LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

(Jhap. ___V_. Copyright No 

•Shelf _...M^74 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



BY MARION HARLAND 



Some Colonial Homesteads, and Their Stories. 

With 86 illustrations. 8°, gilt top . . . $3.00 

More Colonial Homesteads, and Their Stories. 
'With 81 illustrations. 8°, gilt top . . . $3.00 

Where Ghosts Walk. The Haunts of Fa- 
miliar Characters in History and Literature. 
With 33 illustrations. 8", gilt top . . . $2.50 

Literary Hearthstones. Studies of the Home 
Life of Certain Writers and Thinkers. Fully illustrated, 
16°, gilt top, each ....... $1.50 

The first issues are : 

Charlotte Bronte. I William Cowper. 
John Knox. | Hannah More. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London. 



Xiterar\? llDcartbstoncs 

studies of the Home-Life of 
CertairA Writers and Thinkers 



HANNAH MORE 




HANNAH MORE, AT THE AQE OF FORTY 

FROM OPIE'S PAINTING 



Hannah More 



BY 

MARION HARLAND 

AUTHOR OF "some COLONIAL HOMESTEADS AND THEIR 
STORIES," "where GHOSTS WALK," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Zbe Iknickeibocher press 

I goo 



L-ibpa 






72850 



ry Of Cor,..re^] 

Two CoPlEi Hh.f /EO 

AUG 7 1900 

Copyn-(i- P,: V 

SECOND copy. 

Oelfvered to 

OROtR DIVISION, 

AUG 8 1900 



Copyright, igco 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube ftnicfteibocher iprese, IHcw iporl? 



DEDICATION AND PREFACE 

to mrs. john caskie miller 

My dear Sister : 

It is needless to remind you of the strait 
and tali boundaries set about "Sunday 
Reading" in the childhood — now so far 
away ! — which we lived together. 

You must recollect — I can never forget 
— what an oasis in the Sahara of bound 
sermons and semi-detached tracts were 
The Works of Mrs. Hannah More ; how 
fragrant was the memory of the writer 
whose biography had not yet been rele- 
gated to the realm of ancient history. 

At my last visit to you I took from your 
book-shelves one of a set of volumes in 
uniform binding of "full-calf," coloured 
mellowly by the touch and the breath of 
fifty-odd years. They belonged to the 
dear old home library which was our Intel- 



iv Dedication and Preface 

lectual stamping-ground from the time we 
were out of The New York Reader and 
Cobwebs to Catch Flies. The leaves of 
the book I held fell apart at The Shepherd 
of Salisbury Plain. It is illustrated by a 
queer wood-cut of the Shepherd sitting 
upon a stone, chin on hand and elbow on 
knee. The sheep drowse upon the turf 
about him ; Stonehenge is in the middle 
distance : the spire of Salisbury Cathedral 
cuts sharply into the background ; a stip- 
pled sky, whence should come such weather 
as " pleased him because it pleased God," 
is over all. 

I have heard, of late years, that Shepherd 
and family were portraits from life. We 
had never doubted the fact. How we en- 
vied little Molly her task of gathering tufts 
of wool left by the sheep upon briers and 
thorns, to be carded by a bigger sister than 
our Molly, then spun by the biggest, finally 
knit by boys and girls into stockings for 
winter wear ! How we reverenced the 
wee maiden when she wished it were her 
turn to say grace over the great platter of 
potatoes, the pitcher of water, and the 
coarse loaf ! 

" 1 am sure I would say it heartily to-day, 



Dedication and Preface v 

for I was thinking what poor people do 
who have no salt to their potatoes ! " 

In my garden is a thrifty bush of south- 
ernwood reared from a cutting I brought 
away from Cowper's summer-house in 01- 
ney. I think of him when I see or smell 
it. More vividly present to my mind is 
the sprig of southernwood in the but- 
ton-hole of the good-for-naught — with 
"shoulders as round as a tub" — sitting 
upon the wall of the lane along which 
Tawny Rachel, the fortune-teller, had told 
the silly servant-lass to go next Sunday 
afternoon, if she would meet her future 
husband. 

And The Search after Happiness ! You 
cannot have forgotten all of the many lines 
we learned by heart on Sunday afternoons 
in the joyful spring-time, when we were 
obliged to clear the pages every few 
minutes of yellow jessamine bells and pur- 
ple wistaria petals, flung down by the 
warm wind. We knew wistaria as " Vir- 
gin's Bower," in those distant days time 
can never dim for us. Since then we 
have learned new names for many another 
thing — sometimes, for the worse — some- 
times, thank God ! for the better. 



vi Dedication and Preface 

Thinking and dreaming over all this, I 
could not do otherwise than dedicate my 
loving study of our old favourite to you. 
Whatever the book may be to others, I 
know the leaves will give forth for you the 
goodly smell of lavender and thyme, of 
southernwood — and of rosemary. 

" That's for remembrance ! " 

Marion Harland. 

SUNNYBANK, PoMPTON, N. J., June, 1 9OO. 




Cordial thanks are due from the writer of this bi- 
ography to Rev. T. B. Knight, formerly of Wrington, 
now of Clifton, Bristol (England), for valuable assistance 
rendered to her in the collection of materials for her 
work. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. BIRTH — INFANCY — CHILDHOOD — 

EARLY DREAMS .... I 

II. THE BRISTOL SCHOOL FOR YOUNG 

LADIES — HANNAH'S PROFICIENCY IN 
LEARNING — "SEARCH AFTER HAPPI- 
NESS" — FIRST LOVE AFFAIR — MR. 
TURNER 15 

III. THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT — FIRST 

VISIT TO LONDON — DR. JOHNSON 
AND THE REYNOLDSES . . 28 

IV. LONDON AGAIN — "SIR ELDRED OF 

THE BOWER " — THE GARRICKS AND 
THE COTTONS . . . -41 

V. "THE INFLEXIBLE CAPTIVE" — DR. 
JOHNSON'S REBUFFS — GARRICK'S 
KINDNESS — SUCCESS OF " PERCY " 53 
ix 



X Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. garrick's death and funeral — 

"THE FATAL FALSEHOOD " WRIT- 
TEN AND ACTED — LIFE WITH MRS. 
GARRICK AT HAMPTON . . 69 

VII. "SACRED DRAMAS" — VISIT TO OX- 

FORD — TOP WAVE OF POPU- 
LARITY—DEATH OF MISS MORE'S 
FATHER — FAMILY RELATIONS — 
" THE BAS bleu" . . • ^3 

VIII. DEATH OF DR. JOHNSON — THE " BRIS- 
TOL MILK-WOMAN " — REVIVAL OF 
"PERCY" — "THOUGHTS ON THE 
IMPORTANCE OF THE MANNERS OF 
THE GREAT " . . . . I08 

IX. WONDERFUL POPULARITY OF "THE 
MANNERS " — DISCOVERY OF THE 
AUTHOR — FANNY BURNEY AND HAN- 
NAH MORE — COWSLIP GREEN AS A 
PERMANENT ABODE . . . I24 

X. CHEDDAR, AND THE BEGINNING OF A 
GREAT WORK THERE — ANOTHER 
ANONYMOUS BOOK — THE OPINIONS 
EXPRESSED AS TO ITS MERITS BY 
BISHOP PORTEUS AND JOHN NEW- 
TON 139 



Contents xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. MR. NEWTON AT COWSLIP GREEN — 
OBSTACLES TO THE MENDIP MISSION 
MET AND OVERCOME — OPPOSITION 
FROM A NEW QUARTER . .15- 

XII. CHARITABLE MISSIONS IN LONDON — 
ANSWER TO M. DUPONT — LORD 
ORFORD — ' ' VILLAGE POLITICS " — 
WONDERFUL SUCCESS OF "CHEAP 
REPOSITORY TRACTS " . . 167 

XIII. TILT WITH LORD ORFORD ^ — MORE 

TRACTS — GLIMPSE OF FANNY BUR- 
NEY — LORD ORFORD'S DEATH AND 
HIS MEMOIRS . . . -179 

XIV. ORGANISED OPPOSITION TO SCHOOLS 

— BLAGDEN SCHOOL CLOSED — ^LET- 
TER TO AND FROM THE BISHOP OF 
BATH — BUILDING OF BARLEY WOOD 
— THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE — 
SEVERE ILLNESS — DEATH OF DR. 
PORTEUS 187 

XV. "CCELEBS IN SEARCH OF A WIFE "— 
MACAULAY'S BOYHOOD — INTIMACY 
WITH HANNAH MORE — "PRACTICAL 
piety" — DEATH OF MARY MORE — 
FETE AT BARLEY WOOD — DEATHS 



Xll 



Contents 



OF ELIZABETH AND SALLY MORE — 
VISITORS TO BARLEY WOOD — THE 
HOUSE LEFT DESOLATE . . 20I 

XVI. "THE QUEEN OF BARLEY WOOD" — 
LAST BOOK WRITTEN — CHILD VISIT- 
ORS — PERSONAL APPEARANCE AT 
EIGHTY — THE STIRRED NEST — 
REMOVAL TO CLIFTON — FALLING 
ASLEEP 217 




ILLUSTRATIONS 



HANNAH MORE AT THE AGE OF 40 Frontispiece 
From the painting by John Opie. 

DAVID GARRICK 46' 

From a design bv N. Dance. 

HANNAH MORE AT THE AGE OF "]0 . 80 

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.P. . . . I26 

From a painting by J. Rising. 



HANNAH MORE's TREE AT COWSLIP GREEN. I 36 



•* 



WRINGTON, FROM branch's CROSS TREE . 170^ 
Tradition says tlie IVrington victims of 
Jeffreys's " Bloody Assi{es " were hanged 
in this old tree. 

BARLEY WOOD, SOMERSETSHIRE . . 194''' 

y4s it was during Hannah More's residence 
there. 

BARLEY WOOD, AS IT NOW IS . . 202 

Hannah More's own rooms were in the 
" bay " at the left of picture. 
xiii 



XIV 



Illustrations 



WRINGTON GREEN 



PAGE 

2\0 



HANNAH MORE S GRAVE IN WRINGTON 
CHURCHYARD. .... 



228 



v/ 




HANNAH MORE 



HANNAH MORE 

CHAPTER I 

BIRTH— INFANCY — CHILDHOOD — EARLY DREAMS 

EARLY in the eighteenth century, the 
grammar-school in Norwich, Eng- 
land, had more than a local reputation. 
The head master was a brother of the 
Reverend Samuel Clarke, D.D., the learned 
opponent of Hobbes, Spinoza, and other 
leaders in the lusty new school of free- 
thinking, the germs of which heresy were 
brought to Great Britain from the Con- 
tinent. The pedagogue brother of the 
philosopher and theologian was especially 
eminent as an instructor in languages and 
in the classics. One of his most promising 
pupils in these branches was Jacob More, 
the son of a Suffolk gentleman. The 
youth was educated for the Church, and 
I 



2 Hannah More 

remained, to the end of his days, a Tory 
and High Churchman. Before he could 
take orders, the estate he had been brought 
up to consider his rightful inheritance was 
lost to him by a lawsuit, and passed, with 
Thorpe Hall, the family mansion, a fine old 
place near Aldborough, Suffolk, to a cousin 
and an enemy. 

Mr. More left his native county a poor 
and a disappointed man, to become the 
principal of a foundation-school near Sta- 
pleton in Gloucester. While holding this 
position, he married the daughter of a 
well-to-do farmer, a woman of clear, 
sound sense, fair education, and singular 
discretion. 

Jacob More's mother was "a staunch 
Presbyterian and remarkable for the sim- 
plicity and integrity of her principles." In 
her hale old age she fed the active minds 
and lively imaginations of the elder grand- 
daughters with stories of her uncles who 
had fought for the faith under Oliver 
Cromwell, and of her childish experiences 
of forbidden conventicles held in her father's 
house. To these unlawful assemblies 
flocked men and women in the dead of 
wintry nights, through sleet and snow, to 



Birth 3 

join in services conducted by a proscribed 
minister lodged secretly in the More liome- 
stead. While the meeting was in progress, 
the host stood in the outer hall, drawn 
sword in hand, stern of visage, keen of 
eye, every sense on the alert for the stealthy 
footsteps of paid spies, or the tramp of 
soldiery commissioned to break up the 
gathering and hale the ringleaders to 
prison and to judgment. The narrator and 
her sisters walked four miles to church 
every Sunday and in all weathers, she 
would boast to her round-eyed listeners, 
whereas the girls of the later generation let 
rain or heat keep them at home. How 
little she had suffered from the fatigue and 
exposure was proved by her habit of rising 
before sunrise in winter and summer when 
she was over eighty, and that she lived to 
be ninety-odd. 

Among other anecdotes illustrative of her 
strength of mind and will, was one re- 
counting how when once seized with ver- 
tigo, threatening apoplexy, she had opened 
a vein in her own arm, without waiting 
for the surgeon, who lived three miles away. 
The constitutional headaches from which 
her granddaughter Hannah suffered all her 



4 Hannah More 

life long were undoubtedly an inheritance 
from the dauntless ancestress who used the 
lancet boldly to relieve pain and the menac- 
ing pressure upon the brain. 

Hannah More was born in 1743, and was 
the youngest but one of Jacob More's five 
daughters, — Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Han- 
nah, and Martha. He had no son. As was 
the commendable custom of the times, the 
girls received the rudiments of scholastic 
education at home. The Mores were not 
rich enough to have a governess. The 
mother taught her children to read and to 
write, taking each in the order of her age. 
When Hannah, at three-and-a-half, was 
adjudged to be old enough to learn her 
letters, the amazed parent discovered that 
she could read already, having picked up 
the alphabet and the knack of combining 
letters into words from listening to her 
sisters' lessons while she was supposed to 
be busy with her dolls in a corner of the 
schoolroom. 

She was a fragile baby, subject to fre- 
quent attacks of illness. These she bore 
with patient sweetness so long as her 
nurse, an intelligent woman who had lived 
for several years in Dryden's family, would 



Infancy 5 

tell her stories of the poet and repeat his 
verses to her. We see the precocious mite, 
at eight years of age, perched upon her 
father's knee, listening to his recitations 
from Dryden and Pope, and begging for 
others from Virgil, Horace, and Homer. He 
would quote from the Greek and Latin 
classics in the original, "to gratify her ear 
with the sound " (!) then translate them 
into English. 

The scene indicated is as charming as it 
is singular : the baby-face lifted, as a bud 
to the sun, as her ear drank in the sonorous 
Greek and stately periods of the Latin ; the 
grave scholar — always more or less ab- 
stracted from the commonplaces of the 
present life — forgetful of her youth and 
sex in enjoyment of his beloved masters in 
literature. He "dwelt particularly," we 
read, "upon the parallels and wise sayings 
of Plutarch." 

One of the many wise sayings of his 
pupil in her maturer years was "that the 
conversation of an enlightened parent or 
preceptor constitutes one of the best parts 
of education." 

Mrs. Jacob More was far from being the 
equal of her husband in erudition. That 



6 Hannah More 

her mind was as good in quality as his, 
and her views of people and life broader 
and more sagacious, is apparent from her 
determination that her daughters should 
have all the instruction their intellects could 
assimilate. The father held, in force, the 
then popular prejudice against learned 
women, or, as he put it, "female ped- 
antry." To please himself, he began to 
teach Hannah Latin and mathematics. Ac- 
customed, as he was, to the average 
British schoolboy's style of study and his 
rate of progress, he was actually alarmed 
at his little girl's thirst for knowledge, 
and the ease and rapidity with which 
she mastered her lessons. His solicitude 
was rather lest he should develop in his 
own home one of the genus dreaded by all 
sorts and conditions of right-thinking, God- 
fearing Englishmen, than apprehension for 
the child's health of mind and body. 

Against the mother's wishes, the Latin 
and mathematical studies were brought to 
an abrupt end, and the infant prodigy was 
turned out to pasture, mentally. Sensible 
modern parents would do the like, but 
from a different motive. The ardent mind 
would have worn out the delicate frame, or 



Childhood 7 

given way in itself, under the unnatural 
pressure. 

Certain features in the home-life of the 
Mores at this date remind us of the Alcott 
household in classic Concord. The scholar- 
ly, dreamy, unpractical father ; the strong- 
minded, strong-hearted mother ; the group 
of affectionate sisters, set apart from other 
girls of their age and station by bookish 
tastes and unchildlike ambitions — were the 
same in both homes. There is, also, much 
in the history of the Stapleton family which 
recalls the Brontes, making in their moorland 
parsonage a world of thought and action 
for themselves. Had Mrs. Bronte's health 
allowed her to direct the education of her 
daughters, and her life been spared until 
Charlotte was grown, the great novelist's 
career might have been more like Hannah 
More's than we now believe possible. We 
recall Charlotte's home-made library as 
described in the Catalogue of My Boohs, 
with the Date of Their Cotiipletion, all writ- 
ten in miniature pamphlets — also home- 
made of the backs of letters and blank 
fragments of account-books, — when we 
hear of Hannah's essays and moral tales 
scribbled upon stray scraps of paper 



8 Hannah More 

hoarded by her for that purpose. These 
compositions were secreted in the most 
remote corner of a "cubby-hole" under 
the eaves, in which the housemaid kept 
brooms, brushes, and dust-pan. 

Charlotte Bronte was the story-teller at 
school, throwing her room-mates into par- 
oxysms of terror and delight by gruesome 
tragedy and blood-curdling ghost-story. 
Hannah More prattled essay, poem, or tale, 
"always with some well-directed moral," 
to the younger sister who was her bed- 
fellow. In the excess of her admiration, 
the wee listener once and again sprang out 
of bed and rushed down-stairs for a candle 
and a bit of paper upon which these 
wonders of composition could be written 
down. If she waited until morning she 
might forget part of what she had heard, 
and Hannah would never repeat herself. 

There were fine goings-on in the nursery 
at the top of the house, which was also 
the schoolroom in study-hours. Books 
were written there and read aloud to an 
appreciative audience of four ; after which 
a chair was laid upon its back, rigged out 
as a post-chaise with cushions, and at- 
tached by reins to another prostrate chair. 



Childhood 9 

In this conveyance Hannah invited her 
sisters to ride with her to London. Her 
errand there was ever the same — to take 
her latest MS. to the publishers. Having 
disposed of it thus, and satisfactorily, she 
would go in state to call upon the Bishop 
of London. To be received as a welcome 
visitor by a Church dignitary, and to be 
hand-in-glove with publishers who were 
the sponsors of books, was a dream never 
dismissed until it was fulfilled. 

In the nursery-talks of the impossible 
golden days each longed to have come to 
her, when Martha wished for money, and 
Sarah for a pony, Hannah's aspiration never 
varied. She would like to have money 
enough to buy a whole quire of paper for 
her very own use. Her wish was granted 
by her mother as a holiday-gift, and the 
child fell to work to write it full. Not a 
blank page remained at the end of a week. 
Mrs. More took the trouble to read the 
MSS. through. All rang changes upon 
one theme. The child, the mother of the 
woman-who-was-to-be, knew nothing of 
evil except from the grown-people's books 
she had devoured. Yet she had drawn up 
letters to imaginary gamesters, drunkards, 



10 Hannah More 

thieves, Sabbath-breakers, and poachers — 
pleading with them to abandon their evil 
works and turn to righteousness. With 
the optimistic faith of childhood she had, 
likewise, indited replies from each of the 
offenders against conscience and law, de- 
claring that they were pricked in their 
hearts by the admonitions they had re- 
ceived, and were, one and all, resolved to 
go and sin no more. To right a crooked 
world was her fondest dream and loftiest 
ambition. Her pen was the wand that 
was to dispel darkness and create light. 

Mr. and Mrs. More were agreed upon 
one point as to the education of their five 
bright daughters who would enter life 
portionless. Each should be trained to 
some profession or craft by which she could 
maintain herself when her parents could no 
longer provide for her. But one avenue 
was open for impecunious gentlewomen. 
The decision of children and parents was 
the same the Brontes were to make three- 
quarters of a century thereafter. The girls 
would establish a home-school for girls in 
Bristol or in the neighbourhood of that 
place. With this definite end in view, 
Mary, the eldest of the five, was entered as 



Early Dreams 1 1 

a pupil in a French boarding-school at Bris- 
tol, going into town every Monday morn- 
ing and returning to her home on Friday 
afternoon. Saturday was for her the busiest 
day of the seven. Assembled in the school- 
room, her four sisters had an elaborate 
resume of all she had studied during the 
week. The mother provided them with 
such text-books as the senior sister used in 
the French seminary, and the lessons for the 
ensuing week were marked for them to 
study under the mother's supervision. 

It is strongly illustrative of the family 
energy and a high tribute to Mrs. More's 
administrative ability that, by the help of 
the tuition acquired, second-hand, from 
one who was herself a mere girl, the home- 
class kept abreast of those which had the 
advantage of paid professional instructors. 
In the palmy days of her society triumphs, 
Hannah More was remarkable for the purity 
of her spoken French, and wrote in that 
language with ease and propriety. The 
foundation of this proficiency was laid in 
the Saturday drill in the nursery school- 
room. Practice was gained through the 
Mores' association with several French 
officers, prisoners-of-war on parole, who 



12 Hannah More 

lodged in Stapleton. They were welcome 
and frequent visitors to Mr. More's house, 
and ten-year-old Hannah was gradually 
established in the office of interpreter be- 
tween them and her parents. Mrs. More 
was ignorant of the language except for the 
smattering she had picked up from listening 
to her eldest daughter's instructions to her 
juniors, and from superintending their stud- 
ies in that tongue. Mr. More read French 
with as much facility as he read Greek and 
Latin, but, as with many another scholar, 
spoken French was a worse than dead 
language to his ears. 

The courtly guests made a great pet of 
the pretty and clever go-between, and, 
but for her sensible mother, would have 
turned her head with their flatteries. With 
that eclectic property of mind and taste 
which was a natural endowment and, in 
after days, was to contribute largely to 
her popularity and usefulness, she seized 
upon all that could accrue to her real bene- 
fit in this intercourse, and the evil passed 
harmlessly by her. To those months of 
companionship with polished citizens of the 
gayest world known to civilised peoples, 
she owed much of the suave grace of 



Early Dreams 13 

manner and address which, in a provincial 
debtitaiite, captivated and puzzled fashion- 
able London. Her rare gift of repartee was 
brought into play in bandying wits with 
the officers, and polished by the medium of 
the facile, ingenious tongue. While with 
them she thought, as well as conversed, in 
French, Her father's somewhat formal 
harangues, and the plain, common-sensible 
observations of her mother, were uncon- 
sciously adapted by the sensitive, tactful 
interpreter to harmonise with the graceful 
phraseology and lively turns of speech in 
which the replies were couched. 

Hannah was but twelve years of age 
when Mary opened the long-anticipated 
school in the cathedral town of Bristol, 
then, as now, remarkable for the general 
culture of the middle classes, and the num- 
ber of scholarly and distinguished people 
who were born there, or who had chosen 
it as a place of residence. 

Thomas Chatterton was a boy of five, 
playing and dreaming in the Cathedral close 
where his uncle was a verger, when the 
Misses More announced to the public the es- 
tablishment of their Select School for Young 
Ladies, where all the branches of a solid and 



14 Hannah More 

genteel English education were to be taught, 
including geography, with the use of the 
globes, ornamental needlework, painting 
upon velvet, and music ; also, French and 
Italian. Amos Cottle, the book-loving 
bookseller, whose admiration for Words- 
worth and Southey tempted Byron's lash 
and won for the Bristol tradesman im- 
mortality in two lines of English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers, was the Mores' con- 
temporary and friend. Peach, an erudite 
linen-draper, the chum and critic of David 
Hume, affiliated with the accomplished 
father and daughters soon after their re- 
moval to his native town. Ferguson, the 
astronomer, a frequent lecturer before liter- 
ary associations in Bristol, was another 
cherished acquaintance of a family which, 
at once, took rank among the best people 
of the conservative old city. 




CHAPTER II 

the bristol school for young ladies — 
Hannah's proficiency in learning — 
"search after happiness" — first love 
affair — mr. turner 

THE More seminary was a close corpora- 
tion. Mary was principal ; Elizabeth, 
housekeeper ; Sarah, vice-principal ; Han- 
nah and ten-year-old Martha were enrolled 
among the scholars of the first term. 

The valuable library owned by Jacob 
More, as a country gentleman dwelling in 
his ancestral halls, had shared in the wreck 
of his fortunes. Hannah was made ac- 
quainted with the classics — English, Greek, 
and Latin — through her father's retentive 
and teeming memory. What she had 
heard had but whetted her appetite for the 
banquet awaiting her in Bristol, where 
books by the score were bought for the 
15 



1 6 Hannah More 

school and for the teachers of belles-lettres. 
The next four years were a continuous 
revel to the eager intellect, a feast of fat 
things not appreciable by the jaded palates 
of those born to a plethora of modern liter- 
ature. She studied Milton, Pope, Shake- 
speare, and Dryden with avidity, read and 
re-read Addison until her style took form 
and color from that master of perfect Eng- 
lish, Hundreds of pages were covered 
with essays, poems, and stories, — all moral 
and instructive. At sixteen, she was moved 
to write an ode expressive of her enjoyment 
of a series of lectures upon eloquence 
delivered in Bristol by Thomas Sheri- 
dan, author, actor, and teacher of elocu- 
tion, the accomplished father of a more 
brilliant son, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. A 
friend of the Mores took the pains to show 
the lines to the lecturer, who expressed sur- 
prise at the age of the author, and asked for 
an introduction to her. "The acquaintance, 
when obtained, increased his admiration for 
her dawning genius," says a stilted biogra- 
phy written a few years after her death. 

From this we cull a pleasing anecdote of 
the impression made by Hannah's conver- 
sation upon a physician called in to attend 



" The Search after Happiness " 17 

the girl for a serious indisposition. At iiis 
third or fourth visit, he plunged into literary 
and scientific talk as soon as he took his 
seat by the patient's bed, and forgot for the 
next hour why he had come. Starting up 
in a hurry upon discovering the length of 
his stay, he took an abrupt leave, checking 
himself on the stairs to call back — "How 
are you to-day, my poor child ? " 

The Search after Happiness: A Drama, 
dryly characterised by one biographer as 
"a highly-improving Pastoral," was writ- 
ten by Hannah More at seventeen, to be 
acted by her sisters' pupils in the school- 
room. It became, straightway, immensely 
popular in other places and seminaries. 

In a now desolated Southern home I 
pored over a thin, leather-backed copy of 
this highly moral drama fifty years ago, 
and found in it much interesting food for 
thought. The frontispiece, disfigured, as 
were the printed pages, with the mysteri- 
ous yellow thumb-marks of time, showed 
the fair seekers, clad in short-waisted 
gowns, and wide sashes tied directly under 
the arm-pits, garlands in their hair, high- 
heeled shoes, and trim ankles plainly visible 
under the brief skirts then considered 



1 8 Hannah More 

decorous, long gloves coming up to the el- 
bows upon the hands linked in a loving 
chain, as they sallied forth to consult the 
learned shepherdess, Urania, as to the hid- 
ing-place of the "coy fugitive," Happiness. 
1 fancied the central figure, "Cleora,"the 
learned maiden, must look like Hannah 
More, and was sorry when she made the 
damaging admission — 

"This the chief transport 1 from Science drew, 
That all might know how much Cleora knew." 

In reality, this shaft of satire, the most 
polished in the whole production, was 
never deserved by her, then or ever. As 
infant, girl, and woman, she had enough 
honest praise and polite flattery to turn any 
except a phenomenally strong head. How- 
ever priggish her invariable bias for moral- 
ity may seem to us, she was ever modest 
to humility, thoughtful for others before 
she gave a thought to her own welfare or 
advancement, enjoying all the good to be 
extracted from her daily life with the sim- 
plicity of a child. 

In the performance of the drama, over 
which the gay and the sober Bristol people 
went wild, the author was also stage-man- 



" The Search after Happiness " 19 

ager, costumer, and prompter, succeeding 
so well in the combined capacities that the 
play ran through several nights, receiving 
the highest commendations from the local 
press. A Bristol paper printed, about the 
same time, an English translation of an 
Italian opera Hannah More had pencilled 
with flying fingers while the opera was in 
progress, for the benefit of a companion 
who complained that she could not compre- 
hend " what it all meant." She had made 
equal advances in Spanish, and French 
was still a favourite tongue with her. 

The Wesleyan revival gained many con- 
verts to the new movement in Bristol 
while the Mores lived there, but, as is ap- 
parent from the opera episode, Hannah did 
not incline to the asceticism inculcated by 
the leaders of the sect and practised in 
outward observances by their converts. 
Between their Presbyterian forbears and 
their father's High-Churchly proclivities the 
Misses More had fallen upon the safe mid- 
dle ground of evangelical Episcopacy, a 
comely body informed by a devout soul. 

"They were thoughtful, religious women 
after the eighteenth-century pattern," says 
Miss Yonge, "devout and careful of their 



20 Hannah More 

own souls, but never looking beyond the 
ordinary duties about them." 

At eighteen, Hannah was an assistant in 
the family school, now one of the fixed 
facts of Bristol, of which the citizens were 
justly proud. In Bristol society she was a 
conspicuous figure, and might have been 
a belle had she cared for such a distinction. 
Rather below than above the medium 
height of women, s^ie was far prettier than 
the average younj^ girl. ' Her portrait, 
painted by Opie when she was forty, gives 
a mature reproduction — not a faded copy — 
of what she^was at twenty. Her features 
were delicate, clearly cut, and refined in 
every detail. Her hair, fine and abundant, 
was powdered after the fashion of the times, 
enhancing the soft pallor of her complex- 
ion ; her dark eyes were well opened and 
full of light and expression. Her manners 
were always those of the gentle thorough- 
bred, with not a touch of the school-mis- 
tress's primness. Her conversation, in an 
age when conversation was studied as a 
fine art, was>both sensible and brilliant. 

"Just the»sort of fyoung creature," com- 
ments a biographef", "whose fresh, inno- 
cent intelligence is especially captivating to 



s h- 



/ 



First Love Affair 21 

the elderly men with whom she converses, 
fearless of all idea of coquetry." 

She was twenty-two when she accom- 
panied two of the pupils of the More semin- 
ary upon a holiday visit to Belmont, a 
country-house picturesquely situated among 
the hills bounding the valley of the Avon. 
The proprietor, Mr. Turner (whether wid- 
ower or bachelor is uncertain), was a man 
of wealth and character. The eminently 
decorous annalist quoted a few pages back 
thus sketches him : 

" He was a man of strict honour and integrity ; had 
received a liberal education, and, among other recom- 
mendations of an intellectual character, had cultivated a 
taste for poetry, and shown much skill in the embellish- 
ments of rural scenery, and the general improvement of 
his estate. But for the estate of matrimony he appears 
to have wanted that essential qualification, a cheerful 
and composed temper." 

His temper was sufficiently composed to 
allow him to discover quickly that the com- 
panions of his two cousins on this holiday 
outing were two more than ordinarily 
charming young women. Martha, other- 
wise Patty, More was with her sister. She 
was a girl of much intelligence and viva- 
city, but not comparable to the flower of the 



22 Hannah More 

More family, who was two years her sen- 
ior. The host was forty-two, yet entered 
cheerfully, for the nonce, into the pursuits 
and gayety of his fair guests. The pro- 
prieties were conserved by the residence at 
Belmont of an elderly gentlewoman who 
presided over the household. There were 
drives along the river, excursions to vari- 
ous places of interest in the vicinity, and 
much rambling in the extensive grounds 
which the owner meant to make the pride 
of the countryside by carrying out his 
schemes of intelligent landscape-gardening. 
Hannah, albeit city-bred, had a quick eye 
for natural beauties and artistic capabilities. 
She selected sites for grottoes, artificial 
ponds, and ingenious cascades, and, at the 
host's request, wrote appropriate mottoes, 
verses, and sentimental apostrophes for 
each, — a fad in great favour then. It was a 
fantasy of which there are still extant a few 
illustrations even in our country, — to en- 
gross these inscriptions in clerkly charac- 
ters, or in old English letters, in black paint 
upon white boards, and to attach them to 
trees or rocks among the scenes which 
had inspired them. Mr. Turner had this 
done with neatness and despatch, out of 



First Love Affair 23 

compliment to the author, and, incidentally, 
to the beauties of his demesne. The plac- 
ards, "exactly like notices to trespassers," 
were left untouched upon the trees to which 
they were affixed during that love-making, 
midsummer vacation, until rusting nails and 
rotting boards fell to pieces. The last dis- 
appeared less than fifty years ago. 

When Hannah More returned to Bristol, 
she was no stranger to the sentiment she 
had awakened in the heart of her elderly 
host. He followed her and pressed his 
suit so earnestly that she was soon be- 
trothed, with the prospect of so speedy a 
marriage that it was not worth her while 
to resume school duties. She began, in- 
stead, the preparation of a trousseau suit- 
able for the lady of Belmont Manor. The 
wedding-day was fixed, and the last stitch 
taken in the last gown ; the bride-cake was 
ordered, and the bridesmaids were chosen 
from her sympathising sisters, — when Mr. 
Turner's cheerfulness, or his composure, 
played him false, and he begged for a post- 
ponement of the ceremony. We have not 
been told — we never shall be told now — 
upon what pretext the extraordinary re- 
quest was based. It must have seemed 



24 Hannah More 

reasonable to Hannah, for she made no 
protest, and allowed another day to be 
named. Before this arrived, the bridegroom 
again showed signs of uneasiness, and at 
length asked for a second postponement. 
The third delay snapped the strained thread 
of the elder sisters' forbearance. 

