An autobiography, and letters of the author of "The listener," "Christ our law," &c.

Preface

The Editor considers it due to the memory of the subject of the memoir, which is placed at the commencement of the present volume, to state, that it was written by his beloved wife at different periods, as memoranda of the most important part of her life ; intended to be continued from time to time, until they should be ultimately remodelled into a connected narrative.

She did not live to fulfil this intention; and it must therefore be remembered, that these imperfect records were never designed to be published in their present form ; but well knowing her anxious wish to proclaim the Saviour's love to one who had despised and rejected him, and her conviction that by such an avowal, his grace would be magnified, the editor deems himself entrusted with a sacred duty, which he cannot better perform, than by giving the narrative, scanty and imperfect as it

i - D

J v PREFACE.

is, in her own words. He presents it, therefore, without comment, and unaccompanied with any particulars of her history subsequent to the period at which her own memoir closes.

After the change which had taken place in her religious sentiments, the subject of this memoir was severely disciplined in the school of adversity, and no doubt her sorrows were instrumental in establishing her faith, exalting her Christian profession, and fitting her for the special service of that Master, whose love was the constraining principle of her life. Of this devotedness her published works furnish abundant testimony; and those letters of the present collection, which were written within a few days of her death, will give evidence of the power and permanence of that faith which sustained her through a long period of trial, made the approach of death joyous, and prepared her for the heaven which she so ardently anticipated. No one who witnessed the closing hours of her life could refrain from adopting the prophet's exclamation, " Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his !"

Many of the letters now published are interesting, as containing valuable reflections on topics of the deepest interest to the Church of Christ at the

PREFACE.

present period ; and the others are replete with the sentiments and opinions of one " who walked with God."

The Editor dismisses these collections, ardently hoping that the perusal of them may be accompanied with the Divine blessing, and that while they conduce to the edification, comfort and encouragement of many, they may be subservient to the praise of Him, who, in accomplishing the mysterious designs of His grace and providence, not unfrequently condescends to employ the humblest instrumentality of human agency.

Contents

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

CHAPTER I.— Birth and Childhood, - - 13 II. — Early Youth, - - - - 39

III. — Early Womanhood, - - - 46

IV. — Conversion, - - - - - 60

AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

Since it has pleased God to give publicity to a name obscure, to an extent that may hereafter excite the public curiosity respecting her that bore it ; and since it may please Him also to get himself honour by the manifestation of His goodness and mercy, in the record of her life — feeling that it will be impossible for any one else, to state truly that which alone is worth recording, — the history of her mental and spiritual existence, — she is induced to put down at her leisure these notices of herself; rendered the more necessary by the fact, that she has never kept a diary, or any kind of memoranda, of even the most important occurrences of her life. Should that time ever come, which in the plenitude of her happiness it becomes her to anticipate, when with powers and faculties remaining, the interests and affections of this world will have terminated, it is her present thought to collate these materials, and such of her letters as can be collected, into a regular memoir. Of this, God knoweth. 1839.

MEMOIRS, &c.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.

Caroline Fry was born at Tunbridge Wells on the 31st of December, 1787, being one of ten children, and seven daughters.

Of her who makes these records, the remotest recollections are of a most happy and too indulgent home, where, without the elegances or the restraints of polite, or even social life, every comfort was in profuse abundance, and all pleased themselves after their own manner.

Being the youngest but one of a family whose births extended through more than twenty years, she remembers but few of her brothers and sisters as children, and the prescriptive right by which the youngest child of a large family is spoiled, was extended in her favour to the two youngest, the humoured pets of a most loving father. He never walked out but they were one at each side of him — they accompanied him during great part of the day to his farm, or his houses, the building of which was 2 his great pursuit and pleasure. He called them his ladies, chose their dress, taught them to read the newspapers, talk of politics, and play at whist with him every evening, and above all, under surety of his protection, to set at defiance all other authority and control. I have been told that on his death-bed he spoke painfully of having spoiled his two youngest children, then about twelve and fourteen years of age. He did not foresee what adversity and the interposition of divine grace would do to mend his work ; so that, however their difficulties were increased, and their sins accumulated by this early indulgence, they grew up to be neither the least beloved, the least useful, nor the least prosperous of his children.

