(_By Mr. Punch's own Type Writer._)
No. XII.--THE POOR LADY BOUNTIFUL.
[Illustration]
POVERTY is commonly supposed to be a bar to all generosity and enjoyment
of life. Perhaps this may be true of a certain class. But there is a
kind of genteel and not unfashionable poverty with regard to which it is
mainly false. A poor lady, for instance, who is afflicted with an
overmastering charitable impulse, and is blessed with energy, will use
this bar of poverty as a lever with which to move the bounty of her
friends, in order that she herself may appear bountiful, and, as a rule,
her efforts in this direction will be crowned with a success that would
be phenomenal, if it were not so common. The history of her earlier
years is easily written. Whilst still a child, she begins a collecting
career, by being entrusted, on behalf of a church building fund, with a
card divided into "bricks," each brick being valued at the price of
half-a-crown. Her triumphs in inducing her relations and their friends
to become purchasers of these minute and valueless squares of cardboard
are great, and the consideration she acquires on all hands as a
precocious charitable agent is very acceptable even to her childish
mind.
Her profession having thus been determined, she devotes herself with an
unflagging ardour to the task of diminishing the available assets of
those with whom she may be brought in contact. Her parents, who are not
overburdened with riches, look on at first with amusement, and
afterwards with the dismay which any excess of zeal always arouses in
the British breast. Their protests, however, fall upon deaf ears, and
they adopt an attitude of severe neutrality, in the hope that years and
a husband may bring wisdom to their daughter.
This does not save them from being made involuntary sharers in her
charitable iniquities. Her father wakes one morning to find himself
famous to the amount of one pound ten, contributed under the name of "A
Cruel Parent," to the Amalgamated Society for the Reform of Rag-pickers,
and his wife at the same time is made indignant by the discovery that
she figures for twelve-and-sixpence, as "A Mother who ought to be
Proud," in the balance-sheet of the United Charwomen's Home Reading
Association. Further inquiry reveals the fact that the former sum
resulted from the sale by the daughter to an advertising Old Clothes'
Merchant of two of her father's suits, which, although they had seen
service, he had not yet resolved to discard; and the result is the
dismissal of the family butler, who had connived in the transaction. The
twelve-and-sixpence had been formed gradually by the accumulation of
stray coppers and postage-stamps, which her mother was accustomed to
leave about on her writing-table, without the least intention that they
should be devoted to charity. The parents expostulate in vain. The
consciousness that she has diverted to objects, which she believes to be
admirable, money that might have been unworthily spent, steels the heart
of their daughter against their remonstrances, nor can she be induced to
believe that, in thus taking upon herself to interpret or to correct the
intentions of her parents, she has done wrong.
Matters, however, are thus brought to a crisis. Her home becomes
unendurable to her, and she accepts the offer of marriage made by a
subordinate, and not very highly paid official, in one of the
Departments of the Civil Service. Her parents pronounce their blessing,
and rejoice in an event which promises them an immunity from many
annoyances.
The marriage duly takes place, but it is soon evident that the poor Lady
Bountiful will not allow her change of condition to make any difference
to the vigour and persistency of her charitable appeals. She continues
the old firm and the old business under a new name, and takes advantage
of her independence to enlarge immensely the field of her operations. No
bazaar can be organised without her and as a stall-holder she is
absolutely unrivalled. Missions, teas, treats, penny dinners, sea-side
excursions, the building of halls, the endowment of a bishopric, the
foundation of a flannel club, all depend upon her inexhaustible energy
in begging. Nor is she satisfied with public institutions. Private
applicants of all kinds gather about her. Destitute but undeserving
widows, orphans who have brought the grey hairs of their parents to the
grave, old soldiers and stranded foreigners batten upon her capacity for
taking advantage of her friends. For it must be well understood that the
restricted limits of her husband's means and his parsimony prevent her
from contributing anything herself to her innumerable schemes except a
lavish expenditure of pens and ink and paper with which to set forth her
appeals. Yet in this she is a true altruist. For she knows and tells
everybody how delightful and blessed it is to give, and accordingly in
the purest spirit of self-denial she permits her friends to dispense the
cash, whilst she herself is satisfied with the credit.
Like a mighty river, she receives the offerings of innumerable tributary
streams, which lose their identity in hers, and are swept away under her
name, to be finally merged in the great ocean of charitable effort. Who
does not know, that it was mainly owing to her indefatigable efforts,
that the new wing was added to the Disabled District Visitors' Refuge,
and who has not seen at least one of the many subscription lists to
which "per Mrs. So-and-So" invariably contributed the largest amount? Is
it not also on record that at the reception which followed the public
opening of this wing, when the collecting ladies advanced to deposit
their collections at the feet of presiding Royalty, it was the Poor Lady
Bountiful who brought the largest, the most beautifully embroidered and
the fullest purse? It was felt on all hands, that "the dear Princess"
had only done what an English Princess might properly be expected to do,
when she afterwards, under the inspiration of the cunning Vicar,
showered a few words of golden public praise into the palpitating bosom
of the champion purse-bearer.
And thus her time is spent. When she is not organising a refuge she is
setting on its legs a dinner fund, when she has exhausted the patience
of her friends on behalf of her particular tame widow, she can always
begin afresh with a poverty-stricken refugee, and if the delights of the
ordinary subscription-card should ever pall, she can fly for relaxation
to the seductive method of the snowball, which conceals under a cloak of
geometrical progression and accuracy, the most comprehensive uncertainty
in its results. One painful incident in her career must be chronicled.
Fired by her example, but without her knowledge, a friend of hers from
whom she is accustomed to solicit subscriptions, steps down to do battle
on her own account in the charitable arena. And thus, when next the Poor
Lady Bountiful makes an appeal in this quarter on behalf of a Siberian
Count, whom she declares to be quite a gentleman in his own country, she
is met by the declaration, that further relief is impossible, as her
friend has a Bulgarian of her own to attend to. Thus there is an end of
friendship, and both parties scatter dreadful insinuations as to the
necessity for an audit of accounts. Eventually it happens that a rich
and distant relation of her husband dies, and leaves him unexpectedly an
income of several thousands a-year. Having thus lost all her poverty,
she retires from the fitful fever of charitable life to the serene
enjoyment of a substantial income, and awaits, with a fortitude that no
collector is suffered to disturb, the approach of a non-subscribing and
peaceful old age.
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