JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER
[Illustration: _Swan Electric Engraving Co Ltd_
(_after_) _G. Richmond, A.R.A._
_circa 1852_.]
_All rights reserved_
Josephine E. Butler
_AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR_
EDITED BY
GEORGE W. AND LUCY A. JOHNSON
_With Introduction by_
JAMES STUART, M.A., LL.D.
SECOND IMPRESSION
BRISTOL
J. W. ARROWSMITH, 11 QUAY STREET
LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & COMPANY LIMITED
1909
PREFACE.
It is very difficult worthily to record the history of one of the
noblest women who ever lived, but, having been asked by the Ladies’
National Association for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Vice
to prepare a Memoir of Mrs. Josephine Butler, we have tried to tell her
life story as far as possible in her own words, by means of extracts
from her writings, with just sufficient thread of explanation to hold
them together. The present volume is therefore to a large extent an
autobiography, taken chiefly from her _Recollections of George Butler_,
and from _Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade_; but selections
have also been given from most of her principal publications, so as to
give some idea of her extensive literary work. We have not included any
_private_ letters, as it was her strongly expressed wish that these
should not be published.
Many of the quotations have been abridged, but they have not otherwise
been altered, except in a few cases where dates, etc., have been
corrected. We have however ventured, for the sake of securing a
continuous narrative, occasionally to combine passages taken from
different sources.
As this volume is intended to give an account of Mrs. Butler’s own life
and work, it has not been possible fully to sketch the history of the
movement, with which her name was specially identified, or to allude to
many of those associated with her in that movement, whose labours she
so heartily appreciated, and whose friendship she so greatly valued.
We are much indebted to the editors of _Joséphine E. Butler: Souvenirs
et Pensées_ (Saint-Blaise, Foyer Solidariste, 1908), having in many
cases used the same extracts as are given in that volume. We have also
to thank Mrs. Butler’s representatives and various publishers (Horace
Marshall & Son, Macmillan & Co., and others) for permission to quote
from copyright works.
G. W. J.
L. A. J.
_May 1st, 1909._
CONTENTS
_Page_
INTRODUCTION ix
CHAPTER I.
DILSTON 1
CHAPTER II.
OXFORD 17
CHAPTER III.
CHELTENHAM 44
CHAPTER IV.
LIVERPOOL 56
CHAPTER V.
EDUCATION OF WOMEN 74
CHAPTER VI.
WOMEN’S REVOLT 87
CHAPTER VII.
COLCHESTER ELECTION 98
CHAPTER VIII.
APPEAL TO MAGNA CHARTA 113
CHAPTER IX.
MISSION TO CONTINENT 128
CHAPTER X.
THE FEDERATION 148
CHAPTER XI.
GOVERNMENT BY POLICE 165
CHAPTER XII.
REPEAL 170
CHAPTER XIII.
WINCHESTER 186
CHAPTER XIV.
INDIA 204
CHAPTER XV.
GENEVA 217
CHAPTER XVI.
PROPHETS AND PROPHETESSES 232
CHAPTER XVII.
THE STORM-BELL 244
CHAPTER XVIII.
TWO CONFERENCES 263
CHAPTER XIX.
MEMORIES 274
CHAPTER XX.
THE MORNING COMETH 290
APPENDIX 314
PORTRAITS.
JOSEPHINE BUTLER, _circa_ 1852 _Frontispiece_
GEORGE BUTLER 72
JOSEPHINE BUTLER, _circa_ 1876 144
GEORGE BUTLER 196
JOSEPHINE BUTLER, 1900 290
INTRODUCTION.
Josephine Butler was one of the great people of the world. In
character, in work done, in influence on others, she was among that
few great people who have moulded the course of things. The world is
different because she lived. Like most of the very great people of the
world, she was extremely cosmopolitan. She belongs to all nations and
to all time. The work she did, the people she influenced, prove this.
Her _Voice in the Desert_ has been translated into most languages of
Europe, and has spoken like the voice of a compatriot to the people of
every land. She was a great leader of men and women, and a skilful and
intrepid general of the battles she fought. As an orator she touched
the hearts of her hearers as no one else has done to whom I have
listened. She aimed at a perfectly definite object, but round that
object there gathered in her mind many others, all converging to the
same end. She left behind her wherever she went new thoughts and new
aims and new ideals.
Around her central thought grew up many others, and a host of good
works have been left in many countries as living memorials of her
influence. She thus not only led a great crusade, but she helped to
raise the characters of the individuals engaged in it.