And yet the fear of this indulgent father's disapprobation, was the only restraint Caroline remembers to have felt. His absence from home for a whole day, which never occurred but at a general election, a special jury case, or some other such event, was a signal for the outbreaks of insurbordination, and the doing of all sorts of prohibited things: — her other parent being a quiet, careful, domestic woman, an object more of affection than deference, at least to these little people, who held themselves out of her jurisdiction.

More influential even than this partial fondness, was the father's abiding impression, whencesoever derived, that his children were, or were to be, or ought to be, above the position of life in which they were born — his sons were not to be brought up to

B1RTU AND CHILDHOOD. 15

trade — his daughters might not marry men in trade — his little girls might not associate or play with any children of equal condition with themselves. To this inborn, inbred opinion of their own importance, productive of some good results no doubt, must be attributed no small part of the difficulties and misfortunes of their family after their father's death, and the little success that attended most of them notwithstanding the more than ordinary talents distributed to them by Providence, and in a moral and human sense, their actual deserving. The grace of God, and the calling of his Holy Spirit, determined, we cannot doubt, the destiny of the eldest son, the Rev. John Fry, Rector of Desford, sufficiently well known as the author of many works of talent, piety, and learning.

On Caroline the only effect of this parental ambition, was probably that which it had upon her education, and early associations, rather than upon her ultimate destination. She inclines to think that even education rather left her what she was, than made her anything. Her recollection of her own character, temper, feeling, is from the first so very like to what it was at last, it would appear to her that nature has been too strong for any influences acting from without — at least till a divine power interposed to alter its own workmanship, and that but slowly and partially to the last, rather to modify than to change. Back to eight or ten years of age, she can well remember that intense, unreasonable, almost maddening anguish, which through all the changes

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

of her changeful life has known no suspension, and up to this day no diminution, produced upon her by a sense of unkindness, or injustice, or discouragement, often imaginary, always exaggerated. Nobody knew then, or ever has known, or ever can know, the mental agony of these moments, followed by fits of depression, self-reproach, and despondency heretofore scarcely endurable, but now, blessed be God, commixed with that prostration of spirit, and utter self-abandonment, which is not all misery, since in it is realized the full value of redeeming love, and the sweet sympathy of a once-suffering Redeemer. He know T s, what she never herself has known, how much of this passion is sin, and how much is only misery. The bitter and resentful words to which, if the occasion serves, it will give vent, are sin of course, and the pain thus given to others, is often the bitterest and most abiding woe ; but this is rather the casualty, than the character of these passionate fits : — unless something from without unhappily strikes upon the wound in the moment of irritation, the originating cause of which may be no party to the suffering, it is endured in secrecy and silence.

Reverting to her childhood, she remembers to have often passed whole days and nights in tears;* and when pressed by her parents for the cause, unable or ashamed to give the true one, has complained of pain

* At all times of her life these violent and prolonged fits of crying have occasionally occurred. Were they not the safetyvalves of an over-actuated brain]

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD. \J

and sickness which she did not feel, and suffered them to administer remedies as for a bodily ailment. She has often questioned since, whether those tender parents did not judge more accurately than appeared, of these fits of aggravated feeling; for she well remembers that the remedial measures taken to restore her, were a piece of cold meat at breakfast, a glass of strong ale at dinner, or a cup of coffee in the evening. Whatever there may have been since, when knowledge of the extravagance, and experience of the mischiefs of these morbid sensibilities might have afforded some defence against them, there was no sin in them at that early age, and the memory of what she suffered has throughout life produced in her the greatest tenderness and forbearance towards the tempers and feelings of children, and a disposition to treat them more as maladies than faults.* To the truth of this, though ignorant of the cause, many can

* Tt is distinctly in her recollection that on one occasion, wanting to make known to her mother the depression of her mind, and not having* courage to speak of it, being then a professed rhymer, she wrote to her in the following terms, — of the last word she did not know the meaning, and remembers being told it afterwards. She was probably about nine years old : —

I am not very well,

And no mortal can tell

What is my pain,

When I am profane, — no specimen of early genius, but certainly one of premature mental suffering, without external cause — for to misfortune or bodily pain she was a stranger, and almost so to the slightest contradiction.

