and Mackintosh were the representatives--Madame de Staël has won the
proud fame of being the most powerful writer her country has produced
since Voltaire and Rousseau. Historically she is memorable for
inaugurating a new period of literary history. With her began a new
class of female authors, whose genius was no longer confined to letters
and memoirs and sentimental novels. I need not enumerate the long
catalogue of illustrious literary women in the nineteenth century in
France, in Germany, in England, and even in the United States. The
greatest novelist in England, since Thackeray, was a woman. One of the
greatest writers on political economy, since Adam Smith, was a woman.
One of the greatest writers in astronomical science was a woman. In
America, what single novel ever equalled the success of "Uncle Tom's
Cabin"? What schools are better kept than those by women? And this is
only the beginning, since it is generally felt that women are better
educated than men, outside of the great professions. And why not, since
they have more leisure for literary pursuits than men? Who now sneers at
the intellect of a woman? Who laughs at blue-stockings? Who denies the
insight, the superior tact, the genius of woman? What man does not
accept woman as a fellow-laborer in the field of letters? And yet there
is one profession which they are more capable of filling than men,--that
of physicians to their own sex; a profession most honorable, and
requiring great knowledge, as well as great experience and insight.
Why may not women cope with men in the proudest intellectual
tournaments? Why should they not become great linguists, and poets, and
novelists, and artists, and critics, and historians? Have they not
quickness, brilliancy, sentiment, acuteness of observation, good sense,
and even genius? Do not well-educated women speak French before their
brothers can translate the easiest lines of Virgil? I would not put such
gentle, refined, and cultivated creatures,--these flowers of Paradise,
spreading the sweet aroma of their graces in the calm retreats from toil
and sin,--I would not push them into the noisy arena of wrangling
politics, into the suffocating and impure air of a court of justice, or
even make them professors in a college of unruly boys; but because I
would not do them this great cruelty, do I deny their intellectual
equality, or seek to dim the lustre of the light they shed, or hide
their talents under the vile bushel of envy, cynicism, or contempt? Is
it paying true respect to woman to seek to draw her from the beautiful
sphere which she adorns and vivifies and inspires,--where she is a
solace, a rest, a restraint, and a benediction,--and require of her
labors which she has not the physical strength to perform? And when it
is seen how much more attractive the wives and daughters of favored
classes have made themselves by culture, how much more capable they are
of training and educating their children, how much more dignified the
family circle may thus become,--every man who is a father will rejoice
in this great step which women have recently made, not merely in
literary attainments, but in the respect of men. Take away intellect
from woman, and what is she but a toy or a slave? For my part, I see no
more cheering signs of the progress of society than in the advancing
knowledge of favored women. And I know of no more splendid future for
them than to encircle their brows, whenever they have an opportunity,
with those proud laurels which have ever been accorded to those who have
advanced the interests of truth and the dominion of the soul,--which
laurels they have lately won, and which both reason and experience
assure us they may continue indefinitely to win.
AUTHORITIES.
Miss Luyster's Memoirs of Madame de Staël; Mémoires Dix Années d'Exil;
Alison's Essays; M. Shelly's Lives; Mrs. Thomson's Queens of Society;
Sainte-Beuve's Nouveaux Lundis; Lord Brougham on Madame de Staël; J.
Bruce's Classic Portraits; J. Kavanagh's French Women of Letters;
Biographic Universelle; North American Review, vols. x., xiv., xxxvii.;
Edinburgh Review, vols. xxi., xxxi., xxxiv., xliii.; Temple Bar, vols.
xl., lv.; Foreign Quarterly, vol. xiv.; Blackwood's Magazine, vols.
iii., vii., x.; Quarterly Review, 152; North British Review, vol. xx.;
Christian Examiner, 73; Catholic World, 18.
HANNAH MORE.
* * * * *
A. D. 1745-1833.
EDUCATION OF WOMAN.
