Hannah More (British edition 1888)/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
SOLITUDE.
Hannah and Martha had seemed to have one heart and soul between them, from the time the little sisters had lain in the same crib seventy-three years before. Many an occupation had been shared, many a work talked over, many a long dark drive been shared, many a book read together, many an illness cheered by their sweet companionship. The other sisters had gone in regular succession of age, and Hannah must have thought that she, the frailest, would not be the survivor. But hers was to be the widowhood of the heart. In September 1819, Mr. and Mrs. Wilberforce came to Barley Wood; his diary records, "Patty sat up with me till near twelve, talking over Hannah's first introduction to a London life, and I, not she, broke off the conference. I never saw her more animated. About eight in the morning, when I came out of my room, I found Hannah at the door. 'Have you not heard that Patty is dying! They called me to her in great alarm,' at which from the ghastliness of her appearance I could not wonder. About two or three hours after our parting for the night she had been taken ill."
She had gone through much fatigue, for Hannah had not been well enough to go with the Wilberforces the round of the schools at Cheddar, &c. On that last night she had come to her sister's bedside and said, "They are all gone to bed, and our Wilberforce and I have had a nice hour's chat." In a very little time after this she awoke in frightful agony, ending after some hours in unconsciousness, but she lingered for about a week, often rambling in talk but quite peaceful. There was bitter lamentation and weeping all through the Mendips, and among the wide circle of friends who had felt the unusual charm of her society, and what could Hannah write more truly than "I may indeed now say, 'My house is left unto me desolate.' I bless my Heavenly Father, however, that he has not left me without consolation and support."
She was seventy-four years of age, and the feeling "I must finish my journey alone," could not but be strong upon her. "I have lost my chief earthly comfort, companion, counsellor, and fellow labourer," were her words to Daniel Wilson (afterwards Bishop of Calcutta); but she was thankful throughout: "My loss is little compared with her gain, and the remainder of my pilgrimage will be short."
Mrs. Macaulay, the adopted younger sister, came to her early in November, to help her in looking over papers and setting things in order. She was greatly touched when the Shipham schoolmaster came over, with his donkey and panniers, to fetch the books yearly supplied to the school, and she asked him why no one from the parish had for weeks been at Barley Wood, "Why, madam," he answered, "they be so cut up, they have not the heart to come."
These Shipham people, to a man, signed a loyal address, originated among themselves, expressing their disapproval of the democratic agitations taking place in 1819, and it was presented to the Prince Regent with a note on their former act of patriotism.
The bereaved sister was not left alone. She always had the attendance of Miss Frowd, her excellent companion, and one or the other of her cousins, the Robertses, who had a house at Clifton, was almost constantly with her. Her eyesight and hearing were perfect, and though she could no longer visit her schools, she still attended to all the details connected with them. She did not shrink from preparing the school rewards in the ensuing spring, though remembering how this had been the exclusive delight and work of Patty, who in her last round had distributed 1300 of them.
In August she had a terrible illness, which she fully anticipated would be her last. "Nothing but the icy hand of death can cool me," she said. "Poor Patty, I shall soon rejoin her."
But the rest was not yet attained. She began to recover, and, when making some arrangements with a friend, she said, "Not that I have the remotest idea of living through the winter, but we must plan for time and prepare for eternity." When a little stronger, she would exert herself, saying it was a mistake in old persons to suppose that because they could do little, they were therefore exempted from doing anything. Even if only one talent were left, it must still be used to the utmost.
She continued to admit innumerable visitors on this, principle, and was as sprightly in conversation and correspondence as ever, trying always to inculcate some deeper thought, and taking interest in new and old books as much as ever, especially the Life of Madame de Staël, about which she had a correspondence with the author, Madame Necker. During an attack of illness she received a letter from Cadell about a new edition of the Moral Sketches, to which he wished her to append "a short tribute to George III. then newly dead. I fancied that what was difficult might not be impossible. So, having got pen, ink, and paper, which I concealed in my bed, and next morning in a high fever with my pulse above a hundred, without having formed one idea, I began to scribble. I got on for about seven pages, my hand being almost as incompetent as my head. I hid my scrawl and said not a word, while my doctor and my friends wondered at my increased debility. After a strong opiate I next morning returned to my task, and finished seven pages more, and delivered my almost illegible papers to my friend to transcribe and send away. I got well scolded; but I loved my king, and was carried through by a sort of affectionate impulse."
The eulogy on the religious, moral and domestic virtues of George III. is full of heartfelt love, and is, in vigour and language, a wonderful achievement for a sick woman of seventy-five.