2*

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

testify who may hereafter read these pages, some perhaps who have either suffered or benefited by indulgence, according as it w 7 as good or evil in its effects upon those committed to her care. For herself, through those long and many years in which she lived a stranger in the stranger's home, her thoughts untold, her feelings all unshared, it may be, there were some who understood her better than she understood herself; and can tell in w T hat manner this feeling manifested itself, and will call it by its right name. They need not spare to do so, for she would if she knew. All she can recal with certainty, is the intensity of her sufferings, and the strangeness and unfitness, to say the least, of the conduct it occasionally produced, of which more will be told hereafter.* In these her last, best days, when all is viewed by the clear light of heaven, all transacted under the eye of the Omniscient, all shared, all treated of, all prayed over in close communion with the blessed Saviour, the only amelioration of the pain is found in that sweet sympathy.

But that which through all her life she longed for, as an impossible solace, that some one could dwell within her, and see what she herself could never understand, — that solace, that impossibility, has been attained. Jesus, before whom these irrational tears

* Sleep — even the peaceful slumbers of her most happy days, is often no defence against this suffering — under the influence of a dream of some act of unkindness or injustice done her, she often wakes in an agony of tears.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD.

are shed, Jesus, with whom these morbid sensibilities a v shared — He does know — He knows how much is sin, how much is misery — how much to be repented of, and how much only to be borne ; and He can sympathize alike with all, for He and He only pities sin, as much as He pities sorrow, and speaks peace to the contrite, as well as to the afflicted. Under the deep sense of sin, and helplessness, and self-abhorrence, that now accompanies every return of this mental anguish, and adds to its poignancy, she need not tell him, and He need not tell her, the source and nature and culpability of her feelings. She can say to him — and O thou blessed one ! how 7 often hast thou heard it! — "Lord! thou knowest," and he can answer " My grace is sufficient for thee." It is sufficient ; sufficient for Jonah in the great deep, whither his own wilfulness had brought him ; and for Daniel in the den to which his enemies consigned him, and for her who in hours of such deep and untold anguish, as made her cry aloud to God for release from the body of this death, knows and feels and proves He is sufficient — and puts it here, where properly it does not belong, lest she should never reach that part of her soul's history, in which it should be found: — 183S.

To return to her childhood ; the same restless impatience of what she did not like, even when personally unaffected by it; the same eagerness in the pursuits of the moment, and speedy indifference to the objects so eagerly pursued; the same extreme enjoyment of simple and trifling things, even existence itself without adventitious pleasures, when there was no actual cloud upon it, the same disproportioned pain from trifles, also, brief as it was excessive — the same very peculiar contrariety of character, that kept perpetual dissonance between the intellect and feelings, — in common language, between the head and heart, the judgment that seldom erred, and the feelings by which it was always overpowered — the same excessive desire to please, and aptness to displease by precipitancy and want of tact — the same innate consciousness of talent, and painful timidity in the exercise and exhibition of it — all this, through all her life, she can trace back to her remotest memory of herself; much indeed that education might have corrected and did not, but left to grow like the wild rose of the wilderness, in strange and rude luxuriance, all redolent alike of thorns and flowers, to feel and know,and painfullyregret through all her days, she was not, and could not be, what her natural endowments seemed designed to make her. Now she knows that herein God was right, though man was wrong; for it resulted that the consciousness of talent was at all times more a source of humiliation than of pride. When she might have felt elevated above her fellows, she felt only degraded below herself; and where is the sinner so safe as in the dust? True these are late conclusions, that did not cast their consolatory influence through the years gone by, but they are conclusions, and she has come to say with Paul, " I glory in my infirmities, since when I am weak, then am I strong;" — it is best to be nothing, that Christ may be all in all. How little is it known to the aspirants of mankind, that such a feeling, when it can be realized, is bliss, with which the triumphant successes of the creature have nothing to compare.

