LETTERS FMFI L-/-1 1 LL/L-fiJ . RUSSE- , . GURNEY tr A> /a. /f LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY <^ > .-,+. S . / /' t/Td&^u. fra&O. ' LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY EDITED BY HER NIECE ELLEN MARY GURNEY " lo mi son un che, quando Amore spira, noto, ed a quel modo Che delta dentro, vo significando." DANTE, Purgatorio, xxiv. ILonfcon JAMES NISBET tf CO., LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET 1902 Printed by BALLABTTHI, HAHSOH * Co, At the P.allantyne Press PREFACE THE following letters need little introduction. They have been printed under the impression that they would interest a wider circle than they would otherwise reach, and that, whilst giving pleasure to those who were numbered among the writer's friends, by recalling a voice dear to them, they might also bear a message for others to whom she was unknown. The published words of Emelia Russell Gurney are few. But her gifts found their natural channel in cor- respondence, which was a perpetual fountain of enrich- ment to her nearest ones, and was ever widening its circles of blessing as life went on. The idea of making public a selection from among these letters has received kind encouragement from several whose opinion is unbiased and valuable. The task of selection has met with the difficulty, inevitable when dealing with private correspondence of an intimate kind, that the passages which most breathe the atmosphere of the writer's personality, whether in gay or tender vein, are frequently those in the publication of which there would seem to be some- thing of desecration. It is nevertheless hoped that in the necessary process of pruning, sifting, and refusal, the individual aroma has not been wholly lost, the 2065742 vi PREFACE retaining and giving forth of which is the sole purpose of the endeavour. Gratitude should be expressed to the many friends who have been kindly willing to contribute to the store. And it will be seen that letters to Mrs. Russell Gurney as well as from her have in some instances been ad- mitted, thus supplying the interest of mind answering to mind. This is notably the case with regard to the extracts from a correspondence, covering eleven years, between herself and Miss Wedgwood. No attempt at a connected biography has been made ; only such linking together of events and periods as may give the letters their due significance. E. M. G. CONTENTS PAGE PART I., 1852-1870 . y- i PART II., 1870-1878 68 PART III., 1878-1896 173 PART IV., JOURNAL LETTERS FROM JAMAICA, 1865, AND SICILY, 1889 286 vii ERRATA Page 129, line I, for 'mind' read 'find.' 144, line 20, for ' remarkable ' read ' remarkably." 177, line 16 from foot, omit 'not.' 196, line 20 and 5 from foot, far ' Kirjith ' read ' Kirjath.' ., 196, line 7 from foot, for ' Uzziah ' read ' Uzzah.' ,, 207, line 8, for ' semo ' read ' seme.' 210, line i6,for 'birds' read 'bird.' 211, line 13, for 'accacias' read 'acacias.' 216, line 13, for ' Sympneumatic ' read ' Sympneumata.' 223, line i, for ' piu' read ' piu.' 268, line 4 from foot, for ' 1883 ' read ' 1893.' 281, line 13 from foot, for 'for' read 'from.' 286, for date, ' 1865,' read ' 1866.' 297, line 4 from foot, for 'lips' read 'limbs.' 333> l me '5; f or ' Prediga' read ' Predica.' line 19, for ' canoni ' read ' canonici.' 342, line 13 from foot, for 'Capella' read 'Cappella' (also page 345, line 4). 345, line i,for 'Bonino di Pisa' read 'Bonino da Pisa.' 347, line 14 from foot, for 'Segestse' read 'Segeste' (also page 350, line 19). Litters of Emelia Russell Gurney. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY PART I 1852-1870 THE following brief sketch, by Mrs. Russell Gurney's nephew, the Rev. Alfred Gurney, appeared soon after her death in 1896. "Emelia Gurney was born on July 26, 1823. Her father, the Rev. William Batten, an assistant master at Harrow, whose gay and buoyant spirits made him the playfellow of his children, died when she was still a child, and her sister, a year or two younger than herself, passed away in the dawn of womanhood. For many years her mother, a woman of remarkable intelligence and large and generous sympathies, was spared to her, and the affection that knit their hearts together was nothing less than passionate in its tenderness. In 1852 she married, and seldom has marriage been the door opening on a happier life than that which was hers for the next twenty-six years. It was one of the marriages less common than one would expect in which husband and wife are really complemental the one to the other. To his balanced judgment, sagacity, and knowledge of affairs, she brought the aid of a A 2 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY powerful and cultivated imagination, a disciplined en- thusiasm, and the keenest and most penetrating appre- ciation of beauty both in art and nature. Many visits to Italy and Switzerland, and in later years to America, the West Indies, Egypt, and the Holy Land, stimulated and enriched a mind singularly receptive, and added to the ever-enlarging circle of her friends. She was fre- quently an inmate of the house of her venerable uncle, the Rev. John Venn of Hereford, in later years minister- ing with a daughter's tender devotion to the infirmities of old age. After a suffering illness of nearly seven months' duration, on the eve of St. Luke her release came, and very gently and peacefully she faded into life. Among many testimonies of friends who find them- selves denuded and shadowed by her removal, and who have been quick to bear witness to the beauty of her character and the spell that it put upon all who were brought within the sphere of its influence, the following words are, with his permission, quoted from the author of John Inglesant : " She cast the glamour of her own purity and genius over the work of others, and attained thereby to an appreciation which they themselves were unable to accept. Her letters always seemed to me to have a peculiar and original charm, a distinct insight, and a clearness of expression when speaking of spiritual feeling, very far indeed beyond the common, in fact unique. Let us thank God that we have known such lives as hers, a knowledge which silences and subdues all the doubts and per- plexities of life." Interesting though such would have been, no letters have been received which throw any important light on LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 3 the circumstances and influences of the early years of Emelia's life. Her childhood was passed, when the Harrow days were ended, with her mother and sister at Pinner, and later at Hereford, after the removal thither of her uncle and aunt, the Rev. John Venn and his sister. In 1842 Mrs. Batten and her two daughters went to Italy, where the younger one, Florence, died in 1843. The subsequent winters were spent abroad, but mother and daughter finally settled together in London until Emelia's marriage in 1852. The earliest letters given here are from the pen of Mrs. Batten, about the period of the marriage and some years later. The first of these, though quaint and formal in expression, possesses a certain interest as a record. A Letter from Mrs. BATTEN to a Friend, after her Daughter's Marriage to Mr. Russell Gurney, 1852. Do you remember our conversation in your carriage the day you took me to Lowndes Street ? I foresaw what was coming, and I acquiesced in it and even desired it. For I knew that Mr. Russell Gurney possessed qualities which I considered indispensable for my Emily's happiness, and which I found by experience to be most rarely met with, united to other essential qualities. He was several years older than I should have chosen to make him, had I been presented with a fairy's wand and told to conjure up a perfect husband. But this is the only defect of which I can tell you. I shall just describe him, though I am not now in a good humour with him. My heart is turned against him, for he has robbed me, and I feel a little like a wild animal robbed of its young. But I am consoled by thinking of the truth, and you will like to hear Emily's report confirmed. James Stephen called him a first-class man, and so he is. Not first-rate, but first-class. 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY No one could be in his company without seeing that he is a man of fine understanding, well cultivated, and accustomed to inter- course with people of the same stamp. You can introduce no subject with which he is not familiar and able to converse pleasantly and profitably upon. He has quiet, easy, gentlemanly manners, is of middle height, has dark hair, dark intelligent eyes, an aquiline nose, and an air of savoir faire about him which I much admire. He is universally popular in society ; and the lawyer employed to draw up the settlement said, " We are all fully aware that the highest legal honours this country can give are open to him." Then, as to more important matters. His religious principles are such as thoroughly to satisfy my brother Henry [the Rev. Henry Venn]. And his own family speak of him as the most generous and affectionate of brothers. He was the most devoted and dutiful of sons. Now, do you not think I was right to encourage my sweet Emily to say " Yes " to such a suitor? She did say " Yes," with her whole heart. Never had any misgiving from first to last. Indeed, I can give you no idea of the loveliness of her conduct. Well as I knew her, it astonished me. The evening before the marriage she interested herself in every arrangement, put flowers into the vases, packed up her things with Mrs. H., whom she preferred to me, feeling less excited by her, and determined to go bravely forward in the path her heart had chosen and her judgment approved. On the day the same cheerful, solemn, calm continued. She was alone until it was time to dress. When I went to her with her breakfast she was in tears, with the Bible in her hand, and said, " Let me read you the lesson of the day." Mr. and Mrs. Russell Gurney lived for the first year or two after their marriage in a house in Russell Square which had been his father's. They then took the house in Kensington Palace Gardens which remained their home until Mr. Russell Gurney's death in 1878. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 5 From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. AYLSTONE HILL, HEREFORD, 1855 or 1856. To-day the railroad is opened, and the train is amusing itself with passing up and down. We see the smoke from the windows, and the whistle is constantly blowing, and every now and then they pop a gun. I am rather sorry that in future we shall arrive at the terminus at the foot of Aylstone Hill, and not pass the Yapps' house, where he stands out at the door, and Mrs. Yapp peeps out of one window and the daughters at the other. Another vestige of primitive simplicity and cordiality that is passing away. I fear the railway will sweep away many of the distinctions of Hereford ; it will be like other places, and the past alone will remain in our minds. Well, you may be sure that my thoughts are ever hovering over you, and my mind filled with pleasant images of you. A very vivid one is left of dearest Russell at the door of the railway carriage, and all his affection and graceful hospitality, not one atom of which is thrown away upon me, for, alas ! I fear my selfishness makes me too sensible of any marks of kindness and attention. And you, my own dear child, with your smiling face and your pink bows, looking so alive and awake, how fresh and how vivid is your image ! How is this room, too, associated with you, and all my visions about you, and all my sad failures, alas ! alas ! though I do not feel these as I used to do ; the conviction of my own impotency and insignificance nullifies these. God was your Father, and your mother could do little to counteract His plans of love for you. Now I must say farewell, most beloved child. I know you will be glad to hear that Uncle John seems as fresh and happy and vigorous as ever. With tenderest love from all of us to you both. Your own mother, C. BATTEN. In the spring of 1862 a change came into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Russell Gurney the guardianship of a large family of nephews and nieces coming to him, on 6 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the death of his elder brother, John Hampden Gurney, Rector of St. Mary's, Marylebone. In the course of the summer a house was taken for them on Mitcham Common. And for three years this home was presided over and shared from time to time with them by their uncle and aunt. The intimacy and wealth of affection, only increasing with years, between her and some of these nephews and nieces, who became almost like children to her, had its beginning here. And it would be impossible to try to measure or to put into words the extent or the subtle quality of an influence touching their lives so closely during these impressionable years, the stronger for its very unconsciousness and spontaneity. London claims impinged, however, increasingly upon the Mitcham sojourns, and in 1865 the moving of the Hampden Gurney family to Torquay brought this epoch to a close. The following letters were written to her elder nieces at the commencement of the new life, soon after their father's death : To her Niece, EMILY GURNEY. 8 PALACE GARDENS, W., April 1862. ... I expect you would all feel very, very tired for the first few days of the change of air and absence of excitement, and I hope, therefore, that you rest and sleep a great deal. Then when you are rested you will be able to turn this quiet pause in your life to account. You have so much of the past to gather up in your memories and appropriate so much that will be revealed to you in a new light from one marked portion of your life being for ever closed, and from the voice that has spoken with most strength to you during that portion of your life being for ever silent. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 7 The future is veiled from you even more than it must always necessarily be. But we know, as I have just now been reminded by re-reading that wonderful sermon of Robertson's, "Sleep on now" and "Rise, let us be going" we know that the manner in which we meet that future, its power upon us for good or ill, is just according to the measure in which we are making use of our present. I have found this by experience in my own life in things great and small. Some particular thing has been presented to me at one time. I have not learnt it as I should. I have passed on to something else, and have found that the very thing I have neglected would have been of im- mense value to me in that next stage of my life ; but the time for it was gone, and I could not go back to it. It was not the least a predetermination on my part to preach to you, my dear child ; but as I realise you, parting as you must at this time with much of your easy, care-free childhood, and standing on the threshold of a maturer life, bereaved of him whom you would naturally have looked to still to guide every step and foster every development for some years to come, I yearn over you, and long long not that you may be comforted, but that you may be strengthened. Love to all from Uncle Russell. Your ever affectionate AUNT EMELIA. 8 PALACE GARDENS, W., April 14, 1862. MY DEAR EMILY AND ELLEN, The charge of guardianship now falls into your Uncle Russell's hands, and I feel it is but natural that I should give out to you some of the things that arise in my heart on the occasion of being brought into such a new relationship with you all. It is but little, comparatively, that we have seen of each other hitherto. For the future very much of your happiness and very much of mine must depend on our mutual affection for each other, and our mutual understanding of each other's natures and characters. We have each much to learn in order to come to this full understanding of the other ; but I am thankful that we each have a foundation of affection to start from. 8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Dear children, I would not conceal from myself, and I would not conceal from you, that I enter upon this new relationship with much fear and trembling, though by no means without much hope. I have seen too often the difficulties that arise in large families growing up from childhood into youth, and from youth to maturity, and the development of elements of discord that must almost necessarily exist in various minds and characters when brought into contact, to imagine that we as a family can be ex- empted from such difficulties ; especially as the place of real parents can never be supplied by those who come in a measure into the position of parents, without the instincts or associations of the relationship either of parents or children to help them. I tremble also when I realise the contrast which your future life must present in many ways to what it was when you had such a strong, cheerful, intelligent, and truly fatherly heart close at hand to inspire and guide it. I tremble also for myself, lest any of the peace and joy which I have found in my married life alone with my beloved husband should be in any way marred. I mention some of these causes of apprehension, not to trouble you, but in order that we may together open our eyes to the con- tingencies that lie before us, and that we may open our eyes to them in order to meet them, and be prepared for others known and unknown, in the best and wisest manner we may, and not with mere vague sensations of affectionate but blind enthusiasm. On both sides we have the same ground of confidence. We feel that we are entering on this new path by the appointment of God. We should not have chosen it for ourselves ; but circum- stances have been so ordered that both to you and to us it has plainly appeared to be the Will of God. We may therefore con- fidently ask for the help of God in it and His blessing upon it, and believe that we shall receive it. I trust you all will continue daily to offer a petition for this, as we shall. Besides this we need to watch against dangers and temptations that may arise in it. We need also specially to cultivate and cherish all that tends to bind us together, and to remove stum- bling-blocks out of each other's way. We need to keep our eyes LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 9 open to a delicate apprehension of the tastes and feelings of each, and our hearts warm with a generous confidence in the motives and intentions of each. I feel the chief, the supreme importance of perfect openness and sincerity in our intercourse, that we should freely speak our minds to one another, rather than allow any secret little source of dissatisfaction to fret our mutual complacency. You know that we feel that it will be well for you and for us, for a time, and at intervals, to be members of the same household. Circumstances may easily arise to make it desirable that our remaining with you should not continue ; and, indeed, I think, under any circumstances, we should look forward to the time when you may be well able to do without us. God has taken away both your parents, and as none can possibly supply their place, it is according to His intention that you should be able to stand alone earlier than those to whom He still continues the support and protection of parents. Our desire will be to help you and strengthen you to stand alone, rather than to induce you to continue leaning on us. Dear Emily arid Ellen, will you send this to Fred, Alfred, and Edmund ; for though they will be so much away, that their daily life will be much less affected by this change than yours, yet our home will be theirs also at intervals, and I wish them to consider the subject in the same light, and to promote for all our sakes the bond and law that must exist for the family as it is now to be con- stituted. Dear children, I will only add, I love you, and expect I shall love you much more. I think I may say that I sincerely desire to be to each of you just what God designs me to be. And I would pray day by day not to frustrate this design by my own selfish- ness and hardness of heart. Your dear uncle has written to the boys individually. He bids me say he concurs in all that I have said to you collectively. He is so good, and so lovely in his thoughts to others and behaviour to them, that I am sure you will never be tempted to vex him. May the Lord help and teach us all ! Your ever affectionate AUNT EMELIA. io LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To her J\'iece, ELLEN MARY GURNEY. (Written after taking the Cedars, Mitcham, as the home for her nephews and nieces.) July 1862. If you do not like the look of the flat, broad lawn, as smooth as satin, with its cedar a little to the right, and termi- nating indefinitely in the trees in the field beyond, through the wide bay window of the drawing-room, I shall think nothing of your tastes. It looks so peaceful and quiet, and cultivated too ; not shaggy, as some country places do. . . . Just now I write to you completely from the upholstery part of my being, but I am conscious of something like earnest desires from a much deeper part, that our true life there may grow and prosper ; that we may more and more seek after realities, after abiding things. Let us not forget to seek after His teaching and training, especially in prospect of this new path opening before us. It is a most solemn charge for all of us. Yet I don't feel that it is out of harmony with the deeper sense of its solemn im- portance, that we should laugh and play with the flowers and pretty creatures that He decks out the surface of almost every path with, because He knows so well our frame. To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. THE CEDARS, MITCHAM, S., April 22, 1863. DEAR LOUISA, Where are you this heavenly day? I am sitting out on the lawn writing my letters, and I can't get on for looking into the pure sky and on the green-gold powdered trees; and oh, what a concert there is of larks, and now and then a nightingale preparing its song, and the cuckoo and the wood-pigeon. The white blossoms among the other trees look like incense : the earth is offering up its very best, and my heart wants to aspire too. The promise of spring is better than the fulfilment of summer and autumn. There must be a better fulfilment in the life to which our risen Lord would lead us. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY n Write and tell me you are much better, and unfolding your wings somewhere in the sunshine. Your very affectionate EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1863 or 1864. I heartily respond to what you say about the old memories being reburnished indeed I quite feel that a new shoot sprang up at Champery from the old root. That old root, how satisfac- tory it is to fall back upon, and how one learns more and more to value such roots as time strengthens them, and also, alas ! as they become fewer and one realises that they cannot be replaced. That sweeping away at Harrow is to us, especially to my mother, quite desolating ; so much of the chain that bound us to former days is broken, and so they become almost as if they had not been the old landmarks have disappeared, and the river gets wider and nearer the sea. So let it be. We must venture further and further out, and trust more and more in God Himself. Though the earth be removed, and the mountains cast into the sea, yet, &c. Some of the strongest and most abiding of the reli- gious influences which informed and pervaded Emelia Gurney's life had their rise during sojourns of almost yearly occurrence, both before and after her marriage, at Linlathen, with Mr. Thomas Erskine and his sisters. She used to speak of it as " the home of my soul." The following sketch of this home and its influences has been kindly contributed by Miss Julia Wedgwood : I have been asked to add an account of Linlathen to the glimpses given here. No endeavour could open on a task at once more welcome and more difficult. The memories recalled by that name are the sweetest and purest which life affords, yet when I endeavour to describe the mental scenery which forms their background, I seem confronted with an achievement that 12 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY needs genius. All I would recall is from an external point of view quite commonplace. From the point of view which pre- sents it to me, it is further removed from the commonplace than any sojourn preserved in the long gallery of memory's landscape. The attempt to bridge the chasm thus suggested seems not so much difficult as hopeless, but it shall be made. Thomas Erskine, the friend of Carlyle, of Arthur Stanley, and of others distinguished in their own time, was once so well known that it would have been enough to mention his name with no further explanation in any collection of letters published fifty or sixty years ago. He was the author of many works upon religion, but his books are felt, by those who admire them most, to ex- press a very small part of that which he bequeathed to mankind. The extent of the contemporary influence of his writings may be measured by the fact that he had the honour of being attacked by John Henry Newman as a typical specimen of mysticism. Of his history there is little to be said. He was a descendant of the Regent Mar, and a great-grandson of a certain well-known Colonel Erskine who took some part in the establishment of William of Orange on the throne. A grandson of this Colonel Erskine, a minister of the Scotch Church, has the enduring distinction of being admitted to the pages of " Guy Mannering." The eulogy there pronounced on this saintly and simple-minded man has an added interest for a few, in the recollection that it was pronounced on an uncle of Thomas Erskine, whose father, from his success at the Scotch bar, was enabled to purchase the estate of Linlathen, inherited successively by his two sons. Thomas, the younger, followed his father's profession till, to his deep and lasting grief, the death, in 1816, of his elder brother made him the master of the grey Scotch house and sylvan sur- roundings described below. The deep and full inward life led there leaves some record in the following pages. Of the outward life there is nothing to say, save that it was a centre of friendship and intercourse, marked no less by its profound and lofty range than by an atmosphere of refinement and high breeding, for which the few LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 13 who recall it feel, at times, that they look elsewhere in vain. Linlathen itself had none of the charms which attach to one's notions of a Scotch place. It is a tall stone house in Forfar- shire, quite devoid of architectural impressiveness, surrounded by grassy sweeps and noble trees, which, except for one opening towards the west, where the Sidlaw hills showed blue in the evening light, shut in the view. The walled garden was out of sight of the house, and the only feature in the near view was a little stream, sadly polluted by dye-works, but not thereby losing its blue reflections and silvery gleams, hastening to the sea, which it reached within a mile or so, and always suggestive of that neighbourhood after one had caught the straight horizon line (not visible from the house) in an afternoon's ramble. We used to speak of " the green curtains " which shut us in as of some characteristic feature of the place, warding off an alien world, and enclosing one that needed such shelter. As the hills stand about Jerusalem, so the trees stood about Linlathen. One naturally uses the language of the past ; all that is outward is unchanged now, but I seem, when I would recall it, to speak of something that has passed away. When I enter in imagination the square porch facing the sweep of loose grey gravel, and pass along a wide corridor to a library where the walls seem all creamy vellum and mellow russet leather, or enter the neighbouring drawing-room, with its treasure of Italian pictures, or turn the other way to the dining-room, with its circle of past Erskines, who still look down on me with many a suggestion of faces now also passed away, I come upon a life impossible to reproduce except in negatives. Almost everything suggested in the notion of a visit to Scotland was absent. There was no sport, no gaiety, very few neighbours, the drives were mainly to Dundee and Broughty Ferry, " an expedition " was a thing unknown. Nor was the inner life a varied one. Much which makes up the very breath of life to most persons was behind those green curtains as though it did not exist. A casual mention now and then, the question " Is there anything interesting i 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY in the Times ? " which no one asks who reads the newspaper as a part of the day's work this was all the attention I can re- member being given to politics. I was there through that fateful struggle, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and used to watch the Times for long mornings untouched on the table, where the butler had laid it after opening and cutting it. Mr. Erskine would listen to it, but rather as a task, laid aside willingly for some book or letter which had no suggestion for the things of Time. It cannot be denied that this narrowness was sometimes op- pressive for the moment. Much was there to relieve that feeling. A sense of high breeding and refinement, discernible even by un- sympathetic observers, and still more a completeness of union among the home party which somehow suggested a youthful group even to the last. It is rare at any age to enter a family circle where one never feels a breath of divergence, in old age most rare. Each of Mr. Erskine's widowed sisters seemed to combine with the warm feeling of their actual relation a touch of something closer. Mrs. Paterson, that of the sympathetic wife ; Mrs. Stirling, that of the tender, protecting mother, but indeed her attitude towards him seemed to take in all relations. He was one who specially needed such shelter. In a few words I wrote about him just after his death I said that one remembered his life as the sigh of an exile. After the lapse of a generation I feel that still the most appropriate description of it. The words bring back all that was lacking to him, and all that was abundant in him. He never took root in our world. I cannot think what he would have been if his elder brother had survived, and he had led the life of an Edinburgh lawyer. Perhaps more of a man in some ways, but not the man we knew. " These thoughts that wander through Eternity." How clearly I hear now the tones of his voice in that quotation ! They come back whenever I read it as the melody of a song with the words. To him the world and all it contains except human spirits, the whole scenery and circumstances of life, was but a language in which, when rightly interpreted, man might decipher the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 15 idiom and accents of a more permanent home. " What does it all mean ? " he would ask, as we passed under the waving boughs, and he looked around with a sort of wondering gaze, as if he were the inhabitant of some distant planet just dropped upon our earth. It was a commonplace scene which evoked the demand overarching foliage, hedgerow blossoms, quiet lanes, green pastures just what most people may see whenever they take a country walk. It had all a language for him, but a language imperfectly understood, listened to with a sort of eager yearning always pressing thirstily towards some hidden spring. He had not much love for particular places. He cared for Linlathen far, far less than I did. I think there was always a dim feeling that it was his brother's place, and had come to him by a kind of mistake. But the feeling I have tried to describe made all nature wondrously, endlessly interesting to him. I remember the deep tones of his voice as he recalled " the shores of the Gareloch " and his early wanderings there at a time when " the invisible seemed pressing into the visible " a time when I know he looked for a revelation of the invisible unmistakable by all the inhabitants of the earth. It was a time of which our generation only keeps recollection in the existence of the " Catholic Apostolic Church " (to speak of the Irvingites as they prefer to be described) a memorial in some respects misleading, yet not devoid of a real suggestion when attentively contemplated. It was a period associated with marvellous cures, with awakening to a spiritual life; it was in some respects more like a chapter from the Gospels than any- thing else I ever heard of. Yet it ended in disappointment. The surrender of the definite anticipations it had initiated had less effect upon Mr. Erskine than one would have anticipated. That part of his life gave a keynote to feeling after it had ceased to keep any hold on intellect He always felt that it would be perfectly natural to find the Divine within the world unveiled to the eyes of those who needed to be convinced of the very existence of the Divine, and a mistake as to a particular occasion for this emergence had not for him the revolutionary effect on 1 6 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY all thought which it would have had on most persons. He admitted with a very rare and remarkable candour that he had been mistaken in this anticipation admitted it in what many would have felt its most difficult form, for he stated it distinctly in a note to a later edition of the work containing an equally distinct expression of his participation in it ; and then he turned away, and did not willingly revert to the subject. Certain indi- cations of an abiding readiness for the supernatural which may be found in the letters which follow, and which are indeed very characteristic of them, are, I think, best left in the vagueness in which they stand here. They might be called exaggerated or fanciful. I believe they referred to profound realities. But they implied nothing which would have impressed any one in whose mind a belief in the invisible could be increased or diminished by any event in the visible world. His dearest friend, the Duchesse de Broglie, warned him, when both were young, against what may be called a premature absorbedness in the life of eternity. I, knowing him in his old age, often recalled that warning and lamented its neglect. I do not lament it now. Looking on those years through the vista of more numerous successors, I feel the exclusion a part of the peculiar impression of that home, and realise that we could not have had those limitations removed and keep the Linlathen I remember as a sort of vision of some other world than ours. I remember the feeling as I drove through the lodge gates that something fell away and left one freer and more disentangled from blinding conditions, an anticipation that was never disap- pointed. Once, in this journey, to have met a fellow-traveller to whom all the scenery of life, all that most interests ordinary human beings, is but as the furniture of an inn this is an experience which none can wish to exchange for any other except those who do not value it at all. We need not think of the disasters it would bring if it were common. What we have to consider is the memories we should lose if that were removed which is unique. J. W. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 17 The letters from Mr. Thomas Erskine which follow embrace a period of many years ; but it is thought best to place them here together, and in their own sequence. From Mr. THOMAS ERSKINE, of Linlathen, to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. EDINBURGH, July 1855. DEAR MRS. GURNEY, I ought to have written to you long ago ; but I have been too much accustomed to consider that I have a share in my sister's letters, and to count upon her regu- larity. I do also count not a little on the perfect certainty that such friends as you cannot impute my not writing to any forget- fulness of kindness, deep, solid, and imperishable. I have been alone in Edinburgh for a week ; though I ought not to say alone, having friends here who keep me from any feeling of loneliness, if I could have such a feeling in a place peopled with memories of all my past. But yet it seems to myself wonderful how much more of the past I have here, than of the present. My contem- poraries are dead, and the friends that I see about me, with few exceptions, do not remember what I remember. We have, how- ever, a great common future, embraced in one common Father, and one common nature. I often wish I could see you or your dear mother, to com- mune with on the things which I see and feel. I have just read a dramatic poem, with great pleasure and admiration, by a country- man of mine, settled as an Independent minister in Manchester, where I met him a few days ago, entitled " Within and Without," published by Longmans, which I wish you would get and read attentively. I am sure you would like it. I like it better than any poetry and most prose that I have read for many years. I read it through almost continuously, which is a great deal to say of any book, or at least of myself in relation to any book. Yours ever truly, T. ERSKINE. 1 8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Mr. ERSKINE to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. 1862. We read the sermons on your brother-in-law [the Rev. J. H. Gurney] with exceeding interest. He must have been a noble- hearted man and a true. I regretted in reading them that I had not endeavoured to become intimate with him that I might have im- bibed some of his spirit. I feel that your husband must have loved him and honoured him, and must have felt his human existence much impoverished by his removal. I myself had a most noble- hearted brother, whom I loved and honoured and trusted entirely, and even now the thought of him helps me to realise my relation to the great elder Brother, the loving Head of every man, who is in each one of us, as the head of the natural body is present by the nervous system in every member of the body. He is closer to us than ought else, and is continually seeking to train us into a perfect sympathy with Himself, sympathy with the Father and the Son in every thought and feeling. This is eternal life ; it is a participation in God's own will, and God's will is His life. Ever affectionately yours, T. ERSKINE. From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. LlNLATHEN, August l6, 1865. . . . Mr. Erskine went in the carriage to meet Carlyle and his brother: they arrived to dinner. Carlyle does now look quite an old man, in his walk, and his hand trembles so that he can hardly lift things to his mouth. But he seems as bright and lively in his mind and laughs as heartily as ever. I have not a sufficiently good memory to trace what is the difference in him since we saw him sixteen years ago. What a large piece out of our lives ! Well, he has produced six large volumes since that time. Mr. Erskine told him he wondered that he had not chosen the life of a man like Gustavus Adolphus, whose life was devoted to great things, rather than Frederick, whose aspirations were all of such a limited nature. He said, Yes, he should have liked to take Gustavus, but he did not know LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 19 Swedish, and that Frederick had very great qualities, and the object of his life for forty-five years had been to do what he clearly felt was his duty, and no selfish considerations inter- fered with it. He evidently did not enter into all Mr. E. said. In the evening Mr. Erskine tried very hard to make him understand that a man could not be made really good by com- pelling him to be so outwardly. . . . Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Erskine are the most curious contrasts. Mr. E., thrilling constantly with love to all men and pity for the wicked, feeling quite sure that they will be good one day, and Carlyle longing to take a besom and sweep them all away to destruction. I had much sympathy with him in the abuses he spoke of, you may be sure. He seems to have a great dislike to Stuart Mill ; says he is thin in mind and thin in body. At one time he knew him very well. Well, the evening passed in a sort of encounter between Mr. Erskine and Mr. Carlyle : and then actually Mr. E. went away to sit in the still-room while they smoked. I thought he need not have carried his hospitality so far as that ; but I have no doubt we should have thought that our blessed Lord carried His forbearance much too far to the people around Him. Carlyle is now sitting under that beautiful little ash tree in the front of the house, just as he did sixteen years ago, smoking and reading. I do not feel the enthusiasm for him I then did. LINLATHEN, September 1865. The tenderness and love of these Linlathen people to has been most beautiful. It was a most interesting sight to see dearest Mrs. Paterson talking in her bed to the young S.'s with such heavenly earnestness, that I think it must make an impression through their lives; they were looking up to her with the greatest love and reverence. Mr. Erskine's reading of the i45th Psalm this morning was so beautiful, so exquisitely reverential, so filled with tender awe ; 20 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and then the few words he said afterwards : " What a solemn thing it was to have heard such words and to go away as if we had not heard them;" and then his prayer, that they might remain with us all day. And we all sat in solemn silence for a long time after the servants left the library, feeling pene- trated. Dearest Mrs. Stirling looks very tired this morning. I think of Mr. Erskine's words after her illness, " If I lose her, I shall be homeless." Your own tender mother, C. B. From Mr. ERSKINE to E. R. G. LINLATHEN, November 1865. Your letters are always balm to me. The idea that the all-wise Ruler should change His plans or purposes at the cry of His ignorant children seems quite preposterous; yet the lan- guage of our Lord seems quite explicit in favour of such an idea. I do not feel much perplexed about it, although I find it difficult to follow out the steps. My way of understanding it is this. I believe that God's chief purpose in this world is to educate and develop the spirits and minds of men, and that the higher part of this training can only be accomplished by teaching them to know and love Him as a Personal Being. And that this result may be effected, and is intended to be effected, through what are called answers to prayer. When you were here, you may remember that I often spoke to you of what appeared to me the in- sufficiency of mere conscious effort to produce that result on the character which is necessary for its highest Tightness and harmony. Man must learn to love God, in order to love all his unlovable fellow-creatures, and in order to have a right humility, and to love what is right as well as to approve of it. A sense of duty alone cannot produce these things. I have the conviction that if Renan and his friends once came to feel that they cannot be what they ought to be, that they cannot attain true Tightness and true happiness without loving God as a Person, they would be compelled to admit the reasonableness of Christianity, which LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 21 is just the religion of the personality of God, and of the love of Him as a Person. Such a love alone is the law of gravitation for the spiritual world ; for such a personal God is the only centre of gravity possible. Man is created capable of this spiritual perfection in goodness and blessedness, but this capacity can only be developed on the condition that God is a personal Being, and that man learns to know Him and love Him as a personal Being. My belief about answers to prayer is based upon this higher principle. Nothing can give us such a living sense of the personality of God as His answering our secret desires. From Mr. ERSKINE to E. R. G. EDINBURGH, 1866. Your dear mother has informed us of the important trust committed to your husband, and of his and your acquiescence. What would life be without duty? And what would duty be if we did not know that its seat is the bosom of God ? Doubt- less He will be with you, guiding and strengthening your hus- band for his work, and strengthening you to be a helpmeet for him in his arduous circumstances. I am glad that Mr. Gurney has been fixed upon to try this case, and that he has consented to undertake it. The invitation of the Government is not a mere tribute to professional ability, it is an acknowledgment of moral worth, which I feel it good for the country to apprehend and enter into. The moral feelings of the country, in public matters, are generally so mixed up with political faction, that they have no ennobling result, and simply evaporate in noise. I am sure that the treatment of this case will teach them a much-needed lesson. You know how much we three love you and prize you, and how deeply we must enter into your feelings, both of thankful- ness and anxiety. We shall pray for you as we are enabled. Ever most affectionately yours, T. ERSKINE. 22 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Mr. ERSKINE to E. R. G. EDINBURGH, 1866. It has pleased God to take my dear sister to Himself. She died this morning, after a week's illness, having been to me for thirty years my constant companion, my faithful, patient, loving friend, my mother, wife, sister, all in one. She was my earthly life. But I did not begin to write to tell you about her. I should like to say a word for your poor friend. Let her try really to live in what she knows and believes of God. I never would think of requiring a sense of sin from any one. We cannot have that by trying to have it. But the very smallest amount of spiritual thought must give us the consciousness of weakness and dependance. God made us to live as receivers out of Him, and as conscious receivers : receivers from a loving Father, who desires to give us His sympathy and to receive ours. And when we are not in that state, even though we may not con- demn ourselves (because we feel that we have conscientiously done our best), yet we must feel unrestful and unsatisfied. We must feel that something is wrong, whether it is our fault or not. If we could believe that our Almighty Father really loved us, as we love the being whom we most love in the world, and that all the love of mother for child that we have known or felt is but a manifestation of His love for every child of man, and that that love is seeking to educate us all into a participation cf His own righteousness and blessedness, with a reality of purpose which will assuredly go on to its fulfilment, we should find our darkness pass away, and sweet light take its place. But things about us look sometimes so unlike love, and so unlike a purpose of educa- tion, that it is difficult to believe that we are the objects of such a love and such a purpose. And yet in my own heart I feel that there is a continued unceasing demand on me that I should be a better man than I am. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 23 From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. LINLATHEN, October 14, 1867. Well, darling, I arrived here ; was shown by a strange servant into the empty drawing-room. There I sat about half-an-hour alone and in dead silence, and felt in a dull foggy dream ; and so I think I have been ever since. There was a mistake about telling Mary Paterson ; however, she came at last, lovely, sweet, cordial. She certainly is like a graceful tree growing up in the place of the familiar magnificent oaks. Then Mr. Erskine came. Of course there would not be much visible change in him ; he could not look much more sorrowful than he used to look. He began at once to speak of his sisters ; he said their deaths were so com- pletely characteristic of their lives, so entirely in keeping with them, as I had always felt. Not one word did the beloved Mrs. Stirling speak to him. When she was first taken ill she said, " This is death," but she had said this before. The doctor left her, saying they expected her to be much better in the morning. At three in the morning she sent for Mr. E. and said, " I like to have you near me," and asked him to pray with her, but said nothing. He sat with her till all was over. Was not this like her? It seemed as if one could so completely understand it, and feel how it accorded with her character. He said, " Never once in the whole course of her life did she appeal to me for sympathy ; she was always giving it out, but never asking to re- ceive it." We spoke for about a quarter of an hour about them, and then other people came in, and I have not seen him alone since. It was a most fortunate thing for me that I had the " Reign of Law," which I had been reading all the journey here with intense interest, and I found he wanted to hear it, and so I read it to him all the evening, and he entered into it, though I do not know that he liked it as much as I did. I think he slept a little, but not much ; and so the first evening passed away, and there was the getting up and lighting of candles at the hall table, that you know so well, and we went to our rooms. Your own most tender mother, C. B. 24 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY LlNLATHEN, 1867. An enclosure copied from Miss WEDGWOOD'S recollection of a conversation with Mr. ERSKINE. Mr. Erskine's mind seems to have been dwelling so much lately on the analogy between the inward and the outward world. He has spoken so much of the force with which the spectacle of a universe regulated by the law of gravitation weighed upon him, as the token of the one principle which was to keep the spiritual world in order, that of Love. That, as the sun's attraction kept the planets in their right places, not only in regard to the central sun, but in regard to each other, so the love of God was to put us right not only towards God, but towards every human being. We have not yet got into this right state, and the true analogy for our present world would be a solar system in which the law of attraction was not yet acting equally, and that, when this moral gravitation was fully established in every minor planet of the system, the spiritual world would present the same spectacle of perfect order as the natural. He seemed to look upon the force of gravitation as it were a sort of parable of the in- fluence of love keeping everything together, keeping every- thing in movement which did not interfere with any other move- ment, keeping everything in its right place. Judaism, he said, he regarded as chiefly occupied with the orbit of the planets ; Christianity as a revelation of their centre. No human being, he said, at one time or another is without lucid intervals, in which he would allow that the only good thing in life is love ; that every drop of sweetness comes from this. Christianity is just the revelation of the fountain-head of all these scattered drops ; it tells us that there is absolutely no other righteous- ness than love. Love is the desire to make righteous. God creates that He may have fellow-workers. . . . The greater part of this was said when we were walking to Broughty Ferry, and I shall never forget one moment when he stopped to look up into the blue sky through a break in the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 25 cloud, and said, " What a wonderful thing it is that the Light should hide ; there are the stars, why do we not see them ? Why do we not see God? He is here." He was, of course, think- ing of Blanco White's sonnet on Night and Death, of which he spoke. He continued to speak on this, and on the unex- pectedness of the means by which the stars were hidden from us ; the impossibility of our ever guessing that anything was there but blue sky. I think his mind was dwelling on the possible surprise with which it might be that some, who had looked earnestly for God and never found Him, should see Him emerge, as it were, in some other state. From Mr. ERSKINE to E. R. G. DALHOUSIE CASTLE, November 1867. Your kind and welcome letter has followed me to this place. Your visit, yours and dear Mrs. Batten's, is a pleasant memory a joy for life. When I was last here I had just had that vision, and I felt it still present, as always recallable. It is more a matter of memory now ; but I hold it as a reality, giving me the assur- ance that it is not less present because it is less visible. I know that He in whom I live and move and have my being, and without whom a hair falls not from my head, is really caring for me and thinking upon me; that I am not only under a wise and gracious order of things, but that the Orderer Himself knows and meets my needs. I write this to you because I am sure that what is true for me is true for you, and every child of man. Yours affectionately, T. ERSKINE. From the same to Mrs. BATTEN and E. R. G. BELOVED FRIENDS, MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, Any word from you is always most welcome and refreshing, bringing in- timations of the eternal sympathy, which is also the eternal harmony. I am thankful to find that you have found in one important matter that oneness. I mean, that you have found that in very deed the consent of your will to the will of God, in opposition to all self-seeking, is the true order and the true 26 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY blessedness. Milton speaks of consent as arising out of coruent the C making the musical harmony, the S the harmony of feeling. The Father and the Son, dwelling in the sympathy of one Spirit, are the Fountain of all love, and all goodness, and all blessedness. Wherever we see good, we see the presence of God, for there is no other good. Man can proceed from nothing but love ; so that I am shut in to believe it. And when I look or think on some human beings in whom I have found some trace of that love and that purpose, and have felt how entirely I could trust them, I am confirmed in the assurance that God must be better than they are, and must indeed be the Fountain out of which all their loving purposes flow. Jesus Christ is just the revelation of all that I have been saying. He is the Revealer of the Father, the Revealer that He is the Father of every man, and that He desires our perfect right- ness, and withholds no suffering which may help on that con- clusion. Ever affectionately yours, T. ERSKINE. From E. R. G. to ELLEN MARY GURNEY. 8 PALACE GARDENS, December 1866. I am feeling very much now the loss of my beloved Mrs. Stirling, Mr. Erskine's sister; the wise, guiding, loving mother- spirit at the interpreter's house. I do not now expect to see that precious place again. From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. LINLATHEN, September 27, 1868. MOST BELOVED CHILD, Here I am, sitting in this bright and yet sad drawing-room all alone, bright with recollections and sad with recollections. There are the two empty armchairs, and there are the beautiful pictures all round, at which dearest Mr. Erskine now never casts a glance. I think his pleasure in them is entirely gone. And there is the well-chosen library of books, neglected. He is a kind of mournful shadow of his past self. Perhaps that is almost too strong an expression, but it LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 27 expresses much of what he is. And yet at dinner yesterday, with Jane Mackellar and myself, he talked very cheerfully and much as usual ; but he evidently feels that he is here for a very little time, and that that time is one of very much darkness and suffering. You cannot think what an extraordinary day this is ; there is not a breath to stir the great trees, which are slightly tinged with autumn. Now, though it has been rainy and gloomy, there is such a lovely moonlight sunshine on the landscape. Mr. Erskine came in just as I was writing this, and I said to him, " You never look at your pictures, they look so beautiful ; " he just glanced round them and gave a melancholy smile, and then said, " I shall be blind very soon, but I leave it in the hands of God." . . . There's no sunlight to-day. I am not sorry ; the sun- light recalls their spirits more forcibly. Now there is a solemn waiting in the trees, no wind, something of the calm decay which seems suitable to the hour of life that is. Farewell. Oh, what memories, what memories we have together. YOUR OWN MOTHER. Mrs. Stirling entered into rest, December i, 1866. Mrs. Paterson ,, March 1867. Mr. Erskine March 23, 1870. In January 1866 Mr. Russell Gurney was appointed one of the Commissioners to Jamaica to investigate matters connected with the late disturbances there under Governor Eyre. His wife accompanied him, and they were there till April. Selections from her journal letters during this time, written to her mother, are given in a later part of this volume. From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. (written to Jamaica). THURSDAY, January 4, 1866. Oh, what a picture is printed on my mind of the great black hull of the Atrato on our horizon and the gloomy stormy sea on 28 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY which she set forth on her voyage, and the forms of you two beloved ones watching us to the last, and the white flags held up by those who seemed as sad almost as ourselves. We saw what a stormy night was setting in. Some men in our boat, who seemed to know about it, said that you would have a most quiet night, for that you would be sure not to set off in such weather ; that you would go to Yarmouth Roads and there wait till it moderated. This was a little comfort; but the whole thing has been one of those never-to-be-forgotten eras in life which cannot often occur, but which leave marks that are never obliterated. From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. (written to Jamaica). February 22, 1866. I had my Sunday at home alone. You may guess where my thoughts were most of the time. I wonder whether I shall learn any of my lessons ! The lesson seems harder and harder as I look more closely at it ; but my conviction of the necessity of its being learnt grows more intense. How is it that I have not learnt it long ago ? How little one's most intimate friends know the aspect things wear to us. Many say to me, " Are you not quite happy now ? " as if there were no unknown climate, no deep Atlantic to cross before I can see my beloved ones. Others say, " I hope you continue to receive good accounts," as if there were a post every day. Others, " Oh, I am sure they will be preserved in health and come safely back; they are gone on such a good errand." There's one secure footing, and one alone, the will of God. Yes, that is it; to feel that the will of God, whatever it may be, is holy, just, and good, and as such well for us. The lesson, then, to learn, is to love His will and not to be so solicitous to know what it may be for the future; to dwell upon the fact that His love is the love of a Father to all, whatever may seem to us inconsistent with it LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 29 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. SPANISH TOWN, JAMAICA, February 8, 1866. I want very much one of your refreshing awakening letters ; because I am in danger of letting my brain get very soft in this heat. We have seen nothing of the so-called beautiful parts of Jamaica, dwelling in this peculiarly dilapidated town. But the drives around I think lovely enough to make any one frantic ; the variety in the trees, all so strange and new, and so extra- ordinarily leafy and full of sap, and so decked with parasites, and the sleepy stream twisting beneath their great thirsty roots, and the bronze statues that bathe and wash there, and the perfumed luscious air, and the delicately pure, deep, distant sky with nearer clouds this is all more than enough. Of the nights I will not begin to rave, or you will know I am mad, and you won't write ; for that is what I most want here letters lest I should become quite a lotus eater, and hear all your voices very thin and far off, and give up returning to you. The blacks and whites are very perplexing here. I feel so much for both. I think the blacks are silly naughty children no, some silly good children, very, and you know the difficulty it is for elders to treat silly children well and wisely. A great amount of evidence is pouring in, of course of a very contradictory kind. The Commissioners work well together, and go at it most diligently. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. March 3, 1866. Here is the letter you ask for, though I do not feel adequate to counteract the wonderful lotus-eating spell you describe so well. I should fear, however, that Mr. Gurney's business would prove only too effectual a counteraction to any epicurean longing to rest in your present Paradise, giving such a very unquestionable proof that the spirit of man is not divine there. I should have thought that a very liberal Nature would have only set free the spiritual part of our being from all sordid cares to attain a richer 3 o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY development, but it does seem as if this was especially what wanted the resistance of material difficulties, in order to exercise itself rightly. Of course it is the negro race, as you say, which plays the part of silly children, but still there seems no virile development anywhere in the tropics. I am disappointed that the evidence seems so unfavourable to us. I would rather have discovered that the negroes had behaved badly than we. But how you will swear at me (if you ever do such a thing) for blow- ing back your own smoke in your face, when what you must long for is a little fresh air. And I must go on about you, for very few people have filled my mind as you have this last January. Your mother came and called upon me just at the worst time ; I was so touched by it ; but when I heard she was in the drawing- room I could hardly bear to go to her. Oh, what she must have undergone all through those storms ! The details of the loss of the London brought it all so vividly before my thoughts. After what you had told me of her, I felt somehow as if such a loss were more likely for her, and I wondered to find myself thinking of myself in it too. For you I think there would have been something enviable in that passage into another world together. Your mother said your first letters were to her like a parable of death ; while she had been in such agony, you had been waking up to this new world of magical beauty. You cannot think how that expression, "a parable of death," has haunted me. When all one's grief lies in the past, when once one begins to think of the departed as at home in the new abode, how one does long for some word to come from them ! Oh, I wonder if words do come, and we do not hear them ! if they write to us of a new world a spiritual tropics where the poor wearied spirit expands into a " perfumed, luscious air " like yours, and we can- not read their letters, or mistake them for something different ; or if we do not open them, that would be the worst ! I do feel in that terrible silence such an intense need to treasure up all the hints and suggestions of a future, of which this world seems to me to be full and yet not full enough. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 31 I cannot tell you this evening how welcome to me is your bright glimpse of tropical life. I want some escape from the contemplation of dreary, sordid English life as exhibited in a workhouse, which just now oppresses me, and your note gives a suggestion of something so different. I am sure I want pulling up to the surface much more than any one else can want pulling down into the depths (but I am afraid the former is much the most laborious occupation), and so my friends ought always to give me as much of their outward impressions as they can. I was interested in your expression about the unaffected part of oneself that looks on at all one's physical ills. I think this perplexity is often a real distress in illness, painful as it sounds. One of my cousins, who has suffered greatly for a year, and is so changed no one would know her, was saying she really should not care half so much if she had but a dolorometer that would tell her how bad she was. I have often felt that, but did not know it was a part of real serious illness. I think the result might sometimes be very mortifying, however, when the mercury would hardly rise at all after one had clamoured for sympathy as if one had been on the rack. I have been enjoying a visit so much to my uncle, Charles Darwin. He has one of the few minds I ever knew that can understand and philosophise upon its own limits ; e.g. he was speaking of his great love of Poetry as a young man, and how completely it had given way to his taste for science, and there was something so very accurate and subtle in his description of his incapacity ; it seemed wonderful to me his keeping the know- ledge of what poetry was, and yet losing his taste for it. He said, " Well, I suppose it is that in reading scientific books one has not properly taken them in unless one could put the meaning into other words, and so I have got into the habit of this attempt, and cannot help making it upon poetry, where it must fail." I was so much struck with any one who had lost the taste for poetry keep- ing the knowledge that this was just the test that marked it off 32 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY from other kinds of truth. It reminded me of a few words Mr. Erskine said to me once at Linlathen about Music, which he does not understand ; and yet it was a nearer attempt to a definition of the pleasure one receives from it than any words I ever heard about it. From Mrs. BATTEN to E. R. G. (written to Jamaica). March 5, 1866. How earnestly I hope that this letter may find you still at Jamaica; that you will not leave without having enjoyed with dearest Russell some tours in that wonderful place. Oh, my Emily, what a magical effect has your most charming of all and delightful and satisfactory letter had upon me. I think I felt almost as anxious about this letter (what I might hear) as before the last, and now again my sunbeam has shone brightly upon me ! Now, my anxiety is that you may not come away too quickly. Why dear Russell should hurry away immediately after finishing his work, without going to see those wonders of beauty which he will never have another opportunity of seeing, I cannot imagine. Oh, I feel so impatient at having no post to send off an earnest entreaty that you will stay. I trust and hope no idea of my being unhappy will for a moment come into your minds to weigh a feather in the scale; indeed, I think you know too well my earnest desire that you should see everything and have every advantage for that. I have been reading to-day in the Times such a description of a day spent in the country by their corre- spondent in Jamaica. It makes me most earnestly long that you should see it. However, this is not what you want to hear, and so I shall not fill any more of my letter with it, but go on in my journal style, as you like that the best . . . You say you pity us so much for not seeing tropical regions. Well, I do not feel any very ardent desire. I often think of your simile of the photographs. Do you remember when I said (with regret), " I shall see so few more springs," and you LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 33 said it was like a person in a dungeon that had only looked at photographs of the outside world, regretting that he must go out of his dungeon and leave them. Well, I really feel that as I never, never did before. So you are always helping me ! To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1866. It was delightful to get your note. I have sadly missed you and Mr. Gallon on our return. I find my mother so well. The arrival at Southampton, finding her, Uncle J., and Aunt E. to greet us where we had parted in such sorrow to go into a dark unknown future seemed like a glimpse of what a meeting again must be at the other end of the valley of the shadow of death. I hardly knew till I got home what a time of trembling one had gone through. It is such an unspeakable mercy that dear Russell keeps so well after such very hard, trying work, and now so immersed in various things. He is exceedingly interested in his parliament life, and so far it has not the least knocked him up. I must tell you I am more than ever satisfied with him. I do not see a trace of self-seeking in him, or the slightest hankering after the honour that comes from man. Watts has painted the most perfect portrait of him I ever saw " the form and colour of his mind and life." Strong and rigidly dutiful, but softened into loving-kindness by all the tints of years and experience. ... I cannot understand, year after year keeping in such a sunny sheltered spot as we do. I often say how will it feel when the sun goes in. I do not anticipate evil, but I want to make sure of the Centre Sun that goes not down. In 1866 Mrs. Russell Gurney's portrait was painted by Mr. Watts, and is alluded to in the following letter. A smaller portrait of Mr. Russell Gurney was also painted shortly afterwards by the same artist. This she wrote of at the time as " a miracle of Russell." It is now in the National Gallery. 34 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1866. Watts is painting Russell, to my joy, and in his velvet coat ; but only head and half a shoulder. / grow lovelier and lovelier every day. It is very funny to hear the different remarks. H. F. thinks my forehead very dirty, and that my eyes are red with crying. Mrs. P. thinks me an engaging young creature, without that maturity of thought and character for which she loves me. M. B. says, " It is Emily when I dream of her." Mrs. H. bursts into tears before it, and says, " Oh, how pitying ! and with the dear little hands praying. It is like you, but you are purified." Miss T. says, " It is an affected attitude, and not good-looking enough ! " Miss S. says the painting is very rough and patchy, she can't get over it. From a Friend to E. R. G., giving a recollection of some words of Mr. WATTS, in speaking of his portrait of Mr. RUSSELL GURNEY. Mr. Watts said that he always found great difficulty in portrait painting, because he never rested satisfied with reproducing what was merely apparent to the outer eye ; that he always studied the character until he could work out the inner self as much as possible : he spoke of the difficulty of this in a face like Mr. Jowett's. But he said in the instance of your beloved one, there was first such great beauty of feature, " but the beauty of mind and soul was such that I frequently forgot my work in the delight of studying it ; that picture was an immense pleasure to paint." To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. LlNLATHEN, l866. Your letter has come here to me in fog and far northness altogether ; but we have had a delightful visit near the Equator of the moral atmosphere, where the curtain is so thin between the inhabitants and the invisible world that their faces get re- flections from the angels, and we hear voices in the air and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 35 get visions just as the pilgrims did in the land of Beulah, and you cannot think how sweet that is. Tall beeches, with feathering branches sweeping to the smooth banks, keep guard around, and between them one sees in the distance below white sheep feeding in green pastures beside a stream. Inside the great drawing-room the walls are covered with real old Italian pictures, solemnly grand. But this is only the outward scenery. It is the spirit of the inhabitants which is so strangely beautiful and unlike workaday world spirits. You will know I mean Mr. Erskine and his two sisters. They are all delicate instruments, who have responded to the voice of the Lord all the years of their life. And this makes their tunes, both of joy and sorrow, so rarely elevated and ten- derly full of grace. The letters here given between Mrs. Russell Gurney and Lady Mount Temple (at this period Mrs. Cowper Temple) give only a faint reflection of the friendship and close bond of affection which existed and increased between them through all the latter half of Mrs. Russell Gurney's life. Her own impressions of the Broadlands " Confer- ences," in which it was her delight to take part each year, is given later on. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER TEMPLE. LINLATHEN, September 1866. I do not think the beloved circle of three here will remain much longer unbroken. There is a great increase of feebleness in all ; but I need not say that all are abiding in love, and the atmosphere around them is that of a tender, ripe autumn day. Mr. Erskine often repeats a sentence of Jacob Boehmen : " The element of the bird is the air, the element of the fish is the water, the element of the salamander is the fire, and the element of 36 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Jacob Boehmen is the Heart of God." He is dwelling much on the thought that God has made us to educate us, in opposition to the idea that He has placed us in a state of probation. That He would have us partakers of His Nature, and that He will not fail nor be discouraged in His work of drawing our wills to consent to this, nor be interrupted by death. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. BRIGHTON, 1866. Last Sunday we had a fine Advent sermon from Mr. Vaughan [Rev. James Vaughan of Christ Church]. I liked his saying we must always be having an Advent Sunday, again and again ex- pecting our Lord to come to us, and again and again going to Him. We are always wanting a fresh start a beginning again to do better ; a reawakening out of our sleep ; a raising again of claims, of relationships, duties, that we have let die. Christ must come and renew everything for us. Oh, that we may not shut the door against Him or leave Him no room with our crowd of vain thoughts ! To the same. PALACE GARDENS, 1867. At the water-colour exhibition a Cupid and Psyche by Burne- Jones pleased me more than any picture I have seen this year. I would hang it with A. Hughes's one of the lady proud to be guarded by her knight, of a year or two ago. Cupid had a scarf and wings to match of such glorious ruddy purple ; and the sky was deep, deep, solemn grey-blue, like Psyche's eyes, all fitted to receive His glory. There was about the whole picture the grand infinite solemn tone that ought to accompany passionate love in order that it may not be of the earth earthy. . . . You cannot think how many interesting people there are about, rich and poor. One does so long for a wider, deeper nature to contain all the sights and sounds that vibrate on ear and eye. I would say, " Grow, grow ! " to all. And I believe a right growth can only come from maintaining the constant attitude of LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 37 receiving, the child spirit before the Heavenly Father, which is the growing up into the Son in all things. Oh ! to keep up our aspirations for this is hard, but not impossible. To the same. 1868. I did mean to have sent you a line for your birthday. In truth, I feel how infinitely more valuable human beings become every year they live, and far more interesting as they get " some relish of the saltness of time," as Falstaff called it. There is, of course, a poetical beauty about buds and early morning, and a beauty of skin and texture, and a winning attraction in the simplicity and uncertainty of youthful creatures. But we may gain more valuable things than these. A strength, which infinitely enhances the value of tenderness ; a largeness of heart and mind, which grows out of experience ; and, above all, an in- creased knowledge of God and His dealings with ourselves and mankind, which increases our loving confidence in Him im- mensely beyond the early confidence of inherited belief in Him. Go on; grow large, wise, strong, tender, helpful to others, faith- ful to the high and holy calling, as you appreciate it more and more ! There are far-reaching birthday wishes. During the fortnight at Linlathen we had lovely weather also. Golden autumn beauties, and my blessed old beloved Mr. Erskine vanishing away into Eternal Life. I felt it such a gate of heaven to be there. Such an opportunity for a quick- ening of faith, for which I thank God. It is always my Sabbath there. From early youth to mature age I have been permitted to refresh myself there, and now I must expect it to be hidden out of sight, and must all the more try and drink at the Fountain. 38 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS WEDGWOOD FROM 1865 TO 1869. From Miss WEDGWOOD to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. December %, 1865. DEAREST MRS. GURNEY, I was thinking of you so much this morning ; I went in to Mr. Maurice for a little while, and he was talking so characteristically of those Pall Mall letters on Prayer. I said I had not much sympathy with the special prayers. He said, "I don't think I should have much either, but those letters of Tyndall's have converted me to that side." And he went on so very emphatically, "When any one says disorder is a part of order, I feel that, at all events, the argument which leads to that must be wrong." I never can quite make out what Mr. M. ultimately means; he was arguing in favour of the prayers against the cattle plague, yet he said he entirely sympathised with my feeling that it was unwise to bring wishes about events into that influence of prayer (so that we might ever feel that God had disappointed us), and I cannot see the con- sistency of these two views. There is something in his mind which curiously does not see that if a thing is true the contrary of it must be false. I cannot quite make up my mind whether it is because he sees further than most people or (in this direction) not so far, for it is something quite distinct from Robertson's feeling about opposite truths, which always seems to me the car- dinal point of all truth. From Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY to Miss WEDGWOOD. BRIGHTON, December 15, 1865. DEAREST Miss WEDGWOOD, What you said of Mr. M. in- terested me very much. I am always questioning as to whether he sees deeper than others or less deep. I think, though, he looks quite in a different direction from those who are gener- ally discussing such subjects as that of Prayer. He neither looks at it from the religious world point nor from the logical. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 39 What you said to me about the subject at Palace Gardens gave me more light than I have had about the region that you ex- pected to be influenced by prayer, not physical nature, but spiritual nature; and perhaps through spiritual nature the phy- sical may be affected, the cattle plague, for instance, by the minds of men being instructed to deal with it. Again a week has passed since I began this. Visitors have only just left us the . He is most interesting ; he seems closely allied to all the chain of animal life, and describes their ways and nature with an entertaining sympathy. His joy in natural science is beautiful and childlike ; but it is the joy of a child who has found a rare and complicated machine, that he is becoming acquainted with. Alas ! the machine does not seem to him set going by a Father, and pervaded by a Father's love. I don't like Carlyle's bit about illusive hope. I should say the hope he sets forth as a blessing is delusive hope ; if we are hurrying to a black Erebus, let us have our eyes open. The only illusion I would accept is, when the end and purpose is Light, the being lured on to it by the beams that come up from the Central Light, and seem till we get up to them the Central Light itself; and they are types of it, or even parts of it. I liked your letter very much, and I feel as if your mind could help mine very much indeed. I want to dive a deal more, but it seems I am not likely to do so very soon. We are probably to take a flight to Jamaica very soon. It seems such a suddenly new slide in our magic lantern. Russell has been so pressed to go by the Colonial Office that he feels he cannot refuse, to be on the Commission of Enquiry. We should probably be absent three months. The leaving dearest mother is the thorn, and she feels it so much and will feel it. But in other ways (except that my husband says he shall feel it anxious and painful work) I rejoice. I long to see something of tropics and blacks, and expect to be highly entertained. Will you promise to write me an immense letter if we do go ? I am thankful for the gain of your friendship. Believe me ever, very affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. 4 o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS,/**/? 1866. . . . The great press of things has passed, but my mind feels frayed out sadly. I have no excuse for being bewildered, for really I have not half the claims of society, &c., that most London people have. I did not know you were still at Lin- lathen ; it must be delightful in this hot weather. I should like to sit with you in the Beech Walk. I should like to know how Mr. E. is getting on with what he is about, and whether you feel you can help him. When you leave Linlathen, if you come to London next, will you make a point of coming quite fresh to me. I should enjoy beyond anything getting you with the dew still upon you, for here it is very dusty. There are very beautiful sweet things about, only we want minds more at leisure fully to taste them. My true love to you and to the spiritual beings you are with. Your very affectionate EMELIA GURNEY. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. LINLATHEN, July 1866. I send you, as you ask, a few recollections of Mr. E.'s con- versation (or rather monologue) with me. It was interesting to me from its sharp contrast with the conventional point of view, which is what I have also differed from so strongly, that Justice is a coarse, rude virtue which is embodied in our legal dealings with each other, while Mercy (as we call it in God) or generosity (as among ourselves) is something both more extensive and delicate, so that it includes Justice and much besides. It always seems to me that there could not be more appropriate words to describe the exact opposite of the truth. Generosity is the half-way house to justice, that we must aim at before proceeding further on our journey ; and laws do not even get, or attempt to get, so far as this : they stop at a coarse kind of honesty that undertakes to supply remedies for the worst inconveniences of our wrong-doings, and have absolutely no regard to anything ultimate. So that it is LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 41 justice which seems to me the subtle and delicate quality that comes into play in our more perfect relations, while generosity is what we are bound to show towards all. A recollection 0/"Mr. ERSKINE'S conversation. The relation of man to God has suffered in our imagination by being compared to that between a judge and a criminal. All analogies taken from the legal relations between human beings are misleading, as applied to the divine attitude towards us. The judge has not to consider justice towards the criminal at all. He has nothing to do with the question of the deserts of a particular person. All he has to think of is his own duty towards his country, his fidelity to a particular decision which that country has embodied in a law, which law may or may not be a just one. As man to man, he might act towards the accused person in a manner diametrically opposite to that which he has no excuse for evading as a judge, not that as the man he would show mercy and as the judge he must observe justice, but that as the judge he must not observe justice ; that as filling that office he must put out of his mind that estimate of individual claims which is of the essence of justice. Now it is plain that this, which is of the very essence of the right condition of a judge, can find nothing at all analogous to it in the dealings of God with the soul. He must act to that soul as if it were the only recipient of His care in the universe. He has nothing at all to consider which can form a parallel to those claims of the country which for a judge are paramount ; that subordination of the one to the many, which is of the very essence of our laws, is the first thing to put aside in apprehending our position towards God. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. BIRNAM HOTEL, DUNKEI.D, September 18, 1866. DEAREST SNOW, I quite believe that now and then old friends may grow in a very short time. I think that some friend- 42 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY ships derive almost all their value from the length of time they have endured and proved themselves, but just a few have nothing at all to do with time. Now I feel I need you so much ; you have the qualities that I do crave for to stimulate me and make me feel well, so that I must lay hold of you and keep you. The look of your handwriting always makes me feel thirsty, and when I have read your letter twice it has given me the satisfied sensation of a drink of fresh water. I hope on your side there is some satis- faction in giving me to drink. Never think / shall say, " Not a word of your philosophy I beg." On the contrary, my voice would always be going into your ear if it could, saying, " Tell me some more." " Give me some of your oil, for my lamp is gone out," is my motto, I am ashamed to say ; such a hankering after feeding it from others, rather than going to those that sell. And you have no idea how wickedly intolerant this makes me feel to those who have a still more feebly burning lamp than my own. I feel they have no right to exist at all ! We have been a long walk in this lovely place, by the side of a true Scotch stream of transparent brown water, interrupted by mossy tumbled-about stones, and small rocks, making white foam between the shelves, where the golden water lies quite still, and the banks are daintily decked with green and gold ferns and tufts of heather. It is more engaging than a glacier stream which foams and boils so that little leaves can't grow peacefully by it, besides that is soapy instead of transparent. A tropical stream is better than either ; it is not so joyous and innocent as a Scotch one, nor is it rough and rude like a Swiss one, but grand and delicate too, as if meant for nobler beings to be soothed by into nobler visions. The great feathery bamboos set themselves in aisles beside it and roof it in ; and the phosphorescent green light that is netted about it by them makes it gleam wondrously, and where it sleeps in great wide pools the large white Datura bells crowd round, casting long pearl reflections midst the green depths. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 43 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. BEDFORD HOTEL, BRIGHTON, December 27, 1866. MY DEAREST SNOW, It was so good of you to send me beloved Mr. Erskine's note : it seems wonderful to be reminded that he is in the land of the living. I think of him as cur- tained in somewhere like Hades. No, even I, sitting in the sunshine, can't say anything seems " merry " : that word will not do for any one but children, I think ; for those whose eyes have never been opened to see a breaking heart. Shall we ever feel merry again, in a new stage of existence? Is anything like childhood renewed? I hope it may be, and that we may dance and sing, however utterly im- possible it now seems. I have felt the death of a dear old coachman we have had for thirteen years very much. I could not bear him to die. Less, I mean, than some one I might have loved better. I think the touching, grievous thing seemed that one so familiar, so externally interwoven with the brightest parts of our every- day lives, should vanish out of them so unknown; that he should just have lived to serve us faithfully and then vanish whither? One does not feel as if one could ever find him again. Now I am interrupted by watching the long line of the waves as it comes up spoiling and fraying out, sooner or later, all along the curve ; and my thoughts seem like that, never forming them- selves properly or concentrating, but going nohow. Being here again, as we were at this time last year, with the thought of going to Jamaica, makes one recall very vividly the impression one had of going forward as one did into the dark, and how pleasantly we were led by the hand and surprised with good things, and came back and joined on with our dear ones where we had left off. 44 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. i CUMBERLAND PLACE, N.W., December 30, 1 866. DEAREST EMILY, I am glad to think of you at Brighton this delicious October weather, for one can hardly believe we have not miscalculated two months this year. The autumn seems lingering to meet the spring, but I fear winter will con- trive to elbow them asunder with the New Year. The sea breezes must be very refreshing this weather, though rather too strong, I should think, and your description of the "fraying out" line of breakers brought the whole scene very vividly before me; one is never tired of watching that rhyth- mical motion, though the waves never get their white trimming quite neatly finished off. I always look at the waves with a sense of gratitude to Ruskin ; there are so many details in that picture that I never should have seen without his magnifying- glass ; and when one has once looked through it, one can see them without it. I think the man who has taught us to look at the waves and the clouds ought to be allowed to talk a little folly without being sneered at. I care much less for his inter- pretation of the exceptional aspects of nature; but when one thinks that clouds are everywhere, and waves always accessible, and that he has really taught us to see them, I do think we ought to be merciful to our benefactor when he gets upon that human ground, where I think he is almost always unfortunate. ... I think I have often quoted to you Mr. Watts's speech, which I heard at second-hand, about the need of painting not forgetting its relationship to music (not that those were the words) ; and I am reminded of it whenever I look at that picture of you and of Mr. R. G., for there is something musical in both, something effective without detail, and untranslatable into words. I think that is the test. I was looking at Orion last night through the shifting clouds, and the two seemed to me such a symbol of the things of eternity and the things of time, and then I thought how much LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 45 more one estimated the stationary objects when one contem- plated them through that changing medium, and how much truer a value might be gained of the everlasting when we had gone through all the changes of time. But one is very weary sometimes of the region of hopes and fears that come before those great certainties, and some- times quite shut them out. I hope this coming year will leave you as you are, dear Emily, and it is a great comfort to me that there is one of my friends for whom that is my New Year's wish. There is a growth that it does not exclude; but how much besides forms part of any hope for most of those one loves ! Some impossible subtraction or addition that seems so necessary, no rationalism will silence the craving for it. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, February 6, 1867. I am so thankful to you for telling me it was your birthday, and so my first thoughts this morning rushed to you, and up for you. You are a blessed creature, Snow, because you are rich enough to give so much to others; so much love and tender, fine sympathy, and so much mind, all warm and alive from your heart. from Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CUMBERLAND PLACE, February 1867. . . . Why should you find the dining-out world "a vain show"? They are all human souls, but yet, as you say, it is like passing places on the railroad. I often think one wants two lives. I should like a whole one for my friends. One wonders sometimes why there is so much waste in life; why one piles the fire so often, and cannot find a match ; and what is the meaning of the continual mysterious hindrance that comes in when pleasure, if not joy, seems at one's feet, and one does not taste it. The infinite desire and the finite capacity seem 46 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY to manifest themselves in such small things. I feel society specially perplexing, for I am sure the net result in the way of enjoyment is wonderfully small in proportion to all that is expended upon it. I had a charming evening with the Maurices on Sunday to bid good-bye ; it was one of those rare times when he seemed quite at ease. I wonder why that is so seldom, with all his humility and trust, which I should have thought the conditions of ease. From Mr. THOMAS ERSKINE to Miss WEDGWOOD. 13 SHANDWICK PLACE, June 5, 1867. So your beloved aunt, my old well-tried friend, has got a touch which separates her from us till the mortal is put off. No pain or anguish separates us from any one ; but when you look in a face, where you have always found a ready perception or even an anticipation of your meaning, and find no response, you must for comfort go back to the great Fountain of spiritual life, assured that the full personality of your friend is there in safe keeping, and will at the right time reappear. I have had much loving intercourse with her, and I have always found good in her and faithfulness. I never had a cold or indifferent look or sound from her. Yours ever affectionately, T. ERSKINE. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, July n, 1867. DEAREST SNOW, I thought of you often on Monday, and then of the arrival on Tuesday. I knew so well how every inch of the place looked. The shadow of the house on that loose grey gravel, that long passage and the pictures, and the beloved man in his library. The drawing-room must look desolate. I bless you for being there. I only hope your spirits are not too depressed. I can't join with those who call Linlathen so ugly, though I know what they mean. It strikes me so much more as being a LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 47 place not in the flesh, but that one has known in some other phase of existence, a place built for seeing visions and hearing voices. E. C. has been staying two days with me, a farewell visit before going to India. She has kept whiter, more utterly un- stained garments than any human being I ever saw; the only thing I don't like about her is, that she makes all others seem made of clay after one has gazed at her, because she is of seraph material. I thought of what you repeated of the pathos of reti- cence ; there is that about her greatly. It is an aggravating quality, though, in a friend whose heart you yearn to have unfolded to you. The kind of music she makes has not a wide range, but it is strangely distinct and fine and pure. It does not lure one to any new paths, or kindle thoughts or aspirations, and she can't write letters ; so when she is gone to India it will be pretty much as if she were in heaven, where one naturally imagines her if she is out of sight. I wish I could make a right message to send to Mr. Erskine, but he knows how I love and honour and would fain be near him. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. LINLATHBN, Summer of 1867 . I do so long in this house for a little vista towards the world. The eternal principles seem to me somewhat impoverished by being contemplated so exclusively apart from all illustration in the things of time. While we are changing our king, electing a new sovereign by lot, as the Spectator puts it ; while we watch such a tragedy as the Mexican issue; and while all the thought that connects itself with the physical world is so active and so potent it is to me almost stifling to recede into this little nook where there is no glimpse of these things. Do you think me very wicked to feel all this on the second day of my stay? But the fact is one feels this most at first. After a long time, indeed, one comes back to it, but it is the first taste of life without so many of its intellectual condiments that is unpalatable, even when the bread of life is a large part of one's fare. 48 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. August 12, 1867. Good measure, pressed down and running over, dearest Snow, you give into my bosom in return for a poor word. How de- lightful the certainty of a response is ! I rejoice in such an immovable conviction that I shall never look to you in vain. You have quite let me see how Mr. Erskine and you are going on, and the beeches and sunsets too. I think you might expect the book to take an outward form a little more than you do. ... I can appreciate your distinction between indecision from feebleness of wishes and complexity of wishes. In drawing and in looking at sketches lately, I have been so struck with the power that some have of seizing on and emphasizing the leading lines in the midst of complexity of lines ; the power of choice of these, and seeing their relative value amongst so many, must arise from a healthy instinct more than from any process of reasoning, I should think. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 1867. It seemed just like a Linlathen flower that came to me this morning, all perfumed with that peculiar scent, and evolved in that distinctive form, which no other atmosphere or soil could have grown. Did you read about the " white stone " that no man knows, in Mr. MacDonald's sermons ? I liked some of it very much. He makes it out to be the peculiar individuality of each person which enables him to reflect one ray of God's character that no one else can. Your letter reminded me of that, because it gave me a peculiar joy in a glimpse of Mr. Erskine and of you intrinsically. Sometimes a little touch of humour does that more than anything ; the kind of play showing what the creature is, as different from every other. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 49 From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. LlNLATHEN, August 24, 1867. Any word from you about Switzerland, &c., I am sure would be a great interest to Mr. Erskine. Sometimes I glean a scrap from a newspaper, but that is rare, which I am sorry for, for I think where the old keep their tastes for them they supply a good deal of the kind of light mental exercise of fiction with something of the kind of value one gets from other books. I feel as if I had been gliding on so peacefully through this time, resting on my oars, and borne through peaceful landscape. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1867. I have been delighting to think that the Stanleys and Mr. Campbell were at Linlathen while you are. I shall like to hear some time or other your impression of Mr. Campbell ; he seemed to me quite an ideal saint, and yet so reasonable ! I wonder whether you would find him so. Probably the Dean will not leave you the opportunity of coming into very close quarters with Mr. Campbell. Your last letter was full of living, kindling thoughts to me. I think you have been given to me to help me against the comfortable, deadening, sleepy atmosphere of middle age. I assure you I have felt the fatness of forty creeping over my spirit. ... I had finished my note to you, came down, and found the postman at the door giving in your dear letter. You were filling my mind, and it seemed such a quick flash from you. Oh, how thankful I am to be counted in that Linlathen circle ! From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. LINLATHEN, 1867. I wanted to tell you of Mr. Campbell's visit, which has been a great delight to me. We had several most interesting talks. 50 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY I think your description of him peculiarly appropriate, and it is brought out here by his contrast to the Saint, who, whatever else he is, is certainly not reasonable. I think the epithet saintly applies more exactly to Mr. Campbell than to any other of those in connection with whom it suggests itself so far, at least, as one can form an opinion from mere demeanour, which I think is the largest element of one's opinion in any case. There is the look of calm patience in his face, that is more to me the saintly quality than the spiritual insight in which Mr. Erskine goes beyond him. It is curious, and it ought to be instructive as to tolerance, to see three men whose goodness is so mutually exclusive. I think the characteristic quality in each of them is peculiar to himself; neither Mr. E. nor Mr. C. have Stanley's breadth of view, and they have much more that ^he has not. But he is really a delightful little man, and here he, as indeed everybody else, shows off to great advantage in sharing that bond of common love that brings out all sympathy and obli- terates all divergence. He has just been at breakfast quoting a saying of Faraday, that came to me so wonderfully, and yet the words are very commonplace as one writes them down. Dr. Acland, talking to him (Faraday) of a future state, " What do you suppose we shall be, Mr. F. ? " " Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what He hath prepared for them that love Him, but I know that we shall be with Jesus Christ." Now it seems stupid to have written that, since I cannot write down the Dean's voice in telling it; and somehow those words and tones come more home to me from mundane men (I don't want to use the word worldly) than from this beloved one [Mr. E.], who so often seems to think light is made to see, not to see by. The Stanleys are just going. I grieve to lose the crisp, cool brightness of the little Dean, so alien to all gloom ; but I think I feel this more than Mr. E. does. I am spiritually writing advice to the aged all my time, but it is true that this must all be prospective to the thirties and forties. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 51 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. ENGELBERG, September 16, 1867. ... I need not tell you how you brought Linlathen to me up above a pine forest, on a platform straight above that blue- green smiling Lucerne lake ; everything in brilliant rejoicing, the dragon-flies dancing and flashing about seemed the spirits of the place. The " crisp, cool brightness " of the little Dean would do very well amongst them ; but the great shadows of those two sad seers would fade the colours out of their wings. Can any feel as deeply as they do God's purpose for man and man's failure in reaching that purpose, and yet fully rejoice in the sunshine with sunshiny things ? I was so glad you told me that about dear old Faraday. How blessed for him fully to know we should be with Jesus Christ, and to have a glimpse of the fulness to be found in Him ! Calling the stars by their names and binding up the broken hearts ! What an infinite distance there seems between these two things to us ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. LINLATHEN, October 24, 1867. In this room you wrote to me and remembered the time when we had met in it ; and here I find your spirit haunting, and I must speak to you. I wish you could see these trees slowly burning away in such rich loveliness ; it is such a fit framework for these last Linlathen days, and accords so well with the tone in which I find Mr. Erskine. I never saw him so sweet, and still, and content, and finished. In the dusk on Monday he came out half-way to the lodge and met the fly, and I walked with him up to the door. He spoke of them directly, and how he felt sometimes as if he had no business there, but that he must go and find them ; and then of them and their love as being witnesses for God. And you know all he would say, and you know so much more than what he would say. You know how one sees his spirit responding to a call and finding itself at home 52 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY in listening to a Father's voice. It is so well to be here. I did not know how much more contentedly I could see this winding up and completion than hear of it and fancy it. I am constantly reminded of Mrs. Paterson's words, " All one life the life here and the life there." There was a special unity about their life, and it seems going on still in an undertone, veiled only ; one does not seem to wonder where they are or what they are doing ; one has only to think of them continuing. " Are we all down ? " he said, when he took me in to dinner, and then repeated the words " all down," with his emphasis and look ; and I felt they were just waiting upstairs till we had done with our eating and drinking. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. RAVENSBOURNE, BROMLEY, October 26, 1867. I must thank you, my E., for your Linlathen waft of this morning, rich with the fragrance of many different memories to me, besides what is essential to itself. How well I imagine that dark meeting in the drive and your slow walk up, and then the dinner. I think it is so true what you say, that one can better bear to see than to hear of any finishing. I cannot help longing to keep him a little longer, he is so very precious to me. And I should be sorry for my own sake if the book were done, and we had nothing to fiddle-faddle over together. Yours is a more unselfish kind of intercourse ; you have not that craving for somebody to look after that I have. Indeed, your craving must be rather for more time and power to give to the many who need you. I feel as if I had got to the edge of all my best bit of life, and should soon be left all forlorn with nobody to lean upon me, which, paradoxically, is the only thing that keeps me upright. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. February 5, 1868. I have so very much enjoyed Mr. Maurice's four sermons, " The Ground and Object of Hope for Mankind." You know I LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 53 have not much cared for his lately; but these seem sung, not said, and have lifted me up with his aspiring harmonies. Do tell me if you like them too. One sentence about St. Paul seems to express what I fancy Mr. Maurice feels about himself, " that sense of personal insignificance which is most exquisitely painful when it is accompanied with burning zeal and the certainty of a grand vocation." I thought over what you said about conscience being to the spiritual world like sensation to the material. I should very much like to have that sentence from Scott's letter you showed me, if you did not mind copying it for me. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. 1868. . . . When was saying it did not seem to her very different whether one said, "It is a mystery," or, " we can't be quite certain about it," I felt so overwhelmingly that it was all the difference that I could not make any reply at all. The thing always perplexing to me is that those who look upon the existence of God and the future world as a matter of inference, who do not believe in Him just as they believe in one another, can think there is any ground for a strong opinion in the matter. I think, apart from that conviction which answers to the touch of the material world, I should believe that there was some probability of a mind at work in this vast framework. But the love that lets no sparrow fall unnoticed to the ground ! where would one see any trace of it? Where could one see any- thing that looked like any accurate justice, or any power of regulating the minutiae of a life's history, and apart from this what should we mean by God ? On the one hand, there might be some great unseen King who had more power than human beings ; on the other, some subtle force like electricity. But that on which we rest in turning to God, that which comes into our souls like a purifying stream, would be blotted out of existence. In writing to M. it flashed upon me that the world of nature, being wholly God's work, could not show any trace of God. Is it 54 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY that men's thoughts are so riveted on this picture, where no touch can be distinguished as divine because all are divine, that they forget the artist altogether ? Or is it some actual subtraction .of something that former ages possessed, and is He trying whether we can esteem the hope of Him above all other certainty ? from Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. TENBY,/* 1868. . . . My dear little hostess (aged 87) is the survivor of a family brought up under a terrible regime such as one never hears the like of now, and she was made of the stuff that was only braced by it, and in her clear bright evening her society is very reposing after the kind of sick-room atmosphere I have been living in. It is not an ideal old age ; she is a little too independent, but I hardly know any one who so much gives me the sense of health as she. There is a curious deposit of evangelical sympathy in her mind, which is one utterly alien to evangelicism ; her affec- tion for a much-loved nephew, lately dead (that among other things), makes her mind an interesting study to me. At one moment I take up a tract, and fancy myself at Milton [the home of her friend Miss Thornton], the next I hear her declare with much unction, "I don't object to heresy," and Milton recedes into the remotest distance. How curious are the intellectual traces of love ! I should be at such utter loss to understand the presence of these tracts, if my cousin's photograph were not still benignly looking down upon them. How often, I fancy, some such image might explain much that is for us inexplicable. I could not but be highly amused on hearing that one of these tracts, highly prized by my poor cousin, had been sent off as fitting medicine for an obstreperous Eton nephew. That fact gives you an utterly wrong idea of my little eighteenth century aunt, and shows how much actions are worth as witness to character. Light and heat go together ; what is the strange dislocation of their spiritual correlatives ? I was thinking of it to-day when I was drawing, and remem- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 55 bered that to give the effect of the sunlight I saw I must oniy put in half the shadows. Perhaps in the same way to give the effect of the good one sees, one should only express half the evil, and I in uttering the whole of my protest or criticism, positively misrepresent it. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, June ir, 1868. Your letter was full of gold to my poverty-stricken mental condition. I am ashamed of living a life of busy nothingness ; is not a sick-room atmosphere better than that? Not that we are going out much, but it seems a perpetual rush with notes, and one little stupidity after another. How delightful that fairy of eighty-seven must be. I suppose you have now left her, but I began to write to you fancying you beneath her roof. Yes, I see how much the affections influence the intellect; almost hopelessly so sometimes. But I cannot understand it for myself, for I don't think I feel a bit more inclined to follow the creed of one I love than of one I hate. . . . I have been thinking over your words " the great momentum of life." I want to realise that more ; something to prevent its all going off in scattered spray. And it seems to me if this were more realised one would be so much less confused and giddy with it. But C. E. S. feels it the other way, that it is so tremen- dous and awful that we must turn away our eyes. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. June, 1868. Oh, what a gift you are to me ! How little did I think in middle age to have such a new friend, suddenly born to me with no end of unexpected, unimagined qualities ; but more wonderful than anything the kind of sympathy and affection that I always thought could only ripen by long, slow degrees. How can it be ? except that the friendship began in a sort of spiritual tropics 56 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY where wonder flowers bud and blossom and come to ripe glowing maturity independently of the usual succession of seasons. Your letter did not look like yours, and was such a delightful surprise when I opened it ; and then came such a rich, living stream of precious sympathy. How various is the value of that article according to the nature it comes from. . . . No, I did not feel the " rapture snatched from great peril." l I am afraid to let myself feel it ; the peril is present to me every day. I dare not cling passionately to the thread I hold by. I am constantly trying to feel I will be ready to let it go. It is, it has been so exquisitely precious that it must be enough for me however soon it goes out of sight. No, that wife could not tell you what made her husband so beautiful to her, any more than you could describe the colour that there is in a glacier chasm to a blind man. I feel as if I had looked into his soul and seen that kind of reflection of heaven there. I have had time to look and see ; that is enough. Yet day by day it is indeed bliss to have the joy and charm and light and exercise of life continued by his visible presence and his visible need of me. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1868. . . . Then to luncheon with dearest mother, who is particu- larly well ; the two Hereford saints with her. They are so exquisitely good, I always feel inclined to cry when I think of them ; and they cherish me, and think no evil of me, though silently I so diverge from their principles, and in outward life too, yet the blessed ones never condemn. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. SOUTHAMPTON, 1868. And are you alone, just you two at Linlathen? And that other one abiding under a dark cloud. I am surprised that you 1 After an illness of her husband. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 57 think suffering without an external tangible cause less distressing to behold. Certainly it is less bad for you than having to stand by St. Lorenzo on his gridiron, or St. Sebastian thickly studded with arrows ; but then those sufferings are comparatively short, and your whole being is concentrated to support them. But the dragging through the petty details of everyday life unuplifted by a great emergency, with this slow anguish poisoning all life at its spring, is very horrible and desolate ! I never shall forget a week with dearest uncle J. S. while he was under such a cloud. I never could persuade myself that it was morbid. It was so completely realising what one had been brought up to think a real condition of soul, the being shut out from the light of that countenance in whose favour is life and health. I don't know whether it is disease or not that brings some souls into absorb- ing consciousness of the infinite light and the infinite darkness that are round about us. How vividly Mr. Erskine last year described to me the sense of joy in God that flowed into his spirit two or three weeks before I saw him. What you say I am sure is so true, that the light is intended to see by, and not to see. Yet I think there may be exceptional spirits that may stand apart and gaze towards the sunrise, and weary and moan when it seems so long coming. It is the evangelical error to shut the spirit up by force to contemplate what that school considers the "one thing needful," and most pernicious and dwarfing is such a system, I am sure ; yet I cannot doubt that a few have such a sense of a mysterious claim upon them, and such a hungering and thirsting after direct intercourse with the Father of their spirits, that they are starved without it, and that they can perceive no beauty or meaning in anything around them while this sense is unsatisfied. I think it is well for us that there are some such ardent, though perhaps (I was going to say) narrow souls, only that word seems so utterly inappro- priate to the blessed man; but circumscribed, in as far as it does not spread itself out to receive more of the widely mani- fold reflected rays of light. How your letter has made me long to be with you ! It is true enough I could be of no avail ; but 58 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY only satisfy my own longing to be near one so blessed and so long beloved while he is sitting in the Valley of the Shadow of Death. I fancy I hear the words said to him, "O tarry thou the Lord's leisure; be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart." It does seem sometimes as if He would break the bruised reed, and as if He did not know our frame, or pity us half enough. If He has not some very great design for us, He is cruel to have called us into being. ... I was reading your letter to myself this morning with sitting at my side. Oh, the incalculable gulf between that man and the image you brought before me at Linlathen! We hear of light taking a million years to travel from some star on the outskirts of our universe to us, but that calculation shuts out the idea of the distance being infinite; but the chasm between such a spirit as Mr. Erskine's, with all its hopes and fears and needs, and this man's, cannot be bridged over. No sane person could even try to make them understand each other. It is very tiring to try and come in contact with spirits that are so infinitely wide apart I suppose George Eliot could talk with each his own language on his own topics; but I feel utterly aghast at these chasms. Beloved Mr. Erskine! I have been looking and looking at his photograph. He looks as if so many waves and storms had passed over him ; as if he needed to be landed on a tropical shore. There must be a region nearer to the sun of righteous- ness where the trees are full of sap, and where they flush into blossom in a day. I never shall forget the sensation of that first walk in Jamaica. Why, here is what I have been longing for and yearning for from my earliest infancy to this moment ; it was like waking and being satisfied. Will it be so in one of the many mansions? Did you read that bit of Tyndall's address in the Times? I lost it again directly, but it gave me the feeling of the curtain being about to rise up, and the spiritual world to become apparent ! We do want it so dismally ! LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 59 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. MARINE HOTEL, WORTHING, August 7, 1868. There is no intellectual life about me to tell you of. The glory of the weather since we came here has lifted this ordinary little place into something ideal. It has just uninterruptedly impressed upon one the unity of effect of all pervading sun- shine wide, wide, pale blue sky above, wide, wide, pale blue sea beneath. Free space, and sunshine all through it. Does that seem to you too glaring? To me it is very sweet, with the sound of water, and no faces we know ; no sights of squalid misery, no external claims of any kind ; it is very restful. We are close to the nice pier. We go there half-an-hour before breakfast and read our psalms together. And then again sit there under an awning and read to ourselves till 11.30. The water splashes up and down against the supports of the pier, and little boats curtsey about, making light emerald green spaces in their shade. I am reading there Lacordaire's Life by the Abbe Chocarne very interesting; the language and the R. C. ideas taking me into another horizon I like. Then we come into a nice green-blinded room, and I draw, and R. reads me Shakespeare; then come letters and answering them till 4.30, when we drive till dinner. And afterwards, oh ! the moonlights that we have had over the sea; the reflections sometimes so large and slippery, and then all crinkled, and then a long path- way to the abrupt edge of the "under-world." I do not feel "cet inexorable ennui qui fait le fond de la vie" so much (in fact, not at all) in this monotonous life, as in our holidays where we have more exciting natural beauties, and more mixture with dull human beings. Dear Russell has all kinds of bothers about Southampton, but he is very good about not worrying. He is gone to town to-day, and I have time to realise how much the presence of his dear, even, generous nature helps me to enjoy the space and the sunshine. 60 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY I hear from dear mother out of a very different region, every day. She is much alone and she broods over the state of the country almost with despair. The election speeches are bitter wormwood to her, or rather poisonous lies which will extinguish the truth throughout this generation. The Irish Church will go, the English Church' and Popery will come in like a flood, and no one holds up a banner. In order to comfort herself she reads Mr. Elliott's Horce Apocalyptica, and thinks she be- lieves that Christ's coming and Antichrist's destruction are near. Such ingenious schemes as his seem to me infinitely little. But I venerate dear mother's intense feeling for her country, and apprehension of the evil days she sees approaching, and earnest desire to do something against error and for the Truth. Could one agree with Matthew Arnold and yet be energetic and in earnest at the same time? Have you read Caroline Stephen's " Thoughtfulness in Dress " and Miss Garrett's " Women Physicians " in Macmillan ? I saw them both in MS. and liked them. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. LlNLATHEN, l868. I was talking to an acquaintance the other day about the old and new geology the one with its " cataclysms," its sudden effervescence of force, the other with its enormous periods of time. I was saying the impulse of one's mind was rather to believe in the older, as one saw so much in the rocks one could not imagine as the result of any kind of gradual agency, and he urged that in all cases the results of time would look to us like the results of force ; and I thought how in one's inward life the illusion was precisely inverted, how sudden moments copied the effects of years, so that all we imply by " an old friendship " might be achieved in a few days ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. August 1868. Your letter came to me just when I was full of the impression of Lacordaire, and had been musing over his morbid love of LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 61 crucifixion, a thirst to be scourged and trampled on and despised by his brother monks. There was something so real and wise about the man, and yet this seemed to me so unreal ; I wondered what the true root could be of the excesses he practised. Your speaking of a kind of self-abhorrence and consciousness of hypocrisy in Mr. Erskine seemed to throw a certain amount of light upon it. I feel so much your view of our being poor, in- firm, pitiable creatures, who will be tenderly dealt with and helped onward by degrees, and that they can hardly have need to groan and agonise for themselves and others that they have fallen so short of a standard it was not in them to attain. Yet, no doubt, some of the holier and most exalted spirits have felt this, and it seems like a sharing of the mind of Christ. Perhaps some are to walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death all the way up- ward. There is to be such a fulness of experience in that com- plete Man, which is to be composed of members made from all people and kindreds and tongues. There are so many notes in the wide scale ; who shall respond completely to the minors and majors ! When I think of this compass and of this intricacy, I feel with the Yorkshire man who said, " What with the fuzzing and buzzing, and what with the earth a-going round the sun, and what with Faath, I am well-nigh muddled and doited." The seagulls opposite are in such perfect harmony with the waves ; they know exactly what influences to respond to. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. BASSET HEATH, SOUTHAMPTON, November 1868. I can't think why I let the days pass without sending just a scrap at least. Just now I feel so far away from you and Linlathen, and the little world that surrounds me cannot be taken to you. Yet I have had such near glimpses of you through mother, and she sent me your dear tender note to her after she left, about which she told me that as to any use or comfort she could have been to you, you took quite an exag- gerated view. But I am sure her absence must have been a large gap. There is something impressive in her I fancy that 62 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY makes her presence felt. She has such a very strong, decided outline. Your letter has brought that closing autumn before me in- deed! I had lately not thought about his fading quite away from us ; the other fear had put this out. How dear and blessed of you to stay on and on with him ; all through the evening and almost night. I could wish that you might be with him quite to the end. But you must fix a limit to your time ; I shall think of you going this day fortnight. I suppose I have seen Linlathen for the last time. Do you know what it is to put things bye for weighing duly at another time ? When it will be I know not, but I feel as if some time I must sit and realise Linlathen and those beloved ones and their message to me, and their pathetic beauty, and muse and weep over it for about a year. But to have ministered to him lovingly and faithfully as you have done I should like to think I could have done it, but I doubt it. All you say to me about mother interests me so much. I could not have fancied your coloured glasses resembled each other's. That you both see things more distinctly than I do, and less generalised, I know. It is true mother has no self-pity, next to none. She has a good strong sense of resentment against the offender, and then magnanimously forgives, I think. 8 PALACE GARDENS, Christmas Day, 1868. Christmas Day has never much stirred me ; and my early associations with it are so uncomfortable. A second Sunday in one week, and an unnecessary one, when the worldly people (envied creatures !) amused themselves all the more, and without breaking one of the ten commandments either. Now I always think of so many lonely ones, the widows especially. I do look out aghast from my ark at the widespread desolation. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CAMBRIDGE, March 1869. ... I believe his (Mr. Maurice's) is one of the most saintly natures that ever were condemned to sojourn in this world. . . . LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 63 Yet there is something in what I should call (but how angry he would be if he heard me) the rhetorical character of his mind that so jars against me; the pouring out of his indefinite, and yet vehement ideas, as it were, over all the difficulties that they do not touch, which always stirs in me an almost bitter sense of all the difficulties. And yet, every now and then one comes in contact with such a beautiful soul, one feels as if there must be something in his most rhetorical flights. He spoke yesterday of his own love of arguing in such a beautiful spirit. He said his whole life had been punishment for the indulgence of this tendency in early life. I said I should not mind any punishment if it did not always make me worse ; and he said all changes, whether of adversity or prosperity, made us worse at first : somehow there was something in the words that comforted me under a sense of strange wickedness that was stirred up in me. But perhaps you both know you would have attained goals that I do not see, which you would have felt more completing and perfecting. Did you read Huxley's "Protoplasm"? It has filled me with thoughts. I could not understand how it strikes at the root of the Creating Spirit, or how these discoveries should make us throw away any book, as Hume said, that does not treat of numbers or ascertainable facts. It has given me new sensations about a spiritual protoplasm, which pervades the whole kingdom of God, and flows from Him who has ascended and descended and fills all things. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, March 23. I long to get from you some of the waves that have touched you, stirred by that blessed old angel (F. D. Maurice). I do think we shall see him one day with a great many crowns. I suppose there will be nothing like triumph there, or else it would be sweet to see some adored Record pastors having to do him homage, and to fetch and carry for him in the eyes of their congregations ! Perhaps a voice will be heard like that saying, 64 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY " Ye have not spoken the thing that is right concerning Me as My servant Job hath." From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. April 21, 1869. We had the Maurices here for three days, and it was such an anxious time to me that though all went on velvet, and there was not a jar anywhere, I could not help a sense of relief when the poor, dear people drove off. It was all outside intercourse, but nothing could be more satisfactory. I rather withdraw my dictum about the cold parlour, for we sat spiritually in the parlour all the time, and were not at all cold. I should not have been afraid altogether of getting into the inner chamber, but illness turns the key, and though one can unlock it, one thinks thrice before doing it. I think everybody felt his goodness. I wonder what it is. I have nothing to quote, and yet those two days gave me so strongly the feeling of coming near a good man. I suppose some souls are allowed to manifest that directly. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1869. When your dear handwriting greeted me this morning, I felt very glad to think that yesterday I was stretching out towards you at the same time that you were speaking to me ! And yet I remember, as I wrote, I had a doubting feeling come across me, for I had just finished reading your Essay, which made me realise the higher region in which you dwell, and I thought, it could only be accidentally that for a short time she could hold communication with me; she must go up higher and higher out of my ken. . . . Well, it seems to me that your unselfish love is to be fully developed. " He that hath, to him shall be given." This is peculiarly the quality of your love, I think, and it is to be polished to the very last degree. Love is so wonder- fully intermixed with self; what we get in return from the beloved is such a present and sustaining return that I can hardly LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 65 fancy doing without it ; and I wonder how much of my love would remain for my dear ones if no enjoyment of them was felt, and if there were no framework about them to help one's services to them. I fancy when we are spirits, unveiled by the flesh, the nature of our love will show forth by its kind of flame, and then mine will be all dingy and smoky with self, and yours, that has been tried and sifted, will burn up in a long, pointed, spiral flame, blue and transparent. I wonder if I at all, really and substantially in my inmost heart, feel the least like you in longing for " more of God." I go so fully with you in knowing how human love can lift the soul above all things harsh and jarring, setting all questions at rest, and also in feeling certain that the source of all that is precious and love-worthy in His creatures must be so much deeper and wider and fuller ; and I think I hunger to know more and see more in Him that may stir me to more love to Him ; yet I feel I have not half enough of this inward hunger to authorise me to expect to be more filled. Alas ! I feel so like the child of a poor woman I knew, who was often in want of food, and prayed for it with her hungry little daughter. Once, when they had been given a provision of six loaves, the child said, "Now we won't say our prayers for many nights, for we have six loaves in the cupboard." And so I have more in my little cupboard, and your large, large one is left emptier, and you wait a.n&Jravail, I believe, for the manifestation of the sons of God. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CAERDEON, October 23, 1869. The Dean must be an agreeable acquaintance in Rome ; he is such a thoroughly topographical man. I am a little ashamed that I don't the least envy you. My sisters mourn over the utter want of topography in me, and I think it is a want. I hope " in a future state " that I shall find leisure to travel and cultivate a love for mountains and scenery, but in this short life I want every moment for personal interests, and can only admit E* 66 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the outer world as a background ; there I do fully delight in it. Here, for instance, pacing on the terrace with E. and H., I have worshipped the mountains even to their satisfaction. They (the mountains) have been so beautifully explained lately by the snow, that has pointed out all their turns and bends with its soft white fingers, and made one see how much meaning there was in the rugged forms ; more, I think, even than sunshine, which hurries on and will not emphasize a ridge or crevice like the patient snow. It is curious how nature gets at the same result through such opposite means : it was quite the effect of sunshine. I see nothing in nature but some parable, that brings me round again to the souls of men, like the snow on Cader, hint- ing at so many unexplained souls, with all their latent beauty hidden. . . . Ah no, keen-eyed criticism is a mistake ! It does not matter so much for friendship as for kindred, and, strange to say, I think it matters less for old than young ; but the willing- ness to give one's body to be burned for one's friend (and I stop a good way short of that) does not make up for any tiny injustice of estimate, if that is apparent. I am so sure love should be without partiality, but I am equally sure it should be without severity. I think you do attain this, for you do not think your beloved ones better than they are (I don't, of course, mean that I can measure, but you don't found your love on that), and yet I don't believe their mistakes or faults sautent aux yeux to you as they do to me. from E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, December 28, 1869. I really know not when I wrote last ; a dream has been over me lately. I don't know even whether I told you of such a fright on Sunday week about my beloved ; seeing him faint from me, and not being able to get at anything to restore him. He has been getting quite well gradually, and I don't think I have any cause for uneasiness, but a shadow came in then, and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 67 seems always saying to me, " These moments are precious ; let your love lavish itself upon him to the utmost." The danger did not seem to me that I was going to feel that I had loved him too well, but, on the contrary, not enough, not largely, not unselfishly enough. I like Mr. MacDonald's line, " If we love not truly at death, we shall part." It is only a kind of infinitude of love, it seems to me, that can hold us together, and I thirst to grow in the capacity for a height, and depth, and length, and breadth of love. I thirst for that more than to pin myself to his side. PART II 1870-1878 IN January 1870 Mrs. Batten died, while paying a short visit at 8 Palace Gardens. E. R. G.'s account of Mrs. BATTEN'S last days. On the 28th of December (1869) dearest mother came to us for her usual New Year's visit. She was particularly well. She would not come to us for Christmas Day, for she wished to remain at home, to make it pleasant for the servants : she read with them in the evening. On New Year's Eve, when it struck twelve, she came from her room to ours. She knelt with me, and read the prayer from Ephesians iii. 14-21. The intense earnestness and solemnity of her tones, which seemed to bear up our souls with hers, are never to be for- gotten. " For this cause we bow our knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant us according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height ; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we might be filled with all the fulness of God. " Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 69 On New Year's morning Russell read the goth Psalm, and we gave her a photograph of Giotto's fresco of the Ascension. On Sunday the 2nd we all three received the Communion at St. James's. That week was spent as so many other delightful weeks had been spent when she was with us. I hardly took account of the sunshine of her presence, it seemed such an accustomed and natural blessing. She read to me with great enjoyment "The Holy Grail," while I drew. In the afternoons we went together to friends, or to shop for Aunt Emelia's bazaar. On the Qth we once more all three walked together to church and back again. On Monday the loth she was busy seeing the Hereford Bazaar things packed. In the afternoon we went together to the Exhibition of Old Masters, which she greatly enjoyed ; she seemed peculiarly absorbed with some of them. She said she felt everything fuller of meaning and of interest each year. Flowers affected her too much, she said : she must strive against the weakness she felt of an inclination to shed tears whenever she looked at their beauty ; and her tenderness to animals had increased so much, that she was painfully burdened by a sense of their ills. On Tuesday the i ith we went out for the last time together. I left her at Aunt Jane's for an hour : she writes in her diary of her and Milly's sweetness and affection, and says, " Oh, that love may grow stronger this year than ever." On Thursday the i3th she acknowledged she had a slight cold. On Monday the i7th she evidently had fever and bronchitis. I think during this day and the next she felt as if her summons might be come. She was more solemn and abstracted than usual. I felt as if she were gathering together the recollections of her past life, as she had been, indeed, so much during our last journey in Italy ; she had been also reviving again several old friendships, and completing so many little acts of kindness to different people. By Wednesday morning, the igth, all my anxiety was over, and on the 2ist she writes in her diary that she is making great progress towards recovery. On Sunday the 23rd I had a head- yo LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY ache and stayed from church, and we read the service together. She said, " Emily, I feel as if Mrs. Paterson (her beloved Lin- lathen friend) had been here. I never had such communion with her since she died." We had some talk afterwards about death, and how differently she felt about it, how much less of an awful unknown it was. . . . On the morning of the 26th she was more uncomfortable, and we put off a visit to Broadlands, where we were to have gone that day, though she was against our putting it off, and the doctor said there was no cause for uneasiness. I went down to write the telegram and to answer some notes. In half-an-hour they called me up. She was on the bed, her eyes just closing. There was not a sound, not a sigh, her hand was quite warm in mine ; but that wonderful abundance of peace that more and more mantled over the beloved face could only be the reflection from the everlasting Peace; and I could not, as I looked on her, even wish to drag her back from it. Her last words were to her maid, "Why, I think I have been asleep, such a blessed sleep ! " From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (after Mrs. BATTEN'S death). 8 PALACE GARDENS, January 1870. Your deep, tender heart will ache with mine and for mine ; but just now I feel such a sense of all I have had and have in her, and such a thankfulness that that noble, tender heart, with such capacity for pain, has been spared all pangs in parting or in apprehension, and all sense of gradual decay. And I seem to see so plainly written on her brow the peace of God that passes all understanding, that my pain is not bitter or hard to bear. You know what a magnificent abundance of love she clothed me with, and how she was ever longing to pour out her pfe-blood for me. What a blessed mercy that we were not gone away. I was beside her, but not even a last look. The eyes closed, and that peace came more and more. YOUR E. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 71 From Mr. ERSKINE. EDINBURGH, January 1870. " And so shall they ever be with the Lord." This you believe to be the condition of your dearest mother, and to be the con- dition which fills up all your desires for her. Ought you not, then, to bless the Lord for His loving, fatherly dealing with her ? I feel unworthy to speak of this great consolation, but His mercy endureth for ever. I feel that in giving me such friends as your mother and yourself, He has given me the assurance of a love which desires my salvation, the same love which gave the unspeakable gift of Christ ; and yet my heart is troubled. Pray for me that I may know that love aright, and find in it the peace which passeth understanding. In the Spring of 1870 Mr. and Mrs. Russell Gurney took a cottage at Woolhampton, near Reading, which was filled with Mrs. Batten's possessions, as a little " chapel of memories." And here they much enjoyed spending many quiet weeks during the succeeding summers. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY (sent to Villars, Switzerland}. 1870. Your long, welcome letter takes me wonderfully into the days that are gone. Those green platforms how well I know them ! the pine-woods, the early morning view of the Rhone valley towards Mont Blanc. Oh, this magic-lantern world ! You are seeing some of the slides that I saw ; yet even the foregrounds of these are altered, and how different is the subjective foreground with each ! ... I am now gathering together the last relics to go to her cottage. And you cannot think how strange it feels on looking back on so many milestones to feel that there must be many fewer before me, and that the indefinite tracts of country that 72 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY always seemed before have been chiefly passed through and gathered up into reality behind me, and that there remain but little short paths to explore which do not much excite my curi- osity, for experience has taught me pretty much what to expect. And now all my curiosity and all my anticipations go across Jordan, to that world of which we know so little. But I must not babble of such things to those setting out on their journey, for it sounds very flat and tame, as I well remember. And how I used to pity those who, when we were setting out on our travels, used to be waiting to cross the Channel homewards. I would say to you, live, fully in the present. You know what I mean. Let the everlasting, the spiritual, come to you through your present experiences, and not through further on people's. It is your best preparation for the future, I believe, to take root well. To the same. 1870. I wonder whether you have read " The Legend of Jubal " ? It is most magnificent, and pathetic, and full of subtle sugges- tions ; and all through there is the beating of a heart that has resigned itself to breaking, because it cannot find God. And yet it is a temple built, prepared for Him, and Him alone. It is one of the great mysteries to me. We went for three days last week to I , and there I read that poem. How strange it seemed to me to contrast the souls I met there, in their appro- priate setting, with poor George Eliot. Everything was over- flowing with rich prosperity, and the proprietor full of amiable goodness and kindness, and anxious to help souls and bodies of friends and dependents, and successful in this, and satisfied and certain. And that other great, large, empty, hungering soul longing to give its whole self unto death, without recognition by others, and yet with blind eyes towards the Christian heavens. And I cannot feel that the words " revealed unto babes " throw any light upon the mystery ; for though the narrow rich man has but slender intelligence, I do not feel his nature is more on that account, but less childlike than that other's, which is full LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 73 of longing, trusting humility. So I think from her writings and I hear from her friends, who say they never knew what humility was till they knew her. Well, she has not finished her course, and she may yet find the Holy Grail. And of that vision her eyes must behold more than the eyes of the easily satisfied and narrowly ranging ones. 7o the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. Atril or May 1870. Did you read the paragraph at the end of the notice of beloved Mr. Erskine in the Spectator 1 It is to my mind per- fect in the truthfulness of the impressions it conveys, and very beautiful, all but one sentence, which says that he liked a bad joke as well as a good one. As I think refinement and delicacy of apprehension belonged to his nature, I don't think this was true. Though he did sometimes savourer with great delight some words or anecdotes that seemed to him to reveal character, which to most would appear poor jokes perhaps. How one's heart bounds towards that in a fellow-creature which makes him just what he is in distinction from all the rest of his fellows ! And yet, too, how one loves the touches which make him akin to all the world ! The unity and the fellowship. What mysteries do these touch upon ! How are we to take up the torches that have fallen from their hands ? All who have walked in their light should in some little measure do this. You are to me one who stands and beckons to the land of Beulah, where it was observed that the pilgrims spoke often in their sleep, and saw visions. Would that I could follow ! To the same. June 1870. Alas ! so tantalisingly things come ; we have really no Whit- sun holiday, and seem therefore shut out from the privilege of 74 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY enjoying that dear Broadlands and its large white abundant stars. No, they do not look less beautiful this year than before. But I think more so, and the birds' voices are even sweeter than ever. I can hardly understand how it is that all outward things are not more damaged by the withdrawing of her sunshine of love. Sometimes it makes me fear lest my heart is terribly hardened. Sometimes I think it is because that sunshine of love is not withdrawn. Our Cottage, where we have been for two days, seemed all prepared and lined by her, her things fitting in wondrously, and it seeming so completely " a quiet place, made green for wearied eyes." Green pastures slope up and down all round, and it seems found for us and given to us. To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, READING, August 20, 1871. It was very soothing and sweet that summer's afternoon at Harrow. I love to see those words over that archway just above the beloved grave, "We wait for Thy loving-kindness in the midst of Thy Temple, O Lord." What a history of loving-kindness I could think over, mani- fested to her, and to me, connected with that place. It came with a flood of memories as I walked up to Julian Hill and sat beside your dear mother on that well-known lawn. At such moments the sense of a Guiding Hand seems more palpable than the sense of the external world, and so much more uniform and more abiding, and what confidence it gives one for the future. Surely loving-kindness and mercy hath followed us and we learn to feel must continue to follow us though in some sense, in the fullest sense, one feels one must still wait for it; for there is much that seems unlike loving-kindness in the order or disorder around, and how much in the separation of death that needs our firmest filial trust to hope through. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 75 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISS WEDGWOOD FROM FEBRUARY 1870 TO JULY 1871 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, February 3, 1870. Yes, I think I will let you go to Hitchin without begging you to once more come to me first. You know about all, only you don't know how full and beautiful her life was in this condition. It came to me so as a whole, when I heard the Harrow bell toll which had riven her heart so, as she has often told me, when she became a widow nearly forty years ago. Since then she strove and fought upwards, and I saw the sweet sleep as a crown to this, that comes after a day of good work, a sleep in which she looked almost like a bride again, only more ennobled and deepened and filled, as one that takes his armour off rather than as one that puts it on. But I feel with you more than with those who would overwhelm me with her joy. I think there must be dints and marks of pain there still, and sensitiveness to the pain of the still unredeemed humanity. And if her soul is her soul still, she must long after me, and be sorry for my great poverty. And I hope she feels that my sins and negligences and ignorances towards her make me ache and only long to ache more and more. For your love and thought and understanding of things I am so grateful. Your loving EMILY. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. HITCHIN, February 20, 1870. I cannot refrain from pouring out the thoughts that constantly hover around you. So often I cannot believe that she is gone. I think of her in the full daylight of mature power. There is nothing in what I either remembered or heard of her to suggest her departure from this world ; but_y0#rdesolateness has stamped itself upon my heart, and in thinking of that I feel that she must be far away not oblivious of you for one moment, but, in that 76 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY exceeding rush of joy which she feels herself, and anticipates for you, able to keep herself from rushing to comfort you. Oh, do not think that God is separate from her even in the same way that she was from you, or that in thinking only of her you are forgetting Him. She is His utterance to you as the child is only dimly and feebly the utterance of the parents, and you are drawing near to Him whenever you peruse that life which He gave as the truest expression of His own love to you, and which is now spread before you in its completeness. Would it have been forgetting her, if you had been so absorbed in her letters that you had not felt her absence ? I am sure it is no more than this when we are absorbed in human love. I do not say it may not be idolatry, but that is different from what you are feeling now. I am sure that the mothers love is, in a wonderful manner, the revelation of God's love to us, but in the human type it is so associated with partiality, that we can hardly conceive a love as tender as the mother's and yet severe. And all the more for this incapacity we need to take hold of the conviction that it is the type, and that so far as it has been pure and true we have to look to it as the gateway of the Divine Love. How long it will be before the world ceases to grow more dreary to you ! What months and years must pass before your sorrow ceases to expand ! It soothes me to think of the other love that will go with you through it all. How well I remember the way she used to go to look for your letter just after prayers at Linlathen, what a thirst and what security there was in her expectation. Can it be that she has any utterance from you now ? I cannot fancy her happy without it, even in the full fruition of that communion with God she so yearned after, and the reunion to her lost treasures. No, I am sure she must possess something from you even there ! That 1865 visit (at Linlathen) is so clear to me, and her image stands out so vividly in it. I remember so well the first evening when I sat by her side on the green sofa with its back to the door, and we talked about illness, and she seemed so fully to enter into my horror of any prolonged experience of it ; and then LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 77 we talked of my sisters, and I was so drawn to her by her ex- pressions about them. I can't tell what it was in all those talks with her at that time which fill me, as I remember them, with such a sense of consolation. I had such a sense of coming on a rich, strong nature. Afterwards I felt more the strenuous eager- ness and heroic impulsiveness of her spirit, but at that time there was a wonderful sense of rest in her presence. Some of my walks with her are fixed in my mind with such a wonderful sense of reality of the unseen and the fleetingness of the seen, such as I think one never has except in company with one who lives in the light of the unseen. How wonderfully con- tagious that sense is ! One walk through the wood comes back to me slanting evening light on corn-sheaves, and she and I stopping to look at the beautiful gleam, and such a wonderful sense of the beauty of earth being a veil that was almost being drawn aside. I don't remember any words ; I only know there are not many with whom I could have felt that. " Helas ! que les choses passent, et les souvenirs demeurent ! " Now those three are gone. Ah yes, those days were sweet and they will return. I do not think he [Mr. Erskine] feels that as much as I do. I think his misery arises from his having tried to get from the love of God what we were meant to get from the love of man. One sees many who are the opposite. But I am so glad to think he did appreciate her. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, February 1870. Your letter was like balm to me. Your memories of her at Linlathen seemed to console me so much. I hardly know why, but I wanted a living voice to tell me they had not quite gone from everywhere except me. Also the way in which you con- nected them with scenes in nature, sunsets, sheaves of ripe corn, all those veils, and yet in a measure revealers of the spiritual world, led me into a soothing region. It is such a real pleasure to me, too, that you saw her so much as she really was. Those 78 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY two phases in her were both so impressive. When she had come out of her moods of strenuous exertion, one often felt a wonder- ful rest in her, and she seemed to authorise one to rest. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1870. I have had some little experiences lately. I would tell you, but as I think of putting them in words they evaporate like an odour of primroses on the breeze. I long to feel more the sense that my mother lives rather than that she has lived ; and I do now and then think perhaps a thought comes from her. I think that Swedenborg's belief must be a true one, that the inner man, the spirit, is raised at once out of the corruption in which it was sown, into the Incorruptible. And that in the process it is not unclothed, but clothed upon, by the spiritual organisation, or limitation, as it were, which preserves its personality. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. 1870. I remember being much interested in Mrs. S.'s account of her watching the escape of some butterflies from the chrysalis, and being so struck with the great difference there was in the ease with which they disentangled themselves, some taking half the day to get clear, like him. Oh, if some word would come to say the burden was laid aside, but we can wait for it. I was reading over some of your dear one's (Mrs. Batten's) Irish letters the other day. How coolly we set aside all the experience as fancy which has no symbol in the visible world. I can fancy that what we call dying may be an awakening to the reality of all that mysterious spiritual scenery, like the breaking of some painted car that we had been travelling in unawares. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. EDINBURGH, March 1870. I cannot describe to you, and perhaps even you could hardly understand the intense longing I have that the precious past should LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 79 not fade. In some ways it might seem an almost morbid longing. One does not wish that the far-off hills should not look blue, and there is a change in the receding experiences of life which is as little to be fought against. The softness and tender beauty of that first visit at Linlathen, when those three dear ones were here, is some- thing better than any actual experience of those moments ; there were little misfits and disappointments which have evaporated now, and the whole is more beautiful than it was. But the fading of the past which I dread is something different from this mere sifting away of what was temporary and this mellowing of the whole; it is that the hurry of life shall come between, and actually rob me of something. This makes me clutch at every- thing that can fix the pictures to my soul, even pain. from E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (referring to a sketch of Mr. ERSKINE written by her). 8 PALACE GARDENS, April 5, 1870. I cannot find words to tell you what I think of it It is absolutely perfect in what it attempts to portray, in the very best, and highest, and most real marks that his nature has left upon those who loved him. How can I be thankful enough that he reflected himself in your clear mirror. HASTINGS, Easier Day, 1870. You should not apologise for sending your MS. to us. The only thing one feels is, would that we were more able to help. It is written with such a grasp of mind, especially, I think, the sketch of his Christian philosophy, that it seems presumptuous to make any criticisms ; and, indeed, we have none but petty ones to make. ... I did not feel anything the least jarring in your speaking of the narrow range of the objects which inte- rested him. In the winding up of the paragraph of his views, I feel as if he thought more that the becoming acquainted with that law of gravitation of the spiritual world, the opening the eyes to the loving purpose for each one, kindled the responsive love in the 8o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY perceiving heart. You seem to me rather to put it that the know- ledge of a law led us to conform to that law ; it seemed more to me as if he taught that the perception of the light and heat brought us within its action. The " sigh of an exile ! " how that does describe him ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, February or March. You are sick and weary at heart, and just now I am feeling full of hope and hearing the song of a dear canary with a sense of harmony. The wind blows as it lists ; but these refreshing breezes that come, though they go also, are very sweet. They come from the mountain of God. When the veil of the flesh is removed more and more we shall catch of them. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. June 7, 1870. I do not think we can divide our love of God from our love of our beloved ones, and all that comes through them comes from Him ; yet they cannot make us see God. No human spirit can say to another, Stand where I stand and you will see what I see, not in this world, nor in the world to come. It is not the accidents of flesh and blood that cut us off from giving that kind of help to each other ; it is the eternal law that only God can reveal God. Oh, how I felt it when I sat by that wonderful creature, George Eliot, and heard her shrinking modesty of voice as she limited all her assertions to a confession of ignorance, and felt in my soul at the same time a sort of flood of conviction that an invisible person was in the room with us, and yet felt silenced by the sense that the words which rose in my heart as knowledge turned to opinion as they met her ears. And what is there in the experience of death to change this impotence ? We think that any voice coming across that gulf would mean an assurance of what we crave to know ; but what would it be apart from the impression of an inward influx of hope and faith, which might exist without it ? LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 81 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, June 1870. I wish you could have a conviction, a real and adequate one, of how good I feel your words to be. This is what I need to stand on tiptoes to get a glimpse of. Would that I could grow to behold the reality that you do, of what it is to trust God. Mine has been such a superficial, fancied trust. One cannot make another see what he sees, but his assurance of seeing encourages others to look. I suppose I have been too much seeking for signs. A vision of unseen things seems to imply faith; but perhaps it has been rather things seen after all, only pushed up a little higher. How God does help me, and comfort me, and keep me living through you ! I could not have believed beforehand that in my time of need I could have had two such blessed palm-trees to spread over me and to give me of their fruits as you and Mrs. Cowper-Temple have done in this new bereaved region on which I have entered. I almost grudge myself such rich gifts ; indeed, I have been treated like a spoilt child. Your words are indeed true : "a soul may mirror the infinite to us," and fellow- ship with it may flood our life with supernatural joy. It is a manifestation of God. Perhaps we are gaining a glimpse of a coming fuller revelation in the recognition of His offspring, as you seem to expect. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, August 29, 1870. . . . You want to know that it is the will of God that you are suffering and doing. What does the barrier consist of in these days that prevents this knowledge ? Is it more or less light than they had in olden times when no doubt was felt about it ? There has been such difficulty here in getting water. A man we employed to bore below the well gave us such an animated account of their work for seventeen days. All the water there F 82 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY was vanished during the deeper boring, and then it seemed impossible they should ever get through rock after rock. After the third rock was pierced they came to pebbles, then to sand, and then the water sprang up just as it seemed hopeless. Five minutes before it came it seemed as far off and further off than it had seemed in their first half-hour's work. The man described so vividly his despair and all kinds of impediments, and then his joy, with tears in his eyes, that it has remained with me as a parable. But they could work more certainly than we can, and do not feel they are beating the air. Still there are things that we must work at which we are certain tend to the spring from whence the waters flow. Your extract from Mme. de Broglie is in strange opposition to Mrs. Fletcher and all the R. C. saints. By shutting out other thoughts they believed they approached so much nearer to God, and certainly they felt His joy and His strength ; they bored deep, though it was a very small channel. Your loving, grateful E. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. DOWN, September i, 1870. I will not pass this beautiful threshold of September without a word with my dearest E. I had intended to write before your dear letter arrived, for since I came here a change seemed to come over my atmosphere, and I felt that influx of hope that always makes me desire communion with you. I seemed to have come through the hard stratum, and the spring bubbled up through the sand. I felt it in church, when the village organist sat practising "Sound the loud timbrel" after evening service, and I lingered on in the dark till I saw the lights put out in the organ loft; and though I think it a most trumpery tune, and though, of course, the performance was mediocre, there was something in it that so chimed in with my feeling, I seem to recall it like a sympathising human voice. There came such a sudden flood of hope into my heart. I walked back through the little garden trying to find words for it, that it might not LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 83 all evaporate from recollection, but the organ notes hold it best for me now. I felt, we want nothing but our Father, one gleam of hope sets all right, fills the empty reservoirs of love, makes the barriers between estranged hearts transparent, and so welds us one with another that I is lost in We, But what infinitely different states of mind one means by belief. I suppose I always believe whatever it is which is the intellectual correlative of that sudden joy, and yet I could count almost the moments when I have felt it as any force in my life. The next day the kitten caught a bird ; I ran after her to try to make her kill it at once, and the fluttering, the faint cry of the creature made a pain in my heart that seemed to spread out and darken the thought of love. I said to myself, How weak and unreasoning ! When I know of men dying by thousands in agonies that do not by any means always purify, and yet somehow carry through the spectacle of the battlefields my trust in God, how is it that this tiny presenta- tion of the strife and woe of Nature is a barrier to me? The two disproportionate things show one what different mental acts one may make in what one calls knowledge. I suppose one knows the love of God generally like these far-off rumours of battle, and it is only in faint gleams that it really touches one's life. But when it does, how vividly one feels that hope is a common possession. I so dread that this mysterious spiritual life, that flows on in an underground current beneath what is visible to others, should become a thing apart. I want to let it fertilise the other. I see it does not always do so, even where it is true and deep. One needs just as much to pray that the waters shall be carried over the meadows as that they shall pass through them. Surely we shall not seek for this in vain ! I do not think all are led to seek for it. For some mysterious reason this seventy years here is not the time when God lets the force of right conviction show itself on character. 84 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, September 5, 1870. It was dear to me that you should have thought of writing to me on the threshold of September. To me such an eventful day eighteen years ago my marriage day and now the first ungreeted by beloved mother, who then gave me up with sore pain, but who, since then, on each anniversary has so rejoiced with and for us. Oh, how every date of the years as they go is marked with blood and tears, and joys of poor human beings, and how does the Father of our spirits disentangle them all? As I was feeling a sense of the withdrawing of that mother's love that morning, and of its wonderful fulness, that I had in my sense of abundance slighted sometimes, which thought brought with it such a peculiarly sharp aching . . . the poor Emperor was going through the agony of his fall from such a strange height to a corresponding depth ; and all the crushed bodies were sending up their cries too to God . . . and the little birds caught by the cats ! As I write the wind moans, and there seem echoes everywhere of the whole creation groaning and travailing. Yet I know it has often seemed to me as if all were rejoicing, and "Sound the loud timbrel" has been the song that everything was joining in. One can only fully believe in the one thing that one's soul vibrates to at the moment, I think. It is as you say, as if that which receded to the far horizon was only partially believed in ; and the nearer, smaller thing that one feels quickens one's belief into quite a different kind of mental act. How strangely the details of the war seem to blend with one's life ; fainter in hue than the foreground, and yet so tremendous in size, and preventing one, I think, from fully giving one's mind to much besides. The O'Mearas escaped away last Monday. General Trochu sent to them and said, " Do not delay leaving Paris more than forty- eight hours." They had already got a fright from a sergeant de ville who half implied that he thought them spies; and they were LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 85 having such speculations as to what might ensue if the Prussian soldiers came into Paris, that they said they became quite feverish and unable to eat or sleep for the last five days. They are now resting at Boulogne; they will come to us in a few days. September 7. I am just come in from a lonely walk ; R. in town ; the dark clouds all round. The autumnal look of the festal summer being past everywhere, the kind of day that mother used to feel so unspeakably, and on which we used to talk together of life's closing ; but I never would respond to her deep feeling of it. Now how I stretched out my hands to her ! Now I feel how inexplicable, how astonishing it is that we are as tolerant of death as we are. How can such a separation be the order of things ? From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. BEDFORD SQUARE, September n, 1870. I have had two delightful hours since I came here, one with George Eliot, which, though keenly delightful to me, leaves very little to say of it. We talked of the war, and I think all that it enforces is so broad and patent that anything original about it would be shallow, so that one is not inclined to repeat the remarks of a great mind any more than of a small. She responded with a peculiar heartiness to my lament over the French readiness to accept wish as an agent of fact, which meant, I knew Ah yes, there is the root of Christianity. I hardly know how to explain to myself the immense gulf I felt between things which seem to her identical the sense that a profound need common to humanity was the prophecy of its own fulfilment, and the belief that vehement reiteration of desirable opinion would con- vert it to fact. Then she began to say that I had mistaken her about the " egoistic mind," that what she meant was an allusion I had made to the embittering effect of "a sense of sharing" apart from God on a particular mind, and that her meaning was, one must test nothing by its effect on an egoistic and 86 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY rebellious mind "for such a mind there is no help." I felt a sort of triumph as she said the words, for it immediately came to me, Christ said, "Whoever cometh unto me;" there is a broader creed than hers. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WOOLHAMPTON, September 20, 1870. When I received your note I was just thinking, as I looked over some of my beloved mother's books and tracts, how com- pletely I had left off any thought of aiming to do good to people. It was rather comforting to hear you say this was such an unsafe aim, and I agree with you that it is apt to make people dis- agreeable. Yet, if it sprang from a burning love to them, and from an earnest desire to share what has seemed good to our spirits with theirs, it seems as if it must be right. Only, every spirit is in such a different state, and requires such different food. It is rash to proffer one's own rice, milk, or marengue when beefsteak is needed. I have just read "Tyndall at the British Association." I dare say it is badly given, for it does not seem to fulfil its title at all. I could find no definition of Imagination's office in science. Only he seemed to speculate as an example of what it might do. I felt in reading it that we have too much looked upon Matter as apart from Spirit, and an unholy thing. I don't see how it can be cut apart from Spirit. I do think it must have been all breathed into by the Spirit, and that it may rise higher and higher into an approach toward God. What makes one's heart ache so is the declaration that one's attitude should be equally distant from the atheist, who says, "A God could not have done this," and the deist who pretends to know any- thing of the mind of God. Tyndall seems to lead one into a contemplation of infinitude and immensity such as one can rarely get a glimpse of, till one can hardly dare even say, " Oh, that I knew where I might find Him ! " The universe without love, without a purpose does he not paint this before one? And this is what G. E. lives in, I suppose. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 87 From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. September 24, 1870. . . . You are the only one with whom I look for a pro- longation of the Linlathen luxury ; but one must not count upon it with any one. Love is not love if it refuses all partnership with pain. Mme. Bodichon was saying, when she was here, what an entirely generic difference there seemed to be between the love of a mother and a father, and it struck me what a wonderfully deep meaning there was in that difference the love that begins in pain sending its roots so far below the love that begins in pleasure. . . . Sometimes it seems as if one human being could be the keynote to another, but I do not think we are intended for this ; we can only form that incomplete minor till we find ourselves a portion of the chord that starts from God. I think this has been our bond, and do not fear that jar while it remains. And I have such an intense conviction of the return of all real love that has been interrupted. The joy of love seems to me a prophecy of its own eternity. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, October 10, 1870. Yes, it was Friday morning, the date of your letter, when I also felt something like the beginning of a stone being rolled away. There was a great wind among the trees. I knelt at my window, and saw the sighing and the swaying, and gleams of sunshine struggling through the morning clouds ; and then I came away and opened my Bible to read, and the first words that caught my eye were, "Prophesy to the four winds, and say, O breath, breathe upon these slain that they may live ! " Don't say that your words are accumulated and monotonous, and that their meaning is evaporated. To me they image so much; these shinings through that beckon one on and lift one up seem when just gone only tantalising, one so longs that 88 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY they may be permanent : they are apparently so useless when they are not permanent. Does any one now " live in the Spirit " ? Is it possible ? But I don't know that I quite respond to what Mr. Erskine says that the flesh is not made better, and St. Paul says the same, no doubt ; but I feel as if every atom of matter should be redeemed and permeated with spirit. Flesh helps soul as much as soul helps flesh, does not Rabbi Ben Ezra say? And the Son of Man's flesh could not see corruption. Cannot the flesh come into the glorious liberty of the Son- ship ? But we seem " slain," body and soul and spirit, I think, and only now and then get moved for a few moments by the breath moving over us. In reading over her letters of so many past years, and mine, I long so to know whether all those past eager emotions have left a due mark on her. She had almost forgotten, before she left, many things which had made her heart beat with joy and ache with pain. And as I read the past eager expressions of what she felt, I ask, Was this worth while when it was so soon to pass? Is there not something very perplexing in the thought of this evanescence, and very melancholy this want of unity and permanence ? How terrible it is to think that we may go on and on through new regions, with new friends and new hopes and new anxieties, and with a dim sense of having far in the past lost the memory of those that once so moved our hearts. Yet we believe, we hope, that God does retain us all, down to the sparrows that fall. So we may hope that, as we are drawn inwards nearer to our Centre, we may foretaste more and more of this capaciousness. How welcome has your letter been to me this morning ; how refreshing and inspiring for the rest of my day ! Each day comes to me with a sense of fresh hope generally, and if, as I come in to breakfast, a beloved writing greets me, the promise seems half- fulfilled. It will be wonderful to her friends when dear M. A. vanishes ; however old she may be, she seems to dwell so in the midst of us. Yes, her character is a very rare, indescribable one LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 89 certainly eminently undull. Russell delights in her; so must every one, I should think, as one out of many friends. It startled me when you used the word superficial, even though combined with solid ; yet (though not in its ordinary sense) I see its appli- cability. The amount of things she gets through is astonish- ing ; and everything is done so w ell, and the subjects she is interested in she knows so thoroughly, that one would say there was nothing superficial about her ! Yet her own roots are not deep, I see. How I like what you say about long curves, and our being able to tell so little about them from the fraction one can see. Somehow one does not realise with M. A. that her life is a long curve : it seems so complete now. from E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. THE COTTAGE, October 19, 1870. Do write an essay on Truth and Wishes. It wants disen- tangling much. Start from the French and their ideal victories, and branch from that into wishes in relation to abstract truths. . . . One may like to see bits of a map fit in, but may choose the piece to fit on other grounds than to gratify this taste. Then, surely, there is a perception of truth, which is a per- ception of its fitness and beauty, as well as its reasonableness, and this may be expressed by an utterance of pleasure. If one's wish inclines one to believe a thing, it also makes one afraid to believe it. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. November 1870. How welcome are your dear words of sympathy. Not to be able to hold a sorrow because it began a short time ago, and to grow easier and easier because one is longer and longer without the beloved, makes one indeed doubt whether one is worthy of eternal life ! One thing, though, I can say about these nine months, that she 90 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY has been more continually in my mind and in my deepest affections than she ever was in any former period of my life. Yesterday year, the last Sunday in October, she and I walked alone together to church at Rome over the Pincian. And we talked of the former years there together, and remembered often joining Mr. Erskine on the way. And we summed up and seemed to fold away that part of our life. In thinking over what time does, though in one way of look- ing at it, it seems such an accident of our condition here, yet what a colour and what a different nature does it give to an affection. It seems now as I look back on that walk, and re- member how we reached back together then to the past years that we had shared, as if her being went into a larger region of my being than Russell's does, just, I mean, because we had travelled together over a larger tract of country. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, December 10, 1870. I so thought of you travelling northwards early that bitter morning after our cheerful, warming evening together. How pleasant it was to see you in that genial atmosphere. What a glow is sometimes left by that kind of meeting, though indivi- duals have hardly perhaps come into inner contact. There is need of a kind of external fellowship, as well as of deep inner communion ; and the gift of promoting that sense of external fel- lowship is certainly greatly to be desired. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. MIDDLE-TON LODGE, RICHMOND, YORKSHIRE. Though it is very delightful here, I put off my return with some reluctance, there are so many things I want to be doing in London ; but in this casting out of one's precious things to ease the ship, which begins after middle age, and which by the time we reach our port will, I suppose, have sunk the largest part of once cherished aims and schemes beneath the waters of oblivion, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 91 I hold to intercourse with those I love as the one jewel that is not to go overboard, come what may. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. January 1871. What shall I wish for this New Year for thee ? that it may not impoverish thee. But oh, what cross currents rise in one's soul at any forward glance ; for the one desire for a nearer union with God seems tangled with fears of what means may be needed to bring that about, and one shudders and trembles at the thought. What a wide gulf separates the knowledge of God from the knowledge that we may, as it were, carry about with us. The opticians do not need to keep their eyes to the spectroscope to feel assured of those wonderful dark lines that so fill out the words " whatsoever doth make manifest is light." They can bring this knowledge with them away from its source it will carry in intellectual vessels. But we we cannot even remember that intuition of God when it is withdrawn from us ; when some earthly breath dims the glass we can hardly believe that anything lies beyond. I seem with you to enter into an atmosphere which I know I could not long breathe, and the feelings and thoughts which are perfectly real and true as I utter them, make me yet sometimes tremble with a sense of hypocrisy, knowing that I could not bear to have my life judged by them. This is not hypocrisy, but yet I know that the feeling which makes me tremble is from God. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, January 1871. (Just a year after her mother's death.) How slothful of me to miss so much good by not answering your dear last. It was partly owing to little distractions, partly to dumbness, partly to sloth. Yet I have been wanting you all the time. And all the time that great cold shadow of an absence a 92 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY veil at the very spring of one's being. Only once was that re- moved, in a wonderfully vivid dream, by a sense of joy which waked me ; as I said, looking at her face, " Why, never did I see you looking so beautifully, radiantly well as you do." And I just glanced above her head and saw we were out of doors, and the sky brilliantly blue ; but as I spoke a grey cloud came over half. How true I feel what you say about the complicated thoughts that arise when we wish our friends good things for the future the highest and best then comes, Can ye drink of my cup? Still, wish me the highest I am capable of. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G., when the latter was at Hereford nursing her uncle, Mr. JOHN VENN. [Her dream, here alluded to, was of awakening from death in some chaotic world, which filled her with dismay, until she perceived that her uncle was near her, and of his saying, in answer to her exclamation of disappointment, "I see that we need faith here as much as on earth."] i CUMBERLAND PLACE, REGENT'S PARK, N.W., February 4, 1871. How thankful for you I am that you have the great con- solation of nursing him ! It must almost seem like a scrap of the precious past. I wish I had seen him, that I might the more enter into your anxiety, but that dream of yours recurs with a wonderful force to illustrate the kind of impression he must have made upon you. I should so have liked to show you some of Mr. E.'s early letters I have been reading. I would not describe them as specially interesting to one who did not care for him, but the perfume of his character came out so strongly. One sentence struck me : " When a maker of instruments has finished one he lays it aside, and an ignorant beholder might think he threw it away; but the secret is, that his workshop is the place for making, not for using it." It expresses so forcibly the one idea of his life. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 93 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. HEREFORD, February 1871. This morning I begin to breathe decidedly more freely about my dear angelical Uncle John. We have had many alter- nations, but for twenty-four hours he has kept better than at all, and I begin to feel almost a remorse, as the barque that one felt might be nearing the desired haven seems putting out to sea again ! Though I have looked upon him all my life as absolute perfection as to sweetness and unselfishness, I could hardly have fancied anything so lovely, I may say, as he has been in this illness. In the tossing of his fever, and thirst, and weariness always ready with a smile, or a playful word, to respond to anything done for him "just what he wanted," " exactly right." He has seemed to me so completely to have entered into his rest now. Not a groan over his past failings (which used to be a propensity), not a wish to be, or do, or say anything improving, but void of care as a child or a bird. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. February 19, 1871. It seems a long time that I have not written ; the first time, I think, a word from you was ever left so long. I felt so satisfied by it, that there seemed nothing to say. Oh, why is it so rare, that purifying of all the details of life that you are permitted to witness? I do believe it is an exceptional blessing to be able to trace the influence of Christianity as one traces a stream, by the verdure of its banks. Perhaps even your present experi- ence is not so much of an exception as I am supposing it, for the intellectual form of that Christianity has no proportion to the moral perfection of the life, and it is just this misfit that is my perplexity. I think illness tests this so much. The will is so paralysed then, one sees the habitual direction of ten- dencies so nakedly. No doubt one sees much that is accidental, but the thoughtfulness and grateful appreciation of love you speak of certainly have nothing of that character. 94 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY How thankful I am for you that the first return of all those days most loaded with memories of sorrow should find you thus occupied, their barbs sheathed in this atmosphere of love. Oh, how it seems at times as if days bristling with recollections that tear one's heart can never subside into a mere framework for any other experience ! And yet they do thus subside, and a chance date awakens recollections, which, while one realises their poignancy, one can scarcely believe have slumbered. Yet it is best that they should slumber ; we cannot receive their message while we are overwhelmed with their weight. We shall learn most from our past when emotion has gone out from it, and we can contemplate it in the calm of a perfect acquiescence in all the decisions of God, not only for ourselves, but for others. Till then I feel grateful for the gradual fading of these memorial characters on one's mental calendar, knowing eternity must have the power of reviving them under that light we shall be able to read without being blinded, as we are here. . . . Oh, Emily, I cannot tell you how thankful I feel for such books as my uncle's, 1 that drive us from the miserable little corner where we seek to shut up all divine energy, and force us to listen for the voice at our ear. If not now and here, then never and nowhere. That alternative, far from alarm- ing me, is what I rejoice at, for I cannot think that when men once awaken to it, they will be satisfied with this deaf, dead, mechanical sound, that seemed not so unnatural while people thought God was less occupying Himself with us than He used to do. I think then the thirst must awaken for the living waters that are close at hand, though sometimes one feels " we have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep." I know there is no tendency towards this at all among scientific men, but the reverse. But I think, in the conviction that they are deepening in all minds, of the unity of nature, they are preparing the way for our reception of it as a parable, though meanwhile their refusal to see it as this tells hurtfully on them. 1 Charles Darwin. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 95 From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. i CUMBERLAND PLACE, REGENT'S PARK, June 12, 1871. I feel such a longing for a word with you, I must yield to it. Your forget-me-nots are still beside me. All the rich turquoise blossoms which caught your eye have withered away, but other buds, diminished and colourless mere ghosts of flowers have had strength just to open, and show a faded and shrunken sug- gestion of what the ideal is, when it draws sap from its own root in the far-off country streams, and not from mere stalks stuck into artificial reservoirs here in this unflowery London. And I cannot fling away the poor stalks that put forth this ghostly echo of the true flower, feeling them such a symbol of my life, all colourless and shrunken as it is of our lives let me say, of the lives that attach themselves to a mere stalk the root being some far-off reminiscence that can only be recognised as a hope. When shall we see the real blossom, the flower of humanity in the fulness of colour and form that come from a real root ? . . . Always with the thought of you there comes help to me. I felt so especially thankful for our drive home together on Monday. ... I cannot tell you how much blessing I feel in that part of your life which we then entered on. In this im- perfect condition so much help comes to us from being enabled to contemplate that part of the lives of others which is lifted above ordinary life by peculiar love. Of course it is not peculiar in one sense and the most natural perhaps but I mean that one feels sometimes able to recognise universal bonds and duties only through the microscope of those special affinities. What we owe to all, what we claim from all, seems in these dreary moods nothing until we see how individual human souls can combine and lose all separateness, and then it seems revealed how this is only the promise and pledge of something that is the common right of humanity. How different is our capacity to recognise faint shades of a colour, before and after we have seen it pure ! 96 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY THE CRAG./W/V 25, 1871. ... I wish George Eliot would delineate what seems to me both the commonest and yet almost the greatest tragedy of life, the pathos that there is in a strong character that cannot com- plete itself. What makes for happiness, as M. Arnold would say, is so much less the strength of separate impulses than the power of throwing preponderant force into the one that is to govern where this is wanting, energy of feeling seems only to prolong the civil war. And one sees for some lives that this prolonged civil war is inevitable without miracle. I always listen for the voice that shall say, " Take up thy bed and walk." . . . No, we cannot help being poor and blind. But if among the poor and blind some were able to bear pain patiently, to resist wrong with- out self-assertion, to love us through unkindness and contempt, would not the world see that the unseen presence was with them ? From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, W.,//y 27, 1871. It sometimes seems to me quite wrong that I should receive such letters all to myself. They contain such a wealth of rare things ! "The pathos that there is in a strong character that cannot complete itself." I think that there was that about my beloved mother. It would be a fine subject for G. Eliot, and well suited to her pen. No, I don't think the world would see that there was a presence supporting those who could love' on through unkindness and con- tempt, who bore pain patiently, &c. I think there are more of such than you do ; but I don't think they would ever be appre- ciated by the spirit of the world which has an opposite ideal. I have written on without telling you what has been in my thoughts all the time. For I shrink from telling you, feeling that you will dislike it as much almost as I do. We are to go to Washington for six long months ! The Government has asked Russell to go as the English Commissioner to settle the claims of American and British merchants under the Treaty of Washington. It has been hanging over us for some time. He felt he could not LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 97 refuse, supposing the climate was not thought unhealthy for either of us, and that he might return by the end of March whether the work were finished or not. This condition has only just been agreed to. Now nothing remains but that the Corporation and the constituents consent, which of course they will. So I consider it settled. We should have to start the last week in September, or the first in October. It is very unattractive to me, and the Nile seems so delightfully dreamy and picturesque in comparison with that go ahead New World. Still I do not altogether hate it, for I feel a pleasure in R. having a good bit of work to do for which he is fitted, and I think he will be interested in the place and people. And I have a certain pleasure in going forth into an unknown land. But to leave you and some others is very grievous, and to be cut off this quiet winter (certainly we should have gone to the Nile, probably for four months), and only to return after Easter when the busy London time begins, seems to eat away a great slice of friendship opportunity. In 1871 Mr. Russell Gurney was appointed as English Commissioner in an arbitration at Washington, between the claims of British and American merchants. Two winters were spent by him and his wife in Washington, the summer between being spent in England. Before settling down to the winter's work in the autumn of 1871, they took a journey to Niagara, and in the spring of 1872 to some of the Southern States. A few of Mrs. Russell Gurney's letters from America, most of these being in the form of journal letters to Miss Venn, are here given. To her Aunt, Miss VENN. BREVOORT HOTEL, NEW YORK, September 19, 1871. Yes, here we actually are ! I wish you could see how well, and comfortable, and pleased. It has been a day of great excite- 98 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY ment. Soon after breakfast land came in sight, and all the passengers began to collect. Some we had never seen before, and others so transformed by elegant toilettes brought out for the occasion, that we hardly knew them again. There are two promontories that leave a passage between them called the Narrows, and enclose the immense harbour, and are something like the ridge on which Genoa is built : much prettier than I expected; woods and fields and thickly dotted villas. . . . When one gets within the harbour there appears an enormous circle about eight or ten miles across, with buildings to the water's edge. It impresses one wonderfully with its extent and the variety of its buildings. Now all the passengers gathered to the edges of the vessel, and with their opera-glasses could make out their friends on the pier who were waving handkerchiefs to them. Some had been absent one, two, or three years from fathers, mothers, or even husbands, and their excitement kept increasing. It was quite infectious, I assure you, as we slowly neared the great pier where so many eager faces and waving pocket-handkerchiefs were to be seen. Many of the passengers told us whom they were longing to see ; and we went up to them when they had descried their longed-for ones, and congratulated them, and shook hands with them while their tears were overflowing ; and then after long waiting and difficulty in approaching the shore, the bridge was managed across to the pier. And one little woman burst across in a moment from the crowd, and dashed into her husband's arms, with such a bound as I shall never forget. We remained till the last, as there were no arms to fly into. . . . We were set down at this hotel in the style of a first-rate Paris hotel. When we arrived the master did not come to receive us, but we were ushered into the parlour, as they called it, and were received by the master exactly as if he were a gentleman receiving his guests, perfectly civilly, but without the faintest suspicion of being under any obligation to us as customers. He asked about our passage, and how many passengers we had, and how long we should stay, with a kind of benevolent but not LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 99 condescending interest. The rooms are delightfully airy and clean, and in good taste. We immediately went out for a walk down the Fifth Avenue, in which the hotel is. I fancied all the houses were like one another, and all in a white monotony; not at all. They are either red brick or a fine warm-coloured stone; and not all touching one another, but like a succession of villa palaces, thick trees between them and the road, and little green settings to each home. Climbing plants up the balustrades, and massive stone stairs up to the front door, which is generally of finely carved mahogany with plated handles and bolts many tropical leaves forming a border round the edge of the house. Here and there churches with weeping willows by their sides. I was quite unprepared for so much charm in the place. . . . Since I began this we have had time to investigate. It is a desolate-looking place, notwithstanding the bright sun that has been shining upon it since we have been here. There are the widest and the most wildly bad roads I ever saw, like ploughed fields ; with tram lines along them for the great omnibuses, and houses on each side here and there, some rather handsome and some little painted boxes. The redeeming feature is the row of trees on each side. The town seems to extend over an immense area, with great gaps and unfinished buildings in all directions. It is just like a town beginning to grow out of a clearing. On Monday we went for a drive. It is rather pleasant and exciting to feel sure that you have experienced either the very best or the very worst of anything. Certainly we may say now we have been on the very worst roads in civilised life. They are absolutely like ploughed fields, only with less regular hum- mocks. We drove round the large handsome white marble Capitol. These buildings look as if giant children had been at play, and set up their toy buildings here and there in the midst of the country. It is as if the town were camping out in the middle of a prairie, not a pretty fresh prairie, but one all trampled about by builders and masons of a very untidy kind, TOO LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY who left heaps of stones and bricks and mortar here and there and everywhere. To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. BREVOORT HOTEL, NEW YORK, September 21, 1871. DEAREST LOUISA, The great Atlantic is passed. Our voyage prosperous. One sight of almost compensating beauty in exchange for sea-miseries such large sapphire-blue, heaving, crested waves breaking up into dazzling white cascades of foam, and pools of glacier-green interlacing. It was very exciting as we approached New York, escaping the perils of the deep, seeing the New World appear, and then sharing sympathetically the joy of our fellow-passengers in recognising first through opera-glasses, and then face to face, the longing, waiting, beloved ones on the pier. I think the Americans do not try to conceal their natural affections as we more sophisticated ones do. I felt the scene a kind of foretaste or promise of the meeting I long for, when the separating flood shall be past, and we awake from the be- wildering dreams and dark cabined state of our voyage. . . . If we get back safe from May till October, we shall expect our friends to make much of us ! Your very affectionate E. G. To Miss VENN. WASHINGTON, September 22, 1871. . . . We only arrived here at 11.30 last night. I wrote to you after our first week in New York. The next day (aoth) Russell went forth with Mr. Clive to the Recorder's Court, and there sat almost all day, wishing to see the plan worked of the examination of the accused as a witness in his own case. He came back, glad that he had been, and pleased on the whole ; and said that very good order had been maintained, though there were no wigs and gowns or officials of threatening aspect of any kind. Late in the afternoon we had a carriage, for which we paid about 285., and took a drive in the Central Park, a kind of LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 101 Bois de Boulogne. While the carriage was at the door Russell had to be interviewed by three editors in succession. During the first interview he was rather indignant, but became meeker and meeker as they went on. . . . SARATOGA SPRINGS, October i. Well, now I must tell you all that has happened since I wrote last. Not much of happening, to be sure; but just the daily page as it turns itself over, you will want to hear about. You will fancy that it has been wrought in more varied colours than it has been, for it always seems as if something peculiar must be happening on the other side of the Atlantic, I know. When I last wrote to you we were just closing with a house which we finally engaged, and where I think we shall be very comfortable. On Thursday we set forth alone, back again to New York. I shall not describe that journey; we had no adventures, and though we smiled invitingly to every passenger on the road, no one proffered any remark or asked any questions, as we had been led to expect Americans would. We set off on Saturday morning by the Hudson Central Railway. This is a magnificent line, and the carriages are delightful, with great broad windows of plate glass through which one can see the view to perfection. The great charms of the views were the breadth of this noble river, the quantities of boats upon it, the numbers of villas on its banks, and the varying rocks and hills and woods, and some distant well-shaped hills, that added their light blue tints as a background to the gorgeous colours of the nearer shrubs and trees. Autumn does indeed paint magnificently here. The Virginian creeper climbs up everywhere, and the sycamores and shumachs take up every gradation of crimson, gold, and purple. Many of the villas are rather like those on the Lake of Como. No, not so handsome, but they have terraces and cypresses, and balconies, and look very gay and life-enjoying. We went, after making some inquiries about different 104 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY I never before heard of the fullest congregational singing and, at the same time, skill and taste. His sermon was to me in- tensely interesting; manly, candid, full of spiritual force, and with here and there little touches of humour that were perfectly delightful, and not the least irreverent. We liked it so much that we could not help making another expedition in the evening to hear him again. He is a man about fifty-seven or fifty-eight, very genial - looking, and he seems dowered with a kind of supremacy that compels one to look at and listen to him. He ought to be heard with understanding ears, for he is not the least guarded or balanced, but presents you with a glowing, living picture of one side of a truth at a time. At any rate, the worship was like life and sunshine after dwelling in the Catacombs, as we had been doing during the last four Sundays. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. NIAGARA, October n, 1871. Most seriously I want to lay it on your consciences you must come and see this heavenly vision. I cannot use any words about it. I can only say, Come and see. It is as if one had been caught up into the third heaven, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful to attempt to utter. It is such a promise to find loveliness exceeding abundantly, above all that we could ask or think. This is what it has been. I could only cry, with the overpowering sense of this. The fair beauty of the Lord came upon me with such astonishment, when I only expected to find His grandeur and awfulness. The rapids are like a wide, foaming sea before they fall ; then, when they break into the dazzling purity of whiteness, the pearl-grey veil of foam is always mantling up around them, in changing, mysterious folds. And the large rainbow planted in the midst is more brilliant, and at the same time more ethereal, than any I ever saw in the sky. Will you not be thankful for me that my unworthy eyes have been given this. The sound of many waters is now in my ears. You must stay a week at least, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 105 as we have done, and see it in sunshine and shadow, and wander in and out of the flaming woods, and come upon it unawares. To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. NEW YORK, October 27, 1871. Your letter was written October n, while we were sitting on a pine stem in Luna Island watching the rapids the leaping, joyous, wonderful, free rapids above Niagara. All round the autumn woods were burning themselves away in gorgeous, many- tinted flame colours. And the voices of these many waters filled the air, and great clouds of illuminated misty spray from time to time mysteriously veiled the wondrous scene, and then were rent away, partially revealing new combinations. These rapids had been less anticipated and realised before- hand, and therefore came upon one with more freshness of delight, perhaps, than even the falls. No ; the impression that Niagara made was something quite by itself, and shivered to pieces all preconceived opinions, and carried one away one knew not whither. To Miss JAMESON. WASHINGTON, November 1871. DEAREST MARION, Your dear letter came to me just after our arrival in the house that is to be our home here for five months, and your loving greeting has helped to bring sympathetic images into the bare place ! I have felt your sighs in this unfamiliar room, and sighed with you, and so the room is less shut in by its grey walls than before ! But it is unspeakably sad that you should be nailed to your sofa in weakness of body while your poor heart is so riven and aching and often perplexed. To walk about physical motion is some relief even to the perturbed spirit. Certainly the cross on the spirit and the cross on the flesh do act and react on one another, so that each is intensified by the other ; and how strange the dispensation seems that your best and most comforting friends should be kept away io6 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY from you ! Not strange, for it seems the often appointed plan, that in the wilderness the comfortable words are to be spoken by the Spirit to the spirit. Some one remarked that the paralytic man had no friends to place him in the healing waters ; and for thirty-and-eight years he waited in vain at their brink. What long and repeated disappointments ! Yet when he was healed by Him who met him afterwards in the Temple, how thankful he must have been not to have been healed in the other way before ! Divine comfort and teaching and light must come in its own gradual way, wrought in us. How long that must take, con- sidering all our fibres and surfaces that want renewing and re- adjusting and developing an inner man to be raised out of corruption. I see more and more how patient we must be ! During that suffering of your blessed one, that it wrings your heart to think of, I believe the finishing strokes were being put to the renewing of that inward being, day by day. Perhaps that painful decay of the outward is mysteriously connected with some stages of spiritual purification. Do not, therefore, grudge your blessed one that perfecting through suffering which the Captain of her salvation led her into, but take courage to rejoice that she was counted worthy. You are still tasting part of the cup with her, and cannot finish it by any efforts, I believe. Would that some vivid realisation might be granted you, of her present con- dition nearer the throne, which should take the taste out of that former cup. One flash of such I had, as I saw Niagara at first, with its extraordinary brilliancy of beauty : the large vivid spirit iris ; the depth of the purity of the foam ; the voice of the many waters all overwhelmed my whole being, not with awe at its grandeur, but with a pathetic sense of the lavish crowding together of fair majestic beauty in this manifestation of the Lord of the earth. It was as if the words came to me, " exceeding abundantly, above all that we can ask or think ! " This is a token of the glad sur- prise in store for us. If any one at that moment had said to me, " I grieve that you suffered so much in crossing the Atlantic," I should have laughed them to scorn ! LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 107 Well, all this time I am telling you nothing. Since Niagara it has been all railroadings and huge hotels, and schools and institutions, interspersed with some kind-hearted friendly acquaint- ances. I have felt more interested than I expected ; but it is difficult in a few words to generalise our experiences : they have been so detailed. It is astonishing to see such young towns, so large and flourishing; such wide tracts of country with their railroads and clustering villages and towns ; such successful, busy, enterprising human beings ! I thought this would be only disagreeable, but there is an element of life in it which is exhilarating. I enjoyed the congregational fulness of song and worship at Mr. Ward Beecher's, and his manly, vigorous preaching, com- pletely unconventional, and with a sense of humour that he could not resist ; but I discovered no irreverence in him, and no affectation of originality. We find it comfortable to be settled here after our wanderings, with our nice servants ; but except the attache's to the English Legation and three or four foreign Ministers, we have seen no one. The season not having begun, it seems that people do not much call, and the Senators are not yet come. To-day it has been brilliant, just like an Italian October day ; but two days before it was bitingly cold with high cruel winds. These alternations are to be expected through the winter. It is such a straggling, unlovely place ; the Capitol a very fine build- ing, but such incompleteness everywhere. No aiming at the " sweetness and light of perfection," materially or morally, I think! To Miss VENN. WASHINGTON, December 22, 1871. We had our party to dinner, and I quite think it turned out successfully ; though we were in a dreadful fright because Mr. H., who knows all the peculiarities of the Americans, had said that it was the most difficult and delicate point imaginable to arrange the precedence of those we had asked. The Judge io8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY of the Supreme Court ought to go first, and the two Cabinet Ministers ought to go first, and the Spanish Minister, though he represented a sovereign in general circles, was considered one of the family by any of the diplomatic corps, and we are to be considered as belonging to the diplomatic corps ; and then the case was referred to Sir E. T., and he and Mr. H. took op- posite views. And then Mr. N. went to consult an old Miss B., who has been for many years in the world of Washington society, and she only shook her head and said she could really give no opinion, but said that almost anyhow they were to be offended. Finally we determined that the Spanish Minister was to go first, and that Russell should take his wife. Then the Califomian lady was to come next. Mrs. D., the wife of the Minister of the Interior, was taken by the Secretary of the Treasury ; and she was a homely grandmother who talked very lovingly of her four little grandchildren who were coming for Christmas. Well, no one seemed the least bit inclined to be offended, but were as friendly as possible, and after dinner we had seven or eight others. That Blague Bey, the Turk, is as good as a comedy any day. He speaks English with just enough accent to give it the greatest capacities of fun and expression. And there was a pretty Mrs. C., who is one of those outspoken creatures who says exactly what comes uppermost, and between these two we were greatly amused ; it made the end of our evening quite lively. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. WASHINGTON, 1872. I find it so difficult to let the past go. Long blanks and rather empty days give me the opportunity of looking back with such longing eyes. Have you read Mrs. Augustus Hare's Memoirs ? The drama of a life, when one is permitted to see within as well as around it, becomes increasingly touching and interesting, as one gets far on in one's own. One's curiosity becomes intense to learn how it fares with travellers after their early companions and eager aspirations have left them, or faded. With all that melts away, one longs so to know what is actually LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 109 attained and held. Patience certainly seems to come to a matured right life. But how much of energetic aspiration is lost as that is gained ? It is strange to be set here on a narrow bridge or isthmus, from which I look back on my youth and maturity, and see before me the descent of age, long shadows, evening, death, still appearing on the rather distant horizon, but with so few objects between it and me for the eye to rest upon except the graves of beloved ones who are farther on in the journey. Having no children certainly lessens one's hold on life, do you not think ? And till one's parents go, one does not fully taste this. To Miss VENN. WASHINGTON, January 9, 1872. . . . On Friday the 5th we gathered together all our energy and went forth after tea to call on Mrs. T. This is like an old- fashioned English house, with broad oak stairs, landing-places all thronged with little portraits, and china, and relics of the past, and this old lady affects English ways in everything, and very pleasant and comfortable those ways seemed. She had a Sutherland table and hissing kettle in, and made tea for us. She is very High Church in the old-fashioned way, and thinks " private judgment " the greatest curse, and education of the lower ranks poisonous. I did not think there were any such remaining any- where ; fancy finding one in America ! She evidently thought us the rashest of advanced Liberals. However, on the whole, we seem to have given her satisfaction, for the next morning, by cock-crow, she sent in a little note to beg us to go in to dine with her that very day at six o'clock. We found there a Ken- tucky lady who had lived surrounded, she said, by dear old slaves till the war time ; and all were talking of the paradisaical state the slaves were in before the Emancipation and the misery into which they had all fallen. Judge L. was very pleasant and amusing, and not nearly so in harmony with the dark ages as the old lady, but tending in that direction. He does not think, however, that the country is degenerating. He thinks there is no LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY less crime than there was ; much less drunkenness, though there are frauds. He says this is the worst place we could be in for forming a judgment of the best class of Americans, for here most of the people are officials or take part in politics. He confirmed what has been said over and over again, that the best people do not mingle in politics, and that they are in the hands of the people who want to grow rich by this means, having failed in other ways. And yet he would not agree to what I said, that this must lower the general standard of morality very much. He did not think that politics affected the general heart and life of the country at all. He went on to speak of the negroes in a way that would have roused Uncle Henry l to indignation. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. CHARLESTON, March 1872. Oh, how my heart responded to all you said in your dear note. " Even the serious things don't seem worth while," with the foundations quivering. Is the Lord amongst us or not ? is the question stirring one's whole soul ; and the life-blood seems to gather round this central question, and to retire from all the circumference beyond. Did you read in " Middlemarch " a sen- tence about " the keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, which would make us die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence ; but as it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity." Perhaps this kind of quilted gar- ment is intended to keep us from being bewildered by the mani- fold deep questionings in order that we may each take sufficient interest in our tiny bits of work. Yet again, one feels one could work so much better if those questions were answered ! Oh, if you also had been with us on the St. John's River, Florida, so wondrously clear and smooth, and reflecting such a heaven! Now narrow enough to make its palm-fringed banks seem an arched bower, beneath as well as above. And wild oranges grew there and fell into the still edges of the water, lying there like balls of fire ; and hundreds of snow-white cranes flew 1 The Rev. Henry Venn. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY in above us, glittering in the sunlight, and sweet little grey storks picked their way amongst the sedgy banks. There were groves of old ilex trees draped with a long waving grey moss and other fantastic plants ; and all reached, unrestrained by man, towards the clear waters, or dipped thirstily into them. We had nearly a week in this lovely primeval region. To the same. April 1872. Oh, I knew what the departure of that blessed seer [F. D. Maurice] would be to you ! The light is dying off our mountain peaks. When, when will the morning come and show them to us again ? One does think of him as a voice ! its trembling still vibrates in our memory and must help us to pray. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY (between the two visits to America). PALACE GARDENS, August 1872. Dear child, I much wish I could oftener feel you by my side, and that the two worlds in which we are living could be more blended. The description of your Babbacombe life makes me long to be young again and to have such a chance of happy, free, out-of-door life. Yet I hope and think you are enjoying such a life more than I ever did such times in my youth. I was always looking on, and did not receive as I should have done from the present. And this is still my besetting sin, though by experience and con- viction I do believe that in the present our daily bread is to be found, and that our salvation is in the now. Every day to me, as well as you, must have its message, its teaching, its nourish- ment, its medicine. Yet fain would I skip some and get a glimpse beyond the horizon. The coming kingdom, the large eternal life, makes my heart so long to taste it, as one cannot in the flesh ! I know one's energy should expend itself in striv- ing and longing to receive more of this blessed life here, and I believe my desires for that which lies beyond the veil come from the idleness and listlessness which keep me back from striving here as I should do. Then the details of visiting and H2 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY going backwards and forwards from an American to a London season are wearying, stale, and flat, though tolerably amusing to the outermost surface of one. I have had much happiness from very loving and loved friends, and most refreshing and exhilarat- ing it has been to be amongst them all again. And long rays will stretch from the light of their presence into the distance and darkness of Washington. To the same (after return to America). WASHINGTON, November 1872. Our wanderings in Canada lasted a fortnight. They included finely situated Quebec ; the rapids, which we shot successfully near Montreal ; Niagara the magnificent, which we again won- dered at, and bathed our souls in ; a religious community, 1 which seemed to me really like a seed sown in a large place for the coming kingdom. I cannot explain to you, for it would need a volume, the fulness, and the simplicity, and breadth of ideas which these people are endeavouring to carry out. They think they are very consciously and mightily led by the Spirit Oh ! may it be so indeed and that they have supernatural evidence of this in many ways. We could only stay there twenty-four hours, so it was but a superficial glance we could give. How / longed to remain I need not tell you. And how flat, stale, and unprofitable the fashionable watering-place, New- port, seemed afterwards, I need not relate. The villas and gardens, and fashionable sea-shore drive, and the carriages and horses are all in first-rate style ; and here the New Yorkers disport themselves in the summer months, regardless of expense. Here were the P.'s, and Mr. and Mrs. B., extremely kind and hospitable and intelligent people, and so were some others who invited us. From Newport we travelled here, stopping at a lovely villa on the Hudson banks, with the heartiest, sunniest people. The host drove four-in-hand splendidly, and took us all about the lovely country ; and would fain also have sailed us up and down the 1 That of Mr. Harris at Brockton. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 113 broad Hudson in his fairy yacht. But we preferred the dear earth, decked as she was in her gorgeously flaming garments of crimson and gold. We then, as I said, came on here. The Commissioners met and arranged about future work, and then insisted on adjourning again till October 28th. So off we started again, shaken and dusted, dragged by snorting engines to Boston, 500 miles off, and there sojourned very agreeably for ten days. Our cice- rone, Mr. H., was most useful to us. Took us quite in charge, pioneered us about every day, and caught celebrities for us to see : Dr. O. W. Holmes, whom I was very glad to see, having much liked his " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." We were also taken to Longfellow's. He is serene, simple, and tender, as an old poet should be, and eminently picturesque. From Boston we went by rail almost to Albany, and from there struck into very pretty hilly country. Oh, the jewels we saw, rubies and topazes especially, hanging translucent on the trees! We had only two days for this pretty Berkshire, and a glance at the Shaker Community, who planted themselves here one hundred years ago, and live in celibacy and community of goods, and flourish as to material prosperity greatly. Unfortun ately, we could not see their religious dance, but they expounded their curious tenets to us; and though so distorted and un- balanced, there is an interesting side to all these extravagances, as proceeding from dissatisfaction with the poor, mutilated, un- influential Christianity generally seen in the world. A stretching out of the hands, however blindly and impotently, for some- thing higher and less earthly. We returned here for the 28th, and the Commissioners have been getting on steadily ; but we are hopeless of the work being finished before the summer ! To the same. WASHINGTON, April 1873. Just now the claims are getting on well, and the sunshine and the many blossoms are cheering ; and feeling that we have H n 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY only three weeks more of Washington, gives it a sort of halo it has hitherto been without. I don't know how to be thankful enough that the long cold winter is over, and my dearest has not suffered at all in health. We are to have a fortnight loitering here and there when we leave this, and are due at Newport on the ist of June till the work is finished. I greatly hope, as things look now, that we may embark about the i5th of August, and get home by our twenty-first wedding day ! It was silly of me to say the work here was " petty and insignificant." In one sense this is true. I mean that I think an ordinary attorney would have been as well, perhaps better calculated than R. to settle the claims. In another sense, to be permitted to lay even a brick in a work of peace between these countries is an honour. Besides, I am utterly convinced that we have no measuring rods for ascertaining what is great or small in the work given us to do ; and I hope this was given to us, not snatched by us. I know we did not wish for it. But I have a headlong way of rushing into some work for R., and it seems to gratify a moral ambition if it demands a sacrifice. This kind of sentiment at the outset of an undertaking is of the flesh, and needs trying and sifting by time and wear and tear of circumstances ; and this we have had, and have no business to complain. CORRESPONDENCE WITH J. W. FROM SEP- TEMBER 1871 TO DECEMBER 1875 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 1871. Starting for America, Saturday, \ I o'clock. Your dear letter has brought you to me this morning! I shall feed on it on the voyage, but I was obliged to taste it first. I must tell you the Southampton meeting was really very successful, and one moment quite supremely sweet : a sentence of my beloved with such a look towards me when he thanked for LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 115 some expressions also to the "amiable lady," he said, that one who in his absence from home, &c., would still make his life a delight ; but it was only the look of perfect forgetfulness of all the people and applause that there was in the tone and look, that brought an atmosphere of heaven. Received October 2. We have had a very fair voyage. One glorious day at the end of a gale, Sunday, when I crept on deck, and saw the forms of the frolicsome waves and their dancing crests flying off into cascades and making filigree silver network over the sapphire and pools of indescribable glacier-green swirling amongst them. I feel as if I just waked from a bad dream to see this, and then relapsed again into a mollusc. Oh, this Babel in which I am now writing ; about sixty people down two long, shaking tables, playing at whist, chattering, &c., and sailors stamping overhead. The American tones very predominant. The smell of steamer, tobacco, and meals all mingling. How can I attempt to disen- gage my spirit to commune with you ? But this is just a line to go from the New World to show you I am just the same, neither better nor worse ; only yearning a little more affectionately across the gulf to my dearest Snow, and needing her thoughts and words more than ever. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WASHINGTON, September 26, 1871. It seems rather sad to have arrived at one's journey's end. I had a kind of sensation of what the exiles to Siberia felt when they looked curiously out at the last stage, with which they knew they would become so miserably familiar ! And this does look so like an outpost; as if a stray higgledy-piggledy town were camping out on a prairie, and not a fresh prairie, but one worn with brick dust and tramping feet. Then we learnt on arrival here that every hope must be given up of getting finished in six months. So two winters seem spread before us instead of one, and this makes the place uglier. But n6 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY really there is much that is consoling and pleasant and encourag- ing. The colleagues seem decidedly promising. The winter climate, all tell us, is very mild and sunshiny. We have taken a comfortable house. We like what we have seen of the people. The British Legation attaches have been most kind and helpful, and are intelligent and quite gentlemen. Then we like our own two very much. We shall house them, but they will only break- fast with us. We shall, however, rarely get an evening alone from what we hear, and are just making up our minds to live in public almost. I don't think, however, that I shall feel so shy as at home ; there seems something freer in this atmosphere ! We like the perfect conviction of equality with which innkeepers, &c., treat us, without a tinge of rudeness. R. just returned from his first meeting, finds Frazer and Corti pleasant to work with. He anticipates no difficulties, but lengthiness in getting through. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. This travel in America under these circumstances would have intoxicated me with joy twenty years ago, and now I have passed another way. I am longing for that " corporate element in Chris- tianity " that you say Miss G. speaks of a spiritual community and intercourse and gifts in a kingdom not of this world. . . . What a thrill of remorse shot through me this morning, when I knew that I had let yesterday's mail close without a line, having kept my words to you back to the last, and then I found myself left dead and dry (as I find myself oftener and oftener with advancing years) ; and I would not force myself to write to you in that condition, but said I would wait till the morning. The mornings come to me so freshly and hopefully, and wear away into such stupid, commonplace days ! Yet I always expect some new wonder day to dawn and last for me. Tell me, always tell me such good things as your No. 6 says, about the paralytic waiting thirty-and-eight years by the healing waters. How unbearable to him if it had been prophesied that LETTERS OF EMEL1A RUSSELL GURNEY 117 no good would come to him from them ; and afterwards what a joy that he had not been dipped in them ! And Christ finding him in the Temple, that I respond to. But I want the atheists to have a Temple ; some seeking after worship, I mean. I know they have an earnest religion, but I dread their losing the faculty of discerning the living Lord, if there is not that seeking, upward- longing region in the heart which makes it a Temple. If they are content to leave off looking for the stars, and shut themselves in to the lamps, will the stars force themselves in after them ? Well, no doubt the Seeker and Saviour will know how to make them try again, as your letter in the Spectator about Mr. Erskine's views makes one feel. Did you read F. D. M. on the Athanasian Creed ? I liked it particularly. But Russell says he cannot see a glimmer of meaning in it as applied to the Creed ; that it no more touches the question than it does the system of Copernicus, or anything else ! I own that I think it strange that he should feel that Creed a help to emerge from opinions about God into God Himself; but surely this is the ideal work of all expressions of belief and definitions of the Truth. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WASHINGTON, New Year's Day, 1872. . . . And now, do you know I am writing between the visits of two Senators, M.C.'s and Judges ! We have just come from the President's New Year's Reception, and Russell has started with a list of thirty ladies on whom he is to call, and I stay at home to receive the gentlemen. I have had fifteen, and now there is a pause. I have not found one the least like the Yankee one imagines, vaunting himself and his country ; but, on the con- trary, rather shy and formal, as if they were trying to be very particular in their manners. And so I have found them easy to get on with, because it seems as if they only wanted a little good- natured encouraging chat. Another carriage and black coachman interrupted me ; a Judge of the Supreme Court, and two young n8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY sons of a lodging-house keeper came in together. The two were as modest as possible, and did not seem to like to sit down on the blue sofa, and would not have any tea or coffee. Does it make them more contented to feel they may call on anybody, I wonder. I often say to people, " We have too much exclusive- ness in England, I like the removing barriers " ; and without exception hitherto I have been answered, " We don't like it at all, it only leads to display and extravagance, and a mad desire for distinction of some kind or another." From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WASHINGTON, January 14, 1872. I am happy to say I cannot agree with you that Christianity is a failure as a deliverer from sin. It has been fully tried by such a minority ; but those have been, I think, wonderfully de- livered from selfish aims, though not completely, and I cannot help thinking that even the diffused Christianity in the air has done more for its opponents than they can guess. They would not have joy in evolution, I believe, if they had not imbibed inspirations for the perfecting of the whole creation from Chris- tianity. . . . Something you said in your last letter but one, and a sentence I saw somewhere quoted from Goethe, came home to me par- ticularly as I felt so frittered into shreds. You said you had a misgiving sometimes lest those who do not look for immortality should not find it ; and Goethe said he believed in the im- mortality of those who had souls enough to live again. I do fear when my body is dissolved my spirit will dissipate itself all about in smoky atoms ! For I cannot feel a current of my being setting anywhere ! It must be something quite different when one has attained to the resurrection of the dead. Days have passed since I began this, and I have been to five receptions each afternoon, and to evenings, and have 158 new faces and names to bear in mind. Is it not an odd dispensation ? Muddling and externalising seemed the last things I needed, yet these opportunities seem appointed me. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 119 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (about a -visit to Brocton, U. S., 1872). You asked me to tell you about Brocton, if I managed to get there. On Friday last we made a long expedition from this place, and reached the railway station of Brocton Junction, two or three miles from the shores of Lake Ontario. We saw Mr. Harris standing at the luggage van. I had not seen him before, and I dreaded to find a man of whose sanity or sincerity I should doubt. A cheerful, open, hearty face and manner at once dis- pelled my misgivings ; there was nothing of the religious leader that I could trace about him. He attended to our baggage, had all his wits about him, talked of the politics of the day, pointed out different vines in the vineyards we passed and different ways of cultivating them, like a man whose great interests lay among secular things. He and his people have about 300 acres of ground, partly adjoining the station, partly a mile off. His cottage, to which we drove (he had provided a nice open carriage for us), stands on rather a raised platform with slopes on either side, some with vines, and the sea-like blue lake in the distance. It all looks like very new country, wild and rather untidy, and only beginning to be brought under cultivation. These people have been here five years. The cottage to which he took us is very inviting and pretty, a kind of balcony porch leading into a dining-room ; a library, well stocked with books and engravings, and a bedroom and dressing-room, all communicating, all nicely cared for, decked with flowers, &c. A widow, rather elderly, presides a homely, but very beaming, gentle creature, who welcomed us very simply and sweetly. Mr. Harris looks about forty-six or forty-seven, strongly built, with rather a fine head, and impresses one with having an abundance of force and a sense of freedom, and very positive convictions. I did not feel, as with Mr. Maurice, or Mr. Erskine, or Mr. Campbell, this is indeed a holy, spiritual man ; but I did feel most strongly this is an honest, perfectly simple, good man. After we had rested he took us about the place, chiefly 120 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY amongst vineyards, and to their great wine-making place and cellars. He aims at making the very purest and best wine that it is possible to make ; that Christianity should regulate every part of the process. This is the aim in each of the industries he is carrying on : a farm, a nursery-garden, a hotel, a restaurant at the railway station; presently he hopes to get a maple-sugar factory. He says these trades are just beginning to answer, he thinks, but it is almost impossible to compete with the cheaper, adulterating, self-interested tradespeople. His experience of the corruption in every trade and business in which religious people were engaged, and a terrible early experience of the hollowness of the Evangelical clergyman and leading members of the con- gregation to which he belonged, drove him to try to embody Christianity in secular life to get rid of selfishness in every business and transaction. The principle that those who come must accept is, nothing for myself, my life and work and hope for others. Yet each of those who have property are to keep their right to it. But he says the great difficulty is to make them keep up any sense of their personal belonging ; there is no desire to keep, but to give. The wine business, and I think the nursery-garden, were begun with money of Mr. H.'s. A mill and bakery by another on the co-operative principle. Complete self-renunciation to the will of God and service of the brethren, he thinks, opens the heart to the influx of the Spirit, and that by degrees the body is to be completely redeemed and regener- ated by an actual respiration of heavenly or spiritual breath. He breathed on them and said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost ; " he thinks miraculous gifts accompany this condition, and that they were lost when this physical redemption by spiritual breathing was lost. He and his followers think he has the gift of dis- cerning of spirits, and some other supernatural gifts. He has received communication from departed spirits (he believes), which have been confirmed by external facts. Spiritualism, as generally understood, he thinks full of danger and evil. He believes that there is a decaying away of all religions now, which will increase ; but that the kingdom of heaven has also begun to LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 121 appear, through the manifestation of these breathing sons of God. This may be drawn up into heaven again, but he hopes the Lord, in some special way, will come to those who look for Him ; and then His prayer will be fulfilled for unity, " I in them and Thou in Me," and the world will know and the kingdoms of the earth be brought in. They occasionally have worship together, and he preaches, but some time they work on Sunday. Each is to consider the advantage of all rather than his own soul's welfare. He thinks the solacing oneself with hopes of heaven has been most pernicious. Our great endeavour and longing should be, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," and that this must be fulfilled. He takes an extremely dark, and I hope exaggerated, view of the corruption of evil everywhere and of the strength of the principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this world ; thinks our bodies and souls infested with demons, and that the more we get en rapport with the spiritual by religious observances (without the radical uncompromising giving up the whole will to Christ), the more we are infested by them. He thinks he is assailing a stronghold of deceitful spirits, and that he meets them in very close contact, and that it is given to him to bind them. He looks like a man who has struggled much and been marred, but feels the strength of conquering. Unfortunately, our time was so short, and the next morning was so strangely, intensely hot, that he did not take us to see the people. I saw only one young man who was attending to the horses and drove us, called Ernest (the son of a clergyman), who had the same energetic, cheerful face ; and the young woman who waited on us seemed neat, modest, and bright. The restaurant at the station is far the best of any we have seen in America; sparkling with cleanliness and flowers, and the "ladies" who served I talked with, and found them very courteous and amiable, but reticent. Mrs. Requa, the widow, was ready to answer anything I asked, and also to speak glow- ingly of all the peace and joy she had found here. She has been with Mr. H. seven years, and her husband had been four years when he died, blessing God, she said, for all he had received 122 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY here. There seemed to me a kind of glow and earnest expecta- tion in the atmosphere that made one think of the early Chris- tians. Mr. H. does not wish people to remain here unless they find a work that suits them ; but thinks that the newly-born and still weak require the support of fellowship for a time. I find my account of things at Brocton degenerating into an exposition of Mr. H.'s views, because there was so little besides to describe, as all is everyday life; secular things unsecularised by the spirit of utter self-renunciation and active love, and the hope of a fuller manifestation of the kingdom of God. As I write, I feel how unreasonable to expect anything from these visionaries; all experience of the past shows one that when Mr. H.'s personal influence ceases, these houses of cards will fall, and yet, I confess to you, my heart is so drawn to this chimera, I could almost long to cast in my lot with theirs. The great misgiving that would hold me back, would be lest Mr. Harris should be made too much of a pope by his followers. I saw this disposition plainly in the widow, and the thing that repelled me was narrow- ness. " No other work than that at Brocton could be a lasting one." But I have come away so quickened in a longing for righteousness righteousness here. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. PALATKA, ST. JOHN'S RIVER, FLORIDA. Sunday, March 10. This day three weeks, soon after you receive this, we expect to be sailing towards you. For Saturday 3oth our places are taken in the White Star Line ship that leaves New York. On Easter Day think of us on the sea the exile nearly over ; the taste of it all but gone ; and the question only remaining, What has it wrought in us ? We left Washington ten days ago for a hasty flight into the South. We have been travelling over tracts of pine-covered marshy land, strangely flat and monotonous, but now and then, since we reached Georgia and Florida, breaking out into patches LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 123 of magnificent forest scenery of ilexes and pines, with the most luxuriant undergrowth of laurels, magnolias, wild oranges, and climbing yellow jessamine, and the palmetto ; the free growth of all astonishing one with its lavish profusion. In these favoured spots growth seems a joy and not a struggle. Yet a few yards off life seems again restrained and niggardly. The mystery is brought vividly before one of the conditions of life, the breath that awakens it blowing everywhere, yet some impediments hold- ing it back as in the spiritual world. If we had not been in Jamaica, many scenes here would have enchanted me even more. But here there is no beauty of hill and valley and there is more swamp and sand. To-morrow we go up the Upper St. John's, and return to Savannah Friday, and to Washington on the 2oth, for a few more sittings of the Commissioners, unless we hear by that time that the treaty is at an end. The return to England was delayed yet another five weeks, but May found Mr. and Mrs. Russell Gurney again at their cottage at Woolhampton. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. May 31, 1872. I must tell you what an overwhelming meeting we have had with little Kai ! Running from one to another and screaming and crying with joy ; and finally selecting me to spread himself over, and lay his paws abidingly round ! And the cot does look wonderfully sweet. I wish you were here too. The grass and leafiness never looked so bewitching as in contrast to America ; and everything seems so curtained and bowery, after the wide expanses and public life. Thanks for your dear words. I do not see worldly life so satisfying to many I know; "more than spiritual ever seems," you say. I heard such an account of the satisfying spiritual in- toxication prolonged through seven years in a convent, which I must tell you about. But how is spiritual life to be adjusted with healthful energy and interest in earthly things, I wonder. 124 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CUMBERLAND PLACE, July g, 1872. I wanted to tell you how delighted I was with your husband's speech last night. It seemed to me such a rare specimen of that little appreciated virtue, justice. When will people see that generosity is the easy, and so to say, coarse virtue, and that all that kind of excellence which it absorbs must, in a mind more delicately conscientious, take the form of justice at least in all the more responsible situations of life ? From the same, RAVENSBOURNE, August 1872. I always find myself asking the same question, after every visit to you Is it possible that any intercourse in this world can go on being an unmixed source of joy ? And is not the time at hand when the " lean kine " are to appear upon the scene ? But now I ask the question without anxiety, for I always feel, well, if it is so, let them come ! I have had enough now to live upon. I feel that in my communication with you I have been enabled not only to find a fellow-watcher from my spot of earth into the spiritual world, and a response to all that part of my being, but also so wonderfully a channel to all that joy that our hearts must crave for in this world, you have given me a vicarious hold on it that seems at moments all I need. It is not often that one's spirit can come into such close union with another, that what gives joy to that other can warm one's own inmost life with the same kind of joy as one's own joy, and satisfy imagination with all the varied detail without which sym- pathy is imperfect ; but this I do feel with you your peace, your joy is mine. Think of me as one of your convalescents, living on you, only one you cannot get rid of, but whom you will find a less sombre comrade, I trust, when this ill-fitting garment of mor- tality is removed. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 125 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (on the return voyage to America). ON BOARD THE "MORAVIAN," August 22, 1872. It seems to me time to wake up and say a word to you. It has been a time of physical misery and mental inanity such as I have not yet experienced. On Tuesday night I could appreciate more the kind of horror of being the sport of the great waters. They seemed to roar, and then gurgle and hiss around, above, beneath one, as if longing to destroy one, and as the ship shuddered and trembled, I shuddered and shivered too, and could not mount above with any sense of trust and love. Now the storm is over, and we are in smooth waters, the sun shining. We cannot well reach Quebec till Monday 26th, and shall have had a twelve instead of a ten days' passage. I have just been reading your letter, and thinking with you, will the night time of our life seem so short, and not worth thinking of when our morning dawns ? I have thought of this especially in seeing the abject misery of the poor crowded emi- grants in this vessel ; huddled together in dirt and damp and sickness : the one consolation that could be offered them being that it could not last long, and would be forgotten when over. But such a consolation cannot and ought not to be sufficient for the miseries of life. If they are only to be submitted to and got through, life is a poor, unworthy gift. Some language must be learnt in these parts of life, some tools forged that are necessary equipments, I suppose, for our new encounter ; but if we begin to sing before the time, perhaps we shall fail to get this equip- ment woven. The people about me are nice, easy-going ones, making the best of circumstances, thinking a little good sense in adapting oneself to things as they are pretty much all that is needed to make the world what it ought to be. i2 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CUMBERLAND PLACE, July g, 1872. I wanted to tell you how delighted I was with your husband's speech last night. It seemed to me such a rare specimen of that little appreciated virtue, justice. When will people see that generosity is the easy, and so to say, coarse virtue, and that all that kind of excellence which it absorbs must, in a mind more delicately conscientious, take the form of justice at least in all the more responsible situations of life ? From the same. RAVENSBOURNE, August 1872. I always find myself asking the same question, after every visit to you Is it possible that any intercourse in this world can go on being an unmixed source of joy ? And is not the time at hand when the " lean kine " are to appear upon the scene ? But now I ask the question without anxiety, for I always feel, well, if it is so, let them come ! I have had enough now to live upon. I feel that in my communication with you I have been enabled not only to find a fellow-watcher from my spot of earth into the spiritual world, and a response to all that part of my being, but also so wonderfully a channel to all that joy that our hearts must crave for in this world, you have given me a vicarious hold on it that seems at moments all I need. It is not often that one's spirit can come into such close union with another, that what gives joy to that other can warm one's own inmost life with the same kind of joy as one's own joy, and satisfy imagination with all the varied detail without which sym- pathy is imperfect ; but this I do feel with you your peace, your joy is mine. Think of me as one of your convalescents, living on you, only one you cannot get rid of, but whom you will find a less sombre comrade, I trust, when this ill-fitting garment of mor- tality is removed. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 125 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (on the return voyage to America). ON BOARD THE "MORAVIAN," August 22, 1872. It seems to me time to wake up and say a word to you. It has been a time of physical misery and mental inanity such as I have not yet experienced. On Tuesday night I could appreciate more the kind of horror of being the sport of the great waters. They seemed to roar, and then gurgle and hiss around, above, beneath one, as if longing to destroy one, and as the ship shuddered and trembled, I shuddered and shivered too, and could not mount above with any sense of trust and love. Now the storm is over, and we are in smooth waters, the sun shining. We cannot well reach Quebec till Monday 26th, and shall have had a twelve instead of a ten days' passage. I have just been reading your letter, and thinking with you, will the night time of our life seem so short, and not worth thinking of when our morning dawns ? I have thought of this especially in seeing the abject misery of the poor crowded emi- grants in this vessel ; huddled together in dirt and damp and sickness : the one consolation that could be offered them being that it could not last long, and would be forgotten when over. But such a consolation cannot and ought not to be sufficient for the miseries of life. If they are only to be submitted to and got through, life is a poor, unworthy gift. Some language must be learnt in these parts of life, some tools forged that are necessary equipments, I suppose, for our new encounter ; but if we begin to sing before the time, perhaps we shall fail to get this equip- ment woven. The people about me are nice, easy-going ones, making the best of circumstances, thinking a little good sense in adapting oneself to things as they are pretty much all that is needed to make the world what it ought to be. 126 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY August 26. Since I wrote this, we have been detained twenty-four hours in a fog at the entrance of Belle Isle Straits. We have seen ice- bergs under a beautiful sunrise. We have seen a supernatural display of Aurora Borealis ; and the glassy sea in the Gulf of St. Lawrence reflected the spirit-dancing lights. It is again an experience of joy coming in the morning. We are watching the sea turning into the mighty river, and we are hoping to be landed this evening at Quebec. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. Your dear letter has arrived from Belle Isle Straits. That sunrise over the icebergs must have been glorious, and the dancing lights over the sea. But what a Purgatory you went through before the dawn. Now you have almost forgotten it, and are at the Brocton Community. How I long to hear about that, and dread you may be disappointed. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. CUMBERLAND PLACE, November 3, 1872. How shall I make you feel the flood of happiness that floated my soul when the dear, two-headed yellow envelope walked up to my room on Wednesday the 3oth ! The rocks and shoals seemed suddenly far beneath me, and I felt how life would be quite easy, if only one were often thus lifted on the tide of love. As I grow older I feel what is most precious in a real, mutual love is not even the exquisite sense of sympathy in idiosyncrasies, delightful though this is, but the promise of a wider brotherhood which seems given in the sense that two souls can come so near and find such well-being in each other's neighbourhood. I sometimes feel the ties we form here (such as ours, I mean) may be like the puddles left on the beach, mere specimens of what is to be spread everywhere when the tide returns. And yet there is something unsatisfactory in that thought, for one LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 127 cannot bear to feel that any love shall ever lose, not only its absolute value, but its proportion in our spiritual life ; one cannot wish the individual ties to be obliterated like the rock pools at high tide. But I have tangled the threads ; perhaps the fulness of perfection will -reconcile advantages that now seem incompatible. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WASHINGTON, November 20, 1872. What have I to tell you about our life here ? It is much less irksome to me than last year. Some friendly beings embellish it ; but chiefly, the sense of being expatriated and imprisoned has worn off with the novelty. Russell is well and can work, and we have both left off straining our eyes to look homewards, and can live contentedly by the day. Boston interested me much. I saw several fresh, energetic, untrammelled creatures, who could only have grown under this regime, I think. Last night we were at the President's ; about a dozen people sitting in a circle, talking over their triumph at the elections. R. spoke of the dirt thrown on both sides in the way of personal accusations, and said if one believed half, there could not be an honest man in the country. Grant said, " But surely it's just the same in your country ; people say anything they like at elections, and forgive everything afterwards." From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. WASHINGTON, February 12, 1873. A day of pouring rain, dark and gloomy, Russell gone to Baltimore. A kind of dull sense of the end of all things about the house ; when lo ! in comes a buff letter and everything is changed. The glimpse of present, living love brought home to the heart, what sunshine it is ! The day after I wrote my letters poured in [after the death of her uncle, Mr. Henry Venn], and brought such a tide of sweet- 128 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY ness and blessing, and this week I have been living with my blessed ones, and feeling such an inheritance in them. Certainly the convictions of all those were translated into life in an un- common degree. Yesterday I by chance had a talk with a scientific man who is surveying and mapping all the mountains. He has just come from five months alone on the Cordilleras, and had been reading Robertson's sermons, and his heart was rejoicing in them. He spoke of prayer and the scientific difficulty from inside his own sheltering experience of a Father's heart, but did not speak like an ordinarily religious man. I felt it so refreshing, I came dancing home almost. April 12. A marriage has always something of a death in it to the nearest and dearest, and it is followed too by something of a resurrection better life to all often too. You give up some of the presence, to understand the spirit better. You see less of the hindering veil of every day, and more of the true being beneath. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. BROADLANDS, ROMSEY, October 31, 1873. . . . The heavenly sense of being at home again prevents my " making haste " about anything. It is such a foretaste of how it will be. Two oceans overpast and all restored ; and the wander ings and the weariness and misgivings and questionings as to whether it was well so, all lost and merged in the sense of rest and peace. And this view on which my eyes are resting, the many-coloured trees all veiled in morning pearly mist, and the onward-gliding, but clearly mirroring river set in smooth green pastures curving away into the distance beneath sheltering woods, seems the fit shrine of this rest and peace. And "the fair saint," with her unfathomable and extraordinarily wide sympathy, its pre- siding and guardian angel. If you were but here you would be unfoggened ! We have all felt what you say about the autobiography of J. S. Mill exceed- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 129 ingly interesting, only we think we should not mind the halo obliterating the features of his adored one so dull as you do com- pared with the reasonable filial devotion in the first part of the book. November 22, 1873. I wish you would write a review somewhere of Stuart Mill. I saw only one in the Spectator, and it wants much more. That seems to me a most instructive life, and the most pathetic one I think I ever read. I wonder his worship of his wife does not more interest you. That suppressed soul of his looking upward and seeing her fill heaven ! From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. QUEEN ANNE STREET, December 31, 1873. I feel inclined to finish the year with you, after spending so much of the last day with you, partly to tell you how much I had enjoyed those hours, for I have such a desire to know more of your surroundings as well as yourself, and feel as if I could picture your acquaintance-world better after these glimpses. It is not the most interesting kind of world ; yet, from my own experi- ence, I know that it is a loss to be without acquaintance, for which even the greatest wealth of friendship does not entirely compensate. It is not a case of the large hole for the cat and the small one for the kitten, though one does sometimes feel as if all acquaintance were only so much underwood that one would like to cut down when one has picked out the future trees. To me to-day, as I was coming home in the omnibus, there came a strange new joy and brightness. I felt such an influx of hope for the coming year, that I longed to share with you. I think the hope that comes in these autumnal years on anniversaries does not, like the old hopes, mean the prelude to disappointment. I feel like Stanley in his answer from that terrible German boy, " My best years are to come." You cannot say that. But the absolute best lies beyond the space that is marked in years, for both of us. Oh, how one's soul flutters I 130 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and struggles to rise up into the region that seems so near and sometimes so inaccessible the world where we should be one with each other, because of the common relation that we should live upon ! I came upon a thought in some MS. lectures Mr. Hutton has lent me that struck me much that we are united by reverence as much as we are severed by taste ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. QUEEN'S HOTEL, HASTINGS, February 14, 1874. . . . When I was last here I envied Caroline Stephen her opportunities for abundant ministrations ; now I think how much better it is to have the memory of my unmarred be- loved one to the very verge. But whichever way they go, there are peculiar pangs and peculiar gleams of comfort. Has the intercession of Christ no meaning to you ? I suppose not, as you do not see any place for prayer for others. I think it is a kind of divine volition in humanity, that must take place ere the essentially Divine will can have its way. There must be some deep meaning in the intercession of Abraham and Moses and our Lord's prayer for Peter when Satan desired to sift him, and Job for his friends it runs all through the Bible certainly the evil spirit that could not be cast out except by prayer and fasting. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. 31 QUEEN ANNE STREET, W., February 22, 1874. Did you like that article ? I felt it so wonderfully expressive of the heterogeneous feelings the book gave me. How can any one come so near God, and end in a " perhaps," as he does ? How can our relation to Him deserve some attentive considera- tion and not demand the whole ardent devotion of our lives, the devotion that no more excludes human love than caring for a book excludes caring for the author ? LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 131 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, 1874. I don't think I ought to be forgiven for my silence at Hastings. I can only say truly every day I thought of you. But I wanted to be silent It is not that I am very anxious about my dear one. I only realise that he has reached a new platform, . . . and my own approaching anniversary, I wanted to keep it a time of silence, and turned from my writing things. But the last day I was so cheered and uplifted by a little book by Pere Gratry, Les Sources, second part ; do you know it ? You must like it with me, and feel that it brings prayer before you as a help to others, irresistibly. I never felt the Christian life set. before one with such a powerful attraction. It seems to fill the whole horizon, and to leave no room for personal regrets or fears ! June, 1874. I am full of hope about the inconceivable things preparing for us, and I don't think we must go on too much regretting our failures. I see the creature must die before the new life can find an entrance ; so let us fail and give up. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. September 6, 1874. I send you a copy of part of a letter written to Mrs. S., which will interest you. It makes me long for that heart union with our Lord she has tasted. ... If this " love-life " they describe were only for our own joy it would be wrong and sentimental to seek it. But if thus the love of Christ is to flow through us to others, we may surely open out to receive it. I feel being so weaned from everything else, and by this weaning seem to walk just now almost alone. Oh, that it may be a preparation for that union for which I hunger and thirst ! 132 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G MIDDLETON LODGE, September 7, 1874. I was thinking to-day that the meaning of the interest of human passion was made clear by its relation to the only deeper love, or rather by its typical position towards it. And it is memorable that this feeling was never a subject of dramatic in- terest till Christ came. The ancients had an exquisite apprecia- tion of conjugal love, and they fully apprehended the spirit of its hideous counterfeit, but the feeling that is the ground of all fiction with us was to them a blank. The different dispensation under which we live penetrates all life and makes our relations to each other quite as different as our relation to God. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. September 26, 1874. I think what most rouses despair in me is when some waft of cheerful, sensible content with a world unlightened by God reaches me. This atmosphere surrounds me, and seems so wonderfully to wither the small germ within. I cannot understand it. With- my poor M.'s fierce unbelief I never felt it ; it is the abiding legacy of that short friendship that I have so much more realised the power she angrily denied. But when I come near a spirit which goes on its way and does its work and is cheerful and prosperous and ignores God, I feel my lamp go out. Why is this? I have no blame of such a state most of those who arouse this feeling in me are far better than I ; yet some contagion seems to pass to me from them, and then I feel I must fly to you to escape it. . . . Do not struggle to sweep clear a day for me. My strong angel, I can lean upon you without seeing you. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 133 From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. HOPEDEAN, December 20, 1874. I always repeat to myself what I have so often repeated to you, that no life is so remote from the spiritual as the intellectual, and remind myself that if this be so it follows that those who are meant to lead an intellectual life must find access to the other difficult. . . . What an intense sleep it is of Nature ! And the enfolding shroud here so pure. In London it seems the symbol of degradation. How one longs for the purity of Fire that con- verts all alien things to its own nature. I always feel the difference when I see the unsullied snow. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. 8 PALACE GARDENS, December 31, 1874. Heartily I greet thee this New Year's Eve ! Rather afraid I am to speak into your region of country purity and silence, and your intellectual atmosphere, with Greek, Greek characters before your eyes. I am obliged to forget that when I speak to you. And it always seems so incomprehensible to me that it should be as you say it is, and, as facts seem to prove, that the intellectual and the spiritual regions are so far apart and difficult of access from one another. I always fancy them interwoven. That the spirit's domain should be more akin to the sensual or sensuous seems strange. Darkness, murky, dark fog, such as one does not often see, enfolds us here, and there is such a strange hush : it is just like a death time. I am gathering all my dearest ones together in my memory, and trying to feel hand in hand as we advance into the Unknown. In full confidence that it is into unfathomable Love above, be- neath, around, within, from which nothing can separate us. I feel so empty of all sense of it now, or of sense of anything ; yet afraid and ashamed to complain with everything open to us. Yes, the Fire is a deeper purifier than Water. One who bap- tizeth with Fire we need. May we not refuse His Baptism this New Year ! Ever your most loving, E. G. 134 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. HoPEDEAN,_/aary 3, 1875. Now as I look out this balmy day, and see the field spread with ragged patches of snow so that looking on a square yard one might forget the thaw so perhaps it is to be with our emer- gence from the winter of the soul ; there are nooks in one's ex- perience that heap up all icy influences, and as one struggles through them one must remember that this is the drift, and that the sun is shining. How strangely different was your New Year's Eve and mine in outward aspect, here the pure pale lilac shadows crept all day over the smooth snow that sent me back with its glitter when I tried to walk in the afternoon, while you were swathed in fog and the long crystal pendant outside the window seemed a magnet for the sunbeams, which, however, left it quite undiminished when they vanished behind the hill. How often we judge each other just as wrongly as if you had made sure I was wanting candles all day, or I that you could not stir out because of the dazzle of the snow ! It does seem strange that the spirit and the intellect should be so unharmonious ; but I think it is as explicable, or at least as natural, as that two notes close together should produce an intolerable discord. The sensuous and the spiritual life are like the first and third of the scale. But the intellect comes next to the spirit, and any attempt to sound these together is as discordant as the keynote and the second played in unison. We may harmonise them, but only by the introduction of a new element, and without this new element they are mutually abhorrent. But when the new element is brought in, the harmony is far richer than in the common chord. I think the sense of inadequacy which continually haunts me, and, I suppose, most people, in all the obvious sources of feeling, of suffering almost always, and of enjoyment sometimes, will one day be remembered by us as the prophecy of a complete unveil- ing of the realities that are around us now, like things that touch us asleep, but not strongly enough to waken us from our dreams. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 135 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. HASTINGS, January 28, 1875. Your dear letter reached me on that strange anniversary, the 26th, when beloved mother was swept away in silence before my eyes five years ago. That was a day of judgment, that came as a thief in the night a day of darkness from which there was no escape. Its incidents are all graven as with a pen of iron. And they seem inexpressibly painful, though the great fact does not seem absolutely painful ; and now she is, I have no doubt, five years nearer to me than she was this desolate day of 1870. . . . We found it blowing a gale here, and the waves were quite magnificent. But I grudged two days of such wind and rain out of our six for my Russell. All Wednesday he was in town, and I thought over my last year's misery. And your dear note, re- ceived just before we came here, with its compassionate glance over this waning (in time) relationship, made me reconsider my standing-place, and I felt pretty sure trust had so deepened and grown beneath my feet that I could not be so shaken again. You turn almost against the name of Christianity because it is the living God now you want. Why, is not that just what Christianity in its true sense is ? Emmanuel, God with us. I have been reading here Jukes' four aspects of Christ in the four Gospels ; and he helps one to see vividly how as He was in the world so must we be, and how each step must lead to the Cross and Resurrection. I trace that you have been that way. But as yet my footsteps have followed with the easy, well-to-do crowd ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. August 7, 1875. I am extremely glad that you are en rapport with dear, strange Mrs. H. She hears voices and sees hands that others do not see, and this often disturbs her adaptation to those around, to her own great anguish. Oh, that confusion of tongues at Babel ! What a deep cause 136 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY it sprang from, of separated natures. And what a far-off vision does that seem that the Son had faith to claim from the Father for humanity, " that they may be one as we are." From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. August 12, 1875. . . . What one has to do in almost all worldly matters is to be quite sure before one acts, and it is this which is fatal in the spiritual world. That which is action in the spiritual life must be the cause of certainty and cannot be the result. I cannot calmly think of the winter without you, and yet I can believe it may be best ; but there was a terrible blank in those American years. I think the disproportion between the length of this life and the slowness of some of the processes that go on in it is one of the hints that all experience gives of the Beyond ; yet it is so difficult to hear and interpret ! From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. August 16, 1875. In the evening I went on to Brighton and was so welcomed by my sweet Ritualists, with whom I joined in several services in their little oratory, all decked with flowers. Dear souls, they have love, joy, peace, humility, patience besides. And when I condoled a little with Alfred about his health, his utter weakness that makes every effort a burden, he whispered with a radiance indescribable, " Yet labour is rest when it is for Him." . . . All this is not in answer to your letters. Indeed, they are not to be answered, but I like you to feel that they do not fall into space, but into a vibrating instrument, even if the sounds given back cannot get themselves into measure and meaning. I should like you to write an essay on those two words, " The just shall live by faith," and " Men are saved by their want of faith." Yet this latter even in material things is but a very partial truth, and in our relationship with others cannot be carried out at all. But what I rejoice in for you, as for myself, is in our seeing LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 137 that we must become fools to others and to ourselves in order to receive the same Spirit that was in Jesus Christ without measure. You must very deeply discern this necessity when you say that this attitude in your own eyes is a far greater trial than to bear any contempt from others. Now I think the poor, the unendowed with natural gifts, are saved this anguish. But strangely in little things I am taught how unconsciously I have been cherishing self in this thing and the other. . . . Now I record to you as you do to me, that I will in the spirit let go these things which are of the flesh, let their roots be slain by refusing nourishment for them wherever I can. We can't say where it will lead us, as you say, but we have nothing to do with that. We must not speak for self or seek self in anything, however small, I am convinced ; but I don't see how this is to be attained except by the love of One so much lovelier and worth loving than ourselves, in whom we may find all the precious things we want to grab for ourselves, letting Him be the Ruler in everything within, and the Disposer of all around. My glimpse shows me it might be s.o ; and I think the Bible is won- derful as an open window towards Him (looking deeply into its words, not upon them as a critic), and such an antagonistic force to the things of sense and intellect. September 15. Do you think spiritual thoughts go radiating off into the building of a spirit brain, as the " Unseen Universe " implies ? I am so delighted with the idea of energy radiating off by the ether into an invisible structure, and vice versa. It is very much what Swedenborg declared about our spirit bodies. I love, too, the realisation this book gives of the Son conditioning Himself into this universe in the energy of Life everywhere, the first-born of every creature, and the fast-fruits of the Life that all are to grow up into. And so one may say actually He is life of our life and bone of our bone, as I recognised last year from positive experi- ence, and my eyes were at the same time opened to see Him giving its virtue to the sap flowing up into the apple trees and 138 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY making them fruitful. Just now the gardener was speaking of a better stock on which the roses could be grafted, not so strong as the ordinary stock, which is apt to assert itself and affect the grafted roses. What an illustration this is of our individual inter- ference with the indwelling life of the Son of Man. I liked very much seeing that nice sentence of your mother's about my dear uncle and aunt. She has just left us, riper and riper in love, still with such a funny little adamantine strata run- ning through, and such a desire for both worlds for those she loves not at all seeing their incompatibility. September 25. Alas ! I have found that dear smitten one [Lady Augusta Stanley] weaker than I have seen her at all. Still she said, " with good hope of recovery." . . . I do not think she has ever looked in the face the possibility of the continuance of that crippled state ! I believe we are brought up to these things gradually. A long half-conscious approach, and then a moment when the finally shut door brings despair and death. Then the other door of hope is opened in that very spot, and here springs up the Resur- rection life. . . . I do believe we are many of us looking for opportunities of obedience, and learning this and doing that, and we do not wait enough for the sweet Comforter. And in sickness and pain there is such a thing as leaning back upon Him, and taking His cup of consolation. When my father and my mother forsake then the Lord this strange forsaking, this desert, these are the places whence the living waters flow. I see it must be so, through the experience of others, and through a window of my own. The rainbow cannot be without the clouds. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. September 27, 1875. In moments it seems given me to imagine how all experi- ence may be as changed by the unveiling of its true meaning as LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 139 a painted window that we look at from within for the first time. Oh, for the light to shine through all this on which it has so long shone from without. There have been wonderful moments of unveiling, but I want to abide within the cathedral. I so often find myself an inhabit- ant of the world, that region which we have often agreed is further from heaven than hell is. I think the only way back from it is through hell. I must tell you a curious little bit of odd consolation that came into my mind the other day in read- ing some old notes of mine on chemistry. The first name pro- posed by Lavoisier for nitrogen was azote, "the life-opposing," a name fully justified by all its obvious properties. But behold the life-opposing gas turns out to be the one indispensable element in food ! It is, indeed, the distinctive constituent of animal substance. I need not translate my parable. How many spirits, perhaps, must pass through life as azote ! From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. December i, 1875. I wanted to write much of Broadlands, and a very perfect morning I had with your Desideria, and a little bit of his charming tender appeal to her that so thrilled me with the sense of coming very near a perfect union, and then how I stayed and saw her in her exile phase (as it seemed to me) at the dinner-party, where I felt her home-sickness so curiously blend with all the other experiences, of course not expressed by word or deed, but to me most legible in the eyes and folded hands. I think in Linlathen there was more the sense of a rich and peculiar individuality, and at Broadlands more of a very trans- parent medium for the sun to shine through. It is strange, so near as they are, I feel they belong to different dispensations. December 3. Where are you now? Are balmy gales round you? We are deep in snow ; the ivy outside is turned into a camelia bush, 140 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and is laden with heavy blossom ; the streets have an hour of transitory, deceptive beauty, but all will soon be mud. I remem- ber Mr. Scott dwelling on the opposite purity of snow and fire that which disappeared at the first touch of evil, and that which converted all evil to its own nature. It has always given a different meaning to the description of God as a consuming fire. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, 1873 [or later?]. When I realise your life, it sometimes gives me a selfish pang, lest, as you fly through such spaces, and reflect such varied hues, all the absorbent that can possibly receive that little bit of drab colour which is especially me should be used up. I should see you, but I should be unable to hold you, and you would speak to me, but my ear would catch the strain, the effort it would be to you. When you feel this state approaching, please do not try to keep it off and to comfort me ; but coupez court, and let the past be buried out of sight. Why it has come to me to say this I can hardly think, because my confidence is so great in your love. Per- haps it is because just now such a thick white fog has come and hidden the dear trees and green slopes that I best love from this window. Perhaps because there is such a sensation in the air of all things being shaken ; and in reading over my stores of old letters, chiefly my mother's, the record of a long life, I see evidences of deep interests and even of friendships that passed away no, not a real deep friendship, I think ; still it is strange to feel how much a heart was moved at one time by some things that ceased utterly to affect it at another point in its history. One longs to know what is the residuum of all these impressions. Are the years within us like the rings in the oak's stem ? If so, it is well to be " full of days." And they help to bring up more sap from the ground, and to put forth more leaves, to be shadier and greener for more kinds of fellow-creatures, from the ivy and primroses and the squirrels, up to the lovers. But if the days LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 141 only tire us and eat up our sap like caterpillars, what good shall our lives do to us ? To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. HEREFORD, 1873. Yesterday I was travelling to this old home of my youth, filled with memories of all my past life, now looking so still in the dim November, as if waiting for a new life. I find much talk of the " Mission Week " and work here, all different in utterance from that of your spiritual world, and with neither can I quite chime in. Yet I trust to learn more and more from that Root from which both spring. To the same (on the beginning of a new life at Brighton with her brother}. One line I must write, to say how I entered into your letter. How natural ! how completely I see it must have been, just as you describe. All the little actualities marring, in a slight, superficial way, the heavenly idea of this new home. And such as these are to educate our spirits ; and the effect of such circumstances is to make a " natural selection " and subordination of our lower to our higher qualities. How sure I am, that in every gain there must be a loss. And so, on and on, till all the lost parts of our being are again gathered and enriched in a glorious whole in the Resur- rection life. The conviction is now so overpowering, that everything is arranged, all prepared, and ready for us. That we have only to take it drop by drop, and it is the very way of salvation for us. Just as those atoms of Tyndall's are all endowed with those strange selective and other qualities, that contain such wonderful possibilities, so the circumstances and our spirits' lives are adapted and fitted to each other, for discipline, nourishment, chastisement, enlightening, fructifying purposes a blessed, blessed web, one thread of which cannot be spared. 142 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To the same. PALACE GARDENS, 1874. You sent me such a breath of leisure, and sweet thoughts, and lovely, interlacing colours this morning, that I feel almost sitting by your side, under the broad sky, with the vision of blessing everywhere. And did you know how I should welcome the sketch of white lily ? It is full of its own stately grace ; and its bold, uplifted, heaven-aspiring bud, ready to open and drink the light, is full of symbolism, it seems to me. I want you to remember me especially each day, from Thurs- day next to the following Tuesday. We are going to have a kind of retreat at Broadlands, for prayer and longing for a higher life. About eighty or ninety will be gathered together to look upwards. Of course, my dear one cannot come, but wishes me to leave him for this. Will you ask our beloved Alfred's prayers for us ? They are in hopes that Mr. Body will preach in the Abbey on Sunday, on which day a great many will join at the early Communion. But prayers and exhortations will be given by many laymen, and not even churchmen. I spent some hours with the dear Macdonalds yesterday, and was alone with Mr. Macdonald for three-quarters of an hour. I found him in the mood of his very best hymns akin to Faber. Full of the highest aspirations, based upon the most child-like simplicity. And I felt it a privilege to be in the room with him. The following is taken from a letter written by Mrs. Russell Gurney's cousin, Caroline Stephen, to Ellen Mary Gurney : Her religious experiences were the very keynote of Emelia's life. I cannot attempt any account of them ; and, indeed, I hope you will be able sufficiently to set them forth in her own words. It was, no doubt, through the influence of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen and Mr. Macleod Campbell that she was freed from the oppressive Calvinism of the teaching of her early youth. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 143 But this emancipation left her still unsatisfied, until those later experiences of 1874 or 1875, connected with the Broadlands Conferences, which prepared her to accept the mystical views of the Rev. Rowland Corbet, rector of Stoke upon Terne. 1 She loved to sit at the feet of religious and artistic teachers ; as she once said to me, " I have an intense pleasure in being converted." The following letters from Mrs. Russell Gurney are a record of the impressions left by some of the Broad- lands Conferences : August 1874. You ask me to write my impression of the Conference we attended at Broadlands. As I attempt to define the essential and enduring parts of those impressions, a manifested Life rises up before me in exuberant, changing growth, reaching forth in almost infinite ways, and I am convinced of the impossibility of seizing its outline. The natural framework to the spiritual picture pre- sented to us was fair, and who can describe the summer glory and the whisperings of wind amongst stately trees, and the clear, calm movement of a river amidst green pastures, so that one immersed in darkness should feel their harmony and peace and beauty ? Much less can words depict to those who have not witnessed it, the revelation of spiritual life in a united body of Christians. The vision that was impressed upon us, reflected, as it were, in this company (though, of course, so narrowed by time and space), may best be described in St. Paul's words as that of " the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual work- ing in the measure of every part, making increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." These words seem to me to epitomise those six days of Communion. The purpose of this gathering together was different from that 1 A long correspondence with Mr. Corbet on religious subjects resulted in the publication by her of " Letters from a Mystic of the Present Day " (Elliot Stock). i 4 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY of other religious gatherings. It was not for the teaching of religious truths, nor for the arousing of the careless, nor even for taking counsel one with another on spiritual subjects, though, I think, all these objects were in a measure attained ; it was rather for the blending of hearts, through prayer and silence and separa- tion from the world, and thus preparing a condition, or, as it might be expressed, an atmosphere, in which the teaching of the Spirit should be heard, and the truths we already accepted vitalised. This atmosphere we all felt increased day by day. More and more it seemed as if the blessed spirit were moving upon hearts, deepening them, humbling them, and drawing from them fragrant odours of adoration and love. One of a different nation, 1 who largely contributed to the building of our Spiritual Temple, said some words to this effect : " I had often heard that sentence, ' Guided by the Holy Spirit,' but was half inclined to think it something dangerous ; but now I understand what it is very well. Have we not realised here that He means us all to be of one heart ? " This was experienced by many ; their secret thought or need seemed to be met by others. Very remarkable also was the teaching of one supplemented and crowned by some added word of another, either in prayer or in comments upon some verse of Scripture ; so that it was often felt, when the day's utterances were considered, that hot one could have been omitted without a distinct loss. As we sat together morning after morning under those over- shadowing beech trees, the breeze now stirring and now dying into silence amongst the abundant leaves, and heard the wild doves' voices in the intervals of our own prayers and hymns, it did indeed seem as if one heart were shared by all. We seemed together to ascend higher and higher, and, in the rarefied atmos- phere that we breathed in common, to gather courage to make a fuller and more joyful consecration of body, soul, and spirit to our Lord. In such an atmosphere we shared all things in common. Self 1 Theodore Monod. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 145 seemed to pass out of sight, and even the sanctuary of the heart's Holy of Holies was revealed without a sense of profanation. These personal revelations cannot be repeated; they were fresh pulsations from the love-life of the soul, that can no more be written with pen and ink than the fragrance of the flower, or the clearness of the morning dew. A very distinct feature of this conference must not be omitted in any attempt to delineate it, namely, the conversations over passages in Scripture between Mr. Jukes and Mr. Douglas, two well-instructed scribes, who had not tarried in the letter of the Word, but had discerned everywhere beneath it the living Word. Their unveiling of the inward and spiritual meaning in the Jewish history and ceremonial was deeply interesting and practically helpful. The interweaving by these and others, of the intellec- tual and the spiritual in the teaching of Scripture, gave a bracing tone to the emotions excited during the more devotional exercises, and recalled the words, "Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation " (Isa. xxxiii. 6). I sometimes wondered whether there would have been such freedom of utterance, whether innermost hearts could have been so outdrawn, if the host and hostess who gathered us together had been other than they were ; possessing their outward home only to make others absolutely free of it. His spirit was so at home in the heavenly kingdom, his voice ascending and dwelling there in prayer, so completely natural as to remove all sense of transition between the things of the outward and of the hidden life ; and by his side was one who, like "... a nerve o'er which do creep The else unfelt oppressions of the earth," would perceive even on the distant horizon any possible jar be- tween speakers, or the hurt of some sensitive soul, or the need of a timid one for encouragement, ere the word trembling on his lips could be liberated ; and in all such cases swift imagination was at the service of charity, and relief was devised. A sense of free- dom and naturalness was in the very air we breathed. K 146 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY A joyous little child often flitted round the tabernacle of beech trees, and served to symbolise the filial spirit, as set forth by some among us in the oft-quoted words of St. Augustine, " Love, and do as you like." December 1889. The above description of the first Broadlands Conference was written under the impressions then received, in their first glowing freshness. Fifteen years of testing time have sifted those impressions, and I feel impelled to endeavour to answer the question some- times asked, " Was all you described a passing wave of religious excitement, or does any result remain that you can still grasp ? " Very briefly and meagrely, without any allusion to creed or doc- trine or special personal experience, I would say, doubtless there was excitement at that extraordinary time, a joyous thrill of emo- tion that could not but pass away; but recognition of eternal verities, then, as never before vitalised, remains. I think the compelling evidence in living witnesses brought us almost into touch with the Divine presence, so that the possibility and bles- sedness of communion between heaven and earth became from that time established facts in our consciousness. The reality of the one Spirit that stirred our hearts then abides now, and in- creasingly compels recognition, not a memory but a power, as- sailed and yet strengthened by the stress of everyday life. In 1875 the conference was most ably led by Canon Body. It lasted for three days, and was conducted rather on the lines of a church retreat. Progressive instruction was given by Canon Body in the mornings, while later in the day there were conver- sational meetings. To attempt to give further details of the various conferences that succeeded these would involve repetition, and become weari- some. Yet each time a providing hand seemed to send us a special teacher or prophet, whose personality imparted some fresher and fuller light to the aspect of truth he reflected. Once we were led by Mr. Boyd Carpenter (now Bishop of Ripon), and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 147 those who were present will remember his taking the 23rd Psalm as the framework for his three days' large and stimulating and deeply interesting instructions. At several meetings Dr. George Macdonald seemed to be entrusted for us with special messages, not poetic alone, as his cannot fail to be, but, above all, eminently practical, in for ever pressing upon his hearers the fact that willingness to do the will of the Father leads to know- ledge of His doctrine ; and as the tender filial communings of his mind with God were revealed, we recognised that we also of the nineteenth century had our George Herbert. Once the quaint negress missionary, Amanda Smith, stirred all hearts by the account of her wild, impassioned search for God, repeating to us in vibrating, pathetic tones the appeals she used to make to Nature to lead her into His presence. " O sun, you have been obedient to your Maker, O moon and stars, you know your Ruler, will you not tell Him I'm a sinner, and ask Him to find me and forgive me ? " Then she made us partakers of her joy by her simple, rapturous story of finding or being found of Him, when all things became new to her, and she had looked at her hands with surprise to find them black still, while she was so conscious of the new life that bounded through her veins ! And so year by year we drew on to the last of these happy conferences, which took place in August 1888. I am permitted to copy a few lines from Lady .Mount- Temple's journal giving some of its details. " Father Stanton was there, who had not been with us before. He spoke as if his lips had been touched with a coal from the altar, and was full of Christian large-heartedness and charity. He was particularly glad to meet Mr. Newman Hall, and kindly welcomed also some from the Salvation Army. He said he had been perplexed to find so much goodness and piety outside the church, in persons who had not even the benefit of the blessed sacraments; and addressing the audience, he said he would be happy if any one present could solve the difficulty, and give him a reason for this. A voice, a well-loved voice, answered from the other end of the orangery, " Heredity ! " We concluded the voice signified that 148 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY all being children of God, we might expect to find in all some likeness to the Father. Mr. Jeaffreson beautifully opened our morning services with meditations on the Magnificat. George MacDonald, as ever, sought to draw us to the very heart of God. Hannah Smith was radiant, direct, and practical, and seemed to clear and brighten the atmosphere. Mr. Corbet rightly divided the Word of Truth, and Alfred Gurney, as he had always done, soothed and blessed us with his heavenly thoughts before we closed our day. Mr. Farquhar, our constant friend and teacher, read us one of his clever original papers on the Parables. We had also a much-gifted Swede, Professor von Bergen, who gave us a most interesting lecture on Parsifal ; and though last men- tioned, not least appreciated, our dear Antoinette Stirling sang to us, standing under the beech trees with her inspired face, pouring out her rich volume of voice, full of soul, in praise and in appeals to us to trust our God, in the ' Song of the Quails,' ' The Lord is my Shepherd,' and others." Little has been said in these notices of the Broadlands Con- ferences concerning him who was their mainspring, their very heart. What his pervading spirit in our midst did for them, for us all, could not be said in his lifetime : it can never be said ; only in the spiritual, fuller life can it be measured and seen by other scales, and " other larger eyes than ours." He was amongst us, not as the apparent master of the assembly, but as one who had the right to be the servant of all, like the Divine Master. He was the preparer and the almost hidden ruler of the feast. In our rooms we used to find his carefully thought out pro- grammes of the subjects for consideration, with a few sentences of counsel for our profitable use of the time. He was ever circulating amongst us to unite and to encourage all. He did, indeed, " honour all men." I remember one who was not in the same sphere of society, who had been to Broadlands on business, saying, "When I had been with Lord Mount-Temple, I came away glad to be alive ; and that's not always the case when I leave a great house : I often want to hide myself." " Yes," I answered, " his courtesy was perfect." " Well, I suppose it was," LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 149 she said, "but I thought his was the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." It may easily be imagined how such a spirit in our centre was the uniting element that brought each and all into touch with one another : " Some there be that by due steps aspire To lay their hands upon that golden key That opes the Palace of Eternity." After all, it was chiefly this he did for us ; and hearing the simple reality of his voice in prayer, and seeing the illumination of his face, who did not long to follow and enter with him that " palace of eternal life." Was not the goal of " The Quest," described in the preceding pages, apprehended (as far as we may apprehend an ever beyond goal) by intimate heart-union with Him who is the Truth ; and did not the aim of his life express itself and take visible form in these conferences ? To discover and promote spiritual unity beneath outward divergence became increasingly the desire of his heart, and by the exercise of his wide sympathies he was more and more qualifying to be the link, the Uniter (as some called him) not only between members of different classes of society and of different nations, but a far rarer attainment, of differing Chris- tians ; and this not by stilling them, like drowsy members of the " Happy Family " (as unfriendly animals used to be seen cooped under one cage), but by uncovering and appealing to that deep Christ-nature and Christ-enthusiasm which arouses all to give to and to receive from one another of their very truest. His many good works, social, political, and philanthropic, were seen and known of all ; their tokens remain and will endure ; without undervaluing them, it yet seems to some who were pre- sent at the " Conferences," that it was in these that the sap of his finer ideal life had found issue, and had brought almost into sight, even in this cold climate, a bud of the mystic Rose of Paradise. These meetings made him very happy. As Lady Mount- ISO LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Temple writes, " His greatest joy was to see the glory of the common life manifested in others." Was not such a joy as this the inflowing of the tide of that more abundant life that was to quench his long thirst, and carry him out of our sight? On the 1 5th of October, on the last Sunday of his life, I was permitted (I thank God and my dearest friend for it) to enter the sacred chamber where he lingered on the threshold of life, and to behold once again that blessed face, though consumed with fever, still placid, and often illuminated with wonderful flickerings of light from beyond. Occasionally, amidst inarticulate whisperings, two names could be distinguished, the dearest in heaven, and the dearest to him on earth. I beheld, too, a miracle of love in the one always by his side, courageously, radiantly giving him leave to depart to the " far better " with his Lord. In the early part of 1875 her nephew, Alfred Gurney, and his sister made a journey to Egypt and Palestine, which she followed with the greatest and most encourag- ing interest throughout. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. I do thank you heartily for letting us know of your vision [of a possible journey to Palestine], even should it pass quickly away. One requires a little time to weigh it calmly. It is so exquisitely dazzling and attractive that one's first impulse is to say, " Oh yes, yes, it is for them ! " And I am not at all sure that a sober judg- ment should not re-echo the same ; but of this I at present know nothing. A mental spiritual reinforcement is much to be desired in any health plan, I am sure. Oh, to go with you ! I have to glance at my tired one on the sofa in order to keep me from saying, "I will, I must!" But such a privilege cannot be snatched. It can only be prepared for those who are made meet for it. I more and more believe in an atmosphere about Holy Places. Of course it cannot be breathed by being in them physi- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 151 cally, unless the inner spiritual being, in a prepared condition, is in them indeed. But then, surely, much may be received. To the same. December 31, 1874. This is exactly like the death day of the year. All life seems ceasing. I am recalling the images of all my dear ones, and hand in hand we seem passing into the unknown. But in that darkness is the love, above, around, beneath, and " in Him is no darkness at all." To the same. January 1875. Are you really in the ancient land of Egypt, the type of human wisdom and sense, out of which the people of God are called into that other kingdom that cometh not with observation \ where the King is meek ; where the milk and honey flow ; where the inhabitants are receivers rather than workers. Do not try and worry to make the most of all your opportunities ; but be still, and let them flow into you, when and how and where they like. Take pleasure in seeing that circle with the outspread wings, and remember the motto, " God's providence is my inheritance." What a sunbeam you sent me from the orient land ! How my heart leaped as I read it. That Hotel du Nil. Why, I have been on that gallery more or less ever since. Oh, may that venerable Elijah dragoman feed and protect you well on the wondrous river ! No, I don't think it signifies being old in the East. I thought they always were old, and that anything short of four or five hundred years was not counted. He will sit and smoke, and make the provisions come, I should think, and must have emissaries who do the running about. I have just screwed up my courage, and asked Mr. Jukes if he will give us an afternoon Bible-reading one day a week. I don't know any one who has so brought me heart to heart with the Bible as he has. But first the natural, then the spiritual. Through the human 152 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY to the Divine. May you be carried right through the shell, the outward, to the very innermost Sheckinah, in the Holy Land, if you go there, my blessed pilgrims. But don't stir yourselves up, rather relax ; let yourselves subside stand still and see. He does give to His beloved in their sleep. Why should we rise up so early and eat the bread of carefulness ? Why do I advise and preach, as it were ? I assure you I don't mean it addressed to you, but I just express myself. I long to pour out my heart to you. Alas ! what a pouring out of a poor material that is. And yet, is it not strange ? We are told to make melody in our hearts to the Lord. So, His ear may discern melody, what is melody to Him, even in our hearts. Is it not strange, beyond conception ? The other day I had such joy in combining the thought of God's being pure love with the i3Qth Psalm. Just read it, "O Love, Thou hast searched me, and known me," and then, " Thou, Love, hast laid Thine hand upon me." He laid His right hand upon me and said, "Fear not." The fact is, we are not worthy to think of, to say such things : we cannot attain to it. But we may yield ourselves to that blessed searching and proving, and so be led in the everlasting] way, in which there is time to grow and increase in the knowledge of Him. To the same. April 1875. It seems to me almost impossible to write to you when I think of the address on the envelope awaiting this letter ! If you possibly can find time, do me an outline of one hill, or one bit of an olive stem, or something seen from the Mount of Olives, quite small, that I may put it into my interleaved Bible. I do try, and shall continue more now to ask for the blessings and gifts to mind and body you need for this pilgrimage, day by day. As the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so may the Lord be round about you, and bring you back to our loving arms, with much impressed from without and unfolded from within, that may be a treasure to you and many all the days of your life. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 153 I cannot bear to lose an opportunity of seeming to follow you there. I feel so for your difficulties there. The constant stu- pendous difficulty of always feeling one does not feel adequately, turning one back to stone. It has always been so at the great " crises of compassed hopes or fears fulfilled." " The day of days was not the day." But never mind. Let that day come as it will. The framework of His life will impress itself on your memory, and at some time or other will help you just when you need it. " My times are in Thy hand " how delightful ! And He fashions our poor hearts and perceptions and memories after His own good will. What is the good of always struggling to receive, when He is ever giving liberally, with no upbraidings? So don't cut yourselves with knives. How I should like to read that at Carmel. That prayer of calm confidence. And how I should like to read about Elijah in the cave, and the tempest and the fire, and the Lord was not in either. Your first journal, describing the first week of tent-life, flowers, &c., just almost inebriates me with wild longings ! But it is so absurd. For I know that it is just where I now am that God is, and the only place for me to find Him. And this is holy ground for me as long as His will keeps me here. And now, when you receive this, you will be turning your backs on the blessed land ; but the joy of the whole earth will be with you still, and increase more and more, so that when you are fifty, and much has faded that seemed to promise and to make up the charm of life, you will be able to say, Thou has kept the best wine until now ! May 1875. I received your letter from the Mount of Olives, and have since had your last journal, sketching the expedition with such names, Carmel, Hermon, &c., on which you were just starting. And now, I think, you will hardly be in the mood for Athens, the perfection of the earthly life, so different from Zion, that other perfection of beauty, out of which the Lord shone. Athens must speak of a beauty so complete and finished, and of the past ; 154 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY while that life of failure, despised, marred, and still without form and comeliness to the eye of sense, becomes more and more in- finite to the seeing eye, and so fills the horizon with possibilities and aspirations and hope, that imagination knows not how to leave it and to gather round the classical city. How you ever will contain all these worlds and lives, I cannot imagine ! Does not your brain ache with photographs of them ? It is well you are young, or what would become of poor old bottles, with all this new wine poured into them ? Are the skies more delicately fair at Athens than anywhere, and those sun-ripened white marbles against them, I seem to see? In November 1875 Mr. and Mrs. Russell Gurney started themselves for Egypt, and were absent until April 1876. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE. Near SlOUT, EGYPT, March 1876. Since I wrote last we have been in all the wonders of Thebes. In one corner of Karnac I longed for you to stand beside me more than anywhere. Not in the grand hall of 134 columns, tinted so wondrously, first by their own natural grey-pink granite colour, then by the sculptures and paintings variegating their sur- face, then by the sun and air of 3500 years. But it was not this ; but eight mutilated giant half-buried statues that I wanted you to see. They stood out of their dust-graves more or less, all the remaining faces obliterated, some heads quite gone. Every part dinted with time, or the blows of enemies every part except in each statue the firmly-clasped hands crossed on the breast, clenching the symbol, one in each hand, of Eternal Life ! They seemed to bring the past ages into such close sympathy with us, and how pathetically ! And did not that heart's cry go up into the highest heaven, and help to bring Him down to give the Life " more abundantly " ; and are they not still a spectacle to men and angels, as generations come and go, we witnessing with them that LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 155 we are still athirst for more of that Eternal Life, and are waiting, buried, mutilated, unmeaning, but clenching our Hope and His Promise, till He comes fully to redeem it ? To the same, We do want joy in such scenes as you describe. Joy in the very travail pangs. Submission, acquiescence, does not seem the thing. We need to be able to sing the " Doxology of the re- generate soul " in Romans viii. : " And make our converse, even while we die, An interchange of triumph and delight." It must, I think, be easier, so to speak, to be more than con- querors than just to keep one's faith above the water. Such depth of need and anguish must either drown in despair, or give the impetus that lifts the soul into the life of God. Yet it is not so in reality often. Darkness and suffering go together, patience, silence. Moment by moment an unconscious death to self, ere the wings grow, and the flight is taken into the glorious liberty. To the same. 1 Yes, it looks more appalling than fever. But I trust those who love her know that those convulsions are no t signs of suffer- ing. Her spirit may be all the time in the sweetest dream, per- haps wandering in green pastures, by still waters, while the tenement is so shaken. But are we now coming into a dispensation when the angel of destruction pours out vials of trembling ? When He answers us by terrible things in righteousness. In having come to under- stand so much more than in former ages that God is love, have we been forgetting the stern realities around us ? In learning to value so much more " the daisies," and " the laughter of the chil- dren," are we losing hold of the other notes in the scale ? And do we need these startling rents in the beautiful surface of life, to 1 Alluding to one mentally afflicted. 156 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY make us know indeed that God is our refuge and strength, and that we need not fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea ? To ELLEN MARY GURNEY (in the Tyrol). Do you remember the Blake drawing of the Fall? The throne above shaken. The angels with the thorns and marks of woe, and earth beneath showing the wild beasts devouring one another, the creation appalled, and Adam and Eve with downcast faces leaving the garden behind. But between them that serene, simple, fresh morning face, stepping forth, leading each by the hand, forgetting the things behind, into the all things new. Each morning I shall pray that your hand may thus be taken, and you led forth. How unexpected was the joy of all those wild flowers ! How unexpected are our delights as well as our sorrows ! It is very blessed to think we know not what a day may bring forth. I was reading to-day about the manna that came down from heaven. "What is this?" the meaning of the word. How deeply and earnestly are many minds saying this now concerning the bread that cometh down from heaven ! How blessed is food provided. Just what we want Chil- dren don't know what they want. Let us be content to be stupid sometimes, not always feeling or aspiring. Is it not delightful to feel that all our surroundings and conditions, ice, snow, hail, frost, wind, dew, rain, fire, stars, sun and moon, both days and nights, light and darkness, natural and supernatural, are all for us; and we may yield to their play upon us, and sing to each, " Bless ye the Lord ; praise Him and magnify Him for ever." Never did the words strike me so much as last night, " The God of hope." First St. Paul says, the God of patience and con- solation. There is something beautiful in this succession. First patience must have her perfect work, before even consolation. And then the God of hope sends forth His own hope from His emerald surrounded throne. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 157 He has hope for us, and for this poor shipwrecked humanity ; so He can afford to wait, to bless fully. Yesterday I was think- ing with a kind of despair of the dry bones around, and of my own coffined state ; and I thought good Mrs. M., who was with us, so almost foolishly sanguine about those whom she was work- ing amongst, and that she did not appreciate the weight of evil around and within. And then this word struck upon me as never before. God's hope for His poor world. He sees all, and yet has a fountain of hope for us. And it must flow into us more and more, after the day of patience and consolation. So that we may dare to look at the coming years, knowing that God's hope will more and more be ours, ever green and spring-like, and lead us more and more into His abundant peace. To the same. I received much more than I gave at Brighton, and such visions as I received there spread out into volumes. Visions are so much better than memories of words. One needs to find words for them, if they are to pass through the understanding to others ; but they remain within, they grow, and become glorious, as one grows oneself in larger and deeper faculty of beholding. What a revelation is each human being, drawn out by and mani- fested by all the action of God's providence upon them ! They are, indeed, new worlds, infinite worlds in which we may walk forth and recreate ourselves. This morning the verse that seemed given me was, " I am the true Vine, and my Father is the Husbandman." How exquisite it seemed that the Husbandman, who has long patience and gives the early and the latter rain, is also the Father of our spirits in whom we live and move and have our being. Do muse over that a long time. It seems to be fraught with prospects, magnifi- cent prospects. May the Lord of the nights and days be with you and give you His " treasures of darkness " as well as of light. I have been thinking so much of the Word that is very nigh 158 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY us, in our hearts and in our mouths. That we have not to climb up for any more than to dive down for. But that is just where we are, at the very level we can reach. How should we dread the future ? It is only going deeper into the love of God ! " What limit is there to Thee, Love, Thy flight where wilt Thou stay ? On, on, our Lord is sweeter far To-day than yesterday ! " In leaving the things that are behind and pressing forwards, we draw nearer to Him in whom are hidden all our precious, undying blessed ones and blessed things. I see more and more it is faith and patience we need in order to inherit the promises. All things are ours ; but to appropriate, to use our own, can only come by faith and patience. To the same. PALACE GARDENS, 1877. I used to think that the joy of the Lord that was to be our strength was only the evidently supernatural joy, such as that of the Transfiguration, or the rejoicing in spirit in the deep discovery of the Father's purpose ; but surely besides these mountain tops, to which few are taken and where even these may not tarry, the everyday gleams^ of natural sunshine, into which by His blessed providence He leads us, are His joys, to which He wills to give responsive smiles. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. THE COTTAGE, WOOLHAMPTON, READING, March 5, 1877. MY DEAR MR. JUKES, I must thank you for so very kindly proposing to come and see me. . . . One of my first thoughts on the day when my malady was declared to be smallpox was to send a message to you to ask you to "appear before God for me " ; but my second thought was that the isolation which this LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 159 illness brings with it was meant to cast me more completely and directly on God, and I thought any message might possibly lead you to desire in your goodness to adventure yourself near me. Both Russell and I are very grateful to you. I have had a very mild attack, and have found nothing hardly but repose and a sense of the loving-kindness of God moment by moment. I always seem to escape the Cross. And now it is given to me to see the opening buds of spring instead of London life. How shall I escape being spoilt by such flowery paths? Do you know, Mrs. C.-Temple actually offered to come and nurse me directly she heard I had smallpox ! Was not that like touching the leper ? Believe me, most truly and gratefully yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the Honble. Mrs. COWPER-TEMPLE (in anxiety about her husband). You may fancy how it seems to me we are slipping down a sandy crumbling shore into the ocean of eternity. The ocean of love ! Still its brink is a place of trembling and failure of heart and flesh ; so must it be. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. I have felt so surely that the Tabernacle was taking down ! Yet he is better and will be better still, I think. But I seem ever waiting and watching to see the " Post " and the " Token." I am reading over to him the letters I wrote to my mother on our wedding tour twenty-four years ago. It does make life seem like a story-book ! To let go seems such a large part of the teaching of life, as well as to hold. Though it is winter still, we have had to let go our spring-promising almond blossoms. The funeral of the year begun already ? I am full of the thought, through both Mrs. Mac- pherson and James Hinton's Life, of the blessing of giving up. It is as if the Christ within could only be uncovered, could only 160 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY shine forth, by everything that ministers to self (even to the neces- sary self-hood) being taken away. Its sheltering bowers, its rest- ing-places, &c., so that there should be nowhere for Him to lay His head, though the foxes and the fowls have their refuges. He saved others, Himself He cannot save. To the same (visiting the GEORGE MACDONALDS at Nerui). 1878. Just this time last week I was bidding you adieu, and now I can rejoice in the thought of your being at home with the dear pilgrims on the blue sea-shore. Strange to say, the description of the hill, the terraces, the subterranean passages, &c., seemed all so natural, I felt I must have been there in the spirit. Well can I picture that drive from Genoa through the painted villas, and then in the growing darkness that mysterious approach to the great silent uplifted abode ! And how soon the fatigues and worries of the journey were forgotten. Can it, will it be so when we arrive and awake ? I almost hope not. One wants the deep sorrows and dark puzzles to be explained and made valuable, rather than just swallowed up and forgotten, by reason of their short insignificance, in the great abiding glory. You will rejoice that I think my beloved has gone on im- proving a little each day since you left He has had such nice letters from Central Criminal Court lawyers. One says, " Since you took me by the hand, so many years ago, I have always felt encouraged by your presence in all that was manly, true, and upright." He is reaping some of his sheaves, and such a sweet halo of tender humility gathers round. To the same. PALACE GARDENS, March 1878. I have just received your card from Pisa. Did I not follow you there ! How often used I to be locked into the Campo Santo, when the custode was at his dinner, and wander and wonder round and round. And then a voice used to call LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 161 " Giuseppe, Giuseppe," when a party of travellers came to see it; and a boy used to call this Giuseppe to come and walk hastily round with them, and in five minutes they were gone, and I was in silence again with their echoes. I used to feel the place so unspeakably ; but my own personal achings and longings were too intense for me to enter into its deeply in- teresting details. But, of course, I know that unhappy angel crouching on the Day of Doom, and all those little, new-born, unclothed souls flying about. And Solomon scrambling up, uncertain whether to turn to the right or the left. And that happy group under the orange trees, over which the old woman, Death, hovers, having turned a deaf ear to the maimed ones, who entreat her approach. And how lovely the pattern of sun- light that came through the slender shafts on that soft-coloured pavement. The cathedral, too, was most lovely in my eyes, a kind of violet hue of shade which I never saw anywhere else. To the same. VENTNOR, Easter Even, 1878. May the blessed Father raise thee indeed on the morrow, from the grave and gate of Death into His Son's glorious free resurrection life. Little can we murkily guess at the meaning of these words even. Yet, in spite of our being in death and its unconscious- ness, and darkness, and corruption, we are in the midst of life. And, as best we can, we will rejoice and be glad, and make our dungeon prison walls vibrate with our song, for He is risen ! VENTNOR, Easter, 1878. An impenetrable white fog-blanket, barricading our windows and nicely interchanging with grey drizzle, has been our prospect up to the present moment, with the exception of a fine gleam and nice, though cold, little drive on Thursday afternoon. Till then, I think, I never knew what it was to perceive the whole atmos- phere for five minutes, surcharged with primrose scent, as we passed between two woods thronged with these lovely beings. L 162 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY The delicate dream-like youth of that inhaling ! Its epitome of past sweetnesses, and its promise of renewal should, indeed, have borne me on out of death into our surrounding life. Surely we shall get some antennae again sometime, to vibrate and dilate more to Nature's scents ! To Mrs. PEARSALL SMITH. I am very glad thee saw the MacDonalds at their fitting Home. Is not such a family of God's founding wondrously lovelier than a community ? Much as I hanker after a community as an ideal portrayal or carrying out of diviner principles of society than anything to be seen in general on earth. What is to be the sign of the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem, the four-squared city ? In the meantime just this beautiful Nature does so satisfy and enthrall me. Now the twittering of birds I hear. I see the grey-green short grass on the sloping fields with dim, half-buried, waiting daisies, and nearer under the garden shrubs, snowdrops, in triumphing piercing of the brown earth, yet hanging down their pure little trefoil canopies sympathetically over it. Does thee not think that widespread pain of body and soul is too great a mystery for one to wish to dare very much to shirk it, except at the moments one is writhing under its lash ? Some divine plan must be involved in it. From Mrs. PEARSALL SMITH to E. R. G. THE CEDARS, HADDONFIELD, N.J., May 29, 1878. MY BELOVED MRS. GURNEY, I have heard that Mrs. Temple reports your husband to be in poor health, and I have felt ever since that I wanted to write to you and express my sympathy, and to tell you what unspeakable sweetness comes with any trial or suf- fering, if it is once really hidden in the lovely will of God. I know you have learned a great deal about this, and perhaps know more than I do. But even if so, you will not mind being reminded of LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 163 it, for it is a lesson that one has to learn daily in the pressure of some heavy cares or sorrows. I have often myself been com- pelled to say the blessed words, " Thy will be done," over and over a thousand times almost before the sweetness has come. But at last, as surely as God is God, His will has encircled me and mine, as with the walls of an impregnable fortress, and my soul has sunk into utter repose ! But to do this, one thing is essential, we must look resolutely and absolutely away from all second causes. We never can say, " Thy will be done," to second causes, for they generally arise from human sins or human mis- takes. And if we look at them, we shall soon be in despair. But there are no second causes in the universe, dear friend. Everything is God's instrument accomplishing His purposes, and all is ordered in infinite wisdom and love. Man may seem to control affairs or to disarrange them, but behind all the seething and tossing of human affairs, God sits as a refiner with fire, and not a sparrow even falls without Him. What infinite comfort there is here ! But why do I write thus to you? I wonder if it can be that you specially need it just now. I am sure you will be glad to know that the pathway of trial has been turned into a pathway of light and blessing to my soul. The dear Lord has been so good to me that I can only look back and praise Him, and look forward and trust Him. And I have learned that it is indeed true that " by the thorn road and none other is the mount of vision won." The road may be mysterious, but the end is blessed. Therefore, dear friend, we will accept that which our Father sends with submissive spirits, will we not ? and make His dear will the bed of rest for our weary and aching hearts : " Upon God's Will I lay me down, As child upon its mother's breast ; No silken couch or softest bed Could ever give me such sweet rest." With warm Christian love, I am yours in our risen Lord, H. W. SMITH. 164 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY CORRESPONDENCE WITH J. W. FROM DECEMBER 1875 TO NOVEMBER 1876 From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. SUEZ, December 9, 1875. Is it really only a fortnight since I saw you stand watching our departure ? How like the inevitable sundering of death it did seem ! And the silence of absence that followed ; and yet if we had remained together we might have been silent but how different that is ! I still see you standing there, and think you want to know how the unknown into which you saw us drifting has seemed to us. ... Now, such exquisite scenes have been granted to my eyes. The sandy desert, in its wondrous gold-haze tints and soft dove shadows ; the sublimated mountains, like visions melting into the sky; and the strange, stately, wild beings in flowing drapery striding by the water side. It has all been really intoxi- cating to me. And to-day an expedition of six miles into the desert of the Red Sea, the " mountains of deliverance " barring the way back to Egypt on one side, and the far-away mountains towards Sinai on the other, bounding the wonderful undulat- ing expanse of golden sand. It was burning hot as we rode on donkeys those six sandy miles, without a sign of vegetation, and then we saw some black-looking palms in the distance, and found a little grove and a spring of water that had made a little oasis garden, and a veiled woman came up to me and gave me a rose. I cannot tell you what a parable and what a promise it seemed ! The evident impossibility of any plant finding life and nourishment in those dry, loose, shifting sand waves ! But the water had come up from beneath and all was changed. " And the wilderness shall blossom as the rose." Oh, what hinders ? why does not the blessed water flow? LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 165 From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. December g, 1875. I have felt you so wonderfully near me all the time you have been going further and further in the flesh. I cannot tell you how sometimes at night you have seemed to enter into that inmost circle where only those human spirits can enter who bring us nearer to the companionship that is more than human. I have often felt as if I rose upon your wings out of the murky atmosphere around, and found myself in an upper stratum of life where all seemed pure and bright. I have often thought of what you said, that we were coral builders building up a common structure, and it did not so much matter which mouth opened to the water (or whatever it is). I am sure you have opened your mouth for me. From E. R. G. 1o Miss WEDGWOOD. FLOATING NORTHWARDS BETWEEN ASSOUAN AND THEBES, February 15, 1876. Two such letters met me from you at Philoe three days ago. Those words of yours in one have so set me musing that all the temptations in the wilderness were to do something not absolutely wrong. I have often felt in a dim way here that perhaps I have consented to come into the region of sense, when I ought to have sought exclusively to receive only by faith, as chastening seems to meet us again and again. Our boat had a narrow escape of sinking in the cataract on Saturday. It went on the rocks, and if it had not stuck there, would have filled imme- diately with water, having six holes knocked in its bottom. We were not in danger of our lives, for our little boat took us on shore ; but it was a wonder we did not lose our home and things in this desert. We have been detained three days for mending. If one could but see a little more clearly which is the land of sense and which the land of promise, the valley of blessing, one fancies that would be all one needed. I suppose Abraham felt no doubt when; he went out, not knowing whither, and Balaam 1 66 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY a great deal; and yet he, too, might have wished to be quite sure. That lurking self that so disguises itself! May it only be discovered to us, and shown to us where our faith needs purifying. The old Egyptians worshipped Ra as the visible Sun God, as they saw him in the heavens and in authority ; but behind him was Amun Ra, " the concealed " the source of Ra ; Amun could not be felt after. Yes, I sketch in this temple of Ra, and am fascinated ; and often, when I look at my little daubs, which I have rushed at making early in the morning, when the colours are halcyon, and see how I have utterly missed them, I feel And for this you have tarried without ! Yet day by day I go on, and Russell is pleased, and it seems as necessary as any other part of external life. You said how far the pleasure region was from the spiritual, and this sunny land of strange beauty and glamour is that to me. The fragments I pick up about the old religion are most inter- esting, and I am lost in wonder why it should have been con- demned so strongly by the spirit. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. QUEEN ANNE STREET, March 8, 1876. " Floating northwards " delightful thought ! Yet I feel won- derfully little impatience to have you in my arms again. Our love seems to me to belong oh, not entirely, but wonderfully predominatingly to the unseen, and touch and vision are less necessary here than with any other equally precious intercourse. No, I am sure you do not too much delay in the land of sense. I know no one with less temptation to the outward; you may safely worship in the temple of Ra. I believe it is a great mistake to regard those things as mutually inimical which set each other to sleep. How often we have said it When the head thinks, the heart cannot feel ; and yet where thought never came, feeling could hardly ever come either. The predominance LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 167 of either weakens the other, but there is an equipoise that is the strength of each, for both need sleep. It is so, I think, even with that in us which is root of thought and feeling alike ; that which in us is an eye, and above and beyond us is light that which recognises the spiritual and unseen. I think no region is further from it than what we mean by Art, and yet how much Art owes to it, or, rather, how the whole of what is most enduring in Art goes out of it. What a mere drawing-room affair it would become if we banished all that it borrowed from Religion, and yet as the Art grows perfect the Religion dis- appears. I like that idea of Ra and Amun Ra. I have always a great longing after the Egyptian mythology. I feel with Shelley, rather than with Milton, to all these old mythologies. From E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD. March 1876. I should like to tell you all I have felt about Osiris here, and the pathetic magnificence which makes a halo round his mutilated figure; his arms crossed on his breast, with his rod and his staff. These and his grasping hands are almost always evident. Have you read Plutarch's account of the Egyptian religion ? Yesterday we went to Abydos, the ancient This, from which Menes came five or six thousand years ago, the chief burying-place of Osiris, and where his worshippers loved also to be buried. Little remains earlier than Sethi I., 1400 B.C., who restored a temple here ; but I ventured on buying a little bronze Osiris, that a poor man had found in the dust-heaps, for four shillings, most unmistakably antique. The ride of eight miles over the brilliant green plain barley ready to be cut, and beans in full flower, and some with pods almost ripe, looking like a green lake, with raised mud villages standing out of it, encircled with palms was wonderfully lovely. Abydos lies beyond the green line on the edge of the desert, and is only partially excavated. The intaglios and bassi-relievi are 1 68 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY in the best style of any I have seen. Here Osiris and Athor, the homed Cow Goddess of Love, with the moon between her horns, have sometimes beautiful faces, and lay aside their hawks' and cows' faces, and receive the mortal king with such gracious enfolding arms, and touch his lips with the symbol of life, ? , and sometimes pour from vases above his head a stream of this symbol and the one for purity. Is not that a precious anointing? Is it not very strange that Moses should give no kind of allusion to life beyond the veil when, for his forty first years it had always been brought before him ? Even if he thought it all fabulous, I should have thought he would have opposed it rather than have utterly ignored it. Perhaps seers need to be so concentrated on their own visions that all others are nothing to them. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. March 24, 1876. I have been reading Plutarch de Iside et Osiride. I like so much Plutarch's belief that the legends about Osiris contain truth as the rainbow embodies the sunlight ; it seems to me a much deeper comparison than he knew, describing not one particular mythology, but all our elaborated views about God. If the Light is to become an object of contemplation to us, it must change to colour, otherwise it is a thing to see by rather than to see. How distinctly Osiris and Typho must have typi- fied the struggle of the life-giving and the destructive principle to those who lived between the Nile and the Desert ! I am so surprised at Plutarch making Typho the Sea instead of the Desert, but I suppose to those who lived by the sweet fertilising waters, those which were neither sweet nor fertilising seemed even more the antithesis than the barren sand the copy of the life-giving thing without its life-giving power. How much fur- ther off that seems always than anything that is quite unlike. Plutarch's is such a modem mind. His complete ignoring of Christianity is so strange. I do not think he once unques- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 169 tionably mentions it, yet it had been a power in the world for more than 100 years, and never was there a more earnest and reverent spirit than his. Is there any similar development now to which earnest, thoughtful men are blind ? The dispensation of the Spirit will not be a more obvious thing than the dis- pensation of the Son. How strangely difficult it is to wait for God ! Our spiritual years seem to me part of a large cycle. I recognise the season I have known before, but it has found me in a more genial region, the place is changed as well as the time, and richer flowers open to the strengthening sunbeams now. I long to look at your little Osiris and your sketches. I think I too much expressed in my last letter a non-impatience to see you. I do feel a great desire now to look upon you face to face, and I hope we shall not again be separated for some twenty weeks of our remaining pilgrimage. I fear in the object of this excursion you are somewhat disappointed, but the wondrous peace you speak of could not have been so fully manifested here, amid various interruptions and helps, and that will abide with you as a glimpse of something to come. It is always some- thing different from that which is sought, which is found, at least in outward aspect. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. April 9, 1876. That time with your Desideria [Mrs. Cowper-Temple] was like some bath of wondrous revival. She was suffering from violent headache, and could not even drink a cup of tea she poured out to keep me company. She read me some letters, but it was so much more her than anything she said that re- freshed me, that it seems misleading to remember this last. I am sure she will be wonderfully at home in the Invisible, one sees the Heimweh in every look of hers, and I feel it a promise of a full unbroken repose in that far-off Home. As we sat in that pretty green room I felt as if I had dived down to some magic cavern under the sea, where all the din of earth was shut off by 1 70 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY pure, clear waters, and even the light came softened and coloured ; it is an hour that lives in my memory with four or five of this weary pilgrimage one of them our sunset walk from the Con- valescent Home at Broadlands, do you remember ? Since that I have had rather a gay time, my friend Dr. Hort staying with us, and various people to meet him. Have I ever talked to you about him ? I think him much the most interesting man I know at least, the man with much the most interesting mind, which is not quite the same. Only one thing remains with me of all the conversation which so much interested me, but I think it gives you an idea of the man that he thought the arguments which we could bring forward to support any con- viction, bore the same proportion to the true grounds of that conviction as a pencil outline to the richness and variety of Nature. I think only a deep and subtle mind could have felt that. There is a certain disinterestedness of intellect in him that I have very rarely, almost never, found united with depth of con- viction, although I believe it would be its perfect fruit Mr. R. H. Hutton dined with us to meet him, and I had some talk with him that interested me. He was trying to explain Mr. Clifford's views to me, that he regarded Consciousness as the inside of Matter that it was, as it were, the concave, and matter the convex. ... I cannot say, and I hardly understand it, how wonder- fully closer I feel our bond to have grown in your absence. Now when I am walking alone I find myself looking forward to our meeting in a way I never did before. I seem to have acquired a right to you that is something new. I am sure we have been travelling in convergent paths, and now are nearer than when you left England. From Miss WEDGWOOD to E. R. G. May 3, 1876. I always feel ten minutes with you like a sprig of lavender shut into my days, and as if a few words with you helped to retain LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 171 the fragrance. Oh, how one needs a continual re-immersion of one's spirit in the waters of love and trust as the dust of life gathers upon it in all one's petty bustle, and what seems the dis- proportionate and yet inevitable amount of thought and care one has to spend on small arrangements for oneself. What a nothing would all outward snubs and rebuffs be, but for one's own sympathy with them. This load of an undelightful nature is the true cross without which all other crosses would be light, and this is just that which is never entirely removed. The sense of incompleteness which repels others, oh, how it weighs the heart which confesses it ! And yet He said, " Blessed are the poor." Certainly they are blessed or cursed there is no middle path. ... I think one needs a very direct and vivid sense of guid- ance in all the events of small social import, for they seem so disproportionate such small things make intercourse difficult or uninteresting. I have been reading Cicero on Friendship, and it strikes me afresh, what I have always thought how completely the woman is the discovery of these later ages. I feel in reading that sort of thing as if I were going back to a mere man's world, and it seems to me less than half the world, as if the relation be- tween the two more than doubled the world of each. Front E. R. G. to Miss WEDGWOOD (on receiving Martineau's Sermons). October or November, 1876. It is as if you had lent me an Eolian harp, all sensitive to the breathings of the winds of God. Bringing me their tones with such delicate and subtle perfumes too. I am afraid of being too enthusiastic about it ; it seems to me lovelier than anything I ever read. I had all yesterday one of my worst heads, and between my dizziest fits just looked in here and there to uplift myself, and now am beginning. How it is that one who so recognises all called forth in man by the Spirit in apostolic teaching and the 172 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY needs of man should think the facts of Christianity are just imagined by man, I cannot understand. But it does not prevent my rejoicing in and longing to bathe in all this blessed man has found in Christ. Why have you not told me some more about this exquisite being ! Watts's portrait now comes back to me, and fits these utter- ances. Tell me some more. PART III 1878-1896 MR. RUSSELL GURNEY died on the morning after Ascension Day, May 31, 1878, after an illness of only a few days. In the following August Mrs. Russell Gurney left the house in Palace Gardens which had been their home for about twenty-five years, and prepared to move into the small house in Orme Square, which had for many years been her "Home" for convalescents. Here she retained a few rooms for her own use, leaving the largest sitting-room still for the invalids. During the months that intervened, before she moved finally into Orme Square, she stayed with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Miss Venn, at Hereford, and with her nephew and niece at Brighton, and also at Broadlands. Giving, however, the greater part of her time to her dear friends the Miss Kearys at Eastbourne. For a short time in the early part of 1879 she travelled abroad with her nephew and niece, and stayed with the George MacDonalds in a villa at Porto Fino near Genoa. Shortly after her return she took possession of the house in Orme Square, which remained her home from that time, and where for a good many years she still received five or six convalescents. She made frequent flights from London ; and as long as her uncle at Hereford 173 174 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY lived, a part of each year was spent in ministering to him. During these lonely years, and as long as her strength permitted, it was her delight to fly to the side of any friend who was in suffering either of body or mind, or need, such as she could supply. Distance or inconvenience, as many would testify, seemed of no account to her in these ministerings. To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE (after Mr. RUSSELL GURNEY'S death). June 1878. Lift up your hearts ! I have always felt that joy was the thing for sorrow to transmute into, not acquiescence, and that I could not be satisfied with patience, though that is very well and pre- cious and much needed for long intervals. But Joy is such a near relation of Love, and must live while Love lives ; and though Love be wounded and aching and Joy veiled in her grief, yet mornings break. Love is not slain and cannot be divided, and Joy springs up with singing. I can say to-day I am so rejoiced that my beloved lives in the bosom of the Father, and that no man takes his joy from him. What a deep mysterious blessing shall we find one day in all that the Lord has denied us. I can see even in earthly things how my best things have been given through withholdings. And as I read the touching account in Livingstone's journal of his last days and hours, and of his unquenchable eager thirst to succeed, kept up through deathly disease and weakness, yet uncrowned with fulfilment, and of his death coming to him in the lonely swamp on his knees, I felt so it often is with the chosen followers of the crucified One : their thirst must be insatiable till the hour comes His hour. " Your time is alway ready," He said ; but His hour was not till Lazarus had lain four days in the grave. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 175 To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. PALACE GARDENS, June or July 1878. I must tell you of a little opening that seemed to come to me from the spiritual-sensible, for so I call those kind of glimpses that partake of the nature of dreams or visions. Last night I prayed with great desire for some little token of a thought from his heart, even if I might not have any glimpse of himself. And before I went to sleep, as I believe, I opened my eyes to see if my little night-lamp was burning, and I saw a rich bouquet of wall-flowers in a kind of jug held near my face, so wonderfully real. I gazed, and as I gazed they slowly receded to just over the little lamp, and disappeared. I said to myself, " Wall-flowers what can it mean ? " And an answer seemed to flash through me, " These grow for you out of the wall of separation." To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. AYLSTONE HILL, HEREFORD, July i, 1878. ... I seem unable to take your advice about waiting to wind up Palace Gardens. I don't feel as if I could rest till I had folded away one chapter and so made way to begin another. Do not think that I will bury myself away from beloved and ever to be welcomed friends. I shall not. But I seem to see a way on which I would enter with willing feet, and I am impeded and lacerated by memories that can be only memories. His memory is and will be more and more a presence ; but that is to be expe- rienced in a fresh path, not in trying to taste again that outward fruit of it which has withered. God has a fresh Word for us every day. Your ever-loving E. G. Mrs. Russell Gurney's friendship with the Rev. Andrew Jukes was one deeply valued by her from about the year 1874 or 1875 onwards. She owed much to his illuminative words both in his books and in intercourse. 1 76 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY He occasionally gave Bible readings in her house, and little companies used to meet there on Ascension Day year after year for spiritual conference, when their thoughts were led by him. After the Palace Gardens days these little gatherings were transferred to her nephew's house, St. Barnabas Parsonage, Pimlico, where, so long as it was possible for him to come, Mr. Jukes was ever a welcome and revered friend, possessing, as Alfred Gurney always felt he did, some of the gifts of the seer. Fragments of correspondence between Mrs. Russell Gurney and Mr. Jukes are here given. The following interesting record of their friendship has been contri- buted by the Rev. Herbert Jeaffreson : " Mr. Jukes was ordained deacon in 1842, but within a year he left the Church in consequence of difficulties with respect to the oath required by the Act of Uniformity, and became a Dissenter at Hull. I suppose he was much what is called a Plymouth Brother, but I do not think he ever formally joined that body, if, indeed, there is any regular body to join. He was very unfit to be the leader of a sect, for he had little practical knowledge of men, and was constantly taken in. His chapel was split when he introduced a more regular type of service, which they called formal and ritualistic ; but the great dissension arose over his book on the 'Restitution of all Things' (1867), which was regarded by many as heretical. He broke down in health, left Hull, and in 1869 moved to Highgate. There, about 1872, he was visited by Mr. and Mrs. Pearsall Smith, who came to Eng- land to hold religious meetings. At one of these meetings he made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Cowper-Temple, and through them, I believe, came to know your aunt. The first time that I remember hearing him speak of her was after the Broadlands Conference of 1877, when he came back full of the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 177 praises of a young poet-priest (Alfred Gurney), who had gone there with his aunt. "I did not often meet them together two or three times, perhaps at the dear Ascension Day meetings at St. Barnabas, and once at a Broadlands Conference. I did not think that the very affectionate regard which existed between your aunt and Mr. Jukes indicated a very close community of thought. When the 'Letters of a Mystic' were published by her (1883), Mr. Jukes was uneasy about the book, thinking it cut away the grounds of Christian morality, and he urged me to write a review of it ; but my paper never got beyond a rough draught. I may be quite wrong in my estimate, but I have an impression that the agility of your aunt's mind was a little out of harmony with Mr. Jukes' temper. She was always ready to welcome light, or what seemed to be light, from any quarter, and was not always careful to harmonise fresh light with truths previously ascertained or with the elements of the Creed. Mr. Jukes, on the other hand, grasping some basal truth, was disposed to disregard whatever he did not consider as in harmony with it. I do not think this temper often made him narrow, but it did not make him rigid. Perhaps the difference was that between two persons, one of whom is an accredited teacher of others and feels the heavy responsibility of putting opinions before them. I fancy it was some difference of temper, rather than any contradictory opinions, which kept them from being entirely sympathetic in thought. And I am sure that no difference marred their mutual love. " To put the same thing in a different way, I should say that Mr. Jukes' was an affirmative, Mrs. Russell Gurney's an interro- gative mind. He had not much interest in many things which occupied her ; he read little poetry, met few people who were not in some way religious, seldom cared to discuss politics, and was not very deeply concerned even in philosophy, except so far as it touched religion. She, I imagine, was interested in every- body and everything. No doubt the circumstances of their lives accounted to some extent for this difference." M 1 78 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. CLEWER, WINDSOR, August 24, 1878. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, Your letter has just reached me here. I am so glad that you have been able to be with the Miss Kearys, for your presence must have been a comfort to them both as well as a blessing to you. And the night of weeping will soon be past. Joy cometh in the morning. And even while the sorrow lasts it is all working for us, not against us. If our faith were stronger we should even now rejoice in tribulations, knowing that thus only do we escape from self, thus only do we enter the kingdom. Of course flesh and blood will shrink. Even the Best-Beloved said, " If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But the fruit such sufferings bear, for we are all used sacrificially, and the glimpses, too, which such trials give us of heavenly things for it is the angel with the last plagues who says, " Come and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's Wife " can even now more than compensate for all the pain. Therefore, as St. Peter says, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well-doing as unto a faithful Creator. All is for us specially all sorrow is for us. And when we suffer, we suffer with God. Our death is His Cross. Let sufferers then rejoice. God gives us the Cross, that the Cross may give us God. Yours most truly, ANDREW JUKES. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. 8 PALACE GARDENS, September i, 1878. I set off for the morning service at St. James's. Sudden courage came to me to go there after the lapse of the fourteen weeks since I was there with him. And not till I was there did it come into my memory, that on this day, twenty-six years ago, I was married in that very church ! I walked home through the gardens which our feet have so many a day trod together. And now it is evening " The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 179 How can we make it at all definite or real to find our beloved vanished ones in God? We have, I fear, to lose some of the personal, the precious internal special characteristics in the eternal abiding ones ; have we ? Is it part of the losing of our own life in order to find it ? Just now it is rather the converse of this that I am finding. To the same. EASTBOURNE, November 1878. Is it not wonderful how the current of God's love has just floated me in and out of coves and harbours and floated keepers to me, one after another ; so that for a single night I have not been alone, for more than three months, without any planning or providing of my own. To the same. EASTBOURNE, 1878. I have an idea that it was quite a revelation for us, that scene of the moon reflected in little, shimmering, broken lights across the sea. But the golden, unbroken sphere in the still pool is the sleep in Jesus a condition which so stills all the ebb and flow of the faculties as to reflect the whole circle of God Himself. Oh, how baffled we are in trying to put into words even one's own poor thoughts ! How much more in trying to grasp the thoughts above and beyond, sent us by God through higher and holier mediums. Is it not strange how one goes on to the last moment, not- withstanding knowing that the train is going to carry one off, feeling a kind of eternity in one's present companion. I think it must have something to do with the root of our being, being in God, with whom the past, present, and future is. We must taste things by fragments, and have one broken off before another begins. Read your " Sacrement du moment present" again, as I am going to do. We must get rooted and grounded in that, in order to bear at all being whisked on, away from the blessed objects round which our arms cling. i8o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY I feel more and more that our sorrow must be transmuted into joy. It must not only make patience. For Joy is always born of Love, and our love for our beloveds is stronger through absence and death ; so its roots must send out blossoms of joy. To the same. EASTBOURNE, 1878. I have had some great gleams of joy given me in the assurance of the joy of my beloved one. Say a Te Deum for us both. The 1 4th was my blessed Flory's birthday, a day especially spent in the sense of her precious little life. I seem to go about with such a sense of riches and grandeur, in having three such angels so closely linked with me in heaven sister, mother, husband. Each so perfect, and so blessedly, indulgently loving to me. " I must not scorn myself, they love me still ! " We will take courage. We will even go on our way rejoicing. Nothing else will do. It is joy that is the absolute necessity of our being ! To the same. HEREFORD, December 1878. I write in my bedroom, with windows in three different directions, looking into trees all clothed upon with snow. One looks through arcades, and galleries, and winding snow paths to the tree-trunk within. And outermost the fine twigs, all frosted, make a kind of halo of dissolved pearl. I had forgotten how beautiful it was. But it is the beauty of death. How different from the leafy trees, with birds twittering amongst the branches, which I looked into in the middle of June. But that was a more desolate time than this. I am nearer to him, I think, than then. More content, perhaps, to receive him, without seeing him ! This so came to me yesterday. " Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not;" "Eye hath not seen;" LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 181 " The things that are seen are temporal ; " " Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." Strange it is that we seem put into a world of sense in order to be detached from things that are apparent to the senses. " Touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish." To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. Many little signs come looming through the fog-girding, and I know I should see more were my eyes purged, my eye single. Your little, brazen, triangle clock opposite my bed, ticking and saying the words " Not one poor minute 'scapes Thy breast, But brings me favours from above, And in this Love more than in bed, I rest." G. HERBERT. It used to seem as if Eternity were such a puzzling thought ; but now I feel the mystery is in Time. What is that measured thing to do with us and for us ? Why does it so change us and our surroundings ? It becomes so wondrous to look back to the bud, blossoming and decaying, of our life story, and that of others. And the pathos of departures, of absence, of times past. It must be a kind of breaking up of that which should be whole, one, God's Life, part of His sacrifice, perhaps like His broken Body for us, His Soul poured forth unto death, that drop by drop we might drink of it. I think we shall find Time is just the gradual unfolding of what God is, suited to our capacity ; at least, to awaken and unfold our capacity for the beginning to learn Him. When we shall have done with saying, that was, and that will be, and shall know that all is, that will be the consciousness of the Everlasting Embrace. 1 82 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To the same. Do you remember how Joan of Arc's " Voices " and super- natural light ceased just when she seemed to need them most for herself? And Savonarola was also forsaken. And I half remember many others whose lamps seemed to go out though they had long burnt steadily. Most of us are contented with an adherence to an external God. Perhaps those who apprehend Him within feel that first apprehension utterly worthless. Can it be that, after having received the consciousness of inward life and light, they are deprived of it in order to go back to a firmer, deeper hold on the naked external truth ? Perhaps that staying on the name of God of those who walk in darkness and have no light is the very perfecting that is needed before the consummation of com- mending the spirit at every moment into the hands of the Father. I suppose no one really knows what it is to be in darkness but those who know what the light of His countenance is. How few have known that ! I fancy I would gladly bear the pain of long privation for a short glimpse of the joy of the light. We are blessed, because our spirits are poor and needy. We are athirst, and we know we are naked, and miserable, and blind. It is therefore quite, quite certain that we shall not be sent empty away. And we will not suspect Him for one moment, even when appearances seem against His tender, generous, loving-kindness. To Mrs. FRANCIS GALTON. AYLSTONE HILL, HEREFORD, December 30, 1878. MY DEAREST LOUISA, We have always greeted each other at this time. May every blessing be given you both, dear friends. Sometimes when our most beloved on earth is gone from our emptied arms, all seems gone. Then again one finds God is not gone, and He gives us power to awake to other good things ; but most of all He comforts us with the power of hoping in the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 183 invisible and the enduring. Often this seems like hoping against hope, but, on the whole, it is a firm anchor. Think of me especially on New Year's Eve at twelve o'clock. How many times he and I have held each other's hand as we took the new step into the dark year together. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. HEREFORD, December 1878. The last Sunday of this wonderful year is closing ! Closing, and yet, as I trust, opening. May He that hath the key of David both close and open for us ! Let us look for much resurrection, power, and joy ! We are to be revived again, to be built up by the breath of God, through the hunger for righteous- ness, for His meat, which must come from all the disintegration and waste of tissue, which such sorrow, and such sense of failure as sorrow always convinces us of, brings. To the same. March 1879. Tiny crystal flowers of snow career aimlessly through the sky. The poor birches shiver and shake in the wintry blast. Yet everywhere our chestnut buds burst through their glue-coats. Time and space do not belong to the spiritual world. But something analogous to them does, I suppose. But when they have done their work, when the Son gives up the kingdom to the Father, and He is all in all, and we one in Him, they will be no more. To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. May 1879. To think that it is now between five and six months that you have been made to tarry in the valley of the shadow of death. You are becoming acquainted with that region indeed, and you are learning many varied lessons. What is this long, long bap- tism intended for? This month 1 is wonderful to me. The 1 The month of her husband's death. 1 84 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY dividing sea is, as you say, less deep, and the word Evermore begins to sound more than Nevermore through my soul. From Lady EASTLAKE to E. R. G. 7 FITZROY SQUARE, May 23, 1879. DEAR MRS. GURNEY, It is always a sad pleasure to see your fair handwriting. Still the regret was not needed. I was glad to be treated like a friend to whom the truth can be spoken. I should be afraid to come unceremoniously if you did not treat me so. And your letter has made me think too. I don't wonder that the gradual change I spoke of should seem strange and even repugnant to you. I thought I felt the same for many sad years, and could not have believed in its possibility. But the change came gradually of itself. I was not conscious of any co-operation on my part. I was possessed by a feeling stronger than myself, under which I could only just stand, not move, I could only pray and watch my own heart, and leave God to act on it as it pleased Him. In such a position I felt I could not go wrong. And so it has gradually come that He is firs /, as He ought to be, and as He has willed, for it is not my doing. The difference is this, that I no longer hunger for the beloved one here, but have followed and found him in his and my God. I do not love him less. Ah ! no. But I hope I love God more. And so Peace has come, though sorrow is never far off, and too ready to return. We cannot accommodate ourselves to the dreadful change in our lives till we are changed too, and that comes, like all God does, slowly. I have reasoned very much, as I told you, on the laws of sorrow. There is no such a force, and as it is stronger than we, we can only feebly direct it to the right uses, and leave the issue to God. It finds us one thing and it leaves us another, or rather it continues to dwell with us as a friend, not as a torture. Be not afraid that your heart should ever relax its grasp on the be- loved one ; but it becomes a grasp which is reconciled with LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 185 union with God, and therefore with His Peace. Be patient with yourself. You will say in time, " All is well," and not say it merely by rote. Ever, dear friend, yours affectionately, ELIZABETH EASTLAKE. June II, 1879. DEAREST MRS. GURNEY, I can only include you always among my prayers for "those suffering the great anguish of bereavement." But how willingly would I be at your side, giving and taking the peculiar experience which only your and my posi- tion supplies ! To me there is nothing in this world to com- pare with it in intensity of interest. In Shakespeare, Constance says that Grief takes the place of her little Arthur. But the next stage is that God should take the place of the grief. And in studying that I seem to study Him. We are the nearest beings to Him here, and when our hearts are broken and con- trite, nearer to Him than at any other time. Indeed, sorrow is a revelation one of much to bear, to fight, and to learn. Be patient with yourself, I say again. If ever God works in us to will and to do, it is in these times. Ever, dear Mrs. Gurney, yours affectionately, ELIZ. EASTLAKE. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. 3 ORME SQUARE, Ascension Day, 1879. Can you ascend in heart in mind? I cannot to-day. I thought I should. It has been before me all this month, as the day for seeing the Bow in the cloud, and the silvered wings of the Dove. But lo, I am imprisoned in thick clay ! I am now going to lay my cross of flowers on my grave. Afternoon and evening I hope to spend in church. The morning service was very sweet; but I seemed to hear it overhead, while I was an earthworm beneath. The sound of many quiet passers-by, going up and down, to and from the altar, sounded to me like a gather- ing up out of the graves, while I could not stir. But what does 1 86 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY it matter ? The Spring is persistent, spite of cold winds and poor soil I doubt whether we are ever consoled on the level of our grief. I think the Consoler has to lift us out of it, partly by taking us into other scenes, to give our minds and hearts tone, to receive later spiritual consolations. And during this time we have to be perfected in patience. I feel what you repeat to be indeed true that if we dig deep enough we shall find Christ at the very root of our being. It is beautiful to have it connected with that verse, " Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid." And wherever our need makes a delved-out tunnel, whatever faculty wants feeding by Him, there I suppose He does flow up, but only the faith mouth opens to receive. From Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE to E. R. G. (after a severe illness of Lord MOUNT-TEMPLE in Ireland). STANHOPE STREET, Midnight, December 21, 1880. Singing praises to God in our hearts ! All has been arranged so kindly and miraculously for us. Sea smooth, wind favourable, sun shining all beautiful, and enjoyed through our cabin window. Green waves, seagulls descending like doves. Glorious sunset among Welsh hills. Comfortable invalid carriage in which he slept nearly all the way. Blissful arrival ! M. in tears and smiles, opening to us the door, to a vision of comfort and beauty. " It must be supper in Paradise," I said, when I saw lilies, lilacs, and roses, all in heavenly white- ness, white and glistening, with the crimson word of Love. " It was from Mrs. Gurney," says M. ; no need to tell me. And how could she know we were coming, for I kept our journey dark, fearing to make her anxious, and meaning to give her a surprise to-morrow ! Oh ! if this is all so full of joy and sweetness, what will it not be when we are welcomed to our Father's Home ? LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 187 The two letters which follow, and one written from Jerusalem, are a slight record of a friendship with Mrs. Owen, wife of the Rev. Richard Owen of Cheltenham, and the author of some very suggestive writings, among which are, " Keats, a Study," and a small volume of " Poems." The intercourse between the two friends was warm and intimate, but lasted only three brief years. Mrs. Owen died in 1883, during her friend's absence in Pales- tine. To Mrs. OWEN of Cheltenham. AYLESTONE HILL, HEREFORD. September^, i88o(?). It was indeed delightful to me, my dear, new-found friend, to receive your affectionate and most interesting letter ; and I thank you very heartily for the little book of poems, and for your Keats. The F.'s in the former I seized immediately with avidity ; they are lovely with youth-loveliness and melancholy. It is easy to see that Music claims you for her own, by these sweet, measured, flowing cadences. I have not yet read the Keats, but in cutting its leaves I have caught sight of much that is full of alluring interest in your thoughts. How wonderful the attraction of an unread book, like an unread friend, is ! Another unfolding of a vision of the Infinite One. We don't know what we may not find there to awaken something within that has been long waiting for the Voice. I am sure I feel it about you, and I know, if I could wait and listen, you would make sleeping chords awake. I do so congratulate you on having heard Beethoven's Mass in D ; I did not even know about it. Thank you for all you told me. And I do respond to your saying that music means more than words. Just now I am quite in the mood to say Yes to that ; for last evening at the cathedral, an anthem exquisitely sung (one of Goss's) gave such magnificence to the words from Joel ii. 21-26, that it literally seemed to me for a few minutes that the Kingdom was come. Surely it is the spiritual one language, in which Par- 1 88 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY thians and Medes, &c., each one hears his own tongue. Yester- day was a wonderful anniversary in my innermost life, six years ago, and those words and that music summed up the backward glance at them from the Mount. Such glimpses, which rarely come, give one an intense conviction of one's life being an organic whole, and of Chribt being in the midst. You will find this more as the heat and burden of the day passes. In the meantime, the pressure must often be up to the very uttermost that you can bear. I feel so much for you, in having a gift which seems to you in a measure uncalled for, and which the circumstances of your life leave you no time to cultivate. This must often seem such a fretting anguish. Yet I am convinced it will be restored to you, increased from being driven underground into its root. The Blessed One is with us, knitted in with each life, and disposing of us within and without, for the growth of the Body. Adieu, in very blessed memories and in one hope. Yours ever, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. Easter Day 1882 (?). It was your birthday this year, and you feel in accord with the day! How grieved I am that I let the days slip without sending you a greeting ; though, indeed, on Saturday I thought of you much and often, and read my little verses for you, against which you had written your name that happy Sunday at Stoke. They were, " I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes ; nevertheless, Thou heardest the voice of my supplication when I cried unto Thee. I called upon Thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon, hide not Thine ear at my breathing. I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." It all seemed so like the words in your dear hand- writing before me, " I do feel worn out, and sometimes I think there is not much longer for me to bear it." But we cannot, cannot give you up into that passing out of our sight your desire LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 189 aims at. Into the great Peace yes ; but it must be here, still within the prison bars ; for they let through the air from the ever- lasting hills, and the Branch blossoms within them, you see ; and have I not seen the blossoms in your hand ? Your own, yet the tree of the Lord's planting, full of sap, and the glorious fruit will be yours and His. Oh, I long also for you to quite rest, and to enter into fruition, and to be at one, and to eat and drink abun- dantly in the kingdom. But I think there is still more here to be gathered into your dear, large heart, and I am certain, from my new friendship need of you, of what you must be to others who have had you longer. You see I am so frightened at your at all willing to lie down in the sepulchre. How strangely illness and pain have been hunting you since we met. If you could but disentangle your spirit from these shadows ! But who shall say what are the times and the seasons but the Lord of Life ; and the Passion-tide must go on here till the feet have emerged, as well as the head, from the earth conditions. I hear the travail cries everywhere, yet seem strangely insensible to them just now. The very gradual but persistent Spring has so impressed me, and it has been vividly borne in upon me that the Seed contains all within itself in God's great Now. . . . But that the unrolling of the long sad days, the mystery of Time, is the bringing forth of His sons into glory, the partaking of His self-sacrifice, which makes Love and Power and eternal substance sentient. May the Love Life within, above, around, beneath, cherish and nurture you. Your grateful friend, EMELIA GURNEY. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. HEREFORD, 1881. I wrote to your dear Aunt L. on her farewell day at the old house. What a wrench for her to turn out of that long home. We are always stepping deeper and deeper into the mortality which must be completed before we can he swallowed up of life. And now the snowdrops are gone. I see their thin, grey heads, almost skeletons, tipping their lanky stalks. But the daffodils have sprung up in "jocund companies." 1 9 o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To the same (referring to the death of a young maid who had been dear to her). October 1881. How much better I like the word " burial " than " funeral." The burial is just the fulfilment of our latest prayers. "None of self, and all of Thee." The poor pettiness of that which is not living and loving, and so glorified in Him, all buried away ; and nothing precious in His sight and so in ours can be buried there ! I do not wonder at your feeling the concentrated fragrance of that dear violet life much more in its gathering than you possibly could do before. Every going away must bring this before us, and we need indeed the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us more and more to feel the fragrance in present lives, in which there is always so much to hide or interrupt To the same. HEREFORD, December 1881. I trust you will have received J. Fran9ois Millet's life, which has so delighted me, perhaps more than it will you (for, indeed, there is but little expression of himself in it, and that is sad). But what there is, with the illustrations, and with my setting here, of country lanes, and dumb labourers, and sheep, and my own autumn life, just verging upon winter, it has been an epitome of a good deal to me, and has awakened chords that echo harmoni- ously with it. Then that Sower in the frontispiece is the most joyous thing I have seen for long. There is, indeed, Knowledge and absolute Hope there that the seed cannot fail. And more than any attempted representation of our Lord, it has brought Him before me as the Divine Husbandman. " In due season shall you also reap, if you faint not." To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. HEREFORD, Eve of St. Andrew's Day. It is blessed to have saints without as well as within the veil, to whom we may hold out our hands in thanksgiving for all the blessings they have conveyed and ever convey to us ! I came LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 191 upon your track last week at Stoke, and found you in some echoes you had awakened, a little solace for having missed meet- ing you there. And it rejoiced me to hear you had seemed so well, and to find how truly and deeply your presence had been valued. The years are coming round so fast now, that one is almost surprised at the remaining in sight of a long-prized landmark. The subject presented to us first at Stoke was very much your own The New Man. But it was unfolded as the perfect- ing, first, of the Son of Man in His sympathetic union with all mankind ; second, as the Son of God in His oneness with the Father ; and third, as mounting the three steps of His Melchise- ciek throne, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, to become the Perfecter of His brethren. Your grateful and affectionate, EMELIA GURNEY. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. HEREFORD, 1882. Shall you take that Sunday walk you did with me, where we heard the nightingale ? Do you not feel on looking back to such moments, when our existence seems to be worthily environed, and our ears purged to hear some mysterious echoes, not to be put into words, that at such times one has approached very near indeed to the Holy of Holies ? But it is in the backward glance always, I find, that the fuller consciousness awakes, of what it was rather than what it is. To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. 1882 nearly gone ! It has not been an unkind year to us, has it? I think we know more of God, and that He has shone through the tangled web of this existence, with more of His light and heat rays. At least there seem to me added grounds for trusting Him bound up with the accumulated integral sinews of our life. As it were, the moss that we have gathered in our pro- gress seems all to tell the same story of the dews and the warmth and the darkness and the light, of a loving care even to minute- ness. So that this year just adds to the message of each previous 192 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY year, with further force and significance, "Yet your heavenly Father careth for you." Toiling and spinning does nought apart from that. With Him above, around, within, we may just from each region abandon ourselves to trust. Oh, fear not, for I have heard the Sentinel in the dark whis- pering, " All is well." To the same. Oh, we are hearing faint echoes here and there of the extended meaning of Immanuel. God suffering, God baffled, God im- prisoned, sick and thirsty; whom God hoping, God believing, God enduring, is redeeming ! Not to worker God while He in His heaven is unmoved, but to work with Him, to undo the strange spell that hinders, and freezes His Love life-blood from circulating freely in all things above and beneath ! We need not draw a line anywhere between ourselves and our Root of Love, knowing that nothing can separate us, but that all that is not of Him, which makes us ache, or which ossifies and brings mortification into us unconsciously, will by His prevailing life-growth utterly vanish. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. WOOLWICH, Saturday Morning. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, All good things be with you on your proposed journey. I shall hear how you are going when I see you. It is a journey full of interest throughout. At least it was so to me, and I think must be to you, for every spot is con- secrated by the most hallowed associations. Yet why should not our daily path of ordinary life always be to us as interesting, see- ing that it is the reality of which the journey from Egypt to Canaan was but the figure. I fancy that to the angels who watch our steps, all the daily toil and conflict of life are objects of cease- less and unfailing interest. But the scenes where others have lived heavenly lives are special calls to us to follow their steps. May your visit to the Mount of Olives, and Gethsemane, and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 193 the Hill of Ascension, all be to you, as they have been to some others, finger-posts reminding you afresh of the one way of God's elect to heaven. It is our own fault if they do not all say some- thing to us. All good things be with you. Yours ever truly and affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. Towards the end of March 1883 a little party of four friends started for Palestine. Mrs. Russell Gurney, Miss Keary, the Rev. Rowland Corbet, and the Rev. Douglas Guy. The following are extracts from such letters as Mrs. Russell Gurney was able to write during this journey, which was full of charm for her, in spite of the drawbacks of fatigue and illness. LETTERS DURING A JOURNEY TO PALESTINE To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. PORT SAID, March 30, 1883. . . . We had a dear little Easter Sunday. It was not quite like that day, or particularly appropriate. It was more like a rest on the verge of a new stage of existence a rest from the past and undefined expectation of the future. . . . The third day of our voyage everything improved, and we could sit out all day. We had waked at six to behold Crete and the snowy heights of Ida in the background. It was a lovely vision, and we had glimpses through the mist of the shores of the Morea. E. K. was enraptured. She has the freshness and delight of a child about everything, and the spirit of a Mark Tapley for discomforting circumstances. Thursday morning, the zgth, was the first really fine day we had had since we left England. And for the first time we could go upon the clean upper deck under the awning, and pull out our maps and get book and Bible, and compare notes about Jaffa, and determine whether or not to go to Lydda, for it makes the story more complete N I 9 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY about Peter and Dorcas and the vision later. Well, that Thurs- day was really a happy one, and then the nearing Alexandria ; the big ship making its way surely along to its destination, all the forts pointed out, and the realisation of the great semicircle of our fleet's position was very interesting. R. [courier] managed us very nicely, spied the Austrian boat we were to go by the next day, and boated off the bulk of our baggage there, and then took us with the rest to shore. They examined our passports at that strange place do you remember it ? with all the swarming popu- lation in a great conglomerate of bronze and blue around. When the official asked if we were going to Jerusalem, did not a thrill of wonder pass through my being as I answered, " Yes." The sights in the streets as we drove to Hotel Abbas seemed to me even more strangely bewitching and picture-like, dream-like, what- ever it is that is the very contrary to our everyday, practical world, than I expected. Then we drove through the burnt-down quarter, such a scene of miserable desolation, like a huge Pompeii. The best hotel was in the midst of this. E. and I both spent a sleepless night, the variety of sounds we had come amongst utterly scaring it. First, there were the howling dervishes, who never ceased till three o'clock. Then the cocks were the shrillest and strangest, and thought it their duty to perform about every hour from twelve o'clock onwards. The cries of life, altogether so different from our own, seemed to vibrate in wild and unex- pected ways upon one's nerves. Well, we came on board this Austrian Lloyd, and expect to reach Jaffa at nine to-morrow morning. There seems no doubt we shall land, the captain thinks. Jewish pilgrims are on board on the lower deck, with their beds and bundles. There is a dervish also, his dark brows under a deep hood of brown. All kinds of wonders attract our gaze. . . . To the same. JERUSALEM, April 5, 1883. We have been brought here. Our feet have stood upon Mount Zion. I do not know when I wrote to you. All space and time seem destroyed and swallowed up in the glory of our inheritance. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 195 Well, it was a very near point as to whether we could land at all. The little boats that came to meet us were often buried out of sight between the waves. In one of these was Herbert Drake l with an Arab crew, and he amidst the rest had to struggle and fight in a writhing mass as he swarmed up the rope and ladder to get on board. What vociferations, what exhibition of incompre- hensible energy, and what crowds ! . . . Our feet stood on the land. I could not kiss the ground, but picked my way as carefully as I could over it, and we walked along that long bewilderingly picturesque street and reached the bewitching little inn in the midst of orange groves, their luscious odour entrancing us as with a Solomon's Song. . . . Well, we were so enchanted with Joppa, we thought we must remain over Monday. On the Sunday morning after breakfast we found out the roof top, such a lovely, clean spot from which to see that magnificent extent of sea and the line of coast, and to hear that gurgling, shoaling sea in the rocks which must have soothed Peter's senses away so that the heavens opened and bore him the message of universal cleansing. We read our three or four chapters together, and how living and thrilling it all seemed. I must not dwell upon it. We went again the next day to gather up all thoughts and sensations we could ; and then later on Monday we walked along the Jerusalem Road and turned off a sandy lane, through those thick, old, tall fortifications of cacti, and ever oranges and lemons peep over them and suffuse everything into poetry. Why so much more beautiful than in Italy or Florida, I do not know, but never have I imagined such loads of flowers. There were wells of water for irrigation. There was a dear, matter-of-fact, good-natured old Franciscan and Nea- politan, most glad to chatter to us in his own tongue. He had been eleven years tending this garden, and they sold their pro- duce because there were not faithful enough to support them. Well, alas ! we had to leave Jaffa on Tuesday morning. Once more we breakfasted on our little wooden balcony over the orange 1 A young English priest, who had been introduced by Mrs. Russell Gurney to General Gordon, and had gone with him to Palestine. 1 96 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY flowers, and at eight the tumbling-to-pieces char-a-bancs, with three horses each, came. You have enjoyed those dusty roads through cacti, and you know what it is to emerge into the plain of Sharon, but you did not tell me it was like the Campagna in beauty ! The long ranges of the hills of Judah, the bright green sweep of the plains at tneir base, the sheiks' tombs, with water and camels drinking, and pilgrims and sycamore shade as fore- grounds. Then we came to Lydda. What a place ! There Eneas was raised, and from there disciples were sent to Joppa. We saw the old church of St. George in the rabbit warren of a town, all restored, very little of the old crusading time. I should like to photograph everything on my mind and the four French pilgrims who came in, belonging to a pilgrimage of 450 that are just finishing off, and two American ecclesiastics with whom I conversed while attempting a little recollection of a sketch. Then into the char-a-bancs again, and onwards, upwards towards Jeru- salem ! The next morning, yesterday, began all that wondrous ascent to Jerusalem, through tier after tier of locked, stony heights literally stony, but at first how thickly clothed with lovely underwood and many flowers ! Surely nothing in the world can be so impressive as this approach to Jerusalem. Kirjith Jearim do you remember it? The most dignified stone walls, the square, massive, simple remains of the church built in the time of the Crusaders, where there had been a French convent, all deserted now. But the way that village nestled and clung to the hillside ! the remains of massive foundations. Some think it may have been Emmaus ; I feel so sure it was. And then here, too, the Ark rested ; and from here onwards we went our way in the track of the march of the Ark. We could feel how naturally Uzziah put out his hand to save the Lord's Ark : such a parable of what we are so inclined to do now ! We loved Kirjith, and yet perhaps even more the blessed little spot where we rested for two hours. It was called Colonia, and had no sacred associations ; but it seemed the most Sabbath resting-place I ever had. On the stone balcony we sat and had our little meal; and a passion-flower was on the trellis above, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 197 and white doves circled round us, the first we have seen here ; and there, straight before us, lay the upward road over barrier hills to Jerusalem. We read our chapters, we talked one with another. The pomegranates' ruddy leaves glowed in a mass beneath, the grey olive beyond, and some white pear trees in blossom ; and as we went onwards and looked back with regret and fondness it was even more beautiful. Then our thoughts more and more were all towards the Holy City. It seemed to us the most wonderfully symbolic scenery the rugged bare ascent. We said our Psalms of Degrees all together ; never did they seem so beautiful. And why did it not reveal itself after all this ascent ? Still for ever hidden ! Of course we got down to walk when they told us we should soon see it, and we walked in such awe-struck expectation ! but the moment never came. We were in the outskirts and surrounded by modern, neat German buildings ; but the Holy City was not to be seen. And so it went on, and on, and only a bit of the walls beyond these buildings came in sight, then more and more, and we were at the door of our modern, German prosaic inn. After a little arrangement E. and I stole out alone, and went outside the walls of the Mount Zion part, and past the Armenian burying-ground and convent. What exquisite colouring was on the hills of Moab in the distance ! The Vale of Hinnom, so much more of a vale than I expected, at our right ; in the afternoon light it looked a deep descent in shadow. And then as we returned we met R. with letters, and he said, "Would you like to go to the Holy Sepulchre ? " and we went, and it seemed to me just exactly like the pool of Siloam : the poor, the sick, the miserable, crowding round the spot, all longing to be helped. And we so gladly crowded in with them to the little nook that holds just six at a time, and knelt before the stone that has been the symbol for a thousand years to so many needy ones of the Death and Resur- rection of the Healer and Helper of poor suffering humanity. No superstition or clamour revolts me ; it all seems a picture of the true state of things. It was dusk when we came out. We thought there was a wonderful atmosphere of expectant longing about the place. Your own, E. R. G. 198 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To the same. JERUSALEM, April 9. To-day I am only just able to write you a line. The fact is, the long conversations with H. D., with General Gordon, with H. D.'s sect., besides with our own party, who have each their special companionship to be carried out, leaves no time for sketching or writing or anything. And wonder and delight, I feel, is a little frittered by this, but they are all aboundingly interesting. Jerusalem has disappointed me in nothing. With what in- terest I have looked at the beautiful Damascus Gate, outside which you encamped when the wind drove you from beloved Olivet. I see the sun rise over it every morning, and there is the dome of the Rock straight below it. Gordon is sure that Adam was made out of that Rock ; that it is the Rock out of which we were all hewn ; that it is the Rock, of course, of Abraham's sacrifice, and of the Burnt Offering altar. We were on Friday at the Wailing place. There must have been 300 or 400 rubbing their faces against the wall, the veil, is it not, that just hides them, Gordon says, from the Water of the Laver just beyond, and the Table of the Lord (the Burnt Offer- ing). To-morrow we set off encamping. Ever your most privi- leged of old pilgrims, E. R. G. To the same. JERUSALEM, July 17. Did I write to you just before starting on the Jordan expedi- tion ? How I did wonder whether our camp was near the spot you had been on, near that little round head of the spring that Elisha sweetened. A Bedouin black camp was close by, and a Mahomedan camp, and an American camp, so we were not quite so quiet as we should have liked. . . . But the interest of this expedition beats all description (and I am so glad I have not to describe it to you, but only some day to talk it over, and enjoy our recollections together). It is true the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 199 great wall of Moab seems to sink as one descends into the plain ; but how wondrous is the colouring, and that evening, as we clat- tered along that stony descent after leaving those savage defiles, with the brook Cherith cutting its narrow way amongst them, how wonderful it was to look down upon the line of luscious verdure tracking Jordan in the midst of that sandy plain, and to see four little tents pitched against some of the green tamarisks ; and then the crescent moon and luxuriant stars as we went from our bedroom tent to our saloon one. But the scenes them- selves far outdid the adventure of tents ! We returned to the same place again, after the ride of the next day to the Dead Sea and Jordan ; and the third day made our way back, and this was the most precious thing to me, along the upward path He came when Martha and Mary sent for Him ; and at last there was the very spot where their messengers looked over the brow of the hill, in anxiety and hope, and finally despair. And on that brow our camp was pitched, and there i the evening light was the longed-for Bethany, just below. To Mrs. OWEN. JERUSALEM, Tuesday, April 17, 1883. Here your dear letter came to me yesterday, telling me in your own beautiful way of your visit to Mr. Shields and his spiritual pictures. Every word you say finds its echo in us. St. James with the reversed cup was indeed a wondrously blessed revelation ; and Obedience bound to the horns of the Altar, I thought Michel Angelesque, so powerful in every line. But when did I write last ? To thi^k how we have passed from the sea waves to the luscious orange groves, and thence up- wards through stony heights to Mount Zion ; that we have knelt under the venerable olive in Gethsemane, and passed over the top of Olivet, in thought of the Ascension, looking towards the ethereally coloured Moab wall over the blue cloud of the Dead Sea. And we have made our way down the defiles of thieves, guarded by a Bedouin chief, to Jericho, and encamped by the 200 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY sweet stream that Elisha healed, and tasted the bitter salt of the Dead Sea, and sprinkled ourselves with the sacred Jordan water, and then have reascended the stony heights. Oh, what a path- way for beasts to stumble up, passing crowds of Greek pilgrims hastening to Jordan, and two poor dead mules left by the way. And making our last ascent we saw our camp people looking over the brow of the hill down upon our way, and we knew it was just there that Martha and Mary must have sent watchers to look for Him who kept them two days waiting while the life of the beloved ebbed away. And I think that it was just where a spring bursts forth amongst the stones that He and His disciples stayed to refresh themselves after the toiling travel, when Martha came to meet Him. We encamped a stone's throw from Bethany, a little ravine between it and our little platform. It is all and more than one could wish for, the framing of that one spot of home-life the one pillow for the weary life of those three years. Such dear little unexpected dells, and winding paths round knolls, and little green flats, with grey stones shutting them off, and breezy uplands around, looking over sweeps of varied country ; and the mul- titudes of little flowers peeping and smiling up everywhere, the never-failing scarlet poppy and deeper crimson anemone, con- stantly reminding one of transfigured blooddrops. Early on Friday morning (i3th), oh, did you not feel us ? In these scenes, our table in our tent decked with these wild flowers, we partook of the Holy Feast ; and the interpreter read aloud the names of our bereaved ones, and of our dear ones who find not the Home here for their hearts. You know your name was not omitted. Your very loving, E. R. G. To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. 7 o'clock, May 8. Sea of Galilee. In the hinder part of the boat ; the breeze is over, the sail furled ; three rowers, making the cleaving sound of the sweet waters. We have left Tiberias and its ruined towers behind us ; to our left ahead is the opening of a valley between LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 201 some rocky heights, and distant, lilac, cloud-like hills. At the edge of the opening there is flat green, and the few little houses still called like Magdala, Majdel. The little plain of Gennesaret lies behind it. We feel on this spiritual element more like tread- ing in His footsteps than anywhere, and the visionary beauty of everything round takes one out of hard matter into the glassy sea, where all is transfigured before the Throne. It is such a joy to find it so beautiful ; the mantling, enfolding hills fine in their form and in colour most wondrously translucent. The nearer shores rising into cliffs of warm grey, mixed with golden and green turf. Little nestling places quite at the edge. " Children, have you any meat ? " still resounds in His morning voice, after our toiling nights. As we came along His Nazareth road to this, the wind as it moved the corn whispered as never before, yet I could not hear what it said. Oh, the sweet monotony of these plashing oars ; the dark faces and free movements spoil no associations. Now there are little screaming birds dashing into the water, and then skipping along it, grey and white. Our boatman stopped to drink of the water of the lake. Interpreter said, what a symbol of the Way this element is. It bears us along, sustains us, and refreshes us. This lake must have been to Him like the whole vale of Baca used as a well. Our tents were pitched a quarter of a mile from Tiberias, on green just above the white pebble brink. We watched the sun- set hues creeping pinker and more golden over the hills of Gilead on the other side. Then we all sought for shells beneath the grey stones. And, I thought, these will be nice precious things, and make little charm necklaces for one or two who might care. It was too soon dark. But there were the stars, and then arose the wind and fluttered our tents all night. At five we were up, and at six stepped into this dear boat. It is taking us to Ain et Tin, per- haps Capernaum ; and there our horses meet us, and we are to ascend to Safed, and shall look upon this dream once more. No spot have we so longed to stay at ; but, alas ! we are now straitened 202 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY to get to Damascus and then Beyrout. This interfering Time, so difficult to take any account of here. // is the matter of faith here! To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. DAMASCUS, Whitsunday, May 13. Here, just arrived, I find one letter awaiting me ; it is from you, of the 24th of April, answering back my hasty scribbles from Jerusalem. The newness of the world one is in seems to bewilder so much, and to fatigue so much, that the moments in which one can write seem to fly, and to race with one so dis- tractingly, that one does not know how to form one's words even in one's brain, much less with pen and ink. I wonder whether the multitudes of impressions I have received will ever organise themselves into any distinct whole, or whether they have been so emotional as to leave no permanent trace in heart and brain. The " lust of the eye " has been so satisfied, has the spirit been fed ? I know not. But you will want to know our history, and I cannot re- member how much I have told you, so I won't attempt anything like a journal. The tent life was always reminding me of you. Was the howling of the dogs at night as horrible to you as it was to me ? Never shall I forget the awful sounds at Geba and at Jezreel. The latter place is, indeed, the most God-forsaken heap I ever beheld. We were frightfully depressed when we read of all the things connected with the place. But how mysteriously, blessedly the strange words of the prophet sounded at last. "The heavens shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel." It seems to imply that the cry of deepest need and degradation is at last, 'through some inter- weaving intermediaries, to prevail to unlock treasure-houses. It was the plain of Esdraelon that most tired us all, I think, so monotonous in its surface. Yes ; that day we started at seven, and the words were, " Then you will go to Shunem, Nain, Naza- reth." Oh, to have ears to hear and hearts to feel would be a LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 203 boon under such circumstances ! Was not the hill a nice, swell- ing, homely one under which the great woman lived ? Could you not see the reaping fields below the village where the boy said, " My head, my head ! " And was it not curious to think of Nain, where the other restoration took place, being just on the other side of the same hill ? Nain was very evidently the place. The gate must have been just there. I did not mind the little white Franciscan deserted chapel being there. It did not seem to interfere with the sanctity of the natural spot, as many shrines do. We all went and knelt there some time, and then rested half-an-hour outside in its shade, and then again took to the plain, with the site of Nazareth before us, though hidden by its embowering heights ; and what climbs those last were, up and down and over, you know, and the sun beating hotter and hotter. At 12.30 we reached the convent. Our tents were pitched were yours ? just above the Virgin's fountain. There the young and old were struggling, later in the day, to fill their beautiful water-pots, while their pink and yellow draperies fluttered about them. Tuesday, April 2ist, we had our Holy Communion, and re- membered the young ones we cared for. It has been very sweet to connect different places with dear names of those we would naturally lift up our hearts for, and with Him whose Life is the reason of our confident trust for them. How cradled in, how embowered in fold after fold is this home for the secluded boyhood and youth and early manhood of the growing, anointing Priesthood and Kingship of the Saviour ! That place will cer- tainly be a heritage for ever ; how glad I am you also have it. I did sketch a little from my tent door. You know one can never choose a sketch here ; only seize what is presented opposite to where one must needs be posted and planted in some proper shade. It was May ist, Ascension Day, when we left Nazareth. Of course my heart was full of those who had accompanied so many Ascensions in my fulness as well as my emptiness ! The day felt peculiarly halcyon. I thought the birds sang ro me much more than on any other day. There was a wearisome bit of 204 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Esdraelon ; but then such a park, with what they call oaks here, for our midday resting-place. Then the descent into the plain of Acre, and there were the tents, at last, in grassy meadow land, close to Kishon, and oleanders ; and the long, long ridge of Carmel in evening shadow stretching to the sea. Did you encamp, as we did, the next night on the platform sheer over the sea opposite to Acre, in the convent precincts ? Did you go on from Haifa, where the chanting voice of the muezzin called as we passed in the golden afternoon to prayer, along the white sand of the shore, treading on lovely little shells, with fringing palms rising on our right? Did you grudge to strike inland over sandy dunes? But at Ber Jedru we were again on thick grass carpets. To see those tufts cropping under bed and table is exquisite, is it not? The sun was low there. The shadow of Carmel was creeping fast over the golden plain ; the people were gathering at that old picturesque well of Joseph. Dinner comes too soon. No doffing of riding-dress ; then, after- wards, a little Bible reading and talking. . . . Well, the Sea of Galilee has been to me the jewel of all. The descent upon Tiberias seemed to me to exceed in loveliness of evanescent colour anything my earthly eyes have ever beheld. Old, rugged, earthquaked Tiberias spread out below, with the sapphire lake rising high behind, and, fringing that, those dove- wing mountains of Gilead. And we were encamped at the very edge of the white pebbled beach, and could hear the tiny lap of the wavelets all night against the shore ; and three hours on the very bosom of this blessed above all water seemed to me more to hold one in the earthly life of the Lord than any other place ; and the green, retreating little plain of Gennesaret, with Mag- dala there, and the places where Capernaum, Chorazin, &c., once were. The next day, after leaving the glory of Galilee, we entered the glory of Hermon, as seen across the valley, with its little family of young, glistening streams. We had lunch in a thicket of oleanders, bowed with their blossoms, close upon the rushing stream of young Jordan. Yes, Banias that evening was all you LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 205 described the romantic bower of the land ; how we grudged leaving it, the last footstep of our Lord ! And now what a different character has appeared in the scenery. I shall probably be following this letter quickly. Your own much dowered though unworthy one. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. x CHELTENHAM, 1883. It is good to be here ! And, strange to say, the longing for the sound of the voice, and the touch of the vanished hand, does not too much overshadow with gloom, but permits one to seek the Presence in the present, rather than sit down in the ruined past. " Evermore " seems more hinted at than " Nevermore " is emphasized. And the abiding home, though still hidden, as Jerusalem was, by stony hills, though so near, is in very truth at hand ; and we can afford to press onwards, without turning back to gaze and stretch out longing hands for our unripe happy hours behind ! To her Aiece, KATHERINE GURNEY. HEREFORD, 1883. I have as yet very little capacity for loving ! I think and hope it is true that plants, to awaken our love and for it to form round, are just sown in our hearts ; and we shall find these plants again beyond, with some of our love-sap intermingled with their life, and our severance from them will have deepened the sap in our hearts and theirs, and when we behold them again there will be such a reciprocity and intermingling of the here frozen, but there ice-freed, abounding, intermingling streams, that we shall understand that wondrous miracle, that we are loved, and that will loose us to love again. " We love Him because He first loved us." True it is, we can only be loved into life. And now this reminds me of some words in a beautiful letter of dear noble Hannah Pearsall Smith. " I am full of an opening I have had 1 Referring to her friend, Mrs. Owen. 206 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY on that blessed word, ' God is Love.' It came to me like this : that here we are all crying out, ' Oh, that I could find Him ! ' and all the while the key to the knowledge of Him has been put into the hands of every one of us, of every human being that ever lived. For there is not a man, woman, or child on earth, who does not know something at least of love, and therefore some- thing of God. For whatever love is, that God is, for God is Love. Consequently, whenever we have a glimpse of love, either in our- selves or others, we have a glimpse of God, and must say to our- selves, ' Yes, that is just what God is.' I cannot tell thee what wonderful vistas of blessedness have opened up before me as I have contemplated this. For / know something of what love is, and since God is Love, I therefore know something of what He is, and I find that He is altogether lovely. I am afraid I cannot make my meaning as plain as I should like, but I do want thee to recognise thy place and thy possessions, and to realise that thy long quest is ended, and that thou hast found God at last. Found Him in the love that fills thy own heart and life. If I should use one word to express my sense of thy need, it would be simply this recognition." To the same. I am glad you enjoy Maurice's " Kings and Prophets." It was an era to me when I read it. I want to read it again, and see how I like it now. " Uarda " was just a find. I wondered whether those who had not been to Egypt could enjoy it as I did. And now have you seen that her father Rameses, and her aunts' and ancestors' bodies have all been found ? Hidden away from the valley of the tombs, in the time of the Persian invasion, I think. Oh, if we had only time and energy, and formed habits for digging away into any of the mines of interest on either side our path all along, how rich we might become ! But I can only stand on brinks, and see what jewels the dear delvers bring up. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 207 To the same. I can only say about the Inferno, that we must have the dark abyss, the sulphur, the salt, or the art conception of the whole would be wanting. We must have the knowledge of evil, or for us (Eve having eaten of that tree) there would be no knowledge of good. I believe the Inferno is evil as it is subjectively, made objective, (not appropriately punished or seen in its consequences), but just its mal semo dissected and laid bare. And it must needs hurt the eyes of its beholder (Dante), and he must needs either be soiled or made cruel by it, being in the body that casts a shadow. Some of the loveliest Nature touches are in it. And what portraits, Farinata, &c. ; and what tragedies, Rimini and Ugolino. What exquisite paternal and filial feeling in the midst of the revolting horror of the hate between Ugolino and the Archbishop eternal hate in contrast to eternal love. For one thing, it shows one it could not be in the same personalities; the devouring appetite could not continue, for there is no fresh spring in it, all growing out of the bygone acts of the long past. What words for the hypocrites in the "O etemo faticoso manto ! " "La gente stanca." What could so express the over- powering effort of living a life that seems rather than is ? Its absurd long suicide of the true. Then the monster neither two nor one ! The manifestation of union for evil being the complete loss of personality. No, I won't have even the Inferno run down. And I will have the Purgatorio as artistically the highest, because to us the manifested is the region of art ; whereas Paradiso notwith- standing dances and lights, is the revelation which can only be made from thought to thought in words, not in pictures. To Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. How true what you say about the good and evil is. Evil working against itself through a yet responsible agent, but good, or the Good One, counteracting and " carving out of the defeat 208 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY a victory." Sometimes we catch a little glint of it, and it makes one feel as if somehow evil was a necessary nidus for the birth of good. I hope you will receive this on Monday, Gordon's birthday, and that you will send up protecting prayers for him. I want the rumour of him to go before him amongst those tribes, like the dream in the camp of the one little barley loaf that over- turned it, Gideon's allegorical designation. What a funny little inadequate, inappropriate dream the officer would have thought who heard his soldier recount it. " Converse in the Lord forms thought that ripples beyond and beyond and beyond." There is no knowing where it ripples, I think, or who it is making to dream, or to preach, or to fight for a good cause. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. l ORME SQUARE, 1885. I think of you with such pleasure at Bournemouth, with your spring blossom. And before you, too, is the awful muta- bility of these eternal possessions pictured by the recollection of the lovely boy of four years old, once there in your very hand as well as heart. And now in the prosperous course of nature not vanished, not dwindling even. Yet where is that precious jewel that made your being thrill with joy ? Are you to find that again in his angelhood and yours ? Certainly the changes in this life are more perplexing to faith than the change made by the clean sweep of beloved objects from this life. BROADLANDS, October 1885. Here I am in the deserted shrine. Sitting in my beloved Ladye's seat. It seems rather sad that she should be called to a funeral on this her birthday [the funeral of Lord Shaftesbury on October 8]. I am certain it will make her tremble for her beloved. Well, it is all trembling now, as far as this world goes, and to i Referring to a baby niece, and to the babyhood of a nephew ten years before. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 209 hear, " I am the Resurrection and the Life," is the only joyful sound. To the same. BROADLANDS, October 10, 1885. Would, would you could have seen those two last night [Lord and Lady Mount-Temple] when they returned from St. Giles's, Lord Shaftesbury's Dorsetshire place. Their radiance was so heavenly and their account of all things so deeply touching. There was not very much to tell, but the impression received from all around servants, poor, and family with all the teeming testimonies of grateful love from the poor and oppressed of all sorts and conditions. And the sweet little anecdotes that cannot be repeated of his humility and love, though there was a great deal of pride about him too. There were many paradoxes, as in all great men. He seems to have been almost as afraid as Gordon of looking back at anything he had accomplished, and realised almost as vividly that he was but an instrument in God's hand. He said he owed the aim of his life to the impulse given by his nurse. I thought this would be such a nice thing to tell to all young nurses. His father was a strong, and I fancy con- temptuous, opposer, and so were his brothers. And his own children afterwards had no sympathy in his special objects, so that he always had to swim against the stream. Did you see in the paper that the costermongers sent him a watercress wreath ? We thought it so nice of them not to have subscribed to get a wreath of the ordinary kind, but to have sent the one they could gather themselves out of the little brooks. Once lately he said to some one, " He knows I have intensely loved Him these fifty years." They felt the service in the Abbey most exquisite, and the look of all the faces waiting in pouring rain in crowds. To the same. Here are these verses from " In Memoriam." This unifying of past and present, finishing and beginning, silence and motion. O 210 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY The rhythm of life, which yet gives us so much pain, " la puntura della rimembranza," which is felt in such different degrees of acuteness by our fellow-creatures. The sound of the closing of the door, I suppose, has not even been listened to by some of us ! " Sad Hesper o'er the buried Sun, And ready, thou, to die with him ; Thou watchest all things ever dim And dimmer, and a glory done : The team is loosened from the wain, The boat is drawn upon the shore ; Thou listenest to the closing door, And life is darkened in the brain. Bright Phosphor, fresher for the night ; By thee the world's great work is heard Beginning, and the wakeful birds ; Behind thee comes the greater light : The market boat is on the stream, And voices hail it from the brink ; Thou hear'st the village hammer clink, And see'st the moving of the team. Sweet Hesper Phosphor, double name For what is One, the first, the last, Thou, like my present and my past, Thy place is changed ; thou art the same." To the same. ORME SQUARE, 1885. Yes, it is true. We must go on. The things must be left behind whenever they possibly can be ; and a certain lapse of time, it has been decreed, shall make the possibility. It is faith- fulness, not faithlessness, to our precious ones, that bids us look less at what they were to us than at what they are in God, and to what they shall be, consciously and fully to us in Him, when our veils are removed. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 211 To the same (after spending two months in Italy together). HEREFORD, Trinity Sunday, 1886. A solemn grey sky. Smoky mist swamping all the distance. Great branches of a copper beech waving ; a Scotch fir still and firm ; the sloping field of grass, sorrel-mixed, a lovely soft des- cent ; birds flitting, or fussing, or skimming, or hopping around and above and about. Sunday stillness throughout. This is where I am. I look back on this day fortnight, under your roof and wing ; and then to Lucerne together, while the lake sparkled and the mountains dreamt before our eyes. And from thence I go back to Siena, and the hills, and the cypresses, and bulwarks, and accacias, and nightingales. What a phantasmagoria encircles our rooted being ! May we know how to preserve this double consciousness of our peaceful rest in God, while the changing web of our outward Time-life engages our active faculties. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. (after the death 0/Lord MOUNT-TEMPLE). UPPER EGLINTON ROAD, WOOLWICH, October 17, 1888. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, One line of grateful thanks for your letter. The world, the seen world, must henceforth be colder to us. But what is real never passes away. We cannot lose what we truly love. And the love of which Broadlands has been the centre and witness will never leave us, though we may not see them. ... I am increasingly sure that our Lord's words touching Himself, " It is expedient for you that I go away," are true of all those to whom to live is Christ. Through their outward departure we get, even from them or through them, what we never got while they were with us visibly. Surely they yet are with us. " We are come to the spirits of just men made perfect." But you know all this. You have been through the waters. Even if we did not know and see this, the time here is 212 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY short. Therefore, let those who weep be as though they wept not. Yet I feel the chill and blank the last few days have made. How many others, too, will feel it. Yours ever affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. The spring of 1889, from March till June, was spent by Mrs. Russell Gurney in a Sicilian journey, with Miss Keary as her companion, and some lingering in Italy on their way home. In August she started again for Baireuth, with her nephew, Alfred Gurney, and Miss Olive Birrell, to hear and behold the Parsifal Play. From Mrs. PEARSALL SMITH to E. R. G. BABBACOMBE CLIFF, TORQUAY, May 5, 1889. I have heard some of thy letters to our blessed Ladye (Lady Mount-Temple), and am brought so near to thee thereby, that I cannot help sending thee a little love-greeting from this place of beauty. As I look out over the bay this morning while wait- ing for breakfast, the lovely water shows all the colours of the rainbow in the most exquisitely subdued tints lying across it in great lines of beauty. It is so like the Mediterranean that it is hard to believe I am not again on the Riviera. How exquisite Sicily must be ! What a temple ! What a pathway to reach it ! And what a vision after ! [See letter about the Temple of Segestce in the Sicilian letters.] I have intensely enjoyed it all. And I shall never be satisfied till I have seen that temple with my own eyes. ... I have had an " opening " on what it means in the Bible to be satisfied. It means just what we mean when we say to a friend, " I shall be satisfied with anything you do for me." We may not like what is done, but we are satisfied with it because our friend does it, and in the end we generally come to the point of liking it. Now we must be all of us satisfied with what God LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 213 does, because we know He must do the best ; and it is in this sense that Paul says, " I am content with such things as I have." I believe it is a matter of loyalty for us to be satisfied with what God provides, and when we begin with being satisfied we very often end with liking. It seems to me anybody can be content who gets down to the bottom of things in this way, and looks upon satisfaction as being thus an act of our wills rather than a condition of our emotions. Thy sister, HANNAH. From Mrs. PEARSALL SMITH to E. R. G. July 8, 1889. The sight of thy handwriting on an envelope with an English stamp was balm to my soul this morning. I heard thee was at home, but this was more tangible, and established a closer link, and I am so glad to have thee back. England has felt as if partly bereft of its charms with thee out of it. Now I say to myself, even when I do not see thee, " Oh, but she is here ! she is here ! " And this is just the way it is about God. We do not see Him or feel Him, perhaps, but we have His letter with the human stamp on it, and we say jubilantly, " Oh, He is here ! He is here ! " Christ is our letter with the human stamp, and there is no possibility left for us to doubt that God is with us. And this includes all. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. BAIREUTH, August 5, 1889. I feel more dumb than I can tell you. There seems nothing to be said, and so infinitely much to be felt and thought and lived after beholding this life-drama. I think I must try to write you some of my impressions, in order to keep them more in con- sciousness ; but not to-day, for a sense of fatigue paralyses my pen, or my will power, perhaps from the lassitude that comes after the intense excitement of supreme hours. The day of perfect summer warmth, refreshed by tender breezes, was just fitted for 2i 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY our drive to the theatre and back, through the pretty, leafy, gently ascending road ; and between the acts we could stand, and stroll about in the grounds. Our seats in the theatre were the best that could be chosen, in the midst of the building, so that we saw admirably and heard every note. I experienced no shade of disappointment, and am unable to criticise anything. The music floated around the ideas and scenes suggested, as the atmosphere which belonged to them. I cannot say what I should think of it in itself. I can only think of it in relationship to those ideas and scenes. The whole thing seems to me a divine inspiration, and I count among the very highest privileges of my very enriched life to have heard and seen and felt it. I have been living on the thought of " Parsifal " since Sunday, and only sent you such a bare scrap, so dry you might hear it rattle. I continue astonished at the miracle of this wondrous revelation of Art, as the minister of highest moral and spiritual teaching, breathed through its own atmosphere of music, which bears it into the senses and soul of hearers. It speaks, " and the ear comes out to hear." To Mr. FREDERIC SHIELDS. NEUHAUSEN, RHEINFALLS, SCHWEIZ, August 1 8, 1889. I can never tell you how much I enjoyed "Parsifal." It was like a celestial revelation. A life-drama, indeed, with spiritual life flickering through all the mysteries of growth, through inno- cence, temptation, deliverance, the overcoming in God, and the glory through this overcoming of being made a deliverer to others. It seemed to me a miracle that in this age, when " Art for Art's sake " is the motto, such high and indeed spiritual teach- ing should, be the inspiration of the grandest work of musical conception of our day. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 215 To OLIVE BIRRELL. AYLESTONE HILL, HEREFORD, January 12, 1890. DEAREST OLIVE, I have been struggling out of dumbness towards you for a week, and now I welcome the voice which provokes though it kindly disclaims an answer. I am riveted by all you tell me of Mrs. Walter Hughes. It is beautiful to see how her prayer has been answered, that she might help her fellow-creatures, though by the mutilation of the very instrument that she wanted to help them. That's so like a way of God's, I think. You seek to do something in a certain way, and God disables you. Do you know, I find the lovely ordinary country sounds and scenes so exquisitely helpful and hopeful, I don't know how to slink back into the wicked town. This morning my fly did not come as ordered, and I walked half a mile before sunrise, the moon still tenderly brilliant and the birds not in the full madness of spring joy, but still most happily expectant : it all seemed on the very verge of wonderful revelation; and then, the feast of memory and hope and presence in the little Lady Chapel of the cathedral ! I never remember such a day in January certainly, and I dare say nipping cold will come and blight me, and send me humbly content to creep into my shell. But it's a great thing to have seen and heard such wonders, and I take them as good auguries for you and me, this year and on and on. Ever lovingly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. AYLESTONE HILL, HEREFORD, May 21, 1890. You have always shown a dear interest about my beloved uncle, John Venn, and have often sent him a message, and I ought before this to have written to tell you he was safely across Jordan. I am thankful, indeed, for the wonderful privilege of being beside his bed for the last month of his life. He suffered 216 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY a good deal during the last week. It was a very silent, very patient, very loving, very thankful dying bed. From the first he seemed to me impressed with the mystery and wonder beyond words of that into which his spirit was entering. I send you a local paper with a little sketch of his past life. Now please, beloved friend, do not answer this. I know your heart. And your head and pen must not be overdone. Your ever grateful and affectionate EMELIA GURNEY. To EDWARD CLIFFORD. 3 ORME SQUARE. Do you remember Browning's poem about the Boy and the Angel? Even God wanted Theocrite's special note in all Crea- tion's chorus. This subject you will see touched in Rose Oliphant's Sympneumatic H. She says, " Love is known only in the giving." I think it is giving and receiving. I think in the Incarnation Christ says, " Lovest thou Me ? " and craves our love, the kiss, the anointing by the called by name, and suffers till it is given. I think love does and must suffer here by its very nature and by these conditions ; do you ? The root question has, I think, to do with that difficult one is personality eternal ? As we believe in the Divine Personality, I think we cleave to the personal in each unit ; even our own, as well as that of each other and that of the united whole, the Bride of Christ. Only He can have eyes to see what that Personality is to which each member contributes its atom. And only the saints as one whole can see what His is, though each atom may see the blessed vision of Him that his own purged eyes are capable of beholding. I think, on the whole, however, you will find Mrs. O. very searching and stimulating almost terrible, yet salutary. Yours in memo- ries, love, and hope, E. R. G. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, January i, 1891. " I needed you." What a joy-bringing word that is to the human heart, and I venture to believe it is to the Divine Heart. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 217 I think, too, no one human being utters it with any deep truth to another (except on a purely material plane), unless in that other's heart the response has ready grown, and / needed you. Your note gave me one of the new mercies that is an earnest of His mercies being new every morning through this unproved year. Ever affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same, HOTEL DE FRANCE, PAU, BASSES PYRENEES, May 6, 1891. How strange that Time should meddle so much with every- thing in us, and yet be after all nothing. By its means we are stretched out to experience the most extraordinary medley of emotions. I wish to keep them all. I should like to keep everything living in fulness of life that I have ever felt, only each in due proportion of colour. Sometimes I can believe that every moment of life is a heart-beat of God straight into our hearts, and know its infinite preciousness, and fancy what it would be to be absolutely awake to the import, beauty, and passionate love of it all. I think it was the day I received your note that in the evening hour we went for a stroll. We bordered fields of high grass full of large daisies and scabious and flowering grasses. Through them or by their side were little brooks, not so hasty and joyous as those on the slopes ; they only whispered. The sun was low, and his broad lights and deepening shadows were all veiled over with deepening mist We sat on some stones and looked into a broad dashing stream that emerged from deep shade of over- bowering trees, and was lost again just below us under the bridge. The sound seemed monotonously to shut out the very memory of din. Then from a quarter of a mile further along the road the sad, strange voice of a church bell, not tolling, not ringing, but in broken numbers, smote on our hearts, and in a dreamy way we were conscious that two or three women had come along a path that joined the descending road in their Sunday beautiful 2i8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY costume of long black cloaks falling from their heads nearly to the ground. We turned and watched them gather along the road near the church down the hill. All women, in long black cloaks twenty, I should think, of them ; and half of them, I suppose, were carrying a bier from the church, headed by flicker- ing candles in the hands 01" some, and two chanting priests ; and white was over the bier, so we supposed it was a young girl who had found the evening so early in her day, and was being carried by women's hands across the road to the waving grass of the little cemetery. But all was veiled by distance and twilight, mixed with the faintest beams of struggling sunshine amongst the woods and beyond on the heights. It was just a scene on the magic mirror of life, and all nature was in harmony with it. A little ripple on the waters of life and death ; no name, no asso- ciations had marked it for us as more, and that seemed to increase the pathos which is not grief. Argeles is a dell that creeps around and around into our hearts. Its quiet, its isolation without any savageness or stern- ness, its birds, its ever-changing clouded heights and nest-like inings of downy greenery, surpasses any place I ever stayed in, and yet I have told you nothing to help you picture it. I am not sure that it is just what your artist eye would wish to picture ; you would better like to rest from picturing. I hope you have read every word of the lives of L. and A. Oliphant, though I don't quite like the way she has handled the forsaking the world for the unworldly hope. It is beautifully and very judiciously written, I think, and the most interesting episode ever written ! Your affectionate AMIGA. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, July 26 [her birthday}. I cannot help telling you how to-day, a day of lifelong memo- ries to me, and of, now, such loneliness as to sight and touch of the beloveds who loved me from my youth upwards, you have supported and ministered to me fresh and gracious tokens. And LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 219 then the abundant gift of those jessamine and that lily; I cannot tell you what they meant to me on this day ! And then the picture revelations of summer and winter, epitomising more than words can say, but all gathered up in the chant if amour that must be my motto for the evening years ; for life has indeed been this love-song to me, Triste et joyeux tour a tour. The believing, the knowing that it comes from the heart of love and is leading us back thither is the wonderful truth to make us endure, is it not ? This morning I thought, " I wish I felt more exactly as I should feel of thrilling joy at the thought of fourteen years of exile being over since my R. went and twenty-one since my mother went, in the so much nearer reunion. Supposing I were on the eve of setting out to meet them at some place across the seas, how I should then be anticipating and counting the days, and planning to take what they liked and I needed, &c." But heavenly shops for humility and divine knowledge are, alas ! dimmer in their deeper reality than outfitting and booksellers' ones. Your affec- tionate E. R. G. To the same. Holy Thursday, 26th. I am always so fond of Thursdays the feet-washing day, the Holy Communion Day, the Ascension Day. And the coupling of those third and fourth verses of the thirteenth of St. John seems the most marvellous of all combinations, and at the same time is the very key to life ; the Ideal and Actual at one in that supreme knowledge of our origin and destination. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, October 15, 1891. What do you mean by saying you are going to Linlathen for sixty hours? You cannot mean Saint Erskine's Linlathen, my Linlathen, the home of my soul. You must at once write and tell me. Why, the very sound, the look of the word polarises 220 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY each atom of my being. Before Broadlands it was my most sacred spot. Broadlands opened just as the door of Linlathen was closing. I rejoice to think of your reading your and my Wordsworth to Lady G., and then entering into the magnificent rush and ful- ness of life of " The Ring and the Book." Yes, what passages there are there ! I could not read Wordsworth very soon after Browning : one's heart-beats must subside first ; fiery-red blood must subside into a sort of stiller nature condition, ere one can listen and " lean one's ear in many a secret place " with him, October 17. I must follow you into those beloved doors, and loiter along that corridor. And look with you at the pictures so dear to blessed Mr. Erskine the "Schoolmaster" especially, and Boni- fazio, and the long narrow Virgin with the ruins of a past Dispensation ; and you will see his study where I often read to him. Your present host and hostess I love also. How they devoted young days to him ! Well, may some of his spirit come upon you ! Oh, Death in Life ! the days that are no more. Yours ever, E. R. G. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. UPPER EGLINTON ROAD, WOOLWICH, June 10, 1891. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, You arer often present to my thoughts, but this week twice, both yesterday and the day before, you were specially brought before me by two notes the one from Edward Clifford, and the other from your dear Alfred the first of which says, " Mrs. Gurney very suffering, I fear ; " the other, " My aunt is deep in Jacob Boehme," or words to this effect. So I am drawn to send you this line, to show that whether you are "suffering" or "deep in Jacob Boehme," my thoughts and prayers are with you. I can hardly think that the solution of LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 221 the apparent difference between E. C.'s and Alfred's notes is to be found in supposing your suffering results from being deep in Jacob Boehme. I can quite understand any reader of the in- spired shoemaker often confessing that he is out of his depth, and yet not suffering, but rather rejoicing that the stream of grace which we have known, " to the ankles " and " to the knees," has become to us, as to Ezekiel, " waters to swim in, a river that cannot be passed over," of which we can only say, " Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ; for of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things." More than once in bygone days this has been the feeling with which I have closed old Jacob Boehme's pages. But I am wandering from my point, which was, and is, to ask you, if you are equal to it, to send me a line with some tidings of yourself and of what you are learning. I am in a school of wait- ing, a blessed school for poor impatient flesh and blood. Yours ever affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. BOVEY COTTAGE, BETCHWORTH, July 10, 1893. MY DEAR MR. JUKES, Your blessed little book has been pouring out of its infinitude for us during the last three days ! So modest in size, it yet presents us with concentrated nutriment for all life. Its simplicity as well as its profundity seems to me so perfect. I look forward to reading each instruction to my little household every Saturday evening, besides, I hope, medi- tating over it myself alone. I hear your dear voice in the Preface and very much through the Epiphany Sundays. I did not know that our natural light (as we call it) was brighter in April and May, when Whitsuntide comes, than any other time of the year. Every parable of Nature to which you point us is so precious ! But the link that binds the succession of Sunday teaching, as well as Epistle and Gospel and sometimes Collect together, as seen by you, we should never (or / should never, with my too careless glance) have seen without you. The 222 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY pleasant size and easy print of the book make it a delightfully convenient channel for your outflow of truth. I cannot help a little greedy longing that each portion had been longer; but you give us enough to stimulate us to seek for ourselves. How much blessing God has showered upon us through your open window ! With deep thankfulness, your truly affectionate and venerating EMELIA R. GURNEY. To OLIVE BIRRELL. 3 ORME SQU ARE, January 16, 1896. Oh no, I have not the least desire to convert you to a belief in Spiritualism. Accurately speaking, I should never say I believed in Spiritualism. I should say I believed in spirits in- numerable, those made perfect and those very imperfect, pressing around us, and learning through the Church the mystery hid from former ages before the Incarnation. We build our Faith on utterly different foundations from any outward evidence, even on the intuitions from the God in whom we live and move and have our being, who claims us as His offspring. We are con- firmed in this Faith by our own experience of His drawing, and by the evidence we derive from the outward fruits of this Faith in others ; these predispose us to receive the knowledge of Christ which yet passes knowledge, through the testimony of Prophets and Apostles, through written words and actions. Amongst such records there are so many stories and hints that contradict the judgment of the present Sadducean age, that I think well-proved present-day evidence of facts that point to the non-isolation of such old Christian stories as well as others are or might be useful to many. If such dominion of mind or spirit over matter can be proved now, it may remove some of the barriers felt to make the Gospels unbelievable. Then you did indeed send me a grand and touching poem on the " Ladies of Sorrow." I admired it immensely, but I am against your picturing yourself as in the powers of these ladies. And I want to think of them as under the tutelage of the three, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 223 che miran piu profondo, as Dante says, who really lead the company to which we belong. Your very loving E. G. To a Friend passing through great suffering of body and mind. Between 1878 and 1886. I have this moment received your touching note, and my heart leaps towards yours with sympathy. Ah ! I know not whether the peace I now enjoy would stand the shock of long- continued wearing pain and terrible apprehension. In the fur- nace there is not always the consciousness of the presence of the Son of God, or the flames would seem but cool fanning breezes. It seems as though suffering must be a terrible reality, the crushing pressure of an immense weight the Cross, indeed, with its accompanying darkness, and if Patience has her perfect work, it seems all that we can look for. Still joy in the very flames may be granted, and you are eagerly looking for this to carry you above the overwhelming waves. You feel, you say, you want more faith, more submission, more of the spirit of prayer, and you say, " How can I get this ? " Are you not sure that if I had the power to give you this I would set off by the first train to give it you? Are you not much more sure that our nearest, dearest, closest One does give, is giving you drop by drop, as a mother her child, all things freely. Can you just lie back in His arms, and receive ? You have asked ; He has given ; and now believing ts receiving. A command is sometimes better than a promise. " Fear not." You seem to be kept very close to only one thing, the Cross of Christ. I do so respond to what you say, " The difficulty is to persevere day after day, when you get weak and depressed." . I can hardly contemplate the extent of that difficulty in your case. I know what it is in my own little different way. It has been a help to me to realise a truth so brought home to me at Broad- lands last year, in an address I should have called, " Weakness a condition of strength." 224 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY And when I found myself weak, from company, or little worries, or headache, or having to do something I was utterly unprepared for, I have tried to act upon it, and just, as it were, cast myself on this very account upon The fulness^ knowing, assuring myself, with reiterations, that this is God's own chosen condition for the reception of His own strength. " Out of weak- ness were made strong." " My grace is sufficient for thee." What, may I not have a little strength of my own, to help myself to persevere ? May I not have this thorn and its effects on my body and spirit removed in order to get strength from Thee ? No, " Lay down, thou weary one, lay down thy head upon My breast." In just giving up and letting His sweetness and com- forting surround you, His strength also to bear and to do will follow. Yesterday I reader you the words of next Sunday's Epistle, " God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tried above that ye are able, but will with the temptation or trial make a way to escape." Now I believe in the furnace you are much nearer to Him than I am, and that He is teaching you deeper, higher lessons than I can learn out of it. But I know that sometimes in the furnace the tried one is kept blind and unconscious of all this, and a by- stander may be permitted to minister what the tried one cannot perceive. So I venture to write as I do. How unexpectedly God meets us with blessings ! Now you can just lean back, in all the loveliness of God's creation, and breathe in freely His love. For surely, if He gives you the Cross often and for long together, and keeps you from doubting His love in this gift, He would have you take with delight those things He gives you richly to enjoy. We also are very happy here, in our peaceful circumstances. The time at Broadlands was truly delightful, though I do not feel I can tell much about it, especially by pen. The union of various minds in Christ Himself, rather than in certain doctrines about Christ, seemed to me very remarkable, and the growing LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 225 sense, during the four or five days, of His presence amongst these united and longing hearts. The last evening there were three most wonderful discourses, in succession, on the Lord's Supper : the first very broad, a kind of natural theology, but very devout, affectionate, and touching; the second most interesting, from a converted Jew, who dwelt much on the symbolism of the Paschal Ritual; and the third, from one of the highest Sacra- mentarians in the English Church, deeply touching and spiritual. The daylight departed as we sat listening to these wonderful words of faith and love, and the next morning early we almost all went to the Holy Feast in Romsey Abbey. There were evangelistic services at the same time, and several appeared awakened to newness of life. God grant the work begun in many souls and carried on in many others may be yet further deepened, and enlarged, and multiplied. There are nights and days, summers and winters, in the spiritual life, and the changes of seasons may be of the " all things " that " work together for good to those who love God." It is blessed to think that our Father is the Husbandman, who prunes and purges the branches in the true Vine, and takes away that which is not of Christ in His members. How wonderful it is to get a little glimpse of the unity of the spiritual body of Christ, and even the "imperfect members," and those that are not, as well as those curiously forming in the lower parts of the earth, are all in God's book. That verse in Psalm 139 came to me with such a new interest after reading in St. Paul of the body of Christ, and we members in particular. That seemed like the utterance of Christ in humanity. Yesterday morning, when you were much in my thoughts, my chapter for the day said much for you St. Luke xvii. 5 and 6, and the igth verse: "Thy faith hath made thee whole." The Lord's will and power seem always flowing ; man's faith seems to open the door to their entrance within. Then again, I was struck with the Lord's words to Moses, " Wherefore criest thou unto Me ? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward." P 226 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY There are moments for prayers, and moments for going forward, in the strength appropriated by faith. You seem oppressed with more than you can well bear, and to be casting apprehensive looks forward ; so I gather that your terrible cross is still pressing heavily on you. If you have not come to an end of its pain, you have not, I am sure, come to an end of the peace that comes through it ! I hardly dare call my grief a cross, the finished life of my beloved one, hidden in the blessed Lord ! Yet the lonely path here is the path of the cross too ; only comparatively so very free from the thorns and cares that others have. Still, sometimes I am conscious of just nothing but the absence of the longed-for voice and touch ! Well, one may find out many things by feeling what love is. It is perfected and completed by the absence of the beloved, I think. And I know now how I would give my life to help him or please him, and would save him from the slightest pang, and never be content till he was on the way to all he could possibly receive of happiness and sweetness. And much, much more must the love of the Altogether Lovely One be to us, " who died for desire of us " wonderful thought ! And yearns for us now to be with Him above ! It needs all eternity for us to find out the height and depth and length and breadth of that love. Let us give ourselves up to it completely, without the least misgiving. A year of my loneliness has now passed away. Often a few hours have seemed to contain an eternity of grief; yet now, as I glance back, it seems short, and I can realise that in the first em- brace of reunion it will all vanish away as nothing. When God wipes away our tears it will be as though they had never been shed, and more than this. I am sure we shall find that every pang has made way for some precious capacity for more abun- dant spiritual life and use and joy. In my great, shall I call it sorrow? in the all-absorbing thought of my beloved, interwoven as it is with so many hues of beauty, of pathos, of tenderness, of anguish in the vanishing, no LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 227 anxiety enters : all is fixed in the calm Eternal Will now ; and I look out from this upon your anxious time of endeavour and un- certainty with much sympathy. I know so well what it is. It is a precious time, as well as a painful time. Fill it with lavish love, I should say. Self cannot be too much lost in our Head. To cheer, to help the man, in his struggle with the depressing earth work and conflict, seems to me now more than ever such a high calling. What a thorny path you have had ! I can almost feel as if I had comparatively gained the bliss of heaven. My heart's trea- sure there ; and not so many years, even if my life is prolonged to the threescore and ten, ere I may be with him. I feel impelled to write to you to-night, for on looking back on our conversation, I feared I had given a false and exaggerated colour to what I wanted to express. How difficult it is to put these things into words ! I do not wish to affirm more than this, which I think I have learnt : that it is in the most absolute de- spair of self and the creature that trust in our present Lord seems born. That absolute trust in His carrying on His own work in us, by us, and for us, instead of crippling energy and reason, seems to set them free, to be energised by His Spirit. And that filling our gaze with just what He is, and what He whispers, sets at rest the striving and uncertain effort that arises when we doubt as to who is sitting at the helm. I fear that I may have led you to think I am faithful to the directions He gives ; whereas I be- lieve I am often disobedient from heedlessness and indolence. But I cannot doubt that He will overcome my evil with His goodness, and that my hope cannot be put to shame, in looking to the loving-kindness that blots out rather than to the blots I make. In fact, each one in self is nothing but a blot; so the only way is to turn altogether from one's blot to His light. As to details, we may be constantly mistaking and stumbling ; but He lifts up and teaches us by these very things, and His patience is proved by them to be inexhaustible. We often seem 228 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY to think we are to be shepherds to ourselves, instead of only silly sheep ! Your letter, just arrived, fills my heart with aching sadness for you, and yet with thankfulness also to the loving Spirit who is leading you forth into the land of righteousness. It is one of His wonder-working ways to hold your soul in patience under such a long-continued strain on heart and nerves, and I can only stand still and wonder. We often undervalue the work of our Lord in us ; in fact, I believe our eyes are holden from per- ceiving it, lest we should subtly mix up self with that " Not I, but Christ who dwelleth in me." But those outside can plainly see that the poor little self, I, could not continue in patience or endurance without the Comforter who helps infirmities. Patience will perfect you. Let her have her own perfect way, and you will be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Is not this a glorious hope, that our Lord shall see of the travail of His soul in you and be satisfied '? Some one was pointing out the meaning of " compassion." Our Lord's passion on earth is continued, as it were, by His co- passion with His members on earth now. He passions with you. And it is said, " If we suffer with Him or if we co-passion with Him, that we may be co-glorified with Him " (Rom. viii.). I am sure we cannot too much realise and meditate on His abso- lute oneness with us. His being knit in, I mean, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, so that every pang is conveyed to His heart and brain. Then, abiding in us, He calls us to abide in Him, which must be brought about through His redemption of us, and needs to be worked out by our conscious reception of the fact. In the furnace the Son of Man is with you, and He cannot let a hair of your head be singed. May the God of hope fill you with hope. BROADLANDS, ROMSEY. Would that I could send you some of the breathings of trust, faith, and utter confidence in our Lord that have been evoked LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 229 during the last few days here. Would that you could have seen some of the shining faces, and have heard some of the testimonies to the faithfulness of our Lord to these witnesses in their hours of need. Some one has said, " Do not let us walk on God's promises as we do on thin ice, fearing it may give way, but let us step forth as on the firm rock. The more we need, the more we lean, the more we have. Waves and billows may go over our heads, but it is impossible that a hair of our heads shall perish." In Jesus there is wisdom for us as well as righteousness " treasures of wisdom and knowledge," hidden, but to be brought out to us especially in our times of weakness and need. I find these men of faith just drawing out these riches moment by moment. They say they have no reservoirs. So, dear friend, as you journey along the way prepared for you, thank God every step is prepared, and our Lord will go with you step by step. You will just see His wisdom and throw all responsibility on Him, and use His strength, and lean on His arm, and sleep and rest when He gives it, without carefulness. And we are not to strain to see with our own eyes and to hold fast, to rise up early and late take rest ; but just believe that He is caring and watching with us. " When we are worrying we are not trusting, and when we are trusting we are not worrying." An American lady here tells me of losing her way in a Virginian forest where the path was overgrown with vegetation. She said she found if she was straining her eyes to see it, she lost it ; but if she walked on instinctively, she kept it. Nothing blinds us like over-anxiety. I preach this to you. What would be my condition in your circumstances, I know not. But I think our Lord will keep your necessarily anxious heart in a measure of stillness in Him. Alas ! I had hoped the clouds would have cleared at least more than they have done. This persistence of the cross to which you seemed so nailed is indeed very mysterious. A variety of bitter cups you have to taste, my poor friend, and I think with 2 3 o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY these pangs an hour of darkness seems often the accompaniment. Where is the line M With His own hand He seemed intent to aggravate my woe." Well, it is not a strange and unprecedented thing, though I fancy the pang that specially aches always appears so to the sufferer. But we know suffering is God's own school, and almost all His children have had to pass through that school. I think the weakness of body and worn-away nerves accompanying other trials must be worse than anything, for that condition really pre- vents the soul from consciously grasping the love and strength of God. But just patiently lying still in God's hands must, I am sure, be very precious in His sight, and work out something very glorious for the poor sufferer. Dear friend, I have been so little tried in comparison to you ; yet at moments I feel as if my heart must break with indescrib- able anguish. So do not speak of my faith any more, for where is it when I do not rejoice with my beloved one's joy and give thanks for His deliverance and victory ? Let us lift up our heads, our redemption draweth nigh. Mrs. Russell Gurney's warm friendship with Dr. George MacDonald and his family began in London soon after the publication of his poem, "Within and Without," and continued to the end of her life. The following are some of his later letters to her : From Dr. GEORGE MACDONALD to E. R. G. THE RETREAT, HAMMERSMITH, October 1877. VERY DEAR FRIEND, Mr. and Mrs. C.-Temple are coming up to-morrow, and are going to take me to Stanhope Street on Thursday. If you will come and see me there I shall by that time be able to talk a little better to you. I had when you left LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 231 me the disappointed feeling that I had answered one or two things you said very unsatisfactorily. I knew I had gold (for I had thought much about them), but I could only lay my hands on coppers. I am better, but don't feel better yet. What poor trustees we are ! Sometimes, when we have a whole subter- ranean lake of blessed hope, we are yet fearful about some mere trifle. But at least I am learning to obey, by refusing to be care-full. I think, perhaps, the last few years of my life, when I am quite old, I shall be allowed to speak to people about these things. What God will. Affectionately yours, GEORGE MACDONALD. VILLA CATTANEO, NERVI, GENOA, November 12, 1877. VERY DEAR FRIEND, What would you think to see the weather, and hardly anything but weather, on which I am looking out? Ever since I entered Italy last Wednesday nothing but rain, grey sponge squeezed by the hand of the wind. But I have a jolly wood fire, the smell of which would be enough to make one feel at home either in the cave of a hermit or a palace of gold and ivory. There must be a home-heart to the universe, seeing so many things tend to soothe and comfort us, and say, " All is well." I have not got to work yet. It takes much longer to get over fatigue than it did twenty years ago. When will our youth return? That is hid with Christ in God, and is safe. When He shall appear, that will come with Him. Eternal youth is the redemption of the body. What would be the most dreadful thing, do you think ? To me it seemed the other day that it would be for God to let any fault or wrong in me pass ; for Him not to mind, not to care about it. Better hell a thousand times than that. Let Him forgive, splendidly, tenderly, but let it be forgiveness, and not never minding. Let Him make every excuse, every honest excuse for us, for that is but fair; but let not our Father be 232 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY content that one spot should be passed by, or one shade less than His righteousness satisfy Him in us ! M. is no better for this weather, but she is only on the wheel of the great potter. Oh, what will not come out of it all? What a good a good so great that I need faith to give me the courage to face it. It is not death alone that is awful without faith ; but life is to me so vast and unknown, that one might well fear that more than death, but for faith in Him who loves us and is our life. 1877 (?). Will you give our love to your husband. I hope he is pretty well. Blessed be the God that makes us love each other. Is not that part of the meaning of the God of Love ? It is the one thing He cares about. I see more and more into the religion there is in our relation to our fellow-men. I come nearer to understanding that if a man does not love his brother, he cannot love God. Happy are we that we are utterly in the power of the Father; helpless against Him as the struggling little pulpy thing is in the arms of his strong mother. Sometimes one is tempted to say, Would it were all over, and we altogether in the great thought room beyond ! How one is tethered by the heavy chain of gravitation ! But I do not say it. Let me be just as He wills, for His will is my will. Until we are ripe it is not good we should drop ; then we shall hang no longer. I am so glad you enjoy the sound the wind makes in the leaves among which I hang. On the other side I send you a sound of a going, that this letter may be a little pleasure as well as trouble to you. Dear sister Emelia, yours lovingly, GEORGE MACDONALD AND WIFE. " O wind of God, that blowest in the mind, Blow, blow, and wake the gentle spring in me ; Blow, swifter blow, a strong, warm, summer wind, Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see ; Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree, And our high-soaring song-larks meet Thy Dove, Bringing Thy harvest home, hearts laden with Thy love. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 233 Blow not the less though winter cometh then ; Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen ; Let the spring creep into the ground again, The flowers close all their eyes, not be seen ; All lives in Thee that ever once hath been : Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms ; Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my canker-worms." PORTO FIND, September i, 1878. DEAREST SISTER EMELIA, I would have written to you long ago, but I have been pressed with work that has a set time to it, and so have put off too long. I am now seeing a book through the press which I think you will find sympathy with. It is another like " Thomas Wingfold," and will be out in the beginning of November, I think. I do not know that I shall write any more of the sort. The whole thing is beyond writing about ; it is only fit for living. Sometimes the change that must come in me seems so immense, it is nothing less than a birth from above. But if there be One who could call us into thought, He is able for this too. We have but a poor glim- mering notion of what life means. If we were one with the life eternal, the delight of mere consciousness of being would, I think, be something unspeakable. The greatest bliss is just the one thing we cannot do without. As often as we get a little glimmer of truth, we are ready to feel as if now we could get on and be at peace a while ; whereas it is every moment a breathing of God's breath, a walking with God, a thinking of God's thoughts, a consciousness of His presence as our deepest being : this is what we need, to live other than a broken, half-slavish life. Every breath we draw, that, for all we feel to the contrary, might have come from a dead law of existence, and is not the wind, the air, the breath of God to us, is but a kind of death to our deepest self. Only He is behind the death even, and is bringing life out of all death. How is your conscious world moving now, dear, lonely sister ? You are now like the creature spinning its chrysalis. That is the use of the world to you. Have patience, and let your wings 234 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY grow. There is no food for feathers like patience. I have been learning a little about patience lately. Ah, what lovely quiet we have here ! But it only gives the more room for severer battle. It is in desert places that the real battles of the world have been first gained. And who can tell ? nay, I think I can almost tell, that now in your loneliness, now that the noise of the surf of the tide of the world has receded, and will recede yet further from your dwelling, you will find more unexpected doors opening around you, and will learn more clearly than ever that you are all the time in the heart of the Father, where your beautiful husband is also. It cannot be very long. We will go on cheer- fully. Our life might be a call to those beyond: "We are coming, friends ! " Christ be with us and teach us. I am gen e rally, I think, perhaps always, sooner or later sent back to Him when I get into a hedge. That He knew God and was satisfied is a lovely comfort If He lived really, all is well, and we will trust even when we cannot get things all right in our thoughts. To what a bliss we are called to be the heirs of God ! I shall one day live in the universe as God lives in it, with a pure, potent, perfect existence, at home with every form of life, because one with the Heart of all life. You see I have been talking rather than writing to you. You will take what truth there is in it. How I should like to talk to you many times a day. I should get very sick of myself if I hadn't got God to refer the thing to. I think the moment we feel not near Him we should make haste to lay hold upon Him. It is not my books nor your convalescents that is the first business of the day, but that God should have His own in us, and we, what we cannot live without, or do anything without, our own in God. Yours, ever lovingly, GEORGE MACDONALD. BORDIGHERA, December u, 1887. DEAREST SISTER EMELIA, I thank your loving heart and generous hand. . . . Only now the days are growing very short, and the night is at hand. But, is it the night ? At worst it will be a sweet twilight, full of hope. Or, even if I find that still I LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 235 need the purification of loneliness and pain to free me from the phantom of life by me imagined, instead of accepting God's intention of my life, it will yet be full of the hope of sunrise, and I will hope now in the living One, by and in Whom I live. My true love and gratitude are bending and holding out arms to you. Your loving brother, GEORGE MACDONALD. To Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, July 10, 1883. DEAR SIR, I venture to send you a little book, 1 some parts of which I cannot help thinking will find an echo in your sympathy. The letters were written by Mr. Corbet of Stoke, and I obtained his permission to have them printed. Often the words of John Inglesant come encouragingly to my mind in the midst of the gathering darkness. "The sun is set, but it will rise again ; let us go home." Some streaks of dawn and of the home within have seemed to me evidenced by these letters. Believe me one amongst the many grateful whom you have instructed and delighted. EMELIA GURNEY. From Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON, September*), 1883. DEAR MRS. GURNEY, I hope that you will not have cause to regret the kind and appreciative interest you manifested in the more delicate phases of character in " John Inglesant " at break- fast at Denton, when you find that it has involved you in a further discussion. But in thinking over the many pleasant and improving talks of the last few days, I have much regretted that I did not think of asking if you had seen my tale of the French Marquis in Macmillan of July last year. I naturally hesi- tate in asking such a question, and should not do so except to those who will not, I think, misinterpret the motive. But you 1 " Letters of a Mystic of the Present Day." 236 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY showed such a kind interest in character as character, that I trust you will believe that, as far as I can judge of my own feel- ings, my interest in my own characters is independent (as much as such a thing is possible) of the vanity of the author. The character of the Marquis is founded upon the idea that the spirit of noblesse oblige and the chivalry of rank that developed itself in absurd and fantastic and trifling ways in the later French noblesse might be, and in some rare instances was, developed into a far nobler and higher result. The tale has been very favourably spoken of in France, where it has been translated. I should very much like to have your opinion on the French Marquis (your real and sincere opinion, of course). My wife joins me in very kind remembrances and in the hope that you may be able to spend an evening here before long. I am, dear Mrs. Gurney, yours sincerely, J. H. SHORTHOUSE. P.S, I think on reflection that the objection you made that Lord Biron should have perceived the truth more readily, which, at the moment, I confess I thought a sound one, will not stand examination. We must remember that Lord Glamorgan was arrested by the King's Council in Dublin, on a charge which seemed to imply an atrocious crime to all Englishmen. That the king repudiated Lord Glamorgan instantly, only doing what every one felt must be the truth, and that even now it is very difficult to get gentlemen to believe in the duplicity of the king. I must, however, in honesty tell you that since the publication of "John Inglesant," Professor Gardiner, the historian, has dis- covered a letter from Lord Biron, written just before the sur- render of Chester, which shows that he was not averse to the Irish being brought over. / say this shows the effect of John Inglesant's diplomacy ! One other little matter, if you are not quite tired out. I fear I did not insist strongly enough that the whole of the second volume is intended to prove that Inglesant was right in rejecting Cressy's offer. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 237 To Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, September n, 1883. DEAR MR. SHORTHOUSE, It is I who am in great danger of vanity from receiving further communication from you about those deeply interesting creations of yours. It will be such a delight to read again and ask you a little about the Marquis. I quite give up about Biron. If he had been a woman it would have been quite different. She would have seen through all the marks what John Inglesant really was. Character or per- sonality, and the mutual relationships that form it, seem to me the very pith and delight of life. With the encouragement you have given me, I hope to write again soon. Very truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. WESTMINSTER ARMS, WEST MALVERN, September 17, 1883. DEAR MR. SHORTHOUSE, What pleasure we have had to-day on the hill-side in reading the wonderfully beautiful picture and sublimated essence of noblesse oblige. The Christ-sacrifice after such another manner ! What a revelation to Madeline of all but superhuman nobility, when it was too late. In the life beyond how she would seek him out and long to serve him ! How strange it is that such rarely beautiful results can grow out of a system that for the many involved in it produces only hard- hearted selfishness on one side and abject servility on the other. I do not think it impossible, because our life is in God, in spite of all unfavourable conditions ; and it is well for us when our poets and painters can detect these rare and hidden shoots of the Tree of Life, and reveal them to us. How happy it must make you to behold such creations ! It was stupid of me not to see that John Inglesant, the man of culture, could not have regretted turning a deaf ear to De 238 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Cressy. But I have a great weakness for fanaticism, and Mal- volti's latter life, which had more passion in its concentration than De Cressy's, is more attractive to me than even that of the cultured Christian gentleman's. You have given to each such an attractive power, that I did not feel sure whether you did not, in John Inglesant's inmost being, hanker after the narrower expression of faith. I hope to be at Edgbaston the end of this month or beginning of next, and to send a line when the day is fixed, to beg for my promised pleasure. With very kind regards to Mrs. Shorthouse, most truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. From Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON, September 23, 1883. DEAR MRS. GURNEY, I am so pleased that every word you say about the Marquis seems to point in the direction I had in my mind. " The Christ-sacrifice after another manner." This is what I wished to express in the letter from which Lady Welby quotes in her second edition of "Links and Clues." It seems to me that human nature is far higher than some of us think. That it is permeated by the Christ-spirit to an ex- tent of which we little dream. That the Zeit-Geist (as Matthew Arnold would call it) is, in fact, the CAm/-Geist. That the perfect Sacrifice has wrought, and is working, everywhere, though we see it not, and that when the veil is lifted we shall see His form and trace His footsteps in places and through scenes in connection with which we have never dreamt of Him. " Verily, God was in this place and we knew it not." I should like to work the idea more fully out in the after- history of the Chevalier in the horrors of the Revolution, but it is a work, I fear, beyond my power. Hoping to see you here, I am, dear Mrs. Gurney, yours very sincerely, J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 239 To Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, October 27, 1883. MY DEAR MR. SHORTHOUSE, I am delighted with the little golden mystic. The silence of Sacramentalism, as you present it to us, is indeed a need of our questioning and controversial day. I see " hard things " also in the little book, but how should it be otherwise in a guide from Confusion into the " Rich Treasure of Inward Peace." I thank you much for remembering to send me this little book as well as for the gift itself. I will venture to ask you to give my love to Mrs. Shorthouse. The remembrance of an evening at Edgbaston is glowing very brightly amongst my pos- sessions. Believe me, very truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 3, 1883. At last I will find my lazy pen, and talk to dear Mrs. Short- house about her blessed "Little Mark." Only it seems almost too lovely to speak one's common words about. At first I read it without thinking of any interior under-song, as a delightful story complete, in its pictures of an innocent, natural child in contact with worldliness; the trailing glory of his home atmosphere quenched by his exile, so that he must needs die. But as I look again, much beyond was suggested by the story, as well as by the pregnant, precious words of the speakers. Little Mark himself is mostly silent, and cannot explain himself, or Art, or Life. That is beautiful. Once I thought the whole was a scene in Man-soul, as Bunyan would call it, and that Mark was the conscience or divinely born spirit ; the Prince the reasoning faculty ; the Princess the earth- born Psyche allied to the outward ; while the Signorina was the Art-winged one, the counterpart of dear, subtle, humorous old Archellino, the etherealised clown, questioning with Mark con- cerning Art and Life so wondrously : was he the human sensuous- 2 4 o LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY perception ? But no, the simple dignity and unity of the poem seem to fritter in such attempts to label. And besides, the death of Mark, the keynote of the whole, becomes less significant if we seek to trace in it perhaps the passing of Innocence into the higher realm of Virtue, rather than beholding in it the true enacted Word of this lifg's mysterious secret, that the innocent one must be and is a sacrifice, conscious or unconscious, for the outer world. Here is the perfume of the Lamb slain, first glimpsed in the bird's death, which awakens the deep pathos in the Signorina's song. Isoline's unfolding of the Resurrection power on the world, through the passing away of the outward form, must come home to the hearts of those whose beloved ones have vanished, with intimate pathetic force. And they will know how the actors on this life's stage then remove their masques, and at the same time doubt whether all life is not a masque. And oh ! what deep hints there are of the necessity for the clash between the ideal and the small realism and scuffle of life ; regret and irony being struck out of this complex antagonism, awakening the sleeping angel within to weep for the rest in the silence music of heaven, whose words are beyond the heart to conceive. But it is dreadful to pick gems out of such setting and such completion. Only I like to talk with you of your beautiful gift- child ; and I have heard that mothers of children, however rarely beautiful, still care to hear admiration expressed of them, even inadequately, even rudely ! I am glad to see that the " Little Schoolmaster " is to appear in a more fitting and lasting dress. So finished and perfect a work of art, with meaning in every delicate touch, should hardly be seen in such a casual frame as the pages of a magazine. When you have time, tell me if I have misconceived the story. I know I have not alluded to or fathomed half its suggestions. Please make my greetings acceptable to the Maestro, and believe me, dear Mrs. Shorthouse, yours truly and affectionately, EMELIA GURNEY. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 241 To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, April 2, 1885. MY DEAR MRS. SHORTHOUSE, It seems so long since I have heard of you and the " Cotanto Maestro," but I was often re- minded of him in Florence, at San Miniato especially. And I think you will let me send you a tiny memorial of Florence this Easter, in the form of a little old Benitier \ it used to hang by the bedside of some old Florentine. I expected to hate the second part of " Little Mark," and was so angry with people for clamouring for it. But, after all, it kept up the high harmony of the first. But the Maestro there, alas ! sinks lower and lower. The name ought not to be used any more for Mr. Shorthouse. May you have a very happy Easter-tide. Believe me, always most truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, April %, 1885. DEAR "COTANTO MAESTRO," The little blessed book full of widest meaning, complete, and yet happily still an unfinished infinite tale, came to my breakfast-table this morning. Is not that gift enough from its author to dazzle me ? But the Sonnet ! What can I say of the tender sympathy of its inspiration ? making even me forget how much too good for me it is, in the tears your thought brings of my beloved one's "loving will" being here " prolonged." For such a precious thought one needs another word than " Thank you," though that I do say, but wish it meant much, much more than it ordinarily does. Mrs. Shorthouse will guess what your ideal poem must be to me ! An aim, a hope it is " che mi disseta con le dolci stille." Very truly hers and your (May I say?) sincere friend, EMELIA GURNEY. Q 242 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY To Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. 73 GREAT PULTENEY STREET, BATH, November 10, 1885. MY DEAR MRS. SHORTHOUSE, How can I thank you and the " Cotanto Maestro " for remembering me still and for sending me another lovely book from the same strong and delicate hand ? It was a surprise to find old Charles Simeon sketched by that hand. I remember him well in my early youth, and his reading " Samson Agonistes " to my mother and uncle, and stopping to beg that the little ones might be sent out of the room, seeing, I suppose, my mother's eyes wander from the reader to her chil- dren ! Does not the episode at the end of the book seem like a vibration from the last story of Bishop Hannington, though that had not yet reached England ? Surely such beautiful and noble portraits as Mr. Shorthouse presents us with must enrich our young people with the com- pelling ideal that is so much needed now. I hear of so many tears shed over " Sir Percival " ; they will, I trust, water the soil into some blessed fruit-bearing, and so rejoice your heart and that of the Maestro. With heartiest greetings, most truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mr. and Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 21, 1885. MY DEAR FRIENDS, On this darkest, shortest day of the year, I thought I might stretch out my hands to you, and show you Burne-Jones' descending Orpheus, which I think so wonder- fully expressive, and Eurydice beyond. And it all expresses or hints at the story that is uppermost in our hearts at this time of year. And then there are some flowers to say that " spring is not far behind." I do so hope you are well and having beautiful thoughts. I have been almost ill. This time of our being turned away from the sun is so very trying for us, is it not ? But I have heard that the imaginative write all their summer-inspired LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 243 poems at this time. Believe me ever, in such pleasant, affection- ate memory of you, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, January 2, 1887. You can hardly guess what letters are at a breakfast-table where there is one cup, or by the last post where there is silence. But try and fancy what pleasure two such letters gave me on New Year's morning ! Truly and affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 26, 1887. It is quite the prettiest booklet that ever was made ! The moist reeds and reflected images and happy birds are such delight- ful interludes of dry earth ! And the reeds shaken with the wind, and those lightly murmuring streams come charged with delicate harmonies indeed, from the near relations of the blessed violin player. Thank you, dear, kind friends, so much for thinking of me, and letting me take such pretty pictures in my hand associated with your names. May every blessing that Star and Babe can bring (for those must be infinite) be yours. Your affectionate friend, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mrs. SHORTHOU^E. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 30, 1887. MY DEAR MRS. SHORTHOUSE, I send you and the Maestro unspeakable messages by some flowers. Your hearts will read them, and remain unwearied by any poor words of mine about hopes for the coming year. Ought it not to be a wonderful year with three 8's in it ? Eight is the resurrection number, beginning again on a new plane, say 244 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the Mystics. Certainly everything within and without seems to need a new departure ! I wish I had been to Italy this year, to bring back some little memento of the land that Mr. Shorthouse has led us into with such delight. With every affectionate good wish, most truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, April 8, 1888. MY DEAR MR. SHORTHOUSE, On my return from Hereford last night I saw your well-known handwriting on the cover of a book which had not been forwarded to me. I tore it open, and you know that I found my beloved "Violin Player" and the "French Marquis" and other almost equally prized tales and parables. What a delightful companion volume it forms to " Sir Percival," and how glad I am they are rescued (some of them) from the passing character of Macmillan's Monthly. I can only thank you most heartily, and wonder at your kindness in bearing me in mind. I have two delightful New Year's letters before me, still un- acknowledged, though Easter is past. Your quickening thought of the great company of unseen as well as seen, in the Mystical Body, and of the Communion of each and all in the One Body, is welcome at Easter even as on New Year's Day. I heard some deeply interesting sermons from Canon Westcott at Hereford Cathedral in Holy Week on the Natural Fellowship of our Race and our Unity in Christ as One Man, which I feel sure you would greatly have liked. Most truly yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mr. and Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 24, 1891. DEAR AND VERY KIND FRIENDS, To think of your coming and picking me up, and dowering me with that unique and most distinguished daughter of the master's brain and heart, " Blanche, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 245 Lady Falaise." It did, indeed, quite surprise and touch me when it came through the fog into my solitude. Again you bring to us the thought of the sacrificial pain that redeems another soul, just because the love of that soul cannot help itself in any other channel. If it could, my human heart would be a little angry for the sake of that most attractive of all personalities, Lord Falaise. His patience was as divine as her faithful persistency. May a spring-tide of fullest blessing come up and submerge you both this Christmas. Your affectionate and thankful, EMELIA R. GURNEY. To Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. 3 ORME SQUARE, October n, 1892. MY DEAR MRS. SHORTHOUSE, It will be pleasant indeed to welcome you on Friday next, if your purpose holds good of coming to town on that day. Alas ! I have been unsuccessful in getting the guests I wanted to give the pleasure of meeting you. So you will have to put up with only my dear nephew and myself. He longs to meet you, and is worthy ; but (I ought not to say but} he is so modest that he is guessed rather than met ! ' What a sweeping wave has come upon England since our last communication. 1 It seems such a devastation. Yet he leaves all his best with those who, like myself, were only outsiders. Affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. From Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON, December 30, 1892. DEAR MRS. RUSSELL GURNEY, I do not know how to write to you, not because I want to strain after compliment, but because it is so difficult to put into words the delicate shades of delight, 1 The death of Alfred Tennyson. 246 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the finer affections that meet you suddenly in a common life. Can you fancy a terrible day in the Midlands, not smoky, for Birmingham is not smoky, but terribly raw and chill all day long, piercing to the very bone ; then, can you fancy a little dinner- table, simple, but fair and white, and then suddenly at dessert- time, when the mind is open to all grateful influences, a what shall I say ? visitation of fragrance and light, of creatures born in the fairyland of Alpine meadows (not that they are grown in these, but because they speak to you of something high and rare), and in the fine tracery and lines of their lovely forms telling faint tidings of other meadows long ago, which the Love which still exists on earth, and which inspired the gift which brightens us to-night, planned for men, but surely with an after-thought that the sorrow and the fall made the fair flowers lovelier, and the love that comes with them more precious and more neces- sary to us now? My wife joins in love and all best wishes for the New Year. I am, dear Mrs. Gurney, yours very sincerely, J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE. To Mrs. SHORTHOUSE. BOVEY COTTAGE, BETCHWORTH, SURREY, June 30, 1893. MY DEAR MRS. SHORTHOUSE, You wrote me a dear, kind note weeks and weeks ago, and I have let such an ungrateful silence succeed its arrival. You said to me some lovely encouragements, dear friend, about my pilgrim. But, alas ! that I should so utterly have failed in convincing you that Dante is not so much cruel as he is burning to express his sense of the meaning of moral evil. I trust you are both well, and at this moment having tea in your garden. Believe me, silent or penning platitudes, always your and Mr. Shorthouse's devoted servant and friend, EMELIA GURNEY. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 247 To the same, 3 ORME SQUARE, December 28, 1893. DEAR FRIEND, I had a truly kind note from you two months ago, and I now have, in the Maestro's hand, best Christ- mas wishes from you both. I thank you, and think of you, and am so pleased to think you honoured my roof, this year that is dying, with spending a few hours beneath it. Some flowers are going to speak without words for me on Saturday. I draw very close to you all, as the years that remain here to me must be few. I am immersed in the Life of our dear, dear friend, Arthur Stanley ; in fact, I repossess him and am possessed by him. His ardent, glowing spirit, so affectionate and clear and pure, reveals itself again, and his blessed worthy wife's. How well it was they were spared the pain and depression of pro- longed old age. Adieu. Ever affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. BOVEY COTTAGE, BETCHWORTH, July 27, 1894. I am delighted to hear from you, and you always tell me interesting and human things, and greatly, greatly do I prize your giving me the name of friend. Yes, the almond tree was in blossom when last I wrote, and now the corn is sheaving and the days perceptibly shortening. I grudge each one as it goes down the valley of the year. Varied life-chapters have opened to me, chiefly through others, since the almond blossoms were out. I hope they will not be forgotten in our next Home. I would fain write of them ; but, as the years go on, I find myself more and more inadequate to use recording words, and I think I may also say that words seem in themselves too inadequate to use for expression of the beautiful, pathetic, and joyful pictures one beholds within and without. 248 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Did I tell you how much I had enjoyed reading Kidd's " Social Evolution " ? It was like listening to the " loom of Time," as Lowell somewhere says. Say something very sweet for me to the Maestro, of spiritual thoughts and spirit-controlling language. And believe your and his devoted friend and admirer, EMELIA R. GURNEY. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 5, 1895. DEAR KIND FRIEND, How long it seems since I saw you here ! And since I saw your home and picturesque garden it is, I think, five or six years : a good bite out of our term of life. I find the deeper and deeper taste of old age so very curious and quite unexpected. One knows nothing till one tastes it oneself. At anyrate none do but strong imaginations, and even these, I suspect, leave out some special touch which, when the real thing comes to them, makes the distinction of the reality. I have a reader, and have been hearing many Lives. Bishop Heber quite worth, I think, going through. How strangely it shows the change of our age ; surely, in many ways, much im- proved one way, regarding prosy moralisings. Matthew Arnold's Letters are now in progress. It is surprising how he has managed to keep every touch of genius and poetry out of them, and every suggestive and brilliant thought; but simple, affec- tionate goodness prevails throughout, for which one is thankful. All Christmas-tide flow into you from many hearts, and from mine with them. Yours and his ever affectionately and admir- ingly, EMELIA GURNEY. To the same. 3 ORME SQUARE, March 27, 1896. No, I never did see anything so freshly lovely as those dar- ling springlings from your fairy haunts. I am sure they aspired more than ever to vibrate in the spiritual atmosphere of " Little Schoolmaster Mark," " Countess Eve," and other music that LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 249 stirred their roots ! And it is so lovely to have them, through your very kind thought, by my bedside in a bronchial attack I have been afflicted with the last ten days. I am better to-day, and I think they will help me turn a corner. Do you know any legend about the ass on which our Lord entered Jerusalem being blindfolded, and why, as represented in a mediaeval picture I hear of? Dean Church's " Pascal and other Sermons " is, I think, very exquisite. I read every word of Cardinal Manning by Purcell. Whether he is a personal betrayer, and unfair, I won't decide ; but the wire-pulling of Rome is a wondrously candid revelation indeed, and renders the visible Church almost invisible to me at least. Adieu, dear friends, and thanks, and thanks, and thanks. E. R. G. From her Nephew -, ALFRED GURNEY, to E. R. G. ST. BARNABAS PARSONAGE, PIMLICO, S.W., New Year's Eve, 1883. I have a sermon to prepare for the midnight service, always a rather heavy burden ; so letters have to be put away. But, for lack of anything better, I send you a timid little song, " pip- ing low " as usual ; yet a love-song, and a hope-song, and a joy- song my heart would sing if it could, recalling the blessings dispensed by your hands during years that are past, not dead, I think, and countless treasures of great love. And more abun- dant harvests wait to be gathered in with coming years. So we will sing a Te Deum together, and have great hopes for 1884. A. G. FOR 1884. No ache can be without relief When Love Himself draws near; No cup can empty stand, no grief Spoil God's incoming year. 250 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Time's footsteps quickly die away, Soon emptied is his glass ; We look for an oncoming day That nevermore shall pass. So all the years and all the days Our waiting hearts shall be The harps that tremble with His praise Whose is Eternity. A. G. From her Nephew^ ALFRED GURNEY, to E. R. G. ST. BARNABAS PARSONAGE, PIMLICO, S.W., New Year's Eve, 1888. How different would my past years have been without your love ! and I feel it is a foundation-stone upon which to build for all the years to come, because resting on the Foundation. May our Lord and Lover, so wonderful in His dealings with the children of men, as Christmas declares Him to be, more and more abundantly reveal Himself, His love, in you. Your loving ALFRED. From her Nephew, ALFRED GURNEY, to E. R. G. SIENA, April 27, 1894. BELOVED AUNT EMELIA, It would indeed be refreshing and soothing to have a day or two with you at Cheltenham ; but I shall be very busy when I get back. I might, I dare say, manage a night ; I will make a push for that. The day before yesterday I was at Orvieto how beautiful ! And my thoughts were of you ; for years ago you gave me the loveliest little picture, which hangs in my room just a group out of that wonderful painting of the saved receiving their crowns, by Signorelli. I do not suppose I should have discerned its exquisite loveliness but for that long preparation ; the huge pleasure it gave me was due, in large measure, I felt, to you. It is so in my life how often ! Again, and again, and again. Your loving ALFRED. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 251 From her Nephew, EDMUND GURNEY, to E. R. G. December 6, 1 886. MY BELOVED AUNT EMELIA, Your Christmas gift quite took my breath away; it will make everything easy, and will enable Kate to realise at once sundry schemes which she has deeply pondered, but which had no prospect but to be deferred. It is an abounding token of the love and sympathy whose abound- ingness is, and has been, one of the central facts of my universe. I hope that what I feel about that fact makes me in some mea- sure deserving of it ; and I hope that the being whom you men- tion l may come in time also to realise it, and may be far more deserving. Your very loving E. G. From the same, 26 MONTPELIER SQUARE, S.W., February 21. MY DEAREST AUNT EMELIA, Your dear letter was scarcely a surprise, for I had felt all that it expressed yes, I believe, really all when we were together ; but it was none the less sweet to get it in palpable form. I like to owe something musical still to you, for it was you, you know, who practically introduced me to Beethoven. I sup- pose I should have come across him some way or other ; but it was through you that I came across him at a particularly impres- sionable age, and my love for him is linked always with that memory. Bless you for that, and for even better things. Your loving E. From the same (on her reception of his book, " Phantasms of the Living"}. ST. BARNABAS PARSONAGE, PIMLICO, S.W., November 5, 1886. DEAREST AUNT EMELIA, Your letter was a most welcome welcome on my arrival here last night after a fortnight of " psychical " business in France. 1 His daughter, aged five. 252 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY It would be difficult to go on quite without sympathy ; and when sympathy concentrates itself in such a pure and beautiful flame as yours, it makes the vulgar glare of. ordinary worldly success seem a very poor thing by comparison. I am honestly glad to have done this piece of work (not that it is done, only begun) ; but I am afraid, when you see it, you may be much disappointed. The book is written with pains and candour, but it contains no direct spiritual illumination. I am not a source for anything of that sort, and its tone is purely scientific. Of course, I think the /^direct bearing on spiritual matters, the knocking of a brick out of the prison wall, is exceed- ingly important ; but as to this, the reader will have to form his own view. I do not profess to help him. Some people, happily, know nothing of prison walls. Some will be glad of the hole made in the wall ; but, looking through it, will see very different things. / see little but rolling fog ; but, after all, rolling fog may imply light, air, and infinite space. As for the sort of personal credit you so lovingly give me, I simply do not deserve it (though Kate fully deserves her share). I do this sort of work as a beaver makes dams, from instinct rather than motive. The beaver makes dams by necessity it cannot make palaces ; and if I could have made palaces and written either poetry or music, I should not have taken to dams. But if you and Lady Mount-Temple, and others like you, can use the dam as a prop for your palace or a stay in the golden bridge flung from this to the other shore, and if so the chorus of hope is swelled, I am consoled for my selfish aches in the sense of personal dumbness. I was amazed at the Times article. The book had only reached the Times office twelve hours before the paper was pub- lished, so one could not look for very instructive criticism ; and, in fact, the criticism was very stupid. But that the subject should be treated with respect in such an organ is in some degree, as you say, a sign of the idea beginning to tell. I have not seen the article in the Spectator which you mention. Your very loving E.G. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 253 From E. R. G. to a Friend in great trouble during a Sister's dangerous illness. 3 ORME SQUARE, February 1886. . . . How much I feel for you in this terrible furnace in which your sisterly and filial love is tried, I cannot tell you. We shall be bound together in looking to the one unfailing Hope in this time of utter need, and our utter incompetence in helping her will shut us into our fortress and her fortress. As I opened the morning Psalms, the first for the day came like a stream of life: "Truly my soul waiteth still, or is silent, upon God; from Him cometh my salvation " (what a large word !). " He only is my Rock and my Salvation ; I shall not be greatly moved ! " . . . It is wonderfully mysterious that our God, who is Love, permits such seven times heated furnaces for His poor, frail creatures; but He must know that His gold will bear it and come out with a loss of only its hindering dross. . . . Though we cannot understand the Atonement, what a look of recognition we get at such times from the Cross ! To the same, under great trial. 3 ORME SQUARE, January 6, 1887. I think when any one is beckoned, as you are, into the very inner torture-chamber, all words about God and His love and dealings seem beside the mark. When with you I feel and understand how hollow every word must strike upon your heart. You must think, " Oh, if your soul were in my soul's stead, you would know what nonsense you are talking, what songs you are singing to a broken heart. Still, we cannot but say again and again, God is, and He knows all this. There must be a solution, a slowly growing answer to our cry ; and when the hour of desolate darkness in some measure passes, you will be able to say again, " Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." . . . ... I think you will be kept just able to hold on ; bare faith is called upon, and you will be very faint, yet kept pursuing. Comforts from God, or people, or things, few and far between ; yet just the ray of light in the darkness, not disappearing. 254 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Oh, it is a long time to wait till "afterwards," a long "exercis- ing thereby." Yet one can fancy opening one's eyes in another sphere, and seeing it was but a moment. I read somewhere that the words about the Temptation, Satan showing the king- doms, &c., in a moment of time, would be literally a stigma of time; and one may believe that time has just to brand us to stigmatise us into personality for some real life of service, which life will be glory. " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things," &c. Yes, such parables as you describe are most depressing, for they seem to speak with a certain authority of fact. There seems to be duality everywhere, light and darkness ; and I think " God with us " is light in darkness, and the light can only be perceived by the single eye of faith. Have you remarked the proximity of those two verses, the paradox of them, in St. Luke xxi. 16-18? " Some of you shall they cause to be put to death. . . . But there shall not a hair of your head perish ! " I suppose Christ clearly saw the abiding quite untouched by the accident of death and suffering. It may be the same with the poor, tender, bruised little sea-creatures, as He saw that the Father was with ever-falling sparrows. Suffering and death may be the door for all creation to pass a step upwards. To the same. April 1887. MY VERY DEAR SUFFERER, I can only look at you on the Cross in that supreme hour of darkness. It seems impossible for me to do anything but kneel beside you. It is inexpressibly touching to receive from your hands those exquisite tokens of the renewed earth in which you cannot rejoice, whose resurrection message you may not read till travail pangs have had their hour, their season I know not what that is ; long and short is not in the Father's, calendar in whom these times and seasons are ; they are not known to Christ even. Patience, and drop by drop, is all you can have in your agony. I can never say, " Look forward in LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 255 hope," but I think He says, " Look deeper for hope, even into My heart." There's not often a shining Christ manifestation ; it is oftener, "Can ye drink of the cup I drink of? Ye shall in- deed." At least, that is to some of the Christ's followers. Will you come on Thursday and let us share and receive what we can from His hands ? Poor miserable comforters are we all ! To the same. DEAR TEMPEST-TOSSED FRIEND, Many thoughts came to me to-day for you ; at least, not exactly thoughts, not any more rea- sonings with the thoughts and questions that tear you in twain. Even if such could be answered satisfactorily, others would arise in their stead ; for the root of all is in that dark mystery concern- ing the entrance of that which is against God's will into the uni- verse He governs ; it is beyond us, and so we can but fall back in childlike trust upon His heart and weep there while we know that His deepest will to overcome evil with good must prevail. The details of our lives, as they affect us, must be of the all things which are to work together for good, and each soul is His, and will be dealt with wisely and in judgment and mercy. Let us stay ourselves on Him in quiet waiting upon Him. It is His peace which is to keep us in the knowledge and love of God, and only in that peace can we learn of Him and help our fellow- sufferers and sinners, I think. I find these words for you : " I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sor- rowful soul ; upon this I awaked and beheld, and my sleep was sweet unto me !" -Jer. xxxi. 26. Well, I don't feel I can answer your dear note ; it is unanswer- able. All you say is sensible, clear ; what remains for you to do ? I don't know. How can you throw the complication of sin on to God ? I can only say I believe that one absolute conviction of our God in Christ Jesus, as the light of our life and the love of our hearts, and the absolute Ruler everywhere and in everything as Wisdom and Love, permitting, in order to conquer, every 256 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY darkness, compels the soul to rejoice in Him under every possible circumstance ; in fact, however much suffering circumstances may cause, they do not involve our relationship with Him at all. How to get this glimpse I know not. thinks it depends on an act of the will, a concentration of the whole being on Him instead of on circumstances. You say, if it were anything but sin it might be possible. Yet there is hardly a trial in which sin is not mixed. We lose our pre- cious ones' lives by some wicked carelessness that God might have prevented. The poor starve to death, when they feel it the sin of the rich to deny them food. Some mother's sweet little child is kicked to death by the brutal father. Hearts are broken by the forsaking of those who led them astray. I don't see how we could ever rejoice in, love, and trust God, if it was to be because we did not see and feel sin rampant. If He has not taken that into account and provided against it, He is no God for us in these conditions, and whether these worst things happen to you or me makes no difference in their reality (though a good deal in their smart), and reading them in the daily papers might well make atheists of us, without perfect confidence in Him. I feel as if you might just shut your eyes to all, and drop into His arms like an infant, making the venture of faith, saying, " I do trust Thee, my God." To the same. HEREFORD, September 23, 1887. We did meet on the Saturday at Stoke, and had a most delightful time. Mr. Corbet and Sister Hannah both mount up with those eagle wings, glorying in their God and claiming their heritage in Him for every emergency. Mrs. Smith makes most of our exertion of will power ; Mr. Corbet of the com- pelling power of the Vision of God. The two sides being thus presented, I think very valuable. I am come away with an increased sense of our wonderful liberty in God. Just the liberty we feel with some friend who thoroughly loves and understands us : we need explain nothing, and seem set free to LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 257 be our true selves. We had a beautiful sermon from Mr. Corbet on singing of God's " faithfulness in the night season." Adieu, dear, terribly tried friend. I read in the lesson for the day for you, that your vines were to come out of the wil- derness and your door of hope was to open from a valley of mourning. Hosea, ii. Yours in much, but would it were more, sympathy and love and admiration, and in the one Hope, E. R. G. To the same. I have longed to hear from you of your Florentine experi- ences, and shall greatly enjoy some time seeing your photographs, and hearing of the impressions you received from the originals. If you had not such an insane dislike to French, I should beg you to read V. Cherbuliez' " La Nature et 1'Art," in the last four or five Revue des deux mondes. It has made me very forcibly realise how much one owes to those men with opened eyes and constrained hands, as interpreters to us, who are blind and im- potent, of God's secrets. Truly God-given men in one sphere, as God-given as the Prophets and Apostles in the sphere of spiritual truths. When your note came to me I was reading over and studying^ I may say, Wordsworth's " Excursion." I used to think Words- worth's religion cold, and only nature-inspired ; now I think it full of white heat (restrained) and God-inspired. Whether it was because Wordsworth's lines were present in heart and eye when your note came, or whether there really are remarkably answering chords to your sighs, I know not ; but read over, pray, Fourth Book of the " Excursion," " Despondency corrected." I sometimes wonder whether we are right to form to ourselves a distinct ideal or conception of what a "vision of God," after which we long, would really be, or feeling ourselves " nearer to God " ; or do you think we can feel ourselves " growing in holi- ness " ? I do not think so. We have no spiritual thermometers, and I don't think our feelings in the matter are worth much. R 258 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY The following letters from General Gordon, with whom Mrs. Russell Gurney had had valued intercourse both in London and, in 1883, in Jerusalem, were written early in 1884. Those written in January refer to the project pro- posed to him by the King of the Belgians, but not destined to be carried out The two later ones, which she felt greatly privileged to receive, were from Khartoum. From GENERAL GORDON to E. R. G. January (?) 1884. Privately, I will tell you how I am situated. A week ago King Leopold asked me to fulfil my promise made in 1880, to go to Congo and succeed Stanley, so I have asked leave from Government. I do not think the Government will grant it; if they do, I shall go ; if not, I think I shall come home, and work in East End, but am not sure at present. The Temple was the shadow of the Heavenly Temple ; "see that you make it after the pattern." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 259 The shadows meet the true at the altar. The Cross is the ladder Jacob saw. I have been working hard at these things. The River in Ezekiel comes down from above the Brazen Sea, then to Mediterranean and Dead Sea the sacramental stream of Baptism ; while the altar has the sacramental stream of blood. Believe me, my dear Mrs. Russell Gurney, yours sincerely, C. E. GORDON. BELLEVUE HOTEL, BRUSSELS, January 2, 1884. MY DEAR MRS. RUSSELL GURNEY, Thank you very much for your kind letter, December 27. I got here on January i, at dawn. You were prayed for earnestly while in the train, that your union with our Lord may be increased this year (1884); that is the greatest blessing one can wish for. Thank you for your kind invitation, but I fear I cannot come and stay, for I do not mean to stay long in England. I have not yet seen the king. I go to him to-night. He did not, it seems, know that H. M. G. had refused me leave to go to Congo. I will let you know when I see him. But I expect he will press it, and then comes the question of giving up my nationality. Believe me, yours sincerely, C. E. GORDON. BRUSSELS, 4/1/84. Many thanks for kind note. It is all ruled, and I am glad to go. I did try to escape, but the way was hedged, and now I am contented and willing. I hope to be over in a day or two, and leave Lisbon, D. V., on 5/2/84. Kindest regards to you all, C. E. GORDON. BRUSSELS, 17/1/84. I got your kind note this morning. You and those like you are my joys, therefore there can be no effort to remember you. 260 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY There can be no birth without blood. Nothing good can come to us but by travail of soul and sorrow ; it is the plough to prepare for the seed : so in spiritual, so in earthly things, and our Lord will rule all events in Soudan for good. If we do not allow this, we deny His being Lord of heaven and earth, and make Him a negligent Ruler. Stanley and I will, D. V., halve the district I know no books on the Congo. Good-bye ; many thanks for all your kindness. Thank God, He has greatly blessed me, and I have hosts with me, through the prayers of my many friends. Yours ever sincerely, C. E. GORDON. KARTOUM, 18/2/84. Just going into Kartoum. We left London 18/1/84. I was very sorry not to have seen you and our Jerusalem friends before I left for these lands. My kindest regards to you all. You are never forgotten, in spite of all I have had to do, for I feel the force of your united prayers on my behalf. May our Lord be glorified, these peoples blessed, and I humbled to the dust, for then I will know more of the intense blessing of His in- dwelling in me. I like to think all we pass through are as shadows of future ; it is as it affects us individually, that events are of importance. Our work here is to despise the world, and to know Him as our joy and delight ; whether in Soudan or in Orme Square, it is the same lesson to be rid of self. Yours sincerely, C. E. GORDON. KARTOUM, 11/3/84. MY DEAR MRS. RUSSELL GURNEY, Thank you very much for your kind letter, 5th July, received to-day, also grateful to receive note of those who have interceded for me. It is my only support. My feelings are not for success or honour. I feel for the peoples who are here, exposed to such a danger ; but our Lord is Ruler of heaven and earth, and my part is to accept His will, however dark that will is to me. Thanks, then, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 261 for your kind prayer-meeting. All will be done to me in love and mercy, for nothing can happen but by His will. Remember that our Lord did not promise success or peace in this life : in it He promised tribulation ; so that if things do not go well after the flesh, He still is faithful, and what we have to do is to bind our will to His in all things. Kindest regards to you all, my dear Mrs. Russell Gurney. Believe me, with excuses for a short note, yours sincerely, C. E. GORDON. In her later and more suffering years Mrs. Russell Gurney found in the study of Dante a fount of con- tinual interest, and also of consolation in dark hours. Two of her nieces will ever be grateful to have had the gate into this treasure-field opened to them by her, and for her guiding hand among its difficult paths. The way in which she was attracted and inspired by the deeper spiritual teachings of the Divina Commedia is shown in her " Dante's Pilgrim's Progress," the pre- paring of which absorbed her much during a year of great physical suffering and weakness, the interest of the task giving support, and at times carrying her above the sense of pain. Among the following are a few of the letters she received after its publication. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. I have had two or three very pleasant notes about the " Pil- grim " this week, expressing the deep interest, and one the benefit felt in going through it. My prayer has been that just one weary soul might find the Christ-given drop of cold water there ; and I think this has been answered, and I hope there may 262 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY be one of whom I may never hear, for that is the best unconscious honour : one's petty, self-appropriating Adam-mixture being so apt to clutch and spoil. From E. R. G. to Dr. KER, of Cheltenham. 3 ORME SQUARE, W., 1893. I cannot thank you enough for having so kindly written to me. Because, by doing so, you have conferred upon me that wonderful, half-unbelievable joy of knowing that one has been permitted to pass on to another a cup of blessing very precious to oneself. Through Dante, in long hours of corroding grief, that obscured earlier visions of faith, old truths gradually again took a deeper hold on me, and spiritual life became in a measure a present reality. Yet it seemed to me very audacious to meddle with such a supreme work of art as Dante's ; and perhaps still more, to touch with my words the eternal truths he brings before us. With such a misgiving, you may judge how deeply thankful I must be to receive from one like yourself the reassuring ex- pression of your sympathy in my presentation of the spiritual pilgrimage the pilgrimage which I cannot but think Dante feels to be the evolution not only of one soul or some souls, but of the whole human race. Thank you again and again for letting me know that your meditations with Dante have supplied you with some mental and spiritual nutrition. Please let me send you Longfellow's convenient literal translation, in case you have it not. It will help you very soon, with your knowledge of French and Latin, to make the original your own. From Mr. J. H. SHORTHOUSE to E. R. G. LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON, Low Sunday, 1893. DEAR MRS. RUSSELL GURNEY, My wife has read to me, and I have read to myself many passages in your beautiful book. I confess that I have not appreciated Dante as some have, mostly, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 263 I think, because the intense medievalism of consciousness has repelled me. But in the light and guiding of your pregnant paraphrase and comment, I seem to find a solution of some enigmas which are puzzling until we read them in the light. I seem to feel that you have penetrated through Dante's medievalism till you have revealed to us the core of the whole matter ; not as to the past or to the future, but as to the insistent moment the relation of the human consciousness to God. For when we think of it, this surely is the issue of life, that " righteous- ness is righteous," in spite of the "wolf" within ourselves, "the wild beast's ravin and the hunter's cruel guile." I have in my mind as I write clear perceptions of the pos- sibility of carrying these ideas to heights, the spurs and stairways of the Mount of God. These heights are not for me, but the suggestion and the assurance come to me from your words. It is the Christian Nirvana, this truce and peace of God, for which we, wandering in this selva selvaggia ed aspra e forte, long, and to such, travel-stained and weary, your words bring nearer the great vision of the Mount of God. I am, dear Mrs. Russell Gurney, Yours ever sincerely, J. HENRY SHORTHOUSE. from Mr. FREDERIC SHIELDS to E. R. G. SIENA HOUSE, LODGE PLACE, N.W., April 27, 1893. I have read somewhat of your beautiful and discerning comment on Dante, and look to enjoy more yet, and profit thereby. I saw Christina 1 last week, and she spoke very warmly of the originality of your plan, as presenting Dante in an aspect that will invite many to commune with his spirit. And she admired the way in which you had kept your project before you, undiverted by any of the seductive episodes of the Divine Comedy. I see and hear so little, that I know not if any appreciative reviews of it have appeared, but there must be some come. The 1 Miss Christina Rossetti. 264 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY right reader will fall across it with avidity, and give forth his pleasure in some fervently outpoured critique. Yours very sincerely, FREDERIC SHIELDS. From the Rev. HERBERT JEAFFRESON to E. R. G. 115 CLIFTON HILL, N.W., April 23, 1894. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, I lent your "Dante's Pilgrim's Progress " to an old Dante student, Dr. Pope, feeling sure that he would consider it one of the most precious handbooks to the hidden treasure of the poem. He was no less delighted with it than I expected him to be ; and in returning it, offered me the pleasant task of asking you to accept his translation of an Indian hymn, in which he sees a spirit somewhat like Dante ! It is, I suppose, very difficult to us, who are ignorant of the Tamil language, and also of Indian thought and association, to enter into the real delicacy of a religious poem, which would lose half its beauty if it discarded allusion, and were restricted to direct statement. What would " Rock of Ages " mean to us, if we had not grown up with the Psalms and the Gospels ? I have (what you have not) a similar difficulty with regard to Dante, in conse- quence of my great ignorance of his language. Believe me, yours very sincerely, HERBERT H. JEAFFRESON. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. 3 ORME SQUARE, April 5, 1893. DEAREST MR. JUKES, How often I have thought of you as I have been, too audaciously perhaps, preparing the book I now venture to send you. You will therein find many of your own thoughts diluted through my brain and pen. For eight years the Divina Corn- media has been my delight, or rather, I should say, has unfolded things of deepest interest to me. I have only thought of writing for the last year and a half, and it has been done in much weak- ness and with quite an untrained pen, as you know. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 265 My great desire has been to present the idea of the whole poem as the evolution of the race through the indwelling Spirit of Christ I believe Man and God in the Incarnation is Dante's under- lying theme. I shall be very much obliged to you if you will read, straight ahead, the Preface, the Introductions to the Inferno, the Purgatorio (with its last chapter), and the Introduction to and last chapter of the Paradiso, without any of the intervening steps. And will you not write to me till you have taken this half-hour's trouble ? If you can tell me that you think I have brought out this idea in some measure I shall be very glad. If it is not clearly apparent, I should still be most thankful to know it, as it is just barely possible that after a time it may reach a second edition, and I might profit by any hint you may kindly give me. You will see on the page of Illustrations the interpretations of Mr. Shields' mystic signs on the outside of the book, as well as in the Preface the description of the chromolith. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. UPPER EGLINTON ROAD, WOOLWICH, April(> t 1893. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, What can I say of the lovely book which you have sent me, but " Lovely," " Lovely," " Lovely " ? As yet I have only read the Preface, the Introductions, and the last chapter. I turned to them, as you desired, and they have all simply delighted me. Dante has not been a stranger to me. A well-worn copy of Wright's translation is generally within my reach, and not a few of the visions of the Divina Commedia have in bygone days helped me. But till I read the passages in your book, which you call my attention to, I little entered into the reality of Dante's work ; though the thought of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, as present realities and stages of our life, has for years been not only familiar to me and part of my creed, but the very substance also of my experience. Have I not been in Hell, 266 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and said, " Thou hast laid me in the lowest deep, in the darkness, and in the depths " ? Have I not known something of Purgatory, the " fiery trial which is to try us," where waves of fire and water have gone over me ? Have I not had glimpses, and even heard echoes of the Paradise, out of which we were driven in mercy, and to which, like St. Paul and so many other saints, we may be " caught up, to hear unspeakable words, which it is not possible and even lawful to utter ; " when one could only fall down, liter- ally fall down, and cry, " Holy, Holy, Holy " ; and all this spite of the wretchedness and vileness and corruption of the "old man," who is so very slow to die in most of us ? To me for years Hell has been darkness, the darkness of distance from God, with its false dreams. Purgatory, the vision of one's self; Paradise, the vision of God, or at least the approach to the beatific vision. This is what (if I understand you) you see in the Divine Comedy, but which without you I might not have seen there. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. 3 ORME SQUARE, W., April 7, 1893. I must write one word in answer to your letter, just to let my heart overflow in the gratitude and joy you have awakened within me. I have had many kind expressions about the book. Its outside has proved very engaging, but no one has, as you have done, just taken the kernel and pith of it into sympathetic and completely comprehending touch. It is just wonderful that poor, old, small me should have been permitted to do anything that you approve in this matter. Thanks be to the wonder-working One, who may pick up an old worn-out and, at the same time, unaccustomed, untrained pen to scratch on a signpost pointing through beloved Dante to never worn-out truths. I know j/0# will lift up your blessed heart for the dew from Heaven on this endeavour of weakness ! Pray do not take the trouble to write again, for you have said as much as even my greedy heart can crave for. I must not let the "bestia senza pace" lord it over me, with the "bramosa voglia chi dopo 'I pas to ha pitifame che pria." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 267 From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. April g, 1893. I have again been reading your book, and though I do not wish to make "your hunger hungrier than before," I must say again that your book is most refreshing, and must, I think, throw fresh light not on Dante only, but on some who are making the journey he describes so wonderfully, who are still in the Inferno or Purgatorio stage of the appointed Pilgrim's Progress, without a glimmer of understanding as to why they are troubled as they are, or that a Paradise will, through God's mercy, be the end of the journey. Your book is really true theology as well as poetry. Till I read your notes on the extract you give from the beginning of the Inferno, I never understood the pilgrim's dis- covering that he had lost his way. As to the " poor, old, worn-out, untrained pen " that has been used to write it, commend me to such pens. Where are they to be picked up ? At all events, the pen is just the pen to write of these things. Forgive such a line. But your book has made me glad, and I feel I must attempt to express my thankfulness for it, and for what the Blessed Giver of all has given you in it for other weary souls. Yours ever affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. WOOLWICH, Ascension Day, 1893. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, My note did not deserve an answer, but I am glad to get your answer and the little pros- pectuses of your book, which I will try to send into really sym- pathising hands. Your book is too good for the crowd. Think of the welcome Christ met with. It is the welcome which all higher truth must receive here, while the world is what it is. Yes, to-day is Ascension Day, never to be forgotten by those who once met on this morning, years ago, now parted for a little while by the waters of death, which yet are waters of life also, 268 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and who shall surely meet again to thank God for all sorrows and for all joys. With all love, yours ever affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. From the Rev. ANDREW JUKES to E. R. G. UPPER EGLINTON ROAD, WOOLWICH, June 2, 1893. MY DEAR MRS. GURNEY, I feel that I must again write you a line to say what a real delight your book has been to me during the last few weeks. I have read and re-read it. Every page is really a poem and a sermon. It shames me to think how I could have read Dante in days past, and been so blind to the deep spiritual teaching which you bring out so clearly. Of course, no one who knows anything of mediaeval religious thought can possibly read that wonderful poem, which you have so lovingly commented on, without seeing in it not only some of the deepest Christian teaching of those days, but also answers, or at least suggestions as to what must be the answer to the riddle of the discipline and trial of this life, and of the mystery of sin and evil. But till I read your notes I did not clearly see how Dante has anticipated us, both in his seeings and in his experience. But, indeed, our seeings come from our experiences ; and the road, whether for Dante or for us, is one and the same, from self to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I would, but cannot now, write more. This line is only to tell you how glad I am to have your book, which has refreshed and delighted me. Yours ever affectionately, ANDREW JUKES. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. 3 ORME SQUARE, June 3, 1883. DEAR, DEAR MR. JUKES, I don't believe that any young aspirant to literary fame was ever more delighted with being couronne by the French Academy than I, on another plane, am LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 269 rejoiced at heart by your dear and most kind letter received this morning. That you should have again taken the trouble to write to me, and that you should have yourself found words you can set your seal to in my book, seems almost a miracle. It makes me believe that I have not been unaided in the work, and that it was not altogether of presumption and of the impetuosity of the flesh that it arose in my heart to do this. But you know so infinitely more on all the subjects treated than I do, both by experi- ence and by learning, and yet there you are, ready to receive in this divine way ! I know your fatherly goodness, and how fathers are the ones who stoop to receive from their children, so perhaps I ought not to be surprised. I am just come back from Cheltenham, where E. K. and I have been spending six weeks, and we have been both greatly gratified and really uplifted by seeing the work done in spiritual yes, really spiritual education by Miss Beale in the midst of her 900 pupils and teachers at the Ladies' College. There is such a spirit of earnest thought and pursuit of truth, combined with such reverence and humility, as I hardly thought was to be found in the present heiresses of all the ages ! There are hard times coming for them, and this little cohort seems to me blessedly preparing for the conflict. Again thanking you for your letter and for years of outgiving of good things. Believe me, your very affectionate and grateful, EMELIA GURNEY. To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. 3 ORME SQUARE, June 23, 1893. It was, indeed, an indescribable boon to find you again on this side of the hiding veil, and to gather up in your dear pre- sence many of the truths you have so livingly bid us partake with you. Now, to get your letter and to be assured by it of your loving kindness (that of which the two words together speak as in the io3rd Psalm, as you pointed out) is an added joy and possession. 270 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Your words about my " Pilgrim " could only spring from such a combination. I am indeed grateful for them 1 Your teaching has helped the pages of notes to be what they could not have been unaided by you, and I dare to hope that a breath of the Divine Spirit has given some vital power to the seed which you so plentifully sowed. Tn deep affection and gratitude, yours (I trust) ever, EMELIA GURNEY. An account of that which was the chief and absorb- ing interest of the later years of Mrs. Russell Gurney's life is best given in the words of Mr. Frederic Shields, in his little book entitled " The Chapel of the Ascension ; its Story and Scheme." " It was on one of the many precious visits paid to my studio by Lady Mount-Temple (whose friendship I owed to Dante Gabriel Rossetti's mediation), that she brought with her a lady whom she introduced as Mrs. Russell Gurney. The name was well known to me, and at once I understood I was in the pre- sence of the widow of that Recorder of London who had magni- fied his office by the nobility with which he had filled it. " This lady very quietly proposed a commission to paint certain subjects on the walls of a country church. All my interest and gratitude arose to meet her desire ; but I was compelled to plead that my word bound me first to complete the designs for the decoration of Eaton Hall chapel, with which, through the recom- mendation of Alfred Waterhouse, R.A., I had been generously entrusted by his Grace the Duke of Westminster a large and lengthy task. Mrs. Russell Gurney consented to wait my liberty to serve her. But it was so long ere this was obtained, that I was quite prepared to learn that the lengthy postponement had cooled her purpose; for I had not then proved, as since I have, the strong enduring friendship and tenacity of purpose which gradually led me to regard Mrs. Russell Gurney as a living incarnation of courageous fidelity. The direction of the commission was LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 271 changed, only to carve for it a wider channel. It now welled forth as a desire to plant in some great highway of London a place of rest for wayfarers and for prayer and meditation, wherein body, mind, and spirit, oppressed with the hurrying roar of the city's life, might find repose and a refreshing feast ever liberally spread upon its walls for whosoever willed to enter. Long ago the hope of building such a place had been aroused by a small chapel she had seen in Florence, where few services were held, but simply set apart for meditation and prayer, and always open. Her visualisation of this idea was distinct. It embraced two courts : ' an outer one, with seats for wayfarers' rest, having a fountain in its centre overflowing and its walls haply painted with deeds of brotherly kindness ; and in the inner courts those very acts in the new creation from whence these spring through the one perfect Head.'" The following letters were written during this period. LETTERS TO MR. FREDERIC SHIELDS. 3 ORME SQUARE, September i, 1887. DEAR MR. SHIELDS, I have set two agents to work. There is hope, or rather possibility, that I might get a bit of that hideously placarded bit of frontage in Bayswater Road the corner opposite a large public-house, nearly opposite the entrance to Palace Gardens. I should like the site to stretch backwards enough to permit two little halls or chambers the first rather square for sitting and resting in ; the innermost for prayer, half the size. Perhaps in the outermost there might be represented deeds of brotherly kindness, and in the innermost biblical en- couragement to prayer. Please inwardly digest it much. As I leave so soon for Hereford, I should be so glad if the idea could sufficiently shape itself to set things going. Next Thursday I could go to you, and we might then speak 272 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY further of this. Who would be the best architect and what kind of fagade ? First y what material ? From Mr. SHIELDS to Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY. SIENA HOUSE, LODGE PLACE, September 2, 1887. MY DEAR MRS. RUSSELL GURNEY, All this is beautiful and felicitous beyond my thoughts, for yours is the conception and the swift steps taken to nurse it into being. I tremble with desire and fear towards the idea's fulfilment fear to fall short in a matter that involves we know not what wide issues ultimately in the service of art and piety. " Oh, send Wisdom out of Thy holy place, that, being present, she may labour with us," and so, as her children, justify this our deed. The little spot should be pure, a shrine into which anything that defileth, if it entered, should feel itself abhorred. And it should be lit from the roof, shut out from all but heavenly eye, closeted from the tumultuous world's surging around. And this also to economise wall space, precious in so small a temple. By Thursday next my brooding will, I hope, have hatched some thinly fledged idea of a scheme, and we can compare our views. I cannot speak of the matter yet to any one ; it seems a sacred dream, not to be told till fulfilled. From Mrs. RUSSELL GURNEY to Mr. SHIELDS. HEREFORD, November 5, 1887. What happiness there is in meeting in a common purpose ! I cannot tell you, my dear friend, how I am rejoicing in the thought of your growing work, which is to make manifest precious things. And is it egotistic to feel a great added glad- ness in being permitted to contribute to it, even in the lowest, most material form ? You are suffering, and it^seems as if your thoughts and ex- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 273 pressions would be more liberated if you were not in the furnace. But God's way seems to lead His chosen through the fire. I think we might give it the name of a " Resting-place for Wayfarers " ; that is quite simple and quite true. As I was travelling here, I seemed to see in the outer room the four stars or cardinal virtues presiding over their kingdoms of acts, and in the shrine " The Three that gaze more deeply," as Dante said, in glistening white, in verdant green, and flaming red. Yours ever, I trust, in enduring bonds, E. R. G. AYLESTONE HILL, HEREFORD, November 18, 1 888. DEAR FRIEND, I thank you for two kind letters. I shall quite understand that there must be delays, and I don't want to hasten the appearance of those green shoots whose downward roots must first take firm hold and strengthen under the pres- sure of the over sods. This last is a very burying kind of sod. / must, and you will help me in this, keep quite firm to a plan or form of building that we, you and I, approve. Do not feel you must write to inform me of the ins and outs as they go on. I shall now bide in patience, only glad no con- tract is signed, and that we are free to be off ! 3 ORME SQUARE, November 28, 1888. I want you not to feel tied and bound by anything that has passed if, as time goes on, your heart is not towards that work. You will see how life unfolds to you ; and I know, if it is well that so it should be, some of your inspirations will be breathed forth on that wall. But it may be well that they should be transfixed elsewhere, where more might be taught and rejoiced by them. Mr. Shields' narrative continues : " The whole purpose was committed to the will of God, but counsel was asked of friends, and the balance between their 274 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY views and her own calmly weighed, with the result that she came to question, ' Is it wiser to give up the precious vision as unsuited to our English people, and to our Londoners especially ? ' Miss Octavia Hill wrote that she thought that only the associations of a church would keep visitors at all in order, and that there were few who would look at solemn pictures without a living, exponent voice. " At this discouraging moment a suitable site appeared within possible attainment on the Bayswater Road; but after months of wearying attempts to come to agreement with the landholders, all fell through. " Yet at this crisis Mrs. Russell Gurney wrote : ' I feel no wavering ; on the contrary, my conviction is strengthened that we are to try this plan for silence and rest in the presence of spiritual suggestions received through the eye.' " The conditions of many other situations were explored, but every effort appeared destined to extinction. . . . " It was at this juncture that her courageous perseverance received new stimulus through a suggestion made known to me by the architect, Mr. Herbert P. Home. Mr. Kegan Paul had pointed out that the disused, decaying mortuary chapel of the old cemetery on the Bayswater Road, attached to St. George's, Hanover Square, was a site that might possibly be acquired if proper advances were made to its governing board. And thus arose a brighter vision than any that had faded away. " The situation was perfect on the great highway, just removed from one of the busiest convergent parts of London's traffic, and yet enough withdrawn from the noise and hurry to and fro to meet the central purpose, never abandoned, of fitness for rest and meditation, surrounded as it was by a green, silent God's acre. " Mrs. Russell Gurney wrote : ' I covet that site ; for such a site I would spend more on building. It might be lovely. Do find out whether an application to the Bishop of Ix>ndon would be of any use.' " The Burial Board met the application in Mrs. Gurney's name LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 275 with ready entertainment, and slowly it loomed forth that all our schemes had been thwarted that we might rejoice in a better end than we had ever dared to conceive possible. As she had sub- ordinated it all to the will of God, 'yea' or 'nay,' so now it seemed His ' yea ' beyond her hopes. " The many legal difficulties were one by one surmounted, and permission to erect a new chapel formally accorded, the Burial Board electing the generous donor to a seat on their consulta- tions. Finally, in the latter end of 1890, the Bishop of London's chancellor sanctioned the erection and conditions of the present building. " Mr. Home was then instructed to prepare designs ; and at Mrs. Russell Gurney's desire and cost, architect and painter visited some of the northern Italian cities, and primarily Pietra Santa, in the Carrara district, where the beautiful facade of the principal church was indicated, as suggestive of the kind of de- sign desired by Mrs. Russell Gurney. " This journey had much influence upon the views of the young and observant architect, and the result was the present edifice, in connection with which he had the difficult task of preserving the old chapel on the one side and the caretaker's dwelling on the other, the space for the new chapel being thus strictly narrowed in limitation, and its interior controlled by the imperative neces- sity of subjecting its design to the unbroken wall-spaces required to receive the painted subjects. " That within these restraints Mr. Home has succeeded in producing a chaste and fitting shrine will be freely admitted by all who are sensitive to simple, dignified, and refined qualities in architecture. " Mr. W. H. Burke, of Newman Street, who had executed the mosaic designs for Eaton Hall chapel, undertook the erection of the Chapel of the Ascension, and threw all his fine experience and enthusiasm into the practical working out of the plans, and with Mr. Home frequently held consultations with Mrs. Russell Gumey, wherein she showed an admirably clear, exact forethought for every detail and all the multiform requisitions of warming, 276 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY flooring, roofing, lighting. Four years later, when I expressed some shrinking from the great cost incurred, she wrote, ' What a privilege for me, out of the mammon of unrighteousness, to have been permitted to set forth your long-repressed aims ! ' " Her trust, once gained, was absolute and enduring ; and as the chapel slowly rose into actuality, her vision taking outward form and substance, the exulting joy she manifested in every point she approved, and her frank, undisguised disapproval occa- sionally, were alike the emanations of a spirit singularly sincere and incapable of polite disingenuousness. From the beginning an invigorating, inspiring force welled out from her ; her letters vibrate with the most respondent, sensitive sympathies, and are quick with the inspiration of holy influences and devoted earnest- ness. Enthusiastic resolution inspired all her plans, while yet a wise, calm caution held all in rein. " Often a sweet, playful vivacity breaks through in her letters, or again a tender, enthralled delight in the beauties of the country. She writes of taking her past year's diary with her to Pau, 'to talk with her past hours, and ask them what report they bore to heaven.' " Stoutly maintaining her own conclusion, she well knew how to render courteous entertainment to the opinion of opponents. " Beyond any whom I have known, she rejoiced with them that rejoiced, mourned with those who wept, strong was she to com- fort and uplift, and full of delicate tact in helping. " Since it was most inexpedient, by reason of the shortness of life, to await the completion of the chapel building and the pre- paration of its walls for strictly mural painting, it became neces- sary to decide on some medium which would allow the paintings to be carried on in the artist's studio simultaneously with the pro- gress of the builders. " So after inquiry and thoughtful care, the painter decided that, all things duly weighed, oil-painting, when placed in favourable conditions and carefully preserved from any form of artificial lighting, offered in this country, at least, the longest probabilities of endurance. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 277 " But the object was kept in view to avoid anything like framed pictures, and to obtain as far as might be, by the omission of all moulding, the general aspect of an unbroken wall of decoration. " In consultation with the architect and Mr. Burke, the plan was formed of riveting blocks of slate to the walls, leaving an air- chamber behind, and then to affix the paintings to the slate with a composition of white lead, &c., after the manner practised by M. Puvis de Chavannes at Amiens. " Gas having proved most destructive to oil-paintings, it was provided in the deed of gift that no artificial light should ever be introduced into the Chapel of the Ascension, the hours of day- light being sufficient for the purposes contemplated. " Thus also, with the addition of an iron door to the organ-loft, every possible precaution has been taken against the calamity of fire. " The south wall over the organ-loft was next painted, in the severe cold and fogs of the winter of 1894, upon a lofty scaffold, painting day after day by the light of a small oil-lamp, and in such confined space that only a crouching position was possible. In the frieze of child angels around the arch, Mr. Innes Fripp most ably carried forward my designs, expediting the work, Mrs. Russell Gurney manifesting the keenest interest in every step." E. R. G. to Mr. FREDERIC SHIELDS. HEREFORD, April 30. I can in some measure imagine the bewildering dazzle of infinity in which you must lose yourself ere you can distinguish and seize the main lines of the mystic Tree of Life, so as to portray them to the senses, or rather so as to awaken the ap- prehension of them through the senses in others. If, as you say, and as I know, you are driven under the Sycamore Tree, we are sure the Master has found you. 3 ORME SQUARE, December 26. MY DEAR FRIEND, How late I am in saying a blessed Christmas to you ! But happily for us it is an abiding birthday. 278 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Ever coming, ever come, all the days. Never leaving or for- saking us. But it is nice to have our fixed day for union in the thought of the Babe, and in passing on our greetings to one another ; and so I'm sorry I failed to send you a pressure of the hand. Thank you for yours, and for telling me that on Saturday we may perhaps take another step towards our Hope. Ever affectionately yours, EMELIA GURNEY. To Mr. SHIELDS. 3 ORME SQUARE, September to, 1889 (?). MY DEAR FRIEND, I write now because I want to express to you something of the pleasure the two autotypes have been in- creasingly giving me, ever since I set them on my mantelpiece. Sometimes Jonah, sometimes St. Andrew and the little lad, appeals to me most. Jonah in his typical character, triumphing over death and destruction, is, I think, quite magnificent, and such a resurrection song. " O grave ! where is thy victory ? " 3 ORME SQUARE, November 19, 1889. Yes ; la turba, la turba I It is everywhere till that is formed which the Spirit longs unutterably to draw forth. How strange is all this long process, ere the prepared body can be projected for your spirit's inbreathing ! 3 ORME SQUARE, October 21 (?). How Peter's failure and Peter's shame and love have been given to your expression ; and in that the Breast upon which all was flung has, indeed, been revealed ! Many have thanked God, and many more will thank God, for His revelations through you. Surely such can only pass through suffering hearts. 3 ORME SQUARE, October 17, 1893. DEAR FRIEND, I rejoice that you are able to give forth your living thoughts again on canvas, though I wish, indeed, you could speak of pain departed. I ought to have sent you back your LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 279 scroll before this. There is only one suggestion I should like to make. It is in the Noah, who in his white garment represents the cleansing of water-baptism. Might he not speak as John the Baptist did of the further purification needed of the Holy Ghost and Fire (St. Matt. iii. 2) ? It seems to me that the Annuncia- tion of those two great Baptisms at the commencement of our series is very important ; and as Enoch has prophesied of Judg- ment, the note of Noah might be its Object, Purification, or Righteousness. The Dove also promises this. You cannot think how thankful two or three of my friends, as well as myself, have been for the triumph of Life out of Death, pictured in your magnificent Jonah ! Every one delights in St. Andrew and the little lad, but my elect rejoice yet more in Jonah. It is impossible to say how much your wonderful creations delight and feed and touch me. They are unspeakably pathetic, both on the paternal and the offspring side. (Referring to the two lunettes on the outside wall of the chapel the return of the prodigal.) 3 ORME SQUARE, June 30, 1894. I left your studio yesterday quite uplifted with thankfulness for your blessed given-gift for the entrance of our little shrine. You cannot think how it spoke to me. It cannot fail to bring to many hearts a fuller appreciation of the wonderful parable it points to. Then when I came home there were all the autotypes to go through. We were astonished at their variety of expression and teaching, and this variety one can appreciate more in seeing them in succession and on a small scale, perhaps. At any rate, they have done more, I think, than confirm the intense impression almost all the large pictures had made on my heart. I trust many, multiplying and increasingly, will thank God with me for the fulness of His that has been outpoured through your hands. Your grateful and affectionate EMELIA GURNEY. 280 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY WYASTOXK, BAY'S HIM., CHELTENHAM, January 22, 1895. Indeed, dear friend, it is very beautiful of you to feel as you do and say about that small lint in the chain of the outward and inward Providence that fits you to the work of manifestation. I glory in being permitted to be that link. And what do you think I may well feel of gratitude to you for the exercise of such gifts as yours, and for all your zeal and goodwill in it ? 3 OB.ME SQUARE, September i, 1895. MY DEAR FRIEKD, Indeed you might well say, " I am the man that hath seen affliction 3 " Body, soul, and spirit, I think, have been placed in the crucible. And all the petty work you have had as well as the great travail You have been Clerk of the Works and what not \ I am now so hoping that after this week's grand launching, you will take a month's respite in some delicious air. I want you to send one line, one word would do, after you have seen a picture glued to its slab and slipped into its place. Just " successful " would be enough. 3 OXME SQCAEE, October 4, 1895. MY DEAR FRIEND, I have been twice in " la Sainte Chapelle " since you were there. Yesterday with Dr. M., just returned from I wrote to beg be would not attempt to peep into our without me. Every time I go the whole effect and the details grow upon nae amazingly, and I felt Dr. M.'s immense = .-:;.:. i:- -__-.-_ :. proCOtkm. W* EM :.'.: tMjeflhfll JH Wwl and miracle ; its deep harmony of colour, so full of continuation, if I may say so ; its tender vibrations as well as its full chords, and this besides its spiritual import. St. Peter is far grander than be was in your studio, indeed each one is. Your affectionate and grateful friend, EMELIA GUI LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 281 3 Oman, SQPBJOX, Mmmier 7 (?). Your words, " the pbot to ocr wmeelof hie," are tlwillmg r ,and almost convince me that to embody them in Ait is beyond the power of man. And I have more and move felt what yon said about Duality. We cannot hate fife without death ; their inter- change is, of coarse, expressed in every pactnre on die watts. And if we could suggest the triumph of Ae Life as die eternal end of the process, as the " Pivot of the Wheel, 9 it wooM indeed be splendid. But, perhaps, thai can only be the vision in the inner- most shrine of the heart. Affectionately yonrs, EM ELLA GOOCBT. Mr. Shields' narrative continues : " The later years of Mrs, RnsseH Gurnets fife were crossed by much physical suffering and weakness, through which her con- stitntional buoyancy of spirit so often carried her to convalescence, that it seemed to me that the tear she once expressed when hurt by some vexatious delay, "I shail never Hive to see it done,' was premature. Still, the despondent words painMly lingered in my mind, so that I bent all my powers to press die work on to such a point, that some visible earnest of die fulness of her idea might be set forth. Hence, within a years space we had reached die end of all the p a "tiffg f^gdkfll to be done for scaffolding, which was at length cleared away, so thai March 18, 1896, 1 could say, 'Come now'; and I had the long-desired Joy of teaming my most patient, though expectant friend, and of i^Miyiug her ecstatic delight in what had been accomplished, " The morrow had been appointed for the first of a series of lectures by the Rev. Rowland Corbet, TPjm*"^ i Q*y of the purposes of the chapel decoration, to which Mrs. Russell Gamer had invited many friends. She had hoped to be present at the succeeding lecture*. But this opening day, when for the first time she was able to demonstrate that she had not lightly counted the cost of die plan which all her friends had at first discouraged, and that 282 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY though the top stone was not yet brought forth, still there was visible evidence it could now be hoped that grace might be invoked on its eventual completion this day was the very last on which she stood within her 'treasure-house' dedicated to God's glory. The next day she was stricken down with illness, which after seven months of lingering suffering took away her whose gracious presence I had trusted would have long remained my stimulating impulse and encouragement upon a lonely and toil- some path. " That it may be known what manner of head and heart com- bined to utter her ' Well done ! ' these extracts from her letters are given : " ' I have been living in the remembrance of the shrine, only feeling that I had but half expressed what an impression it has made upon me.' " ' An atmospheric harmony, audible, visible, sensitive, like a nature scene, that exists of itself in perfection of unity and detail. It has been a sort of communion with the Soul of Things.' " Again the generous hand indites but a few months before the opening of the chapel : " ' I have seen your perfectly beautiful night scene of our Lord and Nicodemus, and the prevision that lights the beyond. How wonderfully that bronze-like colour lends itself to the subjects of the topmost panels ! I am ashamed to say that the more I see, the more does impatience wax.' " Again as the work progressed : " ' Every time I go, the whole effects and the details grow upon me amazingly. Its deep harmony of colour is full of continua- tion, if I may say so, its tender vibrations, as well as its full chords.' " From these brief extracts it may be conceived what drear vacancy this lady's loss leaves in the heart of her servant." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 283 To the Rev. ANDREW JUKES. 3 ORME SQUARE, W., November 27. DEAREST ST. ANDREW, Your day is just at hand again ! And though I fear you are suffering much during your detention from your waiting home, we cannot help rather selfish joy in having you within reach of our words. I cannot help wishing so much that you could see the little chapel for rest, silence, and prayer that is so growing now in preparation (though very far from completion) under Mr. Shields' most spiritual suggestions on its inside walls. There is a frieze of angels and small subjects over the Apostles and Prophets. You have your patron saint with the lad he brings forward, as your fatherly spirit has the way of doing ; and now I send you the angel over St. Andrew and John the Baptist's heads the kind of young bud of an angel of the dawning Gospel dis- pensation, sounding the eight bells of the sanctuary, with, I think, supreme grace and innocence. I have had these photo- graphs taken to send one at Christmas to each workman employed on the building. Ever, dearest Mr. Jukes, your very lovingly grateful EMELIA GURNEY. To EDWARD CLIFFORD. 3 ORME SQUARE, March n, 1896. Will you try and make time to come to one of these addresses? If possible, the first, for I should like you to be present and lifting up your heart with us for a benediction on the real object of the building and pictures the first time that united prayer will ascend within its walls. I send you four papers, on which you might like to write the names of some who have the same object in assembling. It will be more generally open for those who come to view the pictures after Easter. Yours ever affectionately, EMELIA R. GURNEY. 284 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY March 19. How very welcome to me are your truly sympathetic words ! I am so glad of what you say of the audience, I, being behind them all, could not discern as you did. Yours very affectionately, EMELIA GURNEY. From Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE to Mr. SHIELDS. SHELLEY HOUSE, CHELSEA EMBANKMENT. MY DEAR MR. SHIELDS, I can hardly believe that I have been so ungrateful as never to thank you outwardly for your splendid St. John. I suppose it is because I have thanked you so much inwardly, that the outer part was taken for granted. What a grand old eagle he is, gazing at the sun. How true to the character and development of the Apostle of love, that he should grow from the Vita Nuova of his youth to the strong, intense seer of the greatest Divina Commedia in his age ! His writings were the true soul-food of my beloved, and I think now he has drunk of the Fountain of life, and has come into the perfect union for which he longed. Yours most truly, GEORGINA MOUNT-TEMPLE. From Sir NOEL PATON to Mr. F. SHIELDS. 33 GEORGE STREET, EDINBURGH, January 30, 1895. Your beautiful "Angel of the Chimes" did me no end of good, and has since stood within hand-reach of my bed, a pleasanter and withal more efficacious anodyne to my special aches than as yet my pharmacost has supplied. I thank you for it very heartily. What was my pleasure and surprise when a little while ago the photographs of the grand series of designs, of which my Angel forms part, were brought for my inspection by a lady friend of Mrs. Russell Gurney's. I knew that you were engaged on a very important work of a sacred character; but I was not prepared to find it one LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 285 in every way so congenial to your genius, and so fitted to call forth those unique qualities of invention and execution which the grand cartoons for Eaton Hall chapel first revealed to me. How thankful I am that these designs are being carried out under the auspices of a friend evidently so well fitted to appre- ciate their thought, fulness, and beauty. That they will speak to many a listening heart above the rush and roar of London, when we have all passed beyond the dark river, must be a grateful reflection to her and to you. I earnestly trust that strength will be accorded to you to carry the noble task to completion. I wish I could hope to see it even in progress, but it is very certain that I shall never again bring my blue bonnet over the Border. . . . Ever with true affection yours, NOEL PATON. PART IV JOURNAL LETTERS FROM JAMAICA, 1865, AND SICILY, 1889 To Mrs. BATTEN. O.N BOARD THE "ATRATO," January 2, 1865. IT seemed such a great, strong castle, that it gave us great confidence that the winds and waves could not get at us much. The little steamer careering about us, trying to help to tug us round at last let go, and it tossed away to shore again with our most beloved ones ; that is one of the never-to-be-forgotten scenes in one's life. How grey and desolate and stormy the rounding looked ! We paced the great, clean, still firm deck. The water around chopped up into angry little furrows. R. went down to dinner at 4.30. I sat about on the gallery above, and fancied myself at the Grand Hotel at Brighton and the sea at a respectful distance. Some merry children were romping about. I wrote off a note for the pilot a little before 6, and was warned by the engaging stewardess that it would be wise and safe to get all ready for the night before another quarter of an hour. Already the great castle, every three or four minutes, seemed to trip over a ditch, and then to scurry on in a tipsy kind of fashion. I had to make haste, for this habit grew fearfully fast on our once firm castle, and then came long lurches and lunges and heavy rolling, and even,' variety of move- ment that the ingenuity of a living creature could devise. Some- times the sea-rnonster did just as Cosette does with your slipper : he took our nutshell of a boat (for that's what she seemed now) between his teeth, shook her soundly, and then tossed her off to a scornful distance ; then for two minutes she lay like a dead LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 287 thing, and then struggled madly on again at the mercy of some fresh trick of the furies. I wondered often exactly what amount of misery I was suffering. There's always more or less of one's being that holds itself aloof from anything one is going through, and looks on as a stranger, not intermeddling with it; but this unaffected residuum is small and weak when sea-sickness has any firm possession of one. The sun shines, a yellow gleam, R. walks up and down be- tween his colleagues and a very pale young man. I managed to walk a little too, and looked at the wake of the vessel, the furrows in the dark blue turning glacier-green, and living, curling snow foam. To-day I felt more inclined to look complacently at the frolicsome waves ; yesterday their rough sport teased me like a jeer. Sunday ith. We had such a blessed night untossed, and got up early, had a walk in a soft, moist wind on deck for half- an-hour, and then came down to breakfast, our first meal in company. R. sits on the captain's left, then I. We were up on deck after breakfast, and every one looked contented and peaceable. We saw shoals of porpoises taking flying leaps out of one wave into another. One's preconceived opinions of these creatures are utterly false. I thought they were fat, like alder- men ; quite the contrary : they are slim and joyous, and make a most graceful curve as they turn their somersaults; a kind of glimpse of them one gets reminds one of a hare rushing over hillocks, the two gills standing back like the hare's ears. There were hundreds and thousands frisking along, making the ocean glad by our side. We stood leaning over the deck watching them in a mild wooing breeze, while you were putting on your wraps, doubting whether you should venture through fog and mud to church. When we turned from them, the backs of a long range of blue-jerseyed sailors were before us ; all the ship's crew were having their names called over. Many fine manly faces there were along the opposite side of the ship ; officers, stewards, waiters, cook, butcher, 130 in all, marched afterwards down into 288 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the saloon, and Captain Jellicoe read the service extremely well. Miss B., the Creole young lady, is pleasing and intelligent. She is returning to Santa Cruz after two years and a half edu- cating at a school in Bremen. Santa Cruz is near St. Thomas, one of the three Danish islands. She says she loves the way of life there better than the European. They get up at 5 ; ride or walk after a bath and cup of coffee till 10; come in to a dejeuner & la fourchette ; employ themselves in reading, writing, and household matters till 2, when they sleep for an hour ; drive out from 4.30 till 6.30, when they dine, and go out again in the beautiful moonlight sometimes at night. I asked about their negroes. Her dear nurse she loved so much had died She liked a good many and trusted them ; but they were very wayward and like children, she said. They could not manage their children a bit ; and they often said they wished they were slaves again, because then their missus would manage them ; also because when they were too old to work they would be taken care of. They work pretty well in cultivating vegetables. She says the Moravian Brethren have done an immense amount of good amongst them ; the negroes are completely led by their pastors, and would not think of taking any step in life without consulting them. Miss B. believes many have got better cottages and cultivate their land better under the influence of the Moravians, who are raising them out of the savage life into which they had been sinking more and more since emancipation. I shall just re- peat as much as I can, like a parrot, all that different people say about the negroes. Monday, January 8/Vfc. The dear sea calmer and calmer. Last night I did not know what was going to happen. I waked hearing the engines labouring heavily, but their beats getting slower and slower, and at last ceasing altogether, and the ship just rolling backwards and forwards with a gurgling of water all about, as if we were going to be sucked in. It occurred to me that it might be better to dress to be ready to get into one of the lifeboats ; but the very steady, calm step LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 289 of a walker overhead reassured me. It is very solemn and strange to wake in the middle of the night and to realise that we are wending our way in the midst of the Atlantic, with such a thin partition between us and the invisible world. We found in the morning that some of the machinery had got a little warm, so said the captain, and had to stop to cool and take breath. I went up a little on the dark deck and watched the won- drously beautiful phosphorescent lights by the side of the ship. There were no stars to be seen overhead ; it was just as if they had come down to chase and sport by our side. It was lovely to see them at different distances, as it seemed to me, beneath the water ; some veiled and dim, deeper down, others flashing up to the surface ; some like large globes, others sparkling diamonds. They must be sea-fairies, and a merry life they lead. Tuesday, January 9^. A week since we started, and we have gained rapidly in our chase after summer ; our days have lengthened two hours and a half, the air is deliciously soft. The sun, however, is coy, and does not show himself generously, and the clouds are very remarkably English. I have just pulled out my nicely prepared work and sat for three-quarters of an hour gossiping with Miss B. I think her mild Creole face very engaging. She loves her home at Santa Cruz, but wishes so much it had a history longs for some old building, or some works of art. We are not at all ennuyes with the voyage yet. Russell is particularly spry, picking up all he can from the captain and the Canadians. Wednesday, January loth. Can it really be called January still? If you could but see us, mother, you would be so con- tented for us. At last we have a perfect sky and air and sea. We have been close on the track of summer for three days, but now we have completely caught her, and she is so sweet just here. This would be the spot to choose for climate ; latitude the same as Madeira, the air so fresh and joyous and exhilarating, and the sun not too hot, even without a white umbrella. Before break- fast for half-an-hour we stood at the bows meeting the heavenly breeze ; from 10 to 12.30 I sat in my chair reading. Now I look 290 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY out through the round cabin window and see the dark, dark indigo sea-line against the pure sky ; the nearer water is very deep sapphire, so different from the blue of the Mediterranean, or from the blue of the sea at Brighton on a fine day. There are disappointingly few characters on board ; at least, they do not show as such : all behave in an ordinary fashion. Russell amuses me by not getting tired the whole day of chatting to one and another. The great wonder of the nuns is that their caps keep as snowy and unwrinkled as ever; they have never waned for a moment We have talked to-day over your photo- graph as to whether this would have suited you ; we came to the conclusion it would not. I keep sending you messages along the beautiful glacier track behind us, that we are very well and happy. January nth. Instead of growing hotter, as it ought to have done, it became cooler ; the wind rose in gusts, and we had to retreat into the captain's cabin. The captain showed me the log, and I found the day described as very squally ; it grew worse and worse, and the night was as bad, I think, as our first night on board, only that we were more practised to bear it. To-day, Friday isth, it is bright again. We are looking forward to getting into the trade winds to-morrow. We have been bordering the edge of the Gulf Stream, but no difference is to be discerned in the look of the water. Long garlands of sea- weed are floating on the water ; they are driven here by the stream. No streaks of light and shade, no variety of colour on the whole face of the ocean. I don't much want to take a longer voyage ; and I own I felt it an encouraging sight this morning to see the sailors lugging up the boxes from the hold, and separating them into groups for Vera Cruz, Demerara, &c., &c. Saturday i$th. We are in the Sargasso Sea, the great deep of the Atlantic, where beds of seaweed float, the seaweed that the sailors of Columbus thought they were going to stagnate in for ever. I think as I never did before of the wonderful courage and faith of those men pushing on in their small vessel, where none had gone before, across this terrific, apparently infinite ocean. Yesterday afternoon we attained to the trade winds, that always LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 291 breathe and blow from the N.E. Till yesterday the wind was steadily against us ; now it is just enough in our favour to swell our sails a little ; and this morning before breakfast the clean awning was stretched over the deck, throwing a pretty shade over the groups of people sitting beneath, and giving a little repose to the eye in the contrast to the light and sea around. Oh, what a heaven beneath the sea is ! I have been gazing down into its deep blue flames, swelling up into such exquisite forms, and crumbling out their snows. I saw a fountain in the sea, it was a whale spouting. It is now light after dinner, and we come up on deck again soon after five and watch the sunset. It was not a gorgeous one this evening, but superlatively pure and clear. We could see to read just twenty-five minutes after he dipt in the sea; there was a golden afterglow a quarter of an hour after the sunset In the long, low saloon it is a tiresome time after the great, staring, swinging lamps are lighted, and the long tables prevent anything like grouping. I write my journal or read, and listen with one ear to the conversation of Mr. P., who generally comes into our neighbourhood in the evening, and the Canadians who sit opposite. This evening there was a discussion between the North and the South ; the Canadians strongly for the North, and utterly astonished that any one could be so dark as to think that some of the States could have any more right to disunite them- selves than a province has to rebel against a legitimate govern- ment. It seemed as hopeless that either party should see any reason for the ground that the other took, as if they had been arguing on Fate and Freewill. Sunday, t^th. The good captain sent to tell me there would be a pretty sunrise, so we were on deck by seven. Dove-coloured streaks of cloud were interlacing themselves over a silvery gold background. Small, grey-fringed, distinct cloudlets were drawn up in array along one part of the horizon. There was no flush- ing, no splendour, only a delicate purity, and a growth into such a perfect day, such a Sabbath morning, such a promise of the Sun of righteousness arising with healing in His wings. 292 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY After breakfast all were sitting under the awning in their clean summer things, the ship gently rocking to and fro. I saw a flight of flying-fishes ; only think, they are dressed in silver and blue every day, with gauze wings ; they seem born of the sapphire wave and the sea-foam. They did not look to me larger than swallows, but one cannot judge of size here ; they are really about the size of herrings. When I expressed my admiration of them to Mrs. Stokes, she said, " Oh yes, mum, I do wish one would fly aboard that you might eat it for your breakfast, they are beautiful eating." Amongst the passengers there is a Major G., who is going to his estate in St. Vincent. He is fond of sketching, and has enlightened views on the subject, so we rather fraternised. He said his estate for many years cost him money, but brought him in none ; till three or four years ago he went to look after it him- self during the winter months. The result is that the estate during the last two years has brought in some return, and during this year he expects a larger return. He speaks of the great difficulty of getting the negroes to work. He gives them what is called task-work, but the task-work, which is supposed to be a day's work, is usually got over in four hours. He finds that a great deal may be done by coaxing and chaffing them. They thoroughly enjoy a good-humoured joke. His weeders were in the habit of weeding in such a way that the weeds immediately grew again. He tried to persuade them to pull the weeds up properly and carry them away, but they said that was impossible. After joking with them a little, he said that he would show them how they did such work in England, and immediately knelt down and set to work. The negroes were quite delighted, and made a dance round him, saying, " Look at Massa working ! " And from that time he had no difficulty in getting them to weed properly. He spoke of them with interest and kindliness. He said he thought old men who had been slaves were immensely superior to their sons born in freedom ; there was much more self-control and regularity amongst the former slaves. When he first went out many of them were living, and they received him with the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 293 utmost enthusiasm, and seemed to look at their Massa as a father. In St. Vincent they are all Wesleyan Methodists. He thought their ministers had no influence over the morality of their congre- gations ; at any rate, their morality was at an extremely low ebb, but the religious opportunities were well attended. To-day, after dinner, the Prussian baron proposed the health of Captain J. in the most spirited capital way possible. After tea this last evening lamps were hung under the awning and a spirited little dance was set going, the band doing its best and Captain J. performing wondrously energetic feats. A German lady whom I had thought elderly stood up after some pressing and sailed off so magnificently; she seemed to transmigrate into a young nymph. Tuesday ibth. We were on deck soon after five. Light had hardly begun to dawn. We were unable to see the Southern Cross, for thick clouds were on the southern horizon ; but we did enjoy seeing the day awaken. It was very hot, but just as the sun arose the morning breeze brushed forth. The captain was looking out eagerly for Sombrero, which became visible at about seven a low, little patch of earth, only to be discerned for some time by the breaking of the sea-foam against it ; a dismal little rocky spot, where a few workmen live to get phosphate of lime for manure. There is no water on the island ; they are dependent on getting their supply from ships. Now we have had our last breakfast and all our things are packed, and St. Thomas is just visible on our horizon. It seems miraculous that we should have come out at the right spot on the other hemisphere. At 2.15 exactly we steamed into the gay little harbour, walled in by green hills about 600 or 700 feet high, unshapely and without shades, a uniform yellow green. The houses, in two clusters on mounds, were red, yellow, and white, and looked like toys; no projecting roofs or shady nooks. The water was the most brilliant blue green ; several large steamers were clustered together, and multitudes of little boats with blacks in gay shirts were crowding about. Altogether it was the most garish and bewildering scene to those whose eyes had rested only on the solemn ocean and 294 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY sky for a whole fortnight. Several negroes came on board with their wares ; many passengers were going on shore in the little clustering boats ; strangers were looking about us for friends they had come to meet, and the sun broiled and the air ceased. I was disappointed at seeing nothing picturesque, excepting the negroes. I admired them very much in the full sunshine, with bright colours about them. They looked so different from the dismal blacks about the streets of London. A very large pro- portion of them, however, was not the pure negro, and certainly it is a great improvement in their humanity when their complete blackness and their projecting mouths have been mitigated by the mixture of another race. Russell was immediately absorbed with Mr. C., the West Indian mail manager. I began early to take leave of some of our fellow-passengers, and then, the books stupidly being packed, there was nothing to do but to feel how hot it was ! The day seemed never-ending. We roamed about like unquiet spirits, and then lay down for an hour or so in our hot cabins, hearing the everlasting hauling of boxes and the sailors' heaving cry. Then we went up on deck and saw the Southern Cross just above the hills. The stars are about the size of those in the Great Bear, and as there are no others of the same size very near, the Cross stands out very distinctly. I can imagine that the sight of it must have been thrilling to those whose whole souls were filled with a great enterprise. At 4.30 A.M. half-a-dozen of us had some tea with the captain on the stairs in a very amicable way, and afterwards he pioneered us across the plank bridge over the dark, shark-infested waters to the Conway. Our new vessel seemed wretchedly small after the grand Atrafo, and we felt almost like orphans without good Mrs. Stokes. I will not write of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday ; it seems a long barren tract, a great nightmare of heat and glare over us : no change in the colour of the sea, no strange fishes or birds, no bewitching views of the islands. Yes, there were some very lovely bits of Hayti to be seen yesterday ; but we were not near enough to see anything very characteristic till we stopped about a mile off Jacmel, a straggling, large village lying at the foot of two ranges LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 295 of very pretty hills a long line of thick palms at the edge of the water of a luscious green. A little boat went ashore to take the letters, and Russell went in it. I tried to sketch, but the steamer did all it could to circumvent me by turning round and round. Those who landed said they were greeted by two of his black majesty's soldiers in the wildest uniforms not uniforms, for each was dressed differently and their passports were demanded. They were, however, allowed to land when they explained they were going to return to the ship in a few minutes. And now it is Saturday morning, our nineteenth day of voyag- ing ; we are coasting along Jamaica's shores. Green fields I see, and slopes and hills behind grey in the cloud shadow. I could fancy it the opposite shore of the Lake of Geneva from Ouchy. I am terribly afraid lest I should not discover a distinctive tropical beauty in the island. I could not stay on deck. The heat of the last three days has seemed of an intolerable kind, like what the Ancient Mariner felt on his ship. I crept up at two o'clock as we were approaching Port Royal. The sea had turned from sapphire into an utterly inconceivable green. I peered out of half-shut eyes into the most startling and brilliant scene. The flat edge of the shore seemed set in this brilliant green; there were low wooden shed-like buildings, very tall palms, many ships and boats, two great men-of-war, who lowered their fluttering colours for a moment to make us a bow of welcome. The back- ground was filled in with ranges of shadow-coloured mountains, something like the best views of the Apennines; some great birds the size of eagles were sailing about. Altogether it did produce a new sensation. It was difficult steering into Kingston harbour; there were sandbanks and currents to be avoided. Every one seemed hushed into a breathless state of expectation as we neared the pier ; a crowd of people stood at the edge of it. The descent into the curtseying little boat was less disagreeable than it looked. On landing, we drove in a caliche to King's House, Spanish Town, thirteen miles off. Two nice little nags were driven capitally by a spirited black, and forward we went to try our fortunes. There seemed no road; we plunged over 296 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY mounds and heaps, stirring thick clouds of dust ; but the strange sights bewitched me into forgetfulness of everything else. The little tumble-down sheds by the roadside did indeed look like the habitation of savages : the strange groups of half-clothed creatures, sitting or standing in the doorways, some utterly squalid, some majestic and very well dressed, some carrying baskets of unknown fruits on their heads. I looked about to see if a missionary were not preaching somewhere. It all looked so like an unexplored savage country. Wonderful dislocated Liliputian black pigs were running about thickly. When the sheds ceased, the country on each side the dusty space supposed to be the road looked like botanical gardens utterly neglected and overgrown and dusty. I mean they are the kind of trees you see in a conservatory, only with more abundant blossoms. The road became a road in three miles, and we went at a capital pace. We saw some mon- strous cotton trees with stems growing out like buttresses of a church. Then there were some groups of cocoa-nut palms swinging their huge fronds against the evening sky. We passed a swamp ; there grew new kinds of fat, luscious leaves, some large ferns, rushes, mosses ; and how the frogs did croak ! In two hours, at five o'clock, we came to some more sheds some decent ones, and then entered a square of yellow, long, low houses, or rather buildings ; they looked like casinos of a third-rate Italian modern town, slight, dilapidated-looking places, their Venetian shutters all shut. Our driver stopped before a kind of portico of broad steps and pillars supporting a balcony, under which Zouaves marched up and down. This was King's House. Russell is very much struck with the way in which Sir H. Storks is setting to work, not only with reference to the inquiry under the Commission, but in order to discover the past abuses that have existed in the government of the island and the fitting remedies that might be suggested. He requires every paper which is brought in to any of the officers in the course of the day to be brought in to him at night, and he makes a point of going LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 297 through every one before breakfast the next morning. His im- pression is that the whole system has been utterly rotten. The state of society also, they think, from what they hear so far, is equally*rotten. SPANISH TOWN, Sunday Morning, January 21. The space, the stillness, the repose of having arrived, are more luxurious than you can fancy, after nineteen days' sea- experiences. So we slept late, that is, till 6.30. We were down soon after 7. And now, mother, if I give way and do not hold myself in with the tightest reins, you will think I am gone fairly out of my mind. You know that we had heard it was beautiful in the mountains ; but to come upon such a walk within a stone's throw of this much-abused Spanish Town was utterly overpowering. A lane, dusty and stony it is true, led us through wild, uncleared, primeval-looking country, every shrub and tree new to us, down to a clear but sleepy stream, where bronze statues with large vessels on their heads were slowly and statelily gliding to get water. Great weird luscious trees down to the water's edge ; tangled masses of creeping plants covered with pale delicate flowers spread themselves everywhere : some seemed spilt on the ground, others were tangled like traveller's joy in England ; the wide, mauve, delicate tissue flower-cups of a kind of large con- volvulus were spreading towards the sun. A buff tropiola with chocolate eyes was rampant in all directions. A large waxen yellow jessamine, a pure light-blue convolvulus filled the nooks of broken earth. There were great palm leaves against the morning sky. I could not count the wonder flowers. I saw a humming-bird fluttering over some blossoms. The bronze crea- tures in this setting are just what they should be. Some little children, in white muslin little single garments, were bewitching with their wistful gazelle eyes and their sun-moulded pliant lips. I own I feel intoxicated with beauty, and overpowered with the sense of the goodness of Him who has so decked for us the world, and has permitted us northern ones to behold what the 298 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY blessed sun can call forth from the earth when he has his way. I keep thinking of the verse : " Then shall the earth bring forth her increase, and God, even our own God, shall give us His blessing." It is impossible not to feel what a type this material abundance is of the putting forth and blossoming of the spiritual world in the true light when it shines indeed when the world shall remember itself and turn to the Lord ; what miracles and prodigies will then become the natural order of things. There is a tree here that grows tired once a year, and its leaves drop off in a day. It buds the next, the buds swell the third day, and on the fourth morning it has burst forth into full leaf. The genapp tree. The air this morning was fragrant and almost fresh, and I felt none of the burden of the heat as I have done each morning on the sea. We came in at a quarter to eight, and the sun was then becoming very hot ; thermometer in our room on our return 79. At 8.30 exactly we have breakfast in a room that looks about sixty feet long and fifteen broad ; windows all the way down it on both sides, with wooden Venetian blinds, some open, but most are kept shut One side the windows open on to a covered balcony, on the other on a small garden of trees. I cannot yet tell you the names of the strange trees ; most of them are flower-bearing or fruit-bearing. The boards of the room are stained and there is no carpet or matting. We are eight at dinner, Sir H. Storks in the centre, R. and I on each side. We went to church this Sunday morning at eleven o'clock. Happily it is only five minutes' walk from this, so we were not quite killed going or coming. It is a hideous church, like a London one of the time of the Georges, but better inside, and nice and cool It was anything but crowded. The singing was extremely spirited and good, but the blacks have a certain nasal twang in singing as well as in speaking. I have been shown a hideous little black idol with a black ribbon crossed round its body, and a carved stick, two serpents twisted together with the wickedest kind of lizard creeping up them. This was taken either from Mr. Boyle or one of his LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 299 followers. The followers of this superstition are called Obaiahs. The possession of these divining charms is considered a felony ; it is therefore difficult to learn whether many go after these ways, as they are, of course, always concealed. I sat drawing in a kind of cloister garden. Behind me, with opening arches and latticed-in Venetians on the other side, sat the aides-de-camp at work. A black man made his way in, and said, " If you please, I saw all the men hanged at St. Thomas's in the east, and got them buried ; I want to be paid for it." January 2^th. Last Thursday the Commissioners began their work at ten o'clock, in a large airy kind of ballroom-looking place, in a building that forms one side of this yellow square. There are large open windows on each side and at one end. The Commis- sioners sit at one end behind a large square table. A chair is placed for the witnesses at their right hand. The shorthand writer opposite, and the two Counsel for the Jamaica Commission sit at the bottom. Chairs are placed along one side of the room for the Legislative Assembly and some others belonging to specified classes. A railing partitions off about a tenth of the room, and behind this the common herd are allowed to congre- gate. I thought it was hard there should be so little space for the public, and that there would be crowds wanting to listen to an inquiry of such deep personal interest to so many in the island. But no, they all think here, " There is no joy, but calm." There were not above thirty listless bystanders. We drove this afternoon to the Bog Walk, a corruption of the Bocca del Acqua. The road is above a deep emerald river in a ravine, winding, the ravine clothed with magnificent trees, draped with parasites and ferns. They are all full of sap. The large, light-green, graceful bananas wave against rich deep mangoes. The star apple is something like a gigantic orange tree, only the leaves are lined with a burnished copper ; the light coming through them looks like a shower of gold. Grey rocks here and there ; these are crowned with the small fan-leaved palm. Their nooks are filled with leaves of every shape and colour. Many have the trick of lining themselves with a colour contrasting with 300 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the upper surface colour. All are graceful, except long bristling cacti, that seem like monstrous hairy caterpillars creeping up the stem. The breadfruit trees are wonderfully handsome. But I think that the bamboo, when it grows to a gigantic size, as it does by the edge of a river, is perhaps the most beautiful, like an enormous plume of ostvich feathers. Amongst the cocoa-nuts and breadfruits nestle here and there some little thatched huts ; around them are scarlet poyntsettias. The sun-looked-upon creatures lean over their gates in listless attitudes, but with faces ready to beam into a most responsive smile at the least encour- agement. The old ones say, " Good-day, Massa or Missus " ; the young ones say, " Sar." You would never guess they are speaking English when they are talking together : their tone and accent is so very different ; they chop their words up into short syllables like the chattering of parrots. I began a sketch of a little basket- work cottage. Its young mistress I thought pretty : she was delicately made, and her eyes and teeth were lustrous ; her wool was covered with a gay handkerchief; she had a little girl of four. She looked hardly full grown, and did not know how old she was. Her husband was working on their little piece of land, for which they paid five shillings a month, and for their wretched cabin they paid two shillings. She could not read nor her husband either ; I could make her understand but very little, and I could hardly understand her. When it was growing late she went into the cottage and brought out some clean print dresses and put them on her head, and began to walk away. After a time she made me understand that they were her husband's clean things, and she was going to meet him with them that he might be fit to "pear fore Missus." She offered me very seriously her little girl of four, to take and teach good to in England. They lived upon yams and fruits, and sometimes fish from the river. They carry the most ridiculously inappropriate things on their heads a wine- bottle, or a sickle, a " matchet," as they call it, for cutting the sugar-cane, and if they have nothing else they often carry their hands on their heads. It grew dark before we got home. The golden evening gleams through the tangled draperies of the trees LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 301 linger on through the short twilight into the dark, and seem to throw a rich reflected glamour over the velvety green foliage. Then the cigalas begin to chirp in chorus, and the frogs to croak, and the great black carrion crow, with a red head, sails homewards. On Friday 26th I went off by the seven o'clock train to King- ston. A certain Mr. Alexander Bravo had called upon us, and had invited me in a pressing way to go and spend some days with Mrs. B. I had agreed to go for one day, and he was to take me to see some schools. At the railway station were different degrees of savages : some with only a few rags on ; some in very smart print dresses ; some with vegetables and fruits to sell in Kingston ; others with bunches of screaming poultry, their legs all tied together. The carriages on the train are very dirty and dilapidated. A coloured lad only was in the carriage with me, learning most diligently an English grammar. The views of the mountain ranges are lovely from the railway ; we do not see them from Spanish Town. Mr. Bravo was waiting to receive me, and drove me to his house in the outskirts of the town. The houses are all Venetian shutters and tiled roofs. The front door of Venetian shutters opened into a large square room full of rocking chairs, with slippery stained floor; round this runs a kind of corridor, and the rooms open into it with Venetian shutters, so that the wind blows all through the house. Mrs. Bravo was the daughter of one of the most important of the Spanish slave- traders, I was told, and Mr. B. had a thousand slaves left him by his father. He says he is now ruined, though he received .23,000 compensation; but he says droughts have ruined his sugar plantations, and the reduction in the price of sugar has ruined him, but not emancipation. A comely daughter came in with dark eyes. I talked with admiration of the beauty of the island, and also said I thought the blacks so much better looking than I had expected. I said, " I think some look quite beautiful in the sunshine." At this moment the black footman came in, and the young ladies hooted with laughter, and told him to go and stand in the sunshine that they might see if he looked beautiful. 302 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY They then went on to discuss the blacks. Mr. B. thought them capable of any degree of development ; would not allow that they were so idle as they were accused of being ; thought them trust- worthy and affectionate, with perhaps slightly deceitful proclivi- ties. Mrs. B. was convinced that education ruined them ; there was not a good servant to be had who had been educated at school. They were so conceited they would not have a fault found with them, and so independent they would walk off at an hour's notice. They still had one or two who had been their slaves ; these were much attached to them. She had occasionally used the whip to them, and they had said since, " Ah, Missus, you had no used give us enough whip, you only tickle our faces ; if you had given us more, we do better now." Miss B. liked the negroes on the whole, but thought they could never be depended on ; they might turn against you at any time. She heard most people say they were always pilfering ; but she never locked any- thing up, and she never had lost anything. All their servants had been with them for years. One said she thought they were all a horrible set, and she wished that many more had been executed after the rebellion. Mrs. B. said she did not call it a rebellion, only a mob riot ; whereupon there was a general uproar of different opinions on the subject, which Mr. B. at last silenced with authority, and then turned to me and said that very different views were entertained by different members of his family, and that if I wanted to hear the truth I had better listen to him alone. He said the people were plastic under good or evil influences, that many had been stirred to discontent ; that the local Baptists, sects of ignorant blacks, who had separated themselves from Baptist congregations in order to exercise their gift of preaching, had been the originators of a good deal of savage excitement and mischief. It was then said how wonderfully credulous the people were : their servants had told them that all their friends believed the Queen had sent out the new governor to hang the old one, and then the government would be given into the hands of the blacks. At ten the carriage came, and took us first to the Collegiate LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 303 school, as it is called, where classics and mathematics are taught of which Dr. Milne, a Scotch Presbyterian minister, is the head. There were about fifty boys and youths here, of different degrees of black and white. I was hurried through these to the building behind, of the Woolmer schools. Here there were about one hundred and fifty boys and as many girls ; the schoolmaster, an intensely black clergyman, whom the bishop will not license to any cure here, because he believes him to be seditious. He seemed rather a pompous, humdrum man, but Dr. Milne believes he was perfectly innocent of any seditious opinions or actions. The first class, composed of about twenty-five boys, were reading Macaulay's "History of England" ; they read fairly, as if they understood it, and answered questions in the history well. But the English grammar seemed their cheval de bataille. Mr. B. and the master vied with each other in asking for rules, all of which they had on the tips of their tongues. The girls' school adjoining was very nice and orderly, with a coloured mistress. Mrs. H., Mrs. Milne's mother, who accompanied us, said, pointing to a small leather bag lying on the table, " I don't believe one of these girls would carry that bag to school. If they have anything to carry, they always employ some poorer person to walk behind them with it." I heard them read, which they did very much like parrots, and they could not tell the meaning of any of the common words I asked, yet they were almost as well up in their rules of grammar as the boys ; their copy-books were wondrously neat and copper- plate-like. We went next to the Mico schools, wending our way through thick sunshine : there really does seem a substance in it ; you feel it wrapping over you like a plaster, in spite of lined umbrellas. Mr. Martin, the headmaster, is a coloured man of great intelligence, and evidently of some independence of thought. I felt as if one might get more information from him than from anybody I had yet seen ; it, however, remains to be proved whether or not he has the prejudices against the quite black that the coloured people generally have. The department of the school he generally works in is the training of twelve or fifteen youths for schoolmasters. These were all quite black, from 304 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY the age of seventeen to twenty-three. I asked him how many of those he had trained during the last twenty years were doing well and leading useful lives. He said there were several doing well as tradesmen in Kingston, and a few as mechanics ; the greater number had been ruined by becoming preachers. Their chief object in coming to school was that they might preach ; it was their besetting sin, and he had perpetually to be on the watch against their getting out of sight and preaching to one another. I shall see this man again alone, when I can hear more from him ; the youths in training looked pleasant and intelligent. We went back to luncheon at two. Mr. Bravo was pleased to find I was homoeopathic, and said he had been practising it for twenty years with wonderful success ; they had quite ceased to dread yellow fever since it had been treated homceopathically. He took me into a little laboratory, where he prepared his own medicines. But his chief object in taking me into this private den was to give the printed account of Gordon's trial before the court-martial, and to beg me to ask the Recorder whether he thought that was sufficient evidence to hang a dog upon. He said Gordon's sister was governess to his children, and he had known Gordon for twenty years. He believed him to be a reli- gious and a political enthusiast, but a sincere man. He was the son of an English overseer and a mulatto housemaid. His father had neglected his education, but he was a clever lad, and he prospered in a business which he got into at Kingston. As he made money he spent it in getting his sisters educated in Paris ; and when his father fell into poverty, he supported him and his wife and their children. It was true he did not pay his debts much, but not one person in ten did in Kingston. He said he thought Gordon had used dangerous language, and he had often remonstrated with him about it. He had great influence with the negroes, and had spent his life in doing them kindnesses ; it was true that he had formed them into clubs and bodies for promot- ing some of his own ends, securing an election, &c., and had talked of the evils and abuses in the Government, but he did not believe he was connected with any plot. He felt convinced from LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 305 his knowledge of the gentle nature of the man, that he would not have authorised any murders. He was only told he was to be executed one hour before the deed was done. I asked Mr. B. if the distinct races of the negroes could now be at all distin- guished. He said in some instances they could still trace the Mandingoes, who made the best cultivators of the ground, and the Ebos, who were very much the finest race of men. He used to be able to tell all the tribes, thirty years ago, and the old men now he could distinguish. There seems no doubt that the Maroons belonged to different races. The meaning of the word in Spanish, Maroni, he said, was runaway slaves. They had lived amongst the mountains in independence for several generations, and had gradually acquired stronger characters than their brethren remaining in servitude. Monday, 2gth. I went to return the call to-day of a Mrs. R. Her husband had a large coffee estate. He was educated at Eton, she told me, and had a princely allowance at college. When he was twenty-three he came out here to manage his estate. This was just at the time of the emancipation ; he gradually lost year by year all he was spending on his property, and got no re- turns. Twelve years ago he let the whole out in small tenures to the negroes. His rent-roll he reckons on being from ^250 to ^"300 a year. He says they pay their rents well ; the deficiency seldom amounts to ^12. They cultivate the coffee well, and are mostly living in comfort. He lives in a small house on his estate nine months out of the twelve, only coming to Spanish Town dur- ing the sitting of the Legislative Assembly. He is magistrate of the district of St. Thomas in the Vale ; it is in the mountains and very healthy. They are in complete solitude there, and she said, " You can't think how beautiful everything seems to grow when you are shut up to it alone ; and the people are so simple. The Bible language seems to describe their life, and comes home to one so." I said, " Were you there at the time of the out- break ? " " Yes," she said ; "it was one evening I was walk- ing in the garden with my husband, and he said, ' Well, we must be thinking of going down to Spanish Town soon.' I said, ' I am 3 o6 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY so sorry to go. I never enjoyed a summer more.' As I said this a servant brought me a note ; I gave it my husband to read as I am so blind. He sent the servant away and groaned, ' Oh, this is dreadful ! ' I said, ' Why, what's the matter ? ' When he could speak he told me of the massacre the day before, at St. Thomas in the East, about thirty miles from us, but we lay in the way from parts supposed to be disaffected. I said, ' Well, I sup- pose we shall have to go down to Spanish Town sooner than we thought.' 'No,' he said, 'we had better show no fear, but re- main here ; it is possible I may be sent for : shall you be afraid to stay ? ' ' Oh no,' I said, ' you know I have no fear in me ; I am quite content to stay.' In the evening several of our people came knocking at our door, having heard the wildest reports of what had happened. We told them just what we had heard. Our head-man said, ' I suppose you'll be going away ? ' ' Oh no,' we said, ' we are not afraid of any of you.' ' And you've no need to be, I'm sure,' he answered." The next day Mr. R. was sent for by the governor, and as he had to ride through disturbed country, Mrs. R. sent their servant with him. She remained quite alone with two women servants for three weeks. Tuesday, $oth. This day month we left Southampton; it seems six months ago ! Our days here are beginning to lose their new aspect, and are sufficiently monotonous to begin to go quickly. I grudge every early morning that goes past. The first going out, the feeling the wonderfully pure, wooingly soft air, and the delicacy of the sky is quite indescribable. This morning we saw a tree that had flushed into full flame-coloured blossoms, that had been bare two days ago. The people going forth to fetch water in their undress look much more picturesque than when they put their hats and their crinolines on. At every turn we see some new tree or plant or flower. To-day D. caught an exquisite humming-bird, of every gradation of deep purple, dark green, and gold. Last night we stood out on the broad steps where the Zouave paces up and down, to wonder at the moonlight. The sky, instead of losing its colour and becoming dark grey, as ours LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 307 does, is a deep ultramarine blue, and the moon gilds rather than silvers the objects it shines upon. I found I could read small print by its light. In the drawing-room, which was well lighted, the moonlight was nevertheless distinguishable. How strange it seems, that with all this beauty there lurks a poison. All the ex- perienced people tell us that the night air, especially in bright moonlight, is injurious. The moon smites by night as well as the sun by day. Wednesday, $ist. To-day Mr. Eyre gave his evidence before the Commission. It only lasted an hour and a half. R. says he gave his evidence very fairly and clearly, and his manner was dignified and collected, though when he first came in he was very pale and nervous. R. says he has added very little to what they knew before ; he has not employed any counsel, though Gorrie and Payne on the black side are eagerly on the watch for his weak points, and for the triumph of his adversaries. I had a call from a Mrs. S., a widow, obliged, she told me, to remain here with the wreck of her husband's estate, for the little that remained would become nothing if they were to leave it in the hands of an agent. She came here when she mar" ried, a short time before the emancipation. Her mother and grandmother lived here before her, " and my grandmother gave my mother a favourite slave, who nursed her and her children till she died, and my mother gave me that slave's daughter, who was the nurse of my children the most grateful, loving creature you can imagine. She died of the cholera in 1850, and my chil- dren keep her grave nice with flowers still. I know emancipation was perfectly necessary, but it has completely destroyed all the affection that there was between the blacks and the whites. Of course, many did suffer, who were working under overseers, especially when the master was away from the country ; but the house slaves were part of our own family, and they felt the same interest, more in us than they did in their own children. They never stole anything, because they felt that all things were their own." " But are there no servants now who are attached to their masters and mistresses ? " " Yes, up to a certain point, but they 3 o8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY are always ready to leave you, or to listen to anything that may be said against you ; and then those that have been at school are so fearfully rude and independent. I know it sounds a shocking thing, but still I must say it has been my experience, that when they learn to read they become hopelessly bad; they have a notion that it turns them into ladies, and they will do nothing but dress themselves. There is such a demand for servants, that if you find any fault with them they go off in a huff, and your next- door neighbour happens to be in such sore distress for a servant that she engages her at once. I have endeavoured to train many young girls, but they have all left me when they have grown to be thirteen or fourteen, just when they might be useful. They are very clever at dressmaking ; the moment you have a new gown out from England they see how it is made, and by the next Sunday they are wearing one that is a facsimile of it. We had one very faithful old servant (he had been a slave and could not read), and when he heard the news of the rebellion, after leaving our service, he came to me and said, ' Missus must not fret, for I'll take care of her and the young ladies.' He begged us to come out to his cottage, and I should have been quite inclined to do so, but my girls would not. They do not like the blacks as I do, because they have not seen the good specimens there were in the old times." I went into the Court for a short time. A most statuesque black woman was giving her evidence about her husband being hanged only because a receipt was found in his cottage in Paul Bogle's handwriting ; he had been a schoolmaster. (It remains to be seen whether there was much more evidence against him.) She rose up from her seat once, to enact what she was describing. Her head, in the tightly bound yellow handkerchief, and her mouth, worthy of a Juno, was quite redeemed from coarseness by the splendid curves of her lips, and by the moulding of her firm chin, and the setting on of her head to a perfectly round and delicate throat. She excited my admiration, but not my sym- pathy. I could not see any trace of feeling as she described her husband's death, and a few moments afterwards, as I came out, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 309 I found her talking in the merriest way to a group of friends. I spoke to her, and she answered me rather shortly, and went on talking to her friends ; in a few moments she came running after me and said " I not know you come from England, or I talk more." I have never told you how it rained here. It has poured in the earnest, lavish way in which Nature here works at everything while man reposes. The sound of abundance of rain is so great as sometimes almost to drown the sound of our voices ; but the soil is so sandy and light that it dries again in a few hours. It has interfered sadly with my short sketching moments. How- ever, I must not complain, as it has certainly cooled the air and made a great many flowers flash forth. The thermometer is often only 72 or 73 at night, and has not risen above 80. This afternoon we drove through tangled, uncleared country, with long thin aloes or penguins, as they are here called, on each side of the sandy road, shutting off the cedar-like acacias, their light, soft, green foliage intermixed with trailing climbers, and their stems and branches often tagged with cacti, showing peeps of the deep-blue hills in the distance. After six miles of this kind of road we came to a little port half-a-dozen houses at the water's edge, and the sweetest breeze coming over the green wavelets. It was not pretty ; only the water looked so bright and fresh after the tangled vegetation. Sunday, tfh. We went this exquisite morning at seven o'clock to the early Communion. About forty people there ; about twenty-five very smart black women. The afternoon intensely hot. R. went to call on the Chief- Justice. He said Gordon had come out very badly in cases before him, more than once in money matters. In his affairs he thought he was not honest ; the Chief-Justice is a son of Sir B. Edwards, the historian of Jamaica. Monday, 5th, was a day spent in eagerly watching for the arrival of the mail, and watching in vain. In the morning I went into Court and heard Levien, the editor of a newspaper, who was imprisoned, give his evidence. He is a Jew ; he laid 3 io LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY aside his sensational style and came out quite simply. He had written very much against the Government, but since the out- break had warmly advocated Mr. Eyre's cause. His imprison- ment was a most foolish blunder on the part of the governor or his people. The black editor of The Watchman was also examined ; he expressed himself very well, but fell into acting his story, as the more ignorant people do. He had been sud- denly arrested and treated (by his own account) in the harshest way. Tuesday, 6th. The guns were heard at 6.30 this morning, just before we went out for our delicious walk ; we did not hear them. I lingered behind to sketch, and on my return found the blessed letters. It is impossible to say what it is to hear a voice again from across the Atlantic, that has been utterly silent for five weeks ! Have I told you what a delicious perfume comes in at the drawing-room windows at night ? That, and the stars, and the great fanning leaves, and the chirping and stir of insects, make up a new Beethovenish Symphony for me. I have to-day seen the original letter that poor Gordon wrote to his wife. Mr. Bravo took it himself from General Nelson to Mrs. Gordon. On the outside is written, " Luke vi. 20-26." This was thought peculiarly seditious. But evidence seems coming out against him, more than was given at the court-martial. Wednesday, %th. Now comes the morning again for sending off the letters. Would that I could breathe into you a tropical sensation ! but words will not do it ; at least not mine : they cannot get themselves wings, they go so heavily. A fine brown old naturalist has called upon me, Mr. R. Hill, a stipendiary magistrate. He is the best of all the whites, browns, or blacks I have seen. You see it written on his fore- head that he has lived in a large calm region. He has made beautiful paintings of the birds, fishes, and flowers of Jamaica, and has lent me some nice books on these subjects. He will show me the leaf of life, which may be shut in a drawer, or hooked on a nail, or torn in half; but it does not mind, but LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 311 will send out its fibres, and grow and live again in new rootlets and leaves, do what you will to quench it. Don't we all want some of this more abundant life, to triumph over all the maim- ing, and dark places, and dark corners that some of us seem forgotten in? February i^th. By all means get a pamphlet called " Jamaica : Who is to blame ? " reprinted from the Eclectic Review. It seems the wisest and most masterly view that has been taken of the state of the island. If the lovely place does go to wrack and ruin, it will be the saddest pity that ever was. It is such a paradise, I suppose there ought to be a race of angels to make it do. For everybody says that one of its great diffi- culties is the beauty and fruitfulness of the soil. Men are not obliged to labour in the sweat of their brow for the bread they eat ; and so for want of the curse falling on the ground, men become worse and worse from the idleness in which they can live and feed in peace and comfort. Then, I suppose, the climate does have an enervating effect, even on black skins. We are often struck with the lazy way in which they creep along in the early mornings to their work : not so often the women, they march erect, with great baskets on their heads. They can all make an independent living, and they say this is why they do not care to marry, because they like better sup- porting themselves than a husband into the bargain. Bath, February ztfh. The first part of our drive from Kingston here reminded me of the Cornice road, of the parts low down by the sea. There was just that kind of low under- wood growing, in sandy, stony soil. Wide beds of torrents across the road, with but little water now. Looking up them you see a range of soft, shadowy hills, very much like those you see by San Remo and Mentone. But now and then the late undergrowth was interrupted by tufts of cocoa-nut trees, and there were fringes of penguins, as they call them, a kind of aloe, which get a beautiful pink at the tip. The sun became very hot by 10.30, and our horses fagged very much. We stopped when the horses could go no farther, at a little road- 312 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY side tavern, where nobody was to be seen, except a funny, fat old brown woman, who said she was formerly the owner of the house, but now she had let it to those who took no heed, and let everything go to ruin. Her husband had been a German. The wretched horses were taken out and allowed to eat some grass under a bamboo, and we sat under the same shade in some chairs that the brown woman brought us. We went on in about half-an-hour, and reached the nineteen miles' tavern, as it is called. It is something like a poor Italian inn, only slighter. Here we got some very poor food, but some nice orange-juice and water, and some shade two very desirable things and went on refreshed at two o'clock. Then the road became more and more wildly beautiful, leaving the coast occasionally for valleys clothed with every kind of leaf : there were many sweet streams. There was a cascade that came leaping down a rock, and by the side of the foaming water, sparkling in the sunshine, an abundant, deep, purple convolvulus came gushing down. The little huts, with sloping thatches, built of basket-work of bamboo and plaster, are very, picturesque, but most wretched abodes, except in such a climate as this, where they only want sleeping shelter. They would burn in ten minutes or less, and there seems no attempt at furniture inside, except a few calabashes ; the fire is lighted on the ground, and the smoke goes up through a hole in the roof. And they might be built up again in half a day with the materials that are close at hand thatch being made of the dead cocoa-nut leaves, and the walls of woven bamboos. This ought to be borne in mind when people in England hear about burning cottages and destroying property. We are now in the district of St. Thomas in the East, which looks like a rich exotic garden, the ground swelling in soft hills, cut through by numbers of streams hastening to the sea such a garden of Eden ! We always had a delicious breeze from the sea, so the heat was not overpowering. We reached Morant Bay at three o'clock. The coast is not bold or indented ; the beauty is the form of th undulating ground, the streams, and the vegetation. We turned inland from Port Morant, and struck deeper LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 313 amongst low hills. The after-glow a delicate mauve was mingled with the moon's tints. We went along terraces cut in the sides of the hill, above basins of leafy country, looking like lace-work richly wrought in silver ; the cottages in clusters here and there beneath the pearly columns of the cocoa-nuts, their large leaves glistening in the moonlight like armour; lights in some of the cottages, sending out long rays, inter- rupted by leaves. And to add to the mysterious effect, numbers of fireflies glinting about, some a green phosphorous colour and some glowing sparks, leading our bewildered eyes in and out amongst the nooks and grottoes and temples of greenery that clothed the sides of the road. Every now and then delicious aromatic scents fanned in our faces. We stopped still in the midst of a stream for the horses to drink. At about eight o'clock we were in the village of Bath. We stopped, uncertain as to the house we were to go to; and a tall clergyman, Mr. Douet, came to meet us and direct us on a few steps to one of those roadside dilapidated villas, where we were to be put up. It was very fairly decent, and I have preserved a record of the nature of its outside, which you will see, I trust, some day. We were very tired with our long day, and glad to go to bed. Friday, z^th. Russell went to the court-house this morn- ing a white, wooden building, with a Grecian portico, on a broad green by the roadside, where stood the white church and the white Wesleyan chapel under breadfruit trees, cocoa-nuts, and another kind of feathery palm that abounds here. The strangest and most splendid trees were rampant, each with beautiful flowers hanging from them. Mr. Douet joined me, and told me the names and the natures of some of them. There was a delicious creeping, climbing fern, that was actually shot blue and green. I cannot tell you what a lovely effect it had; the dead leaves were a light pink. There were splendid Brazilian bananas, with immense crimson seed-vessels between each of the light-green leaves. There were the nutmeg and the camphor. The common parasite was the vanilla. One of the 3 i4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY palm tribe, as it grows old and spreading, puts out walking- sticks as supports in all directions. Here all these things are utterly unheeded. Later in the day I sat in the only nice shady place to make a little sketch of the house, and to attempt the effect of the feathery bamboo that covers the hill behind it. When the Court was over, we drove back on the road we had come by in the dark. I was almost loth to look at it in broad daylight, lest some of the recollections of its mysterious, unearthly loveliness should be dispelled. But it would have been a pity not to see it, for its reality is quite as beautiful in another kind of way as its moonlight glory. We passed the house, on a little knoll, where the poor Her- schells lived. He was a clergyman of Bath, who was murdered at Morant Bay. He was disliked chiefly because he had a good deal of land, and insisted on getting his rents, and was thought to interfere too much with the politics of the place. February 2$th. Russell had a long day in the Court, the people flocking in from the country, saying he was come to increase the rate of wages, and also to give them compensation for all they had lost during "mashallah," as they call martial law. Poor things, the letting the Maroons upon them was one of the worst deeds that was done, I think. It was owing to Colonel Fyfe's falling ill that they were uncommanded by any Englishman, and were very wild and barbarous in their devas- tations. The people from Thornton, no doubt, joined Bogle on the nth, and many of the people here plundered several houses directly they heard of the massacre ; they believed all the Buchra would be killed, and they were to have all their worldly goods. It was for these plunderings that so many were flogged, and no doubt some were far too severely punished. It was very difficult to know how to punish them ; they could not have been all put in prison, and, indeed, that would have been no punish- ment at all, even if it had been possible. They are so much like children or animals that it strikes one that whipping, if ever it is employed, is the most suitable punishment they can have. I LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 315 am afraid you will think the air of Jamaica hardens my heart against the blacks Sunday, 2$th. We went to the little white church at eleven. I thought, if you could look at us, you would think the aspect of things very interesting and missionary-like. The black con- gregation, all in their Sunday best, standing in groups under the beautiful trees on the green, waiting to go into the church or the chapel. The two are so close together that they disturb each other in singing their hymns ; they are about the same size, and both were filled with very decent-looking, attentive people. The singing in our church was extremely bad, and very good at the Wesleyan, where we went for a few minutes after our service was over. In both they have catechising in the afternoon. Mr. Douet, the English clergyman, seems a painstaking, sensible, gentlemanly young man. He thinks the soil he has to work upon most unsatisfactory; the ignorance greater than one could imagine, and the superstition also. They are so apt at parrotry that it is some time before you discover how little they understand. He thinks there is hardly a person among them who speaks the truth. The Ibeah man is greatly consulted. One said to be such was hung for joining the rebels. There are others, whom they consult pretty much as fortune-tellers are consulted with us, only he supposes much more universally. Monday, 2&th. Russell and Mr. Strahan (who arranges every- thing for us beautifully, and takes no end of trouble for Russell in sifting the witnesses, as well as paying and providing) went off this morning on horseback to see Thornton, or " Torrington," as they pronounce it, or rather to see all that remains of it ; about eighty houses had been burnt, one or two superior ones, and a schoolhouse which was used as a meeting-house, but the others merely huts. They saw many of the widows of the owners who had been hanged, who seemed very cheerful. Some of the huts were being rebuilt. Mr. S., who has a great talent for under- standing and talking to the blacks, jokes with them, and they respond with great glee and shouts of laughter. One said, " They have killed three pigs, my fowls, my husband, and everytink." 