Hannah More (British edition 1888)/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II.
BRISTOL.
Mary More's talent for teaching and governing must have made itself evident, for she was only twenty-one when, by the assistance of friends, a house was taken in Bristol for a young ladies' school, of which she was manager, Betty acting as housekeeper and Sally as assistant teacher; Hannah, at twelve years old, and Patty at ten, were pupils.
Mary must have been a most remarkable young woman to carry through such an undertaking not only with complete success, but in perfect harmony with sisters so little younger than herself.
Sally's description of their attempt was thus made to 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."
What did these young ladies teach? It is plain, from the letters of all, that they thoroughly understood their mother tongue, thanks to their scholarly father; and they probably gave what is now called an English education, including the arts of good reading and elocution; French and Italian they also taught, and needle work was then a high art. Miss More's pupils were well thought of for the complete grounding they received.
The change gave Hannah access to a feast of books, especially Shakespeare and Milton and others, among which the Spectator was her favourite and her model in the attempts at writing, which continued to be her delight. One of her first compositions that saw the light was an ode on some lectures on eloquence which Sheridan had been giving at Bristol. It was shown to him by a friend, and was good enough to excite surprise that the writer should be a girl of sixteen.
A little later the fever of the drama set in upon the pupils, and Hannah, at seventeen, produced a play for their acting, entitled The Search after Happiness, a highly improving pastoral, wherein a party of young ladies, weary of themselves and of the world, go to consult a worthy shepherdess—by name Urania—telling her
'Tis happiness we seek. Oh! deign to tell
Where the coy fugitive delights to dwell.
There is Euphelia, the vain beauty, bred in the regal splendour of a court; Cleora, the learned damsel, who confesses,—
This the chief transport I from science drew,
That all might know how much Cleora knew.
Then there is the dreamy, novel-reading maiden, Pastorella, saying,—
I scorned the manners of the world I saw,
My guide was fiction, and romance my law.
And, lastly, the gentle Laurinda "never wished to learn, nor cared to know"; so that she is "in sense a woman, but in soul a child." Urania moralizes appropriately to each damsel, and dismisses them all greatly edified.
The absence of all excitement, and especially its freedom from perilous male characters, recommended The Search after Happiness to all the ladies' schools.
There is no more delightful chapter in Miss Mitford's sketches than where she describes the getting up of this highly-improving comedy at the school she attended at Reading. There is something grotesque in the moralizings of the school-girl of seventeen about the ennui and unsatisfactoriness of the great world of which she knew so little, yet the language and versification make it a really remarkable achievement for a girl of her age, and it procured her some consideration in society.
In spite of ill-health and constantly-recurring severe headaches, probably nervous, she was evidently a very pretty girl, with delicate refined features, rather sharply cut, and beautiful keen, dark eyes, which were enhanced in brilliancy by the whiteness of her powdered hair. Her conversation was charming. She was just the sort of young creature whose fresh, innocent intelligence is specially captivating to the elderly men with whom she converses, fearless of all idea of coquetry. Once, when very unwell, she so delighted her physician by her discussion of some book that he entirely forgot that she was his patient, and, after taking leave, returned with "And how are you, my poor child?"
She studied Latin, Spanish, and Italian, and exercised herself in poetical translations, most of which she afterwards destroyed as worthless; but she attained to such facility that at an Italian opera, to gratify the friend beside her, she scribbled an English version, which was at once printed by the local newspaper.
The other sisters enjoyed her successes without a shade of jealousy. They seemed to have equalled her in all but depth of learning and faculty of composition, and perhaps in wit and vivacity in public, though at home Sally was considered the wag. They were in the best society of the old merchant city, numbering among their friends Dean Tucker, and Dr. Langhorne, whom Hannah had met at Weston-super-Mare, and who asked her to correspond with him. Dr. James Stonehouse was also on intimate terms with the sisters. They also knew a Mr. Peach, who had helped Hume to correct his history. In fact, the professional society of Bristol was evidently of a superior order, and, as was the case in other old cathedral towns, included persons in trade who were often as cultured as the classes higher in social rank. Poor Chatterton was living his strange life there, and it will be further remembered that here dwelt Amos Cottle, bookseller, who afterwards appreciated the Lake poets in their crude youth; and here, too, worked as dressmakers the ladies who married Southey and Coleridge.
Bristol was a great centre of operations to Charles Wesley, but Methodism never seems to have attracted the More sisters. They were thoughtful religious women after the eighteenth-century pattern, devout and careful of their own souls, but never looking beyond the ordinary duties about them.
It is rather curious in these days to see the utter insensibility to church architecture in those times. Though she lived in the city of St. Mary Redcliffe, near the Mayor's chapel, as well as the Cathedral, and within reach of Wells and Glastonbury, there is not a single reference to their beauty in any of Hannah More's letters; and it may be doubted whether she had any notion of admiring natural scenery beyond the trim garden and shady park, though perhaps she loved it more than she knew, for picnics among the lovely Clifton rocks and woods were the holiday recreation of the sisterhood. She certainly, in all her works, seems to feel that "the proper study of mankind is man."
However, at this period, she was to study man in a new and more trying light. Two young ladies named Turner, who were among the pupils, always spent their holidays with their guardian cousin, the Squire of Belmont, a house very beautifully placed on a kind of natural terrace on the steep slope of hills extending above the valley of the Avon. They were encouraged to invite their friends to come with them. Hannah and Patty, then twenty-two and twenty, were of the party, and there was much planning of walks and landscape gardening. Hannah wrote inscriptions for favoured spots, and these Mr. Turner, with more courtesy than taste, caused to be painted in black and white on boards exactly like notices to trespassers, and affixed to trees, where they were extant within the last forty years.
All this led to the natural result. Mr. Turner fell in love with the bright, young poetess, and, though he was twenty years her elder, she accepted him, gave up her interest in the school, and purchased her trousseau. The wedding day was fixed, but the gentleman continually deferred it, until the family became indignant, and Sir James Stonehouse, an intimate friend, was called into their counsels, and the engagement was broken off. Mr. Turner was anxious to make some sort of compensation in money, but this the lady refused. He persisted, however; and Sir James Stonehouse, without her knowledge, became trustee for an annuity which was settled upon her, and which she was finally induced to accept.
Everyone agreed that no blame attached to her in this strange affair, the result probably of an elderly man growing shy and fearing to have rashly committed himself. He always spoke of Hannah with the greatest respect, and at his death bequeathed to her one thousand pounds. But this unfortunate experience, when she must have suffered grievously, steeled her heart against other offers, and she rejected one that was made to her a little later. This matter may be held to have been the end of her joyous girlhood, and to have ushered in the second period of her life—her brilliant womanhood.