Her sympathies with the enquiry traditions of the Society, and with the restrictions on reckless relief, often startled and repelled some of the more impulsive philanthropists; but one of the most earnest of them wrote, “I remember taking to her a typical case for advice, and she gave me what I thought stern advice, and I demurred. But she was right; and I often thought of it afterwards.”
During this very period, her attention was painfully drawn to the difficulties of her local and more individual work, and to the dangers of that purely official view of charitable movements, against which she was always on her guard.
She had published in a magazine an account of the courts which had been placed under her care; and of course, in explaining the object of her undertaking, she was obliged to describe the condition of the houses when first she undertook the management of them. Unfortunately, some fussy person took the article to the medical officer, with the question, “If these things were so, what were you doing?” The medical officer was at once seized with a panic, and ordered the destruction of all the houses in that court. Octavia thereupon went to remonstrate with him; and, after hearing her explanations, he withdrew the order. But he had to report to the Vestry, so the matter could not end with that withdrawal. The majority of the Vestry took the side of their officer; and one zealous vestryman exclaimed that he hoped they would hear no more of Miss Hill and her houses. The bitterness was so keen that Octavia feared that the tenants of the court would be affected by the local opinion. Mr. Bond, however, who took an active interest in the workmen’s club, which had been formed in the court, explained the circumstances to the men; and the general feeling of the tenants was drawn to Octavia’s side. Mr. Ernest Hart undertook to discuss the matter with the medical officer; and gradually the official feeling changed, or at least was greatly modified. But three incidents bearing on the affair should be mentioned.
DIFFICULTIES WITH VESTRY OFFICIALS
During the controversy, Octavia’s attention was called to the dangers which would come to the court from a public house built close to it. Her first idea was to secure some kind of disinterested management which should prevent the evils of the ordinary public house; but, finding that, for the time, this was impracticable, she addressed herself to the work of defeating the licence. This she succeeded in doing, but one of the J.P.’s, who had specially championed the publican, was so furious that he addressed insulting remarks to her in reference to her management of the houses.
On the other hand she was much cheered by a letter from Ruskin, received during this crisis. Not long after the first houses were bought he had begun a little to cool towards the work, partly from not understanding Octavia’s attitude towards alms-giving; and partly from that horror of London ugliness which led him to think that any London scheme must fail. But his personal regard for Octavia remained untouched; and, visiting Carlyle during the crisis, he spoke of Octavia’s work, and received such a warm expression of admiration from the “Sage of Chelsea,” that he noted down the words and promptly sent them to Octavia, greatly to her delight.
The third incident refers to the attitude of her friends on the Charity Organisation Council. Some of them thought that her management of the courts should be considered as affecting their movement, and that a friendly enquiry into her methods would strengthen their hands. She disliked the thought of greater publicity, but reluctantly consented to submit her books and papers to the Special Committee appointed for this enquiry. Though they were friendly in tone, Octavia greatly disliked the visits of these gentlemen; and, when they wished to examine the tenants of the courts to find out the moral effects produced on them by the changes, Octavia put her foot down, and declined to allow this interference between herself and her “friends.”
I have given what some may think an undue prominence to this attack on her by the Marylebone officials; but I have two grounds for that course. One is that it was the first important exhibition of that officialism which increased in Octavia her strong dislike of State or Municipal management. The other is that the intensity of her feeling on the matter brings out a point in her character of which many were unaware. I remember well that when Mrs. Nassau Senior was smarting under the attacks on her report on Workhouse Reform, two men remarked that “Miss Octavia Hill would not have felt such attacks, as Mrs. Senior did.” Both were intelligent men, and both had some personal acquaintance with Octavia. But both were mistaken.
It was in the middle of these difficulties and struggles that her attention was partly diverted from her own work by her interest in the affairs of a friend; and, for what I believe to have been the only time in her life, she took an active share in an attempt to return a Member to Parliament. This was in 1874 when Mr. Thomas Hughes came forward as a candidate for Marylebone. Her personal admiration for him, dating from the old Christian Socialist days, and strengthened by her experiences as teacher to his children, decided her to abandon her general indifference to Parliamentary work; and she declared with her usual vehemence that they would return him. Canvassers went out from 14 Nottingham Place with electioneering circulars; and all friends whom Octavia could influence were pressed into the service. Unfortunately, for reasons which do not concern this biography, the effort failed; and, by a curious combination of circumstances, several people were led to attribute Octavia’s zeal to an interest in the cause of Female Suffrage.
ATTITUDE TOWARDS FEMALE SUFFRAGE