A COUNTRY HOME.
The delight expressed in her diary upon her removal to Plashet, found
vent in efforts to beautify the grounds. The garden-nooks and
plantations were filled with wild flowers, gathered by herself and
children in seasons of relaxation, and transferred from the coppices,
hedgerows and meadows, to the grounds, which appeared to her to be only
second in beauty to Earlham. Mrs. Fry was possessed of a keen eye for
Nature's beauties. Quick to perceive, and eager to relish the delights
of the fair world around, she took pleasure in them, finding relaxation
from the many duties which clustered about her in the spot of earth on
which her lot was cast. Her journal tells of trials and burdens, and
sometimes there peeps out a sentence of regret that the ideal which she
had formed of serving God, in the lost years of youth, had been absorbed
in "the duties of a careworn wife and mother." Yet what she fancied she
had lost in this waiting-time had been gained, after all, in
preparation. This quiet, domestic life was not what she had looked
forward to when in the first flush of youthful zeal. Still, she was
thereby trained to deal with the young and helpless, to enter into
sorrows and woes, and to understand and sympathize with quiet suffering.
But the time was coming for more active outward service, and when the
call came Elizabeth Fry was found ready to obey it.
Towards the end of 1809 her father died, after great suffering; summoned
by one of her sisters, Elizabeth hurried down to Earlham to catch, if
possible, his parting benediction. She succeeded in arriving soon enough
to bear her much-loved parent company during his last few hours of life,
and to hear him express, again and again, his confidence in the Saviour,
who, in death, was all-sufficient for his needs. As he passed away, her
faith and confidence could not forbear expression, and, kneeling at the
bedside, she gave utterance to words of thanksgiving for the safe and
happy ending of a life which had been so dear to her. The truth was, a
burden had been weighing her down for some time past, causing her to
question herself most seriously as to whether she were willing to obey
"the inward voice" which prompted her to serve God in a certain way.
This specific way was the way of preaching in Meeting, or "bearing
testimony," as she phrased it, "at the prompting of the Holy Spirit." It
will be remembered that this is a distinguishing peculiarity of the
society which George Fox founded. Preaching is only permitted upon the
spur of the moment, as people of the world would say, but at the
prompting of the inward voice, as Quakers deem. Certainly no one ever
became a preacher among the Friends "for a piece of bread." If fanatics
sometimes "prophesied" out of the fullness of excited brains, or fervid
souls, no place-hunter adopted the pulpit as a profession. Only,
sometimes, it needs the presence of an overwhelming trial to bring out
the latent strength in a person's nature; and this trial was furnished
to Elizabeth Fry in the shape of her father's death. The thanksgiving
uttered by her at his death was also publicly repeated at the funeral,
probably with additional words, and from that time she was known as a
"minister."
In taking this new departure she must not be confounded with some female
orators of the present age, who often succeed in turning preaching into
a hideous caricature. She was evidently ripening for her remarkable
work, and while doing so was occasionally irresistibly impelled to give
utterance to "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Still, after
reaching the quiet of Plashet, and reviewing calmly her new form of
service, she thus wrote, what seemed to be both a sincere and
common-sense judgment upon herself:--
I was enabled coming along to crave help; in the first place, to be
made willing either to do or to suffer whatever was the Divine will
concerning me. I also desired that I might not be so occupied with
the present state of my mind as to its religious duties, as in any
degree to omit close attention to all daily duties, my beloved
husband, children, servants, poor, etc. But, if I should be
permitted the humiliating path that has appeared to be opening
before me, to look well at home, and not discredit the cause I
desire to advocate.
Wise counsels these, to herself! No woman whose judgment is
well-balanced, and whose womanly-nature is finely strung, but will
regard the path to the rostrum with shrinking and dismay. Either the
desire to save and help her fellow-creatures, "plucking them out of the
fire," if need be, is so strong upon her as to overmaster all fear of
man; or else the necessities and claims of near and dear ones lay
compulsion upon her to win support for them. Therefore, while every
woman can be a law unto herself, no woman can be a law unto her sisters
in this matter. As proof of her singleness of heart, another passage may
be quoted from Mrs. Fry's journal. It runs thus, and will be by no
means out of place here, seeing that it bears particularly upon the new
form of ministry then being taken up by her:--
May my being led out of my own family by what appears to me
_duties_, never be permitted to hinder my doing my duty fully
towards it, or so occupy my attention as to make me in any degree
forget or neglect home duties. I believe it matters not where we
are, or what we are about, so long as we keep our eye fixed on
doing the Great Master's work.... I fear for myself, lest even this
great mercy should prove a temptation, and lead me to come before I
am called, or enter service I am not prepared for.... This matter
has been for many years struggling in my mind, long before I
married, and once or twice when in London I hardly knew how to
refrain. However, since a way has thus been made for me it appears
as if I dared not stop the work; if it be a right one may it go on
and prosper, if not, the sooner stopped the better.
