 10. Lady Rachel Russell, 1636-1723 England was in a troubled state when Lady Rachel Russell was born. Charles I was king, but the people were not happy under his rule. England became divided into two parties, some for him and some against him. Among the king's firmest and most staunch supporters was the Earl of Southampton, Rachel Russell's father. He was a loyal Englishman, and when affairs came to a crisis and civil war broke out, though he saw what must be the result, he stuck to his king and fought manfully for him. He married a French lady of noble birth and had two daughters, Elizabeth and Rachel. When Rachel was yet a baby, her mother died. She never had much education, perhaps because her father was a great deal away, and she had no mother to watch over it. Perhaps because the country was in too disturbed a state for any progress in learning, and the result is that her letters are full of mistakes in spelling. She must have heard a great deal about politics as a child, for her father took his seat in the long parliament when his little daughter was only six. She must have heard him talk of the Battle of Edgehill and the bravery of Prince Rupert. She must have heard about Oliver Cromwell. And when she was thirteen, all England rang with the news that Charles the King was beheaded. Her father was one of those faithful four, who on that snowy winter day bore the coffin of the king to the royal tomb at Windsor. Then he took his family away to Hampshire, while Oliver Cromwell was at the head of the English government. When she was seventeen, her father chose her husband and Lord Vaughn. It was acceptance rather than choosing on either side, she said in afterlife. However the young couple went to live in Wales and were very happy, and everyone loved her and respected her. All that know you are forced to honor you, wrote a friend to her one day. Neither are you to thank them for it, because they cannot do otherwise. Fourteen happy years passed away, and then Lady Vaughn was left in widow. She went to live with her elder sister Elizabeth, now Elizabeth Noel, whom she loved very dearly. Her father was dead, and Elizabeth had inherited his seat in Hampshire. So in the home where they had played as children, the two sisters now lived together. In sixteen sixty-nine she married William Russell, a young nobleman. Having traveled abroad he had returned to England in time to become a member of the House of Commons, which restored Charles II to the throne, and from this time he took a prominent part in the politics of the day. He consulted his wife about everything. He was guided by her advice in moments of extreme difficulty. He depended on her judgment, and he found it just and good. On the other hand she watched every event in which her husband's interest was concerned, with unwerying love. His happiness and success were hers, his sorrows and defeats were shared by her too. They were not often parted during the fourteen years of their married life, but when they were separated their letters show how long the time seemed, and how drearily the days passed. The few hours we have been parted seem too many to me to let this first post-night pass without giving my dear man a little talk. She wrote to him, when he had been obliged to be present at the Parliament, just called together again. She tells him about their little child named after her mother, Rachel, how she fetched but one sleep last night, and how very good she was this morning, how she is writing in the nursery with little fubs, as they generally called her, and how she knew the father would be rejoiced to hear that fubs was breeding her teeth so well and beginning to talk. The letters are badly written, bad grammar is used, and the spelling neglected, but they are so homely and happy, they are written with such ease and enjoyment, that we forget that the writer was never really educated, though an Earl's daughter. In 1679 Elizabeth Noel died. This was no common loss to Lady Rachel Russell. It was her only sister, her beloved, the person whom, next to her husband, she loved most dearly in all the world. Though she writes to her husband of her loss, she does not fill her letters with her own feelings. She tries to rouse herself to public affairs, which will interest him more and chats about the three little children and their doings and sayings. She taught the children herself, and their happiness and welfare was her great object in life. She liked fubs to write to her father whenever he went away, and the conscientious little girl used to bring a tiny letter to be enclosed, though sometimes tears were shed when the spelling and writing would not come right. Nevertheless, very anxious times were hovering over England, and Lady Rachel Russell was not blind to her husband's danger. Lord Russell had been in the Parliament that called Charles II to the throne, but slowly he and many others awoke to the fact that they had blundered. Charles was weak, selfish, unfit to rule England, unsettled as she was then, and a few years after the Restoration Lord Russell, together with others, joined the country party against the court. He was a generous, kind-hearted man, raised by birth and fortune high above his fellows, and he soon became one of the most powerful opponents of the court, one of the most influential leaders of the country party. By the wigs he was honoured as a chief. He was one of those who wished to exclude the Duke of York, brother to Charles II, from the throne on account of his religion. In 1678 Lord Russell was supporting a bitter measure against the court party. Lady Russell was very much alarmed. She wrote to him in the House and begged him not to support it. If you do, I am most assured you will repent it. If I have any interest, I use it to beg you to be silent in this case, at least today. In 1681 a crisis arrived. The King and Parliament could no longer act together, and when Parliament was dissolved two men were at the head of the struggle. One of these was Lord Russell. Meetings were held. Some proposed to overthrow the King and set up a new ruler. Others wished to rise and murder Charles II, but they were discovered and Lord Russell was arrested. The messenger waited about the door for many hours so that Lord Russell might have escaped, for the back door was open. But he would not. He had done nothing, he said, which caused him to dread the justice of the country. Lady Russell consulted his friends, and they agreed he ought not to fly. Then he was sent to the Tower. It was the 26th of June. During the fortnight that he lapsed between his arrest and trial, Lady Russell spared neither pains nor energy in finding supporters to defend her husband. She was constantly with him. She wrote for him. She encouraged his timid friends. She strengthened his firm ones. She left not a stone unturned to provide against the charges which would be brought forward to crush him whom she loved so dearly. At last the trial came. The night before Lady Russell wrote a few lines to her husband. She told him that she was going to be present, for friends thought she might be of use. She begged him to keep up heart for her sake as well as his own. The court was densely filled. As Lady Russell entered, her pale face calm and brave, a thrill of anguish ran through the crowd. We have no room to sit down, said the council. Lord Russell asked for a pen, ink, paper, and the use of any papers he had, adding, May I have somebody to write for me? Any of your servants shall assist you in writing anything you please, said the Chief Justice. My wife, said Lord Russell, is here to do it. And Lady Russell stood up in the midst of that crowded court to show that she was willing, more than willing, to fulfill this almost sacred office for her husband. If my lady will give herself that trouble, said the judge carelessly. Trouble! It was no trouble to her. The resolute wife took her seat beside her husband, took up the pen, and during the whole long trial sat there his only secretary and adviser. Even when the sentence of death was pronounced Lady Russell did not give way. She tried later to move the heart of the King, but in vain. Though she was the daughter