<SPAN name="startofbook"></SPAN>
<div>
<h1 class='c000'>SOME EMINENT WOMEN<br/> <br/>OF OUR TIMES</h1></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c001'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“Non aver tema, disse il mio Signore:</div>
<div class='line'>Fatti sicur, chè noi siamo a buon punto:</div>
<div class='line'>Non stringer, ma rallarga ogni vigore.”</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in22'><cite>Purgatorio</cite>, Canto 9, v. 46-48.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>“‘I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me.’</p>
<p class='c002'>“‘What is that?’ said Will....</p>
<p class='c002'>“‘That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite
know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine
power against evil—widening the skirts of light and making the struggle
with darkness narrower.’”—<cite>Middlemarch</cite>, Book iv.</p>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div><span class='large'>SOME</span></div>
<div class='c003'><span class='xlarge'>EMINENT WOMEN</span></div>
<div class='c003'><span class='large'>OF OUR TIMES</span></div>
<div class='c003'>SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES</div>
<div class='c003'>BY</div>
<div class='c003'><span class='sc'>Mrs.</span> HENRY FAWCETT</div>
</div></div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div>London</div>
<div class='c003'>MACMILLAN AND CO.</div>
<div class='c003'>AND NEW YORK</div>
<div class='c003'>1889</div>
</div></div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center'>
<div><i>All rights reserved</i></div>
</div></div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c004'>PREFACE</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The</span> following short sketches of the lives of some of the
eminent women of our times were written for <cite>The Mothers’
Companion</cite>, and are now republished by the kind permission
of the proprietors and publishers, Messrs. Partridge.</p>
<p class='c002'>They were suggested by the fact that nearly all the
best contributions of women to literature have been made
during the last hundred years, and simultaneously with
this remarkable development of literary activity among
women, there has been an equally remarkable activity in
spheres of work held to be peculiarly feminine. So far,
therefore, from greater freedom and better education encouraging
women to neglect womanly work, it has caused
them to apply themselves to it more systematically and
more successfully. The names of Elizabeth Fry, Mary
Carpenter, Sarah Martin, Agnes Jones, Florence Nightingale,
and Sister Dora are a proof of this. I believe that
we owe their achievements to the same impulse which in
another kind of excellence has given us Jane Austen,
Charlotte Brontë, and Elizabeth Browning.</p>
<p class='c002'>The sketches were intended chiefly for working women
and young people; it was hoped it would be an encouragement
to them to be reminded how much good work had
been done in various ways by women.</p>
<p class='c002'>An apology should, perhaps, be offered to the reader
for the want of arrangement in the sequence of these
sketches. As they appeared month by month, in 1887
and 1888, the incidents of the day sometimes suggested
the subject. Thus the papers on Queen Victoria and on
Queen Louisa of Prussia were suggested by the celebration
of the Jubilee in June 1887, and by the universal grief
felt for the death of Queen Louisa’s son and grandson in
1888. As the incidents mentioned in some sketches are
sometimes referred to in those that follow, it has been
thought best not to alter the sequence in which they
originally appeared. The authorities relied on are quoted
in each paper.</p>
<div class='c006'>MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.</div>
<p class='c002'><span class='sc'>London, 1889.</span></p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 class='c004'>CONTENTS</h2></div>
<table class='table0' summary=''>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<th class='c007'></th>
<th class='c008'></th>
<th class='c009'>PAGE</th>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>1.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch01'><span class='sc'>Elizabeth Fry</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>1</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>2.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch02'><span class='sc'>Mary Carpenter</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>9</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>3.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch03'><span class='sc'>Caroline Herschel</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>18</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>4.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch04'><span class='sc'>Sarah Martin</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>29</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>5.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch05'><span class='sc'>Mary Somerville</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>35</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>6.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch06'><span class='sc'>Queen Victoria</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>46</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>7.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch07'><span class='sc'>Harriet Martineau</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>57</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>8.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch08'><span class='sc'>Florence Nightingale</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>69</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>9.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch09'><span class='sc'>Mary Lamb</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>79</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>10.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch10'><span class='sc'>Agnes Elizabeth Jones</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>91</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>11.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch11'><span class='sc'>Charlotte and Emily Brontë</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>99</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>12.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch12'><span class='sc'>Elizabeth Barrett Browning</span> </SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>111</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>13.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch13'><span class='sc'>Lady Sale and her Fellow-Hostages in Afghanistan</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>117</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>14.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch14'><span class='sc'>Elizabeth Gilbert</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>128</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>15.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch15'><span class='sc'>Jane Austen</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>136</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>16.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch16'><span class='sc'>Maria Edgeworth</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>145</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>17.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch17'><span class='sc'>Queen Louisa of Prussia</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>163</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>18.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch18'><span class='sc'>Dorothy Wordsworth</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>176</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>19.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch19'><span class='sc'>Sister Dora</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>186</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>20.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch20'><span class='sc'>Mrs. Barbauld</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>198</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>21.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch21'><span class='sc'>Joanna Baillie</span> </SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>205</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>22.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch22'><span class='sc'>Hannah More</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>211</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td class='c010'>23.</td>
<td class='c011'><SPAN href='#ch23'><span class='sc'>The American Abolitionists—Prudence Crandall and Lucretia Mott</span></SPAN></td>
<td class='c009'>223</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch01' class='c004'>I<br/> <br/>ELIZABETH FRY</h2></div>
<p class='c012'>“Humanity is erroneously considered among the commonplace virtues.
If it deserved such a place there would be less urgent need than, alas!
there is for its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly
sentiment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the portion
of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and alert, never
slumbering and never wearying, moving like an ancient hero over the land
to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues.”—<span class='sc'>John Morley.</span></p>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The</span> present century is one that is distinguished by the
active part women have taken in careers that were previously
closed to them. Some people would have us
believe that if women write books, paint pictures, and
understand science and ancient languages, they will cease
to be true women, and cease to care for those womanly
occupations and responsibilities that have always been
entrusted to them. This is an essentially false and mistaken
notion. True cultivation of the understanding
makes a sensible woman value at their real high worth
all her womanly duties, and so far from making her
neglect them, causes her to appreciate them more highly
than she would otherwise have done. It has always been
held—at least, in Christian countries—that the most
womanly of women’s duties are to be found in works of
mercy to those who are desolate and miserable. To be
thirsty, hungry, naked, sick, or in prison, is to have a
claim for compassion and comfort upon womanly pity and
tenderness. And we shall see, if we look back over recent
years, that never have these womanly tasks been more
zealously fulfilled than they have been in the century
which has produced Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale,
Josephine Butler, and Octavia Hill.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Fry was born before the beginning of this century—in
1780—but the great public work with which her
memory will always be connected was not begun till about
1813. She was born of the wealthy Quaker family, the
Gurneys of Norwich. Her parents were not very strict
members of the sect to which they belonged, for they
allowed their children to learn music and dancing—pursuits
that were then considered very worldly even by many who
did not belong to the Society of Friends. The gentle poet,
William Cowper, speaks in one of his letters, written about
the time of Elizabeth Fry’s childhood, of love of music as
a thing which tends “to weaken and destroy the spiritual
discernment.” Mr. and Mrs. Gurney, however, seem to
have been very free from such prejudices, as well as from
others which were much more universal, for their children
not only learnt music and dancing, but also—girls as well
as boys—Latin and mathematics.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Gurney seems to have discerned that she had an
especial treasure in her little Elizabeth. She is spoken of
in her mother’s journal as “my dove-like Betsy.” The
authoress of the biography of Elizabeth Fry in the
Eminent Women series, says: “Her faculty for independent
investigation, her unswerving loyalty to duty, and
her fearless perseverance in works of benevolence, were all
foreshadowed” in her childhood. She had as a young girl
what appears to us now a very extraordinary dread of enthusiasm
in religion. One would think that if ever a
woman needed enthusiasm for her life’s work, Elizabeth
Fry was that woman. But she confesses in her journal,
written when she was seventeen years of age, “the greatest
fear of religion” because it is generally allied with enthusiasm.
Perhaps the truth is that she had so deep a
natural fount of enthusiasm in her heart that she dreaded
the work that it would impel her to, when once it was
allowed a free course. She had a very strong, innate
repugnance to anything which drew public attention upon
herself, and only the imperative sense of duty enabled her
to overcome this feeling. In her heart she said what her
Master had said before her: “Father, if it be possible, let
this cup pass from me.”</p>
<p class='c002'>When the sphere of public duty first revealed itself to
her, she records in her diary what it cost her to enter upon
it, and writes of it as “the humiliating path that has appeared
to be opening before me.” It must be noticed,
however, that in her case, as always, the steep and difficult
path of duty becomes easier to those who do not flinch
from it. In a later passage of her diary, the public work
which she had at first called a path of humiliation she
speaks of as “this great mercy.”</p>
<p class='c002'>In the little book to which reference has just been
made, we read that the first great change in Elizabeth
Gurney’s life was caused by the deep impression made
upon her by the sermons of William Savery. It is rather
strange to find the girl who had such a terror of enthusiasm,
weeping passionately while William Savery was
preaching. Her sister has described what took place.
“Betsy astonished us all by the great feeling she showed.
She wept most of the way home.... What she went
through in her own mind I cannot say; but the results
were most powerful and most evident” (p. 11, <cite>Elizabeth
Fry</cite>. By Mrs. E. R. Pitman). Her emotion was not of
the kind that passes away and leaves no trace behind.
The whole course of her life and tenor of her thoughts
were changed. She became a strict Quakeress, not, however,
without some conflict with herself. There are
pleasant little touches of human nature in the facts that
she found it a trial to say “thee” and “thou,” and to give
up her scarlet riding habit. Soon after this, at the age of
twenty, she became the wife of Mr. Joseph Fry, and removed
to London, where she lived in St. Mildred’s Court,
in the City. The family into which she married were
Quakers, like her own, but of a much more severe and
strict kind. Her marriage was, however, in every respect
a fortunate one. Her husband sympathised deeply with
her in all her efforts for the good of others, and encouraged
her in her public work, although many in the Society of
Friends did not scruple to protest that a married woman
has no duties except to her husband and children. Her
journal shows how anxiously she guarded herself against
any temptation to neglect her home duties. She was a
tender and devoted mother to her twelve children, and it
was through her knowledge of the strength of a mother’s
love that she was able to reach the hearts of many of the
poor prisoners whom she afterwards helped out of the
wretchedness into which they had fallen.</p>
<p class='c002'>Her study of the problem, how to help the poor, began
in this way. A beggar-woman with a child in her arms
stopped her in the street. Mrs. Fry, seeing that the child
had whooping-cough and was dangerously ill, offered to go
with the woman to her home in order more effectually to
assist her. To Mrs. Fry’s surprise, the woman immediately
tried to make off; it was evident what she wanted was a
gift of money, not any help to the suffering child. Mrs.
Fry followed her, and found that her rooms were filled
with a crowd of farmed-out children in every stage of sickness
and misery; the more pitiable the appearance of one
of these poor mites, the more useful an implement was it in
the beggar’s stock-in-trade. From this time onwards the
condition of women and children in the lowest and most
degraded of the criminal classes became the study of Mrs.
Fry’s life. She had the gift of speech on any subject which
deeply moved her. From about 1809 she began to speak
at the Friends’ meeting-house. This power of speaking, as
well as working, enabled her to draw about her an active
band of co-workers. When she first began visiting the
female prisoners in Newgate it is probable that she could
not have supported all that she had to go through if it had
not been for the sympathy and companionship of Anna
Buxton and other Quaker ladies whom she had roused
through her power of speech, just as she had herself been
roused when a girl by the preaching of William Savery.</p>
<p class='c002'>The condition of the women and children in Newgate
Prison, when Mrs. Fry first began visiting them in 1813,
was more horrible than anything that can be easily
imagined. Three hundred poor wretches were herded together
in two wards and two cells, with no furniture, no
bedding of any kind, and no arrangements for decency or
privacy. Cursing and swearing, foul language, and personal
filthiness, made the dens in which the women were
confined equally offensive to ear, eye, nose, and sense of
modesty. The punishment of death at that time existed
for 300 different offences, and though there were many
mitigations of the sentence in the case of those who had
only committed minor breaches of the law, yet the fact
that nearly all had by law incurred the penalty of death,
gave an apparent justification for herding the prisoners indiscriminately
together. It thus happened that many a
poor girl who had committed a comparatively trivial
offence, became absolutely ruined in body and mind
through her contact in prison with the vilest and most
degraded of women. No attempt whatever was made to
reform or discipline the prisoners, or to teach them any
trade whereby, on leaving the gaol, they might earn an
honest livelihood. Add to this that there were no female
warders nor female officers of any kind in the prison, and
that the male warders were frequently men of depraved
life, and it is not difficult to see that no element of degradation
was wanting to make the female wards of Newgate
what they were often called—a hell on earth.</p>
<p class='c002'>When Elizabeth Fry and Anna Buxton first visited this
Inferno, there was so little pretence at any kind of control
over the prisoners, that the Governor of Newgate advised
the ladies to leave their watches behind them at home.
Mrs. Fry, with a wise instinct, felt that the best way of
influencing the poor, wild, rough women was to show her
care for their children. Many of the prisoners had their
children with them in gaol, and there were very few even
of the worst who could not be reached by care for their
little ones. Even those who had no children were often
not without the motherly instinct, and could be roused to
some measure of self-restraint and decency for the sake of
the children who were being corrupted by their example.
So Mrs. Fry’s first step towards reforming the women took
the form of starting a school for the children in the prison.
As usual in all good work of a novel kind, those who knew
nothing about it were quite sure that Mrs. Fry would have
been much more usefully employed if she had turned her
energies in a different direction. People who have never
stirred a finger to lighten the misery of mankind always
know, so much better than the workers, what to do and
how to do it. They would probably tell a fireman who is
entering a burning house at the risk of his life, that he
would be more usefully employed in studying the chemical
action of fire, or in pondering over the indestructibility of
matter. The popular feeling with regard to Mrs. Fry’s
work in Newgate was embodied by Thomas Hood in a
ballad which is preserved in his collected works, and serves
now to show how wrong a good and tender-hearted man may
be in passing judgment on a work of the value of which he
was entirely unqualified to form an opinion. The refrain
of the poem is “Keep your school out of Newgate, Mrs.
Fry”—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>I like the pity in your full-brimmed eye.</div>
<div class='line'>I like your carriage and your silken gray,</div>
<div class='line'>Your dove-like habits and your silent preaching,</div>
<div class='line'>But I <em>don’t</em> like your Newgatory teaching.</div>
<div class='line'> · · · · ·</div>
<div class='line'>No, I’ll be your friend, and like a friend</div>
<div class='line'>Point out your very worst defect. Nay, never</div>
<div class='line'>Start at that word! But I must ask you why</div>
<div class='line'>You keep your school in Newgate, Mrs. Fry.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Fry’s philanthropy was not of a kind to be checked
by a ballad, and she went on perseveringly with her work;
the school was formed, and a prisoner, named Mary Cormor,
was the first schoolmistress. A wonderful change gradually
became apparent in the demeanour, language, and appearance
of the women in prison. In 1817 an association
was formed for carrying on the work Mrs. Fry had begun.
It was called “An Association for the Improvement of the
Female Prisoners in Newgate.” Its first members were
eleven Quakeresses and one clergyman’s wife. Public
attention was now alive to the importance of the work;
and in the following year a Select Committee of the House
of Commons was appointed to inquire and report upon the
condition of the London prisons. Mrs. Fry was examined
before this committee. Her chief recommendations were
that the prisoners should be employed in some industry,
and be paid for their work, and that good conduct should
be encouraged by rewards; she was also most urgent that
the women prisoners should be in the charge of women
warders. Her work in the prison naturally led her to
consider the condition and ultimate fate of women who
were transported. Transportation was then carried out
upon a large scale, and all the evils of the prison existed
in an intensified form on board the transport ships. The
horrors of the voyage were followed by a brutal and
licentious distribution of the women on their arrival to
colonists, soldiers, and convicts, who went on board and
took their choice of the human cargo. Mrs. Fry’s efforts
resulted in a check being placed on these shameful barbarities.
The women were, owing to her exertions, sent
out in charge of female warders, and they were provided
with decent accommodation on their arrival.</p>
<p class='c002'>Like Howard, Mrs. Fry did not confine her efforts to
the poor and wretched of her own country. She visited
foreign countries in order thoroughly to study various
methods of prison work and discipline. On one occasion
she found in Paris a congenial task in bringing the force of
public opinion to bear on the treatment of children in the
Foundling Hospital there. The poor babies were done up
in swaddling clothes that were only unwrapped once in
twelve hours. There was no healthy screaming in the
wards, only a sound that a hearer compared to the faint
and pitiful bleating of lambs. A lady who visited the
hospital said she never made the round of the spotlessly
clean white cots, without finding at least one dead baby!
Everything in the hospital was regulated by clockwork; its
outward appearance was clean and orderly in the extreme,
but the babies died like flies! The Archbishop of Paris
was vastly annoyed with Mrs. Fry for pointing out this
drawback to the perfect organisation of the institution;
but when once the light was let in, improvement followed.</p>
<p class='c002'>There were many other classes of neglected or unfortunate
people whose circumstances were improved by Mrs.
Fry’s exertions. The lonely shepherds of Salisbury Plain
were provided with a library after she had visited the desolate
region where they lived. She also organised a lending
library for coastguardsmen and for domestic servants.
There was no end to her active exertions for the good of
others except that of her life.</p>
<p class='c002'>She died at Ramsgate in 1845, and was buried at Barking.</p>
<p class='c002'>Her private life was not without deep sorrows and
anxieties. She lost a passionately beloved child in 1815;
in 1828 her husband was unfortunate in his business affairs.
They suffered from a great diminution of fortune, and
were obliged to remove to a smaller house and adopt a less
expensive style of living. She did not pretend to any indifference
she was far from feeling under these trials; but
they were powerless to turn her from the duties which she
had marked out for herself. The work which she had
undertaken for the good of others probably became, in its
turn, her own solace and support in the hour of trial and
affliction. In helping others she had unconsciously built
up a strong refuge for herself, thus giving a new illustration
to the truth of the words: “He that findeth his life shall lose
it: and he that loseth his life, for my sake, shall find it.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch02' class='c004'>II<br/> <br/>MARY CARPENTER</h2></div>
<p class='c012'>“That it may please Thee ... to show Thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.”</p>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Mary Carpenter</span> was thirty-eight years old when Mrs.
Fry died in 1845. We do not hear, in reading the lives
of either, that the two women ever met, or that the elder
directly stimulated the activity of the younger. Yet the
one most surely prepared the way for the other; their
work was upon the same lines, and Miss Carpenter, the
Unitarian, of Bristol, was the spiritual heir and successor
of Mrs. Fry, the Quaker, of Norwich.</p>
<p class='c002'>There is, it is true, a contrast in the manner in which
the two women approached their work in life. The aim
of both was the rescue of what Mary Carpenter called “the
perishing and dangerous classes.” But while Mrs. Fry was
led, through her efforts on behalf of convicts, to establish
schools for them and their children, Mary Carpenter’s first
object was the school for neglected children, and through
the knowledge gained there she was led to form schemes
for the reformation of criminals and for a new system of
prison discipline. Mrs. Fry worked through convicts to
schools; Mary Carpenter through schools to convicts.</p>
<p class='c002'>It will not therefore be imagined that there is any want
of appreciation of Mrs. Fry when it is said that Mary
Carpenter’s labours were more effective, inasmuch as they
were directed to the cause of the evil, rather than to its
results. By establishing reformatory and industrial schools,
and by obtaining, after long years of patient effort, the
sanction and support of Parliament for them, she virtually
did more than had up to that time ever been done in
England, to stop the supply of criminals. Children who
were on the brink of crime, and those who had actually
fallen into criminal courses, were, through her efforts,
snatched away from their evil surroundings, and helped
to become respectable and industrious men and women.
Before her time, magistrates and judges had no choice,
when a child criminal stood convicted before them, but to
sentence him to prison, whence he would probably come
out hopelessly corrupted and condemned for life to the
existence of a beast of prey. She says, in one of her
letters, dated 1850: “A Bristol magistrate told me that
for twenty years he had felt quite unhappy at going on
committing these young culprits. And yet he had <em>done</em>
nothing!” The worse than uselessness of prisons for
juvenile offenders was a fact that was burnt into Mary
Carpenter’s mind and heart by the experience of her life.
She was absolutely incapable of recognising the evil and
at the same time calmly acquiescing in it. Her magisterial
friend is the type of the common run of humanity, who
satisfy their consciences by saying, “Very grievous! very
wrong!” and who do nothing to remove the grievance and
the wrong; she is the type of the knights-errant of
humanity, who never see a wrong without assailing it, and
endeavouring to remove the causes which produce it.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mary Carpenter was born at Exeter in 1807, the eldest
of five children, several of whom have left their mark on
the intellectual and moral history of this century. There
was all through her life a great deal of the elder sister—one
may almost say, of the mother—in Mary Carpenter.
In an early letter her mother speaks of the wonderfully
tranquillising influence of dolls on her little Mary. She
never shrank from responsibility, and she had a special
capacity for protecting love—a capacity that stood her in
good stead in reclaiming the little waifs and strays to whom
she afterwards devoted herself. Her motherliness comes
out in a hundred ways in the story of her life. Her endless
patience with the truant and naughty children was
such as many a real mother might envy. She was especially
proud of the title of “the old mother” which the
Indian women, whom she visited towards the close of her
life, gave her. In writing to a friend, she once said:
“There is a verse in the prophecies, ‘I have given thee
children whom thou hast not borne,’ and the motherly love
of my heart has been given to many who have never known
before a mother’s love.” She adopted a child in 1858 to
be a daughter to her, and writes gleefully: “Just think of
me with a little girl of <em>my own</em>! about five years old, ready-made
to my hand, without the trouble of marrying—a
darling little thing, an orphan,” etc. etc. Her friends
spoke of her eager delight in buying the baby’s outfit.</p>
<p class='c002'>It was her motherliness that made her so successful
with the children in the reformatories and industrial
schools; moreover, the children believed in her love for
them. One little ragged urchin told a clergyman that
Miss Carpenter was a lady who gave away all her money
for naughty boys, and only kept enough to make herself
clean and decent. On one occasion she heard that two of
her ex-pupils had “got into trouble,” and were in prison
at Winchester. She quickly found an opportunity of
visiting them, and one of them exclaimed, directly he saw
her, “Oh! Miss Carpenter, I knew you would not desert
us!”</p>
<p class='c002'>Another secret of her power, and also of her elasticity
of spirit, was her sense of humour. It was like a silver
thread running through her laborious life, saving her from
dulness and despondency. In one of her reports, which
has to record the return of a runaway, she said: “He
came back resembling the prodigal in everything except
his repentance!”</p>
<p class='c002'>The motto which she especially made her own was <i><span lang="la" xml:lang="la">Dum
doceo disco</span>—While I teach, I learn</i>. Her father had a
school for boys in Bristol, and Mary and her sister were
educated in it. They were among the best of their father’s
pupils, one of whom, the Rev. James Martineau, has left a
record of the great impression Mary’s learning made upon
him. She was indeed very proficient in many branches of
knowledge. Her education included Latin, Greek, mathematics,
and natural history; and the exactness which her
father and the nature of her studies demanded of her,
formed a most invaluable training for her after career.
For many years the acquisition of knowledge, for its own
sake, was the chief joy of her life; but a time came when
it ceased to satisfy her. She was rudely awakened from
the delightful dreams of a student’s life by a severe visitation
of cholera at Bristol in 1832. From this period, and
indeed from a special day—that set apart as a fast-day in
consequence of the cholera—dates a solemn dedication of
herself to the service of her fellow-creatures. She wrote
in her journal 31st March 1832, what her resolution was,
and concluded: “These things I have written to be a
witness against me, if ever I should forget what ought to
be the object of all my active exertions in life.” These
solemn self-dedications are seldom or never spoken of by
those who make them. Records of them are found sometimes
in journals long after the hand that has written them
is cold. But, either written or unwritten, they are probably
the rule rather than the exception on the part of
those who devote themselves to the good of others. The
world has recently learned that this was the case with
Lord Shaftesbury. There is a time when the knight-errant
consciously enrols himself a member of the noble band of
warriors against wrong and oppression, and takes upon
himself his baptismal vow—manfully to fight against sin,
the world, and the devil, and to continue Christ’s faithful
soldier and servant to his life’s end.</p>
<p class='c002'>It must be remembered that when Mary Carpenter first
began to exert herself for the benefit of neglected children,
there were no reformatory or industrial schools, except those
which had been established by the voluntary efforts of
philanthropists like herself. Aided by a band of fellow-workers
and wise advisers, chief of whom were Mr.
Matthew Davenport Hill, the Recorder of Birmingham, and
his daughters; Dr. Tuckerman, of the U.S.A.; Mr. Russell
Scott, of Bath; Mr. Sheriff Watson, of Aberdeen; and
Lady Byron, Mary Carpenter set to work to establish a
voluntary reformatory school at Kingswood, near Bristol.
Her principle was that by surrounding children, who would
otherwise be criminals, with all the influences of a wholesome
home life, there was a better chance than by any
other course, of reclaiming these children, and making them
useful members of society. To herd children together
in large, unhomelike institutions, was always, in Mary
Carpenter’s view, undesirable; the effect on character is
bad; the more perfectly such places are managed, the more
nearly do the children in them become part of a huge
machine, and the less are their faculties, as responsible
human beings, developed. Over and over again, in books,
in addresses, and by the example of the institutions which
she managed herself, Mary Carpenter reiterated the lesson
that if a child is to be rescued and reformed, he must be
placed in a family; and that where it is necessary, for the
good of society, to separate children on account of their
own viciousness, or that of their parents, from their own
homes, the institutions receiving them should be based on
the family ideal so far as possible. With this end in view,
the children at Kingswood were surrounded by as many
home influences as possible. Miss Carpenter at one time
thought of living there herself, but this scheme was given
up, in deference to her mother’s wishes. She was, however,
a constant visitor, and a little room, which had once been
John Wesley’s study, was fitted up as a resting-place for
her. On a pane of one of the windows of this room her
predecessor had written the words, “God is here.” She
taught the children herself, and provided them with rabbits,
fowls, and pigs, the care of which she felt would exercise a
humanising influence upon them. The whole discipline of
the place was directed by her; one of her chief difficulties
was to get a staff of assistants with sufficient faith in her
methods to give them an honest trial. She did not believe
in a physical force morality. “We must not attempt,” she
wrote, “to <em>break</em> the will, but to train it to govern itself
wisely; and it must be our great aim to call out the good,
which exists even in the most degraded, and make it conquer
the bad.” After a year’s work at Kingswood in this
spirit, she writes very hopefully of the improvement already
visible in the sixteen boys and thirteen girls in her charge.
The boys could be trusted to go into Bristol on messages,
and even “thievish girls” could be sent out to shops with
money, which they never thought of appropriating.</p>
<p class='c002'>But although the success of the institution was so
gratifying, it had no legal sanction; it had consequently
no power to deal with runaways, and the great mass of
juvenile delinquents were still sentenced to prisons, from
which they emerged, like the man into whom seven devils
entered, in a state far worse than their first. Mary
Carpenter’s work was not only to prove the success of her
methods of dealing with young criminals, but, secondly, to
convince the Government that the established system was
a bad one, and thirdly, and most difficult of all, to get them
to legislate on the subject. A long history of her efforts
to obtain satisfactory legislation for children of the perishing
and dangerous classes is given in her life, written by
her nephew, Mr. J. Estlin Carpenter. It is enough here
to say that in the House of Lords, Lord Shaftesbury, and
in the House of Commons, Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr.
Adderley (afterwards Lord Iddesleigh and Lord Norton),
were her chief supporters. Mr. Lowe (now Lord Sherbrooke)
was her chief opposer. Liberal as she was, born and bred,
as well as by heart’s conviction, she confessed with some
feeling of shame, that the Tories “are best in <em>this</em> work.”
At last, in 1854, her efforts were crowned with success,
and the Royal Assent was given to the Youthful Offenders
Bill, which authorised the establishment of reformatory
schools, under the sanction of the Home Secretary.</p>
<p class='c002'>It is a striking proof of the change that has taken place
in the sphere and social status of women, that Mary
Carpenter, in the first half of her active life, suffered what
can be called nothing less than anguish, from any effort
which demanded from herself the least departure from
absolute privacy. When she began her work of convincing
the public and Parliament of the principles which ought to
govern the education of juvenile criminals, her nephew
writes that to have spoken at a conference in the presence
of gentlemen, she would have felt, at that time (1851), as
tantamount to unsexing herself. When she was called
upon to give evidence before a Select Committee of the
House of Commons in 1852, her profound personal timidity
made the occasion a painful ordeal to her, which she was
only enabled to support by the consciousness of the needs
of the children. Surely this excessive timidity arises from
morbid self-consciousness, rather than from true womanly
modesty. Mary Carpenter was enabled, by increasing
absorption in her work, to throw it off, and for her work’s
sake she became able to speak in public with ease and self-possession.
She frequently spoke and read papers at the
Social Science Congresses, and at meetings of the British
Association. A letter from her brother Philip describes
one of these occasions, at the meeting in 1860 of the
British Association at Oxford, when her subject was,
“Educational Help from the Government Grant to the
Destitute and Neglected Children of Great Britain.”</p>
<div class='c013'><i>“July ——, 1860.</i></div>
<p class='c002'>“There was a great gathering of celebrities to hear her.
It was in one of the ancient schools or lecture-halls, which
was crowded, evidently not by the curious, but by those who
really wanted to know what she had to say. She stood up
and read in her usual clear voice and expressive enunciation....
It was, I suppose, the first time a woman’s
voice had read a lecture there before dignitaries of
learning and the Church; but as there was not the
slightest affectation on the one hand, so on the other hand
there was neither a scorn nor an etiquettish politeness;
but they all listened to her as they would have listened
to Dr. Rae about Franklin, only with the additional
feeling (expressed by the President, Mr. Nassau Senior)
that it was a matter of heart and duty, as well as head.”</p>
<p class='c002'>As years passed by, her work and responsibilities
rapidly increased. It is astonishing to read of the number
of institutions, from ragged schools upwards, of which she
was practically the head and chief. Her thoroughly
practical and business-like methods of work, as well as her
obvious self-devotion and earnestness, ensured to her a
large share of public confidence and esteem, and although
she was a Unitarian, sectarian prejudices did not often
thwart her usefulness. Two instances to the contrary must,
however, be given. In 1856 the Somersetshire magistrates
at the Quarter Sessions at Wells refused to sanction the
Girls’ Reformatory, established by Miss Carpenter at the
Red Lodge, Bristol, on account of the religious opinions of
its foundress. They appeared to have forgotten that
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is
this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction,
and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” A more
deeply and truly religious spirit than Mary Carpenter’s
never existed; but that is the last thing that sectarian
rancour takes heed of. The other little bit of persecution
she met with was regarded by herself and her friends as
something between a compliment and a joke. In 1864 she
wrote a book entitled <cite>Our Convicts</cite>. The work was received
with commendation by jurists in France, Germany,
and the United States, but the crowning honour of all was
that the Pope placed her and her books on the “Index
Expurgatorius.” After this she felt that if she had lived
in earlier times she might have aspired to the crown of
martyrdom.</p>
<p class='c002'>The extraordinary energy and vitality of Mary Carpenter
never declined. When she was over sixty years of age she
made four successive visits to India, with the double object
of arousing public opinion there about the education of
women, and the condition of convicts, especially of female
convicts. At the age of sixty-six she visited America.
She had long been deeply interested in the social and
political condition of the United States, and had many warm
personal friends there. Her first impulse to reformatory
work had come from an American citizen, Dr. Tuckerman;
her sympathy and help had been abundantly bestowed upon
the Abolitionist party, and she was of course deeply thankful
when the Civil War in America ended as it did in the
victory of the North, and in the complete abolition of negro
slavery in the United States. Her mind remained vigorous
and susceptible to new impressions and new enthusiasms
to the last. Every movement for elevating the position of
women had her encouragement. She frequently showed
her approval of the movement for women’s suffrage by
signing petitions in its favour, and was convinced that
legislation affecting both sexes would never be what it
ought to be until women as well as men had the power of
voting for Members of Parliament. In 1877, within a
month of her death, she signed the memorial to the Senate
of the London University in favour of the admission of
women to medical degrees.</p>
<p class='c002'>She passed away peacefully in her sleep, without previous
illness or decline of mental powers, in June 1877,
leaving an honoured name, and a network of institutions
for the reform of young criminals, and the prevention of
crime, of which our country will for many years to come
reap the benefit.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch03' class='c004'>III<br/> <br/>CAROLINE HERSCHEL</h2></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in10'>“As when by night the glass</div>
<div class='line'>Of Galileo less assured observes</div>
<div class='line'>Imagined lands and regions in the moon.”—<cite>Paradise Lost.</cite></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Every</span> one knows the fame of Sir William Herschel, the
first distinguished astronomer of that name, the builder
and designer of the forty-foot telescope, and the discoverer
of the planet, called after George III., Georgium Sidus.
Hardly less well known is the name of his sister, Caroline
Herschel, who was her brother’s constant helper for fifty
years. She was the discoverer of eight comets; she
received, for her distinguished services to science, the gold
medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, and the gold
medal conferred annually by the King of Prussia for
science; she was also made an honorary member of the
Royal Astronomical Society and of the Royal Irish Academy,
and received many other public marks of appreciation of
the value of her astronomical labours. Few women have
done as much as she for the promotion of science, and few
have been more genuinely humble in their estimate of their
own attainments. Nothing made her more angry than
any praise which appeared, even in the slightest degree, to
detract from the reputation of her brother; over and over
again she asserted that she was nothing more than a tool
which he had taken the trouble to sharpen. One of her
favourite expressions about herself was that she only
“minded the heavens” for her brother. “I am nothing,”
she wrote; “I have done nothing: all I am, all I know, I
owe to my brother. I am only a tool which he shaped to his
use—a well-trained puppy-dog would have done as much.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Scientific men and scientific societies did not endorse
Caroline Herschel’s extremely humble estimate of herself.
In the address to the Astronomical Society by Mr. South,
on presenting the medal to Miss Herschel in 1828, the
highest praise was conferred upon her as her brother’s
fellow-worker, and as an original observer. “She it was,”
said Mr. South, “who reduced every observation, made
every calculation; she it was who arranged everything in
systematic order; and she it was who helped him (Sir W.
Herschel) to obtain his imperishable name. But her claims
to our gratitude do not end here: as an original observer
she demands, and I am sure she has, our unfeigned thanks.”
He then narrates the series of her astronomical discoveries,
and adds, referring to the brother and sister: “Indeed, in
looking at the joint labours of these extraordinary personages,
we scarcely know whether most to admire the intellectual
power of the brother, or the unconquerable industry
of his sister.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The sharpest tool, or the best-trained puppy-dog in the
world, could hardly have earned such praise as this.
Without endorsing what Caroline said of herself in her
generous wish to heighten the fame of her brother, it must,
however, be conceded that in a remarkable degree she was
what he made her. With an excellent, and indeed an
exceptionally powerful, natural understanding, she was
ready to apply it in any direction her brother chose. She
was far from being a mere tool, but her mind resembled a
fine musical instrument upon which her brother was able to
play the lightest air or the grandest symphony, according
as he pleased. At his bidding she became, first, a prima
donna, then an astronomer; if he had so wished it, she
would probably with equal readiness and versatility have
turned her attention to any other branch of science or art.
Caroline Herschel was, indeed, a fine example of what
devoted love can do to elevate the character and develop
the natural capacity of the understanding.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was born in Hanover on the 16th March 1750, the
youngest but one of six children. Her exceptionally long life
of nearly ninety-eight years closed in January 1848. Her
memory, therefore, included the earthquake of Lisbon, the
whole French Revolution, the meteor-like rise and fall of
Napoleon, and all the history of modern Europe to the eve
of the socialistic outbreak of 1848. Her family life, before
she left Germany, was of the narrowest possible kind. She
had only one sister, seventeen years older than herself;
and as Sophia Herschel married early, Caroline became the
only girl in her family circle, and to the full was she kept
to those exclusively feminine pursuits and occupations
which the proprieties of Germany at that time enforced.
Her mother appears to have been enthusiastically opposed
to the education of girls. Her father wished to give her a
good education, but the mother insisted that nothing of
the kind should be attempted. How she learned to read
and write we are not told in the biography written by her
grand-niece, Mrs. J. Herschel. These accomplishments
were by no means common among German women of the
humbler middle class a hundred years ago. She did, however,
acquire them, in spite of her mother’s decree that two
or three months’ training in the art of making household
linen was all the education that Caroline required. Her
father, who was a professional musician himself, wished to
teach her music, but could only do so by stealth, or by
taking advantage of half an hour now and then, when his
wife was in an exceptionally good temper. In a letter,
written when she was eighty-eight years old, Caroline
recalls these furtive hours stolen from the serious occupations
of her life, which then consisted in sewing, “ornamental
needlework, knitting, plaiting hair, and stringing
beads and bugles.” “It was my lot,” she writes, “to be
the Cinderella of the family.... I could never find time
for improving myself in many things I knew, and which,
after all, proved of no use to me afterwards, except what
little I knew of music ... which my father took a pleasure
in teaching me—<i>N.B., when my mother was not at home.
Amen.</i>”</p>
<p class='c002'>Very early in her life her brother William became
Caroline’s idol and hero. He was twelve years older than
herself, and distinguished himself among the group of
brothers for tenderness and kindness to the little maiden.
Her eldest brother, Jacob, was a fastidious gentleman, and
Caroline’s inability to satisfy his requirements for nicety at
table and as a waitress, often earned her a whipping.
But her brother William’s gentility was of a different order.
She narrates one instance, which doubtless was a specimen
of others, when “My dear brother William threw down
his knife and fork and ran to welcome and crouched down
to me, which made me forget all my grievances.” Little
did William or Caroline guess that in the kind brother
soothing the little sister’s trouble, the future astronomer
was “sharpening the tool” that was hereafter to be of such
inestimable service to him.</p>
<p class='c002'>The connection of England and Hanover under one
crown caused an intimate association between the two
countries. William Herschel’s first visit to England was
as a member of the band of the regiment of which his
father was bandmaster. On this first visit to England,
William expended his little savings in buying Locke’s
“Essay on the Human Understanding.” Jacob made an
equally characteristic purchase of specimens of English
tailoring art. These professional journeys to England led,
in the course of time, to William Herschel establishing himself
as a music-master and professional musician at Bath.
This, however, he very early regarded merely as a means
to an end. He taught music to live, but he lived for his
astronomical studies and for the inventions and improvements
in telescopes which he afterwards introduced to the
world. When Caroline was seventeen years old, her
father died, leaving his family very ill provided for;
Caroline was more closely than ever confined to the tasks
of a household drudge and to endeavouring to supply home-made
luxuries for Jacob. This went on for five years, the
mother and sister slaving night and day in order that Jacob
might cut a figure in the world not humbling to the family
pride. In 1772 William Herschel unexpectedly arrived
from England, and his short visit ended in his sister Caroline
returning with him to Bath. She left, as she writes
with some awe, even after an interval of many years, “without
receiving the consent of my eldest brother to my going.”</p>
<p class='c002'>There could not possibly be a greater contrast than that
between Caroline’s life in Hanover and her life in England.
From being a maid-of-all-work in a not very interesting
family, where there was a dull monotony in her daily
routine of drudgery, she found she was to become a public
singer, an astronomer’s apprentice, and an assistant manufacturer
of scientific instruments; she was not only her
brother’s housekeeper, but his helper and coadjutor in every
act of his life. Nothing is more remarkable than the
account of the life of William and Caroline Herschel at
Bath. He frequently gave from thirty-five to forty music-lessons
a week; this, with his work as director of public
concerts, kept the wolf from the door, and, needless to say,
occupied his daylight hours with tolerable completeness.
The nights were given to “minding the heavens,” or to
making instruments necessary for minding them much
more efficiently than had hitherto been possible. Every
room in the house was converted into a workshop.
William Herschel literally worked on, night and day,
without rest, his sister on several occasions keeping him
alive by putting bits of food into his mouth while he was
still working. Once when he was finishing a seven-foot
mirror for his telescope, he never took his hands from it
for sixteen hours. The great work of constructing the
forty-foot telescope took place at Bath; and at Bath also,
while still practising the profession of a music-master,
Herschel discovered the Georgium Sidus, and was acknowledged
as the leading authority on astronomy in England.</p>
<p class='c002'>Up to the time of Herschel’s improvements, six or eight
inches used to be considered a large size for the mirror of
an astronomical telescope. His first great telescope had a
twelve-foot mirror. There is a most exciting account in
Mrs. Herschel’s Life of Caroline Herschel, of the failure of
the first casting of the mirror for the thirty-foot reflector.
The molten metal leaked from the vessel containing it and
fell on the stone floor, pieces of which flew about in all
directions as high as the ceiling. The operators fortunately
escaped without serious injury. “My poor brother fell,
exhausted with heat and exertion, on a heap of brickbats.”
The disappointment must have been intense, but nothing
ever baffled these indefatigable workers, and the second
casting was a complete success.</p>
<p class='c002'>Five years after she had joined her brother at Bath,
Caroline made her first appearance as a public singer. She
was very successful, and her friends anticipated that her
well-cultivated and beautiful voice would become a means
of providing her with an ample income. She, however, had
so fully identified herself with her brother’s astronomical
labours, that she only regarded her musical acquirements
as a means of setting him free to devote himself more
completely to the real object of his life. His fame as a
maker of telescopes had by this time spread all over
Europe, and many scientific societies, royal persons, and
other celebrities, ordered telescopes of him. On these
orders he was able to realise a large profit, but Caroline
always grudged the time devoted to their execution. Her
aim for her brother was not that he should become rich or
even well-to-do, but that he should devote himself unreservedly
to advance the progress of astronomical science.
She was ready to live on a crust, and to give herself up to
the most pinching economies and even privations, for this
end. She was the keeper of her brother’s purse, and received
his commands to spend therefrom anything that was
necessary for herself; her thrift and self-denial may be
judged from the fact that the sum thus abstracted for her
own personal wants seldom amounted to more than £7 or
£8 a year.</p>
<p class='c002'>The next great change in the life of the brother and
sister took place in 1782, when William Herschel left Bath
and was appointed Astronomer-Royal by George the Third.
His salary of only £200 a year involved a great loss of
income, but this, in his eyes, was a small matter in comparison
with the advantage of having his time entirely free
to give up to his favourite studies. They bade farewell to
Bath, and settled first at Datchet, shortly after, however,
removing to Slough. Caroline had dismal visions of bankruptcy,
but William was in the highest spirits, and declared
that they would live on eggs and bacon, “which would cost
nothing to speak of, now that they were really in the
country.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Caroline was now installed as an assistant astronomer,
and was given a telescope, which she calls a “seven-foot
Newtonian Sweeper”; and she was instructed, whenever she
had an evening not in attendance on her brother, to “sweep
for comets”; but her principal business appears, at this time,
to have been waiting on her brother, and writing down the
results of his observations; they worked quite as hard as
they had done at Bath. They laboured at the manufacture
of instruments all day, and at the observation of the heavens
all night. No severity of weather, if the sky was clear, ever
kept them from their posts. The ink often froze with which
Caroline was writing down the results of her brother’s observations.
It has been well said that if it had not been for
occasional cloudy nights, they must have died of overwork.
The apparatus for erecting the great forty-foot telescope,
and the iron and woodwork for its various motions, were
all designed by William Herschel, and fixed under his immediate
direction. His sister, in her <cite>Recollections</cite>, wrote:
“I have seen him stretched many an hour in the burning
sun across the top beam, whilst the iron-work for the
various motions was being fixed.” The penurious salary
granted to William Herschel was supplemented by special
grants for the removal and the erection of all this machinery;
and in 1787 Caroline’s services to her brother were publicly
recognised by her receiving the appointment of assistant to
her brother at a salary of £50 a year. She was at all times
grateful to members of the royal family for acts of kindness
shown by them to her brother and herself; but it is evident
that she felt that, so far as money was concerned, she had
not much cause for gratitude to the royal bounty. She
points out that at the time when Parliament was granting
George III. the sum of £80,000 a year for encouraging
science, £200 was considered a sufficient salary for the
first astronomer of the day; and yet money could flow
liberally enough in some directions, for £30,000 was at
that time being spent on the altar-piece of St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor. Even Caroline’s little salary of £50 a
year was not regularly paid. It was a trial to her again
to become a pensioner on her brother’s purse, and it was
not till nine quarters of her official salary remained unpaid,
that she reluctantly applied to him for help. No wonder
that in reading, after her brother’s death, an account of
his life and its achievements, she remarks, “The favours
of monarchs ought to have been mentioned, <em>but once would
have been enough</em>.”</p>
<p class='c002'>It was after her brother’s marriage, in 1788, that the
majority of Caroline’s astronomical discoveries were made.
She discovered her first comet in 1786, her eighth and last
in 1797. She was recognised as a comrade by all the
leading astronomers of Europe, and received many letters
complimenting her on her discoveries. One from De la
Lande addressed her as “Savante Miss,” while another
from the Rev. Dr. Maskelyne saluted her as “My worthy
sister in astronomy.” Royal and other distinguished
visitors constantly visited the wonderful forty-foot telescope
at Slough, and either William Herschel or his sister
were required to be in attendance to explain its marvels.
