HOMELESS IN LONDON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19328, 15 May 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

HOMELESS IN LONDON.

THE OUTCAST WOMAN. Is it true that no woman who is willing to work need lack employment ? Is destitution merely the result of laziness, drink or a vagabond spirit? These were some of the questions which troubled Mrs. Cecil Chesterton (sister-in-law of tho great G.K.C.), and sho finally decided there was only one way (< answer them to her own satisfaction. So starting from zero, and with no asset but i r own personality, she stepped out of security into destitution. " I left mv homo one evening in February. I wore clothes which were shabby, but not ragged. I had watertight shoes and a raincoat—and not one ponny in my pocket. I had determined to start life from an entirely new angle. I would arrive in London with nothing between me and starvation." To do this sho wont to Euston, one bitter night, and mingled with tho crowd arriving from Liverpool by a late train. Very vividly sho brings before her readers tho awful sensation of loneliness ill being cut off from all familiar associations and utterly dependent upon the charity of a huge uncaring city. For charity it had to be. Though sho was an excellent cook absence of references not unnaturally made employers wary. Sometimes she sold matches, and on tho psychology of the matchtrado she is interesting. Brightness is apparently essential to success. An appearance of hopeless misery only makes the possible customer feel how little a few pence would do to alleviato it. Besides " a man may resist tears, harden his heart to importunity, turn aside invective, but there is no sci of Adam who can deny a woman wher she makes him laugh." Of the various shelters which she sampled, Mrs. Chesterton's warmest admiration goes otr. tc the Salvation Army institutions "It is the entire absence of moral superiority that gives the Salvation Army such a great influence. Your social reformer wants always to retorm; the Salvation Army, so far as 1 know it, wants only to help. There is a whole world of difference in the result of these two opposite ideals!" The variety ot types encountered in this vagrant life is truly Dickensian —indeed Mrs. Chesterton met a real flesh-and-blood "Miss Flite." "a little woman who has had a lawsuit pending for years. She will produce masses of documents and thrust them into you: hand with impassioned vituperation of nefarious solicitors and perjured witnesses. She works only by fits and starts, lured by that mirage of wealth that has led many a poor soul to shipwreck ... It may be that one day she will into her own, or it is equally on the cards that she may throw herself into the river and end her misfortunes."

Candid and truthful though the narrative appears ir the main, one cannot help feeling that the author turned a blind eye upon "certain aspects of vice, nor can her statement that in all her wanderings she never met a drunken woman be accepted without tlv usual grain of salt. But when all is said the book is the outcome of a sincere desire to understand the feelings and the point of view of the destitute woman. Above all it teaches humility shows us how dependent most of us are upon our accidental advantages, so that we are more ready than before to acknowledge these poor creatures as trnly our sisters, and to say: " There but for tho grace of God goes you or I." • —" In Darkest London," by Mrs. Cecil Chesterton (Stanley Paul).