A Centuryan

In even the blithest comedy, the sorriest tragedy, or the strangest history, there comes a time when the last line is spoken and the heavy curtain from above descends unalterably. So it was at Clean, Scotland, that Death came to Mary Elizabeth Haldane, nee Sanderson. She had celebrated her 100th birthday but recently (TIME, May 4, EDUCATION). She remembered the first steam engine and the first balloon. She remembered the days when children honied from school blackened and blued by the schoolmaster's rod. She had seen George V throned and Edward VII laid away. She had seen the great Victoria, Queen and Empress, go to her last rest and, 64 years earlier, had seen the girl Victoria take the crown. She had seen the entire reign of William IV. And in 1830, at the age of 5--two years after she had mastered the little hieroglyphics that are the alphabet--she remembered donning a little black and white mourning frock for George IV, may he rest in peace. Last week, Britain mourned for her, and Britain had a right to mourn for the mother of so much of Britain's virtue: mother of Viscount Haldane of Cloan, twice Lord Chancellor; mother of Miss Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, scholar and first woman Justice of the Peace in Scotland; mother of Professor J. S. Haldane of Oxford; mother of Sir William S. Haldane, Crown Agent for Scotland; grandmother of Professor J. B. S. Haldane of Cambridge, famed biochemist. These were the fortune she bequeathed her country.