The Prince of Orange, on one occasion, called, and left an
extraordinary message “to ask Mr. Herschel, or if he was
not at home, Miss Herschel, if it was true that Mr. Herschel
had discovered a new star, whose light was not as
that of the common stars, but with swallow-tails, as stars
in embroidery.” The only glimpse we get, through the
peaceful labours of Caroline’s long life, of the strife and
turmoil of the French Revolution, is the note she makes of
the visit, to her brother’s observatory, of the Princesse de
Lamballe. “About a fortnight after this,” the diarist observes,
“her head was off.” The absence of all comment
upon the wonderful political events of the time is noticeable,
and so also is Caroline’s thinly-veiled contempt for
any science less sublime than that to which she and her
brother were devoted. Her youngest brother, Dietrich, was
a student of the insect world. “He amuses himself with
insects,” she wrote to her nephew; “it is well he does not
see the word <em>amuses</em>, for whenever he catches a fly with a
leg more than usual, he says it is as good as catching a
comet.” Her brother’s marriage, though far from welcome
at the time it took place, was a great blessing to her; for
it gave her a most tender and affectionate sister, and ultimately
a nephew, the inheritor of his father’s great gifts,
and the being to whom, after William Herschel’s death in
1822, Caroline transferred all the devoted and passionate
attachment of which her nature was capable.</p>
<p class='c002'>The great mistake of her life was going back to Germany
after Sir W. Herschel’s death in 1822. She was then
seventy-two years of age, and the previous fifty years of
her life, containing all her most precious memories and
associations, had been spent in England. In this country,
also, were all those who were dearest to her. Yet, no
sooner was her brother dead, than she felt life in England
to be an impossibility. She little thought that she had
still twenty-six years to live; indeed she had long been
under the impression that her end was near, but while her
brother lived she kept this to herself, because she wished
to be useful to him as long as she possibly could. She
never really re-acclimatised herself to Germany. “Why
did I leave happy England?” she often said. The one
German institution she thoroughly enjoyed was the winter
series of concerts and operas, which she constantly attended,
and she mentions with pleasure, in her letters, that she
was “always sure to be noticed by the Duke of Cambridge
as his countrywoman, and that is what I want; I will be
no Hanoverian.” She laments the death of William IV.,
chiefly because, by causing a separation of the crowns of
England and Hanover, it seemed to break a link between
herself and the country of her adoption.</p>
<p class='c002'>She never revisited England, but she kept up a constant
communication with it by letters to her sister-in-law, her
nephew, and later to her niece, Sir John Herschel’s wife.
At that time the post between London and Hanover was
an affair of fifteen days, and letters were carried by a
monthly messenger, of whose services she seldom failed to
avail herself. She took the keenest interest in her nephew’s
distinguished career. His letters to her are full of astronomy.
In 1832 he made a voyage to the Cape to observe
the stars in the Southern Hemisphere. When Miss
Herschel first heard of the intended voyage she refused to
believe it. But when she was really convinced of it, the
old impulse was as strong upon her as upon a war-horse
who hears the trumpet. “Ja! if I was thirty or forty
years younger and could go too!” she exclaimed.</p>
<p class='c002'>On 1st January 1840 the tube of the celebrated forty-foot
telescope was closed with a sort of family celebration.
A requiem, composed by Sir John Herschel for the occasion,
was chanted, and he and Lady Herschel, with their seven
children and some old servants, walked in procession round
it, singing as they went. On hearing of this from Slough,
Miss Herschel recalls that the famous telescope had also
been inaugurated with music. “God save the King” had
then been sung in it, the whole company from the dinner-table
mounting into the tube, and taking any musical instruments
they could get hold of, to form a band and orchestra.</p>
<p class='c002'>The most laborious of all her undertakings she accomplished
after her brother’s death. It was “The
Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a catalogue,
in Zones, of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ, observed
by Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps.” It was for this that
the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was
voted to her in 1828.</p>
<p class='c002'>All through her life in Hanover she lived with the
most careful economy, seldom or never consenting to draw
upon Sir John Herschel for the annuity of £100 that had
been left her by her brother. She said it was impossible
for her to spend more than £50 a year without making
herself ridiculous. The only luxuries she granted herself
were her concert and opera tickets, and her English bed,
which all sufferers from the inhuman German bedding
must be thankful to hear she possessed. The self-forgetfulness
and devotion to others which had characterised her
in youth accompanied her to her grave. Every detail with
regard to the disposition of her property and the arrangements
for her funeral had been made by herself, with the
view of giving as little trouble as possible to her nephew,
and making the smallest encroachment upon his time. In
her latest moments her only thought for herself was embodied
in a request that a lock of her beloved brother’s
hair might be laid with her in her coffin.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch04' class='c004'>IV<br/> <br/>SARAH MARTIN<br/> <br/>THE DRESSMAKER AND PRISON VISITOR OF YARMOUTH</h2></div>
<p class='c012'>“Two men I honour and no third. First the toilworn craftsman that
with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the earth and makes
her man’s.... A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who
is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the
bread of Life.... Unspeakably touching is it however when I find
both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of
man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this
world know I nothing than the Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere
be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; thou
wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths
of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.”—<cite>Sartor Resartus</cite>, pp.
157, 158.</p>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Every</span> one of us has probably been tempted at one time
or another to say or think when asked to join in some
good work, “If only I had more time or more money, I
would take it up.” It is good for us, therefore, to be
reminded that neither leisure nor wealth are necessary to
those whose hearts are fixed upon the earnest desire to
leave this world a little better and a little happier than
they found it.</p>
<p class='c002'>This lesson was wonderfully taught by Sarah Martin, a
poor dressmaker, who was born at Caister, near Great
Yarmouth, in 1791. In her own locality she did as great
a work in solving the problems of prison discipline, and
how to improve the moral condition of prisoners, as Mrs.
Fry was doing about the same time upon a larger scale in
London. It is very extraordinary that this poor woman,
who was almost entirely self-educated, and who was
dependent on daily toil for daily bread, should have been
able, through her own mother-wit and native goodness of
heart, to see the evil and provide the same remedies for it
as were in course of time provided throughout the land, as
the result of study given to the subject, by statesmen,
philosophers, and philanthropists.</p>
<p class='c002'>When Sarah Martin first began to visit the prison at
Great Yarmouth, there was no sort of provision for the
moral or educational improvement of the prisoners. There
was no chaplain, there were no religious services, there
was no school, and there was no employment of any kind,
except what Satan finds for idle hands to do. The quiet,
little, gentle-voiced dressmaker changed all this.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was first led to visit the prison in 1819, through
the compassionate horror which filled her when she heard
of the committal to prison of a woman for brutally ill-treating
her child. Without any introduction or recommendation
from influential persons, she knocked timidly at
the gate of the prison, and asked leave to see this woman.
She had not told a single human creature of her intention,
not even her grandmother, with whom she lived. She was
fearful lest she should be overcome by the counsels of
worldly wisdom that she had better mind her own business,
that the woman’s wickedness was no concern of hers, and
so forth. Her first application at the gaol was unsuccessful;
but she tried again, and the second time she was admitted
without any question whatever. Once in the presence of
the prisoner, the first inquiry by which she was met was a
somewhat rough one as to the object of her visit. When
the poor creature heard and felt all the deep compassion
which had moved Sarah Martin to her side, she burst into
tears, and with many expressions of contrition and
gratitude besought her visitor to help her to be a better
woman.</p>
<p class='c002'>From the date of this visit, the best energies of Sarah
Martin’s life were devoted to improving the lot of the
prisoners in Great Yarmouth Gaol. She did not—indeed,
she could not—give up her dressmaking. She worked out
at her customers’ houses, earning about 1s. 3d. a day.
Her first resolve was to give up always one day a week to
her prison work, and as many other days as she could
spare. She began teaching the prisoners to read and
write; she also read to them, and told them stories. A
deeply religious woman herself, it pained her that there
were no services of any kind in the prison, and she prevailed
upon the prisoners to gather together on Sunday
mornings and read to one another. To encourage them in
this she attended herself, not at first as the conductor of the
service, but as a fellow-worshipper. This was very typical
of her method and character. She was among them as one
who served, not as one seeking power and authority. Another
illustration of this sweet humility in her character may
be given. She wished those of her pupils who could read
to learn each day a few Bible texts; and she always learned
some herself, and said them with the prisoners. Sometimes
an objection was made. In her own words, “Many said at
first, ‘It would be of no use,’ and my reply was, ‘It is of
use to me, and why should it not be so to you? You have
not tried it, but I have.’” There was a simplicity in this, a
complete absence of the “Depart from me, for I am holier
than thou,” which was irresistible, and always silenced excuse.</p>
<p class='c002'>Soon after the commencement of the Sunday services
in the prison, it was found necessary, through the difficulty
of finding a reader, that Sarah Martin herself should
conduct the service. At first she used to read a sermon
from a book, but later she wrote her own sermons, and
later still she was able to preach without writing beforehand.
According to the testimony of Captain Williams,
the Inspector of Prisons for the district, the whole service
was in a high degree reverent and impressive. The
prisoners listened with deep attention to the clear,
melodious voice of their self-appointed pastor.</p>
<p class='c002'>At no time did she seek to obtain from the governor of
the prison any authority over the prisoners; that is, she
never sought to control them against their will; authority
over them she had, but it was the authority which
proceeded from her own personal influence. The prisoners
did what she wished, because they knew her devotion to
them. Her hold over them is best proved by the fact
that never but once did she meet from them with anything
that could be called rudeness or insult.</p>
<p class='c002'>Next to her care for godliness and education, her chief
thoughts were given to provide employment for the
prisoners, first for the women, and then for the men. A
gentleman gave her 10s., and in the same week another
gave her £1. Her gratitude for the possession of this
small capital is touching to read of. She expended it in
the purchase of materials for baby-clothes, and borrowing
patterns, she set the women to work upon making little
shifts and wrappers. The garments, when completed,
were sold for the benefit of the women who had made
them.</p>
<p class='c002'>Her capital grew from thirty shillings to seven guineas,
and in all more than £400 worth of clothing, made in this
way, was sold. The advantages were twofold. First, the
women were employed and taught to sew, and secondly,
each woman was enabled to earn a small sum, which was
saved for her till the time of her release from prison.
This money was frequently the means of giving the
discharged prisoner a chance of starting a new life and
gaining an honest livelihood.</p>
<p class='c002'>Sarah Martin gave particular attention to this very
important branch of her work. A man or a woman just
out of prison, branded with all the stigma and disgrace of
the gaol, is too often almost forced back into crime as the
only means of livelihood. Endless were the devices and
schemes which Sarah Martin employed to prevent this.
She would seek out respectable lodgings for the prisoners
on their discharge; she would see their former employers
and entreat that another chance might be given; her note-books
and diaries are filled with items of her own personal
expenditure in setting up her poor clients with the small
stock-in-trade or the tools necessary to start some simple
business on their own account.</p>
<p class='c002'>After many years of patient and devoted work she
was well known throughout the whole town and neighbourhood,
and was no longer entirely dependent on her
own slender earnings. Her grandmother died in 1826,
and she then inherited a small income of about £12 a year.
She removed into Yarmouth, and hired two rooms in a
poor part of the town. Shortly after this she entirely
gave up working as a dressmaker. She could not, of
course, live on the little annuity she inherited from her
grandmother; this was not much more than enough to
pay for her rooms. But she did not fear for herself. Her
personal wants were of the simplest description, and she
said herself that she had no care: “God, who had called
me into the vineyard, had said, ‘Whatsoever is right, I
will give you.’” It would, indeed, have been to the
discredit of Yarmouth if such a woman had been suffered
to be in want. Many gifts were sent to her, but she
scrupulously devoted everything that reached her to the
prisoners, unless the donor expressly stated that it was not
for her charities but for herself. About 1840, after
twenty-one years’ work in the prison and workhouse of
the town, the Corporation of Yarmouth urged her to accept
a small salary from the borough funds. She at first
refused, because it was painful to her that the prisoners
should ever regard her in any other light than as their
disinterested friend; she feared that if she accepted the
money of the Corporation she would be looked upon as
merely one of the gaol functionaries, and that they would
“rank her with the turnkeys and others who got their
living by the duties which they discharged.” It was
urged upon her that this view was a mistaken one, and
she was advised at least to accept a small salary as an
experiment. She replied, “To try the experiment, which
might injure the thing I live and breathe for, seems like
applying a knife to your child’s throat to know if it will
cut. As for my circumstances, I have not a wish ungratified,
and am more than content.” The following year,
however, it was evident that her health was giving way,
and another attempt was made, which ended in the
Corporation voting her the small sum of £12 a year, not as
a salary, but as a voluntary gift to one who had been of
such inestimable service to the town. She did not live
long after this. Her health gradually became feebler, but
she continued her daily work at the gaol till 17th April
1843. After that date she never again left her rooms, and
after a few months of intense suffering, she died on the
15th October. When the nurse who was with her told
her the end was near, she clasped her hands together and
exclaimed, “Thank God, thank God.” They were her
last words. She was buried at Caister; the tombstone
which marks her grave bears an inscription dictated by
herself, giving simply her name and the dates of her birth
and death, with a reference to the chapter of Corinthians
which forms part of the Church of England Service for
the Burial of the Dead. Well, indeed, is it near that
grave, and full of the thoughts inspired by that life, for us
to feel that “Death is swallowed up in victory.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The citizens of Yarmouth marked their gratitude and
veneration for her by putting a stained-glass window to
her memory in St. Nicholas’s Church. Her name is
reverently cherished in her native town. Dr. Stanley, who
was Bishop of Norwich at the time of her death, gave
expression to the general feeling when he said, “I would
canonise Sarah Martin if I could!”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch05' class='c004'>V<br/> <br/>MARY SOMERVILLE</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Mary Somerville</span>, the most remarkable scientific woman
our country has produced, was born at Jedburgh in 1780.
Her father was a naval officer, and in December 1780 had
just parted from his wife to go on foreign service for some
years. She had accompanied her husband to London, and
on returning home to Scotland was obliged to stay at the
Manse of Jedburgh, the home of her brother-in-law and
sister, Dr. and Mrs. Somerville. Here little Mary was born,
in the house of her uncle and aunt, who afterwards became
her father and mother-in-law, for her second husband was
their son. In the interesting reminiscences she has left
of her life, she records the curious fact that she was born
in the home of her future husband, and was nursed by
his mother.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mary was of good birth on both sides. Her father was
Admiral Sir William Fairfax, of the well-known Yorkshire
family of that name, which had furnished a General to the
Parliamentary army in the civil wars of the reign of
Charles I. This family was connected with that of the
famous American patriot, George Washington. During
the American War of Independence, Mary Somerville’s
father, then Lieutenant Fairfax, was on board his ship on
an American station, when he received a letter from
General Washington, claiming cousinship with him, and
inviting the young man to pay him a visit. The invitation
was not accepted, but Lieutenant Fairfax’s daughter lived
to regret that the letter which conveyed it had not been
preserved. Admiral Fairfax was concerned with Admiral
Duncan in the famous victory of Camperdown, and gave
many proofs that he was in every way a gallant sailor and
a brave man. Mary Somerville’s mother was of an ancient
Scottish family named Charters. The pride of descent
was very strongly marked among her Scotch relatives.
Lady Fairfax does not seem much to have sympathised
with her remarkable child. Mary, however, inherited some
excellent qualities from both parents. Lady Fairfax was,
in some ways, as courageous as her husband; notwithstanding
a full allowance of Scotch superstitions and a special
terror of storms and darkness, she had what her daughter
called “presence of mind and the courage of necessity.”
On one occasion the house she was living in was in the
greatest danger of being burned down. The flames of a
neighbouring fire had spread till they reached the next
house but one to that which she occupied. Casks of
turpentine and oil in a neighbouring carriage manufactory
were exploding with the heat. Lady Fairfax made all the
needful preparations for saving her furniture, and had her
family plate and papers securely packed. She assembled
in the house a sufficient number of men to move the
furniture out, if needs were. Then she quietly remarked,
“Now let us breakfast; it is time enough for us to move
our things when the next house takes fire.” The next
house, after all, did not take fire, and, while her neighbours
lost half their property by throwing it recklessly into the
street, before the actual necessity for doing so had arisen,
Lady Fairfax suffered no loss at all. The same kind of cool
courage was often exhibited by Mary Somerville in later life.
On one occasion she stayed with her family at Florence during
a severe outbreak of cholera there, when almost every
one who could do so had fled panic-stricken from the city.</p>
<p class='c002'>During the long absences of Sir William Fairfax on
foreign service, Lady Fairfax and her children led a very
quiet life at the little seaside village of Burntisland, just
opposite to Edinburgh, on the Firth of Forth. As a young
child, Mary led a wild, outdoor life, with hardly any
education, in the ordinary sense of the word, though there
is no doubt that in collecting shells, fossils, and seaweeds,
in watching and studying the habits and appearance of
wild birds, and in gazing at the stars through her little
bedroom window, the whole life of this wonderful child
was really an education of the great powers of her mind.
However, when her father returned from sea about 1789
he was shocked to find Mary “such a little savage”; and
it was resolved that she must be sent to a boarding school.
She remained there a year and learned nothing at all.
Her lithesome, active, well-formed body was enclosed in
stiff stays, with a steel busk in front; a metal rod, with a
semicircle which went under the chin, was clasped to this
busk, and in this instrument of torture she was set to learn
columns of Johnson’s dictionary by heart. This was the
process which at that time went by the name of education
in girls’ schools. Fortunately she was not kept long at
school. Mary had learned nothing, and her mother was
angry that she had spent so much money in vain. She
would have been content, she said, if Mary had only learnt
to write well and keep accounts, which was all that a woman
was expected to know. After this Mary soon commenced the
process of self-education which only ended with her long
life of ninety-two years. She not only learnt all she could
about birds, beasts, fishes, plants, eggs and seaweeds, but
she also found a Shakespeare which she read at every
moment when she could do so undisturbed. A little later
her mother moved into Edinburgh for the winter, and Mary
had music lessons, and by degrees taught herself Latin.
The studious bent of her mind had now thoroughly declared
itself; but till she was about fourteen she had never received
a word of encouragement about her studies. At
that age she had the good fortune to pay a visit to her
uncle and aunt at Jedburgh, in whose house she had been
born. Her uncle, Dr. Somerville, was the first person who
ever encouraged and helped her in her studies. She ventured
to confide in him that she had been trying to learn
Latin by herself, but feared it was no use. He reassured
her by telling her of the women in ancient times who had
been classical scholars. He moreover read Virgil with her
for two hours every morning in his study. A few years
later than this she taught herself Greek enough to read
Xenophon and Herodotus, and in time she became sufficiently
proficient in the language to thoroughly appreciate
its greatest literature.</p>
<p class='c002'>One of the most striking things about her was the many-sided
character of her mind. Some people—men as well
as women—who are scientific or mathematical seem to care
for nothing but science or mathematics; but it may be
truly said of her that “Everything was grist that came to
her mill.” There was hardly any branch of art or
knowledge which she did not delight in. She studied
painting under Mr. Nasmyth in Edinburgh, and he declared
her to be the best pupil he had ever had. Almost to the
day of her death she delighted in painting and drawing.
She was also an excellent musician and botanist. The
special study with which her name will always be associated
was mathematics as applied to the study of the heavens,
but she also wrote on physical geography and on microscopic
science. It is sometimes thought that if women are learned
they are nearly sure to neglect their domestic duties, or
that, in the witty words of Sydney Smith, “if women are
permitted to eat of the tree of knowledge, the rest of the
family will soon be reduced to the same aerial and unsatisfactory
diet.” Mrs. Somerville was a living proof of the
folly of this opinion. She was an excellent housewife and
a particularly skilful needlewoman. She astonished those
who thought a scientific woman could not understand anything
of cookery, by her notable preparation of black currant
jelly for her husband’s throat on their wedding journey.
On one occasion she supplied with marmalade, made by her
own hands, one of the ships that were being fitted out for
a Polar expedition. She was a most loving wife and tender
mother as well as a devoted and faithful friend. She gave
up far more time than most mothers do to the education
of her children. Her love of animals, especially of birds,
was very strongly developed. With all her devotion to
science she was horrified at the barbarities of vivisection,
and cordially supported those who have successfully exerted
themselves to prevent it from spreading in England to the
same hideous proportions which it has reached on the continent
of Europe. Many pages of one of her learned works
were written with a little tame mountain sparrow sitting
on her shoulder. On one occasion, having been introduced
to the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, she says he quite
won her heart by exclaiming, in reference to the number
of little birds that were eaten in Italy, “What! robins!
Eat a robin! I would as soon eat a child.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Her first husband, Mr. Samuel Greig, only lived three
years after their marriage in 1804. He appears to have
been one of those men of inferior capacity, who dislike and
dread intellectual power in women. He had a very low
opinion of the intelligence of women, and had himself no
interest in, nor knowledge of, any kind of science. When
his wife was left a widow with two sons at the early age
of twenty-seven, she returned to her father’s house in
Scotland, and worked steadily at mathematics. She profited
by the instructions of Professor Wallace, of the
University of Edinburgh, and gained a silver medal from
one of the mathematical societies of that day. Nearly all
the members of her family were still loud in their condemnation
of what they chose to regard as her eccentric
and foolish behaviour in devoting herself to science instead
of society. There were, however, exceptions. Her Uncle
and Aunt Somerville and their son William did not join in the
chorus of disapprobation which her studies provoked. With
them she found a real home of loving sympathy and
encouragement. In 1812 she and her cousin William
were married. His delight and pride in her during their
long married life of nearly fifty years were unbounded.
For the first time in her life she now had the daily
companionship of a thoroughly sympathetic spirit. Much
of what the world owes to her it owes indirectly to him,
because he stimulated her powers, and delighted in anything
that brought them out. He was in the medical department
of the army, and scientific pursuits were thoroughly congenial
to him. He had a fine and well cultivated mind which
he delighted in using to further his wife’s pursuits. He
searched libraries for the books she required, “copying and
recopying her manuscripts to save her time.” In the words
of one of their daughters, “No trouble seemed too great
which he bestowed upon her; it was a labour of love.”
When Mrs. Somerville became famous through her scientific
writings, the other members of her family, who had formerly
ridiculed and blamed her, became loud in her praise.
She knew how to value such commendation in comparison
with that which she had constantly received from her
husband. She wrote about this, “The warmth with which
my husband entered into my success deeply affected me;
for not one in ten thousand would have rejoiced at it as he
did; but he was of a generous nature, far above jealousy,
and he continued through life to take the kindest interest in
all I did.” Mrs. Somerville’s first work, <cite>The Mechanism
of the Heavens</cite>, would probably never have been written
but at the instance of Lord Brougham, whose efforts were
warmly supported by those of Mr. Somerville. In March
1827 Lord Brougham, on behalf of the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, wrote a letter begging
Mrs. Somerville to write an account of Newton’s <cite>Principia</cite>
and of La Place’s <cite>Mécanique Céleste</cite>. In reference to
the latter book he wrote, “In England there are now not
twenty people who know this great work, except by name,
and not a hundred who know it even by name. My firm
belief is that Mrs. Somerville could add two cyphers to each
of these figures.” Mrs. Somerville was overwhelmed with
astonishment at this request. She was most modest and
diffident of her own powers, and honestly believed that
her self-acquired knowledge was so greatly inferior to that
of the men who had been educated at the universities, that
it would be the height of presumption for her to attempt
to write on the subject. The persuasions of Lord Brougham
and of her husband at last prevailed so far that she promised
to make the attempt; on the express condition, however,
that her manuscript should be put into the fire unless it
fulfilled the expectations of those who urged its production.
“Thus suddenly,” she writes, “the whole character and
course of my future life was changed.” One is tempted to
believe that this first plunge into authorship was, to some
extent, stimulated by a loss of nearly all their fortune
which had a short time before befallen Mr. and Mrs.
Somerville. Before authorship has become a habit, the
whip of poverty is often needed to rouse a student to the
exertion and labour it requires. The impediments to
authorship in Mrs. Somerville’s case were more than
usually formidable. In the memoirs she has left of this
part of her life, she speaks of the difficulty which she experienced
as the mother of a family and the head of a
household in keeping any time free for her work. It
was only after she had attended to social and family duties
that she had time for writing, and even then she was
subjected to many interruptions. The Somervilles were
then living at Chelsea, and she felt at that distance from
town, it would be ungracious to decline to receive those
who had come out to call upon her. But she groans at the
remembrance of the annoyance she sometimes felt when
she was engaged in solving a difficult problem, by the
entry of a well-meaning friend, who would calmly announce,
“I have come to spend an hour or two with you.” Her
work, to which she gave the name of <cite>The Mechanism of
the Heavens</cite>, progressed, however, in spite of interruptions,
to such good purpose that in less than a year it was
complete, and it immediately placed its author in the first
rank among the scientific thinkers and writers of the day.
She was elected an honorary member of the Astronomical
Society, at the same time with Caroline Herschel, and
honours and rewards of all kinds flowed in upon her. Her
bust, by Chantrey, was placed in the great hall of the Royal
Society, and she was elected an honorary member of the
Royal Academy of Dublin, and of many other scientific
societies. It was a little later than this, in 1835, that Sir
Robert Peel, on behalf of the Government, conferred a
civil list pension of £200 a year upon Mrs. Somerville;
the announcement of this came almost simultaneously with
the news of the loss of the remainder of her own and her
husband’s private fortune, through the treachery of those
who had been entrusted with it. The public recognition
of her services to science came therefore at a very appropriate
time; the pension was a few years later increased to
£300 a year by Lord John Russell.</p>
<p class='c002'>Throughout her life Mrs. Somerville was a staunch advocate
of all that tended to raise up and improve the lot
of women. When quite a young girl she was stimulated
to work hard by the feeling that it was in her power thus
to serve the cause of her fellow-women. Writing of the
period when she was only sixteen years old, she says: “I
must say the idea of making money had never entered my
head in any of my pursuits, but I was intensely ambitious
to excel in something, for I felt in my own breast that
women were capable of taking a higher place in creation
than that assigned to them in my early days, which was
very low.” It is interesting to observe that her enthusiasm
for what are sometimes called “women’s rights” was as
warm at the end of her life as it had been at its dawn.
When she was eighty-nine, she was as keen as she had been
at sixteen for all that lifts up the lot of women. She was
a firm supporter of Mr. John Stuart Mill in the effort he
made to extend to women the benefit and protection of
Parliamentary representation. She recognised that many
of the English laws are unjust to women, and clearly saw
that there can be no security for their being made just and
equal until the law-makers are chosen partly by women
and partly by men. The first name to the petition in
favour of women’s suffrage which was presented to
Parliament by Mr. J. S. Mill in 1868 was that of Mary
Somerville. She also joined in the first petition to the
Senate of the London University, praying that degrees
might be granted to women. At the time this petition
was unsuccessful, but its prayer was granted within a very
few years. One cannot but regret that Mrs. Somerville did
not live to see this fulfilment of her wishes. She showed
her sympathy with the movement for the higher education
of women, by bequeathing her mathematical and scientific
library to Girton College. It is one of the possessions of
which the College is most justly proud. The books are
enclosed in a very beautifully designed case, which also
forms a sort of framework for a cast of Chantrey’s bust
of Mrs. Somerville. The fine and delicate lines of her
beautiful face offer to the students of the College a worthy
ideal of completely developed womanhood, in which intellect
and emotion balance one another and make a perfect
whole.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Somerville’s other works, written after <cite>The
Mechanism of the Heavens</cite>, were <cite>The Connection of the
Physical Sciences</cite>, <cite>Physical Geography</cite>, and <cite>Molecular and
Microscopic Science</cite>. The last book was commenced
after she had completed her eightieth year. Her mental
powers remained unimpaired to a remarkably late period,
and she also had extraordinary physical vigour to the end
of her life. She affords a striking instance of the fallacy
of supposing that intellectual labour undermines the physical
strength of women. Her last occupations, continued till
the actual day of her death, were the revision and completion
of a treatise on <cite>The Theory of Differences</cite>, and
the study of a book on <cite>Quaternions</cite>. Her only physical
infirmity in extreme old age was deafness. She was able
to go out and enjoy life up to the time of her death,
which took place in 1872, at the great age of ninety-two
years.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was a woman of deep and strong religious feeling.
Her beautiful character shines through every word and
action of her life. Her deep humility was very striking,
as was also her tenderness for, and her sympathy with, the
sufferings of all who were wretched and oppressed. One
of the last entries in her journal refers again to her love of
animals, and she says, “Among the numerous plans for
the education of the young, let us hope that mercy may be
taught as a part of religion.” The reflections in these last
pages of her diary give such a lovely picture of serene,
noble, and dignified old age that they may well be quoted
here. They show the warm heart of the generous woman,
as well as the trained intellect of a reverent student of the
laws of nature. “Though far advanced in years, I take as
lively an interest as ever in passing events. I regret that
I shall not live to know the result of the expedition to determine
the currents of the ocean, the distance of the earth
from the sun determined by the transits of Venus, and the
source of the most renowned of rivers, the discovery of
which will immortalise the name of Dr. Livingstone. But
I regret most of all that I shall not see the suppression of
the most atrocious system of slavery that ever disgraced
humanity—that made known to the world by Dr.
Livingstone and by Mr. Stanley, and which Sir Bartle
Frere has gone to suppress, by order of the British Government.”
A later entry still, and the last, gives another
view of her happy, faithful spirit. The Admiral’s daughter
speaks in it: “The Blue Peter has been long flying at my
foremast, and now that I am in my ninety-second year I
must soon expect the signal for sailing. It is a solemn
voyage, but it does not disturb my tranquillity. Deeply
sensible of my utter unworthiness, and profoundly grateful
for the innumerable blessings I have received, I trust in
the infinite mercy of my Almighty Creator.” She then
expresses her gratitude for the loving care of her daughters,
and her journal concludes with the words, “I am perfectly
happy.” She died and was buried at Naples. Her death
took place in her sleep, on 29th November 1872. Her
daughter writes, “Her pure spirit passed away so gently
that those around her scarcely perceived when she left
them. It was the beautiful and painless close of a noble
and happy life.” Wordsworth’s words about old age were
fully realised in her case—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Thy thoughts and feelings shall not die,</div>
<div class='line'>Nor leave thee when gray hairs are nigh,</div>
<div class='line in2'>A melancholy slave;</div>
<div class='line'>But an old age, serene and bright,</div>
<div class='line'>And lovely as a Lapland night,</div>
<div class='line in2'>Shall lead thee to thy grave.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch06' class='c004'>VI<br/> <br/>QUEEN VICTORIA<SPAN name='r1' /><SPAN href='#f1' class='c015'><sup>[1]</sup></SPAN></h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>A Jubilee</span>, or a fiftieth anniversary of the reign of a king
or queen, is a very rare event in our history. Rather
more than a thousand years have rolled away since the
time when Egbert was the first king of all England. And
in all these thousand years there have only been <em>three</em>
jubilees before that now being celebrated, and these three
have each been clouded by some national or personal misfortune
casting a gloom over the rejoicings which would
naturally have taken place on such an occasion. It is
rather curious that each of the three kings of England
who has reached a fiftieth year of sovereignty has been the
third of his name to occupy the throne. Henry III.,
Edward III., and George III. are the only English sovereigns,
before Victoria, who have reigned for as long as fifty years.
In the case of Henry the Third, the fifty years of his reign
are a record of bad government, rebellion, and civil war.
Edward the Third’s reign, which began so triumphantly,
ended in disaster; the king had fallen into a kind of
dotage; Edward the Black Prince had died before his
father, and the kingdom was ruled by the incompetent and
unscrupulous John of Gaunt; the last years of this reign
were characterised by military disasters, by harsh and
unjust methods of taxation, and by subservience to the
papacy. Those who thus sowed the wind were not long in
reaping the whirlwind; for these misfortunes were followed
by the one hundred years’ war with France, by the peasants’
war under Wat Tyler, and by the persecution of heretics
in England, when for the first time in our history a
statute was passed forfeiting the lives of men and women
for their religious opinions. Passing on to the reign of
George III., the jubilee of 1810 must have been a sad one,
for the poor king had twice had attacks of madness, and
one of exceptional severity began in the very year of the
jubilee.</p>
<p class='c002'>Happily, on the present occasion the spell is broken.
The Queen is not the third, but the first of her name, and
although there are no doubt many causes for anxiety as
regards the outlook in our political and social history, yet
there are still greater causes for hopefulness and for confidence
that the marvellous improvement in the social, moral,
and material condition of the people which has marked the
reign in the past will be continued in the future.</p>
<p class='c002'>It is not very easy at this distance of time to picture to
one’s self the passion of loyalty and devotion inspired by
the young girl who became Queen of England in 1837.
To realise what was felt for her, one must look at the
character of the monarchs who had immediately preceded
her. The immorality and faithlessness of George IV. are too
well known to need emphasis. He was probably one of
the most contemptible human beings who ever occupied a
throne; he was eaten up by vanity, self-indulgence, and
grossness. With no pretence to conjugal fidelity himself,
he attempted to visit with the severest punishment the
supposed infidelity of the unhappy woman who had been
condemned to be his wife. Recklessly extravagant where
his own glorification or pleasure was concerned, he could
be penurious enough to a former boon companion who had
fallen into want. There is hardly a feature in his character,
either as a man or a sovereign, that could win genuine
esteem or love. Mrs. Somerville was present at the
gorgeous scene of his coronation, when something more
than a quarter of a million of money was spent in decorations
and ceremonial. She describes the tremendous effect
produced upon every one by the knocking at the door
which announced that Queen Caroline was claiming
admittance. She says every heart stood still; it was like
the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast. Only
by contrast with such a man as George IV. could William
IV. be regarded with favour. Several prominent offices
about the Court were occupied by the Fitz Clarences, his
illegitimate children. His manners were described as
“bluff” by those who wished to make the best of them;
“brutal” would have been a more accurate word. On one
occasion a guest at one of his dinner parties asked for
water, and the king, with an oath, exclaimed that no water
should be drunk at his table. On another occasion, on his
birthday, he took the opportunity, in the presence of the
young Princess Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of
Kent, to make the most unmanly and ungenerous attack
upon the latter, who was sitting by his side. Greville
speaks of this outburst as an extraordinary and outrageous
speech. The Princess burst into tears, and her mother
rose and ordered her carriage for her immediate departure.</p>
<p class='c002'>It is no wonder that the Duchess of Kent was anxious,
as far as possible, to keep her daughter from the influence
of such a Court as this. Much of the Queen’s conscientiousness
and punctual discharge of the political duties of her
station may be attributed to her careful education by her
mother and her uncle Leopold, the widower of Princess
Charlotte, and afterwards King of the Belgians. It is not
possible to tell from the published memorials what clouds
overshadowed the Princess Victoria’s childhood. She
seems to have had a most loving mother, excellent health
and abilities, and a judicious training in every way; yet
she says herself, in reference to the choice of the name of
Leopold for her youngest son, “It is a name which is the
dearest to me after Albert, one which recalls the almost
only happy days of my sad childhood.”</p>
<p class='c002'>It is evident, therefore, that her young life was not so
happy and tranquil as it appeared to be to outsiders. Perhaps
her extreme and almost abnormal sense of responsibility
was hardly compatible with the joyousness of childhood.
There is a story that it was not till the Princess was eleven
years old that her future destiny was revealed to her. Her
governess then purposely put a genealogical table of the
royal family into her history book. The child gazed
earnestly at it, and by degrees she comprehended what it
meant, namely, that she herself was next in succession to
the ancient crown of England; she put her hand into her
governess’s and said, “I will be good. I understand now
why you wanted me to learn so much, even Latin.... I
understand all better now.” And she repeated more than
once, “I will be good.” The anecdote shows an unusually
keen sense of duty and of conscientiousness in so young a
child, and there are other anecdotes which show the same
characteristic. Who, therefore, can wonder at the unbounded
joy which filled all hearts in England when this
young girl, pure, sweet, innocent, conscientious, and unselfish,
ascended the throne of George IV. and William IV.?
Her manners were frank, natural, simple, and dignified.
The bright young presence of the girl Queen filled every
one, high and low, throughout the nation with enthusiasm.</p>
<p class='c002'>The American author, Mr. N. P. Willis, republican as
he was, spoke of her in one of his letters as “quite unnecessarily
pretty and interesting for the heir of such a
crown as that of England.” Daniel O’Connell, then the
leader of the movement for the repeal of the union between
England and Ireland, was as great an enthusiast for her as
any one in the three kingdoms. His stentorian voice led
the cheering of the crowd outside of St. James’s Palace who
welcomed her at the ceremony of proclamation. He said,
when some of the gossips of the day chattered of a scheme
to depose “the all but infant Queen” in favour of the
hated Duke of Cumberland, “If necessary I can get 500,000
brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honour, and the
person of the beloved young lady by whom England’s throne
is now filled.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The picture of the Queen’s first council by Wilkie was
shown in 1887 in the winter exhibition at the Royal
Academy. It helps one very much to understand the sort
of enthusiasm which she created. The sweet, girlish dignity
and quiet simplicity with which she performed all the duties
of her station filled every one with admiration. Surrounded
by aged politicians, statesmen, and soldiers, she presides
over them all with the grace and dignity associated with
a complete absence of affectation and self-consciousness.
Greville, the Clerk of the Council then, and for many years
before and after, writes of this occasion: “Never was
anything like the impression she produced, or the chorus
of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner
and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was
something very extraordinary and far beyond what was
looked for.” Melbourne, her first Prime Minister, loved
her as a daughter; the Duke of Wellington had a similar
feeling for her, which she returned with unstinted confidence
and reliance. The first request made by the girl Queen to
her mother, immediately after the proclamation, was that
she might be left for two hours quite alone to think over
her position and strengthen the resolutions that were to
guide her future life. The childish words, “I will be good,”
probably gave the forecast of the tone of the young Queen’s
reflections. She must have felt the difficulties and peculiar
temptations of her position very keenly, for when she was
awakened from her sleep on the night of the 20th June
1837, to be told of William the Fourth’s death, and that
she was Queen of England, her first words to the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who made the announcement, were, “I beg
your Grace to pray for me.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The Queen was very careful from the beginning of her
reign thoroughly to understand all the business of the State,
and never to put her signature to any document till she
had mastered its contents. Lord Melbourne was heard to
declare that this sort of thing was quite new in his experience
as Prime Minister, and he said jokingly that he
would rather manage ten kings than one Queen. On one
occasion he brought a document to her, and urged its
importance on the ground of expediency. She looked up
quietly, and said, “I have been taught to judge between
what is right and what is wrong; but ‘expediency’ is a
word I neither wish to hear nor to understand.” Thirty
years later one of the best men who ever sat in the House
of Commons, John Stuart Mill, said, “There is an important
branch of expediency called justice.” But this was
probably not the kind of expediency that Lord Melbourne
recommended, and the Queen condemned.</p>
<p class='c002'>In the <cite>Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson</cite>, by Mrs. Macpherson,
there is a letter, dated December 1838, containing the
following illustration of the way in which the Queen
regarded the duties of her position. “Spring Rice told a
friend of mine that he once carried her (the Queen) some
papers to sign, and said something about managing so as
to give Her Majesty less trouble. She looked up from
her paper and said quietly, ‘Pray never let me hear those
words again; never mention the word “trouble.” Only
tell me how the thing is to be done, to be done rightly,
and I will do it if I can.’” Everything that is known of
the Queen at that time shows a similar high conception of
duty and right. She was resolved to be no mere pleasure-seeking,
self-indulgent monarch, but one who strove
earnestly to understand her duties, and was determined to
throw her best strength into their fulfilment.</p>
<p class='c002'>It is this conscientious fulfilment of her political duties
which gives the Queen such a very strong claim upon the
gratitude of all her subjects. People do not always
understand how hard and constant her work is, nor how
deeply she feels her responsibilities. She is sometimes
blamed for not leading society as she did in the earlier
years of her reign, and it is no doubt true that her good
influence in this way is much missed. Mrs. Oliphant has
spoken of the way in which in those early years of her
married life she was “in the foreground of the national
life, affecting it always for good, and setting an example
of purity and virtue. The theatres to which she went,
and which both she and her husband enjoyed, were purified
by her presence; evils which had been the growth of
years disappearing before the face of the young Queen.”
That good influence at the head of society has been
withdrawn by the Queen’s withdrawal from fashionable
life; and there is another disadvantage arising from her
seclusion, in the degree to which it prevents her from
feeling the force and value of many of the most important
social movements of our time. Except in opening
Holloway College, and in the impetus which she has given
to providing medical women for the women of India, she
has never, for instance, shown any special sympathy with
any of the various branches of the movement for improving
and lifting up the lives of women. Still, fully allowing
all this, it is beyond doubt that her subjects, and
especially her women subjects, have deep cause for gratitude
and affection to the Queen. She has set a high
example of duty and faithfulness to the whole nation.
The childish resolve, “I will be good,” has never been lost
sight of. With almost boundless opportunities for self-indulgence,
and living in an atmosphere where she is
necessarily almost entirely removed from the wholesome
criticism of equals and friends, she has clung tenaciously
to the ideal with which she started on her more than fifty
years of sovereignty. Simplicity of daily life and daily hard
work are the antidotes which she has constantly applied to
counteract the unwholesome influences associated with
royalty. Women have special cause for gratitude to her,
because she has shown, as no other woman could, how absurd
is the statement that political duties unsex a woman,
and make her lose womanly tenderness and sympathy.
The passionate worship which she bestowed upon her husband,
the deep love she constantly shows for her children
and grandchildren, and the eager sympathy which she extends
to every creature on whom the load of suffering or
sorrow has fallen, prove that being the first political officer
of the greatest empire in the world cannot harden her heart
or dull her sympathy. A woman’s a woman “for a’ that.”</p>
<p class='c002'>So much has lately been written about the supreme
happiness of the Queen’s married life, and so much has
been revealed of her inner family circle, that no more is
needed to make every woman realise the anguish of the
great bereavement of her life. In earlier and happier
years she wrote to her uncle Leopold on the occasion of
one of the Prince Consort’s short absences from her:
“You cannot think how much this costs me, nor how
completely forlorn I am and feel when he is away, or how
I count the hours till he returns. All the numerous
children are as nothing to me when he is away. It seems
as if the whole life of the house and home were gone.”
Poor Queen, poor woman! Surely it is ungenerous, while
she so strenuously goes on working at the duties of her
position, to blame her because she cannot again join in
what are supposed to be its pleasures.</p>
<p class='c002'>One of the princesses lately spoke of the loneliness of
the Queen. “You can have no idea,” she is reported to
have said, “how lonely mamma is.” All who were her
elders, and in a sense her guardians and protectors in the
earlier part of her reign, have been removed by death.
Her strongest affections are in the past, and with the
dead. She is reported to have said on the death of one
of those nearest to her: “There is no one left to call me
Victoria now!” The etiquette which, in public at any
rate, rules the behaviour of her children and grandchildren
to the Queen, seems to render her isolation more painful
than it would otherwise be. Lady Lyttelton, who was
governess to the royal children, is stated in the <cite>Greville
Memoirs</cite> to have said that “the Queen was very fond of
them, but severe in her manner, and a strict disciplinarian.”
This may have perhaps increased her present loneliness, if
it created a sense of reserve and formality between her
children and herself.</p>
<p class='c002'>The Queen has always shown a truly royal appreciation
of those who were great in art, science, or literature. It
is well known that she sent her book, <cite>Leaves from our
Journal in the Highlands</cite>, to Charles Dickens, with the
inscription, “From one of the humblest of writers to one
of the greatest.” Mrs. Somerville, in her <cite>Reminiscences</cite>,
speaks of the gracious reception given to herself by the Queen
while she was still Princess Victoria, when the authoress
presented a copy of her <cite>Mechanism of the Heavens</cite> to the
Duchess of Kent and her daughter. More than twenty
years later Mrs. Somerville wrote, “I am glad to hear
that the Queen has been so kind to my friend Faraday.
It seems she has given him an apartment at Hampton
Court, nicely fitted up. She went to see it herself, and
having consulted scientific men as to the instruments
necessary for his pursuits, she had a laboratory fitted up
with them, and made him a present of the whole. That
is doing things handsomely, and no one since Newton has
deserved so much.” The Queen was also very ready to
show her warm appreciation of Carlyle and other eminent
writers. In an interview with Carlyle, at the Deanery,
Westminster, she quite charmed the rugged old philosopher
by her kind and gracious manner. Many years ago, when
the fame of Jenny Lind was at its height, she was invited
to sing in private before the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
Owing to some contemptible spite or jealousy, her accompanist
did not play what was set down in the music, and
this of course had a very discomposing effect upon the
singer. The Queen’s quick ear immediately detected what
was going on, and at the conclusion of the song, when
another was about to be commenced, she stepped up to
the piano and said, “I will accompany Miss Lind.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The Queen’s strong personal interest in all that concerns
the welfare of her kingdom is well known. She became
almost ill with anxiety about the sufferings of our troops
in the Crimea, and she wrote frequently to Lord Raglan
on the subject. Before the end of the siege of Sebastopol,
Lord Cardigan returned from the Crimea on a short visit
to England, and came to see the Queen at Windsor. One
of the royal children said to him, “You must hurry back
to Sebastopol and take it, else it will kill mamma!” In
the summer of 1886, during the anxious political crisis of
that time, a gentleman, who had just seen the Queen, was
asked how she looked. “Ten years younger than she did
a fortnight ago,” was the reply. The severity of the crisis
was for the time averted, and the relief of mind it brought
to the Queen could be plainly read in the change in her
aspect.</p>
<p class='c002'>A wise and good clergyman, who was also a witty and
powerful writer, the Rev. Sydney Smith, preached a
sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral on the Queen’s accession,
in which he gave utterance to the hope that she would
promote the spread of national education, and would
“worship God by loving peace.” “The young Queen,” he
said, “at that period of life which is commonly given up
to frivolous amusement, sees at once the great principles
by which she should be guided, and steps at once into the
great duties of her station.” He then spoke again of peace
and of education as the two objects towards which a
patriot Queen ought most earnestly to strive, and concluded:
“And then this youthful monarch, profoundly but
wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the
childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon God, and
seeks from the Gospel of His blessed Son a path for her
steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which
warms every English heart and could bring all this
congregation upon their bended knees before Almighty
God to pray it may be realised. What limits to the glory
and happiness of our native land, if the Creator should in
His mercy have placed in the heart of this Royal Woman
the rudiments of wisdom and mercy; and if giving them
time to expand, and to bless our children’s children with
her goodness, He should grant to her a long sojourning on
earth, and leave her to reign over us till she is well stricken
in years! What glory! what happiness! what joy! what
bounty of God!”</p>
<p class='c002'>The preacher’s anticipations of a long reign have been
fulfilled, and the bright hopes of that seedtime of promise
and resolution can now be compared with the harvest of
achievement and fulfilment. There is always a great gap
between such anticipations and the accomplished fact; but
it will be well for us all, high or low, if we are able, when
we stand near the end of life and review the past, to feel
that we have been equally steadfast to the high resolves of
our youth, as the Queen has been to the words, “I will be
good,” which she uttered sixty years ago.</p>
<div class='footnote' id='f1'>
<p class='c002'><SPAN href='#r1'>1</SPAN>. Written for the Jubilee, June 1887.</p>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch07' class='c004'>VII<br/> <br/>HARRIET MARTINEAU</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Harriet Martineau</span> is one of the most distinguished
literary women this century has produced. She is among
the few women who have succeeded in the craft of journalism,
and one of the still smaller number who succeeded
for a time in moulding and shaping the current politics of
her day. There are many things in her career which make
it a particularly instructive one. Her vivid remembrance
of her own childhood gave her a very strong sympathy
with the feelings and sufferings of children; all mothers,
especially the mothers of uncommonly intellectual children,
ought to read, in the early part of Harriet Martineau’s autobiography,
her record of her own childhood, and its peculiar
sufferings.</p>
<p class='c002'>The Martineaus were descended from a French Huguenot
surgeon, who left his native country in 1688, after the
revocation of the edict of Nantes. He settled at Norwich,
and became the progenitor of a long line of distinguished
surgeons in that city. Harriet’s father was a manufacturer;
she was born on the 12th June 1802, the sixth of eight
children. There is nothing in the outward circumstances
of her youth to distinguish it from that of the substantial
but simple comfort of any middle class family of that
period, save that her education was above the average.
