Frances Ridley Havergalaus romantic

Frances Ridley Havergal (* 14 December 1836 in Astley, Worcestershire, England; † 3 June 1879 in Caswell Bay, Wales) was an English Christian poet and composer.

Life

Frances Ridley Havergal (her middle name is a reverence to the martyr Nicholas Ridley) was the sixth and youngest child of the Anglican clergyman William Henry Havergal, who was also a poet and composer (he wrote about 100 hymns). In 1842 he was transferred from Astley to Worcester, where his wife Jane died in July 1848.

Frances Havergal proved to be highly gifted at an early age. She could read at the age of three, read the Bible at four, and began writing her own poetry at seven. By the time she entered public school in 1850, she had already learned six foreign languages. In February 1851, under the influence of her teacher Caroline Ann Cooke – who married Frances’ father five months later – she experienced a conversion.

From 1852 to December 1853, the Havergal family stayed in Düsseldorf, where her father, who had been severely visually impaired for years, consulted a specialist in eye diseases. Frances attended the Düsseldorf Luisenschule during this time and took private lessons with a pastor in Oberkassel. In 1860 the family moved to Shareshill near Wolverhampton, and in 1867 to Leamington Spa.

After completing her schooling, Frances Havergal devoted herself to private theological, linguistic and musical studies and worked for a time as a governess; above all, however, she wrote poetry and composed. Verses by her were first printed in a magazine in 1860. During a second stay in Germany in 1865/66, she presented some songs to Ferdinand Hiller in Cologne for review. Hiller found very appreciative words about them, especially about her harmonies, but advised further studies, e.g. with George Alexander Macfarren. Since Frances Havergal considered this composer second-rate, she did not follow Hiller’s advice, but obtained a harmonic textbook recommended by him and studied it intensively. In 1869 her first book of poems, The Ministry of Song, was published. Because of her beautiful singing voice, she also became a soloist with the Kidderminster Philharmonic Society in the 1860s.

In the 1870s Frances Havergal experienced several personal crises which inspired her to write some of her best-known songs. In April 1870, her father died; in early 1874, her American publisher went bankrupt; in the autumn of the same year, she herself became seriously ill with typhoid fever; in 1876, the manuscript of a song anthology she had been working on for months was destroyed in a fire, along with the stereotype records. When her stepmother also died in May 1878, Frances Havergal moved to Wales with her (also unmarried) sister Maria. Here she succumbed to peritonitis in 1879 at the age of 42. Her favourite verse 1 John 1:7 (“The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin”) was engraved on her gravestone.
Source Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Ridley_Havergal