But while I write of her public work, it would be but half the truth
unless I said a word about her personally. She was at home in every
class of society. She was very beautiful, and of a very gracious
presence, and the impression made by first seeing her and hearing her
voice has, I expect, been forgotten by none who ever met her. She was
of a very artistic temperament. She was a good painter, an extremely
good musician. She was a bold rider, and active, though always of a
somewhat weak health. Her industry and application was unbounded. She
was very full of humour, and, while deeply in earnest, had the faculty
of being at times charmingly gay. She dressed with great taste and
simplicity. She, above all things, loved her home and her husband, and
that love was wholly returned.
I have said she was extremely cosmopolitan, and all who have known her
know how true that is. At the same time she was a great lover of her
own country, and particularly of the borderland between England and
Scotland, where she was born, and where she now lies buried in the
churchyard of Kirknewton, where many of her ancestors lie. For she came
of an old Border family; and bravery, and the alertness of battle, and
the power of self-sacrifice, and the indignation against wrong which
characterised her, came to her, perhaps, partly through her descent.
She was a great reader of the Bible, and a humble suppliant before the
throne of God. But, while her own beliefs were clear and definite, she
had no narrowness in her views, and the very names of those who have
been her foremost supporters show how wide her sympathies were, and how
acceptable she was to people of all creeds, as well as of all politics
and of all climes.
She had to endure much, especially in the early stages of her
crusade—the averted glances of former friends, the brutal attacks of
ignorant opponents—but the inspiration of a mighty purpose enabled
her to rise above all that, and to preserve a serenity of mind and of
manner through it all.
And now, what is the sum of it all? It seems to me to be this, that we
must all be glad that she lived. We are each of us individually better,
and the world as a whole is better, because she lived; and the seed
that she has sown can never die.
JAMES STUART.
Josephine E. Butler.
CHAPTER I.
DILSTON.
Josephine Elizabeth Grey was born at Milfield Hill, in the county of
Northumberland, on April 13th, 1828. She was the fourth daughter of
John Grey, and of his wife Hannah Annett. In her _Memoir of John Grey
of Dilston_, she writes thus of her birthplace and family.
It seems to me that any life of my father must include, to some extent,
a history of the county in which he was born, lived and died. He loved
the place of his birth, sweet Glendale. His affections were largely
drawn out to that Border country; not only to the living beings who
peopled it, but to the scenes themselves—the hills, the valleys, and
the rivers. All through his life there will be found evidence of the
heart-yearnings towards them; and these are shared by his children, to
whom there seems no spot on earth like Glendale. This attachment to our
native country is perhaps stronger among us than among some families,
because for so many generations back we were rooted there. Greys
abounded on the Borders; they were keepers often of the Border castles
and towers, living a life not always very peaceful in regard to their
Scottish neighbours.
Glendale is rich in romantic associations: every name in and around
it brings to the mind some incident of war, or lover’s adventure, or
heroic exploit recorded in English ballads, or sung to sweet Scottish
tunes, or woven later into the poems of Sir Walter Scott. It is a very
beautiful range of hills which skirts Glendale to the west; their very
names, Yeavring Bell, Heathpool Bell, Newton Torr, Hetha, Hedgehope,
and Cheviot—were delightful to my father’s ear. Directly in front of
our old home, Milfield Hill, lies the scene of innumerable fights
between Scotch and English, Milfield Plain, and from its windows might
have been seen the famous battle of Humbledon Hill.
Flodden Hill, about a mile north of Milfield Hill, hides beneath its
soil traces of the great battle of 1513: broken pieces of armour of men
and horses were sometimes dug or ploughed up, and brought to the house,
to be treasured up as relics. Many a time did my father recite to his
children every incident of that battle, as he rode or walked with them
over Flodden, sometimes resting at the “King’s Chair,” or by “Sybil’s
Well.” His memory was so good that he could go through almost the whole
of _Marmion_, and other poems relating to that woeful day,
When shivered was fair Scotland’s spear,
And broken was her shield.
His dislike of the Stuarts was great, but he would tell, with a
sorrowful sympathy, how the “flowers of the forest,” the noble youth
of Scotland, “were a’ wede away.”