The independence of judgment in religious matters that
had made their ancestor a Huguenot, made the latter Martineaus
Unitarians; and it was to this fact that the excellence
of the education of the family was in part due. For
the Rev. Isaac Perry, the head of a large and flourishing
boys’ school in Norwich, became converted to the principles
of Unitarianism, with the consequence of losing nearly all
his pupils. The Unitarian community felt it their duty to
rally round him, and support him to the utmost of their
power. Hence those who, like the Martineaus, had children
to educate sent them, girls as well as boys, to him. Harriet
therefore had the inestimable advantage of beginning her
career with a mind well equipped with stores of knowledge
that were at that time usually considered quite outside the
range of what was necessary for a woman.</p>
<p class='c002'>She speaks of herself as having, especially in her childhood,
“a beggarly nervous system”; and her description of
her utterly unreasonable terrors, which she bore in silence,
because of the want of insight and sympathy around her,
ought to be a lesson to every parent. “Sometimes,” she
says, “I was panic-struck at the head of the stairs, and
was sure I could never get down; and I could never cross
the yard into the garden without flying and panting, and
fearing to look behind, because a wild beast was after me.
The starlight sky was the worst; it was always coming
down to stifle and crush me, and rest upon my head.”
“The extremest terror of all,” she says, was occasioned by
the dull thud of beating feather beds with a stick, a process
in which the housewives of Norwich were wont to indulge
on the breezy area below the Castle Hill. A magic-lantern,
or the prismatic lights cast by glass lustres upon the wall,
threw her into the same unaccountable terror-stricken state.
If she could have been coaxed into speaking of these panics,
they might probably have ceased to assail her. But this
she never dreamed of doing. There was too little tenderness
in her family life to overcome her natural timidity.
Once when her terror at a magic-lantern so far overcame
her as to find vent in a shriek of dismay, “a pretty lady,
who sat next us, took me on her lap, and let me hide my
face in her bosom, and held me fast. How intensely I
loved her, without at all knowing who she was.”</p>
<p class='c002'>When Harriet Martineau was more than fifty, she wrote
a detailed account of all she had suffered in childhood, not
from any want of gratitude or affection to her parents, but
because she felt that mothers ought to know what their
children sometimes suffer, so that they might protect them
by tender watchfulness from becoming victims of these imaginary
terrors. It is not, it must be remembered, stupid
children who are most subject to these “ghostly enemies,”
but much more frequently it is the children of vivid imagination
and bright intelligence who are most subject to
them. A child who is frightened of the dark ought not to
be unkindly ridiculed or forced to endure what terrifies it;
it ought to be helped by all gentle means to overcome its
fear, and all other unreasonable fears conjured up by its
imagination.</p>
<p class='c002'>That Harriet Martineau showed in early childhood that
she was gifted with extraordinary mental powers cannot
be doubted. At seven years old she “discovered” <cite>Paradise
Lost</cite>. She had been left at home one Sunday evening,
when all the rest of the family had gone to chapel,
and she began looking at the books on the table. One of
them was turned down open. She took it up, and began
looking at it. It was <cite>Paradise Lost</cite>. The first thing
she saw was the word “Argument” at the head of a
chapter, which she thought must mean a dispute, and
could make nothing of; but something about Satan cleaving
Chaos made her turn to the poetry, and, in her own
words, that evening’s reading fixed her mental destiny for
the next seven years; the volume was henceforth never to
be found, but by asking her for it. “In a few months, I
believe there was hardly a line in <cite>Paradise Lost</cite> that I
could not have instantly turned to. I sent myself to
sleep by repeating it, and when my curtains were drawn
back in the morning, descriptions of heavenly light rushed
into my memory.” Her keen appreciation of Milton’s
great poem was the compensation nature provided for
the imaginative terrors which made her childhood such
a sad one.</p>
<p class='c002'>Another misfortune was in store for her, which might
have embittered the whole of her future existence. When
she was about twelve years old it was recognised that her
hearing was not good; by sixteen her deafness had become
very noticeable, and excessively painful to herself; and
before she was twenty she had become extremely deaf, so
that she could hear little or nothing without the help of a
trumpet. Few people can realise how much the loss of
this all-important sense must have cost her. At the outset
of life, to be deprived of a faculty on which almost all
free and pleasant social intercourse depends must be a
bitter trial. One striking characteristic of Harriet Martineau’s
mind was brought into relief by it. Throughout
her life a misfortune never overtook her without calling
out the strength necessary to bear it, not only with patience,
but with cheerfulness. As soon as it was clear that her
deafness was a trial that would last as long as her life, she
made a resolution with regard to it. She determined never
to inquire what was said, but to trust to her friends to repeat
to her what was important and worth hearing. This
she rightly regarded as the only way of preventing her
deafness becoming as irksome and trying to her companions
as it was to herself. It was not till she was nearly
thirty that she began to use a trumpet, and she blamed
herself seriously for the delay; for she felt it to be the
duty of the deaf to spare other people as much fatigue as
possible, and also to preserve their own natural capacity
for sound, and the habit of receiving it, as long as possible.</p>
<p class='c002'>Harriet’s first attempt at authorship was undertaken at
the age of nineteen; she was tenderly devoted to her
brother James, who was two years her junior. When he
left home for college, the brightness of her life departed;
he told her she must not permit herself to be so miserable,
and advised her to take refuge, each time he left her, in
some new pursuit; her first new pursuit was writing, and
with a beating heart she posted her manuscript to the
Editor of the <cite>Monthly Repository</cite>, a Unitarian magazine of
that day. She adopted the signature of “V. of Norwich”;
all authors will sympathise with what she felt when her
manuscript was accepted, and she saw herself for the first
time in print. She had not told any member of her family
of her enterprise. Imagine therefore her delight when her
eldest brother, whom she regarded with the utmost veneration,
selected this article by V. of Norwich for special
commendation, reading passages from it aloud, and calling
upon Harriet to say whether she did not think it first-rate.
After a brief attempt to keep her secret, she blurted out,
“I never could baffle anybody. The truth is, that paper
is mine.” The kind brother read on in silence, and as she
was going he laid his hand on her shoulder and said gravely
(calling her “dear” for the first time), “Now, dear, leave
it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and
do you devote yourself to this.” “I went home,” she adds,
“in a sort of dream, so that the squares of the pavement
seemed to float before my eyes. That evening made me
an authoress.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The trials of her life, however, shortly after this time
began to thicken round her. Her beloved elder brother,
whose advice had so greatly encouraged her, died of consumption.
Her father’s business declined rapidly in prosperity;
it was a period of great commercial depression,
and for a time absolute ruin seemed to stare the family in
the face. The cares and the mental strain of this time
brought the father to his grave; he died in 1826, when
Harriet was twenty-four years of age, leaving his family in
comparatively straitened circumstances. Shortly after this
Harriet became engaged to be married; but this, instead
of bringing happiness, was a source of special trial; for
shortly after the engagement had been entered into, her
lover became suddenly insane, and after months of severe
illness, bodily and mental, he died. The next misfortune
was the loss, in 1829, by the mother and daughters of
the Martineau family, of nearly all they had in the world.
The old manufactory, in which their money had been placed,
failed. The way in which she treated this event is very
characteristic. “I call it,” she wrote, “a misfortune, because
in common parlance it would be so treated; but I
believe that my mother and all her other daughters would
have joined heartily, if asked, in my conviction that it was
one of the best things that ever happened to us....
We never recovered more than the merest pittance....
The effect upon me of this new ‘calamity,’ as people called
it, was like that of a blister upon a dull, weary pain or
series of pains. <em>I rather enjoyed it, even at the time</em>; for
there was scope for action, whereas in the long, dreary
series of preceding trials, there was nothing possible but
endurance. In a very short time my two sisters at home
and I began to feel the blessings of a wholly new freedom.
I, who had been obliged to write before breakfast, or in
some private way, had henceforth liberty to do my own
work in my own way; for we had lost our gentility.
Many and many a time have we said that, but for the
loss of that money, we might have lived on in the ordinary
provincial method of ladies with small means, sewing and
economising, and growing narrower every year; whereas
by being thrown, while it was yet time, on our own resources,
we have worked hard and usefully, won friends,
reputation, and independence, seen the world abundantly,
abroad and at home, and, in short, have truly lived instead
of vegetated” (<cite>Autobiography</cite>, pp. 141, 142).</p>
<p class='c002'>For a time, notwithstanding the kind brother’s advice
to Harriet, to leave sewing to other women and devote
herself to literature, pressure was brought upon her to get
her living by needlework instead of by her pen. She tried
to follow both the advice of her friends and her own inclinations.
By day she pored over fine needlework, by
night she studied and wrote till two or three o’clock in the
morning. Instead of being crushed by the double strain,
her spirit rose victorious over it. “It was truly <em>life</em> I lived
during those days,” she wrote, “of strong, intellectual, and
moral effort.” And again: “Yet I was very happy; the
deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful;
and so was the exertion of all my faculties, and, not least,
that of will to overcome any obstructions, and force my
way to that power of public speech of which I believed
myself more or less worthy.” Her first marked literary
success was the winning of each of three prizes which had
been offered by the Unitarian body for essays presenting
the arguments in favour of Unitarianism to the notice of
Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans.</p>
<p class='c002'>She took every precaution to prevent the discovery
that her three essays were by the same hand; and great
was the sensation caused by the discovery that this was
indeed the case. The most important result to herself of
this achievement was that it finally silenced those who
wished her to believe that she was fit to do nothing more
difficult in the world than bead-work and embroidery. It
also set her up in funds to the extent of £45, and she
immediately began to plan the work which brought her
fame—a series of tales illustrating the most important
doctrines of political economy, such as the effect of
machinery on wages, the relation of wages and population,
free trade, protective duties, and so on. The difficulties
she encountered, before she could induce any publisher to
accept her series, were such as would have broken any
spirit less heroic and determined than her own. “I knew
the work wanted doing,” she said, “and that I could do
it”; and this confidence prevented her from losing heart
when one rebuff after another fell upon her. Almost
every publisher to whom she applied repeated the cry that
the public would attend to nothing at that time (1831)
but the cholera and the Reform Bill. She says she
became as sick of the Reform Bill as poor King William
himself. At length, after a most exhausting and, to
any one else, heart-breaking succession of disappointments,
her series was accepted, but on terms that made her
success in finding a publisher very little pleasure to her.
The first stipulation was that 500 copies of the work must
be subscribed for before publication, and the agreement
was to cease if a thousand copies did not sell in the first
fortnight. The dismal business of obtaining subscribers
to an unknown work by an unknown author nearly broke
her down. But in her darkest hour, alone in London,
without money or friends, leaning over some dirty palings,
really to recover from an attack of giddiness, but pretending
to look at a cabbage bed, she said to herself, as
she stood with closed eyes, “My book will do yet.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The day of publication came at last, and Harriet, who
had now rejoined her mother in Norwich, eagerly awaited
the result. For about ten days she heard nothing, and
she began to prepare herself to bear the disappointment of
failure. Then at last a letter came, desiring her to make
any corrections necessary for a second edition, as the
publisher had hardly any copies left. He proposed, he
said, to print an additional 2000. A postscript altered
the number to 3000, a second postscript suggested 4000,
and a third 5000! Her first feeling was that all her cares
were now over. Whatever she had to say would now
command a hearing, and her anxiety in future would be
limited to making a good choice what to write about.
Her series made a remarkable sensation; she was overwhelmed
with praise from all quarters. Every one who
had a hobby wanted her to write a tale to illustrate its
importance. Advantageous offers from publishers poured
in upon her. Lord Brougham, who was then the leading
spirit of the Diffusion of Knowledge Society, declared that
the whole Society had been “driven out of the field by a
little deaf woman at Norwich.”</p>
<p class='c002'>It soon became evident, from the amount of political
and literary work which was pressed upon her, that it was
necessary for her to live in London. She accordingly
took a small house in Fludyer Street, Westminster, in
1832, where she lived for seven years with her mother
and aunt. No change could be greater than that from
the provincial society in which she had been brought up,
to that into which she was now welcomed. The best of
London literary and political society was freely offered her.
Cabinet ministers consulted her about their measures, and
she enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of all the foremost
men and women of the day. But her head was not
turned, and she was not spoiled. Sydney Smith said he
had watched her anxiously for one season, and he then
declared her unspoilable. The well-founded self-confidence
that had made her say to herself, when almost any one else
would have despaired, “My book will do yet,” prevented
her from being dazzled by flattery and social distinction.
She knew perfectly well what she could do and what she
could not do. It made her angry to hear herself spoken
of as a woman of genius; and in correcting a series of
errors that had been made in an account given of her
personal history in <cite>Men of the Time</cite>, she drily remarks,
“Nobody has witnessed ‘flashes of wit’ from me. The
giving me credit for wit shows that the writer is wholly
unacquainted with me.”</p>
<p class='c002'>She was a woman of the utmost determination and
endurance in carrying out anything she had made up her
mind to be right. She once remarked that she had thought
the worst that could befall her would be to die of starvation
on a doorstep, and added gleefully, “I think I could bear
it.” Her courage was put rather unexpectedly to the test
in 1835, when she visited the United States. As every
one is aware, negro slavery was lawful all over the United
States until the civil war of 1862. But every one does not
know that the heroic little band of men and women who
first protested against the wickedness of slavery in America
did so at the peril of their lives. The abolitionists, as they
were called, were the objects, even in cities like Boston,
usually considered the centres of culture and refinement, of
most brutal outrage and cruelty. The abolitionists could
not then even hold a meeting but at the peril of their
lives. Miss Martineau found herself therefore in a society
divided into two hostile factions—one rich, strong, and
numerous; the other poor, small, and intensely hated.
When she arrived she was disposed to be rather prejudiced
against the abolitionists. She condemned slavery as a
matter of course, but she thought those who had undertaken
the battle against it in America had been fanatical,
sentimental, and misguided. This disposition of her mind
was diligently fostered by the defenders of slavery, who
represented the abolitionists to her as bloodthirsty ruffians
who were trying to incite the slaves to the murder of their
masters.</p>
<p class='c002'>It was not long before her clear intellect discerned the
true bearings of the case. She soon acknowledged that,
however distasteful to her might be the language used by
the abolitionists, they were completely innocent of the
charges made against them, and were, in fact, the blameless
apostles of a most holy cause. From the time of forming
this judgment, her course was clear. She boldly avowed
abolitionist principles, and took an early opportunity of
attending an anti-slavery meeting at which, in a short
speech, she avowed her conviction that slavery was inconsistent
with the law of God, and incompatible with the
course of His providence. It is unnecessary at this distance
of time to recount in detail the fury with which this
declaration was regarded by the bulk of American society,
and by almost the whole American press. Insult and
contumely now met her at every turn, in quarters where
she had before received nothing but adulation and flattery.
But she was not of a nature to be induced by threats of
personal violence to consent to that which her reason and
conscience condemned. She remained then and always an
ardent abolitionist, and when the great question of the
existence of slavery in the United States was submitted to
the arbitrament of war, she was one of the chief among the
leaders of political opinion in England who kept our
country as a nation free from the guilt and folly of
supporting the secession of the Southern States from the
American Union. The late Mr. W. E. Forster said at the
time that it seemed to him as if Harriet Martineau alone
were keeping this country straight in regard to America.</p>
<p class='c002'>After her return from America she resumed for a time
her usual life of work and social activity in London. In
a few years, however, her health broke down, and she
removed to Tynemouth, suffering, as was then thought,
from an incurable disorder. For five years (1837-42)
she lay on her couch a helpless, but by no means an idle,
invalid. Some of her best books, including her delightful
stories for children, <cite><SPAN name='feats'></SPAN>Feats on the Fiord</cite>, <cite>The Crofton Boys</cite>, etc.,
were written during this period. She was under the care
of a medical brother-in-law, who resided at Newcastle, and
some of the most leading of London physicians visited her
professionally. But her case was considered chronic, and
she resigned herself to the belief that her health was gone
for ever. After five years some one persuaded her to try
the effects of mesmerism, and some members of her family
and many of her former friends were very angry with her
for getting well through its means. Her remarks on the
subject are characteristic. “For my part,” she writes, “if
any friend of mine had been lying in a suffering and hopeless
state for nearly six years, and if she had fancied she
might get well by standing on her head instead of her
heels, or reciting charms, or bestriding a broomstick, I
should have helped her to try; and thus was I aided by
some of my family and by a further sympathy in others,
but two or three of them were induced to regard my
experiment and recovery as an unpardonable offence, and
by them I never was pardoned.”</p>
<p class='c002'>After her recovery she plunged again as heartily as ever
into the enjoyment of travel and of work, and finally
settled in a little home, which she built for herself, in
the Lake country at Ambleside. Here she continued her
literary activity, writing her <cite>History of the Peace</cite>, her version
of Auguste Comte’s philosophy, and at one time contributing
as many as six articles a week to the <cite>Daily News</cite>. But
she was not content with merely literary labour; she exerted
herself most effectually to set on foot, for the benefit of her
poorer neighbours, all kinds of means for improving their
social, moral, and intellectual position. She showed them,
by example, how a farm of two acres could be made to pay.
She started a building society, a mechanics’ institute, and
evening lectures for the people. She was almost worshipped
by her servants and immediate dependents, and was a
powerful influence for good on all around her. On all
moral questions, and all questions affecting the position of
women, she was a tower of strength upon the right side.
She heartily sympathised with Mrs. Butler in the work
with which her name is identified. “I am told,” she said,
“that this is discreditable work for women, especially for
an <em>old</em> woman. But it has always been esteemed our
special function as women to mount guard over society and
social life—the spring of national existence—and to keep
them pure; and who so fit as an <em>old</em> woman?”</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1854 it was discovered that she had a heart complaint,
which might have been fatal at any moment, but
her life was prolonged for more than twenty years after
this, closing at Ambleside on 27th June 1876. The
words of her friend, Florence Nightingale, might have
served as her epitaph—“She served the Right, that is,
God, all her life.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch08' class='c004'>VIII<br/> <br/>FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Among</span> the personal influences that have altered the everyday
life of the present century, the future historian will
probably allot a prominent place to that of Florence
Nightingale. Before she took up the work of her life, the
art of sick nursing in England can hardly have been said
to exist. Almost every one had a well-founded horror of
the hired nurse; she was often ignorant, cruel, rapacious,
and drunken; and when she was not quite as bad as that,
she was prejudiced, superstitious, and impervious to new
ideas or knowledge. The worst type of the nurse of the
pre-Nightingale era has been portrayed by Dickens in his
“Sairey Gamp” with her bottle of gin or rum upon the
“chimbley piece,” handy for her to put it to her lips when
she was “so dispoged.” “Sairey Gamp” is one of the blessings
of the good old days which have now vanished for ever;
with her disappearance has also gradually disappeared
the repugnance with which the professional nurse was at
one time almost universally regarded; and there is now
hardly any one who has not had cause to be thankful for
the quick, gentle, and skilful assistance of the trained nurse
whose existence we owe to the example and precepts of
Florence Nightingale.</p>
<p class='c002'>Miss Nightingale has never favoured the curiosity of
those who would wish to pry into the details of her private
history. She has indeed been so retiring that there is
some difficulty in getting accurate information about anything
concerning her, with the exception of her public
work. In a letter she has allowed to be published, she
says, “Being naturally a very shy person, most of my life
has been distasteful to me.” It would be very ungrateful
and unbecoming in those who have benefited by her self-forgetful
labours to attempt in any way to thwart her
desire for privacy as to her personal affairs. The attention
of the readers of this sketch will therefore be directed to
Miss Nightingale’s public work, and what the world, and
women in particular, have gained by the noble example
she has set of how women’s work should be done.</p>
<p class='c002'>From time immemorial it has been universally recognised
that the care of the sick is women’s work; but somehow,
partly from the low standard of women’s education, partly
from the false notion that all paid work was in a way
degrading to a woman’s gentility, it seemed to be imagined
that women could do this work of caring for the sick
without any special teaching or preparation for it; and as
all paid work was supposed to be unladylike, no woman
undertook it unless she was driven to it by the dire stress
of poverty, and had therefore neither the time nor means
to acquire the training necessary to do it well. The lesson
of Florence Nightingale’s life is that painstaking study and
preparation are just as necessary for women’s work as they
are for men’s work. No young man attempts responsible
work as a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or even a gardener
or mechanic, without spending long years in fitting himself
for his work; but in old times women seemed to think
they could do all their work, in governessing, nursing, or
what not, by the light of nature, and without any special
teaching and preparation whatever. There is still some
temptation on the part of women to fall into this fatal
error. A young woman, not long ago, who had studied
medicine in India only two years, was placed at the head
of a dispensary and hospital for native women. Who
would have dreamt of taking a boy, after only two years’
study, for a post of similar responsibility and difficulty?
Of course failure and disappointment resulted, and it will
probably be a long time before the native community in
that part of India recover their confidence in lady doctors.</p>
<p class='c002'>Miss Nightingale spent nearly ten years in studying
nursing before she considered herself qualified to undertake
the sanitary direction of even a small hospital. She
went from place to place, not confining her studies to her
own country. She spent about a year at the hospital and
nursing institution at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine in 1849.
This had been founded by Pastor Fliedner, and was under
the care of a Protestant Sisterhood who had perfected the
art of sick nursing to a degree unknown at that time in
any other part of Europe. From Kaiserswerth she visited
institutions for similar purposes, in other parts of Germany,
and in France and Italy. It is obvious she could not have
devoted the time and money which all this preparation
must have cost if she had not been a member of a wealthy
family. The fact that she was so makes her example all
the more valuable. She was the daughter and co-heiress
of a wealthy country gentleman of Lea Hurst in Derbyshire,
and Embly Park in Hampshire. As a young girl she had
the choice of all that wealth, luxury, and fashion could
offer in the way of self-indulgence and ease, and she set
them all on one side for the sake of learning how to
benefit suffering humanity by making sick nursing an art
in England. In the letter already quoted Miss Nightingale
gives, in reply to a special appeal, advice to young women
about their work: “1. I would say also to all young
ladies who are called to any particular vocation, qualify
yourselves for it, as a man does for his work. Don’t think
you can undertake it otherwise. No one should attempt
to teach the Greek language until he is master of the
language; and this he can only become by hard study.
2. If you are called to man’s work, do not exact a woman’s
privileges—the privilege of inaccuracy, of weakness, ye
muddleheads. Submit yourselves to the rules of business,
as men do, by which alone you can make God’s business
succeed; for He has never said that He will give His
success and His blessing to inefficiency, to sketchy and
unfinished work.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Here, without intending it, Miss Nightingale drew a
picture of her own character and methods. Years of hard
study prepared her for her work; no inaccuracy, no weakness,
no muddleheadedness was to be found in what she
undertook; everything was business-like, orderly, and
thorough. Those who knew her in the hospital spoke of
her as combining “the voice of velvet and the will of steel.”
She was not content with having a natural vocation for her
work. It is said that when she was a young girl she was
accustomed to dress the wounds of those who were hurt in
the lead mines and quarries of her Derbyshire home, and
that the saying was, “Our good young miss is better than
nurse or doctor.” If this is accurate, she did not err by
burying her talent in the earth, and thinking that because
she had a natural gift there was no need to cultivate it.
She saw rather that <em>because</em> she had a natural gift it was
her duty to increase it and make it of the utmost benefit
to mankind. At the end of her ten years’ training, she
came to the nursing home and hospital for governesses in
Harley Street, an excellent institution, which at that time
had fallen into some disorder through mismanagement.
She stayed here from August 1853 till October 1854,
and in those fourteen months placed the domestic, financial,
and sanitary affairs of the little hospital on a sound footing.</p>
<p class='c002'>Now, however, the work with which her name will
always be associated, and for which she will always be
loved and honoured, was about to commence. The Crimean
war broke out early in 1854, and within a very few weeks
of the commencement of actual fighting, every one at home
was horrified and ashamed to hear of the frightful disorganisation
of the supplies, and of the utter breakdown
of the commissariat and medical arrangements. The most
hopeless hugger-mugger reigned triumphant. The tinned
meats sent out from England were little better than poison;
ships arrived with stores of boots which proved all to be
for the left foot. (Muddleheads do not all belong to one
sex.) The medical arrangements for the sick and wounded
were on a par with the rest. Mr. Justin M’Carthy, in his
<cite>History of Our Own Times</cite>, speaks of the hospitals for the
sick and wounded at Scutari as being in an absolutely
chaotic condition. “In some instances,” he writes, “medical
stores were left to decay at Varna, or were found lying
useless in the holds of vessels in Balaklava Bay, which were
needed for the wounded at Scutari. The medical officers
were able and zealous men; the stores were provided and
paid for so far as our Government was concerned; but the
stores were not brought to the medical men. These had
their hands all but idle, their eyes and souls tortured by
the sight of sufferings which they were unable to relieve
for want of the commonest appliances of the hospital”
(vol. ii. p. 316). The result was that the most frightful
mortality prevailed, not so much from the inevitable
risks of battle, but from the insanitary conditions of the
camp, the want of proper food, clothing, and fuel, and the
wretched hospital arrangements. Mr. Mackenzie, author
of a <cite>History of the Nineteenth Century</cite>, gives the following
facts and figures with regard to our total losses in
the Crimea: “Out of a total loss of 20,656, only 2598
were slain in battle; 18,058 died in hospital.” “Several
regiments became literally extinct. One had but seven
men left fit for duty; another had thirty. When the sick
were put on board transports, to be conveyed to hospital,
the mortality was shocking. In some ships one man in
every four died in a voyage of seven days. In some of
the hospitals recovery was the rare exception. At one
time four-fifths of the poor fellows who underwent amputation
died of hospital gangrene. During the first seven
months of the siege the men perished by disease at a rate
which would have extinguished the entire force in little
more than a year and a half” (p. 171). When these facts
became known in England, the mingled grief, shame, and
anger of the whole nation were unbounded. It was then
that Mr. Sidney Herbert, who was Minister of War, appealed
to Miss Nightingale to organise and take out with
her a band of trained nurses. It is needless to say that
she consented. She was armed with full authority to cut
the swathes of red tape that had proved shrouds to so
many of our soldiers. On the 21st of October 1854
Miss Nightingale, accompanied by forty-two other ladies,
all trained nurses, set sail for the Crimea. They arrived
at Constantinople on 4th November, the eve of Inkerman,
which was fought on 5th November. Their first work,
therefore, was to receive into the wards, which were
already filled by 2300 men, the wounded from what
proved the severest and fiercest engagement of the campaign.
Miss Nightingale and her band of nurses proved
fully equal to the charge they had undertaken. She, by a
combination of inexorable firmness with unvarying gentleness,
evolved order out of chaos. After her arrival, there
were no more complaints of the inefficiency of the hospital
arrangements for the army. The extraordinary way in
which she spent herself and let herself be spent will never
be forgotten. She has been known to stand for twenty
hours at a stretch, in order to see the wounded provided
with every means of easing their condition. Her attention
was directed not only to nursing the sick and wounded,
but to removing the causes which had made the camp and
the hospitals so deadly to their inmates. The extent of
the work of mere nursing may be estimated by the fact
that a few months after her arrival ten thousand sick men
were under her care, and the rows of beds in one hospital
alone, the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, measured two miles
and one-third in length, with an average distance between
each bed of two feet six inches. Miss Nightingale’s personal
influence and authority over the men were immensely
and deservedly strong. They knew she had left the comforts
and refinements of a wealthy home to be of service
to them. Her slight delicate form, her steady nerve, her
kindly conciliating manner, and her absolute self-devotion,
awoke a passion of chivalrous feeling on the part of the
men she tended. Sometimes a soldier would refuse to
submit to a painful but necessary operation until a few
calm sentences of hers seemed at once to allay the storm,
and the man would submit willingly to the ordeal he
had to undergo. One soldier said, “Before she came here,
there was such cursin’ and swearing, and after that it
was as holy as a church.” Another said to Mr. Sidney
Herbert, “She would speak to one and another, and nod
and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all,
you know—we lay there in hundreds—but we could kiss
her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow
again, content.” This incident, of the wounded soldier
turning to kiss her shadow as it passed, has been woven
into a beautiful poem by Longfellow. It is called “Santa
Filomena.” The fact that she had been born in, and had
been named after, the city of Florence, may have suggested
to the poet to turn her name into the language of the
country of her birth.</p>
<p class='c002'>Miss Nightingale suffered from an attack of hospital
fever in the spring of 1855, but as soon as possible she
returned to her laborious post, and never quitted it till the
war was over and the last of our soldiers was on his way
home. When she returned to England she received such
a welcome as probably has fallen to no other woman; all
distinctions of party and of rank were forgotten in the one
wish to do her honour. She was presented by the Queen
with a jewel in commemoration of her work in the Crimea,
and a national testimonial was set on foot, to which a sum
of £50,000 was subscribed. It is unnecessary to say that
Miss Nightingale did not accept this testimonial for her
own personal benefit. The sum was devoted to the permanent
endowment of schools for the training of nurses in
St. Thomas’s and King’s College Hospitals.</p>
<p class='c002'>Since the Crimea no European war has taken place
without calling forth the service of trained bands of skilled
nurses. Within ten years of Florence Nightingale’s labours
in the East, the nations of Europe agreed at the Geneva
Convention upon certain rules and regulations, with the
object of ameliorating the condition of the sick and wounded
in war. By this convention all ambulances and military
hospitals were neutralised, and their inmates and staff were
henceforth to be regarded as non-combatants. The distinguishing
red cross of the Geneva Convention is now
universally recognised as the one civilised element in the
savagery of war.</p>
<p class='c002'>During a great part of the years that have passed
since Miss Nightingale returned from the Crimea, she has
suffered from extremely bad health; but few people,
even of the most robust frame, have done better and
more invaluable work. She has been the adviser of successive
Governments on the sanitary condition of the
army in India; her experience in the Crimea convinced
her that the death-rate in the army, even in time of peace,
could be reduced by nearly one-half by proper sanitary
arrangements. She contributed valuable state papers on
the subject to the Government of the day, and her advice
has had important effects, not only on the condition of
the army, but also on the sanitary reform of many of
the towns of India, and on the extension of irrigation in
that country. Besides this department of useful public
work, she has written many books on the subjects she
has made particularly her own; among them may be
mentioned <cite>Notes on Hospitals</cite> and <cite>Notes on Nursing</cite>; the
latter in particular is a book which no family ought to
be without.</p>
<p class='c002'>It will surprise no one to hear that she is very zealous
for all that can lift up and improve the lives of women,
and give them a higher conception of their duties and
responsibilities. She supports the extension of parliamentary
representation to women, generally, however,
putting in a word in what she writes on the subject, to
remind people that representatives will never be better
than the people they represent. Therefore the most important
thing for men, as well as for women, is to improve
the education and morality of the elector, and then Parliament
will improve itself. Every honest effort for the good
of men or women has her sympathy, and a large number
her generous support. May she long be spared to the
country she has served so well, a living example of strength,
courage, and self-forgetfulness—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>A noble type of good</div>
<div class='line'>Heroic womanhood.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<h3 class='c016'>SANTA FILOMENA.<br/> <br/>BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.</h3>
<div class='lg-container-b c003'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'><span class='sc'>Whene’er</span> a noble deed is wrought,</div>
<div class='line'>Whene’er is spoken a noble thought,</div>
<div class='line in4'>Our hearts, in glad surprise,</div>
<div class='line in4'>To higher levels rise.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The tidal wave of deeper souls</div>
<div class='line'>Into our inmost being rolls,</div>
<div class='line in4'>And lifts us unawares</div>
<div class='line in4'>Out of all meaner cares.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Honour to those whose words or deeds</div>
<div class='line'>Thus help us in our daily needs,</div>
<div class='line in4'>And by their overflow</div>
<div class='line in4'>Raise us from what is low.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Thus thought I, as by night I read</div>
<div class='line'>Of the great army of the dead,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The trenches cold and damp,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The starved and frozen camp.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The wounded from the battle plain</div>
<div class='line'>In dreary hospitals of pain,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The cheerless corridors,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The cold and stony floors.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Lo! in that house of misery</div>
<div class='line'>A lady with a lamp I see</div>
<div class='line in4'>Pass through the glimmering gloom,</div>
<div class='line in4'>And flit from room to room.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>And slow, as in a dream of bliss,</div>
<div class='line'>The speechless sufferer turns to kiss</div>
<div class='line in5'>Her shadow, as it falls</div>
<div class='line in4'>Upon the darkening walls.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>As if a door in heaven should be</div>
<div class='line'>Opened, and then closed suddenly,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The vision came and went,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The light shone and was spent.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>On England’s annals, through the long</div>
<div class='line'>Hereafter of her speech and song,</div>
<div class='line in4'>That light its rays shall cast</div>
<div class='line in4'>From portals of the past.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>A lady with a lamp shall stand</div>
<div class='line'>In the great history of the land,</div>
<div class='line in4'>A noble type of good</div>
<div class='line in4'>Heroic womanhood.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Nor even shall be wanting here</div>
<div class='line'>The palm, the lily, and the spear,</div>
<div class='line in4'>The symbols that of yore</div>
<div class='line in4'>Saint Filomena bore.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch09' class='c004'>IX<br/> <br/>MARY LAMB</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The</span> name of Mary Lamb can never be mentioned without
recalling that of her brother Charles, and the devoted,
self-sacrificing love that existed between the two. It was
one of Harriet Martineau’s sayings, that of all relations
that between brother and sister was apt to be the least
satisfactory. There have been some notable examples to
the contrary, and perhaps the most notable is that given
by Charles and Mary Lamb. When a brother and sister
are linked together by an unusually strong bond of affection
and admiration, it is generally the sister who, by
inclination and natural selection, sacrifices all individual
and personal objects for the sake of the brother. For
instance, she frequently remains unmarried in order to be
able to devote herself to his pursuits and further his
interests. There is no more devotedly unselfish love than
that of a sister and brother when it is at its best. The
love of a wife for a husband, or a parent for a child, has
something in it more of the element of self. In both
these relationships, the husband and wife and the parent
and child are so closely and indissolubly identified with
one another that it is comparatively easy to merge the
love between them into self-love. But between a brother
and sister this is not the case. The bond that unites the
two can be set aside by either of them at will. It is
partly voluntary in its character, and, as previously
remarked, in the give and take of this affection, it is,
speaking generally, the brother who takes and the sister
who gives. The contrary, however, was the case with
Charles and Mary Lamb. Between these two, it was the
brother who laid down his life for his sister, sacrificing for
her sake, at the outset of his own career, his prospects of
love and marriage, the ease and comfort of his life, and
his opportunities of devoting himself exclusively to his
darling studies.</p>
<p class='c002'>The story of these two beautiful lives is worth more
than even their contributions to English literature, and
makes us love Lamb and his sister quite independently of
the <cite>Essays of Elia</cite>, and the <cite>Tales from Shakespeare</cite>. Mary
Lamb was born in 1764, eleven years before her brother
Charles. Her childhood, till the birth of this precious
brother, seems to have had little brightness in it. There
was a tendency to insanity in the Lamb family, and this
tendency was probably intensified in Mary’s case by the
harshness and want of sympathy with which it was then
the fashion to treat children. “Polly, what are those
poor crazy, moythered brains of yours thinking, always?”
was a speech of her grandmother’s that made a lasting
impression on the sensitive child. The love of her
parents, her mother especially, seems to have been centred
on her brother John, older than herself by two years.
“‘Dear little selfish, craving John,’ he was in childhood,
and dear big selfish John he remained in manhood”
(Mrs. Gilchrist’s <cite>Life of Mary Lamb</cite>, p. 4).</p>
<p class='c002'>The first creature upon whom the wealth of affection in
Mary’s nature could be freely bestowed was, therefore, the
baby brother. She spoke in after years of the curative
influence on her mind of the almost maternal affection
which she lavished on the boy who was, to a great extent,
committed to her care. Henceforward she was no longer
lonely, but had gained a companion and object in life.
Her education consisted mainly in having been “tumbled
early, by accident or design, into a spacious closet of good
old English reading, without much selection or prohibition,
and she browsed at will upon that fair and wholesome
pasturage.” This was the library of Mr. Salt, a bencher
of the Inner Temple, to whom her father was clerk. In
1782, when Charles was seven and Mary eighteen, he
became a scholar of the Blue Coat School, where he formed
a lifelong friendship with the poet Coleridge. The
circumstances of the Lambs gradually narrowed. The
father was superannuated, and his income was consequently
reduced. The elder brother, John, held a good appointment
in the South Sea House, but he was much more
intent on enjoying himself and surrounding himself with
luxuries than upon providing for the wants of his family.
For eleven years, from the age of twenty-one to thirty-two,
Mary supported herself by her needle.</p>
<p class='c002'>The father’s mental faculties gradually gave way more
and more. By the time Charles was fifteen he left school,
and the care and maintenance of his family in a short
time devolved mainly on him. He first obtained a clerkship
in the same establishment where his brother was
employed, and two years later he received a better paid
appointment, with a salary of £70 a year, in the India
House. Domestic troubles, however, thickened upon the
family; the mother became a confirmed invalid, and in
1795 Charles was seized by an attack of the madness
hereditary in the family. This affliction must have
weighed terribly upon Mary, who thus saw her one prop
and solace taken from her. She was left alone, with her
father in his second childhood, her mother an exacting and
imperious invalid, and an old Aunt Hetty, who was for
ever poring over devotional books, without apparently the
capacity of sharing any of the household burdens. No
sooner was Charles restored to reason than a new trouble
began. John met with a serious accident, and, though
in his days of prosperity his family saw little or nothing
of him, he now returned home to be nursed. This seems
to have been the last straw that broke poor Mary down.
In September 1796 the mania, with which she had been
often threatened, broke out; she seized a knife from the
table and stabbed her mother to the heart. The poor old
father was almost unconscious of what had taken place;
Aunt Hetty fainted. It was Charles who seized the knife
from his sister’s grasp, but not before she had, in her
frenzy, inflicted a slight wound on her father. The
horror of the whole scene can be with difficulty pictured.
Yet Charles, who had only lately been released from an
asylum, had the power to cope with it, to maintain his
calmness and courage, and above all to resolve that the
terrible calamity which had overtaken them should not be
allowed to enshroud the whole of his dear sister’s life
in the gloom of a madhouse. He wrote to his friend
Coleridge five days after the tragedy, and his letter speaks
nothing but tender fortitude. “God has preserved to me
my senses,” he writes. “I eat, and drink, and sleep, and
have my judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father
was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him
and of my aunt.... With me ‘the former things are
passed away,’ and I have something more to do than to
feel.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Severe self-mastery is perceived in every word of this
letter. Lamb was evidently sensible that his own reason
would totter if it were not controlled by a strong effort of
will. In another letter written a week later to the same
friend, the same spirit is shown; he had already formed
the determination not to allow his sister to remain in a
madhouse; he resolved to devote his life to her, and to
give up all thought of other happiness for himself than
what was consistent with his being her constant companion
and guardian—“Your letter was an inestimable treasure
to me. It will be a comfort to you, I know, to know
that my prospects are somewhat brighter. My poor dear,
dearest sister—the unhappy and unconscious instrument
of the Almighty’s judgments on our house—is restored to
her senses, to a dreadful sense and recollection of what
has past, awful to her mind, and impressive (as it must be
to the end of life), but tempered with religious resignation
and the reasonings of a sound judgment, which in this
early stage knows how to distinguish between a deed
committed in a transient fit of frenzy and the terrible
guilt of a mother’s murder. I have seen her. I found
her this morning calm and serene, far, very far, from an
indecent, forgetful serenity; she has a most affectionate
and tender concern for what has happened. Indeed from
the beginning, frightful and hopeless as her disorder
seemed, I had confidence enough in her strength of mind
and religious principle to look forward to a time when
<em>even she</em> might recover tranquillity. God be praised,
Coleridge, wonderful as it is to tell, I have never once
been otherwise than collected and calm; even on the
dreadful day, and in the midst of the terrible scene, I
preserved a tranquillity which bystanders may have
construed into indifference—a tranquillity not of despair.
Is it folly or sin in me to say that it was a religious
principle that most supported me?... I felt I had
something else to do than to regret. On that first
evening, my aunt was lying insensible, to all appearance
like one dying,—my father with his poor forehead
plastered over from a wound he had received from a
daughter dearly loved by him, who loved him no less
dearly,—my mother, a dead and murdered corpse in the
next room,—yet was I wonderfully supported. I closed
not my eyes that night, but lay without terrors and
without despair. I have lost no sleep since. I had been
long used not to rest in things of sense, had endeavoured
after a comprehension of mind unsatisfied with the ignorant
present time; and this kept me up. I had the whole
weight of the family thrown on me, for my brother, little
disposed (I speak not without tenderness for him) at any
time to take care of old age and infirmities, had now, with
his bad leg, an exemption from such duties; and I was
now left alone.” He then speaks of the kindness of
various friends, and reckons up the resources of the family,
resolving to spare £50 or £60 a year to keep Mary at a
private asylum at Islington. “I know John will make
speeches about it, but she shall not go into an hospital....
If my father, and old maid-servant, and I, can’t
live, and live comfortably, on £130 or £120 a year, we
ought to burn by slow fires; and I almost would, that
Mary might not go into an hospital. Let me not leave an
unfavourable impression on your mind respecting my
brother. Since this has happened, he has been very kind
and brotherly, but I fear for his mind. He has taken his
ease in the world, and is not fit to struggle with difficulties,
nor has much accustomed himself to throw himself into
their way; and I know his language is already, ‘Charles,
you must take care of yourself, you must not abridge
yourself of a single pleasure you have been used to,’ etc.;
and in that style of talking.” Charles goes on to explain
that his sister would form one of the family she had been
placed with rather than a patient. “They, as the saying
is, take to her extraordinarily, if it is extraordinary that
people who see my sister should love her. Of all the
people I ever saw in the world, my poor sister was most
thoroughly devoid of the quality of selfishness. I will
enlarge upon her qualities, dearest soul, in a future letter
for my own comfort, for I understand her thoroughly; and
if I mistake not, in the most trying situation that a human
being can be found in, she will be found ... uniformly
great and amiable. God keep her in her present mind, to
whom be thanks and praise for all His dispensations to
mankind.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The whole of the rest of Lamb’s life was a fulfilment of
the loving resolutions which had sustained him in the
terrible hour of his mother’s death. His love for the
beautiful Alice W——n was relinquished as one of the
“tender fond records” for ever blotted out by a sterner,
more imperative claim of affection and duty. As soon as
the old father died, Mary and Charles were reunited in
one home, and her brother’s guardianship was accepted by
the authorities as a sufficient guarantee that any future
return of her malady should not be accompanied by
danger to the lives of others. He was faithful to his self-imposed
task. He himself was never again attacked by
the cruel malady, but his sister to the end of her life was
subject to recurring periods of insanity, which latterly
isolated her from her friends for months in every year.
Through their joint care and caution no fatal results again
attended these attacks of mania. There is something
inexpressibly touching in the fact that on their holiday
excursions together, Mary invariably, with her own hands,
packed a strait-waistcoat for herself. She was able to
foretell, by premonitory symptoms, when she was likely
to be attacked; and a friend of the Lambs has related how
he had met them walking together, hand in hand, towards
the asylum, both weeping bitterly.</p>
<p class='c002'>Lamb’s strong feeling against allowing his sister to be
placed in an hospital for lunatics is more than justified by
the accounts given, in the <cite>Life of Lord Shaftesbury</cite>, of the
frightfully barbarous treatment to which insane people
were subjected in the early part of the present century.
Their keepers always visited them whip in hand. They
were sometimes spun round on rotatory chairs at a
tremendous speed; sometimes they were chained in wells,
in which the water was made to rise till it reached their
chins; sometimes they were left quite alone, chained to
their beds, from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning,
unable to rise, and with nothing but bread and water
within their reach. No wonder that Charles Lamb said
he would burn by slow fires rather than let his sister be
treated like this.</p>
<p class='c002'>The strong restorative of work done and duty fulfilled
enabled Charles, within little more than a year of the
dreadful calamity which had darkened his life, to make
his first appearance as an author. These first poems were
dedicated to “the author’s best friend and sister.” He
wished to fence her round, as it were, by assurances of the
high value he set on her, and of the depth of his love.
“I wish,” he wrote to Coleridge, “to accumulate perpetuating
tokens of my affection to poor Mary.” When she
was restored to his daily companionship, there was nothing
in her outward manner or appearance to indicate what a
terrible cloud rested on her past life. Her manners were
tranquil and composed. De Quincey speaks of her as that
“Madonna-like lady.” There was no appearance of settled
melancholy in consequence of the fatal deed she had been
led to commit, but that it left a wound which was hidden
rather than healed is indicated by the words written long
years after the event: “My dear mother who, though you
do not know it, is always in my poor head and heart.”
On another occasion, a child Mary loved asked her why
she never spoke of her mother. A cry of pain was the
only response. Her dependence on her brother was an
ever-visible presence in both their lives. Mrs. Cowden
Clarke relates: “He once said, with his peculiar mode of
tenderness beneath blunt, abrupt speech, ‘You must die
first, Mary.’ She nodded, with her little quiet nod and
sweet smile, ‘Yes, I must die first, Charles.’” The event
was contrary to the wish and expectation thus expressed.
Charles preceded Mary to the grave by thirteen years;
but during the greater part of that time her intellect was
so clouded as to deprive her of the power of the acute
suffering the loss of her brother would otherwise have
caused.</p>
<p class='c002'>The literary fame of Mary Lamb rests chiefly on her
<cite>Tales from Shakespeare</cite>, and a collection of beautiful little
stories for children, called <cite>Mrs. Leicester’s School</cite>. The
<cite>Tales from Shakespeare</cite> were written, as so much good work
has been, under the stress of poverty. Six of the great
tragedies were undertaken by Charles, and fourteen other
plays by Mary. The scheme was to render each play into
a prose story fit for the comprehension and capacity of
children; and the work was done with inimitable felicity
of diction, and critical insight into the situations and
characters of the world of men and women who live in
Shakespeare’s dramas. There is a letter of Mary’s
describing herself and Charles at work: “Charles has
written <cite>Macbeth</cite>, <cite>Othello</cite>, <cite>King Lear</cite>, and has begun <cite>Hamlet</cite>.
