Hannah More’s social work is to be considered from the year (1789) that Mr. Wilberforce, one of her close friends, discovered the deplorable conditions existing in the districts around Cheddarcliff. Her long intercourse with the Garricks, and her various literary endeavours which took form during 1782 in her “Sacred Dramas” for the young, have no direct bearing upon her connection with the religious movement which places her in the general scheme with Robert Raikes and Mrs. Trimmer. Patty More had had, at an earlier period, large experience in school-teaching, and this was to prove of inestimable service, for it was with her assistance that Hannah carried on the work in the Mendip mining districts. The two met with some opposition, not only from the classes for whom they were specially striving, but from those who, less broad than themselves, held views regarding the Sunday-school that placed spirituality above the actual needs of the poverty-stricken communities. But, throughout, the Mores never swerved from their set purpose, even though illness overtook them and made the situation still harder than it was. For they were forced to ride many miles from their home, at first unknown in the region they had elected to benefit, a region cursed by ignorance, plagued by license, and wherein assault was a common incident.
“Miss Wilberforce would have been shocked,” writes Hannah More, “could she have seen the petty tyrants whose insolence we stroked, the ugly children we fondled, the pointers and spaniels we caressed, the cider we commended, and the wine we swallowed.”
A study of the centres established by these sisters, and which gradually exerted an influence over twenty-eight miles of territory, a distance traversed in a manner not unlike the journey of the circuit-riders who are to be met with throughout the mountain districts of the South, would throw considerable light on English labour conditions as they then existed. The setting is an isolated wild land, thus described by Miss More:
“Several of the grown-up youths had been tried at the last assizes; three were the children of a person lately condemned to be hanged; many thieves,—all ignorant, profane, and vicious beyond belief. Of this banditti, we have enlisted 170; and when the clergyman, a hard man, who is also the magistrate, saw these creatures kneeling around us, whom he had seldom seen but to commit, or punish in some way, he burst into tears.”
The work grew with the months, and mention is soon made of nine hundred children flocking to a Mendip feast—little ones whose brightest moments were centred in the regular visits of these ministering ladies.
Miss More’s powers were exerted toward counteracting the ideas being spread by the French Revolution; both high and low were struggling against them; they nearly swamped the genius of Wordsworth. Though she rejoiced in the fall of the Bastille, she deplored the deification of Nature and the reign of Reason, and vented her sarcasm on the philosophy of Paine. Her chief alarm was felt for the effect such opinions might have upon the middle class of England. But, despite her conservatism, Miss More was regarded as too strong-minded for religious work; the High Church accused her of too marked an independence. She was advised, much to her own amusement, to publish a confession of her faith. The discussion which ensued need not occupy us; it may, perhaps, have infused into her juvenile tracts a more determined tone, but it did not originally encourage her in their composition.
This was brought about through a desire to give the children of the poor districts religious literature as soon as they were able to read. Mrs. Trimmer was the only author then available, and her books were too expensive for the masses. The More sisters, therefore, soliciting the interest of the Duke of Gloucester, brother of George III, began the publication of the tracts, three a month, containing short talks, ballads, and moral tales. These were scattered broadcast over the country. The scheme lasted from 1794 to 1797, when they were forced to discontinue it, for lack of pecuniary backing. But, during the time, collections of “Repository Tracts” had been brought into existence, which, for at least a quarter of a century, were to stand representative of the best kind of reading for the poor.
A long list of books comprises the literary activity of Hannah More,[35] but it is by such volumes as her “Christian Morals,” “Hints toward Forming the Character of a Young Princess [Charlotte, Princess of Wales],” “Practical Piety,” “The Spirit of Prayer,” “Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education,” and “Thoughts on the Importance of Manners” that her genuine art is overclouded. In her “Repository Tracts,” she was content to approach the poor as a class, nor was she willing to allow herself to forget for an instant that, because of their poverty, they were a type of inferior being. Her object was to make them content with their lot in life, and to have them feel comfortable and worthy within their particular sphere. They were potential with the strength that might place them at the head of their class, but could not carry them outside of it. An insurmountable barrier was thought to stretch between the high and low.
“The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain” is considered the most famous of Miss More’s tracts. They all are redolent with the common moral ideal, but the local colour in them is real and the glimpses of the poor people, their homes, customs, beliefs, hopes, and despairs are described with minute vividness and with much feeling. Whatever brightness they contain is the sort that is gained by way of contrast,—an ethical resolve to show that things are not so bad that they may not still be worse. “Father,” says the little girl, “I wish I was big enough to say grace. I am sure I would say it heartily to-day; for I was thinking what poor people do who have no salt to their potatoes.”
The standard is a narrow one; the child who does not go to church is the bad child; the lack of a new gown fades before the delights over owning a new Bible. Instead of marking books, as the Edgeworths advised, Miss More italicised the passages worthy of memorising. Honest toil is the subject-matter of these stories; the village is the scene of many a vexation. The gaining of knowledge is only a means toward a better understanding of the catechism; one’s duty is to learn to read, else the Holy Writ is a closed subject. There is no aim to carry the children outside of themselves by means of the highest imagination; they are told how they are to cope with their own environment, how to remain satisfied with their own station. They must be rich Christians, but still remain poor people.