Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women — Elizabeth Fry, Part 1

ELIZABETH FRY

When thee builds a prison, thee had better build with the thought ever in thy mind that thee and thy children may occupy the cells.

--_Report on Paris Prisons, Addressed to the King of France_ [Illustration: ELIZABETH FRY] The Mennonite, Dunkard, Shaker, Oneida Communist, Mormon and Quaker are all one people, varying only according to environment.

They are all Come-Outers.

They turn to plain clothes, hard work, religious thought, eschewing the pomps and vanities of the world--all for the same reasons.

Scratch any one of them and you will find the true type.

The monk of the Middle Ages was the same man, his peculiarity being an extreme asceticism that caused him to count sex a mistake on the part of God.

And this same question has been a stumbling-block for ages to the type we now have under the glass.

A man who gives the question of sex too much attention is very apt either to have no wife at all or else four or five.

If a Franciscan friar of the olden time happened to glance at a clothesline on which, gaily waving in the wanton winds, was a smock-frock, he wore peas in his sandals for a month and a day.

The Shaker does not count women out because the founder of the sect was a woman, but he is a complete celibate and depends on Gentiles to populate the earth.

The Dunkard quotes Saint Paul and marries because he must, but regards romantic love as a thing of which Deity is jealous, and also a bit ashamed.

The Oneida Community clung to the same thought, and to obliterate selfishness held women in common, tracing pedigree, after the manner of ancient Sparta, through the female line, because there was no other way.

The Mormon incidentally and accidentally adopted polygamy.

The Quakers have for the best part looked with disfavor on passionate love.

In the worship of Deity they separate women from men.

But all oscillations are equalized by swingings to the other side.

The Quakers have often discarded a distinctive marriage-ceremony, thus slanting toward natural selection.

And I might tell you of how in one of the South American States there is a band of Friends who have discarded the rite entirely, making marriage a private and personal contract between the man and the woman--a sacred matter of conscience; and should the man and woman find after a trial that their mating was a mistake, they are as free to separate as they were to marry, and no obloquy is attached in any event.

Harriet Martineau, Quaker in sympathy, although not in name, being an independent fighter armed with a long squirrel-rifle of marvelous range and accuracy, pleaded strongly and boldly for a law that would make divorce as free and simple as marriage.

Harriet once called marriage a mouse-trap, and thereby sent shivers of surprise and indignation up a bishop's back.

But there is one thing among all these quasi-ascetic sects that has ever been in advance of the great mass of humanity from which they are detached parts: they have given woman her rights; whereas, the mass has always prated, and does yet, mentioning it in statute law, that the male has certain natural "rights," and the women only such rights as are granted her by the males.

And the reason of this wrong-headed attitude on part of the mob is plain.

It rules by force, whereas the semi-ascetic sects decry force, using only moral suasion, falling back on the Christ doctrine of non-resistance.

This has given their women a chance to prove that they have just as able minds as the men, if not better.

That these non-resistants are the salt of the earth none who know them can deny.

It was the residents of the monasteries in the Middle Ages who kept learning and art from dying off the face of Europe.

They built such churches and performed such splendid work in art that we are hushed into silence before the dignity of the ruins of Melrose, Dryburgh and Furness.

There are no paupers among the Quakers, a "criminal class" is a thing no Mennonite understands, no Dunkard is a drunkard, the Oneida Communists were all well educated and in dollars passing rich, while the Mormons have accumulated wealth at the rate of over eleven hundred dollars a man per year, which is more than three times as good a record as can be shown by New York or Pennsylvania.

And further, until the Gentiles bore down upon her, Utah had no use for either prisons, asylums or almshouses.

Until the Gentiles crowded into Salt Lake City, there was no "tenderloin district," no "dangerous class," no gambling "dives."

Instead, there was universal order, industry, sobriety.

It is well to recognize the fact that the quasi-ascetic, possessed of a religious idea, persecuted to a point that holds him to his work, is the best type of citizen the world has ever known.

Tobacco, strong drink, and opium alternately lull and excite, soothe and elevate, but always destroy; yet they do not destroy our ascetic, for he knows them not.

He does not deplete himself by drugs, rivalry, strife or anger.

He believes in co-operation, not competition.

He works and prays.

He keeps a good digestion, an even pulse, a clear conscience; and as man's true wants are very few, our subject grows rich and has not only ample supplies for himself, but is enabled to minister to others.

He is earth's good Samaritan.

It was Tolstoy and his daughter who started soup-houses in Russia and kept famine at bay.