You would like to see us, as we often sit writing on one
table (but not on one cushion sitting, like Hermia and
Helena in the <cite>Midsummer Nights Dream</cite>); or rather, like
an old literary Darby and Joan, I taking snuff, and he
groaning all the while and saying he can make nothing
of it, which he always says till he has finished, and then
he finds out that he has made something of it” (Mrs.
Gilchrist’s <cite>Life</cite>, p. 119). The <cite>Tales</cite> were written for
William Godwin, whose first wife was Mary Wollstonecraft.
His second wife helped him a great deal with his
publishing business. She was a vulgar-minded woman,
and a pet aversion of the Lambs, especially of Charles,
who said, referring to her, “I will be buried with this
inscription over me, ‘Here lies C. L., the woman-hater’—I
mean, that hated one woman; for the rest, God
bless ’em.” The success of the <cite>Tales</cite> could not, however,
be marred by the unpopularity of the publisher
and his wife. The book rapidly ran through several
editions, and even now a year seldom passes without the
<cite>Tales from Shakespeare</cite> being presented to the public in
some new form.</p>
<p class='c002'>A portrait of Mary Lamb has been drawn by the
master hand of her brother. She is the Bridget of the
<cite>Essays of Elia</cite>, as all lovers of the essays well know. The
humour and delicate insight into character for which the
writings of Charles Lamb are so distinguished, are also
characteristic of Mary, though the humour in her case is
less rollicking, and never breaks out in pure high spirits,
as his often does. Some of the most charming of Mary’s
writings are her letters, which have been published in
Mrs. Gilchrist’s <cite>Life</cite>, especially those to a young friend,
named Sarah Stoddart.</p>
<p class='c002'>This young lady had a most “business-like determination
to marry”; and as she generally had more than one
string to her bow, as the saying is, it is no wonder that
she sometimes needed the help of an older and wiser
woman than herself, to get her out of the difficulties in
which she found herself. Much of Mary’s own character
comes out in the advice she gives her friend. She speaks
in one place of her power of valuing people for what they
are, without demanding or expecting perfection. It is a
“knack I know I have, of looking into people’s real
character, and never expecting them to act out of it—never
expecting another to do as I would in the same
case.” How much practical wisdom there is in this, and
what misunderstandings and heart-burnings would be
saved if it were more common not to expect people to act
out of their own characters! There is a funny little bit
in another letter to the effect that women should not be
constantly admonishing men as to the right line of thought
and conduct. “I make it a point of conscience never to
interfere or cross my brother in the humour he happens to
be in. It always appears to me a vexatious kind of
tyranny, that women have no business to exercise over
men, which merely because, <em>they having a better judgment</em>,
they have power to do. Let <em>men</em> alone, and at last we
find they come round to the right way which <em>we</em>, by a
kind of intuition, perceive at once. But better, far better,
that we should let them often do wrong than that they
should have the torment of a monitor always at their elbows.”</p>
<p class='c002'>To begin quoting from the letters of Charles and Mary
Lamb is such an enticing task that it would be easy to fill
more pages than this little book contains. One more only
shall be quoted from each. The most beautiful of Mary’s
letters is perhaps that which she wrote to Dorothy
Wordsworth, soon after the death by drowning of Wordsworth’s
brother John. The beautiful poem by Wordsworth,
“The Happy Warrior,” is supposed to have
been written partly in reference to this brother, and
partly in reference to Nelson, whose death took place
the same year (1805). “I thank you,” Mary wrote,
“my kind friend, for your most comfortable letter; till I
saw your own handwriting I could not persuade myself
that I should do well to write to you, though I have often
attempted it.... I wished to tell you that you would
one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet
memory of the dead which you so happily describe as now
almost begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most
grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that
the memory of their affliction would in time become a
constant part, not only of their dream, but of their most
wakeful sense of happiness. That you would see every
object with, and through, your lost brother, and that that
would at last become a real and everlasting source of
comfort to you, I felt and well knew from my own
experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel
this I didn’t dare tell you so.”</p>
<p class='c002'>How terrible that the mind and heart which could
dictate such words as these were weighed down by the
lifelong burden of insanity! Before Miss Wordsworth’s
reply reached her, she was again attacked, and Charles
wrote in her place: “I have every reason to suppose that
this illness, like all the former ones, will be but temporary;
but I cannot always feel so. Meantime she is dead to me,
and I miss a prop. All my strength is gone, and I am
like a fool, bereft of her co-operation. I dare not think,
lest I should think wrong, so used am I to look up to her
in the least as in the biggest perplexity. To say all that
I know of her would be more than I think anybody could
believe, or even understand; and when I hope to have
her well again with me, it would be sinning against her
feelings to go about praising her, for I can conceal nothing
that I do from her. She is older and wiser and better
than I, and all my wretched imperfections I cover to myself
by resolutely thinking on her goodness. She would
share life and death, heaven and hell, with me. She lives
but for me; and I know I have been wasting and teasing
her life for five years past incessantly, with my cursed
drinking and ways of going on. But even in thus upbraiding
myself I am offending against her, for I know
that she has clung to me for better, for worse; and if
the balance has been against her hitherto it was a noble
trade.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Great, noble spirits they both were, even in their
weaknesses and imperfections, showing an example of
devoted unselfishness, tenderness, and generosity that
many who “tithe mint and anise and cummin” might
envy. Mary Lamb survived to old age, dying in May
1847, aged seventy-three. She was buried by her brother’s
side in the churchyard at Edmonton.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch10' class='c004'>X<br/> <br/>AGNES ELIZABETH JONES</h2></div>
<p class='c012'>“Count not that man’s life short who has had time to do noble deeds.”—From
<span class='sc'>Cicero</span>.</p>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>There</span> is something very interesting in tracing, as we are
sometimes able to do, the connection of one piece of good
work with another. The energy, devotion, and success of
one worker stimulates the enthusiasm of others; this
enthusiasm does not always show itself in carrying on or
developing what has been already begun, but sometimes
manifests itself in the more difficult task of breaking new
ground; and thus one good work becomes the parent of
another. An example of what is here referred to is to be
found in the work of Mrs. Fry. To her initiative may be
traced not only the kindred labours of Mary Carpenter in
reformatory and industrial schools, and the still more
modern efforts for the better care of neglected children by
the boarding-out system, and by such societies as the
Metropolitan Association for Befriending Young Servants,
but to her also may indirectly be traced the success with
which women have devoted themselves to the art of sick
nursing, and from this again has spread or grown out the
movement for extending to women a thorough medical
education and training.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Fry’s connection with the art of sick nursing came
about in this way. In the first quarter of this century a
young German named Fliedner was appointed pastor to
the little weaving village of Kaiserswerth on the Rhine.
He endeared himself to his people by his devotion to them;
but the time came when he was forced to leave them.
The whole village was involved in ruin because of the
failure of the industry on which its inhabitants depended.
The people not only could not support their pastor, but
were themselves reduced to the greatest straits of actual
want. He left them in order to seek in wealthier places,
not maintenance for himself, but help for them. After
travelling for some time in Germany, he came to England,
and while here, still intent on making known the wants of
Kaiserswerth, he met with Mrs. Fry, and was deeply
interested in all she was doing for the benefit of prisoners.
Not long after this he returned to Kaiserswerth, bearing
with him the gifts he had collected to relieve the pressing
wants of his people; but his mind was now full of Mrs.
Fry, and of what was being done in England by and for
women. He and his wife resolved to begin similar work
in Germany. They began with two young women just
discharged from a neighbouring prison, whose relations
refused to receive them or have anything further to do
with them. Soon the number of discharged prisoners increased,
and the pastor and his wife felt that they must have
help; a friend therefore came to join them in their work.
In this way and from this small beginning grew in time a
very large institution, comprising not only an organisation
to enable discharged prisoners to get work and regain their
character, but a home and school for orphans, a hospital
for the sick, and an asylum for lunatics. The whole of
the work of this institution, which occupied several houses
and comprised more than 300 persons, was done by
carefully-trained women, called deaconesses.</p>
<p class='c002'>Kaiserswerth was the parent of all the other deaconesses’
institutions which now exist in almost every part of the
world. The predominating spirit at Kaiserswerth, after
that of religious self-devotion, to which a first place was
given, was that the work of caring for the poor, the sick,
and the afflicted can only be rightly undertaken after a
long course of special preparation and training. It was a
Protestant sisterhood; those who entered were first called
novices; in time the novices became deaconesses, and the
deaconesses were expected to bind themselves to remain
in the institution five years. They were, however, bound
by no vows, and could always leave if other duties seemed
to require that they should do so. In this institution the
art of sick nursing acquired a perfection at that time unknown
in any other part of Europe. It was here, mainly,
that Florence Nightingale received the training which
enabled her to save the lives of so many of our soldiers in
the Crimea, and to introduce into England a new era in
the history of nursing. Here too Agnes Elizabeth Jones
was trained.</p>
<p class='c002'>Miss Nightingale’s often-repeated lesson on the subject
of the necessity of long and careful training was not lost
upon Agnes Jones. When she left Kaiserswerth, she
knew, as Miss Nightingale said, “more than most hospital
matrons know when they undertake matronship.” But
she was not content with this. After working for a time
with the London Bible Women’s Mission, she applied to
the training-school for nurses at St. Thomas’s Hospital for
another year’s training. She entered the hospital as a
“Nightingale probationer.” She went through, while she
was there, the whole training of a nurse. To quote Miss
Nightingale again, referring to this period, “Her reports
of cases were admirable as to nursing details. She was
our best pupil; <em>she went through all the work of a soldier, and
she thereby fitted herself for being the best general we ever had</em>.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Before referring to Agnes Jones’s crowning work in reorganising
the nursing staff of the Liverpool Workhouse
Infirmary, it will be well to recall the story of her life.
There are few incidents in it, none at all of a sensational
character; but perhaps this makes the lesson to be learnt
from it all the more plain and simple.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was born at Cambridge, of Irish parents, in 1832.
Her father was a colonel in the 12th Regiment, and her
descent was from the north Irish stock that has furnished
so many great names to the roll-call of the worthies of our
nation. She was a Protestant evangelical, of the type which
northern Ireland produces. It is easy to label the religious
sect to which she belonged as narrow and unattractive;
but however this may be, as exemplified in her personally,
her religion was too intense a reality to be unattractive.
It permeated her whole life, from the time when as a child
of seven her dream was to become a missionary, to the
hour when she died of typhus taken from a patient in the
Liverpool Infirmary to whom she had given up her own
room and bed. Another deep and permanent influence on
her mind and character was her love for Ireland. Over
and over again in her letters we come across expressions
which show how close to her heart lay her country’s good.
The training at Kaiserswerth was intended to be utilised
for the good of Ireland. “I have no desire,” she wrote,
“to become a deaconess; that would not, I think, be the
place I should be called upon to occupy. No, my own
Ireland first. It was for Ireland’s good that my first
desire to be used as a blessed instrument in God’s hand
was breathed, ... and in Ireland is it my heart’s desire
to labour....”</p>
<p class='c002'>In another letter she refers to the time when she “then
and there” dedicated herself to do what she could for
Ireland, in its workhouses, infirmaries, and hospitals. In
another place she speaks of being retained in England for
another year’s training, and exclaims, “My last English
sojourn, I hope, as Ireland is ever my bourn!” And again,
“My heart is ever in Ireland, where I hope ultimately to
work.” Her heart’s desire was never gratified; she laid
down her life, at the age of thirty-five, in the Liverpool
Workhouse, before she had had an opportunity of giving to
her own dear land the benefit of all she had learned by the
patient years of training at Kaiserswerth and in London.
Ulster Protestant as she was to the backbone, and a
member of the Church of England, she was a true patriot,
and showed her patriotism by labouring with self-denying
earnestness to fit herself to lift up to a higher level an
important branch of the social life of her country.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was very much stimulated, as so many women were,
by the heroism of the Nightingale band of nurses who left
England for the Crimea in 1854. She listened with
vehement inward dissent to those who cast contempt and
blame on them, and, in her own words, “almost worshipped”
their brave leader.</p>
<p class='c002'>She had paid a visit of a week to Kaiserswerth in 1853,
but home duties, especially the care of a widowed sister, at
that time and for some years prevented her from fulfilling
her strong desire for a course of thorough training in the
art of nursing. It was not till 1860 that she returned to
Kaiserswerth for this purpose. Very soon after her year
of preparation there, she received, through Miss Nightingale,
an invitation from Mr. W. Rathbone to undertake the
superintendence of the Liverpool Training School for
Nurses of the Poor. She was overwhelmed by a genuine
sense of her inadequacy to the task. She was a sincerely
humble-minded woman, and not only craved more training
in the mechanical difficulties of nursing, but doubted her
own powers of organising, directing, and superintending.
She hesitated, and while hesitating, joined Mrs. Ranyard
in her London Biblewoman’s Mission. Her work here was
interrupted by a telegram summoning her to Rome to
nurse a sick sister. As soon as the sister recovered, another
invalid relative claimed her. By their bedsides she felt, to
a certain extent, her own power, and the question often
arose in her mind, “Could I govern and teach others?”
As soon as these private cares were over, she visited
nursing institutions in Switzerland, France, and Germany,
and before she returned to England she determined to go
for another year’s training to St. Thomas’s Hospital, and
then to offer herself for the difficult post at Liverpool. “I
determined,” she writes, “at least to try.... If every
one shrinks back because incompetent, who will ever do
anything? ‘Lord, here am I; send me.’”</p>
<p class='c002'>She did not on leaving St. Thomas’s immediately
commence her work at Liverpool. She was for a short
time superintendent of a small hospital in Bolsover Street,
and later she filled a similar post at the Great Northern
Hospital. It was not till the spring of 1865 that she took
the place at Liverpool with which her name is chiefly
connected.</p>
<p class='c002'>The old system in pauper infirmaries was to allow the
patients to be “nursed” by old inmates of the workhouse.
Among those to whom the care of the sick was confided
were “worn-out old thieves, worn-out old drunkards,” and
worse. Mr. W. Rathbone, of Liverpool, strongly urged on
the guardians of that place to do away with this wretched
system, and to substitute in the place of these ignorant,
and often vicious, women a staff of trained paid nurses.
He generously undertook to defray the whole cost of the
new scheme for three years, by which time he believed the
improvement effected would be so great that no one would
for a moment dream of going back to the old plan. It was
to the post of superintendent of the band of trained nurses
that Agnes Jones was called in the spring of 1865.</p>
<p class='c002'>It was no light task for a young woman of thirty-three.
She had under her about 50 nurses, 150 pauper “scourers,”
and from 1220 to 1350 patients. The winters of 1865
and 1866 will long be remembered as the terrible period
of the cotton famine in Lancashire. The workhouse
infirmary at Liverpool was not only full, but overflowing;
a number of patients often arrived when every bed was
full. Then the gentle authority of Sister Agnes, as she
was called, had to be exercised to induce the wild, rough
patients to make way for one another. Sometimes she
had to persuade them to let her put the beds together and
place three or even four in two beds. The children had
to be packed together, some at the head and some at the
foot of the bed. She speaks of them as “nests of children,”
and mentions that forty under twelve were sent <SPAN name='in'></SPAN>in one
day. This over-filling of the workhouse was of course no
ordinary occurrence, and was due to the exceptional distress
in Lancashire at that time. The number of deaths that
took place, for the same reason, was unusually large.
Sister Agnes speaks in one of her letters of seven deaths
having occurred between Sunday night and Tuesday
morning.</p>
<p class='c002'>The dreadful melancholy of the place bore upon her
with terrible weight. There was not only the depressing
thought that most of the inmates were there in consequence
of their own wickedness or folly, but added to this the
patients were isolated from friends and relatives whose
visits do so much to cheer an ordinary hospital. There
were patients with <i>delirium tremens</i> wandering about the
wards in their shirts; there were little children, some not
more than seven, steeped in every kind of vice and infamy.
“I sometimes wonder,” she wrote, in a moment of despair,
“if there is a worse place on earth than Liverpool, and I
am sure its workhouse is burdened with a large proportion
of its vilest.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Some of the best and most deeply-rooted instincts of
human nature seemed to turn into cruelty and gall in this
terrible place. One of the difficulties of the nurses was to
prevent the mothers of the babies, who were still at the
breast, from fighting and stealing one another’s food. They
had nothing to do but nurse their babies, and they would
hardly do that. The noise, quarrelling, and dirt prevailing
in their neighbourhood was a constant source of trouble
and anxiety. Another trouble was the mixture among the
patients of criminal cases, necessitating the presence of
policemen constantly on the premises. The ex-pauper
women, too, whom Sister Agnes was endeavouring to train
as assistant nurses, were a great anxiety. One morning,
after they had been paid their wages, five arrived at the
hospital tipsy; after some months of constant effort and
constant disappointment, the attempt to train these women
was given up. Besides the strain on nerves, temper, and
spirit arising from all these causes, the physical work of
Agnes Jones’s post was no light matter. Her day began
at 5.30 <span class='fss'>A.M.</span> and ended after 11; added to this, if there
was any case about which she was specially anxious, or any
nurse about whose competence she did not feel fully
assured, she would be up two or three times in the night
to satisfy herself that all was going well. Her nurses
were devoted to her, and, as a rule, gave her no anxiety
or discomfort which could be avoided. Her only distress
on their account arose from a severe outbreak of fever and
small-pox among them, which was a source of much painful
anxiety to her. Miss Nightingale said of her that “she
had a greater power of carrying her followers with her
than any woman (or man) I ever knew.” “Her influence
with her nurses was unbounded. They would have died
for her.”</p>
<p class='c002'>All witnesses concur in speaking of her wonderful
personal influence and the effect it produced. The infirmary
began to show the results of her presence within
a month of her arrival. In the three years she spent
there, she completely changed the whole place. At first
the police, to whose presence reference has already been
made, were astonished that it was safe for a number of
young women to be about in the men’s wards, for they
well knew what a rough lot some of the patients were;
but “in less than three years she had reduced one of the
most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something
like Christian discipline, such as the police themselves
wondered at. She had led, so as to be of one mind and
one heart with her, upwards of fifty nurses and probationers....
She had converted a vestry to the conviction of the
economy as well as the humanity of nursing pauper sick
by trained nurses.... She had converted the Poor Law
Board to the same view, and she had disarmed all opposition,
all sectarian zealotism; so that Roman Catholic and
Unitarian, High Church and Low Church, all literally rose
up and called her blessed.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The manner of her death has been already referred to.
It was in unison with her unselfish, devoted life. She died
on the 19th February 1868, and her body was committed
to the earth of her beloved Ireland, at Fahan, on Lough
Swilly, the home of her early years.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch11' class='c004'>XI<br/> <br/>CHARLOTTE AND EMILY BRONTË</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>In</span> the quiet Yorkshire village of Haworth, on the bleak
moorland hillside above Keighley, were born two of the
greatest imaginative writers of the present century, Charlotte
and Emily Brontë. The wonderful gifts of the Brontë
family, the grief and tragedy that overshadowed their
lives, and their early deaths, will always cast about their
story a peculiarly touching interest. Their father, the
Rev. Patrick Brontë, was of Irish birth. He was born in
the County Down, of a Protestant family—one that had
migrated from the south to the north of Ireland. His
character was that which we are more accustomed to
associate with Scotland than with Ireland. Resolute, stern,
independent, and self-denying, he had the virtues of an old
Covenanter rather than the facile graces which so often
distinguish those of Celtic blood. His father was a farmer,
but Patrick Brontë had no desire to live by agricultural
industry. At sixteen years of age he separated himself
from his family and opened a school. What amount of
success he had in this undertaking does not appear, but it
is evident that he had a distinct object in view, namely, to
obtain money enough to complete his own education; in
this he was successful, for after nine years’ labour in
instructing others, he entered as a student in St. John’s
College, Cambridge, remained there four years, obtained
the B.A. degree of the University, and was ordained as a
clergyman of the Church of England. He kept up no
intercourse with his family, and showed no trace of his
Irish blood, either in speech or character. He loved and
married Miss Branwell, of Penzance, a lady of much sweetness
and refinement. Their six children were destined,
through the writings of two of them, to be known wherever
the English language is spoken, all over the world. After
holding livings in Essex and at Thornton, in Yorkshire,
Mr. Brontë was appointed to the Rectory of Haworth,
which is now so often visited on account of its association
with the authors of <cite>Jane Eyre</cite> and <cite>Wuthering Heights</cite>.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Brontë’s six children were born in rapid succession,
and her naturally delicate constitution was further tried
by the constant labour and anxiety involved in providing,
on very limited means, for the wants of the little brood.
Mrs. Gaskell, in her <cite>Life of Charlotte Brontë</cite>, appears to
imply that, more than is even usually the case, the weight
of family cares and anxieties fell upon the mother rather
than the father. “Mr. Brontë,” she says, “was, of course,
much engaged in his study, and besides, he was not
naturally fond of children, and felt their frequent appearance
upon the scene as a drag both on his wife’s strength
and as an interruption to the comfort of the household.”
One feels disposed to comment on this by saying that
children ought never to be born if either of their parents
inclines to regard them “as an interruption to the comfort
of the household.” To give life and grudge it at the same
time is not an attractive combination of qualities. Though
not much helped by her husband, Mrs. Brontë was, however,
not alone in her domestic cares and duties; the eldest
of the “interruptions to the comfort of the household,”
Maria, was a child of wonderfully precocious intellect and
heart. Her remarkable character was described in after
years by her sister Charlotte as the Helen Burns of <cite>Jane
Eyre</cite>. In her, her mother found a sympathising companion
and a helper in her domestic cares. The time was rapidly
approaching when the mother’s place in the household
would be vacant, and when many of its duties and responsibilities
would be discharged by Maria.</p>
<p class='c002'>The little Brontës were from their birth unlike other
children. The room dedicated to their use was not, even
in their babyhood, called their nursery; it was their
“study.” Little Maria at seven years old would shut
herself up in this study with the newspaper, and be able to
converse with her father on all the public events of the
day, and instruct the other children as to current politics,
and upon the characters of the chief personages of the
political world.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Brontë died in 1821. Maria was then eight;
Elizabeth, seven; Charlotte, five; Patrick Branwell, four;
Emily, three; and Anne, one. The little motherless
brood were left alone for a year, when an elder sister of
their mother came to live at the parsonage, but she does
not seem to have had any real influence over them. She
taught the girls to stitch and sew, and to become proficient
in various domestic arts, but she had no sympathy or
communion with them, and their real life was lived quite
apart from hers. As soon almost as they could read and
write at all, they began to compose plays and act them;
they had no society but each other’s; this, however, was
all-sufficient for them. Their power of invention and
imagination was very marked; to the habit of composing
stories in their own minds they gave the name of “making
out.” As soon as the labour of writing became less
formidable than it always is to baby fingers, the stories
thus “made out” were written down. In fifteen months,
when Charlotte was about twelve to thirteen years of age,
she wrote twenty-two volumes of manuscript, in the
minutest hand, which can hardly be deciphered except with
the aid of a magnifying-glass. The Duke of Wellington
filled a large place in the minds of the Brontës, and in
their romances. Something of what the hero was to them
when they were children, Charlotte afterwards put into
the mouth of Shirley, the heroine of her novel of that
name. After the manner of imaginative children, she not
only worshipped her hero from afar, but identified herself
with him or with members of his family. The authorship
of many of her childish romances and poems is ascribed, in
her imagination, to the Marquis of Douro, or Lord Charles
Wellesley; and when these “goodly youths” are not
introduced as authors they often become the chief personages
of the story.</p>
<p class='c002'>The shadow of death that casts so deep a gloom over
the story of the Brontë family, first fell on Maria and
Elizabeth, the two elder children. The four girls—Maria,
Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily—had been sent to a school,
which was partly a charitable institution, at Cowan Bridge,
in Westmoreland. The living at Haworth parsonage was
the reverse of luxurious, but the food and the sanitary
arrangements at Cowan Bridge were so bad that the health
of the little Brontës was seriously injured by it. The food
was repulsive from the want of cleanliness with which it
was prepared and placed on the table. The children
frequently refused food altogether, though sinking from the
want of it, rather than drink the “bingy” milk, and eat
unappetising scraps from a dirty larder, and puddings made
with water taken from rain-tubs and impregnated with the
smell of soot and dust. Besides the faulty domestic
arrangements of the school, the discipline was harsh and
tyrannical, and one teacher in particular was guilty of
conduct towards Maria Brontë that can only be called
brutal. Low fever broke out at the school, from which
about forty of the pupils suffered, but the Brontës did not
take the disease. It was evident that Maria was destined
for another fate, that of consumption. She was removed
from the school only a few days before her death, and
Elizabeth followed her to the grave about six weeks later,
in June 1825. Even after this Mr. Brontë’s eyes were not
opened to the danger his children were in by their treatment
at Cowan Bridge, and Charlotte and Emily were still
allowed to remain at the school. It soon, however, became
evident that they would not be long in following Maria and
Elizabeth unless they were removed; and they returned
home before the rigours of another winter set in. All the
physical and mental tortures she endured at Cowan Bridge,
Charlotte afterwards described in the account she gives of
“Lowood” in <cite>Jane Eyre</cite>. It is not to be taken that the account
of “Lowood” is as strictly an accurate description of Cowan
Bridge as Charlotte Brontë would have given if she had
been simply writing a history of the school. The facts are,
perhaps, magnified by the lurid glow of passion and grief
with which she recalled her sisters’ sufferings. She was
only between nine and ten when she left Cowan Bridge,
and in the account she wrote of it twenty years later we
see rather the impression that was left on her imagination
than a strictly accurate history; but there is no doubt that
in her account of Maria Brontë’s angelic patience, and the
cruel persecution to which she was subjected by one of the
teachers, the Lowood of <cite>Jane Eyre</cite> is a perfectly faithful
transcript of what took place at Cowan Bridge. Mrs.
Gaskell says, “Not a word of that part of <cite>Jane Eyre</cite> but is
a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the
teacher. Those who had been pupils at the same time
knew who must have written the book from the force with
which Helen Burns’s sufferings are described.”</p>
<p class='c002'>After the death of Maria and Elizabeth, the next great
sorrow of the Brontë family arose from the career of the
only son, Patrick Branwell. He was a handsome boy of
exceptional mental powers. He had in particular the gift
of brilliant conversation, and there was hardly anything he
attempted in the way of talking, writing, or drawing which
he did not do well. In one of Charlotte’s letters she says,
“You ask me if I do not think that men are strange
beings? I do, indeed. I have often thought so; and I
think, too, that the mode of bringing them up is strange;
they are not sufficiently guarded from temptation. Girls
are protected as if they were something very frail and silly
indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world, as if they
of all beings in existence were the wisest and least liable to
be led astray.” Poor Branwell, with his brilliant social
qualities, was not sufficiently guarded from temptation.
The easiest outlet from the narrow walls of Haworth
parsonage was to be found at the little inn of Haworth
village. The habit of the place was, when any stranger
arrived at the inn, for the host to send for the brilliant boy
from the parsonage to amuse the guest. The result will
easily be guessed. The guiding principle of Charlotte’s
character was her inexorable fidelity to duty; her whole
nature turned with irresistible force to what was right
rather than to what was pleasant. With Branwell the reverse
was the case. Conventional propriety of course strictly
guarded Charlotte from the possible dangers of associating
with casual strangers at the village inn, although her
strong resolute character would not have run a tenth part
of the risk of contamination as did that of the weak,
pleasure-seeking Branwell. It is needless to dwell on the
details of his gradual degradation; the high ideals and
hopes of his youth were given up; his character became at
once coarse and weak. He was entirely incapable of self-government
and of retaining any kind of respectable
employment. His intemperance and other vices made the
daily life of his sisters at the parsonage a nightmare of
horrors. For eight years the young man, whose boyhood
his family had watched with so much hope and pride, was
a source of shame and anguish to them, all the more keenly
felt because it could not be openly avowed. Many who
knew the family affirmed that so far as purely intellectual
qualities were concerned Branwell was even more eminently
distinguished than his sisters; but mere intellect, without
moral power to guide it, is as dangerous as a spirited horse
without bit or bridle. Branwell was singularly deficient
in that moral power in which his sisters were so strong,
and his education did nothing to supply this natural
deficiency. He died in 1848, at the age of thirty.</p>
<p class='c002'>Cowan Bridge was not the only experience Charlotte
and Emily had of school life. They went for a time to
another school at Roe Head, where Charlotte was very
happy, and in 1835 she returned to the same school as a
teacher. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily went to a school
in Brussels, where the former stayed two years, the latter
only one. All that Charlotte saw and all the friends she
made were afterwards portrayed in her stories. One of
her most intimate friends became the Caroline Helstone
of <cite>Shirley</cite>; the originals of Rose and Jessie Yorke were
also among her schoolfellows at Roe Head. There can be
little doubt that M. Paul Emanuel of Villette was M. Héger
of the Brussels school. Every trivial circumstance of an
unusually uneventful life became food for her imagination.</p>
<p class='c002'>The development of Emily’s genius was different. Her
love of the moors around Haworth was so intense that it
was impossible for her to thrive when she was away from
them. It became a fact recognised by all the family that
Emily must not be taken away from home. The solitude
of the wild, dark moors, and the communing with her own
heart, together with the dark tragedy of Branwell’s wasted
life, were the sole sources of Emily’s inspiration. Her
poems have a wild, untameable quality in them, and her
one romance, <cite>Wuthering Heights</cite>, places her in the first
rank among the great imaginative writers of English fiction.
There is something terrible in Emily’s sternness of character,
which she never vented pitilessly on any one but herself.
She was deeply reserved, and hardly ever, even to her
sisters, spoke of what she felt most intensely. A friend
who furnished Mrs. Gaskell with some particulars for her
biography, states that on one occasion she mentioned “that
some one had asked me what religion I was of (with the
view of getting me for a partisan), and that I had said
that was between God and me. Emily, who was lying on
the hearth-rug, exclaimed, ‘That’s right.’ This was all,”
adds the friend, “I ever heard Emily say on religious
subjects.” Emily’s love for animals was intense; she
was especially devoted to a savage old bull-dog named
Keeper, who owned no master but herself. The incident
in <cite>Shirley</cite> of the heroine being bitten by a mad dog,
and straightway burning the wound herself with a red-hot
Italian iron, was true of Emily. Her last illness was a
time of terrible agony to Charlotte and Anne, not merely
because they saw that she who, Charlotte said, was the
thing that seemed nearest to her heart in the world was
going to be taken from them, but because Emily’s resistance
to the inroads of illness was so terrible. She resolutely
refused to see a doctor, and she would allow no nursing
and no tender helpfulness of any kind. It was evident to
her agonised sisters that she was dying, but she maintained
her savage reserve, suffering in solitary silence rather than
admit her pain and weakness. On the very day of her
death she rose as usual, dressed herself, and attempted to
carry on her usual employments, and all this with the
catching, rattling breath and the glazing eye which told
that the hand of Death was actually upon her. Charlotte
wrote in this agonising hour, “Moments so dark as these
I have never known. I pray for God’s support to us all.
Hitherto He has granted it.” At noon on that day, when
it was too late, Emily whispered in gasps, “If you will send
for a doctor, I will see him now.” A few days later
Charlotte wrote, “We are very calm at present. Why
should we be otherwise? The anguish of seeing her suffer
is over; the spectacle of the pains of death is gone by; the
funeral day is past. We feel she is at peace. No need to
tremble for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does
not feel them.” The terrible anguish of those last days
haunted the surviving sisters like a vision of doom. Nearly
six months later Charlotte wrote again that nothing but
hope in the life to come had kept her heart from breaking.
“I cannot forget,” she says, “Emily’s death-day; it becomes
a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently recurring
idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She
was torn, conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out
of a happy life.” Within a very short time the gentle
youngest sister Anne also died, and Charlotte was left with
her father, the last survivor of the family of six wonderful
children who had come to Haworth twenty-nine years
before.</p>
<p class='c002'>In earlier and happier days the habit of the sisters had
been, when their aunt went to bed at nine o’clock, to put out
the candles and pace up and down the room discussing the
plots of their novels, and making plans and projects for
their future life. Now Charlotte was left to pace the room
alone, with all that had been dearest to her in the world
under the church pavement at Haworth and in the old
churchyard at Scarborough. But Charlotte was not one to
give way to self-indulgent idleness, even in the hour of
darkest despair. She was writing <cite>Shirley</cite> at the time of
Anne’s last illness. After the death of this beloved and
only remaining sister, she resumed her task; but those who
knew what her private history at the time was, can trace
in the pages of the novel what she had gone through.
The first chapter she wrote after the death of Anne is called,
“The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The first venture in authorship of the sisters was a
volume of poems, to which they each contributed. They
imagined, probably with justice, that the world was at that
time prejudiced against literary women. Therefore they
were careful to conceal, even from their publishers, their
real identity. The poems were published as the writings
of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.</p>
<p class='c002'><cite>Jane Eyre</cite> was the first of Charlotte’s stories which
was published, but <cite>The Professor</cite> was the first that was
written with a view to publication. The sisters each
wrote a story—Charlotte, <cite>The Professor</cite>; Emily, <cite>Wuthering
Heights</cite>; and Anne, <cite>Agnes Grey</cite>, and sent them to
various publishers. Charlotte was the only one of the three
sisters whose manuscript was returned on her hands. But
she was not discouraged by the disappointment. Just at
this time Mr. Brontë, who had been suffering from cataract,
was persuaded by his daughters to go to Manchester for
an operation. Charlotte accompanied him, and it was
while she was waiting on him, in the long suspense after
the operation had been performed, that she began <cite>Jane
Eyre</cite>, the book that made her, and ultimately the name of
Brontë, famous. Nothing is more striking in Charlotte’s
personal history than the way in which she reproduced
the events and personages of her own circle into her novels.
Probably the belief that she was writing anonymously
encouraged her in this. Her father’s threatened blindness
and her own fear of a similar calamity are reflected, as it
were, in the blindness of Rochester in <cite>Jane Eyre</cite>. The
success of <cite>Jane Eyre</cite> was rapid and complete, and there
was much dispute whether its author were a man or a
woman. The <cite>Quarterly Review</cite> distinguished itself by the
remark that if the author were a woman it was evident
“she must be one who for some sufficient reason has long
forfeited the society of her sex.” Sensitive as Charlotte
Brontë was, the coarseness of the insult could not wound
her; it could at the utmost be regarded as nothing worse
than a trivial annoyance; for when the words reached
Charlotte, the grave had not long closed over Branwell’s
wasted life; Emily was just dead, and it was evident that
Anne was dying. The greatness of her grief and the
anguish of her loneliness dwarfed to their proper proportions
the petty insults that at another time would have
caused her acute pain. On the whole she had nothing to
complain of in the way her book was received; she suffered
no lack of generous appreciation from the real leaders of
the literary world. Thackeray and G. H. Lewes, Miss
Martineau, and Sidney Dobell were warm in their praise
of her work. Charlotte’s manner of making her literary
fame known to her father was characteristic. The secret
of their authorship had been very strictly kept by the sisters;
but when the success of <cite>Jane Eyre</cite> was assured, Emily
and Anne urged Charlotte that their father ought to be
allowed to share the pleasure of knowing that she was the
writer of the book. Accordingly one afternoon Charlotte
entered her father’s study and said, “Papa, I’ve been
writing a book.” When Mr. Brontë found that the book
was not only written, but printed and published, he
exclaimed, “My dear, you’ve never thought of the expense
it will be! It will be almost sure to be a loss, for how can
you get a book sold? No one knows you or your name.”</p>
<p class='c002'>“But, papa, I don’t think it will be a loss; no more
will you, if you will just let me read you a review or two,
and tell you more about it.” At tea that evening Mr.
Brontë exclaimed to his other daughters, “Girls, do you
know that Charlotte has been writing a book, and it is
much better than likely?”</p>
<p class='c002'>The pacing up and down of the sisters in the firelight,
discussing the plots of their novels, has been already
mentioned. Mrs. Gaskell records that Charlotte told her
that these discussions seldom had any effect in causing her
to change the events in her stories, “so possessed was she
with the feeling that she had described reality.” This
confirms what Mr. Swinburne has said of her strongest
characteristic as an author, that she has the power of
making the reader feel in every nerve that thus and not
otherwise it must have been. It must not, however, be
thought that the conversations with her sisters were therefore
useless; no doubt they were very stimulating to her
imagination, and gave her creations more solid reality than
they would otherwise have had.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1854 Charlotte Brontë married Mr. Nicholls, an Irish
gentleman, who had for eight years been her father’s curate.
She only lived nine months after her marriage. She was
happy in her husband’s love, and appreciated his devotion
to his parish duties. But the loving admirers of Charlotte
Brontë can never feel much enthusiasm for Mr. Nicholls.
Mrs. Gaskell states that he was not attracted by her literary
fame, but was rather repelled by it; he appears to have
used her up remorselessly, in their short married life, in
the routine drudgery of parish work. She did not complain;
on the contrary, she seemed more than contented
to sacrifice everything for him and his work; but she
remarks in one of her letters, “I have less time for thinking.”
Apparently she had none for writing. Surely the
husband of a Charlotte Brontë, just as much as the wife of a
Wordsworth or a Tennyson, ought to be attracted by literary
fame. To be the life partner of one to whom the most
precious of Nature’s gifts is confided, and to be unappreciative
of it and even repelled by it, shows a littleness
of nature and essential meanness of soul. A true wife or
husband of one of these gifted beings should rather regard
herself or himself as responsible to the world for making the
conditions of the daily life of their distinguished partners
favourable to the development of their genius. But pearls
have before now been cast before swine, and one cannot
but regret that Charlotte Brontë was married to a man
who did not value her place in literature as he ought.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch12' class='c004'>XII<br/> <br/>ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Sydney Smith</span>, writing in 1810 upon the extraordinary
folly of closing to women all the ordinary means of literary
education, remarked that one consequence of their exclusion
was that no woman had contributed anything of lasting
value to English, French, or Italian literature, and that
scarcely a single woman had crept into the ranks even of
the minor poets. While he was writing this, a little baby
girl was beginning to prattle, who within a very short time
was destined to win a place among the great poets of this
century. The very great gifts of Elizabeth Barrett were
discernible from her earliest childhood. Her father was
Mr. Edward Moulton, of Burn Hall, Durham. The date
and place of her birth are disputed. Mrs. Richmond Ritchie
states in the <cite>National Dictionary of Biography</cite> that the future
poetess was born at Burn Hall, Durham, in 1809; Mr. J.
H. Ingram says in his <cite>Life of Mrs. Browning</cite> in the Eminent
Women Series that she was born in London in 1809; while
Mr. Browning has written to the papers to say that she
was born at Carlton Hall, Durham, in 1806. Three birthplaces
and two birthdays are thus assigned to her. It is not,
however, disputed that she was christened by the names of
Elizabeth Barrett, and that her father afterwards exchanged
the name of Moulton for that of Barrett on inheriting some
property from a relative. At eight years old little Elizabeth
could read Homer in the original Greek, and was often to be
seen with the <cite>Iliad</cite> in one hand and a doll in the other;
this picture of her gives a beautiful type of her future
character, its depth of loving womanliness, combined with
the height of poetic inspiration and learning. She was
certainly one of the women of whom her brother poet,
Tennyson, sings, who “gain in mental breadth nor fail in
childward care.” She says herself of her childhood that
“she dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses her
black pony.” At about eleven years old she wrote an epic
poem in four books on <cite>The Battle of Marathon</cite>, which
her father caused to be printed. Her home, during most
of her childhood, was at Hope End, near Ledbury, in
Herefordshire. Many pictures of her happy childhood
among the beautiful hills and orchards of the West country
are to be found in the poems, especially in “Hector in the
Garden” and in her “Lost Bower.” Much of her young
life, too, is described in the earlier part of her greatest
work, <cite>Aurora Leigh</cite>. We do not hear much about the
mother of the poetess, but her grandmother, it is said,
looked with much disfavour on the little lady’s learning,
and said she would “rather hear that Elizabeth’s hemming
were more carefully finished than of all this Greek.” Her
father, however, was a worthy guardian of the wonderful
child that had been entrusted to him; he fostered and
encouraged her genius by all means in his power. He
must have had a singular power of self-devotion and self-sacrifice;
and it is probable that much of his daughter’s
beautiful moral nature was inherited from him. When
Elizabeth was about twenty, her mother lay in her last illness,
and simultaneously money troubles, brought on by no
fault of his own, fell upon Mr. Barrett. He would allow no
knowledge of this to disturb his wife during her illness;
and in order effectually to hide the truth from her, he made
an arrangement with his creditors which very materially
reduced his income for life, so that no reduction of his
establishment should take place as long as his wife lived.</p>
<p class='c002'>Two other misfortunes had an important influence on
Elizabeth Barrett’s youth. When she was about fifteen,
she was trying to saddle her pony by herself in the paddock,
when she was thrown to the ground, and her spine was injured
in a manner that kept her lying on her back for
four years. Scarcely had she recovered from this injury,
when another terrible calamity nearly overwhelmed her.
She had been sent to Torquay for the benefit of her health,
and had been there nearly a year, when her eldest brother
came to visit her, in order to consult her about some
trouble of his own. With two other young men, all good
sailors, he took a little boat, intending to have a sail along
the coast. Within a few minutes of starting, and almost
under his sister’s window, the boat went down, and young
Barrett and his companions were drowned. The grief and
horror caused by this terrible event nearly killed her. It
was almost a year before she could be moved by slow
stages of twenty miles a day to London. Those who knew
her best at that time believe that she would have died if
she had not been sustained by her love of literary pursuits,
which afforded some relief to her mind from the constant
dwelling on the tragedy of which she accused herself of
being the cause. Miss Mitford says in her <cite>Literary Recollections</cite>:
“The house she occupied at Torquay had been
chosen as one of the most sheltered in the place. It stood
at the bottom of the cliffs, almost close to the sea; and she
told me herself that during that whole winter the sound of
the waves rang in her ears like the moans of one dying.
Still she clung to literature and Greek; in all probability
she would have died without that wholesome diversion to
her thoughts. Her medical attendant did not always
understand this. To prevent the remonstrance of her
friendly physician, Dr. Barry, she caused a small edition of
Plato to be so bound as to resemble a novel. He did not
know, skilful and kind though he were, that to her such
books were not an arduous and painful study, but a consolation
and a delight.” She, however, appeared to be condemned
to a life of perpetual invalidism. She now lived
in London with her father, and was confined to one large
darkened room, and saw no one but her own family, and a
few intimate friends, the chief of whom were Miss Mitford,
Mrs. Jameson, and Mr. John Kenyon. The impression
she produced on all who came into contact with her was
that she was the most charming and delightful person they
had ever met. Her sweetness, her purity, and the tender
womanliness of her character, made her friends forget her
learning and her genius. Miss Mitford says she often
travelled five-and-forty miles expressly to see her, and returned
the same evening without entering another house.
The seclusion in which she lived was perhaps not unfavourable
to literary work. She lay on her couch, not only, as
Miss Mitford says, reading every book worth reading in
almost every language, but “giving herself heart and soul to
that poetry of which she seemed born to be the priestess.”
In 1835 she published <cite>Prometheus and other Poems</cite>, which,
in the opinion of the most competent judges, raised her at
once to a high rank among English poets. In 1843 she
wrote <cite>The Cry of the Children</cite>, to which Lord Shaftesbury
owed so much in his efforts to protect factory children
from being ground to death by overwork; and later she
wrote the noble “Song for the Ragged Schools of London,”
whose words go straight to every mother’s heart.</p>
<p class='c002'>During her long period of illness her chief link with the
outside world was her cousin, Mr. John Kenyon, to whom
<cite>Aurora Leigh</cite> is dedicated. He knew all who were best
worth knowing in the great world of London, and he occasionally
introduced to her one and another of those whom
he believed to be most capable of appreciating her and
pleasing her. In this way, in 1846, he brought Mr. Robert
Browning to see Miss Barrett. In the autumn of that same
year the poet and poetess were married. What his love was
for her and hers for him may be gathered in the lovely
poem, “Caterina to Camoens,” and in the forty-three
<cite>Sonnets from the Portuguese</cite>, which Mrs. Browning wrote
before her marriage. Almost directly after her marriage
Mrs. Browning was ordered abroad for the benefit of her
health, and the chief part of the remaining fifteen years of
her life was spent in Italy. She identified herself completely
with those who were struggling for the unity and
independence of Italy, and much of her poetry from this
time onwards is coloured by her political convictions. In
Florence, in 1849, her only child, Robert Browning the
younger, was born. The deep joy of motherhood suffuses
much of the noblest part of <cite>Aurora Leigh</cite>. One is
tempted to believe that the lovely description of Marian
Erle bending over her sleeping child,</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>The yearling creature, warm and moist with life</div>
<div class='line'>To the bottom of his dimples,</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>could have been written by no one who had not felt a
mother’s love. In any case, it adds to one’s pleasure in reading
it to know that the poetess was drawing her inspiration
from her own excessive happiness in the bliss of motherhood.</p>
<p class='c002'>Many have singled out Mrs. Browning’s <cite>Sonnets from
the Portuguese</cite> as her chief work. Mrs. Ritchie, in a
very interesting article in the <cite>National Dictionary of Biography</cite>,
says of them, “There is a quality in them which
is beyond words: an echo from afar, which belongs to the
highest human expression of feeling.” Many other of
the best judges have said they are among the greatest
sonnets in the English language. But the work for which
the world is most deeply in her debt is <cite>Aurora Leigh</cite>.
It probes to the bottom, but with a hand guided by purity
and justice, those social problems which lie at the root of
what are known as women’s questions. Her intense feeling
that the honour of manhood can never be reached while the
honour of womanhood is sullied; her no less profound conviction
that people can never be raised to a higher level by
mere material prosperity, make this book one of the most
precious in our language. She herself speaks of it in the
dedication as “The most mature of my works, and the one
into which my highest convictions upon Life and Art have
entered.” If she had written nothing else, she would stand
out as one of the epoch-making poets of the present century.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mr. Browning has published some interesting information
as to the manner in which he and his wife worked.
They were very careful not to influence each other’s
compositions unduly. Their styles in writing are entirely
unlike. They abstained from reading each other’s poems
while they were in process of composition. Mrs. Browning
always kept a low writing-table, with inkstand and pen
upon it, by her side. Mr. Browning wrote: “My wife
used to write it (<cite>Aurora Leigh</cite>) and lay it down to hear
our child spell, or when a visitor came in it was thrust
under the cushions. At Paris, a year ago last March, she
gave me the first six books to read, I never having seen a
line before. She then wrote the rest and transcribed them
in London, where I read them also. I wish, in one sense,
that I had written and she had read it.” No one but a
poet could have expressed so perfectly the great pleasure
the reading gave him. There is an anecdote that when
the Brownings left Florence for London, in 1856, the box
containing the MS. of <cite>Aurora Leigh</cite> was lost at Marseilles.
