Madame Ouspensky's place in Gurdjieff's System is relatively unknown. Her role was never publicized. People on the periphery were not even aware that her House in the country existed.
Madame and P. D. Ouspensky had both very specific functions in the work. His was to disseminate the Ideas in pure form. Hers was to work with people individually who, as she said, 'already knew what they wanted.'
When she left the Prieuré in 1929, Gurdjieff gave her a MS copy of Beelzebub's Tales with the words, 'Go and help your husband in London.'
For this purpose she organised a House for Work based on the principles laid down at the Prieuré. Here some people could live, others visit.
To show people what they actually were and to fight on the side of the 'eternal against the temporal' was a task that aroused little gratitude in unprepared people or in those who defended and protected their little selves whose very life was threatened. But to those who really wished to see themselves—to see what IS—she gave inestimable help.
I was present at her reunion with Gurdjieff at Mendham in 1948. It was as though they had never been apart. And because I was with her, he gave me some experiences that after the passage of thirty years are still vividly present.
During this, his last visit to U.S., Gurdjieff told Madame Ouspensky: 'I need you to help me in my work for the next ten years.' He himself died the following year but she carried out his wish to her own final illness—just over ten years later.
Dorothy Darlington