"Her sisters and friends interfered, and 
would not permit her to be so treated and 
trifled with," testified a family connection 
of the Turners, many years later. "He 
continued in the wish to marry her, but her 
friends, after his former conduct, and on 
other accounts, persevered in keeping up 
her determination not to renew the en- 
gagement." 

The friend most prominent in this praise- 
worthy decision was Dr. (afterward Sir) 
James Stonehouse. This gentleman, an 
eminent physician of Northampton, had 
given up his profession on account of his 
health, and when this was restored entered 
the Church. He was a near neighbour and 
close friend of the Mores, and especially 
attached to Hannah, encouraging her in 
her literary pursuits, and, so far as in him 
lay, supplementing the abstracted, un- 
practical father, who seems to have been 



First Love Affair 25 

content to be supported by his daughters 
during the last years of his life. Sir James 
acted with decision when applied to by the 
worried sisters, an appeal seconded by 
Hannah's weary eyes. Her position was 
more than painful. She had been at great 
expense in preparing her trousseau ; she 
had lost months of valuable time ; her 
suitor's vacillations had made her ridiculous 
in the eyes of acquaintances and Bristol 
gossips. When her fatherly friend bade 
her release Mr. Turner, at once and defin- 
itely, from the violated engagement, she 
took his advice and stood to her resolution. 
There was a final, and what must have 
been a trying, interview between the two 
lately betrothed parties. After agreeing to 
separate by "mutual consent," a new ele- 
ment was introduced into the vexed affair, 
so singular to our modes of thought and 
etiquette, that I prefer to leave the descrip- 
tion to Miss More's quaint biographer, 
William Roberts, Esq., who wrote her 
Memoirs within three years after she de- 
parted this mortal life. 

" In their last conversation, Mr. T. proposed to settle 
an annuity upon her, a proposal which was with dignity 
and firmness rejected, and the intercourse appeared to be 



26 Hannah More 

absolutely at an end. Let it be recorded, however, in 
justice to the memory of this gentleman, that his mind 
was ill at ease till an interview was obtained with Dr. 
Stonehouse, to whom he expressed his intention to se- 
cure to Miss More, with whom he had considered his 
union as certain, an annual sum which might enable her 
to devote herself to her literary pursuits, and compen- 
sate, in som.e degree, for the robbery he had committed 
upon her time. 

" Dr. Stonehouse consulted with the friends of the 
parties, and the consultation culminated in a common 
opinion that, all things considered, a part ot the sum 
proposed might be accepted without the sacrifice of deli- 
cacy or propriety, and the settlement was made without 
the knowledge of the lady. Dr. Stonehouse consenting 
to become the agent and trustee. 

" it was not, however, till some time after the affair 
had been thus concluded, that the consent of Miss More 
could be obtained by the importunity of her friends. 

" The regard and respect of Mr. Turner for Miss More 
was continued through his life ; her virtues and excel- 
lences were his favourite theme among his intimate 
friends, and at his death he bequeathed her a thousand 
pounds." 

Beyond what was written by the serious 
annalist sixty-odd years ago, absolutely 
nothing is known of this strange and im- 
portant episode in the life of her who was 
to become a celebrity in the English world 
of fashion and literature. The truth, baldly 
stated, seems to be that the elderly country 



Mr. Turner 27 

gentleman, while fascinated out of his con- 
servative senses by the bright eyes and 
witty talk of his young guest when he was 
with her, was visited by harrowing doubts, 
when the glamour cooled in his absence 
from the enchantress, as to the wisdom of 
resigning bachelor freedom and changing 
habits hardened by forty-odd years' indulg- 
ence. Of course it is on the cards that 
influences of which rumour dared not prate 
may have added their weight to detach 
him from the woman he had confidently 
expected to marry. We have no warrant 
to go back of the record. When the ache 
and the smart of the misadventure were 
thoroughly cured in Hannah More's heart, 
the humour of the closing act must have 
commended itself to her lively imagination. 
Mr. Turner was a squire, hence a magis- 
trate, and versed in the law. He arraigned 
himself in the Court of Conscience as guilty 
of an unjustifiable breach of promise ; 
judged, convicted, and sentenced himself, 
and would not release the offender until he 
had paid the uttermost farthing. 



CHAPTER III 

THE BROKEN ENGAGEMENT — FIRST VISIT TO 
LONDON — DR. |OHNSON AND THE REY- 
NOLDSES 

IT is not a matter of surprise that the 
many untoward and distressing cir- 
cumstances attendant upon Hannah More's 
betrothal should have begotten in her a 
dread of similar complications. But since 
she never professed to be "in love" with 
Mr. Turner at any period of the affair, and 
suffered more in pride and delicacy than in 
heart at the outcome of the entanglement, 
the strength of her resolution never again 
to think of marrying was remarkable and 
abnormal. She told her sisters, calmly, 
that she "put all such ideas out of her 
mind for all time," and resumed her intel- 
lectual and social duties as if the episode 
had been an incident, annoying for a time, 
28 



The Broken Engagement 29 

and now dismissed from speech and 
thought as if it had not been. Her trous- 
seau was taken into every-day wear ; she 
discussed belles-lettres and MSS. with Sir 
James Stonehouse instead of Mr. Turner's 
vagaries. 

When, less than two years after the rup- 
ture of her engagement, she had another 
offer of marriage from a younger and more 
stable suitor, she negatived it with gentle 
dignity. 

■'And," says Mr. Roberts, "as it happened in the 
former case, the attachment of the proposer was suc- 
ceeded by a cordial respect, which was met on her part 
by a corresponding sentiment, and ended only with his 
existence. These incidents the reader of delicacy will 
duly appreciate." 

The next four years passed quietly, al- 
ways busily, and, as we gather from an 
occasional anecdote belonging to this in- 
terval, not unhappily. One of these has 
to do with her friendly intimacy with Dr. 
Langhorne, an accomplished scholar of 
whom much was expected in his day, but 
whose letters to his clever protegee are his 
only claim upon our consideration. One 
of these stories shows us the pair of friends 



30 Hannah More 

strolling along the sands at the little water- 
ing place of Weston-super-Mare, where 
Miss More was sojourning for her health. 
Pausing where the sand was smooth and 
damp, the physician wrote this fulsome 
doggerel with his cane : 

" Along this shore 
Walked Hannah More ; 

Waves, let this record last. 
Sooner shall ye, 
Proud earth and sea, 

Than what she writes, be past." 

Upon the same surface, using the butt 
of her riding-crop as a crayon, Hannah 
replied : 

" Some firmer basis, polished Langhorne, choose 
On which to write the dictates of thy Muse ; 
Her strains in solid characters rehearse, 
And be thy tablets lasting as thy verse." 

She was twenty-seven years old when 
the oft-rehearsed journey to London, the 
Mecca of nursery-dreams and girlish am- 
bitions, was made in body as in spirit. 
Bristol is less than a hundred and twenty 
miles from the metropolis, and the transit 
by rail a matter of a few hours. Hannah 
More, her sister Martha, and a lady alluded 



First Visit to London 3 1 

to in the Mores' letters as "the fair Clar- 
issa," took a post-chaise for what "was 
then a perilous journey through ditch-like 
roads beset by highwaymen." She chroni- 
cles their safe arrival in a letter to a friend 
a week after their perils were overpast. 
They were "comfortably situated in Hen- 
rietta Street," and beginning to enjoy Lon- 
don with the unsated relish of educated 
provincials. Already they had "dined, 
drunk tea, and supped " at Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds's house, where there was "a brilliant 
circle of both sexes. Not, in general, liter- 
ary, 'though partly so," adds Hannah, 
judicially, and that " we were not suffered 
to come away till one." As dinner was 
probably served not later than three p.m., 
and the visit included three meals, the circle 
had need to be brilliant to beguile time of 
tediousness. 

Miss Reynolds, Sir Joshua's sister, had 
promised to introduce her to "dear Dr. 
Johnson," as soon as he should return to 
town. From the beginning to the end of 
her sojourn in the Enchanted Land of her 
visions, he was to her the centre of attrac- 
tion. Of the "brilliant circle " she remarks 
in another letter : " 'Though the bright sun 



32 Hannah More 

(Dr. Johnson) did not cheer us with his 
rays, yet we had a constellation of the 
Agreeables." She had already met Garrick, 
and the foundation was laid for the warm 
attachment to him and his charming wife 
that was to signify much to the three in days 
to come. Mrs. Montague, one of the leaders 
of the '' Bas Bleu/' had thrown open her 
doors to the Bristol strangers, introducing 
them to other constellations. They went to 
Hampton Court, to Twickenham, and to see 
The Rivals, a new comedy by Sheridan. 
The acting was indifferent and the play so 
nearly a failure that Hannah's good-nature 
leads her to apologise for it : 

" I think he ought to be treated with great indul- 
gence. Much is to be forgiven in an author of three- 
and-twenty, whose genius is likely to be his chief 
inheritance. 1 love him for the sake of his ingenious 
and admirable mother. On the whole, I was tolerably 
entertained." 

Comment upon the mutability of popular 
opinion would be superfluous. 

Most of her letters from London are, un- 
luckily, dateless, but since two of her sis- 
ters were with her when she, at last, met 
Johnson, the important event would seem 
to have been postponed until her second 



Johnson and the Reynoldses 33 

pilgrimage to Mecca. Obliging Miss Rey- 
nolds was their cicerone on the tremendous 
occasion, and the lion was upon exhibition 
in Sir Joshua Reynolds's drawing-room. 
On the way up-stairs the host tempered 
Hannah's joyous flutter by warning her 
that the Great One " might be in one of his 
moods of sadness and silence." 

Instead of which, behold the Lexico- 
grapher walking about the room with a pet 
macaw belonging to Sir Joshua upon his big 
fist, and unbending his massive mind by 
talking to it. Still more surprising was the 
gracious countenance turned upon the 
blushing votary, and "his accosting her 
with a verse from a Morning Hymn which 
she had written at the desire of Sir James 
Stonehouse. In the same pleasant humour 
he continued the whole evening." For 
which hosts and guests were admiringly 
grateful. 

Not a drop of cynical amusement mingles 
with the pleasure with which we read Sally 
More's epistolary narratives of her younger 
sister's reception in the new and wonderful 
world they had entered. They are so naive 
in their delight, so redolent of pure enjoy- 
ment in her darling's successes, with never 



34 Hannah More 

a thought of her own comparative insig- 
nificance, as to disarm criticism of what 
Mr. Roberts calls "the effusions of an 
ardent and intelligent country girl, who 
found herself suddenly introduced to the 
choicest society of the metropolis." Sally 
was more than ardent and intelligent. She 
had a lively sense of fun and a command 
of her pen that fitted her, subsequently, to 
be Hannah's able collaborateuse in The 
Cheap Repository Tracts. But to her let- 
ters, written — as we must bear in mind — 
for the sisters left at home : 

" Since I wrote last, Hannah has been introduced by 
Miss Reynolds to Baretti and Edmund Burke (the sub- 
lime and beautiful Burke ! ) From a large party of liter- 
ary persons assembled at Sir Joshua's she received the 
most encouraging compliments, and the spirit with 
which she returned them was acknowledged by all 
present, as Miss Reynolds informed poor Us. Miss R. 
repeats her little poem by heart, with which also, the 
great Johnson is much pleased." 

Another letter fairly bulges with the 
great Johnson. "Abyssinia's Johnson! 
Dictionary Johnson ! Rambler's, Idler's, 
and Irene's Johnson ! The most amiable 
and obliging of women — Miss Reynolds," 
has taken the sisters to "Dr. Johnson's 
very own house." 



Johnson and the Reynoldses 35 

" Miss Reynolds told the doctor of all our rapturous 
exclamations on the road. He shook his scientific head 
at Hannah and said, ' She was a silly thing ! ' When 
our visit was ended, he called for his hat (as it rained) to 
attend us down a very long entry to our coach, and not 
Rasselas could have acquitted himself more en cavalier. 
We are engaged with him at Sir Joshua's, Wednesday 
evening. What do you think of us ? 

" I forgot to mention that, not finding Johnson in the 
little parlour, when we came in, Hannah seated herself 
in his great chair, hoping to catch a little ray of his 
genius. When he heard it, he laughed heartily, and 
told her it was a chair in which he never sat." 

The Great Bear so seldom put himself to 
the trouble of being tolerably polite, that 
we do well to make grateful note of these 
two audiences, granted to this one of his 
worshippers. With all his affectation of 
contempt for the opinions of his fellow-men, 
he was as vain as the most empty-headed 
coxcomb who strutted in Piccadilly. Ad- 
ulation was the breath of his nostrils ; no 
incense was too rank for his taste. Fanny 
Burney, another of his adorers, thus paints 
him to her confidential crony, Mr. Crisp : 

" He had naturally a noble figure ; tall, stout, and 
authoritative ; but he stoops horribly ; his back is quite 
round ; his mouth is continually opening and shutting, 
as if he were chewing something. He has a singular 
method of twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands ; 



36 



Hannah More 



his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing back- 
wards and forwards ; his feet are never quiet, and his 
whole person looks often as if it were going to roll itself, 
quite voluntarily, from his chair to the floor. . . . 
His dress, considering the times, and that he had meant 
to put on all his best becomes — for he was engaged to 
dine with a very fine party at JMrs. iVlontague's — was as 
much out of the common road as his figure. He had a 
large, full, bushy wig, a snuff-color coat, with gold (or, 
peradventure, brass) buttons, but no ruffles to his 
doughty fists ; and, not, 1 suppose, to be taken for a 
Blue, 'though going to the Blue Queen, he had on very 
coarse black worsted stockings." 

Fanny goes on to show her idol — Mrs. 
Thrale's, Mrs. Montague's, Hannah More's 
idol — pulling a book from the shelf, ' ' and, 
standing aloof from the company, which 
he seemed clean and clear to forget, begin- 
ning without further ceremony and very 
composedly, to read to himself as intently 
as if he had been alone in his own study." 

And — "we were languishing, fretting, 
expiring — to hear him talk — not to see 
him read ! " 

Yet Fanny Burney, in the noon-tide of 
Evelina's popularity, repeats in a twitter 
of rapture to Mr. Crisp that Dr. Johnson 
had said "some sentences in that novel 
might do honour to Richardson." 

Furthermore, "that there was never a 



Johnson and the Reynoldses 37 

better character drawn by Harry Fielding 
or any otiier author, than her Mr. Smith ! " 

" I almost poked myself under the table! 
Never did I feel so delicious a confusion 
since I was born." 

More soberly as to phraseology, but with 
equal gratification, Hannah More writes 
home : 

" Dr. Johnson asked me how I liked the new tragedy 
of Bragan^a. I was afraid to speak before them all, as 
1 knew a diversity of opinion prevailed among the 
company. However, as I thought it a less evil to dissent 
from the opinion of a fellow-creature than to tell a 
falsity, I ventured to give my sentiments, and was 
satisfied with Johnson's answering — ' You are right, 
Madam ! ' " 

Happy, unselfish Sally writes of another 
" occasion" : 

" Tuesday evening we drank tea at Sir Joshua's with 
Dr. Johnson. Hannah is certainly a great favourite. 
She was placed next to him and they had the entire 
conversation to themselves. They were both in re- 
markably high spirits. It was certainly her lucky night. 
1 never heard her say so many good things. The Old 
Genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very 
pleasant. You would have imagined we had been at 
some comedy had you heard our peals of laughter. They 
indeed tried which could pepper the highest, and it is 
not clear to me that the lexicographer was really the 
highest seasoner. " 



38 Hannah More 

The Bristol chrysalis had cast her shell 
quite away, but could never reconcile the 
life of the social butterfly with her home- 
made conscience. When dressed for "a 
great dinner," she steadies the astounding 
construction reared upon her head by the 
perruquier while she writes to a sister of 
her disgust at the 

"present absurd, extravagant and fantastical way of 
dressing the hair. 

" Simplicity and modesty are things so much ex- 
ploded that the very names are no longer remembered. 
I have just escaped from one of the most fashionable 
disfigurers. ... I absolutely blush at myself and 
turn from the glass with as much caution as a vain 
beauty just arisen from the small-pox." 

One of the clever bits that spiced her 
letters and her talk compares the 

" happy and easy way of filling a book with criticism of 
some eminent poet and with monstrous extracts," to a 
" species of cookery. They cut up their author into 
chops, and, by adding a little crumbled bread of their 
own, and tossing it up a little, they present it as a fresh 
dish. You are to dine upon the poet ; the critic sup- 
plies the garnish, yet has the credit as well as the profit, 
of the whole entertainment." 

The Italian Opera, as given in London, 
jarred upon her ideas of fitness and pro- 
priety. 



Johnson and the Reynoldses 39 

" Bear me, some God, O quickly bear me hence, 
To wholesome solitude, the muse of — 

'Sense,' I was going to add in the 
words of Pope, 'till I remembered that 
' pence ' had a more appropriate meaning, 
and was as good a rhyme," is an oft- 
quoted passage from her sisterly corre- 
spondence. 

" This apostrophe broke from me, on coming from the 
(London) Opera — the first I ever did, the last 1 trust I 
shall ever go to. Yet I find the same people are seen at 
the Opera every night — an amusement written in a 
language the greater part of them do not understand, 
and performed by such a set of beings ! Going to the 
Opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own 
punishment with it, and that a very severe one." 

Her rector. Dr. Stonehouse, had written 
to her kindly and seriously relative to the 
Sunday evening gathering in Mrs. Mon- 
tague's salon. She sends through her sister 
her thanks for his "seasonable admoni- 
tions," adding that Conscience had infused 
a drop of wormwood into the cup of 
pleasure before she heard from him. 

Sabbath-keeping in the Bristol house- 
hold was Presbyterian in strictness, and the 
blandishments of town society could not 
do away with the habit based upon her 



40 Hannah More 

parents' principles. She spent the next 
Sunday afternoon at Mrs. Boscawen's in 
company with Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Montague, 
and Mrs. Elizabeth Chapone. The con- 
versation was sprightly, but serious, yet we 
detect a smack of puritanical intolerance in 
the sequitur : 

"They are all ladies of high character for piety, of 
which, however, I do not think their visiting on Sun- 
days any proof, for 'though their conversation is edifying, 
the example is bad. . . . The more 1 see of the 
* honoured, famed, and great,' the more I see of the 
littleness, the unsatisfactoriness of all created good, and 
that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the im- 
mortal principle within. . . . Tell me, then, what 
is it to be wise? This, you will say, is exhibiting the 
unfavourable side of the picture of humanity, but it is the 
right side, the side that shows the likeness." 




CHAPTER IV 

LONDON AGAIN — "SIR ELDRED OF THE BOWER " 
— THE GARRICKS AND THE COTTONS 

HANNAH MORE'S third visit to the great 
metropolis had a specific purpose. 
An important part in the nursery dream 
was still unfulfilled. She had consorted 
with authors, and been hailed as a kindred 
spirit by celebrities ; the visit to the pub- 
lisher was now to become fact and history. 

"I have been so fed with flattering atten- 
tions that I think 1 will venture to try what 
is my real value," was her shrewd remark 
after the incense had cooled and her nerves 
recovered from their flutter in the quiet 
commonplaceness of sober, commercial 
Bristol. Her test was two ballads, in a 
vein that seems to us a tame imitation of 
Percy's Reliques. 

The moral element must be ingeniously 
41 



42 Hannah More 

instilled into the story and poem of to-day ; 
stirred in, as the cook introduces kitchen 
bouquet, a suspicion of cayenne into an 
entree, or vanilla into custard. The com- 
pounding is done according to Sydney 
Smith's salad recipe : 

" Let garlic's atoms lurk within the bowl, 
And unseen, animate the whole." 

Hannah More's moral was the piece de 
resistance in every literary feast she offered 
to the public. 

In the longer of the two poems she car- 
ried in her portmanteau up to town, Sir 
Eldred of the Bower, the moral and the 
tragic run neck-and-neck, from post to 
finish, but the former is the favourite with 
the author, and apparently with her public. 

It is a decisive proof of the completeness 
of her recovery from the unhappiness con- 
sequent upon her ill-starred betrothal, that 
the second poem was a revision of verses 
written during the mid-summer vacation at 
Belmont, and doubtless read in their rough 
form to Mr. Turner. They were founded 
upon a legend of the Avon valley, a story 
of man's fickleness and late useless re- 
morse, woman's constancy and death. Had 



" Sir Eldred of the Bower " 43 

the writer's heart retained the slightest 
sensitiveness on the subject of her own 
slighted affection and her wooer's vacilla- 
tion, she would not have invited the probe 
of memory. 

Cadell, the fashionable publisher of the 
year, not only accepted the brace of poems, 
but paid her what she considered a hand- 
some sum for them, engaging to supple- 
ment this by a second payment, upon 
publication, that would bring up the 
amount to what Goldsmith had received 
for The Deserted tillage, six years before. 
Miss Reynolds, Mrs. Montague, Mrs. Cha- 
pone, Mrs. Vesey, and others of the Bas- 
B/eu coterie fell in love with the verses 
out of hand ; Sir Eldred was the theme in 
all polite circles ; the Garricks were enrap- 
tured, the eminent tragedian giving parlour 
recitations of the new publication to tearful 
drawing-room audiences. Furthermore, 
he wrote some clever verses descriptive of 
the chagrin of man at a woman's triumph 
until Apollo offers a placebo: 

" ' True,' cries the god of verse, ' 't is mine, 
And now the farce is o'er. 
To vex proud man, I wrote each line, 
And gave them Hannah More ! ' " 



44 Hannah More 

Best of all, Johnson not only pronounced 
Sir Eldred and the Avondale legend of The 
Bleeding Rock vastly superior to the embryo 
Bishop's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, 
but sealed his approval by the condescen- 
sion of an added verse to the body of Sir 
Eldred. 

" He has invited himself to drink tea with us to- 
morrow, that we may read Sir Eldred together," writes 
Hannah to a sister. " I shall not tell you what he said 
of it, but to me the best part of his flattery was that he 
repeats all the best stanzas by heart with the energy, 
'though not with the grace, of a Garrick." 

She was never nearer betraying unbe- 
coming and more uncharacteristic vanity 
than when her sister Martha wrote to Bristol 
of the danger of a wedding between Sir 
Eldred's mother and "the father of my 
much loved Irene.'' 

This last-named ponderous drama was, 
by now, defunct to the general reader, but 
had run for over a week at Drury Lane in 
1749, and netted the author a sum equal 
to fifteen hundred dollars. With authorly 
fatuousness not peculiar to himself, Johnson 
rated it highly, and Hannah's acquiescence 
in his judgment was a stroke of guileless 
diplomacy. 



" Sir Eldred of the Bower " 45 

" Mrs. Montague says," continues the sisterly epistle 
before us, — " ' If tender words are the precursors of con- 
nubial engagements, we may expect great things, for it 
is nothing but "Child," "Little Fool," "Love," and 
' ' Dearest. " ' After much critical discourse he turns around 
to me, and with one of his most amiable looks — which 
must be seen to form the least idea of it — he says — ' I 
have heard that you are engaged in the useful and 
honourable employment of teaching young ladies ? ' " 

Won by his amiable affability, Martha 
gives him the "history of our birth, par- 
entage, and education." After hearing it 
all— 

" ' I love you both ! ' cried the Inamorato. ' 1 love 
you all five ! 1 never was at Bristol. 1 will come on 
purpose to see you. What ! five women live happily 
together ! 1 will come and see you. 1 have spent a 
happy evening. 1 am glad I came ! God forever bless 
you ! You live lives to shame duchesses ! ' 

" He took his leave with so much warmth and tender- 
ness that we were quite affected at his manner." 

We twentieth-century readers would be 
more affected had we not heard the tender- 
hearted boor call Fanny Burney names as 
sweet as those he showers upon the mother 
of Sir Eldred— also— " a. little toad ! " while 
he tweaked one of her pink ears. 

The affectionate elder sister appends to 
the letter which 1 have quoted in part : 



46 



Hannah More 



" If Hannah's head stands proof against all the adula- 
tion and kindness of the great folks here, why then, 
1 will venture to say that nothing of this kind will hurt 
her hereafter. Two carriages at the door ! Mrs. Bos- 
cawen and Dr. Johnson ; the latter to take us to an 
auction of pictures ; the former paid a short visit that 
she might not break in upon our engagements. Dr. 
Johnson and Hannah, last night, had a violent quarrel, 
'till at length laughter ran so high on all sides that 
argument was confounded in noise. The gallant youth 
at one in the morning set us down at our lodgings." 

Hannah's head was steady enough to 
endure four or five hours of study, daily, 
and of one day she records, " I wrote ten 
hours yesterday." Good taste and common 
sense revolted at certain London fashions. 
She " hates admixture of finery and mean- 
ness" ; she finds her "dislike of what are 
called public diversions" greater than ever, 
— except a play. When Garrick has left the 
stage she " could be very well contented to 
relinquish plays also, and to live in London 
without ever again setting her foot in a 
public place." 

Her scathing criticism of women's society 
costumes is too good to be abridged : 

" 1 am annoyed by the foolish absurdity of the pres- 
ent mode of dress. Some ladies carry on their heads a 
large quantity of fruit, and yet they would despise 




PORTRAIT OF DAVID QARRICK 

FROM A DESIGN BY N. DANCE 



''Sir Eldred of the Bower" 47 

a poor, useful member of society who carried it there 
for the purpose of selling it for bread. Some, at the 
back of their perpendicular caps, hang four or five 
ostrich feathers of different colours. Spirit of Addison ! 
thou pure and gentle shade, arise ! Thou, who, with 
such fine humour and such polished sarcasm, didst lash 
the cherry-coloured hood and the party patches, and 
cut down, with a trenchant sickle, a whole harvest of 
follies and absurdities — awake ! The follies thou didst 
lash were but the beginning of follies, and the absurdi- 
ties thou didst censure were but the seeds of absurdities. 
Oh, that thy master-spirit, speaking and chiding in thy 
graceful page, could recall the blushes and collect the 
scattered and mutilated remnants of female modesty ! " 

What she did enjoy with her whole 
heart was the company she met at the 
Garricks' town-house, where she was a 
favoured habitiiee, and intimate association 
with the members of the Bas Bleu, some 
of whose names appear in a much-talked-of 
anonymous skit published in the Morning 
Herald of March 12, 1782 : 

" Hannah More's pathetic pen. 
Painting high the impassioned scene : 
Carter's piety and learning ; 
Little Burney's quick discerning ; 
Cowley's neatly-pointed wit 
Healing those her satires hit. 

Let Chapone retain a place ; 
And the mother of her Grace, 



48 Hannah More 

Each art of conversation knowing, 
High-bred, elegant Boscawen ; 
Thrale, in whose expressive eyes 
Sits a soul above disguise : 
Lucan, Levison, Greville, Crewe, 
Fertile-minded Montague," — etc. 

Deep, wholesome content, with joy- 
beads rising from the bottom, to glitter 
upon the surface of the cup, is in a portion 
of another home-bulletin : 

"It is not possible for anything on earth to be more 
agreeable to my taste than my present manner of life. I 
am so m.uch at my ease ; have a great many hours at my 
own disposal ; read my own books, and see my own 
friends, and, whenever 1 please, may join the most 
polished and delightful society in the world. Our 
breakfasts are little literary societies. There is generally 
company at meals, as they [the Garricks] think it 
saves time by avoiding the necessity of seeing people 
at other times. Mr. Garrick sets the highest value upon 
his time of anybody 1 know. From dinner to tea we 
laugh, chat, and talk nonsense. The rest of the time is 
generally devoted to study. I detest and avoid public 
places more than ever, and should make a miserably 
fine lady. What most people come to London for, 
would keep xnt from it." 

All the same, in a "moderate party of 
forty " agreeable people assembled at Mrs. 
Vesey's, there were a dozen titled lords 



A State Trial 49 

and ladies ; and a " select company — much 
too large to please me" — at Sir Joshua 
Reynolds's Richmond house comprised 
Gibbon, the Burke brothers, Lord Pitt, and 
Lord Mahon, together with David Garrick 
and other notables, while Lord North and 
"our noble neighbours, the Pembrokes," 
were frequent guests. Garrick gave her a 
ticket to Westminster Hall where "Eliza- 
beth, calling herself Duchess Dowager of 
Kingston," had a State trial — "a. sight, 
which for beauty and magnificence ex- 
ceeded anything which those who were 
never present at a coronation, or a trial by 
peers, can have the least notion of." Mrs. 
Garrick and Miss More, in full dress, were 
the guests of the Duke of Newcastle, whose 
house adjoined the HaU. 

Hannah's graphic description of the scene 
has this homely touch : 

" I must not omit one of the best things. We had 
only to open a door to get at a very fine cold collation 
of all sorts of meats and wines, with tea, etc., a privilege 
confined to those who belonged to the Duke of New- 
castle. I fancy the peeresses would have been glad of 
our places at the trial, for 1 saw Lady Derby and the 
Duchess of Devonshire with their work-bags full of good 
things. Their rank and dignity did not exempt them 
from the ' villainous appetites ' of eating and drinking." 

4 



50 Hannah More 

In a word, the brilliant provincial — the 
ex-teacher of Bristol tradesmen's daughters 
— was, as our irreverent college-lads would 
phrase it, "in the swim" of London life, 
and, disclaim her gratification as she may, 
we must recall, in reading the frank and 
funny letters she never dreamed would 
meet other eyes than those for which they 
were written, the passionate simplicity of 
Glory McWhirk's soliloquy — ''Such a time 
as this ! such a beautiful time ! And to 
think that / should be in it ! " 

David Garrick, Hannah More's always 
friend and present host, was now sixty- 
five years of age and just beginning his last 
round of professional engagements. Miss 
More saw him in each of his great parts, in- 
cluding Benedict, Hamlet, Lear, and Abel 
Drugger, a character in Ben Jonson's play. 
The Alchemist. 

" When I see him play any part for the 
last time, I can only compare my mixed 
sensations to what I suppose I should feel 
if a friend were to die and leave me a rich 
legacy," she laments. "I feel almost as 
much pain as pleasure He is quite happy 
in the prospect of his release." 

In reciprocation of her admiration he 



The Garricks and the Cottons 5 1 

dubbed her "Nine" — signifying that she 
was the embodiment of all the Muses, a 
title he took into every-day use. It was 
surmised that her strictures upon the hor- 
ticultural head-dress of the day instigated 
him, in personating Sir John Brute in Van- 
brugh's play of The Provoked Wife, to a 
prank which fairly laughed the fashion out 
of court. In a drunken revel, Sir John rigs 
himself in a new gown belonging to his 
wife, and parades the street until arrested 
for disturbing the public peace. Garrick 
added to the gown "a whole kitchen- 
garden upon his head." Miniature cu- 
cumber-frames were worn as a tiara, and 
carrots as earrings. 

Hannah cannot withhold a smart slap at 
the detested mode in a lively letter written 
from the country-house of her "cousin 
Cotton," in the vicinity of Thorpe Hall, 
where her father was born. "A great 
number of Cottons of all ages, sexes, and 
characters " was convoked to meet the 
newly discovered relative whose father had 
been like a dead man out of mind to the 
prosperous clan during the long years of 
his adversity. Miss More's celebrity, if 
based, as we must be allowed to think. 



52 Hannah More 

upon very slight achievements up to this 
time, was, nevertheless, indisputable. She 
figured in the public prints as a wit and a 
woman of fashion, and she was warmly 
bidden to the halls of her ancestors, a 
venerable "lady of the house taking a great 
deal of pains to explain to me genealogies, 
alliances, and intermarriages, not one word 
of which can I remember," — reports Han- 
nah with airy carelessness unpropitious to 
the growth of reverence the genealogist 
would have instilled. 

" I eat brown bread and custards like a native ; and 
we have a pretty, agreeable, laudable custom of getting 
tipsy twice a day upon Herefordshire cider. The other 
night we had a great deal of company — eleven dam- 
sels, to say nothing of men. 1 protest I could hardly do 
them justice when I pronounce that they had, amongst 
them, on their heads, an acre-and-a-half of shrubbery, 
besides slopes, grass-plats, tulip-beds, clumps of peonies, 
kitchen-gardens, and green houses. Mrs. Cotton and I 
had an infinite deal of entertainment out of them, 
'though to our shame be it spoken, some of them were 
cousins. But I have no doubt that they held in great 
contempt our roseless heads and leafless necks." 



CHAPTER V 

"THE INFLEXIBLE CAPTIVE" — DR. JOHNSON'S 
REBUFFS — GARRICK'S KINDNESS — SUCCESS 
OF "PERCY" 

AT least ten years before Hannah More 
knew the Garricks, and while she 
was still her sisters' assistant in the Bristol 
seminary, she had sought to polish her 
style in translations and imitations from the 
Italian, French, and Spanish languages, by 
working up Metastasio's opera of Regulus 
into an English drama. At Garrick's sug- 
gestion she disinterred the manuscript and 
rewrote the play. It was acted in the sum- 
mer of 1777, under the title of The Inflexi- 
ble Captive, in the Bath theatre. Garrick 
wrote the prologue, a signal compliment 
for which the author of the drama thanks 
him gushingly, in a letter dated June i6th: 

" I beg to return you my hearty thanks for your 

53 



54 Hannah More 

goodness in sending me your delightful prologue. That 
you should think me not unworthy to possess so great 
a treasure, flatters more than my vanity. . . . 

