I must now record a passage of my own personal experience at this crisis, which will be variously interpreted by any who may read it, but which I shall state with all simplicity for the encouragement at least of those who believe and know that there is a “God in heaven Who heareth prayer.” I had passed a sleepless night, in vain attempts to soothe the sufferings and allay the fever of my dear invalid, myself weak and exhausted, and now full of pain. The night was long, dark and cold, both spiritually and materially. Towards morning he fell into a troubled sleep. I went softly into a little ante-room, leaving the door open between. A feeling of despair came over me. My own strength was failing, and he was worse. Who would now minister to him, I asked, and was there to be no end to these repeated and heart-breaking disappointments? When Elijah fled into the wilderness, and gave himself up to bitter thoughts, in the depths of his discouragement the voice came to him, questioning, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” bidding him arise out of his depression. So to me it seemed at that moment that a voice came—or rather, I would say, a light shone—into the very heart of my darkness and despair. The promises of God in the Scriptures, with which I had been familiar all my life, came to me as if I had heard them for the first time. I fell on my knees and kept silence, to hear what the Lord would say to me; for, for my own part, I had nothing to say. My trouble was too heavy for speech. “The prayer of faith shall save the sick.”“Call upon Me in the time of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” “Is this true?” I exclaimed. Yes, I knew it was true. It seemed to become a very simple matter, and grace was given to me, in my pain and weakness, to say only, “Lord, I believe.” The burden was removed. I returned to my husband’s room, and sat silent for a while until he moved, and the day broke. I brought him his breakfast, and said to him confidently, “You are going to be better to-day, beloved.” He smiled, but did not speak. Two hours later our kind doctor came. He took his temperature and felt his pulse, and with a sigh of relief he said, “Well, dear Canon, a wonderful thing has happened. A great change has come. You are much better.”
A lady told me later that at a party of friends in Berne, Dr. Demme had spoken of this recovery, and said that it had been very remarkable,—a “Divine interposition” in answer, as he believed, to prayer: he added that my husband had had inflammation of both lungs and pleurisy, as well as the serious heart attack, adding, “any one of which was enough to kill most men.”
After my husband’s serious illness in 1886, I had resolved in my own mind never again to be absent from him for more than a few hours, if possible, during our united lives. I refused all invitations to attend meetings in London or elsewhere, sometimes, I fear, to the surprise as well as the regret of my fellow-workers in public matters. My choice was however deliberate, and I have never had cause to regret it. He had, I thought, sufficiently suffered by my frequent absences from home, during many years of our married life, while engaged in opposing a great social wrong, and he had borne this trial without a murmur. He was now advanced in years, and less strong, and these things seemed to me to constitute a most sacred claim to my personal and constant devotion to him. Never, except for a day or two during the serious illness of a dear sister, did I consent to be separated from him. Even on that occasion I was told by those at home that he seemed to feel my absence sadly, and that at the sound of a footstep or wheels on the drive, he would go to the window to see if by any chance it was his wife who had returned, though he knew that it was scarcely possible.
In this period of quieter life, Josephine Butler by no means rested from literary work, or from active interest in the abolitionist cause. Besides a large amount of correspondence, chiefly connected with the work of the Federation, she issued in 1887 two pamphlets, The Revival and Extension of the Abolitionist Cause, and Our Christianity tested by the Irish Question. In the first she refers to the C.D. Laws then in force in many of the Colonies and in India, and to the traffic in women which the system had facilitated. These Laws were shortly after repealed in most of the Crown Colonies and in India.
In the Irish pamphlet she shows how in the attempt to rule Ireland by a succession of Coercion Acts the same constitutional principles had been violated as in the case of the Acts against which she had so long fought. She traces the long sad story of England’s treatment of the sister isle, the real and solid grievances, which had naturally led to the demand for Home Rule.
