Looking my Liberator in the face, can my friends wonder that I have taken my place, (I took it long ago)—oh! with what infinite contentment!—by the side of her, the “woman in the city which was a sinner,” of whom He, her Liberator and mine, said, as He can also say of me, “this woman hath not ceased to kiss My feet.”
[CHAPTER II.]
OXFORD.
No record of Josephine Butler’s life would be at all true or complete which did not include some account of her husband. His strong and gentle spirit greatly influenced and aided her in all her public work, not only with whole-hearted sympathy, but with active co-operation whenever he had leisure from his other duties. The following pages are taken from her Recollections of George Butler.
In visiting some great picture gallery, and passing along amidst portraits innumerable of great men—of kings, statesmen, discoverers, authors or poets—I have sometimes been attracted above all by a portrait without a name, or without the interest attaching to it of any recorded great exploit, but which, nevertheless interests for its own sake. Something looks forth from those eyes—something of purity, of sincerity, of goodness—which draws the beholder to go back again and again to that portrait, and which gives it a lasting place in the memory long after many other likenesses of earth’s heroes are more or less forgotten. It is somewhat in this way that I think of a memorial or written likeness of George Butler, if it can but be presented with a simplicity and fidelity worthy of its subject. His character—his singlemindedness, purity, truth, and firmness of attachment to those whom he loved—seem to me worthy to be recorded and to be had in remembrance.
M. Fallot, in the Revue du Christianisme Pratique, sketches in a few words the character of the revered teacher of his youth, Christophe Dieterlin, whose mortal remains rest beneath the hallowed soil of the Ban de la Roche, in the Vosges, surmounted by a rock of mountain granite—a suitable monument for such a man. When his pupil questioned him concerning prayer, he replied: “The Lord’s Prayer is in general sufficient for me. When praying in these words, all my personal preoccupations become mingled with and lost in the great needs and desires of the whole human race.” “He was a Christian,” says M. Fallot, ”hors cadre, refractory to all classification, living outside all parties,” a child of Nature and a son of God. These words might with truth be applied to the character of George Butler. It would be difficult to assign him a definite place in any category of persons or parties. He stands apart, hors cadre, in his gentleness and simplicity, and in a certain sturdy and immovable independence of character.
George Butler was born at Harrow on the 11th of June, 1819. He was the eldest son of a family of ten—four brothers and six sisters. Nothing very remarkable in the way of hard study or distinction can be recorded of him during his school career. When questioned in later life concerning any excellency he attained there, he would answer, reflectively, that he was considered to be extremely good at “shying” stones. He could hit or knock over certain high-up and difficult chimney-pots with wonderful precision, to the envy of other mischievous boys, and I suppose to the annoyance of the owners of the chimney-pots. His father, the Dean of Peterborough, wrote to me in 1852: “Your references to George’s early days make me feel quite young again. He certainly was a nice-looking boy, and had a pretty head of hair; at least I thought so, and the remembrance of those nursery days is pleasant to me. But oh! those early experiments in the science of projectiles upon the chimney-pots of the Harrovian neighbours—why remind me of them, unless you are yourself possessed of the same spirit of mischief?”
But school life was not all play for George Butler. He showed an early aptitude for scholarship, gaining among several prizes that for Greek Iambics. In the autumn of 1838 George went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. During the year he spent at Cambridge the sense of duty and of responsibility for the use of opportunities and gifts which he possessed lay dormant within him. Those who loved him best often thanked God, however, as he did himself in later life, that he had escaped the contamination of certain influences which leave a stain upon the soul, and sometimes tend to give a serious warp to the judgment of a man in regard to moral questions. A remarkable native purity of mind, and a loyal and reverent feeling towards women, saved him from associations and actions which, had he ever yielded to them, would have been a bitter memory to such a man as he was. In the interval between leaving Cambridge and going to Oxford he spent several months in the house of Mr. Augustus Short (afterwards Bishop of Adelaide). It was while under his roof that he imbibed a true love of work, and learned the enjoyment of overcoming difficulties, and of a steady effort, without pause, towards a definite goal.
One of his life-long and most valued friends, the Rev. Cowley Powles, writes: “It was, I think, in 1841 that Butler got the Hertford Scholarship. I remember meeting him just after his success had been announced. I was coming back from a ride, and he stopped me and said: ‘I have got the Hertford.’ The announcement was made in his quietest voice, and with no elation of manner, though his countenance showed how much he was pleased. Never was there a man with less brag about him.” In 1843 George Butler took his degree, having obtained a first class. He kept up his connection very closely with Oxford for four years, making use of the time for various studies, and taking pupils or reading parties during the long vacations. In 1848 he was appointed to a Tutorship at the University of Durham, which he retained for a little more than two years. It was during the latter part of his residence there that I first made his acquaintance.
The following, written after our engagement, shows his extreme honesty of character, while it indicates in some faint degree his just and unselfish view of what the marriage relation should be; namely, a perfectly equal union, with absolute freedom on both sides for personal initiative in thought and action and for individual development.