316 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Mr. Douet spends two hours almost every morning in the school, not having an efficient master, and has cottage lectures three evenings in the week. His people are so scattered that he has to make long journeys to visit them. He gives frightful accounts of the immorality in which they are living. He says he has several in his congregation who are most exemplary in never missing church, walking for miles, attending every class, singing hymns with the greatest delight, while they are carrying on the most flagrantly immoral lives. He says they mix up religion with everything ; any quarrel or existing circumstance is sure to present itself to them under some Bible aspect. He thinks the reason of this is that it is the only kind of intellectual life they have. They have never been talked to or taught by educated people on any other subjects ; their intelligence is first drawn out on religious matters, and they have no other subjects of interest or amusement. Their quarrels are frightful, as I can testify. While I was sitting out for more than two hours on Monday morning drawing a cotton tree, the strife and war of words that was carried on was such as I never heard even in Italy. They never come to blows ; the consequence is it all has to come out in words. Their eloquence is extraordinary ; but I could not understand what they said, except, perhaps, a stray word here and there. He said, " When they tell you about their quarrels they usually begin at the very beginning of their lives, saying, ' When I was pickaninny and he was pickaninny so and so happened ; ' and they do not think it rightly heard unless you hear it from these early days. Whole families join in these disputes ; the children are taught to carry them on, and to ' cut their eye,' as they call it, at their father's enemy. This is a peculiar gesture of scorn and defiance that they have." Monday, 26th. To-day all the people from the country round came in troops and gathered outside the court-house, hearing there was a messenger from Missus Queen to raise the rate of wages ; so they had taken a holiday, and had come to hear how much more they were to get. The general impression pro- duced by this Commission is that Missus Queen thought her LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 317 black subjects were quite right in what they had done, and had sent out some messengers to punish the white people for having punished them. Tuesday, 27^. By 7 A.M. I was settled in the midst of my stream to sketch for nearly two hours. The black figures in the foreground, who lounged or dabbled at the edge of the water, were very much interested in knowing what I had drawn ; and several strange creatures came in the course of the day and walked straight into the room where I was sitting, to see what Missus had " draw'd off." They all pronounced it " fust-rate," which is their word of approval for everything. They are par- ticularly pleased at recognising the cocoa-nut. Then I had a visit from Mr. Douet, and went with him to his schools, and saw each of his classes. The master does not seem so conceited as they generally do, and said he was "of a weak nature." The children a much duller set than in the Kingston schools. I could not help thinking what a horrible burden it would be to spend two hours each day amongst them, and that missionaries must either be men of the most exalted faith and piety, or have the most extraordinary tastes to choose such a vocation. After I came back, Mr. Wilson the botanist, who lives on a hill two miles above this, came to see me, and brought me some fibres, and told me the names of some ferns we have collected. He takes a very different view of our black brothers from the two naturalists I liked so much at Spanish Town, and gave terrible accounts of their lying, their ingratitude, and their stupidity. He has no land, is not a magistrate, so that he does not come in contact with them in any unpleasant way, having no bones of contention with them, except that they will steal the plants he puts aside to give them, because they will not pay a penny for the basket in which they are. He has been obliged to give up his own nice vegetable garden, because it was such a vexation to him to have everything stolen. At the time of the rebellion it was said he could have nothing to fear, because he had never been brought into any unpleasant relationship with any of the people. He was, however, told that a party had marched from 3 i8 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Bath to kill him and plunder his house, but they fortunately turned back, the leader being so drunk that he fell into a ditch. He was told afterwards that one who joined this party was a man whom he had nursed through a long illness, and fed day by day to keep him alive. He spoke of the mistake it was to suppose that the people were driven to this rebellion by poverty. He found them so independent that it was most difficult to get any little job of work done even if you offered to pay very highly. Later, I had a visit from Mr. Harvey and another Quaker, who have come out to investigate the state of things, but, in fact, to espouse the negro cause. It was most curious to hear their ver- sion of things. The negroes flock round them, and tell them all their grievances, which they believe as Gospel, and will not hear a word on the other side. They believe that the planters are con- stantly in the habit of keeping back the wages from the people that they have fairly earned ; but the fact we hear is, they are paid exactly according to the number of hours they work (the book-makers are very often black themselves). The people never seem to understand that if they give up work and go home in two hours instead of working the proper time, that they are not to expect a day's wages. The Quakers say they wished Russell had seen a village that they had been to, near Stony Gut, where the desolation was fearful, even cocoa-nut trees cut down ; and that the sight of poor widows and orphans haunting the sites of their former happy dwellings was most pathetic. It happens that Russell has seen this place, and describes an utterly different scene. These men would not hear a word Mr. Wilson said, he told me, but immediately changed the subject when they found he had different views. I cannot wonder at the whites here being angry at the philanthropists coming from England and visiting every place, encouraging the discontented idle people to tell them what lies they like, and listening with open mouths and glistening eyes to the most improbable stories. . . . Now the Commissioners begin to see daylight, and are unanimously of opinion that they will have finished their witnesses by the 25th of March; then they LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 319 will want a fortnight for drawing up their report. We therefore hope to start homewards on the gth of April. We shall be due on the z8th of April ! Writing the dates seems to make it very near at hand, and the thought that next month we expect to be at home, and especially the thought that I shall write you only one more letter after this one ! I can hardly believe it, for I seem only just to have come to the conclusion that I really am in the tropics in the flesh. Now that the day is fixed for going, my thoughts seem to fly towards it, and I feel less absorbed with this place, and to live more in the delight of beholding you again. On Saturday Colonel N. was examined, and gave very great satisfaction to the Commissioners. He was most clear in all his statements, and left upon them all a remarkably favourable im- pression. I have always greatly liked the look of him. Poor Colonel Hobbs is to be examined on Wednesday ; he is in the most nervous state, they say. How surprised the religious public in England would be, who looked upon Gordon as a murdered saint and upon Hobbs as a monster of cruelty, if they heard what we do about the two men. Hobbs is weak, no doubt, but most amiable, teaches in Sunday schools, paints windows in churches, and is considered by all as a religious man. It is difficult to make out what Gordon was, but there can be little doubt that he was very mischievous, discontented, and anything but honourable. I am thankful to say the English officers, both military and naval, are coming out much better than Russell expected. It was only the black troops and the Maroons who could be accused of any- thing like atrocities. It is true that there was no sufficient evidence against Gordon to justify his being hanged ; but there is no doubt that he had been long preparing the way for the outbreak, and stirring up the people to rebellion, if not to murder. The provost-marshal, it is true, acted in the wildest and most off-hand manner. I wish you could have seen two humming-birds I have been watching : I could not see their colours, they looked quite black ; but their movements are so strangely delicate. They have been 320 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY chasing one another, and playing in the most fantastic manner round the patodia tree ; darting about, and then poising for long in the air against the sky : the movement of their wings seemed to make a veil round them. A good, brown woman we met in our walk before breakfast said, " I have found a humming-bird's nest for you, Mrs. Gurney," and she sent the little thing in after breakfast. It is about large enough to put two thimbles in; very neatly made, encrusted with bassi-relievi of light green lichen, and lined inside with the silk cotton fibre. The fibre is too delicate and fragile to be made use of for anything else ; the wood of that magnificent tree is so pithy that it cannot be used. So I am happy to say that splendid tree is quite useless, as utilitarians would define use ; but its good purpose is beauty and majesty, and the supplying a silken lining for humming-birds' nests. The people who live here do look so astonished when I speak of liking this place. The only idea that they have seems to be of contempt for Jamaica and its people, white, brown, and black. I was asked by Mrs. H. if I did not find it dreadfully dull to be here ; and when I ventured in a very modified way to observe that I thought the country rather pretty, she said she believed it was considered so in the hills, but what could any one admire about Spanish Town ? I mildly insinuated that some of the trees were not ugly, and that the cocoa-nut palm pleased me ; to which she responded, "Ah, well, perhaps they are foreign looking" On Tuesday the 6th I had promised to go and spend the day with Mrs. Campbell and to remain the night. She is the wife of Dr. Campbell, brother of the Rector of Kingston, and daughter of the Bishop of Jamaica. In the train I was in a carriage alone and gazed at the visionary mountains. The trees had recovered the contrast of Bath, and I said over and over to myself I cannot be mistaken ; all these things are more lovely than words can describe, and enough to rejoice any heart that is not frozen against beauty. Mrs. C.'s carriage met me and brought me to the cool house under the genapp trees. The front door, which is always open, as all windows and doors are here, opens into a LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 321 corridor or vestibule which is always furnished with seats and tables, and then arched doorways open into the sitting-room, dining-room, and boudoir, all communicating, with stained wooden floors and a few rugs, plenty of cane rocking-chairs and a few tables, and that is all the furniture. A little vestibule, answering to the one you enter by, at the back of the house has steps into the garden yard, which is more like a covered balcony, and there the breakfast was laid on the whitest tablecloth. This woman's hospitality is so different from Mrs. O.'s, which seemed only to come out of a kind of easy good-nature combined with riches, having a good house and good servants, and being pleased to make use of them for company. Mrs. C.'s hospitality comes out of a tender, loving nature that needs to be providing with her own hands for friends. Well, the doctor came in to breakfast at about 9.30, and afterwards Mrs. C. and I sat in the garden in the shade, and I began a sketch of the trunk of a tree with the parasites ; but I talked too much to do any good, and the sun was always finding us out and peeping through holes in the foliage, and then we had to change our seats. She told me a number of interesting stories. She seems to me to take a very just view of things, not joining the party either against or for the blacks or whites, thinking there had been too much of a panic, and that there had been much ill-feeling on the part of the whites as well as fright, but not believing there had been much actual cruelty. At four o'clock Mrs. C. took me a most bewitching drive for three hours amongst the spurs of the hills. Oh that I had words to tell you what I saw ! The nature of the country was rather of the kind of that about Massa and Carrara, the hills all folding about each other, making valleys and denies in all directions a mixture of rock and stream ; but the character of the whole is completely different from anything one can see out of the tropics. We climbed turn after turn amongst these hills on a green rocky bank up above the stream. Peeping out of deep foliage was a little white cottage where the Campbells had lived for a time, and enjoyed intensely being set down in the midst of the 322 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY hills and the people, though the place was so dilapidated that the first day they were there the girl who brought them in some dinner fell through the floor, dinner and all. We went up to Gordon Town, and then we got out and walked and saw the sunset tints come out upon all that was so glorious before, adding a new glory to the old one, till I was incapable of taking in any more in the flesh. We came down after the sun was set, and the stars soon began to come out, and the sky remained a quiver- ing lemon light not colour. At dinner we had the Rector and his wife ; they are not people of many words. The tone and atmosphere was completely un- worldly and so charitable and gentle. They are inclined to take the most hopeful view of the blacks, and they deeply deplore the tone of the white people about them, and think there have been many precipitate rash acts of revenge ; but as to believing in the Star account, they do not for a moment, or imagine that England has disgraced herself in any way. I have often observed in my experience of life that people are judged more by their spirit than by their acts, though you would imagine it would be the contrary. The whole spirit of the people has been disregardful of the blacks, except for their own interests, and contemptuous, as if they were not human beings ; and the volunteers especially were not sorry to have the opportunity of killing them, and it was considered the thing to talk as if they were even more pleased to kill and more hard-hearted than they really felt, and so they have got the credit of being much more cruel than they really were. But the English officers have not been generally brutal ; and as to Mr. Eyre and others having pretended that the rebellion was more widely spread than they really believed it to be, for the sake of popularity, it is the vilest of calumnies. Do not believe for a moment that we have disgraced ourselves as a nation in the punishment of these poor creatures. I believe that any other nation would have been far more reckless, and their conduct would never have been called in question afterwards. I see more and more that people only understand your painting either black or white. If you put the faintest shade into your white- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 323 wash of a person, you are accused of making him all black ; and if you put any white into your description of a person whom those you speak to consider black, they say you think him all white. No one has time or eyes for gradations. Bear in mind that the counsel sent out by the Jamaica Committee are hanging out a flag and attracting as much as they can all the stories of cruelty and over-severity ; and, on the other side, Russell says they have the most inefficient man imaginable. The case of the governor has not been got up in the least, as it might have been. Sunday, March \oth. Oh the days do go too quickly ! Only one month more in the land of sunshine and beauty and abund- ance. It is delightful to see that the people cannot be in any- thing like what we call poverty here. The smallest amount of work brings abundance and luxury. Clothes are luxuries here, not necessaries. Fire is not wanted even to cook, for the people can live on fruits, and they do not want beds. They will not sleep in them, even when they are servants and provided with them ; they prefer lying on the ground with their arm for a pillow. And knives and forks are a weariness to their flesh ; they say everything is so much sweeter eaten with the fingers. On Monday I went early to the pretty river, and drew a few strokes there, the bathers and the washers all congregating round me and talking and laughing very engagingly. They told me about the flowers that come out in summer, saying those would be pretty to draw. There was a great yellow one, they said, so big they could only just put their arms round it. They all seem to know about trees and herbs, and what is good for medicine, and what for food, and what for poultices. I wished I could have photographed some of them with their calabashes, but I cannot draw them, say what you will. One ought to catch them quickly in their attitudes out of doors. Directly they are brought in, even if one can succeed in keeping them out of their Sunday finery, they lose their spirit and their beauty, and look stiff and ugly. Tuesday itf/i, from Gordon Town. This afternoon Mrs. B. and I again mounted on ponies, and rode nearly all the way to Woodford ; I had so set my heart on trying to sketch a bit of the 3 2 4 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY path, where bananas meet overhead and where daturas hang their long white bells. We went in a very independent fashion, accom- panied only by a little girl of ten, who carried a cloak and camp- stool, and paddled with her bare feet nimbly through the stream, and then leant against a tree-trunk watching us with her large dreamy eyes. She was just like a fawn or dryad belonging to the animal and vegetable world around her, only not joyous as those things ought to be, but bewildered and half-waking, as if it was going to dawn upon her that other creatures made like herself had souls, and that she ought not to be without one. So she stared and stared at us with a kind of unconscious wistfulness that touched me. Poor, poor child ! I gave her two small books with pictures in them to encourage her to learn to read a doubt- ful good to lure her on to, but still a necessary one in this age. After tea there was a hurdy-gurdy of a piano, so out of tune that the notes did not bear the smallest relationship to each other. The words sounded in my ears, " Where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile." I do not wonder that a lizard stood in the doorway and hissed us loudly. They say lizards are fond of music, and that is why they come ; but it was easy to see what their feelings were, by their expressive and indignant hiss. The Bishop spoke of the Revival as I have not heard any other clergyman speak of it. He said he hailed it as producing what he so felt the want of amongst these people, some sense of sin ; but it has degenerated into such frenzy, and is accompanied by such immorality, that all are obliged to do what they can to put a stop to it. Mr. I. had also hailed it with the greatest thank- fulness, but, he says, since the beginning it has seemed like the work of a destroying angel. Tuesday, zoth. How good you have been to write so much day by day! You cannot imagine the interest and delight of reading it all in this dreamland. I shall feel just as if I had been stolen away by the fairies when I go home. When the house- keeping books come in, I shall be crossing a stream by moonlight, and hearing the loud cicadas chirping, and feeling the scent of the daturas, and trying to disentangle the stars and fireflies through LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 325 the thickly woven branches. I fear I shall never be " all there " again. The great thing that lies like a load is the not having made something of one sketch that would in the smallest degree convey anything I feel or mean about the bewitching nature of the scenery. There is some witchcraft or ibeahism in it, I believe. The treasure is guarded by some key which has not been found by me. Sometimes, also, I feel a pang at not having improved more my opportunities with the blacks I do not mean in the way of doing them good, that is not my vocation, and I believe the less they talk and are talked to the better, by those who do not understand them, but in not getting more acquainted with their ways, in not having heard a black Baptist preach, &c. But I know I have been hedged in with difficulties, and I freely own that having only a certain amount of energy and feeling, that has been more called out by the scenery than anything else ; yet so am I made, and I cannot help it. The black brothers have been put out, or rather I have left them aside, as too tangled and in- tricate a web for me to meddle with, and I have thought that I might drink in this natural beauty as a blessed cup given me to drink of, rather than strain after nobler and deeper interests that I have not yet grown up into. St. Thomas's again! April \^th 1866. I could moralise at this place during this day of transference from one vessel to another, so like the one spent here more than two months ago, when the unknown future was as a blank before us, which now we look back upon all filled up with details. Some things are wanting that I thought lay concealed in the mist, and the petty circumstances of everyday life do in a slight degree interfere with the vision I looked^ forward to. But how much better on the whole has been the reality than the prevision. So I have found it through life. I hardly knew how to believe, as the boxes were being re- packed, that the time of our exile was over, without one accident or fear of any kind. The poor Commissioners some days worked from six in the morning till twelve at night, with only the intermission of their 326 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY meals. Oh the hurry-scurry of the A.D.C.'s and the horror ex- cited by the proposal of fresh paragraphs to be inserted ! Once or twice we have thought it impossible the Report could be finished in time. On Sunday night a fair copy of the Commis- sioners' Report was brought to Russell for final reading. On Monday morning, the Qth, at eight o'clock, the Report was signed. We had one more breakfast together in that great, long dining-room. We had a very cordial parting. When we reached the station there was a crowd of blackies to see us off. Some grand old women in their Sunday best, kissing their hands and waving their handkerchiefs, and wishing us a safe passage. We arrived at St. Thomas's harbour about four or five on Friday the 1 3th. I have now plenty of time to consider my impressions of Jamaica, and of the black and white question ; and as you will read the Judicial Commissioners' Report, I shall also record, and expect you to read, my laywoman's views on the matter, and give them their due weight accordingly. I feel very much as if I had heard of a tyrannical husband ill-treating and beating his wife cruelly, and had flown indignantly to take part with the poor weak woman ; but having arrived on the spot, and having looked in her face, and heard her story and his, I had found my warm sympathy gradually ebbing away, and the thought arising in my mind, " Well, but you were very aggravating, and unspeakably, inconceivably puzzling to manage ; he was, no doubt, wrong to be so hasty and revengeful, but there were extenuating circum- stances." The days on the Shannon have passed more slowly than any days in the course of my existence. I cannot take an interest in anything except in the question how many miles we make each day, and the answer is generally disappointing. Our ship has been absurdly " taken with a heavy swell " all the time. The wind has been changing about, but always resolves itself into a head-wind ; the sun has scarcely peeped out on us since we saw him set for the last time between the tropics on the isth. There has been no sitting on deck for twelve days, it has been so cold. LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 327 The great topic of conversation more and more becomes what time shall we arrive at Southampton. The captain looks impene- trable, but gives hope of Saturday afternoon. But now we are coming to our last day, Friday ; we are approaching the entrance of the Channel. Two days ago Eng- lish gulls came out to meet us ; to-day a land bird fluttered over our deck as if it would love to land, but thought better of it and withdrew. Many ships have been seen lingering about in the east wind. A genuine English fog has reached out to us ; for an hour last night it was so thick we had almost to stop and then to go gingerly afterwards, ringing a bell to keep vessels from being run down by us. The sea has become very smooth ; 8.30, I have been on deck to see the blessed sight, the first sight of land a lighthouse on the Stilly Islands; 12 at night, we pass the Lizard. Saturday Morning. It is misty, but a perfectly calm day. We are going fast, and shall reach our goal in three or four hours, thank God ! When the curtain, which has been dropped for six weeks between us and any tidings, is raised what will be our prospect ? JOURNAL LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A JOURNEY TO SICILY, 1889. To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. MARSEILLES, March 27. No, I hope no pity was wasted on us. When we left our moving " tent," we agreed we could have gone on two more days and nights. It is always the unexpected, for our English journey was warm and sunny, and our dawn, so counted on this morning, was only grey visible ; and the howling storm, by degrees, after eight, becoming sunny, with a sweeping mistral shaking the few blossoms to be seen to the blast, and turning the men's blouses over their heads. I forgot what a time it took to cincture Paris, 328 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and how forlorn all the stations and great deserted places looked just as it was dusking at 6.30. At the last station electric lights burst out, and delighted E., who said, " This makes me believe in Paris." Electric light is pure wisdom, I think, and now it does not strike me as cold and loveless, only as separated intellect, ready to be married to its complementary love. Then we plunged with screams into darkness. I gladly fled from my couch at four, to sit in a nice little opposite seat, and awaited the sun in vain. And then there was great Lyons, and that broad, mysterious, light-reflecting Rhone to cross. At worst, the south begins to show itself by degrees, though the trees are as bare as ours, ex- cept here and there an exceptional and rash little pioneer. It is interesting to see the first signs of the olive tribe, putting in the thin end of the wedge, when we know how grandly and hoarily they root themselves in the soil about Ariccia and the more southern parts. Then the proportions of the cottages have such a rhythm of their own. Those long perpendicular lines, and the but slightly sloping and richly corrugated tile roofs, and the stray little windows at unexpected spots, and the often outside stairs. They make everyday life look so much more idyllic, even without the pergolas and dancing shadows. I had forgotten such arrays of cypresses were here. How their feathery plumes did sway and bow in the baffling wind ! March 28. We have had such a comfortable night, and bise has much subdued ; and we have had croissons and coffee, and stood on the balcony and compared notes about the charm of everything " furrin," and already I find myself less lumpishly a " winter's slave." I would give anything to steal the dear little femme-de- chambre, with her soft, sensible black eyes and spotless cap, for Orme Square. We look out at whitish sky, towards the hill crowned with the Madonna Church. The great lime trees have not yet put forth a leaf. A crowd of men vociferate and shake hands with a lad, evidently going to push his fortunes in a distant LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 329 land. E. has made herself into a parcel, and abides immovably till we are summoned. I thought the lessons to-day perfect. That Deut. xxx., " The Lord thy God is thy Life, and the length of thy days," for the old and the young ; and the verses about the nighness or the Word, so blessed when one has not wings to ascend, or diving power for descent. This, with St. Luke iii., still more precious. Now we are in the train. I should like always to leave off on the verge of some denouement, like the lady of the Arabian Nights. CASA CORAGGIO, BORDIGHERA, March 29. To continue. Only two or three miles from Marseilles we perceived the strides the spring had made towards advancing summer. The willow trees, of which there are many, quite, quite green, of the ''pur mo nati" brightness ; the alder trees also, and several others and the sun smote us with power as we emerged from the first tunnel. Our window towards the sea, wide open ; the summer look and feeling everywhere. The olives larger, the cypresses taller, the poppies glowing like flames among the tender green springing corn, under the over-smoking olives, reminding us so much of Palestine. Every reminder from the long experi- ence of age gives a deeper value to each beautiful thing that we see, and often to an unbeautiful thing too. It does not occur to us in youth that this will be one of the compensations of age. And we look on from this, and fancy " the larger other eyes " than ours, to which our blessed invisible ones have attained, and how much they can read which we have not grown up to. Oh the pretty grey and yellow rock, tufted and fringed, and here and there mantled with the evergreens we love, the glossy myrtle, the tall white heath, and the yellow spurge in profusion, under twisting rich pinaster stems ! Our first palm greeted us at 12.30, just before Toulon. This is the station for Hyeres, where I always wish to stop, but will just falls short of accom- plishing power. Now come the grey-green aloe spears, hedging along sienna-coloured banks, against the bluest blue sea. The 330 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY billowy-crested Esterelles are in sight. Clumps of wall-flowers whiff their scent to us as we pass ; we see lavender-grey star anemones, and beans in flower in stripes, across the olive groves. I watch a fat priest, in a loose dressing-gowny vestment, walking up and down in the sun, with his breviary in his hands crossed behind him. Now I hail the caroba trees. We approach Cannes at 3.30 ; and here it seems that Flora holds her court. What crowding mimosas, sulphur daisies, eucalyptus with its pretty blossoms, climbing roses just breaking from bud to flower, tall heliotropes covered with blossoms. Gardens cultivated and adorned only too lavishly, up to the very windows of the carriages. Sweets too concentrated; and white and pink parasols sway about amongst them, and hints of Vanity Fair that seem a little to affect and hinder the glory of the flower raiments. There is Antibes and its fortress and the avenue road. By degrees, and or ever we were aware, the evening mystery submerged the gorgeous day tints. Silvery hues gathered on sky and water, with long opal interweavings across the sea. It was after Monaco that the evening ravished us, and that less cultivated parts and lonely little coves spread snares for our en- raptured souls. And lo, we were at Ventimiglia before we took note of the time, and its old town, climbing the hill, looked dark and strange. And up above, with a few attendant cloud mant- lings on the clear sky, beamed out the one great lustrous planet. It seemed to have gathered into itself the very soul of all the day's beauty, and so it did, for it was the love star, Venus. A carriage with two white steeds bore us swiftly to Bordighera. In half-an-hour we were at the door, and Mrs. MacDonald stood bidding us heartiest welcomes. Do you remember the room hung round with Genoese scarves, and a semi-grand piano, and a frieze of photographs of Turner's landscape ? a delightful fire burning on the hearth. A small table spread for our evening meal. And soon the dear patriarch, now looking so venerable, came in with outstretched arms and added his welcome to hers ; and heaped on olive clumps, and knelt and blew up the flames, and soon let himself out to us, after his own beautiful fashion, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 331 making inquiry after you and others. And then he went on to Lazarus, and to the over-troubling of the Lord's heart, when He found that even Mary could not trust His Father and hers about calling Lazarus home, but that she, as well as the rest, made ado, as though an evil thing had happened. We had about an hour and a half of his unchecked talk. And at 10.30 we were led to our lovely chambers. A fire burning bright, quaint things and pretty about, with the certain roughness needed to belong to a certain natural growth, in a fairy olive wood. A heliotrope, eleven or twelve feet high in full bloom, is thrusting itself into my window, and after our morning psalms we walked up and down, and sunned and gazed, and scented and wondered, and gave thanks, and I began my writing. This afternoon there is to be a children's party. We shall go into it at four. Oh if I could but scatter some of these giant violets on you ! All bids fair to be an abundant feast for the two old pilgrims. April 6. It is even interesting to hear of your weather, and to compare it. Your account of the way April came dressed was so pretty and poetical, " swaying between promise and uncertainty." True, I have no longing for an English April, as the poets have ; but I own, perhaps, these hues may be too positive and unchanging, and the coyness and mysteries of light and of hiding and seeking may be missed in this kind of midday blaze. Well, every scene and clime should have its song, and you absorb that of our sea- girt island ; and I love to think of you bareheaded " in the bath of scented freshness." This morning E. and I have had our first dispute, and it was all along of those two "Costanzas" one a grandmother and the other a daughter of Manfredi. I stuck to the note in my Dante ; she to her history of the Normans in Sicily. I had to knock under as usual ; for out of that note's own lips does it stultify itself. There is no satisfaction in history ; its facts and people are so slippery. Whereas the principles in " Moral Ideals " one 332 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY can clench as one's immovable antenatal affinities or repudiate as eternal foes. Do you know, the flies are very trying, bobbing about and returning to the charge. Only think of the beauty of an old workhouse woman's mind, of whom I have just been reading, who had only one hand to keep them off with, and saying, " Yes, they keeps coming back, the forgiving little things ! " HOTEL VITTORIA, PISA, April 9. 11.30 A.M. by the opposite clock-tower that strikes twice all night pertinaciously. The muddier than ever, but full and swift Arno, passing on. How unchanged dear staid old Pisa remains, even since the days of my youth. The flattish corrugated red- tiled roofs ; the time-worn houses, though with some new painted persiennes to their windows ; the many peasants with long carts filled with sacks ; the sleepy air of pedestrians, and paucity of foreigners, make it like one who " gangs his ain gait," let time and the hour run on as they may. E. feels as I do, that Pisa is a place just fitted for the attempati, and that, as at present advised, we would (ideally) end our days here. April 10. It is the most strangely inconsistent thing of these dolcefar niente people to stand about, loudly talking in groups at 1.30 in the dead of the night, as these Pisans do. They were only quiet between 2 and 5. It became a lovely evening yesterday; the clouds whirling off and thinning, and the transparent blue green emerging ; the troubled muddy river quieting and reflecting lights and shades ; the clumsy and picturesque red-grey kind of fortress church to the west, in mass against the light amber horizon. And to the east, the tallest of rainbows sprang up into the dome of heaven, and opaline tints everywhere came out under its magic sway. The people came out and strolled, with great green and red furled umbrellas under their arms, their rich brown cloaks or coats, fur collared and cuffed, hung loose on their shoulders ; and women also stood in groups, and all seems coming to life again, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 333 after the storm. Dear old Pisa, how much I like you and your muddy stream. It will soon be in the sea and lose its mud, it is nice for old people to think. Well, we finished our day with beautiful readings, and rounded it with a very good night ; and this morning, after a breakfast in the sunned window and our usual morning readings, I felt quite like an uncaged bird, and that I might hie me to the green sward, where grow those wonder flowers ! The wind was so gusty, my pride was quelled, and we had to subside into a coupe, which whisked us to the precincts. More lovely than ever was that first entering into the transept confusion of arches, and the delicate violet hue of the colouring of Duomo. The same kind of strong, serious-faced peasant men, as when here with you, were gathering and taking up the seats in the nave for La Prediga. We furtively outskirted, and then sat opposite the pulpit, having watched the archbishop, with a flunky on one side holding a green silk umbrella, and on the other another holding a long wand with the tiniest cross finish- ing it off, and many canoni following with vacantest faces. He made the sign of blessing, with very fine finished courtesy : then came the preacher. Oh such a contrast to our Franciscan, Agostino di Montefeltro a very caricature of a priest ! He stood surveying his audience in silence. . . . Then came the torrent of words and action that these southerners seem to have so usually at command. But oh it was very dreadful ! all about Satana and Protestantism. The triumph of evil over good might have been his text, finishing up each division quite conclusively with the neatest iron bars and locks. Those poor, dear peasants, attentive and grave, as under Agostino, but where was the sacred fire or one helping word for their needs? The stones grew colder under my feet. We did not wait for the third division, but came away unblest. And then the cold wind chased me from even looking into the Campo Santo. And we " couped " to our dear tent on the Arno, to which we are saying adieu. And traps are being gathered and tethered, and we give thanks for our happy sojourn here ; and after a late 334 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY luncheon we turn our faces south again, and hope by midnight to be installed in the Eternal City. The privilege of stepping on from holy place to holy place seems to me greater, deeper, fuller than ever. HOTEL ROYALE, ROMA, April n. ... We crossed the Tiber twice, I think, and saw the hundred lights of the city beyond, and or ever we were aware, though after long expectation we were in the sparkle of the station electric lights. Oh how different from my entrances of yore ! When our carriage was left waiting outside a huge gateway, and a few sleepy carabinieri came forward to poke into provisions we might be smuggling into the city; yet amiably willing they were to receive a little friendly bribe not to keep us waiting too long. And how dim and strange and silent that great Piazza del Popolo used to look, with scarce a sound but that of the dripping fountains. Now we seemed at once in the very heart of the city. Only one little touch gave a distinc- tive sensation to our entree. No porter or official opened the carriage door; but an old facchino, who might have been Tito's father, flung open the door and said, with a voice and air utterly beyond description, so full was it of meaning, of totality, of finality, as though nothing more of joy or sorrow could in this attainment ever be looked for, " ROMA ! " E. read it as I did, and found it a full volume. Turning out of the station, we are at once amongst the grandiose buildings and public gardens, looking like fairyland, with such a tall, Undine-sprite of a silver veil fountain upspringing, illumined by concealed electric light This hotel is not far off an enor- mous Parisian kind of place. E. has been to see a friend, whose brother has become a Roman Catholic and a Pope's chamberlain, and whose mother is very ill ; whom an old Irishman of ninety, called promiscuously "the Archbishop of Ephesus," visits tenderly every day, un vero santo, it seems. He has never been to Ephesus, or is ever, I suppose, going; that is why I say "promiscuously." LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 335 And now a coupe* is beckoned, and we go to St. dementi St. Peter's, and the Colosseum. IN THE TRAIN, April 12. I don't think even the Greek sculptured hills can be lovelier in outline than the Sabines, from about two miles from Rome. Now the more distant line is covered with snow. A perfectly adorable young Italian lady is opposite to me. Her lover or her husband put her into the carriage, and they had an absorb- ing whispered conversation ; it is in some crisis of their lives. I never saw such language-filled eyes as hers deep, dark, shaded with heaviest lids and exquisite brows. He was plead- ing with her, and arguing and persuading, and she looked at him with a limitless passion of tenderness ; it was a mother's pitying ruth, but with her lips she said, " Mai, mai, mai, impossible." The next words I heard were, " Pensi solo com' io era felice iera, ed ora ! " with such infinite sadness. When the carriage was shut, and he took her hands, she said, "Speriamo," with a sigh of despair. He was not interesting looking, but earnest; not a "Tito," but not noble. I wish I could read the romance. I feel sure it is one where the woman is on the divine side. What shall I call her? She is pale olive, a straight nose, and a perfect mouth and chin, about twenty-six. She has taken off her hat, and bewitches me more, with a coil of dead black hair high on her Juno-like head. I have offered her eau-de-Cologne, and in other ways intimated that I was at her feet, ma si tiene chiusa, chiusa, enveloped in her melancholy smile. NAPLES, April 12. " La Pate"tica " (that was the name I decided on) left us at a quaint little town about an hour before we reached Naples. Two rather ordinary-looking young girls came to meet her, and they packed into a little calhhe and drove away. So there is the last of my story without an end. Suddenly to look out and see Vesuvius seemed quite a wonder. The mountain rises very impressively from the plain, 336 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY as we see him from this side. No clear sky; all grey gloom, with clouds and advancing night. On arriving, we were not torn to pieces by facchini, which I missed very much. Saddened and respectably inclined was the first aspect of the wild and joyous people. Anzoleto ! Anzoleto ! is your type improved away ? A great omnibus carried us for miles and miles, it seemed to us, and through strange enough narrow old streets ; the little ornamented nooks of open shops, so like the Eastern Bazaar. And here we were landed, after the poor horses had climbed over the tops of many a terrace of houses, in an enormous bar- rack of a place. We have a good view, it is true, over the roofs of houses, and look upon that indescribably poetic outline of Capri, and can see to our left the shoulders and head of Vesuvius, and last night we were fascinated by watching its flames glow up and then dwindle and die out in a moment. This morning it is thickly veiled with clouds. After morning reading we sallied forth alone and enjoyed splendid sunshine, but a great touch of March wind accompanies it. As yet we have seen no point of view to make us exclaim, " Vedi Napoli e poi morir." Oh such a beauty of two years old toddled before us ! Her father had crossed the road, and she dared not follow, but in- sisted on " Babbo's " return ; he lingered to tantalise ; she pre- tended to cry, with outstretched imploring arms. I begged her not to piangere, and would you believe it, she put her little hand in mine, let me lead her across, and then kissed my hand and crowed with laughter ! Fancy how elated and set up I feel. MESSINA, April 16. We are really here, at the farthest point of our pilgrimage ; and it does seem a long way from our start this day three weeks We have been on the chase of summer ever since, and fancied we had hold of the hem of her garment between Cannes and Bordighera; but she broke away and let us only have a peep again when we reached Naples. Then she departed in a thunder- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 337 storm, and on Monday morning we were too glad to get warm over a fine wood blaze, and I to heap on all the wraps in which I left England. Every outline was blotted out from our view, so that we left Naples without regret, hoping to get into another clime. What an unspeakably lovely journey it must be without hiding clouds ! And I must tell you that we agreed it was the most delightful train we had ever been in. It hardly made a bit of haste, and never screeched or shook, or showed the diabolic character you so hate. We might have been ambling along on a quiet donkey, among vineyards and olive woods and cornfields and sweet by-paths. The carriages seemed much lower than usual, and as we sat in the windows we seemed in the very midst of the country, lingering and strolling to see as much as we wanted. Towards sunset the rain subsided, and we wound up the bleak Apennines into such wild, desolate uplands, with a few flocks of goats and shaggy-looking Calabrian peasants, who might have been brigands a few years ago. At Posenza we were just in the midst of Italy, between its east and west coasts, I mean, in the Basilicata, and then ran down to the sole of its boot at eleven at night, and saw again the tremolar della marina in the moonlight, and many weird and bewitching scenes intermingling with more or less of dreamland. At five we were well awake, and able to enjoy warmer air and smiling, awakening villages, and little troops of wild flowers, gleaming and glistening. At last we turned the very tip of the dear land's toe, and saw the Sicilian mountains faintly through the clouds, and the snows of Etna shining out above them. The sea looked so very gambolful at Reggio we half feared we should have to get to the little steamer in a boat. The waves were Atlantic colour; they did frascarsi in brilliant white foam. The steamer so reminded us of our Greek steamer experiences : so dirty, and filled with such odds and ends of self-neglectful humanity. It was very beautiful, but not a colour anywhere but in the water. " Nebbia, nebbia," everywhere, as all remarked. Etna quite hidden ; only Aspromonte (where the Italian ball was put into dear Garibaldi's foot) behind us, showing its snows. 338 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY There lay Messina before us. As we approached, the line of grandiose houses looked in the sea, they were so little above the quay ; perhaps a little like Genoa from the sea, only, of course, much smaller ; something a little Eastern and uncommon about its air. We rounded the point of its harbour, and then saw why it had been called " Sickle" (Zankle) ; that was just the outline of a bit of its coast. On landing the old facchini were at their old work, seeking to tear us to pieces for prey. At such moments one is glad of one's stern " nurse " (courier). This hotel is more like an Alexandrian one than an Italian. We look over the har- bour to the Aspromonte hills. Such a busy scene, steamers and shipping, and in the foreground a market with magnificent oxen, larger than the grey, of a rich, lustrous, mahogany colour. Along the edge of the quay hundreds and thousands of barrels ever shipping off; and guess what they contain? Lemons cut in pieces, and preserved in salt water so very odd ; I cannot think who or what wants them. At three our nurse took us out in a handsome carriage. First, we stopped at the cathedral, at a side entrance in black and white layers, with ornamented Gothic windows something like little Pisan Spina, grown bigger and more careless and unpro- portionable. Blind men on the steps asking alms, as Dante remarked them in Purgatorio. Inside all very elaborate ; thorough congruity of bad-ish style, but picturesqueness, and all so busy. Priests at so many altars, and groups and strollers. Old men in great cloaks, sitting or kneeling about, and wreaths of little children running about, some hand in hand, curiously peeping ; sweet bursts of organ. I never saw anything quite like it. Some seemed settling themselves to sleep for the day ; all perfectly at home there : no concentration of worship round one altar. Ballroom little glass chandeliers with candles unlighted, I suppose waiting for Easter Dawn, from almost top to bottom of one of the transepts. And this reminds me of the enormously high catafalque made for Conrad, half-brother of our Manfred, with its naming candles or torches so high that the very lofty wooden roof caught fire, and the cathedral of those days was LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 339 much injured, but Manfred restored it. Then the earthquake almost entirely destroyed it in 1700; so no need to wonder at all the bad flying-garmented ornaments. But the facade you would like, of about 1450, by Mazollo a new name to me. The carvings so very naif. Vines with children like monkeys climbing them, and twisting about them, seizing the bunches of grapes or basketing them ; others engaged in all the little busi- nesses of common life rather Giottesque. This west entrance makes one side of an attractive piazza, with a large, elaborate marble fountain in the midst. What I most admire, I think, about the place are the great tall arches that open from time to time from the main street (Garibaldi) to the sea, and from it and its craft, with aerial Calabrian mountains, across the straits. Then we drove on and up little steep streets to the Cappucini, then the Villa Guelfonia. It reminded me of the battlemented entrance and gateway of San Miniato. Within we found our- selves in the quaintest, ruggedest old garden, all terraces and mounds made out of ruins and bastions, crowded with neglected rampant flowers and shrubs, rampaging at their own wild will. It was Costanza's castle, the good daughter of Manfred, whose prayers he wished for ; see what he says about " la speranza ha fior del verde" (Purg. iii.). She held a court here for a time. She was married to the Arragon prince, " 1'onor di Cicilia e d'Arragona," and began the Arragonese rule of Sicily. It is quite unique, the great tower of very old masonry ; and when we climbed the little terraced paths, bordered with lavender and roses and geraniums, and great star bunches of hyacinths and myrtles and flame flowers, what a view we had of the town below, and strait and mountains opposite, and wide encircling sea ; and then, turning our back on the sea, rugged height after height of Sicilian mountains, and narrow ravines and rocks, crowned with perching village or castle. And withal it gave one a kind of grasp of the people in Dante's mind ; and of that beautiful passage he puts into poor Manfred's lips about the width of the embrace of the Infinite Goodness ; and the defiant little censure of the Pastor di 340 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Cosenza, who could not rightly read that page in God. Well, it all mixed up into a strange joy and admiration and worshipful sacrament to me, and it seemed necessary that we should be quenched by a tray of dust and rubbish from a balcony above our heads, when descending the narrow street ; then our barouche bore us away from attendant little gamins who brushed us with their fingers, like curry-combs. The next morning we escaped alone to the cathedral, to receive its full and unalloyed impression. Again half the town was there, and most bewitchingly interesting and picturesque it looked ; all so happy and at their ease was the prevalent impres- sion the people made ; almost all peasants or little shopkeepers. Two beautiful priests, mournful and ascetic looking amongst very ordinary ones. The little children were again enchanting ; a whole string of them came in with slates and books on their way to school, scampering through, and pulling up now and then for a little reverence. We sat about, and knelt a bit here and there; the organ pealed forth just for a word now and then. It seemed to our ignorance broken up services promiscuously ; but such a vision of a peculiar kind of conversazione, in a most striking setting. PALERMO, April 18. Now I must tell you that the journey here was just indescrib- able. Do you know the mesembryanthemums ? They carpet all the ground about the railway ; large cockades of primrose colour, white, pink, and, I must own, magenta also ; miles of orange and lemon groves ; rocky heights beyond like the Greek islands. Pilgrims hooded on their mules with green provender. Then soon, the astonishment of Etna. Its gradual, gradual long slopes, up to its tippeted-with-snow shoulders and head. First one side, then another, we could never look away till it grew dusk ; and then the stars and our Venus ; then the sparkling lights in the Sea of Palermo. Then, ah ! how shall I say it ? we, as in dreamland, ascended some creeper-decked stairs, and found and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 341 knew ourselves enchanted princesses coming into an inheritance of prepared wonders. Three little fairy bowers, opening on to a broad terrace balcony over a glassy sea, moon-illumined ; mysterious hills, absolute silence, tiny boats with lights gliding across with messages as from another world. Warm like June. PALERMO Good-Friday, April 19. I have no expectation of taking up my abode in Sicily. Two things are against it. I find the people so utterly different from the Italians. Rude, rough, and fiery to the last degree. Why, at Messina one of the quite respectable-looking officials at the railway station, because we lingered in the waiting-room after other passengers, raved and stormed at us, and literally flashed murder from his eye at our poor little harmless selves ; and the way they treat one another and their beasts would suit the avenging Furies. Reason two : It is a most windy island, always they tell us ; both cold and hot winds disport themselves, and have their innings without any interval. The people all say it is "variabile, variabilissimo." After that lovely June moonlight on arriving, that night for Jessica or Juliet, when the breath was all love, it changed to cold after sunrise, and we have had only an hour or two of real, sunshiny, quiet warmth since ! Yesterday we walked along this straight long street which traverses the length of the town, and is cut in the centre by another at right angles, dividing the town into four portions. The strange half citadel, half mosque, partly Norman church, cathedral is at the other end ; not quite quaint enough for all this mixture; not the least enrapturing, only from its novelty attractive in general effect. I dare say most interesting to wise architects in many of its details. Inside it is vast and bare looking, and wanting in any picture element ; and the people, not like the Messina ones, enjoying it, but much more conventional and fashionably dressed. We were immensely in- terested in the tombs (would you believe it ?) of those very two Constances ! One, the empress-wife of Henry VL, grandmother 342 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY of Manfred, a fine porphyry sarcophagus with mosaic canopy and pillars ; the other, Constance, wife of Aragon of Villa Rocca, in an old Roman sarcophagus, with a lion hunt sculptured on it. Also tombs of the] nice Rogers, the count, and the king. They are interesting characters, and they came, I am credibly informed, from that illustrious house of Hauteville, of which Tancred of the Crusade was one ; and Robert Guiscard, who is turning up every- where, was, I venture to think, father to Count Roger. We are most comfortable in our snug balcony rooms. Since the Constances are at rest, we have no other cause of quarrel. We are up early, and it is very exquisite ; but, as you would have the wit to perceive, that first enchanting experience could never be repeated. It was magic, or a spiritual wave. PALERMO, Easter Monday, April 22. It is, I fear, very unbecoming to the dignity and propriety of evening pilgrim days to be subject to such fits of in- ebriation ! To-day we have had a gorgeous waking dream of mys- terious splendour, to which that first moonlight enchantment might well have been the vestibule. I should like to have been led blindfold from one to the other. The gem of all shrines this Capella Palatina seems to me. It makes " il mio bel San Giovanni" Baptistery at Florence pale into some- thing thin and rather poor. It is a combination of St. Mark's, Venice, with the chastened beauty of San Miniato. Roger, the first King of Sicily, began to build it, 1132. It combines the ideals of the Saracenic, the Greek Byzantine, and the Norman. I believe these heretical combinations are the ro- mances that my soul loves. How to paint it I know not. When will telepathy be brought to practical perfection, that so I may breathe its vision into thy brain ? First, I must have Rembrandt's eyes lent to me to see its gloom and glory worthily. My breath was literally taken away when I stood within its portal. The arches, supported by columns o rich, LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 343 dark granite and marble, are lengthened Romanesque, with the slight point in the centre and the slight inclination in- wards towards the base. All above them flat, covered with glimmering, glooming, mysterious mosaic, and the roof of high, barn-like, dingy rafters. It is a nave with aisles, the choir and apse raised five steps above the nave. Small and yet unlimited ; measuring by common rule, it is only thirty- six yards long and fourteen wide. Its pulpit, a sort of am- bone, all inlaid marbles, and its pavement, of course, in the St. Mark's style. Rays of light come straggling through its small and rather scarce clerestory windows, across the gloom of deep recess and rounded transept. It seems built of gems by a magic wand, from a magic dream that saw it all as a unity at once, and gave it its soul like none other. I would fain describe some of its quaint imaginative decorations, its bands of peculiar interlacing devices, dividing the partly picturesque, partly conventional, symbolic representations of biblical subjects. We spent more than an hour and a half sitting there, but I must go again awake, and see what it looks like then. So strange to have lived in the world with this extraordinary poem, and not to have heard it thrilling through the air ! And then we wended close by a garden and dream cloisters, and Arab well, and torrents of roses, and nespoli, and iris, crimson-purple, and branches of literally weeping lemon trees, so down did their clusters of fruit drag them. And these clothed the ruins of a mosque converted into a church also by Roger, and the catacombs of his Court. The church in- tended by him, carried out probably by an Arabian architect, now quite bare and deserted. And one end of it opened upon a rocky ledge, which 800 years ago was lapped by the waves. The tower above held the bells, so the custode as- sured us, that tolled and clamoured, and roused the angry, cruel Sicilians when the overbearing French filled the measure of their iniquities, and provoked the ferocious, retaliating mas- sacre that followed in 1280, the Sicilian Vespers. 344 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY This little wild and most abundant garden, with its de- serted delicate cloisters, all aromatic under the sunbeams, reminded me of dreams of Seville, or of the Alhambra. You see, this Sicily has been touched by so many sceptres, Greek, Saracenic, Norman, Anjou, Spanish, and each has left its own mark, and the sky, and sea, and sun have mantled all to- gether into harmony. One thing Sicily lacks forest, even wood; for it has been inhabited for such centuries, that all the trees have been cut down for fuel. Last night we said we must watch the sunrise from the sea, opposite our windows. This came about at 5.10, after long gorgeous preparation, that seemed to flame crimson and then dusk and pale before the first spark came up ; so that we might have said, " Where is the promise of His coming ? " PALERMO, April 24. Yesterday we set out early on our expedition to Monreale. Along a dusty, white , ascending road, the sun terribly powerful. One side of the road is flanked with bosky heights, and gathering beneath them are small olives and abundant lemon trees. On the other, we look on the plain that runs in be- tween craggy mountains behind Palermo. Probably the sea ran up this valley. Formerly, also, there was a forest on these heights, where William II., a nice young man, brought up by an Englishman, while, in about 1180, hunting wild beasts, saw an apparition of the Virgin, who commanded him to build her a church on that very spot. We ascended gradually to this same height, and found ourselves, after a bit of straggling village, in the midst of a gay and very modern-looking piazza, laid out in neatest, brightest beds of cineraria, with a centre fountain, and, I must confess, gas lamps ! But the cathedral arched peristyle along one side, and the crags precipitously rising on the other, and the Eastern - looking houses were special enough, and when we gladly flew into the shade under that open portico, and noted its beautifully sculptured door- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 345 ways, and old bronze doors, by Bonino di Pisa, we were charmed. Many blind were there, but we were not invited to buy ugly baskets, as at Fiesole. We lingered on the threshold, and I hardly ventured to look within, lest my Capella Pala- tina should be blurred ; but lo ! it was yet a fresh vision of beauty, though in the same Byzantine and Norman strain ; and the sweetest organ was rolling out tenderest strains. Palatina was a gloom glory ; this was a dove glory. Larger, more aerial, the pillars all light marble; the marble panels of the walls, grey-white, with their mosaic borders ; the walls above entirely of mosaics on gold ground, like the Palatina, but more illumined. The large arch that separated, or rather out- lined the choir from the nave, had only a very low white lace-like marble screen across it. The space between that and the rich apse was large, and filled with choristers, on one side in blue, on the other in scarlet under white lace. The altar in front of the gorgeous apse was raised very high, and the spectacle of ascending and descending ministrants, and little acolytes with swinging censers, especially from the end of the nave where we stood, made a most beautiful picture. The mosaics, many of them, interested us immensely. I cannot quite tell you how they followed each other, but the nave was, on the whole, from Old Testament subjects, and much what a child might have drawn the conventional, struggling into the realistic, nearly a century before Cimabue's time. There was the funniest little Noah's Ark, at which hammering was going on most energetically ; there was a plank up to its door, along which a man struggled to push an antelope, while Noah's wife and sons and daughters from within were looking, their great faces filling up all the little windows. Further, the dove was returning, with the olive branch, while a monster below opened his cruel jaws in the hopes of snapping up the hope and peace it carried. Amongst the New Testament series we were much struck with the Transfiguration : the idea of the blending of the dead with the living through Christ; a cross-ray going from Moses to Peter on one side, through the body of Christ, and another from Elias to James, 346 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY and another to John, who crouches in the middle, under the Lord's feet. There were two of the disciples at Emmaus. The second represents the moment after the vanishing of the Lord ; the broken bread ; the two at the table and the empty space ; a gold window, against which the Divine Head had been. The action of their hands seems to say, " Did not our hearts burn within us ? " They are very fond of St. Paul here ; as you know, he came to Syracuse ; and all his life is represented very gro- tesquely, especially his being let down in a little basket from the wall, where there is no room for anything but his head. He is also baptized by Ananias, in a vessel like a basket, of about the same size. There is a very touching naivete in all these pictures, and certainly they tell their tale distinctly enough. There is a mosaic of William II. being crowned by Christ him- self. The custode kept clanking his keys, and intimating that the church ought to be shut. We had to leave it at last, and were invited to examine the cortile of the Benedictine monastery that was, and there was another dream that could only be sung by a Persian poet. Such a quadrangle of sculptured columns supporting Moorish arches of the most delicate workmanship and phantasy you can fancy. Two hundred and sixteen columns in pairs, and not one capital like another. At one angle there was an enclosing row of columns, making a little square, in which rose and dripped a dreamy fountain. The central ground was covered with aloes and mesembryanthemums. The massive yellow stone tower of the cathedral was seen rising over one side, with a background of rocky mountain. On one little capital, as if moulded in wax, was the king, partly holding up his church to the Virgin, who stretched a hand to receive it, and an angel's wing kept it from falling a most bewitching little com- position. Returning, we drove into an avenue of just greening mulberry trees, wide-spreading lemon groves on each side. An opening in the hedge of roses tempted us to turn into this grove, and there under nespoli and lemon-laden boughs we sat and had out our basket, and counted the wild flowers around us, and LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 347 wondered we could dream such dreams in our old age, till we remembered the prophecy. To the Lady MOUNT-TEMPLE. PALERMO, April 27. Yesterday was a day of revelation. To-day it seems opening in interpretation. We were called at 3.15. The sky still un- touched by dawn, but the small crescent moon stood just above the hills to the east, and mirrored a narrow path across the bay to our feet. We had to go along our prosaic way by omnibus and railroad as the sun rose, and at eight were at the little isolated station of Calatanmi. Here a strange little car awaited us with a merry young driver. Our road climbed and climbed a little mountain pass. The cold wind blew, and scuds of fleeting showers. The scant people we saw were mostly shepherds in sheepskins. In two hours we were at the village crowning a height, much like some in Palestine, piled up the face of the hill in flat lines, rock-colour, windowless, apparently doorless, of the fortress nature. In the little inn, beggar-thronged even upstairs, neither bread nor milk was to be had ; but we had our basket, refreshed ourselves, and went on again for about a mile, and once over the hill-tops was pointed out our goal, the temple of Segestae. Then we had again to descend into the valley and there leave the carriage, for the rest of the way must be done on foot. In a few minutes a stream eight or ten yards wide crept across our way ; no going farther without crossing that stream. Our bold, bright young vetturino came forward, and with some boys placed some stepping-stones, by dint of perseverance, across the little river ; there were already large rocky ones, but we could not have sprung from one to the other. Then he took my hand, and said, " Andiamo ! " with a virtu that inspired even me so much, that if he had thus bid me follow down the crater of Etna, I should have obeyed. He did the same for E. ; and after this we had two miles' climb and stumble through dried clay ruts and stony places, till we were among the flowery downs. 348 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY Could I but tell you of those delectable mountains ! Turning the shoulder of one, we beheld the wonderful vision. On a swelling height stood the Doric temple, its plain massive columns and entablature facing us, like a work of nature, so simple and majestic, " come se avesse (i secoli) in dispetto." Behind, it was protected by another ridge of rocky mountains. The approach to this temple never, never can you conceive. The path along and between shallow swelling downs, as thickly covered as pos- sibly Flora in her most wildly lavish moods can cover, with tall waving flowers and grass, soft, fluffy, rejoicing, thousand-tinted. But crowding most to the edge of the little ascending path, gor- geous flame-coloured marigolds, the via sacra's glory ; purple gladioli with them ; pink exquisite selaginella ; the large, tall yellow asphodel, the more delicate coral-lined one ; pink mallows ; tassel hyacinth, and countless nameless ones. Is it not, indeed, the land where Proserpine might forget her soul away among the flowers ? On amongst them we went, and mounted regal steps, and entered the sacred enclosure of those thirty-six magnificent unfluted columns ; no remains of inner walls, indeed they were never built ; the wind sweeping ever through and through the columns, no rubbish, no fallen stone, no pavement ; but an even, smooth surface of greenest turf, with a literal Eastern prayer- carpet spread at one of the entrance corners, of richest gold and purple diminutive flowers ! And through the columns as we paced, the near hill downs and valleys rolling, and beyond and beyond even to faintest aerial tints, mountains and sky ; all light, all width, all gladness of beauty ; no dwindling barriers ; all liberty for the most widely embracing human soul. Never in all my travels before, never at Athens, or Baalbec, or Thebes, did I see one fair perfect temple stand on one sepa- rated lonely mount And we had to cross a stream to behold it, and we were pilgrims ; and the temple had no sign of sect, no walls to shut in or out from the breathing of the Spirit as He listeth ; and the gay innocent flowers waved around it, and it was carpeted for adoration; no roof hindering the doming heavens. It was the mingling of the inward and the outward, that you LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 349 taught me in the streamlet at Broadlands. Is not the outward, indeed, the ever-united sacrament, the sign only existing by the inward spiritual grace ? To ELLEN MARY GURNEY. PALERMO, April 28. And now our last Sunday, our last day here has slowly come. Eleven days gone, that have deposited in our hearts treasures and charms unspeakable, and no striving after the treasures ; nice grey fallow days between the blossoming wonders that had to be gathered. To-day we turned into the gardens of the splendid Hotel des Palmes, where all subtropical trees and plants and flowers have been crowded in a kind of lavish cornucopia. The hotel all polished and exquisite ; the seats under palms fit for Sybarites ; the fashionables reclining about the place. We did feel thankful for being advised to choose this quieter, rougher, more primitive one with the terrace over the sea ; from the other there is no view, but along a fine, broad, clean street. This morning we realised our dream of the first moonlight evening, when we said, " We will breakfast on this terrace." An attached waiter, a true sympathetic Italian (not a Sicilian), carried our tray out for us, and put it on a little tin table inside a slight basket-work arbour, with its back to the sun, which position enabled us to sit in comfort to our boiled goat's milk and rolls and butter, and watch the slippery water, scarcely moving itself, curving along the wide expanse of bay ; the distant little townlets to our right like a string of pearls between pinky blue of moun- tains and opal blue of sea ; and the opposite horn terminating in the much nearer precipitous cliff of Monte Pellegrino, so sculptured and defined, with masts and shipping, and moving boats beneath it. One thing I have greatly neglected in my letters : to initiate you into the interesting episode of the Normans overcoming the Saracens here. I don't believe you are half acquainted with pleasant young Count Roger, youngest brother of wily Guiscard, and the count's son, King Roger, whose daughter Constance 350 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY married a son of F. Barbarossa, Henry VI. of Germany, and be- came grandmother of Manfred. Theirs were the palmy days of romantic architecture here, and the Palazzo Reale here, and Monreale, five miles in the hills, are full of memories of them. The dash back into pure classical temple building will be a strain. PALERMO, April 29. Once more I date my letter from Hotel Trinacria, Palermo. The ideal harbour for weary voyagers ! Never can we sojourn in such a spot again, unless the dell in Ante-Purgatorio, where the mixture of colours and scents made the incognito indistinto, is per- mitted us. We found ourselves regretting too much our last breakfast overlooking the sea, with its smooth glassiness in parts, and more sparkling sapphires where the morning breeze took it ; but as we gazed and sorrowed, a large English three-masted vessel, which has been lying in harbour for days, moved pressing on- wards, crowded with sail a sight one never sees in these steam- ing days, looking so stately and full of meaning as it glided eastwards, and it repeated again after its own fashion the watch- word given us at Segestee " Andiamo." GIRGENTI, SICILY, April 30. Another broad terrace balcony, prepared for the princesses ! On to which they stepped forth at ten o'clock last night, under their spangled wide canopy of deep distances : no fairy scene like the Palermo enchantment of moonlight ; but utter darkness and profound silence, and the sense of being high above the sea ; mountain air stealing about ; the distant baying of a dog ; the conviction of being utterly in the country, far from the haunts of living men, and very near the haunts and traces of generations that lived and strove here two or three thousand years ago. Some early settlers came to Rhodes ; the city grew in grandeur and luxury, and walls were ten miles round. And here tyran- nised that horrible Phalaris of the burning bull, whose artificer was first tried in it as a hasty joke of the tyrant, whom, I am happy to say, Dante saw in Inferno, Canto xxvii. Here attack- LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 351 ing Carthaginians were defeated and captured by hundreds, and were probably employed in the great architectural works here ; but after the war between Athens and Syracuse, the Carthaginians overran the island, and Hannibal captured this rich city. From this time Carthaginians and Romans were constantly squabbling over the unhappy island till it became finally the prey of Rome, was called Agrigentum, and sank into comparative insignificance. In 828 the Saracens grabbed it, till Count Roger, of happy memory, rescued it from their grasp. We conned this as we came along our lonely way from Palermo, between tall geranium hedges and waving scented acacia and millions of lemons. This morning we rushed to the view, looking towards the African sea three or four miles off, the intervening descent and plain wild and solitary looking. Three temples about a mile off, looking like cork models. To the right, almost out of sight, the present town of Girgenti, piled up the face of a hill. We went an earlyish walk to a height where stands a little church, St. Biagio, made out of a temple to Ceres and Proserpine ; the path leading up and down and round about rocks and valleys and fig trees with browning figs and brilliantly green almond trees and tangles of greenery. The air intensely hot. In the afternoon we had a carriage and went the round of the temples. We saw six of them, I think, in splendid situations, with back- grounds of mountain or sea ; these things are quite indescribable. You know what they were at Athens. These remind me of the Temple of Theseus there, only their material is not that mellow marble, but very rough and disintegrated. But the miracle of all is the decking with the profusion of flowers, the purple and gold, the rose-pink tall snapdragons, the little wild sweet-peas every- where. I cannot enumerate a thousandth part, and they say February was the time to see them. We filled our baskets, and made our way through thick carobas growing in bright green barley-fields, and came upon a sketching party and offered to carry their bundles back in the carriage ; whereupon an elderly artist became on the spot as intimate as if we had known each other for years. We have been prolonging dinner, comparing 352 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY notes. He is an ardent believer in Christ as the Head and in- spirer and finisher of every man. CATANIA, May 3. " Every place would have its song, If the heart were right." And so even Catania, in its dirty pretending inn, with dark grey sky, wind blowing and howling and carrying whole dust-bins on its wings for scattering at every moment. It began the day before yesterday, while we were having tea in the Temple of Juno. Per- haps it was an offence and a profanity to attempt it in the Pro-naos. The day before was the most perfect summer day, when everything lay sleeping and glowing in the sunshine, and we determined to come again, with fuller time, to absorb all the impressiveness of the scene. On Wednesday morning it was still hot and fair, notwithstanding an ominous sunset with a grey bat's wing across it. We drove early into the old town that climbs a steep hill, very curious to behold, and its in- habitants awfully savage looking and dirty ; yet many new fine palatial residences abutted on the squalor, and a splendidly engineered road wound up a certain height, from whence we climbed the narrow streets to the cathedral and other little antiquities a pillar here, an arch there, very unsatisfactory. But I won't Baedeker you about. In the Temple of Concord we read the opening canto of Inferno ; not to be appropriate, but to absorb us a little, and kindle imagination for the second and third outlooks. This has its cella complete, for it was turned into a Christian church for two or three centuries, and has arched perforations in this inner wall which sheltered us nicely ; but it was not carpeted with flowers like Segestae. That will ever stand alone with its own most special aureole of majesty. Then we moved on and farther up for Juno's more ruined shrine: the peristyle complete only along one side; no cella; LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 353 more wildness and beauty-decked fragments. There I opened on " Abt Vogler," and we read it there, and fancy how it solaced us in the thought of the passed-away temples and generations of worshippers. " Not one lost good," &c. At night the wind arose mightily : every persienne had been closed in expectation of it ; it swept round every point of the compass. Some called it Scirocco, some Levante, some Libaccio ! chi sa ? No terrace balcony, no stars. No morning joy of it at our eight-o'clock breakfast. This place on arrival looked grand and civilised for us Girgenti pilgrims. But we were soon disenchanted within the hotel. . . . Have you seen how we have traversed Sicily, and looked out upon Tirreno, loio, and Africano seas? The railway leads us about a good deal too, through its interior. Etna looked beautifully at us again last evening. The long, extraordinarily long and gradual slope to its summit is, I think, very majestical. Fancy seeing an omnibus with "Porto d'Empedocle" in large letters on it. Perhaps you don't know that he was a Girgenti man, and improved the conditions of his town. CATANIA, May 5. We are at this unsympathetic place again, you see, with all our Syracusan scenes intervening between my last letter from here and this. But I have the sensation of having heaps to tell you of surpassing interest. This is a pure delusion, I know, for these things cannot be told, or Murray would be the most interesting book in the world. The facts there recorded, when they are made to live by the scenes and signs of them that strike our living eyes, are intensely interesting ; but this actual contact is everything, to raise dead history from dry dust, at least to such of us as are not historians. I always thought Syracuse had a wonderful sound and prestige in it ; did not you ? And we did just know of its struggle with Athens, and that she was defeated there, and never recovered her defeat. But we only knew it as a kind of hazy school-booky chapter that had better not be alluded z 354 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY to, lest it should prove our crass ignorance. Well, after this, do not imagine I am going to tell you that this chapter of ancient history lives and glows before me. Oh no ! Only, on looking round at the fifteen miles that its five cities in one covered, and sitting on the time-worn steps of its oval rock-hewn theatre, and walking along its street of tombs, one does seem to get a touch from the past-away age of the twenty-fourth century ago, that stirs one with all kinds of questionings and wonderings. We felt it at Athens, and its thrill again ran through me at Syracuse. Our journey there was not as lovely as most of the other parts of Sicily have been, but the grey windy sky improved, and it was fair when the officials called out " Syracousa." We saw it jutting out into the sea, all but a long thin island. Ortigia was the ancient name of that part of the city, the earliest settlement, and the new town just covers that part no trees, no hills, flat and sandy and yellow. A primitive little bathing machine the omnibus of Casa Politi was. The boys and men clustered round our descent like savages. In the little omnibus a very pretentious smiling man, with tight gloves, spotted us for his prey ; said the Signer Politi was already engaged with a party, and that he was the very providential substitute. Such a funny little back entrance to the inn, then a widish Eastern-looking courtyard, two pepper trees, and two rugged outside stairs, over cavernous arches. At the top of one was Mme. Politi, who tried us in German, went on in French and Italian, and finally launched into very fair English. She pioneered us down the steps again, and through one of the cavernous descending arches into the old thick-walled founda- tions of the house, but newly whitewashed and painted, and, moreover, giving on to a little balcony just above the sea and a narrow intervening terrace. There was something very ravishing and unexpected about it ; brilliantly clean beds and brick tiles, with a few rugs about, and the large windows in the arch letting in sea-rippled reflections of light on walls and roof. She con- fided us to " Mr. Brisk," the guide, and a carriage with a strong pair of horses, and off we whisked along the white dusty road for about two miles : first, to the Roman amphitheatre ; its long grey LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 355 ellipse lying embedded, or rather set, in green turf, with the sea and promontory beyond, made a good picture. But here we despise anything so modern as 212 B.C., when the Romans got possession of the place, and we drove on to the Greek theatre, where more beautiful games were played and poems recited. I will just inform you that it was in 734 B.C. that a colony of Corinthians planted the infant that became the mighty Syracuse, and that it flourished independently for more than five hundred years, when Rome swallowed it up. The wild flowers do not wave about these ruins as about the Girgenti ones, and I will spare you further lately gathered information and remarks on classical times, and only tell you a little about the very extra- ordinary quarries here, which are quite unique, more like the American canons than anything else deep clefts and ravines, the sides absolutely as precipitous as walls, sometimes more than 100 or 150 feet high, and scooping over. In the space between these, tumbled rocks and banks diversify the ground, and almonds and lemons and loveliest plants deck them. These places are called Latomie, and were used as prisons, and the cities were built from the stones of these quarries. In one of them it is believed the 7000 unhappy Athenian captives were incarcerated. The one we explored the evening of our arrival, and just as lights and shades of evening added mystery to the scene, is called " II Paradise." It belongs to a gentleman who has turned it into the most luscious garden Persian poet ever conceived ; its tall enclosed precipices keep all cruel winds away; it is a lap wherein each plant may grow unchecked to its ideal beauty. Roses climb everywhere. Syringas were giving out their over-sweetness, and tall lemon and almond and fig trees. Large green sub-tropical leaves soften the outlines of fallen boulders of rock ; the winding, tangled paths and little terraces amongst these are bordered with spicy carnations, and long trails of ivy clothe some of the walls, hanging from the top and meeting the yellow and white climbing Banksia roses. The overpowering scents and the wild incessant songs of nightingales nearly took away our sober senses, and made us fancy we were in 356 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY a haschish or opium dream. Never have I heard nightingales sing like those ! Fancy the contrast to the groans and misery of enslaved prisoners before the mercifulness of Christ was known. This very Paradise one was, I think, close to the huge cavern with a strangely shaped entrance, that they call "the ear of Dionysius" a most uncanny cave, with an extraordinary echo. The custode who opens it, and speaks or whispers, is answered by a distinct, yet somewhat different voice, that seems to come from the dark recesses of the huge and winding cavern that dimly recedes from one's gaze. Of course, he bangs a great gate, and prolonged thunder reverberates answeringly. Mr. Brisk was most amusing, pointing with his gloved hand, and saying with fervour, " Regardez, regardez, mesdames ; quel point de vue ! mais c'est magnifique," and then, after a deep sigh, again, " magnifique ! " E. said she would give worlds to taste for five minutes his self-satisfaction, it was so utterly with- out misgiving. He had us back to the inn exactly as it struck seven ; as he had said, " C'est mon affaire cela, qu'on ne s'en inquiete pas." Saturday morning was fine and hot, but with the ever-buffeting wind, sand-laden. We had a long drive to see the heights of Epipoloe. The Athenians took this by storm, and hoped by a wonderful wall to circumvent the Syracusans. They, however, ran up a counter-wall and baffled them. We saw the fragments of these walls, and we saw wonderful corridors, rock-hewn, said to be barracks in the remote ages ; and we climbed about and became " summer's tannlings " and wind-tossed atoms ; and it was Mr. Brisk's affaire again, and a difficult one, to have us driven and jolted back again in time for dejeuner. A little rest and then another jolt, to see the tomb of Archimedes and Timoleon, and the much more modern, but far more interesting, first church of Sicily San Marziano. A well-lighted crypt it now is, in the form of a Greek cross. He is said to have been contemporary with the apostles, and to have received St. Paul when he spent his three days here. There is a rude altar, at which St. Paul is said to have ministered, and a pillar at which St. Marcian was LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 357 martyred. Are these things really true ? At any rate, it was the Mother Church of Sicily, and most venerable and quaint and interesting to behold. We had to rush away from it. All these places are so widely scattered. We did up our bundle, had some tea in the window, where we had seen the little crescent of the young May moon pencil itself in the sea the night before. Mr. Brisk would see us off, rushing frantically to thrust us into a wrong train, and then to extricate us. How it jolted and jarred us, and then went to sleep for half-an-hour at a time, but finally consigned us to the station of Catania. And here we rest till 9.30 to-morrow. TAORMINA, May 7. It was well that we left this crime de la crime to the last ! We thought the view over the amphitheatre and the coast, with the mighty sweep of Etna in the background, was not only the most magnificent view in Sicily, but the most magnificent in the world ! The enchanted princesses found the prepared vision almost more than they could attain to. It was beyond the moon- shine magic of the Palermo arrival, and the Armida witchery of the Latomia Paradise garden of Syracuse. Shall I say it was beyond the shrine for heaven-ascending incense of the Palatina, or the delicate intricacies of the cloisters of Monreale ? Beyond, because it contained more of heaven and earth and sea, so fashioned and combined by the Divine Artist as to be an ever- changing, all-embracing revelation of manifold beauty. It par- takes so much of infinity that one might come back and back to it for years and find it always inexhaustible. We had no rich tints, and hardly any breaking gleam of sun through the dove's- wing feathers of clouds ; one long ray over the shoulder of Etna as sunset approached. The head of Etna astonished us by appearing far above in the sky, with layers and banks of cloud below, and the outline curving in and out, far beneath, of the edge of the sea, a peacock-green with tiny white edge seen through the arches and between the chasms of the amphitheatre through which we wandered. How well I can fancy'the despair of the 358 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY artist of whom the custode told us. He had been for years in consumption, and came here too late. Each day when he took up his easel he said, " I see it was all wrong yesterday ; to-day I shall do something better." And so he began again and again each day, destroying the work of the day before, till one morning he was too ill to come out, and died. What an epitome of life : seeing the fair, unattainable ideal, and proving each day one's failure, till death comes to remove us from our unfinished picture ! What a wonderful thing it was to have built a city in this eagle's nest of a place in the cleft of a rock hundreds of feet above the sea, at whose edge the fishermen look to us like little flies, and their boats like floating olive leaves ! Our little inn is on a shelf, sheer above the sea, on the precipice edge. I never looked on such an expanse of sea, reaching half-way up the sky. If we had been able to get into the Timeo, we should have been turned partly towards Etna, and seen more than its shoulder, which we strain to catch behind the large grey convent that crowns another height to our right. But we said when we came into our rooms, " Oh, to spend a week over this sea, and in the midst of such a dome of sky ! " Since that moment almost, layer upon layer of cloud has come, now above, now below, curtaining away almost everything from the field of vision. And the first evening in the theatre, when the custode said, " II tempo fa dimoztrazione di scirocco, ma non e proprio scirocco," gave me a little cold again, so that I have not been'out since. If it may but lift for one more view it will be a boon, but if not, that first evening in and on the amphitheatre was well worth the expense and trouble and little drawbacks of the travel from Dover to this spot ; and it has been the sixth supreme picture prepared for us in Sicily. I don't the least wonder at the ladies we heard of settling here, especially if the Timeo is able to feed them properly, which the Bella Veduta, where we have had to locate ourselves, cannot do. There are in this long village street two or three very fine old houses ; whether to call them Venetian or Gothic, I don't know. One, rather of the LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY 359 Tower construction, has a courtyard like the Bargello at Flor- ence, only much smaller. An outside, time-worn staircase like that ; then an archway entrance to the second storey; the windows, two arches, separated by a tall, slender, marble column. Some peasants are living in it, and invited us in. Work- men were restoring one large room, with frescoed roof, but fresco evidently much later than the fourteenth-century palazzo itself. They said, " le due signore " had taken it, for either a church or a hospital. Should I not have loved to have bought it, and had it reverently restored? To-morrow we wend our way to Messina, and next day close our Sicilian chapter. I dare say, on leaving Proserpine's mystic isle, I shall not be tempted to write you such long descriptions, and it will be a little holiday for you. LA CAVA, Sunday, May 12. How delightful, at the end of a long journey, to find just such a resting-place as one longs for cool, quiet, with views of green hills from the windows, and, still more sweet, a letter in a dear handwriting, seeming to give a smile of welcome; at any rate, betokening that the place has been prepared for one by the thought of the one who has sent forth a messenger before one's face. It was quite a relief to hear of your truly summer days, and to trust that lilacs, and even laburnums, now are bursting forth around you. It seemed so wrong that we should have all summer beauties while you were kept in winter's clutch. I cannot bear to feel that Sicily and its enchantments are over ! Only fancy its witcheries when I tell you that we seem dropped into ordinary life, though in May, in the loveliest parts of Southern Italy. It had such a distinctive character of its own, and that took hold of us. Yet this is greener, and the people are sympathetic, much more so than the Trinacrians ; and the airs are softer. But we know even a more beautiful face does not drive that of the more beloved one away. Yet I will not say Sicily is more beloved than Italy. But in some sense it 360 LETTERS OF EMELIA RUSSELL GURNEY has a more engrossing and marked individuality, and one less entangled with memories. As George Herbert says " We say amiss this or that is, Thy Word is all if we could spell." Our journey from Taormina to Messina was all too short. And finally, at 3.30, we were once more in a Sicilian omnibus, and then had to step from the quay on to the little steamer with its prow towards Italy, and felt that magic was undoing by every paddle movement across those waters, and that the enchanted princesses were shimmering away, and the two old ladies in black were coming to life again. THE END Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON 6* Co. 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