After the battle of Flodden the Border warfare degenerated into a
system of recriminative plunder, which continued till comparatively
recent times. It is only a few generations back that our Northumbrians
used to watch the fords all night long, with their trained mastiffs, to
prevent the Scotch from carrying away their cattle. At one of the early
meetings of the Highland Society at Kelso, my father said: “There was
a time, and that at no distant period, when, had it been possible for
such animals as we have seen to-day to exist, it would have required
the escort of our honourable Vice-President, Sir John Hope, and his
cavalry in bringing each lot to the show-ground, to secure it against
the chance of being roasted among the heather of the Highlands or
boiled in the pots of Cumberland.”
But the time came for this fair Border country to wake up to new
life. Probably no part of England has undergone so rapid a change
as Northumberland has done in the last eighty or ninety years. The
half-barbarous character which I have been describing clung to the
people long after it had given place to civilisation elsewhere.
The soil and climate were rugged, and resisted for a long time the
first efforts at cultivation; but its inhabitants, rugged too, were
energetic, and the impulse once given, it required not many years to
place Northumberland at the head of agricultural progress.
The part which my father had in bringing about this great change in
Northumberland, and in the progress of agriculture generally, was
not inconsiderable. How great the change must have been, in a short
time, those of us can imagine who have witnessed the rich harvests of
the last twenty years, and the merry harvest-homes on Tweedside and
Tillside. Not less striking, perhaps, was the change brought about
later on the banks of the Tyne. When he migrated thither in 1833,
Tyneside, which is now so richly cultivated, presented in many parts
miles of fox-cover and self-sown plantations of fir and birchwood.
John Grey was born in August, 1785. He was the son of George Grey, of
West Ord, on the banks of the Tweed, and of his wife, Mary Burn. He
himself thus writes of his ancestry, in answer to a question addressed
to him by a friend.
“He [an antiquarian] imagines that he brings the Greys down from Rollo,
whose daughter Arletta was mother of William the Conqueror; but I
think their Norman origin is doubtful. Undoubtedly, however, they were
derived from a long line of warriors, who were Wardens of the East
Marches, Governors of Norham, Morpeth, Wark, and Berwick Castles in
the old Border days, and were also dignified by great achievements in
foreign wars. Sir John Grey, of Heaton, 1356, was valorous in the army
of Henry V, and gained, or had conferred on him, castles in Normandy,
and the title of Tankerville, which is now an offshoot of the old
stock. His figure is given as a knight of great strength and renown,
and he was distinguished by the capacious forehead which is said to
have marked the race through all ages; see the late Charles Earl Grey
for its full development. [The writer was not less remarkable for this
feature than any who bore the name.] A son of Sir John Grey, Governor
of Morpeth Castle 1656, gave offence by a marriage with a buxom
daughter of a farmer, at Angerton. In the records it is shown that he
had an annuity from the family estate at Learmonth. From this offshoot
comes our degenerate tribe!”
My mother’s parents were good people, descended from the poor
but honest families of silk-weavers, driven out of France by the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were in the habit of opening
their hospitable doors to everyone in the form of a religious
teacher, of whatever sect, who happened to pass that way. One of
my mother’s earliest memories was of being lifted upon the knee
of the venerable John Wesley, a man with white silvery hair and a
benevolent countenance, who placed his two hands upon the head of the
golden-haired little girl and pronounced over her a tender and solemn
benediction.
In 1833 John Grey was appointed to take charge of the Greenwich
Hospital estates in his native county, and moved to a new house built
for him at Dilston, in the vale of the Tyne.
Our home at Dilston was a very beautiful one. Its romantic historical
associations, the wild, informal beauty all round its doors, the
bright, large family circle, and the kind and hospitable character of
its master and mistress, made it an attractive place to many friends
and guests. Among our pleasantest visitors there were Swedes, Russians
and French, who came to England on missions of agricultural or other
inquiry, and who sometimes spent weeks with us. It was a house the door
of which stood wide open, as if to welcome all comers, through the
livelong summer day (all the days seem like summer days when looking
back). It was a place where one could glide out of a lower window and
be hidden in a moment, plunging straight among wild wood paths and beds
of fern, or find oneself quickly in some cool concealment, beneath
slender birch trees, or by the dry bed of a mountain stream. It was a
place where the sweet hushing sound of waterfalls, and clear streams
murmuring over shallows, were heard all day and night, though winter
storms turned those sweet sounds into an angry roar.
