Mrs. Gardiner

John Newton often exchanged letters with a Mrs. Gardiner. In a letter he wrote to a Mrs. Dawson he says the following about Mrs. Gardiner:

"My friend Mrs. Gardiner has been confined to her drawing-room and chamber for these five years. For so long a time she has not been able to set foot down a single stair, nor does she ever expect it. Yet I think a more lively, cheerful, exemplary Christian than she is, is scarcely to be found in London. And since it is the will of God to confine her, she seems to have no more desire to go out of the door than out of the chamber window." (Written in 1788; Mrs. Gardiner died in 1795.)