From the days of early womanhood to the end, Edith Sichel led a double life, though in a sense very different from that in which this ambiguous phrase is generally employed.  “She was known to the reading public as a writer of books and of papers in magazines....  Her principal books were warmly praised by judges competent to estimate their value as contributions to French biography and history;” and her various writings, belonging to very different orders and ranging over a wide variety of topics, were always marked by vigour and originality.  Her versatility was marvellous; and, “though she had not in youth the severe training that makes for perfect accuracy,” she had by nature the instinct which avoids the commonplace, and which touches even hackneyed themes with light and fire.  Her humour was exuberant, unforced, untrammelled; it played freely round every object which met her mental gaze—­sometimes too freely when she was dealing with things traditionally held sacred.  But her flippancy was of speech rather than of thought, for her fundamental view of life was serious.  “Life, in her view, brings much that is pure and unsought joy, more, perhaps, that needs transforming effort, little or nothing that cannot be made to contribute to an inward and abiding happiness.”

Some more detailed account of her literary work may be given later on; at this point I must turn to the other side of her double life.  She was only twenty-two when she began her career of practical benevolence among the poor girls of Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and Shadwell.  She established in the country Homes for the girl-children of an East End work-house, and maintained them till she died.  For twenty-two years she was treasurer of a Boys’ Home.  She was a manager of Elementary Schools in London.  She held a class for female prisoners at Holloway.  She was deeply impressed by the importance of starting young people in suitable employment, and threw all her energies into the work, “in case of need, supplying the money required for apprenticeship.”  In this and in all her other enterprises she was generous to a fault, always being ready to give away half her income—­and yet not “to a fault,” for her strong administrative and financial instinct restrained her from foolish or mischievous expenditure.  All this work, of body and mind, was done in spite of fragile health and frequent suffering; yet she never seemed overburdened, or fussed, or flurried, and those who enjoyed her graceful hospitality in Onslow Gardens would never have suspected either that her day had been spent in what she called “the picturesque mire of Wapping,” or that she had been sitting up late at night, immersed in Human Documents from the Four Centuries preceding the Reformation.