JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER

All rights reserved

Josephine E. Butler
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR

EDITED BY
GEORGE W. AND LUCY A. JOHNSON

With Introduction by
JAMES STUART, M.A., LL.D.

SECOND IMPRESSION

BRISTOL
J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street
LONDON
Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company Limited
1909

PREFACE.

It is very difficult worthily to record the history of one of the noblest women who ever lived, but, having been asked by the Ladies’ National Association for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Vice to prepare a Memoir of Mrs. Josephine Butler, we have tried to tell her life story as far as possible in her own words, by means of extracts from her writings, with just sufficient thread of explanation to hold them together. The present volume is therefore to a large extent an autobiography, taken chiefly from her Recollections of George Butler, and from Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade; but selections have also been given from most of her principal publications, so as to give some idea of her extensive literary work. We have not included any private letters, as it was her strongly expressed wish that these should not be published.

Many of the quotations have been abridged, but they have not otherwise been altered, except in a few cases where dates, etc., have been corrected. We have however ventured, for the sake of securing a continuous narrative, occasionally to combine passages taken from different sources.

As this volume is intended to give an account of Mrs. Butler’s own life and work, it has not been possible fully to sketch the history of the movement, with which her name was specially identified, or to allude to many of those associated with her in that movement, whose labours she so heartily appreciated, and whose friendship she so greatly valued.

We are much indebted to the editors of Joséphine E. Butler: Souvenirs et Pensées (Saint-Blaise, Foyer Solidariste, 1908), having in many cases used the same extracts as are given in that volume. We have also to thank Mrs. Butler’s representatives and various publishers (Horace Marshall & Son, Macmillan & Co., and others) for permission to quote from copyright works.

G. W. J.
L. A. J.

May 1st, 1909.

CONTENTS

PORTRAITS.

INTRODUCTION.

Josephine Butler was one of the great people of the world. In character, in work done, in influence on others, she was among that few great people who have moulded the course of things. The world is different because she lived. Like most of the very great people of the world, she was extremely cosmopolitan. She belongs to all nations and to all time. The work she did, the people she influenced, prove this. Her Voice in the Desert has been translated into most languages of Europe, and has spoken like the voice of a compatriot to the people of every land. She was a great leader of men and women, and a skilful and intrepid general of the battles she fought. As an orator she touched the hearts of her hearers as no one else has done to whom I have listened. She aimed at a perfectly definite object, but round that object there gathered in her mind many others, all converging to the same end. She left behind her wherever she went new thoughts and new aims and new ideals.

Around her central thought grew up many others, and a host of good works have been left in many countries as living memorials of her influence. She thus not only led a great crusade, but she helped to raise the characters of the individuals engaged in it.

But while I write of her public work, it would be but half the truth unless I said a word about her personally. She was at home in every class of society. She was very beautiful, and of a very gracious presence, and the impression made by first seeing her and hearing her voice has, I expect, been forgotten by none who ever met her. She was of a very artistic temperament. She was a good painter, an extremely good musician. She was a bold rider, and active, though always of a somewhat weak health. Her industry and application was unbounded. She was very full of humour, and, while deeply in earnest, had the faculty of being at times charmingly gay. She dressed with great taste and simplicity. She, above all things, loved her home and her husband, and that love was wholly returned.

I have said she was extremely cosmopolitan, and all who have known her know how true that is. At the same time she was a great lover of her own country, and particularly of the borderland between England and Scotland, where she was born, and where she now lies buried in the churchyard of Kirknewton, where many of her ancestors lie. For she came of an old Border family; and bravery, and the alertness of battle, and the power of self-sacrifice, and the indignation against wrong which characterised her, came to her, perhaps, partly through her descent.

She was a great reader of the Bible, and a humble suppliant before the throne of God. But, while her own beliefs were clear and definite, she had no narrowness in her views, and the very names of those who have been her foremost supporters show how wide her sympathies were, and how acceptable she was to people of all creeds, as well as of all politics and of all climes.

She had to endure much, especially in the early stages of her crusade—the averted glances of former friends, the brutal attacks of ignorant opponents—but the inspiration of a mighty purpose enabled her to rise above all that, and to preserve a serenity of mind and of manner through it all.

And now, what is the sum of it all? It seems to me to be this, that we must all be glad that she lived. We are each of us individually better, and the world as a whole is better, because she lived; and the seed that she has sown can never die.

JAMES STUART.

Josephine E. Butler.

[CHAPTER I.]
DILSTON.

Josephine Elizabeth Grey was born at Milfield Hill, in the county of Northumberland, on April 13th, 1828. She was the fourth daughter of John Grey, and of his wife Hannah Annett. In her Memoir of John Grey of Dilston, she writes thus of her birthplace and family.

It seems to me that any life of my father must include, to some extent, a history of the county in which he was born, lived and died. He loved the place of his birth, sweet Glendale. His affections were largely drawn out to that Border country; not only to the living beings who peopled it, but to the scenes themselves—the hills, the valleys, and the rivers. All through his life there will be found evidence of the heart-yearnings towards them; and these are shared by his children, to whom there seems no spot on earth like Glendale. This attachment to our native country is perhaps stronger among us than among some families, because for so many generations back we were rooted there. Greys abounded on the Borders; they were keepers often of the Border castles and towers, living a life not always very peaceful in regard to their Scottish neighbours.

Glendale is rich in romantic associations: every name in and around it brings to the mind some incident of war, or lover’s adventure, or heroic exploit recorded in English ballads, or sung to sweet Scottish tunes, or woven later into the poems of Sir Walter Scott. It is a very beautiful range of hills which skirts Glendale to the west; their very names, Yeavring Bell, Heathpool Bell, Newton Torr, Hetha, Hedgehope, and Cheviot—were delightful to my father’s ear. Directly in front of our old home, Milfield Hill, lies the scene of innumerable fights between Scotch and English, Milfield Plain, and from its windows might have been seen the famous battle of Humbledon Hill.

Flodden Hill, about a mile north of Milfield Hill, hides beneath its soil traces of the great battle of 1513: broken pieces of armour of men and horses were sometimes dug or ploughed up, and brought to the house, to be treasured up as relics. Many a time did my father recite to his children every incident of that battle, as he rode or walked with them over Flodden, sometimes resting at the “King’s Chair,” or by “Sybil’s Well.” His memory was so good that he could go through almost the whole of Marmion, and other poems relating to that woeful day,

When shivered was fair Scotland’s spear,

And broken was her shield.

His dislike of the Stuarts was great, but he would tell, with a sorrowful sympathy, how the “flowers of the forest,” the noble youth of Scotland, “were a’ wede away.”

After the battle of Flodden the Border warfare degenerated into a system of recriminative plunder, which continued till comparatively recent times. It is only a few generations back that our Northumbrians used to watch the fords all night long, with their trained mastiffs, to prevent the Scotch from carrying away their cattle. At one of the early meetings of the Highland Society at Kelso, my father said: “There was a time, and that at no distant period, when, had it been possible for such animals as we have seen to-day to exist, it would have required the escort of our honourable Vice-President, Sir John Hope, and his cavalry in bringing each lot to the show-ground, to secure it against the chance of being roasted among the heather of the Highlands or boiled in the pots of Cumberland.”

But the time came for this fair Border country to wake up to new life. Probably no part of England has undergone so rapid a change as Northumberland has done in the last eighty or ninety years. The half-barbarous character which I have been describing clung to the people long after it had given place to civilisation elsewhere. The soil and climate were rugged, and resisted for a long time the first efforts at cultivation; but its inhabitants, rugged too, were energetic, and the impulse once given, it required not many years to place Northumberland at the head of agricultural progress.

The part which my father had in bringing about this great change in Northumberland, and in the progress of agriculture generally, was not inconsiderable. How great the change must have been, in a short time, those of us can imagine who have witnessed the rich harvests of the last twenty years, and the merry harvest-homes on Tweedside and Tillside. Not less striking, perhaps, was the change brought about later on the banks of the Tyne. When he migrated thither in 1833, Tyneside, which is now so richly cultivated, presented in many parts miles of fox-cover and self-sown plantations of fir and birchwood.

John Grey was born in August, 1785. He was the son of George Grey, of West Ord, on the banks of the Tweed, and of his wife, Mary Burn. He himself thus writes of his ancestry, in answer to a question addressed to him by a friend.

“He [an antiquarian] imagines that he brings the Greys down from Rollo, whose daughter Arletta was mother of William the Conqueror; but I think their Norman origin is doubtful. Undoubtedly, however, they were derived from a long line of warriors, who were Wardens of the East Marches, Governors of Norham, Morpeth, Wark, and Berwick Castles in the old Border days, and were also dignified by great achievements in foreign wars. Sir John Grey, of Heaton, 1356, was valorous in the army of Henry V, and gained, or had conferred on him, castles in Normandy, and the title of Tankerville, which is now an offshoot of the old stock. His figure is given as a knight of great strength and renown, and he was distinguished by the capacious forehead which is said to have marked the race through all ages; see the late Charles Earl Grey for its full development. [The writer was not less remarkable for this feature than any who bore the name.] A son of Sir John Grey, Governor of Morpeth Castle 1656, gave offence by a marriage with a buxom daughter of a farmer, at Angerton. In the records it is shown that he had an annuity from the family estate at Learmonth. From this offshoot comes our degenerate tribe!”

My mother’s parents were good people, descended from the poor but honest families of silk-weavers, driven out of France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were in the habit of opening their hospitable doors to everyone in the form of a religious teacher, of whatever sect, who happened to pass that way. One of my mother’s earliest memories was of being lifted upon the knee of the venerable John Wesley, a man with white silvery hair and a benevolent countenance, who placed his two hands upon the head of the golden-haired little girl and pronounced over her a tender and solemn benediction.

In 1833 John Grey was appointed to take charge of the Greenwich Hospital estates in his native county, and moved to a new house built for him at Dilston, in the vale of the Tyne.

Our home at Dilston was a very beautiful one. Its romantic historical associations, the wild, informal beauty all round its doors, the bright, large family circle, and the kind and hospitable character of its master and mistress, made it an attractive place to many friends and guests. Among our pleasantest visitors there were Swedes, Russians and French, who came to England on missions of agricultural or other inquiry, and who sometimes spent weeks with us. It was a house the door of which stood wide open, as if to welcome all comers, through the livelong summer day (all the days seem like summer days when looking back). It was a place where one could glide out of a lower window and be hidden in a moment, plunging straight among wild wood paths and beds of fern, or find oneself quickly in some cool concealment, beneath slender birch trees, or by the dry bed of a mountain stream. It was a place where the sweet hushing sound of waterfalls, and clear streams murmuring over shallows, were heard all day and night, though winter storms turned those sweet sounds into an angry roar.

I have thought that the secret of my father’s consistency lay in the fact that his opinions had their root very deep in his soul and affections, that they were indigenous, so to speak, not grafted from without. God made him a Liberal, and a Liberal in the true sense he continued to be to the end of his life. In conversation with him on any public questions, one could not but observe how much such questions were matters of feeling with him. I believe that his political principles and public actions were alike the direct fruit of that which held rule within his soul—I mean his large benevolence, his tender compassionateness, and his respect for the rights and liberties of the individual man. His life was a sustained effort for the good of others, flowing from these affections. He had no grudge against rank or wealth, no restless desire of change for its own sake, still less any rude love of demolition; but he could not endure to see oppression or wrong of any kind inflicted on man, woman, or child. “You cannot treat men and women exactly as you do one pound bank-notes, to be used or rejected as you think proper,” he said in a letter to The Times, when that paper was advocating some ill-considered changes, beneficial to one class, but leaving out of account a residue of humble folk upon whom they would entail great suffering. In the cause of any maltreated or neglected creature he was uncompromising to the last, and when brought into opposition with the perpetrators of any social injustice he became an enemy to be feared. Some who remembered him in early manhood have described his commanding presence when he stood forth on public occasions as the champion of Liberal principles, “unsubdued by the blandishments of his partisans, and unabashed by the rancour of his opponents.” There was seldom to be found a flaw in his argument or a fault in his grammar on those occasions, when “he carried confusion and dismay into the enemy’s camp.” Yet the force which his hearers acknowledged lay in his love of truth, his clearness of judgment, and the known innocency of his life, rather than in rhetoric. The true key to an occasional bitterness against those whom he thought wrong-doers lay also in his great sensitiveness to wrong done. There was no self-satisfaction in his denunciation of evil; the contemplation of cruelty in any form was intolerable to him. He would speak of the imposition of social disabilities of any kind, by one class of persons on another, with kindling eyes and breath which came quickly; but he always turned away with a sense of relief from the subject of the evil-doers, or the evil done, to the persons who suffered, whose position his compassionate instinct would set him at once to the task of ameliorating. His children remember the large old family Bible, which he used punctually to bring forth every Sunday afternoon and peruse for hours, and his appeals to them to listen to the grandeur of certain favourite passages, which he often read aloud. The Book of the Prophet Isaiah was a great favourite, and his love for such words as the following, which he often quoted, was an index of the complexion of his mind: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?”

The Greys were a loving family, but of all the family Josephine’s life-long favourite was her sister Harriet, afterwards Madame Meuricoffre. In her she realised the perfect fulfilment of Christina Rossetti’s lines—

There is no friend like a sister

In calm or stormy weather;

To cheer one on the tedious way,

To fetch one if one goes astray,

To lift one if one totters down,

To strengthen whilst one stands.

My sister Harriet and I were a pair, in our family of six daughters and three sons. We were never separated, except perhaps for a few days occasionally, until her marriage and departure from her own country for Naples. We were more, I may venture to say, than many sisters are to each other; we were one in heart and soul, and one in all our pursuits. We walked, rode, played, and learned our lessons together. When one was scolded, both wept; when one was praised, both were pleased. In looking back to those early days, the characteristics which stand out the most in my memory are her love of free outdoor life, of nature, and of animals. It may be said that these are common to most country-born children, but they were very strongly marked in her.

Among the many good dogs who were personal friends in our family was one, Pincher, whom she loved much. She was sometimes missing when lesson hours came round, and would be found in Pincher’s kennel, quite concealed from view, holding pleasant converse with her dear dog. A tragic event occurred. Twelve of our father’s sheep were found one early morning cruelly worried and bleeding to death in the field. Suspicion fell on Pincher, although there were other dogs of the agents and farmers about, who were much more probably the criminals; but their masters preferred to impute the crime to our dog. Pincher was tried, condemned, and executed, he, poor dog, wagging his tail to the last, and offering his paw, in sign, my sister said through her tears, of forgiveness of his murderers. She was heart-broken, and cried herself to sleep many nights after, her persuasion of the injustice of the sentence making her sorrow very bitter. Trifling incidents often rest in the memory when important things are forgotten. I recall, some time after this, that when we were in the schoolroom, drilled by a strict governess in close attention to our books, the silence was nevertheless broken by my sister’s voice asking suddenly, and with a pathetic earnestness, “Miss M——, had Pincher a soul?” “Silence!” was the reply. “Attend to your books! No silly questions!” But this same question has arisen many a time in the hearts of both of us, when we have witnessed the death of those dear companions, and seen the dumb and almost awful appeal in their dying eyes, fixed upon those whom they loved with a love which seemed out of all proportion to the limitations of their being. The desired solution of the child’s question, “Had Pincher a soul?” was a momentous one for her; but the child’s heart was then, as often, little understood.

Her interest in animal life was not restricted to the nobler beasts. She made collections of creatures as low in the scale as newts and frogs and other aquatic and amphibious beings, declaring that they also were worthy of affection. We had our little beds side by side, and above them there was a shelf on which she arranged these creatures in rows of pots and jars filled with water. An accident occurred one night—the shelf gave way and emptied its burden of pots and jars and water and creatures into our beds. The incident rather damped my ardour in the pursuit of this branch of natural history, I believe, but not so with her. I recollect how tenderly she gathered up the newts, frogs, &c., and replaced them in fresh water, hoping they had got no harm. We had many pets—ferrets, wild cats from the woods, and owls. Some of the latter were magnificent people, with their large eyes and look of profound wisdom worthy of the classic attendant of Pallas Athene. Ponies also we had. On one of these, a beautiful snow-white pony called Apple Grey, many of us had our first lessons in riding. My sister’s ideal at one time of the vocation, which she would choose above others, was that of a circus girl, and in the hope of possibly realising some day that ideal, she began early to practise equestrian exercises. Putting off her shoes, she would leap on to the unsaddled back of Apple Grey, and standing up, guiding her only by the bridle, would essay to trot and then to canter round the fields. By perseverance, and after many falls, she had attained to some degree of excellence in these gymnastics, when her thoughts were turned in other directions than that of the vocation of a circus girl.

She wrote some years later of the death of this dear pony: “Poor old Apple was shot to-day by the side of her grave in the wood. They say she died in a moment. Papa could not give the order for execution, but the men took it on themselves, as she could scarcely eat or rise without help. It was the kindest thing to do. Think of the gallops and tumbles of our young days, and all her wisdom and all her charms! Emmy and I have got a large stone slab, on which Surtees the mason has carved, ‘In memoriam, Apple,’ and I shall beg a young weeping ash from Beaufront to plant on her grave.

Her right ear, that is filled with dust,

Hears little of the false or just

now, and if she is gone to the happy hunting grounds, so much the better for her, dear old pet.”

We had our sorrows; clouds sometimes seemed to darken our horizon; and we would speak together in whispers of some family grief which was not wholly understood by us, or of certain things in the world which seemed to us even then to be not as they should be. We had a handsome brother, John, who used to entertain us in a gentle way with stories of the sea, which we loved to hear; and who on one occasion returned home with his pockets filled with young tortoises for us. He died at sea. We were awed by the grief of our father and mother. We reminded each other of Mrs. Hemans’ Graves of a Household—

He lies where pearls lie deep;

He was the loved of all, yet none

O’er his low bed may weep.

Later our eldest sister married and went out to China. Her letters from the Far East were read aloud in the family, and our curiosity and interest were immensely stirred by her descriptions of that country, of storms at sea, of the customs and ways of the people, of her visit to the house of a great Mandarin, &c. China seemed then much farther away than it seems now.

Living in the country, far from any town, and, if I may say so, in the pre-educational era (for women at least), we had none of the advantages which girls of the present day have. But we owed much to our dear mother, who was very firm in requiring from us that whatever we did should be thoroughly done, and that in taking up any study we should aim at becoming as perfect as we could in it without external aid. This was a moral discipline which perhaps compensated in value for the lack of a great store of knowledge. She would assemble us daily for the reading aloud of some solid book, and by a kind of examination following the reading assured herself that we had mastered the subject. She urged us to aim at excellence, if not perfection, in at least one thing.

Our father’s connection with great public movements of the day—the first Reform Bill, the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery, and the Free Trade movement—gave us very early an interest in public questions and in the history of our country.

For two years my sister and I were together at a school in Newcastle. My sister did not love study, and confessed she “hated lessons.” The lady at the head of the school regretted this. She was not a good disciplinarian, and gave us much liberty, which we appreciated, but she had a large heart and ready sympathy. In spite of the imperfectly learned lessons, she discerned in my sister some rare gifts—a spark of genius (a word which would have been strongly deprecated by my sister as applied to herself); and used furtively to gather up and preserve (we discovered afterwards) scraps of original writings of my sister, and copy books full of quaint pen-and-ink drawings. She also appropriated, and would privately show to friends, a book, a History of the Italian Republics, on the margins of which throughout my sister had illustrated that history in a most original and humorous manner.

The following extract from one of Josephine Butler’s last letters, written to friends in Switzerland in 1905, tells how her “travail of soul” on behalf of oppressed womanhood began at an early age when she was only seventeen.

My father was a man with a deeply rooted, fiery hatred of all injustice. The love of justice was a passion with him. Probably I have inherited from him this passion. My dear mother felt with him, and seconded all his efforts. When my father spoke to us, his children, of the great wrong of slavery, I have felt his powerful frame tremble and his voice would break. You can believe, that at that time sad and tragical recitals came to us from first sources of the hideous wrong inflicted on negro men and women. I say women, for I think their lot was particularly horrible, for they were almost invariably forced to minister to the worst passions of their masters, or be persecuted and die. I recollect the story of a negro woman who had four sons, the sons of her master. The three eldest were sold by the father in childhood for good prices, and the mother never knew their fate. She had one left, the youngest, her treasure. Her master, in a fit of passion, one day shot this boy dead. The mother crawled under a ruined shed of wood, and with her face to the earth she prayed that she might die. But first she prayed, for she was a Christian, that she might be able to forgive her cruel master. The words, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you,” sounded in her heart; and she cried to heaven, “Jesus, help me to forgive!” And so she died, her poor heart broken. I remember how these things combined to break my young heart, and how keenly they awakened my feelings concerning injustice to women through this conspiracy of greed of gold and lust of the flesh, a conspiracy which has its counterpart in the white slave owning in Europe.

Something of her struggles at this period is shown in the following memories, recorded in 1900.

My early home was far from cities, with parents who taught by their lives what true men and women should be. Few “priests or pastors” ever came our way. Two miles from our home was the parish church, to which we trudged dutifully every Sunday, and where an honest man in the pulpit taught us loyally all that he probably himself knew about God, but whose words did not even touch the fringe of my soul’s deep discontent.

It was my lot from my earliest years to be haunted by the problems which more or less present themselves to every thoughtful mind. Year after year this haunting became more tyrannous. The world appeared to me to be out of joint. A strange intuition was given to me whereby I saw as in a vision, before I had seen any of them with my bodily eyes, some of the saddest miseries of earth, the injustices, the inequalities, the cruelties practised by man on man, by man on woman.

For one long year of darkness the trouble of heart and brain urged me to lay all this at the door of the God, whose name I had learned was Love. I dreaded Him—I fled from Him—until grace was given me to arise and wrestle, as Jacob did, with the mysterious Presence, who must either slay or pronounce deliverance. And then the great questioning again went up from earth to heaven, “God! Who art Thou? Where art Thou? Why is it thus with the creatures of Thy hand?” I fought the battle alone, in deep recesses of the beautiful woods and pine forests around our home, or on some lonely hillside, among wild thyme and heather, a silent temple where the only sounds were the plaintive cry of the curlew, or the hum of a summer bee, or the distant bleating of sheep. For hours and days and weeks in these retreats I sought the answer to my soul’s trouble and the solution of its dark questionings. Looking back, it seems to me the end must have been defeat and death had not the Saviour imparted to the child wrestler something of the virtue of His own midnight agony, when in Gethsemane His sweat fell like great drops of blood to the ground.

It was not a speedy or an easy victory. Later the conflict was renewed, as there dawned upon me the realities of those earthly miseries which I had realised only in a measure by intuition; but later still came the outward and active conflict, with, thanks be to God, the light and hope and guidance which He never denies to them who seek and ask and knock, and which become for them as “an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast.”

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.

“I do not ask you to write oftener. I would have you follow the dictates of your own heart in this; but be always certain that whatever comes from you is thrice welcome. I write because I feel it to be necessary to my happiness. I have lately written to you out of the fulness of my heart, when my soul was deeply moved to strive after a higher life. But often my letters will be about trifling matters, so that you may be tempted to say, ‘Why write at all?’ Yet, after all, life is largely made up of trifles. Moreover, I do not wish to invest myself in borrowed plumes. I do not want you to find out later that I am much like other people, perhaps even more commonplace than most. I would rather your eyes were opened at once. I cannot reproach myself with ever having assumed a character not my own to you or to anyone. Such impostures are always too deeply purchased by the loss of self-respect. But I fear that you may have formed too high an estimate of my character—one to which I can never come up; and for your sake I would wish to remove every veil and obstacle which might prevent your seeing me just as I am. If I were only to write to you when my better feelings were wrought upon, you might think me much better than I am, so I will write to you on every subject and in every mood. Those lines which I sent to you gave no exaggerated picture. I have often felt in a very different spirit to that in which we should say ‘Our Father.’ The praying for particular blessings, which is enjoined by the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ has appeared to me at times as derogatory to the omniscient and all-provident character of God. Can He, I have thought, alter the smallest of His dispensations at the request of such a weak and insignificant being as I am? This vain philosophy, the offspring of intellectual pride, has had more to do with blighting my faith than wilful sin or the world’s breath! But though I have ‘wandered out of the way in the wilderness,’ I do not despair of taking possession of the promised land. You say you can do so little for me. Will it be little, Josephine, if, urged by your encouragement and example, I put off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light? Blessings from the Giver of all blessings fall upon you for the joy you have given to me, for the new life to which you have called me! I should think it undue presumption in me to suggest anything to you in regard to your life and duties. He who has hitherto guided your steps will continue to do so. Believe me, I value the expression of your confidence and affection above ‘pearls and precious stones’; but I must not suffer myself to be dazzled, or to fancy that I have within me that power of judging and acting aright which would alone authorise me to point out to you any path in which you ought to walk. I am more content to leave you to walk by yourself in the path you shall choose; but I know that I do not leave you alone and unsupported, for His arm will guide, strengthen and protect you. I only pray, then, that you may be more and more conformed to the image of Him who set us a perfect example, and that He will dispose my heart to love and admire most those things in you which are most admirable and lovely.”

During the years 1848-49 the Dean of Peterborough frequently wrote to his son expressing his desire to see him turning his mind towards the ministry—hoping that he would decide on taking orders. The Dean was sincerely convinced that there was nothing which ought to make his son hesitate to take so serious a step, and that the duties of a clergyman would have a beneficial effect on his character, tending to his highest good and happiness. That, however, was far from being his son’s view of the matter. While appreciating his father’s motives in urging him in this direction, and replying in general terms with a gentle courtesy, he seems to have felt convinced that it was impossible for him to follow his advice in the matter. Finally he wrote: “I thank you, my dear father, for your welcome letter. I think I have already told you that I have no internal call to, nor inclination for, the Church. On the contrary, I should feel I was guilty of a wrong action if I embarked in any work or profession for neither the theoretical nor the practical part of which I had any taste. And if this be true of ordinary professions, is it not so in a tenfold degree in the case of the Church? I feel at present no attraction towards the study of dogmatical theology, or any branch of study in which a clergyman should be versed; and I cannot get over the scruples I have against such a step as you advise. I am at present engaged, usefully I hope, in a place of Christian education, closely connected with a cathedral church, with abundant opportunities of adding to my stock of knowledge in various subjects, as well as of imparting to others what I know. I do not see, at present, any necessity for planning any change in my mode of life.”

