The Lady Bountiful and the Country Squire: Lessons in Life, Love and Woodcarving

Abstract

On Christmas Eve in 1882, Eglantyne Jebb’s mother wrote in her diary, ‘[Y]ou are almost done 1882, the most wonderful year of my life. A lifetime of experience crowded into the last 6 months’.¹ She was referring to the woodcarving lessons she had organized for the needy village children around Ellesmere. At the time, she did not know that her Home Arts and Industries Association (HAIA) would soon be one of the most influential arts and education charities in England. Like other members of the rural elite, Mr and Mrs Jebb realized that although the accumulation of wealth was important, participation in philanthropy and charitable activities was also a passport to enhanced social status and social integration, but there was more to what Mrs Jebb called her ‘fearless’ new career than simply complying with the rules, conventions and duties of the family’s social position. Her charitable impulses sprang from a deepening social consciousness. In 1882 she wrote, ‘[W]e have long talked of Women’s Rights and Women’s work…our first right and our best work is to aid the men of our generation in bringing up a happier and more prosperous race—and this indeed is nothing but what our country has a “Right” to claim from us’.²