Your true monk never passed by on the other side; ah, no!

the business of the old-time priest was to do good.

The Quaker is his best descendant--he is the true philanthropist.

If jeered, hooted and finally oppressed, these protesters will form a clan or sect and adopt a distinctive garb and speech.

If persecuted, they will hold together, as cattle on the prairies huddle against the storm.

But if left alone the Law of Reversion to Type catches the second generation, and the young men and maidens secrete millinery, just as birds do a brilliant plumage, and the strange sect merges into and is lost in the mass.

The Jews did not say, Go to, we will be peculiar, but, as Mr. Zangwill has stated, they have remained a peculiar people simply because they have been proscribed.

The successful monk, grown rich and feeling secure, turns voluptuary and becomes the very thing that he renounced in his monastic vows.

Over-anxious bicyclists run into the object they wish to avoid.

We are attracted to the thing we despise; and we despise it because it attracts.

A recognition of this principle will make plain why so many temperance fanatics are really drunkards trying hard to keep sober.

In us all is the germ of the thing we hate; we become like the thing we hate; we are the thing we hate.

Ex-Quakers in Philadelphia, I am told, are very dressy people.

But before a woman becomes a genuine admitted non-Quaker, the rough, gray woolen dress shades off by almost imperceptible degrees into a dainty silken lilac, whose generous folds have a most peculiar and seductive rustle; the bonnet becomes smaller, and pertly assumes a becoming ruche, from under which steal forth daring, winsome ringlets;

while at the neck, purest of cream-white kerchiefs jealously conceal the charms that a mere worldly woman might reveal.

Then the demi-monde, finding themselves neglected, bribe the dressmakers and adopt the costume.

Thus does civilization, like the cyclone, move in spirals.

* * * * * In a sermon preached at the City Temple, June Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-six, Doctor Joseph Parker said: "There it was--there!

at Smithfield Market, a stone's throw from here, that Ridley and Latimer were burned.

Over this spot the smoke of martyr fires hovered.

And I pray for a time when they will hover again.

Aye, that is what we need!

the rack, the gallows, chains, dungeons, fagots!"

Yes, those are his words, and it was two days before it came to me that Doctor Parker knew just what he was talking about.

Persecution can not stamp out virtue, any more than man's effort can obliterate matter.

Man changes the form of things, but he does not cancel their essence.

And this is as true of the unseen attributes of spirit as it is of the elements of matter.

Did the truths taught by Latimer and Ridley go out with the flames that crackled about their limbs?

Were their names written for the last time in smoke?

'T were vain to ask.

The bishop who instigated their persecution gave them certificates for immortality.

But the bishop did not know it--bishops who persecute know not what they do.

Let us guess the result if Jesus had been eminently successful, gathering about him, with the years, the strong and influential men of Jerusalem!

Suppose he had fallen asleep at last of old age, and, full of honors, been carried to his own tomb, patterned after that of Joseph of Arimathea, but richer far--what then?

And if Socrates had apologized and had not drunk of the hemlock, how about his philosophy, and would Plato have written the "Phædo"?

No religion is pure except in its state of poverty and persecution; the good things of earth are our corrupters.

All life is from the sun, but fruit too well loved of the sun falls first and rots.

The religion that is fostered by the State and upheld by a standing army may be a pretty good religion, but it is not the Christ religion, call you it "Christianity" never so loudly.

Martyr and persecutor are usually cut off the same piece.

They are the same type of man; and looking down the centuries they seem to have shifted places easily.

As to which is persecutor and which is martyr is only a question of transient power.

They are constantly teaching the trick to each other, just as scolding parents have saucy children.

They are both good people; their sincerity can not be doubted.

Marcus Aurelius, the best emperor Rome ever had, persecuted the Christians; while Caligula, Rome's worst emperor, didn't know there were any Christians in his dominions, and if he had known would not have cared.

The persecutor and the martyr both belong to the cultus known as "Muscular Christianity," the distinguishing feature of which is a final appeal to force.

We should, however, respect it for the frankness of the name in which it delights--Muscular Christianity being a totally different thing from Christianity, which smitten turns the other cheek.

But the Quaker, best type of the non-resistant quasi-ascetic, is the exception that proves the rule; he may be persecuted, but he persecutes not again.

He is the best authenticated type living of primitive Christian.

That the religion of Jesus was a purely reactionary movement, suggested by the smug complacency and voluptuous condition of the times, most thinking men agree.

