Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind Part 24

It was deemed undesirable for Bessie to remain at Chichester during the sad week that followed the death of her father. She went to her elder sister, Mary, the beloved Mary of her youth, now the mother of a family and head of a large household.

She wrote with her own hand a short note to one of the sisters at the palace, which rea.s.sured them as to her condition.

MILTON HILL, _28th March 1870_.

MY DEAR SARAH--Thank you for all your letters. As you say, all the preparations must be painful, but I am very thankful to hear you and Nora are pretty well. You know without my telling you so, how very much you are in my thoughts. I hope to come back Tuesday or Wednesday, but Mary wants me to stay. Is it so, that we need not go till after Easter? I should like to know, because of what I may have to do about my own things. I think the appointment seems very good. As for me I am rather better to-day, having slept better two nights; but it is difficult to me as yet to do things, I have so little energy or interest in anything. I will write again about my coming. Mary is really pretty well I think, the last day or two have been much pleasanter. Love to you all from your loving sister BESSIE.

She returned to the palace but did not stay long, and spent the greater part of the two months of preparation for leaving Chichester with her sister, Mrs. Woods. She went, however, to her old home in April, and left it finally with her brother and two unmarried sisters on the 21st of April 1870.

Loving words greeted them on the day of their departure. "Wherever we are," wrote one of the sisters, "we shall all know that we are thinking of each other."

The house in Queen Anne Street was let at this time; two sisters went to St. Leonards, but Bessie, with her faithful maid, took the much shorter and easier journey to Slinfold Rectory, near Horsham, the home of her sister Lucy, Mrs. Sutton.

She was sad and in very feeble health. All the future seemed dark and uncertain; she could make no plans, she could not look forward. At such a time the tender and loving care of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton were very precious to her. Insensibly, almost unconsciously, she was helped by the numerous children around her. Living in their midst she learnt to know them intimately, and they cheered her and amused her. The little boys had quaint ways and odd sayings, and they made her forget herself and listen to them and wonder at them. The eldest girl, also a Lucy, had always been a pet, and now became very dear to her. From Slinfold she went to her sister f.a.n.n.y, Mrs. Ca.s.son, at Torquay, and there found another kind brother-in-law, another large family of nephews and nieces, all ready to love and to wait upon the dear "Aunt Bessie." Four homes, in all of which she was a welcome and honoured guest, were thus open to her. Hitherto her time had been divided between London and Chichester.

She had not allowed herself the luxury of visits to married sisters, and had only seen them and their children on the occasion of their visits to the palace or London. Now she began to be intimate with them, to be interested in the character and dispositions of the young people, and to enjoy the family life of which one and all helped to make her feel she was a member.

Meantime old and dear friends gathered around her and sought to comfort and encourage her. She preserved many letters which she prized and had found helpful. One of the first to speak was the Rev. H. Browne, who held the living of Pevensey. He was one of the Bishop's chaplains, the author of _Ordo Saeclorum_, a student of German theology, and, that which most attracted Bessie, he was a very good reader, and at Chichester had often read aloud Shakespere's plays to the _sisterhood_. Mr. Browne now was the first to strike a note to which she could respond:

He rests from his labours and his works do follow him. Yours remain. It is needless for me to say it, for you must all know it better than I, he counted it among his mercies that a work had been raised up for you, which when father and mother were gone would be to you the work and the blessing of your life. He evidently acknowledged this as G.o.d's calling to you, and as one of the thoughts in which he was greatly comforted in looking forward upon your future life.

Many other writers dwelt upon the unsparing labour and self-denying zeal of her father, and all recognised that she, the daughter so near his heart and always the object of his most tender love and watchful care, must be the one most deeply stricken by the pain of separation.

"To you, I imagine, the blow will come heaviest," wrote Mrs. Powell; and this sentiment is repeated in almost every letter.

