A Quaker Girlhood
A RELIGIOUS REBEL
A QUAKER GIRLHOOD
To her cousin, Annie Whitall Aet. 15.
| PHILADELPHIA, April 25, 1847 Now dear Annie, I am going to tell thee something, though I have not the least idea thee will believe it.
I was out to tea the other night when someone said, that it is said that unless there is somebody within hearing thunder even would make no noise, that is, that there is no noise of any kind unless there is an ear to hear it; I think it is the most ridiculous idea ever heard of, but they say that it is gradually gaining ground among scientific men.
Ask thy father what he thinks, I don't see how it can be possible, just suppose a house was to fall down and nobody near to hear it, according to that it would make no noise, but if someone came by in the midst it would begin to make a noise, oh ! it cannot be. i To her cousin, Annie Whitall Aet. 18.
PHILADELPHIA, Feb. 17, 1850
Did thee have a good meeting?
Sarah 1 and I had very (sic) ; we thought Sammy Balderston was preach1 Hannah Whitall's sister, Sarah Whitall, married William Nicholson, of Philadelphia, and The Lindens, Haddonfield, New Jersey.
L.P.S.
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL ing to us when he said that silence was not worship, and that many came to meeting and sat down in silence without any thought of worship; I verily believe that was us, for really Cousin Anne, Meeting is such a grand place to lay out plans and build air castles.
Does thee ever think good?
I do sometimes positively ; I think I would love to be a minister and make very noble sacrifices and have people to admire me and almost worship me, as I do Samuel
Bettle and Thomas Evans.
Oh! would it not be grand, and then I would travel all over the world, and do so much good.
But I am only a woman, and women are so weak and dependent, and never do any good.
There is no chance is there? I shall have to be content to plod on in the same humdrum path, making pies and cooking and scrubbing, and mending stockings and making shirts, and feel proud if I may claim relationship with great and noble men.
Here it is nearly eleven, and I am sitting up in our study all alone, waiting for the thieves to come and steal ey watch—a perfect martyr to my poor journals.
I can't help thinking what a rich treat the editor of " Memorials of Hannah Whitall " will have one day.
To her cousin, Annie Whitall Aet. 18.
Thee cannot imagine, cousin Annie, what a splendid air castle I built to-day (I won't say where).
I imagined that on a certain time Thomas Evans should 'preach to me, and all of a sudden in some unaccountable manner I should get perfectly good, just like Mme.
Guyon.
I should dress like mother in a cap and
A QUAKER GIRLHOOD
handkerchief, and sugar-scoop bonnet! and hooded cloak, and should preach at the very next meeting
I attended.
And oh! what a splendid voice I gave to myself ; I pictured the whole meeting as almost ready to fall down and worship me, I was so magnificently eloquent, so grandly sublime.
And next I went on a religious visit to England when only 19, where the whole nation even the Queen herself crowded to hear the " young eloquent Quaker girl', and next I went to France—but here my visions were cut short, most fortunately perhaps, or I might next have gone on a religious visit to the moon.
Is it not queer, cousin Annie, but does thee know nearly all my air castles are on that subject, I have always had such an idea even from a little child that I would preach some day.
As far back as I can remember I used to sit in meeting and look at the ministers 2 and wonder how I would feel when I sat up there and preached, as I fully expected to do: and once, at Yearly Meeting-time when it snowed, and we waited for the carriage, I tried it.
I stood in Elizabeth Evans's place and imagined myself with a cap and handkerchief on and all the benches full of people, and began "' my dear friends".
But I could go no further, my feelings were really awful.
I was frightened and hurried down as fast as possible.
Foolish, foolish child!
Of course I know now that such a thing is utterly out of the question, but I cannot help the — feeling once in a while passing through my mind.
I 1 See Note I at end of Chapter.
2 Quaker " ministers " were simply preachers.
There was, of course, nothing like ordination, but merely an acknowledgement by senior members of the congregation.
'' This act of ' recording ' or ' acknowledging ' did not make the speakers ministers ; it was only the recognition that God had already made them such."
(The Unselfishness of God, p. 58.)
A RELIGIOUS
REBEL have always said that I expected to be a minister—to be as fat as aunt Scattergood—and to be married and have 13 great children ; but don't for the world let anyone know that last expectation ;—it was the folly
— of my younger years, I don't expect such things now.
To her parents Aet. 18.
PHILADELPHIA, May g, 1850 Depend upon it, father and mother, you have made a conquest of those Friends, and as their only resource they repay it to me.
When Meeting was out I was standing near the door, when I saw Friend Anne Thornburg coming towards me and looking very pleasant.
She shook my hand most cordially over and over again, and asked if she should not see me again.
Oh, my dear relations, it is such a wonderful _ thing for me to be so much noticed by Ministers and their companions, that it really seems almost too much for me ; I don't think I should be able to bear much of it, for I should get completely above myself.