How was it then, it may be asked, that he did actually elect to become a clergyman some six years later? The answer is, he had gradually become convinced that the work of his life was to be educational, and the desire arose in his mind to be able to stand towards the younger men or boys who should come under his care in the position of their pastor as well as their teacher. He weighed the matter gravely for a long time before becoming a clergyman; but after having taken the step, he never repented of having done so. To the end of his life, however, his character continued to be essentially that of a layman. In 1851 he wrote:—

“You know that I don’t like parsons; but that is not to the point. If I should ever take orders, I don’t mean to be a mere parson; for if I were like some of them whom I know I should cease to be a man. I shall never wear straight waistcoats, long coats and stiff collars! I think all dressing up and official manner are an affectation; while great strictness in outward observances interferes with the devotion of the heart; and though it may indicate a pious spirit—and therefore deserves our respect—it shows, as I think, a misconception of the relation in which we stand to God, and of the duties we owe to man. It seems to me, after all, that being a good clergyman is much the same thing as being a good man. I have a longing to be of use, and I know of no line in which I can be more useful than the educational, my whole life having been turned more or less in this direction. It is a blessed office that of a teacher. With all its troubles and heart-wearyings and disappointments, yet it is full of delight to those who enter upon it with their whole heart and soul, and in reliance upon our great Teacher. I know of no occupation which more carries its present reward with it.”

Our marriage took place on the 8th of January, 1852, at Dilston. Shortly afterwards we settled at Oxford, which became our home for five years. In reviewing the work done by George Butler in the course of his educational career, one cannot but be struck by the fact that he was somewhat in advance of his time. There are men theoretically in advance of their times, who do good service by their advocacy of progressive principles in writing or in speech. With him it was more a matter of simple practice. He perceived that some study useful or necessary for the future generations, and in itself worthy, had scarcely an acknowledged place in the curriculum of the schools and universities, or that some new ground necessary to be explored was still left untrodden; and without saying much about it, without any thought of being himself a pioneer in any direction, he modestly set himself to the task of acting out his thoughts on the subject. His absolute freedom from personal vanity withheld him from proclaiming that he was about to enter on any new line, and at the same time enabled him to bear with perfect calm, if not with indifference, the criticisms, witty remarks and sometimes serious opposition which are seldom wanting when a man or woman ventures quietly to encroach upon the established order of things in any department of life. At Oxford he was the first who brought into prominence the study of geography. His geographical lectures there were quite an innovation, creating some amusement and a good deal of wonder as to how he would succeed. It was a subject which had hitherto been relegated in an elementary form to schools for boys and girls, and was unrecognised, except by a very few persons, as the grand and comprehensive scientific study which it is now acknowledged to be.

At Oxford the subject was entirely new, at least to the older members of the university, who, however, to their credit, came to the lectures, and listened with teachable minds to truths novel to them concerning the world they were living in. We drew large illustrative maps for the walls of the lecture room. I recall a day when I was drawing in a rough form an enlarged map of Europe, including the northern coast of Africa and a part of Asia Minor. It happened that several fellows and tutors of colleges called at that moment. I continued my work while they chatted with him on the curiosity of his introduction in Oxford of so elementary a study. The conversation then turned on letters we had just received from Arthur Stanley and Theodore Walrond, who were visiting Egypt. “Where is Cairo?” someone asked, turning to the map spread on the table. I put the question to an accomplished college tutor. His eye wandered hopelessly over the chart. He could not even place his hand on Egypt! I was fain to pretend that I needed to study my performance more closely, and bent down my head in order to conceal the irreverent laughter which overcame me.

George Butler was one of the first, also, who introduced and encouraged the study of Art in Oxford in a practical sense. In the winter of 1852-53 he obtained the permission of the Vice-Chancellor and Curators to give a course of lectures on Art in the Taylor building. These lectures were afterwards published by J. W. Parker, under the title of Principles of Imitative Art. While promoting the study of Art in Oxford, working with pupils, and examining in the schools, he undertook to write a series of Art criticisms for the Morning Chronicle and afterwards for another paper, visiting for this purpose the galleries and yearly exhibitions in London. This he did for a year or two.

“It was amusing,” he wrote to his mother, after his first visit in this capacity to the Society of British Artists, “to see the ‘gentlemen of the press’ (of whom I was one!) walking about dotting down observations. I travelled up to town with Scott, the architect, who has engaged me to attend a meeting of his workmen, and give them an address on ‘Decorative Art and the Dignity of Labour.’ Josephine and I are both engaged in copying some drawings by Turner in the Taylor Gallery.”

Indefatigable in his efforts to master any subject which attracted him, he was also equally ready and anxious to impart to others any knowledge he had thus gained. He found time among his other occupations to make a very thorough study of some ancient Oscan inscriptions, with engravings of their principal monuments, which he found in the Bodleian Library. He became much interested in that portion of history—almost lost in the mists of the past—which is illustrated by the marvellous records and monuments of Oscan, Umbrian, and Etruscan life in the great museum at Bologna. He worked at and completed, during one of the long vacations, a series of enlarged copies in sepia of the small engravings and prints of these monuments in the Bodleian. These enlargements were suitable for wall illustrations, for a set of lectures which he afterwards gave on the “Ancient Races of Italy.” It was very pleasant to us when we visited Florence together, some years later, to see the originals of some of the Cyclopean ruins of which we had together made large drawings, those gigantic stones of all that remains of the ancient Etruscan walls of Fiesole, up to the lovely heights of which we drove one clear, bright winter’s day.

I have many other memories of our life at Oxford—some very sweet, others grave. I recall with special pleasure our summer evening rides. During the first two years we spent there my father kindly provided me with a horse, a fine, well-bred chestnut. My husband and I explored together all the rising grounds round Oxford. Behind our own little garden there were tall trees where nightingales sang night and day for a few weeks in spring. But it was in the Bagley Woods and in Abingdon Park that those academic birds put forth all their powers. We sometimes rode from five in the afternoon till the sun set and the dew fell, on grassy paths between thick undergrowths of woods such as nightingales love to haunt, and from which issued choruses of matchless song.

Our Italian studies were another source of enjoyment. Dante Rossetti was then preparing matter for his book, Dante and His Circle, by carefully translating into English the Vita Nuova and lyrical poems of Dante, together with other sonnets and poems written by some of his predecessors, such as Cavalcante, Orlandi and Angiolieri of Siena. Mr. Rossetti sent to us occasionally for criticism some of his translations of the exquisite sonnets of Dante, the English of which he was anxious to make as perfect as possible. We had visited Rossetti’s studio at Chelsea, where he had shown us his portfolios of original sketches for his great paintings, besides many unfinished drawings and pathetic incidents expressed in artist’s shorthand—slight but beautiful pencil designs. My husband’s critical faculty and classical taste enabled him to return the sonnets submitted to his judgment with occasional useful comments. There was little to find fault with in them, however.

Aurelio Saffi was at this time in exile and living in Oxford. He had been associated with Mazzini and Armellini in the Triumvirate which ruled in Rome for a short period, and was parliamentary deputy for his own native town of Forli. He was a cultivated and literary man, with a thorough knowledge of the Italian poets. As an exile his material means were at that time very slender. My husband sought his acquaintance, and invited him to give a series of evening lectures on Dante in our own drawing-room. These were attractive to some, and increased the personal interest felt in Saffi in the university. Twenty-seven years later, having returned to Italy from exile, Saffi was presiding at a great congress in Genoa where we were. He alluded, with much feeling, to the years he had spent in Oxford; and turning to my husband, who was near him, he said: “It is twenty-seven years to-day that, an exile from my native land, I had the happiness of being received in your house at Oxford, and I have never forgotten, and shall never forget, the hospitable and gracious reception given to me by you and your worthy companion. The times are changed; a long interval has elapsed, and it is to me a great joy to-day to greet you once more, and on my native soil.”

But this pleasant life at Oxford had its shadow side. I had come from a large family circle, and from free country life to a university town—a society of celibates, with little or no leaven of family life; for Oxford was not then what it is now under expanded conditions, with its married fellows and tutors, its resident families, its ladies’ colleges, and its mixed, general social life. With the exception of the families of a few heads of houses, who lived much secluded within their college walls, there was little or no home life, and not much freedom of intercourse between the academical portion of the community and others. A one-sidedness of judgment is apt to be fostered by such circumstances—an exaggeration of the purely masculine judgment on some topics, and a conventual mode of looking at things.

In the frequent social gatherings in our drawing-room in the evenings there was much talk, sometimes serious and weighty, sometimes light, interesting, critical, witty and brilliant, ranging over many subjects. It was then that I sat silent, the only woman in the company, and listened, sometimes with a sore heart; for these men would speak of things which I had already revolved deeply in my own mind, things of which I was convinced, which I knew, though I had no dialectics at command with which to defend their truth. A few remarks made on those evenings stand out in my memory. They may seem slight and unimportant, but they had a significance for me, linking themselves, as they did, to long trains of thought which for some years past had been tending to form my own convictions.

A book was published at that time by Mrs. Gaskell, and was much discussed. This led to expressions of judgment which seemed to me false—fatally false. A moral lapse in a woman was spoken of as an immensely worse thing than in a man; there was no comparison to be formed between them. A pure woman, it was reiterated, should be absolutely ignorant of a certain class of evils in the world, albeit those evils bore with murderous cruelty on other women. One young man seriously declared that he would not allow his own mother to read such a book as that under discussion—a book which seemed to me to have a very wholesome tendency, though dealing with a painful subject. Silence was thought to be the great duty of all on such subjects. On one occasion, when I was distressed by a bitter case of wrong inflicted on a very young girl, I ventured to speak to one of the wisest men—so esteemed—in the university, in the hope that he would suggest some means, not of helping her, but of bringing to a sense of his crime the man who had wronged her. The sage, speaking kindly however, sternly advocated silence and inaction. “It could only do harm to open up in any way such a question as this. It was dangerous to arouse a sleeping lion.” I left him in some amazement and discouragement, and for a long time there echoed in my heart the terrible prophetic words of the painter-poet Blake—rude and indelicate as he may have been judged then—whose prophecy has only been averted by a great and painful awakening—

The harlot’s curse, from street to street,

Shall weave old England’s winding-sheet.

Every instinct of womanhood within me was already in revolt against certain accepted theories in society, and I suffered as only God and the faithful companion of my life could ever know. Incidents occurred which brought their contribution to the lessons then sinking into our hearts. A young mother was in Newgate for the murder of her infant, whose father, under cover of the death-like silence prescribed by Oxford philosophers—a silence which is in fact a permanent endorsement of injustice—had perjured himself to her, had forsaken and forgotten her, and fallen back, with no accusing conscience, on his easy, social life, and possibly his academic honours. I wished to go and speak to her in prison of the God who saw the injustice done, and who cared for her. My husband suggested that we should write to the chaplain of Newgate, and ask him to send her to us when her sentence had expired. We wanted a servant, and he thought that she might be able to fill that place. She came to us. I think she was the first of the world of unhappy women of a humble class whom he welcomed to his own home. She was not the last.

A travelling circus came to the neighbourhood. A young woman who performed as an acrobat somehow conveyed to us her longing desire to leave the life in which she was plunged, the most innocent part of which was probably her acrobatic performances. She had aspirations very far beyond what is usually expected from a circus woman. She wanted to serve God. She saw a light before her, she said, and she must follow it. She went secretly to churches and chapels, and then she fled—she did not know where—but was recaptured. It was a Sunday evening in hot summer weather. I had been sitting for some time at my open window to breathe more freely the sultry air, and it seemed to me that I heard a wailing cry somewhere among the trees in the twilight which was deepening into night. It was a woman’s cry—a woman aspiring to heaven and dragged back to hell—and my heart was pierced with pain. I longed to leap from the window, and flee with her to some place of refuge. It passed. I cannot explain the nature of the impression, which remains with me to this day; but beyond that twilight, and even in the midst of the pitiful cry, there seemed to dawn a ray of light and to sound a note not wholly of despair. The light was far off, yet coming near, and the slight summer breeze in those tall trees had in them a whisper of the future. But when the day dawned it seemed to show me again more plainly than ever the great wall of prejudice, built up on a foundation of lies, which surrounded a whole world of sorrows, griefs, injustices and crimes which must not be spoken of—no, not even in whispers—and which it seemed to me then that no human power could ever reach or remedy. And I met again the highly-educated, masculine world in our evening gatherings more than ever resolved to hold my peace—to speak little with men, but much with God. No doubt the experience of those years influenced in some degree my maturer judgment of what is called “educated public opinion.”

My motive in writing these recollections is to tell what he was—my husband—and to show how, besides all that he was in himself and all the work he did, which was wholly and especially his own, he was of a character to be able from the first to correct the judgment and soothe the spirit of the companion of his life when “the waters had come in even unto her soul.” I wish to show, also, that he was even more to me in later life than a wise and noble supporter and helper in the work which may have been called more especially my own. He had a part in the creation of it, in the formation of the first impulses towards it. Had that work been purely a product of the feminine mind, of a solitary, wounded and revolted heart, it would certainly have lacked some elements essential to its becoming in any way useful or fruitful. But for him I should have been much more perplexed than I was. The idea of justice to women, of equality between the sexes, and of equality of responsibility of all human beings to the moral law, seems to have been instinctive in him. He never needed convincing. He had his convictions already from the first—straight, just and clear. I did not at that time speak much, but whenever I spoke to him the clouds lifted. It may seem a little strange to say so, but, if I recall it truly, what helped me most of all at that time was, not so much any arguments he may have used in favour of an equal standard, but the correctness with which he measured the men and the judgments around him. I think there was even a little element of disdain in his appreciation of the one-sided judgments of some of his male friends. He used to say, “I am sorry for So-and-So,” which sounded to me rather like saying, “I am sorry for Solomon,” my ideas of the wisdom of learned men being, perhaps, a little exaggerated. He would tell me that I ought to pity them. “They know no better, poor fellows.” This was a new light for me, I had thought of Oxford as the home of learning and of intellect. I thought the good and gifted men we daily met must be in some degree authorities on spiritual and moral questions. It had not occurred to me to think of them as “poor fellows!” That blessed gift of common sense, which he possessed in so large a degree, came to the rescue to restore for me the balance of a mind too heavily weighted with sad thoughts of life’s perplexing problems. And then in the evenings, when our friends had gone, we read together the words of Life, and were able to bring many earthly notions and theories to the test of what the Holy One and the Just said and did. Compared with the accepted axioms of the day, and indeed of centuries past, in regard to certain vital questions, the sayings and actions of Jesus were, we confessed to one another, revolutionary. George Butler was not afraid of revolution. In this sense he desired it, and we prayed together that a holy revolution might come about, and that the Kingdom of God might be established on the earth. And I said to myself: “And it is a man who speaks to me thus—an intelligent, a gifted man, a learned man too, few more learned than he, and a man who ever speaks the truth from his heart.” So I was comforted and instructed. It was then that I began to see his portrait given, and I see it still more clearly now as I look back over his whole past life, in the 15th Psalm: “Lord, who shall dwell in Thy tabernacle? Or who shall rest upon Thy holy hill? Even he that leadeth an uncorrupt life, and doeth the thing which is right, and speaketh the truth from his heart. He that hath used no deceit in his tongue, nor done evil to his neighbour, and hath not slandered his neighbour. He that setteth not by himself, but is lowly in his own eyes, and maketh much of them that fear the Lord. He that sweareth unto his neighbour, and disappointeth him not, even though it were to his own hindrance.”

The winter floods which so often surrounded Oxford during the years of which I am writing are probably remembered with a shudder by others besides myself. The mills and locks, and other impediments to the free flow of the waters of the Isis, were, I believe, long ago removed, and the malarial effect of the stagnation of moisture around the city ceased with its cause. But at that time Oxford in winter almost resembled Venice, in its apparent isolation from the land, and in the appearance of its towers and spires reflected in the mirror of the floods. “It rained,” wrote George in January, 1856, “all yesterday, and to-day it is cold and damp. Indeed, immediately after sunset the atmosphere of Oxford resembles that of a well, though that is scarcely so bad as the horrible smell of the meadows when the floods are retiring. Then one is conscious of a miasma which only a strong constitution can long resist.”

My health failed. I became weak and liable to attacks of chills and fever. We drove out occasionally to the heights above Oxford, to reach which we were obliged to pursue for some distance a road which resembled a sort of high level or causeway (as in Holland) with water on each side. Looking back from the higher ground, the view of the academic city sitting upon the floods was very picturesque. Indeed, the sound of “Great Tom” knelling the curfew from his tower had a very musical and solemn effect as it came over the still waters, resembling a little in pathos the sound of a human voice giving warning of the approach of night; or, like Dante’s Squilla di lontana—

The distant bell

Which seems to weep the dying day;

but poetry and sentiment could not hold out against rheumatic pains and repeated chills.

I spent several months of that year—1856—in Northumberland with our children, my husband joining us after he had completed his engagements as a public examiner in London. His letters, during the few weeks of our separation, seemed to show a deepening of spiritual life—such as is sometimes granted in the foreshadowing of the approach of some special discipline or sorrow. He seems to have felt more deeply during this summer that he must not reckon on the unbroken continuance of the outward happiness which had been so richly granted to us.

To Mrs. Grey.

Oxford, June 6th, 1856.

“I am glad to feel that my treasures are in such good hands and life-giving air. I hope their presence at Dilston will contribute to the assurance that marriage is not a severance of family ties, but that both Josephine and I revert with the fondest attachment to old scenes and dearly loved friends at Dilston.”

To his wife.

June, 1856.

“I am grieved to hear of your sufferings; but you write so cheerfully, and express such a loving confidence in One who is able to heal all our sicknesses, that I dare not repine. However sad at heart I may sometimes feel about you, I will try to bring myself face to face with those mighty promises which are held out to those who ‘rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him.’ And then I hope we shall still be able to go hand in hand in our work on earth.”

To his wife.

July 13th, 1856.

“I have been reading Tennyson’s ‘Maud,’ and correcting my review of it for Fraser’s Magazine. Reading love stories which end in death or separation makes me dwell the more thankfully on my own happiness. It is no wonder that I am sanguine in all circumstances, and that I trust the love and care of our Almighty Father, for has He not blessed me far beyond my deserts in giving me such a share of human happiness as falls to the lot of few? Yet He has given us our thorn in the flesh, in your failing health, and our uncertain prospects. But these shall never hinder our love; rather we will cling to that more closely as the symbol and earnest of the heavenly love which displayed itself in that wondrous act—on Calvary—which the wise men of this world may deem of as they will, but which to us will ever be the most real of all realities, and the sure token of our reconciliation with God.

“I think we are well fitted to help each other. No words can express what you are to me. On the other hand, I may be able to cheer you in moments of sadness and despondency, when the evils of this world press heavily upon you, and your strength is not sufficient to enable you to rise up and do anything to relieve them, as you fain would do. And by means of possessing greater physical strength, and considerable power of getting through work, I may be enabled to help you in the years to come, to carry out plans which may under His blessing do some good, and make men speak of us with respect when we are laid in our graves; and in the united work of bringing up our children, may God so help us that we may be able to say, ‘Of those whom Thou gavest us have we lost none.’”

While exercising much self-denial and reserve in making such extracts as the above, I give these few as affording glimpses of his inner mind and deep affection; for his character would be very inadequately portrayed if so prominent a feature of it were concealed as that of his love for his wife, and the constant blending of that love with all his spiritual aspirations and endeavours. That love was part of his being, becoming ever more deep and tender as the years went on. I have spoken of the strength and tenacity of his friendships. These qualities entered equally into his closest domestic relations. In the springtime of life, men dream, speak, write and sing of love—of love’s gracious birth and beautiful youth. But it is not in the springtime of life that love’s deepest depths can be fathomed, its vastness measured, and its endurance tested. There is a love which surmounts all trial and discipline, all the petty vexations and worries, as well as the sorrows and storms of life, and which flows on in an ever deepening current of tenderness, enhanced by memories of the past and hopes of the future—of the eternal life towards which it is tending. It was such a love as this, that dwelt and deepened in him of whom I write to the latest moment of his earthly life, to be perfected in the Divine presence.

On joining us at Dilston, an arrangement was made with the vicar of the parish of Corbridge (in which Dilston was situated) that he should take his duty, occupying his house for the autumn, during his absence from home. Dissent prevailed largely in the neighbourhood. But during the time that he acted as the clergyman of the parish the church was well filled. Many Wesleyans came, who had not before entered its doors, as well as several families of well-to-do and well-instructed Presbyterian farmers—shrewd people, well able to maintain their ground in a theological controversy. They were attracted, no doubt, partly by the relationship of the temporary minister to my father, who was so much beloved and esteemed throughout the county, and a constant worshipper in the village church, and partly by the simple Christian teaching for which they thirsted, and which they now found. There was little real poverty. We visited the people sometimes together, and their affections were strongly gained.

Our return to Oxford was not auspicious. The autumn fell damp and cold. It was decided that I should go to London to consult Sir James Clarke, on account of what seemed the development of a weakness of the lungs. I recall the tender solicitude which my husband showed for me on the journey, and also the kindness of the venerable physician. I was scarcely able to rise to greet him when he entered the room. At the close of our interview he merely said, “Poor thing, poor thing! You must take her away from Oxford.” We proposed to return therefore at once to make necessary preparations for the change, when he interposed, “No, she must not return to the chilling influence of those floods, not for a single day.”

This was no light trial. Our pleasant home must be broken up; all the hopes and plans my husband had cherished abandoned; the house he had taken and furnished at some expense as a Hall for unattached students thrown on his hands. To carry it on alone, to be separated for an indefinite time from each other, was scarcely possible. There seemed for the present no alternative. He accepted calmly, though not without keen regret, what was clearly inevitable. The difficulties of our position were for a time increased by a serious reverse of fortune experienced by my father, who had always been ready to aid on occasion the different members of the family. There had occurred a complete collapse of a bank in which he was a large shareholder. The loss he sustained was great. The spirit in which he bore the trial raised him still higher in the estimation of those who already so highly valued and admired him. Trouble followed upon trouble for a time, and my husband suffered all the more because of some inward self-reproach for having failed to exercise sufficient providence and foresight in the past. His greatest anxiety was for me; but that happily was gradually lightened as time went on.

Through the kindness of his friend, Mr. Powles, my husband was called to take temporarily the charge of a chapel at Blackheath, in the summer of 1857, which gave him useful and congenial ministerial work while continuing his literary pursuits. He had gone on in advance to arrange for our removal to Blackheath.

To her husband.

St. Barnabas Day,
June 11th, 1857.

God bless you to-day and always, and make you a “Son of Consolation” to many in the time to come, as you have been to me. Earthly success is no longer our aim. What I desire above all for you is the fulfilment of the promise: “They that are wise shall shine as the light, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever.” I had an encouraging conversation yesterday with——, which fell in with the train of my thoughts regarding you and myself. She said she had seen many cases in which individual chastening had preceded a life of great usefulness, though the subject of the chastening had thought at the time that his life was passing away, wasted or only spent in learning the lesson of submission. She thought that those to whom the discipline of life comes early rather than late ought to thank God; for it makes them better able to minister to others, and to walk humbly with their God. May that be the case with us. The little boys remembered your birthday before they were out of bed this morning, and have made an excursion to Nightingale Valley in honour of it.

[CHAPTER III.]
CHELTENHAM.

In the autumn of 1857 my husband was invited to fill the post of Vice-Principal of the Cheltenham College. He accepted the invitation, and we went to Cheltenham the same year. He here entered upon his long course of assiduous and untiring work as a schoolmaster—a work which covered a quarter of a century, beginning at Cheltenham in 1857, and continued at Liverpool from the winter of 1865-66 until 1882. We gained much at Cheltenham in an improved climate, and in the cessation of material difficulties and anxieties. We lived in a large house, in which, for some years, we received a number of pupils. It was characteristic that it should have supplied some of the best athletes of the College, and many successful competitors in the school games, in feats of strength, activity and skill. My husband considered physical training to be an essential part of the education of youth.

Our summer vacations continued to be spent largely at Dilston; we went however one year to Switzerland with our eldest son. We visited Lucerne and its neighbourhood, and afterwards the Rhone Valley, Chamounix, and the great St. Bernard, passing a night at the hospice, where we profited much by our intercourse with the beautiful dogs, one of whom, a veteran called Bruno, the forefather of many a noble hound, attached himself to us, and made himself our cicerone among the rocks in the desolate surroundings of the monastery. Another summer excursion was, with two of our children, to the Lakes of Killarney, including a visit to my brother, Charles Grey, who lived then in a house of Lord Derby, at Ballykisteen, in the “golden vale” of Tipperary. In both these years my husband brought home many sketches. The grey rocks skirting the borders of Killarney lakes, with their richly-coloured covering of arbutus and other flowering trees and evergreens, were tempting subjects for water-colours.

My father had been a friend of Clarkson, and a practical worker in the movement for the abolition of the slave trade. When the War of Secession in America broke out, my husband’s sympathies were warmly enlisted on behalf of those who desired the emancipation of the slaves, and he perceived that that was indeed the question, the vital question of justice, which lay at the root of all that terrible struggle. This was one of several occasions in our united life in which we found ourselves in a minority; members of a group at first so insignificant that it scarcely found a voice or a hearing anywhere, but whose position was afterwards fully justified by events. It was a good training in swimming against the tide, or at least in standing firm and letting the tide go by, and in maintaining, while doing so, a charitable attitude towards those who conscientiously differed, and towards the thousands who float contentedly down the stream of the fashionable opinion of the day. In this case the feeling of isolation on a subject of such tragic interest was often painful; but the discipline was useful, for it was our lot again more emphatically in the future to have to accept and endure this position for conscience’ sake.

