In the year 1792, affairs wore a very gloomy and threatening aspect in England. French revolutionary and atheistical principles seemed to be spreading wide their destructive influence. Indefatigable pains were taken, not only to agitate and mislead, but to corrupt and poison, the minds of the populace. At this crisis, letters poured in upon Miss More, from persons of eminence, earnestly calling upon her to produce some little tract which might serve to counteract these pernicious efforts. The intimate knowledge she had shown of human nature, and the lively and clear style of her writings, which made them attractive, pointed her out as the proper person for such an effort. Though she declined an open attempt to stem the mighty torrent, 159 which she thought a work beyond her powers, she yet felt it to be her duty to try them in secret, and, in a few hours, composed the dialogue of “Village Politics, by Will Chip.” The more completely to keep the author unknown, it was sent to a new publisher. In a few days, every post from London brought her a present of this admirable little tract, with urgent entreaties that she would use every possible means of disseminating it, as the strongest antidote that could be administered to the prevailing poison. It flew with a rapidity almost incredible into the remotest parts of the kingdom. Government distributed many thousands. Numerous patriotic associations printed large editions; and in London only, many hundred thousands were distributed.
Internal evidence betrayed the secret of the authorship; and, when the truth came out, innumerable were the thanks and congratulations which bore cordial testimony to the merit of a performance, by which the tact and intelligence of a single female had turned the tide of misguided opinion. Many affirmed that it contributed essentially to prevent a revolution; so true was the touch, and so masterly the delineation, which brought out, in all its relief, the ludicrous and monstrous cheat, whereby appetite, selfishness, and animal force, were attempted to be imposed under the form of liberty, equality, and imprescriptible right.
The success of “Village Politics” encouraged Miss More to venture on a more extensive undertaking. The institution of Sunday schools, which had enabled multitudes to read, threatened to be a curse instead of 160 a blessing; for, while no healthy food was furnished for their minds, the friends of infidelity and vice carried their exertions so far as to load asses with their pernicious pamphlets, and to get them dropped, not only in cottages and in the highways, but into mines and coal-pits. Sermons and catechisms were already furnished in abundance; but the enemy made use of the alluring vehicles of novels, tales, and songs, and she thought it right to meet them with their own weapons.
She therefore determined to produce three tracts every month, written in a lively manner, under the name of the “Cheap Repository.” The success surpassed her most sanguine expectations. Two millions were sold in the first year—a circumstance, perhaps, new in the annals of printing. But this very success, she tells us, threatened to be her ruin; for, in order to supplant the trash, it was necessary to undersell it, thus incurring a certain loss. This, however, was met by a subscription on the part of the friends of good order and morals.
The exertion which it required to produce these tracts, to organize her plan, and to conduct a correspondence with the committees formed in various parts of the kingdom, materially undermined her health. She continued them, however, for three years. “It has been,” she writes, “no small support to me, that my plan met with the warm protection of so many excellent persons. They would have me believe that a very formidable riot among the colliers was prevented by my ballad of ‘The Riot.’ The plan was settled; they were resolved to work no more; to attack the mills first, and afterwards the gentry. A 161 gentleman gained their confidence, and a few hundreds were distributed, and sung with the effect, they say, mentioned above—a fresh proof by what weak instruments evils are now and then prevented. The leading tract for the next month is the bad economy of the poor. You, my dear madam, will smile to see your friend figuring away in the new character of a cook furnishing receipts for cheap dishes. It is not, indeed; a very brilliant career; but I feel that the value of a thing lies so much more in its usefulness than its splendor, that I think I should derive more gratification from being able to lower the price of bread, than from having written the Iliad.”
