He was soon transferred to the London customs, and his family came with him to England, so his daughter was placed at a school at Staplehurst in Kent.
She early displayed an aptitude for story-writing, and part of her first novel, Mary Bertrand, she composed at the age of fifteen.
In 1869 she contributed to the Churchman's Family Magazine an historical tale, called "Bellasis; or, the Fortunes of a Cavalier", which was the joint production of herself and her father.
A visit to Scotland, where her elder brother had settled as a clergyman of the Scottish Episcopal Church, led to her writing, in 1876, A Scotch Wooing, the first of her books that attracted attention.
[1] Her novels are, with the exception of Bellasis, tales of domestic life, with comparatively little incident, but marked by good feeling and refined taste.