I recollect the sudden revulsion of feeling when the news was telegraphed of the assassination of President Lincoln; the extraordinary rapidity of the change of front of the “leading journal;” and the self-questionings among many whose intelligence and goodness had certainly given them the right to think for themselves, but who had not availed themselves of that right. I remember the penitence of Punch, who had been among the scoffers against the abolitionists of slavery, and who now put himself into deep mourning, and gave to the public an affecting cartoon of the British Lion bowed and weeping before the bier of Lincoln. A favourite scripture motto of my husband’s was, “Why do ye not of yourselves judge that which is right?” But he was not argumentative. He loved peace, and avoided every heated discussion. His silence was, perhaps, sometimes not less effectual by way of rebuke or correction of shallow judgments than speech would have been. Goldwin Smith, one of the few at Oxford who saw at that time the inner meanings of the American struggle, paid us a visit. It occurred to us, while listening to some pointed remarks he was making on the prevalent opinion of the day, to ask him to write and publish something in reply to the often-repeated assertion that the Bible itself favours slavery. “The Bible,” he replied, “has been quoted in favour of every abomination that ever cursed the earth.” He did not say he would write; but the idea sank into his mind, and not long after he sent us his able and exquisite little book, entitled Does the Bible sanction Slavery?—a masterly and beautiful exposition of the true spirit of the Mosaic law, and of the Theocratic government and training of the ancient Hebrew people in relation to this and other questions. This book was naturally not popular at the time, and I fear it has long been out of print. (It was published in 1863.)

In this connection it is interesting to record, that two other notable books owed their inspiration in a large measure to Josephine Butler. The Patience of Hope, by Dora Greenwell, published in 1859, was dedicated to J. E. B., with the inscription—A te principium, tibi desinet (from thee begun with thee my work shall close). Te sine nil altum mens inchoat (without thee nothing high my mind essays). Frederic Myers, who had been at school at Cheltenham College, in his Fragments of Inner Life,[1] tells how“Christian conversion came to me in a potent form—through the agency of Josephine Butler, née Grey, whose name will not be forgotten in the annals of English philanthropy. She introduced me to Christianity, so to say, by an inner door; not to its encumbering forms and dogmas, but to its heart of fire. My poems of St. Paul and St. John the Baptist, intensely personal in their emotion, may serve as sufficient record of those years of eager faith.” St. Paul, published in 1867, was dedicated to J. E. B., with the inscription—ᾗ καὶ τὴν ἐμὴν ψυχην ὀφείλω (to whom I owe my very soul). In 1869 Myers gave up a Lectureship at Trinity in order to devote himself to the promotion of the higher education of women, and he was one of the small band of university men, who worked hard with Josephine Butler and her colleagues on the North of England Council, to which we shall refer later on.

Among the public events which interested us most during these years was the revolution in Naples, the change of dynasty, and Garibaldi’s career. Our interest was in part of a personal nature, as my sister, Madame Meuricoffre, and her husband were in the midst of these events. She had succeeded Jessie White Mario in the care of the wounded Garibaldians in the hospitals, and was personally acquainted with some of the actors in the dramatic scenes of that time. Having told her that my husband had set as a subject for a prize essay—to be competed for in the College at Cheltenham—“The unification of Italy,” my sister mentioned it to Garibaldi, in expressing to him our sympathy for him and his cause. He immediately wrote a few lines, signing his name at the end, to be sent, through her, to the boy who should write the best essay on the subject so near to his heart.

A part of the summer holidays of 1864 were spent at Coniston in the house of Mr. James Marshall, which he lent to us. His sister, Mrs. Myers, had been our kind and constant friend at Cheltenham. It was a beautiful summer. We had returned to Cheltenham only a few days when a heavy sorrow fell upon our home, the brightest of our little circle being suddenly snatched away from us. The dark shadow of that cloud cannot easily be described. I quote part of a letter written some weeks after our child’s death to a friend.

Cheltenham, August, 1864.

These are but weak words. May you never know the grief which they hide rather than reveal. But God is good. He has, in mercy, at last sent me a ray of light, and low in the dust at His feet I have thanked Him for that ray of light as I never thanked Him for any blessing in the whole of my life before. It was difficult to endure at first the shock of the suddenness of that agonising death. Little gentle spirit! the softest death for her would have seemed sad enough. Never can I lose that memory—the fall, the sudden cry, and then the silence. It was pitiful to see her, helpless in her father’s arms, her little drooping head resting on his shoulder, and her beautiful golden hair, all stained with blood, falling over his arm. Would to God that I had died that death for her! If we had been permitted, I thought, to have one look, one word of farewell, one moment of recognition! But though life flickered for an hour, she never recognised the father and mother whom she loved so dearly. We called her by her name, but there was no answer. She was our only daughter, the light and joy of our lives. She flitted in and out like a butterfly all day. She had never had a day’s or an hour’s illness in all her sweet life. She never gave us a moment of anxiety, her life was one flowing stream of mirth and fun and abounding love. The last morning she had said to me a little verse she had learned somewhere—

Every morning the warm sun

Rises fair and bright;

But the evening cometh on,

And the dark, cold night.

There is a bright land far away,

Where tis never-ending day!

The dark, cold night came too soon for us, for it was that same evening, at seven o’clock, that she fell. The last words I had with her were about a pretty caterpillar she had found; she came to my room to beg for a little box to put it in. I gave it her and said, “Now trot away, for I am late for tea.” What would I not give now for five minutes of that sweet presence? The only discipline she ever had was an occasional conflict with her own strong feelings and will. She disliked nothing so much as her little German lessons. Fräulein Blümke had called her one day to have one. She was sitting in a low chair. She grasped the arms of it tightly, and, looking very grave and determined, she replied, “Hush, wait a bit, I am fighting!” She sat silent for a few moments, and then walked quickly and firmly to have her German lesson. Fräulein asked her what she meant by saying she was fighting, and she replied, “I was fighting with myself” (to overcome her unwillingness to go to her books). I overheard Fräulein say to her in the midst of the lesson: “Arbeit, Eva, arbeit!” To which Eva replied with decision, “I am arbeiting, Miss Blümke, as hard as ever I can.”

One evening last autumn, when I went to see her after she was in bed and we were alone, she said: “Mammy, if I go to heaven before you, when the door of heaven opens to let you in I will run so fast to meet you; and when you put your arms round me, and we kiss each other, all the angels will stand still to see us.” And she raised herself up in her ardour, her face beaming and her little chest heaving with the excitement of her loving anticipation. I recall her look; not the merry laughing look she generally had, but softened into an overflowing tenderness of the soul. She lay down again, but could not rest, and raising herself once more said, “I would like to pray again” (she had already said her little prayer); and we prayed again, about this meeting in heaven. I never thought for a moment that she would go first. I don’t think I ever had a thought of death in connection with her; she was so full of life and energy. She was always showing her love in active ways. We used to imagine what it would be when she grew up, developing into acts of mercy and kindness. She was passionately devoted to her father, and after hugging him, and heaping endearing names upon him, she would fly off and tax her poor little tender fingers by making him something—a pincushion or kettle-holder. She made him blue, pink, white and striped pincushions and mats, for which he had not much use. But now he treasures up her poor little gifts as more precious than gold. If my head ached, she would bathe it with a sponge for an hour without tiring. Sweet Eva! Well might the Saviour say, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” She was so perfectly truthful, candid and pure. It was a wonderful repose for me, a good gift of God, when troubled by the evils in the world or my own thoughts, to turn to the perfect innocence and purity of that little maiden. But that joy is gone now for us. I am troubled for my husband. His grief is so deep and silent; but he is very, very patient. He loves children and all young creatures, and his love for her was wonderful. Her face, as she lay in death, wore a look of sweet, calm surprise, as if she said, “Now I see God.” We stood in awe before her. She seemed to rebuke our grief in her rapt and holy sleep. Her hair had grown very long lately, and was of a deep chestnut brown, which in the sun flashed out all golden:—

Hair like a golden halo lying

Upon a pillow white;

Parted lips that mock all sighing,

Good night—good night!

Good night in anguish and in bitter pain;

Good morrow crowns another of the heavenly train.

This sorrow seemed to give in a measure a new direction to our lives and interests. There were some weeks of uncomforted grief. Her flight from earth had had the appearance of a most cruel accident. But do the words “accident” or “chance” properly find a place in the vocabulary of those who have placed themselves, and those dear to them, in a special manner under the daily providential care of a loving God? Here there entered into the heart of our grief the intellectual difficulty, the moral perplexity and dismay which are not the least terrifying of the phantoms which haunt the “Valley of the shadow of Death”—that dark passage through which some toil only to emerge into a hopeless and final denial of the Divine goodness, the complete bankruptcy of faith; and others, by the mercy of God, through a still deeper experience, into a yet firmer trust in His unfailing love.

One day, going into his study, I found my husband alone, and looking ill. His hands were cold, he had an unusual paleness in his face, and he seemed faint. I was alarmed. I kneeled beside him, and, shaking myself out of my own stupor of grief, I spoke “comfortably” to him, and forced myself to talk cheerfully, even joyfully, of the happiness of our child, of the unclouded brightness of her brief life on earth, and her escape from the trials and sorrows she might have met with had she lived. He responded readily to the offered comfort, and the effort to strengthen him was helpful to myself. After this I often went to him in the evening after school hours, when, sitting side by side, we spoke of our child in heaven, until our own loss seemed to become somewhat less bitter.

The following is from a brief diary of the close of that sad year—

October 30th.—Last night I slept uneasily. I dreamed I had my darling in my arms, dying; that she struggled to live for my sake, lived again a moment, and then died. Just then I heard a sound, a low voice at my door, and I sprang to my feet. It was poor Stanley (our second son), scarcely awake, and in a fever. I took him in my arms, and carried him back to his bed, from which he had come to seek my help. In the morning he could not swallow, and pointed to his throat. Dr. Ker came and said he had diphtheria. My heart sank. I wondered whether God meant to ask us to give up another child so soon.

His illness was very severe, and for some days he hovered between life and death. But we were spared the added sorrow we dreaded. When he was sufficiently recovered, it was thought better that I should go with him abroad, to escape the winter’s cold, and for a change of scene from that house round which clung the memory of such a tragic sorrow. My husband and other sons came to London with us, and a pleasant and able courier was engaged, who accompanied me and my little convalescent to Genoa, where we had been invited by kind relatives living there.

At the end of this visit it was arranged that I should accompany my sister to Naples, when we learned that the railway and roads were flooded, and that travelling by land would be difficult and even dangerous. Being unwilling to give up the long-cherished hope of a visit to my sister’s home, I proposed that we should go by sea. My sister, though fearing a sea voyage for me in winter, assented to the arrangement, and as the weather was then very calm we started with good hopes. I had not, however, realised the gravity of the shock which my health had sustained before leaving England.

On this voyage she was taken very seriously ill, nigh unto death. “I was kneeling,” writes her sister, “and rubbing her hands and feet, trying to warm them; and while my imagination was realising all the terrors, my heart was praying desperately to God that He would make a way of escape, that He would work a miracle for us. And He did. The three boys went away and all prayed to God to save her. After a time I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the captain. He said: ‘I saw the other mail vessel coming north, and I have signalled her. If she sees us you shall go on board and return to Leghorn. Make haste!’ I drew a long breath and said: ‘Thank God, I think we are saved!’ I felt the horror melting away in a measure, and hope springing up. We rolled her up, and I went for the weeping children, and found the kind young Sicilian officer comforting them. I thanked him. He said, in Italian, something about the love of Christ, so kindly. I had said very little about her. People must have been impressed with her look, and thought her dying, to take such extreme measures as to stop the two Government steamers on the high seas.”

[CHAPTER IV.]
LIVERPOOL.

In the winter of 1865 my husband received one day a telegraphic message from Mr. Parker, of Liverpool, asking him if he would be willing to take the Principalship of the Liverpool College, vacated by the retirement of Dr. Howson, who became Dean of Chester. He accepted the invitation as providential, and went to Liverpool to see Mr. Parker, the directors of the college, and others interested in the choice of a new principal. There was no hesitation about the matter, and he was shortly afterwards elected. Our removal to Liverpool took place in January, 1866.

Liverpool is one of the largest seaports of the world. No greater contrast could have been found than it presented to the academic, intellectual character of Oxford, or the quiet educational and social conditions at Cheltenham. Its immense population, with a large intermingling of foreign elements, its twelve miles of docks lined with warehouses, its magnificent shipping, its cargoes and foreign sailors from every part of the world and from every nation of the earth, its varieties in the way of creeds and places of worship, its great wealth and its abject poverty, the perpetual movement, the coming and going, and the clash of interests in its midst—all these combined to make Liverpool a city of large and international character, and of plentiful opportunities for the exercise of public spirit and catholic sentiment. The college shared the characteristics of the city in the midst of which it was set. Among its eight to nine hundred pupils there were Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Negroes, Americans, French, Germans, and Spaniards, as well as Welsh, Irish, Scotch and English. These represented many different religious persuasions. A man of narrow theological views would scarcely have found the position as head of such a school agreeable. Firmness and simplicity of faith, truth, charity and toleration, were qualities which were needed in the administrator of such a little world of varied international and denominational elements. The principalship must be held, by the rules of the college, by a member of the Church of England, and the directors had been happy in finding churchmen who were willing to accept the conditions presented, and able to work well in the midst of them. There were, as pupils at the college, the sons of two half-civilised African kings, Oko Jumbo and Jah-Jah. Their fathers having been old and sworn enemies, the two little fellows began their school acquaintance with many a tussle true to the inherited instinct. They were good boys, however, and one of them—afterwards a convinced and consistent Christian—became a missionary among his own countrymen, in spite of much opposition and even persecution, it was said, from his own father.

When we came to Liverpool in 1866, and my husband and sons began their regular life at the College, going there early and returning in the evening, I was left many hours every day alone, empty-handed and sorrowful, the thought continually returning, “How sweet the presence of my little daughter would have been now.” Most people, who have gone through any such experience, will understand me when I speak of the ebb and flow of sorrow. The wave retires perhaps after the first bitter weeks, and a kind of placid acquiescence follows. It may be only a natural giving way of the power of prolonged resistance of pain. Then there comes sometimes a second wave, which has been silently gathering strength, holding back, so to speak, in order to advance again with all its devouring force, thundering upon the shore. But who can write the rationale of sorrow? And who can explain its mysteries, its apparent inconsistencies and unreasonableness, its weakness and its strength? I suffered much during the first months in our new home. Music, art, reading, all failed as resources to alleviate or to interest. I became possessed with an irresistible desire to go forth and find some pain keener than my own, to meet with people more unhappy than myself (for I knew there were thousands of such). I did not exaggerate my own trial. I only knew that my heart ached night and day, and that the only solace possible would seem to be to find other hearts which ached night and day, and with more reason than mine. I had no clear idea beyond that, no plan for helping others; my sole wish was to plunge into the heart of some human misery, and to say (as I now knew I could) to afflicted people, “I understand: I too have suffered.”

It was not difficult to find misery in Liverpool. There was an immense workhouse containing at that time, it was said, five thousand persons—a little town in itself. The general hospital for paupers included in it was blessed then by the angelic presence of Agnes Jones (whose work of beneficence was recorded after her death); but the other departments in the great building were not so well organised as they came to be some years later. There were extensive special wards, where unhappy girls drifted like autumn leaves when the winter approached, many of them to die of consumption, little cared for spiritually; for over this portion of the hospital Agnes Jones was not the presiding genius. There was on the ground floor a Bridewell for women, consisting of huge cellars, bare and unfurnished, with damp stone floors. These were called the “oakum sheds,” and to these came voluntarily creatures driven by hunger, destitution, or vice, begging for a few nights’ shelter and a piece of bread, in return for which they picked their allotted portion of oakum. Others were sent there as prisoners.

I went down to the oakum sheds and begged admission. I was taken into an immense gloomy vault filled with women and girls—more than two hundred probably at that time. I sat on the floor among them and picked oakum. They laughed at me, and told me my fingers were of no use for that work, which was true. But while we laughed we became friends. I proposed that they should learn a few verses to say to me on my next visit. I recollect a tall, dark, handsome girl standing up in our midst, among the damp refuse and lumps of tarred rope, and repeating without a mistake and in a not unmusical voice, clear and ringing, that wonderful fourteenth chapter of St. John’s Gospel—the words of Jesus all through, ending with, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” She had selected it herself, and they listened in perfect silence, this audience—wretched, draggled, ignorant, criminal some, and wild and defiant others. The tall, dark-haired girl had prepared the way for me, and I said, “Now let us all kneel, and cry to that same Jesus who spoke those words”; and down on their knees they fell every one of them, reverently, on that damp stone floor, some saying the words after me, others moaning and weeping. It was a strange sound, that united wail—continuous, pitiful, strong—like a great sigh or murmur of vague desire and hope, issuing from the heart of despair, piercing the gloom and murky atmosphere of that vaulted room, and reaching to the heart of God.

But I do not want to make a long story of this. The result of my visits to the hospital and quays and oakum sheds was to draw down upon my head an avalanche of miserable but grateful womanhood. Such a concourse gathered round our home that I had to stop to take breath, and consider some means of escape from the dilemma by providing some practical help, moral and material. There were not at that time many enlightened missions or measures in the town for dealing with the refuse of society. There was the Catholic Refuge of the Good Shepherd, some way in the country; an old-fashioned Protestant Penitentiary, rather prison-like in character; another smaller refuge; and, best of all, a Home recently established by Mrs. Cropper. But it must not be supposed that the majority of my oakum shed friends were of a character to seek such asylums. Many of them—and especially the Irish Catholics—prided themselves on their virtue; and well they might, considering their miserable surroundings—girls who for the most part earned a scanty living by selling sand in the streets (for cleaning floors), or the refuse of the markets to the poorest of the population. Usually they were barefooted and bonnetless. The Lancashire women are strong and bold. The criminals of the oakum sheds and prison, sent to “do a week” or a month there, had most frequently been convicted of fighting and brawling on the quays and docks, of theft or drunkenness. There was stuff among them to make a very powerful brigade of workers in any active good cause. But there were others—the children of intemperate and criminal parents—who were, humanly speaking, useless, not quite “all there,” poor, limp, fibreless human weeds. These last were the worst of all to deal with. I had the help at this time of a widowed sister who was visiting Liverpool, and who, in spite of very delicate health, threw herself heroically into the effort to help this work without a name which came upon us. We had a dry cellar in our house and a garret or two, and into these we crowded as many as possible of the most friendless girls who were anxious to make a fresh start. This became inconvenient, and so in time my husband and I ventured to take a house near our own, trusting to find funds to furnish and fill it with inmates. This was the “House of Rest,” which continued for many years, and developed, about the time we left Liverpool, into an incurable hospital, supported by the town. It was there that, a little later, women incurably ill were brought from the hospitals or their wretched homes, their beds in hospital being naturally wanted for others.

A few months later, encouraged by the help offered by a certain number of generous Liverpool merchants and other friends, we took a very large and solid house, with some ground round it, to serve as an industrial home for the healthy and active, the barefooted sand girls, and other friendless waifs and strays. We had a good gathering of friends and neighbours at a service which my husband held at the opening of the industrial home. His “dedication prayer” on that occasion was very touching, and full of kindness and heart-yearning towards the poor disinherited beings whom we desired to gather in. This house was very soon filled, and was successfully managed by an excellent matron, a mother. Besides the usual laundry and other work, we were able to set up a little envelope factory in one of the spacious rooms. This work called out some skill and nicety, and interested the girls very much. Several tradesmen and firms bought our envelopes at wholesale prices, and we also supplied some private friends disposed to help us. As chaplain, friend and adviser in these two modest institutions, my husband showed the same fidelity and constancy which he did in every other seriously accepted or self-imposed duty. He often said that it was a rest and refreshment to him to visit our poor people in the evening, and more especially on Sunday. In the House of Rest were received “incurables” so-called (of whom not a few recovered). There was a very peaceful atmosphere in that house answering to its name—a spirit of repose, contentment, and even gaiety among the young inmates, scarcely clouded even by the frequent deaths, which came generally as a happy and not unexpected release, and were regarded by the living as a series of fresh bonds between the family in heaven and that on earth.

Drink was the great, the hopeless obstacle which I found among them. It was on this side that they would lapse again and again. Though it involved no change in my own habits, I thought it was best to take the pledge. I joined the Good Templars, who had many lodges in Liverpool.

Shortly before the creation of these two homes, we had a visit from my sister, Madame Meuricoffre. She and her husband, with their dear little girl, Josephine, had come from Naples to England, and had paid a visit to our father in Northumberland. They had, a short time before, lost a beloved child, their little Beatrice, during an outbreak of the cholera in Naples. The surviving little girl seemed to droop after the death of her companion. She (little Josephine) took ill on the way from the north, and before they reached Liverpool this darling of her parents had gone to join her beloved sister in the presence of God. The parents came to us in deep sorrow, bringing with them the earthly remains of their child.

My sister joined me in my visits to the sick, criminal, and outcast women of Liverpool. We visited the wards of the great hospital together. The strong sympathy of her loving nature quickly won the hearts of desolate young girls, while she greatly strengthened me in the hope that we might be able to undo some of their heavy burdens.

Among the first who came to us to our own house, to die, was a certain Marion, who seemed to us a kind of first-fruits of the harvest, in the gathering in of which we were to be allowed in after years to participate. The first time I saw her was in a crowded room. Her face attracted me: not beautiful in the common acceptation of the word, but having a power greater than beauty; eyes full of intelligence and penetration; a countenance at once thoughtful and frank, with at times a wildly seeking look, as if her whole being cried out, “Who will show us any good?” She was ill, her lungs fatally attacked. I went up to her, and with no introduction of myself said, “Will you come with me to my home and live with me? I had a daughter once.” She replied with a gasp of astonishment, grasping my hand as if she would never let it go again. I brought her home, my husband supported her upstairs, and we laid her on the couch in the pretty little spare room looking on the garden. She lived with us, an invalid, three months, and then died. It was difficult to suppress the thought, “If she had not been so destroyed, what a brightness and blessing she might have been in the world.” Untaught, unacquainted with the Scriptures till she came to us, she mastered the New Testament so thoroughly in that brief time that her acute questions and pregnant remarks were often a subject of wonder to my husband, who spent a portion of almost every evening with her in her room, conversing with and instructing her. Some of the intellectual difficulties which assail thoughtful students occurred to her. I witnessed many a severe struggle in her mind. She would often say, “I will ask Mr. Butler about it this evening.” But her questions were sometimes such as cannot be answered, except by God Himself to the individual soul. This she knew, and through many sleepless nights her murmured prayers were heard by her attendant, “preventing the night watches.” My husband said her remarks concerning the nature of a true faith sometimes strikingly resembled portions of the writings of a well-known modern philosophical thinker, which she had never read, for she had read nothing. I speak of her intellect, but her heart was yet greater. What capacities for noble love, for the deepest friendship, had been trampled under foot in that dear soul.

A well-known divine came to visit us, and hearing of our poor invalid, kindly offered to see and converse with her. My husband and I agreed that we would say nothing to our friend of Marion’s past life, for we thought that, saintly man though he was, he probably had not faith enough to do justice to her and to himself in the interview if he had this knowledge. (There are few men whose faith comes up to that measure.) When he joined us again downstairs his face was radiant, and he spoke, not of any teaching or comfort which he might have conveyed to her, but of the help and privilege it was to himself to have held communion during a short half hour with a dying saint, so young, yet so enlightened, and so near to God.

I recall the day of her death. It was a cold, snowy day in March. In the morning my husband went to see her early, before going out to his college work. She could scarcely speak, but looking earnestly at him said, as if to reward him for all his painstaking instructions, and guessing what he wished to know, “Yes, God is with me, sir; I have perfect peace.” Her long death-struggle lasting twelve hours, joined with the peace and even joy of her spirit, was very affecting. Though it was bitterly cold, she whispered, “Open the windows, for the love of God.” Her long black hair, thrust wildly back, was like the hair of a swimmer, dripping with water, so heavy were the death-dews. She became blind, and her fine intelligent eyes wandered ever, with an appealing look, to whatever part of the room she thought I was in. Towards sunset she murmured, “Oh, come quickly, Lord Jesus.” During that long day she continually moved her arms like a swimmer, as if she felt herself sinking in deep waters. Then her poor little head fell forward, a long sigh escaped her parted lips, and at last I laid her down flat on her little bed. My husband and sons returned from college, and we all stood round her for a few minutes. She had become a household friend. She looked sweet and solemn then, her head drooping to one side, and with a worn-out look on the young frail face, but a look, too, of perfect peace.

A few days before her death I telegraphed, at her request, to her father, who had had no tidings of his lost child for five years. He was an extensive farmer, well to do and honourable, living in a beautiful district in the midland counties. We were surprised, on his arrival, to see a very fine-looking country gentleman, as one would say, reminding us, in his noble height and figure and dignified presence, a little of my own father. He carried with him a valise and a handsome travelling rug. We took him to her room and retired. Their interview was best witnessed by God alone. After two hours or so I opened the door softly. He was lying on a couch at the opposite side of the room from her in a deep sleep, tired probably more by strong emotion than by his journey. She raised her finger for silence, and with the look and action of a guardian angel whispered, “Father is asleep.”

After her death her poor mother came to attend her funeral. I had filled Marion’s coffin with white camelias, banking them up all round her. With her hands crossed on her breast, and dressed as a bride for her Lord, she looked quite lovely. I found the mother alone, kneeling by the coffin in an agony of grief and of anger. She said (her body rocking backward and forward with emotion), “If that man could but see her now! Can we not send for him?” And she added, “Oh, what a difference there is in English gentlemen’s households! To think that this child should have been ruined in one and saved in another!” Yes, it might have been good for “that man” to have been forced to step down from his high social position and to look upon her then, and to have known the abyss from which she had been drawn, to the verge of which he had led her when she was but a child of fifteen.

Marion had “prophesied” to me, before she died, of hard days and a sad heart which were in store for me in contending against the evil to which she had fallen a victim. I recall her words with wonder and comfort. She would say, “When your soul quails at the sight of the evil, which will increase yet awhile, dear Mrs. Butler, think of me and take courage. God has given me to you, that you may never despair of any.”

Snow lay thickly on the ground when we laid her in her grave in the cemetery. When we came back to the house I was trying to say something comforting to the mother, when she stopped me and said, “My heart is changed about it all. The bitter anger won’t come back, I think; and what has taken it all away was the sight of Mr. Butler standing by the grave of my child, and the words he spoke. Oh, madam,” she said, “when I looked at him standing there in the snow, dressed in his linen robe as white as the snow itself, and with that look on his face when he looked up to heaven and thanked God for my daughter now among the blessed, I could hardly refrain from falling on my knees at his feet, for he seemed to me like one of the angels of God! I felt happy then, almost proud, for my child. Oh, madam, I can never tell you what it was to me to look on your husband’s face then! My heart was bursting with gratitude to God and to him.”