It also contained the velvet suits and lace collars
of the little boy; and it is said that Mrs. Browning was
far more distressed at losing the latter than the former.
However, both were fortunately recovered, for the box containing
them was found by Mrs. Browning’s brother in
one of the dark recesses of the Marseilles Custom House.</p>
<p class='c002'>As evidence of her position in the literary world, it
may be mentioned that when Wordsworth died in 1850
the <cite>Athenæum</cite> strongly urged that Mrs. Browning ought
to be made Poet Laureate.</p>
<p class='c002'>Her sympathy with Italy was so strong that it is believed
that the news of the death of Cavour, through whom
in so large a measure the unity of Italy was achieved,
hastened her own. She was very ill when the news
reached her, and she died in Florence on 30th June 1861.
The municipality of Florence placed a tablet upon her house
expressing their gratitude and admiration for her, and saying
that in her womanly heart she had reconciled the wisdom of
the learned with the enthusiasm of the poet, and with her
verses had made a golden ring uniting Italy with England.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch13' class='c004'>XIII<br/> <br/>LADY SALE AND HER FELLOW-HOSTAGES IN AFGHANISTAN</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>The</span> first Napoleon is said to have remarked to Madame
de Staël that women had nothing to do with politics;
whereupon the lady rejoined that women ought at least
to be sufficiently acquainted with political subjects to
understand the reason why their heads were cut off.
When we read the account of the great sufferings of
the English ladies who were held as prisoners or hostages
by Akbar Khan in Afghanistan in 1842, we are reminded
of Madame de Staël’s epigram, and think that they ought
at least to have had the consolation of understanding the
political meddling and muddling, which led to the prolonged
pain and danger to which they were subjected.</p>
<p class='c002'>Afghanistan is a wild mountainous country beyond the
north-west frontier of the British Empire in India. Its
people consist of savage, desperate, lawless tribes, constantly
at war with one another; indeed, they are hardly
ever united unless they are attacked by some foreign foe.
They are particularly jealous of any kind of foreign influence
or interference. Every man among them is bred
to arms, even children being provided with dangerous
knives; they are trained to great endurance, they are
splendid horsemen, and are proficient in many kinds of
manly sports and martial exercises; but with these superficially
attractive qualities they possess others of a different
stamp, for they are treacherous, utterly regardless of
truth, revengeful, bloodthirsty, sensual, and avaricious.
It will thus be seen that both their good and their bad
qualities render them particularly dangerous as foes. The
character of their country is very much like their own. It
is a land of rocky mountain passes, and a great part of it
is savage and sterile. It is separated from India by narrow
rocky defiles, the principal one of which, the Khyber pass,
is twenty-eight miles long, and runs between lofty, almost
perpendicular precipices; the pass itself is so covered with
rocks and boulders that progress along it, even under the
most favourable circumstances, must necessarily be very
slow. The rocky precipices which command the pass are
so steep that they cannot be mounted; but they are perforated
by many natural caves, which for centuries have
been the strongholds of bands of robbers. It is easy to
understand that an army endeavouring to go through this
pass is at a terrible disadvantage, and is almost entirely at
the mercy of the wild tribes of warriors and robbers who
infest the heights.</p>
<p class='c002'>About 1838-39 there was more than usual of internal
fighting between the savage tribes of Afghanistan. Some
tribes wished for Dost Mahomed as their king, or Ameer,
and others wished for Shaj Soojah. It was considered by
those who directed the policy of the British Government in
India, a favourable time for us to interfere. It appears to
have been thought that we should make the ruler of Afghanistan
our friend, if he felt that he owed his throne to our
espousal of his cause. It was, however, forgotten that, however
much the Afghans quarrelled among themselves, they
would forget all past enmities and unite against a foreigner
who tried to intervene between them; and they would hate
and despise any ruler who owed his nominal sovereignty
to the help of foreign soldiers. Therefore, although the
English succeeded, in the first instance, in driving away
Dost Mahomed and making Shaj Soojah king, they soon
found that this first success was the beginning of their difficulties.
Sir George Lawrence has told the story in his interesting
book called <cite>Forty-three Years of my Life in India</cite>,
and another narrative of the same events may be found in
<cite>Lady Sale’s Journal</cite>. An Afghan horseman, with whom
Sir George (then Major) Lawrence conversed, expressed
the feelings of his countrymen and the difficulties of our
position in a few words. “What could induce you,” he
said, “to squander crores of rupees<SPAN name='r2' /><SPAN href='#f2' class='c015'><sup>[2]</sup></SPAN> in coming to a poor
rocky country like ours, without wood or water, and all in
order to force upon us a kumbukbt (unlucky person) as a
king, who, the moment you turn your backs, will be upset
by Dost Mahomed, our <em>own</em> king?”</p>
<p class='c002'>However, for a time the English army in Afghanistan
did not realise the difficult and dangerous position in which
they were placed. Dost Mahomed fled; and not long after
he surrendered himself to the English, and was sent, with
his wives and children, as a prisoner of war to India.
Everybody now thought all trouble and danger were over,
and the married officers and men of the English garrison
sent for their wives and children to join them at Cabul.
Shaj Soojah was established there and received the congratulations
of the English. Lawrence, however, observed
that the Ameer’s own subjects did not join in these congratulations,
and moreover Shaj Soojah himself began to
show signs of getting tired of his English friends. No
special danger was, however, anticipated; the English
envoy, Sir W. MacNaghten, was about to leave Cabul,
having been appointed to the Governorship of Bombay.
Had he left, he would have taken Lawrence with him as
his secretary. When the preparations for his departure
were nearly complete, the clouds that had long been
gathering at last burst in storm. The Ghilzye tribe rose
in rebellion because they had been deprived of an annual
subsidy of £3000, nominally paid them by Shaj Soojah,
but really supplied by the British. This insurrection had
the effect of a match applied to a train of gunpowder.
The whole of Afghanistan was presently in arms; the
safest and most easily defended routes for the return to
India were cut off. The insurrection spread to Cabul
itself; the houses of the English residents were attacked
and burned, the Treasury was sacked, and several officers
and men were murdered in the streets. An attempt to
send help to the English from Jellalabad was unsuccessful;
the Afghans were victorious, and held the small British
force entirely in their power.</p>
<p class='c002'>Sir George Lawrence and Lady Sale complain bitterly
of the incapacity of those who were highest in command
of the English military operations; they urged that the
right thing to have done would have been to take the
whole British force into the Bala Hissar, the citadel of
Cabul, and hold it against all comers till reinforcements
arrived. The time of year was mid-winter, and winter in
Afghanistan is intensely severe. To have held the fort
would have entailed far less difficulty and danger than to
attempt to retreat by the fearful Khyber pass, the heights
of which were held by bands of savage mountaineers.
This rash and fatal course was, however, attempted, with
the result, now well known, that of the whole army, with
the exception of those who were held by the Afghans as
prisoners or hostages, only one man, and he severely
wounded, reached Jellalabad alive. Those who have
seen Lady Butler’s picture, “The Last of an Army,” will
be able to realise something of what the disaster of the
Khyber pass was. Akbar Khan, a son of Dost Mahomed
and the leading spirit of the Afghan chiefs, had said that
he would destroy the army with the exception of one man
who should be left to tell the tale, and he kept his word.</p>
<p class='c002'>Before this fatal retreat was decided upon, attempts at
negotiation with the Afghans were made; Akbar, in particular,
had repeatedly demanded that, as a pledge of good
faith, the wives and children of the English officers and
men should be delivered over to him as hostages. While
the English were still in Cabul, this suggestion was naturally
rejected with horror. Some officers declared they would
rather shoot their wives with their own hands than put
them in the power of Akbar. Akbar had shown himself
desperately cruel and treacherous. He twice invited the
English envoy, Sir W. MacNaghten, outside the encampment
to consult with him and other chiefs as to the terms
of capitulation. On the first occasion the envoy and his
escort returned in safety, but the terms of the treaty agreed
upon were, on the part of the Afghans, entirely set at
naught. When the second conference was about to take
place, the English were treacherously attacked and overpowered,
and our envoy was murdered by Akbar with his
own hands. It was not very likely therefore that the repeated
demand of this man to have the English women
and children placed in his control would be listened to,
and it was not, in fact, conceded until it became evident
that to continue to accompany the ill-fated army in its
retreat meant certain death.</p>
<p class='c002'>The retreat from Cabul began on the 6th January
1842; the thermometer was ten degrees below zero—far
colder than the coldest weather of an ordinary English
winter. The night was spent in the open; part of the
march had been through snow and slush, which wetted
those on foot up to their knees. Lady Sale, who was
riding, says her habit was like a sheet of ice. Many died
of cold and exhaustion on the first night. The poor
Sepoys, accustomed to the warmth of an Indian sun, were
unable to handle their muskets, and when attacked by the
murderous bands of Afghans that continually pursued the
army, were cut down as helplessly as sheep. The sufferings
of the women and children were terrible. One poor
woman had lately been confined. She, as well as the others,
was exposed to all the horrors of the Afghan winter, and
to the chances of dying by the Afghan knife or bullet.
Lady Sale, with her daughter Mrs. Sturt, showed a fine
example of courage and endurance. Lawrence said she
and all the ladies bore up so nobly and heroically against
hunger, cold, and fatigue, as to call forth the admiration
even of the Afghans themselves. It seems to have been
known or rumoured that Akbar would make a special
effort to get hold of the women, for Lady Sale and her
daughter were advised to disguise themselves as much as
possible, and to ride with the men, which they did, riding
with Captain Hay’s troopers. On the second day of the
retreat they were heavily fired upon, Lady Sale was
wounded, her daughter’s horse was shot under her, and
her son-in-law, Captain Sturt, was mortally injured. Let
any one who likes to dwell on “the pomp and circumstance
of glorious war” look on the reverse side of the picture.
Captain Sturt had received a severe wound in the abdomen,
from which it was from the first certain he could not recover.
He was in great agony; it was impossible to move
him without increasing his sufferings, equally impossible
that he should not be moved. He was placed in a kind of
rough litter, the jolting of which was a terrible aggravation
of his pain. At night he lay on a bank in the snow, suffering
from intolerable thirst; the water for which he craved
could only be supplied, a few spoonfuls at a time, because
his wife and mother had no means of getting a larger
quantity. Those who have known what it is, even in the
midst of every home comfort, to stand by the death-bed of
those they love, can best imagine what it was to Lady Sale
and her daughter to see the anguish and death of their son
and husband under such circumstances as these. The
horrors of the retreat became worse and worse. All the
baggage was lost, and the whole road was covered with
men, women, and children lying down in the snow to die.</p>
<p class='c002'>Again Akbar renewed his demand for the women and
children, and this time he urged it on grounds of humanity.
It now appeared certain that the only chance of saving
their lives was to accept Akbar’s proposals. Nine ladies,
twenty gentlemen, and fourteen children were accordingly
made over to him as prisoners or hostages. It is true that
he assured them that they were to consider themselves his
honoured guests, and that on the whole he behaved well to
them, but their sufferings while in his charge were very
considerable. They believed themselves to be in constant
danger of death, or else that they would be sold as slaves
and sent to Bokhara. All their arms and means of defence
were taken from them, and they were but too well acquainted
with the treacherous and cruel nature of the man
whose prisoners they were.</p>
<p class='c002'>The most noticeable feature of Lady Sale’s journal is
its buoyant courage and cheerfulness. The forty-three
persons of whom the hostages consisted were reinforced
by the birth of three infants, one of which was Mrs.
Sturt’s, and consequently was Lady Sale’s grandchild.
They were eight and a half months in captivity. Their
accommodation very often consisted of no more than two
small rooms among the whole party. Lady Sale speaks
of being lodged twenty-one in a room fourteen feet by ten
feet; another time thirty-four persons had to share a room
only fifteen feet by twelve feet; sixteen persons, of both
sexes and all ages, shared one small room for a long time.
Lady Sale and her daughter—indeed, most of the captives—had
lost everything but the clothes they stood in. Yet,
in the midst of all the discomfort and danger to which the
party was exposed, there is seldom a word of complaint in
Lady Sale’s journal which she wrote at the time, and more
often than not their hardships are turned into matter of
laughter and merriment. The retreat from Cabul was
begun, it will be remembered, on 6th January; on the 9th
the ladies and children, with twenty gentlemen, among
whom was Major Lawrence, were made over to Akbar
Khan; not until 18th January were they established in
permanent quarters in the fort of Buddeeabad. The
journal for 19th January begins: “We luxuriated in
dressing, although we had no clothes but those on our
backs; but we enjoyed washing our faces very much,
having had but one opportunity of doing so since we left
Cabul. It was rather a painful process, as the cold and
glare of the sun on the snow had three times peeled my
face, from which the skin came off in strips.” Major
Lawrence describes the rooms assigned to the ladies as
“miserable sheds full of fleas and bugs.” But even these
and worse trials to the temper were good-humouredly encountered.
“It was above ten days,” Lady Sale wrote,
“after our departure from Cabul before I had an opportunity
to change my clothes, or even to take them off and
put them on again and wash myself; and fortunate were
those who did not possess much live stock. It was not
till our arrival here (near Cabul, almost at the end of their
captivity) that we completely got rid of <em>lice</em>, which we denominated
infantry; the fleas, for which Afghanistan is
famed, we called light cavalry.” The food served out to
the prisoners was the reverse of appetising: greasy skin
and bones, boiled in the same pot with rice, and all served
together, was a usual dish. Lady Sale describes a kind of
bread made of unpollarded flour mixed with water, and
dried by being set up on edge near a fire. “Eating these
cakes of dough,” she says, “is a capital recipe for heartburn.”
The bad cooking they remedied by obtaining leave
to cook for themselves.</p>
<p class='c002'>One of the chief alleviations of their lot consisted—so
far, at least, as the ladies were concerned—in needlework;
they were supplied with calico, chintz, and other materials,
and were most thankful, not only for the clothes which
they were thus enabled to make, but also for the occupation
the work afforded. The ladies also cheerfully bore their
part in other kinds of work, and became laundresses, cooks,
and housemaids, and, in one instance, carpenters and masons
for the nonce. The choice of rooms being very limited,
one was allotted to Lady Sale and her companions which
had no windows, and consequently no means of getting air
and light, except what came through the door. “We soon
<em>set to</em>,” writes Lady Sale, “and by dint of hard working
with sticks and stones, in which I bore my part, assisted
by Mr. Melville, until both of us got blistered hands, we
knocked two small windows out of the wall, and thus obtained
‘darkness visible.’” Lady Sale had permission to
correspond with her husband, General Sir Robert Sale, who
was conducting vigorous measures against the enemy at
Jellalabad. Lady Sale was very proud of her husband,
and mentions with evident delight the nickname of “Fighting
Bob,” which his soldiers had given him. Any recognition
of his deserts gave her keen satisfaction. She refers
to the presentation of a sword to him as “the only thing
that has given me pleasure,” although at that time her
praises were upon everybody’s lips. She was so thoroughly
a soldier’s wife that she understood military tactics: before
she left Cabul she speaks of taking up a post of observation
on the roof of the house, “as usual,” in order to watch the
military movements that were going forward. She says
she understood the plan of attack as well as she understood
the hemming of a handkerchief; therefore she diligently
wrote an account of everything of importance to
her husband. These letters were so important for the
military and political news they contained that they were
often forwarded to the Commander-in-chief, to Lord Auckland,
the Governor-general, and to the Court of Directors
of the East India Company.</p>
<p class='c002'>The principal danger to which the prisoners were exposed,
next to the ferocity and treachery of Akbar Khan’s
character, arose from the extraordinary frequency of earthquakes
in the region in which they were confined. Lady
Sale is one of the very few human beings who has ever
made such an entry in a journal as this: “3d and 4th
March. Earthquakes as usual.” Under other dates such
expressions as “Earthquakes in plenty” are frequent; and
hardly less significant is the entry, under the date of 19th
April, “No earthquakes to-day.” The earthquakes were
of a most formidable character. Lady Sale had a narrow
escape of destruction from one which took place in February.
She was on the roof of the room she lived in, hanging out
some clothes to dry, when the whole building began to rock;
she felt the roof was giving way, and rushed down the stairs,
just in time to save her life, as the building fell with an
awful crash the instant she left it. Lawrence writes: “We
all assembled in the centre of the court, as far from the
crumbling walls as possible, ... when suddenly the entire
structure disappeared as through a trap-door, disclosing
to us a yawning chasm. The stoutest hearts among us
quailed at the appalling sight, for the world seemed coming
to an end.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Almost the only angry words that appear in Lady Sale’s
journal are caused by attempts of the officers to negotiate
a ransom for themselves and the rest of the party, without
consulting the ladies as to the terms to be agreed upon.
Women’s suffrage had not been much talked of in 1842,
but Lady Sale appeared to hold that taxation and representation
ought to go hand in hand; for she says, “A council
of officers was held at the General’s regarding this same
ransom business, which they refer to Macgregor. I protest
against being implicated in any proceedings in which I have
no vote.” In the end the Indian Government paid the sum
that it was agreed to give to Saleh Mahomed for effecting
the deliverance of the prisoners. Another source of irritation
to Lady Sale was the dread lest the military authorities
should hesitate to proceed vigorously against the Afghans
at the right moment because it might endanger the lives of
the hostages. “Now is the time,” she wrote on the 10th
May, “to strike the blow, but I much dread dilly-dallying
just because a handful of us are in Akbar’s power. What
are <em>our</em> lives compared with the honour of our country?
Not that I am at all inclined to have my throat cut; on
the contrary, I hope I shall live to see the British flag
once more triumphant in Afghanistan.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Allusion has already been made to Lady Sale’s power
of extracting grim fun out of the discomforts of the situation.
The Afghans are great thieves, and one of the minor
troubles of the captives lay in the fact that their captors
calmly appropriated articles sent to the prisoners. They
took possession of a case in which Lady Sale had left some
small bottles. “I hope,” she writes, “the Afghans will
try their contents as medicine, and find them efficacious:
one bottle contained nitric acid, another a strong solution
of lunar caustic.” Twice she was incapacitated by severe
attacks of fever, which had proved fatal to several of the
party; but her courage never deserted her; and she shook
off fever and all other ills when she heard her husband was
near. Saleh Mahomed had already agreed, for a sum of
money, to remove them from Akbar’s power, and they had
left the place in which they had been confined; but Akbar
would probably have recaptured them had not Sir R. Sale
and Sir R. Shakespear with their brigades joined them just
at the nick of time.</p>
<p class='c002'>Who can tell what the meeting must have been between
the gallant husband and wife? The narrative can best be
given in Lady Sale’s own words: “Had we not received
assistance, our recapture was certain.... It is impossible
to express our feelings on Sale’s approach. To my daughter
and myself happiness, so long delayed as to be almost unexpected,
was actually painful, and accompanied by a
choking sensation which could not obtain the relief of
tears. When we arrived where the infantry were posted,
they cheered all the captives as they passed, them, and the
men of the 13th” (her husband’s regiment) “pressed forward
to welcome us individually. Most of the men had
a little word of hearty congratulation to offer each in his
own style on the restoration of his colonel’s wife and
daughter; and then my highly-wrought feelings found the
desired relief; I could scarcely speak to thank the soldiers
for their sympathy, whilst the long-withheld tears now
found their course.”</p>
<div class='footnote' id='f2'>
<p class='c002'><SPAN href='#r2'>2</SPAN>. A crore of rupees is a million. At that time a rupee was worth 2s.;
therefore a crore of rupees would equal £100,000.</p>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch14' class='c004'>XIV<br/> <br/>ELIZABETH GILBERT</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Elizabeth Gilbert</span>, daughter of the Bishop of Chichester,
was one of the blind who help the blind. It is true,
physically, that the blind cannot lead the blind; but,
perhaps, none are so well fitted as the blind, who are
gifted with courage, sympathy, and hope, to show the way
to careers of happy and active usefulness to those who are
suffering from a similar calamity with themselves.</p>
<p class='c002'>The Bishop’s little daughter, born at Oxford in 1826,
was not blind from her birth. She is described in the
first years of infancy as possessing dark flashing eyes, that,
no doubt, were as eager to see and know as other baby
eyes. Her sight was taken from her by an attack of
scarlet fever when she was two years and eight months
old. Her mother had lately been confined, and, consequently,
was entirely isolated from the little invalid. The
care of the child devolved upon her father, who nursed
her most tenderly, and, by his ceaseless watchfulness and
care, probably saved her life. But when the danger to
life was passed, it was found that the poor little girl had
lost her sight. Everything was done that could be done;
the most skilful oculists and physicians of the day were
consulted, but could do nothing except confirm the fears of
her parents that their little girl was blind for life.</p>
<p class='c002'>With this one great exception of blindness, Elizabeth
Gilbert’s childhood was peculiarly happy and fortunate.
Her parents wisely determined to educate her, as much as
possible, with their other children, and to avoid everything
which could bring into prominence that she was not as the
others were. There was a large family of the Gilbert
children, and Bessie, as she was always called, like the
others, was required to dress herself and wait on herself
in many little ways that bring out a child’s independence
and helpfulness. She used to sit always by her father’s
side at dessert, and pour him out a glass of wine, which
she did very cleverly without spilling a drop. When
asked how she could do this, she replied it was quite easy—she
judged by the weight when the glass was full. She
learnt French, German, Italian, and music, with her sisters,
and joined them in their games, both indoors and out.
When she required special watching and care, they were
given silently, without letting her find out that she was
being singled out for protection. When she was old
enough, the direction of the household and other domestic
duties were entrusted to her in her parents’ absence, in
turn with her other sisters. Thus her ardour, <SPAN name='self'></SPAN>self-reliance,
and courage were undamped, and she was prepared for
the life’s work to which she afterwards devoted herself—the
industrial training of the adult blind. In 1842 an
event happened which doubtless had a good effect in
developing Miss Gilbert’s natural independence of character,
which had been so carefully preserved by her parents’
training. Her godmother died and left her a considerable
sum of money, of which she was to enjoy the income as
soon as she came of age. It was, therefore, in her power
to carry out the scheme which she formed in after years
for the benefit of the blind, without being obliged to rely
at the outset on others for pecuniary support. She never
could have done what she did if she had been obliged to
ask her parents for the money the development of her
plans necessarily required. They were most kindly and
wisely generous to her, but it would have been impossible
to one of her honourable and sensitive nature to spend
freely and liberally as she did money which was not her
own. The saddest and most desponding period of her life
was that which came after she had ceased to be a child,
and before she had taken up the life’s work to which
reference has just been made. She was one of a bevy of
eight sisters; and they naturally, as they passed from
childhood to womanhood, entered more and more into a
world which was closed to their blind sister. At that
time, even more than now, marriage was the one career for
which all young women were consciously or unconsciously
preparing. It was hard for a young girl to live in a social
circle in which marriage was looked upon as the one
honourable goal of female ambition, and to feel at the
same time that it was one from which she was herself
debarred. Those who saw her at this time, say she would
often sit silent and apart in the drawing-room of her
father’s house in Queen Anne Street, with the tears
streaming down her face, and that she would spend hours
together on her knees weeping. “To the righteous there
ariseth a light in darkness.” The light-bringers to the sad
heart of Bessie Gilbert were manifold; and as is usual in
such cases, the light of her own life was found in working
for the welfare of others. The most healing and cheering
of words to those who are sick at heart are, “Come and
work in My vineyard.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Small things often help great ones; and a clever
mechanical invention by a Frenchman named Foucault,
for enabling blind people to write, was not an unimportant
link in the chain that drew Miss Gilbert out of her
despondency. By means of this writing frame, she
entered into correspondence with a young blind man,
named William Hanks Levy, who had lately married the
matron of the St. John’s Wood School for the Blind. Levy
entered with great zeal, enthusiasm, and originality into
all the schemes Miss Gilbert began to form for the welfare
of the blind. Her thoughts were further turned in the
direction of working for the blind poor, by a book called
<cite>Meliora</cite>, written by Lord Ingestre, the aim of which was to
show how the gulf between rich and poor could be bridged
over. But most important of all, perhaps, of the influences
that were making a new outlook for her life, was her
friendship with Miss Bathurst, daughter of Sir James
Bathurst. This lady was deeply interested in all efforts
to raise up and improve the lot of women, and especially
devoted herself to opening the means of higher education
to them. She was one of those who hoped all things and
believed all things, and, consequently, she rebelled against
the impious notion that if a woman were not married there
was no use or place for her in the world. It was her clear
strong faith in women’s work and in women’s worth, that
helped more than anything else to give dignity, purpose,
and happiness to Bessie Gilbert’s life. The life of the
blind girl became ennobled by the purpose to work for the
good of others, and to help both women and men who
were afflicted similarly with herself to make the best use
of their lives that circumstances permitted.</p>
<p class='c002'>Very little, comparatively, at that time had been done
for the blind. The excellent college at Norwood did not
exist. The poor blind very frequently became beggars,
and the well-to-do blind, with few exceptions, were regarded
as doomed to a life of uselessness; in some instances, as
in Miss Gilbert’s own, kindly and intelligent men thought
it neither wrong nor unnatural to express a hope that “the
Almighty would take the child who was afflicted with
blindness.” What was specially needed at the time Miss
Gilbert’s attention was directed to the subject was the
means of industrial training, to enable those who had lost
their sight in manhood or womanhood to earn their own
living. The proficiency of the blind in music is well
known, but to attain a high degree of excellence in this
requires a training from early childhood. To those who
become blind in infancy a musical education affords the
best chance of future independence; but thousands become
blind in later life, when they are too old to acquire
professional skill as musicians; and, besides these, there
are those who are too completely without the taste for
music to render it possible for them to become either
performers or teachers of it. It was especially for the
poor adult blind that Miss Gilbert laboured. She studied
earnestly to discover the various kinds of manual labour in
which the blind stood at the least disadvantage in comparison
with sighted persons. Her efforts had a humble
beginning, for the first shop she opened was in a cellar in
Holborn, which she rented at 1s. 6d. a week. She was
ably seconded by Levy, and by a blind carpenter named
Farrar; the cellar was used as a store for the mats,
baskets, and brushes made by blind people in their own
homes. A move was, however, soon made to a small
house near Brunswick Square, but the work soon outgrew
these premises also, and a house was taken, with a shop
and workrooms, in what is now the Euston Road. Miss
Gilbert exerted herself assiduously to promote the sale of
the articles made by her clients. The goods were sold at
the usual retail price, and their quality was in many
respects superior to that of similar goods offered in
ordinary shops; in this way a regular circle of customers
was in time obtained, who were willing to buy of the
blind what the blind were able to produce. It must not
be supposed, however, that this process, which sounds so
easy and simple in words, was really easy and simple in
practice. The blind men and women had to be taught
their trades; in the case of many of them, their health
was below the average, and, in the case of a few, they
were not quite clear that working had any advantages over
begging, for a living. Miss Gilbert and her foreman, W.
Levy, had industrial, physical, and moral difficulties to
contend with that would have daunted any who were less
firmly grounded in the belief in the permanent usefulness
of what they had undertaken. Miss Gilbert found that
many of the blind people she employed could not, with
the best will in the world, earn enough to support themselves.
The deficiency was for years made up from her
own private means. W. Levy had what appears a mistaken
enthusiasm for employing none but blind persons
in the various industries carried on in the workshop.
There are some industrial processes for performing which
blindness is an absolute bar, some in which it is a great
disadvantage, others in which it is a slight disadvantage,
and a few in which it is no disadvantage at all. The aim
of those who wish to benefit the blind should be, in my
judgment, to promote co-operation of labour between the
blind and the seeing, so that to the blind may be left
those processes in which the loss of sight places them
at the least disadvantage. The blind Milton composed
<cite>Paradise Lost</cite>, and other noble poems, which will live as
long as the English language lasts. He never could have
done this if the mechanical labour of writing down his
compositions had not been given over to those who had
the use of their eyes. This is an extreme instance, but it
may be taken as an example of the way in which the
blind and the seeing should work together, each doing the
best their natural faculties and limitations fit them for.
Levy had an intense pride in having everything in Miss
Gilbert’s institution done only by the blind. So far did
he carry this prejudice that it was only with difficulty that
he was induced to have a seeing assistant for keeping the
accounts. Previous to this, as was natural and inevitable,
they were in the most hopeless confusion. Levy was,
however, in many ways an invaluable leader and fellow-worker.
His courage and energy were boundless. On
one occasion he undertook successfully a journey to France
in order to discover the place where some pretty baskets
were made. He and his wife landed at Calais almost
entirely ignorant of the French language, and knowing
nothing except that certain baskets, for which there was
then a good demand in England, were being manufactured
in one of the eighty-nine departments of France. After
many wanderings, both accidental and inevitable, he
discovered the place. He was received with great
kindness by the people who made the baskets, and, having
learnt how to make them himself, he returned to England
to communicate his knowledge to his and Miss Gilbert’s
company of blind workpeople. A letter of Levy’s to Miss
Gilbert, describing a fire that had broken out close to the institution,
and had for some time placed it in great danger, is
a wonderful instance of a blind man’s energy and power of
acting promptly and courageously in the face of danger.</p>
<p class='c002'>Little by little the work Miss Gilbert had begun grew
and prospered. A regular society was formed, of which
the Queen became the patron, and of which Miss Gilbert
was the most active and devoted member. This association
received the name of the Society for Promoting the
General Welfare of the Blind. Its present habitation is
in Berners Street, London. Its founder, for several years
before her death, was obliged, through ill-health, to withdraw
from all active participation in its business; but so
well and firmly had she laid the foundations, that others
were able to carry on what she had begun. The Society
is one of the most useful in London for the poor adult
blind, because it provides them with industrial training,
according to their individual capacities, and secures them,
as far as possible, a constant and regular market for the
goods they are able to produce. The wages earned are
in some cases supplemented by small grants, and pensions
are, in several instances, given to those blind men and
women who have survived their power of work. The
result of Miss Gilbert’s life has been to ameliorate very
much the lot of the blind poor by substituting the means
of self-supporting industry for the doles and alms which at
one time were looked upon as the only means of showing
kindness and pity to the blind. Miss Gilbert herself was
keenly sensible of the value and life-giving power of work.
Surrounded as she had been from childhood with every
care and kindness which loving and generous parents could
suggest, she yet found that when she began to work, the
change was like a passing from death to life. The book
from which all the facts and details in this sketch are
taken<SPAN name='r3' /><SPAN href='#f3' class='c015'><sup>[3]</sup></SPAN> tells that soon after she began her work one of her
friends “hoped she was not working herself to death.”
She replied, with a happy laugh, “Work myself to death?
I am working myself to life.” It is just this possibility of
“working to life” that she has placed within the reach of
so many blind men and women.</p>
<p class='c002'>Miss Gilbert’s health was always very fragile. After
1872 she became by degrees a confirmed invalid, and after
much suffering, borne with exquisite patience and cheerfulness,
she died early in the year 1885.</p>
<div class='footnote' id='f3'>
<p class='c002'><SPAN href='#r3'>3</SPAN>. <cite>Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind.</cite> By Frances
Martin. Macmillan and Co.</p>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch15' class='c004'>XV<br/> <br/>JANE AUSTEN</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>There</span> is very little story to tell in the life of Jane Austen.
She was one of the greatest writers of English fiction; but
her own life, like the life she describes with such extraordinary
and minute accuracy in her tales, had no startling
incidents, no catastrophes. The solid ground never shook
beneath her feet; neither she, nor the relations and
neighbours with whom her tranquil life was passed, were
ever swept away by the whirlwind of wild passions, nor
overwhelmed by tragic destiny. The ordinary, everyday
joys and sorrows that form a part of the lives of all of
us, were hers; but nothing befell her more sensational or
wondrous than what falls to the lot of most of us. This
even tenor of her own way she reproduces with marvellous
skill in the pages of her novels. It has been well said
that “every village could furnish matter for a novel to
Miss Austen.” The material which she used is within the
reach of every one; but she stands alone, hitherto quite
unequalled, for the power of investing with charm and
interest these incidents in the everyday life of everyday
people which are the whole subject-matter of her six
finished novels. A silly elopement on the part of one of
the five Miss Bennets in <cite>Pride and Prejudice</cite>, and the fall
which stuns Louisa Musgrove in <cite>Persuasion</cite>, when she
insists on jumping off the cob at Lyme, are almost the
only incidents in her books that can even be called
unusual. Her novels remind us of pictures we sometimes
see which contain no one object of supreme or extraordinary
loveliness, but which charm by showing us the
beauty and interest in that which lies around us on every
side. There is a picture by Frederick Walker, called “A
Rainy Day,” which is a very good instance of this; it is
nothing but a village street just by a curve in the road;
the houses are such as may be seen in half the villages in
England: a dog goes along looking as dejected as dogs
always do in the rain, the light is reflected in the puddles
of the wet road, one foot-passenger only has ventured out.
There is nothing in the picture but what we may all of us
have seen hundreds and thousands of times, and yet one
could look and look at it for hours and never weary of the
charm of quiet, truthful beauty it contains. This is one
of the things which true artists, whether their art is painting
pictures or writing books, can do for those who are
not artists—that is, help them to see and feel the beauty
and interest of the ordinary surroundings of everyday life.
Robert Browning makes a great Italian painter say—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in16'>We’re made so that we love</div>
<div class='line'>First when we see them painted, things we have passed</div>
<div class='line'>Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see;</div>
<div class='line'>And so they are better painted—better to us,</div>
<div class='line'>Which is the same thing. Art was given for that;</div>
<div class='line'>God uses us to help each other so,</div>
<div class='line'>Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now,</div>
<div class='line'>Your cullion’s hanging face? A bit of chalk,</div>
<div class='line'>And trust me, but you should, though! How much more</div>
<div class='line'>If I drew higher things with the same truth!</div>
<div class='line'>That were to take the Prior’s pulpit place,</div>
<div class='line'>Interpret God to all of you.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>Jane Austen<SPAN name='r4' /><SPAN href='#f4' class='c015'><sup>[4]</sup></SPAN> was a clergyman’s daughter, born in
1775 at the Vicarage of Steventon, about seven miles from
Basingstoke, in Hampshire. Here she lived, for the first
twenty-five years of her life, the quiet family life of most
young ladies of similar circumstances; two of her brothers
were in the Navy, one was a country gentleman, having
inherited an estate from a cousin, another was a clergyman.
The most dearly loved by Jane of all her family was her
sister Cassandra, older than herself by three years. The
sisters were so inseparable that when Cassandra went to
school, Jane, though too young to profit much by the
instruction given, was sent also, because it would have
been cruel to separate the sisters; her mother said, “If
Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane
would insist on sharing her fate.” The devotion between
the sisters was lifelong. Their characters were not much
alike; Cassandra was colder, calmer, and more reserved
than her sister, whose sweet temper and affectionate disposition
specially endeared her to all her family; but Jane
throughout her life relied upon Cassandra as one who was
wiser and stronger than herself. The quiet family life at
Steventon was diversified by one or two visits to Bath,
then a very fashionable resort; a short visit to Lyme is
spoken of later on; and in the early days in the vicarage
the Austen children not infrequently amused themselves
with private theatricals. Readers of <cite>Northanger Abbey</cite>,
<cite>Persuasion</cite>, and <cite>Mansfield Park</cite> will find these mild amusements
woven into the web of the story; for, as Jane
Austen says herself, she was like a bird who uses the odd
bits of wool or moss in the hedgerows near to weave into
the tiny fabric of its nest. The plays which the Austens
acted were frequently written by themselves. This may
probably have given to Jane her early impulse to authorship.
It is not improbable that it also smoothed the way of
her career as a writer in another sense; for at that time
very great prejudice still existed in many people’s minds
against women who were writers. Lord Granville, speaking
in December 1887, at the unveiling of the statue of
the Queen at Holloway College, cited a great French
writer who had laid it down as an axiom that a woman
could commit no greater fault than to be learned; the
same writer had said—of course partly in joke—that it is
enough knowledge for any woman if she is acquainted
with the fact that Pekin is not in Europe, or that Alexander
the Great was not the son-in-law of Louis the XIV.
Referring to events within his own knowledge and
memory, Lord Granville added, “One of the most eminent
English statesmen of the century, a brilliant man of letters
himself, after reading with admiration a beautiful piece of
poetry written by his daughter, appealed to her affection
for him to prevent her ever writing again, his fear was so
great lest she should be thought a literary woman.”</p>
<p class='c002'>If a similar prejudice were in any degree felt by the
Austen family, it is not unlikely that it was gradually
dissolved by the early habit of the children of writing
plays for home acting. We read, indeed, that Jane did
nearly all her writing in the general sitting-room of the
family, and that she was careful to keep her occupation
secret from all but her own immediate relations. For this
purpose she wrote on small pieces of paper, which could
easily be put away, or covered by a piece of blotting-paper
or needlework. The little mahogany desk at which she
wrote is still preserved in the family. She never put her
name on a title-page, but there is no evidence that her
family would have disapproved of her doing so. They
seem to have delighted in all she did, and to have helped
her by every means in their power. She was a great
favourite with her brothers and sister, and with all the
tribe of nephews and nieces that grew up about her. She
had no trace of any assumption of superiority, and gave
herself no airs of any kind. She had too much humour
and sense of fun for there to be any danger of this in
her case. She was thoroughly womanly in her habits,
manners, and occupations. Like Miss Martineau, her
early training preserved her from being a literary lady
who could not sew. Her needlework was remarkably fine
and dainty, and specimens of it are still preserved which
show that her fingers had the same deftness and skill as
the mind which created Emma Woodhouse and her father,
Mrs. Norris and Elizabeth Bennet. She had taken to
authorship as a duck takes to water, and had written some
of her most remarkable books before she was twenty; and
she had done this so simply and naturally that she seems
to have produced in her family the impression that writing
first-rate novels was one of the easiest things in the world.
We find, for instance, that she writes in 1814 many letters
of advice to a novel-writing niece; and she advises
another little niece to cease writing till she is sixteen years
old, the child being at that time only ten or twelve. In
1816 she addresses a very interesting letter to a nephew
who is writing a novel, and has had the misfortune to lose
two chapters and a half! She makes kindly fun of the
young gentleman, and suggests that if she finds his lost
treasure she shall engraft his chapters into her own novel;
but she adds: “I do not think, however, that any theft
of that sort would be really very useful to me. What
should I do with your strong, manly, vigorous sketches,
full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them
on to the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I
work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after
much labour?”</p>
<p class='c002'>Early in 1801 the home at Steventon was broken up.
Mr. Austen resigned his living in consequence of failing
health, and the family removed to Bath. Mr. Austen
died in 1805, and Mrs. Austen and her daughters lived
for a time at Southampton. They had no really homelike
home, however, between leaving Steventon in 1801
and settling at Chawton, in Hampshire, in 1809; and it
is very characteristic of Jane Austen’s home-loving nature
that this homeless period was also a period of literary
inactivity. She wrote <cite>Sense and Sensibility</cite>, <cite>Northanger
Abbey</cite>, and <cite>Pride and Prejudice</cite> before she left Steventon,
though none of them were published till after she came to
live at Chawton. Here in her second home she wrote
<cite>Mansfield Park</cite>, <cite>Emma</cite>, and <cite>Persuasion</cite>. In consequence of
having three novels finished before one was printed, when
she once began to publish, her works appeared in rapid
succession. <cite>Sense and Sensibility</cite> was the first to appear, in
1811, and the others followed quickly after one another,
for her work was at once appreciated by the public, and
the great leaders of the literary world, such as Sir Walter
Scott, Southey, and Coleridge, welcomed her with cordial
and generous praise. One curious little adventure should
be mentioned. In 1803, during her residence at Bath, she
had sold the manuscript of <cite>Northanger Abbey</cite> to a Bath
publisher for £10. This good man, on reconsideration,
evidently thought he had made a bad bargain, and resolved
to lose his ten pounds rather than risk a larger sum in
printing and publishing the book. The manuscript therefore
lay on his shelves for many years quite forgotten.
But the time came when <cite>Sense and Sensibility</cite>, <cite>Pride and
Prejudice</cite>, and <cite>Mansfield Park</cite> had placed their author in
the first rank of English writers, and it occurred to Miss
Austen and her family that it might be well to rescue
<cite>Northanger Abbey</cite> from its unappreciative possessor. One
of her brothers called on the Bath publisher and negotiated
with him the re-purchase of the manuscript, giving for it
the same sum which had been paid to the author about
ten years earlier. The publisher was delighted to get
back his £10, which he had never expected to see again,
and Jane Austen’s brother was delighted to get back the
manuscript. Both parties to the bargain were fully
satisfied; but the poor publisher’s feelings would have
been very different if he had known that the neglected
manuscript, with which he had so joyfully parted, was by
the author of the most successful novels of the day.</p>
<p class='c002'>There is a quiet vein of fun and humorous observation
running through all Miss Austen’s writings. It is as
visible in her private letters to her friends as in her works
intended for publication. The little turns of expression
are not reproduced, but the humour of the one is very
similar to that of the other. Thus, for instance, in one
of her letters she describes a visit to a young lady at
school in London. Jane Austen had left her a raw schoolgirl,
and found her, on this visit, developed into a fashionable
young lady. “Her hair,” writes Jane to Cassandra,
“is done up with an elegance to do credit to any education.”
Who can read this without thinking of Fanny
Price in <cite>Mansfield Park</cite>, and the inevitable contempt she
inspired in her fashionable cousins because she did not
know French and had but one sash?</p>
<p class='c002'>Reference has already been made to the high appreciation
of Miss Austen’s genius which has been expressed by
the highest literary authorities in her own time and in
ours. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his journal: “I have
read again, and for the third time, Miss Austen’s very
finely-written novel of <cite>Pride and Prejudice</cite>. That young
lady has a talent for describing the involvements and
feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the
most wonderful I ever met with. The big Bow-Wow
strain I can do myself like any now going, but the
exquisite touch which renders commonplace things and
characters interesting from the truth of the descriptive
and the sentiment is denied to me.” Lord Macaulay, the
great historian, wrote in his diary: “Read Dickens’s <cite>Hard
Times</cite>, and another book of Pliny’s <cite>Letters</cite>. Read <cite>Northanger
Abbey</cite>, worth all Dickens and Pliny put together.
Yet it was the work of a girl. She was certainly not
more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature!” Guizot,
the French historian, was a great novel reader, and he
delighted in English novels, especially those written by
women. Referring to the women writers of the beginning
of this century, of whom Miss Austen was the chief, he said
that their works “form a school which, in the excellence
and profusion of its productions, resembles the cloud of
dramatic authors of the great Athenian age.” The late
Mr. G. H. Lewes said he would rather have written <cite>Pride
and Prejudice</cite> than any of the Waverley novels. George
Eliot calls Jane Austen the greatest artist that has ever
written, “using the term ‘artist’ to signify the most
perfect master over the means to her end.” It is perhaps
only fair to state that some good judges do not entertain
so high an opinion of her work. Madame de Staël pronounced
against her, using the singularly inappropriate
word “vulgar,” in condemnation of her work. If there is
a writer in the world free from vulgarity in its ordinary
sense, it is Jane Austen; it must be supposed that
Madame de Staël used the word in its French sense, <i>i.e.</i>
“commonplace” or “ordinary,” such a meaning of the
word as is retained in our English expression “the vulgar
tongue.” Charlotte Brontë felt in Miss Austen a deficiency
in poetic imagination, in the high tone of sentiment
which elevates the prose of everyday life into poetry. She
found her “shrewd and observant rather than sagacious
and profound.” Miss Austen’s writings were so essentially
different from the highly imaginative work of her sister
author, that it is not surprising that the younger failed
somewhat in appreciation of the elder writer.</p>
<p class='c002'>Jane Austen’s failing health in 1816 caused much
anxiety to her family. It is characteristic of her gentle
thoughtfulness for all about her that she never could be
induced to use the one sofa with which the family sitting-room
was provided. Her mother, who was more than
seventy years old, often used the sofa, and Jane would
never occupy it, even in her mother’s absence, preferring
to contrive for herself a sort of couch formed with two or
three chairs. A little niece, puzzled that “Aunt Jane”
preferred this arrangement, drew from her the explanation
that if she used the sofa in her mother’s absence, Mrs.
Austen would probably abstain from using it as much as
was good for her. Her last book, <cite>Persuasion</cite>, was finished
while she was suffering very much from what proved to be
her dying illness. Weak health did not in any way
diminish her industry, and she exacted from herself the
utmost perfection that she felt she was capable of giving
to her work. The last chapters of <cite>Persuasion</cite> were
cancelled and re-written because her first conclusion of
the story did not satisfy her. In May 1817 she and
her sister removed to Winchester in order that Jane might
have skilled medical advice. Here she died on 18th July
and was buried opposite Wykeham’s Chantry, in the
cathedral. Her sweetness of temper and her gentle gaiety
never failed her throughout a long and trying illness.
When the end was near, one of those with her asked if
there was anything she wanted; her reply was, “<cite>Nothing
but death</cite>.”</p>
<div class='footnote' id='f4'>
<p class='c002'><SPAN href='#r4'>4</SPAN>. A very interesting memoir of Miss Austen has been written by her
nephew, Mr. Austen Leigh. All who love her works should read it, and
thereby come to know and love the woman.</p>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch16' class='c004'>XVI<br/> <br/>MARIA EDGEWORTH</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>It</span> will be impossible, in the short limits of these pages, to
give anything like a full account of the long life of Maria
Edgeworth. She lived for nearly eighty-three years, from
1st January 1767 to 22d May 1849; and through her
own and her father’s friends she was brought into touch
with nearly all the leading men and women connected with
the stirring political and literary events of that period.
What this implies will be best realised if we consider that
her lifetime comprised the whole period of the French
Revolution, the War of Independence in the United States,
the long wars of England with Napoleon, the landing of
the French in Ireland (her native country), the passing of
the Act of Union between England and Ireland, Catholic
Emancipation, the Abolition of Slavery in the British
Dominions, the passing of the first Reform Bill, the Irish
Famine of 1847, and the outbreak of revolutionary socialism
on the Continent in 1848. These are some of the most
burning of the political events of which she was a witness;
the literary and social history of the same period is hardly
less remarkable. She lived in the centre of a world made
brilliant by Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, Burns,
Keats, Scott, and Jane Austen. She knew Mrs. Fry,
Wilberforce, and Sydney Smith, as representing some of
the most important of the social movements of her time;
among her friends in the scientific world were Ricardo, the
political economist, Darwin, the naturalist, whose fame has
been overshadowed by that of his grandson, the great
Charles Darwin of our own times, Sir Humphry Davy, the
Herschels, Mrs. Somerville, and James Mill. She knew
Mrs. Siddons, and heard her recite in her own house the
part of Queen Katherine in the play of <cite>Henry the Eighth</cite>.
