Mr. William Plomer writes:
The poetry of Lilian Bowes Lyon is known and admired.
Less well known and no less admirable was her intensely personal care for
the well-being of others, especially the young, the old, and the sick.
It sprang from an imaginative respect for the personalities of others, most
notably if they were exposed to pain, neglect, danger, or that terrible feeling
of being unwanted which has afflicted so many victims of persecution in our
tine. During the last four years of her life she herself was condemned to
constant and acute physical suffering that was hardly susceptible of alleviation.
Reluctant to become what she called " an emotional liability " to those she
cared for most, she resolved " to live beside, not inside, physical pain "
; and her way of lessening that estrangement from the healthy , which may
be felt by the sick was to concern herself to the utmost of her strength with
helping others.
In the last weeks of her life, for instance, though to move was a torment,
she paid three visits to the incurable patients in a London hospital, and
at the time of her death was planning a fourth.
When sharing the trials
of much-bombed Stepney she wrote