The life of Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop) : hon. member of the Oriental society of Pekin ...

Front matter

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Preface

Four Englishwomen have, during the last thirty years, established for themselves a well-grounded fame as travellers — Mrs. Bishop, Miss North, Miss Kingsley, and Miss Gordon Gumming. Lady Baker and Lany Burton were as brave and as resourceful as any of the four; but it must be remembered that each of them was protected by the . presence of her husband against the most powerful of terrorising influences, namely, the solitude which magnifies peril and weakens resistance.

Each of these four ladies has her own special characteristic, literary and artistic; each in her own way has shown what English ladies can do, and with pen and pencil has aroused the interest and admiration of the reading public. Two generations of readers have been strongly attracted by Mrs. Bishop's booJjs of travel, and her capacity for accurate observation, her retentive memory, and her power of vivid portrayal, have enabled multitudes to share her experiences and adventures in those lands beyond the pale which drew her ever with magnetic force.

To this widespread circle, which learnt to admire her resourceful self-reliance, is due some account ot the circumstances which moulded her character, and of the work which she accomplished for her fellows.

VI

PREFACE

As a traveller Mrs. Bishop's outstanding merit is, that she nearly always conquered her territories alone; that she faced the wilderness almost single-handed ; that she observed and recorded without companionship. She suffered no toil to impede her, no study to repel her. She triumphed over her own limitations of health and strength as over the dangers of the road. Nor did she ever lose, in numberless rough vicissitudes, ip intercourse with untutored peoples, or in the strenuous dominance which she was repeatedly compelled to exercise, her womanly graces of tranquil manner, gentle voice, reasonable persuasiveness. Wherever she found her servants — ^whether coolies, mule-drivers, soldiers, or personal attendants — she secured their devotion. The exceptions were very rare, and prove the rule.

Wherever she went, she gave freely the skilled help with which her training had furnished her, and her journeys were as much opportunities for healing, nursing, and teaching, as for incident and adventure. She longed to serve every human being with whom she came in contact.

I have sought to present her as I knew her. She so kept the balance of her gifts that it is difficult to indicate one quality as more characteristic than another. A woman of deep religious conviction and practice, she felt that true religion was the direct outcome of the working of the Spirit, and not dependent on the influence of this or that church or chapel. She ardently desired the spread of the kingdom of Christ Jesus in the world, but was not herself concerned to advocate any special rites or dogmas. She loved humanity, and eagerly welcomed and investigated all evidences of its wonderful and splendid possibilities, and she was inimical to any systems

PREFACE vii

which restricted the free entrance and expansion of the Eternal Spirit of Life.

In writing Mrs. Bishop's biography, I have been greatly indebted for information to her relatives and friends. Among the former I should like especially to name Miss Merttins Bird.

The friends who have helped me are too many for detailed mention, but Lady Middleton, Mrs. Blackie, Miss CuUen (who so soon followed her friend and whose welcome of this volume I sadly miss), Mrs. Bickersteth, Mrs. Allan, Mrs. Macdonald, the Bishop of London, Sir Walter Hillier, Mr. Dunlop, Dr. Neve, the Rev. W. G. Walshe, and the Rev. L. B. Cholmondeley, have all contributed so greatly to the contents of this book that I cannot refrain from recording my sincere acknowledgment of their assistance.

To Miss E. M. C. Ker very special thanks are due for constant help, explanation, correction, materials, and for the originals of a large number of the illustrations.

And it is difficult to express adequately my great indebtedness to Mr. Murray and Mr. Hallam Murray for their deep interest in the book, for their encouraging and scrutinising criticism, for their personal help, in revision and reconstruction, and for the use of many letters which have been the basis, not only of nearly all that is said about Mrs. Bishop's published books, but of many most interesting passages in this record of her life,

Anna M. Stoddart.

