1843–1848

Autobiography from six years old — Wanting to be happy — Sunday chapters and prayer — Golden light — Waving boughs — “The caged lark” — No hypocrisy — Mother’s last words — Death — No trance — The cry of the motherless — Wales — Oakhampton.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY. (Written in 1859.)

HAVE often already planned and half intended to write for my own amusement in coming years a sort of little autobiography of those which are past; but this idea, although my life would furnish plenty of small adventures and incidents, I have now for several reasons laid aside; I scarcely think it would repay the necessary outlay of many precious hours. For, more and more, do I feel what valuable capital Time is, capital which must not be put out at merely amy interest, but as far as possible at the best and highest. In lieu however of a history of my owfer life, I do think that a little account -of my own izmer life would be a not unprofitable investment of an evening hour. And may He who has led me these twenty-two “years through the wilderness” send His blessing upon me while I “remember all the way” by which He, I trust, has brought me hitherto. My reasons for undertaking this little task are these. tst. I have found it so very pleasant and profitable to look back frequently upon what have been God’s dealings with me, that a written retrospect is likely, with His blessing, to puove still more useful and delightful, as being less cursory and more definite. 2nd. I have always avoided keeping a diary, feeling certain that it never would or could be a strictly faithful picture of passing soul-life; yet I think an account of the Zas/, ina bird’s-eye view, would be far easier to give in a true and uncoloured light than any memoranda of a present, which would be tinged with the prevailing hues of the moment, morning, noon, or twilight. Therefore, as I feel sure that I shall not retain such a clear recollection of each year’s history when memory is more burdened, and as I believe that even our own ‘‘experience” is a thing given to be used and improved, it seems almost a duty to endeavour to preserve it as clear and ready for reference and use (at times when “His love in times past” may be an anchor for the stormbeset spirit) as may be. 3rd. A diary no eye but mine should ever see. But, for one reason, one eye shall read these pages, if it should be God’s will that the volume of my life should soon close. It is this. While I do humbly trust, though tremblingly, that I am a child of God, I know, and knowing bewail it, that much in my life and conversation has not been, and is not, “as becometh the gospel of Christ”; and there must be some, if not many, among my own beloved ones, who have no direct evidence concerning me, and whom I must have often grieved by my inconsistency. And it might be that no opportunity of any “deathbed evidence” may be given me, or that my remaining time may be so short that I may never be able to show, by a closer walk with

God, that I am truly His. And as He has in His wonderful, most wonderful, mercy given me hope, I would not that any dear to me should sorrow for me as without hope. So I shall give this to my dear sister Maria, to be opened only in case of my death; that she may have the comfort of hoping, that even in my darkest and most careless days I was not utterly forsaken of that Spirit, who I pray may never cease to strive with me. —

‘Call to remembrance the days of old.” “Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee.”

1843 — 1845.

Up to the time that I was six years old I have no remembrance of any religious ideas whatever. Even, when taken once to see the corpse of a little boy of my own age (four years), lying in a coffin strewn with flowers, in dear papa’s parish of Astley, I did not think about it as otherwise than a very sad and very curious thing that that little child should lie so still and cold. I do not think I could ever have said any of those “pretty things” that little children often do, though there were sweet and beloved and holy ones round me who must have often tried to put good thoughts into my little mind. But from six to eight I recall a different state of things. The beginning of it was a sermon preached one Sunday morning, at Hallow Church, by Mr. (now Archdeacon) Phillpotts. Of this I even now retain a distinct impression. It was to me a very terrible one, dwelling much on hell and judgment, and what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God. No one ever knew it, but this sermon haunted me, and day and night it crossed me. I began to pray a good deal, though only night and morning, with a sort of fidget and impatience, almost angry at feeling so unhappy, and wanting and expecting to geta - new heart, and have everything put straight and be made happy, all at once.;

