No More Quaker Heroes - or Villains

  A Book of Quaker Saints by Lucy V. Hodgkin

 

 illustrated by F. Cayley-Robinson

A Yearly Meeting preparation session on 'Uncomfortable Quaker Histories' which I attended on Zoom yesterday allowed me to revisit work I have done myself on challenging Quaker myths and legends and got me thinking about how to take this forward.

We were presented with stories of Quakers in Lancaster and in America (including William Penn) who had been profitably engaged in the Atlantic slave trade and who had not always been challenged effectively by their contemporaries. We were also reminded of the ambivalent attitude of some Friends in the past to the poor - only to be helped if they were suitably grateful and knew 'their place' and never wholly accepted as equals. In this context we were asked if a testimony to equality had ever existed.

Back in the 1980s I gave a series of talks on Quaker Myths and Legends, questioning assumptions that were taken for granted at the time such as equality between men and women and how the peace testimony came about. In 1986 I was part of the group who wrote and presented the Quaker Womens Group Swarthmore lecture 'Bringing the Invisible into the Light'. As well as questioning whether equality had always been an integral part of the Society of Friends, the lecture included examples of painful personal experience such as domestic violence among Friends. The lecture was welcomed by many but also provoked very strong negative reactions - disbelief that Quakers could act in this way and denial that Friends were not always perfect in their relations with others. A lot of the discomfort stemmed from our audacity in challenging some Friends' established world view.

We are now looking at our past again through the lens of sexism, racism and classism and what we are finding is uncomfortable. I would say that this is what an honest study of the past should be. There never were Quaker Saints. Quakers have always been humans with human imperfections, shaped by the wider society they found themselves in but also by changes in the practices and attitudes of the Society of Friends through the centuries. I think it is better and more helpful to identify with past Quakers who were not perfect than to put heroes and heroines on a pedestal from which they may come crashing down. We may feel shame at the actions of Friends in the past and seek in some way to make amends but I believe that we should also try to reach for understanding, to learn where we are going wrong now and how we may change and improve.

We may remove the name of William Penn from a room in Friends House but I hope we can continue to give him his due and not reject him totally as a Quaker villain. We should not reject his writings because of some aspects of his life because his words are still valuable. When my meeting was reading through Quaker Faith and Practice several years ago as part of the revision process I was surprised to find that the extracts Friends found most helpful were not the most modern writings but those by William Penn and Isaac Penington. 

We need meticulous research, such as we were presented with in the preparation session, looking in detail at Quaker links to slavery, attitudes to the poor and other marginalised groups. The more we learn the more we can understand rather than only condemn. Local studies are a good start but these themes also need to be seen in a wider context - for example the way in which womens' meetings evolved, their purpose and their influence.

I have tried in my biographical posts on this blog to include a broad range of past Quakers, including women of course but also lower class Quakers without much money. There are also 'difficult' Friends and those with mental health problems. Just a few examples are Ruth Follows, Thomas Shillitoe, Benjamin Lay and his wife Sarah, Josiah Langdale and Rebecca Jones. James Jenkins was trying to write honest rather than idealised testimonies to Friends he had known in the 18th century, There is much more work to be done to bring invisible poor Quakers, Quaker servants and Quaker people of colour into the light, but a start has been made.

If there is one lesson we can learn from the past it is that there should be no more Quaker Saints. We must do away with Quaker heroes but I hope we will not go to the other extreme and cast Friends as villains. Idealising the past makes us unable to face reality but so does seeing it only in black and white rather than in Quaker gray.
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Here I go again!

Woman at a window. Jacobus Vrel. 1654

In April last year I decided to try to resurrect this blog. I had good intentions but I only managed three posts in 2021, all in April!

Over the years I have often had problems with writing regularly here although, as I said last year, I have been writing regularly elsewhere. I think perhaps that a blog post feels like a substantial piece of writing - and certainly my historical posts do require quite a bit of research - so that I often feel too intimidated to begin.

With the beginning of a new year I feel inspired to try again, but not to be too hard on myself. I will aim to write once a month (or 12 times a year) and I will broaden my range of topics. Sometimes, as I am doing now, I will just sit down and write and see what comes. I will write about Quakers and Quaker history but may change my format. I hope to share some passages of Quaker writing that have helped me and may even suggest passages to the Book of Discipline Revision Committee! I may also share other passages that I have written in my commonplace book over the years.

Another way in which I hope to continue with this blog is through visual images. Over on Facebook I have been sharing art from my Pinterest boards each day without comment. Perhaps here I can comment about the art, the artist and what the image means to me.

