Friendly Visiting among the Poor: A Handbook for Charity Workers

by Mary Ellen Richmond

[3] Miss Pickton in London "Charity Organization Review," Vol. X, p. 538.

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CHAPTER XI

THE FRIENDLY VISITOR

I have tried to make a number of specific suggestions in the foregoing pages, but it is needless to say that only a few of these are likely to be useful to any one visitor, and it would be fatal to apply them all to one family. In the effort to be specific, I fear that I may have been as exasperating as the cook-books, which, in a similar effort, will suggest, "take a salamander," or "take a slip of endive," when neither is obtainable. Cook-books have their modest uses, however, and the cooks who are most skilful in skipping recipes not intended for them will turn the others to the best account.

In avoiding the danger of representing friendly visiting as a pleasant diversion, I may have gone to the other extreme, and represented it rather as an arduous and {180} exacting profession. It is so far from being this, that professional visiting can never be friendly. In fact, friendly visiting is not any of the things already described in this book. It is not wise measures of relief; it is not finding employment; it is not getting the children in school or training them for work; it is not improving sanitary arrangements and caring for the sick; it is not teaching cleanliness or economical cooking or buying; it is not enforcing habits of thrift or encouraging healthful recreations. It may be a few of these things, or all of them, but it is always something more. Friendly visiting means intimate and continuous knowledge of and sympathy with a poor family's joys, sorrows, opinions, feelings, and entire outlook upon life. The visitor that has this is unlikely to blunder either about relief or any detail; without it, he is almost certain, in any charitable relations with members of the family, to blunder seriously. Visitors have said to me that they could not see that they had been of any special service, though their friendly feeling for certain families made it impossible to stop visiting. These visitors {181} who have no story to tell have often done the greatest good. "One of the women we had not seen since she first came to us some four years before," writes Miss Frances Smith, "and we remembered her distinctly as quite ordinary then. Imagine our surprise in finding that a certain dignity and earnestness, akin to that of the visitor, had crept into this woman's life, and found expression in her face and bearing. Such transfigurations cannot take place in a few weeks or months; they are of slow growth, but they are the best rewards of friendship." [1]

The rewards of friendly visiting and the best results of such work are obviously not dependent upon the suggestions of a handbook. As Miss Octavia Hill has said, success in this depends no more on rules than does that of a young lady who begins housekeeping. "Certain things she should indeed know; but whether she manages well or ill depends mainly upon what she is." Life, therefore, is the best school. Meddlesomeness, {182} lack of tact, impatience for results, carelessness in keeping engagements and promises, will be as fatal here as anywhere.

When we are depressed by a family's troubles and are striving earnestly to find a way out, theirs seem quite unlike any other troubles. In a sense, it is true that they are unlike; but there are certain resemblances between human beings, even when a continent divides them; and, unsafe though it may be to administer charity by rule, it is more unsafe to administer it without reference to certain general principles. Many of the suggestions of this book are not of universal application, but, in bringing it to a close, I shall endeavor to state a few principles that apply quite universally to friendly visiting.

1. The friendly visitor should get well acquainted with all the members of the family without trying to force their confidence. A fault of beginners is that they are unwilling to wait for the natural development of trust and friendliness. "They expect to make a half dozen visits on a poor family inside of a month," says Miss Birtwell, "and see them {183} helped. Now, which one of us ever had our lives strongly influenced by a friendship of a month's standing? . . . I once heard a sermon which made an impression on my mind that has remained with me for years. One of its main ideas was to get your influence before you used it. Many people seem to think that if they can visit a poor family, by virtue of their superior education and culture, they must immediately have a very strong influence. They do not get it that way. They must get it just as our friends get an influence over us, by long, patient contact, and by the slow, natural growth of friendship." [2]

Patience is difficult where we see so many things to be done, and it is particularly difficult where there is actual need; but the visitor does not go to act as a substitute for the forces, charitable or other, that have kept the family alive so far. He must confer with sources of relief that are or can be interested, but beyond this he must have the courage to {184} do nothing until he knows what is the right thing to do.