Hannah More

Hannah More was the fourth daughter of Jacob More, village schoolmaster of Lord Bottelourt’s foundation-school at Stapleton, and his wife; but this same daughter was destined to become world-famous, and to bring countless visitors into the neighbourhood of Bristol, both during her life and after her death. At eight years old we see little Hannah the happy possessor of a long-coveted "whole quire of writing-paper," which it had not needed much coaxing for her to obtain from her observant mother. Mrs Jacob More was one of Nature's gentlewomen, and though only a farmer's daughter, she was a person of vigorous intellect, who fully appreciated the value of education, and had made the most of her own rather narrow possibilities. Bearing in mind the efforts of her later years, it is interesting to notice that Hannah More's first attempts in religious literature were letters to imaginary people of depraved character and their replies thereto, full of contrition and promises of amendment!

The evangelical piety of Hannah More is rather remarkable, when one considers that her father was a staunch Tory and High Churchman. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that it seems remarkable at first sight; for it has been noticed that a Nonconformist strain is frequently productive of conspicuous piety in the families of High Church religionists. Three generations had passed since the time when Jacob More's ancestors had fought bravely as captains in Cromwell's army, and it is probable that the precocious child heard many stirring stories of their doings in the time of the Commonwealth, which intensified the personal and fiery interest with which she afterwards watched the Revolution of 1793. "Coming events cast their shadows before," and the nursery floor was often the stage whereon, in carriages made of their high-backed chairs, the child played at excursions to London, and drove with her sisters "to see Bishops and Booksellers"—a curious combination, when one remembers the happy experiences which she subsequently enjoyed with Porteous and Cadell.

The following quaint advertisement occurs in the Bristol newspapers of March 11, 1758:

"At No. 6 in Trinity St. near the College Green. On Monday after Easter will be opened a School for young Ladies, by Mary More and Sisters, where will be carefully taught French, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Needlework. Young Ladies boarded on reasonable terms."

A few weeks later an additional line appears: "A dancing master will properly attend."

At this time Hannah More was only thirteen, so that the statements as to her having been a chief promoter of the school are altogether incorrect and absurd. Mary More, then barely twenty-one, seems to have been one of those thoroughly unselfish women of whom there are but too few; and she delighted in developing the taste for languages and literature which her more gifted younger sister very early evinced. The school prospered from the first,—and no wonder, for the mistresses were no ordinary women; and from their wise teaching scores of girls went out, strengthened in principle as well as richer in knowledge, into a world where "it was the fashion to be irreligious."

Hannah took her share in the school duties when she was old enough to do so; but at twenty-two years of age a wealthy but elderly admirer appeared upon the scene, and her engagement, to Mr Turner of Wraxall, was doubtless a source of much satisfaction to the little circle, who in 1762 had moved to a large house in Park Street.The street still remains, and the house is now known as "Hannah More Hall.". . . For six years the curious courtship continued; but at the last moment the gentleman decided that he did not feel equal to the responsibilities of matrimony, and, after compensating his Amaryllis for her "blighted hopes" with an annuity variously computed at £200 and £400 per annum, he died a bachelor. To the last this quaint pair entertained a "cordial respect" for each other, and by his will she found herself the possessor of a legacy of £1000. The annuity enabled her to feel independent and to devote herself to the study of literature, for which she was really far more suited than to the consideration of the "varying moods" of a middle-aged landowner. The literary world is distinctly the richer, so that we are able honestly to rejoice at the capricious conduct of the vacillating lover.

