Great Englishwomen: An Historical Reading Book for SchoolsSynge, M. B. (Margaret Bertha)
History
Great Englishwomen: An Historical Reading Book for Schools
Synge, M. B. (Margaret Bertha)
Women -- Great Britain -- Biography
Not only by the rich was she known and loved, but also by the poor. Her
charity and kindness were boundless; she did not simply give her money to
the many beggars who abound in Italy, but she tried to improve their
condition, and help them to work for themselves.
Having obtained news of the death of her husband, Angelica Kaufmann
married a Venetian artist; together they painted, together they enjoyed
the grand Italian art, and when, in 1795, he died, Angelica seemed
overwhelmed. This was the beginning of a series of troubles. She lost a
great deal of the money she had saved owing to the failure of a bank and
the unsettled state of England, which often prevented her money from
arriving. "But I have two hands still left," she would say, "and I can
still work." In 1802 her health failed. She went to Switzerland for
change, but on her return her cough came back. Her strength grew less, her
hand lost its cunning, and at last her busy fingers could no longer hold
the brush.
In the summer of 1807 she died. People of all ranks gathered together at
her funeral in Rome; artists, nobility, poor, and rich came alike to do
her honour. Her coffin was borne by girls in white, and like the great
master Raphael, her two last pictures were carried behind the coffin, on
which was placed a model of her right hand in plaster, with a paint-brush
between its fingers.
Compared to the great and powerful artists before her, she was no mighty
genius; her figures are more full of grace than force or energy; there is
a sameness of design, which has called forth the saying, "To see one is to
see all," but what she has painted she has painted truly. "Her pencil was
faithful to art and womanhood," and we are proud to think that Angelica
Kaufmann was one of the greatest artist-women the world has ever seen.
HANNAH MORE (1745-1833).
Hannah More was one of the first women who devoted her life to the poor.
She had been in London society; she knew most of the leading men of the
day; she could have lived a comfortable life in the midst of great people;
but she chose rather to build herself a little house in the country, and
there to work with her sister Patty among the rough miners of
Somersetshire.
She was one of the younger daughters of Jacob More, a schoolmaster, near
Gloucester. Her grandmother was a vigorous old woman, who even at the age
of eighty used to get up at four in the morning with great energy.
Hannah learnt to read at the age of three. While still small enough to sit
on her father's knee, she learnt Greek and Roman history; he used to
repeat the speeches of the great men of old in the Greek or Latin tongue,
which delighted the child, and then translate them till the eager little
eyes sparkled "like diamonds." Her nurse had lived in the family of
Dryden, and little Hannah heard many a story of the poet from her nurse's
lips.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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