THE GURNEYS OF EARLHAM.* PERHAPS there is no more striking
personality in the whole range of illustrious Englishwomen than Elizabeth Fry, the Quakeress. Biographers have drawn lifelike pictures of her dignified presence, her fervent piety, her magnetic charm of manner and voice, her perseverance and patience. We hear of her in the wards of an unreformed Newgate, and among convicts sentenced to death or transportation. She accom- plishes herculean tasks, cleanses prisons, reforms the whole system of prison discipline, establishes societies for the visiting and nursing of the poor, and reformatories for young offenders, while at the same time she inherits old Puritan traditions, and practises the strictest rules of her sect.
• The Gurneys Al Basil:am. By Augtustns J. 0. Hare. London: George Allen. She was a "plain Quaker," and her principles led her to see endless temptations in the pursuits of music, singing, and drawing ; it was a real affliction to her when her husband went to a concert or an opera, and a lifelong terror that her sons and daughters might peril their souls by dancing. In the present volumes Mr. Augustus Hare gives us the jewel in its setting, for Elizabeth Fry must of neces- sity be the chief character among the eleven children of John Gurney, of Earlham, and his wife, Catherine Bell. Both father and mother were Quakers by inheritance and descent, the former being grandson of John Gurney, imprisoned at Norwich for his faith in 1683, and the latter being great- granddaughter of Robert Barclay, the famous apologist of the Quakers. In tracing an outline of the history of so large a family as the Gurneys of Earlham, with their numerous marriages and ramifications, it must have been a difficult matter for a biographer to gather up so many threads, and to individualise characters that were in some instances noted only for the strength of their religious views and their attachments to family ties, but Mr. Augustus Hare has accomplished the difficult task with a good deal of skill, though we could have wished the second volume some- what curtailed, and he has chosen with discretion suitable extracts from the voluminous correspondence and mass of journals at his disposal. The constant reiteration of Quaker phrases is somewhat wearisome, but Mr, Hare lays stress on the fact that it "is especially as the leading Quaker family of England that the Gurneys of Earlham have become celebrated," and the religious peculiarities of the " Friends " no doubt served to keep them apart from the rest of the world, though at the present time a "plain Quaker" is almost un- known, and the "single language," the gentle-sounding "thee" and "thou," has been laid aside with the Quaker bonnet and cap and broad-brimmed hat. Still, we can plainly see, from the earlier records of the family of Earlham, that the Quaker seed, though duly sown, was not always indigenous to the soil; while, as years went on, only two of the seven sisters practised the faith of their forefathers ; while one of the sons offended against that faith by marrying a prohibited first-cousin, and another, the youngest, was turned in a contrary direction by the narrow sectarianism of his elder brother. Histories of men and women must be chiefly drawn from contemporary records ; and the childish journals kept by some of the young Gurneys reveal some delightful bits of human nature. Louisa and Richenda Gurney are as frank over the confessions of their own misdoings as was Sir Walter Scott's pet Marjorie Fleming over hers. The children did not take kindly to the long meetings and the silences and outpourings prescribed by Quaker rule. The Meeting-house in Goat's Lane (Norwich) was familiarly known as "Goat's," and in 1796 we find eleven. year-old Louisa writing in her journal : "Stayed at home to- day and had a pleasant morning. I am always so happy to escape from the claws of Goat's." And again : "Kitty and Hannah went to Goat's, we three have been blessed with staying away lately on account of our coughs." And on the last day of 1797 Richenda, aged fifteen (if Richenda was born in 1782, as noted in the table given by Mr. Augustus Hare, she could not have been thirteen in 1798, as Mr. Hare says on p. 88, Vol. I.), writes :—" I had a truly uncomfortable cloudy sort of Meeting. It was real bliss to hear the clock strike twelve. What an impatient disposition is mine ! I some- times feel so extremely impatient for Meeting to break up that I cannot, if you would give me the world, sit still. Oh, how I long to get a great broom and bang all the old Quakers, who do look so triumphant and disagreeable." The girls and boys loved music and dancing and acting ; and we are told of dances and " flirtations " and merry gatherings. Young Prince William Frederick, afterwards Duke of Gloucester, visited Earlham on several occasions, and Richenda records a particular afternoon when the Prince insisted that Rachel, the second of the Gurney sisters, should preach him a sermon. "He and a great many of us ran up to Betsy's room, and Rachel gave a most capital sermon. I never saw anything so droll as it was to see the Prince and all of us locked up in Betsy's room, and Rachel preaching to him, which she did in her most capital manner, giving him a good lesson in the Quaker strain, and imitating William Crotch to perfection. I longed for somebody to come and see us." Truly an edifying amusement for the children of a.Qaaker household, and we cannot help wondering what