There were others about the same time whom we took home, who died in our own house, and were laid in graves side by side in the cemetery. Of one I have a clear remembrance, a girl of seventeen only, of some natural force of character. Her death was a prolonged hard battle with pain and with bitter memories, lightened by momentary flashes of faint hope. She struggled hard. We were called to her bedside suddenly one evening. She was dying, but with a strong effort she had raised herself to a sitting position. She drew us near to her by the appeal of her earnest eyes, and raising her right hand high with a strangely solemn gesture, and with a look full of heroic and desperate resolve, she said, “I will fight for my soul through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!” Her eyes, which seemed to be now looking far off, athwart the hosts of which she spoke, became dim, and she spoke no more. “Poor brave child!” I cried to her, “you will find on the other shore One waiting for you who has fought through all those hosts for you, who will not treat you as man has treated you.” I cannot explain what she meant. I have never been quite able to understand it; but her words dwelt with us—“through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!” She had been trampled under the feet of men as the mire in the streets, had been hustled about from prison to the streets, and from the streets to prison, an orphan, unregarded by any but the vigilant police. From the first day she came to us we noticed in her, notwithstanding, an admirable self-respect, mixed with the full realisation of her misery. And that sense of the dignity and worth of the true self in her—the immortal, inalienable self—found expression in that indomitable resolution of the dying girl: “I will fight for my soul through hosts, and hosts, and hosts!”

In the following winter my father died. On the 23rd of January, 1868, we were summoned by a telegraphic message from my sister, Mrs. Smyttan, who had lived with him during the last years of his life. But none of us saw him alive again. The end had been sudden, but very tranquil. His health was excellent to the last. On the morning of January 23rd, as he was passing from his bedroom to his study, he sat down, feeling faint, and raising his forefinger as if to enjoin silence, or intent upon a voice calling him away, he died without a struggle, and apparently without pain, in the eighty-third year of his age.

The family group which was gathered in that house of mourning was incomplete, for many were far away. One of the sisters wrote to the absent ones:

“Two days after our dear father’s death there was such a storm of wind for twenty-four hours as I scarcely remember. The house shook and heaved, and the sky was as dark as if there were an eclipse. The river roared and the windows rattled. We all cowered over the fire, and talked of him and of old days, trying to free ourselves from the sad, restless impression produced by the storm. We heard a crash, and on going upstairs found the window of the room where he lay blown in, the glass shivered about the floor, and the white sheet which had been thrown over the kingly corpse blown rudely away. There was something so irreverent about it, pitiful and weird-like; but he was not disturbed by it—he was beyond all storms, in an infinite and everlasting calm. He looked so grand, and lay in such a majestic peace. His forehead, so high and broad and smooth, his soft grey hair smoothed back. I was much struck by the powerful look of his square jaw, and the union of tenderness and strength in the whole outline of his head and face. I felt almost triumphant about him; and yet how sorrowful such moments are, even when one can look back with thankfulness. The sorrow is not for one’s own loss only; the presence of death in one so dear brings one for a moment into close relation with all the sorrows of earth. When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus it was not for Lazarus and his sisters only. He saw then and felt all the bereavements which would bow down the hearts of men to the end of time.”

The company of voluntary followers to the grave was a very large one, all on foot. Around the tomb, where he was laid by the side of our dear mother, there stood a large and silent gathering of children and grandchildren, friends, servants, tenants and others. As we passed along the vale of Tyne on our way back to Lipwood we were much impressed by the outward results—in the high cultivation and look of happy prosperity of the country—of a long life usefully spent. And this feeling was shared by all the dwellers there, who, equally with ourselves, could mark in all around them the impress of his mind and hand. But only those who had had the happiness of his friendship and confidence could know, with his children, how much of strength and sweetness seemed to be gone away from earth when that great heart had ceased to beat.

One of the most prominent characteristics of our family life during all these years at Liverpool was that of our common enjoyment of our summer tours. There were circumstances which made our annual excursions more than the ordinary tours of some holiday-makers. In the first place, many of my own relatives were settled in different parts of the Continent, thus giving us a personal connection with those places. In order to pay a visit to the homes of some of them it was necessary to cross the Alps, while other near relatives lived in France and Switzerland.

It sometimes happens that the ordinary English traveller knows little of the general life of the people among whom he travels, of the history of the country, its politics, its social condition and prospects. He is content to gather to himself enjoyment from the beauties of Switzerland or the Tyrol, or Italy, while knowing little of the dwellers in those beautiful lands. A wider and a richer field is open to those who care to seek and explore it. My husband was not content without making himself acquainted, to a considerable extent, with the contemporary history of the countries through which we passed. His aptitude for languages aided him in intercourse with people of different nationalities; so that our family relationships abroad, and our friendships with many public men, as well as humble dwellers in continental countries, gave to our visits there a varied interest. These vacation tours were to us like sunlit mountain tops rising from the cloud-covered plain of our laborious life at Liverpool. Moreover, the enthusiasm which he had, and which was shared by his sons, for geographical and geological research, together with our modest artistic efforts, added greatly to the interest of our travels. It was felt to be unsatisfactory to attempt to draw mountains and rocks without knowing something of their geological construction. During a visit which Mr. Ruskin paid us at Liverpool, he was turning over a portfolio of drawings done by my husband, and held in his hands for some time two or three sketches of the Aiguilles towering above the Mer de Glace, and other rocks and mountain buttresses in the neighbourhood of Chamounix. He said it gave him pleasure to look at those (he being a keen observer and student of mountain forms everywhere). “Your outlines of these peaks, Mr. Butler,” he said, “are perfectly true: they are portraits. Very few people are able or care to represent the forms so correctly. For the most part artists are more anxious to produce an effective picture, than to give precisely what they see in nature.”

Our sons inherited their father’s out-door tastes. Our summer tours were therefore a source of the keenest enjoyment to us all. We saved up our money for them, worked towards them, and looked forward to them as a real happiness.

[CHAPTER V.]
EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

Among the subjects concerning which my husband advanced with a quicker and firmer step than that of the society around him in general, stands that of the higher education of women. It may be difficult for the present generation to realise what an amount of dogged opposition and prejudice the pioneers of this movement had to encounter only some twenty-five years ago. We have made such rapid strides in the direction of women’s education, that we almost forget that our ladies’ colleges, higher examinations, and the various honours for which women compete so gallantly with men, are but of yesterday. Miss Clough called at our house in Liverpool one day in 1867, to ascertain the state of mind of the Principal of the Liverpool College in regard to the beautiful schemes, which were even then taking shape in her fruitful brain for the benefit of her fellow-women. I think she was heartily glad to find herself in a house where not a shadow of prejudice or doubt existed, to be argued down or patiently borne with until better days. My husband even went a little further, I believe, than she did at that time, in his hopes concerning the equality to be granted in future in the matter of educational advantages for boys and girls, men and women. An active propagandist work was started soon after by James Stuart, of Trinity College, Cambridge, who made Liverpool his head-quarters during his first experiment in establishing lectures for ladies, which developed into the University Extension Scheme. It was arranged that the first course should embrace four of the most important towns of the North of England, constituting a sort of circuit. It seemed desirable that a man of experience and weight in the educational world should inaugurate this experiment by a preliminary address or lecture, given to mixed audiences, in each of these four towns. My husband undertook this task. His first address was given at Sheffield, where he was the guest of Canon Sale, who approved heartily of the movement. Without unnecessarily conjuring up spectres of opposition in order to dismiss them, he carefully framed his discourse so as to meet the prejudices of which the air, at that time, was full. It was generally imagined that a severer intellectual training than women had hitherto received would make them unwomanly, hard, unlovely, pedantic, and disinclined for domestic duties, while the dangers to physical health were dolorously prophesied by medical men and others. In concluding his inaugural address, my husband said: “A community of women, established purposely to educate girls and to train teachers, was not known in Christendom till the institution of the Ursulines by Angela dà Brescia, in 1537. So unheard of at this time was any attempt of women to organise a systematic education for their own sex, that when Françoise de Saintange undertook to found such a school at Dijon she was hooted in the streets, and her father called together four doctors learned in the laws, ‘pour s’assurer qu’instruire des femmes n’était pas un œuvre du démon.’ Even after he had given his consent, he was afraid to countenance his daughter, and Françoise, unprotected and unaided, began her first school in a garret. Twelve years afterwards she was carried in triumph through the streets, with bells ringing and flowers strewed in her path, because she had succeeded. Her work lived and grew because it was right. So take courage, ladies, struggling now at this day for the right to cultivate to their full extent the faculties and gifts which God has bestowed upon you. You must fight your own battles still. At all times reforms in the social position of women have been brought about by efforts of their own, for their own sex, supplemented by men, but always coming in the first instance from themselves.”

The visit of Miss Clough to the Butlers, already referred to, led to the formation at the end of 1867 of the North of England Council for promoting the Higher Education for Women, a body representing associations of school-mistresses in several large northern towns. Josephine Butler was President of this council from 1867 to 1873, and Miss Clough was Secretary for the three first strenuous years of its existence. The first work of the Council was to organise lectures for women, which had already been begun by Mr. Stuart, to whose genius the inception of the University Extension Movement was due. Mr. Stuart’s first course on astronomy was given, in the autumn of 1867, in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield, and was attended altogether by five hundred and fifty women. These lectures were followed by other similar courses organised by the Council, and the idea rapidly spread. In 1868 Mr. Stuart gave his first lectures to working-men at Crewe. These two independent tributaries, lectures to women and lectures to working-men, combined into one stream, which grew into the University Extension system first adopted by the University of Cambridge in 1873. The North of England Council was one of the bodies which memorialised the University, at the end of 1871, in favour of the lecture system being taken up and put on a permanent basis by the University. Their memorial urged the proposal not only on behalf of women, but also on behalf of working-men, who had alike shown their desire for higher education by attending in large numbers the lectures already given.

The Council also interested itself in the question of examinations for women, and in 1868 presented the following memorial to the University of Cambridge, signed by five hundred and fifty teachers, and three hundred other ladies:

“We, the undersigned, being either connected with or engaged in the education of girls, desire to bring under your consideration the great want which is felt by women of the upper and middle classes, particularly by those engaged in teaching, of higher examinations, suitable to their own needs. The Local Examinations, to which by a Grace of the Senate, passed April, 1865, girls under eighteen have now for three years been admitted, have proved of the greatest advantage in stimulating and steadying the work in Girls’ Schools. Students above eighteen are not, however, admissible to these examinations, nor are they of a sufficiently advanced character to meet the wants of such students, especially of those who have adopted, or wish to adopt, teaching as a profession. We therefore beg that, taking into consideration the grave necessities of the case, you will be pleased, either by extending the powers of the Syndicate for conducting the Local Examinations, or in some other way to make provisions for such examinations as shall adequately test and attest the higher education of women.”

Josephine Butler by her personal efforts obtained many of the signatures to this memorial, and herself went to Cambridge in support of it. Miss Clough wrote of this expedition that “the charm Mrs. Butler put into all the details she gave, showing the desire of women for help in educating themselves, made the subject, which might have been considered tedious, both interesting and attractive, and thus drew to the cause many friends.”[2]

To friends in the North.

June, 1868.

One of our friends at Cambridge amused himself with counting up the number of gentlemen who talked privately and kindly to me about it—there were forty-eight. So you see there is a great deal of sympathy there. It is not so easy for me to tell you what I felt, as what actually happened. I felt the reality of the good that must come from this movement. It would have pleased you, I feel sure, as it pleased me, to see the grave and kindly tone of these dons. I was talking to one elderly Professor with grey hair and a somewhat stiff expression, and I happened to speak of the struggle which the lives of many women of the middle classes is, and of the gratitude we felt when men of weight and real goodness came forward to help us, and this elderly don was deeply moved. The tears came into his eyes, and he could scarcely answer me. He said: “I fear we get selfish here, and forget how much there is of work and sorrow in the world outside of us.” Professor Maurice came to my room one day and talked a long time to me. He said at leaving: “If there is anything else which you and your friends think Cambridge could do to be of use, I trust you will suggest it; it does us more good than it does to anyone else.” I trust that a time is coming when barriers between men and women and one class and another may give way before the influence of true Christian charity, and a desire to help and be helped.

The memorial met with a ready response from the University by the establishment in the following year of the Examinations for Women, which a few years later were called the Higher Local Examinations, and were open to men as well as women.

“These two things—the organisation in the northern towns of lectures given, by University men, which led to University Extension, and the establishment of an examination for women which led to the Cambridge lectures, and so to Newnham College—were the Council’s most striking achievements; but it had a hand in various other important educational enterprises.”[3]

For instance the Council worked hard, and with some success, in endeavouring to induce the Endowed Schools Commissioners to secure that some part of the endowments of Public Schools should be devoted to the education of girls. “Mrs. Butler made an able as well as a zealous President of the Council, and while she herself took an active part in almost everything that was undertaken, she also did good service in kindling the enthusiasm of others by her eloquence and enthusiasm.”[4] Although she retired from the Presidency in 1873 on the ground of ill-health, she attended its last meetings at York in 1874, when she read a paper on Economic Science as a part of the Education of Girls. In that year the Council was dissolved, having finished its pioneer work, and feeling that the movement could henceforth be carried on by other organisations, which had by that time come into existence.

In 1868 Josephine Butler published her first pamphlet, The Education and Employment of Women. Starting with the census figures of 1861, she meets the old argument that woman’s sphere is the home, and only the home, by pointing out that the proportion of wives to widows and spinsters over twenty was only about three to two (in 1901 the proportion was even less), and that over three million women were earning or partly earning their living. This number had risen in 1901 to over four millions. She refers to the miserable wages received by women workers, from the teaching profession downwards, due in part to the comparatively low state of education among girls, and in part to the restrictions upon their employment in various directions, both causes being ultimately traceable to the fact that “they are unrepresented, and the interests of the unrepresented always tend to be overlooked.” Hence she pleads for the higher education of women and the removal of all legal and other restrictions upon their employment. She incidentally urges the mixed education of boys and girls. As against the argument that the more extended employment of women would injure men, she prophesies, in the words of F. D. Maurice, “Whenever in trade or in any department of human activity restrictions tending to the advantage of one class and the injury of others have been removed, there a divine power has been at work counteracting not only the selfish calculations, but often the apparently sagacious reasonings of their defenders.” Surely this prophecy has been fulfilled, as it appears from the Report of the Poor Law Commission recently issued, that, taking a wide outlook of the whole industrial situation, there has been no tendency in the past twenty years for women workers to displace men. (Pp. 322-5.)

In 1869 Josephine Butler edited and wrote an introduction to a volume of essays on Woman’s Work and Woman’s Culture. The essays were by Frances Power Cobbe, Jessie Boucherett, George Butler, Sophia Jex-Blake, James Stuart, Charles H. Pearson, Herbert N. Mozley, Julia Wedgwood, Elizabeth C. Wolstenholme, and John Boyd-Kinnear. In her introductory essay she lays stress on the fact that any disabilities, from which women suffer, cause injury and loss to men, no less than to women themselves. She admits that woman’s sphere is home, but she wishes the home idea to be realised in wider spheres than within the four walls of a single household. She pleads that to grant the demands of women for higher education, and for unrestricted liberty to engage in any employment, will tend to the restoration of true home ideals; first through the restored dignity of women, and secondly through the opening out and diffusion of the home influence and character into the solution of social problems, by the relegation to women of some of the more important work of dealing with our vast populations. This she illustrates in the following passage.

In the present pretty general realisation of the futility, if not the positive harm, of many forms of private philanthropy, and the often-repeated deprecation of meddling individuals, who pauperise the community by their old-fashioned, lady-bountiful way of dispensing alms and patronage, we do not perhaps quite foresee the reaction which is setting in, with a tendency so strong in the opposite direction that it brings us into the danger of once more missing the philosophy of the whole matter. The tendency at present is to centralisation of rule, to vast combinations, large institutions, and uniformity of system. I have a doubt about any wholesale manipulation of the poor, the criminal, scholars in schools, etc. I believe it to be so far from being founded on a philosophical view of human nature and of society, that if carried to extremes the last state of our poor will be worse than the first. For the correction of the extreme tendencies of this reaction, I believe that nothing whatever will avail but the large infusion of home elements into workhouses, hospitals, schools, orphanages, lunatic asylums, reformatories, and even prisons; and in order to attain this there must be a setting free of feminine powers and influence from the constraint of bad education, and narrow aims, and listless homes where they are at present too often a superfluity. We have had experience of what we may call the feminine form of philanthropy, the independent individual ministering, of too mediæval a type to suit the present day. It has failed. We are now about to try the masculine form of philanthropy—large and comprehensive measures, organisations and systems, planned by men and sanctioned by Parliament. This also will fail if it so far prevail as to extinguish the truth to which the other method witnessed in spite of its excesses. Why should we not try at last a union of principles which are equally true? “It is not good for man to be alone” was a very early announcement in the history of the world. Neither is it good for man to work alone in any matter whatsoever which concerns the welfare of the great human family; and the larger the work be which he undertakes, unassisted by her whom God gave to him for a helpmate, the more signal will be the failure in the end.

We quote another passage from this essay to show how here, as always, she founded herself on the appeal to Christ as the highest authority in matters of principle and of action.

The author of Ecce Homo has set the example to those to whom it did not occur to do so for themselves, of venturing straight into the presence of Christ for an answer to every question, and of silencing the voice of all theologians from St. Paul to this day, until we have heard what the Master says. It may be that God will give grace to some woman in the time to come to discern more clearly, and to reveal to others, some truth which theologians have hitherto failed to see in its fulness; for from the intimacy into which our Divine Master admitted women with Himself it would seem that His communications of the deepest nature were not confined to male recipients; and what took place during His life on earth may, through His Holy Spirit, be continued now. It is instructive to recall the fact that the most stupendous announcement ever made to the world, the announcement of an event concerning which the whole world is divided to this day, and which more than all others is bound up with our hopes of immortality, the resurrection of Christ, was first made to women. Nor can we wonder, looking back over the ages since then, and seeing how any truths asserted by women, not at once palpable to the outward sense or provable by logic, have been accounted as idle tales, that of the first apostles it should have been said, “The words of the women seemed unto them as idle tales,” when they declared that Christ was risen. Among the great typical acts of Christ, which were evidently and intentionally for the announcement of a principle for the guidance of society, none were more markedly so than His acts towards women; and I appeal to the open Book, and to the intelligence of every candid student of Gospel history, for the justification of my assertion that in all important instances of His dealings with women His dismissal of each case was accompanied by a distinct act of Liberation. In one case He emancipated a woman from legal thraldom. His act no doubt appeared to those who witnessed it as that of a dangerous leveller, for while He granted to the woman a completeness of freedom from the tyranny of law which must have electrified the bystanders, He imposed upon the men present, and upon all men by implication, the higher obligation which they had made a miserable attempt to enforce upon one half of society only, and the breach of which their cruel laws visited with terrible severity on women alone. They all went out convicted by conscience, while the woman alone remained free; but, be it observed, free in a double sense—free alike from the inward moral slavery, and from the harsh, humanly-imposed judgment. The emancipation granted to another in the matter of hereditary disabilities was signal. In a moment He struck off chains which had been riveted by the traditions of centuries, and raised her from the position, accepted even by herself, of a “Gentile dog” to one higher than the highest of the commonwealth of Israel. In another case His “Go in peace,” and words of tender and respectful commendation to one who had been exiled from society, contrasted solemnly with His rebuke to His self-satisfied host, who, while firmly holding his place among the honoured of this world, marvelled that Christ should not seem to be aware what manner of woman it was who touched Him. To another, before ever she had spoken a word, He cried, “Woman, thou art loosed!” and to objectors He replied, “Ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound lo these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” The tyrannies and infirmities from which He freed these persons severally were various and manifold, and this does but increase the significance of His whole proceeding towards them. Search throughout the Gospel history, and observe His conduct in regard to women, and it will be found that the word liberation expresses, above all others, the act which changed the whole life and character and position of the women dealt with, and which ought to have changed the character of men’s treatment of women from that time forward.

While in His example of submission to parents, of filial duty and affection, in His inculcation of the sacredness of marriage, and of the duty of obedience to laws which ought to be obeyed, His righteousness far exceeded the righteousness of the Pharisees of His own or of the present day, it seems to me impossible for anyone candidly to study Christ’s whole life and words without seeing that the principle of the perfect equality of all human beings was announced by Him as the basis of social philosophy. To some extent this has been practically acknowledged in the relations of men to men; only in one case has it been consistently ignored, and that is in the case of that half of the human race in regard to which His doctrine of equality was more markedly enforced than in any other. It is no wonder that there should be some women whose love for this Saviour exceeds the love which it is possible for any man to feel for Him, and that, retiring from the encounter with prejudices which are apt to lurk even in the minds of the most just and most generous of men, they should be driven to cast themselves in a great solitude of heart before Him, for He only is just, He only is holy, He only is infinitely tender.

In the same year, 1869, Josephine Butler published the Memoir of John Grey of Dilston, a most interesting biography of a good man, who faithfully served his native county throughout his life, and took a keen interest in all the stirring political events of the first half of the last century. An Italian translation of this Memoir was published in Florence two years later.

[CHAPTER VI.]
WOMEN’S REVOLT.

We now come to the period when Josephine Butler began the great work of her life, the crusade against the State regulation of vice. This system had its rise in France, being brought into operation in Paris by Napoleon on the eve of the establishment of the French Empire in 1802. Other continental countries followed the example of France, and several attempts were made to introduce the system into England, but without success until 1864, when a temporary Act was passed “for the prevention of contagious diseases at certain naval and military stations.” This Act was renewed in 1866, and was further extended (to eighteen towns) in 1869. In other countries the system was “suffered to crouch away in the mysterious recesses of irresponsible police regulations.” England was the only country which had “had the courage or the audacity to launch the system in all its essential details in the form a public statute.”[5] This, which at first seemed a triumph for regulationists, proved the very reverse, since the publicity thus given to the matter was the starting-point of a fierce opposition begun in England, and afterwards spreading to the Continent, until it undermined the very foundations of the system. It is not indeed yet destroyed in continental countries, for it is hard to pull down structures which have stood firm for a century, but it is everywhere discredited; and this has come about chiefly through the heroic labours of Josephine Butler and her fellow-workers. In one of her early speeches she tells of her first call to this work.

I first became acquainted with this system as it existed in Paris. I was one of those persons—they were few, I believe—who read that very brief debate in the House of Commons in 1866, when Mr. Henley and Mr. Ayrton alone, but clearly and boldly, entered their protest. It was in that year that the knowledge first broke upon me that this system, which I had so long regarded with horror, had actually found a footing in our England. It seemed to me as if a dark cloud were hanging on the horizon, threatening our land. The depression which took possession of my mind was overwhelming. A few days ago I found a record of those days in an old manuscript book long laid aside. In turning over its leaves I found a note of that debate in the House, the date, and a written expression, which I had since forgotten, of a presentiment which at that time filled my mind, that in some way or other I should be called to meet this evil thing face to face—a trembling presentiment, which I could not escape from, that, do what I would, I myself must enter into this cloud. I find there recorded also a brief prayer, beseeching that if I must descend into darkness, that divine hand, whose touch is health and strength, would hold mine fast in the darkness. I can recollect going out into the garden, hoping that the sight of the flowers and blue sky might banish the mental pain; but it clung too fast for a time for any outward impression to remove it, and I envied the sparrows upon the garden walk because they had not minds and souls capable of torment like mine. But now, when I look back, I see that the prayer has been heard, the divine hand has held mine, often when I knew it not. And, friends, God can give more than power to bear the pain; there is a positive joy in His service, and in any warfare in which He, who conquered sin and death and hell, goes before us, and is our re reward.

Before the Act of 1869 was passed, Daniel Cooper, Secretary of the Rescue Society, aided by a few friends, took active steps to protest against these laws; but, as he afterwards wrote, he “felt an almost utter despair in seeing that, after putting forth our pamphlet and writing thousands of letters imploring our legislators, clergy, principal public men and philanthropists to look into the question, such a stoical indifference remained. We felt, on hearing of your Association, that Providence had well chosen the means for the defeat of these wicked Acts. The ladies of England will save the country from this fearful curse, for I fully believe that through them it has even now had its death-blow.” Dr. Worth and Dr. Bell Taylor of Nottingham also raised their voice against the system early in 1869, and they, with the Rev. Dr. Hooppell and Francis Newman, took part in the first public demonstration against the Act, on the occasion of the Social Science Congress meeting at Bristol in October, 1869, when the National Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts Association was formed.

The appeal to take up this cause reached me first from a group of medical men, who (all honour to them) had for some time been making strenuous efforts to prevent the introduction in our land of the principle of regulation by the State of the social evil. The experience gained during their efforts had convinced them that in order to be successful they must summon to their aid forces far beyond the arguments, strong as these were, based on physiological, scientific grounds. They recognised that the persons most insulted by the Napoleonic system with which our legislators of that day had become enamoured, being women, these women must find representatives of their own sex to protest against and to claim a practical repentance from the Parliament and Government which had flung this insult in their face.

It was on landing at Dover from our delightful summer tour in 1869, that we first learned that a small clique in Parliament had been too successfully busy over this work of darkness during the hot August days, or rather nights, in a thin House, in which most of those present were but vaguely cognisant of the meaning and purpose of the proposed constitutional change.

During the three months which followed the receipt of this communication I was very unhappy. I can only give a very imperfect impression of the sufferings of that time. The toils and conflicts of the years that followed were light in comparison with the anguish of that first plunge into the full realisation of the villainy there is in the world, and the dread of being called to oppose it. Like Jonah, when he was charged by God with a commission which he could not endure to contemplate, “I fled from the face of the Lord.” I worked hard at other things—good works, as I thought—with a kind of half-conscious hope that God would accept that work, and not require me to go further, and run my heart against the naked sword which seemed to be held out. But the hand of the Lord was upon me: night and day the pressure increased. From an old manuscript book in which I sometimes wrote I quote the following:—

September, 1869.—“Now is your hour, and the power of darkness.” O Christ, if Thy Spirit fainted in that hour, how can mine sustain it? It is now many weeks since I knew that Parliament had sanctioned this great wickedness, and I have not yet put on my armour, nor am I yet ready. Nothing so wears me out, body and soul, as anger, fruitless anger; and this thing fills me with such an anger, and even hatred, that I fear to face it. The thought of this atrocity kills charity and hinders my prayers. But there is surely a way of being angry without sin. I pray Thee, O God, to give me a deep, well-governed, and lifelong hatred of all such injustice, tyranny and cruelty; and at the same time give me that divine compassion which is willing to live and suffer long for love to souls, or to fling itself into the breach and die at once. This is perhaps after all the very work, the very mission, I longed for years ago, and saw coming, afar off, like a bright star. But seen near, as it approaches, it is so dreadful, so difficult, so disgusting, that I tremble to look at it; and it is hard to see and know whether or not God is indeed calling me concerning it. If doubt were gone, and I felt sure He means me to rise in revolt and rebellion (for that it must be) against men, even against our rulers, then I would do it with zeal, however repulsive to others may seem the task.

