Hannah More

An 18th century woman writer isn’t someone most typical women today find themselves desiring to emulate.

But I am not what you might call today’s typical woman.

The life of writer and abolitionist Hannah More is extraordinary. I haven’t quite finished Karen Swallow Prior’s biography on her life, but in the first few chapters, I find myself inexplicably drawn to a woman who couldn’t be farther from myself in many respects yet also closer than I thought possible.

Hannah More was making connections during long excursions to the vibrant city of London when she was fifteen. She met and mingled with people much older than herself, made friends with those who might otherwise have remained acquaintances, and developed literary relationships with writers and intellectuals far beyond her own station. One such person was the great rhetorician and thinker, Edmund Burke.

It is difficult for me to imagine walking into a room full of silk clad aristocrats and wealthy speakers and thinkers of the mid-1700s. The young Miss More must have felt out of place at times. I know I would have.

More’s heart seems to beat faster when Prior describes her visiting the home of her favorite poet, Alexander Pope in Twickenham, England. She walked the grounds of his estate in ecstasy, eyes wide with wonder as she pictured Pope here, there, and everywhere she was at the moment. Her mind must have been heavy with the knowledge that he, of all people, had walked the very grounds her own feet trod, and that anywhere she was might have been the very spot where he received a pinch of inspiration for one of his magnificent poems.

During my tour of Jane Austen’s home in Chawton, England. I saved my tour of the house for the last day I was there, just because building it up in my mind was exactly what I was there to do. I was not disappointed.

Like More, the moment I stepped over the threshold, I was enraptured. Every wall, every brick, and every wooden floorboard meant I was where a genius had lived. I don’t know that Austen would much like me referring to her as a genius, although many before me have already done so, but that is how it felt to stand in the same intimate areas where she lived out the last 8 years of her life.

I turned each corner and walked through each doorway softly, quietly, expecting more and more inspiration and magic of the past to wash over me like a wave.

And like More, I stood staring at the very place Jane Austen wrote. The tiny octagonal shaped desk where her forearms rested and her pen scratched words onto paper.

It can only be described as a melancholy happiness, the feeling which came over me as I walked through and touched the things she had touched. Almost as if I was visiting the home of a deceased friend whom I had not seen in a lifetime.

Yes, I consider Jane Austen a friend.

This is the first thing I find in common with Hannah More. The second, her convictions about education.

More believed that although some things were dull in the educational sphere that did not necessarily mean it was a good thing to learn. She knew there were better, more common sense ways to teach children their reading, writing, and arithmetic. No wonder the school she and her sisters owned and ran was such a success! Learning became fun again and proved true in the lives and educations of her pupils.

As I read on, she becomes more and more a friend as Jane Austen has over the years. I think God my mother introduced me to her and that He gave me a mind to understand language and literature.

My hatred for and difficulty with math becomes a small trifle when compared to what these ladies, and countless others have taught me.

More later. (See what I did there?)