Where rich Pharisees adopt a standard of life that can only be maintained by devouring widows' houses and oppressing the orphan, the needs of the hour bring to the front a man who will swing the pendulum to the other side.

When society plays tennis with truth, and pitch-and-toss with all the expressions of love and friendship, certain ones will confine their speech to yea, yea, and nay, nay.

When men utter loud prayers on street corners, some one will suggest that the better way to pray is to retire to your closet and shut the door.

When self-appointed rulers wear purple and scarlet and make broad their phylacteries, some one will suggest that honest men had better adopt a simplicity of attire.

When a whole nation grows mad in its hot endeavor to become rich, and the Temple of the Most High is cumbered by the seats of money-changers, already in some Galilean village sits a youth, conscious of his Divine kinship, plaiting a scourge of cords.

The gray garb of the Quaker is only a revulsion from a flutter of ribbons and a towering headgear of hues that shame the lily and rival the rainbow.

Beau Brummel, lifting his hat with great flourish to nobility and standing hatless in the presence of illustrious nobodies, finds his counterpart in William Penn, who was born with his hat on and uncovers to no one.

The height of Brummel's hat finds place in the width of Penn's. Quakerism is a protest against an idle, vain, voluptuous and selfish life.

It is the natural recoil from insincerity, vanity and gormandism which, growing glaringly offensive, causes these certain men and women to "come out" and stand firm for plain living and high thinking.

And were it not for this divine principle in humanity that prompts individuals to separate from the mass when sensuality threatens to hold supreme sway, the race would be snuffed out in hopeless night.

These men who come out effect their mission, not by making all men Come-Outers, but by imperceptibly changing the complexion of the mass.

They are the true and literal saviors of mankind.

* * * * * Norwich has several things to recommend it to the tourist, chief of which is the cathedral.

Great, massive, sullen structure--begun in the Eleventh Century--it adheres more closely to its Norman type than does any other building in England.

Within sound of the tolling bells of this great cathedral, aye, almost within the shadow of its turrets, was born, in Seventeen Hundred Eighty, Elizabeth Gurney.

Her line of ancestry traced directly back to the De Gournays who came with William the Conqueror, and laid the foundations of this church and of England's civilization.

To the sensitive, imaginative girl this sacred temple, replete with history, fading off into storied song and curious legend, meant much.

She haunted its solemn transepts, and followed with eager eyes the carved bosses on the ceiling, to see if the cherubs pictured there were really alive.

She took children from the street and conducted them thither, explaining that it was her grandfather who laid the mortar between the stones and reared the walls and placed the splendid colored windows, on which reflections of real angels were to be seen, and where Madonnas winked when the wind was east.

And the children listened with open mouths and marveled much, and this encouraged the pale little girl with the wondering eyes, and she led them to the tomb of Sir William Boleyn, whose granddaughter, Anne Boleyn, used often to come here and garland with flowers the grave above which our toddlers talked in whispers, and where, yesterday, I, too, stood.

And so Elizabeth grew in years and in stature and in understanding; and although her parents were not members of the Established Religion, yet a great cathedral is greater than sect, and to her it was the true House of Prayer.

It was there that God listened to the prayers of His children.

She loved the place with an idolatrous love and with all the splendid superstition of a child, and thither she went to kneel and ask fulfilment of her heart's desire.

All the beauties of ancient and innocent days moved radiant and luminous in the azure of her mind.

But time crept on and a woman's penetrating comprehension came to her, and the dreams of youth shifted off into the realities of maturity, and she saw that many who came to pray were careless, frivolous people, and that the vergers did their work without more reverence than did the stablemen who cared for her father's horses.

And once when twilight was veiling the choir, and all the worshipers had departed, she saw a curate strike a match on the cloister-wall, to light his pipe, and then with the rector laugh loudly, because the bishop had forgotten and read his "Te Deum Laudamus" before his "Gloria in Excelsis."

By degrees it came to her that the lord bishop of this holy place was in the employ of the State, and that the State was master too of the army and the police and the ships that sailed away to New Zealand, carrying in their holds women and children, who never came back, and men who, like the lord bishop, had forgotten this and done that when they should have done the other.

Once, in the streets of Norwich she saw a dozen men with fetters riveted to their legs, all fastened to one clanking chain, breaking stone in the drizzle of a winter rain.

And the thought came to her that the rich ladies, wrapped in furs, who rolled by in their carriages, going to the cathedral to pray, were no more God's children than these wretches breaking stone from the darkness of a winter morning until darkness settled over the earth again at night.