Family Pedigree

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 101, 30 May 1941, Page 5

Family Pedigree

ONCE upon a time, there were three sisters. That. I feel, is how this story ought to begin. But actually there were five sisters. And I ought to go on to say that they were the daughters of a king, and had a cruel step-mother. But truth compels me to state that they were the daughters of a» Wesleyan minister, and lived in Birmingham. They were rather remarkable sisters. They shared among them generous amounts of beauty and of brains, and they were very attractive. And they married and had some remarkable children and grandchildren. One of the sisters married a Mr. Kipling and had a son named Rudyard. Another married a certain Mr. Baldwin, who had large railway interests, and was for 16 years a member of the House of Commons; and they had a son named Stanley. who became Prime Minister of England, and was elevated to the peerage as Earl Baldwin of’ Bewdley. Yet another sister married Sir Edward Poynter the artist. And still another was the wife of a still more famous artist, Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Now the BurneJoneses had a son Philip and a daughter Margaret. Margaret married Mr. J. W. Mackail, the famous classical scholar; and they had a son’ and. two daughters. The son is Denis Mackail, ,well-known as the writer of rather light novels; and one of the two daughters, the subject of my talk to-day, became Mrs, Thirkwell, and is well-known to a host of admiring readers as: Angela Thirkwell-("A Few Minutes with Women Novelists." ‘by Margaret Johnston, 2YA, May 17).