Great Englishwomen Part 7

After the death of her father, Angelica took up her abode in Rome; she would get up early, take up her palette and brush, and paint on till sunset in winter, till nearly six in the summer. In the evening, when she could no longer see to paint, she would go out and see her friends, and several nights in the week she would open her rooms to receive visitors. A hall, filled with statues and busts, led to her studio and other rooms, where hung her pictures by the great masters, heads by Vand.y.k.e and Rembrandt, her own portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other pictures.

Not only by the rich was she known and loved, but also by the poor. Her charity and kindness were boundless; she did not simply give her money to the many beggars who abound in Italy, but she tried to improve their condition, and help them to work for themselves.

Having obtained news of the death of her husband, Angelica Kaufmann married a Venetian artist; together they painted, together they enjoyed the grand Italian art, and when, in 1795, he died, Angelica seemed overwhelmed. This was the beginning of a series of troubles. She lost a great deal of the money she had saved owing to the failure of a bank and the unsettled state of England, which often prevented her money from arriving. "But I have two hands still left," she would say, "and I can still work." In 1802 her health failed. She went to Switzerland for change, but on her return her cough came back. Her strength grew less, her hand lost its cunning, and at last her busy fingers could no longer hold the brush.

In the summer of 1807 she died. People of all ranks gathered together at her funeral in Rome; artists, n.o.bility, poor, and rich came alike to do her honour. Her coffin was borne by girls in white, and like the great master Raphael, her two last pictures were carried behind the coffin, on which was placed a model of her right hand in plaster, with a paint-brush between its fingers.

Compared to the great and powerful artists before her, she was no mighty genius; her figures are more full of grace than force or energy; there is a sameness of design, which has called forth the saying, "To see one is to see all," but what she has painted she has painted truly. "Her pencil was faithful to art and womanhood," and we are proud to think that Angelica Kaufmann was one of the greatest artist-women the world has ever seen.

HANNAH MORE (1745-1833).

Hannah More was one of the first women who devoted her life to the poor.

She had been in London society; she knew most of the leading men of the day; she could have lived a comfortable life in the midst of great people; but she chose rather to build herself a little house in the country, and there to work with her sister Patty among the rough miners of Somersets.h.i.+re.

She was one of the younger daughters of Jacob More, a schoolmaster, near Gloucester. Her grandmother was a vigorous old woman, who even at the age of eighty used to get up at four in the morning with great energy.

Hannah learnt to read at the age of three. While still small enough to sit on her father's knee, she learnt Greek and Roman history; he used to repeat the speeches of the great men of old in the Greek or Latin tongue, which delighted the child, and then translate them till the eager little eyes sparkled "like diamonds." Her nurse had lived in the family of Dryden, and little Hannah heard many a story of the poet from her nurse's lips.

When quite small, it was her delight to get a sc.r.a.p of paper, scribble a little poem or essay, and hide it in a dark corner, where the servant kept her brush or duster. Sometimes the little sister who slept with her, probably Patty, would creep downstairs in the dark to get her a piece of paper and a candle to write by. To possess a whole quire of paper was the child's greatest ambition.

One of her elder sisters went to a school in Bristol from Mondays till Sat.u.r.days, and from Sat.u.r.day to Monday little Hannah set herself diligently to learn French from her sister. When she was sixteen, she also went to Bristol, and there she met many clever people, who were charmed with her, and looked on her bright conversation and manner as proofs of dawning genius.

Once, when she was ill, a well-known doctor was called in to attend her.

He had paid her many visits, when one day she began to talk to him on many interesting subjects. At last he went; but when he was half-way downstairs, he cried out, "Bless me! I quite forgot to ask the girl how she was!" and returning to the room he inquired tenderly, "And how are you to-day my poor child?"

The following year she wrote a drama called "The Search after Happiness."

"The public have taken ten thousand copies," she says, "but _I_ have not the patience to read it!"