She was the intimate friend, and connection by marriage,
of “Kitty Pakenham,” the first Duchess of Wellington,
wife of “the Great Duke.” She lived to see the old stage
coaches supplanted by our modern railways; she was the
interested eye-witness of the gradual introduction of the
steam-engine into all departments of industry, a change
which Sir Walter Scott said he looked on “half proud, half
sad, half angry, and half pleased.” She might well feel, as
old age approached, that she had “warmed both hands at
the fire of life.” No life could have been fuller than hers
of every sort of interest and activity. She said in a letter
to a friend, written after a dangerous illness: “When I
felt it was more than probable that I should not recover,
with a pulse above 120, and at the entrance of my seventy-sixth
year, I was not alarmed. I felt ready to rise tranquil
from the banquet of life, where I had been a happy guest.
I confidently relied on the goodness of my Creator” (<cite>Study
of Maria Edgeworth</cite>, by Grace A. Oliver, p. 521).</p>
<p class='c002'>Maria Edgeworth’s family was one of English origin,
which had settled in Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
The Edgeworths intermarried into Irish, Welsh, and English
families, but always maintained strong Irish sympathies.</p>
<p class='c002'>There were many remarkable men and women in the
Edgeworth family before the birth of our heroine, but space
forbids the mention of more than one, her father, Richard
Lovell Edgeworth, whose name and fame are intimately
associated with those of his daughter. Mr. Edgeworth was
a most extraordinary man; at one moment one admires
him, at another one laughs at him, but one must always be
astonished by him. “To put a girdle round about the
earth in forty minutes” would have been a congenial task
to him. He made clocks, built bridges, raised spires,
invented telegraphs, manufactured balloons, ink, and soap,
constructed locks on his bedroom doors of such a complicated
nature, that his guests were afraid to shut their doors lest
they never should be able to open them again.</p>
<p class='c002'>When on a journey in France about 1770, he stayed at
Lyons, and carried out a plan for diverting the Rhone from
its course, thereby saving a large tract of country that had
previously been inaccessible; for this service the city of
Lyons rewarded him by a grant of land; this property,
however, was confiscated a few years later during the
Revolution.</p>
<p class='c002'>He raised a corps of volunteer infantry in Ireland, to
which Roman Catholics as well as Protestants were admitted,
although at that time the sentiment of religious equality
was regarded as akin to infidelity and disloyalty. He was
born in England, and educated partly here and partly in
Ireland; like most of the Edgeworths, he came of a mixed
race, his mother being a Welsh woman of considerable
literary acquirements and faculties; his first remarkable
performance was a runaway marriage, which he contracted
at the age of nineteen, with a Miss Elers, a lady of German
origin, whom he appears rather to have disliked than
otherwise. A runaway marriage with a girl whom he
really loved would have been too commonplace a proceeding
in those days for this eccentric young gentleman. Speaking
of this lady, Mr. Edgeworth wrote: “My wife was prudent,
domestic, and affectionate, but she was not of a cheerful
temper. She lamented about trifles; and the lamenting of
a female, with whom we live, does not render home delightful.”
It is not recorded if Mrs. Edgeworth found the
lamenting of the male with whom she lived any more
delightful, nor indeed is it evident that her husband devoted
much of his overflowing energy to lamentation. As he
did not find his home delightful, he spent very little time
in it, and was not long before he found pleasant society
elsewhere.</p>
<p class='c002'>One can never think of Mr. Edgeworth apart from his
extraordinary domestic history. He had four wives, one
after another, in rapid succession, and twenty-two children.
There were four children, of whom Maria was one, by the
first marriage with the “lamenting female.” The eldest of
these, born when his father was under twenty, was brought
up on the principles advocated by Rousseau, which may
perhaps be summarised as never forcing a child to do anything
that he does not wish to do. One experiment of
this kind appears to have sufficed for the family; the other
twenty-one children, or such of them as survived infancy,
were treated according to other theories. Indeed, it seems
to have been part of Maria’s education that she was to
undertake, for a part of every day, some study or occupation
that was uncongenial to her. Mr. Edgeworth’s theories of
education seem to have been almost as numerous as his
family; a story is told in the book already quoted, of the
visit of a gentleman to Edgeworthstown House in Ireland;
on rejoining the ladies after dinner, the guest was imprudent
enough to exclaim on the beauty of the golden hair of one
of the younger girls. Mr. Edgeworth instantly took his
daughter by the hand, walked across the room, opened a
drawer, held her head over it, and with a large pair of
scissors cut off all her hair close to her head. “As the
golden ringlets fell into the drawer, this extraordinary
father said, ‘Charlotte, what do you say?’ She answered,
‘Thank you, father.’ Turning to his guests, he remarked,
‘I will not allow a daughter of mine to be vain.’”</p>
<p class='c002'>Among the friendships that had a powerful influence on
Mr. Edgeworth’s character must be mentioned that with
Mr. Day, the author of a book which is still well known,
<cite>Sandford and Merton</cite>. Mr. Day was an even more extraordinary
man than Mr. Edgeworth. He entirely set at
naught all the usual habits of society; we are told that
he “seldom combed his raven locks.” He professed to
think love had been the greatest curse to mankind, and
announced in season and out of season his determination
never to marry. It appears that the assistance of a great
many ladies was needed to help him for a time to keep his
word. He made offers of marriage to Margaret Edgeworth,
his friend’s sister, to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd (who
became later the second and third wives of Mr. Edgeworth);
and failing to induce any of these ladies to accept him, he
adopted two orphan girls from the Foundling with the
object of educating one of them to such a pitch of perfection
that she should be fit to be his wife. In order to foster
the quality of “fortitude in females,” he used to drop hot
sealing-wax on their bare arms, and fire off pistols, charged
with powder only, at their petticoats. One of the two
little girls could never entirely overcome the tendency to
make use of some vehement expression of pain or alarm
under these circumstances. This Mr. Day considered a
fatal disqualification for ever promoting her to be his wife.
The other, to whom the romantic name of Sabrina Sydney
had been given, was more promising, and at one time it
seemed as if the perilous honour of being Mrs. Day would
be hers. However, she was saved by her disobedience to
his injunctions against wearing a particular kind of sleeve
and handkerchief which were then in fashion. Upon this
piece of self-will, we are told that “he at once and decidedly
gave her up.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Mr. Day’s proposals to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd,
two beautiful sisters with whom he and Mr. Edgeworth
were brought much in contact at Lichfield, have been
already mentioned. Mr. Day pretended to despise beauty
and to condemn love; but Honora’s beauty so far overcame
his prejudices that he at least professed love for her. His
offer of marriage, however, was more like an ultimatum of
war than an expression of affection. He sent her a huge
packet, in which he detailed all the conditions he should
expect her to fulfil if she married him. One of these was
entire seclusion from all society but his own. She replied
that she “would not admit the unqualified control of a
husband over all her actions: she did not feel that seclusion
from society was indispensably necessary to preserve female
virtue, or to secure domestic happiness. And she declined
leaving her mode of life for any ‘dark and untried system.’”
Mr. Day was deeply wounded, but it was his vanity that
suffered rather than his heart; for in three weeks he made
a similar overture to Honora’s sister, Elizabeth. Now,
however, the tables were turned. Whether the sisters
conspired together to punish him is not known; but
Elizabeth imposed conditions on her lover before she would
consent to receive his attentions; she declared she could
never marry a man who could neither fence, dance, nor
ride, and had none of the accomplishments of a gentleman.
These were the very qualities Mr. Day had chiefly exercised
his philosophy in deriding and denouncing. “How could
he,” cried Miss Elizabeth, with cruel logic, “with propriety
abuse and ridicule talents in which he appeared deficient?”
Mr. Day therefore repaired to France with Mr. Edgeworth
in order to acquire those polite accomplishments of which
it had been the pride of his heart to know nothing. Poor
Mr. Day!</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>How many a month I strove to suit</div>
<div class='line'>These stubborn fingers to the lute!</div>
<div class='line'>To-day I venture all I know.</div>
<div class='line'>She will not hear my music? So!</div>
<div class='line'>Break the string; fold music’s wing:</div>
<div class='line'>Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>When he came back from France, cruel Elizabeth laughed
in his face, and said she had liked him best as he was before.
Notwithstanding all these unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Day
found a wife at length. She was a lady of large fortune,
which, of course, he “despised” and appropriated. She
conformed to all her husband’s whims, and honestly believed
him to be the best and most distinguished of men. “That’s
what a man wants in a wife mostly,” as Mrs. Poyser says;
“one who’d pretend she didn’t know which end she stood
uppermost till her husband told her.” Mr. Day fell a
victim at last to one of his numerous theories. He disapproved
of the professional method of breaking in colts,
and undertook to train one upon an improved plan of his
own. The animal plunged violently and threw him; he
had concussion of the brain, and died a few minutes after
his fall. Poor Mrs. Day was so inconsolable that she took
to her bed, and died two years later. She must have been
a woman of the type of Milton’s Eve: “Herself, though
fairest, unsupported flower.” When her prop was gone,
she drooped and died.</p>
<p class='c002'>During Mr. Edgeworth’s residence at Lyons his first
wife, Maria’s mother, died, and in a few months he married
the beautiful Honora Sneyd. The social circle at Lichfield,
in which Honora had lived before her marriage, contained
many distinguished persons, among them Dr. Darwin, and
Miss Anna Seward, the poetess. Honora herself had been
engaged, or partly engaged, to Major André, the unfortunate
officer whose execution as a spy by the Americans, during
the War of Independence, caused such deep indignation in
England. Her marriage to Mr. Edgeworth in 1773, and
her death in 1780, took place before the melancholy end
of Major André’s life. The association of Honora’s name
with that of Major André is mentioned here as an illustration
of the way in which the Edgeworth family were
connected, in some form or another, with many of the most
interesting events of the times in which they lived.
Another such incident is to be found in the fact that the
Abbé Edgeworth, a relative who had become a Roman
Catholic priest, and had lived many years in France,
attended Louis XVI upon the scaffold, and received his
last words.</p>
<p class='c002'>Of the charm and goodness of the beautiful Honora there
can be no doubt. She won all hearts. Her little step-daughter,
Maria, loved her dearly, and admired her as
much as she loved her. She remembered, in after years,
standing at her step-mother’s dressing-table and looking up
at her with a sudden thought, “How beautiful!” The
second Mrs. Edgeworth became, under her husband’s
tuition, a very good mechanic; and together they wrote a
little book for children, called <cite>Harry and Lucy</cite>. Very
few books for children had at that time been written, so
that they were very early in a field which has since found
so many labourers. Mrs. Honora discerned Maria’s remarkable
qualities of mind. When the latter was only twelve
years old her step-mother wrote to her expressing the
pleasure she felt in being able to treat the young girl “as
her equal in every respect but age.” Mr. Edgeworth, too,
fully appreciated and studiously cultivated Maria’s gifts,
and encouraged her in every way to treat him with openness
and familiarity. This conduct was a very great contrast
with the extreme stiffness and formality which then prevailed
generally between parents and children. It was
near this time, but a little later, that the well-known writer,
William Godwin, was reproached by his mother with his
too great formality in addressing her; he had been
accustomed to speak and write to her as “Madam,” and
she says in one of her letters to him that “Hon’d Mother”
“would be full as agreeable.” Therefore the terms of
friendly familiarity and equality between Maria and her
parents were the more remarkable. The happiness of Mr.
Edgeworth’s second marriage was unclouded, except by the
symptoms of consumption in Honora, which warned them
that an inevitable parting was at hand. She died in May
1780, when Maria was thirteen years old. By his dead
wife’s side, Mr. Edgeworth wrote to Maria impressing upon
her all the hopes that he and her step-mother had formed
for her future. Very soon after he wrote again and bade her
write a short story on the subject of generosity; “It must
be taken,” he wrote, “from History or Romance, and must
be sent the sennight after you receive this; and I beg that
you will take some pains about it.” The story, when
finished, was submitted to the judgment of Mr. William
Sneyd, Honora’s brother, who said of it, “An excellent
story, and extremely well written; but where is the
generosity?”—a saying which afterwards became a household
word with the Edgeworths.</p>
<p class='c002'>When Honora was dying she had solemnly begged her
husband and her sister Elizabeth to marry each other after
her own death. Such marriages at that time were not
illegal, and eight months after Honora’s death her sister
and Mr. Edgeworth were married in St. Andrew’s Church,
Holborn. Not long after this the first really important
event of Maria’s life took place, when she went with her
father and the rest of his family to take up her residence in
her Irish home. At the impressionable age of fifteen,
after having lived long enough in England to judge of the
differences between the two countries, she was introduced
to an intimate acquaintance with rural life in Ireland.
Her father employed no agent for the management of his
property, but invited and expected Maria to help him in all
his business. In this way she acquired a thorough insight
into the charm, the weakness and the strength, the humour
and the melancholy of the Irish character.</p>
<p class='c002'>From 1782, when Mr. Edgeworth and his family
returned to live at their Irish home, dates not only Maria
Edgeworth’s close observation of Irish character and customs,
but also the very painstaking literary training which she
began to receive from her father. Up to this time Maria
had been much at school; owing to the delicate health of
her first step-mother, it was considered best that her education
should be mainly carried on elsewhere than at home.
Now, however, Mr. Edgeworth divided his time between
the management of his estates and the education of his
children, and to Maria’s literary education in particular he
devoted himself with singular zeal and assiduity. She was
continually practised by him in systematic observing and
writing; she was instructed to prepare stories in outline.
“None of your drapery,” her father would say; “I can
imagine all that. Let me see the bare skeleton.” At this
stage her compositions would be altered, revised, and
amended by him, and then returned to her for completion.</p>
<p class='c002'>There is no doubt whatever of the immense pains which
Mr. Edgeworth bestowed upon Maria’s literary training;
and Maria herself felt that she owed everything to him.
It may, however, very well be doubted whether his
influence upon her was good from the literary point of view.
He gave her method and system, and he cultivated her
natural faculties for observation; but there was something
very mechanical and pedantic in his mind—an affectation,
a want of humour, and a want of spontaneity: she, when
left to herself, was content with grouping the facts of life
and nature as she saw them around her, without trying
to be more instructive than they are. <cite>Castle Rackrent</cite>,
which is the best of her Irish stories, was entirely her own,
and bears no traces of her father’s hand. This is the only
one of her tales of which she did not draw out a preliminary
sketch or framework for her father’s criticism. She says
herself of this story, “A curious fact, that where I least
aimed at drawing characters I succeeded best. As far as
I have heard, the characters in <cite>Castle Rackrent</cite> were, in
their day, considered as better classes of Irish characters
than any I ever drew; they cost me no trouble, and were
made by no <em>receipt</em>, or thought of philosophical classification;
there was literally not a correction, not an alteration, made
in the first writing, no copy, and, as I recollect, no interlineation;
it went to the press just as it was written.
Other stories I have corrected with the greatest care, and
remodelled and re-written.” If she had given the world
more work of this kind, and less of the kind produced under
her father’s methods, her name would to-day occupy a
higher place than it does in the hierarchy of literature.</p>
<p class='c002'>Maria Edgeworth may be said to have invented the
modern novel, which gives the traits, the speech, the
manners, and the thoughts of a peasantry instead of moving
only among the upper ten thousand. Sir Walter Scott,
with his usual frankness and generosity, stated in his preface
to the Waverley Novels that what really started him
in his career as a novelist was the desire to do for Scotland
and the Scottish peasantry what Miss Edgeworth had done
for Ireland and the Irish peasantry. “I felt,” he said,
“that something might be attempted for my own country
of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so
fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might
introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a
more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto,
and to tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and
indulgence for their foibles.” Another of the leading
writers of this century has acknowledged his indebtedness
to Miss Edgeworth. The great Russian novelist, Ivan
Tourgenieff, told a friend that when he was quite young
he was unacquainted with the English language, but he
used to hear his elder brother reading out to his friends
translations of Miss Edgeworth’s Irish stories, and the hope
rose in his mind that one day he would be able to do for
Russia and her people what Miss Edgeworth had done for
Ireland.</p>
<p class='c002'>Readers of the life of Maria Edgeworth find plenty of
evidence of the extremely disturbed state of Ireland during
the ten or twelve years which immediately preceded the
passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Reports of midnight
outrages by armed and disguised bands of assassins were
frequent; unpopular people were hooted and pelted by day,
and sometimes murdered by night; country houses were
provided with shutters so contrived as to make it possible
to open a cross-fire upon these murderous bands in case
of necessity. The “Thrashers” and the “Whitetooths”
were the names then assumed by those marauders who in
later times have been known as Whiteboys and Moonlighters.
The state of Ireland, politically and socially,
became so critical that many people began to feel that
almost any change must be for the better. Added to all
the other elements of confusion, there was, about 1798, the
almost daily expectation of the French invasion. England
and France were at war, and it was believed by our
enemies that if they could once effect a landing in Ireland
the people of that island were so ready for rebellion that
the landing of the French would be in itself almost enough
to place the whole country at their disposal. In this
expectation they were, fortunately, very much deceived.
A graphic description of the French invasion, and its utter
failure to accomplish its purpose, has been given by Miss
Edgeworth. Her family had, indeed, a very close
acquaintance with the rebels and the invaders. The
county in which Edgeworthstown was situated was in
actual insurrection, and when the French landed at Killala,
in county Mayo, they marched immediately upon Longford,
which was in close proximity to Edgeworthstown.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mr. Edgeworth sent to the nearest garrison for military
protection for his household. He also found the majority
of the troop of infantry which he had organised faithful
to him; but it soon became evident, in spite of this and of
the personal fidelity of his servants and tenants, that the
house must be abandoned, and that the whole family must
take refuge in the town of Longford. There is something
rather amusing as well as touching in Maria’s womanly
regrets at leaving her new paint and paper to the mercy of
the rebels and the French. “My father,” she wrote, “has
made our little rooms so nice for us; they are all fresh
painted and papered. O rebels! O French! spare them!
We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody
as happy as ourselves.” After the family and household
had made good their departure from Edgeworthstown,
Mr. Edgeworth remembered that he had left, on the table
of his study, a list of the names of the men serving in his
corps, on whose fidelity he could depend. If this list fell
into the hands of the enemy, the men whose names were
upon it would probably be selected for bitter and cruel
vengeance. “It would serve,” wrote Miss Edgeworth, “to
point out their houses for pillage and their families for destruction.
My father turned his horse instantly, and galloped
back. The time of his absence appeared immeasurably long,
but he returned safely, after having destroyed the dangerous
paper.” Even if Mr. Edgeworth did spoil Maria’s
romances, he must be forgiven for the sake of this act of
unselfish gallantry. When the family arrived in safety at
Longford, dangers began to arise from another source. It
was discovered in the course of a few days that Edgeworthstown
House had been left by the rebels entirely uninjured.
The corps of infantry which Mr. Edgeworth had brought
with him into Longford consisted partly of Catholics. Mr.
Edgeworth entertained and defended with vigour a plan
for the defence of the town different from that favoured by
other persons in authority. All these circumstances were
put together with the speed of wild-fire, and created in the
minds of the ultra-Protestants of Longford the conviction
that Mr. Edgeworth was in secret league with the rebels;
this, they were convinced, was the reason why his house
had been spared, why he had admitted Papists into any of
the bonds of good fellowship; and his plan for the defence
of the gaol and the garrison was, they believed, only a trick
for making them over into the enemy’s hands. Two
farthing candles, by the light of which Mr. Edgeworth had
read the paper the previous evening, near the fortifications
of the gaol, were speedily exaggerated into a statement that
the gaol had been illuminated as a signal to the enemy.
An armed mob assembled, fully determined to tear him to
pieces. He escaped through the merest accident. Seeing
him accompanied by English officers in uniform, his enemies
thought he was being brought back a prisoner, and were
for the moment satisfied. The incident is illustrative of
the conflicting passions which, for so many years, have
formed the great social and political difficulty in Ireland.</p>
<p class='c002'>The rebels and their French allies were defeated at the
battle of Ballynamuck, and the quiet family life at Edgeworthstown
was resumed. All through the turmoil of
wars and rumours of wars, the even tenor of Maria’s way
was very little disturbed. “I am going on in the old
way,” she wrote, “writing stories. I cannot be a captain
of dragoons, and sitting with my hands before me would
not make any of us one degree safer.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Maria and her father had published their joint book,
<cite>Practical Education</cite>, in the very year (1798) of the exciting
events just narrated. Elizabeth, the second step-mother,
also had a hand in it; to her notes, we are told, may be
traced the chapter on “Obedience.” In this chapter the
original view is put forward that in order to form and
firmly implant in little children the habit of obedience,
their parents should be careful at first only to tell them to
do what they like doing. The habit of unquestioning
obedience thus formed will, it is thought, be sufficiently
strong to bear the strain, when the time comes that the
child is told to do things which it would rather not do.
There is a considerable element of good sense in this
method, as most people will agree who have tried it in
the training and teaching of dogs. A much more doubtful
theory put forward in the book is that children never
should be in the society of servants. This appears to us,
in these more democratic days, to savour very much of
pride and conceit. It is quite true that parents cannot
depute to a hired servant, however faithful, the responsibility
of their own position. But to say that a child is on
no account to speak to a servant, or to be spoken to by
one, appears to us now as most unreasonable and mischievous.
How valuable in bridging over the gulf that
still separates class from class is the warm affection that
often exists between children and their nurses! Many a
nurse has vied with a mother in warm and self-sacrificing
devotion for her little charges; and all this wholesome and
healing affection would be lost if the plan advocated by
the Edgeworths were carried out. It is satisfactory to
hear that Mrs. Barbauld protested against this doctrine,
and told Mr. Edgeworth that, besides the fact that it would
foster pride and ingratitude, “one and twenty other good
reasons could be alleged against it.” It may be hoped that
Mr. Edgeworth acknowledged himself vanquished before
this formidable battery opened fire.</p>
<p class='c002'>One of the most delightful incidents of Miss Edgeworth’s
later life was her friendship with Sir Walter Scott.
When the first of the Waverley Novels appeared, the secret
of its authorship had been so carefully kept that every one
was in the dark on the subject. The publishers had sent
a copy to Miss Edgeworth and her father. As soon as Mr.
Edgeworth had finished reading it, he exclaimed, “Aut
Scotus, aut Diabolus,” <i>i.e.</i> “either Scott or the Devil”;
and Maria put these words at the top of the letter which
she wrote thanking the publishers for the book. Scott
was already known to the world by his poems, and to this
must be attributed the ready wit of the good guess made
by the Edgeworths; for up to this time neither father nor
daughter had had the pleasure of meeting Scott. In 1823,
however, they did meet, and the acquaintance soon ripened
into a lifelong friendship. Scott acted as guide to Miss
Edgeworth and her sisters in showing them the beauties
and monuments of Edinburgh. They visited him at Abbotsford,
and took a little tour together in the beautiful
scenery of the Highlands. There are delightful descriptions
in Miss Edgeworth’s letters of Scott and his wife;
and we have a pretty little picture of Scott and Lady Scott
driving out, he with his dog, Spicer, in his lap, and she with
her dog, Ourisk, in hers.</p>
<p class='c002'>When Maria arrived at Abbotsford, and was received by
her host at his archway, she exclaimed, “Everything about
you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to
dream.” Two years later, Scott, accompanied by his
daughter and other members of his family, paid a return
visit to Edgeworthstown House. Lockhart, Scott’s biographer
and son-in-law, was one of the party. In his
<cite>Life of Scott</cite> he tells how on one occasion he himself
let fall some remark that poets and novelists probably
regarded the whole of human life simply as providing
them with the materials for their art. “A soft and
pensive shade came over Scott’s face as he said, ‘I fear
you have some very young ideas in your head. Are you
not too apt to measure things by some reference to literature,
to disbelieve that anybody can be worth much care,
who has no knowledge of that sort of thing, or taste for it?
God help us! What a poor world this would be if that
were the true doctrine! I have read books enough, and
observed and conversed with enough of eminent and
splendidly cultivated minds, too, in my time; but I assure
you I have heard higher sentiments from the lips of poor
uneducated men and women, when exerting the spirit of
severe yet gentle heroism under difficulties and afflictions,
or speaking their simple thoughts as to circumstances in
the lot of friends and neighbours, than I ever yet met with
out of the pages of the Bible. We shall never learn to feel
and respect our true calling and destiny, unless we have
taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared
with the education of the heart.’ Maria did not
listen to this without some water in her eyes ... but she
brushed her tears gaily aside, and said, ‘You see how it is.
Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that
people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir
Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his
people as a great lord ought to do.’”</p>
<p class='c002'>The delightful friendship between the two authors continued
without interruption till Scott’s death in the autumn
of 1832. The clouds that overshadowed his later years
were bitterly lamented by Maria. She wrote of the “poignant
anguish” she felt from the thought that such a life
had been shortened by care and trouble. She declined,
with one exception, to allow Scott’s letters to herself to be
published. If they are still in existence, the reasons which
caused her to withhold them no longer exist, and judging
from all we know of Scott and of her, it would be a great
gain to the public to be afforded the opportunity of reading
them.</p>
<p class='c002'>Those who have read this series of short biographies
will find a great many of the subjects of these sketches
among Miss Edgeworth’s friends. She gives a delightful
description of Mrs. Fry, whom she once accompanied to
Newgate. “She opened the Bible,” wrote Miss Edgeworth,
“and read in the most sweetly solemn, sedate voice I ever
heard, slowly and distinctly, without anything in the
manner that would detract attention from the matter.”
The Herschels and Mrs. Somerville were also numbered
among her friends. People sometimes seem to think that
women who can write books, and have learnt to understand
the wonders of science, will probably cease to care
for feminine nicety in dress. It is therefore very pleasant
to find that Mrs. Somerville, the author of <cite>The Connection
of the Physical Sciences</cite>, and Miss Edgeworth had a conference
about a blue crêpe turban.</p>
<p class='c002'>Maria Edgeworth’s life did not pass without the romance
of love. She received an offer of marriage from a Swedish
gentleman, while she was staying in Paris with her family
in 1803. She returned his affection, but refused to marry
him, sacrificing herself and him to what she believed to be
her duty to her father and family. Her third and last step-mother
wrote that for years “the unexpected mention of
his name, or even that of Sweden, in a book or newspaper,
always moved her so much that the words and lines in the
page became a mass of confusion before her eyes, and her
voice lost all power.” Her suitor, M. Edelcrantz, never
married. At the altar of filial piety she sacrificed much.</p>
<p class='c002'>Nothing is more charming, in the character of Maria
Edgeworth, than the sweetness with which she put her own
feelings on one side, and welcomed one after another, her
numerous step-mothers. The third and last, a Miss Beaufort,
was considerably younger than Maria. The marriage
with Mrs. Edgeworth No. 4 took place about six months
after the death of Mrs. Edgeworth No. 3. No wonder that
even the inexhaustible patience of the good daughter was
rather tried by this rapidity. She owns that when she first
heard of the attachment, she did not wish for the marriage;
but her will was in all respects resolutely turned towards
whatever would promote her father’s happiness. She did
not permit her regret to last, and she welcomed the bride
not only with unaffected cordiality, but with sincerest
friendship.</p>
<p class='c002'>Another pleasant characteristic of Maria was the cheery
way in which she recognised and bore with the fact that
she was the only plain member of her family. There is
a nice old sister in <cite>Silas Marner</cite> who says to some ladies
who had not at all recognised their own want of beauty,
“I don’t mind being ugly a bit, do you?” Maria was like
this, except that she thought she possessed a pre-eminence
of ugliness over all other competitors. “Nobody is ugly
now,” she wrote in 1831, “but myself!” Impartial observers,
however, state that the plainness of her features
was redeemed by the sweetness and vivacity of her expression,
and by the exquisite neatness of her tiny figure.</p>
<p class='c002'>Many examples could be given of her practical good
sense and benevolence. On receiving a legacy of some
diamond ornaments, she sold them, and with the proceeds
built a market-house for the village in Ireland where she
lived. In 1826, nine years after her father’s death, she
again undertook, this time for her brother, the management
of the estates. She exerted herself with characteristic
energy to alleviate the sufferings of her country during
the terrible year of the Irish famine. She died very
suddenly and painlessly, two years later, in the arms of
her step-mother, on 22d May 1849, aged eighty-two.
Macaulay considered her the second woman in Europe
of her time, giving the first place to Madame de Staël.
She does not seem to us now so great as this; but a
variety of interests centre round her, and she well deserves
to be remembered.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch17' class='c004'>XVII<br/> <br/>QUEEN LOUISA OF PRUSSIA.</h2></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in12'>“Sir, if a state submit</div>
<div class='line'>At once, she may be blotted out at once</div>
<div class='line'>And swallow’d in the conqueror’s chronicle.</div>
<div class='line'>Whereas in wars of freedom and defence</div>
<div class='line'>The glory and grief of battle won or lost,</div>
<div class='line'>Solders a race together—yea—tho’ they fail,</div>
<div class='line'>The names of those who fought and fell are like</div>
<div class='line'>A bank’d-up fire that flashes out again</div>
<div class='line'>From century to century, and at last</div>
<div class='line'>May lead them on to victory.”</div>
<div class='line in16'>“<cite>The Cup.</cite>”—<span class='sc'>Tennyson.</span></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>It</span> is very difficult for us now to go back in imagination to
the time, between eighty and ninety years ago, when the
whole of Europe was in danger of being crushed under the
tyranny and rapacious cruelty of Napoleon Buonaparte.</p>
<p class='c002'>This miraculous man, with his insatiable ambition, his
almost more than human power and less than human
unscrupulousness, had raised himself from a comparatively
humble station, not only to be Emperor of France, but to
be the conqueror of Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Germany.
He dreamed that in his person was to be revived the ancient
empire of Charlemagne, and that all the nations of
Christendom were to be subject to his universal dominion.
He crowned himself in the presence of the Pope, in Paris,
in 1804, and the year following he had the iron crown of
the kings of Lombardy placed on his head at Milan. Not
content with the title of Emperor of France, he styled himself
Emperor of the West, conceding for a time to the Czar
of Russia the title of Emperor of the East.</p>
<p class='c002'>No combination of the other Powers seemed capable of
withstanding his wonderful military genius. Most of all
his foes, he hated England; because, to the eternal honour
of our country, be it remembered, England took the lead in
rousing the other nations of Europe to resist him. England
was the banker of almost every coalition that was formed
against him. She supplied men, armies, and armed ships,
where she could, and she supplied money to carry on war
against Napoleon everywhere. Our great minister, William
Pitt, threw himself and all the wealth and power of England
into this great struggle against Napoleon. Again and again
he revived the spirit of resistance among the other Powers.
The rulers and representatives of other countries allowed
themselves to be flattered and bribed and threatened into
lending themselves to the objects of Napoleon’s inordinate
ambition. The Czar consented to meet him on intimate
and friendly terms; the Emperor of Austria, notwithstanding
the cruel humiliations he had suffered, consented to
give his daughter to take the place of the unjustly divorced
wife of the Corsican upstart; the less important German
princes cringed before him. The hostility of England alone
was implacable and unceasing, and what made her even
more hated, successful.</p>
<p class='c002'>There is little doubt that Napoleon fully recognised that
England was the main obstacle in the way of the fulfilment
of his dream of universal dominion. His most darling project
was to crush the power of England, and in 1804-5 he
made preparations for the invasion of our country, assembling
a vast army at Boulogne for that purpose. So fast did
his ambition outrun the bounds of fact and common sense,
that he actually had a medal struck to commemorate the
conquest of England. On one side was his own head
crowned with the laurel wreath of victory; on the other,
was a representation of Hercules strangling a giant, with
the lying inscription, “Struck in London, 1804.” He
wrote to the admiral of the French fleet, which was
destined about two months later to be completely destroyed
by our great Nelson at Trafalgar: “Set out, lose not a
moment, bring our united squadron into the Channel and
<em>England is ours</em>.” It was at this moment of supreme suspense
and danger that Wordsworth wrote that stirring
sonnet to the men of Kent, the words of which vibrated
through the nation like a trumpet call.</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent,</div>
<div class='line'>Ye children of a Soil that doth advance</div>
<div class='line'>Her haughty brow against the coast of France,</div>
<div class='line'>Now is the time to prove your hardiment!</div>
<div class='line'>To France be words of invitation sent!</div>
<div class='line'>They from their fields can see the countenance</div>
<div class='line'>Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering lance,</div>
<div class='line'>And hear you shouting forth your brave intent.</div>
<div class='line'>Left single, in bold parley, ye, of yore,</div>
<div class='line'>Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath;</div>
<div class='line'>Confirmed the charters that were yours before;—</div>
<div class='line'>No parleying now! in Britain is one breath;</div>
<div class='line'>We all are with you now from shore to shore:—</div>
<div class='line'>Ye men of Kent, ’tis victory or death!</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>England’s immediate relief from the danger of invasion
did not come from Nelson’s great victory, but from Pitt
once more rousing the powers of Austria and Russia to
combine against Napoleon. Pitt insisted, in the spring of
1805, on pain of losing the subsidies promised by England,
that Austria should at once declare war upon France; and
Napoleon was thereupon obliged to withdraw the forces he
had assembled in great numbers at Boulogne to meet the new
combination that had been formed against him. It was now a
question how strong that combination should be. The two
great Powers of Austria and Russia had already joined it; the
smaller German princes went, some on this side and some on
that. The only important Power that showed indecision
at this critical moment was Prussia. The King of Prussia,
Frederick William III, was a grand-nephew of Frederick
the Great; but he bore no resemblance to that sovereign.
He was weak and undecided in character, wishing to
strengthen and enlarge his kingdom, but without force of
character sufficient to decide on a wise line of conduct and
to adhere to it. He and his minister, Haugwitz, cast longing
eyes upon Hanover, the Electorate of which was then
united with the crown of England. The French had
seized Hanover, and the possession of this coveted territory
was skilfully dangled by Napoleon before the eyes of the
King of Prussia. Frederick William III could not arrive
at a decision whether he should serve his own interests
best by joining the coalition or by remaining friends with
Napoleon. While he was hesitating, Napoleon, with his
customary disregard of all law, violated a neutral territory,
belonging to the Kingdom of Prussia, by taking his army
across it. It was like offering one hand in friendship, and
boxing the ears of your friend with the other. Angry as
the whole of Prussia was by the insult thus offered her,
she did not bring herself boldly to join the coalition of
England, Austria, and Russia against Napoleon. The
vacillating character of the King and the intriguing diplomacy
of Haugwitz stood in the way; but it must not be
supposed that in the general body of the Prussian people
there was not a feeling of shame, anger, and resentment at
the policy that had been adopted by their Government.</p>
<p class='c002'>The embodiment of this strong national feeling was
found in the person of the beautiful young Queen Louisa, a
princess of the House of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Her character
was a complete contrast to that of her husband.
She had the decision, vivacity, and high courage which he
so much lacked. The two were sincerely devoted to one
another; but from the essential differences in their dispositions,
they became respectively the heads of the
two opposing parties in the State; the party who wished
to join the coalition and resist Napoleon, and the party
who wished merely to look on and try to reap some
advantage from whichever side was favoured by the
fortunes of war. It seemed at one time as if the
Queen’s influence with her husband had prevailed, and
that Prussia was going to join the alliance; but just
at this time came the news of the first of Napoleon’s great
victories in this campaign, the capitulation of Ulm, and all
the fears of the timid party were renewed. Then came the
great catastrophe of Austerlitz; Napoleon’s forces had completely
crushed the combined armies of Russia and Austria,
and Pitt’s last supreme effort against Napoleon had failed.
Austerlitz is said to have killed Pitt. He was only forty-seven;
but his health had long been feeble, and this last blow
to all his hopes was fatal. He died a few weeks after the
news reached him, on the 23d January 1806. He attributed
the failure of the coalition to the indecision of Prussia.
If he was right in this he had a terrible revenge. It is one
of the most extraordinary episodes in history that Prussia,
which had hesitated to join one of the most powerful
alliances that had ever been formed against Napoleon, was
destined within a few months to match itself against the
conqueror almost single-handed.</p>
<p class='c002'>Very soon after the battle of Austerlitz the Prussian
minister, Haugwitz, waited upon Napoleon and renewed
negotiations with him. Napoleon offered Prussia the choice
between immediate war, or alliance and the possession of
Hanover. A treaty was drawn up accepting the latter
alternative; Haugwitz agreed to it, and carried it back to
his master for ratification. When the terms of the treaty
became known in Berlin, the anger of the patriotic party
was unbounded. They felt they were bound by ties of
blood and kindred to espouse the cause of their German
brethren. They looked upon the proffered bribe of Hanover
as hush-money, which was to close their lips from protesting
against the oppression of Germany by Napoleon. When
Haugwitz returned to Berlin he was treated with marked
coldness by the Queen. On receiving the disastrous news
of the defeat of Austerlitz, she had called to her side her
two elder boys, the younger of whom became the late aged
Emperor of Germany, and adjured them to think, from
that time forth, only of avenging their unhappy brethren.
The King’s brothers sympathised with the Queen’s views,
as did also the patriotic statesmen Stein and Hardenburg,
and a brave young prince, Louis Ferdinand, the King’s
cousin. Miss Hudson, who has written a life of Queen
Louisa, says in reference to her position at this crisis, “The
Queen did not desire or endeavour to take a leading
part, but she did not dissemble her feelings and aspirations,
and her name was put foremost by popular report, on account
of her superior rank. The Queen did not play any
conspicuous part, but she was a constant incentive to the
best of the nation to work for their country’s deliverance.
It was what she was, not what she did, that made her name
a watchword for the enemies of Napoleon.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Haugwitz had never dreamed that his master would
refuse to ratify the treaty; but the outburst of popular
anger against it had been so marked, and the advantages
it offered to Prussia were in fact so small, that the
King declined to sign, and demanded modifications. His
vacillation had placed him in a cleft stick. If he refused
Napoleon’s terms, he would have to fight with the victorious
French army; if he accepted them, and Hanover with
them, he would have to fight with England; for it was not
probable that the latter country would calmly allow Hanover
to be appropriated by another Power without a struggle.
While this was the situation of affairs, the King of Prussia,
having sent back the treaty to Napoleon to ask for
modifications, one of which was to obtain the consent of
England to the cession of Hanover, the news came to all
the world that Pitt, the most powerful and the most
pertinacious of Napoleon’s enemies, was dead. England
had lost Nelson and Pitt within a few months. It seemed
as if they had been removed to make the pathway of
ambition smooth for Napoleon.</p>
<p class='c002'>Pitt was succeeded in the Ministry by his great rival
Fox, the professed admirer of the French Revolution, a man
whose measure Napoleon thought he had taken, and whom
the Emperor believed he could dupe with fine phrases about
universal brotherhood and a union of hearts. Napoleon
instantly saw the advantage this change might bring to
him. With audacity unparalleled, except by himself, he
commenced negotiations with the English Government and
offered <em>them</em> Hanover, notwithstanding that the ink was
hardly dry on the treaty in which he had offered it to
Prussia. Napoleon, intent for the moment on this fresh
project of pacifying England, received Haugwitz, when he
presented his master’s modifications of the treaty, with
harsh and contemptuous insolence. The conditions of the
treaty were made still more onerous than before on Prussia.
Napoleon now wanted to force a quarrel between England
and Prussia, of which he himself would in any result reap
the advantages. He carried on this project for a time so
successfully that England did actually declare war against
Prussia, but hostilities between them never actually took
place, because it became evident that Prussia had only been
a cat’s paw in the hand of Napoleon. The new treaty which
Napoleon returned to Frederick William was so humiliating
to Prussia, that Haugwitz did not dare to take it to Berlin
himself, but sent it by another hand. The King was so
weak and foolish as to sign it, and from that moment
Napoleon poured insult after insult upon the unhappy
government which had consented to its own slavery. One
of his first acts was to insist on the dismissal of Hardenberg,
one of the most trusted of the Prussian ministers. Under
the pretext of a new Confederation of the Rhine, it became
evident that Napoleon meant to entirely alter the whole
constitution of Germany without consulting Prussia, or any
of the Powers chiefly concerned. The French ambassador
had orders to state that “his master no longer recognised
the Germanic constitution.” Under these new humiliations,
the war fever burst out more strongly than ever, all over
Prussia. Unequal as the contest was, all that was best in
the nation preferred any risk to the humble acceptance of
the galling tyranny that oppressed them. The young men
in Berlin showed what their feelings were by assembling
in crowds outside the house of the French ambassador,
and sharpening their swords on his doorstep and window sills.</p>
<p class='c002'>It may very well be believed that Fox, if he had lived,
would have carried out Pitt’s policy in resisting Napoleon.
Already his eyes must have been opened by the perfidious
transactions about Hanover; but while the process of
disillusion was proceeding, Fox died, in September 1806, a
few months after his great rival. Napoleon stated, in after
years, that he considered the death of Fox, at this juncture,
was the first great blow his power had received. “Fox’s
death,” he often said at St. Helena, “was one of the fatalities
of my career.” The English policy of resistance to
Napoleon had hardly received more than a temporary check
by Fox’s accession to office, and when Prussia finally decided
on fighting with Napoleon, she was promised assistance
both from Russia and England. The struggle, however,
took place under cruel disadvantages to the weaker side.
Napoleon was at the head of 200,000 veterans confident of
victory, and of the irresistible genius of their commander.
Moreover, the French army, or a great portion of it, was
even then on Prussian soil. It was impossible that the
Prussian army could rely on Frederick William, as the
French army relied on its great general. The Queen did
all she could by joining the army, and living in camp, with
her husband, to the very eve of the battle, to encourage the
spirit of the troops, and above all to prevent any change of
front at the last moment. The most experienced of the
Prussian generals begged the Queen to remain with the
army. One of them wrote, “Pray say all you can to induce
her to remain. I know what I am asking; her presence
with us is quite necessary.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The final spark which caused the combustible material
to burst into the flame of war, was the cruel murder of
the Nuremberg bookseller, Palm, by Napoleon, for selling
a pamphlet called, “The Humiliation of Germany.” He was
decoyed upon neutral territory, and was shot on the 25th
August 1806, without even the pretence of a legal trial.
Rather more than a month later, Prussia had declared war.
Her army was very inferior to that of France. The
highest number at which it has been put, even with the
Russian auxiliaries, is 60,000. The troops from England
did not arrive in time to be of any use. In two great
battles, Jena and Auerstadt, fought on the same day, 16th
October 1806, the power and independence of Prussia were
completely crushed. No wonder that all the world at that
moment thought them annihilated! A few days later
Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Berlin. He
occupied the Royal Palaces there and at Potsdam, from
which the Queen had lately fled with her children. It
was then that Napoleon covered himself with everlasting
infamy by a series of bulletins published in an official
gazette called <cite>The Telegraph</cite>, in which he poured every
kind of insult and calumny upon the person, character, and
influence of the Queen. He ransacked her private apartments,
read her correspondence, and sought eagerly, but
in vain, for evidence to support the monstrous charges he
brought against her. She was among the most womanly
of women, devoted to her home, to her children and
husband. Every true woman is more sensitive on what
touches the honour and sanctity of her home than on any
other subject. It was here, therefore, that Napoleon
struck at her with all the brute violence and perfidy of
his nature. M. Lanfrey, the French historian, says that a
volume might be filled with all that he wrote and
published against her. He wished to render her odious in
the eyes of her people, and held her up to ridicule as well
as to calumny. He represented that her pretended
patriotism was only put on to hide her guilty passion for
“the handsome Emperor of Russia,” that nothing had
aroused her from “the grave occupations of dress, in
which she had been hitherto absorbed,” but the desire to
bring about more frequent opportunities of intercourse
with her supposed lover. The stupidity of all this,
repeated again and again in bulletin after bulletin, is as
wonderful as its wickedness. The effect of it in the minds
of the German people is almost as fresh to-day as it was
eighty years ago. They had loved and trusted their good,
brave Queen, before Napoleon tried to cover her with the
mud of his impure imagination. Afterwards, and to this
day, they adored her as no modern queen has ever been
adored. No stranger can be many days in North Germany
now without being forced to ask, “Who is this Queen
Louisa, whose portrait is in every shop window, and after
whom streets and squares by the dozen are called?” Her
name has become the symbol of all that is best in German
national life, simplicity of living, patriotism and devotion
to duty. M. Lanfrey, whose history of Napoleon has been
already quoted, says of the bulletins attacking the Queen,
“Such circumstances as these indicate the defect of
Napoleon’s moral organisation, amounting, in fact, to an
absence of ordinary intelligence. He outraged the most
delicate scruples of the human conscience, because such
sentiments had no existence in his own heart. He made
a grave mistake in treating other men as if they were as
utterly devoid as he was himself of all sentiment of honour
and morality. He did not perceive that these base
insinuations against a fugitive and disarmed woman, by a
man who commanded 500,000 soldiers, would produce an
effect exactly contrary to what he intended; that they
were calculated not only to excite disgust in all noble
minds, but were revolting even to the most vulgar.” How
little did either the conqueror or the conquered foresee
what lay hidden in the womb of time! Prince William,
then a delicate child of eight years old, and a fugitive,
with his mother, before the victorious army of Napoleon,
was destined to become the most powerful sovereign in
Europe, to bring to an end the Napoleonic dynasty, and
in the chief of the Royal Palaces of France, to be crowned
Emperor of a United Germany.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1806, however, the fortunes of Queen Louisa and
her children were at the lowest ebb. After having lost so
much that was more precious than the state and luxury of
royalty, the privations of the fugitive Court were not an
insupportable trial; the kind peasants brought gifts of
money and provisions to their King and Queen, and many
acts of faithfulness and devotion cheered and consoled
Frederick William and his wife. Even ill-health, which
now began to be visible in the Queen, seemed a small
misfortune compared with others she had endured. She
wrote at this period, June 1807, that her greatest unhappiness
was being unable to hope. “Those who have
been torn up by the roots ... have lost the faculty of
hoping.” Still she felt sustained by the confidence that
Prussia, though humiliated, was not disgraced. The
country had had fearful odds against it, and had been
vanquished, but it had striven to do its duty. “Wrong
and injustice on our side would have brought me down to
the grave,” she wrote.</p>
<p class='c002'>A treaty of peace was now about to be drawn up.