I have thought that the secret of my father’s consistency lay in
the fact that his opinions had their root very deep in his soul and
affections, that they were indigenous, so to speak, not grafted from
without. God made him a Liberal, and a Liberal in the true sense he
continued to be to the end of his life. In conversation with him on any
public questions, one could not but observe how much such questions
were matters of feeling with him. I believe that his political
principles and public actions were alike the direct fruit of that which
held rule within his soul—I mean his large benevolence, his tender
compassionateness, and his respect for the rights and liberties of
the individual man. His life was a sustained effort for the good of
others, flowing from these affections. He had no grudge against rank
or wealth, no restless desire of change for its own sake, still less
any rude love of demolition; but he could not endure to see oppression
or wrong of any kind inflicted on man, woman, or child. “You cannot
treat men and women exactly as you do one pound bank-notes, to be used
or rejected as you think proper,” he said in a letter to _The Times_,
when that paper was advocating some ill-considered changes, beneficial
to one class, but leaving out of account a residue of humble folk upon
whom they would entail great suffering. In the cause of any maltreated
or neglected creature he was uncompromising to the last, and when
brought into opposition with the perpetrators of any social injustice
he became an enemy to be feared. Some who remembered him in early
manhood have described his commanding presence when he stood forth on
public occasions as the champion of Liberal principles, “unsubdued by
the blandishments of his partisans, and unabashed by the rancour of
his opponents.” There was seldom to be found a flaw in his argument or
a fault in his grammar on those occasions, when “he carried confusion
and dismay into the enemy’s camp.” Yet the force which his hearers
acknowledged lay in his love of truth, his clearness of judgment,
and the known innocency of his life, rather than in rhetoric. The
true key to an occasional bitterness against those whom he thought
wrong-doers lay also in his great sensitiveness to wrong done. There
was no self-satisfaction in his denunciation of evil; the contemplation
of cruelty in any form was intolerable to him. He would speak of the
imposition of social disabilities of any kind, by one class of persons
on another, with kindling eyes and breath which came quickly; but he
always turned away with a sense of relief from the subject of the
evil-doers, or the evil done, to the persons who suffered, whose
position his compassionate instinct would set him at once to the task
of ameliorating. His children remember the large old family Bible,
which he used punctually to bring forth every Sunday afternoon and
peruse for hours, and his appeals to them to listen to the grandeur of
certain favourite passages, which he often read aloud. The Book of the
Prophet Isaiah was a great favourite, and his love for such words as
the following, which he often quoted, was an index of the complexion of
his mind: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands
of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go
free, and that ye break every yoke?”
The Greys were a loving family, but of all the family Josephine’s
life-long favourite was her sister Harriet, afterwards Madame
Meuricoffre. In her she realised the perfect fulfilment of Christina
Rossetti’s lines—
There is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
My sister Harriet and I were a pair, in our family of six daughters
and three sons. We were never separated, except perhaps for a few days
occasionally, until her marriage and departure from her own country for
Naples. We were more, I may venture to say, than many sisters are to
each other; we were one in heart and soul, and one in all our pursuits.
We walked, rode, played, and learned our lessons together. When one
was scolded, both wept; when one was praised, both were pleased. In
looking back to those early days, the characteristics which stand out
the most in my memory are her love of free outdoor life, of nature, and
of animals. It may be said that these are common to most country-born
children, but they were very strongly marked in her.
Among the many good dogs who were personal friends in our family was
one, Pincher, whom she loved much. She was sometimes missing when
lesson hours came round, and would be found in Pincher’s kennel, quite
concealed from view, holding pleasant converse with her dear dog. A
tragic event occurred. Twelve of our father’s sheep were found one
early morning cruelly worried and bleeding to death in the field.
Suspicion fell on Pincher, although there were other dogs of the agents
and farmers about, who were much more probably the criminals; but their
masters preferred to impute the crime to our dog. Pincher was tried,
condemned, and executed, he, poor dog, wagging his tail to the last,
and offering his paw, in sign, my sister said through her tears, of
forgiveness of his murderers. She was heart-broken, and cried herself
to sleep many nights after, her persuasion of the injustice of the
sentence making her sorrow very bitter. Trifling incidents often rest
in the memory when important things are forgotten. I recall, some time
after this, that when we were in the schoolroom, drilled by a strict
governess in close attention to our books, the silence was nevertheless
broken by my sister’s voice asking suddenly, and with a pathetic
earnestness, “Miss M——, had Pincher a soul?” “Silence!” was the reply.