"Betsy" thought of it in later years, if she remembered the use to which her room had once been put and her sister's capital imitation of a Quaker minister. When she was twenty, Elizabeth Gurney, whom her mother had described in her babyhood as "my dove-like Betsy," gave up the dancing and singing, in which she of all the sisterhood especially delighted, the "purple boots laced with scarlet" and other vanities of this world, and adopted all the strictest Quaker peculiarities, much to the sorrow of her sisters. She seems to have passed through stages of the most rigorous asceticism before she finally developed into a " minister " with an extraordinary gift of exhortation and power of sympathy; in 1807, soon. after her marriage to Joseph Fry, Pri6cilla Gurney writes to another married sister, Hannah Buxton :—" She [Betsy] was so interested about you, but she is never as warm about people as we are, which arises from her very superior principle, and yet is perhaps a little damping where your feelings are highly interested." We do not quite see why such superlative principles should have this effect as a necessary consequence ; but it was an outcome of the severe trammels in which "strict Friends" bound themselves in their endeavour after complete freedom from ceremonies and ordinances. Mrs. Fry probably thought it wrong and hurtful to indulge her deep affection for her own family, just as in still earlier days. she renounced all the innocent pleasures of life—music and art and literature—and refused even to look at the portrait Opie was painting of her own father. The Gurneys had a few intimate friends beyond their own family connections, and among them were Dr. Alderson, of Norwich, and his clever daughter Amelia, wife of the painter Opie. Mr. Augustus Hare might well have spared us Amelia Opie's poetic effusions, and he also hints that the authoress would like to have consoled Joseph John Gurney in his widowerhood, and for that reason became a Quaker. We have never heard this somewhat ill-natured gossip before, and agree with Southey that Quakerism com- mended itself to her because the first real religion she had known was religion "in drab."
Joseph John Gurney, like his sisters Elizabeth and Priscilla, practised the strictest rules of the "plain Friends," to the sorrow of his mother-sister Catherine, and the more en- lightened members of the family. While still a young, hand- some man, he felt obliged to enter a room with his hat on when he was invited out to dinner, and notes with satisfaction that after this declaration of principle his friends soon gave up sending him any more invitations. There is a curious error on p. 52, Vol. IL, in which he says that Wilberforce attributed his conversion to " Milman, Dean of Carlisle." In 1830, when the conversation between Joseph John Gurney and Wilber- force was recorded, Dr. Robert Hodgson had been for ten years Dean of Carlisle, and the Rev. Henry Hart Milman, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's, was merely Vicar of St. Mary's, Reading. We cannot profess to feel much interest in Joseph John and his narrow sectarianism and missionary tours, and we consider the royal personages whom the third Mrs. Joseph John felt constrained to visit and admonish, in imitation of Elizabeth Fry, to have been truly magnanimous and long-suffering. Elizabeth Fry herself had a definite mis- sion in the world, and exerted her influence in all possible channels for the furtherance of her philanthropic schemes, and we can but admire the zeal that preached in season and out of season, and the meekness with which her injunctions were received. There is a delightful account, recorded by a young cousin, of a luncheon at the Mansion House on a Sunday, given to the King of Prussia when he came to stand godfather to the Prince of Wales, to which, by the King's request, Mrs. Fry was invited : "Cousin Fry sat by the King, the Lord Mayor being on the other side of him. Cousin Elizabeth leant back and said to the Lord Mayor, We must have no toasts to-day.'—' Oh, ma'am,' said the Lord Mayor, we mast have one to the Queen and one to the King.'—' No, remember it is First day, we must not have any to-day,' said Cousin Fry. The King overheard and said, Yes, Mrs. Fry, you are quite right, we must have no toasts to-day.' — Then wilt thou strengthen the Lord Mayor's hands ' said Cousin Fry to the King.—' No, ma'am, his bands do not need strengthening ; a word from you is quite enough.' And the King told Cousin Fry that she was the best friend he had in the world, and that he should not think of leaving England till he had paid her a visit at her own home." The gradual break-up of the old home, and the removal by death one after another of the old circle, makes the greater part of the second volume one long-drawn-out sigh. By the time we reach the last chapter we have rung the last knell, and the history ends with the death of Daniel Gurney in 1880, and the widow of Joseph John in the following year.
It is always a doubtful question whether it is desirable to lift the veil that hides the most sacred thoughts and utter- ances, and, in spite of a poet's remonstrance, to reveal the familiar inner life of men and women to the curious gaze of the world. This is an age of book-making, and biographies furnish excellent matter for compilation. Various memoirs and brief accounts of the more celebrated members of the Earlham family circle have already been published, so that in the present instance Mr. Hare is only relighting candles that have already thrown their light on this naughty world ; and at least nothing but good can be learnt from this fresh recital of the deep piety and strong bonds of family love that was eminently characteristic of the Gurneys. As a niece writes :—" The family harmony was in no way disturbed by differences of opinion on religious points. For in one thing they all agreed,—to love one another."
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