Miranda to Miss Ellen Chase.
The other week Octavia made such a beautiful speech for the C.O.S. at Fulham Palace (the Bishop of London’s). I went with her and Miss Yorke to the meeting there. The old palace is so fine, stands in a park with a moat, and looks as if it were far in the country—not near town at all. There is an old hall, built in Henry VII.’s time (though altered in the last century), with carved wooden screen and ancient full-length portraits.... In that hall the meeting was.... The Bishop—Temple (former headmaster of Rugby), and his wife were very friendly. He gave a most amusing account in his speech of how Miss O. had convinced him and the other Ecclesiastical Commissioners that they were wrong, and she was right, about certain points. He said: “When she had talked to us for half an hour we were quite refuted. I never had such a beating in my life! Consequently I feel great respect for her. So fully did she convince us, that we not only did what she asked us on that estate, but proceeded to carry out similar plans on other estates.” Miss O. supposes he refers to the gift of land for Open Spaces, and is very pleased, not having known before that those gifts were the result of her representations to the Coms. about Red X Garden.
14, Nottingham Place,
February 18th, 1886.
To Miranda.
I left Mama at South Lodge this morning. She read me yesterday some of Miss Wedgwood’s book,[[106]] XI.—the chapter about the Romans and Law. It reminded me a little of things that Mr. Maurice has said, but was very different, too. I was much interested by what she says about the influence of women, as shown in Homer and Virgil, and on to the Middle Ages.
THE PARLIAMENT HILL MOVEMENT
March, 1889.
This letter requires a few words of explanation. The long negotiation for securing the addition of Parliament Hill and the adjoining lands to Hampstead Heath, begun in 1884, had just been concluded. They had involved negotiations with the old Metropolitan Board of Works (which expired just at the close of our negotiations), and with two ground landlords, besides appeals to three vestries and to a large number of private persons. The meeting, referred to in the following letter, was held at Grosvenor House to decide on the question of the application of the surplus of the funds raised by the Committee. Octavia and the majority of the Committee were in favour of using the money for the general movement for preserving open spaces; the proposal of the amendment was to apply it to securing access from Kentish Town to the Parliament Hill Fields.
To Miranda.