A letter from the Secretary of her own a.s.sociation, informing her of a vote of condolence pa.s.sed by the Committee, begins, oddly enough, with

"I have the _pleasure_ to inform you,"

The blind workmen and workwomen did their best to express their regret at the death of "his lordship the Bishop," and a note is enclosed to her by the Rev. B. Hayley, written by a poor fellow in the Chichester Union, "just to show what the poor, the very poorest in the diocese, think of your dear father."

The Rev. Dr. Swainson, Canon of Chichester, now Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, heard that Bessie's grief was heightened by the fact that she had spent the last fortnight before her father's death in London, engrossed by the work of the Deputation to Lord de Grey. His letter of sympathy and consolation may be as helpful to others as it was to her, and it is therefore inserted unabridged.

SPRINGFIELD, NEWNHAM, CAMBRIDGE, _30th March 1870_.

MY DEAR MISS GILBERT--I hope you will permit me to write you a few lines on the subject which I hear from many quarters has caused you much additional sorrow in regard to the death of our dear father in G.o.d. I mean your absence from Chichester during the last fortnight of his life. I really do not know that you should regret it: because it was really of G.o.d's appointment: you were engaged over your work for Him: your sisters over their work for Him: your dear father over his work for Him: each and all to the best of your powers, and why should you repine if it pleased G.o.d to remove him so quietly, so gently, so lovingly, without telling you beforehand that He was going thus to take him? May you not rejoice rather that his last days of consciousness were filled with thoughts that you were able to go on with that work in which he took so deep an interest, that some have thought that the best memorial of the love of the diocese to him would be an effort to strengthen your hands in that work? Of course I have often thought of the way in which my dearest father and dearest mother were taken away from me. I was absent from both: but I could not regret my absence. Mrs. Swainson was present at the removal of both her parents: but was not all this of G.o.d's appointment? When we ask Him to guide us day by day, may we not leave it to Him how He guides us? I am sure you will excuse me writing thus: the loss is indescribable, the centre of your earthly affections removed: on this I need not speak. But I feel sure that you need not and you should not take any blame to yourself, because your work carried you away at the time when G.o.d, who so arranged it, was pleased to call your father home.--Believe me to be, my dear Miss Gilbert, ever yours very truly, C. A.

SWAINSON.

The Bishop of Rochester wrote, "His course, ever since he has been a bishop, has been so straightforward, so true, that he has won everybody's admiration and respect."

These and other tributes Bessie preserved and treasured. They helped her, and after a time they comforted her. In May we have one of the first letters written by her own hand, and speaking of her own feelings.

It is addressed to a dear friend of the early Oxford days.

SLINFOLD RECTORY, HORSHAM, _1st May 1870_.

MY DEAR MRS. BURROWES--I was very grateful for your most kind affectionate letter, although I have not written to tell you so.

For some time I really could hardly do anything. No loss in the world could be what this loss is to me. I am always wanting him, always missing him, still I am now better able to feel the blessedness for him, and also better able to think of his being spared suffering and infirmity, which would probably have increased; and yet in spite of all this I often cannot help feeling how my heart would rebound with life if I could know that he could be here again with us. But I long for the hope of being with him to grow stronger and stronger, so that it may be more and more a living power within me, and a real comfort. I am much better and stronger than I was; but cannot say much for my powers of walking.

I cannot say that I take much interest in things yet, and am often oppressed with a feeling of the dreary length of the days without seeing him or hearing anything about him; but as you so kindly say in your letter I shall hope, when able to do so, to work better than I have done if G.o.d will grant me help to strengthen me for this work. I did go up from hence to London for the day for our May Committee, and am very glad I did so, and made a beginning of taking up the work again. I have also done a little towards it in other ways, but just now my own nice maid is having a little holiday, and instead Mrs. Gadney is with me; she cannot write much, while I am not up to much business yet. Lucy, I am sure, would send you her love, but I am writing in my room. She would have written to you, but that I said I would do so myself, as I had intended for some time to write and thank you for your very affectionate letter.... Believe me, my dear Mrs. Burrowes, yours affectionately, BESSIE GILBERT.

