Josephine E. Butler

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 her by her name, but there was no answer. She was our only daughter, the light and joy of our lives. She flitted in and out like a butterfly all day. She had never had a day’s or an hour’s illness in all her sweet life. She never gave us a moment of anxiety, her life was one flowing stream of mirth and fun and abounding love. The last morning she had said to me a little verse she had learned somewhere —

Every morning the warm sunRises fair and bright;But the evening cometh on,And the dark, cold night.There is a bright land far away,Where tis never-ending day!

The dark, cold night came too soon for us, for it was that same evening, at seven o’clock, that she fell. The last words I had with her were about a pretty caterpillar she had found; she came to my room to beg for a little box to put it in. I gave it her and said, “Now trot away, for I am late for tea.” What would I not give now for five minutes of that sweet presence? The only discipline she ever had was an occasional conflict with her own strong feelings and will. She disliked nothing so much as her little German lessons. Fräulein Blümke had called her one day to have one. She was sitting in a low chair. She grasped the arms of it tightly, and, looking very grave and determined, she replied, “Hush, wait a bit, I am fighting!” She sat silent for a few moments, and then walked quickly and firmly to have her German lesson. Fräulein asked her what she meant by saying she was fighting, and she replied, “I was fighting with myself” (to overcome her unwillingness to go to her books). I overheard Fräulein say to her in the midst of the lesson: “Arbeit, Eva, arbeit!” To which Eva replied with decision, “I am arbeiting, Miss Blümke, as hard as ever I can.”

One evening last autumn, when I went to see her after she was in bed and we were alone, she said: “Mammy, if I go to heaven before you, when the door of heaven opens to let you in I will run so fast to meet you; and when you put your arms round me, and we kiss each other, all the angels will stand still to see us.” And she raised herself up in her ardour, her face beaming and her little chest heaving with the excitement of her loving anticipation. I recall her look; not the merry laughing look she generally had, but softened into an overflowing tenderness of the soul. She lay down again, but could not rest, and raising herself once more said, “I would like to pray again” (she had already said her little prayer); and we prayed again, about this meeting in heaven. I never thought for a moment that she would go first. I don’t think I ever had a thought of death in connection with her; she was so full of life and energy. She was always showing her love in active ways. We used to imagine what it would be when she grew up, developing into acts of mercy and kindness. She was passionately devoted to her father, and after hugging him, and heaping endearing names upon him, she would fly off and tax her poor little tender fingers by making him something – a pincushion or kettle-holder. She made him blue, pink, white and striped pincushions and mats, for which he had not much use. But now he treasures up her poor little gifts as more precious than gold. If my head ached, she would bathe it with a sponge for an hour without tiring. Sweet Eva! Well might the Saviour say, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” She was so perfectly truthful, candid and pure. It was a wonderful repose for me, a good gift of God, when troubled by the evils in the world or my own thoughts, to turn to the perfect innocence and purity of that little maiden. But that joy is gone now for us. I am troubled for my husband. His grief is so deep and silent; but he is very, very patient. He loves children and all young creatures, and his love for her was wonderful. Her face, as she lay in death, wore a look of sweet, calm surprise, as if she said, “Now I see God.” We stood in awe before her. She seemed to rebuke our grief in her rapt and holy sleep. Her hair had grown very long lately, and was of a deep chestnut brown, which in the sun flashed out all golden: —

Hair like a golden halo lyingUpon a pillow white;Parted lips that mock all sighing,Good night – good night!Good night in anguish and in bitter pain;Good morrow crowns another of the heavenly train.

This sorrow seemed to give in a measure a new direction to our lives and interests. There were some weeks of uncomforted grief. Her flight from earth had had the appearance of a most cruel accident. But do the words “accident” or “chance” properly find a place in the vocabulary of those who have placed themselves, and those dear to them, in a special manner under the daily providential care of a loving God? Here there entered into the heart of our grief the intellectual difficulty, the moral perplexity and dismay which are not the least terrifying of the phantoms which haunt the “Valley of the shadow of Death” – that dark passage through which some toil only to emerge into a hopeless and final denial of the Divine goodness, the complete bankruptcy of faith; and others, by the mercy of God, through a still deeper experience, into a yet firmer trust in His unfailing love.

