“I want to tell you about an old woman we sometimes go to see here”
(Brighton), “who was ninety-one yesterday. She lived in service till
her health failed, and since then she has had her own little room,
which is always exquisitely clean and neat. The bed-hangings and
chair-covers are all of white dimity, embroidered by her in patterns of
her own designing, with the ravellings of old carpets. She has made
herself two sets. Her carpet is made in the same way, on coarse holland
covered close with embroidery, which, as she says proudly, never wears
out. She is still able to work, though her arrangement of colours isn’t
quite as good as it used to be. The contrast came into my mind between
work like that, and something I was told the other day, [67]—that it
takes a workwoman a week to make one inch of the finest Valenciennes
lace, and that she has to do it, sitting in a dark cellar, with the
light only admitted through a narrow slit, to concentrate it on the
work. It’s enough to make one give up wearing Valenciennes at all!”
This last piece of impassioned young lady’s English, translated into
unimpassioned old gentleman’s English, means, I suppose, that “it is
very shocking, but not at all enough to make one give up wearing
Valenciennes.” Nor should it be. But it should be quite enough to make
one inquire into the matter; ascertain with what degree of fineness
lace can be made in the open daylight and fresh air of France; request
some benevolent lady friend, who has nothing else to do, to undertake
the sale of such lace, with due Episcopal superintendence of the
relieved workers; and buy one’s lace only from this benevolent
lady-Bishop.