“Now and then you look into a face which gives you the masonic sign of a…” — Ada Cambridge | V2Melody

“Now and then you look into a face which gives you the masonic sign of a natural affinity, absent in fifty faces that ought to be more dear.”

Capturing the mysterious immediacy of affinity between otherwise unrelated people · Memoir, Thirty Years in Australia (1903)

About Ada Cambridge

Ada Cambridge

21 November 1844–19 July 1926

Ada Cambridge, who would become one of colonial Australia's most prolific and quietly subversive literary voices, was born on 21 November 1844 at St Germans, Norfolk, England. She was the second child of Thomasine and Henry Cambridge, a gentleman farmer of comfortable means. The Norfolk countryside, with its flat…

More by Ada Cambridge

Poems by Ada Cambridge

More remarks by Ada Cambridge

“If one could throw delicate scruples to the winds and tell the whole story of any human life, or portion of life, however small, the long reign of the work of fiction would be over.”

Suggesting that ordinary lives contain material richer than invented stories · Memoir, The Retrospect (1912)

“To a people so wandering and restless, books in quantities become physically burdensome; they take up too much room in a temporary house, and are too costly as travelling furniture.”

A practical observation on the tension between a love of books and an unsettled life · Memoir, Thirty Years in Australia (1903)

Art
Time

“Pure loving-kindness and open-armed hospitality to strangers surrounded us on all sides but one, and the unexpected welcome went to our young hearts.”

Remembering how generosity to strangers can transform an unfamiliar place · Memoir, Thirty Years in Australia (1903)