This sort of thing went on at intervals, not at all con- — tinuously, for often a month or two would pass without a serious thought or anything like true prayer. At such times I utterly abominated being “talked to,” would do anything on earth to escape the kindly meant admonitions of dear M — — ,, or the prayers which she would offer for me. Any cut or bruise (and such were more the rule than exception in those wild days of tree-climbing, wall-sealing, etc.) was instantly adduced as a reason why I could not possibly kneel down. A chapter in the Bible was often a terrible bore. Then, after a time of this sort, some mere trifle, very often the influence of a calm beautiful evening, or perhaps a “Sunday book” of some affecting kind, would rouse me up to uncomfortableness again. One sort of habit I got into in a steady way, which was persevered in with more or less fervour according to the particular fit in which I might be. Every Sunday afternoon I went alone into a little front room (at Henwick) over the hall, and there used to read a chapter in the Testament, and then knelt down and prayed for a few minutes, after which I usually felt soothed and less naughty. Once, when Marian P. was spending a few days with me, she being my only little visitor at Henwick, I did not like any omission, and so took her with me, saying a few words of prayer “out of my head” without any embarrassment at her presence.

I think I had a far more vivid sense of the beauty of nature as a little child than I have even now; and its power over me was greater than any one would imagine. I have hardly felt anything so intensely since, in the way of a sort of unbearable enjoyment. Especially, and I think more than anything else, the golden quiet of a bright summer’s day used to enter into me and do me good. What only some great and rare musical enjoyment is to me now, the shade of a tree under a clear blue sky, with a sunbeam glancing through the boughs, was to me then. But I did not feel happy in my very enjoyment; I wanted more. I do not think I was eight when I hit upon Cowper’s lines, ending

“My Father made them all!”

That was what I wanted to be able to say; and, after once seeing the words, I never saw a lovely scene again without being “eased by them. One spring (I think 1845) I kept thinking of them, and a dozen times a day said to myself, “Oh if God would but make me a Christian before the summer comes!” because I longed so to enjoy His works as I felt they could be enjoyed. And I could not bear to think of azother summer coming and going, and finding and leaving me still “nota Christian.” I shall know some day why my Father left me to walk thus alone in my early childhood, why such long years of dissatisfaction and restlessness were apportioned me, while others fancied me a happy thoughtless child. But He must have been teaching me, and “who teacheth like Him?” Another soothing influence to me was the presence of any one whom I believed to be more than commonly holy: not among those nearest ’ and dearest to me at home; how perversely I overlooked them! but any very pious clergyman, or other manifest and shining Christian. The Rev. John Davies, of St. Clement’s, I particularly reverenced; and his or any similar presence did me a sort of indefinite good. I used to want such to speak a word about good things to me, much as I hated it from those who would willingly have given it me.

All this while I don’t think any one could have given the remotest guess at what passed in my mind, or have given me credit for a single serious thought. I knew I was “a naughty child,” never entertained any doubts on the subject; in fact, I almost enjoyed my naughtiness in a savage desperate kind of way, because I utterly despaired of getting any better, except by being “made a Christian,” which, as months passed on, leaving me rather worse than better, was a less and less hoped for, though more and more donged for, change. Towards the end of these two years I think (though I do not distinctly remember) that I must have become a shade quieter and happier, because of what is the first memory in my next little soul era.

July, 1845 — Spring, 1850.

We went to St. Nicholas’ Rectory in 1845, and it was in very great bitterness that I bade adieu to my pleasant country life, and became, as I remember dear papa calling me, “a caged lark.” This made a great difference to me, for I do think that the quiet every day beauty of trees and sunshine was ¢ke chief external influence upon my early childhood. Waving boughs and golden light always touched and quieted me, and spoke to me, and told me about God. Being a “youngest” by so many years, and not knowing many children, I very rarely had a companion except my little Flora, in that large Henwick garden, where I first learned to chink; and that may have been the reason why trees and grass were so much tome, They were the first pleasant leaf in God’s great lesson book with me. But at St. Nicholas’ Rectory I had a little tiny room all my own, and that was quite the next best thing; its little window was my “country” (for a “walk” with another was never the same thing as those lonely loiterings in the garden), and soon the sky and the clouds were the same sort of relations to my spirit that trees and flowers had been.