She was in time restored to her usual state of health, and was as bright and vivacious as ever in conversation and correspondence. Sir Thomas Dyke Acland availed himself of this opportunity to get her likeness taken. As one of her letters says:—
"I had intended, as Dogberry says in the play, to bestow my tediousness upon you, but that most despotic of tyrants, and most ardent of friends, Sir Thomas Acland, against my most earnest remonstrances and positive refusals, has sent down Pickersgill to paint my portrait. I dreaded this foolish business so much as to lie awake about it, but I got through it, hitherto, better than usual."
In fact, two portraits were taken, one for Sir Thomas Acland, the other for Mr. Lovell Gwatkin, whose family had been her friends from early youth. A sweet-faced, bright-eyed old woman is shown, small and spare, of the fairy godmother type, in the close cap, with the frilled chin-stay and double ruffle then held to be appropriate to advanced age, but still with much of the life and fire of the sprightly young woman with powdered curls pourtrayed by Opie more than forty years before, in the merry days of Hampton and the Bas Bleu.
The last remnants of those days were passing fast away. Mrs. Vesey, the Sylph, had long since died, after long failure of intellect; Mrs. Montague had died in 1800, Mrs. Boscawen some years later; and Mrs. More had lived to read with sad interest the memoirs not only of Johnson and Horace Walpole, but of Elizabeth Carter. And in the October of 1821 she wrote:—
"I was much affected yesterday with a report of the death of my ancient and valued friend, Mrs. Garrick. She was in her hundredth year. I spent above twenty winters under her roof, and gratefully remember not only their personal kindness but my first introduction through them into a society remarkable for rank, literature, and talents. Whatever was most distinguished in either was to be found at their table. He was the very soul of conversation."
Sir William Pepys was the last remnant of these old times, and a letter to him on the education of the poor, written in October 1821, deserves quotation:—
"I think there is ultraism on both sides of the question. My views of popular instruction are narrow, the views of others I think too narrow. I will give you a sketch of my own poor practice at setting out, but opposition compelled me to lower it. Not the very poor only are deplorably ignorant. The common farmers are as illiterate as their workmen. It therefore occurred to me to employ schoolmasters, who to sound piety added good sense and competent knowledge. In addition to instructing all the poor children in the parish on Sundays at my expense, I directed him to take the farmers' sons on week days, at a low price to be paid by them, and to add writing and arithmetic to reading, which was all I thought necessary for labourers' children. The master carefully instructed these higher boys also in religious principles, which their fathers did not object to when they got it gratuitously. I had long thought that the knowledge necessary for persons of this class was such as would qualify them for constables, overseers, churchwardens, jurymen, and especially tend to impress them with a sense of the awful nature of an oath, which I fear is often taken without any sense of its sanctity. Farther than this I have never gone.
"Now I know the ultra-educationalist would despise these limits. I know not if you have seen a book on popular education written by a man of great talents. Truth compels me to bear my public testimony against his extravagant plan, which is that there is nothing which the poor should not be taught; they must not stop short of science. They must learn history in its widest extent; Goldsmith's Greece is nothing; he recommends Mitford, &c. Even the absurdity of the thing is most obvious; supposing they had money to buy such books, where would they find time to read them without the neglect of all business, and the violation of all duty. And where is all this to terminate? Only cast back your eye upon Athens, where the upper gallery pronounced sentence on Sophocles and Euripides, and an herbwoman could detect the provincial accent of a great philosopher. Yet was there ever a more turbulent, ungovernable rabble? St. Paul tells us how they spent their time. It was only to tell or to hear of some new thing. I have exerted my feeble voice to prevail on my few parliamentary friends to steer the middle way between the Scylla of brutal ignorance and the Charybdis of a literary education. The one is cruel, the other preposterous."
Consumption of time in light reading, in her own class, displeased her. "Thirty volumes of Sir Walter Scott's novels have in the succession of a very few years covered every table. Figure to yourself a large family, where everyone reads for himself, the thousands of hours that have been thus swallowed up. . . . The useful reading compared with the idle, like our medicine compared with our food, is but as grains to pounds. . . . It is not that old age has made me insensible to the charms of genius. In that one respect, I think, I am not grown obtuse. I have been really looking for leisure to read one or two of Sir Walter Scott's novels."
Mrs. More did not fail to enjoy Scott, but she thought that, though his works were free from the coarseness of earlier writers, they were deficient in the practical precepts to be gleaned from them.
