HANNAH MORE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19980, 23 December 1926, Page 12

HANNAH MORE.

A FALSE PICTURE. TEACHER OF THE POOR. SINCERITY AND GOODNESS. Hannah More has been described as a “professional moralist.” This immediately conjures up in the mind a picture of austere and joyless womanhood launched upon an endless and untiring quest of well-doing, according to the narrow and uncompromising creed of definite right and wrong of orthodoxy. The picture is a misconception. It is true that her creed was a narrow one, and her attempts to educate the poor ineffectual in so far that they were strictly limited by a definite harriteb of class distinction which existed at that time. In those days education and knowledge were solely for the leisured classes, for the contemporary opinion was that if the poor were t au 6ht to read they would obey neither God nor man. The fact that Hannah More did teach them to read brought about a considerable amount of adverse criticism, and was regarded as the first spoke in the revolutionary wheel. However, as the Bible was the only literature provided in Hannah’s schools, there was no serious interference. It was quite obvious, too, that intellectual development for the masses was not her object; religious instruction was the sole motif of her enterprise. Labourers’ children should be taught only “such coarse works ar. fit them for servants. I allow of no writing for the ,joor.” And for young fanners, “writing and arithmetic, to qualify them for constables, overseers, churchwardens, and jurors; above all, that they might understand the nature of an oath.” As a writer her efforts were equally without inspiration or enlightenment, but were prompted by the same earnest endeavour “to do good.” Yet the name of Hannah More has lived, not through the results of her philanthropic endeavours or her literary ■ ropaganda, but simply by reason of the strer. th of her unusual personality. If is rarely found that one who so whole-heartedly devotes himself to the working classes is also inspired by a desire to scintillate in the social firmament. In this Hannah More was entirely successful; she was, in the colloquial term, a social success, and in a circle which included such remarkable personalities as Dr Johnson and David Garrick. Hannah More was the fourth in a family of five daughters. She was born in Bristol in 1745. Her father was a schoolmaster, and her mother, the daughter of a well-to-dq farmer, was a woman of considerable intelligence, The .household was a pious and thoroughly happy one. All the sisters were vigorousminded as well as witty, but, like the princess in the fairy tale, Hannah was the cleverest and wittiest of them all. She went a step further than her sisters, and directed her thoughts and witticisms to paper, thereby earning for herself the respect and admiration of the whole family. After receiving a good education she became a governess in a fashionable school for girls. Very soon a situation arose which determined the trend of Hannah’s future. . Two of her pupils had for guardian the wealthy Squire Turner of the Belmont, and she was asked to spend a vacation in company with these young ladies at his “agreeable residence.” Hannah’s sprightly wit and cultured mind soon played havoc with the bachelor heart of the Squire of Belmont. 1 She resigned her position at the school, .and the trousseau was begun—but the elderly lover dallied, and would not “name the day.” And, whether fearful for his own happiness or hers, he made the reason of his hesitancy the disparity in their years, he being her senior by 20 summers. So very soon in the counsel of a good friend Hannah found resolution to terminate this anxious and painful treaty. And from these embarrassments upon her correct and tender mind she came out with a thousand poupds to the good anp a moderate annuity. She was now a free agent, and could indulge her long-dreamed-of wish to pay frequent visits to town. The vulgarity of a breach of promise case seems to hay© in no way affected her being received into the most exclusive society in London. She was immediately welcomed to that precious circle of feminine intellectuals known as the Bas Bleu. Although there was a certain amount of affectation and pretence connected with this movement, these women are much to be congratulated on their enterprising effort to stimulate the art of conversation in order to “free society from the tyranny of whist and quadrilles. It would be an excellent idea it the hostesses of to-day could follow their example, to relieve the tedium of the inevitable game of bridge or the everlasting jazz as the only means of modern entertainment. , . . „ , As the “cultivated country cousin ot this little coterie, Hannah became the rage, while she in her turn was aelighted with her new environment. In her letters she expressed herself as vastly pleased with the little literary societies held at breakfast, and the evening parties, where there was “so much wit under the banner of so much decorum; an innocent kind of wit in Addison’s manner, ’ and where brilliant conversation was maintained "on the strength of a little lemonade, without scandal, cards, or politics.” She had the courage of Her opinions, and openly denounced the grotesque extremes to which the fashions were trending. At one party she attended she noted 11 young ladies, who had amongst them, on their heads, an acre and a-half of shrubbery, besides slopes, grass plots, tulip beds, clumps of peonies, kitchen gardens, and green houses.” It was she who urged Garrick to ridicule this already ridiculous craze by appearing on the stage with great bundles of vegetables on his head, “ including glass cucumber frames and a pendant carrot at each ear.” Writing to her sister, we find her expatiating further on this subject. “I am going to-day to a grand dinner. Nothing can be conceived so absurd, extravagant, and fantastical as the present mode of dressing the head. Simplicity and modesty are things so much exploded that the very names are no longer remembered. I have just escaped from one of those fashionable disfigurers, and though I charged him to dress me with the greatest simplicity, and to have only a very distant eye upon the fashion, just enough to avoid the pride of singularity, without running into ridiculous excess; yet, in spite of ali these sage didactics, I absolutely blush at myself, and turn to the glass with as much caution as a vain beauty just risen from the smallpox, which cannot be a more disfiguring disease than the present mode of dressing.” Her letters to her family were full of entertaining gossip and amusing sketches of'the notables of the day. She describes the Duchess of Kingston—a once reigning beauty, who was evidently one of those women who are incapable of growing old gracefully—as “ large and illshapen . . . like a bale of bombazine.” And she tells a story that shows that our great-grandmothers did not possess the repose with which they have always neen credited. “ I dined one day last week in Dudley street,” she wrote to her sister, “to celebrate the viscount’s (Viscount Falmouth) birthday, who completed his twenty-fifth year. His mother told him she wanted to have him married, and advised him to fall in love; he said he would if he were with any young ladies in the country, but he never could in London, for the women did not stand still long enough for a man to fall in love with them. It would seem that times have not changed, for then, as now the old were as foolish as the young. She complains that “the old are all growing young, and 70 dresses like 17.”