Miss Mackenzie, sister of Bishop Mackenzie, wrote:

I shall never forget his kind fatherliness and his beautiful courtesy and his loving thoughtfulness for every one. What a comfort it is to have all that to look back upon, but now whilst it is all so fresh your hearts must bleed. Dear Bessie, I am so thankful you have your work, your calling, your vocation to attend to, and in trying to alleviate the troubles of others, as you have always done, you will find the best relief to your own sorrow.

The letters from those she loved, whilst full of sympathy, also dwelt upon the call and claim of duty, in the fulfilment of which Bessie could alone find peace. She struggled bravely to respond, but the task before her was more difficult than any that she had yet accomplished; and there was no renewal of physical power, even when she began to recover from the shock of her great sorrow. She paid many visits with her sisters, and returned to Queen Anne Street in August 1871. The change in her health was at that time painfully evident to her friends in London.

She moved slowly, with difficulty, and was easily exhausted by slight fatigue. Still she resumed her work for the blind, as we find by a letter from the Dean of Westminster [Dean Stanley] written on the 22d of June 1871. He informs her that he will have much pleasure in acceding to her request to preach on behalf of the a.s.sociation for the Blind on Sunday morning, 23d July, at Whitehall.

In reply to an appeal to Mr. Ruskin, made somewhat later, she received the following characteristic answer:

DENMARK HILL, S.E., _2d September 1871_.

MADAM--I am obliged by your letter, and I deeply sympathise with all the objects of the Inst.i.tution over which you preside. But one of my main principles of work is that every one must do their best and spend their all in their own work, and mine is with a much lower race of sufferers than you plead for--with those who "have eyes and see not."--I am, madam, your faithful servant, J. RUSKIN.

The Lady President of the a.s.sociation for Promoting the Welfare of the Blind.

In the autumn of 1871 Bessie joined a great gathering of the Gilbert family at Heversham for the celebration of the marriage of the rector, their youngest brother, the "Tom" of early days. She returned to spend a few months only in Queen Anne Street, for she and two sisters had taken a house in Stanhope Place, Hyde Park, which was to be their future home.

The Queen Anne Street house was a.s.sociated in many ways with Bessie's life and work in London, with the visits to her of the blind workpeople, with the early days of the a.s.sociation, with the growth and development of the objects that had engrossed her life. Perhaps it was dearer to her than either the Oxford or the Chichester home. Certainly the wrench of separation was more painful than any previous one had been; and she had less hope and energy for the unknown future that was before her.

When the change of house had been accomplished she paid a visit to Mrs.

Bowles, at Milton Hill, but this did little to restore her exhausted energy. During May and June 1872 there was a marked deterioration in her condition; she walked with greater difficulty, could not rise from a chair without a.s.sistance, and before the end of June had to be carried up and down stairs. She went to church for the last time early in June, driving to All Saints, Norfolk Square, and walking home.

Greatly alarmed at her condition, the family now turned in many directions for the help and advice of eminent medical men. Sir William Jenner took perhaps the most hopeful view. He thought it not impossible that the nerves of motion might regain power, and prescribed in the meantime "the life of a cabbage." Dr. Little was never sanguine. Dr.

Hughlings Jackson and Dr. Hawkesley held out but little hope of improvement. All agreed that she must rest, vegetate, lead the life of an invalid.

When the prospect of the future really dawned upon her, who can wonder that she found submission, acquiescence, exceedingly hard. "My whole being revolts at the very idea," she said one day.

On another occasion, with a part humorous, part pathetic expression, she exclaimed, "The change is great and," after a pause, "not pleasant." But in later years, after long and patient suffering, she was able to say, "Many have a heavier cross."

She announced by letter to the present writer the verdict of her physicians, adding the pathetic words, "Love me to the end."

CHAPTER XX

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW