Hannah More (British edition 1888)/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY WORK.
Literary work was not neglected for the affairs of the Mendip schools, which indeed could not be visited in the winter months by ladies far from strong, so that December sent the sisters to their house at Bath.
Thence Hannah wrote on the New Year's Day of 1792:—
"The waters, I think, are doing me good, and I have been very much better since I came to close winter quarters, owing, under God, to my being quite shut up. Much as I love air and exercise, the loss of them is but a petty sacrifice to what many are called to make; and as I have no avocation at present which makes it a duty to run risks by going out, I am thankful to be furnished with so good a pretence for laying in a little health for future services; for I have partly pledged myself in my own mind, if I live and have health and money, and the French do not come, to take up two new parishes next spring, but, as they are four miles below Cheddar, I have never dared reveal my intention to anyone. I know sloth and self-love will say often 'Spare thyself,' and I feel the extreme concern it will give to those to whom I would wish to give nothing but pleasure, but I have counted the cost. These parishes are large and populous, they are as dark as Africa, and I do not like the thought, that at the Day of Judgment any set of people should be found to have perished through ignorance, who were within my possible reach, and only that I might have a little more ease. I will not say that I am not at times discouraged from this idea; for example, this last week, when, with all my boasting, I have been laid by with five or six days of nervous headache."
Meantime Shipham "suffered dreadfully from a raging fever. We lost seven in two days, several of them our poor children. Figure to yourself such a visitation in a place where a single cup of broth cannot be obtained, for there is none to give, if it would save a life. I am ashamed of my comforts when I think of their wants. One widow, to whom we allow a little pension, burns her only table for firing; another, one of her three chairs. I had the comfort, however, of knowing that poor Jones distributed what we sent most conscientiously, and ran the risk of walking into the pits with which the place abounds, and which were so covered with snow that he was near being lost. 'No words,' he writes me, 'could describe the sensations of this poor village at seeing a waggonload of coal (we sent) enter the place.' I feel indignant to think that so small a sum can create such feelings when one knows what sums one has wasted."
It was an anxious winter. "The teaching of the teachers is not the least part of the work," another letter says. "Add to this, that having about thirty masters and mistresses with under-teachers, one has continually to bear with the faults, the ignorance, the prejudices, humours, misfortunes, and debts of all these poor well-meaning people."
Yet things were much improving: Mr. Drewitt, the curate of Cheddar, "preached most faithfully on Sundays, and gave a lecture in church on Tuesday evenings, all for £25 per annum."
The Dissenters were beginning to take umbrage at Hannah's doings, and the High Church suspected her independence. She was advised "to publish a short confession of her faith," as her attachment both to the religion and government of the country had become questionable to many persons. "I aver I was rather glad to hear it, as I was afraid I had leaned too strongly to the other side, and had sometimes gone out of my way to show on which side my bias lay. I have not room in my letter to Mrs.—— to tell her a true story recently transacted in London. A lady gave a very great children's ball; 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."
The winter at Bath was saddened by the death of good Bishop Horne of Norwich, not many doors from the home of the Misses More, and likewise of a young cousin of Mrs. Wilberforce. In both cases Hannah and her sisters gave their whole hearts to sympathy with the mourners.
Hannah and Patty went to London in April, partly in the hope to recover a poor little heiress, who at fourteen had been decoyed away from home, and going in search of her with Bow Street officers—all in vain, for the child had been betrayed into a marriage and carried to the Continent; and again, in London, doing all in their power to rescue a poor creature who had tried to drown herself from weariness of a sinful course—again, alas! in vain.
The two sisters had a pleasant visit at Fulham Place, where Bishop Porteous was now installed. He took Hannah to see George III. open Parliament, and she was struck by seeing among the lady spectators, close to the foot of the throne, the Countess of Albany, once wife of Prince Charles Edward; whose birthday, the 10th of June, strangely enough, it was.