An illness which kept Mrs. More thirteen weeks in bed occupied the spring of 1821-22; but again she recovered, and resumed her usual habits, and her powers were not impaired, as may be seen by some verses which accompanied a pair of garters. She was in the habit of knitting these to be sold for charitable purposes, and Sir Thomas Dyke Acland had bespoken a pair for a crown. It is worth while to compare this composition with the Bas Blanc she wrote with the stockings for the little Pepys forty years before. Few ideas are repeated, and those that are rather gain than lose in the process:—
Slowly, yet gladly, to my valued friend
The enclosed most faultless of my works I send.
Two cantos make the whole, surpris'd you 'll see
They're better for their strict identity.
Length—to my previous works so worthy blame,
Here the just meed of your applause may claim.
If all my former compositions found
For critic harshness true, and solid ground,
None of my ancient sins you here will see,
Except incurable tautology.
Not e'en reviewers here can find a botch,
British, nor Quarterly, nor scalping Scotch.
The deep logician, though he sought amain
To find false reasoning might seek in vain.
Quibbling grammarians may this work inspect.
Yet in no bungling syntax spy defect.
Its geometric character's complete,
The parallels run on but never meet.
Though close the knots, all casuists must agree,
Solution would but break the unity.
Unravelled mysteries shall here be read,
Till time itself shall break the even thread.
Nor could the rhetorician find, nor hope,
One ill-placed metaphor, one faulty trope.
High claims in this rare composition meet,
Soft without weakness, smooth without deceit.
Say not, as o'er this learned work you pore,
"The author nothing knows of classic lore."
The Roman satirist's self might laud my plan,
For to the end I keep as I began.
Though some its want of ornament may blame,
Utility, not splendour, was my aim.
Not ostentatious I, for still I ween
Its worth is rather to be felt than seen.
Around the feelings still it gently winds;
If lost, no comfort the possessor finds.
Retired from view, it seeks to be obscure,
The public gaze it trembles to endure.
The sober moralist its use may find,
Its object is not loose, it aims to bind.
No creature suffers from its sight or touch,
Can Walter Scott say more, can Byron say so much?
One tribute more, my friend, I seek to raise,
You 've given, indeed, a Crown, give More your praise.
These verses were despatched just before a fever set in—from which her recovery at seventy-seven years of age was remarkable. She was bled seven times in a few weeks. A friend, Miss Frowd, nursed her, visited her schools, managed her clothing clubs, and wrote her letters; and she kept a little bag pinned to her curtain whence she sent relief by her doctor to the poor around, who were suffering from a visitation of typhus, besides that two of their cottages were burnt down within sight of her bedroom window, one through lightning.
Her letters, when again she could write them, are as amusing and spirited as ever. There is one to Mr. Wilberforce, which shows that the march of intellect had made considerable progress in 1823, considerably to the good lady's dismay, for she held that though perhaps ten out of a hundred children might have abilities worth cultivation, the other ninety were better with no knowledge save of their Bible and Catechism. A little girl from one of the threepenny semi-genteel schools was brought into Mrs. More's room. A gentleman present asked her what she was reading.
"Oh, Sir, the whole circle of the sciences."
"Indeed!" said he, "that must be a very large work."
"No, Sir, it is a very small book, and I bought it for half-a-crown." Probably it was the same study as that of her neighbour in the next parish, who announced, "I learn gography, and the harts and senses."
Children of this stamp were frequently brought to Mrs. More to be examined and receive a small reward. One, after repeating a little poem very nicely, when asked, "Who was Abraham?" after some consideration, said, "I think he was an Exeter man."
Meantime, she tells Sir William Pepys, "There is hardly a city in America in which I have not a correspondent, on matters concerning religion, morals, and literature." With a bequest from one of the Canons of Lincoln she redeemed two little slaves in the Burman Empire, and she had the pleasure of hearing that, with the proceeds of a sale of an engraving of her abode, her American friends had founded a mission school for girls in Ceylon, and named it Barley Wood.
Her last book, the Spirit of Prayer, was published in 1824, her eightieth year. It led to the last correspondence with her much-valued friend, Sir William Pepys, who died in the course of the next summer of 1825. Other great friends, Bishops Van Mildert and Fisher and Lady Cremorne, were also taken in a few months time, and none were more sincerely mourned than good Mr. Jones, of Shipham, the first of the clergy who had worked heartily with her. In sixty-one years, during which he had been in Holy Orders, he had only on four Sundays failed to officiate.
