CHAPTER IV.
A COUNTRY HOME.
The delight expressed in her diary upon her removal to Plashet, found vent in efforts to beautify the grounds. The garden-nooks and plantations were filled with wild flowers, gathered by herself and children in seasons of relaxation, and transferred from the coppices, hedge-rows, and meadows, to the grounds, which appeared to her to be only second in beauty to Earlham. Mrs. Fry was possessed of a keen eye for Nature's beauties. Quick to perceive and eager to relish the delights of the fair world around, she took pleasure in them, finding relaxation from the many duties which clustered about her in the spot of earth on which her lot was cast. Her journal tells of trials and burdens, and sometimes there peeps out a sentence of regret that the ideal which she had formed of serving God, in the lost years of youth, had been absorbed in "the duties of a careworn wife and mother." Yet what she fancied she had lost in this waiting-time had been gained, after all, in preparation. This quiet domestic life was not what she had looked forward to when in the first flush of youthful zeal. Still, she was thereby trained to deal with the young and helpless, to enter into sorrows and woes, and to understand and sympathise with quiet suffering. But the time was coming for more active outward service, and when the call came Elizabeth Fry was found ready to obey it.
Towards the end of 1809 her father died, after great suffering; summoned by one of her sisters, Elizabeth hurried down to Earlham to catch, if possible, his parting benediction. She succeeded in arriving soon enough to bear her much-loved parent company during his last few hours of life, and to hear him express, again and again, his confidence in the Saviour, who, in death, was all-sufficient for his needs. As he passed away, her faith and confidence could not forbear expression, and, kneeling at the bedside, she gave utterance to words of thanksgiving for the safe and happy ending of a life which had been so dear to her. The truth was, a burden had been weighing her down for some time past, causing her to question herself most seriously as to whether she were willing to obey "the inward voice" which prompted her to serve God in a certain way. This specific way was the way of preaching in Meeting, or "bearing testimony," as she phrased it, "at the prompting of the Holy Spirit." It will be remembered that this is a distinguishing peculiarity of the Society which George Fox founded. Preaching is only permitted upon the spur of the moment, as people of the world would say, but at the prompting of the inward voice, as Quakers deem. Certainly no one ever became a preacher among the Friends "for a piece of bread." If fanatics sometimes "prophesied" out of the fulness of excited brains, or fervid souls, no place-hunter adopted the pulpit as a profession. Only, sometimes, it needs the presence of an overwhelming trial to bring out the latent strength in a person's nature; and this trial was furnished to Elizabeth Fry in the shape of her father's death. The thanksgiving uttered by her at his death was also publicly repeated at the funeral, probably with additional words, and from that time she was known as a "minister."
In taking this new departure she must not be confounded with some female orators of the present age, who often succeed in turning preaching into a hideous caricature. She was evidently ripening for her remarkable work, and while doing so was occasionally irresistibly impelled to give utterance to "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." Still, after reaching the quiet of Plashet, and reviewing calmly her new form of service, she thus wrote, what seemed to be both a sincere and common-sense judgment upon herself:—
I was enabled coming along to crave help; in the first place, to be made willing either to do or to suffer whatever was the Divine will concerning me. I also desired that I might not be so occupied with the present state of my mind as to its religious duties, as in any degree to omit close attention to all daily duties, my beloved husband, children, servants, poor, &c. But, if I should be permitted the humiliating path that has appeared to be opening before me, to look well at home, and not discredit the cause I desire to advocate.
Wise counsels these, to herself! No woman whose judgment is well-balanced, and whose womanly-nature is finely strung, but will regard the path to the rostrum with shrinking and dismay. Either the desire to save and to help her fellow-creatures, "plucking them out of the fire," if need be, is so strong upon her as to overmaster all fear of man; or else the necessities and claims of near and dear ones lay compulsion upon her to win support for them. Therefore, while every woman can be a law unto herself, no woman can be a law unto her sisters in this matter. As proof of her singleness of heart, another passage may be quoted from Mrs. Fry’s journal. It runs thus, and will be by no means out of place here, seeing that it bears particularly upon the new form of ministry then being taken up by her—
May my being led out of my own family by what appears to me duties, never be permitted to hinder my doing my duty fully towards it, or so occupy my attention as to make me in any degree forget or neglect home duties. I believe it matters not where we are, or what we are about, so long as we keep our eye fixed on doing the Great Master's work. . . . I fear for myself, lest even this great mercy should prove a temptation, and lead me to come before I am called, or enter service I am not prepared for. . . . This matter has been for many years struggling in my mind, long before I married, and once or twice when in London I hardly knew how to refrain. However, since a way has thus been made for me, it appears as if I dared not stop the work, if it be a right one may it go on and prosper, if not, the sooner stopped the better.
