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Hannah More
Hannah More
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This ebook edition has been proofed and corrected for errors and compiled to read with pleasure!
*****
An excerpt from the beginning of:
CHAPTER X.
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY WORK.
LITERARY work was not neglected for the affairs of the Mendip schools, which indeed could not be visited in the winter months by ladies far from strong, so that December sent the sisters to their house at Bath.
Thence Hannah wrote on the New Year's Day of 1792,—
"The waters, I think, are doing me good; and I have been very much better since I came to close winter quarters, owing, under God, to my being quite shut up. Much as I love air and exercise, the loss of them is but a petty sacrifice to what many are called to make; and as I have no avocation at present which makes it a duty to run risks by going out, I am thankful to be furnished with so good a pretence for laying in a little health for future services. For I have partly pledged myself in my own mind, if I live and have health and money, and the French do not come, to take up two new parishes next spring; but as they are four miles below Cheddar, I have never dared reveal my intention to anyone. I know sloth and self-love will say often, ' Spare thyself,' and I feel the extreme concern it will give to those to whom I would wish to give nothing but pleasure; but I have counted the cost. These parishes are large and populous; they are as dark as Africa; and I do not like the thought that at the Day of Judgment any set of people should be found to have perished through ignorance who were within my possible reach, and only that I might have a little more ease. I will not say that I am not at times discouraged from this idea; for example, this last week, when, with all my boasting, I have been laid by with five or six days of nervous headache." to think that so small a sum can create such feelings when one knows what sums one has wasted."
Meantime Shipham —
" suffered dreadfully from a raging fever. We lost seven in two days, several of them our poor children. Figure to yourself such a visitation in a place where a single cup of broth cannot be obtained, — for there is none to give, if it would save a life. I am ashamed of my comforts when I think of their wants. One widow, to whom we allow a little pension, burns her only table for firing; another, one of her three chairs. I had the comfort, however, of knowing that poor Jones distributed what we sent most conscientiously, and ran the risk of walking into the pits with which the place abounds, and which were so covered with snow that he was near being lost. ' No words,' he writes me, ' could describe the sensations of this poor village at seeing a wagonload of coal [we sent] enter the place.' I feel indignant to think that so small a sum can create feelings when one knows what sums one has wasted.
It was an anxious winter. " The teaching of the teachers is not the least part of the work," another letter says.
" Add to this, that having about thirty masters and mistresses with under-teachers, one has continually to bear with the faults, the ignorance, the prejudices, humors, misfortunes, and debts of all these poor well-meaning people."
Yet things were much improving: Mr. Drewitt, the curate of Cheddar, " preached most faithfully on Sundays, and gave a lecture in church on Tuesday evenings, all for twenty-five pounds per annum"
The Dissenters were beginning to take umbrage at Hannah's doings, and the High Church suspected her independence. She was advised " to publish a short confession of her faith," as her attachment both to the religion and government of the country had become questionable to many persons.
" I aver 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 have 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 dressed out a figure to represent me with a large rod in my hand, prepared to punish such naughty doings."
The winter at Bath was saddened by the death of good Bishop Horne of Norwich, not many doors from the home of the Misses More; and likewise of a young cousin of Mrs. Wilberforce. In both cases Hannah and her sisters gave their whole hearts to sympathy with the mourners.
*****
An excerpt from the beginning of:
CHAPTER X.
ANTI-REVOLUTIONARY WORK.
LITERARY work was not neglected for the affairs of the Mendip schools, which indeed could not be visited in the winter months by ladies far from strong, so that December sent the sisters to their house at Bath.
Thence Hannah wrote on the New Year's Day of 1792,—
"The waters, I think, are doing me good; and I have been very much better since I came to close winter quarters, owing, under God, to my being quite shut up. Much as I love air and exercise, the loss of them is but a petty sacrifice to what many are called to make; and as I have no avocation at present which makes it a duty to run risks by going out, I am thankful to be furnished with so good a pretence for laying in a little health for future services. For I have partly pledged myself in my own mind, if I live and have health and money, and the French do not come, to take up two new parishes next spring; but as they are four miles below Cheddar, I have never dared reveal my intention to anyone. I know sloth and self-love will say often, ' Spare thyself,' and I feel the extreme concern it will give to those to whom I would wish to give nothing but pleasure; but I have counted the cost. These parishes are large and populous; they are as dark as Africa; and I do not like the thought that at the Day of Judgment any set of people should be found to have perished through ignorance who were within my possible reach, and only that I might have a little more ease. I will not say that I am not at times discouraged from this idea; for example, this last week, when, with all my boasting, I have been laid by with five or six days of nervous headache." to think that so small a sum can create such feelings when one knows what sums one has wasted."
Meantime Shipham —
" suffered dreadfully from a raging fever. We lost seven in two days, several of them our poor children. Figure to yourself such a visitation in a place where a single cup of broth cannot be obtained, — for there is none to give, if it would save a life. I am ashamed of my comforts when I think of their wants. One widow, to whom we allow a little pension, burns her only table for firing; another, one of her three chairs. I had the comfort, however, of knowing that poor Jones distributed what we sent most conscientiously, and ran the risk of walking into the pits with which the place abounds, and which were so covered with snow that he was near being lost. ' No words,' he writes me, ' could describe the sensations of this poor village at seeing a wagonload of coal [we sent] enter the place.' I feel indignant to think that so small a sum can create feelings when one knows what sums one has wasted.
It was an anxious winter. " The teaching of the teachers is not the least part of the work," another letter says.
" Add to this, that having about thirty masters and mistresses with under-teachers, one has continually to bear with the faults, the ignorance, the prejudices, humors, misfortunes, and debts of all these poor well-meaning people."
Yet things were much improving: Mr. Drewitt, the curate of Cheddar, " preached most faithfully on Sundays, and gave a lecture in church on Tuesday evenings, all for twenty-five pounds per annum"
The Dissenters were beginning to take umbrage at Hannah's doings, and the High Church suspected her independence. She was advised " to publish a short confession of her faith," as her attachment both to the religion and government of the country had become questionable to many persons.
" I aver 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 have 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 dressed out a figure to represent me with a large rod in my hand, prepared to punish such naughty doings."
The winter at Bath was saddened by the death of good Bishop Horne of Norwich, not many doors from the home of the Misses More; and likewise of a young cousin of Mrs. Wilberforce. In both cases Hannah and her sisters gave their whole hearts to sympathy with the mourners.
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