All the time, whenever she was well enough, she admitted a continual succession of callers between twelve and three o'clock. Miss Frowd calculated that in one week she saw eighty. "I know not how to help it," she wrote. "If my guests are old, I see them out of respect; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from a distance I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near home, my neighbours would be jealous at my seeing strangers and excluding them."
Here is a description by one of these visitors, in a private letter (given in a memoir published by Messrs. Fisher):—
I was much struck by the air of affectionate kindness with which the old lady welcomed us to Barley Wood. There was something of courtliness about it, at the same time the courtliness of the vieille cour, which one reads of and seldom meets. Her dress was of light green Venetian silk, a yellow, richly embroidered crape shawl covered her shoulders, and a pretty net cap tied under her chin with white satin ribbon completed her costume. Her figure is engagingly petite; but to have any idea of the expression of her countenance you must imagine the small withered face of a woman in her seventy-seventh year; and imagine also (shaded, but not obscured, by long, perfectly white eye-lashes), eyes dark, brilliant, flashing, and penetrating, sparkling from object to object with all the fire and energy of youth, and sending welcome on all around.
When I first entered the room Lady S—— and her family were there; they soon prepared to depart, but the youngest boy, a fine little fellow of six, looked anxiously in Mrs. More's face when she had kissed him, and his mamma said: "You will not forget Mrs. Hannah, my dear." He shook his head. "Do not forget, my dear child," said the kind old lady, assuming a playful manner; "but they say your sex is naturally capricious. There, I will give you another kiss; keep it for my sake, and when yon are a man remember Hannah More." "I will," he said, "remember that you loved children."
It was a beautiful compliment. After a good deal of conversation on indifferent topics, she commenced showing us her curiosities, which are numerous and peculiar. Gods given up by the South Sea Islanders to our missionaries, fragments of oriental manuscripts, a choice but not numerous collection of books, chiefly in Italian, English, and French, for she speaks all these languages with equal fluency, and, above all, a large collection of autographs. . . . .
"I will now," she said, "show you some monuments of the days of my wickedness," and she produced a play-bill where "Miss More's new tragedy of Percy" was announced exactly fifty-two years ago. She looked to me at that moment as a resurrection from the dead, more particularly when she added: "Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Reynolds, Porteous, all, all the associates of my youth have gone. Nor is there one of them whom I delight in praising more than David Garrick. In his house I made my entrance into life, and a better conducted house I never saw." I never could agree in the latter part of the sentiment.
"On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting. It was only that when he was off he was acting, and I only regret that his species of acting is not more practised by the world at large. I have never been to a play since his death; I could not bear it." She told me it was nine years since she had been downstairs; "but I am like Alexander Selkirk," she added, laughing; "I am monarch of all I survey. Every tree on this little domain was planted by my own hands, or under my special direction."
(The writer of this pleasant letter is rather provoking as to dates, for Percy was acted in 1778, and fifty-two years from that time would be 1830, when Hannah was eighty-five, instead of seventy-seven, and was no longer at Wrington.)
Some of the younger generation who were brought to the shrine at Barley Wood thought the style of conversation too complimentary, but the old lady herself belonged to an age when such forms of speech were thought ordinary civility; she herself was regarded with deep veneration; and humble-minded as she really was, such expressions seemed to her like mere courtesy. Playful she always was, and in the March of 1826 she extemporised the following "heroic poem," as she was pleased to call it, on seeing the carcase of a pig dragged home for dissection:—
The saddest sight that ere was seen
Was Piggy rolling up the green;
Though dragged, he still would roll alone
Downward like Sisyphus's stone.
This pig, as good as e'er was sold,
Was worth, not quite, his weight in gold.
That pork 's unwholesome, doctors tell us
Though of the fact I'm somewhat jealous;
And I believe, beyond all question,
Bacon is sovereign for digestion.
For this one cause, among a few,
I'm glad I was not born a Jew.
No quadruped like Piggy claims
To give his flesh so many names;
The calf and sheep half starve the glutton
By yielding only veal and mutton,
While all extol the liberal swine
For griskin and the savoury chine.
How often does the brawny flitch
Adorn the table and enrich
The stately ham, the rasher small
Are liked in every state; and all
Who will confess they see no good in
The poignant sausage and black pudding,
The spare-rib, sweet-bone, ears and snout
My bill of fare will quite make out;
For I disdain my song to close
By stooping to the pettitoes.
He ne'er was seen to dance a jig,
Though a genteel and graceful pig;
Yet when he round my field would prance,
It might be termed a country dance.
Those men who dancing lives have led,
Are worse than nothing when they're dead;
While Piggy's goodness ne'er appears
Till closed his eyes and deaf his ears.
