It was but a short time before the death of Miss Octavia Hill that one of her sisters succeeded, with much difficulty, in convincing her that some account of her life would be necessary to satisfy the public demand.

On realising this fact, she expressed a strong wish that the family should keep the details of such a memoir in their own hands; and she afterwards made a special request that the final decision as to what should be published, and what suppressed, should rest with me.

It will, therefore, be understood that I am rather the editor than the author of this book. The most important part of this Memoir will be found in the letters; and it is by my express wish that they are printed in larger type than the explanations which link them together.

But even those explanations are only in a limited sense my own work. All I have done is to weave together statements made by my wife and her sisters, a paper left by their Mother, and, in the very early part, the recollections of Octavia’s early playmate, Miss Margaret Howitt.

Only in those chapters which cover the period from 1866 to 1877 have I trusted, to any considerable extent, to my own memory; for it was in those years that I was most closely associated with some parts of Octavia’s work.

With regard to the letters, there are two points to note. First, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to arrange them chronologically; not separating the special subjects, in which Octavia was interested, from each other, but rather suggesting the variety of interests which were occupying her mind at the same time. Secondly, I have endeavoured to emphasise the human and family sympathy, and not merely her business capacity.

There was an outcry in the papers a little time ago, with regard to Florence Nightingale, which took a rather peculiar form. These writers said that there had been too much sentimental talk about the “lady of the lamp” bending over the sick bed; and that this picture had obscured Miss Nightingale’s real power of organisation and practical reform. Perhaps twentieth century hardness may be as blinding as nineteenth century sentiment. At any rate, the danger with regard to Octavia Hill is precisely of the opposite kind to that which was supposed to threaten the fame of Florence Nightingale.

Octavia’s power of organisation, and her principles of discipline, have been allowed by many critics to thrust into the background her human sympathies. The figure of the landlady sternly exacting her rents seems to stand rather on the opposite side to the “lady of the lamp.”

“Miss Hill,” said a critic in the early days of her fame, “I was puzzled to make out how you succeeded in your work, till I realised that the broker was always in the background.”

This statement represents the view of her work which was always most distasteful to Octavia. She disliked extremely the phrase “rent collector” as summing up the essential character of that work. She maintained, as strongly as did Carlyle, that “cash payment was not the sole nexus between man and man,” not, as another critic supposed, because she held that “the poor were there for the rich to do good to”; but because she realised that each had to learn from the other by common sympathy with each other’s needs, and not by a hard enforcement of claims, or a careless belief in the power of money giving. It is this wider and more human aspect of her life, which I hope these letters will bring home to their readers. Perhaps the point of view, on which I am insisting, can be best summed up in Canon Barnett’s words, “She brought the force of religion into the cause of wisdom, and gave emotion to justice.”

I need only add my most hearty thanks to the friends who have helped me, either by sending Miss Hill’s letters, or by hints derived from their own recollections, or by enabling us to use the pictures which appear in this volume.