Mildred looked at the world through very personal lorgnettes, which she held a little bit askew, making what she saw just odd enough to be funny without interfering with the truth of her vision. In the memorial volume written by some of her friends after her death, there is not one of the little studies which does not attempt to describe her talk.
Dolly Ponsonby said: ‘Her great quality was what is ordinarily called a gift of sympathy, but which, in Mildred’s case, I would call interest. There was nothing you could do, or say, or write to Mildred—the smallest thing—that did not interest her profoundly. There seem, now that she is gone, so many things that one could only tell to Mildred. To say that she was sympathetic is true, but does not exactly describe her attitude of mind. She did not necessarily agree with you because she liked you and this gave her companionship a savour. If she disagreed with her friends, they were never offended, because she was so amusing, so genuinely interested and concerned … and with Mildred we felt clever, amusing and attractive.… Certainly she had the power of transmuting prosaic and everyday things into exciting and funny things. She could extract amusement from a door-scraper.… She retained some of the absurd caprices of youth, enthusiasms or dislikes for unaccountable things; there was the charm of the unexpected and the unexplained.’
Gladys Meyrick speaks of Mildred’s gift as a raconteuse, and Dorothy of her ‘Subtle sense of humour, too much for everyday people who often did not understand her’.
Yoi Maraini draws two pictures of Mildred talking. ‘When I saw her last, a short time before she died, she lay in bed explaining to me how the wireless worked in her room. She described vividly the strange sounds she heard, sometimes, late at night when, unable to sleep, she listened. It seemed to me, in hearing her, as if she, with a few words, brought the whole world—throbbing and palpitating with life—into her small room. The trees outside, close to the windows, dripped with rain, the light through them was sad beyond words; with death so near we might have felt closed in, shut away, afraid of the unknown. Instead of that, I look back on that day as if, then, with her and through her, I had seen and heard the cities and the forests of the world in the laughing company of a gay comrade.’
And again: ‘Sometimes when talking with Mildred of merely passing interests, she would suddenly lean forward, look into one’s eyes and ask a question about one’s most intimate feelings. This was done in such a way that it was not possible, for any sincere person, to answer her evasively or with a lie. Under the light talk she had detected something that was vitally important and she cared enough to want to discuss the matter. I can think of nothing that it would have been impossible to talk out with Mildred. The most tortuous paths of the mind, the most illogical, and the most inconsistent actions would have been understood by her.’
Christina Gibson ‘would like to give a picture of Mildred half mirthful, half consumed with warm pity or sympathy, twinkling and teasing.… Her intuition was at times uncanny, like talking to a fairy creature.’
One of her nieces called her ‘ such an easy person to be alone with’; while another wrote: ‘Another thing we relied on from her was criticism; she was impatient of dullness or stupidity and expected people to be what she was herself—gay, lively and amusing, and of “quick understanding”.… She had almost perfect knowledge of what was going on in another’s mind.… While she talked we listened and laughed or were deeply interested in her very definite but unusual ideas about people and all the many other things we discussed. Definite ideas, but she had a curiously indefinite way of expressing them; or perhaps only half expressing, and yet with it she was illuminating and made us think, and see things that we never saw before.’
Gwen Plunket Greene wrote: ‘She could be scathing, mocking, and critical, full, too, of spice and wickedness.… She would listen with the whole of her attention, the whole of her mind absorbed.… Her constant occupation with the feelings and thoughts of others made her more understanding than almost anyone I have ever known.’
And Brian Howard tells how once he saw a very lovely view with Mildred. ‘I admired what we saw and said so, but Mildred said nothing. She loved what she saw too much to do anything but smile. And the reason why I remember that spring afternoon, and I think always will, is because she smiled at me.’
Can these various extracts bring to the mind of those who will never know her anything of the savour of Mildred’s companionship—rare in her speech, rarer still in her gift of eloquent listening?
Anne Douglas Sedgwick was another enchanting talker. Her conversation was greatly helped by her appearance which, with her white hair and bright-blue eyes, was as dazzling as a
