Josephine E. Butler. Butler Josephine Elizabeth Grey

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      CHAPTER III.

      CHELTENHAM

      In the autumn of 1857 my husband was invited to fill the post of Vice-Principal of the Cheltenham College. He accepted the invitation, and we went to Cheltenham the same year. He here entered upon his long course of assiduous and untiring work as a schoolmaster – a work which covered a quarter of a century, beginning at Cheltenham in 1857, and continued at Liverpool from the winter of 1865-66 until 1882. We gained much at Cheltenham in an improved climate, and in the cessation of material difficulties and anxieties. We lived in a large house, in which, for some years, we received a number of pupils. It was characteristic that it should have supplied some of the best athletes of the College, and many successful competitors in the school games, in feats of strength, activity and skill. My husband considered physical training to be an essential part of the education of youth.

      Our summer vacations continued to be spent largely at Dilston; we went however one year to Switzerland with our eldest son. We visited Lucerne and its neighbourhood, and afterwards the Rhone Valley, Chamounix, and the great St. Bernard, passing a night at the hospice, where we profited much by our intercourse with the beautiful dogs, one of whom, a veteran called Bruno, the forefather of many a noble hound, attached himself to us, and made himself our cicerone among the rocks in the desolate surroundings of the monastery. Another summer excursion was, with two of our children, to the Lakes of Killarney, including a visit to my brother, Charles Grey, who lived then in a house of Lord Derby, at Ballykisteen, in the “golden vale” of Tipperary. In both these years my husband brought home many sketches. The grey rocks skirting the borders of Killarney lakes, with their richly-coloured covering of arbutus and other flowering trees and evergreens, were tempting subjects for water-colours.

      My father had been a friend of Clarkson, and a practical worker in the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. When the War of Secession in America broke out, my husband’s sympathies were warmly enlisted on behalf of those who desired the emancipation of the slaves, and he perceived that that was indeed the question, the vital question of justice, which lay at the root of all that terrible struggle. This was one of several occasions in our united life in which we found ourselves in a minority; members of a group at first so insignificant that it scarcely found a voice or a hearing anywhere, but whose position was afterwards fully justified by events. It was a good training in swimming against the tide, or at least in standing firm and letting the tide go by, and in maintaining, while doing so, a charitable attitude towards those who conscientiously differed, and towards the thousands who float contentedly down the stream of the fashionable opinion of the day. In this case the feeling of isolation on a subject of such tragic interest was often painful; but the discipline was useful, for it was our lot again more emphatically in the future to have to accept and endure this position for conscience’ sake.

      I recollect the sudden revulsion of feeling when the news was telegraphed of the assassination of President Lincoln; the extraordinary rapidity of the change of front of the “leading journal;” and the self-questionings among many whose intelligence and goodness had certainly given them the right to think for themselves, but who had not availed themselves of that right. I remember the penitence of Punch, who had been among the scoffers against the abolitionists of slavery, and who now put himself into deep mourning, and gave to the public an affecting cartoon of the British Lion bowed and weeping before the bier of Lincoln. A favourite scripture motto of my husband’s was, “Why do ye not of yourselves judge that which is right?” But he was not argumentative. He loved peace, and avoided every heated discussion. His silence was, perhaps, sometimes not less effectual by way of rebuke or correction of shallow judgments than speech would have been. Goldwin Smith, one of the few at Oxford who saw at that time the inner meanings of the American struggle, paid us a visit. It occurred to us, while listening to some pointed remarks he was making on the prevalent opinion of the day, to ask him to write and publish something in reply to the often-repeated assertion that the Bible itself favours slavery. “The Bible,” he replied, “has been quoted in favour of every abomination that ever cursed the earth.” He did not say he would write; but the idea sank into his mind, and not long after he sent us his able and exquisite little book, entitled Does the Bible sanction Slavery?– a masterly and beautiful exposition of the true spirit of the Mosaic law, and of the Theocratic government and training of the ancient Hebrew people in relation to this and other questions. This book was naturally not popular at the time, and I fear it has long been out of print. (It was published in 1863.)

      In this connection it is interesting to record, that two other notable books owed their inspiration in a large measure to Josephine Butler. The Patience of Hope, by Dora Greenwell, published in 1859, was dedicated to J. E. B., with the inscription —A te principium, tibi desinet (from thee begun with thee my work shall close). Te sine nil altum mens inchoat (without thee nothing high my mind essays). Frederic Myers, who had been at school at Cheltenham College, in his Fragments of Inner Life,1 tells how“Christian conversion came to me in a potent form – through the agency of Josephine Butler, née Grey, whose name will not be forgotten in the annals of English philanthropy. She introduced me to Christianity, so to say, by an inner door; not to its encumbering forms and dogmas, but to its heart of fire. My poems of St. Paul and St. John the Baptist, intensely personal in their emotion, may serve as sufficient record of those years of eager faith.” St. Paul, published in 1867, was dedicated to J. E. B., with the inscription – ᾗ καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ψυχην ὀφείλω (to whom I owe my very soul). In 1869 Myers gave up a Lectureship at Trinity in order to devote himself to the promotion of the higher education of women, and he was one of the small band of university men, who worked hard with Josephine Butler and her colleagues on the North of England Council, to which we shall refer later on.

      Among the public events which interested us most during these years was the revolution in Naples, the change of dynasty, and Garibaldi’s career. Our interest was in part of a personal nature, as my sister, Madame Meuricoffre, and her husband were in the midst of these events. She had succeeded Jessie White Mario in the care of the wounded Garibaldians in the hospitals, and was personally acquainted with some of the actors in the dramatic scenes of that time. Having told her that my husband had set as a subject for a prize essay – to be competed for in the College at Cheltenham – “The unification of Italy,” my sister mentioned it to Garibaldi, in expressing to him our sympathy for him and his cause. He immediately wrote a few lines, signing his name at the end, to be sent, through her, to the boy who should write the best essay on the subject so near to his heart.

      A part of the summer holidays of 1864 were spent at Coniston in the house of Mr. James Marshall, which he lent to us. His sister, Mrs. Myers, had been our kind and constant friend at Cheltenham. It was a beautiful summer. We had returned to Cheltenham only a few days when a heavy sorrow fell upon our home, the brightest of our little circle being suddenly snatched away from us. The dark shadow of that cloud cannot easily be described. I quote part of a letter written some weeks after our child’s death to a friend.

Cheltenham, August, 1864.

      These are but weak words. May you never know the grief which they hide rather than reveal. But God is good. He has, in mercy, at last sent me a ray of light, and low in the dust at His feet I have thanked Him for that ray of light as I never thanked Him for any blessing in the whole of my life before. It was difficult to endure at first the shock of the suddenness of that agonising death. Little gentle spirit! the softest death for her would have seemed sad enough. Never can I lose that memory – the fall, the sudden cry, and then the silence. It was pitiful to see her, helpless in her father’s arms, her little drooping head resting on his shoulder, and her beautiful golden hair, all stained with blood, falling over his arm. Would to God that I had died that death for her! If we had been permitted, I thought, to have one look, one word of farewell, one moment of recognition! But though life flickered for an hour, she never recognised the father and mother whom she loved so dearly. We called СКАЧАТЬ