SORROW AND SYMPATHY.
Unwilling to be separated from me, Clara proposed in 1882 that she and her
two children should spend the summer in New England. Her Uncle William had
placed his furnished house at our disposal; so Mr. Merrick and I had the
novel experience of housekeeping in the land of the Pilgrims. We had the
social pleasure of entertaining most interesting people, among them Miss
Lucretia Noble, the author of “A Reverend Idol.”
After this visit Clara wrote a critique of this much-talked-of book,
published in the _New Orleans Times-Democrat_, in which these words occur:
“Miss Noble reminds one forcibly of that charming woman--Genevieve Ward.
The identity of the ‘Idol’ is supposed to be established in the character
of the worshiped and worshipful Phillips Brooks.” Clara had at times been
a newspaper contributor, and often said a timely word for “the Cause that
needed assistance.” She had addressed an open letter, just before leaving
the city, to Mr. Paul Tulane, the philanthropist whose monument is Tulane
University, urging vainly that this great institution should be
co-educational in its scope. It was said of her that while her intellect
and style were exquisitely womanly they possessed firm rationality and
searching analytical qualities.
Rev. W. F. Warren, D. D., president of Boston University, came also with
his most attractive family to Wilbraham. The friendship and love of his
wife, Harriet Cornelia Merrick, proved a source of great comfort in that
season of sorrow, and a true satisfaction as long as she lived. Her
vigorous, wholesome, sympathetic nature was one on which everybody was
willing to ease off their own burdens. Her intellectual abilities ranked
high, for she had acquired the culture of seven years spent in Europe. She
was widely known for twenty-four years, as the editor of the _Heathen
Woman’s Friend_--the organ of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of
the Methodist Episcopal Church. She was an artist in music and a master of
the French, German and Italian languages. A friend in Germany said: “Her
German is perfect. She is never taken for an American; for does she not
possess all the virtues of a German housewife? Does she not dearly love to
fill her chest with fine linen, and take the best care of her household?
And then she cultivates her flowers, makes fine embroideries, and last is
a good knitter. She cannot be an American lady!” Yet she was a model
mother after the American ideal; besides being a trustee of the New
England Conservatory of Music, and a leading officer of numerous other
boards. She had a breezy fashion of conversation, a fascinating smile, a
cheery word, a fun-sparkling eye and bright hair waving prettily from a
broad brow. When I confided to her the fact of my daughter’s threatened
life by a latent disease, she gave such heartful sympathy that I have
never ceased to be grateful, and shed many tears when she too was called
away.
I needed a close friend this sad summer, for though my daughter was not in
usual health when we left home, none knew of the presence of a fatal
malady. After a physician from Springfield had told us that she might
survive a year in a warmer climate, it was difficult to keep strong enough
to show her a cheerful face; but the medical orders were that Clara should
not be informed of her own danger if we expected to take her home alive. I
telegraphed for Mr. Guthrie. When he arrived and saw her looking as usual,
sitting by an open window, bright, and beautifully dressed, he sent an
immediate message to New Orleans allaying anxiety. But it was soon evident
that she had entered upon the beginning of the end. She drove out every
day and did not suffer: and we found her serenely conscious of her own
condition. She said: “It is all right, if I die. I have been as happy as
opportunities, and kindness, and attentions, and love can make a human
being. It is beautiful to die here in Wilbraham where every one is so
kind.” Every day she was bright and cheerful, and looked her own sweet
self. One day her father assisted her into the carriage, and I knew it was
for her a last drive. Though almost prostrated with grief, I was able to
welcome her cheerfully when she returned. The next morning she got up as
usual, and calling for her children, took a tender leave of all of us.
“Don’t grieve, mother dear, don’t!” she said; “I am safe in God’s
keeping.”
“Oh, my child, what can I do without you!” I cried. “Do as other bereaved
mothers have done and bear it bravely! and you will have both my little
children to rear; they are yours.” When at the last she fixed her
beautiful eyes on me and said: “My mother!” her earthly word was silenced,
her life-work done.
I find that I wrote thus to a dear friend at that time: “Here I
am--sitting in the chamber of my dead. The Marthas and the Marys are here
doing according to their natures. Mary sits in the quiet with me, Martha
writes of our loss to the absent, or prepares dinner. God help us! the
business of life must go on even in the presence of death. My Clara lies
on the lounge, wrapped in white cashmere, so still--so cold;--and this is
the last day she can so lie before she is buried from my sight. The wind
blows cool, as often in a New England August, but it drives pangs into my
sore heart, and the day seems different from any other day of my life. Why
does God leave us at such times set apart to suffer, as on some eminence?
The people pity us. Her father says the time is short and we shall soon go
to her. Yes--and then the air and the sunshine will take on a new nature
for some one else--for our sakes. But it is different to lay old frames in
the dust from putting under the daisies’ bed the young in their glorious
prime. God knows best. It may be that she is taken from evil to come. She
lived happily, and has laid down all of earth bravely to go into the other
life.
