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 _Hymns for Infant Minds_, 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.
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 _larning_—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 _Hannah More_).
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?”
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 _Rivals_, 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 _King Lear_, 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, _The Fatal
Falsehood_, which Garrick had been preparing to put on the stage at the
time of his death.
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.
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.”
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 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....”
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.
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 _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_. 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. _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_ 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 _The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain_
was considered Hannah More’s masterpiece. Wilberforce said he “would
rather present himself before Heaven with the _Shepherd_ in his hand
than with _Peveril of the Peak_.”
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.
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.
XXIII
THE AMERICAN ABOLITIONISTS
PRUDENCE CRANDALL AND LUCRETIA MOTT
EVERYBODY 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.
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 _élite_ 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.
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.
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 _Liberator_. 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 _Liberator_ 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.”
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, _provided it could be
effected in some other place_.” 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!”