The Collected Letters of Hannah More

Hannah More to Sarah Horne Hole, March 16th 1824

To: Mrs. Hole
Address: Hillenden/ near Uxbridge
Stamped: WRI[NG]TON [partial]
Postmark: E18MR181824 and a second, partial ESTO18MR18182[4]
Seal: Red wax
Watermarks: Fleur de lys design, with JM underneath, and 1822 underneath that.
Endorsements:

H More to Mrs Hole/ March 16. 1824/ on the death of/ her mother F E Horne

MS: Cambridge University Library, Add.8134/K/13
Published: Undetermined

Barley Wood
16 March 1824

My dear Friend

I truly sympathize with you on the affecting loss you have Sustained on the death of my old friend your excellent Mother. Her great /piety/ however and her exemplary life afford a consolation to her surviving Family of the most soothing kind. She had indeed from her early life devoted herself to her God and Saviour I remember /her/ total submission to the divine /will/ upon the greatest bereavement she could sustain in this life. I never can forget your incomparable father, either in his delightful Society at Oxford,[1] or on his dying bed at Bath, which I daily attended, and at the closing Scene took away his mourning widow to our house .[2] She edified us by her patience in sorrow inexpressible. The great age to which her life has been prolonged[3] is a very reconciling circumstance to you in losing her From the former state of her health you could not have calculated on keeping her so long . How timid and delicate she once was!

As for me it has pleased infinite Wisdom to take from me all the companions of my early and middle life, and to leeve [sic] me to finish my journey alone. It is remarkable that I, the youngest but one, and the most unhealthy of my whole family sh[o]uld survive them all. My sufferings have been great, but my mercies have been far greater. It is two years and a half since I have been down stairs, and four Years since I have been in any other house; but tho I still continue liable to frequent attacks of fever, I am on on the whole far more recovered than it was thought I ever could be. I see my friends in the morning and enjoy their Society . At my time of life and with my battered constitution I cannot last long; but I am in the best hands, and I have long prayed to have no will of my own

And is it true that my dear little Sally Horne has three Grandchildren?[4] May God bless them both here and hereafter.

Adieu my dear Mrs. Hole
believe me your affection[ate] [tear]
and sincere friend
H. More

I heard a good Account of dear Mrs. Kenn[i]cott last week from the Bishop of /Durham/ [5] who at past 90 writes as fine a hand as ever[6]

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[1]

It was at the Oxford home of Ann and Benjamin Kennicott that More had first met George Horne, in 1780.

[2]

George Horne died at a house in Queen Square, Bath on 17 January 1792. The More sisters (bar Hannah) had taken a house on Great Pulteney Street in Bath upon their retirement from teaching. It was there that Felicia and Sally Horne were tended to. Felicia Horne later requested that More write an epitaph for her husband, a request More declined. See Smith, The Literary Manuscripts and Letters of Hannah More, p. 28.

[3]

Felicia Horne was baptised in 1741. She would have been some way into her eighties at her death.

[4]

Felicia Hole Welby had three sons by 1824: John Earle (1820-1905); George Earle (1821-1916); and William Earle (1823-1915).

[5]

Shute Barrington (1734-1826), who became Bishop of Durham in 1791. He was a close friend and firm supporter of William Wilberforce. More is incorrect about his age, though: Barrington would not turn ninety until 26 May.

[6]

Barrington and the Kennicotts moved in the same social circles in the 1770s and 1780s, and Benjamin Kennicott followed Barrington as a canon of the fourth prebend at Christ Church, Oxford.

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