Josephine E. Butler. Butler Josephine Elizabeth Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ in an agony of grief and of anger. She said (her body rocking backward and forward with emotion), “If that man could but see her now! Can we not send for him?” And she added, “Oh, what a difference there is in English gentlemen’s households! To think that this child should have been ruined in one and saved in another!” Yes, it might have been good for “that man” to have been forced to step down from his high social position and to look upon her then, and to have known the abyss from which she had been drawn, to the verge of which he had led her when she was but a child of fifteen.

      Marion had “prophesied” to me, before she died, of hard days and a sad heart which were in store for me in contending against the evil to which she had fallen a victim. I recall her words with wonder and comfort. She would say, “When your soul quails at the sight of the evil, which will increase yet awhile, dear Mrs. Butler, think of me and take courage. God has given me to you, that you may never despair of any.”

      Snow lay thickly on the ground when we laid her in her grave in the cemetery. When we came back to the house I was trying to say something comforting to the mother, when she stopped me and said, “My heart is changed about it all. The bitter anger won’t come back, I think; and what has taken it all away was the sight of Mr. Butler standing by the grave of my child, and the words he spoke. Oh, madam,” she said, “when I looked at him standing there in the snow, dressed in his linen robe as white as the snow itself, and with that look on his face when he looked up to heaven and thanked God for my daughter now among the blessed, I could hardly refrain from falling on my knees at his feet, for he seemed to me like one of the angels of God! I felt happy then, almost proud, for my child. Oh, madam, I can never tell you what it was to me to look on your husband’s face then! My heart was bursting with gratitude to God and to him.”

      There were others about the same time whom we took home, who died in our own house, and were laid in graves side by side in the cemetery. Of one I have a clear remembrance, a girl of seventeen only, of some natural force of character. Her death was a prolonged hard battle with pain and with bitter memories, lightened by momentary flashes of faint hope. She struggled hard. We were called to her bedside suddenly one evening. She was dying, but with a strong effort she had raised herself to a sitting position. She drew us near to her by the appeal of her earnest eyes, and raising her right hand high with a strangely solemn gesture, and with a look full of heroic and desperate resolve, she said, “I will fight for my soul through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!” Her eyes, which seemed to be now looking far off, athwart the hosts of which she spoke, became dim, and she spoke no more. “Poor brave child!” I cried to her, “you will find on the other shore One waiting for you who has fought through all those hosts for you, who will not treat you as man has treated you.” I cannot explain what she meant. I have never been quite able to understand it; but her words dwelt with us – “through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!” She had been trampled under the feet of men as the mire in the streets, had been hustled about from prison to the streets, and from the streets to prison, an orphan, unregarded by any but the vigilant police. From the first day she came to us we noticed in her, notwithstanding, an admirable self-respect, mixed with the full realisation of her misery. And that sense of the dignity and worth of the true self in her – the immortal, inalienable self – found expression in that indomitable resolution of the dying girl: “I will fight for my soul through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!”

      In the following winter my father died. On the 23rd of January, 1868, we were summoned by a telegraphic message from my sister, Mrs. Smyttan, who had lived with him during the last years of his life. But none of us saw him alive again. The end had been sudden, but very tranquil. His health was excellent to the last. On the morning of January 23rd, as he was passing from his bedroom to his study, he sat down, feeling faint, and raising his forefinger as if to enjoin silence, or intent upon a voice calling him away, he died without a struggle, and apparently without pain, in the eighty-third year of his age.

      The family group which was gathered in that house of mourning was incomplete, for many were far away. One of the sisters wrote to the absent ones:

      “Two days after our dear father’s death there was such a storm of wind for twenty-four hours as I scarcely remember. The house shook and heaved, and the sky was as dark as if there were an eclipse. The river roared and the windows rattled. We all cowered over the fire, and talked of him and of old days, trying to free ourselves from the sad, restless impression produced by the storm. We heard a crash, and on going upstairs found the window of the room where he lay blown in, the glass shivered about the floor, and the white sheet which had been thrown over the kingly corpse blown rudely away. There was something so irreverent about it, pitiful and weird-like; but he was not disturbed by it – he was beyond all storms, in an infinite and everlasting calm. He looked so grand, and lay in such a majestic peace. His forehead, so high and broad and smooth, his soft grey hair smoothed back. I was much struck by the powerful look of his square jaw, and the union of tenderness and strength in the whole outline of his head and face. I felt almost triumphant about him; and yet how sorrowful such moments are, even when one can look back with thankfulness. The sorrow is not for one’s own loss only; the presence of death in one so dear brings one for a moment into close relation with all the sorrows of earth. When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus it was not for Lazarus and his sisters only. He saw then and felt all the bereavements which would bow down the hearts of men to the end of time.”

      The company of voluntary followers to the grave was a very large one, all on foot. Around the tomb, where he was laid by the side of our dear mother, there stood a large and silent gathering of children and grandchildren, friends, servants, tenants and others. As we passed along the vale of Tyne on our way back to Lipwood we were much impressed by the outward results – in the high cultivation and look of happy prosperity of the country – of a long life usefully spent. And this feeling was shared by all the dwellers there, who, equally with ourselves, could mark in all around them the impress of his mind and hand. But only those who had had the happiness of his friendship and confidence could know, with his children, how much of strength and sweetness seemed to be gone away from earth when that great heart had ceased to beat.

      One of the most prominent characteristics of our family life during all these years at Liverpool was that of our common enjoyment of our summer tours. There were circumstances which made our annual excursions more than the ordinary tours of some holiday-makers. In the first place, many of my own relatives were settled in different parts of the Continent, thus giving us a personal connection with those places. In order to pay a visit to the homes of some of them it was necessary to cross the Alps, while other near relatives lived in France and Switzerland.

      It sometimes happens that the ordinary English traveller knows little of the general life of the people among whom he travels, of the history of the country, its politics, its social condition and prospects. He is content to gather to himself enjoyment from the beauties of Switzerland or the Tyrol, or Italy, while knowing little of the dwellers in those beautiful lands. A wider and a richer field is open to those who care to seek and explore it. My husband was not content without making himself acquainted, to a considerable extent, with the contemporary history of the countries through which we passed. His aptitude for languages aided him in intercourse with people of different nationalities; so that our family relationships abroad, and our friendships with many public men, as well as humble dwellers in continental countries, gave to our visits there a varied interest. These vacation tours were to us like sunlit mountain tops rising from the cloud-covered plain of our laborious life at Liverpool. Moreover, the enthusiasm which he had, and which was shared by his sons, for geographical and geological research, together with our modest artistic efforts, added greatly to the interest of our travels. It was felt to be unsatisfactory to attempt to draw mountains and rocks without knowing something of their geological construction. During a visit which Mr. Ruskin paid us at Liverpool, he was turning over a portfolio of drawings done by my husband, and held in his hands for some time two or three sketches of the Aiguilles towering above the Mer de Glace, and other rocks and mountain buttresses in the neighbourhood of Chamounix. He said it gave him pleasure to look at those (he being a keen observer and student of mountain forms everywhere). “Your outlines of these СКАЧАТЬ