Mrs. Elizabeth Fry--Mrs. Amelia Opie--Lady Noel Byron--Miss Harriet
Martineau--Mrs. Mary Howitt.
It would do injustice to my own feelings and the facts of history, to
leave it to be inferred, from my silence, that the Women of England have
not furnished some of the brightest names in the galaxy of Modern
Reformers.
Looking ever so casually in this direction, what figure so promptly
meets the eye as that of ELIZABETH FRY--the friend of the prisoner, the
bondman, the lunatic, the beggar--who has been aptly named "the female
Howard"? Mrs. Fry hardly deserved more credit for the benevolent
impulses of her heart, than for the dignity and urbanity of her manners.
They were natural, for they were born with her. The daughter of John,
and the sister of Joseph and Samuel Gurney, could hardly be else than
the embodiment of that charity which never faileth, that philanthropy
which embraces every form of human misery, and that amenity which
proffers the cup of kindness with an angel's grace. In youth, her
personal attractions, and the vivacity of her conversation, made her the
idol of the social circle, and severe was her struggle in deciding
whether to become the reigning belle of the neighborhood, or devote her
life to assuaging the sorrows of a world of suffering and crime.
Happily, she resolved that Humanity had higher claims upon her than
Fashion. Her resolution once formed, she immediately entered upon the
holy mission to which, for nearly half a century, she consecrated that
abounding benevolence and winning grace, which, in her girlhood, were
the pride of her parents and the delight of her companions.
Though her eye was ever open to discover, and her hand to relieve, all
forms of sorrow, it was to the inmates of the mad-house and the
penitentiary that she mainly devoted her exertions. Wonderful was her
power over the insane. The keenest magnetic eye of the most experienced
keeper paled and grew feeble in its sway over the raving maniac,
compared with the tones of her magic voice. Equally fascinating was her
influence over prisoners and felons. Many a time, in spite of the sneers
of vulgar turnkeys, and the positive assurances of respectable keepers,
that her purse and even her life would be at stake if she entered the
wards of the prison, she boldly went in amongst the swearing, quarreling
wretches, and, with the doors bolted behind her, encountered them with
dignified demeanor and kindly words, that soon produced a state of order
and repose which whips and chains had vainly endeavored to enforce.
Possessing peculiar powers of eloquence, (why may not a woman be an
"orator?") she used to assemble the prisoners, address them in a style
of charming tenderness all her own, win their assent to regulations for
their conduct which she proposed, shake hands with them, give and
receive a blessing, return to the keeper's room, and be received by him
with almost as much astonishment and awe as Darius exhibited toward
Daniel, when he emerged from the den of lions.
In this way, Mrs. Fry made frequent examinations of the prisons of
England. She pursued her holy work on the Continent, visiting prisons in
France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, and Prussia. In the early
part of her career, she encountered both at home and abroad some
rudeness, and many rebuffs. But her ever-present dignity, tact, and
kindness, at length won the confidence and plaudits of the great
majority of her own countrymen, and of many philanthropists and titled
personages in other lands. She was a favorite of the Kings of Prussia
and Denmark--the former, when in England, paying her a complimentary
visit at her own house. She sought frequent occasions to press, in
person, the subject of her mission upon the attention of crowned heads
and ministers of state. She accomplished a great work in the cause of
Prison Reform, in ameliorating the Penal Code, and improving the
condition of convict ships and penal colonies. Her special mouthpiece in
Parliament was her brother-in-law, Mr. Buxton--her measures were
supported by Mackintosh and other illustrious Senators--and it is the
highest tribute to the dignity which her rare excellences threw over her
enterprises, that they got the better of Sydney Smith's love of
ridicule, and drew from him two or three articles in their favor in the
Edinburgh Review. This greatly useful and greatly beloved woman died in
1845, at the age of sixty-six. To her may be applied with equal
propriety Burke's beautiful tribute to Howard:
"She visited all Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of
palaces, or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate
measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a
scale of the curiosities of modern art; not to collect medals, nor
collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to
plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of
sorrow and pain; to take the guage and dimensions of misery,
depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to
the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and compare and collate the
miseries of all men in all countries. Her plan was original: it was
as full of genius as of humanity. It was a voyage of discovery; a
circumnavigation of charity. Already, the benefit of her labor is
felt more or less in every country."
