That several of Mrs. Allingham's drawings should illustrate scenes connected with Great Britain's poets is not remarkable, seeing that her life has been so intimately bound up with one of them, but it is at first somewhat startling to find that the two selected for illustration here should treat of Milton and Waller, for was it not the latter who said of _Paradise Lost_ that it was distinguished only by its length. The accident that has brought them together here is perhaps that the two scenes are near neighbours, and, may be, the artist was tempted to paint the old oak through kindly sentiments towards the author of the sweet-smelling lines, "Go, Lovely Rose," by which his name endures. Coleshill, where the oak stands, is a "woody hamlet" near Amersham, and a mile or two away from Chalfont St. Giles. The tree which bears his name, and under which he is said to have composed much of his verse, dates from long anterior to the late days of the Monarchy, when he was more engaged in hatching plots than in writing verse. If, as is probable, he viewed and sought its comforting shade, he can hardly have believed that it would survive the fame of him who received such praise from his contemporaries as to be acclaimed "inter poetas sui temporis facile princeps." [Illustration: 7. APPLE AND PEAR BLOSSOM _From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Theodore Uzielli._ Painted 1901.] A charming little picture made out of the simplest details is this spring scene in an Isle of Wight lane. But if the details are of the simplest character, as much cannot be said for the methods employed by the artist in their treatment. These are so intricate that the drawing was perhaps the most difficult of any to reproduce, owing to the impossibility of accurately translating the subtle gradations which distinguish the tender greenery of trees, hedgerow, and bank. CHAPTER III THE ARTIST'S EARLY WORK Mrs. Allingham, whose maiden name was Helen Paterson, was born on September 26, 1848, near Burton-on-Trent, Derbyshire, where her father, Alexander Henry Paterson, M.D., had a medical practice. As her name implies, she is of Scottish descent on the paternal side. A year after her birth her family removed to Altrincham in Cheshire, where her father died suddenly, in 1862, of diphtheria, caught in attending a patient. This unforeseen blow broke up the Cheshire household, and the widow shortly afterwards wended her way with her young family to Birmingham, where the next few years, the most impressionable of our young artist's life, were to be spent amid surroundings which at that date were in no wise conducive to influencing her in the direction of Art of any kind.