Devotion, Desire and
Heart: Frances Ridley Havergal - Gower Journal volume 48 (1997)
Born just
before Queen Victoria came to the throne, Frances was the
youngest of six children of the Rector of Astley in Worcestershire. She was proud to be linked through her middle
name with the former Bishop of London, Nicholas Ridley, martyred at Oxford in 1555 along with
Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Worcester. Each
morning her elder sister would teach Frances reading and spelling for
half an hour, and each afternoon twenty to thirty stitches of patchwork, as
well as giving her a short Biblical text to learn. Of a fair complexion with light curling hair,
Frances was often engrossed in books - from the age of four she had learned to
write, and could read from the Bible.
She would join in the Sunday evening hymn singing, and by the age of
seven was writing verses herself.
Although her
parents were Christians, and both her brothers sought ordination, Frances
realised that more than family connections was needed. When aged nine she longed for God to make her
a Christian before that summer, so that she could really enjoy the beauty of
nature, for she knew that she was "a naughty child". When reading in a William Cowper poem the
phrase ‘my Father made them all’ she realised she could say ‘God made
them all’, but not ‘my Father’.
She thought she might become converted by praying very hard, but had no
clear idea at that time of believing on Christ Jesus.
When aged eleven
she experienced 'what must be childhood's greatest grief' - the death of her
mother. Two years later she began
praying for faith, having no doubt of her own unrighteous condition, and,
during a visit to Oakhampton, spoke with her future step-mother of spiritual
matters, and was able to commit her soul to Christ Jesus.
She summed this up in a later hymn in the words:
I am trusting Thee, Lord
Jesus,
Trusting only Thee,
Trusting Thee for full
salvation,
Great and free.
Frances thrived
on academic study at the Belmont Christian boarding school - where the girls
conversed in French!
She was a fine
linguist, starting to learn Welsh from a donkey-girl during a visit in
Colwyn Bay,
and subsequently obtaining a Welsh New Testament and prayer book, and later
becoming fluent in German.
In November
1852 she accompanied her parents to
Germany so that her father (having
incipient cataracts) could consult an oculist.
At school in
Dusseldorf
she found German easy enough, and especially enjoyed the music and drawing
classes.
Munster cathedral was enchanting, but she
commented that 'Popery knows well how to lull and deceive, knows well how to
entrap the senses and feelings, and nothing can be better suited to the natural
heart than such a religion'.
She did
very well at school in
Germany,
coming first in the class, and stood firm in her faith as the only apparent
believer there.
Finishing
school, she was aware of her responsibility, commenting that 'in a measure
one's whole life ... must be greatly influenced by...the first year after
leaving school'.
Her regime was a salutary example of 'redeeming the
time': staying at Obercassel in 1853 she used to get up at 5am, have breakfast
at 7am, and then study for four hours, devoting one hour to French literature;
but she also enjoyed such physical activities as rowing on the Rhine. During a later stay in Harlech she climbed
Snowdon, and found the ascent very easy after mountains in Germany and Switzerland!
She thought
much about confirmation, writing when it was still two years away: 'It seems
such a solemn vow ... one of my most constant prayers, if I am spared to be
confirmed, (is).. that I may never act as if I had not been (confirmed).' How different from some of us who may have
approached such an occasion as a mere duty!
Frances
felt the reality of God's blessing when confirmed at Worcester Cathedral on 17
July 1854, aged seventeen, and subsequently renewed her confirmation vows on
each anniversary of that occasion. She
worked at memorising complete books of Scripture - the gospels, epistles,
Revelation, Isaiah. Her father had
helped her acquire enough Greek to study the New Testament, and that summer she
studied Hebrew.
Illness in
the form of erysipelas had at times curtailed her schooling, and she always
found the enforced rest from any 'head study' most trying. Her health was in a critical state when she
was twenty, and she commented 'It is very strange to think that I was in real
danger, the erysipelas having gone to my head; it seems like a new life given
me, and I do hope that He who has restored it will give me grace to use it for
Him.'
During a
visit to Germany the following year she returned to their lodgings one day, and
sat down to rest by a print of Durer's painting of the crucified Christ, with
the words 'All this I did for thee: what hast thou done for Me?' This painting, in the gallery in Dusseldorf, had led to
the conversion of Count Zinzendorf, founder of the Moravians. Frances was inspired to write some
verses, but after reading them over felt dissatisfied, and threw them into the
fire: however they fell out unmarked.