The course of the French Revolution was affecting Hannah powerfully. She had looked on at first with hope, and rejoiced in the destruction of the Bastille; but as the counsels of the more violent party began to prevail, disapproval soon became disgust and horror, and her pen was actively employed against the principles they avowed. A speech of Citizen Dupont in the National Assembly on the 14th of December 1792, was a direct attack on religion, not unlike the declamations which, after the lapse of nearly another century, are again to be heard in France. "Nature and Reason, these are the gods of men," was his cry, as he called on the Assembly to found schools of public instruction whence Christianity should be banished. Against these arguments of Sansfoy, the Britomart of Mendip couched her lance, in a pamphlet whose proceeds were devoted to the support of the seven thousand emigrant clergy who had taken shelter in England. Emotion lifts the author into eloquence in her final paragraphs, above all in the prayer with which she concludes that the righteous nation may haply find, while the discovery can still be attended with hope and consolation, that "doubtless there is a reward for the righteous, verily there is a God that judgeth the earth."
Paine's writings were exciting much alarm among the upper classes, and were either themselves or travesties of them spreading widely among the lower; and Miss More was entreated by persons from every quarter to write a popular refutation such as should be available for distribution. At first, doubting her own powers, she refused, but afterwards the idea inspired her, and in a few hours she had completed a tract called Village Politics, by Will Chip, a conversation in which she could give play to her native sense of humour.
Tom Hod, the mason, is discovered in a dismal state of mind by his friend Jack Anvil, the blacksmith, who inquires the cause.
Tom.—"Why, I find here that I am very unhappy and very miserable, which I should never have known if I had not had the good luck to meet with this book. Oh, 'tis a precious book!"
Jack.—"A good sign, though, that you can't find out what ails you without looking into a book for it. What is the matter?"
Tom.—"Matter? why, I want liberty."
Jack.—"Liberty! that's bad indeed! What, has anyone fetched a warrant for thee? Come, man, I'll be bound for thee. Thou art an honest fellow in the main, though thou dost tipple a little at the Rose and Crown."
Tom.—"No, no; I want a new constitution."
Jack.—"Indeed! why I thought thou hadst been a desperate healthy fellow. Send for the doctor."
As Tom's grievances are disclosed, Jack has ready answers to them. As to equality. "Suppose in the general division our new rulers should give us half an acre of ground apiece, we could, to be sure, raise potatoes on it for the use of our families; but as every man would be equally busy in raising potatoes for his family, why, then, you see, if thou was to break thy spade, I, whose trade it is, should no longer be able to mend it. Neighbour Snip would have no time to make us a suit of clothes, nor the clothier to receive the cloth, for all the world would be gone a-digging."
Tom.—"But still I should have no one over my head."
Jack.—"That's a mistake. I'm stronger than thee, and Standish the exciseman is a better scholar, and we should not remain equal a minute."
Jack condemns the original French constitution, explaining how there the poor paid the taxes, and the quality nothing, and that ours is "no more like what the French one was, than a mug of our Taunton beer is like a platter of their soup maigre." So "because my neighbour Farrow t'other day, pulled down a crazy old barn, is that a reason why I must set fire to my tight cottage?"... "Those poor French fellows used to be the merriest dogs in the whole world, but since equality came in I don't believe a Frenchman has ever laughed."
Tom.—"What, then, dost take French liberty to be?"
Jack.—"To murder more men in one night than their poor king did in all his life."
Tom.—"And what dost thou take a democrat to be?"
Jack.—"One who likes to be governed by a thousand tyrants and yet can't bear a king."
Tom.—"What is equality?"
Jack.—"For every man to put down everyone that is above him."
Tom.—"What are the rights of man?" (N.B. This was during the Reign of Terror.)
Jack.—"Battle, murder, and sudden death."
Tom.—"What is it to be an enlightened people?"
Jack.—"To put out the light of the Gospel, confound right and wrong, and grope about in pitch darkness."
Hannah published anonymously, and through Rivington, instead of Cadell. In consequence she was inundated with presents and recommendations of "Will Chip," while hundreds of thousands of copies were in circulation. The King was delighted with it, and Bishop Porteous, who was in the secret, wrote this note to Hannah:—
It was perhaps a greater compliment, though a less desirable one, that the Axbridge people made Tom Paine's effigy share the fate of Guy Fawkes. Some of the special favourites at Shipham joined them, and the result was a revel at the public-house, of which the Shipham men showed themselves most bitterly ashamed, and the most promising one of all could not for many months, nor till after an earnest conversation with Hannah More, recover his spirits or believe himself forgiven. The answer to Dupont actually raised £240 for the emigrant clergy. At the same time, a pamphlet came out complaining of this benefaction, as interfering with the Divine will that the French priests should starve!