Soon after coming, a sermon by the curate on “Fear not, little flock,” etc., struck me very much, and woke me up again from a longer slumber to a more restless unhappiness than usual. I did so want to be happy and be “a Christian,” which term embraced everything I could possibly think of in the way of happiness. And I didn’t at all see how I was to be, except by praying very hard; and that I had done so often that I got quite disheartened at its resultlessness, At this time I don’t think I had any clear ideas about believing on the Lord Jesus, and so getting rid of the burden which had pressed so long upon my little soul. My general notion was that I didn’t love God at all, and was very bad and wicked altogether; that if I went on praying very much, something would come to me and change me all at once; and make me like many whom I read about and a few whom I saw. As for ¢rying to be good, that seemed of next to no use; it was like struggling in a quicksand, the more you struggle the deeper you sink. To come back to the sermon. I had never yet spoken a word to any mortal about religion; but now I was so uneasy that, after nearly a fortnight’s hesitation, taking the emboldening opportunity of being alone with the curate one evening when * almost dark, I told him my trouble; saying especially that I thought I was getting worse, because since I had come to St. Nicholas’ I had not cared at all for Sunday afternoon reading and prayer. His advice did not satisfy me. He said the excitement of moving and coming into new scenes was the cause most likely of my feeling worse, and that would soon go off; then I was to try and be a good child, and pray, etc., etc. So, after that, my lips were utterly sealed to all but God for another five years or rather more. Even when feeling most, I fancied I could as soon speak Sanscrit, or die, as utter a word to a human being on what was only between me and God, This intense reserve must have grieved those who loved me. Consequently too, anything like hypocrisy was the sin of all others which I could least understand, and imagined the most zmwfossible to commit. How could any one say or seem more than they felt, when it was so impossible to say as much as one felt!

My dear mamma’s illness and death (July 5th, 1848) did not make the impression on me which might have been expected; I mean as regards my spiritual state, for my intense sorrow, childish though it was, seems even now, after the lapse of eleven years, a thing of which I do not like to speak or think. A mother’s death must be childhood’s greatest grief. But I am trying now to write only of my soul’s life. I did not at all expect her departure, and shut my ears in a very hardened way to those who tried to prepare me for it; so when it came I was not ready, and there was nothing but bitterness in it tome. I did not, would not, see God’s hand in it, and the stroke left me worse than it found me.

One subject often occupied my mind in these years, which would seem unusual for a child — the Lord’s Supper. After coming to St. Nicholas’, almost every monthly sacrament made me thoughtful. I begged to be allowed to stay in the church and see it administered “only once,” but this apparently mere curiosity was not gratified, so I used to go round to the vestry and listen to the service through the door. One Sunday the hymn “My God, and is Thy table spread,” was sung before sermon; it quite upset me, and I cried violently, though being in a corner of the pew I managed to conceal it. I used to reckon the years to the time when the invitation would extend to me too, not. by any means happily, for I wondered what I should ever do; I could not stay away, but how could I dare to go? ‘Well, I hope I shall be a Christian by then!” was my only comfort. ’

Turning from the Autobiography, some of her
mother’s words are given.

“You are my youngest little girl, and I feel. more anxious about you than the rest. I do pray for the Holy Spirit to lead you and guide you. And remember, nothing but the precious blood of Christ can make you clean and lovely in God’s sight.”

Frances. “Oh, mamma, I am sure you will get
better and go to church again!”

“No, dear child; the church mamma is going to is the general assembly and church of the firstborn in heaven. How glorious to know I shall soon see my Saviour face to face! Now go and play and sing some of your little hymns for me; there is one verse I should like you to sing twice over:

“And when her path is darkened
She lifts her trusting eye,
And says ‘my Father calls me

To mansions in the sky!’”

Before her mother’s death (when she was eleven years old) her wish was gratified to see the Lord’s Supper administered. We remember her grave, flushed face, when kneeling at her mother’s bed during the “Communion of the Sick.”

The whole story of her child life at this time is told in her “Four Happy Days,” in which, under the name of “Annie,” she reveals the bitterness of this first grief. We can almost see her in her tiny bedroom, “kneeling on the chair, leaning her little arms on the window-seat, and feeling as if she wished she had something to lean her little heart on too. The clouds had been her great friends since she had had no trees to sit in and make up fancies about. Sometimes she watched the clouds “FOUR HAPPY DAYS,” 21

