ELIZABETH BISLAND WETMORE

[1861- 1

ELIZA

KATHERINE VERDERY

LIZABETH BISLAND was born in the State of Louisiana, February 11, 1861, on Fairfax Plantation. A big Palladian house with massive pillared porticoes, set amid a grove of old liveoaks, like so many of the residences of that date in the "Evangeline Country"; already famous through Longfellow's poem. It was the home of her father, Thomas Shields Bisland. He had studied medicine, but preferred the ampler, pleasanter life of the Southern sugar planter on his inherited estates to the laborious practice of his profession. His wife, Margaret Cyrilla Brownson, was a woman of marked beauty and decided literary ability, which under different circumstances might have brought her prominently into the world of letters.

Like most Americans the family combined many strains of blood. Thomas Bisland on the maternal side derived from the Huguenot Du Praslins, who early settled in South Carolina, and from Elizabeth, third daughter of John Knox, the Scotch Reformer by his second wife Lady Margaret Stuart, a cousin of Queen Mary. The Brownsons were descendants of the Asshetons, baronets of James I's creation and seated in Leicestershire from the time of the Conquest, and also from Sir Gregory Watts, Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Ralph Assheton was a connection by marriage of William Penn and assisted him in the foundation of his colony.

Elizabeth Bisland's great-grandmother was the second wife of Don Fernando Gayoso de Lemos, the last Spanish governor of the Province of Louisiana, who because of her fondness of canarycolored dresses was known throughout the territory as "The Yellow Countess."

Hugh Bisland was hanged at the Tolbooth in Edinborough in 1715 for going out with the Pretender. The family emigrated to South Carolina, but in 1778 their land was confiscated and their house burned because of their unrelenting Toryism, and for "giving aid and comfort to the British." They again emigrated to the Province of Louisiana, and securing a grant of land from the Spaniards, settled near what is now known as Natchez, Mississippi.

Elizabeth Bisland was the second child and one of a family of nine. Her advent being almost simultaneous with the outbreak of the Civil War, the sound of cannon and the smoke of battle formed the atmosphere of her infancy, and the bitter struggle of the recontsruction period robbed her of the irresponsible joys of childhood.

Her father entered the Confederate Army with the rank of lieutenant, but his medical education was soon pressed into service, and it was in the capacity of surgeon that he remained in the army throughout the war.

After the fall of Mobile the Federals, under the command of General Banks, ascended the Bayou Têche in force. The young mother and her two babies fled in an army ambulance through the Red River country to the old home in Natchez, and two bloody encounters took place at Fairfax. The Confederates under General "Dick" Taylor met the Union troops at this point and the fighting raged back and forth through the house itself. General Taylor in 'Destruction and Reconstruction' describes this engagement, at what he calls "Camp Bisland."

At the conclusion of the war the family returned to Louisiana to spend the bitter days of the reconstruction period. The story of hardships of this time in the South is a familiar one. Food of all kind was scarce and meat a rare luxury. Educational opportunities were almost non-existent. It was under such adverse circumstances that Elizabeth's childhood was spent.

"Big hominy" was the main staple of food for the growing little body, and a garret full of half mutilated books the only diet for a hungry mind. But the books were good. Old English classics and stately translations from the Greek and Latin poets. The fact that often the first and last pages of a volume were missing may have acted as a beneficial stimulus to the child's eager imagination, for she delighted to supply these defects to suit her own fancy.

When she was twelve years old the family inherited the ancestral place in Natchez and moved thither. It was at about this time that she began to write verse in secret. For a hiding place for her papers she used an old secret cupboard where money had been stored in the Spanish days, confiding her little manuscripts to its safe keeping during the hours when she assisted her mother in the care of the increasingly large family.

Mrs. Bisland was at this time also writing verse, much of which appeared in the New Orleans Times-Democrat, thus enabling her to add a few dollars to the wrecked fortunes of the family.

At sixteen Elizabeth made her first venture in this direction, sending a Christmas sonnet to the same paper which was, for some quaint youthful reason, now forgotten, signed B. L. R. Dane.

Overcome with the acute shyness so often attendant on the early efforts of sensitive and artistic natures, she walked miles to a neighboring village lest her own postmark betray her identity, oblivious to the fact that this close incognito prevented any remuneration reaching her.

Eagerly she watched the issues of the paper, and was rewarded by seeing the sonnet given a prominent place in the Christmas edition.

After that many verses appeared in its columns signed B. L. R. Dane, the quality of which attracted the attention of the editor to such an extent that he wrote Mrs. Bisland to ask if she knew a poet in her neighborhood by the name of Dane. This being discussed in the family circle Elizabeth shyly confessed the authorship. Both family and editor were amazed, the latter writing that he had supposed the poems written by an elderly man who had spent much time in England-for which impression the old English volumes in the garret must have been responsible.

The young authoress received back pay for all the work which had appeared, and this was her first capital.

The need of money becoming increasingly great, she soon went to New Orleans, where she was given a salaried position on the Times-Democrat. She worked incessantly writing reviews, verse, all sorts of stray articles, and practically filling the woman's department on the paper.