“The students stop in passing, and seeing our mourning door ask, ‘Who is
dead?’ My dead is nothing to them. They never saw Clara--nor me. It is
only an idle question. We are only two atoms among earth’s millions. O
Lord, forget not these particles in Thy universe,--for we are being tossed
to and fro,--and bring us to a resting place somewhere in Thy eternal
kingdom!
“I know the world must still go on, though it is stationary for me, and I
am honestly trying to have patience with its cheerful progress; but even
the playfulness of my two motherless little ones jars upon me. It is
useless for me to try to realize human sympathy from the lonely height
where I sit and weep over the untimely death of my two beautiful
daughters. They were God-given, and my very own by ties of blood, but more
by that happy responsiveness of soul which constitutes ‘born friends.’
After being as the woman whose children rise up and call her blessed, I am
now like Rachel of old, refusing to be comforted because they are not. I
lie down in humble submission because I cannot help myself. I say over and
over, ‘Thy will be done!’--but all the same I would have them back if I
could. None of us try to raise a controversy with the inevitable. We are
grateful for kind words and sympathy. They cannot change anything, but
they give just a drop of comfort to a desolate, disrupted life on the
human side of that gateway, through which the majority have gone down into
the silence where ‘the dead praise not the Lord.’”
Many testimonies to the character and worth of our child were written and
published. They shall speak for her and for the greatness of our loss. The
_Times-Democrat_ said: “Wherever she moved she was by the necessities of
her sweet nature a ‘bright, particular star’ among earth’s shining ones.
Her conversation was a delight to all within sound of her voice. Her wit
was gentle, pure, generous and sincere. She ruled all hearts, and loved to
rule, for she ruled by love.”
Catharine Cole wrote: “Many men and women famous in the great world of art
and literature will pay the sweet tribute of tears to the memory of this
lovely woman; and here in our own home, where she was so beloved and
admired, her gentle, cheery presence will be missed and mourned for many
sad days. She shone like a jewel set amid dross.”
From Mrs. Mollie Moore Davis--widely known for her exquisitely delicate
love poems and quaint tales of real life--came this tender word: “I truly
appreciated her great gifts and greater loveliness. She is a star gone
from my sky.”
Mrs. Mary Ashley Townsend sent me these words: “Her constant and
determined intellectual development, her devotion to progress, her
literary tastes, her social charms, her reliability as a friend, her
loveliness as a wife and mother, formed a combination of qualities that
made her the realization of the poet’s dream,
“‘Fair as a star when only one
Is shining in the sky.’”
Mrs. Townsend is herself a rarely gifted poet, long and deeply homed in
the heart of New Orleans. With the exception of Longfellow and Cable, no
writer has so vividly mirrored the very atmosphere of lower Louisiana. In
“Down the Bayou” its “heroed past,” its shrined memories find an eloquent
voice; there in everlasting tints are painted its dank luxuriance and
verdant solitudes; its red-tiled roofs and stucco walls, the “mud-built
towers of castled cray-fish,” its sluggish, sinuous bayoux and secrets of
lily-laden lagoons, its odors of orange bloom and mossy swamps mingled
with flute-toned song and flitting color amid the solemn, dark-hued
live-oaks. Mary Ashley Townsend had three lovely daughters. One has passed
over the river, but she still has Adele, who resembles her gifted mother,
and Daisy, to comfort her life.
James R. Randall, the gifted author of “My Maryland,” said in his own
newspaper: “She was too radiantly dowered for this world she glorified.
She was all that poets have sung and men have wished daughter and wife to
be. Well may the bereaved father and husband wonder with poor Lear ‘why so
many mean things live while she has ceased to be.’” Other expressions were
as follows: “It is something worth living for, to have been the mother of
such a being.” “Outside of your mother-love the loss of the sweet
friendship and congeniality of your lives will create an awful void. But
that beautiful soul is yours still--growing and developing in Paradise.”
“Amid all her charms what impressed me most was her admiration for her
mother. She addressed you often and fondly as ‘dear,’ as if you were the
child and she the mother.” “Centuries of experience have not developed a
philosophy deeper or more comforting for the human race than that of
David: ‘He shall not return to me but I shall go to him.’ I thank God for
the great gift of death!”
