But one thing I gained in the Court of Appeal.  The Court expressed a strong view as to my right of access, and directed me to apply to Sir George Jessel for it, stating that it could not doubt that he would give it.  I made the application and obtained an order of access to the children, seeing them alone, once a month; of a visit of the children to London twice a year, with their governess, for a week each time; of a week at the seaside in similar fashion once a year; of a weekly letter from each of them with the right of reply.  This order, obtained after such long struggle, has proved useless.  The monthly visit so upset my poor little daughter, and made her fret so constantly after me, that in mercy to her I felt compelled to relinquish it; on the first visit to the seaside, I was saddled with the cost of maintaining the Rev. Mr. and Mrs. Child, who were placed as guardians of the children, and who treated me in their presence as though I were a dangerous animal from whom they were to be protected.  To give but an instance of the sort of treatment I received, I wished Mabel to have the benefit of sea-bathing, and was told that she could not be allowed to bathe with me, and this with a suggestiveness that sorely taxed my self-control.  I could not apply to the Court against the ingenious forms of petty insult employed, while I felt that they must inevitably estrange the children from me if practised always in their presence.  After a vain appeal that some sort of consideration should be shown to me, an appeal answered by a mocking suggestion that I should complain to the Master of the Rolls, I made up my mind as to my future course.  I resolved neither to see nor to write to my children until they were old enough to understand and to judge for themselves, and I know that I shall win my daughter back in her womanhood, though I have been robbed of her childhood.  By effacing myself then, I saved her from a constant and painful struggle unfitted for childhood’s passionate feelings, and left her only a memory that she loves, undefaced by painful remembrances of her mother insulted in her presence.

Unhappily Sir George Jessel has terribly handicapped her future; left to me she would have had the highest education now open to girls; left to her present guardian she receives only fifth-rate teaching, utterly unfitted for the present day.  Twice I have offered to bear the whole expense of her education in the High School at Cheltenham, or in some London College, without in any way appearing in the matter, but each time my offer has been roughly and insultingly refused, and the influence that marred the mother’s life is undermining the future happiness of the child’s.  But I am not without hope that I may be able to obtain from the Court of Chancery an order for the benefit of its ward, and I trust before very long that I shall be able to insure to my child an education which will fit her to play her part worthily when she reaches womanhood.  I had hoped to save her from the pain