The Childhood of Distinguished Women Part 1

The Childhood of Distinguished Women.

by Selina A. Bower.

I.

THE PRINCESS ALICE.

The Princess Alice was the second daughter and third child of our own beloved Queen Victoria and the late Prince Consort, "Albert the Good."

Our deepest sorrowful interest has recently been excited by the touching and sudden way in which this lovely and gifted woman has been called from her home on earth to her eternal home in heaven.

The Princess was born on April 25th, 1843, and was very gladly welcomed by the warm, true mother's heart of Her Majesty, who has ever shown and expressed the deepest love for her happy circle of girls and boys.

The first incident in the babyhood of the Princess Alice which attracts attention is the record of her christening. It was a very brilliant one, the Archbishop of Canterbury officiating, on June 2nd. The sponsors were the late King of Hanover, Ernest, the present Duke of Coburg, and the Princesses Sophia, Matilda, and Feodora.

We will give the Queen's own words about the important choice of the royal infant's names; Her Majesty thus writes:--"Our little baby is to be called Alice, an old English name, and the other names are to be Maud (another old English name, and the same as Matilda) and Mary, as she was born on Aunt Gloucester's birthday." Again, in writing to her uncle, the Queen's account of the little Princess's conduct was that "little Alice behaved extremely well."

When quite a young child, the Princess Alice was remarkably quick, and earnestly enjoyed the acquirement of all the knowledge suitable to her years, and soon displayed intellectual talent of a high order.

Peculiarly sweet and amiable in her disposition, and patient and untiring in her love, the young Princess was a favourite in the royal nursery and schoolroom.

Her ill.u.s.trious father found her when even a child as to age, quite his companion as to comprehension and mental capacities.

Two very special characteristics place the beloved Princess Alice in the highest range of distinguished women, and call for the deepest regard and respect from all hearts.

From her earliest youth, whatever was learned by her was _thoroughly_ acquired, quietly and completely mastered, definitely and decidedly finished. And with her highly-refined, cultivated, and capacious mind, she also combined every domestic and feminine grace and duty, and was the useful, helpful English maiden, as well as singularly intellectual.

"In her teens," the Princess was p.r.o.nounced to be "one of the most accomplished young ladies in England."

When the Queen visited Scotland in 1844, the Princess was too young to accompany the royal party, and Her Majesty thus writes of the separation. Just when they were ready for the journey, "Alice and the baby (Prince Alfred) were brought in, poor little things, to wish us good-bye."

But in the course of a few years, all the children were able to partic.i.p.ate in the Scotch journeys, and the Princess Alice became the constant companion of the Queen, riding with her over the lovely hills on ponies; visiting the poor women in the cottages, calling at the shop to purchase comforts for them; and at various times climbing the ascents to Feithort, or up Morven, Loch-na-Gar, and Ben Mac Dhui. This latter ascent was made through the dank mountain cloud; but this did not daunt the royal travellers, the Queen recording--"However, I and Alice rode to the very top, which we reached a few minutes past two; and here, at a cairn of stones, we lunched in a piercing cold wind.... Luncheon over, Albert ran off with Alice to the ridge to look at the splendid view, and sent for me to follow."

In December, 1861, Prince Albert was attacked by the terrible disease which eventually proved fatal. The Princess Alice, although only seventeen, was the constant, unwearied nurse of her well-loved parent, and tended and watched him with the strongest filial love. To the last she kept her post, and when her aid and gentle care were no more needed, for he had pa.s.sed away, she turned to soothe, comfort, and support her beloved mother with womanly and dutiful affection.

On the 1st of July, 1862, the Princess Alice married Prince Louis of Hesse, and proved a pattern wife and mother. But in 1878, her own little household group was smitten with diphtheria, and in nursing and caressing her darling children, she caught the disease herself. One child preceded her, the Princess Mary, who died November 16th, and on December 14th, the anniversary of her honoured father's death, she, too, was summoned home.

The changes and sorrows of life, and, perhaps, especially the death, of a darling little one, who fell from a window, in 1873, and was killed by the fall, had been blessed to her by the Holy Spirit of G.o.d; and scenes of family sickness and bereavement seem to have led the endeared Princess Alice to that loving and sympathizing Saviour who is ever ready to save the heart that fully trusts in Him.

The whole English nation mourned for her, as for one near and dear to each, and a solemnity pervaded all cla.s.ses, though Christmas was at hand.

Possibly the antic.i.p.ation of Christmastide had been bright in her own loving spirit: if so, that antic.i.p.ation was realized, for the first Christmas in heaven with Jesus Himself must indeed surpa.s.s the most joyous and happy one ever spent on earth.

In Memoriam.

THE PRINCESS ALICE, WHO DIED DEC. 14th, 1878.

She is taken to celebrate Christmastide, In Emmanuel's land of light; The notes of her carol swell far and wide, And her raiment is l.u.s.trous white.

Introduced to the happy, and blood-bought throng, For whom Jesus, the Christ, was born, How sweetly will echo her triumph song, On the Heavenly Christmas morn!

And the day she was taken was linked in love, By fond memory's silver chain, With him who had entered the Home above, Which knows neither parting nor pain.

At the dawn of the wintry, and short, dark day, The angel of death hovered near, To herald the sorrowful mother away, From trouble, and trial, and tear.

Let us mingle our prayers, asking G.o.d to bless, With earnest, affectionate cry, Our well-beloved Queen, in her new distress, Her comfort our G.o.d can supply.

May she treasure the thought with tremulous praise, That those who were lent, and not given, Are joining with us in the angels' lays, And keeping their Christmas in Heaven!

_Montacute, Ilminster, Somerset, Christmas, 1878._

II.

MRS. HANNAH MORE.

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 att.i.tude 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 cla.s.sical learning.

The nurse who a.s.sisted 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 Sat.u.r.day, 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 sc.r.a.p 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.