" 1 have read and re-read it with all the malice of a 
friend, and pronounce that I never read a sweeter or 
more beautiful thing. The first stanza is strikingly de- 
scriptive ; the second elegantly pathetic ; the image of 
the sun and shower very fine, and the third is highly 
poetical." 

Miss Yonge reminds us, in writing of 
this period of Hannah More's life, that "it 
was an age of compliments that would now 
sound fulsome, if not absurd, and Hannah 
was a demonstrative person," —a gentle 
caution against harsh judgment we need 
to recollect in reading her letters to her new 
and distinguished friends. She excelled 
her teachers in the use of flowery compli- 
ment. Mrs. Piozzi — formerly Mrs. Thrale, 
Johnson's chief hostess, and a notable 
figure in the circle that held him as centre 
and sun — writes in her Anecdotes of Sam- 
uel Johnson, — " He once bade a very cele- 
brated lady (Hannah More) who praised 
him with too much zeal, perhaps, or with 
too strong an emphasis (which always 
offended him), consider what her flattery 
was worth before she choked him with 
it." Miss Burney corroborates the story 



Dr. Johnson's Rebuffs 55 

by repeating Johnson's retort to Mrs. Thrale, 
who said of Fanny Burney, "We have 
told her what you said to Miss More, and 
I believe that makes her afraid." "Well ! " 
grovv'led the bearish idol — " and if she was 
to serve me as Miss More did I should say 
the same thing to her." 

Johnson's parasite, Boswell, has his thrust 
at a woman he never liked : 

"Talking of Miss Hannah More, a literary lady, 
Johnson said, ' 1 was obliged to speak to Miss Reynolds, 
to let her know that I desired she would not flatter me 
so much.' Somebody now observed, 'She flatters 
Garrick.' Johnson: 'She is in the right to flatter 
Garrick. She is in the right for two reasons : first, 
because she has the world with her, who have been 
praising Garrick these thirty years ; secondly, because 
she is rewarded for it by Garrick. Why should she 
flatter me ? I can do nothing for her. Let her carry 
her praise to a better market.' " 

And again in another chapter : 

" Miss Hannah More was then just come to London 
from an obscure situation in the country. At Sir Joshua 
Reynolds's one evening, she met Dr. Johnson. She 
very soon began to pay her court to him in the most 
fulsome strain. ' Spare me, I beseech you — dear 
madam ! ' was his reply. She still laid it on. ' Pray, 
madam, let us have no more of this,' he rejoined. Not 
paying any attention to these warnings, she continued 



56 Hannah More 

still her eulogy. At length, provoked by this indelicate 
and vain obtrusion of compliment, he exclaimed, 
' Dearest lady ! consider with yourself what your flattery 
is worth, before you bestow it so freely.' " 

Of this outrage upon common decency 
Horace Walpole remarks sensibly : "Mrs. 
Thrale and all Johnson's disciples seem to 
have taken his brutal contradictions for 
bon-mots. 

Some years had elapsed since the rebuffs 
were given, when the publication of the 
Anecdotes drew from Hannah the complaint 
that Mrs. Thrale had "needlessly printed 
some of Johnson's rough speeches." She 
had already begged Boswell to soften "his 
departed friend's asperities " in his projected 
book. Whereupon Bozzy made the fam- 
ous reply that he "would not make the 
tiger a cat to please anybody." Respect 
for the memory of him who had gone 
may have prompted Hannah's remon- 
strance. It is quite as likely that she 
winced at the thought of having the pep- 
per-pot, of which she had been forced to 
partake once and again, uncovered to the 
public view. Not one of the "disciples" 
ever answered Johnson after his own man- 
ner. His pebbles, however rough, and 



Garrick's Kindness 57 

however hard they were thrown, were 
diamonds to them. 

The son of a poor white living near 
Mount Vernon recalled in his old age, 
as one of the greatest honours of his 
life, a flogging he had received from 
George Washington. Johnson's kicks were 
accounted better than other people's half- 
pence by his noble toadies. Hannah 
chronicles none of the kicks in her most 
confidential letters, and makes the most of 
the crumbs of compliment, the crusts of 
condescension he tossed to her at his 
pleasure. 

By contrast, the cordial kindness of her 
best friends, the Garricks, must have been 
trebly sweet. We can overlook the re- 
dundant adjectives in her letters to them, 
after reading of the home they made for 
her in their town and country houses, their 
pride in her talents, their tender solicitude 
for her welfare, the unfailing energy of 
their co-operation in her literary work. 1 
select at random one instance of their pa- 
rental kindness, which must have appealed 
to the heart of the motherly sister left in 
Bristol. It is written from Hannah's Lon- 
don lodgings. 



58 Hannah More 

" Mrs. Garrick came to see me this morning, and 
wished me to go to the Adelphi [the Garricks' home 
in town] which I declined, being so ill. She would 
have gone herself to fetch me a physician, and insisted 
upon sending me my dinner, which I refused. But at 
six this evening, when Garrick came to the Turk's Head 
to dine, there accompanied him, in the coach, a minced 
chicken in a stew-pan — hot! — a canister of her fine 
tea, and a pot of cream. Were there ever such people ! 
Tell it not in Epic, nor in Lyric, that the great Roscius 
rode with a stew-pan of minced meat with him in the 
coach for my dinner ! " 

Another incident illustrative of his watch- 
ful consideration of her comfort is better 
known. She writes from Farnborough 
Place, the magnificent country-seat of the 
Wilmots in Hampshire. 

"On Sunday evening 1 was a little alarmed. They 
were preparing for music (sacred music was the ostensi- 
ble thing), but before 1 had time to feel uneasy, Garrick 
turned around and said — ' Nine ! you are a Sunday 
woman. Retire to your room. I will recall you when 
the music is over.' " 

The Inflexible Captive, introduced by the 
greatest of living English tragedians, was 
so well received by the fashionists of Bath 
that the author went on bravely with a 
more ambitious enterprise of a similar na- 
ture which Garrick had urged upon her. 

In November, 1777, the tragedy of Percy 



Success of " Percy " 59 

was brought out at Covent Garden Theatre, 
and forthwith became the decorous rage of 
play-going London, The scene was laid 
in England ; the time was that of the Cru- 
saders. A lovers' quarrel ; the going of the 
desperate Percy "off to the wars again" ; a 
forced marriage between his distracted Dul- 
cinea and Percy's enemy, Lord Douglas ; 
a false report of Percy's death ; his return 
to interview the wife of another ; a hus- 
band's jealousy ; a duel ; a suicide by drink- 
ing poison ordered by her husband to be 
taken in case he should fall ; the death of 
Percy in the duel, followed by Douglas's 
suicide, — form an olla podrida so unlike 
the mild panada of the Search for Happi- 
ness that we must accredit Garrick with 
the garlic, wine, and spices. Miss Yonge 
shows full appreciation of the fact in sum- 
ming up the ingredients of the play, and 
ushering it upon the stage : 

" Neither Hannah nor her friends seem to have had 
the slightest scruples as to entertaining a Christian audi- 
ence with suicide after the high Roman fashion, — as, 
indeed, the tragic stage was in those days a conven- 
tional world, quite apart from any relation to the facts 
of history, manners, or real life, and with a code, as 
well as customs, of its own. Written under the super- 
intendence of one who perfectly gauged the taste of the 



6o Hannah More 

contemporary public, and who, 'though retired, had an 
unlimited power of patronage, Percy had every advan- 
tage, and the actress, Kitty Clive, observed that ' Gar- 
rick's nursing had enabled the bantling to go alone in a 
month.' " 

" Garrick thinks of nothing, talks of 
nothing, writes of nothing, but Percy," 
says Hannah, gratefully, — and, we must be- 
lieve, sincerely. " The play seldom comes 
into my head unless it be mentioned. I am, 
at present, very tranquil about it." 

The Garricks induced her, by friendly 
force, to take up her abode with them in 
the stirring times they anticipated, if she 
did not. She should have her " own com- 
fortable room, with a good fire and with 
all the lozenges and all the wheys in the 
world," promised the affectionate hostess. 
Garrick wrote prologue and epilogue, and 
bargained that Hannah should pay him by a 
handsome supper and a bottle of claret. 
Dryden used to receive five guineas apiece 
for such things, but he, as a richer man, 
could afford better terms. Falling into his 
humour, Hannah offered a steak and a pot 
of porter, and after much and merry hag- 
gling, they supped at midnight upon toast 
and honey.- 



Success of " Percy " 6i 

She breaks off the story of a supper 
at Sir Joshua's, a morning at the Chan- 
cellor's, and an evening with Lady Bath- 
urst at Mrs. Boscawen's, to exclaim at 
the "dreadful news from America" (in 

1777)- 

"We are a disgraced, undone nation ! 
What a sad time to bring out a play in ! 
when, if the country had the least spark of 
virtue remaining, not a creature would think 
of going to it." 

This letter to her sister has an interesting 
postscript, — so graphic as to bring the 
scene in the theatre and the domestic after- 
act vividly before us : 

" Mr. Garrick's study, Adelphi. Ten at night. 
" He himself puts the pen into my hand, and bids 
me say that all is just as it should be. Nothing was 
ever more warmly received. 1 went with Mr. and Mrs. 
Garrick ; sat in Mr. Harris's [the manager's] box, in a 
snug, dark corner, and behaved very well, that is, very 
quietly. The prologue and epilogue were received with 
bursts of applause. So, indeed, was the whole, — as 
much beyond my expectation as my deserts. Mr. 
Garrick's kindness has been unceasing." 

Mrs. Montague wrote to wish her " health 
to wear her bays with pleasure, and that 
she might ever be, as she had been, the 



62 Hannah More 

pride of her friends and the humiliation of 
her enemies." On the second night, "even 
the men shed tears in abundance " ; Dr. 
Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and author of 
the Reliqiies, etc., called in person to con- 
vey to Miss More the congratulations of the 
Duke of Northumberland and Earl Percy 
upon her great success. Each of these 
lords, father and son, "paid handsome 
sums for his ticket, as became the blood of 
the Percys, and in so genteel and respectful 
a manner that it was impossible for the 
nicest pride to take umbrage at it." Lord 
Lyttleton went every night for a week to 
see Percy ; Lady North had a stage box ; 
Mrs. Chapone was enraptured ; Lady Bath- 
urst made no engagements for a fortnight 
that she might not miss a night of the new 
play ; Mrs. Boscawen sent a laurel wreath 
clasped by a valuable ring ; on the twelfth 
night, Covent Garden Theatre still "over- 
flowed prodigiously, although the School 
for Scandal and their Majesties were at the 
other house." Mr. Home, whose tragedy 
of Douglas cost him his clergyman's gown 
and title, and won a King's favour and a 
pension, called to pay his respects, and 
was presented by Garrick in a graceful 



Success of '' Percy " 63 

speech, "making the Percy acquainted 
with the Douglas." 

The venerable and venerated Mrs. De- 
lany gave a dinner and an evening party 
to the author of Percy, the Duchess of 
Portland and a host of other titled friends 
of the beloved hostess attending the even- 
ing entertainment ; the Duchess of Beau- 
fort asked for the honour of Miss More's 
acquaintance. The author's profits of the 
play from the theatre were six hundred 
pounds ; Cadell, the publisher, gave one 
hundred and fifty, "with conditional pro- 
mises besides," for the right to issue it in 
book form. 

" If I were a heroine of romance, and were writing to 
my confidante," she tells her sister, " 1 should tell you 
all the fine things that are said, but as I am a real, living 
Christian woman, 1 do not think it would be modest. I 
will only say, as Garrick does, that I have had so much 
flattery that 1 might, if 1 would, choke myself in my 
own pap." 

It is curiously characteristic to find her 
turning from the cloying draught to com- 
mune with her own quiet heart on an 
evening when she had five invitations to 
dine abroad, " preferring the precious and 
rare luxury of solitude." "I am at this 



64 Hannah More 

moment as quiet as my heart could wish, 
and quietness is my definition of happi- 
ness," is a singular avowal from the suc- 
cessful and petted darling of the day. In 
her luxurious solitude her thoughts turned 
longingly to the dear group at home, for 
whose sake she penned pictures of the 
triumphs they would enjoy more than 
she. 

" I think some of you might contrive to 
make a little jaunt, if it were only for one 
night, and see the bantling," she pleads. 
" Adieu, and some of you come ! " 

"Some" — we would fain believe all 
four of them — responded to the invitation 
and were present at the "twelfth night," 
to exult unselfishly in the " prodigious over- 
flow " aforementioned, and to wonder, as 
one of them said afterward, to see Hannah 
"so mightily indifferent through it all." In 
a letter, written after their return to Bristol, 
Hannah quotes an extract from a communi- 
cation just received by a friend from Mrs. 
Clive, rating Percy as "the best modern 
tragedy that has been produced in my 
time." "This is copied," says Hannah, 
"to give some pleasure to your sisterly 
vanity "; and dwells, more satisfiedly, upon 



Garrick and Johnson 65 

the "excessive kindness" of her friends 
during a slight illness through which she 
had just passed. 

" The Garricks have been to see me every morning. 
The other day he told me he was in a violent hurry — that 
he had been to order his own and Mrs. Garrick's mourn- 
ing — had just settled everything with the undertaker, 
and called for a moment to take a few hints for my 
epitaph. I told him he was too late as 1 had disposed 
of the employment a few days before, to Dr. Johnson, 
but as 1 thought he [Garrick] would praise me most, I 
should be glad to change. As to hints, I told him I had 
only one to give, which was to romance as much as he 
could, and to make the character as fine as possible." 

The two men are brought together again 
in the last letter of the series covering the 
five months Hannah spent in London in 
1777-78. Garrick was her escort to a 
party at Sir Joshua Reynolds's hospitable 
house, where were Gibbon the historian, 
Dr. Charles Burney, the father of Fanny 
{Evelina), the Bishop of St. Asaph, Bos- 
well, Dr. Johnson, and other notable 
men, besides several distinguished women. 
" Scarce an expletive man or woman among 
men," writes Hannah, wittily. "Garrick 
put Johnson into such good spirits that I 

never knew him so entertaining, or more 

5 



66 Hannah More 

instructive. He was as brilliant as him- 
self, and as good humoured as any one 
else," 

Her dream of meeting a Bishop, socially, 
had come to pass two years before, and 
was now quite an every-day affair. Bishops 
Newton and Porteous were among her fast 
friends. The latter was destined to take a 
prominent part in her affairs in succeeding 
years. Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London, in- 
vited her to pay him a visit at Fulham Pal- 
ace, once the residence of the notorious 
Bonner, a visit commemorated by Hannah 
in a ballad descriptive of an imaginary call 
at his ancient haunts from the ghost of the 
persecutor. Bonner objurgates the decad- 
ence in churchly zeal on the part of the 
present incumbent, predicting naught but 
evil to Church and State : 

" While this apostate Bishop seeks 

The freedom of mankind. 
" And who shall change his wayward heart, 

His wilful spirit turn ? 
For those his labours can't convert 

His weakness will not burn." 

The mild satire brought out a smarter re- 
ply from Mrs. Anna Lsetitia Barbauld, au- 
thor of the hymn beginning. 



Mrs. Barbauld 67 

"While Thee 1 seek, Protecting Power," 

and better known to our mothers than to 
ourselves, by her Early Lessons for Child- 
ren, Evenings at Home, and Devotional 
Vieces. As the wife of a dissenting min- 
ister, she descried fewer changes in the 
Episcopal See than were evident to Jacob 
More's daughter, and sarcastically apolo- 
gised, in the name of the Laodicean Bishops, 
for their lukewarmness, representing that 

" The spirit of the times restrains 

The spirit of the Church. 
" Church maxims do not greatly vary, 

Take it upon my honour ; 
Place on the throne another Mary — 

IVe 'II find another Bonner ! " 

Hannah was not to be drawn into a po- 
lemic encounter of wits. Staunch church- 
woman though she was, she was so much 
at one with what were spoken of as "the 
Evangelicals," that her spiritual nature was 
athirst through all the giddy round of 
worldly gayeties, the pomp and circum- 
stance of her personal successes. 

In the five months of her sojourn in Lon- 
don, she read the Epistles through three 
times, and divers uninspired devotional 
works, also West on the Resurrection, a 



68 



Hannah More 



book which was engaging the attention of 
the religious world. "In my poor judg- 
ment, a most excellent thing," she notes, in 
a diary letter. 

She carried back with her to Bristol and 
comparative quiet the plan of a domestic 
drama, to be called, The Fatal Falsehood, 
and set herself assiduously to work upon it. 





CHAPTER VI 

GARRICK'S death and funeral — "THE FATAL 
FALSEHOOD " WRITTEN AND ACTED — LIFE 
WITH MRS. GARRICK AT HAMPTON 

GARRICK had approved the scheme 
and action of The Fatal Falsehood. 
Four acts of it were read and revised by 
him. He was never to see the fifth. On 
January 20, 1779, a special messenger was 
despatched to Bristol with the news of his 
death and an earnest request from Mrs. 
Garrick that Miss More would lose no time 
in coming to her, 

Hannah was ill in her bed when the sum- 
mons came. She arose at once, made 
ready, and set off to London without the 
delay of an hour. Preparations for a state 
funeral were going on when she reached 
the house in which the widow was staying. 
69 



70 Hannah More 

I copy a portion of a long letter from Hannah 
to her home : 

" She ran into my arms and we both remained silent 
for some minutes. At last she whispered, ' I have this 
moment embraced his cofFm, and you come next.' " 

After going into the details of Garrick's 
last and fearfully brief illness, the sympa- 
thising friend continues : 

" I paid a melancholy visit to his coffm yesterday, 
where I found room for meditation, 'till the mind ' burst 
with thinking.' His new house is not so pleasant as 
Hampton, nor so splendid as the Adelphi, but it is com- 
modious enough for all the wants of its inhabitant. And, 
besides, it is so quiet that he will never be disturbed 'till 
the eternal morning, and never 'till then will a sweeter 
voice be heard. May he then find mercy ! They are 
preparing to hang the house with black, for he is to lie 
in state until Monday. 1 dislike this pageantry, and can- 
not help thinking that the disembodied spirit must look 
with contempt upon the farce that is played over its 
miserable relics. But a splendid funeral could not be 
avoided, as he is to be laid in the Abbey with such illus- 
trious dust, and so many are desirous of testifying their 
respect by attending. 

" I can never cease to remember with affection and 
gratitude, so warm, steady, and disinterested a friend ; 
and I can most truly bear this testimony to his memory, 
that 1 never witnessed in any family more decorum, pro- 
priety and regularity, than in his ; — where I never saw a 
card, or ever met (except in one instance) a person of his 



Garrick's Death and Funeral 71 

own profession at his table, of which Mrs. Garrick, by 
her elegance of taste, her correctness of manners, and very 
original turn of humour, was the brightest ornament." 

The state funeral was an imposing cere- 
monial. Ten peers of the realm were the 
great tragedian's pall-bearers ; Richard 
Brinsley Sheridan was chief mourner. 
Hannah breaks off suddenly in a graphic 
description of the scene with — "Then the 
body (alas ! whose body ?) " 

It is Hke a passionate sob and an impetu- 
ous rush of tears blinding the eyes to what 
was passing before them. 

In sad composure she resumes the narra- 
tive. 

The burial service was read by the 
Bishop of London amid silence so impress- 
ive that every syllable was audible in the 
vast spaces of the magnificent Cathedral. 

"And this is all of Garrick ! " Hannah 
breaks forth, again. " So passes away the 
fashion of this world 1 " 

The sad, bitter wonder of the mourner, 
for whom the face of life and nature has 
changed under the gloom of one awful 
cloud, sounds in the next sentence : 

" And the very night he was buried, the play-houses 
were as full, and the Pantheon was as crowded as if no 



72 Hannah More 

such thing had happened ; nay, the very mourners of the 
day partook of the revelries of the night, — the same 
night too ! " 

At Mrs. Garrick's solicitation Hannah 
went back witli her to the desolated home, 
Hampton, "this sweet and once cheerful 
place," as Hannah calls it. The dead mas- 
ter's dog ran out eagerly, hoping to greet 
him ; the perfect weather, the budding 
verdure, although the spring was not yet 
come — "all would appear as beautiful as 
it used to be," sighs the writer, " could we 
pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow." 

Mrs. Garrick bore the terrible blow like 
the true Christian woman she was, meet- 
ing friends and acquaintances with calm 
resignation, which was almost serene and 
altogether heroic. 

" When I expressed my surprise at her self-command 
she answered : " Groans and complaints are very well for 
those who are to mourn but for a little while, but a sor- 
row that is to last for life will not be violent or romantic. ' " 

Consistently with her unselfish resolve 
not to darken other lives by her grief, she 
insisted that Miss More should not share 
her seclusion when they returned to the 
London house, but receive and return the 



''The Fatal Falsehood" 73 

visits of her many friends. With no in- 
clination for gay society, the guest pre- 
ferred the quiet routine of which she writes 
to her sisters : 

" My way of life is very different from what it used 
to hi . You must not, therefore, expect much entertain- 
ment from my letters, for, as in the annals of states, so 
in the lives of individuals, those periods are often the 
safest and best which make the poorest figure. 

" After breakfast I go to my own apartment for sev- 
eral hours, where 1 read, write, and work, very seldom 
letting anybody in, though I have a separate room for 
visitors, but I almost look upon a morning visit as an 
immorality. At four we dine. At six we have coffee ; 
at eight, tea, when we have, sometimes, a dowager of 
quality. At ten we have salad and fruits. Each has 
her book, which we read without any restraint, as if we 
were alone, without apologies, or speech-making." 

The tranquil twilight of this existence 
was broken in upon by Mr. Harris, the 
theatrical manager who had brought out 
Percy. Learning that The Fatal Falsehood 
was ready for the stage, he importuned 
Miss More to allow him to give it to the 
public. Summer and the close of the 
fashionable season were rapidly approach- 
ing ; several of the actors who had con- 
tributed to the success of Percy were 
out of town, and the author of the new 



74 Hannah More 

play was not merely "mighty indifferen" " 
about what became of it, but heartily dis- 
inclined to a repetition of her theatrical ex- 
periences. The manager was a man of 
resources and resolution. In May he had 
wrung from her a reluctant consent to the 
production of the new play. 

The author was conveniently indisposed 
on the first night. One of her sisters went 
to the theatre as her proxy, and we are de- 
pendent upon her for the report of the 
manner of its reception : 

"The applause was as great as her most sanguine 
friends could wish. When Hull came forward to ask 
permission to perform it again, they gave leave by three 
loud shouts, and by many huzzaings. I will tell you a 
little anecdote. A lady, observing to one of her maid- 
servants when she came in from the play, that her eyes 
looked red, as if she had been crying, the girl, by way 
of apology said, — ' Well, ma'am, if I did, it was no 
harm. A great many respectable people cried too ! ' 

"Percy, I hear, is translated into German, and has 
been performed at Vienna with great success." 

Despite the lateness of the season, the 
success of The Fatal Falsehood was so 
pronounced that Cadell asked for the book- 
rights, and Hannah prepared the play for 
publication in this form. In the course of 
the negotiation, the publisher made the 



^^The Fatal Falsehood" 75 

jocose remark to which some biographers 
attribute Miss More's refusal ever to write 
again for the stage : 

"You are too good a Christian to be a 
dramatic author." 

It is far more probable that what little 
inclination she had for this line of com- 
position, and her enjoyment in dramatic 
triumphs, were effectually dispelled by 
Garrick's death. All the enthusiasm she had 
felt in the success of Percy was inspired by 
his keen interest in the undertaking. She 
had been carried forward by the rush of his 
energy ; he had fairly talked her into love 
for the offspring of her brain. With his 
going, departed her ambition to earn histri- 
onic laurels. She refused to go to the 
theatre upon any of the few nights when 
The Fatal Falsehood was played, and, so 
far as we know, never entered a theatre 
again. The lesson of "Vanity of Vanities" 
had been pressed too sharply home to be 
forgotten. 

Within a few weeks after the perform- 
ance of the last play she was ever to write 
she returned to Bristol, remaining there un- 
til late in the year (1779). Then Mrs. Gar- 
rick recalled her insistently, and for the 



76 Hannah More 

next two years Miss More's home was 
virtually with her widowed friend. 

" We never see a human face but each other's," Han- 
nah wrote to her sister the middle of January, 1780. 
'"Though in such deep retirement I am never dull, be- 
cause I am not reduced to the fatigue of entertaining 
dunces, or of being obliged to listen to them. We dress 
like a couple of Scaramouches, dispute like a couple of 
Jesuits, eat like a couple of aldermen, walk like a couple 
of porters, and read as much as any two doctors of 
either university." 

Mrs. Garrick — nie Eva Maria Veigel — was 
an Austrian dancer, beautiful and courted 
by royalty, yet blameless in character and 
deportment, when Garrick first met her. 
The love-match was singularly happy, and 
although the wife remained in the com- 
munion of the Roman Catholic Church, 
the difference in religious belief appeared to 
be no drawback to their domestic felicity, 
or to discount her worth as a friend in the 
sight of his English associates. 

Gossipy and often ill-natured Boswell 
says that Mrs. Garrick called Hannah More 
her "domestic chaplain," presumably on 
account of the guest's sincere interest in the 
church-going habits and moral status of 
the servants of the quiet household. It 



Life with Mrs. Garrick 77 

speaks untold things for the gentle tolera- 
tion of her whom nine-tenths of English- 
reading people persist in regarding as a 
pietist of the strictest sect, that Mrs. Gar- 
rick's alien faith interposed no barrier to 
their mutual attachment. The prolonged 
and absolute seclusion of Hampton would 
have tested to the utmost friendship based 
upon anything except thorough harmony 
of opinions and tastes. When the conven- 
tional twelvemonth of mourning was over, 
Hannah spoke regretfully of the projected 
removal to London. 

"We have been very busy sending around Mrs. Gar- 
rick's cards of thanks," she mentions, incidentally. " I 
suppose they include seven hundred people, six hundred 
of whom I dare say she will hardly ever let in again. 

"We regret leaving a new cow and a young calf 
The birds that we feed three times a day at the window 
are to be left on board wages ; a small loaf is to be 
brought to them every morning." 

She openly regretted Hampton in the 
first letter sent to Bristol after they were 
installed in the London house. She had 
been peremptorily summoned to rejoin 
"the old set — the Johnsons, the Burneys, 
the Chapones, the Thrales, the Smelts, the 
Pepyses, the Ramsays, and so on, ad infini- 
tum " — at the house of Mrs. Ord, a leader of 



78 Hannah More 

the clique. Mrs. Garrick presented a new 
head-dress and put it upon her friend with 
her own hands : 

" So 1 was quite sure of being smart. But how short- 
lived is all human joy ! and see what it is to live in the 
country ! When 1 came into the drawing-rooms 1 found 
them full of company — every human creature in deep 
mourning, and 1 — poor I ! all gorgeous in scarlet ! I 
never recollected that the mourning for some foreign 
Wilhelmina Jacquelina was not over. However, 1 got 
over it as well as I could, made an apology, lamented 
the ignorance in which 1 had lately lived, and 1 hope 
this false step of mine will be buried in oblivion." 

Delightful Mrs, Deiany — better known 
to us than any other private gentlewoman 
of her generation, from the reading of her 
Diary, Letters, and Life, published a dozen 
years or so ago — invited Miss More re- 
peatedly to her select and unparallelled 
parties of eight. At these the pleasant 
acquaintance already formed with Horace 
Walpole ripened into friendship that was to 
endure for the rest of his life. She intro- 
duced him by letter to her home coterie as 
"my friend, Horace Walpole, son to the 
minister of that name." He soon fastened 
upon her the affectionate sobriquet of 
"Saint Hannah," and took mischievous 



Life with Mrs. Garrick 79 

pleasure in using it in conversation and 
correspondence. 

At Mrs. Delany's she met, also, Lady 
Mary Wortley Montagu, brilliant, eccentric, 
and so dashing as to jar upon Saint Han- 
nah's sense of propriety. In cataloguing 
among her distinguished new acquaintances 
the Countess of Bute, she writes her down 
as " wife to the late First Minister, and 
daughter (but of a very superior character) 
to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu." 

Conversation-parties at Mrs. Boscawen's, 
where card-tables in the outer drawing-room 
"weeded the company of some of the 
great, and all the dull," were recorded zest- 
fully. The popular author spent a "very 
agreeable day " at Wimbledon Park, then in 
the occupancy of the Bishop of St. Asaph, 
and enjoyed chiefly turning over the library 
collected by the Duchess of Marlborough, 
whom Hannah calls, irreverently and paren- 
thetically, "old Sarah." Tea with Bishop 
Newton ; a crush at Mrs. Ord's, where she 
heard from Johnson of the King's sugges- 
tion, seconded by Miss More, that Edmund 
Spenser should be included in the Lives of the 
Poets ; sitting for her portrait to Miss Rey- 
nolds, with Johnson lolling in an easy-chair 



8o Hannah More 

near her, and saying the best things he 
could think of "to ensure a pleasing ex- 
pression," — were the recreation of days she 
made studious in the heart of London and 
in the thick of "the season." At one of 
Mrs. Boscawen's famous dinner-parties she 
met Beranger — "all chivalry and blank 
verse and anecdote," With all her liking 
for the Bard of Twickenham, Hannah 
could not resist the temptation of quoting 
his eulogium upon Lord Cobham, and con- 
trasting it with the facts attending the 
peer's demise. 

I will let her tell the story ; 

" — Lord Cobham — of whom Pope asserts, you know, 
that he would 

' Feel the ruling passion strong in death,' 

and that 

' Save my country, Heaven ! ' 

would be his last words. But what shows that Pope 
was not so good a prophet as poet was that in his [Cob- 
ham's] last moments, not being able to carry a glass 
of jelly to his mouth, he was in such a passion, feeling 
his own weakness, that he threw glass, jelly and all, into 
Lady Chatham's face and expired." 

Hampton, "very clean, very green, very 
beautiful, and very melancholy," with its 




HANNAH MORE, AT THE AGE OF SEVENTY 



Life with Mrs. Garrick 8i 

" long, drear calm of fixed repose," was yet 
a change that "suited her mightily after 
the hurry of London." With the passing 
of the effervescent spirits of youth, the love 
for higher and nobler pursuits than the fol- 
lies of the day strengthened. She read 
much, filling her correspondence with lit- 
erary friends with dissertations upon Gray, 
Gibbon, The Ltisiad, Walpole's pamphlet 
upon the Chattertonian controversy, John- 
son's Life of Addison, and Madan's treatise 
upon polygamy — Thelyphthora. 

Of this last peculiar production she says, 
severely : 

" There never was such a strange book under such a 
mask of holiness. I have as great an antipathy to some 
of the gospel according to Mr. Madan, as ever an infidel 
had to the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I believe 
the Holy Scriptures were never before made the cover, 
nay the vehicle, of so much indecency." 

The readers of William Cowper's Life 
will recognise in the obnoxious author 
the kinsman, Martin Madan, whose extra- 
ordinary defence of polygamy incited the 
gentle poet to write Anti-Thelyphthora, 
afterwards regretted as "a mistake, if not 
a folly." 

6 



82 Hannah More 

Miss More was, with the rest of theEng- 
Hsh world, intensely interested in the trial 
of Lord George Gordon, the ruling spirit 
of the " No Popery " riots, and shows ster- 
ling sense in her comment upon the result : 

"I am glad he is acquitted, for it disap- 
points the party, and uncanonises the 
martyr." 

Her picture of general society as she saw 
it with the pure, grave eyes through which 
a chastened spirit looked on life — although 
penned in 1782 — condenses the views 
formed in the two years of her residence 
with the widow of her dead friend and 
second father. 

" On Monday I was at a very great assembly at the 
Bishop of St. Asaph's. Conceive to yourself one hundred 
and fifty, or two hundred people met together, dressed 
in the extremity of the fashion ; painted as red as bac- 
chanals ; poisoning the air with perfumes ; treading on 
each other's gowns ; making the crowd they blame ; 
not one in ten able to get a chair ; protesting they are 
engaged to ten other places, and lamenting the fatigue 
they are not obliged to endure ; ten or a dozen card- 
tables, crammed with dowagers of quality, grave ecclesi- 
astics and yellow admirals ; — and you have an idea of 

an ASSEMBLY. 

" I never go to these things when I can possibly avoid 
it, and, while there, stay as few minutes as 1 can." 



CHAPTER VI[ 

"SACRED dramas" — VISIT TO OXFORD — TOP 

WAVE OF POPULARITY — DEATH OF MISS 

MORE's father — FAMILY RELATIONS — "THE 

BAS BLEU " 

/ 

THE sense of solemn responsibility to 
God and to her kind for the matter 
and manner of her daily living which had 
been steadily growing upon Miss More for 
many months, is indirectly, but significantly, 
expressed in her reference to the publica- 
tion of a work committ-ed to Cadell late in 
the year 1781. 

" 1 actually feel very awkward about this new book," 
she confides to her faithful sister. " Strangers who read 
it will, 1 am afraid, think I am ' good,' and 1 would not 
appear better than 1 am, which is certainly the case with 
all who do not act as seriously as they write. I think 
sometimes of what Prior makes Solomon say of himself 
in his fallen estate ; — ' They brought my proverbs to 
confute my life. ' " 

83 



84 Hannah More 

She evidently expressed the same dread 
to Mrs. Boscawen, who, in acknowledging 
the receipt of an advance copy of the work 
in question, bids Hannah read Matthew 
v., 15 : 

"Neither do men light a candle and put 
it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and 
it giveth light unto all who are in the 
house. 

