January 22nd, 1873.
To Mrs. Nassau Senior.
You slipped out so that I did not see when you went; and I do not seem one-half to have thanked you for all your help; it was of a kind I never can forget. Neither do I seem to have told you how very happy the news of the arrangement with Stansfeld made me.
I hope you were not damped by the hitch about the “Public.” I am so accustomed to this kind of thing, and to its coming all right, that I seem to see beyond the difficulty. Will you, when you are seeing or writing to your friends, tell them of the delay in the immediate starting of the plan? It shall be done soon somehow, and might come to an issue any day; but I feel a little anxious lest any contributor should begin to think we did not intend to try the plan, if they hear nothing for some little time. You will know best to whom this temporary pause had better be explained.
MR. S. A. BARNETT’S MARRIAGE
February 8th, 1873.
Miranda to Mrs. Durrant.
Did I tell you that Mr. Barnett, the curate who has worked with Octavia so admirably in St. Mary’s, has just married Miss Henrietta Rowland, one of Octavia’s best workers; and now they are going to live and work in the East End? Octavia thinks it such a splendid thing to have such a man at work down there—she thinks it quite a nucleus of fresh life; and Mrs. Barnett, of whom Octavia is very fond, is admirably fitted for the work too. The wedding was very touching—the church was crowded with poor people; even the galleries were filled with them. He was so much beloved—one of those men with strong individual sympathies and an intimate personal knowledge of the people in their homes—a strong Radical too, with a horror of class distinctions, and practical disregard of them, which you don’t find in all Radicals.
14, Nottingham Place,
March 6th, 1873.