When she went to London she was introduced to Garrick the actor, Sir Joshua Reynolds the artist, and many other clever people. Sir Joshua Reynolds one day took her to see Dr. Johnson, or "Dictionary Johnson," as she called him. She was very nervous, as no one knew how the great doctor would receive her, or what temper he would be in. But it was all right.

He came to meet her "with good humour on his countenance," and with royal grace greeted her with a verse out of her own "Morning Hymn."

When she went to see him one day alone, he was out. So Hannah More went into his parlour, and seated herself in his great chair, hoping to feel inspired by so doing. When Dr. Johnson entered, she explained to him why she was sitting there; at which he went into fits of laughing, and cried out that it was a chair he _never_ sat in.

After this he became a frequent visitor at the house of the five sisters--

"I have spent a happy evening," he cried one night. "I love you all five; I am glad I came. I will come and see you again."

In 1777, Hannah More wrote a play called "Percy." Hidden in the corner of a box at the theatre, she anxiously watched the performance of her play; she heard her hero speak through the voice of her friend Garrick; she saw her audience--even the men--shedding tears, and she knew it was a success.

So much did her writings apply to the feelings of her audience, that after the performance of one of her plays called the "Fatal Falsehood," when a lady said to her servant girl, who had been to the play, that her eyes looked red, as if she had been crying, the girl answered:

"Well, ma'am, if I did, it was no harm; a great many respectable people cried too!"

The death of David Garrick affected Hannah More deeply. Mrs. Garrick sent for her at once in her trouble, and, though ill in bed at the time, Hannah More came to comfort her friend. After this she spent much time with Mrs. Garrick, often in the depths of the country giving up her time to reading and writing, and taking long walks to the pretty villages round.

Then she built herself a little house near Bristol, where she went to live with her sister Patty. They made long expeditions together to villages round, and they soon discovered what a bad state the country people were in.

In a village near, she set to work to establish a school for the little children, and was soon rewarded by finding that three hundred were ready and longing to be taught. Difficulties lay at every turn; the rich farmers objected to the children being taught, and religion brought into the country.

"It makes the people so lazy and useless," they said.

"It will make the people better and more industrious," urged Hannah More; "they will work from higher and n.o.bler motives, instead of merely for money and drink!"

At last they consented to have a school, and the children came by hundreds to be taught.

Then she went on to two mining villages high up on the Mendip Hills. In these villages the people were even more ignorant than those at Cheddar; they thought the ladies came to carry off their children as slaves. For at this time the selling of little children as slaves had reached a terrible height, and many great men, Pitt, Fox, and others, were doing what they could to have it abolished by an Act of Parliament.

It was into districts where no policemen dared to go that Hannah More and her sister ventured. There was no clergyman for miles round; one village had a curate living twelve miles away; another village had a clergyman who himself drank to excess, and was never sober enough to preach. There was one Bible in the village, but that was used to prop up a flower-pot. Such was the state of affairs when Hannah More first went among them.

Soon a school was established, and again the children were ready and willing to be taught. Before long they had six schools and as many as twelve hundred children were being taught. Very soon their work bore fruit.

"Several day-labourers coming home late from harvest, so tired that they could hardly stand, will not go to rest till they have been into the school for a chapter and a prayer," wrote Hannah More.

In 1792 she wrote "Village Politics," at the request of friends, to try and give a more healthy turn to politics in England. She did not put her own name to it, but called herself "Will Chip." One of her friends discovered who had written it, and sitting down he began a letter, "My dear Mrs. Chip," thanking her for giving to the world such a popular and wholesome tract.

Hannah More still kept up with the world outside; she watched with the keenest interest the struggle against slavery; her heart ached for the victims of the French Revolution across the Channel, and she wrote pamphlets on both subjects. Then came an attack on her writings; people said she wished for the success of France; some said she was an enemy to liberty, and many other false things.

This made Hannah More very unhappy. She liked to be loved, she could not bear to be hated; she who was ready to see good in all, could not bear to be forced to see evil. Then her poor people upheld her, and school-teachers and church-workers came forward to bear witness to the world-wide good her writings had done. Sympathy flowed in from all sides, and she found heart to go on again.

