, Lowell, and many other distinguished writers were numbered amongst her friends, and she has many interesting personal reminiscences to relate concerning them.

Blanche Lindsay From a miniature by Mrs. Kate Perugini daughter of diaries Dickens

"I knew Browning and his sister Sarianna fairly well," she said a short time ago, "but only many years after the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. One day I asked Browning about his late wife. 'tell me,' I said, 'what she was like. 'i cannot,' he replied; 'i cannot talk about her, but come and see.' After that, in the house near the Harrow Road, where he lived, he showed me a bust of his wife - a pensive, intellectual face, with drooping, long curls on either side; beautiful dark curls they were, I believe, but colourless, of course, in the white marble.

"I knew Adelaide Proctor's mother well," continued Lady Lindsay, "a sturdy and interesting personality, who in old age thought nothing of climbing on foot, when returning from a party, to the fifth floor of the mansions where she lived. Robert Browning, James Russell Lowell and other distinguished men were her constant visitors, and on her eightieth birthday Lowell wrote a poem in her honour, beginning, ' I know a young lady of 80.' "

It was in 1890 that Lady Lindsay's first book of poems, entitled "Lyrics," was published, and the charm and pathos of the verses quickly earned for it a fame richly deserved. Then followed "A String of Beads," verses for children, in 1802; "The King's Last Vigil," in 1894; "The Flower Seller," in 1896; "The Apostle of the Ardennes" in 1899; "The Prayer of St. Scholastica," in 1900; "A Christmas Posy," in 1902; "From a Venetian Balcony." 1903; "Poems of Love and Death" and "Godfrey's Quest" in 1907, all of which have earned the praise of the critics.

Perhaps the most widely read of her works is the "King's Last Vigil," which had a most interesting origin. "The whole of that poem," says Lady Lindsay, "even to the last detail, was revealed to me in a dream. Curiously enough, 'the Oracle' was the outcome of the same source of inspiration."

In 1907, Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd., who have published most of Lady Lindsay's works, issued a selection of her poems, and the power, pathos and charm of her writings may be judged from the following extracts.

A Prayer

God of war! God of war! Thine the strength and Thine the might. Be Thou with us, day and night, Through the darkness, in the light,

Near and far. Guard our armies, guard our men, Fathers, brothers, husbands, when Death and danger lead the fight God of war!

God of peace! God of peace Keep our homes, and keep the land,

Women, children, in Thy band. Grant that strife on yonder strand

Soon may MM. I. for victory we cry, Peace comes after victory, Sorrow flies at Thy command God of peace!

Doubting Nay, do not ask me once again, Thy very doubting gives me pain;

Have I not said (and. while I speak, Here's hand on hand, and cheek on cheek) Dear heart, I love thee?

And yet, thy doubt to love allied Is sweet, so sweet I dare not chide. Cease not thy love, cease not thy doubt; O child, I could not live without 1 Dear heart, I love thee.

For love's not love that dreads no ill, And doubt like this means loving still. And both together fill thy heart, To make thee lovely as thou art; Dear heart, I love thee.