Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - H for Hope

Speaking as someone who has often been tempted to give in to depression and despair, part of me is surprised that I now find myself called to hope -  and not just to stand still in that hope but to travel hopefully.

Britain Yearly Meeting this year was particularly inspiring and we wrote minutes that committed us to work for peace, justice and  equality. It is easy to be cynical and think of these as just words but I am convinced that there is a spirit alive among us that will lead us on to action. I hope there is.

For me the decision to hope, while still acknowledging the despair around us and the obstacles that we will have to overcome, is one I can unite with. I found it best expressed in the concluding minute to Yearly Meeting.

"'I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. And in that also I saw the infinite love of God.'
(George Fox, 1647)

We have set off once again from this Yearly Meeting on the long journey illumined by the Love of God, to challenge the principalities and powers of this world, and to work towards the establishment of the peaceable Kingdom. May we travel in hope, loving both our fellow travellers and those who will oppose us, and pray that in our travellings the light may break in upon us more and more."

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - G for Priscilla Hannah Gurney

Priscilla Hannah Gurney was born on 22 June 1757 in Norwich, the elder of the two daughters of Joseph Gurney, a merchant, and Christiana Barclay. Priscilla's father died when she was four, but when she was ten her mother married John Freame, her first cousin, and the family moved from Norfolk to Bush Hill, Enfield. A son was born but John Freame's poor health led him and his wife to leave their children with relatives and travel on the continent. In 1770 he died and the family moved again, this time to Bath, which Priscilla saw as a 'vortex of dissipation'. About two years later her mother married for a third time, to William Watson of Bath, a physician, scientist and non-Quaker. This was the second time that Priscilla's mother had married against the rules of the Society of Friends, marriage with first cousins and non-Quakers both being frowned upon. On both occasions she had escaped with a loving reprimand rather than disownment, but she was determined that her daughters should not offend in this way and kept a close eye on their suitors.

Company At Play from The Comforts of Bath by Rowlandson 1798

In 1775, when she was 18, Priscilla went on an extended visit to her Norfolk relations and while she was there refused a marriage proposal from a young Quaker. This visit also brought into focus the spiritual dilemmas she was facing. For several years afterwards she was torn between the influence of her Quaker relations and that of her worldly friends in Bath, one of whom was zealous in urging Priscilla to convert to the Church of England. Eventually Priscilla, wanting to please her friend, was baptized and attended church services but was still unsatisfied. Her Quaker relations talked and wrote to her and gave her Quaker books to read. She tried to blot out the inner voice she heard saying "I must be a Quaker" by going to balls, concerts and plays in Bath, but the mental anguish of her spiritual struggle made her ill.

Barclay's Apology title-page

At last Priscilla decided to read some Quaker books and found to her surprise that she agreed with everything in her ancestor Robert Barclay's Apology, a standard work of Quaker theology. She told her family that she was now a Quaker. Her mother asked Priscilla not to change her appearance and Priscilla tried to oblige but eventually felt compelled to dress and speak as a 'plain Friend'. She was still stuggling spiritually and felt more comfortable with other Quakers than with her family.

When Priscilla was 27 she turned down another proposal from a young Quaker to whom she had at first been attracted. He refused to accept her rejection, trying to hold her to an 'understanding' which she did not feel they had, and harassing her both personally and through his family and friends. This emotional pressure made her ill and she took to her bed where she was visited by several weighty Friends. Among them was Mary Davis of Minehead, who befriended Priscilla, introduced her to Richard Reynolds and his wife Rebecca and took her to visit them at their home in Coalbrookdale.

Dale House, Coalbrookdale

Mary and Priscilla planned to set up home together, and even after Mary's marriage to John Merryweather in 1788 they still pursued their intention. But Mary's death, after the birth of her second child in 1791, put paid to this and Priscilla made her home instead with the Reynolds, who she called her 'parental friends', at Dale House, Coalbrookdale. The close-knit Quaker circle of families at Coalbrookdale, enlivened by a constant stream of visitors, at last gave Priscilla a secure base in which she felt at home and to which she could contribute. She became a Quaker minister in 1792 and travelled both locally and as far afield as Scotland and the Scilly Isles.

Priscilla, described by a friend as 'small in person, beautiful in countenance, elegant in manner', was the ideal person for her young cousin Elizabeth Gurney (later Fry) to be sent to visit in 1798 when she too was going through a spiritual struggle. Priscilla acted as a calm and sympathetic influence and introduced Elizabeth to Deborah Darby, who prophesied her future service.