Napoleon, the Emperor of Russia, and the King of Prussia,
met in a grand ceremonial way at Tilsit. The Emperor
of Russia was considered by Napoleon sufficiently powerful
to be treated with flattery and consideration. The King
of Prussia, being helpless, was harshly dealt with; and
when the terms of the peace were discussed, Napoleon was
inexorable in insisting on an almost complete destruction
of the power of Prussia. All the principal fortified towns
in Prussia, including Magdeburg, which commanded the
Elbe, were to remain in the hands of the French; and the
standing army of Prussia was to be limited to 42,000 men.</p>
<p class='c002'>The idea appears to have occurred to the Emperor of
Russia, that if Queen Louisa joined her husband at Tilsit
she could induce Napoleon to modify these harsh conditions
of peace. Frederick William concurred, and wrote to the
Queen, requesting her immediate presence to intercede
with Napoleon for more favourable terms. No wonder,
when the King’s letter was placed in her hands, that the
Queen burst into tears, and said it was the hardest thing
she had ever been called upon to bear and do. All her
woman’s pride revolted against humbling herself to beg for
favours from the man who but the other day had so
brutally insulted her. But she thought, how could she,
who had urged her sons to die for their country, refuse to
sacrifice her just and natural resentment for the same end?
She set out without delay, and the famous interview
between herself and Napoleon was speedily arranged. He
now treated her with every outward mark of respect, and
was perhaps surprised to find the fancy picture he had
drawn of her, in his infamous bulletins, falsified in every
particular. She would not allow him to trifle with her,
and lead the conversation away to commonplaces, but
went straight to the object which had brought her to
Tilsit, the granting of moderate terms of peace to Prussia.
She was calm, dignified, and courteous; once only her
self-command failed her: “When she spoke of the Prussian
people, and of her husband, she could not restrain her
tears.” She begged the conqueror at least to grant to
Prussia the possession of Magdeburg. The French
minister, Talleyrand, who was present at the interview,
thought that Napoleon wavered; but a tiger with a kid
in his claws does not easily relinquish it, even if an
archangel pleads with him. The interview was brought to
an end, with no concession promised. The Queen and
Emperor met again at a State banquet the same evening,
and again the following day at a smaller private gathering.
But she had humbled her pride in vain. Her first words
after the final leavetaking were, “I have been cruelly
deceived.” Napoleon did not hesitate to misrepresent to
his wife, the Empress Josephine, the whole bearing of the
Queen of Prussia to him: “She is fond of coquetting with
me,” he wrote; “but do not be jealous.” But to Talleyrand,
who could not be deceived, because he was present
at Tilsit at all the interviews that had taken place between
the two, Napoleon said, “I knew that I should see a
beautiful woman, and a Queen with dignified manners, but
I found the most admirable Queen, and at the same time
the most interesting woman I had ever met with.” On
another occasion he remarked to Talleyrand that the
“Queen of Prussia attached too much importance to the
dignity of her sex, and to the value of public opinion.”
From a man of Napoleon’s gross and low estimate of
womanhood, a greater compliment would be impossible.</p>
<p class='c002'>The French army was withdrawn from Berlin in
December 1808. The King and Queen of Prussia did
not re-enter their capital till December 1809. In the
following July, Louisa died. Spasms of the heart had
come on, a short time previously, during the illness of one
of her children. They returned with a violence which she
had not strength to resist. Her husband and her people
felt that she had died of a broken heart. The short-lived
rejoicings that had greeted her return to Berlin were now
changed into devotion to her memory, and to the cause
of German patriotism with which her name will always
be associated. The King, his children, and his subjects
mourned her loss with unceasing fidelity and reverence.
Four years after her death, Frederick William and his
Russian allies crushed Napoleon’s army at the battle of
Leipzig. On his return to Berlin, the King’s first thought
was to lay the laurel wreath of victory on his wife’s tomb.
Queen Louisa’s eldest son directed that his heart should
be buried at the foot of his mother’s grave, and the same
spot was also selected as the last resting-place of her
second son, the Emperor William. It will long be
remembered that it was here that the late Emperor, then
King William of Prussia, knelt alone, in silent meditation
and stern resolve, on the sixtieth anniversary of his
mother’s death, just at the time of the outbreak of the
war of 1870 between France and Germany.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was only thirty-five years old when she died; but
she was able to leave to her children and to her people a
name that will be remembered and honoured as long as
the German Empire lasts. Her tomb at Charlottenburg is
one of the most beautiful monuments to the memory of
the dead, which the world contains. The pure white
marble statue of the Queen is by the sculptor Rauch, who
knew her well, and honoured her as she deserved. Everything
about the building is designed with loving care.
The words chosen by the King, and placed over the entrance
of the temple where the monument lies, are: “I am
he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for
evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death.”</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch18' class='c017'>XVIII<br/> <br/>DOROTHY WORDSWORTH</h2></div>
<div class='lg-container-b c014'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>“And were another childhood world my share,</div>
<div class='line'>I would be born a little sister there.”—<span class='sc'>George Eliot.</span></div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>A hundred</span> years ago England was particularly rich in
great brothers and sisters. There were William and
Caroline Herschel, Charles and Mary Lamb, and, perhaps,
chief of all, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. These
last were certainly the greatest as tested by the position
of the brother in the world of literature. He won and
maintained a place among the greatest of English poets;
but the very greatness of the brother was the cause why
the sister is known only as a tributary to his genius. It
is not that his achievements dwarf hers by comparison;
she made no conscious contribution to literature; she felt
from the outset of their life together that he was capable
of giving to his countrymen thoughts which the world
would not willingly let die, and she deliberately suppressed
in herself all cultivation of her own powers, save such as
should contribute to support, sustain, and promote his.
As Charles Lamb said of his own sister, “If the balance
has been against her, it was a noble trade.” There is, however,
much evidence that the balance was not against
Dorothy Wordsworth. She did not sacrifice herself in
vain. She chose to give up all independent cultivation
of her own considerable poetic gifts, and also to renounce
all hopes of love and marriage, for the sake of devoting
her whole life to her brother, and of helping to a freer
and nobler utterance the poet who has given us “The Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality,” “The Ode to Duty,”
“The Happy Warrior,” and a host of songs and sonnets
among the most beautiful in our language. The sister
freely and generously gave, the brother freely and generously
received, and freely and generously acknowledged
the value of the gift. Over and over again, in prose and
verse, Wordsworth acknowledges all that he owes to his
sister; never more warmly than when, on the approach of
old age, disease had laid its hand upon her, and the long
accustomed support seemed likely to be withdrawn. When
Coleridge and Dorothy lay prostrate under the stroke of
sickness, Wordsworth wrote at the age of sixty-two: “He
and my beloved sister are the two beings to whom my intellect
is most indebted, and they are now proceeding, as
it were, with equal steps, along the path of sickness, I will
not say towards the grave; but I trust towards a blessed
immortality.” If Wordsworth, reviewing the past, could
speak thus of his sister, it must be of interest to us to endeavour
to discern what her influence over him was, and
how their life together was passed.</p>
<p class='c002'>William Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth,
in Cumberland, the second son of John Wordsworth, a
lawyer and land-agent to the Earls of Lonsdale. Dorothy,
her parents’ only girl, was twenty months younger than
William, and the two children very early showed that close
sympathy and tender affection for one another which is often
the precious possession of happy family life. Only a few
years were spent together by the brother and sister in this
joyous playtime of life; but the happiness of this early time
is recorded in several of Wordsworth’s poems, especially in
the one where he speaks of his sister and their visit together
to see the sparrow’s nest—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>She looked at it and seemed to fear it;</div>
<div class='line'>Dreading, tho’ wishing, to be near it:</div>
<div class='line'>Such heart was in her, being then</div>
<div class='line'>A little Prattler among men.</div>
<div class='line'>The Blessing of my later years</div>
<div class='line'>Was with me when a boy:</div>
<div class='line'>She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;</div>
<div class='line'>And humble cares, and delicate fears;</div>
<div class='line'>A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;</div>
<div class='line in6'>And love, and thought, and joy.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>William and Dorothy were less than nine and seven respectively
when these happy days of childish companionship
were closed by the death of their mother in 1778.
William was then sent to school, and Dorothy went to live
with her maternal grandparents at Penrith. The children
were doubly orphaned five years later by the death of their
father, in 1783. William and his brothers then passed to
the guardianship of their uncles, Richard and Christopher
Wordsworth, while Dorothy was made over to the care of
other relatives, and spent her time partly at Halifax and
partly with her mother’s cousin, Dr. Cookson, Canon of
Windsor. She and William, however, by no means forgot
their childish affection or let it grow cold. They rarely
met at this time, but their meetings were looked forward
to by both with ardent and intense pleasure. Each continued
to be to the other the dearest and most beloved of
friends.</p>
<p class='c002'>Wordsworth, like most generous young people of his
day, was deeply stirred by sympathy with the French
Revolution. At its outset he believed it would bring immeasurable
blessings to mankind; tyranny, cruelty, and
vice were, he believed, to be dismissed from the high places
of the earth, and in their stead would reign justice, mercy,
peace, and love. It is therefore not difficult to imagine
with what agony of disappointment he saw, as he thought,
all these high hopes falsified, and the light that had been
lit by the Revolution quenched in blood and in a series of
massacres more cruel and remorseless than any that had
disgraced previous forms of government. For a time the
belief in goodness and righteousness seemed shaken in him.
To disbelieve in the power of goodness is infidelity; and
from this gulf of infidelity Wordsworth was saved by his
sister’s influence. This was the first memorable service
she rendered to his moral nature. He was saved from becoming
permanently soured and narrowed by the sunny
radiance of his sister’s sympathy and by her unshaken
faith that good is stronger than evil. The brother and
sister now resolved to live together; and from that hour
Dorothy’s whole life was given to enrich and solace that
of her brother, and to help him to give utterance to those
great thoughts and words which at last made the whole of
England aware that the nation was possessed of another
poet.</p>
<p class='c002'>Wordsworth was now twenty-five years of age; he had
passed through his college career at Cambridge and had
travelled abroad, and the time had come when it was not
unnaturally expected of him that he should settle down to
some business or profession that would provide him with
an income. Very little had come to the family from inheritance,
and parents and guardians are not generally
disposed to look with lenient indulgence on a penniless
young man of twenty-five who shows a disinclination to
any steady work, and is suspected of an ambition to become
a poet. Wordsworth’s uncles had been kind and
generous guardians, but they could not have been pleased
at what must have seemed to them at this time the dilatory,
desultory life of their nephew. His sister, however, all the
while gave him her warmest sympathy and support. Before
any one else had dreamed of it, she recognised her brother’s
genius; she not only believed that he would be a poet, but
<em>knew</em> that he <em>was</em> a poet. She did not urge him, as a well-intentioned
but less perceptive friend might have done, to
become a lawyer, or a doctor, or what not; she made it
possible, by joining her life to his, and nourishing his genius
by the tribute she poured into it from her own, that he
should have the quiet sympathetic surroundings without
which his poetic imagination could not work.</p>
<p class='c002'>Their slender means were augmented about this time
by a legacy which rendered it possible for the brother and
sister to have a little cottage home together. Here, at
Racedown, in Dorsetshire, Wordsworth first began seriously
to devote himself to poetry. Their means were so small
that the utmost economy was necessary; but Dorothy
cheerfully undertook all the household work of cleaning,
cooking, making, and mending. She was not one of those
who think there is any degradation, either to man or woman,
in manual labour. While she was busied with household
cares, her brother often worked in their garden; when their
digging and cooking were accomplished, they read Italian
authors together, or took long walks through the beautiful
country in which they had fixed their abode. It must not
be thought that Miss Wordsworth was nothing more to her
brother than an energetic, economical housekeeper; she
was in feeling almost as much a poet as he was. She had
the same intense sympathy with nature, the same observant
eye and loving heart for all the various moods of the
beautiful outside world. She had also much of her brother’s
power of expression, and the same felicity in description.
It has been said of her, “Her journals are Wordsworth in
prose, just as his poems are Dorothy in verse.” Wordsworth
said of his brother John that he was “a silent poet,”
and “a poet in everything but words,” meaning that he
was a poet in feeling and sympathy; but something more
than this can be said of Dorothy; she was a prose poet,
who might have become a true poet, if she had not felt
that she had another vocation. She was her brother’s inspirer
and critic, and what she wrote herself proves that
she was worthy to be both. Some passages of her diary
are almost identical in thought and observation with subjects
that Wordsworth has crystallised in immortal verse.
On 30th July 1802 we have, for example, in the prose of
Dorothy’s journal, part of what Wordsworth has given to
us in the sonnets on Westminster Bridge and Calais sands.
“Left London between five and six o’clock of the morning,
outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The City,
St. Paul’s, with the river, a multitude of little boats, made
a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the
houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, were spread
out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a
pure light, that there was something like the purity of one
of Nature’s own grand spectacles. Arrived at Calais at
four in the morning of 31st July. Delightful walks in
the evenings, seeing far off in the west the coast of
England like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the
evening star, and the glory of the sky. The reflections in
the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple
waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away
on the sands.” Whoever will compare this with the two
sonnets beginning “Earth has not anything to show more
fair,” and “Fair star of evening, splendour of the West,”
will see how far it is just to say that Dorothy has given
us in prose what Wordsworth has given us in verse. There
is a deeper human passion in Wordsworth’s verse than
Dorothy ever reached in her prose. He would not stand
to-day the third in the noble group where Shakespeare and
Milton are first and second, if he had not possessed, over
and above his subtle sympathy with Nature, sympathy also
with the greatest of Nature’s works, “man, the heart of
man, and human life.” In the “Lines composed a few
miles above Tintern Abbey,” and again in the “Ode on
the Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth speaks of
the change which had gradually come in himself from the
days when the worship of external nature, “meadow, grove,
and stream, the earth and every common sight,” was all in
all to him, to the time when—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in28'>I have learn’d</div>
<div class='line'>To look on nature, not as in the hour</div>
<div class='line'>Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes</div>
<div class='line'>The still, sad music of humanity,</div>
<div class='line'>Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power</div>
<div class='line'>To chasten and subdue.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>It was here, as it seems, that his sister could not follow
him. Perhaps her self-suppression, the very concentration
of her devotion to her brother, closed her powers of receptive
sympathy for the wider issues of human destiny
which inspires the most precious of Wordsworth’s verse.
Whether this be so or not, he saw in her what he once
had been and had ceased to be.</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in22'>I cannot paint</div>
<div class='line'>What then I was. The sounding cataract</div>
<div class='line'>Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,</div>
<div class='line'>The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,</div>
<div class='line'>Their colours and their forms, were then to me</div>
<div class='line'>An appetite; a feeling and a love,</div>
<div class='line'>That had no need of a remoter charm.</div>
<div class='line in10'>... That time is past,</div>
<div class='line'>And all its aching joys are now no more,</div>
<div class='line'>And all its dizzy raptures.</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'> · · · · · ·</div>
</div>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>For thou art with me here upon the banks</div>
<div class='line'>Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,</div>
<div class='line'>My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch</div>
<div class='line'>The language of my former heart, and read</div>
<div class='line'>My former pleasures in the shooting lights</div>
<div class='line'>Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while</div>
<div class='line'>May I behold in thee what I was once,</div>
<div class='line'>My dear, dear Sister!</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>After Racedown the next residence of Wordsworth and
his sister was (1797) at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire. Here
they were visited by Coleridge and Lamb, and here the
“Ancient Mariner” was composed, chiefly by Coleridge, but
with the help and by the stimulus of Wordsworth and
Dorothy. It was during their residence here that the
“Lines written above Tintern Abbey” were composed and
published. Racedown and Alfoxden were temporary resting-places
only; Wordsworth and his sister did not make
a real home for themselves till they settled in the beautiful
lake country of Westmoreland, in 1799. At first they
lived in a small cottage, where Dorothy, with the help of
one feeble old woman, whom they employed partly out of
charity, did all the domestic work. A few years later they
removed to the house at Rydal Mount, Grasmere, which
will always be associated with their memory, and where
the rest of their lives was passed. It has been pointed
out by Mr. Matthew Arnold that almost all Wordsworth’s
best work was produced in the ten years between 1798
and 1808. During this time he had achieved no fame;
he had gained no audience, as it were, save the very select
group of whom the chief members were his sister, Coleridge,
and Charles and Mary Lamb. All through this time of
the production of Wordsworth’s best work, Dorothy continued
to devote herself to him by the cheerful performance
of the double duties of domestic drudge and literary
companion and critic. She was also his comrade in many
long mountain excursions, in which they both delighted.
Miss Wordsworth had extraordinary physical strength,
which many persons believe she overtaxed by her long
walks over moor and mountain. It is certain, however,
that her brother delighted in her physical vigour no less
than in her mental gifts. He speaks in lines addressed to
her of her being “healthy as a shepherd boy,” and in other
places he often shows that physical feebleness formed no
part of his conception of feminine grace. His ideal woman</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in16'>is ruddy, fleet and strong,</div>
<div class='line'>And down the rocks can leap along</div>
<div class='line'>Like rivulets in May.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>Or again—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>She shall be sportive as the fawn,</div>
<div class='line'>That wild with glee across the lawn</div>
<div class='line'>Or up the mountain springs.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>In 1802 the poet married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson,
and nothing is more characteristic of Dorothy’s sweet and
generous nature than the warm, loving welcome which she
gave to her brother’s wife. She did not know jealousy in
love; her love was so perfect that she rejoiced in every
addition to her brother’s happiness, and did not, as a meaner
woman might have done, wish his heart to be vacant of all
affection save what he felt for herself. The poet’s wife was
worthy of such a husband and sister-in-law, and the family
life went on in perfect love and harmony, that were only
strengthened by the new ties and interests that marriage
brought. Wordsworth’s children became as dear to Dorothy
as if they had been her own, and she devoted herself to them
so that they learnt to feel that they had in her almost a
second mother.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1832, Wordsworth then being sixty-two years old
and his sister over sixty, Dorothy’s health seriously broke
down. So much has been said in some of the books about
the poet and his sister of the harm resulting to Miss Wordsworth’s
health from her long walks, that it might have been
imagined that she had been the victim of a very premature
decline of physical powers. Considering, however, that she
was descended from parents both of whom had died young,
it is at least doubtful whether her failure of health at the
age of sixty can be fairly attributed to her pedestrian feats.
Her illness in 1832 culminated in a dangerous attack of
brain fever, from which she recovered, but with mental
and physical powers permanently enfeebled. Her memory
was darkened, and her spirits, once so blithe and gay, became
clouded and dull. Wordsworth and his wife tended
her with unceasing devotion. One who knew them well
wrote of Wordsworth at this time that “There is always
something very touching in his way of speaking of his
sister. The tones of his voice become very gentle and
solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of expression
which is so remarkable in him on all other subjects.”
The same friend wrote, “Those who know what they
(William and Dorothy Wordsworth) were to each other
can well understand what it must have been to him to see
that soul of life and light obscured.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Notwithstanding the delicate health from which she
suffered before the close of her life, she outlived her
brother for five years. He died on 23d April 1850,
the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death. His
sister at first could hardly comprehend her loss; but when
at last she understood that her heart’s best treasure was
no more, she exclaimed that there was nothing left worth
living for. It was hardly life to live without him to whom
her own life had been devoted. The friends surrounding
her dreaded the shock which this great loss would be to
her, but she bore it with unexpected calmness. A friend
wrote, “She is drawn about as usual in her chair. She
was heard to say as she passed the door where the body
lay, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy
victory?’” She died in January 1855, and was buried by
her brother’s side in Grasmere Churchyard.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch19' class='c004'>XIX<br/> <br/>SISTER DORA</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>One</span> of the most remarkable women who, in recent times,
have devoted themselves to nursing and to the service of
the sick poor, was Dorothy Wyndlaw Pattison, more
generally known by the name of Sister Dora. She was
a lady born and bred, well-educated, high-spirited, sweet-tempered,
and handsome; full of fun and sense of humour,
fond of hunting and other athletic exercises, and remarkably
fond of her own way. As her own way was generally a
good way, she was probably right in preferring it to the
ways of other people. Strong determination, when it does
not degenerate into stupid obstinacy, is one of the most
useful qualities any human being can have. In Sister
Dora’s case her strong will was a great secret of her success,
but it also, in a few instances, led her into errors, which
will easily be seen as the story of her life is told.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was born, in 1832, at Hauxwell, in Yorkshire, a
small village on the slope of a hill, looking towards the
moors and Wensleydale. Her father was the clergyman of
the village, and one of her brothers was the Rev. Mark
Pattison, the well-known scholar and the Rector of Lincoln
College, Oxford. Dorothy Pattison was first roused to
wish for something more than the ordinary occupations of
a young lady’s life by the enthusiasm felt throughout
England in 1856 for Miss Florence Nightingale’s work in
the Crimea. Dorothy wished to join Miss Nightingale’s
band of lady nurses at the seat of war, but her parents’
opposition and her own want of training prevented her
from carrying out this wish. From this time, however,
she fretted against the life of comparative inactivity to
which she was restricted so long as she remained in her
village home. Some years were passed (wasted, we well
may think) in unnecessary friction between herself and her
father, she desiring to leave home, and he opposing her
wishes in this respect. At last she did leave, in 1861,
more or less in face of her father’s opposition; he declined
to make her any allowance beyond what he had been
accustomed to give her for pocket-money and clothes, and
she had therefore to live partly on what she was able to
earn. She obtained work as a village schoolmistress at
Little Woolston, near Bletchley, and lived for three years
in a small cottage, quite alone, without even a servant;
her life at this time must have been very much like that
described in <cite>Jane Eyre</cite>, where the heroine gains her
livelihood for a time by similar work. She showed, as a
village schoolmistress, that keen sympathy with children
and power over them which always distinguished her.
She could enter, through her bright imagination, into the
feelings and thoughts of children, and her playfulness and
love of fun made her a real friend and companion to them.
At Little Woolston, too, she did a good deal of amateur
nursing for the parents and friends of her little pupils.
Her biographer, Miss Lonsdale,<SPAN name='r5' /><SPAN href='#f5' class='c015'><sup>[5]</sup></SPAN> says that the people in the
neighbourhood of the village were very quick to discover
that the new schoolmistress was a real lady, but for some time
they could not get over their astonishment if they found Miss
Pattison blacking her own grate when they came to see her.
She was, perhaps, the first instance they had come across
of a cultivated woman who thought that “being a lady”
was not inconsistent with working hard. Dirtiness, untidiness,
and muddle vex the soul of the “real lady” far more
than doing the work which produces cleanliness and order.</p>
<p class='c002'>After three years at Little Woolston, Miss Pattison
made what many must think was the great mistake of her
life. Her strong will has already been spoken of; she
had found by experience that she could not submit it even
to the control of her own father, to whom she was naturally
bound by strong feelings of affection. It was necessary to
her to have freedom and scope for her energies, and to
learn by self-government what she had failed to learn
through the government of others. Notwithstanding the
incompatibility of her nature with the absolute submission
required in such institutions, Miss Pattison joined a High
Church Sisterhood, at Coatham, called the Sisterhood of
the Good Samaritan. It was part of the discipline of the
sisterhood to require unquestioning obedience to all
commands. The reason, the feelings, the natural piety of
the novices were completely subordinated to obedience as
their first and paramount duty. By way of training in
unquestioning obedience, Sister Dora, as she was now called,
was subjected to various tests of submissiveness; one day,
for instance, after she had made all the beds, they were
pulled to pieces again by the order of the Superior, and she
was told to make them again. In some institutions of this
kind, after the floor has been carefully and thoroughly
scrubbed by a novice, some one enters, by order of the
Superior, with mud or ashes, and purposely makes it dirty
again; the novice is then ordered to return to her work
and scrub the floor once more, and she is expected to do
so without showing the least sign of disappointment or
annoyance. It may be true that this system fosters the
habit of unquestioning obedience, but if so it must be at
the expense of other and more valuable qualities. This
unnatural system is perverting to the moral sense and
judgment, as Sister Dora, a few years later, found to her
cost.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1865 she was sent by the sisterhood to Walsall, to
take part in the nursing in a small cottage hospital.
Towards the end of the year she received orders from the
sisterhood to leave this work and take work as a nurse in
a private case in the South of England. Walsall had not
been trained to habits of unquestioning obedience; its
inhabitants and the managers of the little hospital had
already discovered Sister Dora’s fine qualities as a nurse.
They resisted the order that would have deprived them of
her services. While negotiations on this subject were
proceeding between the Walsall people and the sisterhood
at Coatham, news reached Miss Pattison from Hauxwell,
to say that her father was dangerously ill and much desired
to see her. She telegraphed to the sisterhood, telling them
of her father’s serious illness, and asking permission to visit
him. The answer, which was returned almost immediately,
was a blank refusal, and she was bidden to proceed at once
to Devonshire to nurse a stranger. Incredible as this may
seem, it is still more incredible that the order was obeyed.
Miss Pattison had not escaped the paralysis of moral sense
which this cast-iron system produces; she turned her back
on her home and proceeded to Devonshire. Her father
died almost immediately, without ever seeing his daughter
again. The shock of this event roused Sister Dora from
the lethargy from which she had suffered. She was almost
broken-hearted, and deeply resented the dictation to which
she had been subjected. She ought to have seen, and
probably did see, that the will, like all other powers of the
mind and body, with which each one of us is endowed, is
given to us to be used; we are responsible for its right use,
and when we use it wrongly, as she did in this case (for it
must have needed a very strong effort of will to resist the
appeal of love and duty), it is we ourselves who must bear the
punishment and endure the anguish of our fault. She did
not immediately sever her connection with the sisterhood,
but she began from that time to be less completely in
thraldom to it. She finally quitted it in 1875, under
circumstances which have not been made public. When a
friend questioned her as to the cause, Sister Dora’s only
reply was, “I am a woman, and not a piece of furniture.”</p>
<p class='c002'>After her father’s death, Sister Dora returned to Walsall,
and in this place practically the whole of the rest of her
life was devoted to the service of the sick and of all who
were desolate and oppressed. She plunged into her work
with all the greater eagerness from her desire to forget
herself and the many inward troubles and anxieties which
oppressed her at this time. Her great desire was to become
a first-rate surgical nurse. Walsall has been described by
those who lived there as “one of the smokiest dens of the
Black Country,” and the workers in the various factories of
the locality were often frightfully injured by accidents with
the machinery, or by burns and scalds. Sister Dora
became marvellously skilful in what is known as “conservative
surgery,” that is, the art of saving a maimed and
crushed limb instead of cutting it off. A good old doctor
at the hospital taught her all he knew; but she outgrew
his instructions, and Miss Lonsdale gives an instance of a
case in which Sister Dora saved a man’s right arm from
amputation, in spite of the doctor’s strongly expressed
opinion that the man would die unless his arm were taken
off immediately. The arm was frightfully torn and twisted;
the doctor said it must be taken off, or mortification would
set in. Sister Dora said she could save the arm, and the
man’s life too. The patient was appealed to, and of the
two risks he chose the one offered by the Sister. The
doctor did not fail, proud as he was of his pupil, to remind
her that the responsibility of what he considered the
patient’s certain death would be on her head. She accepted
the responsibility, and devoted herself to her patient almost
night and day for three weeks, with the result that the arm
was saved. The doctor was the first generously to
acknowledge her triumph, and he brought the rest of his
medical colleagues to see what Sister Dora had done. The
patient’s gratitude was unbounded; he often revisited the
hospital simply to inquire for Sister Dora. He was known
in the neighbourhood as “Sister’s Arm.” During an illness
she had, this man used to walk every Sunday morning
eleven miles to the hospital to inquire for her. He would
say, “How’s Sister?” and on receiving a reply would add,
“Tell her it’s <em>her arm</em> that rang the bell,” and walk back
again. Sister Dora used to say when speaking of her
period of suspense and anxiety in this case, “How I prayed
over that arm!”</p>
<p class='c002'>She was particularly skilful in her treatment of burns;
sometimes she would take two poor little burnt or scalded
babies to sleep in her own room. Those who have had
experience in the surgical wards of hospitals know what
an overpowering and sickening smell proceeds from burnt
flesh. Sister Dora never seemed for a moment to think
of herself or of what was disagreeable and disgusting in
such cases as these. In one frightful accident in which
eleven poor men were so badly burned that they resembled
charred logs of wood more than human beings, nearly all
the doctors and nurses became sick and faint a few minutes
after they entered the ward where the sufferers lay, and
were obliged to leave. Among the nurses Sister Dora
alone remained at her post, and never ceased night or day
for ten days to do all that human skill could suggest to
alleviate the sufferings of the poor victims. Some died
almost immediately, some lingered for a week or ten
days; only two ultimately recovered. Her wonderful
courage was shown not only in her readiness to accept
responsibility, but in the way in which she was able to
keep up her own spirits, and to raise the spirits of the
patients through such a time of trial as this. She would
laugh and joke, and tell the sick folks stories, or do anything
that would help them to while away the time and
bear their sufferings with fortitude and courage. She
made her patients feel how much she cared for them,
and that all she did for them was a pleasure, not a
trouble. She used to provide them with a little bell,
which she told them to ring when they wanted her. One
poor man was reproached by the other patients for ringing
his bell so often, especially as when Sister Dora arrived
and asked him what he wanted, he not infrequently
answered that he did not know. But Sister Dora never
reproached him for ringing too often. “Never mind,” she
would say brightly, “for I like to hear it;” and she told
him that she often fancied when she was asleep that she
heard his little bell, and started up in a hurry to find it
was only a dream. She was so gay and bright and pleasant
in her ways, giving her patients comical nicknames,
and caressing and coaxing them almost as a mother would
a sick child, that they regarded her with a deep love and
veneration that frequently influenced them for good all the
rest of their lives. Twice while she was at Walsall, there
were frightful epidemics of small-pox, and on both occasions
she showed extraordinary courage and devotion. She did
not bear any charm against infection, and in fact generally
caught anything that was to be caught in the way of infectious
disease. Her courage, therefore, did not proceed
from any confidence in her own immunity from danger.
She deliberately counted the cost, and resolved to pay it,
for the sake of carrying on her work. At the first outbreak
of small-pox in Walsall there was no proper hospital
accommodation for the patients; and Sister Dora nursed
many of them in the overcrowded courts and alleys where
they lived. She was called in to one poor man who was
dying of a virulent form of the malady known as “black-pox.”
He was a frightful object: all his friends and relations,
except one woman, had forsaken him; when Sister
Dora arrived, she found there was only one small piece of
candle in the house, so she gave the woman money to go
out and buy candles, and other necessaries. The temptation
was too much for the poor woman, who must, after
all, have been better than the patient’s other relatives and
neighbours, for she had stayed with him when they had
run away. But when the professional nurse arrived and
gave her money, she ran away too, and Sister Dora was
left quite alone with the dying man. Just as the one bit
of candle flickered out, the poor man, covered as he was
with the terrible disease, raised himself in bed and said,
“Kiss me, Sister.” She did so, and the man sank back;
she promised she would not leave him while he was alive,
and his last hours were soothed by her presence. She
passed hours by his side in total darkness, uncertain
whether he were dead or alive; at last the gray light of
early dawn came, and she was at liberty. Her promise
was fulfilled; the man was dead.</p>
<p class='c002'>At the second outbreak of small-pox at Walsall, hospital
accommodation was provided for the patients; and the
ambulance, a sort of omnibus fitted up to convey a patient
and nurse, was frequently to be seen in the streets. Sister
Dora was as strong as she was courageous; she would come
to a house where a small-pox patient lay, and say she had
“come for” so-and-so. Resistance and excuses were no
good; she would take the patient, man or woman, in her
arms as easily as she would a baby, and carry the burden
down to the ambulance. Her presence cheered the whole
town, and prevented the spread of that dastardly panic
which sometimes comes over a place which is stricken by
disease. An eye-witness described how every one in the
town felt new courage at the sight of the ambulance and
Sister Dora, “with her jolly face smiling out of the
window.”</p>
<p class='c002'>She spent six months at the small-pox hospital in 1875;
and for a long time she was practically alone there with
the patients; the doctors of course came by day, and three
of her old patients constantly visited the hospital for the
sake of seeing if they could do anything for her; and there
were two nearly helpless old women from the workhouse,
who were supposed to do part of the work; but she was
absolutely alone as regards regular skilful assistance in the
nursing and other work. The porter did what he could,
showing his devotion by getting up early to scrub and
clean for her; but he could hardly ever resist the temptation
to go off “on the drink” whenever his wages were
paid; on these occasions he would absent himself for four
and twenty hours at a time. Once when this had happened,
and Sister Dora was quite alone, a delirious patient, a tall,
powerful man, flung himself out of bed in the middle of the
night, and rushed to the door trying to make his escape.
“She had no time for hesitation, but at once grappled
with him, all covered as he was with the loathsome disease
... she got him back to bed, and held him there by
main force till the doctor arrived in the morning.”</p>
<p class='c002'>One of the trials of her work was that the small-pox
patients were nearly all “alive” with vermin; added to
this was the horror of the all-pervading smell of pox; in
a letter to a friend, Sister Dora spoke of this, and said it
was impossible to get away from it. “I taste it in my
tea!” For months she never had her bonnet on, or went
even as far as the gate; and yet she was able to look back
on the time she spent in this hospital as one that had been
very much blessed to her. With her High Church feelings
about Lent, she wrote cheerfully in the letter already quoted,
“Is not this a glorious retreat for me in Lent? I can have
no idle chatter.” In another letter, she wrote, “I am still
a prisoner, surrounded by my lepers. I do feel so thankful
that I came.... I thank God daily for my life here.”</p>
<p class='c002'>Endless instances might be given of her physical and
moral courage; once, when she was in a third-class railway
carriage with a lot of rough navvies, who were swearing and
using horrible language, she boldly reproved them; they
laid hands on her, one of them exclaiming, “Hold your
jaw, you fool; do you want your face smashed in?” She
remained quite calm, not struggling, although they were
holding her down on the seat between them. When the
train reached a station, they let her go, and she got out of
the carriage, and one of the men begged her pardon, saying,
“Shake hands, mum! you’re a good plucked one, you are;
you were right, and we were wrong.” Another time in the
hospital, a half-drunken man, flashily dressed, rang the bell
in the night, and on the door being opened forced his way
into the hall, and demanded a bed. The night nurse on
duty was unable to get rid of him, and Sister Dora was
summoned. The man reiterated his determination to stay
all night, and Sister Dora contented herself with barring
his access to the patients by standing erect on the last step
of the stairs with her arms spread from the wall to the
balusters. The man seated himself opposite to her, the
nurse fled shrieking, and the two waited, staring at one
another, each hoping the other would be the first to tire of
the situation. Presently the man made a rush down the
passage towards the kitchen door, but Sister Dora was too
quick for him, and by the time he had reached it she was
there with her arms spread across it, as on the stairs, to bar
his way. She expected he would knock her down, but instead
of doing so he muttered some compliment to her
courage, and turned on his heel and left the place.</p>
<p class='c002'>She had a very strong personal influence for good on
the poor rough people, both men and women, for whom
she worked. Her religion was one more of deeds than of
words, and they saw that both in word and deed it was
genuine. Many a one has dated a new start in life from
the time he came under her care. Sometimes patients,
waking in the night, would find her praying by their bedsides,
and it touched them deeply to see how sincerely and
truly she cared for them. Although she had the hearty
sense of fun already alluded to, no man could ever venture
on a coarse word or jest in her presence, and she inspired
a good “tone” in the wards even when they were occupied
by the roughest and poorest. As time went on there was
hardly a slum or court in the lowest part of Walsall where
she was not known, and hardly a creature in the town that
did not feel he owed something to her. Although most of
her time was given to healing bodily troubles, all her patients
felt that she cared for something higher in them than their
bodies. She joined heartily in several missions that were
started with the object of reaching the lowest and most
outcast; she would go quite fearlessly at midnight into
the haunts of the most degraded men and women of the
town, and induce them, for a while at least, to pause and
consider what their lives had been given to them for.
Once, we are told, when she was on her way to a patient’s
house at night, she had to pass through one of the worst
slums of the town. A man ran out of a notorious public-house
and said, “Sister, you’re wanted; they’ve been fighting,
and a man’s hurt desperate.” Even she hesitated
momentarily, and the thought passed through her mind
that she might be murdered. But her hesitation did not
last sufficiently long to be visible; she followed the man immediately,
taking comfort characteristically in the thought,
“What does it matter if I am murdered?” To her astonishment,
as soon as she reached the group of men, brutalised
apparently almost below the level of humanity, a way was
respectfully made for her, and every hat was taken off as
she passed to the side of the wounded man.</p>
<p class='c002'>But the time was approaching when the hand of death
was to be laid upon this wonderful woman in the midst of
all her labours. She was only about forty-four years of
age, when she discovered that she was stricken by an incurable
and terribly painful disease. It was a sign both of
her strength and of her weakness that she insisted on keeping
this fact absolutely secret. She, who had always been
so strong, could not bear to acknowledge that her strength
had come to an end. She, who had been so ready to give
sympathy, could not bear to accept it. She went on with
her work, bearing her pain silently and proudly, and admitting
no one to her confidence. In order more completely
to conceal her illness, she left Walsall for a time; and those
who remained in charge of the hospital did not dream but
that her absence was merely temporary. With the knowledge
that her days on earth were numbered, she still went
on studying her profession. She attended some of Professor
Lister’s operations in London in order to become acquainted
with his antiseptic process, and she went to the Paris Exhibition
especially to study the surgical appliances shown there.
Then presently she came back to Walsall, in October 1878.
In November of the same year the Mayor opened a new
hospital in her name; she was too ill to be present. Up
to the last the townspeople could not believe that their
“dear lady” was really to be taken from them, especially
as her vitality was so strong that she rallied again and
again, when those about her thought that the end was
near at hand. She never lost her old habit of joking and
making fun out of the dismal circumstances of sickness.
Her arm, which became terribly swollen and helpless, she
nicknamed “Sir Roger,” and she laughed at her doctors
because she lived longer than they had predicted she would.
She quite chuckled over the idea that she had “done the
doctor again.” Her life was prolonged till 24th December
1878. The grief throughout the district when it was known
that death had removed her was overpowering. The veneration
and gratitude of the whole town found expression in
many schemes for memorials in her honour. The working
people wished most of all for a statue of their dear lady.
The wish was gratified, through Miss Lonsdale’s generous
aid, in the autumn of 1886. A pure white marble statue
now stands in a central position of the smoky town of
Walsall, commemorating the life and labours of one of the
best of this generation of Englishwomen. Her work is
another illustration of the text, “He that is greatest among
you, shall be your servant.”</p>
<div class='footnote' id='f5'>
<p class='c002'><SPAN href='#r5'>5</SPAN>. <cite>Sister Dora: a Biography.</cite> By Margaret Lonsdale.</p>
</div>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch20' class='c004'>XX<br/> <br/>MRS. BARBAULD</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Anne Letitia Barbauld</span> will probably be more remembered
for what she was than for what she did. At a
time when women’s education was at a very low ebb, and
when for a woman to be an authoress was to single herself
out for ungenerous sneers, attacks, and insinuations, Mrs.
Barbauld did much to raise the social esteem in which
literary women were held, and prove in her own person
that a popular authoress could be a devoted wife, daughter,
and sister.</p>
<p class='c002'>Mrs. Barbauld’s father was the Rev. John Aikin, a
Doctor of Divinity, much esteemed in Nonconformist circles
for his learning and piety. He was for nearly thirty years
the head of a well-known Nonconformist college at Warrington,
round which a little knot of learned and good
men gathered, who, it is said, did much to raise the tone,
intellectually and morally, of English society at a time
when Oxford and Cambridge were sunk in the deepest
lethargy, and had comparatively no influence for good in
any direction. Among the men, whose names afterwards
became honourably known, who were connected with the
social or educational life of the Warrington Academy, may
be mentioned Dr. Priestley, Dr. Enfield, the Rev. Gilbert
Wakefield, Howard the philanthropist, and Roscoe the
historian. In the midst of a society tempered by such good
influences as these, Anne Letitia Aikin grew from girlhood
to womanhood. She and her brother, John Aikin, four
years younger than herself, were the only children of their
parents. She was born at Kibworth, in Leicestershire, on
20th June 1743, where her father had a school before he
became the head of the Warrington Academy. Her mother
is said to have come to the singular conclusion that a girl
brought up in a boys’ school must either be a prude or a
tomboy, and Mrs. Aikin preferred the former. Judging
from a cameo portrait of Mrs. Barbauld, taken at the
request of her friend Josiah Wedgwood, she certainly looks
as if a good deal of her time had been spent in the enunciation
of the words “prunes, prisms, and propriety.” But
appearances are notoriously deceptive, and there is a nice
little story of Mrs. Barbauld’s girlhood, which shows that
her excellent mother did not succeed in entirely eradicating
the tomboy element from her daughter’s character. When
only fifteen years old, Anne had attracted the affections of
a Kibworth farmer, who made a formal application to Dr.
Aikin for his daughter’s hand. The Doctor, seeing his
daughter in the garden, gave the suitor leave to go and try
his fortunes. When she understood the nature of his
errand, her embarrassment was very great, for the dilemma
presented itself of having to say “No,” and yet to spare the
feelings of the swain; finding no other way out of the
difficulty, she ran up a tree, thus gaining the top of the
garden wall, and then, by one spring, the lane on the other
side, leaving her discomfited lover to admire her agility and
bewail its results.</p>
<p class='c002'>Anne was from her birth an extraordinarily precocious
child. Her mother wrote of her in after years, comparing
her with some less wonderful grandchildren, “I once, indeed,
knew a little girl who was as eager to learn as her
instructors could be to teach her, and who, at two years old,
could read sentences and little stories in her <em>wise book</em>,
roundly, without spelling, and in half a year more could
read as well as most women; but I never knew such
another, and I believe never shall.” Her father shared
sufficiently in the prejudices of the period to refuse for a
long time to impart to this gifted child any of the classical
learning of which he was the master, and in which she
ardently desired to share. At length she so far overcame
his scruples that she became able to read Latin with facility,
and gained some acquaintance with Greek. The fact that
her father was a schoolmaster no doubt enabled her to enjoy
many opportunities of instruction and education to which
the bulk of Englishwomen at that time were complete
strangers. At a time when it was thought enough education
for most women if they were able to read, “and perhaps
to write their names or so,” it is not surprising if schoolmasters’
daughters enjoyed an advantage in being able at
least to pick up the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table.</p>
<p class='c002'>Anne was thirty years of age before she made her first
appearance in print with a volume of verse in 1773; but
she appears to have been known as a poet in her own circle
of friends a few years earlier than this, as there is a letter
in existence from Dr. Priestley, dated 1769, in which he asks
permission to send a copy of her poem, called “Corsica,”
to Boswell, who was destined to future immortality as the
biographer of Dr. Johnson. Her first printed volume was
highly successful, and passed through four editions almost
immediately. Thus encouraged, Anne and her brother
shortly afterwards printed a joint-volume, called <cite>Miscellaneous
Pieces in Prose</cite>, which also attracted much attention
and commendation. In Rogers’s <cite>Table Talk</cite> an anecdote
is given about this volume which illustrates the amusing
mistakes sometimes arising from joint authorship. The
various articles in the book were not signed by their
respective authors, and on one occasion Charles James Fox,
meeting John Aikin at a dinner party, wished to compliment
him on his book. “I particularly admire,” he said,
“your essay, ‘Against Inconsistency in our Expectations.’”
“That,” replied Aikin, “is my sister’s.” “I much like,”
returned Fox, “your essay on Monastic Institutions.”
“That” answered Aikin, “is also my sister’s.” Fox thought
it best to say no more about the book.</p>
<p class='c002'>In the same year as that of the publication of this volume
of Essays, 1774, Anne Letitia Aikin became the wife of the
Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, a descendant of a French Protestant
family. Mr. Barbauld’s father had been chaplain
to the Electress of Hesse Cassel, a daughter of George II,
and the son had been intended for the Church of England.
He had, however, conscientious objections to taking orders
in that Church, and joined the Presbyterian body. Miss
Aikin was warned before her marriage that her future
husband had suffered already from an attack of insanity,
but with Quixotic devotion this only seemed to her an
additional reason why she should unite her life with his.
Her married life, notwithstanding many good qualities on
her husband’s part, was one of exceptional trial and loneliness.
Mr. Barbauld was liable throughout his life to fits of insanity,
which took the form of fierce and uncontrollable fury as
often as not directed against his wife. They settled at
Palgrave in Suffolk, and opened a boys’ school there. Mrs.
Barbauld was much urged by her friend Mrs. Montague to
open a school for girls, for the purpose of imparting to
them, in a regular manner, various branches of science, such
as did not then form an ordinary part of women’s education.
Mrs. Barbauld declined the task, giving various excuses,
such as her own want of proficiency in music and dancing,
and other feminine accomplishments. It may, however, be
not improbable that her real reason was one that could not
be avowed, and was to be found in the mental condition of
her husband. It must have been a sufficiently severe trial
to the strongest nerves to keep a boys’ school, and to know
that the head master and principal teacher was at any time
liable to fits of insane fury; but this would have been even
worse, it would have been a fatal objection, in a girls’ school.
Poor Mrs. Barbauld set herself with pathetic resolution to
make the best of the partner and the life she had chosen.
She seems immediately to have assumed she would never
have any children of her own, for within a year of her
marriage she adopted from his birth her nephew Charles,
her brother’s son. This was the little Charles from whom
<cite>The Early Lessons</cite> and <cite>Hymns in Prose</cite> were written. Very
few educational books for young children had then
been written, and Mrs. Barbauld set herself to supply the
deficiency. She discovered from practical experience the
sort of books children learn best from, and the kind of
paper and type that suited them best. Many of her friends
in the literary world thought she was wasting her talents
in such employment. Dr. Johnson is recorded in Boswell’s
life to have spoken very scornfully of what she was doing,
and set it all down to her having married a “little Presbyterian
parson.” It appears, however, in the anecdotes of
Johnson, collected by Mrs. Thrale, that though he might
have spoken in this way at times, his warm heart did not
fail to appreciate the devotion of Mrs. Barbauld’s talents to
the humble tasks which her marriage had rendered necessary.
“Mrs. Barbauld,” Mrs. Thrale wrote, “had his best praise,
and deserved it; no man was more struck than Mr. Johnson
with the voluntary descent from possible splendour to painful
duty.” She wrote herself in her preface to <cite>The Early
Lessons</cite>: “The task is humble, but not mean, for to lay
the first stone of a noble building and to plant the first
idea in a human mind can be no dishonour to any hand.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The school at Palgrave was successful mainly through
Mrs. Barbauld’s efforts; among the scholars were reckoned
many men of future distinction, such as the first Lord Denman
and William Taylor of Norwich. After eleven years of
courageous and exhausting work, the school was given up,
and Mr. Barbauld undertook the charge of a Presbyterian
church at Hampstead. The husband and wife here enjoyed
the friendship of Joanna Baillie and her sister, and here
some of Mrs. Barbauld’s best literary work was done. But
the terrible malady which had pursued her husband
throughout his life continued to darken their existence.
