Margaret Gatty:

The full text of the original book "Parables from Nature" and the other works by Margaret Gatty are available free to read on the Internet for example at the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/).

These works by Doris read to me as if the writing of the "Introduction to Parables from Nature" inspired the second piece shown below, which is a more extensive discussion of Margaret Gatty, her life and works. Perhaps as starter for a more comprehensive work about Margaret Gatty? Again it is unclear if Doris attempted to have his study published or not, though she clearly circulated this article around her  writing circle - Scribbler, where she wrote under the name of Susan -  for review and to seek further information about Margaret Gatty. Lamenting the problems with trying to obtain a copy of "Recollections of the life of Rev. A.J. Scott, D.D., Lord Nelson's chaplain" (1842).

THE COURAGE THAT BEARS. 

A Preliminary Study for a Life of Mrs Alfred Gatty 

 “For the courage that dares, and the courage that bears, are really one and the same.” “Convalescence." J.H. Ewing 

Should a woman choose marriage over a career? Can she combine motherhood with a profession? These are questions that are thoroughly familiar to us. We see them discussed in the Press, we hear them argued in debate, and we are ready to admire the woman who can make a success of the two careers. It is, perhaps, salutary for us to look back occasionally at the women of an earlier generation, who took motherhood in their stride as a natural process and not as an achievement, and still found time and energy for creative work, for art, music, or writing. Of these women, Mrs, Gatty is an outstanding example. 

Like many another writer, she is remembered today by a single work. Her "Parables from Nature’ have been printed and re-printed in all the well known collections of classics, but of her other works, and particularly of Mrs. Gatty herself, very little is known. Yet her story, simple as it is, is one of quiet heroism, for she was of those who will never let life beat then. 

Born in 1809, she was to lose her mother before she was three, but she, and her elder sister, Horatia, found in their father a kindly, if erratic, teacher. The Rev. Alexander John Scott had been Lord Nelson's chaplain on the ‘Victory’, and had seen his beloved friend and hero die in his arms. His admiration for Nelson is reflected in the name Horatia, which he bestowed on his daughter, and which was repeated again in his grand-children. Mr. Scott was a book lover, if ever there wae one, and the Essex Rectory in which he settled after Nelson's death overflowed with books from cellar to attic. Tho two little daughters read widely and gathered a store of unusual knowledge ~~ snatches of Greek and Hebrew, and an appreciation of the literature of other European nations. Particularly was Margaret attracted by German literature, and her sister made up stories about the wood-cuts in old German volumes long before they could properly read the contents.  Some of these books she took with her into her married life, and they came not only the treasures of her children, but the inspiration for many stories and verses written by her daughter. 

In 1839, Margaret married the Rev Alfred Gatty, who had just been appointed to the parish of Ecclesfield in Yorkshire. It would be interesting to know the circumstances that led to the meeting between the girl in the Essex parsonage, and the young curate on the Yorkshire Moors, but so far it has not been possible to raise the veil, though the fact that Margaret Scott's uncle, the Revs Tilliem Ryder was Vicar of Ecclesfield from 1823 to 1825, and his brother Thomas R. Ryder for the next fourteen years points to some family influence in the bestowal of the living on the young curate. 

“If I were to state in full the incidents which led to my coming to Ecclesffeld as vicar fn 1839”, writes Alfred Gatty (a) with the tantalising reticence which characterises all his references to his family, “they would sound as romantic as those of a sensational novel; but I do not advertise and my domestic life is sacred.”

 (a) A Life at One Living by A. Gatty D.D. (1884) 

He does tell us, however, that he had been for two years in a remote curacy on the Yorkshire moors, where he had never married a couple nor buried a corpse, for the simple reason that there was neither licence to marry nor churchyard in which to bury. His tiny church held barely a hundred, and he himself had to live in Leyburn and walk in every Sunday to Spennithorpe, lunching frugally in his parish clerk's cottage on biscuits brought by himself, an egg taken out of the hen's nest in the clerk's corner cupboard and a glass of water.

 From this tiny curacy, he was moved to the charge of the large parish of Ecclesfields in a growingly important area. It was still mainly rural, piece work for the steel industry being done in the cottages. The file-cutters brought their material out from Sheffield, and carried back the completed work on the backs of donkeys. About this custom, Mr, Gatty tells a story that goes far to prove how little parliamentary commissions alter in a hundred yeare or so. A projected railway was being discussed, and the question arose as to whether the proposed route would pass through the vicar's globe. hMs Gatty was summoned to London, and liberal terms offered for his expenses. He spent several days in town, and when at last called before the committee, he was solemnly asked: “

“As many file-cutters live in your village, how do they get their files to Sheffield?” 

