A FAMILY’S STORY

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31339, 8 April 1967, Page 4

A FAMILY’S STORY

Katharine Fry’s Book. Edited by Jane Vanslttart. Hodder and Stoughton. 160 pp. Illustrated. Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer is a well-known figure, but as wife and mother she is less familiar. In this book her daughter Katharine, eldest of her eleven children, gives a vivid ture of the i'ry family and her mother’s family—the of some of the major events of their times. At the age of 71 Katharine Fry began this remarkable boric, completing it when she was 75, but so lively is her style that this is by no means an elderly lady’s boric. Commander and Mrs D. C. Polly, fifth generation descendants of Elizabeth Fry, lent Katharine Fry’s original boric to Jane Vansittort, who has edited its 200,000 words to a most entertaining 50,000. The original volume was illustrated with illuminated capitals at the beginning of each of its 14 chapters, charming watercolour sketches, drawings and portraits, many of which are reproduced in this book. As the eldest of the eleven children of a famous mother, Katharine met many notable people of the day and with her keen eye and talented pen and brush she has recorded events in a most entertaining manner. She and her sister Rachel accompanied Elizabeth Fry on many of her journeys to the prisons, the convict ships, coastguard stations

(for which she was instrumental in obtaining libraries), and to Mansion House receptions where, on one occasion, Elizabeth Fry, wearing her sombre Quaker dress and bonnet, was presented to Queen Charlotte. No matter lin what company she was, Elizabeth Fry remained the same calm, dignified woman.

compassionately interested In each problem presented to her, whether it was the Royal babies’ teething troubles or the plight of a. woman sentenced to death for passing a forged £1 note, ■Katiwrine Fiy was near the 'door of Westminster Abbey at 6 aan. to watch the coronation procession ef George IV in 1821. From her position in the stands she made a sketch of the acene “on the becks of letters pinned together, and the crown of a hat for a table!” The sketch is reproduced in this book. “Suddenly,” mid Katharine Fry, "we were disturbed by a loud and continued Yell, the most horrid noise I ever heard.” It was Queen Caroline who, against the orders of the King, was going from locked door to locked door of the Abbey, trying in vain to take her place at the coronation.

But life was not all meetings with famous people. As Elizabeth Fry was a strict Quaker and Joseph Fry a liberal, their tastes were far from ostentatious, but they were undoubtedly a wealthy family. However, in 1828 a

financial crash, occasioned by the speculations of Joseph Fry’s brother in South American mines, caused them to give up their family home "Plashet” with its beautiful grounds and move to a much smaller house nearer to London. Through all these difficult times Elizabeth Fry continued her work for prison reform and at the suggestion of Robert Southey extended its scope to include hospital reform. In 1847 Katharine Fry and her sister Richenda published a “Memoir” of their mother, giving full details of her public life. The Impression given In that account of a stately, rather humourless woman, remote from her family, differs widely from the more natural account in this present book, which was obviously written without any seif-consciousness as to the effect it would produce on the reader. With ite dramatic accounts of a carriage accident in which Katharine Fry was Involved in France, the preparations for flight In the event of invasion by Napoleon—which in 1802 seemed imminent-4he estabhrinnent by Elizabeth Fry of a corps of nursing sisters from whom. Florence Nightingale subsequently drew some of her nursing sisters for the Crimea, this book will undoubtedly appeal to a wider reading public than Katharine Fry had in mind when she wrote, "I shell endeavour ... only to record a few of those private and familiar particulars which are Ukely to interest the family’s descendants.” To her these were everyday events of limited appeal, but she herself aptly describes their attraction for us in an illuminated chapter heeding: TMno* n«4th«r 6«auti/ul nor rart May yet provt both kept with care. ' In an introductory note Jane Vensittart says that there is sufficient material for six books without repetition. To leeve us with one taste only of this delectable dish would be ungenerous.