of one of his oldest and most faithful servants, he refused pardon, unless Lord Russell would change his opinions. It is all true, said the King when Russell's innocence was pleaded, but it is true that, if I do not take his life, he will take mine. Slowly all hope disappeared, and the fatal day approached. Lord Russell wrote to the King, I hope Your Majesty's displeasure against me will end with my life, and that no part of it shall fall on my wife and children. His last thoughts were for his wife. He dreaded the blow for her more than for himself. The parting with her was the hardest thing he had to do, for he was afraid she would hardly be able to bear it. He said to Burnett, the bishop who was allowed to be with him the last few days. Tears came into his eyes when he spoke of her. The last day came, and Lady Russell brought the three little children to say good-bye forever to their father. Little Fubbs was only nine, her sister Catherine, seven, and the baby three years old, too young to realize his loss. He kissed them all calmly, and sent them away. Stay, and sup with me, he said to his wife. She stayed, and they ate their last meal together. Then they kissed in silence, and silently she left him. When she had gone, Lord Russell broke down completely. Oh, what a blessing she has been to me, he cried. It is a great comfort to me to leave my children in such a mother's care. She has promised me to take care of herself for their sakes. She will do it, he added, resolutely. Lady Russell returned heavy-hearted to the sad home to which she would never welcome him again, there to count the wretched hours till the fatal stroke was given. On July 21st, 1683, she was a widow and her children fatherless. They left their dreary London house and went to an old abbey in the country, where Lady Russell gave herself up to the education of her children. She never neglected this duty she had taken upon herself, and her daughters never had any other teacher but their mother. She tried to dismiss her sorrow for their sakes, and interest herself in their pleasures. Politics still interested her, and it was with troubled feelings she saw James II mount the throne of England. In 1688 her eldest daughter Rachel was married. The same year the Great Revolution began. In 1689 William and Mary were crowned. One of their first acts was to annul the sentence against Lord Russell. When the parchment which affected this was laid on the table of that assembly, in which eight years before his face and his voice had been so well known, the excitement was great. One old wig-member tried to speak, but could not. I cannot, he faltered, name my Lord Russell without disorder. It is enough to name him. I am not able to say more. Lady Russell's health was broken, and she was threatened with blindness. It has been said that she wept herself blind. But this is hardly true. It was discovered she had cataracts, and must give up writing by candlelight and reading. Soon after her son, Lord Tavistock, was married at 15 to a rich heiress, and her daughter Catherine to a nobleman. An amusing account is given of Catherine and her husband, which shows what favor the family was in at this time. When they drew near Belfar where they were going to stay, verses were presented them on the occasion of their happy marriage. At the gate stood four and twenty fiddlers all in a row, four and twenty trumpeters with their ten terra ra ra's, four and twenty ladies, and as many parson's. Her son was only just married when Lady Russell was requested to let him stand to be elected to the House of Commons. He was just going to Cambridge to study. A mere boy, and his mother, feeling it would ruin his future, and turn his head to inter-parliament so young, refused, though the offer was attempting one. In 1701 she was called to the death bed of that son, who had called smallpox, which was raging at that time. His wife and little children had been obliged to flee from it, and his mother was left to comfort his last hours. I did not know the greatness of my love to him, till I could see him no more. She cried when he had gone. She was confused and stunned by the suddenness of his death, but she had need of all her strength, for another blow was close at hand. Six months after her second daughter Catherine died. Rachel, Duchess of Devonshire, was very ill at the time, but knowing her sister's illness she constantly inquired for her. It was all the poor mother could do to keep up herself and conceal from Rachel the death of her sister for a time. The last years of Lady Russell's life were calm, but very sad. Her husband, her son and daughter were all gone, and she longed to follow them. At last, on a September day in 1723, she died in the arms of her daughter Rachel, the little fubs of Fygon days, and she was buried beside the husband whom she had loved and served so devotedly during the few happy years of their married life. END OF CHAPTER X Though she was born on the banks of the German Rhine, may still be called an English woman, for her work lay chiefly in England, and the greater part of her life was spent in this country. Although no mighty heroine, she was on the one hand a lover of art, a painter, a musician, in the eyes of the public beautiful and popular, on the other a genuine true-hearted woman, often deceived but never deceiving, true to the world and true to herself. She was born in 1741 at a town on the Rhine in a wild and picturesque district. Her father, John Kaufman, had been a sort of traveling painter, mending a picture here, copying one there, and painting signs for the public houses in the neighbourhood. In the course of his travels he had met a German girl, married her, and their only child they called Marie Ann Angelica Catherine. So, though born to poverty, she was rich in names. John Kaufman then took to painting as a means of livelihood. The first toys that little Angelica had were his paint brushes, his unstrained canvas, his bladders of colour, which she would play with till her little fingers were discoloured, and her pinafore dobbed all over. It was not many years before it became evident that the little girl would surpass her father in the love, if not in the art, of painting. When he gave her copy books to learn her letters, she left the words unwritten and copied the pictures only. Instead of playing with childish toys, she would get scraps of paper and copy the pictures and models in her father's studio, or sketch the trees and houses in the country round. Then her father began to teach her drawing. He showed her how to mix the colours and lay them on. He explained to her about light and shade, and gave her models to copy. When they went out for walks, he would take the child's hand and make her look well at the faces of the people they passed, then draw their features when she got home. So little Angelica, or Angela, as her father loved to call her, learned to love drawing and painting more and more. When she was eleven, her father moved to Como in Italy. Here people heard of Angelica and her wonderful power of painting, and the Bishop of Como offered to sit for the little girl to paint him. He was an old man with a long flowing beard, a difficult subject for such a young artist. But Angelica did it, and the portrait was such a success that the Archbishop of Milan and many other great Italians sat to be painted by the eleven-year-old child, until she had more work than she could well do. Still she went on, learning, copying the old master's pictures, and teaching herself the old Italian art. When she was sixteen her mother died. Poor little Angelica took it terribly to heart, and her father thought it best to leave Italy and go to Switzerland, so that change of scene might divert her mind. Her father's love for her was unbounded. He petted her. He loved to sing her praises, to call her his angel, his Angelina, his little artist's daughter, and she returned it with all the warmth of her lonely little heart. Once Angelica was entrusted to paint alone an altarpiece on the wall of a village church. Day after day father and daughter went to the church, and Angelica would sit on the top of a high scaffolding, her dark hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes eagerly fixed on the fresco before her, on which angels, lambs, doves, grew under her clever fingers. Veloce did the honest John Kaufman, watching the form he loved so well. His arms folded, his head thrown back, and feelings of pride and joy kindling in his heart. Besides her love for painting, Angelica was intensely fond of music. Her voice was pure and sweet, and she could play wonderfully well. She learnt to conquer the most difficult of the grand old Italian pieces, and would sing from memory the old ballads to amuse her father when he was melancholy and troubled. And this was often the case. He had little money. He had nearly starved himself to give his daughter the education he knew she deserved. The roof was umble, the beds were hard, the sheets coarse, the bread dark and sour. Angelica had to mend her own scanty and often threadbare clothes. But the time was coming when she would have money enough to dress in silk and satin had she wished. On their return to Milan, John Kaufman was urged strongly to have Angelica educated for the stage. Her beauty and her voice would soon win her renown, they said. Managers made her tempting offers, and her father was ready to give his consent. But Angelica was true to her art. The stage had its attractions for her. The offer was a tempting one. She drew a picture of herself standing between music on one side and painting on the other, turning towards painting, and bidding a tender farewell to music. Then bravely, though not without a sigh, she took up her brushes, and with fresh energy set her whole mind to painting. In 1763 she took up her abode in Venice to study and paint pictures. Six years of traveling among Italian art had widened her experience and given a firmer grasp both to mind and hand. Countesses, duchesses, ladies came to see her, and sit for their portraits. And when, in 1766, a rich lady offered to take her to England to make her fortune, Angelica consented. The first few days in London were rather lonely for the poor girl, but she soon learnt the English language, and her bright, pleasant manners won her many friends. Among these was Sir Joshua Reynolds, the greatest artist in England. Mr. Reynolds is the first of painters here, she wrote to her father in Germany. She admired his colouring so much that she became his pupil, and the great artist was delighted with her. Not only as a clever painter, but as a woman. He painted her portrait. She painted his. On the establishment of the Royal Academy, Angelica Kaufman was made a member. It is said that Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted her to be his wife. Be that as it may, we soon after find Angelica living in Golden Square, some way from her old home. She was very popular. No large evening party was complete without her. The world of fashion, the world of art, all sought her society, and her praises were sung throughout the country. She painted the young Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, and other members of the royal family, which made her trebly popular. Before beginning a portrait, Angelica would scan the features before her closely. She would wait till the sitters had arranged themselves in natural positions, and then, as truthfully as she could, she would paint them. She was making her fortune rapidly. Her father had come over to live with her, and life seemed to go on very happily for her till she was twenty-six. Then she married a man calling himself Count Torn. Handsome, clever, amusing. But three weeks after it was discovered that the real Count Horn had arrived in England, and that the man who had married Angelica was only the Count's footman, who had taken his master's name. This was a terrible blow to Angelica and her father. For a long time she seemed bordering on despair, and could not even go on painting. Her husband went abroad. Angelica never saw him again, and he died some years later. At last her friends roused her, and persuaded her to take up her brushes again, and she threw herself into her work once more. As time wore on, John Kaufman grew old and infirm, and the doctor said he must go abroad. Angelica was tired of London's society, weary of London fogs and mists, and she had long been yearning for her beloved Italy. So they left England, and though it cost Angelica many pangs to leave the friends who had been so kind to her, she was very thankful to be in a sunny climate once more, under the blue Italian skies. In Venice she painted several well-known pictures on historical subjects. They were eagerly bought at high prices, and are now to be seen in different parts of Europe. After the death of her father, Angelica took up her abode in Rome. She would get up early, take 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 Van Dyke 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 Kaufman, 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, nobility, 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 paintbrush between its fingers. Compared to the great and powerful artist 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 Kaufman was one of the greatest artist women the world has ever seen. END OF CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII of GREAT ENGLISH WOMEN This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. GREAT ENGLISH WOMEN by M.B. Singh CHAPTER XII HANNAH MOORE 1745-1833 Hannah Moore 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 Somersetshire. She was one of the younger daughters of Jacob Moore, 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 eye 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 scrap 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 choir of paper was the child's greatest ambition. One of her elder sisters went to a school in Bristol, from Mondays till Saturdays, and from Saturday 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 halfway 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 today, 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, mourning him. When she went to see him one day alone he was out, so Hannah Moore went into his parlor 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 Moore 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 Faults Hood, 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 Moore deeply. Mrs. Garrick sent for her at once in her trouble, and though ill in bed at the time Hannah Moore 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 was 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 Moore. They will work from higher and nobler 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 mended pills. 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 active parliament. It was in two districts where no policeman dared to go, that Hannah Moore and her sister ventured. There was no clergyman for miles around. 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 Moore 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 laborers coming home late from harvest, so tired that they could hardly stand, while not go to rest till they have been into school for a chapter and a prayer, wrote Hannah Moore. In seventeen ninety-two 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 Moore 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 Moore 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 Moore 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 learned geography and the hearts and senses, posted a little girl in a country parish, meaning the arts and the sciences. I am learning syntax, a little servant said to Hannah Moore when questioned about her school. Hannah Moore died at the age of eighty-eight, after years of intense suffering. She had lived to see how education was helping the poorer classes and stamping out crying. How a little love and kindness had helped even the rough minors 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 remember the name of Hannah Moore. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Of Great English Women This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Great English Women by M. B. Singh Chapter 13 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 21st, 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 seaside, but at the side 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 someday 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 quantities 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 amusement. 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. Hither, too, 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 amusement and pleasure seemed gone. New feelings had been stirred within her. She felt there was something more to live for than mere pleasure. A nobler spirit was moving within her that showed her their 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-colored 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 Street seemed dear to her. 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 eighteen oh nine 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 trows to get ferns and wildflowers to plant in their garden at home. Then, refreshed and strengthened, she was again ready to take up her London work. It was in eighteen thirteen 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 all mighty better than thee. Sara 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 schoolroom, 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 learned 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 aprons 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 ships was the next work for Mrs. Fry. Up to this time the vessels were terribly overcrowded. 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 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 immigrants 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 ship 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 too 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 inquire 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 bleeding like a flock of little lambs. A long row of clean white cots was placed all around the room. On a sloping mattress before the fire a row of babies was lying waiting for 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 pittously 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 willed 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 morning for her. Fast crowds assembled in the friend's burying ground, near her old country home at Plachette. Silently and reverently to attend the simple Quaker funeral and to do honour to Elizabeth Fry, now laid at rest beside her little child. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Great English Women This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Great English Women by M. B. Singh Chapter 14 Mary Summerville 1780-1872 Mary Summerville, 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 mid-shipman, 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 will-barrow, will him to the next neighbour's door, and there leave him. The neighbour would then come out, feed the cripple with a little oat-cake or anything she could spare, and will him on to 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 she used to prepare by taking out the still 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 the general fear of thunder, for at the first clap he would rush howling indoors and place his head on Mary's knee. Thus the shutters closed, they waited the utter distraction they expected, but which never came. When Mary was seven her mother made her useful at shelling peas and beans, feeding the cocks 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 took quirk 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 quirked 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, still support round her body, a band drawing her shoulders back till the shoulder blades met, a still rod with a semicircle passing 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 passed 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 shells, and wondering at curious marks of fern leaves and shells 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 find 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 Jesus, 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 overhead. 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 aid her. It was found that some rats had gnawed the ropes on which the Jesus hung, and all the Jesus 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 in 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 thunderstorm. 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 candles 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 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 seventy-five pounds a year at his death in 1813. In 1804 Mary Fairfax married a cousin, a Mr. Grieg, and went to live in London. She was very poor, her mother could afford her but a small outfit, and gave her twenty pounds to buy a warm wrap for the winter. Mrs. Grieg 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 life 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 favorite subject, 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 life 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. They traveled abroad a good deal, and then settled in London, where Mary Somerville gave up a good deal of her time to teaching her little children. Here she published a book on physical geography, which is very well known and used still. It was a great undertaking for a woman and made a stir in the world of science. But she was not entirely given up to science. We find her making with her own hands a quantity of orange marmalade for a friend, who had brought her back minerals from a foreign land, to take on his next voyage, and she enjoyed an evening at the play as much as any one. The long illness and death of their eldest child fell very heavily on Mrs Somerville, and for a time she could not even work. Then they moved to Chelsea. Here she was asked to write an account of a French book which she had read on astronomy, a book which only some twenty people in England knew, and she was chosen above all the learned men to write on this difficult subject. It was a vast undertaking, the more so as she still saw in entertained friends, not wishing to drop society altogether. Moreover, it was not known what she was writing, as, if it turned out to be a failure, it was not to be printed. In the middle of some difficult problem a friend would call and say, I have come to spend a few hours with you, Mrs Somerville, and papers and problems had to be hidden as quickly as possible. When it was finished the manuscript was sent to the great astronomer, Herschel, who was delighted with it. Go on thus, he wrote, and you will leave a memorial of no common kind to posterity. Mrs Somerville never wrote for fame, but it was very pleasant to have such praise from one of the greatest men of science living. The success of her book proved its value and astonished her. Seven hundred and fifty copies were sold at once, and her name and her work were talked of everywhere. Her bust was placed in the great hall of the Royal Society. She was elected a member of the Royal Academy in Dublin, and of the Natural History Society at Geneva. A bust of her was made the figurehead of a large vessel in the Royal Navy, which was called Mary Somerville. And lastly she received a letter from Sir Robert Peel, saying he had asked the king, George IV, to grant her a pension of twelve hundred a year, so that she might work with less anxiety. Here was success for the self-taught woman, raised by her own efforts higher than any woman before her in any branch of science, and it is pleasant to find her the same modest character after it as she was before. Her health being broken she went to Paris. Here she still went on writing, but being very weak and ill she was obliged to write in bed till one o'clock. The afternoons she gave up to going about Paris and seeing her friends. Some years after her husband being ill they went abroad to Rome, where they made many friends. One friend is mentioned as having one Mrs. Somerville's love by his love for birds. The Italians eat nightingales, robins, and other singing birds, and when the friend heard this he cried, What? Robins? Our household birds? I would soon as eat a child. In eighteen sixty her husband died in