Her first work, The Search after Happiness, published in 1773, was an immediate success, and at once secured her a footing among the distinguished writers of that day. At twenty-eight the obscure schoolmaster's daughter awoke to find herself famous. It was a far cry from Bristol to London in those days. George Stephenson was still unborn, and the natural terrors of the journey were increased by the hordes of highwaymen with which the roads were infested. It is a red-letter day when, in 1773, Hannah More starts on her first pilgrimage to London. Every step of the way is fraught with interest to the young traveller, whose ideal, Samuel Johnson, looms in elephantine grandeur as at the farther side of a great gulf. She has heard of him, read of him, dreamed of him, and now she is to see her hero—the scarred, uncouth scholar whose brilliant intellect could make even his enemies admire and tremble and who has had the solitary glory of creating a faithful biographer.

Arrived in London, she is the cynosure of all eyes; and as if to prove that Barabbas was not a publisher, T. Cadell of the Strand made her the handsome offer of the same remuneration for Sir Eldred of the Bower and the Bleeding Well as Goldsmith had received for the Deserted Village—"be it what it might." This now "unconsidered trifle" was then much praised—and, what is still more remarkable, and certainly not in the very least a matter of sequence, it was also much read.

The following are Green-Armytage’s personal assessments, in 1908, of Augustine Birrell’s criticism of Hannah More in Birrell’s Collected Essays: Res Judicatae (1892).

Hannah More among the prophets and Hannah More as a humorist are, possibly, characterisations under which she has not appeared upon any stage within the last fifty years. But this is a generation that knows not Hannah! and certainly, whoever else knows anything about her, Mr Augustine Birrell does not. He may have read her Life and Works from cover to cover, but a man only gets out of a book that which he himself is capable of assimilating, and Mr Birrell is evidently not en rapport with his subject, and had better have left his unworthy Essay unwritten. . .

It has a spurious smartness about it which makes its misstatements all the more distasteful to an earnest student of her time, especially when coupled with a condescending air of patronage and superiority which sits ill upon a man who has not done, and could not do, one tithe of the work that was done by this delicate woman. . .

As Charles Lamb whimsically said, "She is not Hany More," and Mr Birrell can therefore criticize as harshly as he thinks fit; but with men like Johnson, Garrick, Pitt, Wesley, and Macaulay as counsel for the defence, even her greatest admirers of to-day can afford to smile. In his self-evident desire to be smart, he has forgotten alike the "scrupulous justice which belongs to critics and the delicacy towards the sex which belongs to gentlemen," with which the British Review wrote of her in 1811. To speak of an old woman and a dead woman as a "huge conger-eel floundering in a sea of dingy morality" may be smart writing, but its taste is questionable, to say the least. The careless condescension with which, in later years, he acknowledges her lineaments to be "very pleasant" is almost comical, when one looks at the strong sweet old face with its halo of silver curls, to which Time has but added the beautiful serenity of a well-spent life.

The Bristol election of 1774 was very hotly contested, and the intelligent and tactful sisters did their utmost to secure the return of the Whig candidates, Cruger and Burke, who were triumphantly declared successful by a large majority. This election, "the most interesting that ever took place in Bristol," must have been a time of unwonted excitement for the quiet sisterhood. . . . From 1775 her time was largely spent in the very heart of Londonlife, and amid all the social and intellectual gaieties which the best society afforded. Her account of the trial of Elizabeth, Countess of Bristol, is full of humour, and her letters are brimming with vivacity and observant shrewdness, verifying her own declaration in her seventy-first year, "My temper is naturally gay. This gayety even time and sickness have not much impaired. I have carried too much sail. Nothing but the grace of God and frequent attacks of very severe sickness could have kept me in tolerable order. If I am no better with all these visitations, what should I have been without them?"

Her tragedy, Percy, was produced at Covent Garden Theatre in 1777. Four thousand copies of the "book o' the words" were sold in a fortnight, and the play itself had an unusually long run, David Garrick taking the principal character, and enriching the performance by a prologue and epilogue of his own. This tragedy seems to have made the greatest success of any of her plays, and excited the emotions alike of rich and poor. Johnson, Garrick, and Pitt united in praising it, and the author's place in the literary world was definitely secured.

