[CHAPTER XIX.]
MEMORIES.
When I received the announcement of the passing away, at ninety years of age, of Mr. Arthur Albright, my thoughts were carried back to many years ago. I felt a kind of peace in the thought that this brave Christian has been permitted to live to such a ripe old age. It is an encouragement to us all to observe, as we do in so many cases, that the most strenuous workers for justice and truth, who have been foremost in the ranks of combatants for the right, are often strengthened in body and in nerves to endure for a greater number of years than others who perhaps live more for themselves.
I have not seen Mr. Albright for very many years. In the seventies I frequently met him at the annual meetings of the Friends at Devonshire House. One incident stands out very vividly in my mind, and I may be permitted to recall it just in the manner in which it comes back to me. In the earliest years of our agitation for repeal (I think it was in 1870) I was at Birmingham, where naturally my message was received with unhesitating cordiality by leading members of the Society of Friends. Among these stood foremost Mr. Arthur Albright and his friend and relative Mr. John E. Wilson, who have both now gone to their rest. (My most intimate friends in the whole matter were Mr. and Mrs. Kenway, in whose house I always stayed in Birmingham.) After a large meeting held there, there was a discussion as to whether it would not be well at once to attack the British stronghold of Regulation, viz. Plymouth, where already that system had begun to bear its corrupt and tragic fruits, there having been already several suicides of poor girls forcibly brought within its tyranny. These Quaker gentlemen put it to me, Was I willing to go, because they felt that, at that period of our crusade the cause must be presented prominently as a woman’s cause, and be represented by women? I answered, “Yes; probably it is right to go.” These gentlemen replied that they would with pleasure charge themselves with any expenses that the journey and the meetings might involve. Well, I packed up my things, and with a somewhat trembling heart, counteracted by the supreme love of battle which was born in me, I went with a few friends to the railway station to proceed to Plymouth. There I was somewhat startled to find myself closely followed on the platform by these two friends above mentioned. Mr. Albright was tall, straight, thin, and in figure as in principles, as firm as a bar of iron. Mr. Wilson was also tall, broader, and perhaps more imposing looking. I turned to thank them for their kindness in coming to see me off. The reply in a very gentle voice was, “Oh, we go with thee; we could not leave thee alone.” There came, I recollect, to my heart quite a thrill at that moment of admiration and gratitude. I thought to myself, “This is true chivalry.” These were responsible business men, who had their duties every day in Birmingham. I do not think that either of them were great speakers. Mr. Albright was a silent man, but his few words were weighty, and his convictions were immovable; he was one of those Quakers whom the poet Whittier described as “a non-conductor among the wires.” They came with me to Plymouth, together with other early friends of our cause. At the great and stormy meeting which we had there they stood by me, sat behind me when I had to speak, and I felt that their presence was a tower of strength, though they said so little. The day of our meeting was a day of overpowering heat. The battle in which we were engaged was equally hot, and the Quaker calm of my kind friends was better to me than even the breeze that blew through the open windows. These may seem to be trifling remembrances, but, strange to say, such memories live sometimes in the brain when greater things are forgotten.
Long ago I asked a gift of God—companionship with Christ. Shall I murmur because He, having granted my request, grants it not in the way that I expected? I thought of Mary sitting at His feet, hearing His word calmly, happy and wise; but that is not the companionship He grants me to-day (Good Friday). To-day it is the companionship with Him of the penitent malefactor, nailed to a neighbouring cross. I cannot grasp His hand, nor sit at His feet, nor lean on His breast as the beloved disciple did, for I am bound hand and foot, stretched on my cross till every nerve and muscle strains and aches. I can only turn my head to that side where the Lord hangs in pain also, so near that I can hear His breathing, His sighs, the beating of His heart; but separated by the cross. The cross which brings me so near to Him is the hindrance to a still nearer approach. I can speak to Him in few and faint words from my cross to His, but without the tranquil rest and consolation which I once knew in His presence, and such as the family of Bethany knew, whom He loved. But did He not also love that dying malefactor? and did not those two, in some sense, resemble each other as they hung there, a spectacle to men and angels, more than Martha or Mary resembled Him as they sat at His feet, or ministered to Him with busy hands?