Florence. To occupy her mind Mrs. Somerville began to write another book. She was now over eighty, and her hand was not so steady as it used to be. But she had her eyesight and all her faculties, and with her pet Mountain Sparrow sitting on her arm she wrote daily from eight in the morning till twelve. Five years later she had the energy to go all over an iron-clad ship, which she was very curious to see. I was not even hoisted on board, she wrote to her son, but mounted the ladder bravely and examined everything in detail except the stoke-hole. At the age of ninety she still studied in bed all the morning. But I am left solitary, she says with pathos, for I have lost my little bird, who is my constant companion for eight years. One morning her daughter came into the room, and being surprised that the little bird did not fly to greet her as usual she searched for it, and found the poor little creature drowned in the jug. In eighteen seventy an eclipse of the sun interested Mr. Somerville very much. It came after a huge thunderstorm, and was only visible now and then between dense masses of clouds. The following year there was a brilliant aurora lighting up the whole sky. Many ignorant people were very frightened because it had been said the world was coming to an end, and they thought that a bright piece of the aurora was a slice of the moon that had already tumbled down. Though at the age of ninety-two her memory for names and people failed she could still read mathematics, solve problems, and enjoy reading about new discoveries and theories in the world of science. Some months before her death she was awakened one night at Naples to behold Mount Vesuvius in splendid eruption. It was a wonderful sight. A fiery stream of lava was flowing down in all directions. A column of dense black smoke rose to more than four times the height of the mountain. While burst a fiery matter shot high up into the smoke, and the roaring and thunder never ceased for one single moment. Three days later extreme darkness surprised everyone. Mrs. Summerville saw men walking along the streets with umbrellas up, and found that Vesuvius was sending out an immense quantity of ashes like fine sand, and neither land, sea, nor sky were visible. In the summer Mrs. Summerville and her daughters went out of Naples and took a pleasant little house near the sea. She still took a keen interest in passing events. She knew she could not live much longer, and she worked on to the actual day of her death, which took place in the autumn of 1872. Mrs. Summerville stands alone as the greatest woman in the world of science. She was entirely self-taught, and it was by her own efforts she rose to be what she was. A woman of untiring energy, with wonderful power of thought and clearness of mind. A woman in advance of her times. CHAPTER 15 Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the greatest woman poet England has ever had, though some of her poetry is difficult to understand, owing to her depth of thought and great reading, yet many of her prettiest and most touching poems have been written about little children. She, with her pitiful heart, felt for the sorrows they could not express, and has told us about them. She has told us about little Lily, who died when she was no taller than the flowers. Of the little factory children who only cried in their playtime, and only cared for the fields and meadows just to drop down in them and sleep. Of little Ellie sitting alone by the stream, dipping her feet into the clear, cool water, and dreaming the hours away. Elizabeth Barrett always looked on Malvern as her native place, though she was not actually born there, but in Durham in 1809. The early years of her life seemed to have been very happy. We hear of her as a little girl with clusters of golden curls, large, tender eyes, and a sweet smile. She herself has not told us much about her early years, but the glimpses she has given us are very bright. Her father had a country house near Malvern, and over the Malvern hills the child loved to roam. She liked to be out all day with the flowers, and the bees, and the sun. If the rain fell, there was sorrow. She says, and she laid her curly head against the window, while her little finger followed the long trailing drops down the pain. And like other children she would gently sing, rain, rain, come to-morrow, to try and drive it away. When she went out it was not along the sheep-paths over the hills that she cared to go, but to wander into the little woods where the sheep could not stray. Now and then she tells us one of them would venture in, but it's wool called in the thickets, and with a silly thorn-pricked nose it would bleed back into the sun, while the little poet girl went on, tearing aside the prickly branches with her struggling fingers, and tripping up over the brambles which lay across her way. At eight years old and earlier she began to write little verses, and at eleven she wrote a long epic poem in four books called The Battle of Marathon, of which fifty copies were printed, because she tells us her father was bent on spoiling her. She spent most of her time reading Greek, either alone or with her brother. She so loved the old Greek heroes and would dream about them at night. She loved the old Greek stories. She ate and drank Greek. And her poetry is mixed with Greek ideas and thoughts and names, even from a child. She had one favorite brother. With him she read. With him she talked. They understood one another, and entered into one another's thoughts and fancies. He called her by a pet name when they were little children together, because the name Elizabeth seemed so hard to utter, and he calls me by it still. She adds pathetically in later life, when that life was no longer all sunshine and laughter, and when the brother had been taken from her. But these were happy days, these days of childhood, never forgotten by Elizabeth Barrett, who looked back to them afterwards, and remembered how she sat at her father's knee and how lovingly he would look down at the little poet and reward her with kisses. When she was older the family moved to London, and there Elizabeth Barrett became very ill. She had always been fragile and delicate, and now she was obliged to lie all day in one room in the London house. When she grew a little stronger and the cold weather was coming on the doctor ordered a milder climate, and she was moved to Torquay, her favorite brother going with her. She had been there a year, and the mild sea breezes of Devonshire had done her good, when fresh trouble came to her. One fine summer morning her brother with a few friends started in a little sailing vessel for a few hours' trip. They were all good sailors, and knowing the coast well they sent back to the boatman and undertook the management of the boat themselves. The idea of danger never seems to have occurred to them. They had not got far out when suddenly, just as they were crossing the bar, inside of the very windows the boat went down, and the little crew perished, among them Elizabeth Barrett's favorite brother. He was drowned before her very eyes, and already ill and weak she nearly sank under the weight of the blow. The house she lived in at Torquay was at the bottom of the cliffs close to the sea, but now the sound of the waves no longer soothed her. They sounded like moanings from the sea. She struggled back to life, but all was changed for her. Still she clung to Greek and literature, and she would pour over her books till the doctor would remonstrate and urge some lighter reading. He did not know that her books were no hard study to her. Reading was no exertion, but a delight and comfort to her. Changing the current of her thoughts from the sad past, and helping her to wile away the long hours of sickness. However, to make others happy about her, she had her little addition of Plato bound so that it looked like a novel, and then she could read it without being disturbed or interfered with at all. She tried to forget her ill health and weariness, and some of her letters at this time were so bright and amusing, that we see how well she succeeded in throwing herself into the lives of those