One day, going into his study, I found my husband alone, and looking ill. His hands were cold, he had an unusual paleness in his face, and he seemed faint. I was alarmed. I kneeled beside him, and, shaking myself out of my own stupor of grief, I spoke “comfortably” to him, and forced myself to talk cheerfully, even joyfully, of the happiness of our child, of the unclouded brightness of her brief life on earth, and her escape from the trials and sorrows she might have met with had she lived. He responded readily to the offered comfort, and the effort to strengthen him was helpful to myself. After this I often went to him in the evening after school hours, when, sitting side by side, we spoke of our child in heaven, until our own loss seemed to become somewhat less bitter.

The following is from a brief diary of the close of that sad year —

October 30th.– Last night I slept uneasily. I dreamed I had my darling in my arms, dying; that she struggled to live for my sake, lived again a moment, and then died. Just then I heard a sound, a low voice at my door, and I sprang to my feet. It was poor Stanley (our second son), scarcely awake, and in a fever. I took him in my arms, and carried him back to his bed, from which he had come to seek my help. In the morning he could not swallow, and pointed to his throat. Dr. Ker came and said he had diphtheria. My heart sank. I wondered whether God meant to ask us to give up another child so soon.

His illness was very severe, and for some days he hovered between life and death. But we were spared the added sorrow we dreaded. When he was sufficiently recovered, it was thought better that I should go with him abroad, to escape the winter’s cold, and for a change of scene from that house round which clung the memory of such a tragic sorrow. My husband and other sons came to London with us, and a pleasant and able courier was engaged, who accompanied me and my little convalescent to Genoa, where we had been invited by kind relatives living there.

At the end of this visit it was arranged that I should accompany my sister to Naples, when we learned that the railway and roads were flooded, and that travelling by land would be difficult and even dangerous. Being unwilling to give up the long-cherished hope of a visit to my sister’s home, I proposed that we should go by sea. My sister, though fearing a sea voyage for me in winter, assented to the arrangement, and as the weather was then very calm we started with good hopes. I had not, however, realised the gravity of the shock which my health had sustained before leaving England.

On this voyage she was taken very seriously ill, nigh unto death. “I was kneeling,” writes her sister, “and rubbing her hands and feet, trying to warm them; and while my imagination was realising all the terrors, my heart was praying desperately to God that He would make a way of escape, that He would work a miracle for us. And He did. The three boys went away and all prayed to God to save her. After a time I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the captain. He said: ‘I saw the other mail vessel coming north, and I have signalled her. If she sees us you shall go on board and return to Leghorn. Make haste!’ I drew a long breath and said: ‘Thank God, I think we are saved!’ I felt the horror melting away in a measure, and hope springing up. We rolled her up, and I went for the weeping children, and found the kind young Sicilian officer comforting them. I thanked him. He said, in Italian, something about the love of Christ, so kindly. I had said very little about her. People must have been impressed with her look, and thought her dying, to take such extreme measures as to stop the two Government steamers on the high seas.”

CHAPTER IV.

LIVERPOOL

In the winter of 1865 my husband received one day a telegraphic message from Mr. Parker, of Liverpool, asking him if he would be willing to take the Principalship of the Liverpool College, vacated by the retirement of Dr. Howson, who became Dean of Chester. He accepted the invitation as providential, and went to Liverpool to see Mr. Parker, the directors of the college, and others interested in the choice of a new principal. There was no hesitation about the matter, and he was shortly afterwards elected. Our removal to Liverpool took place in January, 1866.