I have good intentions but I have had those before and not written. Let's see how I get on in 2022!

Resurrecting My Blog

Still life with books and primroses by the Finnish artist Marga Toppelius-Kiseleff. 1886

 

 

 

Easter seems like a good time to try to put some new life into this blog again. I have written nothing for nearly two years but recently I had occasion to look back at my posts and wonder whether I could make another attempt to continue.

While many people began to write blogs and share their thoughts during the pandemic I went back to my handwritten diary and wrote much more regularly, almost daily, there. I have also spent much more time on social media, sharing daily art from my Pinterest boards on Facebook and expanding my use of Twitter to include more art, humour and even virtual friends.

The isolation of the past year has, in some ways, been easier for me than for many others. I have not been alone and my husband, the driver, has been the one to make forays into the outside world. As we are both retired we have not had any work worries as we are used to working from home on our various projects. We have adapted our routines to include many more deliveries than before and also Zoom meeetings of various kinds. We have also been able (when restrictions allowed) to see family and friends outside in various locations.

I have wondered why I did not include blog writing in my altered routine but can find no convincing answer except that I have always struggled to keep writing here and the uncertainty and fear underlying everything this last year did not improve my tendency to procrastinate!

As the seasons turn however I have found a new resolve to look again at my research into 18th century Quakers, particularly Catherine Payton Phillips, to identify gaps and fill them where I can and to do some writing with a view to publication in some form. I hope that writing here will help with that and that sharing what I write will also be of some use, both to myself and to others.

So here I go, making yet another new start. I hope to find companions on the way.

New Year, Old Blog or Here I Go Again

Yet again I return to this blog after a long gap. In fact I see that I only wrote three posts last year when I had meant to write monthly. I do not want to castigate myself for this however but instead want to look at ways in which I can go forward into the new year.

This blog has had several different strands. First and foremost it has been a way of continuing to write my spiritual autobiography - a project I have been engaged in for many years. I am looking at different approaches and hope that I can share some of that work here.

I have also used this blog to share my passion for Quaker history - and especially for the eighteenth century and particular Quaker characters - with others. The Quaker alphabet structure helped me with that but it also limited my choice of subject, although without it I only managed one Quaker history post last year so something needs to be done.

As well as writing here I have other outlets for my thoughts. I write a diary, also irregularly, in a series of A5 blank books using a rollerball pen. This is just for my consumption but sometimes what I write in my diary can feed into what I write here and in fact for the last few weeks I have been considering with pen and paper how I can continue this blog.

There is something else that I do regularly elsewhere. As well as reading and writing the visual arts are also important to me. I am a devoted fan of Pinterest and use my 'boards' to collect images for my eighteenth century research but I have created many others for art that I love. Some are devoted to a particular artist - for example Eric Ravilious, Emily Carr, Felix Vallotton and Giovanni Boldini - while others cover subjects that attract me - trees, the sea, windows, landscapes, abstraction and still life to name but a few.

Eric Ravilious. Cuckmere Haven 1939

Nearly two years ago I decided to share some of this art on Facebook as an antidote to all the doom and gloom about the world appearing there. So every day, usually when I first open up my computer, I share a piece of art from my Pinterest boards. At first I wrote a bit about the chosen image from my perspective but after a while I decided to leave each image open to whatever interpretation my friends wanted to give it. I now just give the title, the name and nationality of the artist and the date it was made if I can find it. I think this is right for Facebook but for a while now I have been wondering about finding a way to expand this description, to give more background or to explain why it appeals to me. So I have decided to add this to my possible subjects for this blog.


So I am expanding my subject matter but realistically I know that actually sitting down to write is likely to remain a problem for me! I need a prompt but I also need to be flexible. Aiming to write once a month, as I did last year, is obviously not enough but weekly writing feels like too much pressure, so in 2019 I will aim to post something every two weeks and allow myself to do more if I can. I will also set a reminder on my phone for every other Sunday and see how that works!

Blogging is a personal thing for me but, unlike my diary, this blog is written for an audience. I welcome dialogue and hope that I will hear from some of my readers in 2019 - if only to act as another sort of prompt!

Turning Inside Out again?

For the second time a course on 18th century Quakers which I had hoped to run for Woodbrooke has been cancelled because of a lack of bookings. This has led me to consider what to do next. I am not going to abandon the 18th century but perhaps the time has come to approach it in a different way. I shall continue to try to 'introduce you to my friends' through this blog and I will look into the possibility of creating an online course for Woodbrooke for 2020.