around her. At last she was well enough to be moved in an invalid carriage with a thousand springs to London, in short journeys of twenty miles a day. There are seven long years she lived in one large, but partly darkened room, seeing only her own family and a few special friends. Her poems were sad, beautiful, and very tender. Never once did she allude in words to the terrible blow which had swept so much sunshine and happiness from her young life. But her writings are full now of wild utterances and passionate cries, now calming down into sleepy lullabies for the children she had such sympathy with. She did not put her name to many of her works, but readers were startled from time to time by the wonderful new poems, until at last they were traced to the sick room of Elizabeth Barrett. In her sick room lived Flusch, a little dog given her by a friend. He was dark brown with long, silken ears and hazel eyes, but better than these such a faithful heart. And, of thee it shall be said, this dog watched beside a bed day and night unweary, watched within a curtained room, where no sunbeam break the gloom round the sick and dreary. He would push his nose into her pale, thin hand, and lie content for hours till the quick tears of his mistress would sometimes drop onto his glossy head, and he would spring up eagerly, as if to share the trouble if he only could. Here is a story about Flusch which shows his devotion. The little terrier was stolen, and his mistress shed many tears for her lost favorite. She was accused of being childish, but she could not help it. Fluschie is my friend, my companion, and loves me better than he loves the sunshine without, she cried. At last the thief was found, and he gave up the dog for some money, saying, You had better give your dog something to eat, for he has tasted nothing for three days. But Flusch was too happy to eat. He shrank away from the plate of food which was given him, and lay down his head on his mistress's shoulder. He is worth loving, is he not? asked Elizabeth Barrett, when she had told this story to a friend. One of her best-known poems is The Cry of the Children. For the little overworked children in the large factories her human heart was stirred. She knew what a life they led from early morning till late at night, amid the rushing of the great iron wheels, or working underground in the damp and dark, and she could not be silent. Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers, ere the sorrow comes with years. They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, and that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleeding in the meadows, the young birds are chirping in the nest, the young fawns are playing in the shadows, the young flowers are blowing towards the west. But the young, young children, O my brothers, they are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, in the country of the free. They seem to look up with their pale and sunken faces, and to cry that the world is very dreary. They take but a few steps, and get so tired that they long for rest. It is true, they say, sometimes they die very young. There was one, little Alice, died lately. They go and listen by her grave, and she never cries. No one calls her up early, saying, Get up, little Alice, it is day. Time to go off to the droning, droning wheels in the factories. And it is good when it happens, say the children, that we die before our time. It is no good to call them to the fields to play, to gather big bunches of cow slips, to sing out, as the little thrushes do. For oh, say the children, we are weary, and we cannot run and leap. If we cared for any meadows, it were merely to drop down in them and sleep. For the great wheels never stop, the little heads may burn, the little hearts may ache, till the children long to moan out. O ye wheels, stop, be silent for to-day. Here were the children in their misery, lifelike, only too true and real, and then the poet pleads for them, pleads that they may be taught there is something in life as well as the great grinding wheels, pleads that the life of the little factory children may be made happier and brighter. And England heard the cry of the children. The following year fresh laws were made about the employment of children in factories. They were not to be allowed to work under the age of eight, and not then unless they were strong and healthy. They were not to work more than six hours and a half a day, and to attend school for three hours. Three years after this poem was written, Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, the poet, and together they went off to Italy, where the softer air and mild climate brought back her health for a time. She is getting better every day, wrote her husband, stronger, better wonderfully, and beyond all our hopes. One of Mrs. Browning's happiest poems is the story of little Ellie and the swan's nest. Little Ellie sits alone, she begins, mid the beaches of a meadow. Then she goes on to tell us of her shining hair and face, how she has thrown aside her bonnet, and is dipping her feet into the shallow stream by which she sits. As she rocks herself to and fro, she thinks about a swan's nest she has found among the reeds, with two precious eggs in it. Then the vision of a night, who is to be her lover, rises before her. He is to be a noble man, writing on a red-roned steed shod with silver. He is to kneel at her feet, and she will tell him to rise and go. Put away all wrong, so that the world may love and fear him. Off he goes, three times he is to send a little foot-page to Ellie for words of comfort. The first time she will send him a white rosebud, the second time a glove, and the third time leave to come and claim her love. Then she will show him and him only the swan's nest among the reeds. Little Ellie gets up, ties on her bonnet, puts on her shoes, and goes home round by the swan's nest, as she does every day. Just to see if there are any more eggs. On she goes, pushing through the elm-tree-cops, winding up the stream, light-hearted. Then when she reaches the place, she stops, stooped down. And what does she find? The wild swan has deserted her nest. A rat had gnawed the reeds, and Ellie went home sad and slow, if she ever found the lover on the red-roned steed. Soothe I know not, but I know she could never show him, never that swan's nest among the reeds. It was at Florence that Mrs. Browning's little son was born, her little Florentine, as she left to call him. She has drawn us many a picture of him, with his blue eyes at amber curls, lit up to golden by the Italian son. My little son, my Florentine, sit down beside my knee. She begins in one poem, and then she tells him in verse a tale about Florence, and the war in Italy. And when it was over, the child had grown very grave. For Mrs. Browning loved Italy with all her heart, and she watched the great struggle for Italian unity, which was going on very anxiously. From time to time she wrote patriotic poems to encourage the oppressed, and to express her delight at their victories. At the same time England was not forgotten. I am listening here in Rome, she wrote, when pleading for the ragged schools of London. Still, though under the clear Italian skies, she can see the ragged, barefooted, hungry-eyed children begging in the London streets. It is a disgrace to England, she cries. She knows they cannot all be fed and clothed, but put a thought beneath the rags to enable the heart struggle, so that by gentle words the children may learn just the uses of their sorrow. And again Mrs. Browning's appeal was not in vain. One of her last poems was a very sad one, called Little Maddie. Mrs. Browning had, even in Italy, suffered very much from bad health, and in 1861 she died. She was buried beside a grassy wall in the English burial-ground just outside Florence, the city she loved so well. In Italy, my Italy, as she has called it, the land where Keats and Shelley lie. Of the early and private life of Florence Nightingale there is no need to speak, but you should know what good work she has done for her country, how she left her English home to go and nurse the poor soldiers who were wounded in battle in