Mrs. Fry having been a member of the Society of Friends, we easily turn
to Mrs. AMELIA OPIE, also belonging to that venerable body. As Mrs. Opie
wrote the celebrated work on _Lying_, we must tell the truth if we say
anything of this excellent lady. When I saw her, though the sun and
shade of more than sixty years had flitted across her path, her
conversation and manners retained much of the sprightliness of youth,
and would have been _very_ agreeable, had she not affected more
juvenility than she really possessed. Nearly half a century before, she
had sent to press a volume of poems, marked by graceful versification,
sweetness, and pathos; and a domestic tale, "The Father and Daughter,"
which was distinguished, amongst the mass of sentimental nonsense which
floated all around, by lively narrative, and a high moral tone. This
novel run through several editions, and still holds its place in
libraries. Since then, numerous works of fiction have flowed from her
pen, which bear the same literary impress, are elevated in their moral
aim, and tend to soften the heart, and make us love mankind better than
before. Some of Mrs. Opie's best gifts have been laid on the altar of
humanity. She has been the warm friend, both in youth and in old age, of
enterprises for the improvement of man, without respect to clime, creed,
or color.
I have said that Mrs. Opie was a Quakeress. In doctrine, she belongs to
the straitest of the sect, while she talks of Barclay's Apology and
Byron's Childe Harold, of George Fox's preaching and Walter Scott's
novels, in the same sentence, and with equal delight. Suppose her _thee_
and _thou_ did sound oddly in such company, and her tongue trip
occasionally when repeating some of Tom Moore's champagne jokes at Lord
Holland's dinners; and suppose her dress is juvenile in style, and
fastidious in arrangement, dazzling the eyes as it throws back in
disdain the envious brilliancy of the blazing chandelier, showing that
no belle in the room has toiled more hours at her toilet this evening,
than she; still she is good Mrs. Opie, is not "a birth-right member" of
the plain-speaking and plain-dressing sect, but joined them "on
convincement," while far advanced in life, with habits firmly fixed, and
after passing the line when it is easier to change one's creed than
one's manners. Under that glossy satin dress, there beats a heart whose
every avenue is open to truth, and whose sympathies gush out in streams
that return not to their fountain, till they have swept the entire
circle of human want and woe. Suppose this worthy Christian
philanthropist is rather fond of telling her auditors (and are they not
fond of hearing?) the fine things Sir Walter Scott said to her in
Melrose Abbey, or the flat joke that some flatter earl cracked in her
ear when leading her into the drawing-room of Lord Fitzfoozle, or what
Campbell said to her at her own house, when she was participating in a
discussion with Wordsworth and Sir Thomas Lawrence, about the relative
merits of poetry and painting, or how she used up all her stock of
French the day she dined with Lafayette--she is only one of a great
crowd of book writers and book readers on both sides of the Atlantic,
who are fond of insinuating that they have shone as conspicuous spangles
in more than one comet's luminous tail.
In her declining years, Mrs. Opie has occasionally sent into the world
some effusion of her benevolent pen, on religious and charitable
subjects--lives in a neat style at Norwich--shows her visitors rooms
lined with rare paintings, partly the product of her husband's lively
pencil--is active in all works of love and mercy--was on familiar terms
with the late warm-hearted Bishop of Norwich--and delights to guide her
friends through the long aisles of the aged cathedral, when the organ
sounds its sweetest notes.
The circumstances under which I first saw Mrs. Opie remind me to say a
few words of Lady NOEL BYRON, the widow of the poet. She appeared as
mild as the blue sky of an Italian summer evening. Edified by her
intelligent conversation, and charmed with the softened grace of her
manners, one could not but say to himself--Can it be that that mild blue
eye, that mellow voice, that bland mien belonged to _the_ Lady Byron,
the wife of the wild genius, whose erratic fire, while it startled the
round world with its glare, withered all that was sweet and lovely
within its own domestic circle, nor paled till it had consumed its
owner by the intensity of its own volcanic hell? Hidden under that pale
cheek and quiet countenance, there _may_ lie the smoldering embers of
passions that once shot their flames through the very veins of the bard,
and made him the mad suicide he was. But they now slumber so profoundly,
that one must disbelieve they ever existed. The mystery must die with
the parties.
There is a sprightliness in the conversation of Lady Byron that wins the
listener, and a common sense that edifies him, while the tinge of
sadness which flows through it gives a serious and sincere hue to the
vein of pure morality that pervades much of this unfortunate woman's
discourse. Decidedly plain-looking--for, even in the bloom of youth, she
could not have been handsome--her countenance when in repose is rather
dull and uninteresting, but it kindles up when excited by the contact of
kindred minds, and is set off by an address and manners familiar and
easy.
