Annie Besant : an autobiography ... / [Annie Wood Besant].

  • Annie Besant
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annie Besant : an autobiography ... / [Annie Wood Besant]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    39/408 (page 29)
    CHAPTER II. EARLY CHrLDHOOD. And now began my mother’s time of struggle and of anxiety. Hitherto, since her marriage, she had known no money troubles, for her husband was earning a good income ; he was apparently vigorous and well : no thought of anxiety clouded their future. When he died, he believed that he left his wife and children safe, at least, from pecuniary distress. It was not so. I know nothing of the details, but the out- come of all was that nothing was left for the widow and children, save a trifle of ready money. The resolve to which my mother came was characteristic. Two of her husband’s relatives. Western and Sir William Wood, offered to educate her son at a good city school, and to start him in commercial life, using their great city influence to push him forward. But the young lad’s father and mother had talked of a different future for their eldest boy; he was to go to a public school, and then to the University, and was to enter one of the “learned professions”—to take orders, the mother wished; to go to the Bar, the father hoped. On his death-bed there was nothing more earnestly