the Crimea, and how well she did the work that she undertook to do. Not only did she work out of England, but in England she has improved some of our hospitals, taught some of our English nurses how to work better, and has made nursing into the happier labor it is now, instead of the drudgery it was too often before. She was born in Florence in 1820 and therefore named after that town, but her home was always in Derbyshire. She was always fond of nursing and her early ambition was to improve the system of nursing, and to get many things done that she saw would make pain and suffering more bearable in our English hospitals. Now in Germany, in a little village on the Great Rhine, is a large building where women are trained as nurses for sick people. They all wear full black skirts and very white aprons, deep white collars and caps, and all the sick people come from the village, and village is round to be nursed by them. There was no training school for women in England, so it was to this kind of hospital home that Florence Nightingale went in 1851, and there she worked for three months. They were three happy months, and she learned the best German rules of nursing, and saw how a large hospital ought to be managed, and so she got some of the training which fitted her for the great work which she undertook some years later. On her return to England she became head of a London hospital for women. But before you hear about her work, and how she nursed our soldiers, you must know about the war in the Crimea, how our soldiers were wounded, and why they wanted good nursing. For several years a dispute had been going on between Russia and Turkey, and at last Russia pushed her troops into Turkey, and Turkey declared war. England and France had promised some time before to help Turkey if she needed help, and now they found themselves at war. English and French steamers kept hurrying backwards and forwards from the Black Sea to try and make peace. But it was impossible, so armies were sent, and Lord Raglan, who had lost one arm at Waterloo, fighting under the Great Duke of Wellington, was given the command of the English army. Now at the Sea of Russia is a peninsula called the Crimea, and the allied armies of England, France, and Turkey, knew that if they could take a large town in the Crimea called Sevastopol, the Russian fleet in the Black Sea would be rendered powerless for a long time. So they chose this town for their attack, but they were divided from it by the River Alma, and here the Russian army was posted in great strength on a line of steep, rocky hills on the other side of the river. They thought that the English and French would never dare to cross the river in the face of their fire. But the allied armies were very brave. The order was given to cross the river. The men waited the string, and under a deadly fire from the Russians, they scaled the heights bravely. The Russians were brave, but badly commanded, and before long they fled, leaving the allied armies victorious. The English had fought their first battle, gained their first victory at the Crimea, and allowed British cheer rows from the troops as they stood on the well-won heights, and struck terror into the hearts of the retreating Russians. Our soldiers had fought nobly, but three thousand lay dead or wounded on the field of battle. Great were the rejoicings in England when news of the victory arrived, but the joy was mixed with sorrow at the terrible accounts of the English soldiers who were wounded so badly on the field. All night the doctors worked, trying to dress their wounds and relieve their pain, and have them carry to hospitals and tents. But the work was enormous, and there were not enough doctors to perform it, and no proper nurses to take charge of the hospitals. The cry for doctors and nurses reached England, and England responded readily to the call. Many English women offered themselves to go out and nurse the six soldiers, and their offer was accepted by the government. One of the first volunteers was Miss Nightingale, and owing to her great experience she was entrusted with choice of nurses and the leadership of them. It was a difficult matter to choose the fittest nurses out of the many who offered themselves, but at last the work was done, and one October day Miss Nightingale and thirty-seven nurses left Folkstone by steamer for the east. They were received by a crowd at Boulogne to wish them Godspeed on their mission, and then some of their chief citizens entertained them at dinner. The Fisherwomen of Boulogne in their plain bright skirts and colored shawls carried all the luggage themselves up from the steamer amid the cheers of the people. All through France the nurses were received with sympathy and respect, for France and England were joined in a common cause, and France had already sent out nurses for their six soldiers. Then Miss Nightingale and her little band sailed for Marseille to Constantinople. They had a very stormy passage, but arrived at Constantinople on November 4th, 1854, on the eve of another great battle. The Battle of Balaclava, made famous by the charge of the Light Brigade, in which so many brave lives were lost through a mistaken order, was over. But November 5th, the day after Miss Nightingale arrived, was to be made famous by another splendid victory over the Russians. It was a misty winter morning, and the day had hardly dawned when the Russians advanced, sure a victory, to the plateau of Inkerman, where a scanty British force was collected. So thick was the fog that the English knew nothing till in overwhelming numbers the Russians appeared pressing up the hill. At once the fighting began, and the soldiers bravely kept their post, driving back the Russians time after time as they mounted the slopes. All day the battle lasted, and the English were getting exhausted when a French army arrived, and the Russians were soon in full retreat, having been beaten by an army, taken unawares, and only a fourth part of their own number. This battle is famous because the soldiers, not the generals, won the day. The wounded soldiers were taken to the hospital at Skutari, where Miss Nightingale had only just arrived. The hospital was already full. Two miles of space were occupied by beds, and there were over two thousand sick and wounded soldiers. Then the wounded from Inkerman were brought across the water, and landed at the pier. Those who could walk to the Great Barric Hospital. Those who were too badly hurt to walk were carried on stretchers up the steep hill leading to the hospital. It was a large square building outside, and inside were large bare wards with rows and rows of closely packed beds. There seemed no room for the heroes of Inkerman, but beds were made up all along the passages as close as possible, and the wounded men were laid in them. It was a cheering sight to the six soldiers to see Miss Nightingale and the nurses moving about the wards. They all were aprons and bands with Skutari Hospital marked on them, plain skirts and white caps. The men had never been nursed by women before, only by men. Some of them very rough, some knowing nothing of sickness and unable to dress their wounds. But these nurses moved about from bed to bell, quickly and quietly, attending to each sufferer in turn, and working for hours and hours with no rest. Some of the soldiers were too ill even to know where they were until they slowly returned to life and found themselves no longer lying on the battlefield, but in the hospital, being cared for and looked after by Miss Nightingale or one of her band. The nurses had a hard time of it. The Turkish bread was so sour they could hardly eat it. What butter they had was bad, and the meat, one of them said, was more like moist leather than food. But they worked on through the day, often through the night as well, carrying out the doctor's orders, giving medicine, supplying lint and bandages, and giving lemonade to the thirsty soldiers. There was barely room to pass between the beds, so closely were they packed. Here and there a little group of doctors would stand over a bed, talking over a pad case, while those soldiers who could walk would go to the