LADY WAKE'S REMINISCENCES

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 775, 26 March 1910, Page 10

LADY WAKE'S REMINISCENCES

Charlotte Lady Wake, whose "Re.' mmiscences'' have just been published, was sister of' Archibald Campbell Tait Archbishop of Canterbury. - She S born in 1800 and died in ISSB her'™!' collections thus covering the greater part of the nineteenth century. How " tar back they go is shown in a letter she wrote to Queen Victoria,' on her ' late Majesty's jubilee, in ISS7, in which" she recalled "the well-remembered jubilee of George the Third, when all were ; .expecting the French to land, a fear so' real that my father had a large car-' nage made,' to carry us and my mother. up to the hills." She was eleven years' older than her famous brother, and. acted as mother to him when their' mother died, besides acting once,'mora as: _mother of the house" when the' archbishop lost his wife. Her remiriis. '■ cences are chiefly concerned with tha domestic side of her brother's life; and} she says little about his important public acts. Lady Wake' ; remembered the time when England and- Scotland were very unlike in manner and thought.' She saw (writes the "Athenaeum'!); the French prisoners shivering over!', their ingenious industries in Edinburgh! Castle; she remembered the huge 'cara* van' or omnibus which was to bear the. family to safety when 'Boney's' flee'tf should, appear in tie Firth of Forth;.' she could recall the burning of, a sup- : posed changeling, and the scoring of aj witch 'aboun the breath.' " In the writer's early days commisH skms in the army were granted to in-i fants,' who rose to high military' rank!' wlieh scarcely out of their "cradles. When Lady Honeyman in Park Place; inquired what "all that crying in the? nursery" was about, the answer was:—* "Oh, my leddy," there'snaething the! matter; it's only the major greeting foe his parritch." We learn from this intertaining volume that th'e Eaxl of Shaftesbury, of evangelical memory,! was "a magnificently handsome youth, full of fun and frolic"; that the rector of the parish drove to Doncaster raoei on a Sunday, to be in time for the St* Leger, which was then run on a Mon-* ■ day, and that the Archbishop of York! attended the race on.horseback, -to the -. consternation, of ■ two young , Scottish; ladies "carefully educated in the Prey, byterian Church."