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“Kiss me, Mother, ere I die;

Kiss me-kiss me, Mother, ah!

Kiss, ah! kiss me e-ere I—

Kiss me, Mother, ere I d-d-die!”

She wrote the words to them herself, and other poems. In lighter moments she wrote waltzes, one of which, the “Kensington Coil,” was almost national to Kensington, having a sweet dip in it. Thus:

It was very original. Then there were her “Songs for Little People,” at once educational and witty, especially “Gran’ma’s Porgie,” and that ditty, almost prophetically imbued with the coming Imperial spirit, entitled “Black Him In His Little Eye.”

Any publisher would take these, and reviews like “High Living,” and the “Ladies’ Genteel Guide” went into raptures over: “Another of Miss Francie Forsyte’s spirited ditties, sparkling and pathetic. We ourselves were moved to tears and laughter. Miss Forsyte should go far.”

With the true instinct of her breed, Francie had made a point of knowing the right people—people who would write about her, and talk about her, and people in Society, too—keeping a mental register of just where to exert her fascinations, and an eye on that steady scale of rising prices, which in her mind’s eye represented the future. In this way she caused herself to be universally respected.