bed of a comrade to help pass some of the long hours away. The winter was bitterly cold. The men on the bleak heights before Sevastopol were only half fed. Their clothes were in rags. They had to sleep on the damp ground and toil for many hours every day in the trenches, ankle deep in water and mud. Many hundreds died, many more sickened, and were taken to the hospital. Besides the large kitchen which supplied all the general food, the nurses had another, where jelly, arrowroot, soup, broth, and chickens were cooked for those who were too ill to eat the usual hospital fare. Here Miss Nightingale would cook herself, if there was some urgent case, and with her own hands feed the sick and dying men. She had a great power of command over the soldiers. Many a time her influence helped a wounded man through the dreaded operations. He would sooner die than meet the knife of the surgeon. Then Miss Nightingale would encourage him to be brave, and while she stood beside him, he, with lips closely set and hands folded, set himself for her sake to endure the necessary pain. And the soldiers would watch her gliding down the wards, and long for their turn to come, when she would stand by their special bed and perhaps speak some special word to them. Then the men under her, the orderlies who had to obey her in everything, did it without a murmur. During all that dreadful period not one of them failed her in devotion, obedience, ready attention. For her sake they toiled and endured, as they would not have toiled and endured for any one else. Never, she said, never came from any one of them a word or look which a gentleman would not have used. And the tears would come into her eyes, as she thought how, amid those terrible scenes of suffering, disease and death, these men, accustomed to use bad language, perhaps to swear, never once used a bad expression which might have distressed her. Their lady in chief. But Miss Nightingale had very uphill work. Among other things, when she first went to the hospital, she found there was no laundry, and only seven shirts had been washed belonging to the soldiers. So she had a laundry formed as soon as possible, and there was a grand improvement in the cleanliness of the hospital. One December day great excitement ran through the wards of the Great Scrutari Hospital, when it became known that a letter from the queen had arrived. I wish, wrote the queen, Miss Nightingale and the ladies to tell these poor, noble, wounded and sick men that no one takes a warmer interest or feels more for their sufferings or admires their courage and heroism more than their queen. Day and night she thinks of her beloved troops. Copies of this letter were made and read aloud in each ward, and as the last words, followed by God save the queen, were uttered, a vigorous amen rose from the sick and dying men. They liked the queen's sympathy, and they loved to think in that far-off land that England was thinking of them. The rejoicings in the wards over an English newspaper were great. Small groups of soldiers would collect round the stove, while one would stand in the middle, perhaps with only one arm, or his head bound up, and read to his eager listeners the news of England and the news of the war, which was still being waged around them, and in which they were keenly interested, for the long siege of Sevastopol, in which many of them had taken part, was still going on. In the spring came the unexpected news of the death of Nicholas, Emperor of Russia. Nicholas is dead. Nicholas is dead, was murmured through the wards, and the news traveled quickly from bed to bed. How did he die? cried some. Well, exclaimed one soldier, I'd rather have that news than a month's pay. One man burst into tears, and slowly raising his hands, he clasped them together, and sobbed out, thank God. In the summer Miss Nightingale went to visit the camp hospitals near Balaclava, and to take some nurses there. She wrote up the heights on a pony, while some men followed with baggage for the hospitals, and she was warmly greeted by the six soldiers. A little later she was seized with fever, and carried on a litter to one of the hut hospitals, where she lay for some time in high fever. When at last she was well enough to be moved, she was carried down and placed on board a vessel bound for England. But she felt there was more work to be done, and though still weak and ill, she returned to her post at the Barrett Hospital. In the autumn of 1855 the interest among the soldiers became intense, as it was known that Sevastopol could not hold out much longer. At last, in September, it was announced that Sevastopol was a heap of ruins. The effect in the warts was electric. Sevastopol has fallen, was the one absorbing thought. Dying men sat up in their beds, and clasped their hands, unable to utter more than one word, Sevastopol. Would I had been in at the last? murmured one, wounded while the siege was yet going on. With the fall of Sevastopol, the war was at an end, and peace was signed the following spring. But Miss Nightingale still remained at Scudari, till the English had finally left Turkey in the summer of 1856. England had resolved to give her a public welcome, but she shrank from it, and quietly arrived at her home in Derbyshire, unrecognized. But England wanted to show her gratitude to her in some way for the good work she had done, and the soldiers wanted to share. So a fund was started, called the Nightingale Fund, and very heartily did all join in the home movement. The soldiers, both those who were wounded and those who were not, gave all they could, so universal was the feeling of thankfulness and gratitude to Miss Nightingale, who had given up so much for their sakes, and risked her life to ease their sufferings and cheer their long hours of pain. At Miss Nightingale's special wish the fund was devoted to the formation of a training school for nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. For up to this time no woman could be properly trained in England, and there were not many who could afford to go to the training home on the Rhine in Germany. The Queen presented Miss Nightingale with a beautiful jewel. It was designed by the Prince Consort. The word Crimea was engraved on it, and on the back were the words, to Florence Nightingale, as a mark of esteem and gratitude for her devotion towards the Queen's brave soldiers. From Victoria R. 1855. In 1858 she wrote a book called Notes on Nursing, and it soon became very popular. In it she tries to show how much harm is done by bad nursing. Every woman, she says, or at least almost every woman in England, has at one time or another of her life, charge of the personal health of somebody. In other words, every woman is a nurse. And then she tells the women of England what a good nurse ought to be, how quiet and clean, how obedient to the doctor's orders, how careful about food and water. Windows are to be made open, doors are made to shut, she remarks, and if nurses remembered this oftener it would be better and happier for their patients. But her life was chiefly lived in those two years at the Scutari Hospital. The many difficulties she met with at first, the struggle against dirt and bad food, the enormous amount of extra work to be got through in the day because others would not do their full share, the terribly anxious cases she had to nurse. All these told on her health. I have been a prisoner to my room from illness for years, she tells us. But she did more good, brave, noble work in those two years than many a woman has done in a lifetime. One of our poets has written about Miss Nightingale. He was reading one night of the Great Army of the Dead on the battlefields of the Crimea. The wounded from the battle plane in dreary hospitals of pain, the cheerless corridors, the cold and stony floors. And as he pictured this desolate scene he seemed to see a lady with a little lamp moving through the glimmering gloom, softly going from bed to bed. He saw the speechless sufferer turn to kiss her shadow as it fell upon the darkened walls. And then he adds, A lady with a lamp shall stand in the great history of the land, a noble type of good, heroic womanhood.