14, Nottingham Place, W.
April 28th, 1889.
To her Mother.
Miranda and I concocted a letter to the owners of some dreadful buildings in Southwark, which Miss J. is ready to undertake, asking to have them put under her care. So we have sent that off; and it may bear fruit now or later. Then we finished the accounts of Gable Cottages, and despatched report of same. They are now complete! Then I settled about the painting of Hereford Buildings. We had an evening’s work over Income Tax returns.... To-morrow I collect in Deptford; Miss Hogg is still away; also Mr. T. is sending his manager to talk over matters with me. Then I have to go right up near Paddington to a Com. of the Women’s University Settlement for Southwark. I hope much from the link with them, and the members interest me much. They are all very refined, highly cultivated (all, I fancy, have been at one of the Universities), and very young. I feel quite a veteran among them; and they are so sweet and humble and keen to learn about the things out of their old line of experience. I much delight in thinking one may link their young life with the houses, and hall, and garden in Southwark.
It feels like home now Miranda is back again; and it is wonderful to see the atmosphere of love and peace and duty she spreads round her....
My horse-chestnut and one oak grow quite tall; and all my ferns are in little rolls waiting for a little more warmth and rain and time to uncurl; the children’s voices (but soft and as if far away) are singing hymns in the school; the birds are chirping, and a quiet sense of Sunday calm is over things.
December 4th, 1889.
To Miss M. Shaen.
We are busy as usual, and all goes with wonderful success—a sort of thorough, quiet, steady progress and life that often amazes me. The great stir of strikes and free dinners and huge gifts, the excitement of those who feel as if action now alone were beginning, and as if all had to be rearranged, replanted, as it were, before it would grow, touches us little; and in the steady friendship of old days, and slow but definite improvement of tangible things in a few places, work goes quietly forward as the years roll on. We are helped, no doubt, by the wave of right hearty sympathy and sincere sense of duty now pervading the educated classes, and largely helped; and from my heart I thank God for it. But for the crude theories, I can only hope that many of them will be exploded before they do real harm.
October 25th, 1889.