For several years she lived a life of adulation, but throughout it all she held tight on to her Sundays, and maintained a degree of real simpleness which could only be regarded as remarkable, were not her early influences taken into account. The Jesuits have a saying, "Give us a child to train until he be nine years old, and you may do what you like with him afterwards," and of the truth of this Hannah More is an example. The purity of her life remained untouched, and if to our modern notions she sometimes appears almost "priggish," it must be remembered that the line between faith and unfaith was more sharply defined in her day than it is now, and she was bold to avow that "Propriety is to a woman what the great Roman critic said that action is to an orator,—it is the first, the second, and the third requisite."

Her Utopian schemes of reforming the character of theatrical representations seems to have died with Garrick, and the sight of his coffin in the same room where she had but lately witnessed him performing as Macbeth, made her resolve definitely to devote her talents to higher uses. Garrick was buried in 1779, amid great mourning and splendid pomp, in the great Abbey of Westminster, but on the very night of his funeral the play-houses were as crowded as if no such thing had occurred, and the mourners of the day shared in all the revelries of the night. Such a satire upon "the fashion of this world" helped no doubt to intensify the sadness of his sudden death, and from that time the brilliant life of London, with all its triumphs and successes, seems to have palled upon her. With a woman of her nature this was no mere "phase," resulting from the painful emotions of the time, but a gradual deepening of an innate piety, for which thousands have had reason to be thankful.Never again did she enter a theatre, even when Sarah Siddons was taking a prominent part in Percy, and we cannot but admire the consistent striving after the "highest," which is the keynote of all her subsequent career.

In 1785 we see her installed as mistress of a tiny house called "Cowslip Green," about ten miles from Cheddar; and when in 1789 her sisters gave up the Park Street school and settled in Pulteney Street, Bath, she spent part of every winter with them, and part with Mrs Garrick, for whom she retained the greatest affection and respect. John Wesley much deprecated her retirement to the country, and sent her a message more emphatic than grammatical, which runs thus—

"Tell her," said he, "to live in the world. There is her sphere of usefulness. They will not let us come near them."

But retreat did not mean idleness, and, from the quiet village of Wrington, year by year issued pamphlets and tracts, which circulated in millions, and were instrumental in counteracting the torrent of infidel and licentious literature which threatened to inundate and undermine England—her religion and her government. Realising the enormous influence wielded by those in the van of society, she published an anonymous pamphlet on The Religion of the Fashionable World, and, in spite of the absence of "original thought and happy phrases" which Mr Birrell deplores, its authorship was speedily discovered by Dr Porteous, Bishop of London, who at once declared "Aut Morus, aut angelus!" Her Village Politics was published by Rivington instead of by Cadell, and under the pseudonym “Will Chip,” in order to divert suspicion from its writer, and, to her amusement and gratification, it was sent to her by every post with laudatory reviews recommending its propagation in her own neighbourhood. It sold by the thousands....

It was in 1789 that William Wilberforce visited the sisters at Cowslip Green, and during his visit an immense impulse was given to their work among the poor of the neighbourhood. After visiting the magnificent gorge known as "Cheddar Cliffs" he was observed to be unusually silent, but in the evening he exclaimed, a propos of the amazing ignorance of the people there, "Miss Hannah, something must be done—if you will be at the trouble, I will be at the expense." This was practically another turning-point in the life of Miss Hannah More; and her familiarity with the cottagers, her own tireless energy and abounding sympathy, enabled her to write as powerfully of "Tom White the Postilion" and "Black Giles the Poacher," as she had written before in Hints to a Princess and The Manners of the Great.

But the schemes of Wilberforce and the More sisters for benefiting the population met with no response from the people of that benighted region. The very poor lived in a world of their own—less than half-civilised; and even among the farmers, the only argument for the better education of the children that had any effect was that "while they were at Sunday-school they could not be robbing orchards." But these women worked on undauntedly—through evil and good report—with the energy of the Old and the sweetness of the New Dispensation, until schools and scholars were alike established, and out of a seeming Chaos order and discipline were evolved.