Caroline had not to complain of a neglected education, as far as education is comprehended in mere instruction. School was not to be thought of; she never slept from under the same roof with her father during his life-time, nor as she believes ever was ten miles from home but once, when he took her and her younger sister, on a visit to their brother, then recently married and settled in London. The instruction of the younger girls was therefore committed to the elder, who had been educated at w 7 hat were then thought good schools ; the aspirings of the family extended both to knowledge and accomplishments, and though the opportunities were small, the most was made of them; and at a time when girls in that station of life learned very little, and were thought best employed in domestic duties, and the operation of the needle, in this family every thing was at least attempted, and books, drawing, and music were the occupations of the younger people — the return of the eldest brother from Oxford at each vacation affording a great stimulus to this literary taste, by accession of books and other information which could scarcely otherwise have reached them, in their exclusion from the reading world. Many studies were thus introduced, which common as they are now, were not so then — such as Botany, Chemistry, As-

22 AN AUTOBIOGRAPY.

tronomy, &c, and the young people being all considerably gifted by nature, were prodigies of learning in the estimation of their equals. Often as the recollections of this irregular school-room and its high pretensions, have since provoked a smile, Caroline knows she was indebted to it for a great deal of solid, early acquiied knowledge, which the most expensive school at that period would not have afforded; while some of its deficiencies have never ceased to be inconveniently felt.

She has no recollection of pain or difficulty, or unwillingness in learning — but a distinct one of pleasure in buying a sixpenny book, (the History of a Mouse) the first she remembers to have possessed, when she could have been but a very few years old. It is not to be supposed, that her partial and loving parents should underrate or disregard the first development of talent, little as they did to cultivate and direct it. At eight years old, little Caroline was an established poet laureate in the family, who was to write a copy of verses on every birth-day, saintsday, fast-day or thanksgiving-day, and every victory by sea, or land, sufficiently numerous in those warlike days; in the inspiring hope of receiving presents of money or pretty things, from whoever had the good fortune to receive the dedications of her muse. It is doubtful whether any of these, at least profitable productions, extending as they did from eight to fourteen years of age, are still in existence ; — if they are, it must be in the hands of her sisters. She has the

BIfiTH AND CHILDHOOD. 23

impression that they were not so good as a great many children write at that age.

However, they were not thought slightly of then, and that destiny so vainly afterwards resisted, was the first ambition of her life — to be an author, especially to be a poet ; for general as was her taste for reading, and eager as her interest in all kinds of knowledge, poetry was undoubtedly the predominant taste. Some trifling circumstances, distinct, as if of yesterday, upon her memory, may evince how strong and inborn this literary ambition was. Well is the feeling remembered, with which, sitting upon her father's knee, she heard a conversation between him and her mother, originated by his declaration, that he would have his two youngest girls taught Latin. It was an extravagant proposition certainly, considering the actual station of the parties, and the rarity of the accomplishment at that period, but proportioned to her intense desire for learning was her silent resentment against her mother for the opposition that defeated this intent. Her childish impression of the necessity of knowing other languages, in order to become an author in her own, was a source of continual discouragement and depression to her, for she guessed not how easy it would be to attain them for herself. She remembers saying to some one of her family, on it being suggested that she might be a Milton, her then favourite author; — that she could never expect poetical fame, because she would never have the means of knowing any language but her own; a saying that often recurred to her in after-life, when the study of languages became her favourite pursuit, after poetry had been pretty nearly relinquished.

