August 25th, 1880.
To Mrs. Shaen.
I have been very much delighted lately with some correspondence with some of my fellow-workers about the Artizans’ Dwellings Acts. We had a great blow about the work itself just as I left town,—one likely to create dissension and call up bad feeling; and somehow the correspondence about it has, instead, shown how nobly men respond, when they manage to find the right way to look at things. I often wonder how men manage to get into such messes, when human hearts ring so true if struck rightly. It has been really quite beautiful to see how men will put temptation and bad feeling (even when almost justified) under their feet, when reminded of the cause for which they should work. I don’t even know that it is a question of reminding. The good men see nobly and act accordingly. I am obliged to keep very much out of all (even thought of) work. The home claims are very strong just now, and my own strength not very great. It is very strange to have to put the old things so wholly second. I do not know, however, how to be entirely sad about it. I often think that now people want more to see how noble private life should be, and can be, than to take up public work,—at any rate exclusively.
Harrogate,
September 4th, 1880.
Mrs. Hill to Mrs. Edmund Maurice.
If you were to spend all your time from now till Christmas in guessing what Octavia was doing last Friday afternoon you would never guess aright, so I will tell you. She was acting to a Harrogate audience the part of Piety in the MacDonald’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” On Thursday we had spent the day at Harewood, and on our return found Lily and Bob here waiting to ask if she would act for poor Grace, then lying seriously ill of hæmorrhage, at Ilkley. The rooms for the performance were engaged, and it seemed impossible to postpone it. Octavia agreed and learned her part (eight pages) that night. I cannot tell you how beautiful she looked, and how lovely her voice sounded. It was most pathetic to see the MacDonalds so brave and energetic; but all so pale and feeling-full. Poor Mr. Jamieson acted Mr. Brisk. MacDonald was so chivalrous and beautiful to his poor wife and to us,—forgot no tenderness to her, or politeness to Miss Yorke and to me.
OCTAVIA IN THE “PILGRIM’S PROGRESS”
September 20th, 1880.
To Mr. Blyth.