Lady Russell was now in a position of influence and importance, but she did not change her quiet way of living. A paper that she wrote about this time for her children shows her loving anxiety for them. In it, after bidding them never to forget their prayers morning and evening, she tells them about her own prayers, and how she always carried with her a little piece of paper on which she noted her faults, that she might ask forgiveness for them; in this way she had gained a habit of constant watchfulness.

One of her anxieties had been to arrange suitable marriages for her children, and it was a great joy to her when her husband’s closest friend, the Duke of Devonshire, proposed that his son should marry her eldest daughter. When this marriage was decided on, Lady Elizabeth was only fourteen and Lord Cavendish not sixteen. Lady Russell had to go to London to make the necessary arrangements, and felt it right to go more into society, though she said that going to parties was hard for one with a heavy and weary mind. The marriage was delayed by the bride having an attack of measles, and when it did take place, the young couple only spent three weeks together under Lady Russell’s care, and then Lord Cavendish was sent to finish his education by travelling on the continent for two years. A few years later Lady Russell married her younger daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of Rutland, the best match in England. When her son was only fifteen, a seat in Parliament was offered her for him, but she refused because she thought him too young. She had, however, already arranged a marriage for him to a girl in whose education she took the deepest interest. He was married when he was fifteen, but his wife stayed at home with her mother and he went to Oxford for a year’s study, during which his mother often visited him. At seventeen he was sent to travel abroad, as Lady Russell believed that to “live well in the world, it is for certain necessary to know the world well.” During his travels he caused her some anxiety for he took to gambling, and lost so much money that when he came home, she had to ask his grandfather for money to pay his debts. Shortly afterwards his grandfather died, and he became Duke of Bedford. Now it seemed as if Lady Russell’s anxieties were over, since her three children were all happily married, but sorrow followed her to the last. Her son, in the fulness of life and health, was seized with smallpox, the haunting terror of those days before vaccination was discovered. His wife and children had to fly from the infection, and only his mother, with her never-failing courage, stayed to soothe his last moments. Shortly afterwards her younger daughter, the Duchess of Rutland, died. Once again a demand was made on Lady Russell’s courage. Her only remaining daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire, had just given birth to a child; it was feared that, if she heard of the death of her sister, the shock might be fatal; so her mother stayed with her and did not let her learn the truth, telling her that she had that day seen her sister out of bed, by which she really meant that she had seen her in her coffin.

Another trouble of Lady Russell’s later life was the fear of blindness; but she bore this calamity with patience till an operation restored her sight. She lived till the age of eighty-eight, when she died after a short illness, watched over by the loving care of her only remaining child. During a long life, her courage, her love, her faith had never failed her in spite of her sore trials. It is interesting to remember that three of the chief families of England, the houses of Devonshire, Bedford, and Rutland, look back to this pure, warm-hearted woman and her murdered husband as their common ancestors.

VI
ELIZABETH FRY

In and round Norwich have gathered for a long time many of the chief families belonging to the Society of Friends, the religious body whose members are commonly called Quakers. It was founded by an earnest Christian preacher in the seventeenth century, who taught men to lead a true and simple Christian life, to have nothing to do with what he considered vain pleasures, such as music and dancing, to dress very simply, to worship in silence without any set prayers or any ordained minister, waiting for the Spirit to move one of the members to pray or address the meeting. The Gurneys were one of the chief families belonging to the Society of Friends; and John Gurney, who lived at Earlham, a nice country place near Norwich, was the father of seven daughters and four sons. The third of these daughters, Elizabeth, was born in 1780, and when she was only twelve years old her mother died, leaving Catherine, the eldest child, who was not quite seventeen, to take her place as well as she could. The Gurneys were a very happy, lively family. They did not follow the Quaker rules strictly; they rode about the country on their ponies, dressed in scarlet habits, and loved dancing and singing and gaiety of all kinds. But they were carefully educated and brought up to take a deep interest in religion. Elizabeth was delicate, and could not study much; neither did she often go to Meeting, as the Friends call their religious gathering, partly because she was not strong, and partly because it bored her. One day, when she was eighteen, she had gone to Meeting wearing some very smart boots, which pleased her very much; they were purple, laced with scarlet. She was restless and sat and looked at her boots. But presently a stranger began to preach, a visitor from America. She was forced to listen, and was so moved with what she heard that she began to weep. This was the beginning of a great change in her; she awoke to the reality of religion, and began to feel that she must become what was called a plain Friend, one who followed the rules of the Society in every particular. But first she wished to know more of the world, and, with her father’s consent, she paid a visit to London, where she shared in a great deal of gaiety. Still her determination to give it all up only grew stronger. Her sisters, though they dearly loved her, did not share her ideas, and grieved when she would not join their amusements. She found some satisfaction in teaching poor children in Norwich, for whom there were no schools in those days. At last many of her difficulties were settled by her marriage, when she was twenty, with Mr. Joseph Fry, who was also a plain Friend. His family were so strict that amongst her new relations Elizabeth found herself the gay one of the family, instead of the strict one as she had been in her own home.

Photo: Emery Walker.

Elizabeth Fry.

The Frys lived in London, in the city, as business men then did; later they lived also at Plasket House in Essex, then a beautiful country place, but now covered by the crowded population of East Ham. They had a large family, eleven children in all, and Mrs. Fry was devoted to her husband and her children, but from the first she did not feel that on their account she must give up all work for others. She visited the poor and helped the suffering wherever she could. She was naturally timid and unwilling to put herself forward. Amongst Friends it is the constant habit to trust to the guidance of the Holy Spirit to show both what should be done and to gain strength to do it. As a young woman Mrs. Fry had felt shy even at reading the Bible at family prayers in her own house. As she grew older she began to feel that it might be her duty to speak at the Friends’ Meetings. She seemed at last to be driven by the Holy Spirit to do so, and though frightened beforehand, when once she had begun all was easy. The Meeting which she attended was pleased with her speaking and chose her for one of their regular ministers. This was when she was thirty-one and already the mother of seven children. After this she was a frequent speaker at Friends’ Meetings all over the country.

The Friends as a body were always anxious to help suffering and misery of every kind. Some gentlemen well known to Mrs. Fry, having learnt of the miserable condition of the women in Newgate, then one of the chief prisons in London, asked her to visit them one winter to see if she could not do something to improve their condition. It was a terrible scene that Mrs. Fry found when, alone with one other lady, she entered Newgate prison in January 1813. In four rooms were crowded nearly 300 women and with them many children. Those who had been tried, and those who had not yet been tried, were all herded together, whether guilty of grave or trifling crimes. There was no woman to take care of them; day and night they were under the charge of one man and his son. They had no employment of any kind; they had no clothing supplied but what they had on when they came. In rags and dirt they slept on the filthy floor without any bedding, and they cooked, lived, and slept in the same rooms. When strangers visited them, as seems to have been allowed, they all started begging, and when they were given any money they at once bought drink, which could be got in the prison. Their language and their conduct were alike terrible, and the governor of the prison himself feared to go amongst them. He begged Mrs. Fry and her companion to remove the watches which hung at their sides lest they should be snatched from them by the women, but they paid no heed to his warning. The two ladies had brought with them a supply of warm garments which they distributed amongst the wretched prisoners, and before leaving each said a few words of prayer, which moved some of their listeners to tears.