Some months later she showed the verses to her father, who wrote the
tune 'Baca' for what became her most popular hymn during her lifetime, usually
rendered 'Thy Life was given for me'.
This hymn is currently in such collections as 'Christian Hymns' and
'Hymns Ancient and Modern'.
At her
eldest sister's home in Oakhampton Frances taught her nieces Evelyn
and Constance, also joining them in swimming and riding, until they went away
to school. During this time she sang
with the Philharmonic Society in Kidderminster. Later she was greatly grieved by the news of
Evelyn's death, though she had been able to lead her niece into a relationship
with Christ Jesus.
With the
increasing influence of the Oxford Movement on some Anglican services, she
wrote to a friend about the differences between Evangelical doctrine, which her
father and she held, and the 'High
Church' position. Evangelicals stressed the supremacy of Christ
and His atonement, believed that conversion (sudden or gradual) was an absolute
necessity, taught that good works followed justification, rather than being the
means of it (which came only through faith in Christ), and felt that outward
forms and ceremonies had no merit or virtue in themselves. The 'High Church' position seemed to stress
the role of the Church rather than Christ's atonement, teach that regenerating
grace was given in baptism (so one should beware of 'falling from grace'), and
suggest there was implicit virtue in the performance of rites. Frances
felt that the High
Church position had more
devoutness than devotion, more a feeling of duty than of desire,
and it worked on the intellect and imagination rather than on the heart.
A visit to London enabled her to
worship at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in Southwark, whose minister,
C.H.Spurgeon, was the leading nonconformist preacher of his generation. Frances wrote: 'I heard Spurgeon on
Sunday morning. Magnificent! I
don't recollect hearing anything finer.... That 'Tabernacle' is certainly one
of the most remarkable sights in the world - the end of the season and London
half empty, but it was thronged, and always is, twice every Sunday; and
more than half are men, and intellectual looking ones too.' Although the building could hold five
thousand, persons had to come early to be sure of admittance.
After the
death of her father, who had composed chants and sacred songs, Frances
prepared Havergal's Psalmody for the
press. She said 'Writing is like praying
with me, for I never seem to write even
a verse by myself, and feel like a child writing; you know a child would look
up at every sentence and say 'What shall I say next?' That is just what I do; I ask that at every
line He would give me not merely thoughts and power, but also every word, even
the very rhymes. Very often I have a
most distinct and happy consciousness of direct answers' (one of her own hymns
is 'Master speak, Thy servant heareth' - she certainly recognised His
voice). After hearing one of her tunes
sung in church it struck her 'what a privilege it is even to have contributed a
bit of music for His direct praise.'
She would be
approached by all sorts of people with problems, and wrote 'I actually dread a
visit to a large household; for each one separately, as a rule, seems to
imagine they must pour out all their difficulties and feelings to me in
private, often down to the very servants; and though I am thankful for the
opportunities this gives, you cannot think what a strain it often becomes upon
heart and nerves. I hope not many are
the repositories of as many sad secrets, spiritual and temporal, as I am.'
Although
intellectually she enjoyed reading Shakespeare, she was saddened that 'there is
so much that is entirely of the earth earthy, amid all the marvellous genius
and even the sparkles of the highest truth which flash here and there, so much
that jars upon one's spirit, so much that is downward instead of upward.'
Frances was not
immune to life's frustrations, and experienced on a smaller scale a catastrophe
similar to Thomas Carlyle's loss of the first draft of his 'History of the
French Revolution' (the manuscript was loaned to a friend, whose servant
mistakenly burned it). Sheets of
manuscript music which she had prepared for the press (for the Appendix to
'Songs of Glory') were destroyed at a fire in the printer's. On that occasion she had kept no copy, not
even a list of the tunes, and it meant another six months of hard work before
she was able to turn to writing the book that she had envisioned. Her comment was 'Thy way, not mine, O
Lord'.