One of the useful and grateful tasks of historians and biographers is to
bring forward to the eye of every new generation of men and women those
illustrious characters who made a great figure in the days of their
grandfathers and grandmothers, yet who have nearly faded out of sight in
the rush of new events and interests, and the rise of new stars in the
intellectual firmament. Extraordinary genius or virtue or services may
be forgotten for a while, but are never permanently hidden. There is
always somebody to recall them to our minds, whether the interval be
short or long. The Italian historian Vico wrote a book which attracted
no attention for nearly two hundred years,--in fact, was forgotten,--but
was made famous by the discoveries of Niebuhr in the Vatican library,
and became the foundation of modern philosophical history. Some great
men pass out of view for a generation or two owing to the bitterness of
contemporaneous enemies and detractors, and others because of the very
unanimity of admirers and critics, leading to no opposition. We weary
both of praise and censure. And when either praise or censure stops, the
object of it is apparently forgotten for a time, except by the few who
are learned. Yet, I repeat, real greatness or goodness is never
completely hidden. It reappears with new lustre when brought into
comparison with those who are embarked in the same cause.
Thus the recent discussions on the education of women recall to our
remembrance the greatest woman who lived in England in the latter part
of the last century,--Hannah More,--who devoted her long and prosperous
and honorable life to this cause both by practical teaching and by
writings which arrested the attention and called forth the admiration of
the best people in Europe and America. She forestalled nearly everything
which has been written in our times pertaining to the life of woman,
both at school and in society. And she evinced in her writings on this
great subject an acuteness of observation, a good sense, a breadth and
catholicity of judgment, a richness of experience, and a high moral tone
which have never been surpassed. She reminds us of the wise Madame de
Maintenon in her school at St. Cyr; the pious and philanthropic Mary
Lyon at the Mount Holyoke Seminary; and the more superficial and
worldly, but truly benevolent and practical, Emma Willard at her
institution in Troy,--the last two mentioned ladies being the pioneers
of the advanced education for young ladies in such colleges as Vassar,
Wellesley, and Smith, and others I could mention. The wisdom, tact, and
experience of Madame de Maintenon--the first great woman who gave a
marked impulse to female education in our modern times--were not lost on
Hannah More, who seems to have laid down the laws best adapted to
develop the mind and character of woman under a high civilization.
England seems to have been a century in advance of America, both in its
wisdom and folly; and the same things in London life were ridiculed and
condemned with unsparing boldness by Hannah More which to-day, in New
York, have called out the vigorous protests of Dr. Morgan Dix. The
educators of our age and country cannot do better than learn wisdom from
the "Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education," as well as
the "Thoughts on the Manners of the Great," which appeared from the pen
of Hannah More in the latter part of the 18th century, in which she
appears as both moralist and teacher, getting inspiration not only from
her exalted labors, but from the friendship and conversation of the
great intellectual oracles of her age. I have not read of any one woman
in England for the last fifty years, I have not heard or known of any
one woman in the United States, who ever occupied the exalted position
of Hannah More, or who exercised so broad and deep an influence on the
public mind in the combined character of a woman of society, author, and
philanthropist. There have been, since her day, more brilliant queens of
fashion, greater literary geniuses, and more prominent philanthropists;
but she was enabled to exercise an influence superior to any of them, by
her friendship with people of rank, by her clear and powerful writings,
and by her lofty piety and morality, which blazed amid the vices of
fashionable society one hundred years ago.
It is well to dwell on the life and labors of so great and good a woman,
who has now become historical. But I select her especially as the
representative of the grandest moral movement of modern times,--that
which aims to develop the mind and soul of woman, and give to her the
dignity of which she has been robbed by paganism and "philistinism." I
might have selected some great woman nearer home and our own time, more
intimately connected with the profession of educating young ladies; but
I prefer to speak of one who is universally conceded to have rendered
great service to her age and country. It is doubly pleasant to present
Hannah More, because she had none of those defects and blemishes which
have often detracted from the dignity of great benefactors. She was
about as perfect a woman as I have read of; and her virtues were not
carried out to those extremes of fanaticism which have often marked
illustrious saints, from the want of common-sense or because of
visionary theories. Strict and consistent as a moralist, she was never
led into any extravagances or fanaticisms. Stern even as a
disciplinarian, she did not proscribe healthy and natural amusements.
Strong-minded,--if I may use a modern contemptuous phrase,--she never
rebelled against the ordinances of nature or the laws dictated by
inspiration. She was a model woman: beautiful, yet not vain; witty, yet
never irreverent; independent, yet respectful to authority; exercising
private judgment, yet admired by bishops; learned, without pedantry;
hospitable, without extravagance; fond of the society of the great, yet
spending her life among the poor; alive to the fascinations of society,
yet consecrating all her energies of mind and body to the good of those
with whom she was brought in contact; as capable of friendship as Paula,
as religious as Madame Guyon, as charming in conversation as Récamier,
as practical as Elizabeth, as broad and tolerant as Fénelon, who was
himself half woman in his nature, as the most interesting men of genius
are apt to be. Nothing cynical, or bitter, or extravagant, or
contemptuous appears in any of her writings, most of which were
published anonymously,--from humility as well as sensitiveness. Vanity
was a stranger to her, as well as arrogance and pride. Embarking in
great enterprises, she never went outside the prescribed sphere of
woman. Masculine in the force and vigor of her understanding, she was
feminine in all her instincts,--proper, amiable, and gentle; a woman
whom everybody loved and everybody respected, even to kings and queens.
Hannah More was born in a little village near Bristol, 1745, and her
father was the village schoolmaster. He had been well educated, and had
large expectations; but he was disappointed, and was obliged to resort
to this useful but irksome way of getting a living. He had five
daughters, of whom Hannah was the fourth. As a girl, she was very
precocious in mind, as well as beautiful and attractive in her person.
She studied Latin when only eight years of age. Her father, it would
seem, was a very sensible man, and sought to develop the peculiar
talents which each of his daughters possessed, without the usual
partiality of parents, who are apt to mistake inclination for genius.
Three of the girls had an aptitude for teaching, and opened a
boarding-school in Bristol when the oldest was only twenty. The school
was a great success, and soon became fashionable, and ultimately famous.
To this school the early labors of Hannah More were devoted; and she
soon attracted attention by her accomplishments, especially in the
modern languages, in which she conversed with great accuracy and
facility. But her talents were more remarkable than her
accomplishments; and eminent men sought her society and friendship, who
in turn introduced her to their own circle of friends, by all of whom
she was admired. Thus she gradually came to know the celebrated Dean
Tucker of Gloucester cathedral; Ferguson the astronomer, then lecturing
at Bristol; the elder Sheridan, also giving lectures on oratory in the
same city; Garrick, on the eve of his retirement from the stage; Dr.
Johnson, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Mrs. Montagu, in whose _salon_ the most
distinguished men of the age assembled as the headquarters of
fashionable society,--Edmund Burke, then member for Bristol in the House
of Commons; Gibbon; Alderman Cadell, the great publisher; Bishop
Porteus; Rev. John Newton; and Sir James Stonehouse, an eminent
physician. With all these stars she was on intimate terms, visiting them
at their houses, received by them all as more than an equal,--for she
was not only beautiful and witty, but had earned considerable reputation
for her poetry. Garrick particularly admired her as a woman of genius,
and performed one of her plays ("Percy") twenty successive nights at
Drury Lane, writing himself both the prologue and the epilogue. It must
be borne in mind that when first admitted to the choicest society of
London,--at the houses not merely of literary men, but of great
statesmen and nobles like Lord Camden, Lord Spencer, the Duke of
Newcastle. Lord Pembroke, Lord Granville, and others,--she was teaching
in a girls' school at Bristol, and was a young lady under thirty
years of age.
It was as a literary woman--when literary women were not so numerous or
ambitious as they now are--that Hannah More had the _entrée_ into the
best society under the patronage of the greatest writers of the age. She
was a literary lion before she was twenty-five. She attracted the
attention of Sheridan by her verses when she was scarcely eighteen. Her
"Search after Happiness" went through six editions before the year 1775.
Her tragedy of "Percy" was translated into French and German before she
was thirty; and she realized from the sale of it £600. "The Fatal
Falsehood" was also much admired, but did not meet the same success,
being cruelly attacked by envious rivals. Her "Bas Bleu" was praised by
Johnson in unmeasured terms. It was for her poetry that she was best
known from 1775 to 1785, the period when she lived in the fashionable
and literary world, and which she adorned by her wit and brilliant
conversation,--not exactly a queen of society, since she did not set up
a _salon_, but was only an honored visitor at the houses of the great; a
brilliant and beautiful woman, whom everybody wished to know.
