Great Englishwomen Part 8

A new sphere of work now opened before her; she was surrounded by the poor, workhouses claimed her attention, the sick and dying begged for a sight of the simple Quaker woman, whom "to see was to love," and whose gentle words always comforted them.

In 1809, Mr. and Mrs. Fry and their five children moved into the country for a time, for rest after the smoke and din of the crowded city life.

Here Elizabeth Fry was very happy; she loved to live out of doors with her little children, to explain to them the growth of a flower, the structure of a bee's wing or caterpillar; they would all go long rambles together with baskets and trowels to get ferns and wild flowers to plant in their garden at home. Then, refreshed and strengthened, she was again ready to take up her London work.

It was in 1813 that she first entered the prison at Newgate, and the special work of her life began. She found the prison and prisoners in a disgraceful state, and her womanly heart was touched with pity for the poor creatures who were compelled to live in these unhealthy wards and cells. Many had not sufficient clothing, but lived in rags, sleeping on the floor with raised boards for pillows. Little children cried for food and clothes, which their unhappy mothers could not give them. In the same room they slept, ate, cooked, and washed; in the bad air they fell ill, and no one came to nurse them or comfort them, no one came to show them how to live an honest, upright life, when their prison-life was over. Sick at heart, Elizabeth Fry went home, determined to help these miserable people in some way or other. Then trouble came to her. Her little Betsy, a lovely child of five, died, and long and bitter was her grief.

"Mama," said the child, soon before her death, "I love everybody better than myself, and I love thee better than everybody, and I love Almighty better than thee."

Sorrow was making Elizabeth Fry more and more sympathetic and able to enter into the sufferings of those around her.

At last she was able to work again, and with her whole heart she set herself to improve the prisons.

She got the prison authorities to let the poor women have mats to sleep on, especially those who were ill, and she begged to be alone with the convicts for a few hours. The idleness, ignorance, and dirt of these women shocked her. How could the poor little children, pining for food and fresh air, ever grow up to be good women in the world, into which they might be turned out any time? How could those wretched women ever learn to be better and happier by being thrown into those unhealthy cells with others as bad or worse than themselves, if no one ever tried to teach them how to live better lives, and start afresh in the world? She proposed to start a school for the children, and the prisoners thanked her with tears of joy.

They had not known such kindness before; they had never been spoken to so gently; the noise and fighting ceased, and they listened to the simple Quaker's words.

So an empty cell was made into a school-room, and one of the prisoners was made school-mistress. Mrs. Fry and a few other ladies helped to teach, and the children soon got on, and learnt to like their lessons. Still the terrible sounds of swearing, fighting, and screaming went on; Mrs. Fry met with failure and discouragement on every side; the utter misery and suffering sickened her, and she would sometimes wonder if she should have strength to go on. But she found she had.

Soon others came forward to help, and not long after we find a very different scene. Instead of the inhuman noises that reached the ear before, comparative stillness reigned; most of the women wore clean blue ap.r.o.ns, and were sitting round a long table engaged in different kinds of work, while a lady at the head of the table read aloud to them.

The news of this reformation soon spread. Newspapers were full of it; pamphlets were sent round; the public awoke to the evils of prison-life, and the voice of the people made itself heard; and Queen Charlotte herself sought an interview with Elizabeth Fry, the leader of this important work.

To improve the state of convict s.h.i.+ps was the next work for Mrs. Fry. Up to this time the vessels were terribly over-crowded; the women had nothing to do all day during the voyage; their children were separated from them, and all were marked with hot irons, so that if by any chance they escaped, they might be found again. Part of the vessel was made into a school for the children; pieces of print were collected for the women to make into patchwork, and a matron was chosen to nurse those who were ill.

Mrs. Fry herself went to bid the emigrants farewell. She stood in her plain Quaker dress at the door of the cabin with the captain; the women stood facing her, while sailors climbed up to the rigging to hear her speak. The silence was profound for a few moments. Then she spoke to them a few hopeful, encouraging words, and prayed for them; many of the convict women wept bitterly, and when she left, every eye followed her till she was out of sight. From this time she visited every convict s.h.i.+p with women on board leaving England till 1841, when she was prevented by illness.

Elizabeth Fry had a wonderful power of winning hearts by her gentle and earnest way of speaking. One day she went over a large Home for young women; as she was going away the matron pointed out two as being very troublesome and hard to manage. Mrs. Fry went up to them, and holding out a hand to each, she said, looking at them with one of her beautiful smiles: "I trust I shall hear better things of thee."