"On donkey," he replied, and was thanked and dismissed. With a certain dry irony, Mr. Getty comments on the affair: ‘The sum of £28 was paid to the vicar for bringing out of Yorkshire this Important piece of information.’ 

So to the wide-spread parish of seventy~ eight square miles, with a population of over eight thousand, the young vicar brought his bride, by stage conch one Autumn afternoon. Ahead of her she saw the old church, and the newly-built, bare looking vicarage. It was a difficult task to which they had come, a rough community of sportsmen and hard drinkers, among whom bull and bear baiting had scarcely died, and where the coroner had been fighting a vigorous campaign against cook mains. 

It was a time of economic unrest, in which trade depression and unemployment led to Chartist riots, with terrible poverty going hand in hand with the wildest speculation. Small wonder that with stories of smashing and burning, of rebellion and revolution coming on every coach, Margaret Gatty formed such a deep conviction of the beauty of law and order, of the essential rightness of obedience and service, a conviction that shows clearly in all her letter writings. The little parable ‘Kicking’ (In the Parables from Nature ) which tells of the colt's fight against authority and final realisation of its wisdom, becomes doubly interesting when read in the light of the troubled times in which the writer's early married years were spent. 

Not only was it a time of unrest socially, but it was also a time when the church was just stirring after a period of sleep. Ecclesfield Church. a grand structure dating back to the fourteenth century, and capable of seating more than a thousand peoples had been neglected for years. The nave was shut off and filled with rubbish the fabric in need of repair and the churchyard overgrown. In the villages, the few schools were incredibly inefficient, the mistress of one group of infants having to sign for her salary with a cross. 

The whole living was, in fact, a challenge to the keen young man who had come to take up the work. He settled down to tackle it, and made it a life's work, while in the big new vicarage Margaret, his wife, made a home and bore four sons and four daughters. 

They made a cheerful party, this crowd of children, coming fast on each other's heels, and of them all, the leader from the first was Juliana, the second daughter. A delicate little person was Julie; who could not go to a party without paying for it with a sick headache, or to a picnic without colds and quinsy, but she came up from each illness with an unaltered conviction that she could do all that the others did, with a fresh courage which was, as she herself later admitted, the direct reflection of the courage of her mothers. For though for her day, Margaret Gatty married late in life, she shouldered the burden of her eight confinements with cheerfulness, She was not a carefree optimist by nature. 

"I am too much your daughter not to be strongly tempted to “beat my future brow", much more so than to be overly hopeful', (b)

writes her daughter Juliana in later years, But Margaret Getty had a firm belief, not only that her life had been planned by an all wise God, but also that work well done was the only real way to happiness. Behind the growing, noisy crowd of boys and girls moved the gentle, fair haired woman, watching over their physical welfare, in itself no small task, with such a series of babies and with a problem like Julie to cope with. Another of her letters gives us some clue to this. 

“So far from being vexed at your being so careful -I  earnestly hope you will never be less so. If you had been, I should have been dead long ago. I have no more doubt than of my present well being. And as it is - taking care is so little in my line - that if you took to ignoring one's delicacy, or fancying it was fancy, I know I should merely, by instinct, hold out to the, last gasp of existence, and do what I could while I could” (c )

Equally, Margaret Gatty watched over their moral welfare, for Ike most women of her generation, she believed in much edification for the young, and her first writings bear witness 

(b) Frederiction. N.B Easter Monday 1896

(c ) “ “ 12th January 1866. 

both from J.Helwings Her Books &  Letters by H. K.F. Eden

to her conviction that every story should have a clearly explained moral. Later, she allowed her sense of humour more play, realising with the wisdom of the more experienced mother,  how much can be learned with a laugh. The fat caterpillars, adventurous spiders and gossiping carrots of the parables bring a smile, and hide their moral with much more skill. For Mrs. Gatty was in her element when she dealt with nature. She loved all living creatures, particularly plants, and this love of nature she shared with her children. As they played and ran in the countryside round the vicarage, giving names to their fields, building ‘bowers" of branches, paddling in streams and gathering wild flowers, they kept their eyes open. Any unusual flower, any strange water weed, was carefully gathered to 'take home to mother.” And how gladly did Margaret Gatty receive them.

