Background
Born in Philadelphia to an influential Quaker family, Smith’s background was one of high ideals, inquiring intellect and incipient feminism. This led to a rigorous education, on both sides of the Atlantic. Early on, family connections brought her into close contact with influential figures such as critic Bernard Berenson, philosopher Bertrand Russell, and Martha Carey Thomas (a relative whose unhappy love affair was fictionalized by Gertrude Stein in Fernhurst). It also set the tone for Smith’s later life: provoking, reconciling and enjoying a play of contradictory ideas.
Read more about this topic: Hannah Smith (philanthropist)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)