But parties and conversaziones did not take up ail her time. Encouraged by her friend Garrick, she wrote plays, which were largely attended by an enthusiastic and fashionable crowd. None of her plays had any real merit, but Hannah More was popular, and flattery was almost a form of entertainment in those days. After Garrick's death she gradually withdrew (fom the circle of wits, so keenly did she feel his loss, and share his widow’s grief. It was then that she commerced to throw herself with earnestness into her philanthropic activities.

Tier village schools, ineffectual as they appear to us now, were the starting point of the elaborate scheme of compulsory education now provided by the State. She oven had to procure and provide out of her own personal expenses suitable accommodation for her pupils. It is interesting to note the value of property at that date. In one of her letters she writes: —“l procured immediately a good house, which, when n partitition is taken down and a window added, will receive a great number of children. The house and an excellent garden of almost an acre of ground* J-

t have taken at once for six guineas and a half per year.” The secret of her success was her sincerity and her genuine goodness of heart. Mr Brimley Johnson says of her, “I believe that the ultimate cause of her success, the secret of love won and heart* conquered, may be found in her personal emotion towards all in trouble as individual human beings; never regarded as typos of cases, never less eagerly loved for backsliding or ingratitude; if once, then always her friends. Theologically expressed, she followed the Christ law of never confounding the sinner with the sin. There is no instance in all the correspondence or journals about her work, of any reproach, or even impatience towards those to whom her life was given.” She founded clubs and societies for the distressed poor, and brought help and relief to many a home. “Finding the wants and distresses of Sfeae poor people uncommonly great (for their wages were but Is per day), she explained, “and fearing to abuse the bounty of my friends by a too indiscriminate liberty, it occurred to me that I could make what I had to betow go much further by instituting clubs or societies for the women, as is done for men in other places. It was no small trouble to accomplish this; for though the subscription was only three half-pence a week, it was more than they could always raise; yet the object appeared so important that I found it would be good economy privately to give widows and other very poor women money to pay their club.” One rule connected with these clubs is worth recording for its ingenious simplicity. It was that any girl who had belonged to one of them, and is married, with a fair character, is presented with five shillings, a pair of white stockings and a new Bible. Surely an incentive to virtue. For 85 years she persisted in this work, serenely happy in her teaching of the doo trine of the beauties of religion and virtue, sincerely believing that a knowledge of the Bible and a regular attendance at church were the greatest essentials necessary to the true interpretation of the Christian faith. But, in spite of the vehement narrowness of her creed, Hannah More is certainly through her unflagging efforts “to do good’’ under tremendous disadvantages, one of th« great women of history, whose charm and goodness earned for her the respectful admiration and lifelong friendship of the cynical Horace Walpole, who affectionately named her “his holy Hannah.”