Very soon after penning these words, the Meeting of which she was a
member acknowledged Mrs. Fry as a minister, and thus gave its sanction
to her speaking in their religious assemblies.
But, not content with this form of service, she visited among her poor
neighbors, bent on actively doing good. She secured a large room
belonging to an old house, opposite her own dwelling, and established a
school for girls on the Lancasterian pattern there. Very quickly, under
the united efforts of Mrs. Fry, the incumbent of the parish, and a
benevolent young lady named Powell, a school of seventy girls was
established, and kept in a prosperous condition. This school was still
in working order a few years ago.
Plashet House was a depot of charity. Calicoes, flannels, jackets,
gowns, and pinafores were kept in piles to clothe the naked; drugs
suited to domestic practice were stored in a closet, for healing the
sick; an amateur soup-kitchen for feeding the hungry was established in
a roomy out-building, and this long years before public soup-kitchens
became the rage; whilst copies of Testaments were forthcoming on all
occasions to teach erring feet the way to Heaven. But her charity did
not stop with these things.
An unsavory locality known as "Irish Row," about half a mile off, soon
attracted her attention. The slatternliness, suffering, shiftlessness,
dirt and raggedness, were inducements to one of her charitable
temperament to visit its inhabitants, having their relief and
improvement in view; while her appreciation of the warm-heartedness and
drollery of the Irish character afforded her genuine pleasure. Proximity
to English life had not refined these Irish; their houses were just as
filthy, their windows as patched and obscured with rags, their children
just as neglected, and their pigs equally familiar with those children
as if they had lived in the wilds of Connemara. Shillalahs, wakes,
potatoes, and poverty were distinguishing characteristics of the
locality; whilst its inhabitants were equally ready, with the free and
easy volatility of the Irish mind, to raise the jovial song, or utter
the cry of distress.
The priest and spiritual director of "Irish Row" found himself almost
powerless in the presence of this mass of squalid misery. That Mrs. Fry
was a Quaker and a Protestant, did not matter to him, provided she could
assist in raising this debased little colony into something like orderly
life and decency. So he cooperated with her, and with his consent she
gave away Bibles and tracts, vaccinated and taught the children, as well
as moved among them generally in the character of their good genius.
When delicate and weak, she would take the carriage, filled with
blankets and clothes for distribution, down to Irish Row, where the
warm-hearted recipients blessed their "Lady bountiful" in terms more
voluble and noisy than refined. Still, however unpromising, the soil
bore good fruit. Homes grew more civilized, men, women, and children
more respectable and quiet, while everywhere the impress of a woman's
benevolent labors was apparent.
It was the annual custom of a tribe of gypsies to pitch their tents in a
green lane near Plashet, on their way to Fairlop Fair. Once, after the
tents were pitched, a child fell ill; the distracted mother applied to
the kind lady at Plashet House for relief. Mrs. Fry acceded to the
request, and not only ministered to the gypsies that season, but every
succeeding year; until she became known and almost worshipped among
them. Romany wanderers and Celtic colonists were alike welcome to her
heart and purse, and vied in praising her.
About this time the Norwich Auxiliary Bible Society was formed, and Mrs.
Fry went down to Earlham to attend the initial meeting. She tells us
there were present the Bishop of Norwich, six clergymen of the
Established Church, and three dissenting ministers, besides several
leading Quakers and gentlemen of the neighborhood. The number included
Mr. Hughes, one of the secretaries, and Dr. Steinkopf, a Lutheran
minister, who, though as one with the work of the Bible Society, could
not speak English. At some of these meetings she felt prompted to speak,
and did so at a social gathering at Earlham Hall, when all present owned
her remarkable influence upon them. These associations also increased
in her that catholicity of spirit which afterwards seemed so prominent.
Some of her brothers and sisters belonged to the Established Church of
England; while in her walks of mercy she was continually co-operating
with members of other sections of Christians. As we have seen, she
worked harmoniously with all: Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and
Dissenter.
On looking at her training for her special form of usefulness we find
that afflictions predominated just when her mind was soaring above the
social and conventional trammels which at one time weighed so much with
her. We know her mostly as a prison philanthropist; but while following
her career in that path, it will be wise not to forget the way in which
she was led. By slow and painful degrees she was drawn away from the
circles of fashion in which once her soul delighted. Then her nature
seemed so retiring, and the tone of her piety so mystical, while she
dreaded nervously all approach to "religious enthusiasm," that a career
of publicity, either in prisons, among rulers, or among the ministers of
her own Society, seemed too far away to be ever realized in fact and
deed. Only He, who weighs thoughts and searches out spirits, knew or
understood by what slow degrees she rose to the demands which presented
themselves to her "in the ways of His requirings," even if "they led her
into suffering and death." It was no small cross for such a woman thus
to dare singularity and possibly odium.