A minister of God wrote me, from Worcester, Mass., a word that may be as
great a light to some sitting in darkness as it was to me: “I must confess
that, for my own part, I take such sorrows with less heaviness of heart
than once, for the reason that every such loss seems to strengthen, rather
than weaken, my faith in immortality. In good and beautiful lives I see so
vividly a revelation of God--the Infinite Holiness and Beauty shining
through the human soul and the raiment of clay--that I cannot believe it
possible for death to extinguish their real life ‘hidden with Christ in
God.’ I cannot believe that they can be ‘holden of the grave.’ I feel
assured that theirs is a conscious life of progress and joy, and cannot
mourn for them as dead, but only as far away. More and more am I convinced
that this vivid feeling of the Divine Presence in beautiful human lives is
peculiarly the Christian’s ground of hope in immortality. It was what the
apostle meant by ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory,’ and it gives us
gradually the clear vision of an immortal world. Only thus, as we gain
that ‘knowledge of God’ which is ‘eternal life’ _here and now_, can we
rise above the mist and smoke of this temporal world and lift our eyes
‘unto the hills whence cometh our help.’ Only thus as we live in the
eternal world, _here and now_, can we feel secure that nothing fair and
good in human life can perish.”
Mrs. Hannah Whitehall Smith wrote me thus from Philadelphia the sad
December of this year:
“MY DEAR FRIEND:
“Miss Willard wants to open the lines between your soul and mine. She
feels sure we can do each other good, and asks me to tell you about my
Ray who went home three years ago, because you, too, have lost a
daughter and will understand. My Ray died after five days’ sickness.
As soon as she was taken ill, I began, as my custom is, to say, ‘Thy
will be done.’ I said it over and over constantly, and permitted no
other thought to enter my mind. I hid myself and my child in the
fortress of God’s blessed will,--and there I met my sorrow and loss.
When she went out of my earthly life the peace of God which passes all
understanding came down upon me from above, and enwrapped me in an
impregnable hiding-place, where I have been hidden ever since. My
windows look out only on the unseen and divine side of things; and I
see my child in the presence of God, at rest forever, free from all
earth’s trials. Whatever may be your experience I know that grief is
bitter anguish under any other conditions than these, and the mystery
of it is crushing.
“Our blessed Frances gave me your letter to read, and I could echo
every word you said about her. She is queen among women and is doing a
glorious work, not the least of which is the emancipation of
women--coming out on every side. They have far more than they know for
which to thank Frances Willard.”
To that letter I replied: “If the Heavenly Father takes note of the
sparrow’s fall, it may be that He put the thought in Miss Willard’s mind
to ask you to help me; but, dear lady, you are many a day’s journey ahead
of me in religious experience when, in the presence of the death of your
beloved, you can say, ‘Thy will be done.’ I wish I could, like you, will
whatever God wills.
“I thank you for the account of your Ray, and I thank God that He created
such a Christian mother. Simeon said to Mary: ‘Yea, a sword shall pierce
through thine own soul also.’ Every one who has lost a child has been
pierced through and through. In this crisis of my life I am amazed and
stupefied by my own capacity for suffering, and actually look upon myself
with an awed pity, as I would upon a stranger. How can I yield everything?
I had already buried one lovely daughter in the bloom of life; and I had
only one left. I submit because I must. My heart cries out for my child;
God forgive me, but I would call her back to me if I could.”
When the time drew near for the annual convention of the Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union, my husband and sons urged that I should go to Detroit,
hoping the change of scene and new responsibilities might arouse me from
depression. Miss Willard had already written: “My heart turns toward thee
in thy desolation. Remember thou hast doting sisters. I believe thy
beautiful Clara knows how we rally to thy side, and is glad.”
While I was in Detroit, Hannah Whitehall Smith called upon me several
times, and talked about my condition of mind, and so inspired me with
gratitude that I endeavored to obey every suggestion she made, regardless
of the pride and self-sufficiency which is so common with unsatisfied
souls. She seemed to have direct access to the Heavenly Father, and laid
my case before Him with such simplicity and faith that my heart was
deeply touched, and I gained a new knowledge of spiritual relations. When
I learned in these latter days, that she had been called to sorrow over
her husband “gone before,” I wrote to her in loving memory of her former
goodness, and received a reply, from Eastnor Castle, where she and Lady
Henry Somerset had been engaged in preparing a memorial of Miss Willard,
which was issued to the people of Great Britain.
The letter reads: “Your loving sympathy in my last great loss has been
most welcome. My dear husband had been a great sufferer for eighteen
months, and longed so eagerly to go that no one who loved him could be
anything but thankful when his release came. I have been enabled to
rejoice in his joy of having entered into the presence of the King. It
cannot be long for me at the longest before I shall join him, and until
then I am hidden in the Divine fortress of God’s love and care. I love to
think that you too are hidden there, dear friend and sister, and that
together we may meet in the Divine Presence where there is fulness of joy
even in the midst of earthly sorrow.
“Lady Henry joins me in love to you. She is, as we are, very sorry over
the loss of our beloved Frances Willard; but God still lives and reigns,
and in Him we can rest without anxiety. I have found Him a very present
help in many a time of trouble, and I rejoice to know I was permitted to
help you realize this in your hour of sore need.”