The Authoritative Life of General William Booth Part 22

Chapter XIX

Conquering Death

Only those who have had some experience of a perfect life-partners.h.i.+p--such as existed for thirty-five years between The General and his wife--can form any conception of the sufferings he had to pa.s.s through, in connexion with her prolonged illness and death.

She had always been more or less delicate in health, yet had, through nearly all those years, triumphed so completely over weakness and suffering as to be at once one of the happiest of wives and mothers, and the most daring of comrades in the great War.

During much of 1887 she had suffered more than usually, and yet had taken part with him in many great demonstrations; but in February, 1888, new symptoms made their appearance, and she decided upon consulting one of the ablest of London physicians, because she had always dreaded that her end would come, like that of her mother, through cancer, and wished to use every possible care to prolong, as much as might be possible, her days of helpfulness.

When in February, 1888, Sir James Paget told her that she had, undoubtedly, got this disease, and would, probably, not be alive for more than eighteen months or two years, she received the announcement with the greatest calm and fort.i.tude. The General says:--

"After hearing the verdict of the doctors, she drove home alone.

That journey can better be imagined than described. She told me how, as she looked upon the various scenes through the cab windows, it seemed to her as if sentence of death had been pa.s.sed upon everything; how she had knelt upon the cab floor and wrestled in prayer; and how the realisation of our grief swept over her.

"I shall never forget, in this world or the next, that meeting. I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet and help her up the steps. She tried to smile upon me, through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, she unfolded to me gradually the result of her interview. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat and came and knelt beside me, saying, 'Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you, at your last hour.'

"I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world was coming to a standstill. She talked like a heroine, like an angel, to me. She talked as she had never talked before. I could say nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray.

"I was due in Holland for some large Meetings. I had arranged to travel there that very night. She would not hear of my remaining at home for her sake. Never shall I forget starting out that evening, with the mournful tidings weighing like lead upon my heart. Oh, the conflict of that night journey! I faced two large congregations, and did my best, although it seemed to me that I spoke as one in a dream. Leaving the Meetings to be continued by others, I returned to London the following evening. And then followed, for me, the most painful experience of my life. To go home was anguish. To be away was worse. Life became a burden, almost too heavy to be borne, until G.o.d in a very definite manner comforted my heart."

After this, there were two years and a half of such tortures for him to bear! For some time, indeed, Mrs. Booth was still able occasionally to take part with him, even in very large Meetings. But any one can understand how such privileges only increased his sense of coming loss.

Her last address was delivered in the City Temple, on June 21, 1888, and she had to remain for nearly an hour after in the pulpit before she could move. Nevertheless, she was able to continue her help by writing for our publications, and to individuals, for a long time after this.

Before the Self-Denial Week of 1888 she wrote to our Soldiers:--

"Although not able to be at the front of the battle in person, my heart is there, and the greatest pain I suffer arises from my realisation of the vast opportunities of the hour, and of the desperate pressure to which many of my comrades are subject, while I am deprived of the ability to help them, as in days gone by."

In 1889 she wrote:--

"I am now realising, as never before, how much harder it is to suffer than to serve. I can only a.s.sure you again, by letter, that my heart is as much with you as ever. Regard no opposition, persecution, or misrepresentation. Millions upon millions wait for us to bring to them the light of life."

To the great Crystal Palace Demonstration of 1889 she sent a message which was displayed in large letters:--

"My place is empty, but my heart is with you. Go forward. Live holy lives. Be true to The Army. G.o.d is your strength. Love and seek the lost. G.o.d is my salvation and refuge in the storm."

Hers was, indeed, a prolonged storm of suffering, the strain of which upon The General cannot easily be realised. He would go out, time after time, to his great journeys and Meetings with, necessarily, a gnawing uncertainty as to what might occur in his absence, and would be called, again and again, to what he thought might be her last agony, only to see her, after hours of extraordinary pain and weakness, rally again, to suffer more. To the very end her mind continued to be as clear and powerful as of old, so that her intense interest in everything connected with his work made it difficult for The General to realise that she might at any moment be called away from him. Often through the long hours of the night he would watch beside her.

To a party of Officers who visited her in 1889, she said:--

"I feel that at this moment I could put all my children into their graves, and go to a workhouse bed to die, sooner than I could see the principles of The Salvation Army, for which I have lived and struggled, undermined and sacrificed. G.o.d will not fail you. Give the children my dear love, and tell them that, if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten years old, I should have been as good a Soldier then as I am to-day."

