In the year 1808, during a visit to Lancashire, her friend, Miss Kennedy, made her acquainted with the family of Mr. Greg, at Quarry Bank. “We stayed a week with them, and admired the cultivation of mind and refinement of manners which Mrs. Greg preserved in the midst of a money-making and somewhat unpolished community of merchants and manufacturers. Mr. Greg, too, was most gentlemanly and hospitable, and surrounded by eleven clever and well-educated children. I thought them the happiest family group I had ever seen. Miss Kennedy also took me to visit her friends, the Rathbone family, at Green Bank, near Liverpool, and we there met Mr. Roscoe, the elegant-minded author of the ‘Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici.’ Mr. Roscoe took us to his beautiful residence at Ollerton Hall, and charmed us by the good taste of his varied and agreeable powers of conversation. He had been returned member for Liverpool during the Whig Ministry of 1806, and both he and Mr. Rathbone had taken a decided part in the cause of the abolition of the slave trade. We were taken to see the last ship which had sailed from the port of Liverpool for trade in human beings. It was then undergoing a change for the stowage of other goods than those wretched negroes who had formerly been crammed in the space between decks not more than four feet high. The iron hooks remained to which they had been chained. It was a sickening sight,—but those chains were broken. We stayed some days at Green Bank, where we enjoyed the society of the venerable William Rathbone, the zealous friend of civil and religious liberty. It was he, and Mr. Roscoe, and Dr. Currie, who by their personal influence and exertions established the first literary and philosophical society at Liverpool, and induced their fellow-townsmen to think and feel that there were other objects besides making money which ought to occupy the time and thoughts of reasonable beings.”

Mr. W. E. Forster, on a visit to Mrs. Fletcher, brought with him “Mary Barton,” which had then only just appeared, and was still anonymous. Mrs. Fletcher says:—“We were at once struck with its power and pathos, and it was with infinite pleasure I heard that it was written by the daughter of one whom I both loved and reverenced in my early married life in Edinburgh, so that I had a two-fold pleasure in making Mrs. Gaskell’s acquaintance through Miss M. Beever, who knew her at Manchester, and who told me that she always asked about me with interest.”

She visited Liverpool again in February, 1848, where Mrs. Rathbone, of Green Bank, introduced her to that worthy Irishwoman, “Catharine of Liverpool,” whose history is one of the romances of poverty.[[12]]

In 1851 she was in Manchester, and after dining with Mrs. Gaskell, went to hear Kossuth in the Free Trade Hall. She was delighted with the orator, pleased with the crowd, who considerately made way for the white-haired old gentlewoman, and impressed by the interest in foreign politics shown by “this great town of Manchester.” Next morning at breakfast she met Thomas Wright, the prison philanthropist, then a hale man of sixty-six.

Her autobiography was edited by her daughter, Lady Richardson, and published in 1875 by Edmondston & Douglas. Another edition appeared in the United States in 1883.

Mrs. Fletcher had not only ability, but the subtler gift of sympathy. She had an instinctive feeling for that which was beautiful alike in the spheres of literature and morals.

Footnotes:

[12]. An interesting account of this benevolent woman is given in “Chambers’s Miscellany,” 1872, vol. iv., No. 50.

Manchester and the First Reform Agitation.

