April, 1900.
You ask me for a few words on the character and career of my brother-in-law, the Chevalier Tell Meuricoffre, who fell asleep on Thursday, March 22nd. It would hardly be possible for me to write of him impersonally, while even as a sister, to whom he was very dear, it is not quite easy. But I will try. I cannot speak of him in any direct connection with the cause which your paper represents, for he never came personally to the front in our work, though in sympathy he was with us and with his dear wife, my sister, who has been for several years a member of our International Committee, and some of whose published letters reveal a deeper insight than I have ever observed in any other person into the intimate relations of our question with the spiritual life of individuals and nations. Mr. Meuricoffre’s was a very full, varied and most useful life. Swiss by parentage, he was born and lived almost all his life in Naples, where he fulfilled some of the highest citizen functions in a manner to attract the esteem of his fellow-citizens of every nationality and creed. Now that he is gone a thousand testimonies are pouring in to his sterling worth, and to the affection he had inspired far and wide. He was the head and support of the Swiss Protestant colony in Naples—a very numerous society—and the promoter of countless good works, such as the International Hospital, which he created for the reception of strangers arriving in Naples, who did not find any such safe or good treatment in the other hospitals of the city. Truth, purity, uprightness, singlemindedness, and a most munificent generosity were among his characteristics. Noblesse oblige seemed to be his motto. He did not let his left hand know what his right hand did. Besides his public acts of benevolence, he aided privately numbers of individuals and families whose needs or misfortunes were a secret to all except himself. He was the most open-handed of men. He and my husband were great friends, and in several points they resembled each other. If the world were more largely peopled with such men as these two, we should not have needed, dear Editor, to maintain so continuous and arduous a struggle as we have had for justice and mercy at the hands of men. Mr. and Mrs. Meuricoffre used to spend a part of each summer at their beautiful Swiss home on the borders of the Lake of Geneva; and it was here that many delightful family gatherings took place, assembling from Italy, England and France. We have golden memories of those times, where we (from England) used sometimes to rest, in order to prepare ourselves for approaching conferences of the Abolitionist Federation in Switzerland. Some of your readers may remember Mr. Meuricoffre’s presence at the conference in Berne in 1896, and my sister’s words spoken in the sacristy of the large church at Colmar, the year before, when she pleaded for the poor child victims in Italy.
The occasion of the Colmar meeting, referred to in the above letter, is described in the following extract from a journal kept by Josephine Butler in 1895.
This week at Colmar was altogether sweet. My darling Hatty made a lovely impression on all our friends. I shall never forget her words spoken at a preliminary meeting in our salon at the hotel, where arrangements for the week were discussed. One saw there was a tendency, in the preparing of certain resolutions, to drop to a lower standard in the proclaiming of principles (in order to disarm opposition, it was said). Her few words spoken very gently, but firmly, led the whole company up to the higher standard—that of Christ; and our old and valued friend, Professor Felix Bovet, thanked her for recalling them to that standard. At one of our early morning devotional meetings, which were held in the sacristy of the large Protestant Church, her voice went to my heart, and to that of many, as she stood up and prayed for poor Italy, and for Naples especially, asking God to send some of His inspired teachers and workers there. But most of all there dwells in my heart the memory of that early morning when, before going to the sacristy, I went to her room. I had been ill and exhausted all the day before. She kneeled down, half dressed as she was, and drew me down beside her, and putting her arm round me, and drawing me close to her side, she poured out her soul in such a loving petition for me, weeping as she prayed, and yet with such firm faith and loving assurance as people only have when they feel God very near, and realise His will to grant what is asked. Her voice sounded to me like that of some ministering angel, pleading pleading face to face with God—a voice trembling with emotion and yet steadied by the sense of the dear and awful presence of the Christ to whom she spoke. And her prayer was large and far-reaching, embracing those dearest to us, and “the little ones, the lost lambs of Jesus.” Wonderful strength and health were given to me for the remaining days at Colmar.
In 1901 she published In Memoriam, Harriet Meuricoffre, consisting mainly of letters from her sister, which are written with a delicacy of literary style, and reveal the extreme sweetness of her character. The following extract from one of these letters shows how these two sisters were more than sisters—heart-friends: “How I wish I was near you; not that I could do anything, but I sometimes feel as if my intense love for you might almost surround you like the vapour which forms itself around the human hand, and enables it to plunge into molten metal at white heat, and not be scorched. I feel sure that God will keep you all through these days, and give you strength for each hour. At what hour have you meetings for prayer? It is so sweet to draw near to Him early in the morning before all the rumbling, and shouting and dust come between heaven and earth. Every morning, my best beloved, I will be holding you up to Him, between six and seven o’clock. Let a quick little thought of this cross your mind while dressing. My whole heart is with you, and will be, every day and all the days.”
In 1903 she published The Morning Cometh: A Letter to my Children, under the pseudonym of “Philalethes.” This little book, like The Lady of Shunem, is a Bible study, chiefly on those passages which point to the larger hope and the restitution of all things. We give three extracts from it.
I’ve heard within my inmost soul
Such glorious morning news.
In the course of the last twenty years or so, and especially in that of the last five or six years, a flood of light has been poured upon the meanings of the sacred writers, and most of all on the text of the teaching of Christ and His Apostles. This light has come gradually to me, and to many, like new life. Up to the time that this light shone out fully, it has seemed that we had all received only half a gospel of glad tidings; now it is a whole gospel, for which thousands have been waiting; and the joy it brings is great, and will be greater, the more we enter into and are made to understand the love of God and His divine purpose for the salvation of all. “The Larger Hope,” as this new light is sometimes called, and which might be called the Illimitable Hope, is rapidly becoming more clearly seen and joyfully accepted.
The unscriptural teaching concerning eternal punishment has created thousands of atheists, sceptics and defiant scoffers at Christianity, and has made many just-minded and tender-hearted people very unhappy, bringing the grey hairs of many in sorrow to the grave—in sorrow for a lost world—or a lost child (supposed through false teaching to be lost, but not lost). Having conversed of late years with a few of such sorrowful persons, and with some who have been driven by false representations of the character of God to the verge of a complete and final rejection of all faith in Him, I have seen the relief it has brought when the other side has been set before them. I have seen countenances light up as with a new hope, and the man or woman addressed like one who has thrown off a burden of years, and who now begins to breathe freely, delivered from an intolerable oppression.