and wondered all sorts of things about them, and especially wished she could reach the spendid white ones which looked like snow mountains that could be climbed and rested upon. But she found in a book that they were only vapour like the others, and that there would be nothing to rest upon and look down upon, only dismal thick mist and rain. Poor child! there are other bright things besides shining clouds, which when reached are only mist and tears.... She was musing over some words which had just been spoken in - her mother’s room. ‘Fanny dear, pray to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing for you. Her mamma said them very feebly and solemnly when she said good-night, and now they seemed to sound over and over again, so that they never should or could be forgotten. ‘I wonder what He is preparing for me,’ she thought. ‘Oh I do hope He is preparing one of the many mansions for me! how I wish I knew whether He is! But I don’t think He is preparing me for it, else I should not feel naughty so often.’ But her mamma meant something sadder and nearer, which she knew God was surely preparing day by day for her little girl; she knew it could not be very long before she would be singing the ‘new song’ in perfect joy, while all her child’s little songs would be hushed in great sorrow, the greatest that a child can know. Her mamma saw how strangely she was unprepared for all this, and she never would stay to listen to anything her sisters said about their dear mamma being worse.”

Only a few weeks before her own death, Frances referred to this: “The words mamma taught me in 1848 have ,lbeen a “fe prayer with me. This ‘preparing’ goes on; it is as when gaining one horizon, another and another spreads before you. So every event prepares us for the next that is prepared for us. Mamma’s words I also remember, ‘Dear child, you have your own little bedroom now, it ought to be a little Bethel.’ I could not ¢ken make head or tail of what she meant, and often wondered, till some months after, when reading in Genesis I came to the chapter; and then I understood it. Having that small room to myself developed me much as a child; it was mine, and to me it was the cosiest little nest in the world.”

We must take one more look (from the “Four Happy Days”) at St. Nicholas’ Rectory on the 11th of July, 1848. “Annie [Frances] was standing by the window in a front room, looking through a little space between the window and blind. All the shops were shut up, though it was not Sunday. She knew. it would be dreadful to look out of that window, and yet she felt she must look. She did not cry, she only stood and shivered in the warm air.

“Very slowly and quietly a funeral passed out of the front [Rectory] gate, and in another minute was out of sight, turning into the church. Then she stood no longer, but rushed away to her own little room, and flung herself on her little bed, and cried ‘oh,mamma! mamma! mamma!’ It seemed as if there was nothing else in her little heart but that one word, The strange hope which had lasted all that week was gone. She had found curious things in books, and one was that people had sometimes been supposed to be dead and yet it was only a trance, and they had revived and even recovered, And so, when no one was near, she had gone again and again into that room, and drawn the curtain aside,-half expecting to see the dear eyes unclose, and to feel the cold cheek warm again to her kiss. But it was no trance. The dear suffering mother was at rest, seeing Jesus face to face. Only the smile of holy peace was left on that lovely face, and that remained to the last, telling of life beyond death; she had never seen the solemn beauty of that smile before. But now all hope was gone, and she knew that she was motherless.”

In her little book of poems she wrote:

Eye hath not seen, nor ear hath heard,
Neither can man’s heart conceive,
The blessed things God hath prepared
For those who love Him and believe.
July 5th, 1848.
And again:

Oh! had I the wings of a dove,
Soon, soon would I be at my rest;
I would fly to the Saviour I love,
And there would I lie on His breast.

July oth.

On a marble tablet in. St. Nicholas’ Church,
Worcester, is this inscription.

JANE,

The beloved Wife of Rev. W. H. Havercat, M.A, Rector of this Parish, and Hon. Canon of Worcester Cathedral,

Died in holy peace, July 5th, 1848,

AGED 54 YEARS.

“TI give unto them eternal life.”

After this sorrowful time our dear father took us all away to North Wales. On our return Frances often visited her sister Miriam’s home, Oakhampton, where she is remembered as a clever amusing child, sometimes a little wilful and troublesome from mere excess of animal spirits, but always affectionate and grateful for any little treat; reading a good deal of poetry, and leaving traces of

* her studies in volumes found in hayloft and manger and garden nooks.

When at St. Nicholas’ Rectory, she threw herself into the work of her society for providing warm clothing; and her chief coadjutor (whom she calls “Maria” in “Four Happy Days”) was the youngest daughter of Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P.

Though her grief for her dear mother’s death was very deep, she ever tried to conceal it. Not that it was always heavy upon her, for as she writes: “If anything else occupied my attention I had a happy faculty of forgetting everything else for the moment. And thus it happened that a merry laugh or a sudden light-heeled scamper upstairs and downstairs led others to think I had not many sad thoughts, whereas not a minute before my little heart was heavy and sad.”