'A very long span of events is brought back to memory by the announcement this week of the death of Lady Watkin at the the summer of 1851, when as a young we of 83. My mind runs back to a day in
Fondan, mainly to have a look at the provincial, I was paying my first visit to
"Great" International Exhibition of 1851." It was the first time that I had ever passed along the footways of the Strand—since then such very familiar ground—and I stopped to look ina window at some pictures of scenes in the great show at Hyde Park. They were engravings in the then very early numbers of the Mnstrated London Neves, whose fortun nude through the "immense public interest in Paxton's famous Palace of Glass. It seems odd to think that m in those remote days the Lady Watkin who died this week was getting on for 40. She was plain Mrs. Ingram at that time of day, wife of the founder of that which has since become the most famous and successful illustrated newspaper in the world. A time arrived when, through the honour bestowed upon her husband in consideration of his distinction as the founder of the journal, she became Lady Ingram.
was a great many years after that, when the founder ofthe paper was dead, and [had become a good deal better acquainted with English journalism, that T found. myself at a dinner in Kent in celebration of an election contest, sitting by the side of a very intelligent gentleman who told me many very interesting facts in the history of the Mustrated London News, and he turned out to be the cldest son of Lady Ingram. 'A generation passed by after that when one day I was introduced to the bride of Sir Edward Watkin. She was very bright and intelligent at the age of fourscore, and had just been married to Sir Edward Watkin, the projector of the still unrealized husband had watched the growth and culmination of the great, picture paper, but at about that time the L[lvstrated News was turned into a joint-stock company, and Sir Edward made such arrangements as left it quite out of the question that he would take any financial advantage out of this octogenarian marriage. There were nosharesto be had in that promising joint-stock company. I tried to get some by family favour, but nothing would induce anybody concerned to let any of the shares go out of the family. And the resolution was a wise one; for since then ths company has started The Sketch, which has become almost as good a property as the parent newspaper, and shares in the company must be worth quite double what they were at the date of Lady Ingram's second marriage. My latest recollection of Lady 'Watkin left' mo under the impression that she had a few years of green and happy old age as the wife of Sir Edward, who is one of the kindest and most considerate and sympathetic of men.
20th May.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.