That Miss More’s efforts in behalf of virtue should be opposed by those against whom they were aimed, will not surprise us. But she was attacked from a quarter whence she had a right to expect sympathy and support. The nature of the attack will be learned from a letter written some years afterwards: “I will say, in a few words, that two Jacobin and infidel curates, poor and ambitious, formed the design of attracting notice and getting preferment by attacking some charity schools—which, with no small labor, I have carried on in this country for near twenty years—as seminaries of vice, sedition, and disaffection. At this distance of time,—for it is now ended in their disgrace and shame,—it will make you smile when I tell you a few of the charges brought against me, viz., that I hired two men to assassinate one of these clergymen; that I was actually taken up for seditious practices; that I was with Hadfield in his attack on the king’s life. At the same time they declared—mark 162 the consistency—that I was in the pay of the government, and the grand instigator of the war, by my mischievous pamphlets. That wicked men should invent this, is not so strange as that they should have found magazines, reviews, and pamphleteers, to support them. My declared resolution never to defend myself certainly encouraged them to go on. How thankful am I that I kept that resolution! though the grief and astonishment excited by the combination against me nearly cost me my life.”
There is not space to go at large into an account of this persecution, which was continued for several years. The most inveterate of her enemies was the curate of her own parish, who was named Bere, and the most distressing result to herself was being obliged to discontinue the school at that place. But, whilst laboring so earnestly for the poor and the humble, Miss More was still mindful of the wants of the higher classes, and, in the midst of her anxiety and distress, which very seriously affected her health, she found time to compose the “Strictures on Female Education,” for their benefit. All her practical admonitions, and all her delineations of female excellence, were afterwards brought together in the character of Lucilla, in the novel of “Cœlebs in Search of a Wife,” who is a true representative of feminine excellence within the legitimate range of allotted duties. She did not venture on publishing this work without much anxious hesitation. “I wrote it,” she says, “to amuse the languor of disease. I thought there were already good books enough in the world for good people, but that there was a large class of readers, whose wants had 163 not been attended to—the subscribers to the circulating library. A little to raise the tone of that mart of mischief, and to counteract its corruptions, I thought an object worth attempting.” It was published without her name, and though many at once recognized the style, she herself did not acknowledge it till it had passed through many editions. It excited such immediate and universal attention, that, in a few days after its first appearance, she received notice to prepare for a second edition; and shortly afterwards she was followed to Dawlish, whither she had gone to try the effect of repose and the sea air, in restoring her health, by the eleventh edition.
Her works at an early period were duly estimated in the United States, and of the “Cœlebs” thirty editions had been issued before the author’s death. It is not a little creditable to the public taste, that a work so full of plain and practical truth should be so well received. In “Cœlebs,” as well as in some of her smaller productions, Miss More evinces her power of invention, and gives proof that, had she chosen to employ fiction as the vehicle of instruction, her imagination would have afforded her abundant resources; but habit and the bias of her mind led her in another course: a certain substantiality of purpose, a serious devotion to decided and direct beneficence, an active and almost restless principle of philanthropy, were the great distinctions of her character.
When the education of the Princess Charlotte became a subject of serious attention and inquiry, the advice and assistance of Miss More were requested by the queen. Bishop Porteus strenuously advised that the 164 education should be intrusted to her; but, when the latter required that the entire direction should be given to her charge, this was thought, by those in power, to be too great a confidence. They were willing to engage her in a subordinate capacity; but this she declined, and so the negotiation ended. Her ideas on the subject were given to the world under the title of “Hints for forming the Character of a Young Princess”—a book which subsequently was a great favorite with her for whose benefit it was intended, and doubtless contributed to the formation of those virtues and principles which made her death so much lamented.
In the country Miss More had hoped to find retirement. But Barley Wood—a place to which she had removed, about one mile from Cowslip Green—was any thing but a hermitage. “Though,” she says, “I neither return visits nor give invitations, except when quite confined by sickness, I think I never saw more people, known and unknown, in my gayest days. I never had so many cares and duties imposed upon me as now in sickness and old age. I know not how to help it. If my guests are old, I see them out of respect, and in the hope of receiving some good; if young, I hope I may do them a little good; if they come from a distance, I feel as if I ought to see them on that account; if near home, my neighbors would be jealous of my seeing strangers, and excluding them.” Her epistolary labors were enormous. She laid it down as a rule never to refuse or delay answering any application for epistolary advice, enduring the incessant interruptions with indefatigable kindness.