And here I may remark—and the judgment is based not upon this speech only, but also upon many others heard in later years and more fully remembered—never was there a missionary speaker who more conscientiously avoided excessive use of bright colouring in pictures of missionary success. Her nature was passionately truthful, and she ever sought as far as possible to make her audiences see things as they really were. As far as possible, I say, for her saddened eyes saw much which her woman’s lips could never speak, and this she allowed her friends to understand.
In the New Year Mr. Lewis was sent north, south, east, and west on deputation journeys, but Mrs. Lewis’s work was largely confined to the London district, in which she attended many meetings advocating the cause to which her life was given. Once she started at an hour’s notice for Newport, Mon., and spoke at an evening meeting the same day, “with Tom and Mr. Evans, of Merthyr.” As much as possible of her time was given to her “dear mother,” Mrs. Hartland, who was at this time a confirmed invalid and subject to the discipline of much suffering, which she endured with exemplary Christian patience and submission.
It is interesting to me, as it will be to many readers, to gather from the diary that Grenfell was a frequent visitor at the rooms of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. The entry for Saturday, March 21st, surprised me. “Mr. Grenfell and Mr. Hawker called.” The eclecticism of memory is one of the mysteries of life. Incidents of no moment and little interest are retained with photographic clearness, other incidents which it would be precious to recall pass utterly out of mind. Clearly upon this day I must have spent some time—probably an hour, perhaps more—in conversation with two people whom I regarded with affectionate esteem and whose lives I was destined to write long years afterwards. Yet I confess with wonder and humiliation that the utmost effort at recollection leaves me destitute of the faintest remembrance of the fact.
Six weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Lewis were both down with influenza. The illness was somewhat serious and involved a visit to Ventnor, where lost energies were recovered. They returned to London in the middle of June, and on the day of arrival met Mrs. J. J. Brown and Messrs. Grenfell and Oram. On June 19th Mrs. Lewis records with a note of relief that she has “passed Dr. Roberts,” and on the last day of the month she and her husband leave London for Liverpool amid the cheers of a company of friends who had gathered at St. Pancras for the send-off. Mrs. Parkinson accompanied them to Liverpool, where Mr. Parkinson joined them later. On Wednesday, July 1st, the little party spent the day at Southport. Surely it must have been a wet day, for Mrs. Lewis smites the fair town with the scornful phrase, “wretched place,” and is glad to get back to Liverpool to tea. An evening entertainment in Liverpool proved as little satisfactory as Southport. Perhaps she was in no mood for entertainment.
The next day she sailed upon her fourth voyage to Africa, which, though enlivened by many incidents of interest, proved on the whole the most wearisome and comfortless of her experience. On August 20th she writes: “Arrived at Banana about 7 a.m. After breakfast went ashore and called at the Dutch House. Went to see dear Annie’s grave. Tom photographed it. Rather tired.”
The mention of “Dear Annie’s grave” calls for a slight digression. Annie was the youngest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jonas Smith, of Camden Road Church, and one of Mrs. Lewis’s girl friends, whose name has already been mentioned. She became engaged to Mr. Percy Comber and went out to Africa to be married. Arriving at St. Thomé on the voyage, she was overjoyed to find that the homeward-bound steamer was in port and that among her passengers were Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. There lies before me as I write her letter to Mrs. Hartland, written at the close of this happy day of meeting, telling of how her friends were brought aboard her ship and of the eager, happy converse which ensued.
They parted. The Lewises arrived safely in England. Annie Smith was married at Matadi on June 5th, and passed up to Wathen, where she worked for a few months with great joy and much promise. Toward the end of the year serious illness fell upon her, and under doctor’s orders she started for home, accompanied by her husband. But her journey ended at Banana on December 19th. She was laid to rest beside the sea, and her stricken husband turned back to his work—alone. The sorrow at Camden Road was great. She had gone from us such a little while before, so full of radiant life, so joyous in her consecration to the great cause. Mrs. Lewis was present at the memorial service held in Camden Road Church on January 25, 1891, and the reader will appreciate the sorrowful interest of her visit to “dear Annie’s grave,” and the intensity of her sympathy with “poor Percy, so sad and lonely.”
On August 28th, Mrs. Lewis writes from Tunduwa (Underhill) lamenting endless delays. The old King of San Salvador is dead, and the hoped-for carriers are detained by the prolonged obsequies of their late sovereign. She is still in Tunduwa on September 6th, but has been of service in nursing Mr. Lawson Forfeitt through an illness, whose return to England, she suggests, should be arranged speedily. Finally, on September 12th, San Salvador is reached, and the longed-for work is resumed. A fortnight later Mrs. Graham and Mrs. Phillips are on the point of leaving for England. Their husbands are to accompany them to the coast, and Mr. Graham is to remain in charge at Underhill, while Mr. Forfeitt takes his much-needed furlough.
It is not practicable, as it is not necessary, to attempt anything like a continuous story of the next two or three years. The work proceeds along the lines laid down, and the days are passed in the quiet and sometimes monotonous discharge of routine duties. San Salvador is off the main line of the Mission, and Mrs. Lewis and her friends live in a little world of their own, which occasionally seems to be very small and secluded. But the work is too constantly exacting to give time for dispiriting reflection upon its isolation, nor is it destitute of occasional excitements.