[Footnote:  My mother, Emma Winsloe, came of quite a different class from my father.  His ancestor of earliest memory was factor to Lord Bute, whose ploughman was Robert Burns, the poet.  His grandson was my grandfather Tennant of St. Rollox.  My mother’s family were of gentle blood.  Richard Winsloe (b. 1770, d. 1842) was rector of Minster Forrabury in Cornwall and of Ruishton, near Taunton.  He married Catherine Walter, daughter of the founder of the Times.  Their son, Richard Winsloe, was sent to Oxford to study for the Church.  He ran away with Charlotte Monkton, aged 17.  They were caught at Evesham and brought back to be married next day at Taunton, where Admiral Monkton was living.  They had two children:  Emma, our mother, and Richard, my uncle.]

My mother was more unlike my father than can easily be imagined.  She was as timid, as he was bold, as controlled as he was spontaneous and as refined, courteous and unassuming as he was vibrant, sheer and adventurous.

Fond as we were of each other and intimate over all my love-affairs, my mother never really understood me; my vitality, independent happiness and physical energies filled her with fatigue.  She never enjoyed her prosperity and suffered from all the apprehension, fussiness and love of economy that should by rights belong to the poor, but by a curious perversion almost always blight the rich.

Her preachings on economy were a constant source of amusement to my father.  I made up my mind at an early age, after listening to his chaff, that money was the most overrated of all anxieties; and not only has nothing occurred in my long experience to make me alter this opinion but everything has tended to reinforce it.

In discussing matrimony my father would say: 

“I’m sure I hope, girls, you’ll not marry penniless men; men should not marry at all unless they can keep their wives,’ etc.

To this my mother would retort: 

“Do not listen to your father, children!  Marrying for money has never yet made any one happy; it is not blessed.”

Mamma had no illusions about her children nor about anything else; her mild criticisms of the family balanced my father’s obsessions.  When Charty’s looks were praised, she would answer with a fine smile: 

“Tant soit peu mouton!”

She thought us all very plain, how plain I only discovered by overhearing the following conversation.

I was seventeen and, a few days after my return from Dresden, I was writing behind the drawing room screen in London, when an elderly Scotch lady came to see my mother; she was shown into the room by the footman and after shaking hands said: 

“What a handsome house this is. ...”

My mother (irrelevantly):  “I always think your place is so nice.  Did your garden do well this year?”

Elderly lady:  “Oh, I’m not a gardener and we spend very little time at Auchnagarroch; I took Alison to the Hydro at Crieff for a change.  She’s just a growing girl, you know, and not at all clever like yours.”