FIGHT FOR FORTUNE
SUCCESS AFTER FORTY-FIVE
YEARS
(From the Guardian's Special Correspondent—By Air Mail).
LONDON, October 19
Mrs Rosamund Templeton has, at the age of 90, just received £18,000. It has cost 45 years—half her life— of penury and litigation to secure it. And it has come too late.
"I am very old and money no longer counts," she said, as she sat in her bleak house overlooking the sea at Lancing, Sussex. The money is compensation for the seizure of the site of Armageddon in Palestine. "What can I spend money on at my age? Any interest I had in clothes no longer exists. I have bought a house and a motor car. Some money has gone to help small tradesmen who helped me in my time of need. Some I have given to a clergyman who was a constant friend during my years of penury. I have given £3000 to my favourite niece." Mrs Templeton, when a young woman, wrote several books on her idea of human conduct. "One day," she explained, "Laurence Oliphant, the Victorian mystic and reformer, visited me. I knew the moment I saw him that I should marry him. In fact, so certain was I that I bought my trousseau the day we met! Laurence wanted me to go with him to Palestine to his colony of ascetics. He died shortly after we
were married, however, and I had to carry on alone. I have been to Palestine twenty-five times. Only a few months ago I made my last journey to sign the papers which would give me my money.
"It was during my first years in the Holy Land that I bought Armageddon, the battlefield of Babylon and my life. I bought it because it seemed to symbolise the war Laurence's colony were waging against the vices and unhappiness of the world. Then, through poverty, I was forced to give up the experiment. Arabs and Jews and Turks settled on my land, and eventually the Haifa railway station was built on it. Now, after years of fighting, the Palestine Land Court has given me this money as compensation. I have one satisfaction—l know to whom to leave my money—to those who have help-
Ed me."
Permanent link to this item
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EG19351119.2.8
Bibliographic details
Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 88, 19 November 1935, Page 3
Word Count
372FIGHT FOR FORTUNE Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVI, Issue 88, 19 November 1935, Page 3
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