# Hannah More (British edition 1888)/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
HANNAH AS A POETESS.
After the feast of compliments and civilities that she had received, Hannah said to her sisters on her return to Bristol, "I have been so fed with flattering attentions that I think I will venture to try what is my real value by writing a slight poem, and offering it to Caddell myself."
Accordingly she produced a melancholy ballad, by name Sir Eldred of the Bower, on the model of those collected by Dr. Percy:—
There was a young and valiant knight, Sir Eldred was his name; And never did a worthier knight The rank of knighthood claim.
The versification is smooth, the story the same as that of the old ballad of Gil Morice, anticipating the ​catastrophe of Rokeby, by which Mortham mistakes his wife's brother for a former lover, and kills him in her arms, causing thus her death and eliciting the moral:
The deadliest wounds with which we bleed, Our crimes inflict alone; Man's mercies from God's hand proceed, His miseries from his own.
To this she added some verses written at the time of her visits to Belmont, where there is a red rock with a little stream proceeding from it, in a sort of scaur, overgrown with copsewood. Tradition connected with it a story of the time of the Roman occupation of Britain, of a maiden who pined away like Echo on being neglected by her lover:—
Then strange to tell, if rural folks say true, To hardened rock the stiffening damsel grew. No more her shapeless features can be known, Stone is her body, and her limbs are stone.
When the tidings reached the swain, he rushed to the spot and stabbed himself, the dagger piercing to the stone, so that blood issued from it:—
And though revolving ages since have passed The melting torrents undiminished last.
Armed with these poems, Hannah went to London with Sally in 1776. The result of her criterion was triumphant, though it is only a proof of the evanescence of success. Caddell gave her far more for the verses than she had dared to expect, and promised to raise the ​sum to whatever Goldsmith (dead three years previously) had received for The Deserted Village.
Mrs. Montagu wrote:—
This excellent lady was as highly cultivated as any of her time, so that it is the more comical to find her admiring the simplicity of the taste and the correctness of the manners. The Romans were probably the Polydore and Ianthe of the Rock, who evinced their calm magnanimity by suicide and petrifaction, and the unfortunate Sir Eldred and his Bertha were the Goths. Johnson scorned the genuine article discovered by Dr. Percy, and parodied it with,—
I put my hat upon my head, And went into the Strand, And there I met another man, With his hat in his hand.
But he patronised Sir Eldred, even adding this stanza to Sir Eldred's wooing:—
My scorn has oft the dart repelled Which guileful beauty threw; But goodness heard, and grace beheld, Must every heart subdue.
​Miss Reynolds told the sisters that "Sir Eldred was the theme in all polite circles, and that the beauteous Bertha has kindled a flame in the cold bosom of Johnson."
Garrick was equally delighted, and read the verses aloud to select audiences with all the effect of his perfect elocution. On one of these occasions Hannah wrote: "I think I never was so ashamed in my life, but he read it so superlatively that I cried like a child. Only think what a scandalous thing to cry at one's own poetry. I could have beaten myself, for it looked as if I thought it very moving, which, I can truly say, is far from being the case. But the beauty of the jest lies in this. Mrs. Garrick twinkled as well as I, and made as many apologies for crying at her husband's reading as I did for crying at my own verses. She got out of the scrape by pretending she was touched at the story, and I by saying the same thing of the reading. It furnished us with a great laugh at the catastrophe, when it would really have been decent to have been a little sorrowful."
Garrick further wrote a poem representing the male sex as mortified by the success of a female performance, till Apollo appears and claims it:—
True! cries the god of verse, 'tis mine, And now the farce is o'er, To vex proud man, I wrote each line, And gave them Hannah More!
​"Nine," as uniting all the nine Muses in one, was Garrick's pet name for the lady. It was a wonderful season for her, though one drawback to her good taste was the style of dress, which it was necessary in some degree to follow. She writes: "Some ladies carry on their heads a large quantity of fruit, and yet they would despise a poor useful member of society who carried it there for the purpose of selling it. Some, at the back of their perpendicular caps, hang three or four ostrich feathers of different colours."
Surely Hannah must have concocted with Garrick the head-dress with which he put these enormities out of fashion by appearing on the stage in the character of Sir John Brute with a whole kitchen garden on his head, including glass cucumber frames, and a pendant carrot at each ear.
He had sold the patent of Drury Lane, and was going through all his great parts for the last time. To his devoted admirer, Hannah, the sight appeared, she said, "like assisting at the funeral obsequies of the poets who had conceived them"; but she wrote some lively verses in the character of Dragon, the watchdog at Mr. Garrick's house at Hampton, describing his pleasure in his master's return.