“Attend to your books! No silly questions!” But this same question has
arisen many a time in the hearts of both of us, when we have witnessed
the death of those dear companions, and seen the dumb and almost awful
appeal in their dying eyes, fixed upon those whom they loved with a
love which seemed out of all proportion to the limitations of their
being. The desired solution of the child’s question, “Had Pincher a
soul?” was a momentous one for her; but the child’s heart was then, as
often, little understood.
Her interest in animal life was not restricted to the nobler beasts.
She made collections of creatures as low in the scale as newts and
frogs and other aquatic and amphibious beings, declaring that they
also were worthy of affection. We had our little beds side by side,
and above them there was a shelf on which she arranged these creatures
in rows of pots and jars filled with water. An accident occurred one
night—the shelf gave way and emptied its burden of pots and jars and
water and creatures into our beds. The incident rather damped my ardour
in the pursuit of this branch of natural history, I believe, but not so
with her. I recollect how tenderly she gathered up the newts, frogs,
&c., and replaced them in fresh water, hoping they had got no harm.
We had many pets—ferrets, wild cats from the woods, and owls. Some of
the latter were magnificent people, with their large eyes and look
of profound wisdom worthy of the classic attendant of Pallas Athene.
Ponies also we had. On one of these, a beautiful snow-white pony called
Apple Grey, many of us had our first lessons in riding. My sister’s
ideal at one time of the vocation, which she would choose above others,
was that of a circus girl, and in the hope of possibly realising some
day that ideal, she began early to practise equestrian exercises.
Putting off her shoes, she would leap on to the unsaddled back of Apple
Grey, and standing up, guiding her only by the bridle, would essay to
trot and then to canter round the fields. By perseverance, and after
many falls, she had attained to some degree of excellence in these
gymnastics, when her thoughts were turned in other directions than that
of the vocation of a circus girl.
She wrote some years later of the death of this dear pony: “Poor old
Apple was shot to-day by the side of her grave in the wood. They say
she died in a moment. Papa could not give the order for execution,
but the men took it on themselves, as she could scarcely eat or rise
without help. It was the kindest thing to do. Think of the gallops
and tumbles of our young days, and all her wisdom and all her charms!
Emmy and I have got a large stone slab, on which Surtees the mason has
carved, ‘In memoriam, Apple,’ and I shall beg a young weeping ash from
Beaufront to plant on her grave.
Her right ear, that is filled with dust,
Hears little of the false or just
now, and if she is gone to the happy hunting grounds, so much the
better for her, dear old pet.”
We had our sorrows; clouds sometimes seemed to darken our horizon; and
we would speak together in whispers of some family grief which was not
wholly understood by us, or of certain things in the world which seemed
to us even then to be not as they should be. We had a handsome brother,
John, who used to entertain us in a gentle way with stories of the sea,
which we loved to hear; and who on one occasion returned home with his
pockets filled with young tortoises for us. He died at sea. We were
awed by the grief of our father and mother. We reminded each other of
Mrs. Hemans’ _Graves of a Household_—
He lies where pearls lie deep;
He was the loved of all, yet none
O’er his low bed may weep.
Later our eldest sister married and went out to China. Her letters
from the Far East were read aloud in the family, and our curiosity and
interest were immensely stirred by her descriptions of that country, of
storms at sea, of the customs and ways of the people, of her visit to
the house of a great Mandarin, &c. China seemed then much farther away
than it seems now.
Living in the country, far from any town, and, if I may say so, in the
pre-educational era (for women at least), we had none of the advantages
which girls of the present day have. But we owed much to our dear
mother, who was very firm in requiring from us that whatever we did
should be thoroughly done, and that in taking up any study we should
aim at becoming as perfect as we could in it without external aid.
This was a moral discipline which perhaps compensated in value for the
lack of a great store of knowledge. She would assemble us daily for
the reading aloud of some solid book, and by a kind of examination
following the reading assured herself that we had mastered the subject.
She urged us to aim at excellence, if not perfection, in at least one
thing.
Our father’s connection with great public movements of the day—the
first Reform Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, and
the Free Trade movement—gave us very early an interest in public
questions and in the history of our country.
For two years my sister and I were together at a school in Newcastle.
