They had never before taken Millicent with them; but they thought, as she was likely soon to leave their protecting roof and guidance, it were well that she should see one of these great gatherings; see the order and wisdom in which everything was administered, and hear the gifted ministers, both men and women, from all parts of the kingdom, and make acquaintance with their particular friends and their children. To Millicent, who had spent the greater part of her life in the society of a country town, this visit was the occasion of much delightful anticipation and some nervousness. She had heard of the enormous wealth of some of the London Friends, and that their style and mode of living much differed from their own simple habits. She had an inward shrinking from undergoing the criticism of young men and women who lived in the centre of life and intelligence, and whose eyes must be quick to detect any of the slightest evidences of country breeding. The roar and bustle of London at first confounded her. All appeared hurry, noise, and the long-sought-after perpetual motion. The millionaire bankers, the Messrs. Barrington, were the London agents of her father. They lived a few miles out of town; but at these times their houses were so full of their relatives and most intimate connections, that they did not ask the Heritages to take up their quarters with them. They went to airy and ample private lodgings in the outskirts of the city, yet within a short drive to meeting; and Mr. Samuel Barrington, Mr. Heritage’s particular friend, and through whom he generally transacted business, invited them to dine and spend the evenings with them after the meetings were over, as often as, according to his phrase, was agreeable to them; and when the yearly meeting was concluded, Millicent was to make a visit of some weeks at their house.
Except to a young lady Friend, no idea can be given of the impression which the first view, and the subsequent attendances of the yearly meetings, made on Millicent. The silence, the calmness, the order with which several hundreds of Friends, men and women, assembled was something very imposing to a youthful imagination. True, Millicent had seen a simple image of this fuller assembly in the quarterly meetings of her own county; but there she knew almost every individual, their history and connections. There still existed a plainness of manner and of mind, a sort of equality of character and condition, that was familiar to her thoughts. Here came together a class of persons of a position, a wealth, and an education to which she was unaccustomed, and which made her feel as if she were a novice in a higher range of life.
The general aspect of the assembly was plain. The men were almost wholly dressed in the peculiar garb and cut of the Society, still, with differences, advancing from the most marked and almost grotesque formality of costume to a very near approach to the fashion, but the plainest fashion, of the outer world. Amongst the women, the distinctions were still more prominent. There was a delightfully neat and pure character of dress throughout the whole female side of the meeting, for the men and women sate separated. A general tendency to dove-colour prevailed in both dresses and bonnets; but the younger portion displayed a smarter tint of colour, even in the dove, and a certain elegance of style, especially in the bonnets, which showed that taste, and even fashion, could no more be excluded from the younger branches of the Friend world, especially the affluent Friend world, than light and air. Youth and beauty would assert their rights as strongly, if unobtrusively, as the more solemn attributes of strong sense, and spiritual development in the older members. Millicent saw with great delight the many charming faces enclosed by the exquisitely neat and often white bonnets. Other young ladies had abandoned the silk bonnet, and assumed straw ones, though of a modest style, and furnished only with the simplest ribbon to tie them with. No gay bows and ultra-fashion makes had yet dared to invade that ancient sanctuary of plainness and worldly abnegation. In our day all that rigid stand by the order in the outward has fallen like the leaves of autumn, and has not reappeared at spring. The Friend has, in a majority of cases, assimilated himself to the world; and it is a still more satisfactory truth, that the world has, in many things, interiorly assimilated itself to the Friend.
During the course of the yearly meeting, both in the general meetings for worship and in the separate meetings to which the ladies retired to transact their own affairs—for Quakerism was the first institution to invite woman to consider that she had affairs which she could best transact, and that she had faculties intended for use—Millicent saw, with the lively interest of youth, the long row of ministers in the gallery at the head of the meeting, men and women, and heard, sometimes with astonishment, the addresses there made by persons of both sexes. None, however, appeared to greater advantage than her own mother; and the high admiration in which she found her held, gave her a deep feeling of gratified pride. In the women’s meetings she was equally struck with the ability with which certain ladies addressed this assembly on matters of business, and the practical eloquence to which they had attained. These meetings, and the society which she enjoyed in the evenings at different houses of wealthy and leading Friends, impressed her with a high idea of the solid merits and highly moral and philanthropic tone of the Society. She heard continually discussed those great topics of humanity which have always occupied the mind and aims of Friends. Opposition to slavery and the slave-trade and to war, plans and operations for the reform of prisons, for the extension of education amongst the poor, were everywhere the subjects of conversation. On these points there were manuscripts read and tracts handed about; and though they had no foreign missions—not being able, on their peculiar religious principles, to establish such works for the propagation of the faith, or to co-operate in those established by other bodies of Christians, unless they were directly moved thereto by the spirit—yet they had “public Friends,” as they termed them, occasionally in America or the West Indies, or elsewhere, who were under concern to minister there, and from one or other of these favoured individuals had letters, which they read for the edification of the rest.
