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Hello, there is a woman, novelist Anthony Trollope wrote, of whom not to speak in a work purporting

to be a memoir of my own life would be to omit all allusion to one of the chief pleasures

which has graced my later years.

In the last 15 years, she has been, out of my family, my most chosen friend.

She is a ray of light to me, from which I can always strike a spark by thinking of her.

I do not know that I should please her or do any good by naming her. But not to allude to her in these pages

would amount almost to a falsehood. I could not write truly of myself without saying that such a friend had been vouchsafed to me. I trust she may live to

read the words I have now written and to wipe away a tear as she thinks of my feeling while I write them."

End quote.

Who was this woman who graced Trollips later years?

Well, scholars believe the reference was to an American woman named

Kate Field, whose life and writing career are more worth more than a footnote.

Born in 1838 to actor parents,

she began publishing poetry at the age of nine.

At the age of 16, she was sent to Europe to round out her education, where she fell into a number of pursuits

she wrote for American newspapers, she lived in Florence, where she studied studied voice and according to legend she was

kidnapped in Sicily by a gang of brigands and demanded a ransom after being held for six weeks

Her family eventually paid the money, but by then the gang leader had fallen in love with Kate Field and was insisting on marriage. When she refused him, he gave up the gang life and joined a monastery instead.

In her 30s, Kate Field returned to the United States and went on the lecture circuit, crossing paths with Mark Twain.

She was an opinionated journalist, art critic, and cultural critic, arguing against against prohibition and the Statue of Liberty

which she thought was a poor use for an island. She was so successful as a journalist and lecturer

...