Friendship is such a precious thing. We choose our friends, not our family and while blood may be thicker than water, relations can sometimes be a trial!

Amelia Opie was one of Elizabeth Fry’s best friends. They met as young women. Amelia was a poet and writer married to the artist, John Opie. They had little money yet led a sociable bohemian lifestyle and were surrounded by creative and talented friends, artists and writers.  

Amelia had married beneath her father’s expectations. Opie’s income, although he was becoming a famous artist, depended on the caprice of fashion so money was short. And times were hard.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, had married Joseph Fry, a merchant and banker and they followed a steadier, anthropological life. It was comfortable for many years but she too came to learn about impecunity,

As a lifelong admirer of Elizabeth, you can imagine my joy when looking through some papers, I found an original letter written in 1838 by Amelia. I was delighted – it might as well have been the Staffordshire Horde I had discovered! Sadly the letter was not written to Elizabeth but to a Dr Bath in Bristol, possibly a relation of the friend whose grandfather’s papers I was shown.  But just to hold a letter written in her hand was a joy and to know that correspondence in this delicate pen would also have arrived in Elizabeth’s mail.

I share this thought about friendship to mark the anniversary in October of Elizabeth Fry’s death in 1845 aged 65. It is an appropriate theme because Elizabeth was, of course, a Quaker, a member of the Religious Society of Friends and Amelia later became one too.