My sister did not love study, and confessed she “hated lessons.” The
lady at the head of the school regretted this. She was not a good
disciplinarian, and gave us much liberty, which we appreciated, but
she had a large heart and ready sympathy. In spite of the imperfectly
learned lessons, she discerned in my sister some rare gifts—a spark
of genius (a word which would have been strongly deprecated by my
sister as applied to herself); and used furtively to gather up and
preserve (we discovered afterwards) scraps of original writings of my
sister, and copy books full of quaint pen-and-ink drawings. She also
appropriated, and would privately show to friends, a book, a _History
of the Italian Republics_, on the margins of which throughout my sister
had illustrated that history in a most original and humorous manner.
The following extract from one of Josephine Butler’s last letters,
written to friends in Switzerland in 1905, tells how her “travail of
soul” on behalf of oppressed womanhood began at an early age when she
was only seventeen.
My father was a man with a deeply rooted, fiery hatred of all
injustice. The love of justice was a passion with him. Probably I have
inherited from him this passion. My dear mother felt with him, and
seconded all his efforts. When my father spoke to us, his children,
of the great wrong of slavery, I have felt his powerful frame tremble
and his voice would break. You can believe, that at that time sad and
tragical recitals came to us from first sources of the hideous wrong
inflicted on negro men and women. I say women, for I think their lot
was particularly horrible, for they were almost invariably forced to
minister to the worst passions of their masters, or be persecuted and
die. I recollect the story of a negro woman who had four sons, the sons
of her master. The three eldest were sold by the father in childhood
for good prices, and the mother never knew their fate. She had one
left, the youngest, her treasure. Her master, in a fit of passion, one
day shot this boy dead. The mother crawled under a ruined shed of wood,
and with her face to the earth she prayed that she might die. But first
she prayed, for she was a Christian, that she might be able to forgive
her cruel master. The words, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you,” sounded in her heart; and she cried to heaven, “Jesus, help me to
forgive!” And so she died, her poor heart broken. I remember how these
things combined to break my young heart, and how keenly they awakened
my feelings concerning injustice to women through this conspiracy
of greed of gold and lust of the flesh, a conspiracy which has its
counterpart in the white slave owning in Europe.
Something of her struggles at this period is shown in the following
memories, recorded in 1900.
* * * * *
My early home was far from cities, with parents who taught by their
lives what true men and women should be. Few “priests or pastors”
ever came our way. Two miles from our home was the parish church, to
which we trudged dutifully every Sunday, and where an honest man in
the pulpit taught us loyally all that he probably himself knew about
God, but whose words did not even touch the fringe of my soul’s deep
discontent.
It was my lot from my earliest years to be haunted by the problems
which more or less present themselves to every thoughtful mind. Year
after year this haunting became more tyrannous. The world appeared to
me to be out of joint. A strange intuition was given to me whereby
I saw as in a vision, before I had seen any of them with my bodily
eyes, some of the saddest miseries of earth, the injustices, the
inequalities, the cruelties practised by man on man, by man on woman.
For one long year of darkness the trouble of heart and brain urged me
to lay all this at the door of the God, whose name I had learned was
Love. I dreaded Him—I fled from Him—until grace was given me to arise
and wrestle, as Jacob did, with the mysterious Presence, who must
either slay or pronounce deliverance. And then the great questioning
again went up from earth to heaven, “God! Who art Thou? Where art Thou?
Why is it thus with the creatures of Thy hand?” I fought the battle
alone, in deep recesses of the beautiful woods and pine forests around
our home, or on some lonely hillside, among wild thyme and heather,
a silent temple where the only sounds were the plaintive cry of the
curlew, or the hum of a summer bee, or the distant bleating of sheep.
For hours and days and weeks in these retreats I sought the answer to
my soul’s trouble and the solution of its dark questionings. Looking
back, it seems to me the end must have been defeat and death had not
the Saviour imparted to the child wrestler something of the virtue of
His own midnight agony, when in Gethsemane His sweat fell like great
drops of blood to the ground.
It was not a speedy or an easy victory. Later the conflict was renewed,
as there dawned upon me the realities of those earthly miseries which
I had realised only in a measure by intuition; but later still came
the outward and active conflict, with, thanks be to God, the light and
hope and guidance which He never denies to them who seek and ask and
knock, and which become for them as “an anchor of the soul, sure and
steadfast.”
Looking my Liberator in the face, can my friends wonder that I
have taken my place, (I took it long ago)—oh! with what infinite
contentment!—by the side of her, the “woman in the city which was a
sinner,” of whom He, her Liberator and mine, said, as He can also say
of me, “_this woman_ hath not ceased to kiss My feet.”