Читать книгу Life of Octavia Hill as Told in Her Letters онлайн

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After the Guild had been carried on for some time, Mr. Neale was asked to take over a new kind of work, which a lady had started in order to employ some Ragged School children. This was the making of a special kind of toy which she had invented; and Mr. Neale appointed Octavia head of the workroom. The following account is given by my wife and her sister Miranda. The management of the toy-making helped to “develop Octavia’s business faculties. She had to pass the children’s work, which was paid by the piece, to assign the various processes to each child, to choose the shapes and colours of the toy furniture, to price it, and to see that, when the suites were finished, they were neatly packed in boxes and sent over to the show room, where the ladies’ glass work was also exhibited. From time to time she had to take stock, and to see if the sales justified the expenditure.

TOY-WORKERS

“Her daily intercourse with the girls taught her to know intimately the life of the poor. Most of the children came from very poor homes, and had, though so young, experienced great hardships. There was Louisa, an emotional, affectionate girl who had lost both parents, and helped to support herself and the aunt with whom she lived. She had worked at artificial flower-making, and told us how, when trade was busy, she had been kept late into the night, and had had to run frightened through the streets in the small hours of the morning, and tap at the window to wake her aunt. There was poor Denis whose face and neck were terribly disfigured with burns; but who had such a sweet pathetic voice that, when she sang, one forgot her ugliness. There was Clara, a tall, over-grown girl from a dirty home, who was half-starved and cruelly treated. She wore a low dress and short sleeves, and one could see her bones almost coming through her skin. On one occasion when her work was too slovenly to be passed, she burst into tears, and said that her mother would beat her if she did not take back the money expected of her. There was little Elizabeth, a stunted child of about nine, with so fierce a look that Octavia, in loving raillery, called her her little wild beast. She had never come with us on the Saturday-afternoon walks to Hampstead, but used to look wistfully after us. Once we pressed her very much to come, and then she exclaimed ‘I cannot, I have to nurse the baby.’