August, 190&

Contents

CHAf. TAGE

I. PARENTAGE AND INHERITANCE ... I

II. FIRST TRAVELS AND PUBUCATIONS . . 27

Chapter I Parentage And Inheritance

The Birds, a widespread clan of the upper middle class, almost defy tabulation into branches and families : their genealogists are so embarrassed by the results of constant intermarriage, amongst cousins of far and near degree, that the most valiant efforts are marred by confusion and blunders. It must suffice, therefore, to supply some simple details of Mrs. Bishop's immediate descent and relationships. These relationships have so direct a bearing upon her own great inheritance of character — mental, moral, and spiritual — that we may be pardoned for making a short digression into the maze of cpllateral families doubly and trebly allied to each other.

Of the clan generally little need be told, except its descent from William Bird, who lived in the latter part of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth century. He died in 1731, bequeathing Barton, in Warwickshire, to his eldest son, Thomas Bird. His second son, John, was for a time in London, where he became an alderman, and, after marrying Judith Wilberforce, retired to Kenilworth, where he died and was buried in 1772. His wife, who survived him many years, was in due time laid by his side.

I

Of these Kenilworth Birds, two daughters, Hannah and Lucy, especially claim our attention. Hannah, the elder, married, in 1779, the Rev. Robert Sumner, Vicar of Kenilworth, whom she survived fortyfour years, living to see her eldest son, John Bird Sumner, made Bishop of Chester, a see from which he rose to the Primacy of the Church of England; while her second son, Charles Richard Sumner, was first made Bishop of Llandaflf, and was then transferred to the see of Winchester.

Hannah Bird's sister Lucy married her cousin, Robert Bird, of Barton, and was Mrs. Bishop's grandmother.

This Robert Bird was Thomas Bird's grandson, a second son, and obliged to make his way in the world without expectation of inheriting Barton House. In this he prospered, seeking and finding fortune in India first, and then in America, for he had both spirit and ability, inherited perhaps from his maternal grandfather, Sir George Merttins, sometime Lord Mayor of London, whose memorial slab, with his shield as governor and treasurer of Christ's Hospital, has quite recently been removed to Horsham.

When Robert's elder brother, Henry, died without children, he succeeded to the property in Warwickshire. But by this time he was married and the father of ten children — four sons and six daughters. Barton was remote, and Mr. Bird felt disinclined to live out of touch with the world, so he let the place for a long term of years, and rented Taplow Hill, in Berkshire," where he and his family became so thoroughly at home that the county claimed them as Birds of Taplow, ignoring the fact that they were merely its tenants.

Robert Bird of Barton House, Warwick, ob. 1842, Grandfather of Mrs. Bishop.

ROBERT BIRD OF BARTON 3

He was properly Robert Bird of Barton, in Warwickshire, and the old gabled manor-house was worthy of greater attachment from its owner, though we can understand his seeking a more advantageous centre as home for his sons and daughters. Later on in our story Barton will interest us as the house from which Isabella Bird was married, and we linger a moment ere we follow her grandfather to Berkshire. It is greatly altered now to suit modern requirements, but in i88i it remained much as it had ever been, and, with the village on the heath and its ancient church, looked more like a bit of Queen Elizabeth's than of Queen Victoria's England, The little church of St. Lawrence, with Norman tower and antique inconvenience, takes us farther back still, to days when the broad lands of Warwickshire harboured only churls enough to serve their lord's manor, and parish laws took no account of the future and increasing rural congregations.

But the squire of Barton on his final return from America settled at Taplow Hill. His wife was a daughter of Judith Wilberforce, and brought her mother's strenuous racial strain into the home atmosphere and into her children's character and rearing. She was doubly connected with the Wilberforces, for her aunt, Elizabeth Bird, of Kenilworth, married Judith's uncle, Robert Wilberforce, of Hull : these two were parents of the great liberator, William Wilberforce. The young people at Taplow Hill were twice over Wilberforce's cousins, and in his youth and middle-age he was a constant guest there, honoured by all, and especially after his death by the lingering maiden ladies, who treasured as mementoes of their great kinsman lines inscribed by him on the blank leaves of their Bibles.

4 PARENTAGE AND INHERITANCE [chap. .

How forcibly this impassioned strain was to direct and govern Edward Bird, the third son of Robert and Lucy Bird, remains to be told ; but it is impossible to overestimate its influence both in his and his daughter's character. From her great-grandmother, grandmother, and father Isabella received the priceless inheritance of a soul-hunger and thirst for righteousness, which in her later years was to dominate all that she observed, to vitalise all her convictions, and to culminate in her memorable appeals to Christian England to send out into all the Christless world and bring its unhappy millions to the Saviour.