Appeals continued to pour in. I read all that was sent to me, and I vividly recalled all that I had learned before of this fatal system and its corrupting influence in continental cities—the madness and despair into which it drives the most despised of society, who are yet God’s redeemed ones, and the blindness and hardness of heart which it begets in all who approach it in its practical administration, or in any way except in the way of uncompromising hostility. And the call seemed to come ever more clearly.

So far I had endured in silence, I could not bear the thought of making my dear companion a sharer of the pain; yet I saw that we must needs be united in this as in everything else. I had tried to arrange to suffer alone, but I could not act alone, if God should indeed call me to action. It seemed to me cruel to have to tell him of the call, and to say to him that I must try and stand in the breach. My heart was shaken by the foreshadowing of what I knew he would suffer. I went to him one evening when he was alone, all the household having retired to rest. I recollect the painful thoughts that seemed to throng that passage from my room to his study. I hesitated, and leaned my cheek against his closed door; and as I leaned I prayed. Then I went in, and gave him something I had written, and left him. I did not see him till the next day. He looked pale and troubled, and for some days was silent. But by and by we spoke together about it freely, and (I do not clearly recollect how or when) we agreed together that we must move in the matter, and that an appeal must be made to the people. (Already many members of both Houses of Parliament, bishops and responsible officials had been appealed to, but so far in vain.) I spoke to my husband then of all that had passed in my mind, and said, “I feel as if I must go out into the streets and cry aloud, or my heart will break.” And that good and noble man, foreseeing what it meant for me and for himself, spoke not one word to suggest difficulty or danger or impropriety in any action which I might be called to take. He did not pause to ask, “What will the world say?” or “Is this suitable work for a woman?” He had pondered the matter, and looking straight, as was his wont, he saw only a great wrong, and a deep desire to redress that wrong—a duty to be fulfilled in fidelity to that impulse, and in the cause of the victims of the wrong; and above all he saw God, who is of “purer eyes than to behold iniquity,” and whose call (whatever it be) it is man’s highest honour to obey; and his whole attitude in response to my words cited above expressed, “Go! and God be with you.”

I went forth, but not exactly into the streets, to cry aloud. I took the train to the nearest large station—Crewe—where there is a great manufactory of locomotives and a mass of workmen. I scarcely knew what I should say, and knew not at all what I should meet with. A friend acquainted with the workmen led me after work hours to their popular hall, and when I had delivered my message, a small group of leaders among the men bade me thrice welcome in the name of all there. They surprised me by saying, “We understand you perfectly. We in this group served an apprenticeship in Paris, and we have seen and know for ourselves the truth of what you say. We have said to each other that it would be the death-knell of the moral life of England were she to copy France in this matter.”

From Crewe I went to Leeds, York, Sunderland and Newcastle-on-Tyne, and then returned home. The response to our appeal from the working-classes, and from the humbler middle class in the northern and midland counties and in Scotland, exceeded our utmost expectations. In less than three weeks after this first little propagandist effort, the working-men of Yorkshire, recognised leaders in political and social movements, had organised mass meetings, and agreed on a programme of action, to express the adhesion of the working-classes of the north to the cause advocated.

Meanwhile the Ladies’ National Association for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had been formed towards the end of 1869, and on the last day of that year their solemn protest appeared in the Daily News. This protest is here given in full, because from it can be sufficiently gathered the nature and scope of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and also because it sums up the objections which were then and have ever since been raised by those who have strenuously opposed the regulation of vice involved in those Acts, and in the similar systems in operation in other countries; objections based upon the two fundamental principles of an equal moral standard for men and women, and of the equal treatment of men and women by the law of the land.

“We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts. (1) Because, involving as they do such a momentous change in the legal safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been passed not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown in a great measure to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the Representatives of the People nor the Press fulfil the duties which are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place without the fullest discussion. (2) Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every guarantee of personal security which the law has established and held sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police. (3) Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes. (4) Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause both of the vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to arrest, forced medical treatment, and (where this is resisted) imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are punishments of the most degrading kind. (5) Because by such a system the path of evil is made more easy to our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England, inasmuch as a moral restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognises, and provides convenience for, the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be necessary and venial. (6) Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their action—violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalising even the most abandoned. (7) Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or improved the general morality of the country. We have on the contrary the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other continental cities, where women have long been outraged by this system, the public health and morals are worse than at home. (8) Because the conditions of this disease in the first instance are moral not physical. The moral evil, through which the disease makes its way, separates the case entirely from that of the plague, or rather scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care. We hold that we are bound, before rushing into experiments of legalising a revolting vice, to try to deal with the causes of the evil, and we dare to believe, that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation, those causes would not be beyond control.”

Over one hundred and twenty names were attached to the Protest when it first appeared, but the number very soon reached two thousand, including those of Josephine Butler, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, Mary Priestman, Agnes McLaren, Ursula Bright, Margaret Lucas, all the most prominent women in the Society of Friends, and many others well known in the literary and philanthropic world. A friendly Member of Parliament wrote:“Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, ‘We know how to manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing; what are we to do with such an opposition as this?’”

Since some have supposed that the opponents of the Acts objected to any measures for the diminution of the special diseases in question—because forsooth! that would involve an interference with God’s method of punishing sin—it may be well to point out that Josephine Butler took a very different line in her first pamphlet on the subject, An Appeal to the People of England, by “an English Mother,” published early in 1870. In this she first goes over the whole ground of objections to the arbitrary and compulsory character of the Acts in a masterly and moving argument; and then proceeds to plead earnestly for a better and humaner way of dealing with the matter, and in the forefront of her proposals she places the provision of the most ample free hospital accommodation, worked on an absolutely voluntary basis, and as far as possible by woman doctors; and she argues from experience that this would be more likely, than any compulsory system, to lead to a decrease of disease, while at the same time affording more hope of moral influences prevailing, and leading to reformed lives, as well as cured bodies.

“We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts. (1) Because, involving as they do such a momentous change in the legal safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been passed not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown in a great measure to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the Representatives of the People nor the Press fulfil the duties which are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place without the fullest discussion. (2) Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every guarantee of personal security which the law has established and held sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police. (3) Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes. (4) Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause both of the vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to arrest, forced medical treatment, and (where this is resisted) imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are punishments of the most degrading kind. (5) Because by such a system the path of evil is made more easy to our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England, inasmuch as a moral restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognises, and provides convenience for, the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be necessary and venial. (6) Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their action—violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalising even the most abandoned. (7) Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or improved the general morality of the country. We have on the contrary the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other continental cities, where women have long been outraged by this system, the public health and morals are worse than at home. (8) Because the conditions of this disease in the first instance are moral not physical. The moral evil, through which the disease makes its way, separates the case entirely from that of the plague, or rather scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care. We hold that we are bound, before rushing into experiments of legalising a revolting vice, to try to deal with the causes of the evil, and we dare to believe, that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation, those causes would not be beyond control.”

Over one hundred and twenty names were attached to the Protest when it first appeared, but the number very soon reached two thousand, including those of Josephine Butler, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, Mary Priestman, Agnes McLaren, Ursula Bright, Margaret Lucas, all the most prominent women in the Society of Friends, and many others well known in the literary and philanthropic world. A friendly Member of Parliament wrote:“Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, ‘We know how to manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing; what are we to do with such an opposition as this?’”

Since some have supposed that the opponents of the Acts objected to any measures for the diminution of the special diseases in question—because forsooth! that would involve an interference with God’s method of punishing sin—it may be well to point out that Josephine Butler took a very different line in her first pamphlet on the subject, An Appeal to the People of England, by “an English Mother,” published early in 1870. In this she first goes over the whole ground of objections to the arbitrary and compulsory character of the Acts in a masterly and moving argument; and then proceeds to plead earnestly for a better and humaner way of dealing with the matter, and in the forefront of her proposals she places the provision of the most ample free hospital accommodation, worked on an absolutely voluntary basis, and as far as possible by woman doctors; and she argues from experience that this would be more likely, than any compulsory system, to lead to a decrease of disease, while at the same time affording more hope of moral influences prevailing, and leading to reformed lives, as well as cured bodies.

[CHAPTER VII.]
COLCHESTER ELECTION.

Among our first and best helpers in our own town was my cousin, Charles Birrell, a Baptist minister, who had a church in Liverpool. There existed a strong friendship between him and my husband. Mr. Birrell was a gifted man, of a dignified presence, and a beautiful countenance; he was refined and cultivated, and was eloquent in speech. He was elected in 1871 to be President of the Baptist Union, in which he pleaded our cause. He had been ill, but came to our meeting at Liverpool. Early in 1870 I find in my book of scanty records—written at the time for my own use alone—the following:—

Thank God, all doubt is gone! I can never forget Charles Birrell’s prophetic words at our meeting yesterday concerning the future of this work. He rose from his sick bed to speak them, and stood there, a witness for God, pale and ill, but with a holy joy in his whole countenance, seeing God rather than the people around him, and sending us forth to our work with confidence. Then my husband’s benediction! The words of those two—their prayers, their counsels—must never be forgotten. God sent them to us to dispel all lingering doubts or hesitation—kind, pure-hearted, unworldly men, messengers of hope and assurance! And now it is revolt and rebellion, a consecrated rebellion against those in authority who have established this “accursed thing” among us. We are rebels for God’s holy laws. “What have I to do with peace” any more? It is now war to the knife. In a battle of flesh and blood mercy may intervene and life may be spared; but principles know not the name of mercy. In the broad light of day, and under a thousand eyes, we now take up our position. We declare on whose side we fight; we make no compromise; and we are ready to meet all the powers of earth and hell combined.

She addressed many meetings this year besides those mentioned in the last chapter, travelling for the purpose over 3700 miles before the middle of June; and when the North of England Council held its meetings in that month she expressed a wish to resign the Presidency of that body, in order to reserve her strength and energies for her new work (her resignation however did not take effect, as stated on a previous page, until three years later). Her wish to resign is explained in the following speech.

I proposed at our meeting yesterday to resign the office of President of this Council, as soon as it may be convenient to the Council to allow me to do so. It is not because I am not deeply interested in the cause which this Council represents. I may say I am more deeply interested in it than ever, for I see in the education of women one of the most ready and necessary means of freeing poorer women from the awful slavery of which I have seen so much lately. Nor do I undervalue the higher culture of the individual as a means towards the attainment of the highest personal happiness. The strangely providential guidance of all our schemes has lately been deeply impressed on my mind. We started our educational schemes, I believe, in an honest and humble spirit, and they appeared to us the readiest path towards aiding our fellow-women—the distressed, the needy, and the wasted; and I believe our labour has not been in vain. But in this, as in all our work on earth, we needed further enlightening and teaching. Looking back on my own experience of the past year, it appears to me as if God in His goodness had said to me, “I approve your motive and your work; but you are trying to lay on the topstone while there is an earthquake shaking your foundations. You must first descend to the lowest depths before you can safely build up.” And then He showed us a plague spot. He showed us a deadly poison working through the wholesale, systematic, and now legalised, degradation of women. He showed us the ready elements for a speedy overthrow of society, which the educated would not be able to stem. Not that our work in the cause of education has in any sense been a failure—far from it; but we need a still larger infusion into these noble schemes for educating the masses of the spirit of self-sacrifice, even of martyrdom. We need to have our hearts still more deeply penetrated with pity, and to be more resolutely bent on making all our practical efforts tend to the revival of justice, and of a pure and equal moral standard and equal laws. While therefore I continue to regard the cause of education as a most sacred cause, I come to the present meeting with a sad heart; and I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold because I feel that God has called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all are not called to descend to the depths of woe, and to cast in their lot among wretched slave-gangs, in order to help the slaves to carry the weight of their chains, if not to break them away. This work, I think, is mine; but there is other work not less holy, which aims not less directly at a future emancipation. But while I feel all the greater dependence on, and deeper gratitude, to you my fellow-workers in this Council and others, for the work you are doing, and for the work you will do, in the cause of humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I fear I may not in future be able to give the needful time to this work, nor to bring to it the vigour and spirit which it demands and deserves. I wish to leave this work in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest sympathy. It points perhaps to the most important of all the means by which we hope, against hope, to undo the heavy burdens, and let the oppressed go free, and inaugurate a purer and sounder national life. To keep pace however with this portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart tolerably free, and that cannot be the case with one who is called to deal with the most miserable, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the outcast, the victim of our social sins, whose name one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I have great hope, I am full of hope for the education cause, and for the anti-slavery cause, in which we are engaged. Nevertheless one’s very soul grows faint before the facts of 1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one’s fitness to be a fellow-sufferer with the slave, it does not increase one’s fitness for a work which requires intellectual energy.

The National Association, which was daily increasing in vitality and in boldness of operation, effectually prevented the further extension of the system we opposed, and by means of successful contests at by-elections—pre-eminently that of Colchester in October-November, 1870, where the Government candidate, Sir Henry Storks, was defeated on this one question by over 400 votes—forced the Government to look seriously into the matter. I give some prominence to this hotly-contested election at Colchester, as it proved to be somewhat of a turning-point in the history of our crusade. A public meeting had been arranged for in the theatre. I was with our friends previous to this meeting in a room in a hotel. Already we heard signs of the mob gathering to oppose us. The dangerous portion of this mob was headed and led on by a band of keepers of houses of prostitution in Colchester, who had sworn that we should be defeated and driven from the town. On this occasion the gentlemen who were preparing to go to the meeting left with me all their valuables, watches, &c. I remained alone during the evening. The mob were by this time collected in force in the streets. Their deep-throated yells and oaths, and the horrible words spoken by them, sounded sadly in my ears. I felt more than anything pity for these misguided people. It must be observed that these were not of the class of honest working people, but chiefly a number of hired roughs and persons directly interested in the maintenance of the vilest of human institutions. The master of the hotel came in, and said in a whisper, “I must turn down the lights; and will you, madam, consent to go to an attic which I have, a little apart from the house, and remain there until the mob is quieter, in order that I may tell them truly that you are not in the house?” I consented to this for his sake. His words were emphasised at the moment by the crashing in of the window near which I sat, and the noise of heavy stones hurled along the floor, the blows from which I managed to evade. Our friends returned in about an hour, very pitiful objects, covered with mud, flour, and other more unpleasant things, their clothes torn, but their courage not in the least diminished. Mr. James Stuart, who had come purposely during the intervals of his duties at Cambridge to lend his aid in the conflict, had been roughly handled. Chairs and benches had been flung at him and Dr. Baxter Langley; and a good deal of lint and bandages was quickly in requisition; but the wounds were not severe.

I should have prefaced my recollections of this election conflict by saying that on our first arrival in Colchester we went, as was our wont, straight to the house of a Quaker family. Mrs. Marriage, a well-known member of the Society of Friends, received us with the utmost cordiality and self-possession. At her suggestion we began our campaign with a series of devotional meetings, gathering together chiefly women in groups, to ask of God that the approaching events might be over-ruled for good, and might open the eyes of our Government to the vital nature of the cause for which we were incurring so much obloquy. Among the women who helped us most bravely were Mrs. King and Mrs. Hampson; there were also many others.

I may be excused, perhaps, for mentioning an amusing incident of the election. I was walking down a by-street one evening after we had held several meetings with wives of electors, when I met an immense workman, a stalwart man, trudging along to his home after work hours. By his side trotted his wife, a fragile woman, but with a fierce determination on her small thin face; and I heard her say, “Now you know all about it; if you vote for that man Storks, Tom, I’ll kill ye!” Tom seemed to think that there was some danger of her threat being put in execution. This incident did not represent exactly the kind of influence which we had entreated the working women to use with their husbands who had votes, but I confess it cheered me not a little.

To her sons.

Colchester, Nov., 1870.

I have tried several hotels; each one rejects me after another. At last I came to a respectable Tory hotel, not giving my name. I had gone to bed very tired, and was dropping asleep, when I heard some excitement in the street, and a rap at my door. It was the master of the hotel. He said, “I am sorry, madam, I have a very unpleasant announcement to make.”“Say on,” I replied. He said, “I find you are Mrs. Josephine Butler, and the mob outside have found out that you are here, and have threatened to set fire to the house unless I send you out at once.” I said, “I will go immediately. But how is it that you get rid of me when you know that though I am a Liberal I am practically working into the hands of Colonel Learmont, the Conservative candidate?” He replied, “I would most gladly keep you, madam; undoubtedly your cause is a good one, but there is a party so much incensed against you that my house is not safe while you are in it.” He saw that I was very tired, and I think his heart was touched. He said, “I will get you quietly out under another name, and will find some little lodging for you.” I packed up my things, and he sent a servant with me down a little by-street to a small private house of a working-man and his wife. Next day I went to the C—— Inn, the head-quarters of our party. It was filled with gentlemen, in an atmosphere of stormy canvassing. The master of the inn whispered to me, “Do not let your friends call you by your name in the streets.” A hurried consultation was held as to whether our party should attempt to hold other public meetings or not. It seemed uncertain whether we should get a hearing, and it was doubtful, if I personally would be allowed by the mob to reach the hall where we had planned to hold a women’s meeting. Some of the older men said, “Do not attempt it, Mrs. Butler; it is a grave risk.” For a moment a cowardly feeling came over me as I thought of you all at home; then it suddenly came to me that now was just the time to trust in God, and claim His loving care; and I want to tell you, my darlings, how He helped me, and what the message was which He sent to me at that moment. I should like you never to forget it, for it is in such times of trial that we feel Him to be in the midst of us—a living Presence—and that we prove the truth of His promises. As I prayed to Him in my heart, these words came pouring into my soul as if spoken by some heavenly voice: “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.” (Psalm xci.) Are they not beautiful words? I felt no more fear, and strong in the strength of these words I went out into the dark street with our friends.

The London Committee had commissioned the two Mr. Mallesons to come down to help us. I like them much, they are so quiet and firm. Someone had also sent us from London twenty-four strong men of the sandwich class as a body-guard. I did not care much about this “arm of flesh.” It was thought better that these men should not keep together or be seen, so they were posted about in the crowd near the door of the hall. Apparently they were yelling with the regulationist party, but ready to come forward for us at a given signal. The two Mr. Mallesons managed cleverly, just as we arrived, to mislead the crowd into fancying that one of themselves was Dr. Langley, thus directing all their violence of language and gestures against themselves. Meanwhile Mrs. Hampson and I slipped into the hall in the guise of some of the humbler women going to the meeting. I had no bonnet or gloves, only an old shawl over my head, and looked quite a poor woman. We passed safely through crowded lines of scoundrel faces and clenched fists, and were unrecognised. It was a solemn meeting. The women listened most attentively while we spoke to them. Every now and then a movement of horror went through the room when the threats and groans outside became very bad. At the close of the meeting some friend said to me in a low voice, “Your best plan is to go quietly out by a back window which is not high from the ground, while the mob is waiting for you at the front.” The Mallesons and two friendly constables managed admirably. They made the mob believe I was always coming, though I never came. Mrs. Hampson and I then walked off at a deliberate pace from the back of the hall, down a narrow, quiet, star-lit street. About thirty or forty kind, sympathising women followed us, but had the tact to disperse quickly, leaving us alone. Neither of us knew the town, and we emerged again upon a main street, where the angry cries of the mob seemed again very near. I could not walk any further, being very tired, and asked Mrs. Hampson to leave me, and try to find a cab. She pushed me into a dark, unused warehouse, filled with empty soda-water bottles and broken glass, and closed the gates of it. I stood there in the darkness and alone, hearing some of the violent men tramping past, never guessing that I was so near. Presently one of the gates opened slightly, and I could just see in the dim light the poorly-clad, slight figure of a forlorn woman of the city. She pushed her way in, and said in a low voice, “Are you the lady the mob are after? Oh, what a shame to treat a lady so! I was not at the meeting, but I heard of you, and have been watching you.” The kindness of this poor miserable woman cheered me, and was a striking contrast to the conduct of the roughs. Mrs. Hampson returned saying, “There is not a cab to be seen in the streets.” So we walked on again. We took refuge at last in a cheerfully lighted grocer’s shop, where a very kind, stout grocer, whose name we knew—a Methodist—welcomed us, and seemed ready to give his life for me. He installed me amongst his bacon, soap and candles, having sent for a cab; and rubbing his hands, he said, “Well, this is a capital thing; here you are, safe and sound!” We overheard women going past in groups, who had been at the meeting, and their conversation was mostly of the following description: “Ah, she’s right; depend upon it, she’s right. Well, what a thing! Well, to be sure! I’m sure I ’ll vote for her whenever I have a vote!” I have now got to my lodgings in the working-man’s house, which are very small, but clean. I hope to be with you on Saturday. What a blessed Sunday it will be in my quiet home.

My husband had personal friends in the Government, and on most questions he sympathised with their policy; it was the more painful therefore to have to maintain a prominent position personally in the perpetual attack and protest on this question. He was often reminded by cautious friends of the very distant prospect of any possible retirement from school work which he must now contemplate, so far as that retirement (or promotion of any kind) depended on the goodwill of those then in power. He perfectly understood this from the first, and his experience for many years from this time was that of an ever receding prospect in that direction. He continued to speak and write for the just cause whenever opportunity presented itself, patiently wearing his harness as a laborious schoolmaster for twelve long years after this date. Though it was a trial to him to be at variance in any way with personal friends or public men whom he regarded with esteem, yet it was not possible for him to set motives of policy or his own private interests above fidelity to a cause and a principle which he considered vital.

In March, 1871, I was called to give evidence before the Royal Commission which had been appointed. I was not fully aware until recently, when looking over his letters, how his tender solicitude for me had followed me in all my endeavours, in every varying circumstance. His duties at the Liverpool College forbade him accompanying me to London on this occasion; and even if this had not been the case, he would not have been allowed to remain with me during the examination in the House of Lords. He had, unknown to me, written to the Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Massey, commending me to his kindly consideration. For it was a formidable ordeal, being, as I was, the only woman present before a large and august assembly of peers, bishops, members of Parliament, representatives of the military and naval services, doctors, and others; my questioners being in a large majority hostile, and the subject serious and difficult. On the morning before I was called I received a number of letters, addresses of sympathy, and notices of united prayer for my support from associations of working-men in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Birmingham, and many other towns.

Several of these letters from working-men were published under the title of Vox Populi.

To her husband.

March, 1871.

It is over. It was even a severer ordeal than I expected. It was distressing to me, owing to the hard, harsh view which some of these men take of poor women, and of the lives of the poor generally. They had in their hands and on the table everything I have ever written on the subject, and reports of all my addresses, marked and turned down; and some of the Commissioners had carefully selected bits which they thought would damage me in examination. Frederick Maurice was not present, I am sorry to say; but Mr. Rylands, Mr. Mundella, and above all Sir Walter James, I felt, were my friends. The rest were certainly not so. To compare a very small person with a great one, I felt rather like Paul before Nero, very weak and lonely. But there was One who stood by me. I almost felt as if I heard Christ’s voice bidding me not to fear. I handed to the Chairman a large packet of the letters and resolutions from working-men. He said, “We may as well see them; for no doubt that class takes some little interest in the question.” I should think so! Let them wait till election times, and they will see! One of the Commissioners asked, “Are these bonâ-fide working-men?” I replied, “Yes, and well-known men. There is more virtue in the country than you gentlemen in high life imagine.” He then asked, “If these laws were put in operation in the north, do you believe they would be forcibly resisted?” I replied, “I do.”

To her husband.

March, 1871.

I shall be so glad to get back to you, and to breathe fresher air. I am sure your prayers have been heard in regard to my evidence before the Commission. I don’t think I did justice to the Commissioners in my first letter to you. I was so tired and depressed and dissatisfied with myself after the long ordeal, that I saw it all through rather a dark medium. But now I am full of thankfulness to God. I think I may quote to you what Mr. Rylands said to-day to Mr. Duncan McLaren and others: “I am not accustomed to religious phraseology, but I cannot give you any idea of the effect produced except by saying that the influence of the Spirit of God was there. Mrs. Butler’s words and manner were not what the Commission expected; and now some of them begin to take a new view of what they have hitherto called the ‘religious prejudice.’” He added that Lord Hardwicke came to speak to him afterwards, and that he seemed moved, and said, “If this is a specimen of the strength of conviction in the country on moral questions, we must reconsider our ways.” I tell you all this, dear husband, that we may learn more and more to wait upon God, who hears prayer. I spent yesterday with dear Fanny in her rooms. Home to-morrow.

[CHAPTER VIII.]
APPEAL TO MAGNA CHARTA.

Josephine Butler’s publications in 1871 included Sursum Corda, the substance (much expanded) of a speech delivered at the annual meeting of the Ladies’ National Association, two Addresses delivered at Croydon and at Edinburgh respectively, and The Constitution Violated, the most solid and weighty of all her utterances on the Contagious Diseases Acts. The main argument of the last mentioned work is given in the following pages.

The enactments called the Contagious Diseases Acts, passed respectively in 1866 and 1869, may be regarded from several points of view. With their medical aspect and the statistical consideration of their results on public health it is not my intention to deal. It has been dwelt on by other people and in other places fully.

The moral side of the question is undoubtedly the most important, and has been dwelt upon by the religious portion of the community, almost to the exclusion of others, although it may be truly said that it of necessity includes all others.

There is however one aspect of the question which has not been sufficiently set forth, that is, the constitutional aspect, including the effect which such legislation must have on our social and moral life as a nation, from a political point of view.

I am convinced that the people of this country are as yet but very partially awakened to the tremendous issues involved in the controversy before us, considered as a matter of constitutional rights; therefore it is that I venture, though I am no lawyer, to bring before them its extreme importance under that aspect. For this time of agony for the patriot, who can in any degree foresee the future of that country which violates the eternal principles of just government, drives many of us, unlearned though we be, to search the annals of our country, to enquire into past crises of danger, and the motives and character of the champions who fought the battles of liberty, with that keenness and singleness of purpose with which, in the agony of spiritual danger, the well-nigh shipwrecked soul may search the Scriptures of God, believing that in them he has eternal life.

On the occasion of an infringement of a constitutional principle by Parliament itself, a century ago, Lord Chatham, when urging the House of Lords to retrace this fatal step, used the following words: “If I had a doubt upon this matter, I should follow the example set us by the most reverend bench, with whom I believe it is a maxim, when any doubt in point of faith arises, or any question of controversy is started, to appeal at once to the greatest source and evidence of our religion—I mean the Holy Bible. The Constitution has its political Bible also, by which, if it be fairly consulted, every political question may and ought to be determined. Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights form that code which I call the Bible of the English Constitution. “[6]

In following out this advice of Lord Chatham, it is to these authorities that I wish to appeal in determining the exact nature of those principles of the Constitution which I assert have been violated. I am aware that in doing so I may incur criticism on account of my ignorance of legal terms and definitions, and on account of unskilfulness in the arrangement of the matter before me. I shall be satisfied however, if I succeed in commending my subject to those to whom I particularly address myself—I mean the working men and working women of England. Neither they nor I have had a legal training, but we may alike possess a measure of that plain English common sense which, to quote again Lord Chatham’s words, is “the foundation of all our English jurisprudence,” which common sense tells us that “no court of justice can have a power inconsistent with, or paramount to, the known laws of the land, and that the people, when they choose their representatives, never mean to convey to them a power of invading the rights or trampling upon the liberties of those whom they represent.”[7] Further on in this essay I shall show that Parliament, in making the Contagious Diseases Acts, has invaded and trampled on the liberties of the people.

Among the clauses in Magna Charta, there is one upon which the importance of all the others hinges, and upon which the security afforded by the others practically depends. This clause, and the supplementary clause which follows it, have been those whose subject has formed, more than any other, matter and occasion for the great battles fought for English liberty and right since the charter was signed by King John.

They are the thirty-ninth and fortieth clauses of King John’s Charter, and the twenty-ninth of that of King Henry III, and are as follows:—

39. NO FREEMAN SHALL BE TAKEN, OR IMPRISONED, OR DISSEISED, OR OUTLAWED, OR BANISHED, OR ANYWAYS DESTROYED, NOR WILL WE PASS UPON HIM, NOR WILL WE SEND UPON HIM, UNLESS BY THE LAWFUL JUDGMENT OF HIS PEERS, OR BY THE LAW OF THE LAND.

40. WE WILL SELL TO NO MAN, WE WILL NOT DENY TO ANY MAN EITHER JUSTICE OR RIGHT.

“These clauses are the crowning glories of the great charter.”[8] Mr. Hallam calls them its “essential clauses,”[9] being those which “protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and spoliation.”[10] The same high authority observes that these words of the great charter, “interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society.” The principles of this clause of the great charter, which, if we look backwards, are lost in antiquity, were subsequently confirmed and elucidated by statutes and charters of the reign of Henry III and Edward III entitled “confirmationes cartarum.”“The famous writ of Habeas Corpus was framed in conformity with the spirit of this clause; that writ, rendered more actively remedial by the statute of Charles II, but founded upon the broad basis of Magna Charta, is the principal bulwark of English liberty, and if ever temporary circumstances, or the doubtful plea of necessity, shall lead men to look on its denial with apathy, the most distinguishing characteristic of our constitution will be effaced. “[11] The same powerful testimony is given by De Lolme, Guizot and De Tocqueville.

It is precisely these very clauses, thus endearingly eulogised by these great historians and lawyers of various nations, which stand violated both in letter and in principle by the Contagious Diseases Acts.

It is not requisite for my purpose to enter into a critical examination of each of the words and phrases of the great clause of Magna Charta referred to, nor even to quote a selection of comments on these words and phrases from the voluminous writings which exist on the subject. There are two expressions however, as to the meaning of which I shall make a few remarks. The first, as bearing more particularly on the subject in hand, viz. the phrase “or anyways destroyed,” and the second, the words “by the law of the land,” in order that I may with respect to these words correct a misunderstanding which may arise in the mind of a reader who reads them without the light of those subsequent comments and charters which have elucidated Magna Charta.

As to the first phrase, Blackstone, as well as other writers, gives a very wide signification to this word “destroy,” and in general terms it may be said that they agree in understanding that these words of the charter sternly forbid any proceeding on the body of an accused person unless after trial by jury. If it were possible for me here to describe in detail that proceeding which the Acts in question sanction upon the body of a person suspected or accused, who has been condemned without any jury trial, no further words of mine would be needed to convince my readers that this proceeding comes within the scope of that word “destroy.” The expression in Magna Charta, “We will destroy no one unless by the judgment of his peers,” is by the great lawyers interpreted to mean that no proceeding of any kind whatever of a compulsory nature shall be permitted on the person of anyone except after jury trial. Blackstone and others, to make the matter more plain, minutely define those cases in which alone this prohibition of Magna Charta may be set aside, viz. in the punishment of young children by their parents, and of pupils by their masters, but even these were to be kept within the bounds of decency and humanity. I will only quote the words of De Lolme[12] on this subject: “Thus it was made one of the articles of Magna Charta, that the executive power should not touch the person of the subject, but in consequence of a judgment passed upon him by his peers; and so great was afterwards the general union in maintaining this law, that the trial by jury which so effectually secures the subject against all the attempts of power, even against such as may be made under the sanction of the judicial authority, hath been preserved till this day.”

The words “by the law of the land” have been taken by some not to refer to jury trial. Attempts have been made to justify illegal proceedings by this interpretation. This has given rise to arguments and enactments, by means of which the relation of these words to jury trial has been settled beyond dispute. And it is these arguments and enactments which, as much as anything else, have thrown light on the ancient institution of jury trial, and have confirmed, as a lasting and inalienable part of the Constitution, this ancient “law of the land.” One of the most marked discussions on this subject, ending with the establishment of the principle which we have laid down, that jury trial is the one constitutional form of trial recognised in Magna Charta, took place in the reign of Charles I, when Judge Selden, at the time of the arrest of the five members, made a famous speech, pleading for the release of Sir E. Hampden from illegal imprisonment, on the ground that these words, “by the law of the land,” showed that it was illegal to imprison him by any other method than that of jury trial.

We who have combined to oppose this legislation maintain that this Act is unconstitutional, because it submits a case, in which the result is to the party concerned of the most enormous consequence, to trial without jury. We are well aware, while making this statement, that there is a class of cases in England which at this present time are tried without a jury. But these cases are what are called “minor cases.” Now we maintain that a woman’s honour is a point of very grave importance to her, and that no State can thrive in which it is not regarded as a very sacred question. And we maintain that a case which is to decide as to the question of a woman’s honour is by no means, nor by any stretch of language or imagination, capable of being called a “minor case.” We therefore maintain that this law, which places the determination of the fact as to a woman’s honour solely in the hands of a single justice of the peace, is as great an infringement of constitutional right as if the determination of the fact as to whether a man were guilty of murder or not were placed in the hands of a single justice of the peace. We maintain absolutely that to deprive of jury trial a woman whose honour is the subject in question is a breach of the English Constitution, as fundamentally expressed in that clause of Magna Charta, of which we have already pointed out the importance: “We will condemn no one except by the judgment of his peers.”

In answer to our objections to these Acts, it is utter vanity and folly in anyone to plead that they apply only to women who are prostitutes. Can it be supposed that there is any man in England so foolish as to think that the safeguards of English law exist for the sake of the guilty only? They exist for the sake of the innocent, who may be falsely accused, as well to protect them when accused, as to lessen the chances of unjust accusation. And can it be supposed that we are so blind as ever to be able to fancy that it is impossible that under this law an innocent woman may be accused? On the contrary, it is obvious that the question of a woman’s honour is one in which mistaken accusations are peculiarly likely to occur.

For the rich and great there may be little danger in dispensing with jury trial in this particular instance. As there are classes in society whose position and wealth place them above any chance of being erroneously accused of theft, so there are classes whose position, wealth and surroundings place the women belonging to them equally above any chance of being erroneously accused of being prostitutes. To this fact we may probably trace the apathy and indifference of so many of the upper classes to the passing of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and the urbanity with which they assure us that our fears are ungrounded, and that the operation of these Acts can seldom err. Again we must quote the words of Junius: “Laws are intended not to trust to what men will do, but to guard against what they may do.” But at the same time can we accept the assurance that the action of the officials who carry out these Acts will never be in error? We certainly cannot. Ladies who ride in their carriages through the streets at night are in little danger of being molested. But what of working women? What of the daughters, sisters, wives of working men, out, it may be on an errand of mercy, at night? And what most of all of that girl whose father, mother, friends are dead, or far away, who is struggling hard in a hard world to live uprightly and justly by the work of her own hands,—is she in no danger from this law? Lonely and friendless and poor, is she in no danger of a false accusation from malice or from error, especially since one clause of the Act particularly marks out homeless girls as just subjects for its operation? And what has she, if accused, to rely on, under God, except that of which this law has deprived her, the appeal to be tried “by God and my country, by which she is understood to claim to be tried by a jury, and to have all the judicial means of defence to which the law entitles her.”[13]

We have been reproached for making this question a class question. We accept the reproach, if reproach it be, because we say that it is a question for the poor rather than for the rich. It was not we who initiated this distinction, but the majority of the upper classes soon taught us that they considered it no question of theirs. They told us plainly that the subject was too unpleasant to be treated as one of public interest. But while with this plea they endeavoured to silence us, we found that they generally lent the weight of their influence, and not always apathetically or ignorantly, to the promotion of this legislation. To them this legislation involved no present and immediate diminution of freedom for themselves, and they seem to have been blindly ignorant, or selfishly forgetful, that their children and children’s children would be, as well as the children of the poor, inheritors of the fatal consequences of violated liberties, and that the chains which they now weave for others will in time entangle themselves. But when we turned to the humbler classes we found that they knew that it is a question for them, and that they, more intelligent in this than the upper classes, knew that it was also a question for this whole country of England, whose political liberty depends on the preservation of the rights of all. “The trial by jury ever has been,” says Blackstone,[14] “and I trust ever will be, looked upon as the glory of the English law. It is the most transcendent privilege that any subject can enjoy or wish for, that he cannot be affected in his property, his liberty, or his person but by the unanimous consent of twelve of his neighbours and equals, a constitution that I may venture to affirm has, under Providence, secured the just liberties of this nation for a long succession of ages.”

I cannot therefore but regard the present as a crisis as great as any crisis through which this nation has ever passed. This country was once called on to decide whether it would permit the king, for his satisfaction, to override this thirty-ninth clause of Magna Charta, and it decided most emphatically that he should not. It is now called on to decide whether it will permit Parliament itself, for the sake of the lusts of certain men, to override this same clause. It remains for the people of England to decide this question, and a very solemn choice is given to you, my countrymen, at this moment: Are these men to have protection in their vices, or will you retain your liberties? If any of my readers then came to the consideration of this matter with the idea that there might be something to be said for this law medically, and that though there might be something undefinedly wrong in it, yet it embodied at least a benevolent intention, let him then remember that he has, at the next election, to answer for himself and his country: Shall we have liberty in lust, or shall we have political freedom? We cannot retain both.

Early in 1872 the Home Secretary, Mr. Bruce, introduced a Bill to repeal the Contagious Diseases Acts, and to substitute provisions dealing with the subject in a different manner. Some opponents of the Acts at first were inclined to accept this compromise, but Josephine Butler issued a Letter on the subject of Mr. Bruce’s Bill, and a leaflet entitled, A Few Words addressed to True-hearted Women, in which she closely examined the measure, and showed that it was really open to the same moral and other objections that had been raised against the Acts which it was intended to replace. The agitation against the Bill, which was thus roused, led to its ultimate withdrawal. In this year also she published another pamphlet, The New Era, dealing with the fight against the regulation system in Berlin, the lessons to be learned from past failure, and the source from which hope for the future was to be derived.

The repealers at this period took part in several by-elections, notably that at Pontefract, when scenes of greater violence than those at Colchester occurred, showing the fierce feelings roused by this moral controversy. We cannot attempt to record the whole course of the seventeen years’ struggle, to notice the separate leagues and societies formed to oppose the Acts, the large number of public meetings, petitions to Parliament, and other active measures taken by the Abolitionists; but some idea of the vigour of the fight may be gathered from the fact that in one year, 1873, over two hundred and fifty public meetings were held, besides fifteen important conferences, at most of which Josephine Butler took a leading part.

In spite of great encouragements now and again, we were from year to year forced to confess that the prospect of victory was much more distant than we at first imagined. Looking back over those years, we can now see the wisdom of God in allowing us to wait so long for the victory. For the mere legislative reform, or rather undoing and repairing, which was our immediate object, was but a small part of the great and vital movement which it was His design to create and maintain for the purifying of the nations; and if we had obtained a speedy triumph there would not have been that great awakening of consciences which we have witnessed, resulting in practical and lasting reforms. At times the struggle between opposing principles was very severe; and hostile criticisms, censures—public and private—accusations, invective, and bitter words fell upon us at certain crises as thickly as the darts of Apollyon on Christian’s armour at the entrance of the dark valley. Motives of the worst kind were sometimes imputed, among the most frequent being that of a lurking sympathy, not with the sinners alone, but with their most hateful sins. A certain class of our enemies thought themselves happy, it seemed, in inventing a dart which they believed would strike home in our own case; they sought diligently to spread an impression that some tragic unhappiness in our married life was the impelling force which had driven me from my home to this work, and coarse abuse was varied by hypocritical expressions of pity and sympathy.

But they were the most unworthy alone—the lewd fellows of the baser sort naturally—by whom this kind of scourging was inflicted or attempted. It only had the effect of strengthening our indifference to all selfish, impure, and interested opposition, and of deepening our thankfulness for the good gifts of peace and unity of heart in our home. Such manifestations however taught us much of the deeper meanings of these “signs of the times.” Much more serious practically was the opposition of honourable opponents, men of education, high character and honesty, who in some cases had openly given their names in favour of a principle and a measure which happily many of them learned to regard later with suspicion and abhorrence.

On May 21st, 1873, the first debate and division in Parliament took place on our question, which had been courageously and ably pioneered in the House of Commons by William Fowler, a member of the Society of Friends, and which afterwards (when Mr. Fowler lost his seat for Cambridge) was taken in hand with equal ability and courage by Sir Harcourt Johnstone. My husband congratulated me and himself heartily on the division. The majority against us was 137, yet he could rejoice! And justly so, for in counting up our probable friends in the House we had not dared to hope that we should have as many as those who actually voted for us, viz. 128.

It was on this occasion that old Mr. Henley spoke in the House of Commons the following solemn words (respect for his personal character caused members on both sides of the House to listen in perfect silence, a silence so great that though his voice was feeble all he said was distinctly heard): “It is complained,” he said, “that this agitation is carried on by women; but we cannot shut our eyes to the fact that women are most affected by this legislation. We men do not know what women suffer. Unless they tell us, we cannot know. In this matter women have placed their feet upon the ‘Rock of Ages,’ and nothing will force them from their position. They knew full well what a cross they would have to bear, but they resolved to take up that cross, despising the shame. It was women who followed Christ to His death, and remained with Him while others forsook Him, and there are such women amongst us now.”

In a division on the question of Women’s Suffrage, which occurred about this time, Mr. Henley, who had till then been opposed to granting the parliamentary franchise to women, voted in favour of it, and spoke a few very touching words. He told me, that the experience he had now had of the injustice, which Parliament (not excluding the good men in Parliament) is capable of inflicting on women, had convinced him that they (women) must labour for and obtain direct representation on equal terms with men.

[CHAPTER IX.]
MISSION TO CONTINENT.

On the 25th of June, 1874, a few friends of the Abolitionist cause met to confer together at York. All were filled with a profound sense of the solemnity of the purpose which had brought them together. It was a time of deep depression in the work. Those who were present fully recognised the powerful array of organised forces against which they had to contend; they were filled with a kind of awe in the contemplation of those forces, and the magnitude of the difficulties with which they were called to grapple. At the same time everyone of the group seemed animated by a deep and certain conviction that the cause would triumph. The circumstances under which this conference took place were such as to call strongly for the exercise of that faith which alone can animate reformers to contend against a sudden increase of an evil, at whose destruction they aim. The voice of the Abolitionist had for a time been partially stilled by the clash of parties in the General Election. For a time even the most energetic workers were unable to see what steps for the continuance of the work could most effectively be taken. Having hitherto felt themselves engaged in a battle for the abolition of the State sanction of vice in Great Britain only, they had become aware that a large and powerful organisation on the Continent was seeking to increase the efficacy of the vice regulations, and for that purpose was appealing confidently to England to take the lead in organising, under all the Governments of Europe, an international scheme for the application of these regulations to every country, and to every seaport throughout the world. After a period of silence for united prayer, the Rev. C. S. Collingwood, Rector of Southwick, Sunderland, addressed the little group around him in words which have never been forgotten by those who passed through the trial of faith of that year—words which were assuredly inspired by God, and were His message to us at that period of anxious suspense.

In the course of the speech he said: “Our ceasing to be heard in Parliament for a time, or in the Press, or by public meetings, means necessarily so much clear gain to the other side. We have a most solemn charge, and cannot even maintain our ground except on the condition of ceaseless warfare. Much of the hostile pressure comes from abroad, and we shall do well to consider the propriety of carrying the war into the enemy’s country by establishing relations with leading and earnest opponents of the regulation of sin, say in France, Belgium, Prussia, Italy, etc., and stimulating opposition in these countries, and perhaps holding our own international congress. There can be no doubt that in all the countries subjected to this degrading system a few sparks would create a great fire of indignation and revolt against the immoral system. When Granville Sharp, in 1772, obtained the famous decision that a slave is free as soon as he touches English territory, he did not think it one of the first steps towards the general abolition of the slave trade, and of slavery everywhere; but it was so. And thus, when some noble ones among us raised a cry of horror and indignation on finding that supervised vice had presumed to desecrate our English soil they little guessed how far their voices would reach, nor what the work was upon which they unwittingly were entering, nor what the victories which they were to achieve. But they have already been able to produce great effects in Africa, Australia, and the United States; and, though still unsuccessful at home, we and they believe that the opposition which has commenced in England will obtain its utmost success here, and that a force of public opinion and true sentiment is being slowly generated, which will cross all lands and seas, and in its progress sweep away everywhere the monstrous organisation of vice, against which we lift our voices to-day.”

These words found an echo in the breasts of all present, and from that conference all departed feeling that a new era was dawning upon the whole movement, which could only lead to the final triumph of the cause of justice and morality far beyond the limits of our own country.

Before separating, the conference passed a simple resolution, accepting Josephine Butler’s proposition to open correspondence with opponents of the Regulation system abroad. This opening of correspondence “was in its beginning an apparently feeble—as it was indeed a laborious—undertaking, carried on somewhat in the vague and in the dark.” The results however were so far encouraging that later in the year she resolved to undertake a personal mission to the Continent. Shortly before her departure a meeting of women to wish her “God speed” was held at Birmingham, chiefly promoted by the Society of Friends. Mrs. Richardson, of York (who, like her sister, Mrs. Kenway, of Birmingham, was one of Josephine Butler’s oldest and dearest fellow-workers), wrote of this meeting:“I desire that you may be reminded of the meeting which took place immediately before her departure, and to which all then present, and she herself, largely attributed the remarkable success which was permitted to attend her labours, believing it to have been the direct answer to earnest prayer offered up there, and from many other friends elsewhere who were with us in spirit that evening. The meeting was called for the express purpose of united prayer to God on Mrs. Butler’s behalf—that He would guide and protect her on every hand, and prosper the work upon which she was about to enter.... After the reading (of Psalm xci), Mrs. Wilson offered prayer for God’s presence and blessing on the meeting, that it might tend to the help and strength of Mrs. Butler, and of all present. Mrs. Butler then gave a little account of how this widening prospect of the work had grown upon her. The necessity of seeking the sympathy and co-operation of other countries had been brought forcibly before her mind at the time of a conference at York in June, when this feature of the subject had taken great hold of the meeting; and knowing that it could, for obvious reasons, be more successfully carried out if universally adopted, she reminded us that those who were promoting the hateful system of regulated vice in continental nations were watching with anxiety the action of England in this direction, and rejoicing to see that it was beginning to take deep root here, and that whereas amongst them it was a police regulation only, here Parliament had seen fit to make it the law of the land. Mrs. Butler expressed her conviction that it must be made known abroad that many in England had determined, by God’s help, to bring to an end the entire system, and desired the sympathy and co-operation of those in other countries, who, she knew, had long groaned in secret under the burden of an evil which they felt powerless to grapple with. From that time Mrs. Butler had increasingly felt that the task must devolve upon herself of setting a spark to the smouldering embers, and in connection with this prospect the words of the Scriptures had constantly been before her mind: ‘I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.’ She believed the time had now come when she must give herself up to this new branch of the work."[15]

Josephine Butler herself wrote to a friend concerning this meeting:—

As we sat, during those calm silences which I so much love in Friends’ meetings, when God seems even more present than when any voice of prayer is breaking the hushed stillness, I did not think any more of the cold winter, long journeys, cynical opposition and many difficulties I knew I was going to meet. I knew that God is true, and that certainly I should be able to trample on the lion and adder. My thoughts were carried far beyond this near future, and a vista seemed to rise before me of the years to come—of some great and marvellous and beautiful manifestation of the power of God, of gathering hosts, an exceeding great army, before whom will melt away the monstrous wickedness which men of the world believe to be indestructible, and of the redemption of the slave.

She left England in December, accompanied by one of her sons, and joined later by her husband and other sons and Mr. Stuart. Some idea of the extent and nature of her work during this journey through France, Italy and Switzerland may be gathered from the following letters.

To Mr. Stansfeld.

December, 1874.

I think I told you that I spent a part of my last afternoon in Paris, at the Prefecture of Police. The memory of that interview is so exceedingly painful to me that I feared I should be unfitted for my work if I dwelt upon it. I was struck by the grandeur of the externals of the office, and by the evidence of the irresponsibility and despotic sway over a large class of the people possessed by the man Lecour. I ascended a large stone staircase, with guards placed at intervals, and many people coming and going, apparently desiring audiences. The Prefect’s outer door is at the top of the staircase, and over it, in conspicuous letters, are engraved the words; “Arrests—Service of Morals” (the arrests being of women only). In looking at these words the fact (though I knew it before) came before me with painful vividness, that man in this nineteenth century has made woman his degraded slave, by a decree which is heralded in letters of gold, and retains her in slavery by a violent despotism which, if it were applied to men, would soon set all Paris, and not merely a few of its buildings in flames. The words “Service des Mœurs” is the most impudent proclamation of an accepted falsehood. Too clearly and palpably is the true meaning of it “Service de Débauche”; and M. Lecour’s conversation throughout showed and confirmed most powerfully the fact (though he himself may be blind to it) that it is immorality, not morality, for which his office makes provision. I was kept waiting some time in the handsomely furnished room of the Prefect while he finished his interviews with people who had preceded me. While seated by the fire, with the newspaper in my hand which had been given to me by a liveried servant, I heard the whole of the conversation (it was impossible not to hear it) which passed. It left a very sorrowful and terrible impression on my mind. An elderly man was there, who appeared to be pleading the cause of a woman, perhaps a near relation, or in some way dear to him. M. Lecour spoke of the woman as one whom he had full power to acquit or to condemn, and there was a lightness in his tone which contrasted strikingly with the troubled gravity of the other, who more than once interrupted the volubility of the Prefect with the words, spoken in a voice of sullen, repressed emotion, “But you have accused her.” I thought of the words, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” Such a power in a merely human, but most awful sense, is possessed by that irresponsible ruler of the women of Paris; but his credentials are not divine. As I left his place I felt oppressed with a great sadness, mingled with horror; and, in thinking of M. Lecour, I recalled the words about “man, drest in a little brief authority,” who “plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep”; and not only that, but as make women die, cursing God, in horror and despair.

To Mr. Stansfeld.

Antibes, December, 1874.

I should like our friends to know how much the little faithful band of sympathisers in Paris recognise our mission as from God. There has lately been a great religious movement in France, as in some parts of England. Meetings for prayer are still held constantly. It seems also that there was among some a feeling of suspense, of expectation, almost of discomfort, in the belief that action, and aggressive action, ought to follow, and must follow, the deepening of spiritual life and the clearer apprehension of their personal relations with the Father in heaven. They have been feeling it is not enough to meet and pray, and to try for themselves to draw ever nearer to God. There must be a deeper meaning in this spiritual awakening; there must soon be a call to battle. Thus then without knowing what had been passing in Paris, and ignorant of the fact of a religious awakening, I spoke to them what I felt, and said that the only meaning of our being on earth at all was to be combatants; that the only condition of our spiritual health is war, unceasing war, against the whole kingdom of Satan, and against all evil things. I found some of these good men pondering these matters, and I began to see the connection in their minds between this call to oppose the evil round them and the previous movement. They saw, and confessed that the deepened personal life of the soul meant increased responsibility, and they recognised the guidance of God in this second call; and as the path became clearer to me I saw how “God leads the blind by a way they know not of.”

From her sister.

Naples, New Year’s Eve,
Midnight, 1874-1875.
“Beloved of my Soul,

“I want to spend this solemn hour with you. My heart is overflowing with gratitude to Him whose cross you bear. This year, which you told me began with such discouragement, and with the revelation of such new, untold horrors that you would not repeat them, has finished gloriously with the carrying of the standard of the fiery cross over the sea and into another land; and you—it is as if (no, there is no if about it) God surrounds you with His shield.

“Everyone out of England to whom I told your mission said you would be insulted and outraged in Paris, and could not do any good.

“Even people who believe in your mission told me of the way irreverent Frenchmen turn to ridicule anything spoken with a foreign accent; spoke of the dangers you would incur, and the impossibility of your making any impression. When they talked thus I smiled and said, ‘Wait and see: this is of God, and He will justify His handmaid.’ I felt so clearly that God gave it you to do; and whatever the world may think, God knows what He is about.

