Some Eminent Women of Our Times

Millicent Fawcett

Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Some Eminent Women of Our Times / Short Biographical Sketches

“Non aver tema, disse il mio Signore:

Fatti sicur, chГЁ noi siamo a buon punto:

Non stringer, ma rallarga ogni vigore.”

В В В В Purgatorio, Canto 9, v. 46-48.

“�I have a belief of my own, and it comforts me.’

“�What is that?’ said Will…

“�That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don’t quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are part of the divine power against evil – widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower.’”

    – Middlemarch, Book iv.

PREFACE

The following short sketches of the lives of some of the eminent women of our times were written for The Mothers’ Companion, and are now republished by the kind permission of the proprietors and publishers, Messrs. Partridge.

They were suggested by the fact that nearly all the best contributions of women to literature have been made during the last hundred years, and simultaneously with this remarkable development of literary activity among women, there has been an equally remarkable activity in spheres of work held to be peculiarly feminine. So far, therefore, from greater freedom and better education encouraging women to neglect womanly work, it has caused them to apply themselves to it more systematically and more successfully. The names of Elizabeth Fry, Mary Carpenter, Sarah Martin, Agnes Jones, Florence Nightingale, and Sister Dora are a proof of this. I believe that we owe their achievements to the same impulse which in another kind of excellence has given us Jane Austen, Charlotte BrontГ«, and Elizabeth Browning.

The sketches were intended chiefly for working women and young people; it was hoped it would be an encouragement to them to be reminded how much good work had been done in various ways by women.

An apology should, perhaps, be offered to the reader for the want of arrangement in the sequence of these sketches. As they appeared month by month, in 1887 and 1888, the incidents of the day sometimes suggested the subject. Thus the papers on Queen Victoria and on Queen Louisa of Prussia were suggested by the celebration of the Jubilee in June 1887, and by the universal grief felt for the death of Queen Louisa’s son and grandson in 1888. As the incidents mentioned in some sketches are sometimes referred to in those that follow, it has been thought best not to alter the sequence in which they originally appeared. The authorities relied on are quoted in each paper.

В В В В MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT.

В В В В London, 1889.

I

ELIZABETH FRY

“Humanity is erroneously considered among the commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place there would be less urgent need than, alas! there is for its daily exercise among us. In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like an ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues.” – John Morley.

The present century is one that is distinguished by the active part women have taken in careers that were previously closed to them. Some people would have us believe that if women write books, paint pictures, and understand science and ancient languages, they will cease to be true women, and cease to care for those womanly occupations and responsibilities that have always been entrusted to them. This is an essentially false and mistaken notion. True cultivation of the understanding makes a sensible woman value at their real high worth all her womanly duties, and so far from making her neglect them, causes her to appreciate them more highly than she would otherwise have done. It has always been held – at least, in Christian countries – that the most womanly of women’s duties are to be found in works of mercy to those who are desolate and miserable. To be thirsty, hungry, naked, sick, or in