Lady Byron has found occasional relief from the cloud which memory hangs
over her, by participating in enterprises of charity and philanthropy.
Indeed, she seemed to be quite a reformer, apparently holding firmly,
while uttering cautiously, the liberal political sentiments which
constituted the redeeming feature in her husband's character. As might
be expected, she is sensitive to all allusions in her presence to him,
seeming desirous that the thick veil of oblivion should hide all traces
of their lamentable union and separation. It is not so with her
daughter, Ada Augusta--the "gentle Ada"--since Lady Lovelace, who loves
to talk of her father, and glows with delight when you tell her that his
works are universally read, not only in the seaboard cities of America,
but among the far-away woods and prairies of the New World.
Who that can appreciate a happy blending of philosophical acumen with
philanthropic devotion, illustrated in writings profound and poetic, and
conversation rational and racy, could fail to be pleased with Miss
HARRIET MARTINEAU--in spite of her tin trumpet? And well would it be
for their own reputation and the comfort of society, if many authors and
talkers used a trumpet to gather up the responses of their readers and
auditors, rather than to blow private griefs or fancied merits in the
averted face of the public. Descended from one of the families exiled
from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Miss Martineau
inherits the fondness for philosophical speculation and the vivacity of
spirit of the people whence she traces her lineage, mingled with the
hatred of tyranny and love of toleration which the event that drove her
forefathers to England was calculated to inspire. These French Puritans,
wherever scattered up and down the world by the bigotry of Louis XIV, if
they have had less of iron in their character and marble in their aspect
than the Huguenots of Plymouth, they have displayed, under persecutions
equally severe, as heroic a defense of their own civil and religious
freedom, while exhibiting in their treatment of others a larger measure
of that charity which suffereth long and is kind.
Miss Martineau became a student in extreme youth. While a girl, delicate
health prevented her mingling in pastimes usual to her sex and years,
and she sought society in books. Subsequently, an embarrassing deafness
threw her upon her own mental resources for amusement and instruction.
Gifted with ready powers of writing, and the needed motive for "trying
her hand" being found in pecuniary necessity, she naturally turned from
reading books to making them, and became an author at the age of twenty.
During the next twenty-five years, she sent to press numerous works,
ranging over a wide field of topics, from verses and stories adapted to
the nursery and the school, to volumes on political economy and
poor-laws, after the order of Bentham and Malthus. She has written
tales, novels, prayers, hymns, illustrations of political economy and
pauperism and taxation, sketches of travels in Europe, Asia, Africa and
America, and numberless papers for reviews and magazines, exhibiting
high powers of reflection and rare graces of composition, and aiming at
the great and good end of instructing, amusing, and elevating mankind.
Two of her most interesting publications, and they are among the most
recent, are "Life in a Sick Room" and "The Holy Land"--the former, a
beautiful record of her own experience and reflections while suffering
under deep-seated disease; the latter, a vivid and graphic picture of
her lingerings around the sacred scenes of Palestine.
The works of Miss Martineau that produced the greatest sensation, and
most widely extended her reputation, are those on political subjects. In
politics, for she is a politician, she must be classed with the radicals
of the school of Bentham, Cobden, and Hume. This fact, uniting with the
class of topics she handled, have not vouchsafed to her exemption from
the canons and hot shot of criticism to which the writings of the other
sex are exposed. And she is too much of a woman to plead her sex in bar
of the operation of any legitimate rule of literary warfare. She is able
to give as well as take in the arena of authorship. Her works, or rather
tales, (for she dressed her disquisitions in the drapery of fiction,) on
political economy, poor-laws, and cognate subjects, drew down upon her
the sneers and maledictions of the High Tory Quarterly Review--the
former being aimed at her sex, the latter at her doctrines--which only
resulted in proving that the critics had very slender claims to be
regarded either as gentlemen, philosophers or statesmen. So novel was
her undertaking, that she encountered great difficulty in getting a
publisher for her "Illustrations." She first offered them to the
generally astute and always liberal Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. The managers declined to issue them, prophesying that the
project would prove a dead failure. At length a bookseller was found,
hardy enough, or wise enough, to send into the world essays on political
economy, poor-laws, and taxation, dressed up in fiction by the hand of a
woman. The success of the experiment was immediate and complete. The
numbers were eagerly bought as they came out, the advent of each link
in the series being looked for with as much interest as Dickens'
Nickleby or Dombey; new editions followed new editions; Germany and
France translated and sent them over Europe; till the most driveling
specimen of Britain's old-womanish legislation received a shock from
which it has never recovered, and looked at one time as if it might fall
a sudden victim to the exposures of a comparatively young damsel.