I recall these things to sustain me in the midst of mournful questionings. He has chosen the manner of our companionship, and therefore it is dear to me. No pleasant walks on the slopes of the Mount of Olives, no evening converse or public teaching on the shores of the lake or on the green hillside, no sweet ministerings by the wayside or in humble dwellings to His human needs. These are not His choice for me. In the morning of life I chose for myself—I chose the beautiful and good things set before me; and now in the evening, when the shadows are closing round, He chooses for me. If I have worn a crown of roses, shall I not gladly change it for one of thorns, if it brings me nearer? When my earthly paradise faded, and its best human companionship was withdrawn, and I was left alone, then my Lord remembered my first request—for companionship with Him. And how could He choose better than He had chosen—to share His solitude, to know the sweet and awful companionship of suffering, of darkness, of the vision of the whole world’s sin, for which He was wounded to death, and of the slow hours counted in silent pain? I thank thee, O God!
The following message was written for the Conference of the Federation held in Paris in June, 1900.
In the midst of all that is now being done to promote a higher morality and to win men, our soldiers and others, to accept the higher standard, there is still, I think, a tendency to forget, or at least to feel less, our responsibility towards the immediate and the saddest victims of the social evil—the women, the young girls of the so-called outcast class. May I once more put in a plea for them? Unable now to work among them in any practical way, yet the thought of them is ever with me. There are memories which nothing can efface, forms which visit me again in the night season, faces which look through the mists of the past and seem to plead for some word from me, some reminder addressed to our busy workers and noble social reformers—a word to recall to them that “we are still in bonds; we are still in State prison-houses, in beleaguered cities where a famine of all that heart and soul crave, and the disease-impregnated atmosphere are wearing us out and holding us until the last breath of hope is extinguished and we die; and yet no sound of any relieving army reaches our ears, no glad tramp of swiftly-flying horses bearing our deliverers; no cry from the watch-tower, Relief is on the way! We are here while you are preaching purity, more manliness to men, more courage to women, more love for humanity. Have you forgotten us?” From the Maisons tolerées of Geneva, of Paris, of Berlin, from slave pens and prisons all over the Continent comes this cry to those who have ears to hear.
At the meeting of our Abolitionist Federation about to be held in Paris will that voice be heard, or will it be lost amidst the excitement of those days, amidst the pressure of a thousand interests and the voices of appeal from many workers in innumerable good causes? And yet a few streets distant there are and will be abodes filled with human beings—our sisters, driven outside the pale of all law, hemmed round and crushed down by a cordon and by weights of arbitrary police rules, slaves and prisoners to whom no light comes, to whom no word of hope penetrates. They have been so welded into a compact class by human egotism that even the good and kind among men and women are apt to forget that they are no more criminal than others who are free, and to look upon them as a peculiarly degraded portion of humanity.
May I recall a few memories? In Paris some twenty or more years ago my husband and I, on our way to an evening meeting, shortened our route by going through an obscure by-street. As we passed there darted out of the darkness a girl gaily dressed, painted, but no fille de joie, no dressing or paint could hide the marks of slavery and pain. She made for me, she threw her arms round my neck, her cheek for one moment pressed against mine, the tears coursing down through the paint which hid the pallor underneath, and calling me by my name, she said (in French), “We love you! Oh, we love you!” I had no time to respond. She, seeing or feeling the approach of a policeman or something, tore herself away and darted back into the darkness. Like a meteor out of the darkness this vision appeared, and into the darkness it returned, leaving no trace behind. I never heard of her again. I know nothing. Where is that spirit now? Where? I ask it of God. She told me she loved me (she and her doomed comrades). Shall I ever have the opportunity of returning to her those dear words? We had been having meetings, in which sympathy was expressed for these captives. Some few of them, in spite of police surveillance, had managed to creep into our meetings, and perhaps they had read something in the newspapers.