"When they read your Dramas, they 'will think 
you good?'" pursues the friendly critic. "1 am not 
' afraid ' so. 1 hope so ! else 1 am sure they must think 
you a hypocrite. ... I never yet suspected that 
any one could ' bring your proverbs to confute your 
life.' " 

The candle just lighted and put upon a 
goodly candlestick by Cadell was Sacred 
Dramas and A Poem on Sensibility. The 
subjects of the Dramas were "The Find- 
ing of Moses," "The Slaying of Goliath of 
Gath," " Belshazzar's Feast," and " Heze- 
kiah's Meditations during his Sickness," 
founded upon 2 Kings xx., i-ii. They 
were intended for private reading, not for 
the stage, and, in the dearth of Sunday 
literature prevalent at that time, they served 
their end well. Nineteen editions ran 
through the press before the popular call 



"Sacred Dramas" 85 

for the book slackened. The Bas Bleu 
clique praised it to the skies : orthodox 
Jonas Hanway, author of the Book of Na- 
ture, and a veritable Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, 

"sat down to read them [the Dramas] with fear and 
trembling, as he had persuaded himself it was taking an 
undue liberty with the Scriptures, but he had no sooner 
finished them than he ran off to the bookseller, bought 
three or four, and went to a great boarding-school 
where he had some little friends. He gave the govern- 
ess the book, and told her it was part of her duty to see 
that all her girls studied it thoroughly." 

Bishop Lowth "liked the whole book 
more than he could say," and the Bishop of 
Chester gave to the author what she hon- 
estly declared to be "the praise best worth 
having," when he assured her that her 
work "would do a vast deal of good." 
Worthy Queen Charlotte had the Dramas 
read aloud to her by one of her ladies-in- 
waiting (a slavish post of honour after- 
wards occupied by Fanny Burney), and 
charged Miss Hamilton, an acquaintance of 
Miss More, to convey to that lady "all 
manner of handsome and flattering mes- 
sages, desiring her, above all things, to pur- 
sue the same path, and to go on by writing a 
sacred drama upon the history of Joseph." 



S6 Hannah More 

In fine, the ball of popular favour was 
again at the author's feet ; fresh laurels 
were to be had for the gathering. Perhaps 
her head may have been a trifle light in the 
gale of incense that " boomed" Percy, two 
years ago. It was as steady now as her 
heart, as cool as her judgment of her own 
abilities and shortcomings. She passes 
coolly from mention of the Bishop's plaud- 
its to discourse at greater length upon the 
books she is reading. She has finished six 
volumes oi Jortin's Sermons — "elegant, 
but cold, and very low in doctrine." Cardi- 
phoiiia, by our old friend and Cowper's 
spiritual guide, John Newton, suits her bet- 
ter, "having in it much vital religion, and 
much of the experience of a good Christian." 
Gibbon's History of the Lower Empire, "in 
three very thick quartos, a fine, but insidi- 
ous narrative of a dull period," has been 
read aloud by herself to Mrs. Garrick every 
day from dinner until tea, and she treats 
her sisterly correspondent to a critique of it 
which is terse and masterly. Passing from 
the topic, she says : 

" However, 1 am now plunging into 
other studies than the disputes of Arius 
and his antagonists, with which my head 



Books and Friends 87 

has been filled, and am pleasantly engaged 
to spend the evening with Eneas at Evan- 
der's rustic banquet." 

At the same time she is reading Bishop 
Lowth's Isaiah, "a work of great labour 
and erudition, but better calculated for 
scholars than plain Christians." She con- 
siders his De Sacra Poesi "a treasure." A 
translation of A Lady of Quality's Advice 
to her Children commends itself to her by 
the author's knowledge of the human 
heart and the emptiness of the world. She 
has also been "running over" the post- 
humous Letters of Sheiistoiie, dining with 
the Lord Chancellor at Apsley House, with 
the patriots at Bishop Shipley's, with the 
Bishops of Durham and of Chester, break- 
fasting with Lord Monboddo at Sir Charles 
Middleton's, and spending whole happy 
days with Mrs. Delany, now eighty-two 
years old and blind, yet the object of Han- 
nah's veneration and almost envy. 

"Such an excellent mind, so cultivated, 
such a tranquil, grateful spirit, such a com- 
posed piety ! " 

She encloses in a home letter a copy of 
verses slipped into her hand at the meeting 
of the "Oyster Club, consisting of about 



88 Hannah More 

half-a-dozen learned men and two or three 
ladies." It was scribbled under the table 
by Rev. Dr. Home, Dean of Canterbury 
and author of a Commentary upon the 
Psalms, Letters on Infidelity, etc. The im- 
promptu doggerel was superscribed : 

"To Bamber Gascoigne, Esq., on his 
having accidentally overturned a cruet of 
vinegar and oil upon a gauze apron of Miss 
Hannah More's, — alluding to the good tem- 
per with which she laughed off the acci- 
dent. 

" Like Hannibal, why dost thou come, 
With vinegar prepared, 
As if the gentle Hannah's heart 
Like Alpine rocks were hard ? 

" All sharp and poignant as thou art, 
The acid meets a foil ; 
Obedient still to Nature's law, 
Superior floats the oil." 

The Carthaginian warrior bore a part in 
another compliment received by the popu- 
lar author at this date. Johnson was her 
neighbour at a Bishop's dinner-party, and 
Hannah was privately importuned by the 
host to show the Great Bear off to advant- 
age to some strangers present. She suc- 
ceeded so well that he took her hand "in 



Table-Talk 89 

the middle of dinner," but presumably 
when he was well-gorged, and spouted 
passages from Rowe's Fair Penitent and 
other dramas and poems. 

" One of the company happened to say a word about 
poetry. 

" Hush ! hush ! " said he. " It is dangerous to say a 
word about poetry before her. It is tali<ing of the art of 
war before Hannibal ! " 

Hannah More was a spinster of thirty- 
seven, but no prude, for she relates in this 
connection and without a suspicion of a 
blush, that Johnson "continued his jokes, 
and lamented that 1 had not married Chat- 
terton, that posterity might have seen a 
propagation of poets." 

So much for the table-talk of literati of 
both sexes in the reign of moral George 
the Third and his exemplary consort. 

In this year of 1782 the Academy of Arts, 
Science, and Belles Lettres at Rouen had 
elected Miss More to membership. She 
corresponded with this organisation in 
French until communication between the 
two nations of England and France was 
interrupted by the Revolution. 

Notwithstanding the nineteen editions of 



90 Hannah More 

the Sacred Dramas, the author was not 
quite satisfied at their reception by the pub- 
lic she had hoped to interest. 

"The word 'Sacred' in the title is a 
damper to the Dramas. It is tying a 
millstone about the neck of Sensibility 
which will drown them both together." 

Leaving Mrs. Garrick in June (1782) for 
her Bristol home, she spent a few days en 
route with her friends, Dr. and Mrs. Ken- 
nicott, in Oxford. Dr. Benjamin Kennicott 
was one of the most learned biblical schol- 
ars in the United Kingdom, and Keeper of 
the Radcliffe Library. He had just com- 
pleted his monumental work, the fruit of 
many years' labor, the yetus Testamentum 
Hebraicnm cum Variis Lectionibus, and, as 
we learn from Miss More's correspondence, 
was more than willing to seek relaxation in 
social converse with his sprightly visitor. 
In a mock menagerie set up in the Kenni- 
cott House, the host was an elephant, his 
wife a dromedary, Miss Adams, daughter 
of the Master of Pembroke, an antelope. 
Miss More, a rhinoceros. 

The principal incident of this visit was 
the expedition to Pembroke College with 
Johnson as cicerone. Pembroke was his 



Visit to Oxford 91 

Alma Mater, and he would let no one show 
it to Miss More but himself. He conducted 
her proudly from room to room, pointing 
out the chambers formerly occupied by the 
poets who had been of his college. 

" ' This was my room, — this, Shenstone's, etc., etc. 
In short, we were in a nest of singing birds. Here we 
walked, there we played at cricket.' When we came 
into the common room, we spied a fine large print of 
Johnson, framed and hung up that very morning, with 
this motto — 

* Unt> is not Jobnson ours, bimselt a 
bost ? ' 

Under which stared you in the face — 

' from Miss More's "Sensibility." ' 

"This little incident amused us, but alas! Johnson 
looks very ill indeed — spiritless and wan. However, he 
made an effort to be cheerful and 1 exerted myself to 
make him so." 

She had a "delectable visit" at the 
Bishop of Llandaff's, near Wallingford, and 
in describing it to her sister alludes to the 
"inundation of company at the Kenni- 
cotts'." As she writes there are "in the 
next room three Canons, three Heads, three 
ladies, one student, and one Professor." 



92 Hannah More 

And so, floated upon the top wave of 
popularity, as the favoured guest in every 
company in which she found herself, she 
drifted back, as usual, for the summer 
months to Bristol. Her sisters were still 
teaching, the well-conducted seminary hav- 
ing taken the form of a training-school for 
governesses, some of whom, as Sally 
amused Hannah and Mrs. Garrick by relat- 
ing, needed to be taught to spell and read. 
Long years of faithful service in their chosen 
profession had brought money, with re- 
putation, to the faithful quartette. They 
were already revolving the scheme, dear to 
Hannah's heart, of retiring to a country cot- 
tage, "too low for a clock" — as the 
dreamer had pictured it in the days when 
going to London, visits to publishers and 
bishops, were the staple of her visions. 
The sisters had kept in touch with the bril- 
liant member of the band that was always 
one in heart. Her triumphs were sweeter 
to them than to her more sophisticated 
spirit. They would have been dust and 
ashes between her teeth had she not shared 
them with the rest. 

Several years before this, the needs of 
the enlarging seminary had compelled the 



A Singular Omission 93 

Misses More to build a more commodious 
house in Park Street, Bristol. It is still 
standing and the main building is occupied 
by a Roman Catholic bookseller. In the 
rear of the house is the " Hannah More 
Hall." Shortly afterwards, the daughters 
built a pleasant home for their parents at 
what was known as Stony Hill, Bristol. 

Curious, sentimental, and superficial read- 
ers of Hannah More's life and letters have 
marvelled at the absence of all reference to 
her father and mother in the hundreds of 
epistles which went from London, Hamp- 
ton, Oxford, Bath, and other of her tem- 
porary abodes to the Bristol home-circle. 
Several biographers have lamented openly 
that we hear so little of the exemplary 
couple whose judicious education of their 
girls had produced such notable results. 
Mr. Jacob More was a ripe scholar, a good 
man, an affectionate parent. His wife was 
a woman of more than ordinary intelligence, 
as we have seen, and her method of secur- 
ing for all her brood the advantages of the 
French school to which she could afford to 
send but one, showed her to be shrewd 
and far-sighted, and to possess much ex- 
ecutive ability. 



94 Hannah More 

Careful comparison of Hannah's diary- 
letters reveal wide gaps between the dates 
which recall to mind the fact that half of 
her year was spent in the bosom of her 
family. We have no means of knowing 
what proportion of the summer months 
was devoted to filial cares. That her rela- 
tions with her father remained affectionate 
to the last we shall show presently. It 
must be observed, furthermore, that every- 
thing pertaining to the domestic life of the 
Bristol homestead was carefully excised 
from the sisterly correspondence before it 
was committed to the compiler. It would 
have been far more satisfactory to us had 
Hannah's heart-talks remained just as she 
sent them ; if we had had more of the wo- 
man, and perhaps less of the courted au- 
thor, the student, the philosopher, and the 
clever annalist of other clever people's say- 
ings and doings. 

The Bristol sojourn of this year was es- 
pecially pleasant, if we may judge from the 
chance references to it which have escaped 
the pruning-shears of decorous editing. 
Mrs. Montagu — whose Portland Square 
mansion was the headquarters of the Bas 
Bleu, and whose fame as a litterateuse and 



Bristol Vacations 95 

leader of fashion has been revived in our 
era by Dr. Doran's Lady of the Last Century 
— ran down to Bristol for the express pur- 
pose of visiting her friend in her own 
home, and "talked of nothing else" for 
days afterward. While there she was in- 
troduced to the Mores' great friend, Dr. (or 
Sir) James Stonehouse, and wrote from 
Bath to express the gratification she had 
had in reading some of his works. The 
Bristol sisters, released by the summer va- 
cation from the bondage of school routine, 
made picnics and other outdoor excursions 
in Hannah's honour, the five taking car- 
riage, or walking to some one of the famil- 
iar haunts of Lang Syne, carrying a basket 
of provisions and spending the whole day 
in the open air. Hannah, we may surmise, 
was, as of old, the chief story-teller. The 
length of her tri-weekly letters to her best- 
beloved, and the minuteness of detail with 
which she tried to make them know the 
celebrities she met ; to enter in imagination 
the new world she had found — are amaz- 
ing in one whose every hour in town was 
mortgaged. More conclusive testimony to 
the depth and steadfastness of her love 
for her sisters could not be desired. They 



96 Hannah More 

were partners in her literary ambitions as 
they were to become, before long, in her 
benevolent labours. In every joy and every 
trial the beautiful fivefold cord held fast. 

Winter was late in coming that year, and 
although Mrs. Garrick was urgent in her 
petitions for the return of her domestic 
chaplain, business adviser, and counsellor- 
general, Hannah lingered in Bristol until 
December. She must have been glad of 
this when, in the first week of the new 
year (1783), she had a letter from her sister 
Sarah announcing the sudden death of her 
father. 

Miss Yonge mentions a copy of original 
verses he sent to Hannah, "long after he 
was eighty years old." As he was the 
father of five children in 1747, the pro- 
bability is that he was nearer ninety than 
eighty at his death. With the shock still 
upon her, Hannah wrote to Patty More : 

" It was so unusual for me to receive a letter two days 
following, that, when Sally's came on Wednesday, I had 
so strong a presentiment of its contents that 1 did not 
open it for a long time, but laid it down very deliber- 
ately, and went and did several things which 1 thought 
too well 1 should not be able to do after I had read it. 
Yet, notwithstanding all this preparation, I was just as 



Death of her Father Q7 

much shocked at reading it, as if I had expected nothing 
like it. I could not get quite through it for many hours 
after. And yet there is no cause for grief, but much for 
joy, much cause to be thankful. And I am very thank- 
ful that he was spared to us so long — that he was 
removed when life began to grow a burden to himself — 
that he did not survive his faculties — that he was not 
confined to the miseries of a sick-bed — and, above all, 
that his life was so exemplary, and his death so easy. 

" I wish I had seen him ! Yet that is a vain regret. 
I hope he did not inquire after me, or miss me. Mrs. 
Garrick was very much affected, as my father was a 
very great favourite of hers." 

The last sentence is strongly corrobora- 
tive of what I said awhile ago of the elisions 
(editorial) in Hannah More's home corre- 
spondence. There is no mention in any 
other letter of Mrs. Garrick's acquaintance- 
ship with Mr. More. Yet that she knew 
and admired him as a man, and valued him 
as a friend, we have here direct proof. Of 
the genuineness of Hannah's affliction we 
have more evidence in another note : 

" Hampton, Jan. 28, 178^. 
"Since my dear father's death I have never yet had 
resolution to go out of doors, so much as to walk 
around the garden, in almost three weeks ; but, as 
the day is fine, 1 intend to go out when 1 have finished 
this scrawl." 
7 



98 Hannah More 

In March, Mrs. Garrick and her friend re- 
moved to London. There, although she 
declined to appear in large assemblies. Miss 
More's friends rallied in force about her. 
Horace Walpole "wrangled with her about 
poets, he, abusing all her favourites, and she, 
his " ; Hoole sent her the preface to his trans- 
lation of Ariosto, a compliment upon which 
she comments, dryly, as an expensive pres- 
ent, since she could not do less now than 
subscribe for the work, " and a guinea and a 
half for a translation of a work is dearish." 
She visited Dr. Johnson, who was still an 
invalid, but very "interesting and all kind- 
ness" to her. Lord Bathurst singled her 
out after a dinner at Apsley House and en- 
tertained her by the hour with anecdotes 
of his godfather. Lord Bolingbroke, of 
Pope, and others, — "all very important 
and full of interest." The letter in which 
these items are jotted down concludes with 
a weary-hearted sigh : "This round will 
not last long. 1 begin to calculate that 
there is little more than a clear month be- 
tween this and June." 

The editorial pruner overlooked two brief, 
eloquent sentences in a letter penned May 
5th: 



Family Relations 99 

" Is it not very melancholy when you go 
to see our solitary mother ? I endeavour to 
think of it as little as I can, but in spite 
of my endeavours it mixes with all my 
thoughts." 

Why the aged mother of five dutiful 
daughters should have been solitary in her 
widowhood is a mystery which Mr. Roberts 
and other chroniclers who lived nearer the 
times of Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, Hannah, 
and Martha More do not seem to have 
thought it worth their while to clear up. 
That the melancholy solitude was not the 
fault of any one of her children we must 
believe when we read of their devotion to 
one another and their ready response to 
sorrow and need in whatever form these 
confronted them. 

Hannah was summoned from her sum- 
mering with her sisters to witness the death 
of Dr. Kennicott, and to support his wife 
through the trying scenes accompanying it. 
Her peculiarly sympathetic nature was 
joined to self-control and practical activity 
in every exigency that made her invaluable 
in the house of mourning. 

' ' I shall stay while 1 have any chance of being useful 
to the afflicted widow," she wrote to her sister. 



100 Hannah More 

" What substantial comfort and satisfaction must not 
the testimony which our departed friend was enabled to 
bear to the truth of the Holy Scriptures afford to those 
who lean upon them as the only anchor of the soul ! 
When Dr. K. had an audience of the King to present 
his work, His Majesty asked him, — ' What, upon the 
whole, had been the result of his laborious and learned 
investigation ? ' To which he replied that he ' had 
found some grammatical errors, and many variations, in 
the different texts, but not one which, in the smallest 
degree, affected any article of faith or practice.' " 

In another letter Hannah gives us an idea 
of the nature and extent of her " useful- 
ness to the afflicted widow " : 

"We are vastly busy packing, selling, 
writing, etc., and perhaps it is good for 
poor Mrs. Kennicott that she is not allowed 
a quiet enjoyment of her grief." 

Miss More had had an illness of her own 
earlier in the summer, for she writes in 
July to William W. Pepys, Esq., one of 
her most valued literary friends : 

" I have been filling up the vacant hours 
of my convalescence in scribbling a parcel 
of idle verses," which she begs him to 
"read critically with all the malice of a 
friend. Do not make the least scruple of 
striking out any improper, or singularly 
tlimsy, couplet." 



^'The Bas Bleu" loi 

Her critic responded tliat he had read 
the poem over twenty times, and "really 
thought it a composition of first-rate merit 
of its kind." 

Thus was born the poem, The Bas Bleu, 
in which the members of the accomplished 
coterie in which Mrs. Montagu and Mrs. 
Vesey were ruling spirits, were described, 
and contrasted favourably with the Salon 
Bleu of the Hotel Rambouillet : 

" Where point and turn and equivoque 
Distorted every word they spoke ; 
All so intolerably bright 
Plain common-sense was put to flight ; 
Each speaker so ingenious ever, 
'T was tiresome to be so clever. " 

The members of the English clique re- 
ceived, as was the fashion of the day, 
Latin names ; the stingless satire was 
copied by Mrs. Pepys, "that the hand- 
writing might not betray the authorship," 
and sent by post, anonymously, to Mrs. 
Vesey. Loelius, Roscius, Lentulus, Atticus 
& Companv, recognising themselves under 
their Latin togas, were flattered and 
charmed, begged for confidential copies of 
the verses, passed them on to their friends, 
still confidentially, until everybody was 



102 Hannah More 

quoting it, and tiie authorship ceased to be 
a secret. 

Dr. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale that 
the poem now " wandering about in manu- 
script " was in his opinion "a great per- 
formance." To the author's face he said 
that "there was no name in poetry that 
might not be glad to own it." When the 
blushing recipient of the compliment told 
him that she was "delighted at his appro- 
bation," he answered quite characteris- 
tically : 

"And so you may be, for I give you the 
opinion of a man who does not praise 
easily." 

Miss Yonge sums up the verdict that 
must be rendered by those so far removed 
by time from the personal interests of that 
epoch in English literature as to be unable 
to appreciate what were then adjudged to 
be the best points of the performance : 

"On the whole, however, modern taste 
prefers the letter sent out by Miss More to 
Mrs. Pepys with a pair of stockings knitted 
for one of the children — a cleverer thing in 
its way than The Bas Bleu." 

The letter, playful, graceful, and ingen- 
ious, is headed, The Bas Blanc. 



"The Bas Bleu" 103 

" The subject," she says, " is simple, but it has a be- 
ginning, middle and end. The exordium is the natural 
introduction by which you are let into the whole work. 
The middle, I trust, is free from any unnatural tumor or 
inflation, and the end from any disproportionate little- 
ness. I have avoided bringing about the catastrophe 
too suddenly, as 1 know that would hurt him at whose 
feet 1 lay it." 



And so on through four pages of let- 
ter-paper, concluding with the expectation 
that " it will long survive all my other pro- 
ductions." Therefore — "1 am desirous to 
place it in the Pepysian collection." 

The stockings, however tender and tat- 
tered, would fetch their weight in gold 
now. 

The Bas Bleu appeared in print in 1786, 
and was bound in the same volume with a 
poem entitled Florio, depicting the character 
and ways of a man about town. The book 
was dedicated to Horace Walpole. A ' ' cho- 
rus of panegyric " greeted the new applicant 
for popular favour ; Horace Walpole dis- 
claimed the praises lavished upon him in the 
dedication, but said a "thousand diverting 
things about Florio," and the author was 
perhaps the only person in the mutual 
admiration society who appraised the 



104 Hannah More 

production justly, and weighed aright the 
value of the encomiums it received. 

Her growing weariness with what she 
had once fancied would fill and flush her 
measure of content is apparent in many a 
passage in letters as full as ever of incidents 
that would entertain the toiling sisterhood 
in Bristol. In 1787, she turned an import- 
ant leaf in the Higher Life by becoming 
acquainted with William Wilberforce and 
John Newton. The bill for the abolition 
of the African slave-trade was, through the 
exertions of Wilberforce, brought before 
Parliament in 1787, and marked the begin- 
ning of a struggle he was to maintain 
with unflinching courage for twenty years, 
a hard-won victory crowning, his efforts in 
1807. William Cowper believed it near at 
hand when he set his lance in rest and 
charged upon the leaders in the abhorrent 
traffic. Hannah More threw energy and 
talent into the cause. The ring of genuine 
feeling sounds through lines which, in 
smoothness of versification, remind us of 
Pope at his best : 

" Who makes the sum of human blessings less, 
Or sinks the stock of general happiness, 
Though erring fame may grace, though false renown 



"The Bas Bleu" 105 

His life may blazon, or his memory crown, 
Yet the last Audit shall reverse the cause, 
And God shall vindicate His broken laws." 

A sentence catches my eye as I turn the 
pages of the Letters, and brings a gleam of 
cynical amusement to the lips : 

"1 was in the very joy of my heart on 
seeing the other day in the papers that our 
charming Miss Burney has got an establish- 
ment so near the Queen. How 1 love the 
Queen for having so wisely chosen! " 

Poor "Evelina" — forbidden to read, ex- 
cept at her royal mistress's behest ; the 
fag of a vulgar German "mother of the 
maids " ; writing by stealth the Diary that 
opens the windows of her prison-house to 
us ; broken in health and degraded in spirit 
by confinement and the never-ending rou- 
tine of labours which should have devolved 
upon an unlettered Abigail — could have 
disabused her fellow-craftswoman's mind 
of the illusion, lowered her reverent affec- 
tion for the "sweet queen" — as Macaulay 
sneeringly calls the dull taskmistress, — and 
dispelled any lurking envy that might have 
entered generous Hannah's mind at the 
story of " little Burney's " elevation. 

While fortunate Fanny was combing the 



io6 Hannah More 

hair and lacing the bodice of her "sweet 
queen," catching monthly glimpses of 
her father and sisters at court receptions, 
and spending every evening in playing cards 
with snuffy, ill-tempered Mrs. Schwellen- 
borg, Hannah was concluding the purchase 
of Cowslip Green, and setting up herself, 
one sister, and a limited number of house- 
hold gods therein. 

The "thatched hermitage," which now 
became her summer resort, was built upon 
pleasant grounds in the parish of Wring- 
ton, ten miles from Bristol, on the road to 
Exeter. Martha, otherwise Patty, was her 
housekeeper and companion ; the other 
sisters were frequent visitors. Mrs. Ken- 
nicott pleaded for the privilege of being 
"rammed, crammed and jammed there" 
during the second summer of Hannah's oc- 
cupancy, and recapitulated some of the joys 
of her first visit in a letter to her late hostess : 

" 1 long to be trimming honeysuckles, broiling chops, 
and talking sentiment with you, my dear friend Patty, 
and am an excellent gypsey cook, while Governess be- 
holds with astonishment, and Sister Betty is preparing 
for us in the house, with the vain expectation that we 
shall, some time or other, come into it, and look like 
gentlefolks." 



"The Bas Bleu" 107 

"The most perfect little hermitage that can be con- 
ceived," thus the proud mistress paints it to John New- 
ton. " A pretty, quiet cottage which 1 built myself 
two years ago." (This is in 1787.) "There is a great 
deal of picturesque scenery about it. The care of my 
garden gives me employment, health and spirits. I 
have always fancied, if I could secure to myself 
such a quiet retreat as 1 have now really accomplish- 
ed, I should be wonderfully good. ... I have 
actually found a great deal of the comfort I expected, 
but without any of the concomitant virtues. . . . 
It is a very significant saying, 'though a very old one, 
of the Puritans, that ' Hell is paved with good inten- 
tions.' I sometimes tremble to think how large a 
square my procrastination alone may furnish to this 
tessellated pavement." 




CHAPTER VIII 

DEATH OF DR. JOHNSON — THE "BRISTOL 
MILK-WOMAN " — REVIVAL OF "PERCY " — 
"THOUGHTS ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE 
MANNERS OF THE GREAT " 

DR. JOHNSON'S death (December 13, 
1784) had produced a profound im- 
pression upon Miss More, and had its 
influence in turning the current of her 
thoughts and labours into the channel the}/ 
never left during the last thirty years of her 
life. Her letter to her Bristol sisters con- 
taining the story of his last hours is sol- 
emn and dignified. After one of her later 
visits to him she had lamented to Mrs. 
Boscawen, "that his mind is still a prey 
to melancholy, and that the fear of death 
operates on him to the destruction of his 
peace." 

"It is grievous, it is unaccountable!" 
108 



Death of Dr. Johnson 109 

she continues. " He who has the Christ- 
ian hope upon the best foundation ; whose 
faith is strong, whose morals are irreproach- 
able. But I am willing to ascribe it to bad 
nerves and to bodily disease." 

It was, therefore, with devout thankful- 
ness that his friend chronicled what she 
had learned from a letter from Mr. Pepys, 
relative to the closing scenes of Johnson's 
eventful mortal career : 

" A friend desired he would make his will, and as 
Hume in his last moments had made an impious de- 
claration of his opinions, he thought it might tend to 
counteract the poison if Johnson would make a public 
confession of his faith in his will. He said he would, 
seized the pen with great earnestness, and asked what 
was the usual form of beginning a will. His friend told 
him. After the usual forms he wrote — ' 1 offer up my 
soul to the great and merciful God. I offer it full of 
pollution, but in full assurance that it will be cleansed in 
the blood of my Redeemer.' 

" He talked of his death and funeral at times with 
great composure. On the Monday morning he fell into 
a sound sleep, and continued in that state for twelve 
hours, and then died without a groan. 

" No action of his life became him like the leaving it. 
His death makes a kind of era in literature. Pity and 
goodness will not easily find a more able defender, and 
it is delightful to see him set, as it were, his dying 
seal to the professions of his life, and to tiie truth of 
Christianity." 



1 10 Hannah More 

Some weeks later she wrote : 

" I have often told you that Sunday is not only my 
day of rest, but of enjoyment. 1 go twice to the churches 
where I expect the best preaching, frequently to St. 
Clement's to hear my excellent friend, Burrowes. By 
the way, it gives me peculiar pleasure to think that there 
I partook of the Holy Sacrament with Johnson the last 
time he ever received it in public. 

" It was very considerate in Mrs. Garrick to decline 
asking company on Sunday on my account, so that I 
enjoy the whole day to myself. I swallow no small 
portion of theology of different descriptions, as I always 
read, when visiting, such books as I do not possess at 
home. I devour much, but, 1 fear, digest little. In the 
evening I read a sermon and prayers to the family, 
which Mrs. Garrick much likes." 

Her intimacy with Horace Walpole grew 
and strengthened apace. He declared Cow- 
slip Green to be a relation, cousin-german, 
at least, to Strawberry Hill, his beautiful 
and famous country-seat, and sent a com- 
plete collection of his writings, handsomely 
bound, to the "hermitage," as a nucleus 
for Miss More's library. When he was 
confined to his house by severe illness he 
summoned his vivacious friend, now rising 
forty, to cheat him into forgetfulness of 
bodily pain. 

"Notwithstanding his sufferings 1 never found him so 



Horace Walpole 1 1 1 

pleasant, so witty, so entertaining," says Hannah. " I 
never knew a man suffer pain with such entire patience. 
This submission is certainly a most valuable part of re- 
ligion, and yet alas ! he is not religious. 1 must, how- 
ever, do him the justice to say, that except the delight 
he has in teasing me for what he calls 'over-strictness,' 
I have never heard a sentence from him which savoured 
of infidelity." 

Upon the same page with the account 
of her visit to the brilliant scholar and diplo- 
mat, we are treated to a picture of a small 
party where were Burke, Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, Lords Palmerston and North, and at 
which Mrs. Fielding and Hannah More led 
in the game of Twenty Questions, the dis- 
tinguished statesmen 1 have named joining 
in like eager schoolboys. 

" And now " — concludes the faithful sis- 
ter — "1 hope to receive due praise for my 
implicit obedience in gratifying your in- 
satiable curiosity with an account of almost 
every dinner 1 have eaten, and every per- 
son to whom 1 have spoken." 

Still a repetition of the old story of the 
expensive boarding-school attended by one 
of the five, and, at second-hand, by all the 
rest. The close corporation was a perpet- 
ual institution, to which each member was 
constant unto death. 



1 12 Hannah More 

Another interview with Horace Walpole 
introduces an adventure almost too familiar 
to be repeated to anyone who is at all con- 
versant with the outlines of Miss More's 
biography. 

" Neither years nor sufferings can abate the entertain- 
ing powers of the pleasant Horace which rather improve 
than decay, 'though he himself says he is ' only fit to be 
a milk-woman as the chalk-stones at his finger-ends 
qualify him for nothing but scoring.' But he declares 
he will not be a Bristol milk-woman ! \ was obliged 
to recount to him all that odious tale." 

The "odious tale," in brief, was this : 
The More sisters discovered in one Anne 
Yearsley, who brought milk to their door 
and carried away the garbage from the 
kitchen, a talent for verse-making and a 
taste for literature which, in their opinion, 
approximated genius. Hannah named her 
" Lactilla," in the thousand letters of appeal 
addressed to rich and influential friends, 
and collected over six hundred pounds to 
be invested for Mrs. Yearsley's benefit. 
She also edited and arranged Lactilla's poems 
for the press. Besides money and useful 
articles to be used in the home in prepara- 
tion for the genius, donations of books were 



The " Bristol Milk- Woman "113 

intrusted to Miss Moore. The gift of a set 
of Bell's Edition of the Poets from the 
Duchess of Devonshire was the direct 
means of exposing the real character of the 
poetical protegee. Pending the purchase of 
shelves upon which the books could be ar- 
ranged in the Yearsleys' cottage, they were 
placed in the Cowslip Green library. Lac- 
tilla thereupon wrote to the Duchess, de- 
claring that Miss More meant to keep them 
for herself. She asserted, moreover, that 
the six hundred pounds were used in pur- 
chasing an estate for the mistress of Cow- 
slip Green ; that Miss More had used her 
as a cat's-paw to fill her own purse ; that 
the pretended benefactress was envious 
of Lactilla's talents and bent upon her 
downfall, with much more coarse abuse 
and ungrateful railing that need not be re- 
corded. 

Mrs. Montagu had contributed liberally 
to the fund collected by the thousand let- 
ters, and was warmly interested in the 
object. Yet she had advised her friend 
kindly and tactfully in the beginning of the 
enterprise to inform herself as much as 
was practicable as to Lactilla's temper, 
disposition, and moral character. 



1 14 Hannah More 

" It has sometimes Iiappened to me that, by an en- 
deavour to encourage talents and cherish virtue by driv- 
ing from them the terrifying spectre of pale poverty, 
I have introduced a legion of little demons. Vanity, 
luxury, idleness and pride have entered the cottage the 
moment poverty vanished." 

The caution was prophetic. When Anne 
Yearsley insisted violently upon receiving 
every shilling of the principal committed in 
trust to Mrs, Montagu and Miss More, in- 
stead of accepting the interest, the ladies 
put the affair into a lawyer's hands for set- 
tlement. He made a rich Bristol merchant 
trustee of the fund, and the latter was 
fairly worried into yielding it to the ter- 
magant. With it she stocked a circulat- 
ing library at the Hot Wells, and never 
ceased to regale such patrons as would 
listen to her with stories of Hannah More's 
hypocrisy, envy, and greed. 