“He is not an idealised Joss, who lives in churches. He is present among us. He can manage even the Paris police. How He laid your enemies under your feet! Sometimes I got frightened because of your weak chest, and the bitter weather, and I longed to be with you, that I might at least run about after you with spirit-lamp and tea-caddy, or muscat wine, cloves and sugar to cheer you. Two days ago I got your first letters to your dear husband, which he sent on to me. It must not happen that you do not get here. With all you have to do, it seems cruel to bring you so far; but it would be sweet that you should once be in my dirty Naples, and dear George also. I recall all his kindness and goodness, since old Oxford days, until that crowning goodness of receiving us with our dead treasure as his guests, the pretty guest chamber ready for her, in spite of all the unhealed wounds the sight must have opened in your hearts. All that comes up, and we long to have you as our guests, to repay the kindness.

“Your mission is too high and holy to be understood! Is it not wonderful how people go on thinking it lovelily humble and sweetly meritorious to go on picking off a bad-smelling leaf here and there from the upas tree, instead of taking the Sword of God and striking at its very tap root—nipping here and there the results of its growth, instead of cutting off the source of its life?”

To her husband.

Naples, January 13th, 1875.

We have had an excellent meeting here. The circumstances which led to it were very affecting, and I must tell you all when we meet. You know that my one object in coming here was to see my darling Hatty, and to rest awhile with her in her beautiful home. I neither planned nor expected a continuance of my mission here; but God ordered it otherwise, and without our seeking it at all, the work came to us. Two gentlemen called and gravely desired to learn whether I would address a company of friends on the subject of our mission, if they undertook the arrangements. I was much touched and somewhat surprised. I said I could not refuse their request. They then asked me to accompany them to the office of the English Consul, to ask him to preside at the meeting. We parted at the Consul’s door, they to get circulars of invitation printed, and to make other arrangements, and I to confer with Hatty about the ladies who would be most likely to support us. In every step however the initiative was taken by others, and we only followed the guidance which was so distinct, that we could have no doubt at all about the Voice, saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it.” How often have I longed to have Hatty, my childhood’s beloved companion, associated with me in this holy work. You can imagine how sweet it is to me; and how full, and tender, and penetrating are her sympathy in, and her understanding of, the whole matter. The children are very good, Thekla a most lovable little maiden. Our days are very pleasant. Hatty takes me in her carriage the most beautiful drives. The first evening the sunset was lovely. Capri and Ischia were bathed in a sweet, pale rosy light, and the feathery cloud resting on Vesuvius was reddened and golden, and all these were again reflected in the smooth, pale blue waters of the bay. I wish every moment that you were here.

At the meeting we had no expressed opposition, but I was aware of an opposing current of thought and opinion in the room, which we were able to trace to its source, namely an English doctor. I thought he looked ominous as he entered with a great bundle of the Lancet under his arm, and I observed him whispering impatiently to his neighbours on each side as I spoke. It almost makes one smile to see that miserable Lancet brought forward as an authority in a great moral and humanitarian question like this. You can believe that Hatty and I returned to the house with our hearts full of thankfulness to God, and having arrived there that the word of command, “Tea, Giovanni,” was given with more thirsty eagerness than usual. Hatty says she believes Giovanni thinks our afternoon teas are a species of “culto,” which we “pagani” observe with great solemnity and punctuality. It was an afternoon meeting, as you will see. I should tell you that a resolution was passed, of sympathy with the work and the workers. Our friends here look anxiously to what may be done in Rome, and think that if some of the deputies and leading men would take up the question, and then send an invitation to them in Naples to co-operate with them, it would give the best chance for practical results here.

To her sister.

Turin, January 29th, 1875.

I live over again in thought the sweet days I spent with you. I look back upon that time as something sacred; but it leaves a blank in my heart. I realise more than before what a loss it is to us to be so far and so long separated, and I feel more than ever the tenacity of early affection, and the ties of kindred. Ah! how often I lie awake at night thinking of those hours we spent together. It was a sunshine and happiness to prepare me for the hard work which was to follow; and which is a suffering piece of work, though full of interest and hope. Going from city to city, tired and weary, always to meet with sharp opposition and cynicism, and ever new proofs of the vast and hideous oppression, is like running one’s breast upon knife points, always beginning afresh before the last wound is healed.

You understand, don’t you? I utter this little cry to you, but I am not despondent. This is really only physical weakness, I think, for I have to praise God for good work accomplished, and for souls inspired to work. “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” The hour of our redemption has struck! I say “our” for we have not only remembered those that are in bonds, as being bound with them, but actually suffered with them in spirit for long, long years. This may be but the beginning of the breaking of our bonds, and to our finite minds the Deliverer may seem long in coming. To the Lord a thousand years are but as one day, and one day as a thousand years; but the time is coming—is coming most surely. One thing we know, and that is, that all this cruelty and sin, this blinding and misleading of souls, this selfish profligacy, this slaughter of the innocents, this organised vice, this heavy oppression, this materialism which sets the body above the soul, profaning the sacred name of science, and making of her a “procuress to the lords of hell”—all this we know is hateful in the eyes of the Holy God, and we know that it must perish before the light of His countenance, when the arm of the Lord shall be revealed, and when His own arm shall bring salvation. Even out of the depths therefore we will praise Him, and rejoice for the day that is coming. Be strong in faith, my dear one; do not despair even for those poor captured victims, from their childhood forced into sin and shame, whose sorrowful sighing seems for a time to rise in vain to heaven. Can we love them so much, and doubt that God loves them far more than we? Our utmost pity is but a drop compared with the ocean of His pity for them. I feel a kind of triumph in that beautiful arrangement by which He has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the strong. It matters nothing at all what we are, provided we are but entirely willing to be made the instruments of His will, His agents in this world. I do not think we know the meaning of the word strength until we have fathomed our own utter weakness. I sometimes think of the lines about the “Steadfast Prince”—

To these my poor companions seem I strong,

And at some times, such am I, as a rock

That has upstood in middle ocean long,

And braved the winds and waters’ angriest shock,

Counting their fury but an idle mock:

Yet sometimes weaker than the weakest wave

That dies about its base, when storms forget to rave.

I from my God such strength have sometimes won,

That all the dark, dark future I am bold

To face—but oh! far otherwise anon,

When my heart sinks and sinks to depths untold

Till being seems no deeper depth to hold.

Did I tell you how I had been pleasantly haunted before I left home by the words, “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.” I often used to wake up suddenly at night with a fear lest I had been presumptuous to think of such a mission as this; and then these words would again and again sound in my soul, and almost in my ears, as if an angel had spoken them. Yes, it is true, if that hand opens the door, not all the powers of earth nor of hell can prevail to shut it.

To her sister.

Lausanne, February 13th, 1875.

My work is over in Switzerland. A hard ten days’ work rather. My evenings are rather lonely, and the cold at times is bitter; at Chaux-de-Fonds it was really cruel. But it is over; and I can only see the good part of it now. At several places committees have been formed. Switzerland has responded wonderfully. Let us thank God! As in Italy a man was found to devote his life wholly to the work, so in Switzerland a man has come forward ready for any service—it is M. Humbert. Is it not touching to see how God prepares hearts? I have asked him to meet me in Paris, that we may try and find a man in France also who will give his life to the cause. I got your precious telegram to-day. It seemed to bring a breath of southern warmth into the cold. There is a terribly sharp wind to-day. I long to hear from you again, for I feel as if I had found you again after many days. We shall now, though parted for long, weary seasons, work in heart and in prayer at least together; hope, believe together, and together “watch for the morning.” I wrote my last letter home in one of those large Swiss railway carriages, with tables and chairs, and a nice fire in the corner. I was alone, and piled logs of wood on my fire, and was quite warm, and at ease. They fence out the cold perfectly in the houses here. It is only out of doors that one feels it. The scenes on the Jura reminded me of pictures of the winter retreats of chamois, or of bear-hunting in Norway. Those enormous pines, such as George drew, look so handsome with their loads of newly-fallen snow and pendants of icicles, like jewels, in the sunlight. I was asked to go to Bienne and Basel, but I could not stay. I regret most of all not going to Zurich. There is life there, and it will join us, I am sure. But I feel I ought not to delay longer here. Our meeting here was a most excellent one of men and women in a church. Mr. Buscarlet spoke after I had spoken; he had in his hand a copy of the Edinburgh Daily Review, which he had just received from Scotland, and out of which he read, translating it as he went on, part of the speech of Mr. Stansfeld at Edinburgh, and giving the statistical proofs, so ably stated by him, of the physical failure of these laws. It was listened to with great interest. After every meeting in Switzerland some practical step has been agreed upon, and I have confidence that the separate efforts will develop ere long into a connected, organised work. It has been agreed that the speech made by Professor Aimé Humbert, at Neuchâtel, shall be printed and widely circulated. This is being put in hand at once. I was glad to hear a citizen of Berne say, with grave conviction, that he believed the greatest obstacle they would have to contend against in Germany would be from the German habit of judging, which denies to woman her place as man’s equal, makes her the mere house-wife and child-bearer, and gives her no voice at all even in these matters, which concern women most terribly and closely. This, he said, would be a dead weight; but they must fight against it, protest against it; for it was upon this equality and the equality of the moral standard for both sexes that the whole reform we seek must rest for its success. I was glad to hear this sentiment from a German-speaking Swiss, and to hear the same conviction, in other words, strongly expressed by others. Another Swiss gentleman said it seemed to him that it would be around this question that the great battle of the “droit de l’individu,” the principle of personal responsibility and freedom, would be fought in Europe—that right which the party of privilege, the absolutists, on the one hand, and the socialists on the other, destroy or deny. I had a most pleasant evening at the Buscarlets’. I love Madame Bridel. She has written to her son-in-law, M. E. de Pressensé.

To Joseph Edmondson, and other friends.
Paris, February, 1875.

I write to you, dear friends, who may care to read this letter, a last letter before leaving France, and I want to tell you once more how wonderfully God has worked in this matter. I am filled with awe and gratitude when I think of it. I see His hand in all, and I think your prayers have followed and surrounded me: were it not so, I should hardly know how to account for many extraordinary interpositions when I was in extremities, and the kindness I have met with in every place. It is a touching history, and I now want to beg my friends in England not to be wanting in faith any more concerning this foreign work. I felt last autumn that most of my friends agreed to this part of the work because I wished it, rather than because they saw for themselves that it was a logical sequence to, and a necessary expansion of, our home work. Oh, if they could only see how hearts on the Continent are leaning towards England in this matter! We all fancied that our England was the only country which felt rightly, the only people which had groaned as just and good people under this evil and tyranny. It is not so. In no place which I have visited have I found a complete acquiescence in the evil, and in every place there has been, at one time or other, some active opposition breaking out here and there. But the evil has been too strong, and Governments have been too strong. Protests however have been made in almost every city at some time or other. Good and noble souls have laboured in secret, heroically, to try to undermine the system, and some have suffered persecution and contempt for the cause. I tell you all this because I want you to see, as I do, how providentially it seems that the open appeal to international effort should have come from England now. I want you to see how God has been training us, not for our battle in England alone, but for this battle of principles all over Europe. I am convinced that we should be simply fools if we were to be contented with achieving our own repeal victory. What do those English people, who care only for the interests of England, suppose would happen if we were to get repeal? Would they go back to their politics, their homes, their families, and be in no more danger? Not a bit of it. If we left the Continent unmoved and unhelped, we should not be safe for a year on our own soil. Whence did this particular evil come to us? Did it not come from the Continent? And what would hinder the infection from again invading us? But when once the open conflict is begun abroad, the case will be altered.

To her husband.

Paris, February, 1875.

It was a relief and rest to me, after seeing many sad places, to pay a visit to the “Maison des Diaconesses,” and to see the good work done there—the schools, hospital, and refuge. I dined with the deaconesses, and afterwards one of them took me to see the poor girls they rescue from misery and vice. They were all assembled, and this deaconess said to them, in a sweet, gentle voice, “I want you to look at this dear lady, my children. Yes, look at her well, for she is your friend, and perhaps you may never see her again. She is our friend; she has come to Paris to say that our bonds shall be broken.” And then she continued, speaking almost as a person speaks in a dream, and very solemnly,“Our bonds shall be broken. A time shall come when vice shall no more be organised and upheld by the law, to crush us down to hell. You understand what I mean, my children. Ah, you understand too well! She has come to Paris to oppose the great machinery which makes it so easy to sin, and so hard to escape. She brings you a message from Jesus to-day, my children, and asks you to love Him, and to look forward in hope. For our bonds shall be broken—ours; for we are sisters, we suffer with you.”

She explained further to them, very delicately and solemnly, till one saw they began to feel they had a part with us in the good war. I said a few words, and then we all sang a hymn together, about our bonds being broken, at the end of which this deaconess played a few notes on her harmonium, on which she had accompanied us, in which there came a minor tone of sadness for one moment, which seemed to express the hidden agony of the heart so well known to us, while we spoke only of hope to the poor girls.

[CHAPTER X.]
THE FEDERATION.

The year 1875 has few clear recollections for me personally, in direct connection with our cause. Six years of work, and more especially the winter months spent in very difficult work on the Continent, had over-taxed my strength. My health gave way, and was only restored by several months of rest, during which I heard only the distant echoes of the conflict, while I remained at home.

During this autumn Une Voix dans le Désert was ably edited by M. Aimé Humbert, and brought out in French and German, and widely circulated. It consisted of my addresses given on the Continent during the previous winter. These addresses, spoken in French, were never published in English, but were translated year by year into other languages—Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Russian. The following letter refers to this work.

To M. Humbert.

1875.

I feel with you every day that some such voice is needed just now. It would perhaps have been better had we been able to bring out a complete book as our first, a book which should contain all the scientific and juridical arguments, as well as a complete review of historical facts relating to this subject. But such a complete book is at this moment impossible. I therefore beg you to communicate what I now say to Messieurs Sandoz and Fischbacher (publishers). We want statistics and facts—yes,—but would English statistics and facts alone, drawn from a limited experience, be much or generally valued in other countries? I think not, if they stood alone. Facts from a larger area we must have later, and we shall have them, for, thank God, they stand as indestructible witnesses everywhere of the folly and futility of the attempt to regulate vice. How much more powerful, how overwhelming in fact, would it be for our opponents, and how strengthening for our cause, if we could show facts and statistics gathered from every country, and over a larger period of time. This is precisely what we are now aiming at. We have received all the most recent reports from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries. On every hand there is confession of the failure of regulation. Mireur, Jeannell, Diday, Deprès, Pallasciano, Huet, Crocq, all confess to hygienic failure. The proposals of some of these men to ensure future success (a success which they confess they have never yet ensured) are of such a wild and ghastly nature, that one has only to read their books to see that the beginning of the end is at hand. From out these statistics there appear, here and there, deeply pathetic facts, such as these: that four-fifths of the poor girls subjected to this tyranny (according to one writer) are orphans; many are foreigners in the country of their enslavement; many are young widows. Does not our God, who is the God of the Fatherless, of the Widow, and of the Stranger, take note of these things? You see that in a year or two we shall have a mass of evidence against this system which will give the doctors and materialist legislators a hard task to refute. I care little that men accuse me, as you say, of mere sentiment, and of carrying away my hearers by feeling rather than by facts and logic. Even while they are saying this they read my words, and they are made uncomfortable! They feel that there is a truth of some sort there, and that sentiment itself is after all a fact and a power when it expresses the deepest intuitions of the human soul. They have had opportunity for many years past of looking at the question in its material phases, of appreciating its hygienic results, and of reading numberless books on the subject—statistical, medical, and administrative. Now for the first time they are asked to look upon it as a question of human nature, of equal interest to man and woman; as a question of the heart, the soul, the affections, the whole moral being. As a simple assertion of one woman speaking for tens of thousands of women, those two words “we rebel” are very necessary, and very useful for them to hear. The cry of women, crushed under the yoke of legalised vice, is not the cry of a statistician or a medical expert; it is simply a cry of pain, a cry for justice, and for a return to God’s laws in place of these brutally impure laws invented and imposed by man. It is imperfect, no doubt, as an utterance, but the cry of the revolted woman against her oppressor, and to her God, is far more needful at this moment than any reasoned-out argument. I think therefore, and my husband agrees with me, that it is better to publish the Voice in the Wilderness simply as the utterance of a woman, and to do it quickly. It will rouse some consciences, no matter how imperfect men may find it. On the eve of a war it may be said that the sound of the trumpet is imperfect because it only calls to the battle, and that we want to see the troops, their arms, and the strength of muscle on either side. Yet the call to battle is needed; the close grappling with the foe will follow. It is only when the slave begins to move, to complain, to give signs of life and resistance, either by his own voice, or by the voice of one like himself speaking for him, that the struggle for freedom truly begins. The slave now speaks. The enslaved women have found a voice in one of themselves, who was raised up for no other end than to sound the proclamation of an approaching deliverance. Never mind the imperfection of the first voice. It is the voice of a woman who has suffered, a voice calling to holy rebellion and to war. It will penetrate. Then by and by we shall come down on our opponents with the heavy artillery of facts and statistics and scientific arguments on every side. We will not spare them, we will show them no mercy. We shall tear to pieces their refuge of lies, and expose the ghastliness of their covenant with death, and their agreement with hell. We and our successors will continue to do this year after year until they have no ground to stand upon.

Shortly after her return to England she had given an account of her mission, at a conference held in London, “in the course of which she showed that her own work abroad had had very little of a creative character, but had rather served to bring out and give expression to sentiments and convictions already existing in the various countries she had visited.” It was resolved at this conference to form a federation of the friends of the movement in all countries. “The British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution” was formally constituted at a meeting in Liverpool on March 19th, Mr. Stansfeld being chosen as President, Mr. W. Crossfield as Treasurer, and M. Aimé Humbert, of Neuchâtel, as Continental Correspondent. Mrs. Butler was appointed Hon. Secretary, with Mr. H. J. Wilson as co-Secretary pro tem. (he was succeeded a few months later by Mr. Stuart, who this year became Professor Stuart). The heavy work of correspondence connected with the starting of the Federation, added to the fatigues of the preceding winter’s work on the Continent, proved to be too much for her bodily strength, and she was compelled to give up all work for several months. The work however experienced no check, for during these months Mr. Wilson in England and M. Humbert on the Continent, by their untiring energy and earnestness, succeeded in gaining many adherents to the Federation, which was thus early put on a firm foundation.

In the following April the late Rev. J. P. Gledstone and Mr. H. J. Wilson started on a journey to the United States, where they met many leaders of the old anti-slavery party and other kindred spirits, whom they enlisted into sympathy and co-operation with the Federation. Writing to Josephine Butler twenty years later, Mr. Gledstone recalled the occasion of their starting on this journey: “It was, I remember, a cold, stormy Thursday in April, 1876, when you persisted in accompanying Mr. Wilson and me to the river, to see us on board the Adriatic. The anti-regulation struggle has seen some uncommon things; I think so now, as I recall your slender form seeking shelter from the keen wind that swept through the little tug that conveyed us to the huge steamer lying in the middle of the Mersey—two strong men sent out on their mission and cheered to it by one woman!”

This year Josephine Butler published anonymously, for the Social Purity Alliance, The Hour before the Dawn: an Appeal to Men. A French translation of this pamphlet was published the same year in Paris. Her name appeared on the title-page of the second edition, issued six years later. Its sustained eloquence and passionate, pathetic appeal combine to make it one of the finest of all her writings. It reveals the profoundest sympathy for all men, as well as women, who have sinned and are struggling to rise again. To such she preaches a gospel of hope, and shows that though the past is irreparable, there is always an available future. We can only give one extract, selected because of its autobiographical interest.

I look back to the years when my soul was in darkness on account of sin—the sin, the misery and the waste which are in the world, the great and sad problems of life, the prosperity of evil-doers, the innocent suffering for the guilty, the cruelties, the wrongs inflicted and never redressed, and the multitudes who seem to be created only to be lost. A great cloud gathered over me. Anger, fear, dismay filled my heart. I could see no God, or such as I could see appeared to me an immoral God. Sin seemed to me the law of the world, and Satan its master. I staggered on the verge of madness and blasphemy. I asked, “Does not God care? Can God bear these things?” He is silent, the woe deepens, and the question is still sent up from generation to generation, Hath God not seen? Will He not help? Does He look down from His eternal calm of heaven an indifferent spectator? Can it be that the Eternal rests content that any human beings whom He has created should perish for ever? That men should destroy themselves in spite of God is a terrible thought, but not so terrible, not so fatal to hope, to love, and to faith as the thought, full of deadly poison, that God cares not—that the heart of Him who redeemed us is cold, when my own is filled with an agony of compassion. This bitter thought taking possession of my soul, did not beget despondency, or lassitude, or indifference, leading me to close my eyes and fold my hands; but it stirred up the rebel within me. I could not love God—the God who appeared to my darkened and foolish heart to consent to so much which seemed to me cruel and unjust, and removable by an act of His power. I was like one who is leaning over a great gulf, whence none who fall into it ever return. “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me.” The pride and rebellion gave way before deep and heavy sorrow; and then all the sorrow gathered itself up into one great cry. I asked of the Lord one thing—that He would take of His own heart and show it to me; that He would reveal to me His one, His constant attitude toward His lost world; that as I had shown Him my heart He would show me His heart, so much of it as a worm of the earth can comprehend and endure, so much of it as the finite can receive from the Infinite (for to know His love for the world and His sorrow for the world, as they are, would break any human heart. I should, in the moment of such a revelation, expire at His feet: a man cannot so see God and live). Deep calleth unto deep; His own helpful spirit, out of the depths of my heart, making supplication for me with groanings unutterable, calling to the deep heart of Christ, awakened echoes there which called back again to mine.

Continuing to make this one request through day and night, through summer and winter, with patience and constancy, the God who answers prayer had mercy on me. He did not deny me my request—that He should show me of His own heart’s love for sinners, and reveal to me His one, His constant attitude towards His lost world; and when He makes this revelation He does more—He makes the enquiring soul a partaker of His own heart’s love for the world. The doubt, the dark misery growing out of the contemplation of the sorrows of earth and the apparent waste of souls are no longer able to drive me into sullenness and despair, for I have found the door of hope. I do not say—for I speak neither more nor less than I have learned of God—that the perplexity is solved, that the sorrow is gone. Sorrow is with me still, the enduring companion of my life. I do not pretend to be able to explain the secrets of God and the great problems of life with any clearness of speech to satisfy another. But I have found the door of hope. He has the key of all mysteries, and we are then nearest to the solution of every painful mystery, when we have drawn nigh and heard from Him the secrets of His heart of love. Now I know when my heart is strangely stirred by the sight of a vast multitude in some great city that my heart’s yearnings over them are but the faintest shadowings of His heart’s yearnings over them; that my love, which would embrace them all, is but as a drop of water to the ocean of His love, which would embrace them all. But in vain! Words are not found in which to express what it is which Christ may reveal to the soul which has waited on Him in determined love and grief, with this one request, “Show me Thy heart’s love for sinners, and Thy one, Thy constant attitude towards Thy lost world.” Seek it, friends, and you shall know how far it solves the sorrowful problems of earth, though you too may find it to be among the things which it is not possible or lawful for a man to utter. Where, where in heaven or on earth, if not here, will you find an answer alike to the great questions of life which vex your heart, and to the problem of yourself, that single being, so fearfully and wonderfully made?

In the late autumn of 1876 a newspaper war suddenly broke out in France kindled by numerous cases of arbitrary and cruel action on the part of the Police des Mœurs, and frequent arrests both of men and women for resisting or even speaking against that force. As a result the Paris Municipal Council, which was opposed to the system, appointed a commission of enquiry, and the commission invited certain persons from different countries who had studied the question to give evidence before it. Mr. and Mrs. Butler, Mr. Stansfeld and Professor Stuart were invited from England, and they went to Paris for this purpose in January, 1877.

The members of the commission were not wholly of one mind on all points, and it was rather a severe exercise of brain and memory to meet and satisfy the various questions of a company of quick-witted, logical Frenchmen. It was an exercise however, which left one feeling stronger and happier, because of the sincerity of motive which we felt animated the questioners.

Some days after giving our evidence a great meeting was held in the Salle des Écoles, Rue d’Arras. The hall was densely crowded. There was a considerable proportion of “blue blouses,” working men from St. Antoine and Belleville quarters, students from the Latin quarter, and some members of the Chambers and of the Senate, besides Municipal Councillors. There was also a good attendance of women. The several addresses given were listened to with extraordinary attention and interest, and in a quietness which was remarkable considering the mercurial and excitable nature of a portion of that audience. So keen was the sympathy (having its roots deep in bitter experience) of the poorer part of the audience, especially the working men, that it was necessary in some degree to restrain all that it might have been in our hearts to say on the injustice and cruelty of the system of which the victims were drawn so largely from their own ranks.

Another large meeting was held in the Salle de la Redoute, which was crowded with respectable working women. With the memory of all I had seen and heard in Paris of the condition of the honest working woman, hunted from street to street and from room to room by the police, and looking at the troubled and earnest faces all turned towards me, I could not refrain from uttering these words: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the honest workwoman of Paris has not where to lay her head.” Many burst into tears, or hid their faces in their hands. In coming out from the meeting, several poor girls came to me, their faces swollen with weeping, and said, “Ah, madam, how true those words were about the foxes!”

The Federation had met for its first annual conference in London in 1876, and from that time it has held annual conferences in various cities abroad or in England; the meeting every third year being called a congress, and being of a larger and more important character. The first congress, at Geneva, is described in the following letter.

To a relative.

Geneva, September, 1877.

I can only give you a brief sketch of the past week; full reports will be published. The anxiety which we could not but feel went on augmenting up to Friday. On Friday we began to see daylight, and all has ended well. Many of us are tired and stupefied for want of sleep, but at the same time inwardly giving thanks to God.

This Congress has been a wonderful event. There were 510 inscribed members, besides the numerous public which attended the meetings. It is, they say, the largest Congress that has ever been held in Geneva. On the first days people continued flocking in from all nations. There were Greeks who came from Athens, and Russians from St. Petersburg and Moscow. There were Americans, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Germans, Pomeranians, Italians, French and Spaniards. Señor Zorilla, the late President of the Spanish Cortes, spoke on Wednesday, and was nominated as one of a committee to consider what action should be taken in Spain. On Sunday, in the cathedral, Pastor Rœrich preached a powerful sermon to a very large congregation on the question before the Congress, and in all the churches we and our work have been prayed for.