Mrs. MARY HOWITT has walked gracefully over a portion of the same field
of literature as Miss Martineau, gathering flowers not seen by or not
congenial to the eye of the more matter-of-fact disciple of the great
Utilitarian. She has more poetry and less philosophy in her temperament
than Miss Martineau, is more domestic and rural in her tastes, grapples
less with themes that agitate senates, and has a heart more susceptible
to the _individual_ joys and sorrows of mankind. She is equally
bountiful in her contributions to the every-day reading of the times;
gives her writings a high moral aim; makes her readers good-humored, and
overflowing with _bonhommie_; and if she does not set them to thinking
so hard about the causes of human misery, stimulates them to as much
activity in alleviating the effects.
In 1823, soon after her marriage with Mr. Howitt--and two more congenial
spirits never closed hands at the altar--they jointly published "The
Forest Minstrel," a volume abounding in lively pictures of rural
scenery, and filial reverence for the poetry of the olden time. They
made a tour of Scotland, traveling more than a thousand miles over
highland and moorland, half of which they performed on foot, drinking at
the storied fountains, and holding familiar converse with the spirits
that haunt the old castles and battle-fields of a country whose
novelists and bards have associated
"With every glen and every stream,
The romance of some warrior dream."
This tour, taken when their minds were alive to the sublimities and
beauties of the scenery, and when their poetic eye threw its young
glance upon each filament of the drapery that song and story have spread
over every spot between Tweed-dale and Loch Ness, gave form and color to
all the subsequent writings of the Howitts. Returning home, they
published another volume of poetry, which, like the first, was warmly
eulogized by the public press. They were now fairly launched on the
stream of English literature. For several years Mrs. Howitt gave much
time to the preparation of works for the young. Being first enlisted in
this department by the wants of her own rising household, she
subsequently wrote for the public, throwing off scores of stories, which
were bought, read, and admired by "the million" of her own country, are
found in "morocco and gilt" on marble tables in American cities, and in
yellow covers in the log huts beyond the mountains, while some, through
the medium of translations, have found their way into the nurseries of
Germany and the forest-homes of Poland.
After a variety of literary adventures in England, Mr. and Mrs. Howitt
visited Germany, about 1840, where they resided some three years. Here
they acquired a knowledge, among others, of the Swedish tongue. The
result of their continental sojourn was the translation into English by
him of the celebrated "Student Life in Germany," and the publication of
his "Social and Rural Life in Germany," and her translation and
introduction to British and American readers of the now widely known
Swedish novels of Frederika Bremer. Deeply sympathizing with all efforts
to elevate the mind and condition of their countrymen, and feeling the
need of a weekly periodical that should combine high literary qualities
with radical political doctrines, they started, in 1846, "The People's
Journal." Mrs. Howitt was a large contributor to its pages, both under
its original name and that of Howitt's Journal. Some numbers of the
latter for the closing part of the year 1847 are now under my eye, and I
am struck with the great amount, varied character, and benevolent aim
of her contributions. Stories for children; translations from Hans
Christian Andersen; poetic gems; a sketch of Laura Bridgman;
translations of Swedish and Hungarian tales; a sketch of "the Deserter
in London," which kindles indignation against war; "Love passages in the
lives of every-day people;" a most eloquent petition to the Queen, for
commuting the sentence of a woman then lying in Newgate, whose execution
had been postponed that she might give birth to a child--these, and such
papers, scattered through the Journal, exhibit the mode in which Mrs.
Howitt has spent her life of late years. And, her husband being witness,
she is not only an industrious authoress, but a model wife and mother.
While the Journal gave an impulse to the cause of freedom, it was most
disastrous to the pecuniary interests of the Howitts. They have had
their full share of the joys and sorrows, honors and perplexities,
profits and losses of literary life. They have encountered their
checkered lot with as hopeful a brow as anybody can be expected to
exhibit, that attempts to get a living by writing "books which _are_
books," in this age of "_cheap_ literature." In prosperity and
adversity, they have given hand, heart and pen to progress and reform.
Should they ever accomplish their purpose of visiting America, the
friends of pure and pleasing literature would unite with the friends of
social and political reform, to give them welcome hands with hearts in
them.