Since Hannah More had become famous, her father's Norfolk relations recollected her existence, and she was invited to pay a visit to a family named Colton, living at Bungay. There she found even the London ladies' ​head-gear surpassed at a family party where there were eleven damsels. "I protest I hardly do them justice'" she says, "when I pronounce that they had amongst them, on their heads, an acre and a half of shrubbery, besides slopes, grass plats, tulip beds, clumps of peonies, kitchen gardens and greenhouses."
The Colton family themselves seen to have been good and congenial people; but after some two months, Hannah rejoined the Garricks at Hampton, and went with them to pay a visit to Mr. Wilmot's at Farnborough, where she met Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott. The Doctor was Hebrew Professor at Oxford, and his wife had learnt the language in order to be able to copy for him. This was the beginning of another of Miss More's life friendships. On the Sunday evening, when music was talked of, Garrick turned to her and said "Nine, you are a Sunday woman; retire to your room, I will recall you when the music is over."
The Garricks were both revising Hannah's present undertaking; "A German Commentator will suck an author dry," wrote David, to frighten the authoress when the work was in his wife's hands.
For a successful tragedy was the prime achievement expected of all who, in the language of the day, aspired to be denizens of Parnassus. Hannah had long ago half translated, half imitated, Metastasio's drama of Attilio Regulo, and called her work The Inflexible Captive. It was brought out this summer at the theatre ​at Bath, and to the author's request for an epilogue, Garrick replied, "Write you an epilogue! Give you a pinch of snuff!" And he composed one that delighted her very much. The work had success enough to encourage her in producing a more original one, called Percy, for the London world.
It was founded on an old French tale of Raoul de Coucy, but the catastrophe had so much likeness to that of Sir Eldred as to show very little power of invention, and by the adoption of English and Scotch names the playwright involved herself in inconsistencies that seem to have been regarded as mere trifles in those days.
Elwina, the daughter of Lord Raby, has been betrothed to Percy, but a quarrel between the retainers has led to the match being broken off, and to the lover going with the King to the Crusades. Oblivious of Chevy Chase, and apparently with no Border between them, Lord Raby then bestows the unwilling and sorrowful Elwina on Douglas. Strange to say, the tidings arrive—
The King is safe and Palestine subdued;
while of Percy it is reported—
Beneath the walls of Solyma he fell.
On hearing which Elwina faints. Of course, Percy is alive, returns, and has an interview with Elwina, in ​which each displays much virtue; but Percy refuses to restore a scarf which the lady had given him in happier days. A letter entreating him to give it up, falls into the hands of her husband, who, mad with jealousy, not only challenges Percy, but sends her a cup of poison to be taken in case of his own death. Inevitably this is reported to her, and she drinks the potion, but lives to hear that it was really Percy who was killed, just before her father had arrived on the scene to explain all; and while she dies, Douglas stabs himself! Her ravings were really touching, and must have been very effective, but neither Hannah nor her friends seem to have had the smallest scruple as to entertaining a Christian audience with suicide after the high Roman fashion—as indeed the tragic stage was in those days a conventional world, quite apart from any relation to the facts of history, manners, or real life, and with a code as well as customs of its own.
Written under the superintendence of one who perfectly gauged the taste of the contemporary public; and who, though retired, had an unlimited power of patronage, Percy had every advantage, and the actress Kitty Clive observed that "Garrick's nursing had enabled the bantling to go alone in a month." It had, however, real merit, quite sufficient to support that enthusiasm which contemporaries are apt to feel for the work of a female friend—just as Scott did when he placed Joanna Baillie on a level with Shakespeare.
​No drama of lady's manufacture has kept a permanent hold on the stage; but Percy's immediate success was triumphant. The authoress's home letter begins: "I may now venture to tell you (as you extorted a promise from me to conceal nothing) what I would not hardly have done last night, that the reception of Percy exceeded my most sanguine wishes. I am just returning from the second night, and it was, if possible, received more favourably than on the first.
"One tear is worth a thousand hands, and I had the satisfaction to see even the men shed them in abundance. The critics (as is usual) met at the Bedford last night, to fix the character of the play. If I were a heroine of romance, and were writing to my confidante, I should tell you all the fine things that were told; but as I am a living Christian woman, I do not think it would be so modest; I will only say, as Garrick does, that I have had so much flattery, that I might, if I would, choke myself in my own pap."
The house of Northumberland regarded the tragedy as a personal compliment, and Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and collector of the Reliques, was deputed by the Duke to congratulate and thank her, and expressed his regret that the gout had prevented both him and his son from being present. "They sent, however, each for a ticket, for which they paid, as ​became the blood of the Percys; and in so genteel and respectful a manner, that it was impossible for the nicest pride to take umbrage at it."
