Life of Frances Power Cobbe, as told by herself / with additions by the author, and introduction by Blanche Atkinson

by Frances Power Cobbe

“OBITUARY.

“The Late Mrs. Yates.

“The Victoria Street Society and the cause of Anti-vivisection have lost their most generous supporter in Mrs. Richard Yates, of Liverpool; a good and noble woman if ever there were one. Born in humble circumstances, she was one of the truest gentlewomen who ever lived. Her wide cultivation of mind, broadly liberal but deeply religious spirit and sound, clear judgment, remained conspicuous even in extreme old age. The hearts of those whom she aided in their toil for the poor brutes, with a generosity only equalled by the delicacy of its manifestations, will ever keep her memory in tender and grateful respect.”

A warmly-feeling article in the Inquirer, October 10th, 1891, known to be by her friend and pastor, Rev. Valentine Davies, gave the following sketch of her life. It is due to her whose generosity has so brightened my later years, that my autobiography should contain some such record of her goodness and usefulness.

“Mrs. Richard Vaughan Yates.

“On Thursday evening, October 1st, there passed peacefully away one who was the last of her generation; bearing a name honoured in Liverpool since the Rev. John Yates, in the latter part of last century and the early years of this, ministered in Paradise Street Chapel, and his sons took their places in the first rank of the merchants and philanthropic citizens of the town. Anne Simpson was born November 10th, 1805, and to the last retained happy recollections of her childhood’s home, a simple cottage in the pleasant Cheshire country. She married, in the midsummer of 1832, Mr. Richard Vaughan Yates, having first spent a year (for purposes of education) in the household of Dr. Lant Carpenter, at Bristol, of whom she always spoke with great veneration. Richly endowed with natural grace and delicacy of feeling, true nobility of heart, and great simplicity, sustained by earnest religious feeling and a strong sense of duty, there was never happier choice than this, which gave to Mrs. Yates the larger opportunities of wealth and freedom in society. She shared her husband’s interest in many philanthropic labours, his care for the Harrington Schools, founded by his father, and for the Liverpool Institute, his pleasure and his anxieties in the making of the Prince’s Park, opened in 1849, as his gift to the town. She shared also to the full his delight in works of art and in foreign travel. The late Rev. Charles Wicksteed published some charming reminiscences of one of their Italian journeys; and still more notable was that journey through Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, recorded by Miss Harriet Martineau in her Eastern Travel.

“Since her husband’s death, in 1856, Mrs. Yates has stood bravely alone, living very quietly, but keenly alive to all the interests of the world, with ardent sympathy for every righteous cause, and generous help ever ready for public needs as for private charity. No one will ever know the full measure of her acts of kindness, her care for the least defended, her many quiet ways of doing good. She was a great lover of dumb creatures, and felt a passionate indignation at every kind of cruelty. Four-footed waifs and strays often found a pleasant refuge in her house, and for many years she was an active worker for the local branch of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The cabmen and donkey-boys of Liverpool at their annual suppers have long been familiar with her kindly face and gracious word, and many a time has her intrepid protest checked an act of cruelty in the public streets. The friend of Frances Power Cobbe, she took a deep and painful interest in the work of the Victoria Street Society for the Suppression of Vivisection, and sustained its work through many years by generous gifts. Herself a solitary woman in these later years, it was to the solitary and defenceless that her sympathies most quickly went. She desired for women larger powers to defend their own helplessness, to share in government for the amelioration of society, and to share also in the world’s work. She had a surprising energy and persistence of will in attending to her own affairs and doing the unselfish work she had most at heart. With a plain tenacity to the duty that was clear, she went out to the last, whenever it was possible, to vote at every election where she had a vote to give, and to attend meetings of a political and useful social character. Hers was a life of great unselfishness and true humility. Suffering most of all through sympathy with others, she longed for more light to dissipate the darker shadows of the world. And she herself, wherever it was possible to her patient faithfulness and generous kindness, drove away the darkness, praying thus the best of prayers, and making light and gladness in innumerable hearts.

“After only a few days of illness she fell asleep. A memorial service was held on Sunday last in the Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, where for many years she regularly worshipped. The Rev. V. D. Davis preached the sermon, and also on the following day, at the Birkenhead Flaybrick Hill Cemetery, spoke the words of faith at her grave.”—Inquirer, October 10th.

I have erected over her last resting-place (as I learned that she disliked heavy horizontal tombstones), a large upright slab of polished red Aberdeen granite. After her name and the dates of her birth and death, Shakespeare’s singularly appropriate line is inscribed on the stone:—

“Sweet Mercy is Nobility’s True Badge.”