The girls had been proof against words of reproach and command, but at these few heartfelt words of hope and kindness, they both burst into tears of sorrow and shame.

In 1839 Elizabeth Fry went to Paris, in order to visit the workhouses, prisons, and homes on the continent, and to stir up the people to enquire into their arrangements.

A few days after her arrival she went to a little children's hospital. As she entered the long ward, the only sound audible was a faint and pitiful bleating like a flock of little lambs. A long row of clean white cots was placed all round the room; on a sloping mattress before the fire a row of babies were lying waiting their turn to be fed by the nurse with a spoon.

The poor little things were swathed up, according to the foreign custom, so tightly that they could not move their limbs. For some time Mrs. Fry pleaded with the Sister of the ward to undo their swathings, and let their arms free, and, as she did so at last, one of the babies, who had been crying piteously, ceased, and stretched out its arms to its deliverer.

Everywhere, abroad and at home, among old and young, she was welcomed as a friend; from the head of the land to the poorest prisoner, she was loved, for "it was an honour to know her in this world." Through illness and intense suffering she struggled on with duty and work, until she was no longer able to walk. She was still wheeled to the meetings in a chair, but the work of her life was ended. Then sorrow upon sorrow came to her; her son, sister, and a little grandchild all died within a short time of one another.

"Can our mother hear this and live?" cried her children. A long year of intense pain and suffering followed, and then, one autumn evening, Elizabeth Fry died. Universal was the mourning for her; vast crowds a.s.sembled in the Friend's burying ground, near her old country home at Plashet, silently and reverently to attend the simple Quaker funeral, and to do honour to Elizabeth Fry, now laid at rest beside her little child.

MARY SOMERVILLE (1780-1872).

Mary Somerville, whose parents' name was Fairfax, was born in Scotland on the day after Christmas in the year 1780. Her father was away at sea; he had begun life early as a mids.h.i.+pman, and had been present at the taking of Quebec in 1759. He had left his wife in a little seaport town on the Scotch coast just opposite Edinburgh, in a house whose garden sloped down to the sea and was always full of bright flowers. The Scotch in this part lived a primitive kind of life; we are told that all the old men and women smoked tobacco in short pipes, and the curious way in which a cripple or infirm man got his livelihood. One of his relations would put him into a wheelbarrow, wheel him to the next neighbour's door, and there leave him.

The neighbour would then come out, feed the cripple with a little oatcake or anything she could spare, and wheel him onto the next door. The next neighbour would do the same, and so on, and thus the beggar got his livelihood.

Here it was that Mary lived with her mother, her brother Sam, and sometimes her father.

Now Mrs. Fairfax was very much afraid of thunder and lightning, and when she thought a storm was coming on, she used to prepare by taking out the steel pins which fastened on her cap, in case they might attract the lightning. Then she sat on a sofa at some distance from the fireplace, and read aloud descriptions of storms in the Bible, which frightened her little daughter Mary more than the storm itself. The large dog Hero, too, seems to have shared in the general fear of thunder, for, at the first clap, he would rush howling indoors and place his head on Mary's knee.

Thus, with shutters closed, they awaited the utter destruction they expected, but which never came.

When Mary was seven, her mother made her useful at sh.e.l.ling peas and beans, feeding the c.o.c.ks and hens, and looking after the dairy. Once she had put some green gooseberries into some bottles, and taken them to the kitchen, telling the cook to boil the bottles uncorked, and when the fruit was enough cooked, to cork and tie them up. In a short time the whole house was alarmed by loud screams from the kitchen. It was found they proceeded from the cook, who had disobeyed orders, and corked the bottles before boiling, so of course they exploded. This accident interested Mary very much, and in after years she turned it to account in her reading of science.

She was devoted to birds, and would watch the swallows collecting in hundreds on the house roofs to prepare for their winter flight. She always fed the robins on snowy mornings, and taught them to hop in and pick up the crumbs on the table. All through her life this love of birds continued; and, when she was quite old, and her little mountain sparrow died, having been her constant companion for eight years, she felt its death very much.

When she was between eight and nine, her father came back from sea, and was quite shocked to find his little daughter still a wild, untrained child, unable to write, and only reading very badly, with a strong Scotch accent. So, after breakfast every morning, he made her read a chapter from the Bible and a paper from the "Spectator." But she was always glad when this penance was over, and she could run off with her father into the garden, and take a lesson in laying carnations and pruning fruit trees.