The Taplow sons and daughters were Robert Merttins Bird, sent early to India, a happy-huntingground for lads in the days of the East India Company ; Henry, who went into the navy ; Lucy, who married the Rev. Marmaduke Thompson ; Mary, who followed her eldest brother to India, and when he married devoted herself to missionary work and died in harness there; Edward, who was first a barrister and then a clergyman; Elizabeth, who married Mr. Harrington Evans ; Henrietta, who had strong views on infant baptism and renounced on their behalf her clerical lover, at the sacrifice of her life ; Rebecca and Catherine, who never married ; and George Merttins the youngest, born in America, who followed his eldest brother to India, where both married daughters of the Rev. David Brown, one of the " five great chaplains," and a colleague of Henry Martyn.

These two Taplow sons entered the service of the East India Company, but the younger died in early manhood, his widow bringing two little ones to Taplow Hill, and living there till old Mr. Bird's death.

I792-I8I2] EDWARD BIRD S

It is with the third son, Edward Bird, that we have especially to do, and of his career we have clear although scanty information in a memorial sketch written by his daughter in 1858, immediately after his death, and printed for private circulation. It contains only thirty-five short pages, and deals almost wholly with his clerical and public rather than with his private life. But a few facts may be gathered from it and interwoven with reminiscences supplied by his niece. Miss Merttins Bird.

He was born in 1792, and must have been a lad with two brothers and three sisters older than himself when the family roof-tree was set up at Taplow early in the last century. His father destined him, like his elder sons, for India, and sent him to Cambridge for thorough equipment. He was entered at Magdalene, where he graduated. In the meantime, his sister Elizabeth married the Rev. J. Harrington Evans, a young clergyman of the strongest evangelical type. Edward Bird was about twenty years old when it was proposed that he should read the Bible with his brother-in-law during vacation time. He did so in a perfunctory manner, indifferent at that time to its message. Mr. Evans was discouraged and suggested that readings so little valued should cease. This startled his pupil and brought him to anxious self-questioning. He became conscious of his own levity, went home in distress and prayed that God would pardon him and vouchsafe to him every blessing which the Bible can confer. From that day he read anxiously and earnestly, but it was not until he heard Mr. Evans preach on the text " Without Me ye can do nothing," that he fully understood his deep need of Christ Himself. It was a new man in Christ that returned the second daughter, and they were married in 1830. Dora Lawson's favourite occupation for some years had been Sunday-school work. There was none at Boroughbridge, so she paid for a room in the village out of her own pocket-money, and taught five classes there every Sunday, from young women down to little children. She was a fitting companion in all respects — a woman whose tact, dignity, and kindness never failed, although great reserve of manner sometimes hid the true warmth of her nature.

Isabella Lucy, called after her two grandmothers, was born at Boroughbridge Hall on October 15, 1831, Early next year Mr. Bird went as curate to Maidenhead in Berkshire, where two years of extraordinary activity awaited him. The spirit which animated him was felt from the beginning, and he not only filled the church at all ordinary services, but was obliged to hold many extra meetings and to receive in his study, daily, many anxious inquirers of every class. A troop of the Life Guards stationed at Maidenhead came under his influence, and some of the men came to him for spiritual help and guidance. It was a time of rapid sowing, reaping, and harvesting, very rare in one man's experience, and he was filled with joy and gratitude. But his physical strength was not equal to the strain, and, although he recognised that God had set His seal upon the life dedicated to Him, his enfeebled constitution compelled him to abandon his work at Maidenhead, and his cousin, Dr. Bird Sumner, Bishop of Chester, presented him with the quiet living of Tattenhall, in Cheshire.

Thither he removed with his wife and little girl in 1834, and in this restful sphere he remained for eight years. A baby boy, called Edward, had been born, and died at Maidenhead in 1833. Soon after

1834] TATTENHALL 9

his arrival his third child was born, a little girl, to whom was given her aunt Henrietta's name. Here, in the midst of beautiful scenery, amongst the sweet influences of garden and pasture, these httle ones spent their early childhood. The country round consisted of large tracts of grazing-lands where the farmers were engaged in cheese-making.