After
receiving a booklet 'All for Jesus', she consecrated herself fully to God,
commenting that there had to be full surrender before there could be full
blessedness, and regarded that time, Advent 1873, as a milestone in her
life. Some months later she stayed at a
house in Worcester where there were twelve people, some unconverted, but all
having received much prayer. During her
five-day stay, each one experienced God's blessing, and on the last night Frances, too
happy to sleep, wrote the couplets of the hymn 'Take my life and let it
be'. She had strong opinions about the
most suitable tune for this, as when writing to the compiler of Songs of
Peace and Joy: 'I cannot possibly
sanction ... the setting of my Consecration hymn, 'Take my life', to that
wearisomely hackneyed Kyrie of Mozart ... I particularly wish that hymn kept to
my dear father's sweet little tune 'Patmos', which suits it perfectly.' But it is the Mozart tune that is more
prevalent for that hymn today. She
worked on a book of verses and practical thoughts for children, for morning and
evening use, feeling that there were several such available for adults but none
at that time for younger persons.
To her
correspondents she might endeavour tactfully to correct any failings, as when
writing:
Would you like any one to retail,
and dwell upon, little incidents which made you appear weak, tiresome,
capricious, foolish? Yet, dear,
everything which we say of another which we would not like them to say of us is
transgression of this distinct command of our dear Lord's... Do not think I am condemning you without
seeing my own failures. It is just
because it is a special battle-field of my own that I am the more pained
and quick to feel it when others, who love Jesus, yield to the temptation or do
not see it to be temptation.
About clothing
she commented:
I must dress both as a lady and a
Christian. I do not consider myself at
liberty to spend on dress that which might be spared for God's work, but it
costs no more to have a thing well and prettily made, and I should only feel
justified in getting a costly dress if it would last proportionately longer.
After the
death of her stepmother in May 1878 the Leamington
home was sold. Ornaments and jewellery
were packed up and sent to Church Missionary House for sale. She wrote 'I had no idea I had such a
jeweller's shop, nearly fifty articles being packed off. I never packed a box with such pleasure.'
Frances had visited the Mumbles area during a
previous stay in Swansea, and in October she
joined her sister Maria in lodgings in the hamlet of Newton, at a house then called 'Park
Villa'. She wrote on 23 October 1878,
'We have been most graciously guided here .. for God has not only supplied our
need and our notions in a most wonderful way in the details of our little
lodgings and their surroundings. We came
the beginning of October, and consider it 'home' till next June, and so far as
we see at present, this arrangement is likely to last our lives! for I do not
see how anything could suit us better.'
Her mention of it being home 'till next June' would turn out to be
prophetic. Maria wrote that her
sister:
Enjoyed walks and scrambles on the
cliffs, at low tide springing lightly over boulders to beds of seaweeds, and
rocky pools bright with sea anemones.
Watching the vessels with all sails up entering the harbour made her
think of 'the abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom'. She studied the Nautical Almanac, and at the
top of Mumbles Lighthouse listened attentively to all the lighthouse keeper
told her.
In
her study was her favourite chair from Astley Rectory, her American typewriter
with Hebrew Bible, Greek New Testament and lexicons at hand. At her study table she would be reading her
Bible by 7am in summer, and by 8am in winter.
Her harp-piano was on a stand nearby.
Her sofa faced the west window, looking out over Caswell Bay
and the rocks, and from there she enjoyed the sunsets. She preferred early visiting and early study
to late nights and frittering late talks.
'I don't think I ever felt more thankful and glad for anything than on
reaching this quiet little nest. Our
present abode suits us so perfectly in all manner of little ways.
Frances was
accustomed to huge postal demands - during the first half of 1872 she had
received six hundred letters (by comparison novelist Catherine Cookson received
about five hundred letters over a similar period in 1972): now correspondence
poured in to 'Park Villa'. Frances wrote
that she had 'fifteen to twenty letters to write each morning, proofs to
correct, editors waiting for articles, poems and music I cannot touch, American
publishers clamouring for poems or any manuscripts, four Bible readings or
classes weekly, many anxious ones waiting for help, a mission week coming. And my dear doctor says my physique is too
weak to balance the nerves and brain, and that I ought not to touch a pen!'