Illustrative of this learned ambition, the only ambition perhaps that she was ever susceptible of, she recals another of her childish feelings. Her father's house was opposite the Parade, or Pantiles, as they were called at Tunbridge Wells, the resort at that time of the greatest and noblest of the land, whom, as children do, the little girls were in the habit of looking at, and watching from the windows most particularly those who happened to have children of their own age, — indeed, as their father's objection to his children associating with others, did not extend to those above them, the two little girls, being pretty well dressed, and well-mannered children, often went to play or walk with the young ladies whom they contrived to become acquainted with as children do. Among the great things and gay things thus constantly before their eyes, was the handsome equipage of the Duke of Northumberland, whose carriage and four brought every day under the windows two little girls, some few years older ■ than Caroline, then about ten or eleven ; who became, as was so natural, the objects of her curiosity and envy ; but the envy took a single direction, it never occurred to her to want the titles, or the equipage, or the dress of these little girls, but she remembers now the painful moody sadness, with which she sat and looked at them, and thought how many things they could learn, how many masters they could have; — it may seem an overdrawn statement, but it is distinct to her as if of yesterday ; a bitter repining at her lot, which no one can remember but herself, because no one ever knew it— had the feeling been less strong, the impression would not have remained. From this and other recollections, it has always appeared to her a great disadvantage to young people of the middle ranks, to be brought up in a public watering-place, where they are in juxtaposition and more near comparison with their superiors in wealth and station, than is likely to occur elsewhere — thestirrings of rivalry andambition so excited, are not always of so harmless a nature in the issue, as little Caroline Fry's longings towards the house of Percy.

Among the means of instruction within herreach indiscriminate reading was the most important. The house, for the period, was not very ill supplied with school-books, and childish literature — such as it was when Mrs. Trimmer was a high authority, and Mrs. H. More, and Mrs. Hamilton, &c, were beginning to write. But the great supply was in the two circulating libraries, usually pertaining to a watering-place, to both of which her father was a subscriber ; and, whence she was allowed lo fetch what she pleased, without the smallest guidance or restraint, or so much as advice upon what she had better read or not read. As no other person read much in the house, the library catalogues were little C's peculiar treasure and sole counsellor ; and, since she had nothing else to choose them by, the books had to be chosen by 3 their names only. And now let not the incautious mother, or the adventurous daughter, take courage, and assume that the result of unrestricted reading may not be so bad as people think, and the trash of a circulating library not so certainly destructive of moral and intellectual taste. What parental prudence did not, a beneficent Providence did — partly by the effect of their example, and partly by the natural character of her own mind. Little Caroline never saw any body read pernicious books — she never heard of pernicious books— or heard anything about what they contained. She never saw a novel in her father's house, and never spoke with any one who had read them. The exact morality of her father's house was such, that she does not remember to have ever heard a free expression, or an indelicate allusion, or a profane or immoral word in jest or earnest. The very name of vices and follies, was strange to her ear — and all the knowledge of the living world, its passions and pursuits, was no more than she learned from those parts of the newspapers which her father desired to hear, and which were generally read aloud — consisting chiefly of the parliamentary debates, the court circular, robberies, accidents, and most especially theatrical reports, which in a newspaper are innocent enough. If the common talk of young ladies about love and marriage, &c, went on, as it must be supposed it did, among her grown-up or growing up sisters: it never transpired in the family circle, or within hearing of the little ones.