"Something must be done," Wilberforce had said, and "Miss Hannah" did it. She aimed at the highest, but protested most strongly against making the poor into philosophers. Her desire to keep them in their proper place is now out of fashion, and the School Boards of 1906 would scoff at the short and simple lessons of 1799. Her theory was, "suitable education for each and Christian education for all," and the wedding-present for a girl who was married from Hannah More's schools was "a pair of white stockings knitted by herself, five shillings, and a Bible."

In 1802 the house now known as Barley Wood was finished, and thither the five sisters repaired, living happily together as they had done in the old days, to the admiring surprise of Dr Johnson, whose acquaintance she had so coveted nearly thirty years before. To Barley Wood often resorted many leaders of the "Clapham Sect." Henry Thornton, Zachary Macaulay, Wilberforce, and others were gladly welcomed to its old-fashioned hospitalities by the five ladies, now no longer young, who had permanently fixed their abode within its walls.

Thence issued the series of "Cheap Repository Tracts" published by the S.P.C.K., which had an enormous circulation, and which show that "Patty" also had a sprightly fancy and a ready pen. This sister we may fairly suppose to have been the most akin to "Miss Hannah," as hers is the name which occurs most frequently in connection with the social and literary interests of the latter; but all the five, in their devotion to one another, are perhaps unique in domestic annals. Of these tracts the most popular was The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, the hero of which was modelled on a man whom she herself had met. The extraordinary sale of 1,000,000 copies shows its admirable suitability to, and popularity with, the class for whom it, as well as the other tracts, was written.

The atmosphere of Barley Wood was often enlivened by visits from Zachary Macaulay's son, little Thomas Babington, afterwards Lord Macaulay. . . It was Hannah More who first started Lord Macaulay's library, writing to advise him, when only six years old, to "lay a little tiny corner-stone" for the same. She was said to have had the rare gift of knowing how to live with both young and old, and she often kept Macaulay with her for weeks together, the youthful prodigy meanwhile declaiming poetry and reading prose by the hour. His subsequent appreciation of moral goodness and his persevering energy in acquiring knowledge may be fairly traced to the influences of his childhood; but his "negativism" on religious subjects is a matter of surprise and regret, and his old friend of Barley Wood so deeply felt his defection "from the party of the saints to the party of the Whigs," as Mr Maurice significantly says, that she changed her intention of leaving him her own valuable library, as a testimony of her disapproval.

With little outward eventfulness flowed on those next few years, save for the inevitable visits of death, until in 1819 the last blow was struck in the passing away of Patty, whose loving co-operation and care had cheered every step of her career from the time when the little sisters had sung themselves to sleep in the nursery bed at Stapleton…

Unfitted by ill-health, temperament, and having to cope with the deceitfulness of servants, she determined to move into Clifton, and in a smaller house, with a fresh staff of servants, to begin another chapter of her life—at eighty-three years of age. Three days a-week, from twelve to three o'clock, were set apart for the reception of visitors, and when remonstrated with for thus fatiguing herself, the unselfish old lady had always four reasons ready, which she considered unanswerable—If old, she saw them "out of respect; if young, hoping to do them good; if from a distance, because they had come from far; if from near home, because neighbours would be naturally aggrieved at being excluded when she was open to receiving strangers."

As her strength for earthly journeyings declined, her thoughts centred more and more on the "land of far distances," and she realised fully that the time of her departure was at hand. Her final illness lasted for eleven months—long enough for a whole treasury of dying sayings; but the "gayety" of which she spoke in her seventy-first year never forsook her, and is not one of the least charming traits in the character of this quiet reformer.