" Had she turned out well," philosophised impress- 
ive Hannah, "I should have had my reward. 1 have 
had my trial. Perhaps I was too elated at my success 
and in counting over the money, I might be elated 
and think — ' Is not this great Babylon which I have 
builded ? ' " 

In the same tone of unresentful humility 
she tells Mr. Pepys : 



The " Bristol Milk-Woman "115 

" I confess my weakness, — it goes to my 
heart, not for my own sake, but for the 
sake of our common nature. Do not let 
this harden your heart or mine against any 
future object. Fate bene per voi is a beau- 
tiful maxim." 

To Mrs. Carter she pleads for the in- 
grate : 

" Prosperity is a great trial and she could not stand 
it. I was afraid it would turn her head, but 1 did not 
expect it would harden her heart. I continue to take 
the same care of her pecuniary interests and am bring- 
ing out a second edition of her poems. My conscience 
tells me I ought not to give up my trust for those poor 
children on account of their mother's wickedness. This 
will not steel your heart, nor, I trust, mine, against the 
next distress that may present itself to us ; but there are 
many on whom, I fear, it may have that effect." 

Prosperity and adulation had not shaken 
her own brain from its just balance, or al- 
tered the warm, tender heart. The success 
of her published writings was a continual 
surprise to her. Her estimate of drama, 
poem, and essay was so far beneath that 
of critic and general reader that she de- 
scried an element of absurdity in the popu- 
lar verdict. 

When The Search after Happiness was 



1 1 6 Hannah More 

disinterred and brouglit out in a new and 
modern dress, she laughingly gave the 
copyright to her sister Patty, her favour- 
ite of the four — if she had a favourite. 
As the work of a seventeen-year-old school- 
girl it could hardly be approved by the ad- 
mirers of the far better worl^ elaborated 
by her deft pen twenty-three years after- 
ward. How the result of Cadell's venture 
impressed her, we see in a home-letter 
(1787) : 

" I believe Patty will be a great fortune at last, for 
the ninth edition of my present to her — The Search 
after Happiness — has gone to the press. I am really 
shocked at the public taste which has taken off ten 
thousand copies of a poem which I have not the pa- 
tience to read." 

Her sturdy humility had a further and a 
harder trial in the revival of Percy upon 
the London stage, with Mrs. Siddons as El- 
wina. Meeting Mr. Pepys at a quiet din- 
ner at Mrs. Chapone's, for which snug 
party of three Hannah had "refused one 
of the finest assemblies in London — very 
grand and very dull," he told her that he 
had had a great struggle whether to come 
to Mrs. Chapone's, or to go to the theatre 



Revival of ''Percy" 117 

to see Percy, finally concluding "to give 
up the child for the sake of the mother." 

"They were astonished at my not being there. I 
told them 1 had been able to resist Shakspeare so many 
years there was no great philosophy in withstanding the 
poet of that night. The next day I had another attack. 
I dined with Sin Joshua, Mr. Burke, and two or three 
others of that stamp. They cried, all at once — ' Were 
you not delighted with Mrs. Siddons last night in 
Percy ?' I replied, ' No, for I did not see her.' They 
would not believe me guilty of such insensibility, add- 
ing, — ' She did it exquisitely, as the tears of Mr. Fox, 
who sat with us, testified.' " 

This was no affectation of humility. 
The earnest, chastened spirit was intent 
upon higher things ; the mature mind re- 
jected husks. She had seen the best and 
the worst of the world of polite letters 
and gilded follies. At Hampton, to which 
dear retreat Mrs. Garrick took her in the 
spring, to Hannah's "great joy, to dissi- 
pate colds and gather violets," she devoted 
more space to longings for her garden at 
Cowslip Green, dreams of the blossoming 
apple-trees and the avenue of limes she 
had set out in the autumn, than to a mag- 
nificent assembly at Lady Amherst's she 
had attended just before leaving London. 



1 18 Hannah More 

Royalties were there in groups, the Prince 
of Wales among them, "as usual all gay- 
ety and gracefulness." He asked that Miss 
More should be presented to him. He had 
"often wished to see her." John Home, 
the author of Douglas, had breakfasted at 
Mrs. Garrick's. 

"Douglas writes no more, but has 
hung up his harp, as well as Percy. It 
is time for us both to take our leave of 
poetry." 

It is significant of the growing change in 
her tastes and ambitions that the "author 
whom she ventures most to recommend " 
is Mrs. Trimmer, from whom she had a 
long call in London. This lady is best 
known by her Tracts for the Poor, and 
children's books. 

" I made one lady take three dozen of her books yes- 
terday," says practical Hannah, after speaking of the 
visible change in Brentford morals and manners in con- 
sequence of Mrs. Trimmer's labours. " I presumed to 
give her a great deal of good, wholesome advice about 
booksellers ; for, popular as I am persuaded she must be, 
she has got little or nothing by her writings except reput- 
ation and the consciousness of doing good, on which 
two things 'though I set all due value, yet where there 
are ten children money must have the eleventh place in 
maternal consideration." 



Mrs. Trimmer 119 

There were twelve children when she 
visited Mrs. Trimmer in Brentford a couple 
of years afterward, and the compassionate 
reader will unite in my hope that the 
worldly wisdom of the spinster-author had 
brought forth the lucrative fruits of pounds, 
shillings, and pence in addition to the goodly 
blossoms of reputation and the approval 
of conscience with which the prolific ma- 
tron had been well content up to her meet- 
ing with Miss More. 

Each of the charming letters in the col- 
lection before me is a distinct temptation 
to the pen of the copyist. Every sketch is 
graphic and bold ; the list of names would 
fill a Blue Book of fashion and fame. I 
yield to the temptation to give the devotees 
of nineteenth-century "Teas" a glimpse 
of the more formidable rite which bore the 
name in the eighteenth. 

" A The is among the stupid new follies of the winter 
[1788]. You are to invite fifty, or a hundred people to 
come at eight o'clock. There is to be a long table, or 
little parties at small tables ; the cloth is to be laid as at 
breakfast ; everyone has a napkin ; tea and coffee are 
made by the company, as at a public breakfast ; the 
table is covered with rolls, wafers, bread and butter, — 
and what constitutes the very essence of a The, — an 
immense load of hot buttered rolls and muffins, all 



120 Hannah More 

admirably contrived to create a nausea in persons fresh 
from the dinner-table. 

" Now, of all nations under the sun, as I take it, the 
English are the greatest of fools. Because the Duke of 
Dorset in Paris, where people dine at two, thought this 
would be a pretty fashion to introduce, we, who dine 
at six, must adopt this French translation of an English 
fashion, and fall into it as if it were an original inven- 
tion. This will be a short folly." 

It lived long enough to be imported into 
certain of the newly made States of America, 
the war being over and the chase of foreign 
novelties in full swing. The late and pon- 
derous teas in vogue in some of the South- 
ern States, where dinner is never served 
before three p.m., are a relic of the " stupid 
folly," superseded in our generation by the 
simplest of social functions, — the sensible 
"Afternoon Tea " of our English cousins. 

It is pleasant to us, as lovers of the Olney 
bard, to find Hannah More quoting to John 
Newton, his leal friend and admirer, Cow- 
per's "God made the country and man 
made the town," when she had been for 
some weeks in the quiet enjoyment of 
Cowslip Green. 

" The world is wiped out of my memory as with the 
sponge of oblivion," she declares. " But, as 1 have ob- 
served to you before, so much do my gardening cares 



'' Manners of the Great" 121 

and pleasures occupy me, that the world is not half so 
formidable a rival to heaven in my heart as my garden." 

Eight months prior to the date of this 
letter (July, 1788) the world — or what 
stood with the rural moralist for it — was 
stirred to its centre by the appearance of a 
small volume published by Cadell, with no 
hint as to the authorship. The title was 
long, didactic, and, to our apprehension, 
heavily uninviting. The author, when dis- 
closed, feared that it was "a sounding 
title," — Thoughts on the Importance of the 
Manners of the Great to General Society. 

Could a publisher outside of a Tract 
House be found for such a treatise at the 
present day and in our country, the book 
would fall from the press like a stone into 
the depths of the sea of oblivion, creating 
no more sensation upon the surface than 
the bursting of a bubble in mid-Atlantic. 
This may be because there are no titled 
Great among us ; perhaps the many un- 
titled Great ones are so wise in their own 
conceit that they heed no admonition. The 
effect of the anonymous publication upon 
London society was like the explosion of a 
submarine torpedo. This was the more 
remarkable because the little book was 



122 Hannah More 

neither satire nor story. The writer had 
resorted to no tricks of authorial or the ad- 
vertiser's art to attract notice to the protest 
against "the less obvious offences that are, 
in general, safe from the bar, the pulpit, or 
the throne, yet which do much harm to 
inferiors." 

The allusion to the remonstrance of "the 
throne " was at once interpreted by all who 
had read the Royal Proclamation against 
Vice and Immorality recently put forth by 
the reigning sovereign, the respectable sire 
of the First Gentleman in Europe. It was 
a dull and soggy production, and in the cir- 
cumstances likely to be as efficient as the 
Pope's bull against the comet. 

The Thoughts were couched in Addiso- 
nian English. The aim was direct ; the 
"offences" were patent, and were dealt 
with with forceful simplicity. Assuming 
the duty of the superior to the subordinate 
in the matter of example, the Great were 
admonished that divers practices they never 
thought of considering even minor vices 
were lowering the standard of right and 
wrong among the common people. The 
hair-dresser who obeyed My Lady's sum- 
mons on Sunday ; the footman whose glib 



*' Manners of the Great" 123 

"not at home" was put into his mouth 
by his mistress, seated at her ease in her 
drawing-room ; the servant who pocketed 
the fee for furnishing a clean pack of cards 
to his master and his gambling compan- 
ions ; the maid who laid the rouge upon 
her mistress's cheeks — were so many ap- 
prentices in the sins of Sabbath-breaking, 
gaming, and lying. 

With regard to the "card-money" evil, 
the appeal was for other employers, no less 
than for the servant's own good : 

" If tlie advantage of the dependent is to increase in a 
direct ratio with the dissipation of his employer, what 
encouragement is left for valuable servants, or what 
prospect remains of securing valuable servants for sober- 
minded families? " 

And as to fashionable falsehoods : 

" Nor should the master look for undeviating and per- 
fect rectitude from his servant in whom the principle of 
veracity is daily and hourly weakened in conformity with 
his own command." 




CHAPTER IX 

WONDERFUL POPULARITY OF "THE MANNERS" 
— DISCOVERY OF THE AUTHOR — FANNY BUR- 
NEY AND HANNAH MORE — COWSLIP GREEN 
AS A PERMANENT ABODE 

WITHIN a week after the publication 
of Thoughts on the Importance of 
the Manners of the Great to General So- 
ciety, a second edition was demanded. This 
was exhausted in six days; a third, hurriedly 
put upon the market, in one forenoon. 

Conjecture ran riot as to the author. He 
was assuredly a person of education and of 
such breeding as had given him a chance 
to investigate in person the abuses he 
would reform. The Bishop of London 
(Dr. Porteus) had been outspoken upon 
some of the subjects dealt with by the 
fearless critic. What more probable than 
that he had chosen the mask of a layman 
124 



Theories as to Authorship 125 

under which to assail what a clergyman 
would be supposed to treat perfunctorily ? 
Another faction contended for the extreme 
likelihood that William Wilberforce — born 
agitator and reformer, now in the full tide 
of the religious enthusiasm which was to 
bear him into the forefront of the battle 
with churchly formalism and state corrup- 
tions — had set his virile pen to paper in 
these practical essays. 

In support of this theory there were not 
wanting those who recalled an anecdote, 
told by him with regret and self-condemna- 
tion which his fashionable acquaintances 
thought morbidly disproportionate to the 
occasion. He had discharged a servant for 
habitual lying, and was answered by the 
fellow, impudently, that he had learned his 
first lesson in falsehood from himself. Mr. 
Wilberforce, being too busy one day to see 
visitors, had told the footman to say that 
his master was " not at home," should any- 
one call. As a titled youth had excused his 
suicide by writing that "what Cato did, and 
Addison approved, could not be wrong," 
the flunkey assumed that what "so relig- 
ious a man as his master " did, and ordered 
his servants to do, must be right. 



126 Hannah More 

It was well known that the incident had 
moved Mr. Wilberforce to the resolution 
never again to allow the false and fashion- 
able phrase to be used in his household. 
The story was a strong link in the chain of 
circumstantial evidence fastening the au- 
thorship of the much-talked-of book upon 
the philanthropist, who, at the tender age 
of fourteen, had written and published a 
newspaper article, /// Condemnation of the 
Odious Traffic in Human Flesh. 

This hypothesis was warmly supported 
by no less a personage than Thomas Bruce, 
Earl of Elgin, the celebrated archaeologist to 
whom England owes the Elgin Marbles in 
the British Museum. The active interest 
he took in the modest treatise is a side-light 
upon the effect produced by it in the high- 
est circles of the realm. 

in a conversation with the Bishop of 
London, Lord Elgin "assured him, as a 
certain fact," that Mr. Wilberforce, and no- 
body else, wrote what was popularly (as 
was natural) abbreviated in common speech 
into Tlie Manners of the Great. The 
Bishop's right — put forward by his ad- 
mirers — to the paternity of the book was 
disposed of by the author's assertion, in 




WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, M.P. 

FROM A PICTURE BY J. RISING 



Discovery of the Author 127 

the body of the work, that he was not a 
clergyman. 

Lord Elgin's next call, after leaving the 
Bishop's house, was upon William Wilber- 
force. He found that gentleman with Man- 
ners of the Great in his hand, and the first 
words were in such praise of it as put his 
Lordship's theories to flight. Mr. Wilber- 
force not merely denied the authorship, but 
declared that he was ignorant as to who 
had written it. 

Cadell called upon the author for a fourth 
edition "to be put to press immediately," 
and his exultation may have made him a 
trifle indiscreet in the talk with "almost all 
the Bishops " of which he speaks to the 
anonymous notoriety. The first intimation 
Hannah More had of the discovery of her 
carefully guarded secret was through an 
unsigned epigram that came one morning 
with the rest of her mail. It accompanied 
a copy of Manners of the Great: 

" Of sense and religion in this little book 
All agree there 's a wonderful store ; 
But while round the world for an author they look 
1 only am wishing for More." 

" I think 1 know the hand," writes Hannah. " 1 am 
a little frightened, but nobody has betrayed me. it is 



128 Hannah More 

only by the internal evidence that it is guessed at. 
When the author is discovered i shall expect to find al- 
most every door shut against me ; — mais, n'importe ! 
1 shall only be sent to my darling retirement. 

" 1 spent Saturday evening at Lady Amherst's. The 
Book lay on the table. Several of the company took it 
up and talked it over, and Mr. Pepys looked me through, 
so that 1 never had such difficulty to keep my coun- 
tenance. A day or two before 1 dined at the Bishop of 
Salisbury's. I was obliged to hear him, Mrs. Montagu, 
and the Bishop of Lincoln talk it over with the greatest 
warmth. All commended it, ' though some of the com- 
pany thought it rather too strict, but the Bishops 
justified it.' " 

"The Bishops" seemed to have been 
particularly brisk in investigation, as well 
as in commendation, of the lay-woman's 
missionary work to the great of the earth. 
Mrs. Trimmer and Miss More called to- 
gether upon the Bishop of Salisbury (Dr. 
Horsley), and the learned host took occa- 
sion to remark that he was "sitting be- 
tween two very remarkable women. One 
has undertaken to reform all the poor, and 
the other all the great." 

Then, bowing to Mrs. Trimmer, he added, 
"I congratulate you upon having the more 
hopeful subjects." 

Hannah's sister Patty had been her confi- 
dante all throughout the writing of the 



Popularity of " Manners " 129 

book. Besides her publisher, she had no 
other. 

"My book is now before the public, with its sound- 
ing title," she had written to Martha on publication-day. 
" In it I have not gone deep, it is but a superficial 
view of the subject. It is confined to prevailing prac- 
tical evils. Should this succeed, I hope, by the blessing 
of God, another time to attack more strongly the princi- 
ple. I have not owned myself the author ; not so much 
because of that fear of man which ' worketh a snare,' as 
because, if anonymous, it may be ascribed to some 
better person, and because of fear that I do not live as I 
write." 

(The old haunting dread lest hers should 
not be esteemed "practical piety! ") 

"I hope it may be useful to myself, at 
least, as 1 give a sort of public pledge of 
my principles to which I pray 1 may be 
enabled to live up." 

The success of the sober, didactic disquis- 
ition was as amazing to her as it is to us. 
When Cadell pressed her to revise a fourth 
edition, she found it "unaccountable." 
When a fifth ran off the press into the 
eager hands of purchasers, she comments : 

" 1 am astonished at the unexpected and undeserved 
popularity of The Manners. It is in the houses of all 
' the Great.' Did 1 tell you that some time ago Mr. 



no Hannah More 

Smelt walked up to me, and said, without any preface, — 
' Well, the ladies will give up everything but the Sunday 
hair-dresser.' You may be sure I looked very wise." 

Mr. Smelt had been one of the tutors to 
the Princes when they were young, and 
was still an attache of the Royal household. 
His name is so closely associated in our 
minds with Fanny Burney's Diary that we 
break off the story of our present heroine's 
life to synchronise with it the experiences 
of the younger author, whose novels, Eve- 
lina and Ccecilia, had been the talk of their 
day. 

When, at the height of the London season 
of 1788, Mr. Smelt — always "Fanny's" 
friend and admirer — was congratulating 
Miss More in a gay assembly upon her 
latest book, Miss Burney had led for two 
years, and was to endure for three more, 
the life thus described by Lord Macaulay : 

"What was demanded of her was that she should 
consent to be as completely separated from her family as 
if she had gone to Calcutta, and almost as close a pris- 
oner as if she had been sent to gaol for a libel ; that, 
with talents which had instructed and delighted the 
highest living minds, she should now be employed only 
in mixing snuff and sticking pins ; that she should be 
summoned by a waiting-woman's bell to a waiting- 



Fanny Burney 131 

woman's duties ; — that she should sometimes fast until 
she was ready to swoon with hunger ; should some- 
times stand 'till her knees gave way with fatigue ; that 
she should not dare to speak or move without consider- 
ing how her mistress might like her words and gestures. 
And what was the consideration for which she was to 
sell herself to this slavery ? The price at which she was 
valued was her board, her lodging, the attendance of a 
man-servant, and two hundred pounds a year. The 
man who, even hard-pressed by hunger, sells his birth- 
right for a mess of pottage, is unwise, — but what shall 
we say of him who parts with his birthright, and does 
not get even the pottage in return ? " 

Miss Burney adds telling touciies, pe- 
culiarly her own, to this sketch of the Man- 
ners of the Very Great. 

" In the first place you must not cough. In the sec- 
ond place you must not sneeze." (This is when in the 
presence of Royalty.) " In the third place you must 
not, on any account, stir either hand or foot. If, by 
chance, a black pin runs into your head, you must not 
take it out. If the pain is very great, you must bear it 
without wincing. If it brings tears to your eyes, you 
must not wipe them off. If they give you a tingling 
by running down your cheeks, you must look as if 
nothing was the matter. If the blood should gush from 
your head by means of the black pin, you must let it 
gush. If the agony is very great you may privately bite 
the inside of your cheek, or of your lips, for a little re- 
lief. — Only be sure either to swallow the bitten piece, 
or commit it to a corner of the inside of your mouth 



1)2 Hannah More 

until they " (the Very Great) " are gone — for you must 
not spit." 

And, again, in a letter to her sister : 

" Can you blame the plan that I have intentionally 
been forming — namely, to wean myself from myself — 
to lessen all my affections — to curb all my wishes — to 
deaden all my sentiments ? To support the loss of the 
dearest friends, and best society, and bear, in exchange, 
the exigeance, the ennui and attempted indignities of 
their greatest contrast — this must be my constant en- 
deavour." 

Yet, we read, a few chapters back, of 
the joy of heart which thrilled the censor 
of the Manners of the Great at news of 
Miss Burney's appointment. Verily, the 
divinity that doth hedge a king doth dazzle 
the clearest eyes and confuse the most up- 
right conscience. 

Hannah, in her darling retirement of 
Cowslip Green, "a perfect outlaw from all 
civil society and regular life, employed 
' from morn to noon, from noon to dewy 
eve,' in raising dejected pinks and reform- 
ing disorderly honeysuckles," is, by com- 
parison with "little Burney's" slavery, a 
princess in her own right. 

After this second digression from the 



Horace Walpole's Criticism 133 

straight path of our narrative apropos of 
charming Fanny Burney,— a digression that 
has somewhat relieved the pressure upon 
my republican sympathies, if it has not en- 
tertained my readers,— return we to "The 
Book" and its influence upon the public of 
Great and lesser readers. 

There is a smack of gentle satire that 
may have been unintentional, in Hannah's 
reference in the letter which alludes to the 
"undeserved popularity " of The Manners, 
to a report that "Madame de Sevigne's 
Letters are going into disrepute. I am 
sorry," she says dryly, "that good taste is 
so much on the decline." 

Her account of the interview with Horace 
Walpole after her friends had virtually ac- 
knowledged that the famous book was 
hers, is so characteristic of both that I can- 
not refrain from giving it entire : 

" He said not a word of the little sly book, but took 
me to task in general terms for having exhibited such 
monstrously severe doctrines. I knew he alluded to the 
Manners of the Great, but we pretended not to under- 
stand one another, and it was a most ridiculous con- 
versation. He defended (and that was the joke !) 
Religion against me, and said he would do so against 
the whole bench of Bishops ; that the Fourth Com- 
mandment was the most amiable and merciful law that 



134 Hannah More 

was ever promulgated, as it entirely considers the ease 
and comfort of the hard-labouring poor and beasts of 
burden ; but that it never was intended for persons of 
fashion, who have no occasion to rest, as they never do 
anything on the other days, and indeed, at the time 
the law was made, there were no people of fashion. 

" He really pretended to be in earnest, and we parted, 
mutually unconverted, he lamenting that I am fallen into 
the heresy of puritanical strictness, and 1 lamenting that 
he is a person of fashion for whom the Ten Command- 
ments were never made." 

Nothing which was said of her book or 
her "heresies" wrought her up to the 
pitch of earnestness displayed in her long 
criticisms of Gibbon's History of the De- 
cline and Fall of Rome. 

" I have almost waded through that mass of impiety 
and bad taste," she breaks out to Mr. Pepys. "I 
protest I think that, if this book were to become the 
standard of style and Religion, Christianity and the 
English language would decay pretty nearly together, 
and the same period would witness the downfall of sound 
principles and good taste. I have seldom met with 
more affectation or less perspicuity. The instances of 
false English are many, and of false taste endless." 

And to Mrs. Boscawen : 

" I think I shall never get through. I sit down to it 
with disgust and rise unentertained — ! had almost said, 
enraged. With what malignant delight does he dwell 



The King's Insanity i35 

on the first corruptions of the Church and how does he 
enjoy the failings of the Fathers ! of which, truth to 
speak, there is a plentiful crop. He does not, as in the 
first volume, stab openly with the broad sabre of Infidel- 
ity, yet, where he finds a sore place, instead of mollify- 
ing it with ointment, how does he delight to pour over it 
cold aconite and deadly hellebore ! " 

The Bristol letters of 1 789 mention slightly 
the correction of the proofs of the seventh 
edition of Manners, of which Hannah re- 
marks, "Instead of being thankful, as I 
ought to be, I was rather provoked at such 
a disagreeable job," and passes on to the 
discussion of what was then the prominent 
topic in everybody's mind — the insanity 
of George the Third. Fanny Burney, in her 
gilded "gaol," was writing quires in her 
private journal on the same theme, telling 
her sisters, who were not to read the en- 
trancing pages for months after they were 
penned, the details of a national calamity 
which Hannah More deplores to the faith- 
ful quartette in the old home, while re- 
hearsing the few particulars of the tragedy 
which the newspapers were allowed to 
print, or which leaked o'lt through the 
jealously closed gates of the palace. The 
temporary relief to the country at large 



\}6 Hannah More 

consequent upon what was believed to be 
the King's complete and permanent re- 
covery, found expression in a "constitu- 
tional ball " at court, which was the "best 
and pleasantest thing of the kind ever 
known," says Miss More. 'All was loy- 
alty and joy, and, for once, magnificence did 
not murder cheerfulness. Old Willis " — 
the physician to whose skill it was thought 
the King was indebted for the return of 
health — "supped at a little table with 
Pitt and two or three others, and was 
almost worshipped. 

"To-morrow we go out of town for a 
week to live among the lilacs. How I 
shall enjoy the lilacs — and the leisure ! " 

Serious comments upon the monster 
procession to St. Paul's to return thanks for 
the King's recovery foreshadow the work 
she was soon to take up and never lay 
aside until her long period of active useful- 
ness was over. 

" The poor soldiers were on guard from three in the 
morning. I would willingly relinquish all the sights I 
may see this twelvemonth to have known they had, 
each, some cold meat and a pot of porter. 1 was 
troubled, too, about the six thousand charity children, 
but the Bishop assures me they had, each of them, a 



Cowslip Green 137 

roll and two apples. ... I now begin to think 
there has been quite enough of singing, and dancing, 
and illuminating and eating, and drinking, on this joyful 
occasion, and cannot help thinking with the Lady in 
Coinus, that we ' praise God amiss.' I begin to want 
to see this very important blessing recorded by some 
public act of pious munificence and charity." 

She finished Gibbon amid the lilacs and 
the leisure of Cowslip Green in 1789, and 
deals him a last smart rap in a letter to 
Mrs. Carter : 

" 1 had no other way of coming at the history of the 
Bas Empire but by wading through that offensive and 
objectionable book. I do not know whether he takes 
most pains to corrupt the principles, or to pervert the 
taste of his reader. Luckily, 1 cannot read Greek, but 
those who do assure me that many of the notes are 
grossly indecent. I am sure this is the case with many 
of those which 1 can read." 

In October of this year she paid a visit to 
the Bishop's palace at Salisbury, where she 
was ever a welcome guest. In these so- 
journs she gained the familiarity with the 
surrounding country which gives such a 
charming touch of local colour to The 
Shepherd of Salislmiy Plain. 

As the year neared its close she retired 
to the " perfect little hermitage " of Cowslip 
Green in company with her best-beloved 



138 Hannah More 

sister Martha. Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah, 
and Martha were building a handsome 
house in Great Poultney Street, Bath, and 
preparing to settle themselves therein for 
the rest of their lives. In thirty-odd years 
of teaching they had amassed a comfortable 
fortune, and now withdrew from business, 
intending to spend the rest of their days in 
comparative leisure, dividing their time 
between Bath and Cowslip Green. In the 
opinion of their friends they had richly 
earned the respite from professional labours, 
and Hannah the long-coveted right to live 
all the year round with her books, her 
flowers, and the few chosen intimates who 
loved her well enough to leave the gay 
world for her sylvan retreat. 

The dream was as fair as it was innocent ; 
the fulfilment seemed close at hand. 




CHAPTER X 

CHEDDAR, AND THE BEGINNING OF A GREAT 
WORK THERE — ANOTHER ANONYMOUS BOOK 
— THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED AS TO ITS MERITS 
BY BISHOP PORTEUS AND JOHN NEWTON 

MISS HANNAH MORE ! something 
must be done for Cheddar ! " 
The speaker was William Wilberforce, 
now just thirty years of age, slight of fig- 
ure, narrow-chested, thin - visaged, and 
short-sighted. Always infirm of health, 
he had been spending in Bath the brief va- 
cation granted hini by the Parliamentary 
recess, and had accepted the invitation of 
the More sisters to run over to them for a 
day or two. Early in the morning after his 
arrival he had set out in a chaise for a day 
in the open air among the romantic hills 
and vales of Cheddar, about ten miles dis- 
tant from Cowslip Green. A hamper of 
139 



140 Hannah More 

provisions packed under the seat of the 
carriage was to serve him for an al fresco 
luncheon. 

He returned at sunset, so quiet and pale 
that his hostesses thought him seriously 
indisposed, a fear confirmed by his going 
abruptly up to his room, and the discovery 
of the untouched luncheon u/here they had 
put it in the chaise. 

No questions were asked when he came 
down to supper, and no remark was made 
upon his lack of appetite for the meal, and 
evident abstraction, until the servant who 
had waited at table left the room. Then 
he electrified the three women — the two 
Mores and his own sister — by the exclam- 
ation at the head of this chapter. The 
great antislavery advocate had had his eyes 
rudely opened to the poverty, ignorance, 
and spiritual destitution of the populace 
which had dogged him all day, like figures 
in an horrible and incredible dream. They 
had begged from him at every step, and 
when he talked with them after emptying 
his pockets of all the money he had with 
him, they told tales of hungry families and 
unfed souls that made his heart sick. 

The living of Cheddar was in the gift of 



Cheddar 141 

the Vicar of Wells. The tithes amounted 
to fifty pounds per annum. The incum- 
bent did not pretend to live in the parish, 
or to do any religious duty therein. His 
home was in Oxford, and he had "some- 
thing to do " in the University there. His 
curate lived at Wells, twelve miles from 
Cheddar. One service was held in the 
parish church on Sunday, but there was 
no cottage visiting, no catechising of the 
children ; no attention was paid to the sick 
and poor. 

The talk which followed Mr. Wilber- 
force's story lasted far into the night. 
When he returned to London, the fire kin- 
dled by him burned steadily. Hannah and 
Patty made a circuit of the regions lying in 
darkness and reported strange things to 
their director. 

The richest man in the district was a sort 
of ogre, living near Bridge water, "in a 
country as savage as himself." 

We will let Hannah's facile pen tell part 
of the tale of the preliminary canvass prior 
to the establishment of what would be 
known now as a " Mission." 

" He begged I would not think of bringing any re- 
ligion into the country. It ' was the worst thing in the 



142 Hannah More 

world for the poor, for it made them lazy and useless.' 
In vain did I represent to him that they would be more 
industrious as they were better-principled, and that, for 
my part, I had no selfish views in what I was doing. 
He gave me to understand that he knew the world too 
well to believe either the one or the other. If these rich 
savages set their faces against us, it was clear that 
nothing but hostilities would ensue ; so I made eleven 
more of these agreeable visits, and as 1 improved the art 
of canvassing, I had better success. Miss Wilberforce 
would have been shocked had she seen the petty tyrants 
whose insolence 1 stroked and tamed ; the ugly children 
I fondled ; the pointers and spaniels I caressed ; the 
cider I commended and the wine I swallowed. 

" After these irresistible flatteries 1 inquired of each if 
he could recommend to me a house " (for a school) " and 
said that I had a little plan which I hoped would secure 
their orchards from being robbed, their rabbits from be- 
ing shot, poultry from being stolen, and which might 
lower the poor-rates. 

" Patty, who was with me, says she has good hope 
that the hearts of some of these rich poor wretches may 
be touched. They are, at present, as ignorant as the 
beasts that perish, intoxicated every day before dinner 
and plunged in such vices as make me begin to think 
London a virtuous place." 

She rented a house large enough to re- 
ceive a goodly number of children, and 
proposed to open, immediately, such a 
Sunday-school as Robert Raikes, whom 
she knew in London, had organised in sev- 
eral other places. Besides this, a day-school 



Cheddar 143 

would be conducted by another teacher than 
the Mrs. Easterbrook " of whose judgment" 
the Misses More " had a good opinion." 
Hannah interpolates, sportively : 

" I hope Miss Wilberforce will not be 
frightened, but I am afraid she " (the teacher) 
"must be called a Methodist." 

" If you will be at the trouble, I will be 
at the expense," Mr. Wilberforce had said, 
and Hannah apologises for having taken the 
house for seven years at an annual rent of 
six and a half guineas. 

" There 's courage for you ! " she continues. "It is 
to be put in order immediately, for 'the night cometh,' 
and it is a comfort to think that 'though I may be dust 
and ashes in a few weeks, yet by that time this business 
will be in actual motion." 

Of one curate she writes : 

"Mr. G is intoxicated about six 

times a week, and very frequently is pre- 
vented from preaching by two black eyes, 
honestly earned by fighting." 

By the end of the summer, the beginning 
of which saw the inauguration of the enter- 
prise, Hannah relates with devout gratitude 
the "uncommon prosperity" in the Ched- 
dar School which comforts and encourages 



144 Hannah More 

her. Children who had not known the 
alphabet when they entered the classes, 
could read the New Testament, recite the 
catechism, and "give pertinent answers to 
any questions which involve the first prin- 
ciples of Christianity. " All the sisters were 
crowded into the thatched cottage at Cow- 
slip Green, the Bath house being not quite 
ready for occupancy. 

"I am made for this dull, quiet life," 
declares Hannah, "and have almost lost all 
taste for any other. We cultivate roses 
and cabbages con spirito." 

Her mind had not changed when the 
three elders removed to "the new man- 
sion" leaving Hannah and Patty in 
Wrington. 

' ' I have never crept out of the ' Cowslip's Bell ' since 
I crept into it, and it is with sorrow and regret I find the 
time approaching when my sisters will expect me to join 
them at Bath. 1 hate Bath ! ... It is grievous 
to reflect that, while we are sending missionaries to our 
distant colonies our own villages are perishing for lack 
of instruction. We have in this neighbourhood thirteen 
adjoining parishes without so much as even a resident 
curate. . . . We have established schools and 
various little institutions over a tract of country of ten 
or twelve miles, and have near five hundred children in 
training." 



