The last time I saw him was in the July before the Great War, when he came down to tea, and talked cheerfully of all he was doing at Broome Park, and of the trees he intended to plant, and how I must come over from Lady Northcote’s at Eastwell Park and see his improvements. He certainly then had no idea of what lay before him. In a last letter written from the War Office (I think in 1915, but it is only dated “25th”) he speaks of trying to motor down some evening, but naturally never had time.
The final tragedy ended a great life, but he had done his work.
CHAPTER XVI
THE DIAMOND JUBILEE—INDIA—THE PASSING OF THE GREAT QUEEN
I realise that in the foregoing pages I have dwelt more on foreign lands than on our own country. This only means that they offered more novelty, not that England was less interesting to my husband and myself.
The great Lord Shaftesbury used to say that his was a generation which served God less and man more. I trust that only the latter half of this dictum has proved true, but certainly throughout Queen Victoria’s reign men and women seemed increasingly awake to their duty to their fellows and particularly to children.
Without touching on well-known philanthropic movements, I should like to mention one, unostentatious but typical of many others—namely, the “Children’s Happy Evenings Association,” founded by Miss Ada Heather-Bigg and inspired throughout its existence by the energy of her sister, Lady Bland-Sutton. This was the pioneer Society for organised play in the Board, now “County,” Schools. It owed much to the work of many of my friends, and was specially fortunate in the personal interest of its patron, now Queen Mary. Though the exigencies of the new Education Act compelled it to cease its voluntary work after the Great War, during thirty years it brought happiness into the lives of thousands of poor children.