"People always want to know if I write, or paint, or play, or what I
do," she once said to me. "They all expect me to do something. My
function is not to do, but to be. I make no poetry. I am a poem--if you
read me aright."

And again, in a moment of despondency, she said, "I am one of the weary
women of the nineteenth century. No other age could have produced me."

When she said she did nothing she must have meant she was not great in
anything, for her time was all occupied, and those things in which she
was interested were never so well done without her help. If any crying
abuse were brought to light in the old Cathedral city; if any large
measure of reform were set on foot; if the local papers suddenly became
eloquent in favour of some good movement, and adroit in their powers of
persuasion; if burdens had to be lifted from the oppressed, and the
weak defended against great odds, you might be sure that Ideala was
busy, and her work could be detected in it all. And she was especially
active when efforts were being made to find amusement for the people.
"That is what they want, poor things," she would say. "Their lives are
such a dreary round of dull monotonous toil, and they have so little
sun to cheer them. They ought to be taught to laugh, and have the
brightness put into themselves, and then it would seem as if they had
been relieved of half the atmospheric pressure beneath which they
groan. Think what your own life would be if day day after day brought
you nothing but toil; if you had nothing to look back upon, nothing to
look forward to, but the labour that makes a machine of you, deadening
the power to care, and holding mind and body in the galling bondage and
weariness of everlasting routine."