Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's LifeAlec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
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Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Life
Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel), -1940; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
Everyone was talking of Borkum in 1910. Two English officers had been
arrested as spies there and imprisoned in a German fortress.
Mr. Percy Anderson, fresh from designing the dresses for _Kismet_,
chanced to see a sketch I had made at Borkum a few years before.
“Why on earth don’t you send it to an exhibition?” he asked.
“I never show anything nowadays,” was my reply.
“Send this for a change, then—just get a frame and send it in.”
The frame was bought, and to the Lady Artists in Suffolk Street it
went. A little thrill of joy passed through me when I opened an
envelope with a bright red ticket:
_Admit the artist to varnishing day._
A week later my little picture appeared in the _Daily Graphic_.
Borkum, once famous “as the only spot on earth without a Jew,” is now
a great German naval base. In 1900 it was little more than a sandhill,
with a few lodging-houses and bathing-machines, and ourselves the
only English folk. Icebound in winter, it was the home of millions of
wild fowl in summer. Every evening before going to bed the visitors
and residents sang their anti-Jewish anthem. Though strong in
fortification, Borkum is not great in size, being only six miles long
and half a mile wide.
Public charity is no doubt an excellent thing. The world could not
get on without it. But private charity seems to me of infinitely more
value. If every one of us always had some particular case in hand for
someone less blessed than ourselves, what a much happier place the
world would be. Individual charity means so much. There is nothing
easier than for a rich person to write a cheque and send it to some
institution, where a large percentage is swallowed up in paying rates,
rent, and taxes, clerks, and the rest of it, but it means a great deal
for a person to give up their private time, to expend their own energy,
in looking after some individual case. We all know people we can
help, not singly, but in multitudes, if we choose to take the trouble,
and for the greater part of my life I have found it a good thing to
have one big job in hand at a time and to work at it till completed.
Procuring public or private pensions for the genteel poor, getting
cripples into homes, invalids into hospitals, or people recovering
from illnesses into convalescent homes; starting young people in life;
enquiring into emigration cases and helping them; finding young women
places in bonnet shops, even securing employment in orchestras.
In fact, there is generally a niche for every case if one only takes
the trouble to find it. The niche is not always procurable by the
persons themselves, as they have not the world-wide knowledge and
influence to secure it; but with a little capacity, a little work,
and a little thought one is often able to help young people to start,
to help to educate children, and do hundreds of little individual
kindnesses which may keep the whole family together, or mean the future
success of the individual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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