Rosalind Travers Hyndman

Maoriland Worker, Volume 13, Issue 26, 27 June 1923, Page 12

Rosalind Travers Hyndman

! . ..?. By tAJLIMA'.- '■■■.:■ , -: 1 "She was, in the finest sense, a citizen of the world, and her heart burned In service of the idea of liberation." i, * ft * * Could any woman ask for a better epitaph than thise words of F. I. Gould's, spoken at her funeral? : They gathered up all that she was, tall that she thought, all that she did. The grandaughter of a bishop of the Established Church, the wife of Henry ' Mayers Hyndman, the founder of the Socialist movement in England, there jseems a big, almost unbridgeable, gulf between the two. "She had the foundations on which a very conventional English character might have been built," soys one. Sut because Rosalind Travers was Eo much bigger in every way than her "conventional foundations," she personally bridged the gulf between the Established Church and Socialism. She was born in 1874, and passed her early years in "stately Arundel," her father being Colonel John Amory Travers and her mother, Florence Ellicot, a daughter of the Bishop of Gloucester. ; The usual countryside activities of the giri of such parentage were hers. Correspondence classes for students, j orphan schools, charity organisations —the little narrow round of duties that thousands of other "upperclass" girls were performing. But j Rosalind Travers wanted something i .more satisfying than all this. I Reaching outward, she turned to lit- j erature as a means of expressing her- j self. Some of those who became her f friends at this period were Ernest j Hartley Coleridge, George Gissing. Hilaire Belloe and G. K. Chesterton. For three, years she lived and worked at Shelley's birthplace. Field Place, Horsham, sending forth lie/ ''Creations" in the form of verse and j

plays. But this could not entirely satisfy the 7a I lire of the woman who was ever outward, onward, upward. Tiie countries of East Central Europe, ; ; iruggling in blood and tears for freedom and a wider life, drew her. 3ue went first to Finland, fighting fot: Ler freedom from Russia. She remained for a year, watching, thinking, writing, translating, by the medium of her sympathy and understanding, the tragedy of blood nnd tears into the burning words that were afterwards given to the world as "Letters from Finland." In 1909 the Social Democratic Federation held in Trafalgar Square a meeting - of protest against the suppression of the last remains of political autonomy of Finland by Russia. And here Rosalind Trovers and Henry Mayers liyndman met for the first time. Next year she went to Europe again, this time travelling through Austria, Bohemia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro. Serbia, Roumania, and Poland, her keenly artistic, sensitive Eoul vividly alive to the tragedy of it all, while her well-balanced, clearsighted brain recorded it in bald words. It was probably this unusual combination of qualities that took Rosalind Travers out of the conventional, prosaic atmosphere in which she was born. She possessed both masculine •land feminine attributes.. In her fine sense of beauty, her exquisite sensibility to joy and sorrow, she was all woman; in. her keen rea-j soning powers and big, broad outlook, ' ! she was all man; and from this side of her, perhaps, came a certain restlessness, a love of adventure. Dr. Richard Garnett speaks of her as having 'a powerful and original mind, inspired with deep and even passionate interest in the questions o" I Use day, and phases of contemporary CStetsnce, while stt tli© easa® time capable of bestowing on them that ideal radiance which redeems them from the commonplace." In 1913 Hyndman's ■wife died, and in 1914, four months before the outbreak of war, he and Rosalind Travers were married. It must have been an ideal marriage, built on community of interests and joy in common work. From then on Rosalind Travers Hyndman seems to have merged her own identity entirely in that of the "dear old man," as liis friends and fellow-workers always called Hyndttian. She so devoted herself to him and his work for the Socialist movement that she practically cut herself on* from all her old circles. For seven years she lived for Hyndman and his work. And when he died In 1921, one can imagine that she felt desolate indeed. Letters to Meads

Indicate the desperate, despairing loneliness she felt, the passionate, overwhelming desire she had to be retinited to her soul-mate. But because ghe -was a "brave soul," she struggled on, though shaken to her very heart's core—determined to use her j 1 last ounce of strength that his work j * should not perish. Up to within a few hours of he/ death she was immersed in the work of the Hyndman Literary Trust, and, ' In the re-issue in popular form ol . some of H.M.H.'s works. A preface which she had written tv , ITyndman's "Evolution of Revolution" . reached the office of the Social Demo- ■ I cratic Federation by post within a ' few minutes of the time that news ol 1 her death came. So that, literally, as 1 It was said, "her work being finished, she died upon his tomb." « * * # Rosalind Travers Hyndman was a , poet and a lover of beauty, perhaps I before all else. She wanted to see j "a democracy that clothed itself in j beauty, as well as made sure of its j materialistic basis." j In one of her last writings in { "Justice," she said: "Wlieu the work-j ers of this country understand their j ! own economic condition, and prepare j j intelligently' for the inevitable change j they will "ho longer struggle for high wages in mean homes, but for fellowship, opportunity, adventure, joy and j space to live." j She saw true beauty in little com- i ! mon,* everyday tiling?—the embroidery o£ the Ukranian peasant woman, a good book, a well-constructed play. | I The "'ideal life,'' as sue say," it, was ,' j one in which the people "were not ex- ; j hnusted by their labour, but had room i and time to live." | j Hero is a little tribute paid by one : j who knew her well: "She had a; [most uncompromising sense of duty,' j combined with a sweet womanliness, j which made her at times somewhat of i ti paradox. But thosr- whose privi'oy: , j ie was lo know something of her t: v:; j personality found her a woman of in-! finite charm, insight and humanity." j