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Josephine E. Butler
Josephine E. Butler An Autobiographical Memoir
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 We have not included any private letters, as it was her strongly expressed wish that these should not be published.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.
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.
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!”