The reform agitation began in Manchester in 1792, and its history is instructive and too little known by the present generation. The town, which was heartily Republican in the Civil Wars, was as heartily Jacobite in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and in its closing years was dominated by the sworn friends of intolerance and privilege. The vainly proposed repeal in 1789 of the Corporation and Test Acts, by which the Nonconformists were excluded from all municipal offices, led to the formation in Manchester of a “Church and King Club,” whose members showed their loyalty by deep potations and their piety by wearing buttons which bore a representation of the “Old Church.” An era of bitter party feeling now set in. Those who were Dissenters, those who were suspected of thinking that Manchester and other important manufacturing towns should be represented in Parliament, those who ventured to regard the sale of pocket-boroughs as a scandal, those who hinted that any improvement was possible in the constitution of a Parliament that was notoriously non-representative and that included many members who owed their position to improper and corrupt influences, were marked out for social ostracism and persecution. The Liberals of that day banded themselves together and formed the Manchester Constitutional Society, which in May, 1792, set forth as one of its objects that “members of the House of Commons should owe their seats to the good opinion and free suffrage of the people at large, and not to the prostituted votes of venal and corrupt boroughs.” The Government immediately issued a proclamation against “wicked and seditious writings,” and called upon the magistrates to take rigorous action. The King’s birthday was celebrated by illuminations, and the partisans of the “glorious Constitution,” which denied them the rights of citizenship, tore up a couple of the trees growing in St. Ann’s Square, and tried to batter down the gates of the Unitarian chapels in Cross Street and Mosley Street. The publicans were warned that their licences would be forfeited if they allowed any gatherings of the reformers upon their premises. No less than 186 of them signed an agreement to that effect, and in some of the taverns was a conspicuous announcement, “No Jacobins admitted here.” The war with France was hailed with delight by the adherents to the old order, and was deeply deprecated by the reformers. A man of great talent, Thomas Cooper, issued an address on the evils of war, and this, with other dissuasives, appeared in the Manchester Herald, a newspaper which the reformers had started. Encouraged by the authorities of the town, a drunken mob attacked the printing office and sacked it. The Rev. J. Griffith declared that he would not act against the rioters if called upon to do so, and a special constable offered the mob a guinea for “every Jacobin’s house that they pulled down.” A friend of the printer’s applied to the constable for help, and was answered by a threat of being kicked out of the place. The leader of the reformers was Mr. Thomas Walker, and his house also was selected for attack. He and his friends defended the place with firearms. The conduct of the rioters was defended by Wyndham in the House of Commons, and a prosecution was instituted, not against the law-breakers, but against Mr. Walker. He had firearms in his possession, and therefore he had “obtained arms to wage war against the King.” The case came on at the Lancaster Spring Assizes, but the principal witness proved himself to be a shuffling perjurer, and Law, afterwards Lord Ellenborough, saw the matter to be so hopeless that he threw up the case. Thomas Cooper left the town for America, where he obtained high distinction as a chemist, jurist, and political economist. The reformers were helpless and almost hopeless. The war fever had seized the nation; the right of public meeting and the freedom of the press were the subject of constant attack. The law against seditious assemblies was used as a means of prohibiting any public expression of disapprobation of the state of the Constitution or the acts of the Government. It was denounced by Charles James Fox, and a very whimsical protest was made against it in Manchester, which is thus described in a newspaper of the time:—“On Monday evening (28th December, 1796), the members of the Manchester Thinking Club commenced their first mental operation by beginning to think, or in other words, submitting themselves like good subjects to a constitutional dumbness. The number of thinkers assembled was not less than 300, and many of the thoughtful actually came from Liverpool, Stockport, and other remote places to witness this novel spectacle. The members were all muzzled, and such an imposing silence prevailed for one hour as would have done honour to the best thinkers that ever adorned assemblies of a more dignified nature. The word ‘Mum’ appeared in large characters on every muzzle, and except a seditious sigh or a treasonable groan that occasionally broke forth, ‘Mum’ was literally the order of the night.” Here is an advertisement of the meetings of the “Thinking Club”:—“The members of this truly constitutional Society continue to meet for the intellectual purpose of silent contemplation every Thursday evening, at the Coopers’ Arms, Cateaton Street, where strong constitutional muzzles are provided at the door by Citizen Avery, tailor to the swinish multitude. The questions still to be thought of are: Is man really a thinking animal or not? and if he is, as thinking is rather a troublesome operation of the mind, ought he not to be thankful that his betters kindly think for him? The chair to be taken at half-past seven. Thinking to begin precisely at eight.”