I will not attempt any criticism on those numerous poems. They are not
much read and valued in our time. They are all after the style of
Johnson and Pope;--the measured and artificial style of the eighteenth
century, in imitation of the ancient classics and of French poetry, in
which the wearisome rhyme is the chief peculiarity,--smooth, polished,
elaborate, but pretty much after the same pattern, and easily imitated
by school-girls. The taste of this age--created by Burns, Byron,
Wordsworth, Browning, Tennyson, Longfellow, and others--is very
different. But the poems of Hannah More were undoubtedly admired by her
generation, and gave her great _éclat_ and considerable pecuniary
emolument. And yet her real fame does not rest on those artificial
poems, respectable as they were one hundred years ago, but on her
writings as a moralist and educator.
During this period of her life--from 1775 to 1785--she chiefly resided
with her sisters in Bristol, but made long visits to London, and to the
houses of famous or titled personages. In a worldly point of view these
years were the most brilliant, but not most useful, period of her life.
At first she was intoxicated by the magnificent attentions she received,
and had an intense enjoyment of cultivated society. It was in these
years she formed the most ardent friendships of her life. Of all her
friends, she seems to have been most attached to Garrick,--the idol of
society, a general favorite wherever he chose to go, a man of
irreproachable morals and charming conversational powers; at whose
house and table no actor or actress was ever known to be invited, except
in one solitary instance; from which it would appear that he was more
desirous of the attentions of the great than of the sympathy and
admiration of the people of his own profession. It is not common for
actors to be gifted with great conversational powers, any more than for
artists, as a general thing, to be well-read people, especially in
history. Hannah More was exceedingly intimate with both Garrick and his
wife; and his death, in 1779, saddened and softened his great
worshipper. After his death she never was present at any theatrical
amusement. She would not go to the theatre to witness the acting of her
own dramas; not even to see Mrs. Siddons, when she appeared as so
brilliant a star. In fact, after Garrick's death Miss More partially
abandoned fashionable society, having acquired a disgust of its
heartless frivolities and seductive vices.
With the death of Garrick a new era opened in the life of Hannah More,
although for the succeeding five years she still was a frequent visitor
in the houses of those she esteemed, both literary lions and people of
rank. It would seem, during this period, that Dr. Johnson was her
warmest friend, whom she ever respected for his lofty moral nature, and
before whom she bowed down in humble worship as an intellectual
dictator. He called her his child. Sometimes he was severe on her, when
she differed from him in opinion, or when caught praising books which
he, as a moralist, abhorred,--like the novels of Fielding and Smollet;
for the only novelist he could tolerate was Richardson. Once when she
warmly expatiated in praise of the Jansenists, the overbearing autocrat
exclaimed in a voice of thunder: "Madam, let me hear no more of this!
Don't quote your popish authorities to me; I want none of your popery!"
But seeing that his friend was overwhelmed with the shock he gave her,
his countenance instantly changed; his lip quivered, and his eyes filled
with tears. He gently took her hand, and with the deepest emotion
exclaimed: "Child, never mind what I have said,--follow true piety
wherever you find it." This anecdote is a key to the whole character of
Johnson, interesting and uninteresting; for this rough, tyrannical
dogmatist was also one of the tenderest of men, and had a soul as
impressible as that of a woman.
