Michael Fairless by William Scott Palmer

Margaret Fairless Barber was born on the 7th of May 1869 at Castle Hill, Rastrick, in the W. Riding of Yorkshire, in the house that had been her grandfather's, and where her father was also born. She was the youngest of the three daughters of the late Fairless Barber and Maria Musgrave, his wife, and was christened after the great-grandmother, whose violet eyes she inherited, eyes that had reappeared in one member of each generation, though in Margaret's case the violet gradually turned to a most beautiful grey. It is perhaps worth recording for the curious in such matters, that this family of five members had but three birthdays. The eldest and youngest girls were born on the same day at a nine years' interval, and the second girl on her father's birthday: only the mother had a day to herself, a fact for which the children used to feel it appropriate to offer affectionate sympathy as being such a lonely condition. A grandchild-her eldest daughter's first child-subsequently removed this reproach by appearing within a few hours of the anniversary. As Michael Fairless undoubtedly inherited many of their tendencies, it may not be inappropriate to give a slight description of her parents and the home in which she spent her earlier years.

Her father was educated at St Peter's at York, where he distinguished himself in mathematics, painting, and poetry, writing the Prize Poem one year. He subsequently took up his father's profession of the law, and acquired a large practice. All the work which this entailed did not, however, prevent him from the pursuit of his private tastes, which were antiquarian and literary. He collected old oak and books, and gradually amassed a library of his favourite subjects: archeology, topography, travels, essays, poetry; standard novels and the Cornhill Magazine, which in those days contained the work of Thackeray, George Eliot, George Meredith, Mrs Browning, and others. He was gentle, quiet, and studious, well-read, an excellent Latin scholar, and a man with a keen sense of humour, absolutely devoted to his home and family.