A Jagger-Richards song that invested the then 17-year-old Faithfull with a wisdom beyond her years, it now seems more like a cruel prophecy of misery to come – her crucifixion by a misogynist press over the infamous Redlands bust, her eventual destitution, a broken relationship with her son, the list goes on.
In 1743, sitting quietly with pen in hand, Sarah Osborn pondered how to tell the story of her life, how to make sense of both her spiritual awakening and the sudden destitution of her family.
Christina the Astonishing sounds like a really terrible comic book from the 70s, and it doesn't sound like all of her insanity and destitution actually helped anyone, but I guess if you pray so much you routinely levitate, Catholics will venerate you for centuries.
In the novel her subsequent rescue from destitution by a well-meaning cleric, St. John Rivers, who seeks to marry her and turn her into a missionary, teaches her the importance of passion as well as goodness, and it takes an act of telepathy to bring her back to Rochester, who has been blinded -- and widowed -- in a Thornfield fire.
But she does not pity her friend: I thought of this destitution of hers as some spiritual or aesthetic exercise.
Destitution was her great theme, and she knew it in all its guises, so she never withheld.
It also said that she could not be trusted because she had been convicted for using false papers to work – despite it being a desperate measure to stave off destitution after her asylum case was rejected.
She became extremely popular among service personnel who raised money for her when she faced destitution after the war.
Roach was given her first charge sheet at the age of two and a half – for neglect by way of destitution, a device to remove her from her mother and place her in foster care.
Ann never remarried, and her last seven years were lived "in destitution and holiness". Garnet called her veramente Santa ("truly a holy woman").