On the 7th of September the end came, and after lying in a semi-delirious state for many hours, she passed away, murmuring as her last conscious words, "Patty—joy." There is a deep pathos in the association of the words. One could almost believe that a glimpse of that beloved sister who had shared in so much of her earthly happiness was vouchsafed to her, waiting perhaps to welcome her within the golden gates of that beautiful country wherein is "fulness of joy, and pleasures for evermore."

On the 13th of September 1833, every church in Bristol rang a muffled peal, and the tired body of Hannah More was laid to rest in Wrington churchyard, amid every manifestation of respectful mourning. There lie the five More sisters, of whom Johnson had said, "I love you all!"…

Judged by the present pyrotechnic style of literary composition, the success of her work seems phenomenal; but in her day books were not so much a matter of daily outputting as now, and for a publisher to be delivered into the hands of a woman was a welcome novelty. Phrases, too, which to us seem "stilted" almost to absurdity, were then only the courtesies of everyday life—so much is the standard of politeness in its decadence. But it is not too much to say that Hannah More will always be remembered with respectful admiration, even by men of more literary culture than William Wilberforce, who said that he would "rather appear in Heaven as the author of The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain than as the author of Peveril of the Peak." Such men as the shepherd doubtless still exist, though their conditions may be different; and among the many new editions that are continually cropping up, perhaps "Coelebs" and "Will Chip" may yet appear with their wholesome influences, to the displacement of some of our modern writers and the benefit of the next generation.

Her large-heartedness is conspicuously evidenced in her life-long friendship with Mrs Garrick—née Eva Veigel—"La Violetta" of the Viennese ballet. The fact of a staunch Evangelical and a loyal Romanist being able to spend twenty winters together on terms of closest intimacy speaks for itself, though it is quite likely that in these days when the Italian Mission is becoming more and more realised as a proselytising agency, such an unfettered intercourse would be almost impossible, or at any rate impracticable. Hannah More says candidly, "We dispute like a couple of Jesuits"; but it is clear that the love on either side was in no way affected, nor the possibility of compromise entertained.

Of More's character as exhibited by her handwriting, Green-Armytage concludes: The versatility which shows itself in Hannah More's handwriting is manifested by the readiness with which she devoted the ambitions, which had been fostered under Garrick's guidance, to other interests; and what dramatic powers she possessed were quickly overshadowed by the characteristic enthusiasm with which she threw herself into religious and philanthropic reforms. This divine enthusiasm, however, never waned, as her last book on The Spirit of Prayer clearly shows. It proclaims, in tones as distinct, though less forcible, Carlyle's solemn message to the world—"No prayer, no religion, or at least only a dumb and lamed one! Prayer is and remains always a native and deepest impulse of the soul of man; and, correctly gone about, is of the very highest benefit (nay, one might say indispensability) to every man aiming morally high in this world. Prayer is a turning of one's soul in heroic reverence, in infinite desire and endeavour, towards the Highest, the All Excellent, Omnipotent, Supreme."

"Hannah More is incapable of a literary resurrection," says the Minister of Education.... It may be so, but when the struggle of 1906 is only remembered as one more illustration of the extraordinary bias which early training can give to the mind of a man learned in the Law and the Scriptures, the Church shall be quietly extending her boundaries throughout the world, and educating generations of children whose Imperial instincts shall march side by side with the principles and practices for which Hannah More pleaded more than a hundred years ago.

Practical Piety is going out of fashion quite fast enough: we do not want to ignore its Principles also.

Who knows but that the "ever- rolling waves" of Time may once again bear upon their crests the quaint old text-books of God-fearing Faith and Morality which were written—and acted upon—by the little lady of Barley Wood!

A. J. Green-Armytage’s biography of Hannah More takes a sympathetic and admiring view of More’s religiosity and literary merits, while at the same time keeping with a largely traditional view of the role of the independent woman. Additionally, Green-Armytage appears to have a personal quarrel with the criticism leveled by Augustine Birrell on Hannah More’s writing; Green-Armytage regards More as having a much higher degree of literary talent than does Birrell.