At the same time I will put some more effort into research and writing and try to make progress on my biography of Catherine Payton Phillips. I have ideas for some journal articles which I will focus on. I know from long experience that, as the historian Barbara Tuchman put it, 'Research is endlessly seductive. Writing is hard work'. I think that now is the time to do some of that work.

Also, for a while now I have been feeling nudged towards a new direction - or rather to a new approach to an old path. It is twenty-five years since I set out as a Joseph Rowntree Quaker Fellow to give workshops on spiritual autobiography up and down the country. I talked about this in earlier posts on this blog - first of all ten years ago and then later when I was wrestling with some difficult questions.

Having published my book Turning Inside Out; an exploration of spiritual autobiography in 1996 and given up the workshops after ten years, I thought that spiritual autobiography, although still an interest, had faded into the background of my life, except in its connection to my historical research and writing.

Recently though I have been contacted by a few Friends in different parts of the country who had read my book and wanted to use it as a basis for workshops in their meetings to allow people to share their spiritual journeys. Encouraged by this I got out my notes and at long last transcribed the two background talks I gave as part of the workshops from longhand to the computer. Of course they need updating but I may now look at ways of publishing them as I originally intended to do.

I am also putting together a new Woodbrooke course with Rhiannon Grant on 'Spiritual Blogging' which is due to run in May 2019. It will be a new experience to work with someone else on different approaches to spiritual autobiography and I am looking forward to it.

I am also aware that I need to do more work on my own spiritual autobiography. I have a title - and used it for this blog - but so far I have only written fragments in different places. I was inspired by some of the writers I met at the QUIP conference earlier this year, especially Iris Graville and her memoir Hiking Naked, both to read more and to go back to writing about my spiritual journey. I need to turn inside again before I can take the next step, turn inside out and share what I have found with a wider audience.

So it seems to me that what I am being led to do is not so much a change of direction as a closer integration of the two strands of my endeavour - spiritual autobiography and 18th century Quakers. I need to allow what appear to be stumbling blocks to become stepping stones.

Laid Down

It is nearly a year since I last wrote this blog but now seems a good time to start again. The title of this post is Quaker terminology for what happens when a piece of work comes to an end. It is laid down and the group or committee which has been carrying it on ceases to exist.

A long-standing committee on which I have served for just over a year and clerked since the beginning of 2018 has just been laid down by the central committee in charge of it. The reason for this is unclear and communication throughout could have been better but the decision has been made and the committee has been wound up. When we realised what was happening the committee wrote a minute and tried to change the central committee's mind as we did not think that our work was at an end, but this was in vain. It appears that an alternative approach is being sought but our committee has been laid down.

Under Quaker discipline of course I accept this decision but I have been wrestling with the way it has made me feel. I cannot help feeling rejected and a failure even though rationally I know that this was not the intention of the central committee.

In my working life I have been made redundant twice and both times I knew it was not my fault. In one instance the redundancy arose from a change of policy and in the other my job was tied to that of someone who the organisation wanted to dismiss. On both occasions I felt shock, rejection and a sense of failure that took a long time to work through.

Is there a difference between a committee or people engaged on a particular piece of work deciding that they have come to a stop and therefore laying themselves or the work down and having that work taken from them or laid down by another body? I think it is obvious that there is a difference. Recognising that an end has been reached is a way of taking control of the situation rather than having a decision imposed - even if the reasons for that decision are valid. I wish that there had been a way of helping our committee to understand and take a greater part in the decision that was made.

It has been hard but writing this post has helped me to continue the process of reconciling myself to the situation as it is. I am taking advantage of the time and space I have been given and welcome the opportunity to go back to my research and writing. I am sure that a way will open if I am attentive to my Inward Teacher. As I lay down one set of responsibilities I am taking up this blog again and hope to write regularly, at least once a month, on Quaker history and other matters that I need to explore in writing.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015-2017 - Z for Zed - The End

This is my last post in the Quaker Alphabet Blog. Since 2013 I have been through the alphabet, writing about Quaker related subjects, four times. Most of the other people who set out on this journey together have moved on to other things and it is time for me to do the same.

I have found this a useful prompt for my blogging - although sometimes no prompt is loud enough for such an arch-procrastinator as myself. The alphabetical structure has sometimes been difficult - not many names begin with Z, although some do, and some letters are much more difficult to find subjects for than others. I was particularly proud of X for Xylography!