Mary Ann Schmmelpenninck

In 1804 Richard Reynolds, after the death of his wife, decided to leave Coalbrookdale for Bristol and Priscilla also moved away, back to Bath where her sister still lived. There she made a striking figure in her old-fashioned plain Quaker dress and black silk hood. Her friend Mary Ann Schimmelpenninck recalls, 'She had what is called a helmeted eyelid, and a beautiful and serenely arched eyebrow, which contributed to her devout and tranquil expression, beautifully formed nose indicated at once strength and acuteness of intelligence and great delicacy of taste'. For the rest of her life Priscilla, in increasingly delicate health, lived in Bath, sometimes travelling in the ministry, and cultivated her talent for friendship. She was 'constant, ardent and faithful in attachment, earnestly persevering in the endeavour to serve her friends'. Eventually confined to her house by an extreme susceptibility of the lungs, but still welcoming small groups of friends, she died in Bath on 17 November 1828 at the age of 71.

In spite of Priscilla's misgivings about publishing her spiritual autobiography Memoirs of the Life and Religious Experience of Priscilla Hannah Gurney edited by S. Allen was issued in 1834, only six years after her death. Much of its interest lies in what it tells us about the struggles of one brought up both among Friends and 'in the world'. Priscilla Hannah is referred to by both her names because there was a contemporary Priscilla Gurney who was also a minister.

Quaker Alphabet Blog 2015 - F for Caroline Fox

A drawing of Caroline Fox in 1846 by Samuel Lawrence

Caroline Fox, the youngest of the three children of Robert Were and Maria Barclay Fox, was born at Penjerrick, near Falmouth in Cornwall in 1819. her parents both came from long lines of Quaker forebears and were themselves devoted to the Society of Friends, although they remained untouched by the evangelical trends of the time. Robert was an amateur scientist of repute, conducting chemical experiments on his living-room table, and the family home was a cultured and literary one.

Caroline and her brother and sister were educated at home - writing essays, reading, learning domestic skills and taking plenty of exercise.They were concerned with the welfare of the local people from an early age and conceived the idea for the foundation of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1832 when Anna Maria, Barclay and Caroline were 17, 16 and 13, respectively. This became more than an idea as their parents, uncles and aunts and their friends took up the proposal with enthusiasm and made it a reality.

Anna Maria Fox in old age

Caroline also began to keep a journal in 1832 in which she recorded the comings and goings of the household including several vivid character sketches. After Caroline's death a selection from her journals was put together and published by Horace Pym, a friend of the family. He concentrated on her portrayal of famous people such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, Elizabeth Fry and John Bright and omitted most of the references to Caroline's own life.

Until she was twenty-one Caroline's life was placid. Her time was spent at home, with occasional visits to London and Bristol. However in 1840 she made the acquaintance of John Sterling, a writer, radical and friend of Coleridge and Carlyle. The two became friends, even though he was twelve years older than Caroline, married and the father of five children. Then in 1843 Sterling's wife died after giving birth to their sixth child and he and Caroline grew closer.

The couple entered into an engagement but the match was strenuously opposed by Caroline's family, who disapproved of Sterling's lack of Christian belief. Caroline regretfully withdrew from the engagement and a further blow fell when, less than a year later, Sterling died of the consumption he had suffered from all his life.

From now on Caroline gave up all thought of personal happiness. At first she suffered from depression and then threw herself into good works. She found that her experience of suffering enabled her to enter into the feelings of the poor and the bereaved. She became much more serious in her approach to religion and was influenced by the writings of the Christian Socialist, Frederick Denison Maurice. She formulated a broader definition of Quakerism for herself and wrote in 1846
'I have assumed a name today for my religious principles - Quaker-Catholicism - having direct spiritual teaching for its distinctive dogma, yet recognising the high worth of all other forms of Faith: a system, in the sense of inclusion, not exclusion; an appreciation of the universal and the various teachings of the Spirit,, through the faculties given to us, or independent of them.'

More family sorrows afflicted Caroline. In 1855 her brother Barclay died of consumption in Egypt, in 1858 her mother died and in 1860 her sister-in law, Barclays widow, Jane Fox died, also of consumption, in France. This last loss brought Caroline and her sister Anna Maria an added responsibility in the shape of their nephews Robert, George, Henry and Gurney, then aged 14, 13, 11 and 9, whose guardians they became.

Caroline and Anna Maria Fox's gravestone

It was not long, however, before the boys grew up and left their aunts' care and Caroline's health began to fail. In 1871 she caught a cold while out delivering New Year gifts which turned to bronchitis and after a few days illness she died in her sleep at the age of 53. Caroline's sister Anna Maria oversaw the publication of Caroline's journals after her death and made sure that the originals were destroyed as requested in her will. She lived on until 1897 and was buried in the same grave in Budock Quaker Burial ground near Falmouth.