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Notes for Anne REDFERN

'She was a remarkable woman in many ways, and from her were inherited those gifts of mind and that sterling character that were so conspicuous in her son. She had great decision and self-possession, courage to face difficulties, a certain authoritativeness of tone combined with unfailing patience and kindness; and with all this she maintained a real intellectual life and interest of her own, with a love for and skill in music that lifted her children and those about her to a level where it was natural for them to be concerned in good books and public affairs and some of the fine arts, instead of with over-much personal talk or the mere details of domestic life.

She was an accomplished French scholar, and in one of her letters to her son, after she had been reading the novel Consuelo, remarked, "I cannot think why French should seem so much more charming to read than English, but it is so to me, and I assure you when the last number of Deronda was brought in I did not feel inclined to put down Consuelo to read it." And beneath these traits of mind and character there lay a sober and undemonstrative piety of heart which never wavered. All these characteristics of her mind come out plainly in her correspondence in later years, and were well known to those friends who were intimate with Mrs. Bodington when she spent the evening of her life under her son's roof.' Taken from Sir Nathan Bodington's biography.

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