To her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Pearsall Smith?
Agt. 21.
ALBANY, April 1, 1853 Thou can never be too thankful for being a Quaker.
I am sure as I sit by and listen to the ladies here, some See Note II at end of Chapter.
* On June 25, 1851, Hannah Whitall was married to Robert Pearsall Smith, son of John Jay Smith (1798-1883), and Rachel Pearsall, of Flushing, Long Island.
From 1829 to 1851 John Jay Smith was Librarian of the Library Company of Philadelphia founded by Benjamin Franklin, and the Loganian Library founded by his greatgrandfather, James Logan,
(Dictionary of American Biography, Vol.
XVII.) VL.P.S:
A QUAKER GIRLHOOD
of them old and gray, and hear how entirely their minds are filled with the perfect froth and fooleries of life, I rejoice that, silly as I am, I am preserved from being that silly.
I have just been having a long conversation with a Mrs. White about whether New York or Philadelphia is the best place to buy silk.
Asif I, a simple Quaker, should know anything about it!
This world is a sadly foolish place.
But Lizzie, let me beg of thee to wear no more Honiton lace—it is going out entirely.
Nothing but Valenciennes, dearie, if thou wishes to preserve thy standing.
And thy undersleeves must be cut up on the lower side in a sort of point—indeed they must, it is so important !
NOTE I (p. 3) The peculiar Quaker garb was adopted, she tells us in her autobiography, as a sign of "' becoming serious"', and those who received the call '' would feel it their duty to appear at ' Yearly Meeting' in the sugar-scoop bonnets, or the straight-collared coats, that were the outward -sign of their inward change. ...
To £ put on a plain bonnet ', as it was expressed, seemed to me almost as much the end of all earthly human life as death would be."
The awful power of this sanctified bonnet she illustrates with an anecdote from her mother's childhood : *' One morning as she was crossing a lonely bridge . . her dislike to her little ' plain bonnet ' "—her schoolfellows had laughed at her because of it—'' grew so strong that she took it off and kicked it before her.
All day that deed weighed heavily on, her conscience, and as she came to that bridge on her return home from school in the dusk of the evening, she saw a dark shadow at a little distance up the creek...
She firmly believed it was the devil in person coming to snatch her to himself because of her wickedness, and, filled with terror she flew home as fast as her trembling legs would carry her, promising in her childish heart never again to rebel against her ' plain bonnet '."
'(The Unselfishness of God, pp. 103-5-) The other garments mentioned were of equal severity.
This strictness of dress was not confined to the Quakers.
In her posthumous book, Religious Fanaticism (edited by Ray Strachey, Faber, 1928), page 203,
HWS. tells of an old lady so pious that 'she wouldn't tie a bow in her bonnet strings, but had a hook and eye to meet under her chin '"'.
In spite of this, however, that particular old saint, having given, as she thought, almost everything to the Lord, became convinced that the Lord
A RELIGIOUS REBEL
told her that there was one thing left to give "' and that was her virginity, and that He would send a man whom she must be willing to receive in His name and surrender herself to him.
She told us," H.W.S. goes on, "that she said, 'Thy will be done ', and was now awaiting the ringing of the bell and the advent of the promised man. ...
But," she adds, "' whether that man ever came or not, I do not know."
(See note on p. 54.)
NOTE II (p. 4)
} Hannah Whitall's daydreams were sometimes of a more material character.
Thus in her spiritual autobiography, The Unselfishness of God (published in 1903), she wrote of herself as a little girl :
"* My Meetings were mostly passed in building air castles, an occupation that I felt to be very wrong, but which had an irresistible fascination forme.
Curiously enough, these day dreams never took the form of love stories, as youthful air-castles so generally do, I suppose because I had never been allowed to read novels, and never heard anything about falling in love.
But I always made myself out to be something very wonderful and grand, and the admired of all beholders.
Sometimes I was to be a preacher whose eloquence was to surpass the eloquence of all preachers since the world began ; sometimes I was to be an inventor of more wonderful machines than had ever been invented before ; but more often I was to be the most marvellous singer the world had ever known ; and the ' meetings ' that stand out in my memory more distinctly than any others were those of one especial winter in my fourteenth year, when I endowed myself with an undreamed of gift for singing, that electrified everybody, and brought the world to my feet.
Why I pitched on singing for my day dreams I cannot imagine, as it was a forbidden worldliness among the Quakers, and was something
T scarcely ever heard either in public or private ; and I was myself so utterly devoid of any musical talent that during my whole life I have not been able to sing a note, or even to distinguish one tune from another.
But so it was; and there I used to sit on the bench beside my mother, through many a long meeting, outwardly a demure little
Quaker, but inwardly a great prima donna (not that I called myself that), with my whole foolish little heart swelling and bursting with the glory of my triumphs on the stage, which, however, was a place I had never even so much as seen!"
L.P.S,