30 December: Boreham on Josephine Butler

Flotsam and Jetsam
The anniversary of the passing of Josephine Butler, which we mark today, reminds us that, once upon a time, angels appeared among men. They do still, but they take a different form. If the days of earth's infancy could have produced a Santa Teresa or an Elizabeth Fry, or a Florence Nightingale or a Frances Willard, or a Catherine Booth, or a Josephine Butler, there would have been no need for the coming of the angels. It was because the sacred tree that had been divinely planted in the midst of the nations was as yet incapable of producing such choice fruit that special provision had to be made. In the old days, angels came and angels went, leaving little to show for their coming. Josephine Butler came, and earth can never be quite the same again. Misery fled before her as darkness is scattered at dawn. Thousands of lives, soured and wretched, were sweetened and brightened; social life became pervaded by a new and healthier atmosphere; the laws of nations were made more just and more humane.

Mr. Gladstone declared that Josephine Butler lived her life on the lofty level of that of St. Catherine of Sienna; whilst the Rt. Hon. James Stuart, MA, LLD, affirms that there is no man living, and certainly no woman, whose lot is not the happier for Josephine Butler's influence. The world, Dr. Stuart adds, is different because she lived; she belongs to all nations and to all people; the seed that she has sown can never die. It is certainly a singularly winsome and engaging figure that is conveyed to our minds, by the biographies of her. We see a cultured and graceful girl, fond of music, fond of painting, particularly fond of dogs and passionately fond of fun. The darkest day of her gay young girlhood was the day on which her beloved "Pincher" was shot—unjustly, as she believed—for worrying sheep.

Internal And External Forces Cooperate
The daughter of the most admirable and lovable parents, reared in an atmosphere that was both pure and exhilarating, it was natural that Josephine Butler should early feel herself to be a citizen of the eternities. Her fancy took far flights; her mind insisted on exploring the riddles of the universe: she caught herself probing in solitude the mysteries of life and death and immortality. "It was my lot," she says, "from my earliest years to be haunted by the problems which present themselves more or less insistently to every thoughtful mind. Year after year, this haunting became more tyrannous." Who would have guessed that, beneath her laughing eyes and vivacious behaviour, this gay young Scottish lassie carried such a hungry heart? The moving passages in which Josephine Butler has recorded the story of her secret travail and deliverance are worthy to rank among the noblest classics of the kind.

Three striking incidents led Josephine Butler, at this plastic and impressionable stage of her intellectual development, into the career in which she achieved such great distinction. Soon after her marriage, her husband heard of a young woman in Newgate Prison and convinced himself that, though undoubtedly guilty of the offence of which she had been convicted, she was rather to be pitied than blamed. He suggested to his young wife that, as they needed a servant, they should, on the expiration of her sentence, take the prisoner into their home. They did; and the success of the daring experiment led Josephine to wonder how many other girls, well worth saving, remained in the abyss. The second of the three episodes had to do with the visit of a circus to the neighbourhood. On a Summer Sunday evening, Mrs. Butler was sitting by the open window of her home when she heard the sound of sobbing among the shrubs nearby. She soon discovered that the tears were being shed by a girl who, employed as an acrobat at the circus, had escaped and was desperately anxious to leave a life that she loathed, "the most innocent part of which was probably her performance on the trapeze." Mrs. Butler arranged for her emancipation.

Woman's Sorrow Fills World With Gladness
The third incident was a still more poignant one. Shortly after the return of Mr. and Mrs. Butler from a delightful holiday among the beautiful English lakes, their little girl, Eva, in leaning over the banister rail, fell with a crash in the hall, and, a few hours later, died without regaining consciousness. For months it seemed as if the cruel shock would shatter the mother's reason or destroy her health. But, when she recovered, she resolved that all the prodigal daughters of the world should be her daughters; and she devoted the rest of her days to one of the most gracious and fruitful ministries that the world has ever seen. In the course of those thirty years, thousands of woebegone women, with a dark past and a darker future, were led into lives of happiness and usefulness.

Yet, although Josephine Butler devoted the best energies of her life to her brave and determined struggle to salvage the flotsam and jetsam of the world's womanhood, she acquired an extraordinary ascendancy over the most cultured minds of her time. She was associated with Miss Anne J. Clough, the pioneer principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, in her brave campaign for the higher education of women. Two of the most notable literary enterprises of the day were dedicated to her—Dora Greenwell's "Patience of Hope" and Frederic W. H. Myers' "Saint Paul." In the inscription to her book, Dora Greenwell, addressing Josephine Butler, says: "From thee begun, with thee my work shall close; without thee nothing high my mind essays." Frederic Myers' tribute is still more striking. Dedicating "Saint Paul" to Josephine Butler, he says that, to her, he owes his very soul. Mrs. Butler lived to be eighty. Then, one night, just as a new year was about to break, she bade her household a smiling goodnight and went to her rest as usual. She closed her tired eyes in sleep and never again opened them. Without any pang of parting or sadness of farewell, she had slipped out of a world that was incalculably the sweeter, the cleaner and the richer for her gentle passage through it.

F W Boreham

Image: Josephine Butler