At last the happy home was broken up--the bright home where the poor people had never failed to find warmth and shelter and a welcome from the five sisters.

The three eldest died first. Still, through all the sad partings, Hannah More bravely worked on, while she had strength for it, writing when she could, and keeping bright those who still remained around her.

A few years later Patty died; she was the nearest of all to Hannah's heart, and the "aching void" she felt after her sister's death affected her health. Long and dangerous illnesses constantly left her unable to work for many months. Her work had been taken up by others now, and the "tide she had helped to turn had already swept past her."

"I learns geography and the harts and senses," boasted a little girl in a county parish, meaning the arts and sciences.

"I am learning syntax," a little servant said to Hannah More when questioned about her school.

Hannah More died at the age of eighty-eight, after years of intense suffering. She had lived to see how education was helping the poorer cla.s.ses, and stamping out crime; how a little love and kindness had helped even the rough miners in their work, and how the children, taught in the village schools, were already growing up better and happier men and women, and it pleased her, long after her health and memory had failed, to hear that they still remembered the name of Hannah More.

ELIZABETH FRY (1780-1845).

Elizabeth Fry was one of those rare women whose "life was work." Once having recognized the path of duty, she never left it; through illness and suffering, trouble and sorrow, she held fast to it, and the result was grand. For she was our first great prison reformer, the first to open the eyes of the nation to the alarming state of the prisons, the first to take active steps for their improvement.

She was born in Norwich on May 21, 1780. Her father, John Gurney, belonged to the Society of Friends; he was a popular, warm-hearted man, fond of his children, devoted to his wife. Elizabeth was the third of eleven children; when she was two years old, her father and mother moved to Earlham Hall, an old house standing in a well-wooded park, about two miles from Norwich.

She was a nervous, delicate little child; every night, on going to bed, she would quake with fear at the prospect of being left alone in the dark, when the moment should come for the candle to be blown out. Sea-bathing, too, had its horrors for her. She was forced to bathe when they went to the sea-side, but at the sight of the sea she would begin to cry and tremble till she turned her back on it again. The child's devotion to her mother was intense; she would often lie awake at night and cry at the thought that her mother might some day die and leave her, and her childish wish was that two big walls might fall and crush them both together. But the two big walls never _did_ fall; when Elizabeth was but twelve, her mother died, leaving eleven children, the eldest barely seventeen, the youngest only two. Elizabeth was tall and thin; she had quant.i.ties of soft flaxen hair and a sweet face, but she was so reserved and quiet, that people thought her quite stupid. She was very fond of dancing and riding and any kind of amus.e.m.e.nt, and when she was a little older we hear of her as a "beautiful lady on horseback in a scarlet riding-habit."

When she was eighteen a great Quaker preacher came to Norwich, and Elizabeth went with her six sisters to hear him. Hitherto she had cared little for Quaker meetings, but this time, as soon as the preacher began, her attention was fixed. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and "Betsy wept most of the way home," says one of her sisters. From that day all love of amus.e.m.e.nt and pleasure seemed gone. New feelings had been stirred within her; she felt there was something more to live for than mere pleasure; a n.o.bler spirit was moving within her, that showed her there lay work around her to be done, and work specially for her to do. And she soon found the work; an old man, who was dying, wanted comfort and care; a little boy called Billy from the village needed teaching. Slowly other little boys came to be taught, and in a few months she had a school of seventy. She taught them in an empty laundry, no other room being large enough.

Life went on thus till she was twenty. The more she saw of Quakers, the more firmly she believed they were right; she now wore their dress,--a plain slate-coloured skirt with a close handkerchief and cap, with no ornaments of any kind. In the summer of this year she married Joseph Fry, also a Quaker, engaged in business in London, where they accordingly went to live. Leaving her old home was a great trial to her, for the "very stones of the Norwich streets seemed dear to her."