An appeal to fund country holidays

early 20th century

leaflet

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An early appeal written by Ada Vachell for country holidays for young people. The tone is often an mixture of romantic and pitying, echoing the Victorian sentimentality of writers like Charles Dickens. Part of it reads:

"But I am thinking now of some to whom Country and Holidays are very far off divine events. Halt and maimed and blind who live in the mean streets of our city, where always so much is unlovely, where in summer-time dirt and dust and over-crowding are harder than ever to endure, and the stifling heat of narrow courts is well-nigh unbearable.

I am holding a letter in my hand from the mother of one of our little Guild children. The letter says: "I should be very proud for Charlotte to go away for I do not think she ever had the pleasure of seeing a field before". Charlotte is a little cripple girl, one of others who until last summer had never in the Country, had "never had the pleasure of seeing a field!"