# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Bray, Caroline

​BRAY, Mrs. CAROLINE (1814–1905), friend of George Eliot and author, eighth and youngest child of James Hennell (d. 1816), traveller and afterwards partner in the mercantile house of Fazy & Co., Manchester, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Joel Marshall of Loughborough, was born at 2 St. Thomas's Square, Hackney, London, on 4 June 1814. Her brother Charles Christian [q. v.] and her sisters Mary [q. v.] and Sara [see below] won distinction as writers. Caroline was educated at home, and her home life probably suggested to George Eliot that of the Meyrick family in 'Daniel Deronda.' Caroline was for a short time a governess, and the experience was helpful to her later in writing schoolbooks. She married on 26 April 1836 Charles Bray [q.v.], a ribbon manufacturer of Coventry. The Hennells were Unitarians of the school of Priestley, but Bray, like her own brothers and sisters, held more advanced views, which Mrs. Bray never wholly shared.
In 1841 Mrs. Bray and her sister Sara were introduced to Mary Anne Evans (to be known later as George Eliot the novelist), and the acquaintance quickly ripened into close friendship. Portraits of Miss Evans and of her father, drawn by Mrs. Bray in 1842, were presented by the artist to the National Portrait Gallery in 1899. The correspondence with George Eliot, which began in 1842, only ceased with life, and on it Mr. J. W. Cross's biography of George Eliot is largely based.
In 1840 Charles Bray bought a small property near Coventry known as Rosehill, and there entertained many interesting visitors. Emerson stayed there in 1848 (cf. M. D. Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, 1882, pp. 273-5) ; Herbert Spencer in 1852, 1853, 1856, and 1862 (cf. Herbert Spencer, An Autobiography, 1904). Bray ​retired from business in 1856. Between 1859 and 1881 he and his wife resided for part of each year at Sydenham. After Bray's death in 1884 Mrs. Bray lived at Ivy Cottage, St. Nicholas Street, Coventry, where she died of heart failure on 22 Feb. 1905. She was buried in Coventry cemetery.
Mrs. Bray, an accomplished woman, of gentle temper and sound judgment, wrote many educational books notable for their clearness and simplicity. The most important are 'Physiology and the Laws of Health, in Easy Lessons for Schools' (1860), and 'The Elements of Morality, in Easy Lessons for Home and School Teaching' (1882). About 15,000 copies of the former were sold. It was translated into French, and at Dr. Colenso's desire into Zulu. The latter, an excellent little book, was translated into Italian, Dutch, and Hindustani. 'Our Duty to Animals' (1871), for a long period a class book in the schools of the midland counties, 'Richard Barton' (1871), 'Paul Bradley' (1876), and 'Little Mop' (1886), impressed on the young the duty of kindness to animals. The establishment of the Coventry Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1874 was due to Mrs. Bray's initiative, and she acted as its honorary secretary until 1895.
Sara Hennell (1812-1899), author, Mrs. Bray's elder sister, born at Hackney on 23 Nov. 1812, was educated at home, and from 1832 to 1841 was employed as a governess. In 1841 she settled at home at Hackney, and ten years later moved with her mother to Coventry. During 1844–6 she supervised George Eliot's translation of Strauss' 'Life of Jesus' (Cross, George Eliot's Life, i. chap. 2). George Baillie of Glasgow having offered and awarded a prize for the best layman's essay against infidelity, in 1854 offered a second prize of 'twenty sovereigns' for the best discussion of 'both sides of the subject.' Sharing the religious views of her brother Charles and brother-in-law, Charles Bray, Miss Hennell won the second prize with her severely impartial 'Christianity and Infidelity: an Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides' (1857). George Eliot credited it with 'very high and rare qualities of mind' (Cross, George Eliot's Life, i. 35). In 1859 appeared Miss Hennell's 'Essay on the Sceptical Tendency of Butler's "Analogy,"' which ranks as a classical commentary on Butler's work. Gladstone, who refers to Miss Hennell as 'a member of a family of distinguished talents which is known to have exercised a powerful in influence on the mind and career of George Eliot,' wrote that 'No critic can surpass her either in reverence or in candour' (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1895). 'Thoughts in Aid of Faith' (1860) is an attempt to reconcile religious feeling with philosophy and 'the higher criticism.' Her most ambitious work, 'Present Religion as a Faith owning Fellowship with Thought' (3 vols. 1865, 1873, and 1887), is marred by a laboured and involved style. Her object is 'to present a philosophical theism in consistence with scientific thought by the help of a doctrine of evolution' (cf. Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, pp. 23-4). After Charles Bray's death in 1884 she lived with Mrs. Bray at Ivy Cottage, 1 St. Nicholas Street, Coventry. She died there on 7 March 1S99, and was buried in Coventry cemetery.
[Sara S. Hennell, A Memoir of Charles Christian Hennell, 1899; J. W. Cross, George Eliot's Life as related in her Letters and Journals, 3 vols., 1885; Coventry Herald, 25 Feb. 1905; Charles Bray, Phases of Opinion, 1884; private information. For Sara Hennell see also Coventry Herald, 10 March 1899, reprinted in Memoir of Charles Christian Hennell, pp. 127-131.]
E. L.