Her Hampstead home existed in Mrs. Riddell’s palmy days; she went through much subsequent trouble, backing a bill for a friend, paying debts for her husband, keeping a paralysed brother whose health necessitated constant care, and who was for many years a heavy drag upon her purse, all of which brought incessant anxiety upon the authoress. My father and my husband helped her substantially many times—so when they both died so suddenly she was even more handicapped by Fortune. She nobly struggled on until the year 1900, when, as already mentioned, I made a personal application to Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, for a sum of money towards purchasing an annuity for her. Much correspondence ensued, and, thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Balfour, a cheque for three hundred pounds was finally handed to me from the Civil List. Through the help of Mr. J. M. Barrie, a further couple of hundred pounds was obtained from the Royal Literary Fund. This, with some kindly contributions from my own personal friends, among whom may be mentioned Sir W. S. Gilbert, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Justin Huntley McCarthy, E. W. Hornung, and Anthony Hope Hawkins, was, however, found to be too small a sum to buy an annuity of real value, and, accordingly, I made that bold suggestion to the Society of Authors. It was finally agreed that I should hand over three hundred pounds direct to them, in consideration of their granting her a pension for life, the Society retaining the three hundred at her death. Mrs. Riddell thus became the first pensioner of the Society of Authors, of which she was one of the original members; and time after time she expressed to me her gratitude for that sixty pounds a year, her own private income being practically _nil_. The Society conferred a great benefit in bestowing this pension, and, at the same time, must feel proud to know it was given to one so worthy to claim it in the world of literature. Her struggles to work were magnificent, and she actually published her last book after she was seventy years of age. Nearly fifty years of penmanship is indeed a record. During the last months of her life she suffered much pain from cancer, and was constantly in her bed, not being able to write at all, and to read but little. I constantly went to see her, and wondered at her patience and grieved at her poverty and suffering. Then came her release; for such was the messenger of death to her tired spirit. And the few friends who saw her laid in the grave, felt it was so, and had the relief of knowing they had added to her comfort—and even the necessaries of life—in her last darkened years.