In order to be near her brother, and enjoy the protection
and solace of his society, Mrs. Barbauld left Hampstead in
1802, and removed to Stoke Newington, where Dr. Aikin
then lived. But Mr. Barbauld’s mania continued to increase,
and after a sudden attack which he made upon his wife
with a dinner knife, it became obvious that he must be put
under restraint. The unhappy man put an end to his own
life in 1808. After an interval, Mrs. Barbauld resumed
her literary work, bringing out an edition of English Novels
in 1810. In the following year she brought out a poem,
which she called “1811,” very strongly tinged with the
despondency which she felt regarding public affairs. She
had been bred as a Whig, to hope for great things from
the measures of emancipation with which that party had
always been identified. Her sympathies were rather with
the French Revolution than with the long-continued struggle
of England against Napoleon. The poem had a tone of
gloom and deep melancholy, which perhaps reflected more
of the writer’s personal despondency than the circumstances
justified. It is not a little curious that a passage in it is
credited with having suggested Lord Macaulay’s famous
prophecy that in years to come a New Zealander “will
from a broken arch of Blackfriars Bridge contemplate the
ruins of St. Paul’s.” The poem provoked a coarse and
insulting review in the <cite>Quarterly</cite>, with which it is to be
regretted that Southey’s name is now identified. Murray,
the proprietor of the <cite>Review</cite>, is said to have declared that he
was more ashamed of that article than of any that had ever
appeared in his magazine. Mrs. Barbauld’s friends, Miss
Edgeworth foremost among them, expressed their indignation
and sympathy; a more ungentlemanlike, unjust, and
insolent review, Miss Edgeworth said she had never read;
and she wrote an inspiriting letter to her friend, concluding
with the words, “Write on, shine out, and defy them.”
But at nearly seventy years of age Mrs. Barbauld was to
be excused if she felt that younger and stronger hands
must carry on the fight. The poem referred to was not
her last literary effort, but it was the last of her writings
published during her lifetime. Very little, perhaps, of her
work has permanent value; one poem, however, that
beginning “Life! I know not what thou art,” which was
written in extreme old age, will probably live as long as
anything in the language. It indicates possibly what she
might have done, had it not been for the tragedy of her
married life. Of two lines in this poem—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>Life, we’ve been long together,</div>
<div class='line'>Through pleasant and through cloudy weather—</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>Wordsworth declared that, though he was not in the habit
of grudging people their good things, he wished he had
written those lines. Her mental powers remained clear and
vigorous to the end of her long life. When she was past
eighty, writing to Miss Edgeworth, she summed up, as it
were, the worth of what she knew and did not know. “I
find that many things I knew, I have forgotten; many
things I <em>thought</em> I knew, I find I knew nothing about; some
things I know, I have found not worth knowing, and some
things I would give—oh! what would one not give to know,
are beyond the reach of human ken.”</p>
<p class='c002'>All her life through she laboured with her pen in defence
of civil and religious liberty, against the iniquities of the
slave trade, and for many other causes which have made
life more worth living in England to-day. She died,
universally honoured and respected, in 1825, aged eighty-two.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch21' class='c004'>XXI<br/> <br/>JOANNA BAILLIE</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Mrs. Joanna Baillie</span>, as she was usually called, because,
though she was never married, her age and literary
reputation were held to entitle her to brevet rank, was a
remarkable instance of a writer rapidly rising to the highest
pinnacle of fame, and then as rapidly and surely descending
almost to the common level of ordinary mortals. But the
Scotch woman, with the blood of heroes in her veins,
showed herself worthy of her descent, both by the modesty
and dignity with which she bore her fame, and by the
sweetness and unassuming simplicity with which she bore
the loss of it. She was descended from Sir William
Wallace, and the fame of this long-past ancestor is perhaps
equalled by that of another and a much nearer relative.
John Hunter, the great anatomist and physiologist, the
founder of the College of Surgeons, was her mother’s
brother. She therefore might truly feel, not in a figurative
sense, that in everything she was “sprung of earth’s first
blood”; and her double connection with the best and
greatest of the heroes of Scotland was probably not without
its influence on the development of her mind and character.</p>
<p class='c002'>She was born at Bothwell, near Glasgow, on the banks
of the Clyde, in 1762. In a poem addressed, near the
close of her life, to her sister Agnes, she recalls how they
had as children—</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line in10'>... paddled barefoot side by side,</div>
<div class='line'>Among the sunny shallows of the Clyde.</div>
</div></div>
</div>
<p class='c002'>Her father was a minister of the Scotch Church, and
afterwards a Professor of Divinity in the University of
Glasgow. His death in 1778, and the establishment of
his son Matthew in the medical profession in London,
caused Mrs. Baillie and her daughters, Joanna and Agnes,
to remove there in 1784; and in London practically the
rest of the future poetess’s long life was spent. Her first
work was a volume of verse published anonymously in
1790. The first of her series of dramas, called <cite>Plays on
the Passions</cite>, was published in 1798. These were also
published without the author’s name. They made an
immediate and very widespread impression; and their
author was frequently, and by the very best judges, lauded
as being equal, if not superior, to Shakespeare. The idea
of these dramas, and of those in the successive volumes
which appeared in 1802 and 1812, was to delineate a
single dominant passion, such as hatred, envy, etc.; and
each of the passions thus treated was made the subject first
of a tragedy, then of a comedy. The language employed
is easy, dignified, and simple: and it is probable that the
contrast Joanna Baillie’s dramas afforded in this respect to
the dramas of the generation closing with the death of Dr.
Johnson, was the reason of the great hold which they at
once obtained upon the public mind. It is not easy in any
other way to account for their extraordinary popularity.
The time in which Joanna Baillie lived was one marked
by a literary revolution, in which the formal, stilted, and
didactic manner was overthrown, and poets and great
writers sought to express their thoughts in simple and
natural language. The leaders of this literary revolution
were Wordsworth and Coleridge. In the great movement
identified with their names Joanna Baillie bore a humbler,
but a useful and effective part.</p>
<p class='c002'>When Joanna Baillie’s first volume of plays appeared,
there was much speculation as to their possible authorship.
Samuel Rogers, the banker, poet, and critic, thought that
they were written by a man. It seems to have been
difficult, at the end of the last century, for the great judges
in the literary world to conceive that a poem, worthy of
praise, could be of female authorship. Even so late as
1841, a writer in the <cite>Quarterly Review</cite>, writing upon
Joanna Baillie’s poetical works, puts the coping-stone upon
the praise which he bestows upon her style and diction by
saying that they are “masculine.” He says, “Let us again
express our admiration of the wonderful elasticity and
<em>masculine</em> force of mind exhibited in this vast collection of
dramas;” and in another place the writer says, “The
spirit breathing everywhere is a spirit of <em>manly</em> purity and
moral uprightness.” We should say, at the present day,
that there is certainly force of mind in Joanna Baillie’s
dramas, but that it is feminine, not masculine in character,
and that the spirit of purity which breathes through them
is essentially the womanly spirit. She had particular
power and skill in the delineation of female characters,
especially those of an unusual degree of elevation and
purity. This in itself would have sufficiently betrayed the
sex of the writer now when people have had far wider
opportunities of judging of the differences between men
and women as authors. Thackeray could give us an Ethel
Newcome and a Becky Sharp, but women were needed to
give us a Dorothea, a Marion Erle, or a Shirley Keeldar.
Mrs. Siddons, the great actress, was charmed by the
character of Jane de Montfort in Joanna Baillie’s Tragedy
on Hatred. The play called <cite>De Montfort</cite> was put
upon the stage by John Kemble, the brother of Mrs.
Siddons: they both appeared in it. It ran for eleven
nights, but it was not successful on the stage. Joanna’s
complete ignorance of what was requisite for the success
of a play upon the stage foredoomed her to failure; the
audience was, in the first act, let into the secret upon which
the plot of the whole play turned, consequently as the
drama proceeded the interest in it, instead of becoming
more and more intense, gradually dwindled away, until in
the fifth act it had quite evaporated. Mrs. Siddons, whose
admiration for the character of Jane de Montfort has been
already mentioned, is said to have remarked to the poetess,
“Make me some more Jane de Montforts”—a request
which does not appear to have been gratified. In all, five
of Joanna Baillie’s plays were put upon the stage—two of
them, called <cite>Constantine and Valeria</cite> and <cite>The Family
Legend</cite>, had a considerable degree of success. <cite>The
Family Legend</cite> was brought out in Edinburgh in 1809,
under the special patronage of Sir Walter Scott, who wrote
the prologue of the play. At a later date it was reproduced
in London.</p>
<p class='c002'>The authorship of Joanna Baillie’s first volume of plays
did not long remain a secret. Sir Walter Scott was the
first to make a successful guess as to the personality of the
writer; and the discovery led to the formation of a warm
friendship between him and Joanna, which only terminated
with his life. Many of Scott’s most delightful and characteristic
letters were written to her. It was perhaps Scott’s
too generous appreciation of Joanna’s powers as a dramatist
that led to her plays being so much overrated, as they
certainly were when they first appeared. Scott compared
her to Shakespeare. Miss Mitford followed suit, saying of
her sister-writer, “Her tragedies have a boldness and grasp
of mind, a firmness of hand, and resonance of cadence that
scarcely seem within the reach of a female writer.” Byron
made her an exception to his sweeping generalities concerning
the female sex, saying, “Woman (save Joanna Baillie)
cannot write tragedy.”</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1825 the golden mists which had surrounded the
sunrise of her literary life had melted away. Charles
Lamb was too keen a critic probably to have been carried
away by the stream of fashion at any time; but in the year
mentioned, writing to his friend Bernard Barton, he says:
“I think you told me your acquaintance with the drama
was confined to Shakespeare and Miss Baillie: some read
only Milton and Croly. The gap is as from an ananas to
a turnip.” Lamb’s contemptuous reference measures the
rapid fall from the heights of fame which Joanna Baillie
endured, and endured without any failure of sweetness and
dignity of character.</p>
<p class='c002'>Joanna Baillie’s day as a poetess was of short duration:
it is now chiefly as a woman that she charms and helps us.
Her house at Hampstead was for many years a meeting-place
for those who were most worth meeting, either for talent
or goodness; her kindly and gentle influence brought out
all that was best in her guests and companions. In Miss
Martineau’s autobiography she has something to say about
nearly all the lions and lionesses of the literary London of
her day, and she singles out our poetess for special commendation.
“There was Joanna Baillie,” she writes,
“whose serene and gentle life was never troubled by the
pains and penalties of vanity; what a charming spectacle
was she! Mrs. Barbauld’s published correspondence tells
of her in 1800, as a ‘young lady of Hampstead whom I
visited, and who came to Mr. Barbauld’s meeting, all the
while with as innocent a face as if she had never written a
line.’ That was two years before I was born. When I
met her about thirty years afterwards, there she was, still
‘with as innocent a face as if she had never written a line!’
And this was after an experience which would have been
a bitter trial to an author with a particle of vanity. She
had enjoyed a fame almost without parallel, and had outlived
it. She had been told every day for years, through
every possible channel, that she was second only to
Shakespeare, if second; and then she had seen her works
drop out of notice, so that, of the generation who grew up
before her eyes, not one in a thousand had read a line of
her plays; yet was her serenity never disturbed, nor her
merry humour in the least dimmed” (<cite>Autobiography</cite>, vol.
i. p. 385).</p>
<p class='c002'>This serene and happy temperament accompanied Joanna
throughout her long life. She went on writing till past
eighty, and lived to the great age of eighty-nine. Her
sister Agnes, her inseparable friend and companion, lived
to be over a hundred, and preserved her faculties clearly
to the end. Joanna Baillie was never ill. The day before
her death she expressed a strong desire to die. She
went to bed, apparently in her usual health, but was
found to be in a state of coma in the morning, and she
died on the afternoon of the same day, 23d February
1851.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch22' class='c004'>XXII<br/> <br/>HANNAH MORE</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Miss Charlotte M. Yonge’s</span> charming little biography of
Hannah More brings strikingly before us the picture of the
authoress of <cite>Cœlebs in Search of a Wife</cite>, and also depicts in
a way that will not easily be forgotten, some of the more
striking contrasts between the present day and the England
of eighty or ninety years ago. There are some who are
always inclined to say “the old is better”; but they must
be very curiously constituted who can look back on the
social condition of our country at the end of the last century
and beginning of this, without being filled with amazement
and thankfulness at the improvement that has taken place.</p>
<p class='c002'>It is not so generally remembered as it ought to be,
that the second half of Hannah More’s life was devoted to
the service of the poor, especially to the spread of some
measure of education and civilisation in the then almost
savage districts in the neighbourhood of Cheddar, and of
the Mendip Hills. Yet even so advanced an educationalist
as Hannah More thought that on no account should the
poor be taught to write. In a letter to Bishop Beadon,
describing her system of instruction for the poor children
in the parishes immediately under her care, she says: “They
learn on week-days such coarse work as may fit them for
servants. <em>I allow of no writing for the poor.</em> My object is
not to make fanatics, but to train up the lower classes in
habits of industry and piety.” We cannot have a more
apt illustration of the fact that the advanced reformer of
one generation may become, by the natural growth of
society, the type of what is most exaggeratedly retrograde
in the next. It would be very ungenerous and short-sighted
on our part to condemn Hannah More for her
narrowness of view. She belonged to a day when the
farmers in the village, where she sought to establish a
Sunday school, begged her to desist because “religion
would be the ruin of agriculture, and had done nothing
but mischief ever since it had been brought in by the
monks at Glastonbury.” At another place her educational
schemes were so stoutly opposed by all the leading inhabitants
that it was impossible to obtain for the school the
shelter of any roof, and the children were accordingly assembled
to sing a few hymns under an apple-tree. They
were soon, however, driven from this shelter by the fears
of the owner of the tree, who said he was afraid the hymn
singing was “methody,” and that “methody” had blighted
an apple-tree belonging to his mother!</p>
<p class='c002'>Even these examples of ignorance and superstition
might possibly, however, be matched at the present day.
More thoroughly significant of a state of things that is
past and gone for ever, is the following incident. “On a
Sunday,” about the year 1790, “in the midst of morning
service the congregations in the Bristol churches were
startled by the bell and voice of the crier, proclaiming the
reward of a guinea for a poor negro girl who had run
away.” The idea of property in human beings is one that
is now universally abhorrent; but less than a hundred
years ago the loss of such property could be cried in the
midst of congregations assembled to acknowledge the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of humanity,
and it was only one here and there among the worshippers
who felt the blasphemy and the mockery of the proceeding.</p>
<p class='c002'>As an illustration of the extreme hardships endured by
the poor before the era of steam manufactures had set in,
we learn that the difficulty in obtaining clothes was so
great that at Brentford, close to London, thrifty parents
bought rags by the pound, and made clothing for their
children by patching the pieces together. Brushes and
combs, it is added, were entirely unknown. It is no exaggeration,
therefore, to say that the poorest beggar of the
present day can, if he choose, be more luxuriously clad and
cared for than the children of the thrifty poor a hundred
years ago. The difference in morals is as great as the
difference in manners and education. Hannah More heard
a charity sermon, in which the preacher, a dignified ecclesiastic,
propounded that “the rich and great should be extremely
liberal in their charities, because they <em>were happily
exempted from the severer virtues</em>.” This was the old Papal
practice of the sale of indulgences appearing again in a Protestant
dress. No wonder, if this was a type of the Gospel
that was preached to the rich, that Patty, Hannah’s sister,
was accustomed to say that she had good hope that the
hearts of some of the “rich poor wretches” might be touched
by her sister’s eloquence.</p>
<p class='c002'>The change of manners may be illustrated by the following
anecdote. Hannah More, in the height of her literary
celebrity, was asked to sit next the Bishop of Chester,
Dr. Porteous, at dinner, and make him talk. She pressed
him to take a little wine. He replied, “I can’t drink a
<em>little</em>, child: therefore I never touch it. Abstinence is easy
to me; temperance would be difficult.”</p>
<p class='c002'>These were days when Edmund Spenser was not considered
a poet, and when Dryden and Pope were preferred
to Shakespeare. Hannah, however, defended Milton’s
<cite>L’Allegro</cite>, <cite>Il Penseroso</cite>, and <cite>Lycidas</cite>, against the strictures
of Dr. Johnson; though they found themselves in entire
agreement in depreciating Milton’s sonnets. Johnson’s
simile for a sonnet was “a bead carved out of a cherry
stone.” The noble and solemn music of Milton’s majestic
sonnets certainly did not harmonise with Johnson’s image,
and, therefore, as Milton’s sonnets were not pretty playthings,
it was agreed that he could not write sonnets.</p>
<p class='c002'>The bigotry and narrowness of religious criticism at
that day may be measured by the fact, which Hannah
mentions in one of her letters, that her book on <cite>Practical
Piety</cite> had been attacked by the Calvinists as giving a sanction
to idolatry, because she had spoken of the sun as “he.”
She did not altogether escape being tarred with the same
brush, if we may judge from the passage in <cite>Cœlebs</cite>, where
she makes Mr. Stanley complain of Day’s <cite>Sandford and
Merton</cite>, and other books which had lately been written for
the young, that there was “no intimation in them of the
corruption of human nature, and thus that they contradict
the catechism when it speaks of being ‘born in sin, and the
children of wrath.’” She could not help, it appears, taking
her religion sadly, as English people are supposed to take
their pleasures. There was, however, a great fund of
natural gaiety and light-heartedness in her, but whether
she considered this one of the results of being a child of
wrath or not, she did not seem to think gaiety, any more
than writing, was a thing to be encouraged in the poor.
She describes a great meeting of the schools founded by
herself in the Mendip Hills. This annual “Mendip feast”
took the form of what we should now call a gigantic school
treat. The schools established were spread over an area
of twenty-eight miles, and nearly the whole population of
the villages, to the number of seven or eight thousand
people, attended. The children were generously regaled
on substantial fare. But nothing in the form of a game
or a festivity of any kind was permitted. The singing of
“God save the King” “is the only pleasure in the form of
a song we ever allow.... The meeting,” she says again,
“took its rise from religious institutions. The day passed
in the exercise of duties, and closed with joy. Nothing of
a gay nature was introduced....”</p>
<p class='c002'>One cannot help thinking, on reading this, that she had
only herself to thank if, in spite of all her talents and goodness,
her name became a byword for severity and primness.
Charles Lamb speaks in one of his early letters of “out-Hannahing
Hannah More”; and she herself tells what she
states is a true story, illustrating the way in which she was
regarded in circles where childish merriment was not discountenanced:
“A lady gave a very great children’s ball,”
wrote Miss Hannah, somewhere about 1792: “at the upper
end of the room, in an elevated place, was dressed out a
figure to represent me, with a large rod in my hand, prepared
to punish such naughty doings.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The pity of this was that her natural disposition seems
to have been sprightly and gay enough; her verses and
other compositions often show a very pretty wit. If she
had been as merry when she undertook her great work on
the Mendips, as she was in the days when she was the friend
and constant companion of Garrick, Johnson, and Horace
Walpole, the general impression left by her character would
have been a much more attractive one. Miss Yonge thinks
that the chief reason of the austerity of her religion is to
be found in the low condition of morals at the time. “There
was scarcely,” she writes, “an innocent popular song in existence,
simple enough,” ... “and unconnected with evil, and
the children and their parents were still too utterly rough
and uncivilised to make it safe to relax the bonds of restraint
for a moment.” We cannot think that this excuse is altogether
valid: the age that had produced “John Gilpin” and
“Goody Two Shoes” can hardly be said to be without one
innocent popular song or story which would amuse children.
The gloomy complexion given to religion by the school of
which Hannah More was a member has a great deal to
answer for; in some temperaments, among whom the poet
Cowper may be quoted as a type, the gentle and sensitive
nature was plunged into profound and morbid melancholy
which wrecked the whole existence of its victim; in others,
of a more energetic and rebellious character, it produced a
violent reaction, not only against religion, but against all
moral order, and every kind of restraint. Just as the excesses
of the reign of Charles II. followed the grim and rigid
piety of Puritan England, so the orgies of the Prince Regent
and his boon companions followed the austere and mirth-killing
religion of the early evangelicals. About the time
of which we are now writing, a serious attack was made in
one of the religious papers upon Jane Taylor, the joint
authoress with her sister of <cite>Hymns for Infant Minds</cite>, because
in one of her stories she had represented, without
reprobation, a family party of young children enjoying a
dance together. When people impute wickedness to actions
that are in themselves innocent and harmless, they are
tampering with and weakening their own moral sense, and
that of all those brought within their influence. To invent
sins generally ends in manufacturing sinners.</p>
<p class='c002'>Hannah More, the youngest but one of five sisters,
daughters of Jacob More, master of the school at Stapleton,
near Bristol, was born about 1745. Her father belonged
to a Norfolk family, several members of which had been
numbered amongst Cromwell’s Ironsides. Jacob More,
however, forsook the family traditions both in politics
and religion. He became a churchman and a Tory; and
this may have been the cause of his leaving the home of
his fathers, and settling in the West Country. He here
married a farmer’s daughter, of whom little is known except
that she persuaded her husband to impart his classical
and mathematical learning to his clever little daughter,
and that by many acts of motherly sympathy she encouraged
her children to use the talents with which Nature had
very liberally endowed them. The five sisters, Mary, Betsy,
Sally, Hannah, and Patty, were a tribe of whom any mother
might have been proud. Hannah and Patty were inseparable,
sharing every hope and every occupation and possession.
Their taste was for literature. Sally was the wit
of the family. Mary and Betsy supplied the practical,
housewifely element in the quintet. As a little girl,
Hannah’s two ambitions were to “live in a cottage too
low for a clock, and to go to London to see bishops and
booksellers!” At the age of twenty-one, Mary More set
up a school on her own account in Bristol. Betsy and
Sally were her assistants, and Hannah and Patty were
among the first batch of pupils. Sally in after years thus
described this adventurous proceeding to her friend Dr.
Johnson: “We were born with more desires than guineas.
As years increased our appetites the cupboard at home
grew too small to gratify them; and with a bottle of
water, a bed, and a blanket, we set out to seek our fortunes.
We found a great house with nothing in it—and
it was like to remain so—till, looking into our knowledge-boxes,
we happened to find a little <em>larning</em>—a good thing
when land is gone, or rather none, and so at last, by giving
a little of this larning to those who had none, we got a
good store of gold in return” (pp. 6, 7, Miss Yonge’s
<cite>Hannah More</cite>).</p>
<p class='c002'>Hannah’s unusual abilities soon began to attract notice.
She wrote a play for school acting, which had a great
success; we are told how on one occasion, when she was
ill (her health was always delicate), her doctor was so
carried away by the charm of her conversation that he
forgot to make any inquiries about her health; he took
his leave, and was on the point of departing from the
house, when he returned with the inquiry, “And how are
you, my poor child?”</p>
<p class='c002'>Hannah’s first visit to London was about 1772 or 1773,
when she was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. She
saw the first performance of Sheridan’s <cite>Rivals</cite>, and sagely
remarks that the writer must be treated with indulgence,
for that “much is to be forgiven in an author of twenty-three,
whose genius is likely to be his principal inheritance.”
She was introduced to Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua’s sister,
and this lady promised to make her known to Dr. Johnson.
She saw Garrick, the great actor, in <cite>King Lear</cite>, and was so
much impressed by him that she wrote a long description
of his acting in a letter that was handed about among her
friends and gained a sort of half publicity, as seems to have
been not unusual at that time. This letter paved the way
for an introduction to Garrick and his wife, and Hannah
More became one of their most intimate and valued friends.
Garrick encouraged Hannah to write for the stage, and
some of her pieces, under his fostering care, had an astonishing
degree of success. Garrick’s favourite name for the
poetess was “Nine,” by way of delicate comparison with the
nine muses. Horace Walpole used to call her “Saint
Hannah.” Dr. Johnson called her “a saucy girl,” perhaps
the nicest epithet of the three. When Garrick died,
Hannah was one of the ladies admitted to Westminster
Abbey to witness his funeral. Hannah spent the first year
of her friend’s widowhood with Mrs. Garrick at her house
near Hampton; and on many other occasions it was shown,
in a similar way, that Hannah was one on whom her friends
were accustomed to depend for sympathy and support in
the darkest hours of mourning and sorrow. After Garrick’s
death Hannah never visited a theatre again. She did not
even go to see her own play, <cite>The Fatal Falsehood</cite>, which
Garrick had been preparing to put on the stage at the time
of his death.</p>
<p class='c002'>From the time of her first entry into London society
she seems to have had access to all that was best in the
world of literature and art, and to have played a distinguished
part there. It is, therefore, the more to her
credit that she turned from this gay and brilliant life in
order to devote herself to the work of education and
civilisation among the poor people of Cheddar and the
Mendips.</p>
<p class='c002'>She and her sister Patty had settled in a pretty cottage
home called Cowslip Green, in the parish of Wrington,
Bristol. Here they were visited by their friends from the
great world, and hence they, in their turn, made their
annual visit to London. Mention has already been made
of the painful impression produced in Hannah on hearing,
in a Bristol church, the loss of a negro girl proclaimed by
the crier in the midst of the morning service. She was a
woman much influenced by her friendships. She had been
a poetess and dramatist under the influence of Johnson and
Garrick; Wilberforce and John Newton (Cowper’s friend)
had now awakened in her a passion of pity for slaves and
a passion of hatred against slavery. Miss Yonge states
that Hannah was before this a friend of Lady Middleton,
“who had first inspired William Wilberforce with the idea
of his great work in life; and on going to make her annual
visit to Mrs. Garrick in the winter of 1787, she first heard
of the Bill that was to be introduced into Parliament for
the abolition of slavery.” In 1789 William Wilberforce
came to spend a few days with the Misses More, at Cowslip
Green. By way of showing him the beauties of the
neighbourhood the ladies sent him to see the picturesque
cliffs and caves of Cheddar. When their guest returned
he was remarkably silent; the food that had been sent
with him was untasted, and he remained for some hours
alone in his room. His hostesses naturally feared that he
was ill; but when he rejoined them they discovered that
instead of admiring the natural beauties of Cheddar, the
tender heart of the future emancipator of the slaves had
been wholly engrossed by the evidences which had presented
themselves of human depravity, misery, and neglect. The
inhabitants of the picturesque region were almost savages;
their poverty was frightful; there was no sort of attempt
at education of any kind; there were no resident clergymen;
the people were utterly lawless; it was unsafe for a
decent person to go amongst them unprotected; writs
could not be served but at risk of the constable being
thrown down some cliff or pit. These things Wilberforce
had discovered, and they obscured for him all the pleasure
which pretty scenery could afford. “Miss More,” he said,
“something must be done for Cheddar;” and after much
consultation and thought, before he went away, he again
charged the ladies with the task of civilising and educating
the wild district which lay at their doors, adding, “If you
will be at the trouble, I will be at the expense.”</p>
<p class='c002'>From this time the sisters led a new life. It is true
that Hannah did not give up her literary pursuits; she
laboured with her pen as well as with other instruments
in pursuit of her end. But now the main object of both
Patty and Hannah was to educate and reclaim the inhabitants
of the districts which have been named. The work,
merely from a physical point of view, was by no means
light. There were no roads, or such bad ones that the
only practical means of travelling was on horseback. Their
first task was to endeavour to gain the goodwill and
assistance of the farmers and gentry. Patty says of some of
these, “They <SPAN name='are'></SPAN>are as ignorant as the beasts that perish;
intoxicated every day before dinner, and plunged into such
vice that I begin to think London a virtuous place.” Such
clergy as did occasionally visit the district might as well
have stayed away. Of one Patty says, “Mr. G—— is
intoxicated about six times a week, and very frequently is
prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly
earned by fighting.” The sisters showed their good sense,
as well as their benevolence, by finding out and utilising
whatever in the way of a good influence existed in the
district. They rejected no help because the helper did not
conform to their particular pattern of orthodoxy. They
did not hesitate, although they were strict churchwomen,
to engage a Methodist to act as mistress in one of their
Sunday schools. They soon had thirteen villages under
their care, and an improvement began to be visible in
nearly all of them. Of one of them, Congresbury, Hannah
wrote describing the first opening of the school: “It was
an affecting sight. Several of the grown-up youths had
been tried at the last assizes, three were the children of a
person lately condemned to be hanged, many thieves, all
ignorant, profane, and vicious beyond belief. Of this banditti
we have enlisted one hundred and seventy; and
when the clergyman, a hard man, who is also the magistrate,
saw these creatures kneeling round us, whom he had seldom
seen but to commit or punish in some way, he burst into
tears. I can do them little good, I fear, but the grace of
God can do all....”</p>
<p class='c002'>The Misses More did not escape bitter persecution and
misrepresentation in their good work. A Mr. Bere, curate
of Wedmore, distinguished himself by his furious hostility
to them. He threatened them with penal proceedings for
teaching without a license, induced the farmers to make
formal complaint to the Archdeacon against them, and
obtained an affidavit from a half-witted young man, whom
they had befriended, making personal charges against them.
Influential friends, however, came to the ladies’ assistance.
The good Bishop said, “When he heard it was Miss Hannah
More he knew it was all right.” But the persecution they
endured was not without its effect on their health and
spirits. Hannah was laid up for about two years at this
time, and was unable to pursue her work amongst her poor
scholars.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1802 the sisters removed from Cowslip Green to
Barley Wood; here Hannah wrote some of her best known
books. None of her works is better known, at least by
name, than <cite>Cœlebs in Search of a Wife</cite>. Here also, by
the request of Queen Charlotte, she wrote a book of advice
on the education of Princess Charlotte, who, it was thought,
was destined to become Queen of England. <cite>The Shepherd
of Salisbury Plain</cite> was written at Cowslip Green, as one
of a large series of simple stories for the poor, intended by
the sisters to counteract and undersell popular literature
of an objectionable character. The Misses More produced
three of these tracts a month, and it is calculated that more
than two millions were sold in a year. By many <cite>The
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain</cite> was considered Hannah More’s
masterpiece. Wilberforce said he “would rather present
himself before Heaven with the <cite>Shepherd</cite> in his hand than
with <cite>Peveril of the Peak</cite>.”</p>
<p class='c002'>At Barley Wood Hannah experienced the great and
unavoidable calamity of old age, the gradual loss, by death,
of the friends and allies of her youth. Johnson, Burke,
Reynolds, and Garrick were dead long ago, and the brilliant
society in London, of which Hannah had formed part, had
lost many of its stars. One by one, death laid its hand on
the members of the More sisterhood, till Hannah and Patty,
the lifelong friends and companions, were the only two
left. In September 1819, Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce being
on a visit to the sisters, Patty sat up till a late hour of the
night talking to her guests of old days, and Hannah’s first
introduction to London. In the morning the first news
that met the visitors’ ears was that Patty was dying. She
lingered about a week, but never regained consciousness,
and then Hannah was left quite alone, the last of all the
five. But her friends gathered round her, and her vigorous
intellect and strong sense of duty did not allow her to be
idle. She still had vivacity enough to write humorous
letters and verses, and to poke fun at what she considered
the misdirected zeal of some educationalists.</p>
<p class='c002'>A few years before her death, Hannah More removed
to Windsor Terrace, Clifton. Her old age was cheered
by the companionship of a friend, Miss Frowd, of whom
Miss More wrote, she is “my domestic chaplain, my house
apothecary, knitter and lamplighter, missionary to my
numerous and learned seminaries, and, without controversy,
the queen of clubs” (penny clubs). When an old lady of
more than eighty can write in this buoyant strain, it is the
more to be regretted that she seemed to have thought
gaiety was a thing it was dangerous to encourage a taste
for in the poor. Still, though we cannot help regretting
this, we shall do well if we can imitate, in however humble
a degree, her unselfish devotion to goodness and the way
in which she spent the best years of her life in trying to
improve the lot of the most destitute and miserable of her
neighbours. She lived to be eighty-eight. She had no
long illness, and no failure of any of her mental faculties,
except that of memory. Her body became gradually
weaker, and she longed for death. One day “she stretched
out her arms, crying, ‘Patty! joy!’” She never spoke
again, dying a few hours later, on 7th September 1833.</p>
<div class='chapter'>
<h2 id='ch23' class='c004'>XXIII<br/> <br/>THE AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTS<br/> <br/>PRUDENCE CRANDALL AND LUCRETIA MOTT</h2></div>
<p class='c005'><span class='sc'>Everybody</span> is an Abolitionist now. There is not, probably,
in any part of Europe or the United States a single human
being who would now defend slavery as an institution, or
who thinks that for man to own property in his fellow-man,
to be able to buy and sell him and dispose of his whole life,
is not a sin and an outrage against all feelings of humanity.</p>
<p class='c002'>Slavery was put an end to in the British Dominions nearly
seventy years ago, but it is only twenty-six years since it
was abolished in the United States of America. The time
is well within the memory of many persons now living
when to be an Abolitionist, even in the New England
States, was to be hated and reviled, to render one’s self the
object of the bitterest persecution, to risk comfort, happiness,
and even life. In England the Abolitionist party was
headed by men like Wilberforce, Clarkson, Macaulay, and
Buxton, who all enjoyed the advantages belonging to
education, good social position, and comparative wealth.
It was always “respectable” in England to be an Abolitionist,
and it was not necessary to possess the courage and
devotion of a martyr to declare one’s hatred of slavery.
But in the United States it was quite otherwise. Great
and influential people of all parties there were for many
years vehemently opposed to the emancipation of the slaves.
Even as late as 1841 Miss Martineau describes the great
sensation made among “the <i><span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">élite</span></i> of intellectual Boston”
when they found that Lord Morpeth (afterwards the Earl
of Carlisle), who was then on a visit to the United States
of America, had openly expressed his sympathy with the
principles of the Abolitionists.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1835 the Boston mob dragged William Lloyd
Garrison, the leader of the American Abolitionists, through
the streets with a rope round his neck; and his life was
only saved from their fury through the stratagem of the
Mayor, who committed him to gaol as a disturber of the
peace. In 1841 the feeling against the Abolitionists was
a little less violent; but “anti-slavery opinions were at
that time in deep disrepute in the United States; they
were ‘vulgar,’ and those who held them were not noticed
in society, and were insulted and injured as often as
possible by genteeler people and more complaisant republicans.”
It was a matter of great astonishment to the
polite world of Boston that the English aristocrat made no
secret of the fact that he shared the opinions of the despised
and hated Abolitionists.</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1828 Garrison was a poor lad, working for his living as
a printer; he determined to devote himself to the gigantic
task of freeing his country from the curse of slavery. He
began to print with his own hands and publish an anti-slavery
paper called the <cite>Liberator</cite>. He wandered up and
down the United States as an anti-slavery lecturer; by and
by a few friends began to gather round him, and those
who shared his principles and his enthusiasm gradually
made themselves known to him. In 1833, being then
twenty-eight years old, he received a letter from a young
Quaker lady, Miss Prudence Crandall, who asked his advice
under the following circumstances: Two years previously
she had bought a large house at Canterbury, in the State of
Connecticut, and had started there a boarding-school for
girls. She had flourished beyond her expectations, and had
every prospect of forming a highly successful school. She
wrote to Garrison and asked his advice about changing her
white scholars for coloured ones. She says in her letter,
very simply, not giving herself any airs of martyrdom, “I
have been for some months past determined, if possible,
during the remainder of my life to benefit the people of
colour.” Under these quiet words lay a firmness of purpose
that would have supported her to the stake if need
were. She did not, on that occasion, tell Garrison that
she had already admitted to her classes, not as a boarder,
but as a day scholar, a very respectable young negro woman,
whose family she knew well as members of the church which
she herself attended. By this action she had given great
offence to the “genteel” inhabitants of Canterbury. The
wife of an Episcopal clergyman who lived in the town told
her that if she retained “that coloured girl” the school
would be ruined. Prudence replied, that though the school
might be ruined she would not turn her scholar out. She
soon discovered that many of her pupils would leave, not to
return, if the coloured girl were retained, but this did not
shake her resolution. She began to consider whether it
would not be possible to have a school for coloured girls
only; and upon this point, not saying anything of her
own sacrifices, she wrote, as before mentioned, to consult
Garrison. Very soon after the date of this letter the
<cite>Liberator</cite> newspaper contained an advertisement, stating
that “Miss P. Crandall (a white lady), of Canterbury, Conn.”
had opened a “High School for young coloured ladies and
misses.”</p>
<p class='c002'>By this time the town of Canterbury had put itself into
the greatest state of excitement about Miss Crandall’s project.
She might have reasonably thought when she had
converted her school into one for “young coloured ladies
and misses” only, that so long as she and her pupils and
their parents were satisfied no one else had any concern in
the matter. But this was not the view taken by the
inhabitants of Canterbury. Three town’s meetings were
summoned in one week to consider what measures could be
taken to stop and thwart her project. At first it seems to
have been thought desirable to try the fair means of persuasion,
and Miss Crandall was waited on by a deputation of
leading gentlemen of the place, who professed to feel “a real
regard for the coloured people, and perfect willingness that
they should be educated, <em>provided it could be effected in some
other place</em>.” Miss Crandall’s scheme of educating them in
her own house in Canterbury would, they assured her, bring
disgrace and ruin on the whole town. Miss Crandall heard
them out, and then announced her determination to carry
out her plan. There was an immovable firmness under the
tranquillity of the young Quakeress’s demeanour. Another
town’s meeting was called, and Miss Crandall was allowed
to be represented by counsel, but the gentlemen who took
up her cause were not granted a hearing, on the ground that
they were outsiders, not natives of the town, and the whole
of Canterbury, in public meeting assembled, then proceeded
to vote their unanimous disapprobation of the school, and
their fixed determination to oppose it at all hazards. They
certainly opposed it with great vigour, but the hazard was
not so much to the town of Canterbury as to the young
woman, who was the object for two years of the most relentless
persecution. She all the while maintained her
quiet dignity, causing Garrison to exclaim in a letter to a
friend, “Wonderful woman! as undaunted as if she had
the whole world on her side! She has opened her school
and is resolved to persevere.” One of her friends wrote to
Garrison: “We shall have a rough time, probably, before
the year is out. The struggle will be great, no doubt, but
God will redeem the captives.... We are all determined
to sustain Miss Crandall if there is law in the land enough
to protect her. She is a noble soul!”</p>
<p class='c002'>The fight between the heroic little Quaker woman and
the town of Canterbury soon waxed very hot. Almost
directly after the school was opened in 1833, her enemies
procured the passing of an Act by the State Legislature of
Connecticut, prohibiting private schools for non-resident
coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of such
scholars. The fact is a warning of the way in which small
local parliaments may be carried away by local passions.
Such an Act would probably, even then, never have passed
the Legislature of the United States. As it was, its
originators must have been ashamed of it as soon as their
rage against Miss Crandall had had time to cool, for it was
repealed in 1838; but in the five years during which it was
in operation it gave Miss Crandall’s enemies great power
over her. Under this Act she was twice arrested, tried,
convicted, and imprisoned. She appealed to the Supreme
Court, and had the satisfaction in the superior tribunal of
defeating her persecutors, though only on a technical point
of law. But in the interval she was subjected to the most
extraordinary and inhuman persecution. There was not a
shopkeeper in the town who would sell her, or any member
of her household, a morsel of food; she and her scholars
were not admitted to take part in public worship; no public
conveyance would take them as passengers; doctors would
not attend them. Miss Crandall’s own relations and friends
were warned that if they valued their own safety they must
not visit her or have anything to do with her. “Her
well was filled with manure, and water from other
sources was refused; the house itself was smeared with
filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally set
on fire.” (See <cite>Life of William Lloyd Garrison</cite>, vol. i. p.
321). But the little “school-marm” held her own. Unlike
that Frenchman of whom we are told that he consecrated a
long life to coming invariably to the assistance of the
strongest side, she was emphatically the friend of the
oppressed, and one of that band “who through faith subdued
kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises,
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of
the aliens.”</p>
<p class='c002'>The existence of a group of such women is one of the
most precious national possessions of the American people.
Miss Crandall, now Mrs. Philleo, is still (1889) alive and
in full vigour of mind and body. The revenge which the
whirligig of time has brought to her is the triumph of her
cause. She now enjoys a small pension granted to her
by the Government of the United States in recognition
of her services to the anti-slavery cause.</p>
<p class='c002'>Another of the famous anti-slavery women of the United
States was Lucretia Mott. She, too, was a Quakeress, as
were a very considerable proportion of the women who
first took up the Abolitionist movement. At one time
the Puritan inhabitants of New England, who had fled from
their homes in Europe to escape persecution, instituted the
most cruel persecution against the Quakers and all sects
who differed from the Puritan creed. The persecuted are
often only too ready to become persecutors in their turn.
Lucretia Mott’s ancestors, the Coffins, descended from the
ancient Devonshire family of that name, had fled before
this Puritan persecution to the island of Nantucket to the
east of Massachusetts. Here Lucretia was born in 1793,
and here her childhood was passed till she was eleven, when
her father removed to Boston, Massachusetts. Lucretia
and her younger sister, spoken of in her father’s letters as
“the desirable little Elizabeth,” had opportunities of education
at Boston that would have been quite out of the question
in the primitive island of their birth. At the age
of eighteen Lucretia married James Mott, and her home
henceforward was at Philadelphia. Partly for the sake of
educating her own children, and partly with the view of
helping her mother, who had been left a widow with five
children to support, Lucretia Mott opened a school. When
she was about thirty years of age she began gradually to
be drawn into work of a more public kind, through her
deep interest in many moral movements of her time. Foremost
among these stood the anti-slavery agitation; she
travelled many thousands of miles, speaking and lecturing
for the anti-slavery cause. It was then, even in America,
quite a novelty for women to take an active part in public
movements, and some of the more old-fashioned of the
Abolitionists did not approve of the participation of Lucretia
Mott and other women in the work. But Garrison was
always, from the first, as eager for the equality of women
as he was for the emancipation of the slaves; and he felt
too deeply what the anti-slavery cause in England and
America owed to women to tolerate their being set on one
side without any recognition of their work. However, at
first only a minority held this view, and the difficulty which
some men felt in working with women caused Lucretia
Mott to form the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.
At the first meeting of this society, none of the ladies felt
competent themselves to take the chair, so they elected a
negro gentleman to that position, a choice which Mrs. Mott
explained a few years later in the following words:
“Negroes, idiots, and women were in legal documents classed
together; so that we were very glad to get one of our own
class to come and aid us in forming that society.”</p>
<p class='c002'>In 1840 Lucretia Mott was one of the delegates chosen
to represent American societies at the World’s Anti-Slavery
Convention held in London in that year. It is well known
that she and all other lady delegates were refused recognition
because they were women. Sir John Bowring, Mr.
Ashurst, and Daniel O’Connell were among those who protested
against this arbitrary act of exclusion; but the protest
was in vain. Garrison had not been present when the
question of refusing to allow the lady delegates to take
part in the Convention was discussed. He arrived in
England five days after the question had been settled.
With characteristic generosity, he refused to sit as a delegate
where the ladies had been excluded. They had been
relegated as spectators to a side gallery, and he insisted on
taking his seat there also. The absurdity of holding a
World’s Anti-Slavery Convention in which the chief workers
against slavery were present as spectators, not as participators,
caused a great deal of discussion at the time; and
the general movement in England towards the social, educational,
and political equality of women may be said to date
from that period.</p>
<p class='c002'>For thirty years Lucretia Mott hardly ever let a day
pass without doing something to weaken the fabric of
slavery, which she felt to be the greatest curse of her native
land. Her manner and voice were sweet, solemn, and
tranquil; her small and fragile figure, her exquisite womanliness
of demeanour, made it difficult to believe that she
could become the object of violent hatred and persecution.
Yet she had often known what it was to stand on a platform
in the midst of a shower of stones and vitriol, and to endure
in silence the unmanly insults of the pro-slavery press.
The simple and direct sincerity of her mind, her forgetfulness
of self, and her tranquil courage, carried conviction to
the minds of thousands that she had a message worth
listening to. But at first many even of her own religious
community thought it necessary to show their disapprobation
of her conduct, by refusing to recognise her when they met.
She owned that this “had caused her considerable pain,”
but it never caused her to swerve for a moment from the
course she felt to be that of duty. She usually took a
share of the seat behind the door in railway cars, because
that place was ordinarily assigned to negroes, and would
converse kindly with her fellow-passengers there.</p>
<p class='c002'>At the celebrated trial in 1859 of Daniel Dangerfield, a
fugitive slave, Lucretia Mott remained all through the long
hours of suspense by the side of the prisoner. The trial
and the courthouse were watched by two crowds, both in
the greatest anxiety and suspense, one hoping for the release,
the other, and by far the larger and more dangerous, hoping
for the condemnation of the man. At last the long trial
ended in victory for the right. Daniel Dangerfield was
declared a free man; but the authorities of the court
thought it would be impossible to get him away in safety
through the angry pro-slavery crowd, without an escort
of police. Their fears were found to be groundless, for
when the doors of the court were thrown open, and the slave
walked out, a free man, Lucretia Mott, the aged Quaker
lady, was by his side; her hand on his arm was a sufficient
protection, and he passed through the angry crowd in safety.</p>
<p class='c002'>Very soon after this came the War of Secession. The
Abolitionists knew, though the politicians did not, that this
war would decide the question of slavery. As all the world
knows now, they were right. The American people were
enabled to prevent the secession of the slave states; and
in 1863 a proclamation of President Lincoln announced
the Abolition of Slavery in the United States. Lucretia
Mott lived for seventeen years after this crowning victory
of her life’s labours. She died on 11th November 1880,
universally respected, and loved by those who knew her.</p>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c001'>
<div>THE END</div>
</div></div>
<div class='nf-center-c0'>
<div class='nf-center c014'>
<div><i>Printed by</i> <span class='sc'>R. & R. Clark</span>, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</div>
</div></div>
<div class='t-note'>
<p class='c002'><b>Transcriber’s Note:</b></p>
<p class='c002'>Some corrections have been made to the original text. In
particular, punctuation errors have been corrected. Additional
corrections are listed below:</p>
<div class='lg-container-b'>
<div class='linegroup'>
<div class='group'>
<div class='line'>p. <SPAN href='#feats'>67</SPAN> <cite>Feats in the Fiord</cite> -> <cite>Feats on the Fiord</cite></div>
<div class='line'>p. <SPAN href='#in'>96</SPAN> sent in in one day -> sent in one day</div>
<div class='line'>p. <SPAN href='#self'>129</SPAN> relf-reliance -> self-reliance</div>
<div class='line'>p. <SPAN href='#are'>220</SPAN> They are are as ignorant -> They are as ignorant</div>
</div></div>
</div></div>
<SPAN name="endofbook"></SPAN>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.