Cheddar 145 

Martha More remained in Wrington wlien 
Hannah paid her usual winter visit to Mrs. 
Garrick at Hampton, whither the conscien- 
tious thinker and worker carried Cheddar 
and its claims upon a burdened heart, 
brooding over the wretchedness she could 
but partially relieve, the pagan* darkness 
into which the system of schools watched 
over by Patty in her absence shed so few 
gleams of light. In March, 1790, she con- 
fers with her sister over the project of 
allowing the parents to share in the in- 
struction given to their children: 

" We will, at first, limit the number. As to the time, 
an hour will be quite sufficient. More would break in 
upon the children's time, and take parents too long from 
their own families. They are so ignorant that they need 
to be taught the very elements of Christianity. Speak 
to Mr. Foster, the clergyman, on the subject. He is 
disposed to be obliging and kind. He must see that it 
will enable them to understand his sermons better at 
church and bring more people there." 

Her mind was too much engrossed with 
the sad realities of human want to allow 
her to take pleasure in the glittering round 
of London gaieties. She bemoaned the 
passing away of the "little old parties." 
Everything was "great and vast, and 



146 Hannah More 

magnificent. The old were all growing 
young, and seventy dressed like seven- 
teen." Jolinson, Garrick, Adams, Kenni- 
cott, and wonderful, beautiful Mrs. Delany 
were dead ; Mrs. Vesey, at whose house 
the Bas Bleu grew into permanence and 
power, had lost her mind and was a pitia- 
ble wreck of a once fascinating woman for 
years before the dissolution of her body. 
The set which had made city-life tolerable 
to one of Hannah's eager intellect and lofty 
ideas was broken up, and no new admirers 
and friends could reunite the magic circle. 
The spirit of the reformer had laid hold of 
her. It was not in vain that she had 
corresponded with Great Heart Newton, 
and wrought with pen and tongue and 
purse with Wilberforce to overthrow 
slavery. In the winter of 1790 she pub- 
lished a volume, uniform in size with Man- 
ners, and as fearless in tone, entitled Ait 
Estimate of the Religion of the Fashionable 
World. Like its predecessor, it was sent 
anonymously out to try its fortune in the 
World it criticised. It was bought up 
readily and read with interest. In partial 
explanation of what is phenomenal to us, 
Roberts writes : 



Another Anonymous Book 147 

" Hers was the solitary case in the whole history of 
man and his anomalies in which severe and sober truth 
was enabled to make its way through all the obstacles of 
habit, interest, and prejudice, without art, stratagem, or 
machinery. She went forth with her sling, and her 
pebbles from the clear brook, and triumphed." 

The commotion produced by the book 
was the greater because it was avowedly a 
reply to a pamphlet, optimistic and latitudin- 
arian in character, written by the Duke of 
Grafton, under the title of Hints to an As- 
sociation for Preventing Vice and Immor- 
ality. According to his easy-going Grace, 
the World stood less in need of reformation 
than the Church itself. That was, he as- 
serted, the ''Age of Benevolence." Mor- 
ality was flourishing apace, and genuine 
religion more prevalent than ever before. 
If people did not go to church they had 
good reasons for staying away. A man 
would be saved by his life, not his creed. 
His heart might be right in the sight of 
God, although he did not accept the 
Athanasian Creed, and was wearied by the 
vain repetitions of the Litany. 

Like the valiant Churchwoman she was, 
Miss More pleads pertinently and reverently 
for the formula endeared to her by early 
association and devout usage : 



148 Hannah More 

" If we do not find a suitable humiliation in the Con- 
fession, becoming earnestness in the Petitions, a con- 
genial joy in the Adoration, a corresponding gratitude in 
the Thanksgivings, it is because our hearts do not ac- 
company our words." 

As was to be expected, the thin veil of 
anonymity was soon torn into shreds. The 
author's sentiments and style were, by now, 
too well known for her to hope for con- 
cealment. Mrs. Boscawen set this forth 
gracefully in a congratulatory letter : 

"Your plan of secrecy would have succeeded per- 
fectly and you would have been perfectly concealed if 
giants could be concealed. But if, like Saul, you are 
higher than any of the people from the shoulders and 
upwards, you must be conspicuous. " 

She goes on to say that having heard 
Miss More had published another book she 
had said that she did not believe it, having 
received no presentation copy from pub- 
lisher or author. Being assured that she 
would change her opinion after reading the 
work, she had ordered a copy. 

" Then, the giant appeared, and so plainly that, hav- 
ing read some twenty pages, I sent the man back for 
four more. A few days afterwards 1 received the great 
favour of a present of a copy from the Bishop of London 
himself, which you may believe I value very highly." 



Opinions Expressed 149 

Each edition was exhausted as fast as it 
was printed. It was a sermon-loving age, 
when people read homilies without ennui, 
and relished hard hitting. Nowadays, 
nobody but the scholar reads Addison, and 
the scholar finds Johnson's long-winded 
periods tiresome. We must have concen- 
trated mind-food, and the capsule must be 
goodly to view. Even the sober-minded 
would consider Hannah More's Estimate 
sensible, but dry, reading. That she was 
a power for righteousness in her long gen- 
eration, we must take upon the testimony 
of her best and wisest contemporaries. 
With the Bishop of London's attestation to 
this effect and that of Rev. John Newton 
we will close this stage of her manifold 
labours for the good of her class and her 
kind : 

"St. James Square, 1790. 

" 'Aut Erasmus aut Diaboliis ! ' was, you know, the 
laconic and expressive speech of Sir Thomas More to a 
certain stranger who had astonished him with a torrent 
of wit, eloquence and learning. 

" 'Aut Morns aut Angelus ! ' exclaimed the Bishop 
of London, before he had read six pages of a certain 
delicate little book that was sent to him a few days ago. 

"Such precisely was the note i was sitting down to 
write to you at the very moment 1 received your full and 



150 Hannah More 

true confession of that mortal sin of presuming once 
more to disturb the sweet repose and tranquillity of the 
fashionable world. . . . 

" There are but few persons, I will venture to say, in 
Great Britain that could write such a book ; — that could 
convey so much sound, evangelical morality and so 
much genuine Christianity in such neat and elegant 
language. It will, if 1 mistake not, soon find its way 
into every fine lady's library, and if it do not find its 
way into her heart and her manners the fault will be her 
own. 

" Mrs. Porteus desires to be very affectionately and 
gratefully remembered to you, — gratefully for the 
pleasure she received from the Estimate, for 1 read it to 
her last night, and we thought the evening as well and 
as pleasantly spent as if we had been at the Pantheon." 

Such praise from the learned author of ^4 
Summary of the Evidences of Christianity 
must command our respect. 

John Newton was less sanguine as to the 
favour the book might meet with in polite 
circles : 

"The fashionable world," he wrote to Miss More, 
" by their numbers form a phalanx not easily impressible, 
and their habits of life are as armour of proof which 
renders them not easily vulnerable. Neither the rude 
club of a boisterous reformer, nor the pointed delicate 
weapons of the authoress before me can overthrow or 
rout them. But 1 do hope that an individual, here and 
there, may be wounded and made to wince, and apply 
for healing to the leaves of the tree of life. 



Opinions Expressed 151 

" In such an age as this it is an honour and a privilege 
to be able and willing to bear a testimony against evil 
and in favour of the truth, 'though it should go no 
further. We are not answerable for the success, but we 
are bound to the attempt, according to the talents and 
opportunities afforded. I trust the writer of the Esti- 
mate W\\\ hear in that Day, — 

" ' Forasmuch as it was in thine heart, thou didst 
well that it was in thine heart.' 

" In short. Madam, if, among the present members 
of the fashionable world, any can be found unprejudiced 
and free from deep prepossessions — or so far as they are 
so — I expect and hope that the Estimate, if it comes in 
their way, will prove to them, ' as a light shining in 
a dark place,' for which they will have reason to praise 
God and to thank the writer." 




CHAPTER XI 

MR. NEWTON AT COWSLIP GREEN — OBSTACLES 
TO THE MENDIP MISSION MET AND OVERCOME 
— OPPOSITION FROM A NEW QUARTER 



M 



R. NEWTON'S string of pessimistic 
" ifs " did not interpose a barrier to 
the continued friendship between him and 
the popular author of the Estimate. Mrs. 
Boscawen reci^oned her a giant. Blunt John 
warned her that the Giant's Causeway was 
likely to be no better than a sandbar, to be 
carried out to sea by the sweeping waves 
of folly and pleasure. She ought to have 
known him well enough by this time not 
to be utterly cast down by his strictures. 
It was his habit to see things through 
smoked glasses. 

In another epistle to Miss More, he be- 
moaned himself over what he thought was 
Cowper's lapse from the higher walks of 
literature and morality : 
152 



Newton at Cowslip Green 153 

" I have heard of the pompous edition of Milton that 
is to come abroad. I have not seen the printed pro- 
posals. The report sufficed for me. I am sorry to see 
the author of The Task degraded to a mere editor, 
'though of Milton himself, whom 1 certainly prefer to a 
hundred Homers." 

The readers of Cowper's Life will recall 
that the poet accounted his translation of 
Homer his magnum opus. Mr. Newton 
was otherwise minded. He "mourns and 
mourns, and mourns " further to his 
correspondent : 

" It is pitiful, and to many who love him it seems 
strange, yea, passing strange that a writer so truly origi- 
nal should not favour us with writings in his own origi- 
nal way. It is not however quite strange to me. He 
has many friends, so-called, who, in the time of his 
recess, cared little about him 'till his name and fame as 
an author began to be spread abroad in the polite 
circles. Since that period they have buzzed about him, 
and by their fine words and fair speeches have imper- 
ceptibly given an inferior direction to his aims, and 
withdrawn him more out of my reach. For there was 
a time when he would not have undertaken a work of 
any extent without previously apprising me. The state 
of his mind makes me cautious how 1 express my grief 
and disappointment. Otherwise, I should write to him 
in large letters." 

Letters as large, doubtless, as those which 
conveyed to the semi-hermit of Olney his 



154 Hannah More 

mentor's opinion of the worldly gaieties 
going on at "Orchardside," under the 
impetus of Lady Hesketh's society. 

Hannah More was a close, but never un- 
kindly, reader of character and motive. As- 
sociation with Johnson, Sheridan, Burke, 
Walpole — nay, with her own father, who 
eschewed "female pedants" — must have 
enlightened her as to the transparency and 
unconscious frankness of masculine vanity. 
She must have detected the spring of New- 
ton's chagrin — hidden to himself alone — 
and had her own views as to poor Cowper's 
flagrant ingratitude, spiritual decadence, and 
degradation of taste. She had, also, abund- 
ance of tact, and knew how to soothe and 
divert the wounded spirit from dwelling 
upon its own hurts. In August, 1791, five 
months subsequent to the melancholy letter 
from which I have copied, Mr. Newton 
was domesticated for some weeks at Cow- 
slip Green. The invitation accepted by the 
London worker was tempting : 

" A little thatched cottage, a quiet cell, a few books, 
a maple dish and a dinner of herbs, are all you can, in 
reason, expect. But 1 hope we shall be able to furnish 
the appropriate sauce of ' quietness therewith,' for 
which 1 trust you will be contented to renounce the 
' stalled ox ' of noisy London." 



Newton at Cowslip Green 135 

More seriously the writer adds : 

" I hope you will do some good in this dark region 
where the light of Christianity seems scarcely to have 
penetrated. We are sending missionaries to our colo- 
nies while our villages are perishing for lack of instruc- 
tion. You will hardly believe the things you will see 
and hear in this neigiibourhood." 

The guest was bettered in health — let 
us hope mellowed in judgment of his fel- 
lows — by the sojourn among the mount- 
ains of Mendip. His sleep in "the little 
hermitage at the foot of them " was sweet. 
He visited the parish schools in Cheddar, 
and in outlying districts so destitute of the 
common comforts of life as to awaken the 
wonder of one used to the meanest slums 
of the metropolis, and so nearly inaccessible 
that he doubted if it were right for women 
to try to visit them. He would, he says, 
if he could, "give Hannah and Patty, not 
shoes but nerves and sinews of iron and 
brass to fit them for traversing Mendip." 
He led the family devotions, night and 
morning, talked and prayed with a sick 
maid, and held converse, sweet and pleas- 
ant to his soul, with the gracious brace of 
sisters. We have no more amiable present- 
ation of him than as we see him strolling 



156 Hannah More 

up and down the garden alleys, smoking 
the pipe of serenity under the very windows 
of the spinsters' drawing-room. When 
he went away his pipe was left where 
he was wont to deposit it, in the heart of a 
thick black currant bush. 

" That hand would be deemed most presumptuous 
and disrespectful which should presume to dislodge it," 
writes Hannah, merrily. " For my own part, the pipe 
ot Tityrus, 'though in my youthful days 1 liked it pass- 
ing well, would not now be deemed a more venerable 
relic." 

That was a marvellous September — " a 
renewed spring," she went on to tell the 
city man, pitying him that he was not in 
the vale of Cowslips to enjoy it. 

" We have everything of the golden age except the 
innocence. The garden is full of roses as in June, and 
we have an apple-tree literally covered at the same 
moment with fruit nearly ripe and fresh blossoms." 

" And only man is vile ! " 

The antithetical line came to be the un- 
dertone of letters and thoughts. Mr. New- 
ton confesses that he has imparted to his 
friend, Mr. Cowper, — dear, despite his va- 
garies in the direction of Sunday after- 
noon strolls, Homeric translations, and 



Obstacles Overcome 157 

Miltonic editorial studies, — his fears lest 
Miss More's absorption in the Mendip mis- 
sion might deprive a waiting public of 
what they had a right to expect from her 
pen. Dr. Stonehouse, the revered rector 
of the sisters for forty years, wrote in a 
sportive vein a remonstrance to the same 
effect : 

" Sally is a very good Sally. Sally came and took 
care of me when I was sick. Sally will answer my let- 
ters. Poetess is a great lady, and flies abroad on the 
wings of cherubim, twenty miles from Cowslip Green, 
and for what ? Why, truly to see poor ragged boys 
and girls, and to teach them to fly." 

The five sisters were together at Cowslip 
Green that summer, and were one in the 
purpose which filled Hannah's mind and 
heart. The effort to teach ragged boys 
and girls to fly above their native mire and 
fog was but a part of the work that in- 
creased upon their hands to an extent 
which would have daunted less resolute 
spirits. Hannah's fine sense of humour 
took the sharpest edge from some of the 
difficuhies that beset them at every turn of 
the upward road. She relates, without im- 
patience or discouragement, that one rich 



158 Hannah More 

farmer, with an income of one thousand 
pounds a year, informed her brusquely 
" she need not come to his neighbourhood 
to make his labourers wiser than himself. 
He wanted no saints about him, but work- 
men." His wife, — of whom Hannah re- 
marks, " 'though she cannot read, she 
seems to understand the doctrine of phi- 
losophical necessity," — told the town 
ladies that "the lower classes were fated 
to be poor, and ignorant and wicked," and 
howsoever wise the sisters might consider 
themselves to be, " they could not alter 
what was decreed." The husband took 
up the word and let the interlopers under- 
stand that the parish was well enough as 
it was. If the young men gambled and 
fought too near his house Sunday even- 
ings, he could always swear at them and 
order them off. " What could one desire 
more ? " 

Some of the thrifty-minded cottagers re- 
fused to let their children attend either the 
Sunday- or day-schools, unless they were 
paid for it. Others hung back from a fear 
they were industrious in imparting to oth- 
ers, — namely, that when the seven years 
were up for which the schoolhouse was 



Obstacles Overcome 159 

rented, they would find themselves bound 
to Miss More for a term of servitude be- 
yond the sea. In other words, that she 
would transport them to a penal colony 
where they would put into practice for 
her emolument the knowledge they had 
acquired under teachers employed by 
her. 

" I must have heard this myself in order 
to believe that so much ignorance existed 
out of Africa ! " exclaims the anti-slavery 
woman in mingled amusement and indig- 
nation. 

Within three years after the opening of 
the first school in Cheddar, there were 
twelve hundred children under the care of 
the mistress of Cowslip Green and her sis- 
ters, and ten parishes were included in 
their round of visitation. This work was 
done in parishes where there was no resid- 
ent clergyman, yet so punctilious were 
the unsalaried missionaries that, before be- 
ginning to labour within the bounds of 
any one of these, they wrote to, or called in 
person upon, the nominal incumbent of 
the living to ask his consent to the estab- 
lishment of schools and cottage visiting. 
Permission was, in nearly every case, 



i6o Hannah More 

granted with cheerful indifference which, 
one would think, might have been more 
disheartening than open opposition. 

The sisters always disclaimed the name 
of Methodists, yet few Wesleyan circuit- 
riders were more regular in routine defined 
by their Conference than these staid Church- 
women in their self-appointed "beat." One 
school was fifteen miles from Cheddar, and 
reached by roads so rugged and lonely that 
they were obliged to take lodgings in the 
wild district while upon duty there. The 
novel scheme had passed out of the charmed 
realm of theory into the severe practice of 
such lessons of self-denial and endurance 
as had been, until now, unknown to the 
brave women. Besides superintending in 
person all the branches of the work, they 
instituted a series of cottage prayer-meet- 
ings, — Bible - readings, we should call 
them, — and conducted them regularly. 
Printed prayers, joined in by all present, a 
printed sermon read by one of the Misses 
More, selections from the Scriptures, with 
a few simple explanations of what was not 
clear to the unlettered auditors, — formed 
the order of exercises. 

Modern zeal for Sunday-schools, amount- 



Opposition i6i 

ing sometimes to a sort of furore that 
makes the offices of the Church unimport- 
ant by comparison, has driven out of the 
zealot's recollection the fact that Robert 
Raikes's design was, primarily and solely, to 
provide schools for the children pf the poor 
and ignorant, not for the offspring of 
Christian parents, who were, presumably, 
reared from birth in the nurture and ad- 
monition of the Lord. 

Before the first of her dozen parish 
schools was six months old, Miss More's 
genuine good sense perceived what thou- 
sands in our favoured land are slow to 
acknowledge, — to wit, that however faithful 
the teacher, the instruction received in the 
Sunday-school is superficial and unsatis- 
factory without the sure foundation of 
home-training in holy things. If we would 
have the fruit good we must look to the 
tree on which it grows. We may not ex- 
pect a child to learn a foreign language from 
hearing it spoken for one, or two, or six 
hours per week, while for the rest of the 
time he is allowed to speak his vernacular, 
and hears nothing else used by those about 
him. 

The dismayed conviction that the stone 



1 62 Hannah More 

she rolled up the Hill Difficulty one Sun- 
day must be heaved up the same height 
on the next, unless she could counteract 
the gravitation of daily environment, moved 
Miss More to the cottage visitations which 
became an important arm of their service. 
Parents were invited to the meetings held 
after Sunday-school ; relief and burial 
clubs were formed among the women, 
to which the weekly subscription was 
three halfpence ; classes were gathered on 
week-day evenings, where adults were 
taught to read, and drilled in the precepts 
of the religion to which they had been for 
so long strangers. Industrial classes in 
sewing and knitting were held three times 
a week. In a parish where the More 
sisters found, at their first visit, but one 
Bible, and that was used to prop a broken 
flower-pot. Bibles, prayer-books, and hymn 
books were eagerly coveted as prizes by 
the end of the third year of the mission- 
schooling. 

Every girl bred in a school and who bore 
a character for sobriety, modesty, and in- 
dustry, received upon her wedding-day a 
Bible, five shillings, and a pair of white 
stockings. Any member of the women's 



Opposition 163 

club who fell sick was allowed three shil- 
lings a week ; a married woman, seven 
shillings sixpence, weekly, during her con- 
finement. 

All these items, with scores of others, 
Hannah wrote out with her own hand to 
Mr. Wilberforce and other persons who 
contributed money to the enterprise. She 
gave money, time, nerve- and brain-force. 
In the summer of 1792, she writes to a 
woman friend : 



" This summer I have had the satisfaction of seeing 
the first dawn of hope on a subject of great difficulty 
and delicacy. My young women who were candidates 
for the bridal presents which I bestow on the virtuous, 
gravely refused to associate with one who had been 
guilty of immoral conduct ; whereas it formerly used to 
afford matter for horrid laughter and disgusting levity. 

" It was a very trying matter to me, for 1 thought it 
my duty at one of our late anniversaries in presence of 
three hundred people, and half-a-dozen of the clergy, to 
deliver a solemn remonstrance on this very subject. I 
did not think myself at liberty to be excused, for it was 
a matter paramount to all misplaced delicacy, and I had 
the pleasure of witnessing the most becoming gravity 
and exact decorum in that part of my audience which I 
most feared. ... No small difficulty remained to 
prevent the others from being vain of their virtue, and to 
convince them that, 'though she had been singularly 
bad, there was nothing meritorious in their goodness." 



164 Hannah More 

At this time Miss More says, seriously 
and simply : 

" I have devoted the remnant of my life to the poor, 
and to those that have no helper ; and if 1 can do 
them little good, I can at least sympathise with them, 
and I know it is some comfort for a forlorn creature 
to be able to say — ' There is somebody that cares 
for me.' That simple idea of being cared for has always 
appeared to me a very cheering one. Besides this, the 
affection they have for me is a strong engine with which 
to lift them to the love of higher things, and 'though 1 
believe others work successfully by terror, yet kindness 
is the instrument by which God has enabled me to 
work. 

" Alas ! I might do more and better ! Pray for me 
that 1 may." 

The sweet and sincere humility which 
informs this letter, and was manifest in all 
she did, did not disarm criticism. She was 
pained and surprised — when kind words 
and active benevolence had well-nigh con- 
quered the brutish ignoramuses who had 
opposed the inception of the reform ; when, 
as she relates, "several got warm enough 
to declare they had no objection to the 
ladies coming," and one rich man clapped 
his hands and declared he "believed it 
would turn out a very good job" ; when 



Opposition 165 

the crooked paths seemed to be straighten- 
ing and the high places to be levelled — that 
attack came from other and most unex- 
pected quarters. Sectaries and High-Church 
bigots were united in dispraise of one who 
called herself a Churchwoman, yet adopted 
methodistical modes of carrying the Gospel 
to the poor. " It is such inconvenience to 
belong to no party," she sighs, "and so 
discreditable is moderation ! " 

" A high-flier (a friend, too) told me the other day, he 
would advise me to publish a short confession of my 
faith, as my attachment both to the religion and the 
government of the country had become questionable to 
many persons. I own 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 had 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 a figure dressed out to 
represent me, with a large rod in my hand, prepared to 
punish such naughty doings ! " 

She gives the mortifying story without 
comment, but there must have been a pain- 
ful heart-throb in contrasting the Now of 
disfavour and contumely with the Then 
of society and literary honours ; when 



1 66 



Hannah More 



coroneted carriages blocked the street be-.. 
fore her lodgings, and the great ones of 
earth vied in chanting her praises. She had 
chosen the way in which she would walk 
for ' ' the remnant of her Hfe, " and her ways 
were no more those of her former court- 
iers than her thoughts were their thoughts. 




CHAPTER XII 

CHARITABLE MISSIONS IN LONDON — ANSWER TO 
M. DUPONT — LORD ORFORD — ^" VILLAGE POLI- 
TICS " — WONDERFUL SUCCESS OF "CHEAP 
REPOSITORY tracts" 

IT was altogether consistent with the 
changed tenor of Hannah More's career 
that her London visit of 1792 was upon 
a charitable errand. A fourteen-year-old 
heiress, in whom the sisters were much 
interested, had been decoyed from her 
home under promise of marriage, and was 
secreted so cunningly in London that all 
efforts of Hannah and Patty, aided by Bow 
Street detectives, failed to find her. Han- 
nah writes to Mrs. Kennicott that her 
" time is passed with thief-takers, officers 
of justice and such pretty kind of people," 
while poor Patty, fairly worn out, fell ill 
and added to the cares and perplexities of 
167 



i68 Hannah More 

the situation. Of the victim of a wicked 
man's arts, Miss More says tearfully, "It 
was the most timid, gentle, pious little 
thing ! " The unhappy child was hurried 
to the Continent, and there married to her 
betrayer. 

The ill-success of this errand of mercy 
did not dissuade Hannah from taking up 
the cause of a "fine young creature, who 
had thrown herself into the canal in St. 
James's Park," in a fit of frenzy induced by 
the unfaithfulness of her seducer. Miss 
More and Mrs. Clark, Mr. Wilberforce's 
sister, sought her in the disorderly house 
in which she had taken refuge, and did 
their utmost to save her, carrying her off 
to a respectable lodging, paying her debts, 
and watching with her by turns until she 
contrived to elude their vigilance and elope 
with a " certain great lawyer who was an 
infidel." 

"I have still some hope !" pronounced 
the would-be saviour, four years later, in 
recapitulating the adventure to her sister. 

Her optimism was of the hardiest kind, 
and stood enough tests to crush out and 
tear up any other type of charity. All the 
sympathy she could spare from the misery 



Answer to M. Dupont 169 

close under her eyes was given to the vic- 
tims of the French Revolution, the horrors 
of which were then engaging the public 
mind. The oration of Citizen Dupont be- 
fore the National Assembly of France, 
December 14, 1792, found admirers even 
in England, where his watchwords, "Na- 
ture and Reason are the gods of men," 
and the rank blasphemy of the address, 
were condemned by all bodies of Christians. 

At the urgent request of many public 
men and private friends, and under the 
impulse of her own indignation at "atheis- 
tical speeches which stuck in her throat,'' 
Miss More wrote Remarks on the Speech 
of M. Dupont made in the National Con- 
vention on the subjects of Religion and 
Public Education. It had a large sale in 
England, and the Bishop of Leon caused it 
to be translated into French. Hannah 
thought this "lost labour," and the pam- 
phlet itself a "trumpery thing, written for 
shillings, and not for fame." Every penny 
she received for it — and it netted over two 
hundred and forty pounds — was given to the 
Emigrant French Priests in England. 

The best refutation of her depreciation of 
the v^^ork was in the storm of abuse it 



1 70 Hannah More 

brought upon the author from ' ' those whose 
fondness for French politics blinded them to 
the horrors of French impiety," and over- 
zealous Protestants, who accused her of 
"opposing God's vengeance against Popery 
by wickedly wishing the French priests 
should not be starved, when it was God's 
will that they should," and arraigned her 
before the Protestant world as " a favourer 
of the old popish massacres." 

She brought her sunny philosophy to bear 
upon objurgatory pamphlets and speeches : 

" I do assure your Lordship," she writes to the Earl 
of Orford,* who had feared the effect of the onslaught 
upon her spirits, "that all of them have not given me 
one minute's uneasiness. Had my adversaries accused 
me of almost anything but a fondness for bloodshed 
and popery, I think my conscience might, in some de- 
gree, have pleaded guilty, and I might have set about 
a serious reformation, the proper end of all repentance. 
However, all censure is profitable. . . . My mind 
is of such a sort of make that my chief danger lies, not 
in abuse, but in flattery, it is the slaver that kills — not 
the bite." 

The poisonous "slaver" never corroded 
the pure metal of her soul. She was ever 
on the watch lest the beautiful humility she 

* Formerly Horace Walpole. 



Lord Orford 171 

named self-knowledge might suffer from 
the adulation thrust upon her. 

"I am afraid it is so pleasant to talk of 
oneself that one would almost rather talk 
of one's faults than not to talk of one's self 
at all," is her self-reproof to Lord Orford 
for "all the egotism " of what makes her 
letter interesting. 

Apropos of Horace Walpole (Lord Or- 
ford), someone repeated to Miss More his 
regret during a severe illness that he " had 
scolded her for being so religious. I hope 
she will forgive me ! " 

As soon as he was well he sent her a 
Bible, handsomely bound, and a compli- 
mentary inscription to herself written upon 
the fly-leaf 

"When I receive these undue compli- 
ments," said Hannah to her sister, "1 am 
ready to answer with my old friend, John- 
son — ' Sir ! I am a miserable sinner ! ' " 

The versatile pen that wrote the political 
pamphlet in reply to Dupont, was at the 
same time busy upon the first of the Cheap 
Repository Tracts. This new and extra- 
ordinary departure from any of the lines of 
work in which Miss More had earned fame 
and fortune was, as she always believed in 



172 Hannah More 

her simple and powerful faith, a direct in- 
spiration from a higher source than man's 
judgment. She had been importuned to 
write in popular style an answer to Thomas 
Paine's Rights of Man and other tracts in a 
similar vein, which were circulating freely 
among the English peasantry. The idea 
did not commend itself to Miss More at 
first. She had not the knack of writing 
for the common people, she said, and if she 
had, who, among those for whom the book 
was intended, would read it } The com- 
mendation of their superiors in education 
and station would avail nothing with the 
discontented poor, — and so much more to 
the same purpose that her friends gave 
over the attempt to persuade her. Pon- 
dering the matter in solitude, the whole 
scheme and dialogue of VHlage Politics by 
Will Chip came to her. She sat down, 
forthwith, and finished the tract before 
leaving her desk. 

A third time she sent a book anony- 
mously into the world, now changing her 
publisher, lest Cadell's connection with it 
might be a clue to the authorship. Within 
a month the editions ran into the hundred 
thousands ; even the King read it, and 



'tillage Politics" 173 

expressed his delight openly ; dozens of 
copies were presented to Miss More, with 
warm recommendations to her to read that 
which she might and ought to have done, 
and what, it was hoped, would move her 
to imitation. 

Our old acquaintance. Bishop Porteous, 
of London, had been taken into Hannah's 
confidence. In fact, he was one of those 
who had pressed the task upon her. 

"In an evil hour, against my will and 
my judgment, one sick day, I scribbled the 
little pamphlet, and the very next morning 
after I had first conceived the idea, sent it 
off to Rivington," — is Hannah's story of 
the birth of the foundling. 

Roberts says: " The tact and intelligence 
of a single female " (we wish he could 
have dropped the obnoxious adjective !) 
"wielded at will the 'fierce democratie of 
England,' and stemmed the tide of mis- 
guided opinion. Many persons of the 
soundest judgment went so far as to affirm 
that it had essentially contributed under 
Providence to prevent a revolution." 

More to our taste is the Bishop of Lon- 
don's letter to his friend and fellow-con- 
spirator : 



174 Hannah More 

" My dear Mrs. Chip : 

" I have this moment received your husband's Dia- 
logue, and it is supremely excellent. 1 look upon Mr. 
Chip as one of the finest writers of the age. This work, 
alone, will immortalise him, and, what is better still, I 
trust it will help to immortalise the Constitution. If the 
sale is as rapid as the book is good, Mr. Chip will get 
an immense fortune and completely destroy all equality 
at once. How Jack Anvil and Tom Hod will bear this 
I know not, but I rejoice at Mr. Chip's elevation, and 
should be extremely glad at this moment to shake him 
by the hand, and ask him to take a family dinner with 
me. He is really a very fine fellow." 

Better than all the praises of the upper 
classes was the fact that Will Chip was 
read in smithies, in pot-houses, and at cot- 
ters' firesides, often aloud to a gaping crowd 
who, for the first time, heard the politics 
of the day elucidated in nervous English, 
so simple that a child or unlettered plough- 
boy could understand the drift of each 
speaker's argument. As, for instance, when 
Jack Anvil defined French liberty to be 
"To murder more men in one night than 
the poor king did in all his life," and a 
democrat as "One who likes to be gov- 
erned by a thousand tyrants, and yet can't 
bear a king." Equality, for which the 
French mob was flooding Paris with blood, 



*' Cheap Repository Tracts" 175 

was said by the village Conservative to be, 
"For every man to put down everyone 
that is above him," and the Rights of Man, 
as interpreted by the " free " canaille, to be 
" Battle, murder and sudden death." 

"These poor French fellows," says Jack, 
'•' used to be the merriest dogs in the world, 
but since Equality came in I don't believe a 
Frenchman has ever laughed." 

When the same reasoner has proved the 
folly of his malcontents' Agrarian theory, 
Tom doggedly asserts, "But still 1 should 
have no one over my head." 

"That 's a mistake ! " retorts Jack. "1 'm 
stronger than thee, and Standish, the ex- 
ciseman, is a better scholar. We should 
not remain equal a minute." 

The twelve hundred children in the 
Mendip schools devoured the Dialogue and 
talked of it in their homes ; clergymen dis- 
tributed hundreds of copies in their par- 
ishes. In at least one town Tom Paine 
was burned in effigy, and his book tossed 
into the flames with him. 

Under the stimulus of the amazing result 
brought to pass by the work of that "one 
sick day," the More sisters determined to 
write and publish at least three tracts a year 



176 Hannah More 

after the same order, — "stories, ballads 
and religious readings," — at a price that 
would oust the revolutionary trash which 
was the only literary food of the people 
besides "ballads and broadsheets of the 
last dying speeches " of criminals, and half- 
penny songs of the vilest kind. These 
Cheap Repository Tracts are now classics, 
an apotheosis never anticipated by those 
who wrote them, or the philanthropists 
who bore, with the sisters, the cost of pub- 
lication and distribution. Foremost among 
these were the Bishop of London and Wil- 
liam Wilberforce, but a Royal Duke was 
a contributor to the fund and a warm well- 
wisher to the project. As its success be- 
came apparent, a committee, the chairman 
of which was Archbishop Moore, was 
formed in London to enlarge the circulation 
of the Tracts and to bear the major part of 
the expense. 

