To Love One's Enemies. The work and life of Emily Hobhouse, by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme

To Love One's Enemies. The work and life of Emily Hobhouse, by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme. ISBN 9783838203416 / ISBN 978-3-8382-0341-6

This is Jennifer Hobhouse Balme's introduction to the second edition of her biography of her great aunt: To Love One's Enemies. The work and life of Emily Hobhouse.

Jennifer Hobhouse Balme  

September 1939 was memorable for me not only for the start of World War II, but as the first time I heard of my Great Aunt, Emily Hobhouse. She had stood up to a powerful British Government in the Anglo Boer War of 1899-1902 to help the women and children of South Africa. Their homes were being destroyed and they were being herded into camps - concentration camps - by Lord Kitchener, where many of them died. I was a child at the time, but my imagination was sparked. Years later I read Ruth Fry's biography and was disappointed. After my father's death in 1963 I inherited a trunk of papers, a sort of historian's dream, and although I was to learn there was a copy of some of the material, a draft autobiography, in the archives at Bloemfontein, South Africa, I knew I had a treasure chest. By the time I could do anything about it, I had married and had moved to Canada. Initially what I read shocked me - was everything so very bad? I had to study the matter further. Although at first sight British Columbia might seem a bad place to start, the library at the University of Victoria was open to me and this housed considerable material, old and new, on the Boer War in which the Canadians had also fought. The London Times newspaper on microfilm was there and the British Hansard was available in the provincial archives. My husband and I went to South Africa where we met people who knew and remembered Emily Hobhouse, in particular Gladys Steyn and Maynie Fleck. We visited the archives at Bloemfontein and went through 64 trunks of General Smuts's papers in Pretoria and Cape Town. In London I studied at the Newspaper Library, and more briefly at the British Library and the London School of Economics. My chief scoop, however, was at the Public Records Office which houses, the correspondence between Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the Commander-in-Chief, and St. John Brodrick the Secretary of State for War. I cannot explain my relief to find, time and time again, that Kitchener corroborated what seemed Emily's most outlandish statements. In Oxford I consulted Lord Milner's papers. Originally I had planned a full-scale biography on Emily Hohhouse, and had visited Minnesota and Mexico where Emily had lived, and Emily had travelled with me in my mind to France and Italy and to her beloved Cornwall, her birth-place. But I had not got very far in my studies when John Fisher produced a biography. I suppose no one is entirely satisfied with what other people have written and I found some errors. I changed my strategy. I decided to concentrate on the letters I had, which were mainly to do with the South African Women's and Children's Distress Fund and Emily's part in the Boer War - to show her innocence - and by publishing direct from the letters to avoid the pitfalls which a biographer might fall into. Then Miss Van Reenen published Emily's letters taken direct from the copy of her draft autobiography in Bloemfontein! This book cut right across the work I was doing and Miss Van Reenen had the distinct advantage of knowing the people and the country. I altered my plans again to concentrate on the Boer War period, to reinforce or to contrast Emily's comments with extracts from official and newspaper reports and in this way to give a comprehensive account of the Concentration Camps. Later, when I found I had other potentially interesting material, I extended the book through to Emily's death. It has taken a long time but it has been a fascinating task. This is a study in depth; this sort of book has to be. It is not a charming book and has only a few witty remarks. It records grim reality, which, if we are to advance the thinking of mankind, we must accept. In presenting the contents I have tried to keep the material as close to the narrative as possible so that the story flows. The story starts with Emily's young life. It continues with CP. Scott and Emily's brother Leonard trying to avert the Anglo Boer War. When that fails Emily helps plan a holiday in Switzerland - hardly the activity of a fanatic. Gradually, however, the war absorbs more and more of Emily's time as she is drawn to do something for the women and children who have been made homeless by the war's relentless pressure. All Emily's future work is a result of this experience. (...)

This is an excerpt from the biography: To Love One's Enemies. The work and life of Emily Hobhouse, by Jennifer Hobhouse Balme.

Title: To Love One's Enemies
Subtitle: The work and life of Emily Hobhouse
Author: Jennifer Hobhouse Balme
Publisher: ibidem
Stuttgart, Germany 2012
ISBN 9783838203416 / ISBN 978-3-8382-0341-6
Softcover, 15x21 cm, 710 pages, many b/w photos