At first she lived in cheap lodgings in the French quarter of the city in order to send home as much of her salary as possible.

It was at this time that she met Lafcadio Hearn, young, sensitive and struggling like herself. They recognized in each other that close kinship of spirit which is the foundation of perfect friendship, and so long as he lived the relationship remained unclouded and unchanged.

In writing to her from Japan years after, Hearn gives an exquisite pen picture of her as she appeared to him at this time. "But you ought to see my study-room. It is not very prettya little Japanese matted room, with glass sliding windows (upstairs), and a table and chair. On the opposite wall is the shadow of a beautiful and wonderful person whom I knew long years ago in the strange city of New Orleans. (She was sixteen years old, or so, when I first met her; and I remember that not long afterwards she was dangerously ill, and that several people were afraid she would die in that quaint little hotel where she was stopping.)

"The shadows watch me while the night lasts. The lady talks to me about a fire of wreckwood, that used to burn with red and blue lights. I remember that I used to sit long ago by that

Rosicrucian glow, and talk to her; but I remember nothing else— only the sound of her voice-low and clear and at times like a flute. My memory is of a Voice and a Thought-multiple, both, exceedingly-but justifying the imagination of une jeunne fille un peu farouche (there is no English word that gives the same sense of shyness and force) who came into New Orleans from the country, and wrote nice things for the paper there, and was so kind to a particular kind of savage that he could not understand—and was afraid."

At the end of several years' work in New Orleans, she felt her field too limited and went accordingly to New York, reaching there with a few letters of introduction and fifty dollars in her pocket, but with high courage in her heart. She went directly to Mr. Chester Lord of the Sun and asked for work. He listened patiently and then looking at her kindly he said, "My dear little girl, pack your trunk and go back home; this is no place for you."

But on being assured that such a course was out of the question he consented to give her a trial.

She brought him an account of a negro burial with vivid touches of humor and pathos, which he not only accepted, but which led to her receiving many assignments from the Sun.

Gradually she gained a firm foothold in the newspaper circles of the Great City. As soon as her finances would permit, she' left the dreary atmosphere of boarding house life and took a modest little apartment. Here on Sunday afternoons the most interesting literary and artistic people of New York gathered about her tea table. Such men as Sir Henry Irving, Coquelin the elder, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Vassili Verestchagin, the painter, and Archibald Forbes, the war correspondent, came to listen to the "flutelike" voice which lived so musically in Hearn's memory. And of that "kindness" of which he also speaks there was no end.

Even when her own way was most thickly beset with difficulties she never turned a deaf ear to the perplexities of others struggling with the problem of living. She was quick with tactful advice and generous in praise of the least merit. In the battle for daily bread her fine womanliness suffered no tarnish, nor in future years of prosperity did she lose in any degree the great art of sympathy.

In 1889 she was doing work for the New York World, the New York Sun, the Illustrated American, writing the New York letter for the Brooklyn Eagle and the Chicago Tribune, and was an assistant editor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. She worked early and late producing an average of fifty thousand words a month, and earning some five thousand dollars a year.

It was at this time that Mr. Brisben Walker of the Cosmo

politan conceived the idea of sending a representative around the world with the object of beating Phineas Fogg's record of eighty days' circumnavigation in Jules Verne's fantastic book. His choice fell on Miss Bisland.

With only a few hours' preparation she started for San Francisco on November 14, 1889. At the end of seventy-six days of hard travel she returned to New York, having outstripped "Phineas Fogg" by four days.

Her account of the trip appeared first serially in the Cosmopolitan and later in book form under the title of 'Flying Trip Around the World.'

This was her first book and brought her considerable notice.

She had won many friends on the journey, one of whom was Lady Broome, who invited Miss Bisland to spend the coming season in London as her guest. The invitation was gladly accepted, and for the first time in her life she gave herself up to care-free enjoyment. She continued to write during this time but not under the whip and spur of necessity.

Lady Broome introduced her not only to social, but also to literary London, and here she met and made friends of Herbert Spencer, Jowett, the master of Balliol, Rudyard Kipling and Rhoda Broughton. The liking between the two last was cordial and mutual, and at the end of the season Miss Bisland followed Miss Broughton to her home in Oxford and secured nearby lodgings. Here she wrote in collaboration with Miss Broughton 'A Widower Indeed,' which subsequently appeared in book form on both sides of the Atlantic. Soon after its publication-in 1890-Miss Bisland became engaged to Mr. Charles W. Wetmore, an Ohio man by birth, but at the time a resident of New York. After graduating from Harvard University he was admitted to the New York Bar, where he became a prominent and successful corporation lawyer.

He had long known Miss Bisland and followed her to Oxford, where she became engaged. She returned to New York in 1891, and was married October the sixth.

Her pen lay idle for some time after this. The luxuries of life, which she appreciated too wisely to abuse, were now hers, and she had the pleasure of expressing her own individuality in a home, which she and Mr. Wetmore built at Oyster Bay, Long Island. Into the building and development of that charming Tudor house, with its acres of cultivated orchards and gardens, she put herself, giving personal supervision to every detail until the whole became expressive of her own charm.

But the necessity for more intellectual expression, which is the