One of Hannah's ballads, The Riot, 
averted the destruction of valuable mills 
and private houses near Bath. The colliers 
" struck," and inflamed the other labouring 
classes until a bloody riot was imminent. 
Hundreds of copies of the ballad were 
strewed broadcast through the district. 



" Cheap Repository Tracts " 177 

sung by the school-children, and in the 
public houses, until reason and temperate 
counsels got the upper hand of turbulence. 

"A fresh proof by what weak instru- 
ments evils are, now and then, prevented ! " 
observed Hannah, when this was reported 
to her. 

Of another ballad, Turn the Carpet, 
Bishop Porteous said: "Here you have 
Bishop Butler's Analogy — all for a half- 
penny ! " 

The particular passage to which he re- 
ferred runs thus : 

" This world, which clouds thy soul with doubt, 
Is but a carpet inside out. 
As when we view these shreds and ends, 
We know not what the whole intends, 
So, when on earth things look but odd 
They 're working out some scheme for God. 
What now seem random strokes, will, there. 
In order and design appear. 
Then shall we praise what here we spurned ; 
For then the carpet shall be turned." 

Black Giles the Poacher, comprising the 
story of Tawny Rachel, his wife, was ob- 
jected to by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, 
brother of the poet, and afterwards Master 
of Trinity, as " novelish and exciting," a 



lyS Hannah More 

stricture he extended to other of the series. 
The popular taste found, in one and all, 
innocent stimulus for the imagination, so 
blended with excellent moral teachings 
that the one could not be had without im- 
bibing the other. One of the best of these 
tracts was Parley the Porter, which some 
hasty critics have attributed to Bunyan. 

The pearl of the series, as all agree, 
was the inimitable Shepherd of Salisbury 
Plain. Miss Yonge calls it, aptly and 
prettily, "an idyl of religious content and 
frugality." 




CHAPTER XIII 

TILT WITH LORD ORFORD — MORE TRACTS — 
GLIMPSE OF FANNY BURNEY — LORD ORFORD'S 
DEATH AND HIS MEMOIRS 

TWO millions of the Cheap Repository 
Tracts were sold in one year. For 
three years Hannah More, with occasional 
assistance from her sister Sally, — who was 
the best writer of her four coadjutors, — 
prepared three tracts annually, superin- 
tended her growing schools and societies, 
embracing now nearly seventeen hundred 
women and children, and conducted per- 
sonally the immense correspondence in- 
volved in her several charitable and literary 
enterprises, besides writing many other 
letters to friends in all parts of the United 
Kingdom and upon the Continent. The 
excruciating headaches became more fre- 
quent, and in other ways her delicate 
179 



i8o Hannah More 

physique betrayed the strain upon her 
forces, but the indomitable spirit held its 
own; her rare gift of humour solaced 
many a weary hour, tempered many an 
annoyance. Her intimacy and friendly pas- 
sages at arms with Lord Orford were the 
same as of old. They seldom met without 
an encounter of opinions and wits. The 
following is a sample of their tilts : 

" Lord Orford rallied me, yesterday, for what he 
called 'the ill-natured strictness of my Tracts.' He 
talked foolishly enough of ' the cruelty of making the 
poor spend so much time in reading books and de- 
priving them of their pleasure on Sundays.' 

"In return, I recommended him and the ladies 
present to read Law's Serious Call. I told them it was 
a book their favourite Mr. Gibbon had highly praised, 
and, moreover, that Law had been Gibbon's tutor early 
in life. (Both are true, but was there ever such a 
contrast between preceptor and pupil?) They have 
promised to read it and I know they will be less afraid 
of Gibbon's recommendation than of mine." 

To John Newton she explains, solicit- 
ously, that, in view of the dissemination 
of asses' loads of pernicious pamphlets, in 
cottages, by the highways, and at the 
mouths of mines and coal-pits, she has 

"thought it lawful to write a few moral stories, the 
main circumstances of which had occurred within her 



More Tracts i8i 

own knowledge . . . carefully observing to found 
all goodness on religious principles. 

" Some strict people, perhaps, will think that invention 
should have been entirely excluded ; but, alas ! I know 
with whom I have to deal, and 1 hope I may thus 
allure these thoughtless creatures to higher things." 

John Newton was a frequent guest at 
Cowslip Green, and heartily in sympathy 
with the mission-school innovations. After 
one of his visits he left a string of atrocious 
doggerel behind him, for which, never- 
theless, we love him better than for the 
sermonical epistles which Hannah found 
edifying : 

" In Helicon could I my pen dip, 
I would attempt the praise of Mendip. 
Were bards a hundred I 'd outstrip them, 
If equal to the theme of Shipham ; 
But harder still the task 1 'd ween 
To give its due to Cowslip Green." 

In 1793, Miss More tells Mrs. Boscawen 
of the leading tract for the coming month 
— The Way to Plenty, containing a number 
of recipes for cheap, nourishing dishes, 
such as the cottage housewife could pre- 
pare for her family at less cost than the 
wretched victuals she was accustomed to 
set before them. Newspapers and private 



1 82 Hannah More 

letters had called upon her for something 
of the sort. She was the established au- 
thority upon every subject with thousands 
of the poor all over England. They would 
listen to whatever she had to say. Would 
she not try to teach them the small eco- 
nomies by which they might better their 
ways of living ? 

"It is not a very brilliant career," she confesses to 
her old friend. " But 1 feel that the value of a thing 
lies so much more in its usefulness than its splendour 
that I have a notion I should derive more gratification 
from being able to lower the price of bread than from 
having written The Iliad." 

The very next sentence gives us a hasty 
glimpse of Fanny Burney, now Madame 
d'Arblay. She had married a French re- 
fugee, and was anxious to eke out their 
scanty income by a return to her long- 
disused profession. 

" But let me not forget to do homage to real talents, 
for which 1 still retain something of my ancient kind- 
ness. I therefore wish it were in my power to offer 
ten subscriptions to Miss Burney (1 always forget her 
French name !) instead of one, for which 1 take the 
liberty to request the favour of your setting down my 
name." 

How far off must the brilliant career each 
had known in the other's company have 



Glimpse of Fanny Burney 183 

seemed to the earnest-souled philan- 
thropist as she wrote "little Burney's" 
name in this connection ! There is even a 
touch of formality, almost embarrassment, 
in Hannah's manner of making the sub- 
scription, as if she struggled with rising 
memories. And she "still retains some- 
thing of her ancient kindness for the real 
talents" of the half-forgotten celebrity 
whose sphere of thought and action was 
not more utterly changed from what it was 
in the day of Garrick, Johnson, and the 
Thrales, than was Hannah's own. 

in 179s, Miss More writes to a serious- 
minded correspondent whose name we do 
not know : 

"I think 1 have done with the aristo- 
cracy. 1 am no longer a debtor to the 
Greeks, but 1 am so to my poor barba- 
rians." 

The name is justified by what she relates 
of the moral and religious status of her con- 
stituents in a region which " had helped to 
people the county gaol and Botany Bay, be- 
yond any other that she knew." To spare 
the pride of farmers, who were as ig- 
norant as their labourers, she hit upon the 
plan of forming private evening classes 



{:■ 



i84 Hannah More 

for them. These were well attended, the 
men bringing their wives with them. She 
and faithful Patty were unremitting in vis- 
itations far and near, driving across the 
country when the nature of the ground al- 
lowed them to do so, walking when they 
reached a point beyond which a carriage 
could not go. 

In 1796, she writes to Patty from Fulham 
Palace, where she was making a brief visit : 

" While you are labouring in your Sunday missions 1 
am idling my time with Lords and Commoners. . . . 
Did I ever tell you of the satisfaction Mr. Pitt expressed 
one day about our tracts? He said he had just heard 
that forty thousand had been sent to America, and ' he 
had not met with anything in a long time that had 
pleased him more than that such sort of reading was 
gaining ground in this country.' " 

She is more deeply moved by this news 
than by a four-hours' tete-d-tete with Lady 
Waldegrave, who had called expressly to 
see her. Old things had passed away, and 
for all time. 

We are reminded here of Wilberforce's 
speech to an acquaintance a few years be- 
fore his death in 1833, that he "would 
rather present himself in Heaven with The 
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain in his hand 



LordOrford's Death 185 

than with Peveril of the Peak." As this 
one of Scott's novels was not published 
until 1823, the anecdote is in evidence of 
the continued popularity of the idyllic 
tract in the author's old age, thirty years 
after it was written. 

For the period lying between 1794-97, 
she wrote little for the press except these 
tracts and ballads. In England and in 
America they were found in every library 
that contained religious literature for the 
home, and, after the establishment of Sun- 
day-school libraries, The Shepherd of Salis- 
bury Plain and Parley the Porter were kept 
in brisk circulation by childish lovers of 
stories with plenty of local colour and 
action in them. 

Personal sorrow followed hard after lit- 
erary triumphs. In the spring of 1797, 
Edmund Burke died, and also Lord Or- 
ford. Miss More was sensibly afiflicted by 
the death of the latter. As she says to her 
sister Patty : 

" Twenty years' unclouded kindness and pleasant cor- 
respondence cannot be given up without emotion. I 
am not sorry now that 1 never flinched from his ridi- 
cule, or attacks, or suffered them to pass without re- 
buke. His playful wit, his various knowledge, his 



1 86 Hannah More 

polished manners — alas ! what avail they now ? The 
most serious thoughts are awakened. Oh, that he had 
known and believed the things that belonged to his 
peace ! My heart is much oppressed with the re- 
flection." 

Lord Orford's executors applied to her 
for such of his letters to her as she was 
willing to have published, and returned to 
her all of those she had written to the de- 
ceased peer. He had carefully preserved 
every one. In the handsome collection of 
his works published the next year, his let- 
ters to Miss More appeared — "the only 
living correspondent to whom any of the 
letters were addressed." She tells a funny 
story of "tumbling over the leaves" of 
the volumes in company with the Bishop 
of London, and happening unexpectedly 
upon her own portrait — "hideous pic- 
ture ! " she calls it. This was at the 
Duchess of Gloucester's. Miss More was 
surprised and gratified, a few days after- 
wards, by receiving from Miss Berry a 
copy of the " memorial of our late friend." 
She adds, " I did not at all expect such a 
compliment." 

It seems natural, and even inevitable, 
to us. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ORGANISED OPPOSITION TO SCHOOLS — BLAG- 
DEN SCHOOL CLOSED — LETTER TO AND 
FROM THE BISHOP OF BATH — BUILDING OF 
BARLEY WOOD — THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE — 
SEVERE ILLNESS — DEATH OF DR. PORTEUS 

IT does not appear natural— it ought 
surely to have been evitable by some 
human and humane agency — that Mr. Wil- 
berforce, taking his bride to visit his dear 
friends at Cowslip Green, should have 
found the state of affairs depicted in Han- 
nah's letters of the summer of 1798. 

In after years, she thus condensed the 
disgraceful scenes, the enacting of which 
required months and years, in a confiden- 
tial communication to Sir W. W. Pepys, 
her ancient and sympathising ally : 

"Two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambi- 
tious, formed the design of attracting notice and getting 

187 



1 88 Hannah More 

preferment by attacking some charity schools (which, 
with no small labour, I have carried on in this county 
for near twenty years) as ' seminaries of vice, sedition 
and revolution.' It will make you smile when I tell you 
a few of the charges brought against me, — viz. that 1 
hired two men to assassinate one of these clergymen ; — 
that I was actually taken up for seditious practices ; — 
that I was with Hadfield in his attack upon the King's 
life. One of them strongly insinuated this from the 
pulpit, and then caused the newspaper which related 
the attack, to be read at the church-door. At the same 
time — mark the consistency ! they declared that I was 
in the pay of Mr. Pitt, and the grand instigator (poor 
1 !) of the war, by mischievous pamphlets, — and, to 
crown the whole, — that I was concerned with Char- 
lotte Corday in the murder of Marat ! ! ! 

" That wicked and needy men should invent this is 
not so strange as that they should have found maga- 
zines, reviews and pamphleteers to support them. My 
declared resolution never to defend myself certainly en- 
couraged them to go on. Yet how thankful am 1 that 
1 kept that resolution ! though the grief and astonish- 
ment excited by this combination nearly cost me my 
life." 

An entry in a private diary seen by no 
eyes but iiers until after hier deatli, records 
of August 13, 1798 : 

' ' After two days' severe headache, fell down in a 
violent fit — dashed my face against the wall, and lay 
long, seemingly dead — much bruised and disfigured. 
Have lain by above a fortnight, almost useless from 
violent pains in my head and loss of sleep. 1 have lost 



Female Education 189 

all the time from my book, and have redeemed too 
little of it by serious thought. Oh ! for that happy 
state where is neither sorrow nor crying ! " 

The heroic soul was sorely bestead ; the 
silver cord tense to breaking. With affec- 
tionate violence Mr. Wilberforce interfered 
to prevent an utter wreck, and took her 
away with himself and his wife to Bath, 
despite Hannah's protest against "leaving 
poor Patty to work double tides." 

Returning from the much-needed vaca- 
tion after two months' absence, she fell to 
work, although still far from well, upon 
the interrupted "book." It appeared early 
in 1 799 under the title. Strictures on Female 
Education. It was warmly, if not raptur- 
ously, received by those whose opinions she 
valued most highly, and met with many 
amusing comments in the higher walks of 
life where dwelt those for whose edifica- 
tion it was written. Much of it, as Miss 
Yonge observes, amusedly, is as applicable 
to the schoolgirl of to-day as to that of the 
eighteenth century, notably the chapters 
upon exaggerated language and upon 
"Baby Balls." 

The modern publisher would rate as " a 
first-class ad." for the work, that Peter 



190 Hannah More 

Pindar took exception to her reference to 
the harm done the youthful mind by unex- 
purgated editions of the poets, and that the 
Bishop of London stigmatised Peter Pindar's 
attack upon his friend Miss More, as "a 
piece of gross and coarse ribaldry, rancour 
and profaneness." The Anti-Jacobin Re- 
view also forwarded the sales of the book by 
descrying revolutionary tendencies in cer- 
tain portions, and an archdeacon criticised 
three chapters as decidedly too Calvinistic 
for a Churchwoman's writing. 

As Hannah had said, years before, "It 
is such an inconvenience to belong to no 
party, and so discreditable is moderation ! " 

Emboldened by her consistent adherence 
to her principle of non-combativeness, rich 
and ignorant farmers, superstitious hinds, 
led by more cunning rogues, Socinian 
schismatics, godless and pugnacious cur- 
ates, led on the opposition to one system of 
charities established by her, known as the 
Blagden schools, until, by the advice of 
the aged, and hence timid, Bishop of Bath 
and Wells (Dr. Moss), the mission at Blag- 
den was given up. Miss — or as she was 
called after she passed her fiftieth birth- 
day, " Mrs." — More wrote a letter of twenty 



Appeal to Bishop 191 

pages to Dr. Beadon, the successor of Dr. 
Moss, which is one of the most able pro- 
ductions ever submitted to ecclesiastical 
powers that be. In clearness and force of 
style, in graphic statement of the simple 
facts in the vexed case, and in eloquent 
vindication of the motives and conduct 
of her coadjutors, first, herself, last, — 
it rises to the dignity of a state docu- 
ment. Such feeling as throbs beneath the 
studied moderation of every sentence never 
informed a state paper. A perusal of it — 
and there is not one dull paragraph in the 
whole — helps us to understand the tre- 
mendous effect produced by her treatise on 
the Manners of the Great and by The 
Estimate. 

We are left in no doubt as to the influ- 
ence of her epistle upon Bishop Beadon. 

"I wanted no declaration, or evidence, of either 
your faith or your patriotism," he avers, "more than 
what may be derived from your numerous and avowed 
publications, and I can only say that if you are not a 
sincere and zealous friend to the Constitutional Estab- 
lishment, both in Church and State, you are one of the 
greatest hypocrites, as well as one of the best writers in 
his Majesty's dominions." 

He closes his lettei by assuring her of 
his desire that her 



192 Hannah More 

"remaining schools" should be maintained, "and as 
long as they continue to be under the inspection and 
guidance of yourself and the several parochial ministers 
where they are established, you may assure yourself 
they will have my protection and every encouragement 
I can give them." 

Nevertheless, the persecution for right- 
eousness' sake went on. The Bishop's let- 
ter was written in 1801, and a few months 
later in the same year, the farmers at Wed- 
more, a " peculiar parish," where there was 
no resident clergyman, and over which the 
Bishop thought he had no jurisdiction, is- 
sued a formal writ against the Misses More 
"for teaching the poor without a license." 

"In Blagden" — Mrs. More writes — "is 
still 'a voice heard, lamentation and mourn- 
ing,' and at Cowslip Green Rachel is still 
' weeping for her children, and refuses to 
be comforted because they are not ' in- 
structed. This heavy blow has almost 
bowed me to the ground." 

It is a comfort to us to learn that the 
Bishop of London continued to be her leal 
supporter and exerted all his influence to 
shield and sustain her ; that Bishop Bar- 
rington of Durham espoused her cause 
manfully; that the good and great Robert 
Cecil wrote long letters full of sympathy 



More Scandals 193 

and brotherly counsel, and that articles 
were published in her defence by nine 
prominent clergymen. 

Yet the air was thick with scandals of 
the vilest import set on foot by anti-Jaco- 
bin pamphleteers, and caught up and mul- 
tiplied by lewd fellows of the baser sort 
in pot-house and slums. In her letter to 
Pepys, Mrs. More enumerated several 
which she considered most preposterous. 
She speaks to Mr. Wilberforce of one which 
must have annoyed her by its extreme 
absurdity and by the very nature of the 
calumny directed against a woman of 
threescore. A scurrilous pamphlet, circu- 
lated and laughed over in her own county, 
affirmed that she was encouraging and re- 
ceiving three lovers at once, an actor and 
two officers in the Royal army ! 

The one phrase that betokens how such 
darts had rusted into and inflamed her soul 
attributes the persecution " in great part to 
the defenceless state of her sex." 

In the course of time the waves foamed 
out their own shame upon ears that had 
grown weary with listening, but the tem- 
pest had lasted long enough to exhaust the 
innocent object of its fury. 



194 Hannah More 

In answer to a pressing invitation from a 
London friend in 1802 to seek refuge with 
thie faithful band whose love had never 
grown cold, and who were prepared to 
welcome her with all the old-time warmth, 
Mrs. More replies : 

" Battered, hacked, scalped and tomahawked as I 
have been for three years, and continue to be, brought 
out every month as an object of scorn and abhorrence, 
I seem to have nothing to do in the world. . . . 
From long habit it will seem odd, after never having 
once omitted going to London for thirty years, to dis- 
continue it, but I think I am right. 1 have, in that long 
period, been spoiled for ordinary society, but 1 am not as 
nice as I used to be." 

This is the one touch of morbidness we 
find in all her voluminous correspondence, 
and her friends, especially her devoted sis- 
ters, set themselves zealously to work to 
dispel the rising cloud. A most opportune 
diversion was brought about in the form 
of a proposition to give up the summer 
cottage at Cowslip Green, also the house 
at Bath, and to build upon a piece of 
ground the five sisters owned in Wring- 
ton a home sufficiently commodious to 
hold them all, where they might live the 
year round. 



The Princess Charlotte 195 

Thus began the residence at Barley Wood, 
a name associated with that of Hannah 
More the world over. She rallied bodily 
powers and cheerfulness in the congenial 
task of building, furnishing, and landscape 
gardening, but full restoration of the nor- 
mal tone of nerves and spirit was gradual. 
In 1804, she regrets that her "nerves are 
far from being sufficiently strong " to allow 
her to write. 

" I have acquired such a dislike to it that I hesitate 
and procrastinate for days even when I have nothing but 
a common letter to write. 1 used to defy mere pain 
and sickness, and found little difference when anything 
was to be written, whether I was ill or well, but the 
late disorders of my body have introduced new disor- 
ders into my mind — listlessness and inapplication (two 
words of which before 1 hardly knew the meaning)." 

it was, therefore, a signal victory over 
physical and mental " disorders " when she 
again put pen to paper. In response to the 
earnest request of the Queen, conveyed 
through an "eminent dignitary of the 
Church," she wrote (1805) Hints towards 
Forming the Character of a Yonng Prin- 
cess. The baby Princess Charlotte of 
Wales was the heiress-apparent to the 
throne, an engaging little being whom 



196 Hannah More 

kindred and courtiers conspired to spoil. 
Mrs. More iiad once (in 1799) passed the 
morning with her at Carlton House, and 
described her to her sisters, as 

" the most sensible and genteel little creature you could 
wish to see. Her understanding is so forward that they 
really might begin to teach her many things. It is, per- 
haps, the highest praise, after all, to say that she is 
exactly like the child of a private gentleman ; wild and 
natural, but sensible, lively and civil." 

The reminiscence doubtless had some in- 
fluence in moving her to obedience to 
what from Royalty had the form of a com- 
mand. Her one stipulation was that the 
book should appear without her name, and 
she tactfully and deferentially dedicated it 
to Dr. Fisher, then Bishop of Exeter, after- 
ward of Salisbury, who had been lately ap- 
pointed as preceptor to the Princess. Mrs. 
More had hesitated, as she gave the Bishop 
to understand, to complete her half-finished 
work after this appointment was made, 
for fear that "it might be deemed intrusive 
and superfluous to interfere in a vocation 
which had now been authoritatively con- 
fided to a learned and able man." 

The Bishop thanked her in a letter ad- 
dressed to one he supposed to be of his 



Severe Illness 197 

own sex, and, when undeceived by the 
public verdict upon the internal evidence of 
the treatise, expressed himself as honoured 
by the opportunity of making the acquaint- 
ance of an author he had long admired and 
esteemed. The Queen graciously bestowed 
upon the Hints her " warm commenda- 
tions." The author begged Lady Walde- 
grave to " say with truth in speaking of it, 
that 'though written for royalty, it was 
meant to be useful to all young persons of 
rank and liberal education." 

Miss Yonge says with shrewd humour : 

"On the whole it maybe feared that these Hints 
proved about as useful to poor Princess Charlotte as 
Bossuet's work, In usitni Delphini, to the Grand Dau- 
phin. But the loyal Hannah remained in happy ignor- 
ance of how father, mother and grandmother contended 
over the high-spirited girl who, meanwhile, under Lady 
Albemarle's easy rule, laughed at Bishop Fisher, and 
ran wild with George Keppel." 

From 1806 to 1808, loyal Hannah's im- 
mediate personal interests were confined 
to the space enclosed by the four walls of 
her sick-room. In returning from one of 
her schools on a stormy day, she took cold, 
and a pleuritic fever supervened upon the 
first symptoms. For many months this 



198 Hannah More 

kept an intermittent form, baffling the phy- 
sicians and reducing the patient to such 
weakness that her sisters for a while de- 
spaired of her recovery. During all this 
time the work so dear to her heart was 
carried on, to the best of her ability, by the 
devoted Patty ; the memory of the founder 
was cherished in the schools, and the cot- 
tagers within an area of twenty miles about 
Cowslip Green and Barley Wood talked 
of and prayed for their suffering bene- 
factress. 

It was a notable and joyous event when 
she made her first appearance in public 
after her illness — convalescent, if not cured 
— at the twentieth anniversary of the 
foundation of the Cheddar schools, the 
most flourishing in the system she had 
established. By 1809, she was enjoying 
her usual health, — reading and comment- 
ing upon The Lay of the Last Minstrel and 
Corinne, interested in two learned works, 
sent to her by the authors, both of whom 
were Bristol clergymen, and in the full 
flood of correspondence with Sir W. W. 
Pepys, Wilberforce, Mrs. Kennicott, and 
others of the old circle of intimates. A sad 
break in this was made by the death of Dr. 



Death of Dr. Porteus 199 

Porteus, the Bishop of London, in the 
seventy-eighth year of his age. He had 
paid a visit to Barley Wood earlier in the 
spring, and, although feeling the infirmity 
of his years, was happy and companionable 
in the society of his much-loved friend. 

His last public service, as Mrs. Kennicott 
wrote to Mrs. More, was to wait upon the 
Prince Regent with a petition that he 
would alter the date set for the meeting of 
a club established under the patronage of 
His Royal Highness. It was to be held on 
Sunday, and the venerable prelate, " with 
agitated earnestness, conjured him to fix 
on some other day. . . . The Prince 
received him most graciously, seemed 
much affected, and granted his request." 

" 1 honour him more for this difficult exertion of piety 
than for a hundred acts of charity," observes Hannah. 
" They were a gratification to his nature, but this was a 
triumph over his naturally timid and modest nature. 
. . . Full of days, of honours, and of virtues, his 
death was without a pang, and he may literally be said 
to have fallen asleep." 

Among her most carefully preserved pa- 
pers was a note of two lines, the last he 
ever wrote to her. He had, a few days 
earlier, asked her prayers "in a time of 



200 Hannah More 

much difficulty and distress," the nature 
of which he did not define. 

The second note ran : 

"My dear Mrs. More : 

" Prayer has had its usual effect, and all 
is now perfectly right." 

After his death, Mrs. More knew that the 
"difficulty and distress" were in anticipa- 
tion of his delicate mission to the Prince of 
Wales. He left her a legacy of one hun- 
dred pounds. In conformity with a senti- 
mental fashion of her times, she erected in 
a copse upon the Barley Wood grounds an 
urn, inscribed : 

"7o Beilby Porte us, late Lord Bishop 
of London, in memory of long and faitJtful 
friendship. 




CHAPTER XV 

" CCELEBS IN SEARCH OF A WIFE " — MACAULAY'S 
BOYHOOD — INTIMACY WITH HANNAH MORE 
— "PRACTICAL piety" — DEATH OF MARY 
MORE — FETE AT BARLEY WOOD — DEATHS OF 
ELIZABETH AND SALLY MORE — VISITORS TO 
BARLEY WOOD — THE HOUSE LEFT DESOLATE 



HANNAH MORE'S only novel, Coelehs 
in Search of a Wife, in two octavo 
volumes, was published in December, 1809, 
without the author's name. 

The plot is slender and the motif trite, 
but the Story took amazingly with evan- 
gelical people who had scruples as to read- 
ing the average romance of the day. Miss 
Yonge covers this ground when she tells 
us : 

" To those more seriously disposed per- 
sons who barely tolerated fiction of any 
sort, Coelehs, with its really able sketches 



202 Hannah More 

of character and epigrammatic turns, was 
genuinely entertaining and delightful." 

Pious mothers put it into their daughters' 
hands and pressed the perusal of it upon 
their sons. Sydney Smith scarified it in 
the Edinburgh Review, making the prig- 
gish hero and the impeccable heroine the 
jest of polite circles. Another reviewer 
took the novel in deadly seriousness. Rich- 
ard Cumberland was a playwright of some 
note, the author of a comedy, The West 
Indian, an heroic drama, The Battle of 
Hastings, and a poem, Calvary, or the Death 
of Christ, in eight books. He fell upon 
Coelebs with violence disproportionate to 
the cause ; talked of the author's " suckling 
babes of grace," and declared the volumes 
to be no better than a " decoction of hell- 
broth " ; warned the clergy against a book 
which was designed to subvert churchly 
ordinances, since "deepest mischiefs lurked 
in every page of Ccelebs, and as the book 
was already in many hands, he felt it his 
duty to say '" Caveat emptor / " 

"Alas for poor human nature," writes 
Hannah, "that he has not forgiven, at the 
end of thirty years, that in my gay and 
youthful days a tragedy of mine [Percy] 



'' Coelebs in Search of a Wife " 203 

was preferred to one of his" — The Battle 
of Hastings — " which, perhaps, better de- 
served success." 

The Roman Catholic Vicar-General of 
England took exception to certain strictures 
upon "Popish observances," and wrote to 
the anonymous author on the subject, 
courteously but earnestly. Hannah replied 
with equal courtesy, defending her position, 
but expressing her esteem for many writers 
and preachers of his communion, notably 
Bossuet, Massillon, Bourdaloue, Francis de 
Sales, and Pascal. 

"1 am too zealous in my own faith," 
she says, "not to admire zeal in the oppos- 
ite party." 

In spite of adverse criticism — perhaps 
partly because of it — the book ran through 
twelve editions in as many months in Eng- 
land, and had a still livelier sale in America. 
Thirty American editions appeared during 
the author's lifetime. A new edition would 
now be a curiosity. The profits of the 
English editions to Mrs. More, within a 
year after the day of publication, were two 
thousand pounds. 

Ccelebs is interesting to us, chiefly on 
account of its connection with Thomas 



204 Hannah More 

Babington Macaulay, who, with his sister, 
was supposed to have furnished the models 
of the Stanley children. Macaulay's mother 
was a former and favourite pupil of the 
More sisters in Bristol, and her friendship 
with them was continued after her marriage 
to Zachary Macaulay, the eminent philan- 
thropist and close friend of William Wil- 
berforce. Mr. Wilberforce introduced Mr. 
Macaulay to the Barley Wood household, 
in which Miss Mills — his future wife — 
was a visitor. A mutual attachment and 
betrothal followed. The Macaulays lived 
at Clapham, and Hannah More's first meet- 
ing with Thomas was during the last win- 
ter she passed in London. Calling upon 
Mrs. Macaulay, she was received by a 
quaint four-year-old boy, who regretted 
that his mother was not at home, — 

" But if you will be so good as to come 
in and sit down, I will give you a glass of 
fine old spirits." 

When his mother asked him afterwards 
why he had made such an offer to a lady, 
he answered that Robinson Crusoe always 
drank old spirits, and he supposed it was 
the right thing to do. 

From that day Hannah More took him 



Macaulay's Boyhood 205 

into peculiar favour, keeping liim with her 
for weeks together, hearing him "read 
prose by the ell, and declaim poetry by the 
hour," discussing heroes admired by them 
both — "ancient, modern, and fictitious," — 
reading the Bible aloud to him, and argu- 
ing theological points raised by him while 
the reading went on. They worked to- 
gether in the garden, and studied botany 
there ; the hostess gave him cooking les- 
sons to wile him from too close application 
to his books, and hearkened indulgently to 
his literary projects, already many and am- 
bitious. How heartily she entered into the 
pursuits and dreams of a childhood which 
recalled her own, we gather from her let- 
ters to her grave-eyed baby knight. 

"'Though you are a little boy now, you 
will, one day, if it please God, be a man, 
but long before you are a man I hope you 
will be a scholar," she wrote when he was 
six years old. 

And at seven he had these suggestions : 

" 1 think we have nearly exhausted the Epics. What 
say you to a little good prose, — Johnson's Hebrides, or 
IValton's Lives, — unless you would like a neat edition 
of Cowper's Poems or Paradise Lost, for your own eat- 
ing? I want you to become a complete Frenchman, 



2o6 Hannah More 

that I may give you the works of Racine, the only dra- 
matic poet I know in any language that is perfectly pure 
and good." 

This is entirely in keeping with the prim 
declaration of " Lucilla's " little sister who, 
upon her seventh birthday, gives up "all 
her gift books with pictures," and upon 
her eighth, her "little story-books." 

"Now," — she announces, "1 am going 
to read such books as men and women 
read." 

We read it with a shuddering laugh — but 
a Hannah More and a Macaulay were re- 
spectable products of a system of education 
that allowed a child to browse at will in a 
well-chosen library of ' ' men's and women's 
books." 

Practical Piety, published in 1811, bore 
Mrs. More's own name. Ten editions were 
called for within a few months. 

"My expectations from it were low," Hannah con- 
fesses to Sir W. W. Pepys. " It is nothing to the pub- 
lic that it was written in constant pain, and it is the 
worst of all apologies that it was done in such a hurry 
that it was very little longer in writing than in printing. 
But life is short. Mine is particularly uncertain, and I 
had persuaded myself that it was better to bring it out 
in a defective state than not at all." 



Death of Mary More 207 

Under the same solemn conviction tiiat 
her working days were (at sixty-eight) 
nearly over, she penned a sequel to Practi- 
cal Piety in 181 3, which she entitled Chris- 
tian Morals. The subject grew upon her 
as she wrote until the work extended to 
two volumes. She regarded these as her 
"last words," and in saying as much to 
Mrs. Kennicott, quotes Cato's 

" While yet I live, let nie not live in vain ! " 

Two years before, she had described to 
the same attached friend a visit she had 
paid to some friends near Bristol, where 
she had been "rubbing up some of the 
friendships " of her early youth. 

" I have been visiting, with a soothing sort of feeling, 
the scenes where we used to gypsey, and traced many a 
spot where I had picked dry sticks to boil the tea-kettle 
under a shady oak, or broiled mutton chops on knitting 
needles. 

" The companions of these harmless rambles are all 
dead, while our sickly family are all alive." 

The first of the five sisters to die was the 
eldest, Mary. Her declining strength had 
been the cause of sorrowful solicitude to 
the others for some months past. From 
her twentieth year she had taught in the 



2o8 Hannah More 

school she had founded, without the inter- 
mission of one term, until her retirement at 
the age of fifty-two. The residence at 
Barley Wood was not inaction. Her share 
in the charitable labours of Hannah and 
Patty was not inconsiderable, and she re- 
mained to the last the referee in all domes- 
tic and business matters, the strong staff 
and beautiful rod upon which the others 
leaned. 

Her end was as peaceful as her life had 
been benignant. Surrounded by those who 
loved her best, she breathed her last on 
Easter morning, April 20, 18 13. 