Liverpool is one of the largest seaports of the world. No greater contrast could have been found than it presented to the academic, intellectual character of Oxford, or the quiet educational and social conditions at Cheltenham. Its immense population, with a large intermingling of foreign elements, its twelve miles of docks lined with warehouses, its magnificent shipping, its cargoes and foreign sailors from every part of the world and from every nation of the earth, its varieties in the way of creeds and places of worship, its great wealth and its abject poverty, the perpetual movement, the coming and going, and the clash of interests in its midst – all these combined to make Liverpool a city of large and international character, and of plentiful opportunities for the exercise of public spirit and catholic sentiment. The college shared the characteristics of the city in the midst of which it was set. Among its eight to nine hundred pupils there were Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Negroes, Americans, French, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as Welsh, Irish, Scotch and English. These represented many different religious persuasions. A man of narrow theological views would scarcely have found the position as head of such a school agreeable. Firmness and simplicity of faith, truth, charity and toleration, were qualities which were needed in the administrator of such a little world of varied international and denominational elements. The principalship must be held, by the rules of the college, by a member of the Church of England, and the directors had been happy in finding churchmen who were willing to accept the conditions presented, and able to work well in the midst of them. There were, as pupils at the college, the sons of two half-civilised African kings, Oko Jumbo and Jah-Jah. Their fathers having been old and sworn enemies, the two little fellows began their school acquaintance with many a tussle true to the inherited instinct. They were good boys, however, and one of them – afterwards a convinced and consistent Christian – became a missionary among his own countrymen, in spite of much opposition and even persecution, it was said, from his own father.

When we came to Liverpool in 1866, and my husband and sons began their regular life at the College, going there early and returning in the evening, I was left many hours every day alone, empty-handed and sorrowful, the thought continually returning, “How sweet the presence of my little daughter would have been now.” Most people, who have gone through any such experience, will understand me when I speak of the ebb and flow of sorrow. The wave retires perhaps after the first bitter weeks, and a kind of placid acquiescence follows. It may be only a natural giving way of the power of prolonged resistance of pain. Then there comes sometimes a second wave, which has been silently gathering strength, holding back, so to speak, in order to advance again with all its devouring force, thundering upon the shore. But who can write the rationale of sorrow? And who can explain its mysteries, its apparent inconsistencies and unreasonableness, its weakness and its strength? I suffered much during the first months in our new home. Music, art, reading, all failed as resources to alleviate or to interest. I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own, to meet with people more unhappy than myself (for I knew there were thousands of such). I did not exaggerate my own trial. I only knew that my heart ached night and day, and that the only solace possible would seem to be to find other hearts which ached night and day, and with more reason than mine. I had no clear idea beyond that, no plan for helping others; my sole wish was to plunge into the heart of some human misery, and to say (as I now knew I could) to afflicted people, “I understand: I too have suffered.”

It was not difficult to find misery in Liverpool. There was an immense workhouse containing at that time, it was said, five thousand persons – a little town in itself. The general hospital for paupers included in it was blessed then by the angelic presence of Agnes Jones (whose work of beneficence was recorded after her death); but the other departments in the great building were not so well organised as they came to be some years later. There were extensive special wards, where unhappy girls drifted like autumn leaves when the winter approached, many of them to die of consumption, little cared for spiritually; for over this portion of the hospital Agnes Jones was not the presiding genius. There was on the ground floor a Bridewell for women, consisting of huge cellars, bare and unfurnished, with damp stone floors. These were called the “oakum sheds,” and to these came voluntarily creatures driven by hunger, destitution, or vice, begging for a few nights’ shelter and a piece of bread, in return for which they picked their allotted portion of oakum. Others were sent there as prisoners.

I went down to the oakum sheds and begged admission. I was taken into an immense gloomy vault filled with women and girls – more than two hundred probably at that time. I sat on the floor among them and picked oakum. They laughed at me, and told me my fingers were of no use for that work, which was true. But while we laughed we became friends. I proposed that they should learn a few verses to say to me on my next visit. I recollect a tall, dark, handsome girl standing up in our midst, among the damp refuse and lumps of tarred rope, and repeating without a mistake and in a not unmusical voice, clear and ringing, that wonderful fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel – the words of Jesus all through, ending with, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” She had selected it herself, and they listened in perfect silence, this audience – wretched, draggled, ignorant, criminal some, and wild and defiant others. The tall, dark-haired girl had prepared the way for me, and I said, “Now let us all kneel, and cry to that same Jesus who spoke those words”; and down on their knees they fell every one of them, reverently, on that damp stone floor, some saying the words after me, others moaning and weeping. It was a strange sound, that united wail – continuous, pitiful, strong – like a great sigh or murmur of vague desire and hope, issuing from the heart of despair, piercing the gloom and murky atmosphere of that vaulted room, and reaching to the heart of God.

