Quaker cheer
The cold winds of ‘the Little Ice Age’ will be blowing through the open door of Henley Meeting House on the afternoon of Saturday 14 September. They will do so to celebrate a man whose whole life was afflicted by some of the coldest weather Britain has ever experienced.
The seventeenth century was notable for its cold weather and George Fox (1624-91) and the early Quakers could not escape it. The ‘Frost Fairs’ on the Thames attest to its severity, and passages in Fox’s Journal, when read alongside other diaries more willing to describe the weather, indicate the many privations of a man so often incarcerated in draughty gaols, travelling the length and breadth of the land both on horseback and on foot in rain and snow.
At our exhibition, some of it edible, we aim to contrast the experience of Fox with the plight of today’s Quakers in an age of global warming.
We will raise our cups of mid-seventeenth century tipple – tea, coffee or drinking chocolate – to wash down ginger cake and toast the man who taught us to walk cheerfully over the world whatever the weather.
Mike Macleod
Children's patchwork
I was saddened – even appalled – at the letter in which it was reported in the latest Friend (30 August) that the patchwork hanging made to commemorate George Fox’s birthday by the children at Yearly Meeting was not allowed to be displayed at Friends House.
Could it be shown in Kendal alongside the Quaker Tapestries? I’m sure that Anne Wynn-Wilson, the instigator of those wonderful panels, would want to encourage the children in taking up needles and thread!
Helen Keating