Chester was seven miles distant, but three miles of the road were paved, and it was not pleasant for either walking, driving, or riding. Nevertheless, Isabella was both walking and riding upon it when she was little more than four years old. Her tiny body was fragile, her face white, and on her lips was the constant cry, " I very tired." Her parents kept her out of doors as much as possible, and the doctor suggested that Mr. Bird should take her on a cushion before him when he rode round his parish. So she learned to ride almost in infancy, and was promoted a year or two later to her own horse, for her father rode one and she the other of the carriage-pair.

To those outings she owed far more than her life-long familiarity with the art of riding, although that was no small gain for one who was afterwards to mount, as necessity urged, ox, horse, mule, or yak in distant lands. As a child her ridinghabit was her usual dress^ — a smocked frock, little finer than a carter's. As they rode, Mr. Bird would draw her attention to every feature of the wayside — to the fields far and near, in grass, or crops, or fallow, to the farm-houses, their dairies and press-houses, telling her the uses of all and each, questioning her minutely as to what she saw. Long after, a friend asked her to what she traced her habit of accurate observation. " To my father's conversational questioning upon everything," she lo PARENTAGE AND INHERITANCE [chap, i

answered. " If we rode, he made me tell him about the crops in such-and-such fields — ^whether a waterwheel were under-shot, or over-shot, how each gate we passed through was hung, about animals seen and parishioners met." And so she learned to measure distance and space with her eye, to note each season's signs and labours, to look for changes in the crops and to know their purpose.

And as her father knew every wayside and meadow flower, she learned their names, habits, and uses, and felt for them an almost passionate love, which she retained to the end of her life. Even when human sympathy hardly consoled her, flowers would reach her sorrow and their sweet solace would recall her to fortitude.

An incident out of the meagre annals of those years at Tattenhall recurs to the memory as it was told in after years by herself. One Sunday morning she was left alone in the house and in bed. Her mother, thinking her scarcely well enough to go to church, had wrapped her up and bidden her rest till she returned. Isabella was not more than five years old, but a little scheme had been forming in her active mind for some days, and she felt this solitude to be her opportunity. Out on the lawn was a round bed of ranunculuses, crimson and golden and glorious, which she longed to visit. It was forbidden, for the weather had been rainy and the grass was damp. But she stole out of her wrappings and pattered downstairs with shoeless feet to the drawing-room window, which opened down to the ground. Out she darted straight to the flower-bed, and walking round and round, counting the bright blossoms, touching them and kissing them, she filled her whole being with the joy of them, and flitted

1836] CHILDHOOD

II back to bed. She said no word about her escapade, but cherished its memory awhile and then forgot it for a score of years.

To this time too belongs one of those thrilling episodes which give to children their first awestricken but rapt experience of the mystery of iniquity.

Near Tattenhall rises a hill known as Rawhead, a name of itself sufficient to fill a child's imagination with strange terrors. This hill was full of caves, in which dwelt a gang of outcasts whose doings grew notorious. Robbery followed robbery in the neighbourhood. The caves were searched on suspicion, but nothing was found to warrant arrest. The burglaries continued and the matter grew serious. At length one midnight some one passing the churchyard saw lights and heard voices, and forthwith proclaimed that it was haunted. No one would go near it, until the magistrates decided to make a midnight raid with armed constables, and to see what manner of ghosts disturbed its peace. They found the Rawhead gang busy hiding booty in a grave, the slab of which they had raised. An old woman whose cottage was close to the churchyard proved to be in collusion with the burglars and had assisted them to choose their storehouse. All were arrested and transported. But Isabella never forgot how her nurse took her to see the unearthing of silverplate and jewellery from that grim hiding-place, and how, trembling, rather with eagerness than fear, she and a little playfellow watched the whole process hand-in-hand,, from the lifting of the slab to the recovery of the last teaspoon.

Fear, indeed, she hardly knew, and her fearlessness was disconcerting at times, when she played the r6le of enfant terrible, flashing out the pithy sarcasm which in youth came so readily to her Hps.