Though feeding spoilt his shape and beauty,
Yet feeding was in him a duty;
In spite of this reproach or that,
It was his duty to grow fat.
Death was to him no awful sentence,
No need for sorrow or repentance;
How many a gourmand, stout and big,
Might envy thy last hour, O pig!
In the letter that follows this effusion Mrs. More speaks of fears that her head might not last out her body, but there are no signs of decay in the composition. There is plenty of vigour in a letter to Daniel Wilson, bearing date August 2, 1826.
"As to their reproaching you with being a Calvinist, I wish, as Bishop Horsley said in his incomparable charge, that before they abuse Calvinism they would just take the pains to inquire what it is. I hope to make you smile for a moment when I tell you this story. A little party was sitting at a comfortable game of whist, when one of the set, having a slight headache, turned about and asked a lady who was sitting by to take her cards for a few minutes. The lady excused herself by saying that really she could not play; on which the other exclaimed, 'Now that is what I call Calvinism!' It is a pity that Bishop Horsley could not have been by to have heard this satisfactory exposition of the doctrine, and so practical too!
"The only one of my youthful fond attachments which exists still in its full force is a passion for scenery, raising flowers, and landscape gardening, in which I can still indulge in some measure, as far as opening a walk from my chamber window among a little grove of trees which I planted twenty-four years ago. . . .
"But I am running away from my object, which is that I scribbled the enclosed rhymes in a state of mind not very different from what you describe:—
Solitary Musings.
Lord, when dejected I appear,
And love is half absorbed in fear.
E'en then I know I'm not forgot,
Thou 'rt present, though I see Thee not;
Thy boundless mercy 's still the same,
Though I am cold, nor feel the flame,
Though dull and hard my sluggish sense,
Faith still maintains its evidence.
Oh, would Thy cheering beams so shine
That I might always feel Thee mine!
Yet, though a cloud may sometimes rise
And dim the brightness of my skies,
By faith Thy goodness I will bless,
I shall be safe though comfortless;
Still, still my grateful soul shall melt
At what in brighter days I felt.
O wayward heart, thine be the blame,
Though I may change, God is the same.
Not feebler faith, not colder prayer,
My state and sentence shall declare;
Nor nerves nor feelings shall decide,
By safer signs I shall be tried.
Is the fixed tenor of my mind
To righteousness and Christ inclined?
For sin is my contrition deep,
For past offences do I weep?
Do I submit my stubborn will
To Him who guards and guides me still?
Then shall my peaceful bosom prove
That God, not loving is, but Love.
Mrs. More had expected to end her days in the house so dear for her sisters' sake, and where the garden and shrubbery, which she could see from her windows, were full of precious associations.
But a serious evil was growing up in her household. Her sisters had always attended to domestic matters, and set her at liberty for her literary and charitable undertakings, and she was unused to housekeeping or to the control of servants—when Patty's death left all upon her hands, when already past three score and ten. Her disposition had always been to shrink from administering rebuke; and a house where there was continual resort of visitors, and likewise of poor from all her parishes, was such as to need an active supervision that was impossible from a mistress so aged and so often confined to her room (though apparently the visitor quoted above must have been mistaken in thinking she had been nine years upstairs). The waste was such that she found in 1826 that she had exceeded her income in the two past years by £300, and had to trench on her capital. She wished to sell the reversion of Barley Wood, and to remain to the last near the graves of her sisters, in a place to which she was so much attached, while she submitted to the wastefulness and extravagance of the servants as a chastisement on her incompetence, which affected no one's interest but her own. However, in 1828, in her eighty-third year discoveries were made which showed that the mischief went far beyond mere waste and idleness, and that there were positive evils, bred of indolence and luxury, and the poor old lady had to be made aware that these dishonest and vicious servants were making her appear to tolerate the sins she had testified against through life.
She was terribly distressed, but as soon as she knew the truth, her resolution was taken at once. The servants were dismissed, and on a cold inclement day, she left her beloved home for Clifton. Things must have come to a grievous pass, for several of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood waited at her chamber door to protect her from anything that would distress her. She descended the stairs with a placid countenance, and then walked silently round the lower rooms, looking up at the portraits of all the dear old friends long since passed away; then, when settled in the carriage with Miss Frowd, she gazed out on her trees and garden, and said, "I am like Eve, driven from Paradise, but not, like Eve, by angels."
Yet of these wretched servants she said, "People exclaim against their ingratitude towards me, but it is their sinfulness towards God that forms the melancholy part of the case."