We always anticipated that when the final resolutions should come to be voted upon then would be the real war, and so it was. When the voting began, our faithful bands of ladies worked and watched in their different sections quite splendidly. First we had a considerable conflict in the Social Economy Section. Then came the voting in the Legislative Section, in the smaller hall of the Reformation, which was densely crowded. Professor Hornung presided. The discussion lasted three hours. Some lawyers were present, who are now busy in the prospect of the revision of some parts of the penal code of Switzerland, notably a young jurist, an able man who spoke well, but as a downright opponent. There followed a stormy scene, which the President with difficulty controlled. People of many different languages stood up at the same moment, each with a finger stretched out, demanding to speak. “Je demande la parole” sounded from all sides of the room. Mr. A——, the young jurist, made the President indignant by asserting that a resolution drawn up by him was not juridique. Seeing that M. Hornung is Professor of Jurisprudence at the Geneva University, and possesses the very highest reputation, this was rather strong, and I do not wonder it irritated him. But it did good, for it stimulated him to come out on the last day of the Congress with a splendid judicial speech, by far the best and clearest utterance of the kind I have ever heard in any country. We shall translate and circulate it. Hornung is a delightful man. He has that good gift of God, an enlightened intellect, as well as a pure heart, together with great refinement and gentleness of manner. At one o’clock, when we were all feeling the need of food, and our throats were dry with the dust of the room, an Italian advocate got up and declared there had not yet been enough discussion of each point. The chairman was aghast. He had expected the voting to be got over just at that moment. A kind of barking, House of Commons cry arose of “Vote, vote!” while the President stood open-mouthed, attempting to read the resolutions so as to be heard. A sort of stampede seized some of the German and Swiss members, and they made for the door. Half the meeting would have gone out, and so damaged the worth of the voting. So I ventured to shut the door and set my back against it, declaring that no one should have any food until he had voted! This half startled and half amused the assembly, and they all sat down again obediently. After another half-hour of discussion, it was agreed that we should meet again for a final voting at half-past six the next morning.

On the same day the resolutions of the Moral Section were passed very satisfactorily. Then came the Hygienic Section. The discussion here was so long that it was also adjourned until an evening hour. At eight o’clock that evening we all went to the hall of the Hygienic Section, and there sat crowded together, or stood, amidst a scene of intense interest, till midnight. Dr. Bertani of Rome took a leading part. Our ladies all went to the meeting; but they had been up so early, and had worked so hard all day, that by 11.0 p.m. this is the scene which one of my sons described as having observed at the back of the hall, “a long row of ladies all sound asleep”; but they had appointed a watcher—Mrs. Bright Lucas—who sat at the end of the row, and whom they had charged to keep awake, and to give them the signal whenever voting began on each clause of the resolution. Mrs. Lucas was wide awake, with eyes shining like live coals! We had prayed that God would direct this meeting, and it was wonderful and beautiful to see how the truth prevailed. Dr. de la Harpe, the President, acted well throughout. At the end I shook hands with him and Dr. Ladame, thanking them for their excellent words. Dr. de la Harpe replied, “You owe us nothing; it is you and your friends who must be thanked, who have brought us so much light.”

At the end of the Congress all the resolutions came out satisfactorily. We owe a good deal of this result to Professor Stuart’s tact and patience in talking to the different presidents individually. We think our resolutions are on the whole excellent as a statement of principles—clear and uncompromising; and shall we not thank God for this? His hand has been over us for good all this time, convincing men’s hearts and consciences, and controlling their words and actions. The earnest daily prayers offered up have not been in vain. These resolutions will be sent to every Government and to every municipal council throughout Europe. They have been telegraphed to the English press in extenso. My son George was charged with the work of telegraphing, and had necessarily to exercise much alertness and activity. M. Humbert is impressed with the excellence of whatever work he undertakes.

In the Legislative Section we had an energetic discussion over the seduction laws of different countries, and the recherche de la paternité, subjects not immediately in our programme, but closely touching it. The discussion became so hot, that it seemed difficult for some of the members to remain calm at all. Signora Mozzoni, a delegate from Milan, burst into tears over it, and one or two of our good gentlemen lost their tempers a little. One cannot wonder, for this is one of the important questions upon which people of different nations and creeds hold very different views. Miss Isabella Tod and Mrs. Sheldon Amos took a line on the point of the age to which protection should be given, in which I could not quite follow them, and I felt obliged for once to oppose my own countrywomen. Professor Hornung was pleased with what I said, as it seems it accorded with the views of most continental jurists.

The young advocate who had opposed us called yesterday to say that he had come round to our views, chiefly influenced by that desperate little impromptu legal discussion among the ladies. He had imagined, he said, that we were a number of “fanatical and sentimental women,” but “when he heard women arguing like jurists, and even taking part against each other, and yet with perfect good temper, like men (!), he began to see that we were grave, educated, and even scientific people!” He came afterwards to every meeting, and, as he said, weighed all our words.

I think I have not mentioned the resolutions at the Section of Bienfaisance, under good Pastor Borel’s presidency. Those also were very satisfactory.

Josephine Butler published in 1878 a biography of Catharine of Siena. A French translation of this was published nine years later at Neuchâtel. Mr. Gladstone wrote to George Butler, expressing his intense interest in the book, and adding: “It is evident that Mrs. Butler is on the level of her subject, and it is a very high level. To say this is virtually saying all. Her reply (by anticipation) to those who scoff down the visions is, I think, admirable.” We give but one quotation.

Here I must pause to speak of that great secret of Catharine’s spiritual life, the constant converse of her soul with God. Her book, entitled The Dialogue, represents a conversation between a soul and God, mysterious and perhaps meaningless to many, but to those who can understand full of revelation of the source of her power over human hearts. All through her autobiography (for such her Dialogue and Letters may be called) no expressions occur more frequently than such as these: “The Lord said to me,” &c.; “My God told me to act so and so”; “While I was praying, my Saviour showed me the meaning of this, and spoke thus to me.” I shall not attempt to explain, nor shall I alter this simple form of speech. It is not for us to limit the possibilities of the communications and revelations, which the Eternal may be pleased to make to a soul, which continually waits upon Him. If you are disposed, reader, to doubt the fact of these communications from God, or to think that Catharine only fancied such and such things, and attributed these fancies to a divine source, then I would give you one word of advice, and one only: go you and make the attempt to live a life of prayer, such as she lived, and then, and not till then, will you be in a position which will give you any shadow of a right, or any power, to judge of this soul’s dealings with God.

[CHAPTER XI.]
GOVERNMENT BY POLICE.

In 1879 her writings included two pamphlets, Government by Police and Social Purity, the latter being an address delivered at Cambridge. This year the Federation held its Conference at Liége. A bright and vivid account of the meetings at Liége, from the skilful pen of Madame de Morsier, is given in the Reminiscences of a Great Crusade, which shows that these annual gatherings of crusaders from various countries were not wholly devoted to serious discussions of a painful subject, but became occasions for true human fellowship (even touched with gaiety) between persons of divers tastes and experiences. The account concludes thus: “And now, little town of Belgium, sitting on the banks of the Meuse, surrounded with green hills, let me take one parting look at you! We have only known you a few days, and now you live in our memories a luminous point in the past. Many of us arrived within your walls strangers to each other, and have parted friends; some arrived sorrowful, discouraged, asking what would be the end of all this? They return peaceful, and fortified with the conviction that work is happiness, and conflict a duty. Manet alta mente repostum.”

The agitation in Paris against the Police des mœurs, referred to in the last chapter, had been continued, and led this year to the resignation of M. Lecour, who was appointed chief “bell-ringer” of Notre Dame; and this was followed by further enquiries and newspaper revelations, and the subsequent resignation of the Prefect of Police and other members of his staff, and later of the Minister of the Interior. In these events M. Yves Guyot and other members of the French branch of the Federation took a prominent part. Early in 1880 Mr. Alfred Dyer and Mr. George Gillett visited Brussels to investigate cases of English girls, many of whom were minors, alleged to be detained in the licensed houses of that city against their will, and with the connivance of the police. Some of these girls were rescued, and being brought to England, were placed under the care of Josephine Butler.

Another of the poor refugees helped by Pastor Anet to escape from Brussels came to our house in Liverpool. She appeared to be in pain, and on being questioned she replied that she was suffering from unhealed stripes on her back and shoulders from the lash of this tyrant.

I drew from her, when alone, the story of her martyrdom. The keeper of this house in Brussels, enraged with her because of her persistent refusal to participate in some exceptionally base proceedings among his clients, had her carried to an underground chamber, whence her cries could not be heard. She was here immured and starved, and several times scourged with a thong of leather. But she did not yield. This poor delicate girl had been neglected from childhood. She was a Catholic, but had had little or no religious teaching. She told me, with much simplicity, that in the midst of these tortures she was “all the time strengthened and comforted by the thought that Jesus had Himself been cruelly scourged, and that He could feel for her.”

Before her capture she had one day seen in a shop window in Brussels an engraving of Christ before Pilate, bound and scourged. Some persons, no doubt, may experience a little shock of horror at the idea of any connection in the thoughts of this poor child between the supreme agony of the Son of God and her own torments in the cellar of that house of debauchery. We often sincerely mourn over these victims as “lost” because we cannot reach them with any word of love or the “glad evangel.” But He “descended into hell,” into the abode of the “spirits in prison,” to speak to them; and I believe, and have had many testimonies to the fact, that He visits spiritually these young souls in their earthly prison many a time, He alone, in all His majesty of pity, without any intervention of ours.

Josephine Butler published in May a statement making definite charges of gross ill-treatment of young girls in Brussels, and these charges were substantiated in a deposition on oath, made in response to a formal application from the Belgian authorities, under the Extradition Act. Some months later she sent a copy of her deposition to the editor of Le National in Brussels, intending it merely to be used in connection with evidence, which he had to give before a Commission then sitting on the subject. He however published it in Le National, and it created a great sensation throughout Belgium.

To her sister.

You can imagine that on first hearing of this I felt a little troubled, and as if I had been “given away.” Also persons friendly to us, such as Lambillon, Hendrick and others, who had given us information from a good motive, were angry at seeing their names published as having had any knowledge whatever of these evil things; and I was pained to think of their pain.

I was pondering all this one evening, when I suddenly recollected that on New Year’s Day of this year, and for many days after, I had taken upon me to make a special and definite request to God for light to fall upon these “dark places of the earth, wherein are the inhabitants of cruelty.” Some strong influence seemed to urge me to make this request. I used to kneel and pray, “O God, I beseech Thee, send light upon these evil deeds! Whatever it may cost us and others, flash light into these abodes of darkness. O send us light, for without it there can be no destruction of the evil. We cannot make war against a hidden foe. In the darkness these poor sisters of ours, these creatures of Thine, are daily murdered, and we do not know what to do or where to turn, and we find no way by which to begin to act. Send us light, O our God, even though it may be terrible to bear.” I had made a record of this petition, and then I had forgotten it. But not so our faithful God. His memory is better than mine! He did not forget, and He is now sending the answer to that prayer. Then I thought of the words, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe.” Here is the very thing I had asked for, brought about in a way I had not dreamed of.

One consequence of these revelations was the dismissal of M. Lenaers, the Chief of the Brussels Police des mœurs, followed by the resignation of his principal subordinate. Another consequence was the formation of a strong committee in London for the suppression of the white slave traffic. The proposals of this committee in regard to legislation were ultimately adopted in that portion of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1885, which deals with offences connected with other countries. The matter was still further advanced many years later, largely owing to the efforts of Mr. W. A. Coote, by the Governments of Europe signing the International Convention for the suppression of the white slave traffic, 1904. This Convention has no doubt done something towards the suppression of this traffic, but as Josephine Butler frequently pointed out, and as was emphasised in the discussions at the Conference of the Federation in 1908, there is a grave risk, that in those countries, in which the authorities still license immoral houses, the police will not honestly and thoroughly endeavour to prevent the traffic upon which the profits of those houses so largely depend.

[CHAPTER XII.]
REPEAL.

In the spring of 1882 George Butler resigned the Principalship of Liverpool College, and three months later Mr. Gladstone appointed him to a Canonry at Winchester. This year Josephine Butler published The Life of Jean Frederic Oberlin, the gentle and beloved Pastor of the Ban de la Roche (1740-1826), who not only ministered to his people in things spiritual, but also in things material, teaching them to make roads and to grow potatoes. Like John Grey, he changed the whole aspect of the country side, and in his old age his great services were recognised by the award to him of the gold medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of France, and by the King bestowing on him the dignity of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The following passage illustrates the great principle of his life—ora et labora.

In our own busy and exciting times, when competition (even in good works) is apt to distract and disturb the heart and the brain of the followers of Christ, to the detriment of calmness and depth, we all require to be reminded of the one and only source of true life and power. Our young, hard-worked ministers, and many other Christian workers, both old and young, engaged in the multitudinous active duties which they are required in these days to fulfil to the last tittle, and in favour of which they too often postpone even the work of waiting upon God, know by bitter experience the deadening effect on the soul of the enforced whirl of active engagements—benevolent, pious, and laudable as these may be. But by whom are these chains enforced, to the disadvantage of the spiritual life? By the tyrant society—even a Christian society, which can in its turn become tyrannical. It would be better to rebel somewhat against this tyranny, to resist the pressure of over-work, and to determine to be often alone with God, even if our hours with Him appeared to rob earth of a small particle of our poor services.

Bernard of Clairvaux, when engaged in a correspondence with persons and orders throughout the whole of Europe, battling single-handed with an amount of work which might overwhelm any modern Secretary of State, found that on the days when he spent the most time in prayer, and in listening to the voice of God and the teachings of the Spirit, his letters were the most rapidly written and persuasive, and his active work the most promptly and successively accomplished. His many schemes, evolved from his own ingenious brain, widened into or were lost in the far greater plan and purpose of God; anxiety was allayed; power—the power of the Holy Spirit, to which he had opened his heart—flowed forth, and was felt in every word he wrote or spoke, and in his very presence and looks.

Oberlin reserved stated hours for private prayer during the day, at which times none, as a rule, were permitted to interrupt him. These hours came to be known to all his parishioners, and it was usual for carters or labourers, returning from the fields with talk and laughter, to uncover their heads as they passed beneath the walls of his house. If the children ran by too noisily these working people would check them with uplifted finger, and say, “Hush! He is praying for us.” At times his soul was moved to an agony of intercession for his people; he travailed in birth for them. Sometimes he was in darkness on their account. His natural kindness to all becoming, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, a constant and yearning desire for their salvation, he would spend hours on his knees pouring out his soul in prayer for them with “strong crying and tears.” He felt the awful nature of the responsibility of one who is called to be an overseer of the flock of God, and who must give an account of the souls committed to him. “Oh, my people, my people, my children, my friends!” he would cry in his prayers—apostrophising them, and pleading with them as well as for them, though he was alone with God.

In 1883 Josephine Butler published the remarkable story of The Salvation Army in Switzerland, telling how the workers of the Army in Geneva had attracted some of the poor slaves of the State-protected houses, who “escaped or succeeded in obtaining release, and once more in the light of day, they listened to the glad tidings of salvation;” and how the keepers of these houses, “like the sellers of the shrines of Diana, fearing that the hope of their gains was threatened,” secured bands of roughs, who disturbed the Army’s meetings, until at last the authorities, being unable or unwilling to keep order, expelled Miss Catherine Booth and Miss Charlesworth from Geneva as disturbers of the peace! Later Miss Booth was imprisoned at Neuchâtel, but was released after a trial at which the illegality of her treatment was exposed. She was however shortly after expelled from the Canton; but despite persecution the Army has since prospered in Switzerland.

The next two letters refer to Mr. C. H. Hopwood’s resolution condemning the compulsory examination of women under the Contagious Diseases Acts, which could not be moved, being crowded out by the debate on the Address.

To her son Stanley.

February 27th, 1883.

We have had some hard work lately. Father and I went to Cambridge for a quiet Sunday. It was bright and pleasant there, and the Fellows’ garden was beginning to put on its spring clothing. Then we came up to London to prepare for the coming on of our question in the House. A Member of Parliament, whom we met at Cambridge, told us that the amount of pressure brought to bear at this moment by the country was, he thought, “unprecedented in the history of any agitation.” Our friends are active in every nook and corner of the country: even from remote villages petitions come pouring in. Also many single petitions, such as from Cardinal Manning and the Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. Mr. Hopwood told us that several M.P.’s came to him yesterday, and said they must vote with us, though before they had been hostile. “It is a strange thing,” said one, “that people care so much about this question. All my leading constituents have urged me to vote with you.” One of our strongest opponents, a military man, said to him, “Well, you have had extraordinary support from the country; it is evident that yours is the winning side.”

I was in the Lobby a few days ago, and saw a petition lying in someone’s hand, on the back of which was written: “Petition from 1553 inhabitants of West Ham.” You know that these are poor working fathers and mothers, some of whom have lately had their children stolen. They have had less than a week to collect these names. These silent figures are eloquent. There is a distinct change of tone in the House, and your father and I believe that it dates from the time that we came forward publicly to confess God as our leader. Our cause was openly baptised, so to speak, in the name of Christ, and our advance has been steady ever since. Also I thought I saw what I never observed before in the sceptical and worldly atmosphere of Parliament, i.e. signs of a consciousness of a spiritual strife going on. Some members spoke to us of the spiritual power in our movement, while on the other hand there is a seething and boiling of unworthy passions, such as would appal one if one did not remember that it was when the great Incarnation of purity drew near to the “possessed” man of old that the “unclean spirits” cried out.

To return to my story. Some of our friends in Parliament telegraphed to us at Cambridge that no debate would come on, on account of the arrears of talk on the Address. This is disappointing. Mr. W. E. Forster’s management of Irish affairs necessitates much discussion.

We have arranged for a great meeting for prayer. We shall hold it close to the House of Commons during the whole debate, if there is one, and all night if the debate lasts all night. We have invited about twenty of our best friends in the House to join us. This meeting has been advertised in The Times, The Standard and Daily News. Some of our parliamentary friends counselled this course, saying that it was well that all the world should know with what weapons and in whose name we make war, even if they scoff at the idea, as of course many do.

To her son.

February 28th, 1883.

We went to the House at four o’clock yesterday. Justin McCarthy was speaking. There was still to the last a chance of Mr. Hopwood’s resolution coming on, but perhaps not till midnight. I did not remain in the Ladies’ Gallery, but came and went from the prayer-meeting to the Lobby of the House. We saw John Morley take the oath and his seat. The first thing he did after taking the oath was to sit down by Mr. Hopwood and say, “Now tell me what I can do to help you to-night, for the thing our Newcastle electors were most persistent about was that I should oppose this legislation.” I then went to the Westminster Palace Hotel, where we had taken a large room for our devotional meeting. There were well-dressed ladies, some even of high rank, kneeling together (almost side by side) with the poorest, and some of the outcast women of the purlieus of Westminster. Many were weeping, but when I first went in they were singing, and I never heard a sweeter sound. There were some cultivated voices amongst them, and the hymns were well chosen. I felt ready to cry, but I did not; for I long ago rejected the old ideal of the “division of labour,” that “men must work and women must weep.” A venerable lady from America rose and said, “Tears are good, prayers are better, but we should get on better if behind every tear there was a vote at the ballot box.” Every soul in that room responded to that sentiment. I never saw a meeting more moved. The occasion and the circumstances were certainly pathetic. As we continued to pray we all felt, I think, a great pity come into our hearts for those men who were at that moment in the House so near to us, who wield so great a responsibility, and so many of whom will have a sad account to give of their use of it.

Charles Parker told me next day that at that time several M.P.’s were walking about the Lobby, and that two young men, not long in Parliament, said to him, “Have you heard, Parker, that the ladies were to hold a prayer meeting to-night to pray for us? But I suppose it is given up, as this debate is to be postponed.” Mr. Parker, better informed, said, “On the contrary, that is just what they are doing now, praying for us. It throws a great responsibility on us.” The young men, he said, looked very grave. Father had to return home, I went back to the House, while other women remained and continued their intercessions. All Westminster was wrapped in a haze, out of which glared only the great light on the clock tower. I walked through the mist, feeling rather sad, and wondering how much longer this horrible yoke would remain fastened on the neck of a people who wish to get rid of it, and how long women will be refused a voice in the representation of the country. I climbed up the wearisome gallery stairs, and from the grating saw a crowd of our gentlemen friends from the country sitting in the Strangers’ Gallery opposite. How patiently they sat through those long hours. Some of them had come even from Scotland for the purpose. Father had gone home, but just above the clock I saw George, and tried to catch his eye, but he, believing that I was at the other meeting, did not look towards our gallery or see me. I sat on till midnight for the chance of our resolution coming on. By and by Mr. Hopwood asked the Speaker’s leave to make a statement. He then made a very good speech, explaining, rather to the country than to the House, how it was he was prevented from bringing on his resolution, and saying that Parliament and the Government should have no peace on the question, for the country was aroused, and nothing could lessen their present determination. He called them to witness to the needless waste of time there had been in talking and recriminations before midnight. Mr. Trevelyan told me he thought our opponents had purposely prolonged the debate on the Address.

I must tell you that just in the second hour of our prayers your telegram was handed to me. I thought it was some business, and was pleasantly surprised when I saw it was from St. Andrews, so far off, and yet it brought you so near, and just at a moment when it was peculiarly precious to me.

After another half hour at the meeting, I returned once more to the Lobby of the House, and found some of our friends waiting about. They took me out on the terrace along the river front. The fog had cleared away, and it was very calm under the starlit sky. All the bustle of the city was stilled, and the only sound was that of the dark water lapping against the buttresses of the broad stone terrace, the water into which so many despairing women have flung themselves.

I forgot to tell you that before the debate began I ventured into the circular hall or lobby next to the House itself, having caught sight of the venerable face of old Mr. Whitwell. He remembered me, and shook hands. I stood near him in a corner, as if he had taken me under his protection. The first word he said to me was, “Has it ever struck you that there is no one thing in the whole of Christ’s discourses to which He has given such emphasis as that of the certainty of prayer being answered? Now you may be sure our persevering prayers will be answered in this matter.” I saw several other friends, among them your member, Mr. Williamson, who said, “Tell your son that I have presented his petition from St. Andrews, and that I support the prayer of it with all my heart.” I am glad to tell you Albert Grey and Robert Reid, father’s old pupil at Cheltenham, are with us on the question. I met Cardinal Manning in the Lobby, and had a pleasant talk with him. He is much in earnest about all good movements. He has been ill, and looked even thinner than a spider! He said he would do all he could for us, through his influence, on the Irish Catholic vote.

On April 20th Mr. Stansfeld moved the resolution condemning compulsory examination, which Mr. Hopwood had been prevented from bringing on in February, and it was carried by 182 votes to 110. In accordance with this resolution, the Government suspended the operation of the Acts in the following month.

To her sister in Naples.

Winchester, April, 1883.

Some day I trust I shall be able to tell you in detail of the events of the last few days. I longed for your presence during the debate; it was for us a very solemn time. All day long groups had met for prayer—some in the houses of M.P.‘s, some in churches, some in halls, where the poorest people came. Meetings were being held also all over the kingdom, and telegraphic messages of sympathy came to us continually from Scotland and Ireland, France, and Switzerland and Italy. There was something in the air like the approach of victory. As men and women prayed they suddenly burst forth into praise, thanking God for the answer, as if it had already been granted. It was a long debate. The tone of the speeches, both for and against, was remarkably purified, and with one exception they were altogether on a higher plane than in former debates. Many of us ladies sat through the whole evening till after midnight; then came the division. A few minutes previously Mr. Gerard, the steward of the Ladies’ Gallery, crept quietly in and whispered to me, “I think you are going to win!” That reserved official, of course, never betrays sympathy with any party; nevertheless, I could see the irrepressible pleasure in his face when he said this.

Never can I forget the expression on the faces of our M.P.’s in the House when they all streamed back from the division lobby. The interval during their absence had seemed very long, and we could hear each other’s breathing, so deep was the silence. We did not require to wait to hear the announcement of the division by the tellers: the faces of our friends told the tale. Slowly and steadily they pressed in, headed by Mr. Stansfeld and Mr. Hopwood, the tellers on our side. Mr. Fowler’s face was beaming with joy and a kind of humble triumph. I thought of the words: “Say unto Jerusalem that her warfare is accomplished.” It was a victory of righteousness over gross selfishness, injustice, and deceit, and for the moment we were all elevated by it. When the figures were given out a long-continued cheer arose, which sounded like a psalm of praise. Then we ran quickly down from the gallery, and met a number of our friends coming out from Westminster Hall.

It was half-past one in the morning, and the stars were shining in a clear sky. I felt at that silent hour in the morning in the spirit of the Psalmist, who said: “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion we were like unto them that dream.” It almost seemed like a dream.

When Mr. Cavendish Bentinck was speaking against us I noticed an expression of pain on Mr. Gladstone’s face. He seemed to be pretending to read a letter, but at last passed his hand over his eyes and left the House. He returned before Mr. Stansfeld made his noble speech, to which he listened attentively.

Later in the year she referred to this victory in a speech at Birmingham, which was printed under the title The Bright Side of the Question, and from which we quote the two following paragraphs.

I will say then to the women here one word. Dear women, I recall a scene; you will understand me. The night of the memorable debate in April, lasting many hours, there were meetings of women not far from the House of Commons—a crowd of women upon their knees through a great part of the night. I crept out of the House of Commons, where I was in the Ladies’ Gallery, and joined those meetings for a few moments. It was a sight I shall never forget. At one meeting there were the poorest, most ragged and miserable women from the slums of Westminster on their knees before the God of hosts, with tears and groans pouring out the burden of their sad hearts. He alone knew what that burden was. There were mothers who had lost daughters; there were sad-hearted women; and side by side with these poor souls, dear to God as we are, there were ladies of high rank, in their splendid dresses—Christian ladies of the upper classes kneeling and also weeping. I thank God for this wonderful and beautiful solidarity of the women of the world before God. Women are called to be a great power in the future, and by this terrible blow which fell upon us, forcing us to leave our privacy and bind ourselves together for our less fortunate sisters, we have passed through an education—a noble education. God has prepared in us, in the women of the world, a force for all future causes which are great and just.

We shall not stop, our efforts will not cease when this particular struggle is at an end. God has called us out, and we must not go back from any warfare to which He shall now call us in the future. We praise, we thank Him for what He has done already for us, and for what He is going to do, for we shall one day have a complete victory. We can echo the words of that which is written: “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour, for He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaidens.” And remember, women, if we are faithful unto death, from henceforth all men shall call us blessed. Yes, generations to come, your children and your children’s children will call you blessed, because you have laboured for purer morals and for juster laws.