She was not more than six years old when— as Miss Grainger Stewart told us in Blackwood's Magazine, a few weeks after her death— she sat listening to a gentleman who was canvassing Tattenhall in his own interest, and who excited her distrust by his too obviously expressed admiration of the lovely little Henrietta. She marched up to him and asked in clear incisive tones : " Sir Malpas de Grey Tatton Egerton, did you tell my father my sister was so pretty because you wanted his vote ? "

This power of expressing herself was remarkable from her earliest years. Her parents treated her with wise observation and noted her quick mental growth, indicating rich and varied endowment. Her brain was never stunted by rebuff, nor stultified by baby language. They took ample care that her lessons should not be overstimulating ; and as Mrs. Bird taught her children herself, her judgment meted out the length and quality of what they learned. To be in the open air, to be with her parents, to understand therefore almost unconsciously the conditions of life and human intercourse, the arts too of speaking, reading, and writing; to absorb from father and mother opinions, standards, tastes, and distastes — these were her early education in the truest sense. Recalling that time, she once said : " No one can teach now as my mother taught ; it was all so wonderfully interesting that we sat spellbound when she explained things to us. We should never have liked an ordinary teacher."

It was not possible, however, to stay her from reading when she had once found the key to all knowledge stored in books. One day she was lost, i838] EDUCATION 13

and the mid-day meal was cooling on the table while mother and maids sought her high and low. At last, in order that no possible hiding-place might be overlooked, they looked into the stable, and there in the manger they found her poring over a heavy volume, which proved to be Alison's French Revolution, more fascinating to the seven-year-old student than all the moral tales of Maria Edgeworth and her like. Isabella Bird wanted no books for children; from the beginning her mind fastened on the actual and grew robust on the strongest food, her vigorous imagination finding scope, and to spare, in real events, whether past or present, and preferring the miracles of Moses, and the wilderness-march of his people, to all the Sentimental and educational feigning of that day.

Then there wa^ one delightful annual visit which made a deep impression upon her character and multiplied her standards. This was the holiday at Taplow Hill with the grandparents and maiden aunts. They all went together and spent about a month, in the summer-time, when the gardens looked their best.

The old people were still alive, although the Squire was nearing eighty, and Mrs. Robert Bird was but four years younger. Their long life together was approaching its end, for the grandfather died in 1842, wTien Isabella was eleven years old, and the grandmother was solitary for six surviving years. But while Mr. Bird was Rector of Tattenhall both were alive, dignified and hospitable. Taplow not only sheltered all the Indian grandchildren, but the bereaved children of the house as well. It is from Miss Merttins Bird, " the last Taplow grandchild," that we gather details of her childhood's home, and are therefore enabled to realise the happy summer i84o] TAPLOW HILL 15

racial, determined the strictly evangelical tone of her household.

Family prayers began the morning. All servants, outdoor as well as indoor, were summoned, and sat in line to hear the Squire read the lessons and a prayer for the day out of Thornton's Family Prayers. Then the old gentleman rose up and bowed to men and maids, as they filed out past him with curtseys and salutes. Breakfast followed, when letters were read aloud, for postage was a consideration then, and letters were framed with decorum for general reading — those from India exciting special interest. The ladies of the family took no sugar in their tea, and felt the sacrifice to be a sacred protest against slave-grown products. Oddly enough, although they daily mourned its absence, they took sugarless tea long after the emancipation in the West Indies.

The maiden aunts were short-sighted, and wore spectacles, which gave them an expression of sternness quite foreign to their natures. Still, on certain points they were stern enough, and the only drawback to Isabella's perfect enjoyment of Taplow Hill was that she was never allowed to sit down during the long Sunday services, but in pain and weariness had to endure, standing to the end. This was especially irksome to her, as it was in her early childhood that the trouble which dogged her whole suffering Ufe was developed; and had her courage not risen above it she might have delivered herself over to confirmed ill-health and adorned a sofa all her days." But, even as a child, her brave spirit scorned prolonged concession to this delicacy. Every one rode at Taplow, and Isabella bettered her home lessons upon Shag and Camilla. She raced and rode with her cousins, and, though younger than i6 PARENTAGE AND INHERITANCE [chap, i

some of them, was recognised amongst them all as a superior, whose opinions on religious, social, and even pohtical subjects were to be courted and quoted.