Certain classes of persons in England have always maintained that successive Irish leaders and patriots were mere mischief makers, the cause and not the exponents of the prevailing discontent. If their mouths could be stopped, they imagine, there would be no more disaffection in Ireland, or such as there was would be easily repressed. This was their manner of judging of Flood, of Grattan, of Curran, of O’Connell. They could not learn, and are as far from learning to-day as ever, that you cannot heal the broken heart of Ireland by gagging those whom she sends over here to plead for her. They were relieved when the prison doors closed upon one after another of Ireland’s patriotic but unhappy sons; they were hopeful of quieter times when O’Connell died, worn out and sad. As one of their own poets said, “They broke the æolian harp, and then wrote an epitaph on the wind;” the wind which gave voice to the harp, a voice sometimes sad and low, and wailing, sometimes giving forth a shriek full of agony and vengeance. They imagined it was dead. Such has ever been the manner of looking at national griefs by people who lack sympathy with all aspirations after self-government, freedom, and the manhood of a nation, and who believe you can beat the souls of men into submission by physical force. They bring out their handcuffs and their cannon; they create the silence of desolation, and then they call it peace.
In order to give a complete idea of my husband’s kindliness of nature, and to fill in some characteristic touches of his home life, I must speak of our affectionate companions—our dogs. Our first dog friend was Bunty (the origin of the name is obscure). He lived with us many years at Liverpool, and came with us to Winchester. He was a dog of excellent parts; not of pure breed, chiefly otter hound. He had beautiful eyes, full of human expression. He had a strong sense of humour. It is generally said that dogs hate to be laughed at. This was not the case with Bunty. He could bear to be laughed at, would enter into the joke, and, so to speak, turn the laugh against himself, by behaving in a manner which he well knew would excite laughter. He shared many pleasant holidays with us. He died in 1883. My husband had the free hand of a sculptor. A few things which he carved in stone were worthy of preservation, among them a perfect likeness of this good dog in an attitude of watchful repose. Beneath he carved the words—ΑΡΙΣΤΟΥ ΚΥΝΟΣ ΣΗΜΑ. “Some of my friends,” he wrote, “find a difficulty in believing that I carved Bunty’s likeness in stone. Froude says, some centuries hence, when the monument is disinterred and its inscription discovered, some Dryasdust will start a theory that a Greek colony once inhabited the Close.” Bunty’s successor was Carlo, a handsome thoroughbred retriever, quite black, with shining curls—a sensible, gentlemanlike dog, excellent in his own special art of retrieving birds, and an uncompromising guard and watchdog. His attachment to his master, whom he outlived for two years, was profound. This poor dog was very wretched and melancholy when his master left his home for the last time and returned no more. He would seek him in every corner of the house, and along the riverside where he had been accustomed to walk with him or watch him fishing; and returning, would rest his chin on the arm of his master’s empty study chair, as if waiting for the familiar hand to pat his head. His dumb grief was very touching.
In May, 1888, Josephine Butler started The Dawn, a quarterly sketch of the work of the Federation, and in the pages of this periodical she continued to speak words of encouragement and warning to her friends for over eight years, after which its issue ceased. She and her husband attended the Conferences of the Federation at Lausanne in 1887, and at Copenhagen in 1888; and to the end of his life, notwithstanding his increasing weakness, they were able to enjoy together peaceful visits to relatives in Switzerland and Italy. It was on their way home from one of these visits, that George Butler died in London on March 14th, 1890. Two years later Josephine Butler published her Recollections of George Butler, from which we have already quoted so much, and from which we must now make one more quotation.
We read in the Gospels that the disciples of Christ found themselves one dark evening separated from the Master, “in the midst of the sea”; that He saw them from the shore “toiling in rowing, for the wind was contrary.” Such is sometimes the position, spiritually and morally, of one who has up to a certain point “fought a good fight and kept the faith,” but against whom arise contrary winds and buffeting waves; one for whom “fightings without and fears within” have proved too severe, and who is now “toiling in rowing,” with faint heart and gloomy outlook—the presence of the Master no longer realised to reassure and guide. “Old Satan is too strong for young Melancthon,” said one of the reformers of the sixteenth century, and the same enemy has proved many a time since then too strong for much humbler workers. The problems of life at times appear so perplexing as to be incapable of any solution. The lines of good and evil, of right and wrong, light and darkness, appear blurred; and the weak and burdened spirit loses the hold it had retained hitherto of the highest standard, fidelity to which alone can bring us again out of darkness and trouble into light and hope.