A WOMAN OF THE EMPIRE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 May 1920, Page 9

A WOMAN OF THE EMPIRE.

A WONDERFUL LIFE. London, Jan. 15. t A life wonderful closed on New Year's day when Elizabeth Louisa (Mrs. 11. B) Grigg died at tlie age of S3 years in her house at Onflow Gardens. She liad gone down to tiic country just before Christmas to make one of a large narty of friends and children at Cliveden House, Taplow. Always full of life, slip was in exceptionally good spirits, even ■for her, and had thrown herself with delight into a regular children's Christmas, with Christmas trees, Kate Greenaway, tableaux vivants, and a fancy drcsa dance. On Saturday evening, December 2(i, she was taken suddenly ill. She endured a short hut trying illness with complete serenity, and died most peaceful} - late on New Year's night.

Her girlhood was spent in Sydney, New South Wales, where she wpp born in ■ a year before Queen Victoria's accession to the throne; and she could well remember coming home in a sailing ship round Cape Horn about the time of the Crimea War and doing the grand tour of Europe with her father and mother 111 one of the travelling carriages of the period. Her father, Sir Edward Deas-Thomson, was a man of wide experience and great ability, whose mind and influence remained strong in her throughout her life. Trained for the Civil Service in England by i',is own father, Sir John Deas-Thomson, who was one of Lord Barham's chief assistants at the Admiralty during the Napoleonic wars, he travelled early in Canada and the United States, and had then taken an appointment in Australia under Sir Richard Bourke, then Governor of New South Walei Bourke was a soldier who had been wounded early in his service with his regiment, tlie Grenadier Guards, and had afterwards served with distinction on Wellington's stair in the Peninsula. A kinsman and in early youth a ward of Edmund Bourke, he had considerable political ability, and left his mark on both the colonies, Cape Colony and New South Wales, which he afterwards governed.

Edward Deas-Thomson apparently impressed him favorably from the outset, for in a very short time he had given him his daughter in marriage and made him Colonial Secretary of the Colony—a job denounced in verse by no less a lampoonist than Bob Lowe, the future Lord Sherbrooke, then practising unsuccessfully at the Sydney bar. The appointment was, however, justified by results. Deas-Thomson steered the colony through the excitement and dangers of the gold rush, had much to do with"'the framing of the Act which gave it responsible Government, came Home to see that Act through Parliament, and returned to end his days in the public service of the colon}' which he loved.

Elizabeth, as the eldest nf ,1 large family, always acted till her Tiiarriage as her father's secretary and confidante, and she could remember liirn moving a resolution in the Legislative Council in favor of the Federation of Australia—a farsighted aspiration which was not realised till half a century afterwards. She had a vivid memory of the Svdney of those days, and often spoke of its' attractions, with its keen young society of ficvermnent officials, University and professional men, almost entirely recruited from the English universities, and its background of squatters of the patriarchal times coming in to race and dance. The convict community at Botany Bay was disappearing in lic'r youth, but she could remember it. It is not yet realised in this country how large a* proportion of this community were political offenders, such as Chartists or poachers, I and bad boys of the countryside, trans- ! ported for very light offences. She could remember many instances of involuntary immigrants of this.type who had become a credit to "their adopted land. In 1870 she married Henry Bidewell Grigg, a young Indian civilian on sick leave from Madras, and threw herself whole-heartedly for the jiext 25 years into Indian life. It was an India still responding gratefully to paternal government. Her husband was an innovator by nature, whose ideas she shared with enthusiasm, and she also did much on her own aecounfto assist Indian ladies and to spread the cultivation of music and art in Indian homes. Like all English mothers in Indian homes, she went through the bitterness of division from either husband or children which Indian life necessitates; but she travelled constantly between England and India, and never lost touch with her children, though parted from them often for many months.

Her husband died suddenly from typhoid fever m 1895, while slip*ivas on her way home. Devoted to him and fervently believing in his work and career, just on the threshold of wider'influence she had to face the complete coilaspe of her universe and make life her herself anew. She returned at once to India to clear up and say good-bye, and then settled down to the care of her children, while still maintaining touch with her old friends and interests. She lived <in London for the last 2"> years of her life, returning once on a short visit to India when her daughter married. There was nothing in this life which was not shared by hundreds of other Englishwomen of her type and time; but she was exceptional of her understanding of Imperial questions, because, With her long experience first in a sclf-pro-visjoning colony, and then in India she knew the problem as a whole. She also realised as very few the human side, and more particularly the women's side, of Empire; and always held that Englishwomen, no less than Englishmen, must train and devote themselves to that cause, if the great fabric was to endure She always felt herself indeed a liviiu' part, however small, of the wonderful British organism which circles the world. She understood its needs from personal experience, and kept abreast of its changes of thought and feeling up to her last day with wonderful freshness of mind. It was her greatest pride to have spent her life in the companionship of men with whom the service of the Empire came before all other claims, and she proved her own mettle in that service again and again—not least when, from her 78th to S2nd year, her only son was at the front in France.

But when all this is said it leaves the greater part unsaid—her open-mimled-ness, her fairness, her instant apprehension of beauty in any form, her warmheartedness her sincerity, her quickness of temper her abiding and unfaiim c charm. If she never turned her backon any of life's trials she welcomed its joys ancl wonders with open arms Endowed with so many gifts and sonsibilities, she had but on? fear, l| v ln°- 30 long, to outlive her powwa; and from that she whs spared. »!,„ Wils interpreting Debussy to herself a week before site

died, and in her sketching she was always trying ljew forms. At four score, in .her quick sense of beauty everywhere and keen apprehension of all she did, she was still a girl at heart. All she saw, all she felt, she could interpret- As a beautiful example of her power of seeing great things whole and bringing all her talents to bear together nothing was more like her than'her very last bit of work. It was a sale of her own sketches, entirely organised by herself, to assist the liaplc Club to send out British school teachers -io Western Canada. One of her last delights was to know that the sale went well. But everyone who knew her was aware that silo saw the chief reward of her life in the career of her only son. Colonel E. W. M. Grigg, formerly colonial editor of the Times, and now military secretary to the Prince of Wales, fortunately trained and endowed to be the companion of His Royal Highness on those recent rnd coming journeys through the British Commonwealth which are not. the least significant episodes of contemporary 1 history. So much, and yet one has not described her. The sense of inward radiance she gave out cannot be conveyed, and the happy light of the mind wis with her to the close.