At last one day her father said: "This kind of life will never do; Mary must at least know how to write and keep accounts."

So Mary was sent to a boarding school kept by a Miss Primrose, where she was very unhappy. Fancy the wild, strong Scotch child, used to roaming about the lanes, wandering by the sea at her own will, caring for no lessons but those of Nature, suddenly enclosed in a stiff steel support round her body, a band drawing her shoulders back till the shoulder-blades met, a steel rod with a semicircle pa.s.sing under her chin to keep her head up, and thus bound up having to learn by heart pages of Johnson's dictionary; not only to spell the words and give their parts of speech and meaning, but to remember the order in which they came! Such was the strict discipline through which Mary Fairfax pa.s.sed for one long year. Once home again, she was like a wild animal escaped from a cage, but still unable so much as to write and compose a letter.

When the tide went out, she would spend hours and hours on the sands, watching closely the habits of the starfish and sea-urchins, collecting sh.e.l.ls, and wondering at curious marks of fern leaves and sh.e.l.ls on blocks of stone. She had no one to tell her they were fossils, or to explain to her their curious forms.

Still her people at home were not satisfied with the way she "wasted her time," and she was sent to the village school to learn plain needlework.

The village schoolmaster also came on the winter evenings to teach her the use of the globes, and at night she would sit up at her own little window trying to learn about the stars and moon. And yet, fond as she was of stars, the dark nights had their terrors for her.

One night, the house being full, she had to sleep in a room apart from the rest of the house, under a garret filled with cheeses, slung by ropes to the rafters. She had put out her candle and fallen asleep, when she was awakened by a tremendous crash and a loud rolling noise over head. She was very frightened; there were no matches in those days, so she could not get a light; but she seized a huge club shod with iron, which lay in the room, and thundered on the bedroom door till her father, followed by the whole household, came to her aid. It was found that some rats had gnawed the ropes on which the cheeses hung, and all the cheeses rolled down. However, Mary got no comfort, but only a good scolding for making such an uproar and disturbing the household in the night.

When she was thirteen, her mother took a small house in Edinburgh, and Mary was sent to a writing-school, and also taught music and arithmetic.

One day, when she was getting up, she suddenly saw a flash in the air.

"There is lightning!" she cried to her mother.

"No," answered Mrs. Fairfax, "it is fire;" and on opening the shutters they found the next house but one was burning fiercely. They dressed quickly, and sent for some men to help pack the family papers and silver.

"Now let us breakfast; it is time enough to move our things when the next house takes fire," said her mother, calmly showing the presence of mind one would not have expected from a woman so afraid of a thunder-storm.

At last Mary obtained what she had so long wished for, a Euclid, and she worked at it by day and night. "It is no wonder the stock of candles is soon exhausted," said the servants, "for Miss Mary sits up till a very late hour;" and accordingly an order was given that the candle should be put out as soon as she was in bed. So she had to content herself by repeating the problems at night by heart, till she knew well the first six books.

She had learnt to paint, too, in Edinburgh, and her landscapes at this time were thought a great deal of by various people.

In 1797 her father was in a naval battle against the Dutch, and for his brave action he was knighted.

"You ask for the promotion of your officers, but you never ask a reward for yourself," were words addressed to him on his return.

"I leave that to my country," answered Fairfax. And his daughter tells us that his country did little for him, and his wife had nothing to live on but 75 a year at his death in 1813.

In 1804 Mary Fairfax married a cousin, a Mr. Greig, and went to live in London. She was very poor, her mother could afford her but a small outfit, and gave her 20 to buy a warm wrap for the winter. Mrs. Greig lived a lonely life, for her husband was out all day for three years, at the end of which time she returned to her old home, a widow, with two little boys, one of whom died soon after.

Then she threw her whole self into the study of mathematics and astronomy.

At last she succeeded in solving a prize problem, and was awarded a silver medal with her name upon it, which greatly delighted and encouraged her.

When she had money enough she bought a little library of books on her favourite subjects, which have since been presented to the College for Women at Cambridge.

Her family and those around her thought her very foolish to read so hard at subjects they thought so useless. When, some years later, she was going to marry Dr. Somerville, his sister wrote to say she did hope the "foolish manner of life and studies" might be given up, so that she might make a "respectable and useful wife to her brother."

Her husband, however, encouraged her in her study of science; he saw nothing "foolish" in it at all, and he helped her to collect minerals and curious stones.