" I thought it something blessed to die on Easter 
Sunday — to descend to the grave on the day when 
Jesus triumphed over it," v^^rote Hannah to a friend. 
" I am dividing my morning between contemplation of 
her serene countenance and in reading my favourite 
Baxter's Saints^ Rest." 

In July Hannah made a farewell visit to 
several places endeared to her by memories 
of those who had gone, and by associations 
with former joys, — Strawberry Hill, Ken- 
sington Gore (the home of the Wilberforces), 
and Mrs. Garrick's residence at Hampton, 
being among these. She was on her way 
to the country-seat of a dear old friend, 



A Narrow Escape 209 

Lord Barham, when the news of his sudden 
death arrested her. Those were sad pil- 
grimages and the times were solemn. 
Hannah was far from well, Patty's health 
was becoming infirm, and the shadow of 
their recent loss rested upon heart and 
home. 

" Yet we are still, except in severe weather, able to 
attend our schools," records the heroic worker. " We 
keep up about seven hundred children, besides receiving 
the parents who attend in the evening. Our teachers 
were mostly bred up by ourselves, so that our plans 
are pretty well maintained." 

She was busy with an Essay on the Char- 
acter and Practical Writings of Saint Paul, 
and writing an additional scene for her 
sacred drama of Moses, when an accident 
nearly cost her her life. Her shawl caught 
fire as she was passing the grate, and before 
she could give the alarm she was apparently 
wrapped in flames. The presence of mind 
of Miss Roberts, a visitor, who threw Han- 
nah upon the carpet as if she had been an 
infant, and with her bare hands tore off the 
blazing garments, saved her from a horrible 
death. 

The Essay on Saint Paul was published 
in 1815 — when the author entered her 



210 Hannah More 

seventy-first year. " The night cometh ! " 
was her watchword from month to month, 
and day to day. She must work while her 
waning day lasted. A short but alarming 
visitation of ophthalmia, which kept her in a 
dark room and idle, so far as eyes and hands 
went, was accepted as an additional warn- 
ing of the brevity of life and the fewness of 
her remaining opportunities of active use- 
fulness. 

Yet in 1816, we see her the principal 
figure in a gathering in the beautiful 
grounds of Barley Wood to celebrate the 
formation of a branch Bible Society in the 
parish of Wrington. Nearly forty clergy- 
men were present at the religious exercises, 
which were held in a waggon-yard, as the 
only place in the neighbourhood which 
would hold the convocation of people of 
all classes. 

"So," says Hannah, complacently to Mr. 
Wilberforce, " the Archdeacon cannot plant 
us in his ' hot-bed of heresy and schism.' " 

One hundred and one dined at Barley 
Wood, and about one hundred and sixty 
took tea within the hospitable doors and 
under the trees on the lawn, the day being 
remarkably fine. 



Deaths of Elizabeth and Sally 21 1 

" It had all the gayety of a public garden," continued 
Hannah, and excuses the expense (twenty pounds) by 
representing that "many young persons of fortune 
present, by assisting at this little festivity, will learn to 
connect the idea of innocent cheerfulness with that of 
religious societies, and may 'go and do likewise.' For 
no other cause on earth would we encounter the 
fatigue." 

Not one of the quartette could afTord to 
take risks in the matter of health that sum- 
mer. Elizabeth, the eldest of the band, 
was partially paralysed and bedridden. In 
June, mortification in one leg, probably the 
result of an embolism, ensued, and she lay 
without the power to articulate or to swal- 
low, partially unconscious of the agonis- 
ing queries of her affectionate nurses, until 
death released her from her sufferings. 
She had been the housekeeper in Bristol, in 
Bath, and, latterly, at Barley Wood, and 
her loss was felt the more keenly because 
her tender heart had responded so readily 
to the bodily needs detected by her quick 
eye and womanly intuition, that those to 
whom she ministered were never fully 
aware how much she had done, and how 
well, until the place that once knew her 
was for ever vacant. She was sadly needed 
just then. Sally was ill with a distressing 



212 Hannah More 

dropsical affection, the lively Patty, Han- 
nah's right-hand woman, had a disease of 
the liver, "the reigning feature of which 
was a determination of blood to the head," 
especially alarming because hereditary, and 
when Elizabeth died, Hannah was feebly 
convalescent from bilious fever. 

" I have carried too much sail," she says in what she 
apologises for as " the annals of a hospital." " My life, 
upon the whole, must be reckoned as an uncommonly 
prosperous and happy one. 1 have been blessed with 
more friends of a superior cast than have often fallen to 
the lot of so humble an individual. Nothing but the 
grace of God, and frequent attacks through life of very 
severe illness, could have kept me in tolerable order. If 
I am no better than I am with all these visitations, what 
should I have been without them ? 1 have never yet 
felt a blow of which I did not perceive the indispensable 
necessity." 

The stuff of which her faith was made 
was tried, as in a furnace heated seven 
times, in the spring of the next year (1817). 
Sally — the eldest of the three survivors — 
was laid upon a bed of such anguish that 
the surgeon who attended her often left the 
room in tears, and all Hannah's Christian 
heroism was required to hold her fast to 
her post of duty. For four months the or- 
deal continued, — intensest bodily pain and 



Deaths of Elizabeth and Sally 2 1 3 

serenest inward peace on the part of the 
invalid, and a sorrowful looking forward to 
the certain end with the devoted sisters. 

" Poor Sally ! you are in dreadful pain ! " 
said one of them, when a sharp paroxysm 
caused her to change countenance. 

"I am, indeed, but all is well," was the 
reply, to be repeated again and again, like 
the refrain of a blessed song in the racked 
house of a pilgrimage which was nearing 
the end. 

" I know everybody, and remember 
everything," she answered when asked if 
she recognised a visitor to the chamber 
where she lay dying. 

When Hannah inquired, "Have you com- 
fort in your mind ? " the response was made 
smilingly : 

" I have no w//comfort at all ! " 

A few days before her death, the doctor 
bade her "Good-morning," as he entered. 
She lifted her clasped hands in holy trans- 
port : 

"Oh, for the glorious morning of the 
Resurrection ! But there are some grey 
clouds between." 

They parted suddenly as she awoke out 
of a quiet sleep on the following morning, 



214 Hannah More 

and looking up, as the martyr Stephen 
gazed heavenward in dying, she cried out 
in a clear, full voice : 

"Blessing, and honour, and glory, and 
power be unto the Lamb ! Hallelujah ! " 
Her last words were — " Blessed Jesus ! " 
Hannah and Patty drew yet more closely 
together after Sally's translation, "work- 
ing cheerfully together," we are told, as 
befitted those who felt the time remaining 
for earthly labours to be all too short. As 
the others had passed away in the order of 
their ages, Hannah conceived the idea that 
her turn would come next. She wrought 
upon each day's task in the abiding thought 
that the call might come at cockcrowing, 
or at midnight on the morrow. Revision 
of eighteen volumes of her published works, 
in preparation for new editions, took up 
much time. Coelebs was in the fifteenth. 
Practical Piety in the eleventh, edition. 
Coelebs had been translated into French, 
several of the Cheap Repository Tracts into 
Russian, Distinguished travellers, calling 
at Barley Wood, told of seeing her books 
in Sweden, and even in Iceland ; the Essay 
on Saint Paul and several of the Sacred 
Dramas were translated by missionaries 



Visitors to Barley Wood 215 

into the Cingalese and Tamil languages. 
The author gave audience in her modest 
mansion to the titled and the great from all 
quarters of the globe. 

"Hannah is still herself," writes Bishop 
Jebb of a visit paid to Barley Wood in 
June, 1818. " She took me for a drive to 
Brockley Combe, in the course of which 
her anecdotes, her wit, her powers of 
criticism, and her admirable talent of re- 
citation, had ample scope." 

In another part of the letter he says of 
Patty : 

" This interesting woman is suiTering with exemplary 
patience the most excruciating pain. Not a murmur 
escapes her, 'though, at night, especially, groans and 
cries are inevitably extorted, and the moment after the 
paroxysm, she is ready to resume with full interest and 
animation whatever may have been the subject of 
conversation." 

In September, 1819, the sisters had a 
week's visit from Mr. and Mrs. Wilber- 
force. Patty seemed so well that, when 
Hannah was taken ill on the fourth day of 
their guests' sojourn with her, she had no 
uneasiness as to her sister's ability to attend 
them in their walks and drives, and to 
entertain them when at home. At eleven 



2i6 Hannah More 

o'clock on the last night of the visit, Patty 
went to Hannah's bedside with the cheery 
announcement — "They have all gone to 
bed, and our Wilberforce and I have had a 
nice hour's chat." 

There is a delicate touch of nature and 
of pathos in Mr. Wilberforce's mention of 
the subject of the " nice " talk. 

" Patty sat up with me till near twelve, talking over 
Hannah's first introduction to a London life, and 1, not 
she, broke off the conference. I never saw her more 
animated. About eight in the morning when 1 came 
out of my room 1 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." 

In less than a week the true, loving heart, 
faithful unto death, was stilled for all time. 

"We had worked thirty-two years together," said 
the bereaved woman, now in the seventy-fifth year of 
her age. ' ' I may now, indeed, say, ' My house is left 
unto me desolate.' I have lost my chief earthly com- 
fort, companion, counsellor, and fellow-labourer. My 
loss is little compared with her gain, and the remainder 
of my pilgrimage will be short." 




CHAPTER XVI 

" THE QUEEN OF BARLEY WOOD " — LAST BOOK 
WRITTEN — CHILD VISITORS — PERSONAL AP- 
PEARANCE AT EIGHTY — THE STIRRED NEST — 
REMOVAL TO CLIFTON — FALLING ASLEEP 

HANNAH MORE'S correspondence was 
always voluminous. It awakens 
melancholy reflections upon the uncertainty 
of life and the changes which come to the 
most stable of human friendships, when we 
note the abridged list of those to whom 
she had written regularly and freely in the 
prime of her womanhood. 

Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs. 
Vesey, Mrs. Carter ; Johnson, Garrick, 
Walpole, — had passed from earth long ago. 
The diary-letters to the sisters were closed 
by Patty's death. In 1821, Mrs. Garrick 
died in her hundredth year. Pepys and 
Wilberforce were all that were left of the 
217 



2i8 Hannah More 

matchless coterie which gave lustre to the 
social history of the latter part of the eight- 
eenth century. It is grand to see the wo- 
man who had outlived the contemporaries 
of youth and middle age arising from the 
bed physicians and friends thought for 
many weeks of 1821-22 would be the bed 
of death, and buckling on her armour for 
active service in God's church and His 
world. 

"There is hardly a city in America in 
which 1 have not a correspondent on mat- 
ters concerning religion, morals, or litera- 
ture," she told Sir W. W. Pepys. 

She corresponded with the Royal Society 
of Literature upon such subjects as The Age, 
Wrilings, and Genius of Homer ; wrote a 
masterly critique upon Madame Necker's 
Life of Madame de Stael ; read and com- 
mented upon the sermons of Magee and 
Dean Milner, and upon the next page re- 
viewed Scott and Byron ; was actively in- 
terested in the University in the Ionian 
Islands, projected by Lord Guilford ; and 
exerted her "feeble voice" to prevail upon 
her few parliamentary friends "to steer the 
middle way between the Scylla of brutal 
ignorance and the Charybdis of a literary 



Last Book Written 219 

education," declaring the one to be "cruel, 
the other, preposterous." 

In this connection I may state her con- 
viction that " though, perhaps ten out of a 
hundred children (of the peasant classes) 
might have abilities worth cultivation, the 
other ninety w^ere better with no know- 
ledge save of their Bible and Catechism." 

In 1824, when she was seventy-nine, she 
wrote and published her last book. The 
Spirit of Prayer. Pepys says of it : 

"There is such an animated spirit of piety running 
through the whole of it, that not to have greatly relished 
it would have impeached one's taste, even more than 
one's principles. Mrs. Montagu and I used always to 
agree that you had more wit in your serious writings 
than other people had when they meant to be profess- 
edly witty. . . . As to this last treatise, 1 hope to 
have it always upon my table, and to read it over and 
over again as long as 1 wish to cherish the spirit of piety, 
which 1 pray to God may be as long as I live." 

In June of this same year Hannah More 
was called upon to mourn the death of this 
noble gentleman. 

" 1 believe he was the last of that select society in 
which for a long series of years we passed so many 
agreeable evenings together," writes the woman of 
eighty to the widow of her late friend. " I told him, 



220 Hannah More 

not long since, that he and 1 were the leavings of 
Pharsalia. 

" Death has lately thinned the ranks of my friends. 
Among the more distinguished were the late Bishop of 
Salisbury and the Dean of Canterbury. 1 lately reck- 
oned up thirty physicians who had attended me in 
numberless successive illnesses — all taken ! 1 left ! 

" Though my health is better than usual, yet at my 
time of life, I feel on the verge of Eternity. An awful, 
but not a fearful, anticipation." 

Yet the "Queen of Barley Wood," as 
she was styled affectionately by her friends, 
held almost regal court in the "little do- 
main where every tree was planted by her 
own hand or under her directions." From 
a description of the place in a private letter 
written by one of her visitors, we learn that 

"athickhedgeof roses, jessamine, woodbine and clema- 
tis fringed the smooth and sloping lawn on one side ; 
on the other, laurel and laurestinus were in full and 
beautiful verdure. From the shrubbery the ground 
ascends, and is well wooded by flowing larch, dark 
cypress, spreading chestnut and some hardy forest trees. 
Amid this melange, rustic seats and temples occasionally 
peep forth, and two monuments are especially conspic- 
uous — the one to the memory of Porteous, the other to 
the memory of Locke." 

Miss Frowd, the amiable and sympathetic 
companion of the otherwise solitary mistress 



Personal Appearance at Eighty 221 

of the home, computed that the number 
of calls averaged eighty per week. Mrs. 
More "knew not how to help it." She 
saw the older guests out of respect ; the 
young, in the hope of doing them good ; 
those from a distance, because they had 
come so far to see her ; her neighbours, to 
hinder them from feeling jealous of the at- 
tention she paid to strangers. From twelve 
o'clock until three each day a constant 
stream of carriages and pedestrians filled 
the evergreen - bordered avenue leading 
from the Wrington village road. Rowland 
Hill, whom Mrs. More calls "an extraordi- 
nary being," spent a morning with her, 
proving to be "extremely well-bred, in 
spite of his irregular clerical perform- 
ances," and "talking of everybody from 
John Bunyan to John Locke." Mrs. More 
chronicles admiringly that he had vaccin- 
ated "very near eight thousand poor peo- 
ple with his own hand." Ecclesiastics by 
the score, statesmen by the dozen, and 
numberless people of rank from England, 
Canada, and the Continent paid their re- 
spects to the wonderful old lady. 

" You would be surprised to see the number of su- 
perior Americans who visit me," she writes. " They 



222 Hannah More 

are a very improving people. Tliey are running the 
race of glory witli us. I hope they will make us quicken 
our pace. 

" I had lately a visit from the principal bookseller of 
New York, who told me he had sold thirty thousand 
copies of Ctrlebs, and he added that it did more good 
there than my decidedly religious writings, because it 
was read universally by worldly people who might 
shrink from some of the others." 

The large number of children who were 
brought to see her was a source of especial 
gratification. 

" They say your sex is naturally capri- 
cious," she said playfully to a boy of six as 
he took his leave. " There! 1 will give you 
another kiss. Keep it for my sake, and when 
you are a man remember Hannah More." 

"I will," he said, " remember that you 
loved children." 

The Rev. T. B. Knight — formerly of 
Wrington, now of Bristol and President of 
the "Hannah More Society," an organisa- 
tion having as its object the intelligent pre- 
servation of everything pertaining to the life 
and labours of this great and good woman 
— has in his possession an autograph letter 
from Mr. Gladstone written to Mr. Knight 
relative to a visit he paid to Barley Wood 
as a child. 



Personal Appearance at Eighty 223 

By the courtesy of Mr. Knight I herewith 
give a verbatim copy of the note : 

" Dear Sir : 

In the spring of 1815 I think it was, — certainly not 
later, that my mother took me to see Mrs. Hannah More 
at Barley Wood, when she presented me personally 
with a small copy of her Sacred Dranms, which 1 still 

possess. 

Your very faithful 

W. E. Gladstone. 

Jul. 20. 'qo." 

In 1826, when she was eighty-one, Han- 
nah More wrote a long and earnest letter 
to "an awakened Infidel," urging upon 
him the importance of "Repentance to- 
wards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ." Rowland Hill himself could not 
have made a more direct and powerful ap- 
peal. Although for eight years she had 
been confined, except in very fine summer 
weather, to a suite of two rooms on the 
first floor of her house, she took lively in- 
terest in the adornment of the grounds 
visible from her windows, superintending 
the setting out of plantations of young 
trees and the opening of new walks. Her 
knitting- work was a great solace when she 
was too weary to write letters. She knit 



224 Hannah More 

stockings for her friends, socks, garters, 
and muffatees, for "the Jews' basket," and 
charity bazaars. 

"These, by the lady customers' giving 
five times more than they are worth, bring, 
in the year, no contemptible sum," is a 
passage in a letter to a titled friend. 

The private letter from which quotation 
was made awhile ago treats us to a sketch 
of the Hannah More of this date which 
brings her vividly before our eyes : 

" There was something of courtliness about h;r man- 
ner, — the courtliness of the vielle coiir, 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" (eighty-odd?) "and imagine also — 
shaded, but not obscured, by long, perfectly white 
eyelashes — eyes, dark, brilliant, flashing and penetrat- 
ing, sparkling from object to object with all the fire and 
energy of youth, and sending welcome all around. . . . 
The spirit within was as warm and cheerful as if the 
blood of eighteen, instead of eighty, coursed in her 
veins." 

The placid beauty of the long evening of 
her well-spent life was disturbed, the nest 



The Stirred Nest 225 

in which she had hoped to die was broken 
up by a cause so ignoble one has hardly 
patience to tell the pitiful story. 

Her sisters had been her housekeepers, 
and when the death of the youngest, the 
willing, efficient Patty, threw the care of the 
establishment, including the management 
of servants, upon Hannah, she was too old 
and infirm to learn new lessons. With 
generous confidence in the fidelity of do- 
mestics taken from the parish for whose 
poor she had toiled so long and at such cost 
to herself, she committed everything to 
them,— marketing, cookery, and running 
expenses, with the care of house and 
grounds. 

"To bestow confidence where experi- 
ence should awaken suspicion and inspire 
caution, is to sleep on duty," says her bio- 
grapher, candidly. He might have added, 
*'and to invite dishonesty." 

When the house-bills were inordinately 
large, cook and parlour-maid had only to 
plead the needs of the parish poor, to whom 
the kitchen doors were ever open, to lull 
the mistress's misgivings, and even win 
her approbation. "The poor ye have 
always with you," was a text that implied 



226 Hannah More 

the Christian duty of giving without 
ceasing. 

The waste and thievery at Barley Wood 
were matters of serious concern to her 
friends and a parish scandal for months be- 
fore the victim of ingratitude and peculation 
would listen to a syllable of accusation 
against those she " knew she could trust." 
For three years the expenditures of the 
household exceeded her abundant income 
by three hundred pounds annually, and in 
1828 she awoke with a thrill of shame and 
horror to the truth that other and grosser 
evils than waste and indolence had resulted 
from her imprudent confidence. "Dis- 
honest and vicious servants were making 
her appear to tolerate sins she had testified 
against through life." 

The old energy of spirit and will asserted 
itself. She made quick work of a change 
that was like tearing up affections and 
memories by the roots. The vile creatures 
of her bounty were dismissed summarily, 
and she left her home for a house on Wind- 
sor Terrace, in Clifton, now a part of Bristol. 

Several gentlemen from the neighbour- 
hood, apprehensive of riotous demonstra- 
tions from the disgraced servants and their 



Removal to Clifton 227 

friends, who had shared in the benefits of 
their thieving, awaited without to escort 
the carriage which camo to take her away- 
one cold morning early in the year. When 
dressed for the journey, Mrs. More walked 
slowly, leaning upon her companion's arm, 
through the rooms filled with mementos 
of days that were no more, pausing before 
each portrait to look a loving farewell. As 
she was assisted into the coach by the rev- 
erent bodyguard, she cast one lingering 
glance upon house and gardens : 

"I am driven, like Eve, out of Paradise, 
but not, like Eve, by angels." 

If there were bitterness in the ejaculation, 
it was short-lived. By the time she was 
settled in her new quarters she could say, 
calmly, if sadly, to those who inveighed 
against the ingrates : 

"It is their sinfulness towards God that 
formed the melancholy part of the case." 

Then she dismissed "the case" and 
made the brightest best of what was left to 
her. A Sketch of my Court at Windsor 
Terrace, 1828, begins with the Duke of 
Gloucester as one of "my sportsmen." 
The Bishop of Salisbury is put down as her 
"oculist"; Mr. Wilberforce, her "guide. 



228 Hannah More 

philosopher, and friend " ; Mr. Cadell, 
''accoucheur to the Muses, who has intro- 
duced many a sad, sickly brat to see the 
light, but whispers that they must not de- 
pend upon a long life." 

It is gratifying to read, in connection 
with the exaggerated report of her pecuni- 
ary losses which got abroad, that her 
American readers and admirers proposed 
to make up "a fund sufficient to preserve 
her from all fear of future pecuniary diffi- 
culties." 

The offer was gratefully declined with 
others from friends nearer home. Barley 
Wood was sold to Mr. William Hartford, 
an esteemed acquaintance, and she parted 
with the copyrights of ten of her books, 
realising a handsome sum by the transfer. 

She says, cheerfully, that "I have ex- 
changed eight pampered minions for four 
sober servants, and greatly lessened my 
house expenses, enabling me to maintain 
my schools and enlarge my charities." 

' ' Misc Frowd is my great earthly treasure. 
She has the entire management of my fam- 
ily, and is very judicious in the common 
offices of life. She reads well and she reads 
much to me." 



Falling Asleep 229 

Miss Frowd was kneeling at her pillow 
on Friday, September 6, 1833, when the 
dark eyes opened full upon her face, and 
the voice, still soft, although weak and thin 
with age and illness, said : 

"I love you, my dear child, with ferv- 
ency. It will be pleasant to you, twenty 
years hence, to remember that I said this 
on my death-bed." 

She had been ill for ten months, failing 
in body and in mind — never in heart and 
temper — for nearly five years. Morning 
prayers had been said at her bedside as 
usual, that day, she seeming to listen with 
"hands devoutly lifted up." The evening 
had come, and Miss Frowd was still watch- 
ing the dear visage upon which a strange 
radiance had settled, — an "unusual bright- 
ness." At nine o'clock the brightness be- 
came glory, a smile that made her face as 
the face of an angel. She lifted her arms 
to embrace some one invisible to her 
watchers. 

" Patty !" she cried, then, as distinctly, 
"Joy!" 

And when she had said this, she fell 
asleep. 



INDEX 



Addison, Joseph, 1 6, 47 
Adelphi, The, 58, 70 
Albemarle, Lady, 197 
AldboroLigh, Suffolk, 2 



B 



Bamber, Gascoigne, 88 

Barbauld, Anna Lastitia, 66, 67 

Baietti, 34 

Barham, Lord, 209 

Barley Wood, 195, 198-200, 204, 210, 214, 215, 220, 

222 224 226, 228 
Barrington, Bishop, 192 

Bas Bleu, The, 32, 43, 47, 85, 94, 101, 103, 146 
Bath, 138, 139, 189, 194 
Bathurst, Lady, 61, 62 
Bathurst, Lord, 98 
Beadon, Bishop, 191, 192 
Beaufort, Duchess of, 6} 
Belmont Manor, 21-23, 42 
Beranger, 80 

231 



232 Index 

Black Giles the Poacher, 177 

Blagden, 190, 192 

Boscawen, Mrs., 40, 46, 48, 61, 62, 79, 84, 108, 134, 

148, 152, 181 
Boswell, 55, 56, 65, 76 
Bristol, 13, 14, 19, 23, 30, 67, 69, 90, 92, 93, 94, 207, 

226 
Bronte, Charlotte, 78 
Burke, Edmund, 34, 49, 117, 185 
Burney, Dr. Charles, 65 
Burney, Fanny, 55, 36, 45, 47, 54, 55, 65, 85, 105, 

130, '33, '35 



Cadell, 43, 6}, 74, 84, 116, 121, 129, 172, 228 

Captive, The Inflexible, 53, 58 

Carter, Mrs., 40, 47, 115, 137 

Cecil, Robert, 192 

Chapone, Mrs. Elizabeth, 40, 43, 47, 62, 116 

Charlotte, Princess of Wales, 195-197 

Charlotte, Queen, 85, 195, 197 

Chatterton, Thomas, 13, 81 

Cheap Repository Tracts, 176, 179, 214 

Cheddar, 139, '40, '43, '45, "55. '59, '<JO, 19 

Chester, Bishop of, 85, 89 

Chip, IVill, 172, 174 

Clark, Mrs., 168 

Clarke, Rev. Samuel, i 

Clifton, 226 

Clive, Kitty, 60, 64 

Cobham, Lord, 80 

Cottle, Amos, 14 

Cotton, Mrs., 51 



Index 233 

Cottons, The, 51 

Cowper, William, 81, 86, 104, 120, 152, 154, 156 

Cowslip Green, 106, no, 117, 132, 139, 144, 154, 157^ 

159, 181, 187, 192, 194, 198 
Crisp, Mr., 35, 36 
Cumberland, Richard, 202 

D 

Delany, Mrs., 6}, 78, 79, 87, 146 
Devonshire, Duchess of, 113 
Dramas, Sacred, 84, 85, 90, 214 
Dryden, John, 4, 5, 16, 60 
Dupont, Citizen, 169, 171 



Eld red, Sir, of the Bower, 42, 43-45 
Elgin, Lord, 126, 127 
Evelina, 36, 65, 130 



Falsehood, The Fatal, 73-75 
Ferguson, 14 
Fielding, Henry, 37 
Fisher, Bishop, 196, 197 
Frowd, Miss, 226, 228, 229 



Garrick, David, 32,43,46,48-51,53, 58-61, 63,65, 

69-7', 75, 76 
Garrick, Mrs., 49, 58, 69-72, 75-78, 90, 92, 96-98, 1 10, 

1 17, 1 18, 145, 208, 217 
Garricks, The, 43, 47, 53, 57, 60, 65 



234 Index 

George the Third, King, ns, 136 

Gibbon, Edward, 49, 81, 80, 134, 137, 180 

Gladstone, W. E., 222, 223 

Gloucester, Duke of, 227 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 43 

Gordon, Lord George, 82 

Grafton, Duke of, 147 

H 

Hampton, 72, 77, 80, 1 17, 145, 208 

Hanway, Jonas, 85 

Happiness, Search after, 17, 59, 116 

Harris, Mr., 61, 72, 73 

Hartford, Mr. William, 228 

Hill, Rowland, 221, 224 

Hobbes, i 

Home, Mr. John, 62, 118 

Home, Dr., 88 

Hume, David, 14 

J 

Jebb, Bishop, 215 

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 31, 32, 34-37, 44-4^, 54-57> 65, 
79, 88, 91, 98, 102, 108-110 

K 

Kennicott, Dr. Benjamin, 90, 99, 100 
Kennicott, Mrs., 90, 100, 100, 167, 198, 199, 207 
Keppel, George, 197 
Knight, Rev. T. B., 222, 223 



Langhorne, Dr., 29, 30 
London, Bishop of, 186, 190, 192 



Index 235 



Lowth, Bishop, 66, 85 
Lyttleton, Lord, 62 



M 



Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 105, 130, 204-206 

Macaulay, Zachary, 204 

Madaii, Martin, 81 

Mahon, Lord, 49 

Maimers of the Great, 121-124, 126, 129, 133, 135, 191 

Mendip, 1S5-157, 175 

Milton, John, 16 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 70 

Montagu, Mrs., 32, ^6, 39, 40, 43, 45, 48, 61, 94, 101, 
113, 114 

More, Elizabeth, 4, 15, 138, 211, 212 

More, Hannah, birth, childhood, dreams of authorship, 
1-14 ; school-days ; first published works ; be- 
trothal, 15-27; broken engagement; first visit to 
London, 28-40 ; Sir Eldred played in London ; 
intimacy with the Garricks, 41-52 ; Dr. Johnson ; 
The Inflexible Captive acted in Bath ; Garrick's 
kindness ; Percy written and acted, 53-67 ; Gar- 
rick's death ; intimacy with his widow ; The Fatal 
Falsehood acted in London ; social and literary 
triumphs, 68-82 ; Sacred Dramas written and pub- 
lished ; death of Jacob More ; The Bas Bleu, 83-107; 
Johnson's death; " Bristol milk-woman "; Thoughts 
on the Importance of the Manners of the Great 
published, 108-123 ! great popularity of The Man- 
ners ; Cowslip Green built, 124-138 ; Cheddar 
schools established by Hannah More and her sisters, 
139-15 1 ; John Newton at Cowslip Green; other 
schools established ; William Wilberforce's friend- 



236 Index 



ship and cooperation, 152-166 ; persecution and 
calumnies ; Village Politics and Cheap Repository 
Tracts published, 167-178; mission-work among 
the poor extended ; Lord Orford's death and Me- 
moirs, 179-186; fierce opposition to the Mores' 
organised charities ; Barley Wood built, 187-200 ; 
Ccelebs in Search of a IVife published ; Practical 
Piety ; deaths of Mary, Elizabeth, and Sarah More, 
201-216; last book written; removal to Bristol; 
old age ; death, 217-229 

More, Jacob, i, 2, 4, 10, 12, 15, 93, 96, 97 

More, Mrs. Jacob, 5, 9-12, 93, 99 

More, Martha ("Patty"), 4, 9, '5, 21, 30, 44, 45, 96, 
106, 116, 129, 138, 141, 142, 144, 155, 167, 185, 
189, 198, 207-209, 214-216, 22s, 229 

More, Mary, 4, 10, 13, 15, 138, 207, 208 

More, Sarah, 4, 9, is, 33, 34, 37, 9^, 138, 211-214 

Mores, The, 4, 7 

Moss, Dr., 190 

N 

Newcastle, Duke of, 49 
Newton, Bishop, 66, 79 
Newton, John, 86, 104, 107, 120, 146, 149, 150, 152- 

156, 180, 181 
North, Lady, 62 
North, Lord, 49 
Northumberland, Duke of, 62 
Norwich, 1 

O 

Orford, Lord, 170, 171, 180, 185, 186 



Index 237 

p 

Paine, Thomas, 172, 175 

Parley the Porter, 1 78 

Peach (" the Linen-draper"), 14 

Pepys, Mrs., 101, 102 

Pepys, W. W., 100, 114, 116, 187, 193, 198,206, 217- 

219 
Percy, 58-64, 73-75, 86, 116-118, 202 
Percy, Dr., 62 
Percy, Earl, 62 
Pindar, Peter, 189, 190 
Pitt, Lord, 49, 184 
Pope, Alexander, 5, 80 

Porteiis, Bishop, 66, 148-150, 173, 177, 199, 200, 220 
Practical Piety, 200, 214 

R 

Raikes, Robert, 142, i6i 

Reliques, Percy's, 44 

Reynolds, Miss, 31, 33-35, 43, 79 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 31-35, 37, 49, 61, 65, 117 

Rivington, 173 

Roberts, Miss, 209 

Roberts, William, 25, 29, 34, 146, 173 



Salisbury, Bishop of, 137, 227 

Shepherd 0/ Salisbury Plain, 137, 178, 184, 185 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 16, 32, 71 

Sheridan, Thomas, 16 

Siddons, Mrs., 116, 117 

Smelt, Mr., 130 



2^8 Index 

Smith, Sidney, 202 

Spinoza, 1 

Stapleton, 2 

Stonehouse, Sir James (Dr.), 24-26, 29, 33, 39, 95, 157 

Strawberry Hill, 1 10, 208 

Suffolk, I 



Thorpe Hall, 2, 5 1 
Thrale, Mrs., 36, 48, 54, 56, 102 
Trimmer, Mrs., 118, 11 g 
Turner, Mr., 21-23, 25-20, 42 
Turn the Carpet (ballad), 1 77 

V 

Vesey, Mrs., 43, 48, 101, 146 

W 

Waldegrave, Lady, 184, 197 

Wales, Prince of, i 18, 109, 200 

Walpole, Horace, 56, 78, 81, 98, 103, 110, 112, 133 

Wedmore, 192 

Wilberforce, Miss, 142 

Wiiberforce, William, 104, 125-127, 141, 143, 146, 163, 

176, 184, 187, 189, 193, 198, 204, 210, 215-217, 

227 
Windsor Terrace, 226, 227 
Wrington, 106, 144, 145, 194, 210, 221, 222 



Yearsley, Anne, 112-115 

Yonge, Miss, iq, 54, 59, 06, 102, 180, 197 



By MARION HARLAND 



Where Ghosts Walk 

The Haunts of Familiar Characters in History 
and Literature 

With 33 illustrations. 8% gilt top (in a box), $2.50. 

" In this volume fascinating pictures are thrown upon the screen so 
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heroes live once more ; we recall the honored dead to life again, and 
the imagination runs riot. Travel of this kind does not weary, it 
fascinates." — N, V, Times, 



Literary Hearthstones 

studies of the Home=Life of Certain Writers 
and Thinkers 



The first issues are 

CHARLOTTE BRONTE HANNAH MORE 

WILLIAM COWPER JOHN KNOX 

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