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