eleven, I was sighing over a sum in
algebra; it _wouldn't_ come right; but instead a whole poem came to me
suddenly. I wrote it down.

'From that day my "poetic career" began. At thirteen I wrote a long
poem _a la_ "Lady of the Lake"--1300 lines in six days. At thirteen I
wrote a drama of 2000 lines, a full-fledged passionate thing that I
began on the spur of the moment, without forethought, just to spite my
doctor, who said I was very ill and must not touch a book. My health
broke down permanently about this time, and, my regular studies being
stopped, I read voraciously. I suppose the greater part of my reading
was done between fourteen and sixteen. I wrote a novel, I wrote fat
volumes of journals: I took myself very seriously in those days.'

Before she was fifteen the great struggle of her life began. Dr.
Govindurajulu Naidu, now her husband, is, though of an old and
honourable family, not a Brahmin. The difference of caste roused an
equal opposition, not only on the side of her family, but of his; and in
1895 she was sent to England, against her will, with a special
scholarship from the Nizam. She remained in England, with an interval of
travel in Italy, till 1898, studying first at King's College, London,
then, till her health again broke down, at Girton. She returned to
Hyderabad in September 1898, and in the December of that year, to the
scandal of all India, broke through the bonds of caste, and married Dr.
Naidu. 'Do you know I have some very beautiful poems floating in the
air,' she wrote to me in 1904; 'and if the gods are kind I shall cast my
soul like a net and capture them, this year. If the gods are kind--and
grant me a little measure of health. It is all I need to make my life
perfect, for the very "Spirit of Delight" that Shelley wrote of dwells
in my little home; it is full of the music of birds in the garden and
children in the long-arched verandah.' There are songs about the
children in this book; they are called the Lord of Battles, the Sun of
Victory, the Lotus-born, and the Jewel of Delight.

'My ancestors for thousands of years,' I find written in one of her
letters, 'have been lovers of the forest and mountain caves, great
dreamers, great scholars, great ascetics. My father is a dreamer
himself, a great dreamer, a great man whose life has been a magnificent
failure. I suppose in the whole of India there are few men whose
learning is greater than his, and I don't think there are many men more