Very soon after penning these words, the Meeting of which she was a member acknowledged Mrs. Fry as a minister, and thus gave its sanction to her speaking in their religious assemblies.
But, not content with this form of service, she visited among her poor neighbours, bent on actively doing good. She secured a large room belonging to an old house, opposite her own dwelling, and established a school for girls on the Lancasterian pattern there. Very quickly, under the united efforts of Mrs. Fry, the incumbent of the parish, and a benevolent young lady named Powell, a school of seventy girls was established, and kept in a prosperous condition. This school was still in working order a few years ago.
Plashet House was a depôt of charity. Calicoes, flannels, jackets, gowns, and pinafores were kept in piles to clothe the naked; drugs suited to domestic practice were stored in a closet, for healing the sick; an amateur soup-kitchen for feeding the hungry was established in a roomy out-building, and this long years before public soup-kitchens became the rage; whilst copies of Testaments were forthcoming on all occasions to teach erring feet the way to Heaven. But her charity did not stop with these things.
An unsavoury locality known as "Irish Row," about half a mile off, soon attracted her attention. The slatternliness, suffering, shiftlessness, dirt, and raggedness, were inducements to one of her charitable temperament to visit its inhabitants, having their relief and improvement in view; while her appreciation of the warm-heartedness and drollery of the Irish character afforded her genuine pleasure. Proximity to English life had not refined these Irish; their houses were just as filthy, their windows as patched and obscured with rags, their children just as neglected, and their pigs equally familiar with those children as if they had lived in the wilds of Connemara. Shillelaghs, wakes, potatoes, and poverty were distinguishing characteristics of the locality; whilst its inhabitants were equally ready, with the free and easy volatility of the Irish mind, to raise the jovial song, or utter the cry of distress.
The priest and spiritual director of "Irish Row" found himself almost powerless in the presence of this mass of squalid misery. That Mrs. Fry was a Quaker and a Protestant, did not matter to him, provided she could assist in raising this debased little colony into something like orderly life and decency. So he co-operated with her, and with his consent she gave away Bibles and tracts, vaccinated and taught the children, as well as moved among them generally in the character of their good genius. When delicate and weak, she would take the carriage, filled with blankets and clothes for distribution, down to Irish Row, where the warm-hearted recipients blessed their "Lady Bountiful" in terms more voluble and noisy than refined. Still, however unpromising, the soil bore good fruit. Homes grew more civilized, men, women, and children more respectable and quiet, while everywhere the impress of a woman's benevolent labours was apparent.
It was the annual custom of a tribe of gipsies to pitch their tents in a green lane near Plashet, on their way to Fairlop Fair. Once, after the tents were pitched, a child fell ill; and the distracted mother applied to the kind lady at Plashet House for relief. Mrs. Fry acceded to the request, and not only ministered to the gipsies that season, but every succeeding year; until she became known and almost worshipped among them. Romany wanderers and Celtic colonist were alike welcome to her heart and purse, and vied in praising her.
About this time the Norwich Auxiliary Bible Society was formed, and Mrs. Fry went down to Earlham to attend the initial meeting. She tells us there were present the Bishop of Norwich, six clergymen of the Established Church, and three dissenting ministers, besides several leading Quakers and gentlemen of the neighbourhood. The number included Mr. Hughes, one of the Secretaries, and Dr. Steinkopf, a Lutheran minister, who, though at one with the work of the Bible Society, could not speak English. At some of these meetings she felt prompted to speak, and did so at a social gathering at Earlham Hall, when all present owned her remarkable influence upon them. These associations also increased in her that catholicity of spirit which afterwards seemed so prominent. Some of her brothers and sisters belonged to the Established Church of England; while in her walks of mercy she was continually co-operating with members of other sections of Christians. As we have seen, she worked harmoniously with all: Catholic and Protestant, Churchman and Dissenter.
On looking at her training for her special form of usefulness we find that afflictions predominated just when her mind was soaring above the social and conventional trammels which at one time weighed so much with her. We know her mostly as a prison philanthropist; but while following her career in that path, it will be wise not to forget the way in which she was led. By slow and painful degrees she was drawn away from the circles of fashion in which once her soul delighted. Then her nature seemed so retiring, and the tone of her piety so mystical, while she dreaded nervously all approach to "religious enthusiasm," that a career of publicity, either in prisons, among rulers, or among the ministers of her own Society, seemed too far away to be ever realised in fact and deed. Only He, who weighs thoughts and searches out spirits, knew or understood by what slow degrees she rose to the demands which presented themselves to her "in the ways of His requirings," even if "they led her into suffering and death." It was no small cross for such a woman thus to dare singularity and possibly odium.