But I do not want to make a long story of this. The result of my visits to the hospital and quays and oakum sheds was to draw down upon my head an avalanche of miserable but grateful womanhood. Such a concourse gathered round our home that I had to stop to take breath, and consider some means of escape from the dilemma by providing some practical help, moral and material. There were not at that time many enlightened missions or measures in the town for dealing with the refuse of society. There was the Catholic Refuge of the Good Shepherd, some way in the country; an old-fashioned Protestant Penitentiary, rather prison-like in character; another smaller refuge; and, best of all, a Home recently established by Mrs. Cropper. But it must not be supposed that the majority of my oakum shed friends were of a character to seek such asylums. Many of them – and especially the Irish Catholics – prided themselves on their virtue; and well they might, considering their miserable surroundings – girls who for the most part earned a scanty living by selling sand in the streets (for cleaning floors), or the refuse of the markets to the poorest of the population. Usually they were barefooted and bonnetless. The Lancashire women are strong and bold. The criminals of the oakum sheds and prison, sent to “do a week” or a month there, had most frequently been convicted of fighting and brawling on the quays and docks, of theft or drunkenness. There was stuff among them to make a very powerful brigade of workers in any active good cause. But there were others – the children of intemperate and criminal parents – who were, humanly speaking, useless, not quite “all there,” poor, limp, fibreless human weeds. These last were the worst of all to deal with. I had the help at this time of a widowed sister who was visiting Liverpool, and who, in spite of very delicate health, threw herself heroically into the effort to help this work without a name which came upon us. We had a dry cellar in our house and a garret or two, and into these we crowded as many as possible of the most friendless girls who were anxious to make a fresh start. This became inconvenient, and so in time my husband and I ventured to take a house near our own, trusting to find funds to furnish and fill it with inmates. This was the “House of Rest,” which continued for many years, and developed, about the time we left Liverpool, into an incurable hospital, supported by the town. It was there that, a little later, women incurably ill were brought from the hospitals or their wretched homes, their beds in hospital being naturally wanted for others.

A few months later, encouraged by the help offered by a certain number of generous Liverpool merchants and other friends, we took a very large and solid house, with some ground round it, to serve as an industrial home for the healthy and active, the barefooted sand girls, and other friendless waifs and strays. We had a good gathering of friends and neighbours at a service which my husband held at the opening of the industrial home. His “dedication prayer” on that occasion was very touching, and full of kindness and heart-yearning towards the poor disinherited beings whom we desired to gather in. This house was very soon filled, and was successfully managed by an excellent matron, a mother. Besides the usual laundry and other work, we were able to set up a little envelope factory in one of the spacious rooms. This work called out some skill and nicety, and interested the girls very much. Several tradesmen and firms bought our envelopes at wholesale prices, and we also supplied some private friends disposed to help us. As chaplain, friend and adviser in these two modest institutions, my husband showed the same fidelity and constancy which he did in every other seriously accepted or self-imposed duty. He often said that it was a rest and refreshment to him to visit our poor people in the evening, and more especially on Sunday. In the House of Rest were received “incurables” so-called (of whom not a few recovered). There was a very peaceful atmosphere in that house answering to its name – a spirit of repose, contentment, and even gaiety among the young inmates, scarcely clouded even by the frequent deaths, which came generally as a happy and not unexpected release, and were regarded by the living as a series of fresh bonds between the family in heaven and that on earth.

Drink was the great, the hopeless obstacle which I found among them. It was on this side that they would lapse again and again. Though it involved no change in my own habits, I thought it was best to take the pledge. I joined the Good Templars, who had many lodges in Liverpool.

Shortly before the creation of these two homes, we had a visit from my sister, Madame Meuricoffre. She and her husband, with their dear little girl, Josephine, had come from Naples to England, and had paid a visit to our father in Northumberland. They had, a short time before, lost a beloved child, their little Beatrice, during an outbreak of the cholera in Naples. The surviving little girl seemed to droop after the death of her companion. She (little Josephine) took ill on the way from the north, and before they reached Liverpool this darling of her parents had gone to join her beloved sister in the presence of God. The parents came to us in deep sorrow, bringing with them the earthly remains of their child.