I set out to use this format in part to continue to write about lesser-known Quakers of the past and I am happy to have done that. Of my biographical posts the most viewed has been Annie Elizabeth Clark. I certainly intend to continue with this theme and it will be a relief not to have to squeeze my writing into the confines of the alphabet.



Occasionally my alphabetical posts have been historical in other ways and there are themes there which I may try to expand on in future.

Another strand of my blogging has always been the autobiographical and when my life experience and my Quakerism have intersected some more personal posts have appeared in the alphabetical sequence.

So this is not really an ending. I am leaving one particular framework behind but I hope I can use it as a stepping stone to more writing. The difficulty that the alphabet structure was meant to remedy still remains - how to make myself sit down and write. To find out whether I have made any progress there you will have to watch this space!

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - B for William Charles Braithwaite

W.C. Braithwaite

William Charles Braithwaite was born in Camden, London on 23 December 1862, eighth of the nine children of Joseph Bevan Braithwaite and Martha Gillett. He was a pretty child, 'very fair, with a captivating smile, his golden hair arranged in one long curl on the top of his head', and was doted on by his older sisters. He showed an early love of books and learned to read when he was three.

William was brought up in a close, contented Quaker family but had little contact with others of his own age. Both his parents travelled in the ministry and were often away from home, but their absences were accepted as normal. William grew particularly close to his father with whom he shared a love of study.

William was educated at home until he was eleven when he was sent away to Quaker schools, first in Weston-super-Mare and then in Scarboroough. Leaving school at seventeen, William went to University College London, graduating in 1881. He was active in sport but also in the Bunhill Adult School and the Friends Christian Fellowship Union.

J.B. Braithwate, William's father

William next turned his attention to the law, studying mostly at home or in his father's chambers. After qualifying in 1887 William lived at home and worked for ten years with his father in his conveyancing practice at Lincoln's Inn, a happy arrangement for them both. William explored London, studied, wrote poetry and did peace work with his uncle and neighbour, George Gillett.

His friend George Newman, who met him at this time, says he was 'a reserved, imperturbable man, of quiet but exceptional power...He never failed you. He was circumspect, seeing all sides and sympathizing with many...possessing a delightful sense of humour and a well-developed faculty of imagination.'

William's life changed in 1896 when he became engaged to Janet Morland and accepted the offer of a partnership in Gillett's Bank in Banbury, Oxfordshire. He had to give up the legal profession and move away from home, but banking gave him a more settled income and more leisure for study and for his work with the Society of Friends.

Banbury Quaker Meeting House in 1910s

He settled happily in Banbury with Janet and the couple had four children, three boys and a girl. There was a shift in attitude towards family life from one generation to another. William's father had encouraged his children to join him in his study, but had expected them to do so in absolute quiet. In contrast it was a source of wonder to William's friends how he could calmly collate an ancient manuscript or prepare an Adult School lesson while his small children played around the room, asking questions and demanding his help in their games.

As well as his other interests William became involved in public life in Banbury. He was a magistrate from 1906 until his death and chairman of the Education Committee for many years. He was also very involved with the local Quaker school, Sibford.

John Wilhelm Rowntree

William was much influenced by his friendship with John Wilhelm Rowntree who he had met at Yearly Meeting 1893. They shared a belief in the need for education for Friends and for strengthening the Society and developing its ministry. One of John Wilhelm's projects was the writing of a standard history of Quakerism and he had begun collecting thousands of books and pamphlets for the necessary research when he died suddenly and unexpectedly in 1905. William took up the project and worked on it in his leisure time for the next fourteen years. He sometimes became so absorbed in the work 'that he seemed to be living in the seventeenth century, far removed from the events that were passing around him.' The Beginnings of Quakerism and The Second Period of Quakerism were completed in 1919 and have not yet been surpassed.

At the beginning of 1922 several of William's long-term projects were nearing completion. The histories had been finished eighteen months earlier, the new Yearly Meeting Book of Discipline, which William was much concerned with compiling, had been agreed and Gilletts Bank had been amalgamated with Barclays after negotiations in which William had taken a major role.

In the last week of January William ministered at Banbury Meeting, took a leading part in a conference on Ministry in Oxford, began a series of Adult School evening talks and worked in the bank. On Friday he felt unwell but went to London by the early train to attend an educational meeting. He became much worse and only just managed to get to Paddington and onto the train home. He arrived in Banbury in a state of collapse, sank into a diabetic coma and died the next day, 28 January 1922, aged fifty nine.