The Childhood of Distinguished WomenBower, Selina A.
History
The Childhood of Distinguished Women
Bower, Selina A.
Women -- Biography
It is not difficult to picture that happy home, with all its quiet
influence of love, for the five little girls appear to have been good
children, very affectionate to each other, and would form a sweet,
bright group as they stood with respectful attitude and intelligent
faces round the kind mother, and repeated with interest and earnest
emulation, the familiar "A, B, C."
Presently, something more than this was needed, but books were scarce.
Mr. More had been educated for the Church, but his desire to be a
clergyman was frustrated. He removed from Norfolk, his native county,
and in his transit to Stapleton, which in those days was a long and
difficult journey, he lost the greater part of his library. He therefore
endeavoured to supply from memory, information and instruction to his
five daughters, and Hannah was always extremely delighted to stand by
her father's knees and listen to his stories of Grecian and Roman
history, and also to gain thus from him a fair amount of classical
learning.
The nurse who assisted the busy mother with her happy charge, had lived
for some time in the family of Dryden, and often interested and amused
Hannah and her sisters with accounts of the poet.
When Mr. More found that Hannah evinced such a desire for information,
he began to teach her Latin and Mathematics; but as she outstripped all
his pupils in the foundation school with extreme rapidity, the father,
fearing that it might tend to make Hannah unfeminine, ceased these
instructions. They seem, however, to have been supplemented by a
different mode of education. The parents were poor, too poor to supply
all the requirements of so large a family. Very wisely they determined
that the children should be trained to support themselves. Miss More
was, therefore, sent to a good school in Bristol, as a weekly boarder,
and every Saturday, on her return home, she was required to teach her
four sisters _all_ that she had learned in the week!
When this sister was twenty years old, she, together with Betty and
Sally, opened a school themselves in Bristol; and Hannah, then twelve
years of age, and Patty were sent as pupils.
On one occasion Hannah was taken ill, and Dr. Woodward, evidently a
literary man of that time, was sent for to attend her. But so great was
her conversational power, that the kind doctor forgot the purpose for
which he came. After some time, he took his leave, but exclaimed,
presently, "Bless me! I forgot to ask the girl how she is to-day!"
This remarkable talent, thus early developed, was one of Mrs. Hannah
More's charms through life, and existed to the last lingering days of
an intelligent old age.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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