How much, in the absence of all other moral instruction and restraint, Caroline owed to this ignorance and simplicity concerning evil, will appear as her tale progresses ; but the first effect was that she had neither curiosity nor understanding for any sort of reading that might have been injurious. With all her passion for poetry, she never read any but Milton, Cowper, Virgil, Pope, Young, Dryden, and Thompson — she does not think even she had any taste for Shakspeare before she was fourteen — and of those authors, it was the graver, not the lighter pieces she enjoyed ; — Milton's Paradise Lost, and Pope's Homer's Iliad, being certainly the earliest, and most habitual diet of her poetical appetite — as Young's Night Thoughts and Cowper's Task, were a little later, and she recollects w 7 hat she cannot well account for, and what is certainly not the case now, and very unusual to a child, she had a decided preference for epic poetry, and for blank verse. As far as she remembers, her prose reading was quite as good. The heroes of Lacedemon, were the idols of her imagination, second only to Achilles and Agamemnon — Plutarch's Lives were her exhaustless feast — the pious heroism of Gustavus Adolphus — the adventurous spirit of Charles of Sweden — the courtly Francis, and the sagacious Charles — whatever was great, or noble, or bold, or proud, was the food of her reflective, as well as inquisitive, faculties — divided only with her love of whatever was philosophical ; — she believes, that before she was fourteen, she had read, and enjoyed, and reflected upon all the standard classical works, in translations of course, and a great many books upon natural philosophy and science, such as were then most in circulation. We say reflected upon, because all reading was to her, through all her life, only so much material for thinking and feeling. She never took delight in mere facts, nor turned over pages for mere information — nor could well retain these when she had got them ; whence it probably resulted, that with all her knowledge, she never was an accurate scholar, her memory had no verbal stores, she had nobody's thoughts in her head but her own, could never quote from any other writer, or bring what she had read to bear upon her arguments. It is commonly said in youth that it is of no use to read more than you can remember. This is not true. The use of reading is to form the mind, to enlighten the understanding, to direct the opinions, and provide the materials for thinking and for judging. It is the mental aliment, which it is no more indispensable to remember in detail, than the things we eat and drink, and grow up upon bodily. No doubt, the addition of a strong, verbal, and eventual memory, with the higher intellectual powers, is a very great advantage in writing and conversation, of which Caroline has always felt the want.

In nothing has C.'s ultimate character been so true to the first impulses of nature, as in her pleasures. There is every appearance that the firstborn will be the survivor. Little C. never liked the dull, the artificial play-thing, nor the game of play, unless it were one of skill and exercise, such as throwing the ball, and skipping the rope, &c. Her earliest remembered pleasure, was the first-blown flower of the spring, or the new-born lamb in her father's meadow; she knows distinctly, — and never returns to her native place without a vivid recurrence of the impression, — where she used to go with her nurse, to see if the wild snow-drop was budding, to gather the first primroses, to hunt the sweet violets from among the nettles where they were yearly to be found. The long romantic walk, the nutting, and the blackberrying, were the great occurrences; the hay-field, the barn-floor, the sheepcote, the many hours of the day she spent with her father upon the farm, listening to the detail of the bailiff, watching the plough, and the various operations of the field, are recollections of such exquisite pleasure, as never fail to return upon her memory and her feelings, whenever she sees anything of farming.operations; she doubts if she ever sees a cart, or so much as hears a wagoner's whip, without the stirring of some vague reminiscences of bygone pleasure — pleasure as regards the farm, w 7 hich never happened, in all the varieties of her subsequent life, to be renewed ; yet she longs for it, even now that the garden feeds the still prevailing passion, but never bears a snow-drop so white, nor a violet so sweet, nor a primrose so smooth, and round, and pure, as those that grew for her 3* without her care. If any one who loves her should like a proof of this, perhaps they will find them growing still in the same place, upon the farm of Hangershall, hard by the clear rivulet that divides Kent from Sussex, under shelter of the high rocks. This, amid the beautiful scenery of Tunbridge Wells, it will be judged, was no bad training for a poet; and whatever she may, or may not owe to it, in the culture of the imagination, she no doubt owes to it her escape from one of the dire penalties of authorship and reading — the miseries of dyspepsia, and hypochondriasis. Born of very handsome and healthful parents, and leading through all her first years the most healthful life possible, her constitution outbore the long intermediate pressure; and she is, when this is written, a remarkable instance of bodily activity and animal spirits, not worn and injured by mental toil and suffering — long and weary as they were.