Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman
Chancery: “Two men; I must have them; golf and bridge; the 4.20 from Waterloo; not to bring a servant.” . . . And so on and so forth. Indispensable for entertaining on Connie Maitland’s lines. They are so nice and tractable; but worse than useless if you go officially, as it were, for a whispered word of guidance. As witness Mrs. Sawyer. . .
I cannot remember where I first met her; probably at Lady Maitland’s. . . Sooner or later one meets everybody there; and, with all respect to dear Connie, I, personally, should not mind if some of her protégés came a little later and left a little sooner . . . before I had time to be involved, I mean. It is all this craze for collecting money and, incidentally, carving a niche for oneself as the great organizer. One pictures Connie standing blindfold over a map of England and spearing it ruthlessly with a knitting-needle. “I, Constance Maitland,” you can hear her saying, “ordain that here and here and here I will erect hospitals, libraries and wash-houses.” . . .
Whether the locality likes it or not, as it were. If the needle pierces Grasmere, so much the worse for Grasmere. It shall have its hospital—in mid-lake, regardless of the needless additional expense. I am serious about that, because I feel that, if Connie spent more
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