Her little sister Henrietta was shyer and less spirited, although her health was more equable and her mental advance almost as rapid as Isabella's. She was very winning and gentle; always happy with a book and with her mother; a little reserved, and less inclined for boisterous comradeship. But she, too, could ride and run and read and dream. More drawn by the spiritual world than was Isabella then, her thoughts were wont to dwell there in a kind of rapt reverie. A cousin, Henrietta Bird, from whom we have quoted largely in these details about Taplow, lived there ; and to distinguish one from the other, Isabella's sister was called Hennie, and was always known by that abbreviation.

The little girls were respectively eleven and eight when they were taken away from Tattenhall and set down in Birmingham. More than one reason made this change advisable. Isabella was stronger, Mr. Bird was anxious for a more arduous sphere of labour, and some discontent had arisen at his warm championship of Sabbath observance in the cheese-making districts round Tattenhall.

A great sorrow fell upon them all in 1842, in the death of their beloved father and grandfather. He had lived eighty-two years, and had received the last desire of his heart in the return of his eldest son Robert Merttins Bird. When the successful Anglo- Indian stood by his bedside, his father looked at him and whispered: "What was it the old man Simeon said? Nunc dimitiis, was it not?" And soon after he passed away, i842] BIRMINGHAM 17

The church at Tattenhall had grown discouragingly empty, in consequence of Mr. Bird's fearless protests against Sunday labour. Nearly as much work was done on Sundays as on week-days — not in the open fields, but in the dairies and presses. It is difficult to understand the question in all its bearings, for it is obvious that cows must be milked on Sundays. Doubtless Mr. Bird did not oppose the necessary work, but only the increase of unnecessary work in the manufacture of dairy produce on Sundays which had crept in, and which to him was a manifest breach of a divine law, declared by God Himself to be the test of national righteousness and the condition of national prosperity. Mr. Bird's point of view was the law of the living God; but he was powerless against the bidding of Mammon, and the convicted farmers left a church where there was no comfortable doctrine for their case.

How sad a leave-taking it must have been is borne in upon us when we note the beauty and peace of Tattenhall, and then visit the parish of St. Thomas's in Birmingham. The Bishop, too, disapproved of his transfer; and had Mr. Bird not found absolute trust in his decision within his own family, the step might have been still harder to take. Those faithful to him at Tattenhall felt the parting bitterly, and for many years there lived in the parish godly men and women whom he had brought to Christ, and who were known as "Bird's saints."

St. Thomas's in Birmingham is a large, gloomy church, built in the worst possible taste, that pseudoclassical style, pretentious and dismal, which Georgian architects aifected; It contrasted painfully with sunny St. Alban's at Tattenhall, where the light fell through ancient stained glass, and five cheerful bells called the i8 PARENTAGE AND INHERITANCE [chap, i

parishioners to worship. St. Thomas's had been planned to seat over two thousand people, but a few hundred formed the congregation in 1843, and these were always shifting.

The city was then heaving with the last throes ot Chartism, and four years earlier the rioters had made a pause at St. Thomas's to pull up the railing and arm themselves with its iron spikes, on their march to wreck Lucy's Mills. The hands were still sullen, the employers were hard. Sunday labour was more than permitted. Success was the one standard in Birmingham. It mattered little of what intrinsic quality of righteousness, or the reverse, a man's aims might be — public opinion applauded, or blamed their issue according to their success or failure.

The Birds found a house in Frederick's Road, with a garden attached, which employed the old Tattenhall gardener, who came with them. It had some appletrees big enough to give seats and shelter to the little girls, who used to climb into them and con their lessons hidden amongst the leaves.

Mr. Bird began eagerly to organise his work — the parish visiting, the Sunday school, the preaching. It was a heavy task. The parish contained a population of 16,000, and the church was almost empty. Then, stronger in Birmingham than in the grazing-lands of Cheshire, Mammon swayed men's souls. His parish was given over to Sunday trading, and the fight he had to wage on the Lord's side was with a very ApoUyon.