Selina A. Bower

Mrs. Hannah More spent her happy childhood at Stapleton, near Bristol; and her early girlhood in Bristol itself, as a pupil in the school of her three elder sisters.

Besides these three sisters, whose names were Mary, Betty, and Sally, there was also one younger than Hannah herself, named Patty.

The five little girls were the children of a Mr. Jacob More, the head master of a foundation school at Stapleton.

Mr. More had married the daughter of a farmer, who had been carefully brought up, and possessed considerable mind and also great judgment.

Hannah was born in 1745, and, together with her four sisters, learned to read at home, the mother herself teaching them.

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.

Hannah's other great talent, as a writer, was also early and fully indicated. As a mere child, she would scribble poems and prim essays upon every scrap of available paper, and a story is told of her, that she had one grand ambition constantly before her young life, and that was to be old enough to "possess a whole quire of paper!" As a schoolgirl, Dr. Johnson, the elder Sheridan, and the astronomer Ferguson, seem to have been on terms of some intimacy, and exercised a talented influence upon the strong sense and mental capacity of Hannah More.

England was experiencing change during the younger years of this well-known and justly honoured writer; the upper circles of society were gay and semi-infidel in principle, disposed to laugh at, and ridicule anything of a religious character; the lower were so intensely ignorant that they devoted themselves to indolence and vice. But already Wesley and Whitefield were preaching the simple gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and, through the influence of His Holy Spirit, awakening numbers to study, appreciate, and rise to the full reception of the truth as it is in Him.

Mrs. Hannah More threw her literary influence and ability into the effort to raise and benefit her fellow-countrymen; though I am not aware that, during her early years, she in any way displayed personal and positive perception of the great love of that Heavenly Father who provided the special salvation and restoration so singularly suited to the wants and capacities of every child of man. But her evident respect for religion is singularly shown in the apparent sorrow that any disregard should be manifested towards God's Word; she once remarked, with emphatic disapproval, "We saw but one Bible in the parish of Cheddar, and that was used to prop a flower-pot!" She died in 1833, at the age of eighty-eight.