human and otherwise. Belonging to a family in the highest
circles, it was upon the table d'hote of her destiny that she should
become a regulation debutante, careeristina, and successful wife and
mother. Instead, she chose to question the whole routine of the life
of her class, and in her diary she records her doubts and cravings,
and her revolt against what is assumed by her family and friends to be
the normal course of existence for her. The attitudes and questionings
in these passages, the religious feeling displayed, are distinctly
masculine. Most easily could the following, for instance, pass as
having been written by a man: "I desire for a considerable time only
to lead a life of obscurity and toil, for the purpose of allowing
whatever I may have received of God to ripen, and turning it some day
to the glory of His Name. Nowadays people are too much in a hurry
both to produce and consume themselves. It is only in retirement, in
silence, in meditation that are formed the _men_ who are called to
exercise an influence upon society." In a note-book she puts May 7,
1852, as the date upon which she was conscious of a call from God
to be a saviour. Now the vast majority of women who have remained
spinsters at 32, in spite of considerable personal attractions and
high natural ability, are visited by waves of emotional fervor for a
de-personalization of the self. But in the case of the subject, as
Strachey has so well shown, the call was pursued with a self-willed,
pitiless, unscrupulous determination, worthy of Satan himself upon the
most ferocious evil bent. In its pursuit indeed she became what her
latest biographer has called a "woman possessed by a Demon." All
necessary, not alone because if she had been meek and mild she would
have existed in futility, but because of the high percentage of the
masculine endocrines in her composition. It is most regrettable that
we have no statement of the findings of a gynecologic examination of
her. That she was almost consciously masculine may be inferred not
only from the way she bullied Lord Pannure and worked to death her
dearest friend with the angelic temper, Sidney Herbert, who was so
amiable that he could be driven by one who wrote: "I have done with
being amiable. It is the mother of all mischief." She could also
write, "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an
excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and _other men_.
When a disaster happens, I act