There must have been much reality and good acting, for when the letter was intercepted by the villain, a voice from the shilling gallery called out, "Pray send it to Mr. Percy." Sally and Patty came up to enjoy the sight, and found that the authoress had just been presented with a wreath of Roman laurel, "the stems confined within an elegant ring." It came from Mrs. Boscawen, and was acknowledged in some fanciful verses, not without grace, though modern taste might smile at the frequent interposition of the hard-worked Apollo. Four thousand copies of the play were sold in a fortnight, and, actually in the life-time of Sheridan, almost in that of Goldsmith, Hannah was exalted as the best dramatic writer of the day.
Vers de société writing was one of the favourite amusements of the day, and Hannah and the clever Mrs. Barbauld vied in their composition. When Garrick gave Miss More the shoe-buckles he had worn at his last appearance on the stage, Mrs. Barbauld wrote—
Thy buckles, O Garrick, thy friend may now use, But no one shall venture to tread in thy shoes.
After a visit to Dr. Lowth, Bishop of London, at Fulham Palace, Hannah wrote a ballad expressing the disgust of Bonner's ghost at the sight of the ​Protestant prelate's family in the precincts of his former abode. The quondam Bishop exclaims—
Mrs. Barbauld, from the Nonconformist point of view, wrote a rejoinder as an apology from the Bishops, beginning—
Satire is certainly more diverting than compliment! It has been said that Hannah More's mind afterwards underwent a sudden change or conversion; but, in point of fact, the sisters were always deeply and quietly religious women, and she held the even tenor of her way through all the enjoyments of society, and in the midst of all the whirl of success she was keeping up her habits of religious study. She writes from London: "I have read through all the Epistles three times since I have been here; the ordinary translation, Locke's paraphrase, and a third put into very elegant English, I know not by whom, in which St. Paul's obscurities are elucidated, and Harwood's pomp of words avoided. I am also reading West on the ​Resurrection, in my poor judgment a most excellent thing."
The success of Percy encouraged the author to produce another tragedy, called The Fatal Falsehood, founded on domestic troubles. Garrick prepared it for the stage; but before it appeared, he died almost suddenly, on the 20th of January 1779. His wife immediately entreated Miss More to come to her, as her most congenial friend and comforter, and truly her sympathy was most deep and full.
Garrick was buried in Westminster Abbey, and Hannah, with another lady, had tickets from the Bishop of Rochester, Dean of Westminster, to witness the funeral, and after some difficulty obtained a place in a little gallery directly over the grave. "Just at three the great doors burst open with a noise that shook the roof, the organ struck up, and the whole choir, in strains only less solemn than 'the Archangel's trump,' began Handel's fine anthem. The whole choir advanced to the grave in hoods and surplices, singing all the way, then Sheridan as chief mourner, then the body (alas! whose body?), with ten noblemen and gentlemen pall-bearers; then the rest of the friends and mourners; hardly a dry eye, the very players, bred to the trade of counterfeiting, shed genuine tears."
More affecting still is the account of the widow's return to her own house. "She bore it with great tranquillity, but what was my surprise to see her go ​alone into the chamber and bed in which he had died not a fortnight before. She had a delight in it beyond expression. I asked her the next day how she went through it. She told me, 'Very well; that she first prayed with great composure, then went and kissed the dear bed, and got into it with a sad pleasure.' When I expressed my surprise at her self-command, she answered, 'Groans and complaints are very well for those who are to mourn but for a little while, but a sorrow that is to last for life will not be violent and romantic.'"
Sharing Mrs. Garrick's griefs in this manner, Miss More had not the heart even to go and witness the first performance of her Fatal Falsehood, which was acted at the Adelphi in the spring—so different was all from the unceasing witticisms and merriment which had passed between her and her friends when ushering Percy into the world.
"Hannah seems mightily indifferent," wrote Patty, who had come up to town on hearing that she was unwell.
Indeed, she could not bear to visit a theatre again, and never saw her own play, though it had a very fair success, and compliments were showered on her. Her sister had the full pleasure of the applause, and sent home a story of a maid coming back with red eyes, and answering a remark on them with "A great many respectable people cried too!"
​Mrs. Boscawen sent five gentlemen with oaken sticks to applaud, but they did not find it necessary to lead the audience, there was universal clapping, and Miss Reynolds wrote, "I congratulate you, myself, and all my sex on the happy and most beautiful exhibition of your play last night."
And yet Hannah never again wrote for the stage; perhaps partly because, when preparing a second edition of The Fatal Falsehood, Caddell told her she was too good a Christian for a dramatic author!