The writers generally require the loan of curios from Iceland, Finland, Norway, Mexico, Morocco, Sicily; or any country, in fact, with which one’s name is associated. Lists have to be made, the objects looked out, packed, sent, placed, fetched, unpacked. Sometimes things get damaged, or lost, and then no one seems responsible.
People write asking for patronage; the loan of one’s name as a patroness to soup kitchens, charity concerts, balls, clubs, hospital bazaars, or collections by a friend for some charity. I was once asked by an unknown man to be godmother to his child. Soaps have asked for my patronage, and a motor-car was suggested as a free gift (it was the early days of motoring) if I would drive it through the streets of London.
Letters from women and men aspiring to literature—and verily half the world seems to think literary gifts are as common as pens and inkpots; letters from the natives of all the countries about which I have ever written, asking for help, or “for money to buy a ticket home because they are stranded in London and destitute”; or a fond father wishing to start his son in mining writes to ask my experience of mines in Mexico; while perhaps a mother thinks my experience would solve a question whether her daughter, who is a hospital nurse, would find a good opening in Canada; and, again, a girl starting a dairy enquires for hints on the Danish procedure.
Letters modestly ask me if through my medical connection I can get “a poor friend” seen by a doctor gratis; or if I can give someone an introduction for the stage, or hear somebody else sing or recite, and see what he or she had better do with their talent.
Oh dear! Oh dear! Letters never end, they are like the taxes in their persistency. Is there anything under the sun people will not bother a busy woman to obtain? The following letter was as much underlined as one of Queen Victoria’s epistles:
“I know your books so well, and have heard so much of all your great kindness to people. I am a worker in one of ... and am resting a time, and am anxious to get some help towards getting a Bath chair for a poor crippled child. It is such a sad, sad case, and if she had a chair she could get to church and Sunday School. I have also been a missionary in poor needy India. Please send a little help towards the Chair, and also if you can towards the support of our Hospital for poor Purdah women in India, where I hope to be able to return some day. I am Dean ...’s niece.
“Yours very truly,
“O. P.”
One effusion addressed to me begins:
“It is very many years since we met, but I am hoping you have not quite forgotten me. I have been a widow for nearly two years, and am now anxious to get some employment, as I am absolutely penniless.”