The most intimate woman friend, it would seem, that Hannah ever had was
Mrs. Garrick, both before and after the death of her husband; and the
wife of Garrick was a Roman Catholic. Hannah More usually spent several
months with this accomplished and warm-hearted woman at her house in
Hampton, generally from March to July. This was often her home during
the London season, after which she resided in Bristol with her sisters,
who made a fortune by their boarding-school. After Hannah had entered
into the literary field she supported herself by her writings, which
until 1785 were chiefly poems and dramas,--now almost forgotten, but
which were widely circulated and admired in her day, and by which she
kept her position in fashionable and learned society. After the death of
Garrick, as we have said, she seemed to have acquired a disgust of the
gay and fashionable society which at one time was so fascinating. She
found it frivolous, vain, and even dull. She craved sympathy and
intellectual conversation and knowledge. She found neither at a
fashionable party, only outside show, gay dresses, and unspeakable
follies,--no conversation; for how could there be either the cultivation
of friendship or conversation in a crowd, perchance, of empty people for
the most part? "As to London," says she, "I shall be glad to get out of
it; everything is great and vast and late and magnificent and dull." I
very seldom go to these parties, and I always repent when I do. My
distaste of these scenes of insipid magnificence I have not words to
tell. Every faculty but the sight is starved, and that has a surfeit. I
like conversation parties of the right sort, whether of four persons or
forty; but it is impossible to talk when two or three hundred people are
continually coming in and popping out, or nailing themselves to a card
table. "Conceive," said she, "of the insipidity of two or three hundred
people,--all dressed in the extremity of fashion, painted as red as
bacchanals, poisoning the air with perfumes, treading on each other's
dresses, not one in ten able to get a chair when fainting with
weariness. I never now go to these things when I can possibly avoid it,
and stay when there as few minutes as I can." Thus she wrote as early as
1782. She went through the same experience as did Madame Récamier,
learning to prefer a small and select circle, where conversation was the
chief charm, especially when this circle was composed only of gifted men
and women. In this incipient disgust of gay and worldly society--chiefly
because it improved neither her mind nor her morals, because it was
stupid and dull, as it generally is to people of real culture and high
intelligence--she seems to have been gradually drawn to the learned
prelates of the English Church,--like Dr. Porteus, Bishop of Chester,
afterwards of London; the Bishop of St. Asaph; and Dr. Home, then Dean
of Canterbury. She became very intimate with Wilberforce and Rev. John
Newton, while she did not give up her friendship for Horace Walpole,
Pepys, and other lights of the social world.
About this time (1785) she retired to Cowslip Green, a pretty cottage
ten miles from Bristol, and spent her time in reading, writing, and
gardening. The country, with its green pastures and still waters, called
her back to those studies and duties which are most ennobling, and which
produce the most lasting pleasure. In this humble retreat she had many
visitors from among her illustrious friends. She became more and more
religious, without entirely giving up society; corresponding with the
eminent men and women she visited, especially Mrs. Montagu, Dr. Porteus,
Mrs. Boscawen, Mr. Pepys, and Rev. John Newton. In the charming
seclusion of Cowslip Green she wrote her treatise on the "Manners of the
Great;" the first of that series in which she rebuked the fashions and
follies of the day. It had an immense circulation, and was published
anonymously. This very popular work was followed, in 1790, by a volume
on an "Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable World," which
produced a still deeper sensation among the great, and was much admired.
The Bishop of London (Porteus) was full of its praises; so was John
Newton, although he did not think that any book could wean the worldly
from their pleasures.
Thus far most of the associations of Hannah More had been with the
fashionable world, by which she was petted and flattered. Seeing clearly
its faults, she had sought to reform it by her writings and by her
conversation. But now she turned her attention to another class,--the
poor and ignorant,--and labored for them. She instituted a number of
schools for the poor in her immediate neighborhood, superintended them,
raised money for them, and directed them, as Madame de Maintenon did the
school of St. Cyr; only with this difference,--that while the
Frenchwoman sought to develop the mind and character of a set of
aristocratic girls to offset the practical infidelity that permeated the
upper walks of life, Hannah More desired to make the children of the
poor religious amid the savage profligacy which then marked the peasant
class. The first school she established was at Cheddar, a wild and
sunless hollow, amid yawning caverns, about ten miles from Cowslip
Green,--the resort of pleasure parties for its picturesque cliffs and
fissures. Around this weird spot was perhaps the most degraded peasantry
to be found in England, without even spiritual instruction,--for the
vicar was a non-resident, and his living was worth but £50 a year. In
her efforts to establish a school in such a barbarous and pagan locality
Hannah met with serious obstacles. The farmers and petty landholders
were hostile to her scheme, maintaining that any education would spoil
the poor, and make them discontented. Even the farmers themselves were
an ignorant and brutal class, very depraved, and with intense
prejudices. For a whole year she labored with them to disarm their
hostilities and prejudices, and succeeded at last in collecting two
hundred and fifty children in the schoolhouse which she had built. Their
instruction was of course only elemental, but it was religious.