Florence Marryat by Helen C. Black — Read

Battling with a fierce snowstorm, and a keen east wind, which drives the flakes straight into your face like repeated stings of a small sharp whip, a welcome shelter is presently found in Florence Marryat's pretty, picturesque little house in St. Andrew's Road, West Kensington. Two bright red pots filled with evergreens mark the house, which is built in the Elizabethan style of architecture, with a covered verandah running along the upper part. By a strange coincidence, the famous author has settled down within a stone's throw of the place where her distinguished father -- the late Captain Marryat, R. N. -- once lived. Until three months ago, there stood in the Fulham Palace Road, a large, handsome building enclosed in ten acres of ground, which was first called "Brandenburg Villa," and was inhabited by the celebrated singer Madame Sontag.

It next fell into the hands of the Duke of Sussex, who changed its name to Sussex House, and finally sold it to his equerry Captain Marryat, who exchanged it with Mrs. Alexander Copeland for the Manor of Langham, in Norfolk, where he died. For some years past Sussex House has been in Chancery, but now it is pulled down; the land is sold out in building plots, and the pleasure grounds will be turned into the usual streets and rows of houses for the needs of the ever-increasing population. The study -- or as Florence Marryat calls it, her "literary workshop" -- is very small, but so well arranged that it seems a sort of _multum in parvo_, everything a writer can want being at hand. It has a look of thorough snugness and comfort. The large and well-worn writing table is loaded with books of reference and a vast heap of tidily-arranged manuscript, betokening the fact that yet another new novel is under weigh.