She was
opposed to any Sunday post, and saddened that many Christians did not consider
that an issue worth endorsing. 'I was
delighted in another house to see a notice on the post box in the hall, with
the post times, and "No delivery or despatch on Sundays." No manner of work must include postal
delivery, and it is not right to ignore God's commands.' How grieved she would have been at the
secularisation of Sundays nowadays!
As there was
then no church building in Newton, the schoolroom was used for Anglican
services, while on many occasions Frances played the organ and was involved
with the children's work at nearby Paraclete,
one of six chapels in peninsular Gower erected by Diana, Lady Barham, in the
early nineteenth century.
In April
1879 Frances took a Y.W.C.A.
meeting at Swansea,
singing 'Precious Saviour, I live only for Thee' to her tune 'Hermas'. Afterwards she gave each person a copy of her
hymn 'Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee', with a blank
space where any might sign their name in allegiance to Christ.
Visitors to
'Park Villa' were both the humble and the famous. With the Vicar's agreement Frances invited
several nearby cottagers to a Bible reading at the house, and the month before
her death she had a visit from the American musician Ira D. Sankey (who had
accompanied Dwight L. Moody on his evangelistic tours), together with his
wife. Correspondents included the blind
American hymn writer Frances van Alstyne (née Fanny Crosby), authoress of such
hymns as 'To God be the glory' and 'Blessed Assurance'.
Frances
radiated the love of her Saviour, and was a most attractive personality. She received a number of proposals of
marriage - at least one during her short stay in Newton - all of which she declined.
Her health was always precarious, and after a succession of feverish
chills in late May she awoke in the night with stabbing abdominal pains. The doctor was summoned from Swansea,
as their own doctor had toothache, and Frances was unwilling to call him
out at night. After two days of pain
there was a brief relapse on Whitsunday - which disappointed Frances, who was
ready to go 'home'. Plans for a two
month visit to Irish Society Mission stations the following week (staying with
the Bishop of Cashel) had to be cancelled.
On Wednesday 3 June she died of peritonitis at about 1am.
Early in the
morning a week later the vicar of Swansea
addressed many villagers on the lawn outside 'Park Villa', before her coffin
began the journey to the family tomb in Astley, Worcestershire, within sight of
the Rectory where she was born. The
inscription states 'By her writings in prose and verse, she being dead yet
speaketh', and the verse 'The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from
all sin' (1 John 1v7) is quoted. Her
dying wish was that, if space permitted, that verse might be on her tomb.
In 1864 she
had written: 'If I had my choice, I should like to be a 'Christian Poetess',
but I do not feel I have ability enough ever to turn this line to much
account. I feel as if music were a
stronger talent.' Whether she would have
revised that opinion during the subsequent fifteen years of her life we do not
know, but when in 1937 a memorial plaque was unveiled, outside the house (by
then re-named 'Havergal'*), where she had died, it described her as a
'Christian Poetess and Hymnwriter'.
Her hymns
may not be so frequently sung these days, but their sentiments continue to
challenge each of us into a deeper relationship with her Lord:
O
let my life be given,
My
years for Thee be spent,
World-fetters
all be riven,
And
joy with suffering blent:
Thou
gav'st Thyself for me
I
give myself to Thee.
* in 1930-31 the house was
already named ‘Havergal’.
Paraclete chapel in Newton was built in 1818,
the fourth of six chapels in peninsular Gower erected by Diana Middleton, Lady Barham.
The others are Bethesda in Burry Green and Trinity in Cheriton (both belong to
the Presbyterian Church in Wales, originally known as the Calvinistic
Methodists), the original Bethel in Penclawdd (now a much enlarged Welsh
Independent chapel), Immanuel in Pilton Green (now a private house), and Mount Pisgah
in Parkmill (now part of the United Reformed Church).
The
name Paraclete occurs five times in
the Bible – four times in John's gospel when referring to the Holy Spirit – in
the New International Version translated as the Counsellor. In John 14v16 Jesus promises the disciples "I will
ask the Father and he will give you the Counsellor to be with you – the Spirit
of Truth". See also John 14v26, 15v26 and 16v7.
The
fifth instance is in 1 John 2v1 "We have an Advocate (or 'one who speaks to the Father in our defence') – Jesus
Christ the righteous." The word translated Advocate is the same word Paraclete,
from the Greek Parakletos. So
the chapel is named after both Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
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