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.
“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.”
“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.”