Letter from Sir John Simon to R Owen

40 Kensington square, W

April 12, 1877

My dear Mr. Owen,

Knowing your life as I do, and
holding it in real reverence, I could
not have failed to be indignant at
any mere mendicancy, whosoever’s it
had been, which had importuned you with
its appeals; and I cannot express to
you how distressed I am, and (though
innocently) how humiliated, that you
should have received from kin
of mine the begging letter which you send
me. The story of that household is
a most painful one; and though I would
not trouble you with many details
about it, I feel myself called upon to
assure you (and you will, I feel confident
believe this assurance) that its circum-
stances have never been neglected by
those to whom it might legitimately look
 
for needful help. The marriage was
I believe agreed upon on terms of mutual
deception as between him and her, and
certainly with abundant and most culpable
false statements from both of them to others;
and I doubt if, in the nearly seven years which
have since elapsed, there has been a month in
which they have been self-supporting. During
these years I and others have again and again
done what we could to provide him with
opportunities of earning an honest subsistence;
nbut again and again he has shown himself
unable to profit permanently, if at all, by
opportunities (in some cases most advantageous
opportunities) which we have got for him;
and while he has been unsuccessful in earning,
she, I regret to say, has become an entirely un-
scrupulous mendicant. From various members
of her family – from her brother, from us here, from
my father and mother, and from others, their ménage
has always been receiving assistance, and,
relatively speaking, liberal [underlined] assistance; liberal,
I mean, on the assumption that he is to be, at
least to some reasonable extent, a worker and
bread-winner: and if members of her
family are feeling (as we [underlined] are) grave dis-
pleasure towards them, this is not be-
 
cause they want help (which within
limits several of the family would be
willing to give) but because of the re-
peated most painful evidence which we
have of their thriftlessness and self-indulgence
even when they are calling on others to feed
them, and because of the barefaced and ex-
treme mendacity with which alms are
begged in all directions. Shocking as it is,
I assure that I do not at the present
moment know whether or not to attach
any importance to her assertion that her
husband is ill: for previous [inserted above] appeals of a harrowing
kind have been made on imaginary
grounds, and till I hear from her brother, to
whom I have written on this matter, I am
obliged to reserve judgement.

You will observe that the representation,
made to you, of my being absent from home
is pure falsehood. She has been in almost
daily communication with my wife, who, in
spite of her grievous faults, is always befriending her.

You will, I feel sure, excuse this long
answer to your note. And again let me
say how very very grieved I am that you
should have been molested with that unworthy
application. Believe me ever, my dear
Mr Owen, respectfully and faithfully yours,

John Simon