 Who can doubt the reference to Hermione's parents in her first book, “The Fairy Godmothers & other Stories” is a portrait of herself and her husband? 

‘There are many pleasanter things to do than to sit in that stupid sort of way’ (grumbles little Hermione when called down to the drawing room to see the visitors) ‘I Like the room when all Papa's papers and books are about, when he is scribbling away so busy, and when|Mamma has got her microscope out looking at seaweeds or curiosities.’

 And strangely -similar is the mother of the children in Darkness and Light, the second story in this book, for we read that 

‘the children caught at the sea-weeds that were scattered on the sands to carry home to their Mamma’, 

Not only did Margaret study her specimens through the microscope, she pressed  copied and tabulated with endless patience. But, Keen as she was for them, she could yet remember to teach her brood an old saying that had come down to her from the past "When you pick wild flowers, leave some for the Naiads and Dryads.” It was a phrase that stuck in their minds .

“Leave some for the Naiads and Dryads", they called to each other as they picked, and the warning had its uses as a curb on greediness of all sorts. Only to Julie, to whom words so easily sang themselves into a rhythm, did it seem to be the burden of a song so that later, when she had blossomed from Julie, and Aunt Judy into Mrs, J.H.  Ewing, the well-known writer, she fitted her own ending to it and made it the chorus of a child's poem. It is a chorus so lilting, and so timeless, that it might well catch the fancy of the child of today as well as the child of a hundred years ago. 

Pluck, children, pluck, 

But leave some for good luck:

Some for the Naiads, 

Some for the Dryads,

And a bit for the Nixies, and the Plxies’

In 1848, Mrs. Gatty had a severe illness and was sent away to the sea for her health. In the milder air of Hastings she gradually improved in health and the quiet days of convalescence gave her an opportunity for wider research in her favourite studies. By a wonderful stroke of luck, her doctor was intensely interested in seaweeds, which, with the help of the microscope, were beginning to be reclassified. He lent her the 'Phycologia Britannica’ and she read it avidly, copying out large portions for her own use. On the seashore she gathered specimens, to he eagerly examined and pressed, her love for accuracy making her tabulate each to the last detail.

 Many of her specimens she sketched with painstaking care, for, though she had loved to draw from hor childhood, and had helped to cultivate a budding artistic talent in Julie; the pencil was always to her rather a means of recording truth than of illustrating fancies. The parable ‘Knowledge not the Limit of Belief’, with its discussion between a Seaweed, a Zoophyte and a bookworm is based on the knowledge that she acquired in those days by the seas, though it was not written until some years later. Her mind was too full of new impressions for her to be able to express them yet, but her conscience would not let her be idle even during convalescence and in her resting times she wrote her first little book. This effort a collection of moral stories for children entitled ‘The Fairy Godmothers and other Stories,’ bears scanty witness to her love of nature. It is to too full of pious reflections to be read by modern children, and each story is but a slight sketch to illuminate a central truth. Its interest for us Lies less in its merit then in the clues it gives us of the author and her family, for it is clear that she looked for material very much in her own circle, 

The seaweed collecting Mammas, referred to before, are very much reflections of herself; there runs through the book the deep religious conviction that was so much a part of her, and, most significant of all, there is laid down in the first story her firmest belief

- that to love one's work, and to give one's very best to it is the true way to happiness.  By means of a human child and a group of fairy godmothers offering gifts she pictures a test for happiness and, having proved the fleeting quality of beauty, riches and pleasure gives the crown to what she calls (perhaps rather unattractively) Love of Employment. 

"You can’t put the meaning into one word, as you can Beauty or Riches” (says the fairy godmother) but “she likes everything she does and she likes always to be doing something.” 

The second story, Joachim the Mimic, which tells of the boy she so copied his schoolmates peculiarities that he found himself eventually unable to imitate the best when he wanted to, is said to be directed at one of her own boys whos gift of mimicry tended at times to be used unkindly, but no clue can be found as to which of the four it was. Possibly in later years, neither the Rev, Reginald Gatty, the respected Vicar of Bradfield, nor Alfred Scott Gatty, the popular musician, would have cared to own to such a childish Weakness, even had either been the culprit rather then the two remaining brothers. (d) 

The third story, "Darkness & Light” tells, Somewhat sombrely, the lesson that the blind may see more than the seeing, but, by a happy twist at the end, returns the blinded boy to sight with the added inner vision that he has learned in affliction. This is typical of Mrs. Gatty who, unique in this respect disliked unhappy endings, deathbeds and unavailing repentance's as much as many of her contemporaries enjoyed them. Here her daughter Juliana, who in Many ways so resembled her, failed to copy her mother's example. Jackanapes - dying of wounds, Leonard, in the “Story of & Short Life” , with his injured back they slip pathetically away, and Mrs Ewing has obviously enjoyed writing about them. But then Mrs Ewing had never borne a child of her own. To the mother of eight there must be more horror than pathos in the subject of a child's death-bed, and one can understand what made Margaret Gatty shrink from it when one remembers how hard her fight had been to keep Juiliana alive. Probably she had still more reason than this, if, as one of Juliana's later letters leads one to suppose, two of her sons died quite young. Here however confirmation is lacking. Though Juliana writes to her husband reporting her mother's death: 

“It is all over, she is with your Father and Mother and the dear Bishop and my two brothers..." 

there are later letters written to her brother Charles, and clear evidence that Reginald, Vicar of Bradfield and Alfred Scott Gatty outlived their mother by many years. 

(d). Unlikely, since evidence seems to point to the two youngest brothers being born after publication of this book

 Possibly the explanation is that a ninth child died at birth or in early infancy, and is therefore not included by the father when he refers, in the introduction to his book to his eight children who were well known to the parishioners.

 On her return to Ecclesfield, Margaret Gatty had her book published and it had a certain small success. But the new hobby which she had brought from Hastings were of more importance than the Fairy Godmothers. During the next few years, she devoted her spare tine (which can have been all to Iittle, with the cares of a house, a still growing family and, a subject rather neglected in this study, the parish.(e) to a close study of seaweeds and zoophytes getting together a fine collections beautifully pressed, mounted and tabulated. 

In this work, she rejoiced to have the friendship of many other naturalists, though some were pen friends only. Among them were Dr. Johnston of Berwick on Tweed, the editor of ‘British Zoophytes ' (to whom she later dedicated her Parables) and Dr Harvey author of the book that had been such a discovery to her, the ‘Phycologia Britannica’.

Though with Dr Johnston her chief point of contact was their common nature study, she also took an intense interest in all he could tell her of the advances of science in his own profession. She rejoiced with him at the introduction of chloroform, and had little patience with the opponents of its use. Those were of two classes, those who doubted its efficacy , and clung to old, known methods, and those who fought it on religious grounds as Interfering with the decrees of Providence. To Margaret Gatty, with her keen mind ever 

e) But Parish demands were many and varied, e.g  such a casual reference as ‘One day, when my wife and myself were busy in the village, for the epidemic (of cholera!) ‘was at its height.‘ A Life at One Living. A.Gatty.

ready to search out truth, it was incredible that the doctors themselves should be so sceptical, and as loth to test this new discovery, but for the pious layman who fought in in the name of the Lord she had a real horror, All creatures were so lovable to her, she saw under her microscope the ever-recurring evidence of a beauty of plan and design that filled her with reverence she saw a little of the urge to completeness that animated all nature, and to her it was heresy to suggest that the All-wise Craftsman preferred suffering, and would forbid alleviation by this new method. 

Firmly she tackled tho village doctor, making him read letters from Dr. Johnston telling of what had been done in Scotland, discussing and arguing with him till she won a reluctant agreement that chloroform might at times be desirable. This was one step gained, and she next begged Dr. Johnston to send clear instructions for its use so that her doctor should be adequately coached. But though she had at last won over tho doctor, the village firmly opposed, as villages have doubted and opposed the new fangled idea since the beginning of civilisation. Clearly Margaret saw that but one way would convince the men ,(and particularly the women) that this was God's gift to the suffering. With no one to support her action but her husband, she took chloroform from the doctor herself, and to the amazement of villagers, survived to prove her case.

In a day when gas for an aching tooth, and a whiff of anaesthetic for a minor operation are taken for granted, it is not easy to assess at its full worth an act of quiet bravery like this, but we can see in it not only proof of Margaret Gatty’s courage but also her passion for scientific truth. 

In 1835, the first volume of ‘Parables from Nature' was published, with illustrations by Mrs, Gatty herself, and it was at once a success. It cut right away from the story packed with moral reflections which had been the style of her first book, and put the moralising, if such there had to be, into the mouths of bees and earwigs of turnips and carrots. Children loved the stories, though their philosophy is adult. Here again is the author's creed of the Joy of service, the happiness of work, the wisdom of law, order and authority -- not only an adult philosophy, but the philosophy of a very- mature mind.

 l During the years that followed, further series of Parables were published, making five in all, but it was not till after her death that they were gathered into one volume and illustrated by such famous men as Holman Hunt, Burne Jones and Tenniel.

Now began Mrs Gatty's really prolific years. Not only did she produce more stories for children, of which - Aunt Judy's Tales (which in a thin disguise pictured her own family) was easily the favourite, but little collections of proverbs, of emblems, of verse, often with her own sketches, flowed from her pen. Yet still her nature study went on and the result of four years’ research was summed up in 1862, by a volume entitled British seaweeds, containing nearly four hundred illustrations with detailed descriptions. It was intended to help the amateur collector, and contained a helpful section on preserving and arranging seaweeds. In the introduction, she again reveals her creed in these significant words:

 "Even the happy people of whom the strange phrase is used that 'money is no object to them’ cannot command fate altogether, They are mortal in respect of their minds, and cannot, with all appliances, get away from the inexorable law that rules that whoever would find the world interesting must work out an interest in it for himself"

 Mrs. Gatty was now fifty-three. She had borne eight children, lived a life of strenuous activity, and had had a really serious Illness which had left seeds of trouble behind it. Try as she would to pretend that her health was as good as ever, it was clear that it was beginning to fail. That she should give in to weakness was laughable to her, and when, in 1866, it was suggested that she should become editor of a monthly magazine for children, called, after her popular book, "Aunt Judy's Magazines” she accepted the post, regardless of the fact that already she was tackling as much as her health would stand. (Aunt, Judy's Magazine soon won a circle of enthusiastic readers, but the story of its career, and its later association with the original of Aunt Judy, Juliana Ewing, who had by then outdistanced her mother as a writer for children, must be the subject of another study. We are concerned now only with - its heroic editor, who with her family now growing up and leaving home, threw her whole energies into her literary work, in spite of increasing handicap. 

The weakness which she had tried to ignore became all too real, end her right arm passed from the aching stage, which she had explained away as ‘writer's cramp’, and later as neuralgia, to a condition of complete uselessness. Before it was quite helpless, she had taught herself to write with her left hand instead, but soon found that this too was losing its power.

 Juliana, who, with her husbands Major Ewing had been for some years stationed abroad, was now back in England and it was she, bound to her mother by their writing gift which they shared, who came to Margaret Gatty’s help at this time. At her mother's side she took down from dictation the literary and scientific work which Mrs. Gatty could not bear to relinquish, and tackled the editorship of the magazine for her. 

Gradually tho disease spread, affecting all the limbs and causing intense pain, until at last complete paralysis prevailed. The woman who had set Love of employment above all gifts lay there unable to move, with only her brain working as keenly as ever. It was a tragic ending to a busy life, but for Mrs. Gatty, though she often prayed for patience, there was no rebellion. She had stated so clearly in the Parables 

"Animals under men… men under authority, all under God. In obedience of will is the only true peace” 

and she lived out this belief to the end, 

On October 4th 1873, she paused quietly away, and throughout the country children felt her going as a personal loss. A suggestion in Aunt Judys Magazine that readers who loved her might like to subscribe to a  memorial brought an immediate responses and today there is on the wall of Ecclesfield Church a little tablet, bearing this inscription 

‘In memory of Margaret Gatty, wife of the Rev. Alfred Gatty, D.D. Vicar of Ecclesfield, who died the 4th day of October. 1873. This tablet is erected by more than a thousand children, as token of love and gratitude for the many books she wrote for them. * 

Though a beautiful window, which they named the ‘Parable Window’ was later erected in the church to her memory by a group of her friends, she must, one imagines, have wanted no greater memorial, what greater can there be? than to have won the love of over a thousand children. 

SUSAN. 

FootNote. SUSAN would be immensely grateful to any Scribbler who is in possession of information which fills some of the more obvious gaps, and who will pass 1i on. Also for loan of a copy of 'Recollections of the Reverend Scott (1842) by A. & M.Gatty, which has so far proved unobtainable