A virtue worth stitching
The other week I inspired one reader, Rebecca, with my cross-stitch post, and she put up a cross-stitch verse from the home of Thomas Hardy in Dorset. So, I thought I would share the verse from a cross-stitch hanging on the wall of Haworth Parsonage in England, stitched by Elizabeth Bramwell in the 1790's. Unfortunately I don't have a photo because you couldn't take flash-photography in the house.
You might find that the verse sounds like something rather quaint and homely, written and stitched by a woman of little intelligence or imagination, but keep in mind that this is the woman who raised Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë (and three other siblings) after the death of their mother - three girls whose novels still stand as classics of the English language, which don't look like being surpassed any time soon. You'd have difficulty finding another home, before or since, in which so much female creativity, passion and intelligence flourished. (I don't know why I felt compelled to write that - but I feel the need to defend the art of cross-stitch - I know the craft-haters are out there! :) ) Yet this is something Elizabeth Bramwell taught them.
(I tried to design my own cross-stitch of this little verse on graph paper (cross-stitchers were the graphic designers of yester year believe me - choosing fonts, layout, colours etc) but I don't like the colours any more so it's unfinished somewhere.)
CHARITY decent easy
Modest kind
Softens the high and
Rears the abject mind
Not soon provoked
She easily forgives
And much she suffers
As she much believes
Soft peace she brings
Wherever she arrives
She builds our quiet
As she forms our lives
Lays the rough paths
Of peevish nature even
And opens in each heart
A little heaven.
Elizabeth Bramwell, October 11th 1790