Such was the aspect which the Society wore to Millicent during the continuance of the great meeting, which lasted about ten days. She saw, wherever she went, abundant evidence of wealth in the houses of the leading Friends, united to a certain plainness of style. The furniture was good, handsome, and substantial, but made no pretensions to splendour or fashionable elegance. No works of art adorned those plain walls, except everywhere one large framed engraving, which, from its subject, had procured for it the privilege of breaking through the Friends’ law concerning painting and sculpture,—a law with them as strict as that of the Jews,—it was the Treaty of William Penn with the American Indians, from the picture by Benjamin West. This engraving was familiar to Millicent in her own father’s dining-room, and greeted her here in every considerable house that she entered. It was well worthy of such an honour, as the memorial, to use the words of Voltaire, “of the only treaty ever made without an oath, and the only one which never was broken.” It was deserving of its universal honour, as perhaps the grandest practical disproof which genuine Christian principle has ever triumphantly given to the sophistries and the aggressive crimes of soidisant Christian governments. It was deserving of this pre-eminent distinction, for that great action represented by it still towers aloft, high above the highest moral reach of the most vaunted statesman. Well, therefore, was it in the Friends to break a little law regarding art, in order to exalt that great eternal law of God, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,”—whether that neighbour be found in the city dwelling or in the wild forest of untutored man. It was an everyday testimony of the Friends that they at least, on some occasions, really believed the words of the Universal Father, that he is no respecter of persons.
But the Yearly Meeting was over, the Friends were hurrying simultaneously away to their different, and many of them very distant, homes by the long coach journeys of those days. Mr. and Mrs. Heritage had taken a loving leave of their dear child, and she was the guest of Mr. Samuel Barrington, at his suburban house. This was truly a very pleasant home. It was a large old country brick-house, in extensive grounds. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Barrington, one son, Edmund, and three daughters, all grown up. Two other sons were married, and lived not far off.
The routine of the household very much resembled that of Fair Manor, and of most Friends of that day. Immediately after breakfast, the whole household assembled, and Mr. Barrington read a chapter from the Bible. This over, the carriage appeared at the door, which drove the father and son to business. Dinner was on the table at two o’clock, for the city Friends had not yet fallen into the fashionable evening hours for that meal, even the fashionable hour being rarely later than five o’clock. The gentlemen dined in town, and returned to tea at six. During the day the ladies amused themselves for some hours with their needlework and talk, or took Millicent for a drive, to call on some other Friends, or made a shopping visit to the city. After tea, Mr. Edmund would propose a ride, in which Millicent and one or more—perhaps all—of his sisters would accompany him. They were extremely kind to Millicent, and she soon found herself a marked object of attention. Her peculiar style of beauty—that fair complexion, and those clear blue eyes, in combination with those long dark eyelashes, those finely-arched and jetty eyebrows, and rich raven hair,—that oriental tout ensemble was extremely piquant, even to the sober young men of the Society. Then it was whispered that she was a very wealthy heiress, which by no means detracted from her charms; and the quiet grace and modesty of her manners were in themselves, unknown to her, as distingué as if she had been Lady Millicent, instead of simple Millicent, the Friends’ Child, as Elizabeth Drury was fond of calling her.
By degrees it dawned on Millicent that there was a side to the Friends’ life in London, at least amongst the opulent, of which she had not dreamed. The Misses Barrington, in their conversations in their own room, launched into topics which at first startled Millicent. They asked her if she had ever been at the theatres, the opera, or at morning and evening concerts? With unfeigned surprise, she replied, “Oh, certainly not! Surely no Friends went to such places!” A pleasant smile passed over the faces of the young ladies: and one of them said to Millicent, patting her gently on the shoulder, “Oh, dear Simplicity! don’t thou think we all do nothing but attend meetings and study prison discipline!” They informed her that they frequently went to all these places of amusement.
“But,” said Millicent, “it is against the rules of the Society. What do your parents say? How do you answer the Queries?” (Certain queries put to and answered by each particular and monthly meeting, regarding the maintenance of the principles and practices of the Society.)
“My dear child,” said the young Friends, “we leave the meetings to settle all that. They don’t know, in fact,—though perhaps they guess a little,—half of what we do: why should they? We don’t want to break any moral law, but we cannot live like nuns in a convent when all the London stream of rational enjoyments is flowing around us.”