To the last she maintained her interest in comrades who were furthest off, as well as in those who were near. To Australians she sent the message:--

"Tell them I look on them and care for them, as for my English children, and that I expect them to gather in many a sorrowing mother's prodigal, who has wandered far from his Father's house."

Of one of those terrible occasions when it seemed as if the end had come, The General writes, in December, 1889:--

"To stand by the side of those you love, and watch the ebbing tide of life, unable to stem it, or to ease the anguish, is an experience of sorrow which words can but poorly describe. There was a strange choking sensation in the throat which threatened suffocation. After several painful struggles there was a great calm, and we felt the end had come."

What a mercy that n.o.body knew how many months of agony were yet to follow! It was not till October, 1890, that the end really came. She sent that year to The Army for its Self-Denial Week, the message:--

"My Dear Children and Friends,--

"I have loved you much, and in G.o.d's strength have helped you a little. Now, at His call, I am going away from you.

"The War must go on. Self-Denial will prove your love to Christ.

All must do something.

"I send you my blessing. Fight on, and G.o.d will be with you.

Victory comes at last. I will meet you in Heaven.

"Catherine Booth."

On October 1st violent haemorrhage set in. The General was telegraphed for, and after days and nights of continual suffering and extreme weakness, she pa.s.sed away on Sat.u.r.day afternoon, October 4, 1890.

Writing immediately afterwards, The General said:--

"Ever since our first meeting, now nearly forty years ago, we have been inseparable in spirit; that is, in all the main thoughts and purposes of our lives. Oh, what a loss is mine! It cannot be measured."

And yet, anxious, as in every other case, to make the very best of the funeral for the good of souls, The General rose, by G.o.d's grace, so completely above his own feelings as to be able to take part in all the unparalleled services that followed. More than forty thousand people visited the Congress Hall, Clapton, to look upon her remains there, and to pray and give themselves to G.o.d in many cases, whilst her favourite hymns were sung by bands of Cadets. The coffin was then removed to the Olympia, the largest covered building we could hire in London, and 30,000 persons pa.s.sed the turnstiles to attend the funeral service, conducted mostly by signs, according to a printed programme.

The next day, the funeral march was restricted to Officers of whom 3,000 were present; but the crowds which looked on as it pa.s.sed right through from our Headquarters in the City to the Abney Park Cemetery were beyond all computation. A crowd of 10,000, admitted by ticket, surrounded the grave, where The General spoke, as one newspaper reported, "as a Soldier, who had disciplined his emotion without effort, and straight from the heart." Of his wonderful address, we have only room to quote the final words:--

"What, then, is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work is plainly to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours, and cheer my poor heart as I go along, with the thought that when I have served my Christ and my generation, according to the will of G.o.d, which I vow this afternoon I will, to the last drop of my blood, that then she will bid me welcome to the skies, as He bade her. G.o.d bless you all!

Amen."

And then he knelt and kissed the coffin, and we lowered it into the grave. The Chief of the Staff read a form of Covenant, which thousands repeated, and then we parted.

From that very day The General rose up and went forward, sorrowing, as every one could see, to his last days over his irreparable loss, but never allowing his grief to hinder his labours for those who, amidst their afflictions have no heavenly Comforter.

A still further blow was to fall upon him, only three years later. Mrs.

Booth had delighted, especially during her years of suffering, in the fellows.h.i.+p of her second daughter, Emma, who had been married to Commissioner Tucker, in 1890, and who had always seemed to The General to be the nearest representative, in many respects, of her mother. He had gladly given her up to go with her husband to India, and was equally willing for her, later, to go to the United States. But he always kept up a very full correspondence with her. Her last letter to him, written on an American train, said:--

"My Precious General,--

"I am still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit--the sympathy now is most marked.

"I also spoke for 'fifteen minutes' (stretched a little) in the Merchants Exchange, a huge marble structure. No woman, they say, has ever been heard there before. This was on Sat.u.r.day at noon, and quite a number of the leading business and money men turned up at Sunday's Meetings.

"Can't write more. How I wonder how you are! Up above us all so high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say cyclone or race-horse, or--but there is no simile fine enough.

"Good-night! Would that you were here, so that I could say it, and hear all that you would like to say, and then start off again to try and carry out your wishes with better success, as

"Your unfailing Emma."

Alas, alas, for the uncertainties of human life! Little did she imagine that before the letter could reach him she would be gone from another train, for ever from his side.