An Irreparable Loss
Ox January 26th, 1899, I entered upon my old age, for at 9.30 that night the life of my life, the heart of my heart, ascended to the right hand of God. In her fifty-third year Emma Jaxe Parker died into the life immortal. Take her for all in all, we ne’er shall look upon her like again. This is the calm judgment of those who knew her best. Her stature, her grace, her high-bred ease, her living smile, clearly typified the uniqueness of her soul. She was at once the sweetest and the stateliest flower in the garden, the very making of the garden, as Ave came to know when the Lord plucked her and left the garden Hoav old was she? Emma was born on June 20th, 1846, and she went up on January 26th, 1899; but these figures give no idea of her age. Years made no impression on her unfading youngness. Her life
1?7 was a child’s smile — a spring dawn — a morning salutation. The dew itself was never fresher, the aurora never brighter. In her coflfin she was young, in her shroud she was the tranquil image of Victory.
I saw Emma in her noble father’s house when she was little more than sixteen. She married me before she was nineteen. We companied with one another full thirty-four years, and they seemed but thirty-four days for the love I bare her. All the years she was young, strong, blithesome — the very genius of hope and song.
If I had to sum up her characteristic quality in one word I would choose the word Health, using it in its broadest sense, including body, soul, and spirit. As to the body, we had no doctor for a quarter of a century; as for her mind and heart, her imagination and will, no hint of disease could be even suspected, much less discovered. Emma lived above moods and whims, imaginings and prejudices, jealousies and envyings. She had indeed no relation to any of them. At school she was known as Eresh Breeze, in our home she was known as Sunshine. Her oft-frequented Beachy Head well represented her whole personality. for there the reviving air of the moorland interbreathcs with the exhilarating air of the sea, and the wedded winds are rich with the incense of wild floAVcrs, million-fold, shy and sweet beyond the imagining of dreams.
Intellectually? Clear and strong in a high degree. How was it expressed? Heni-y Ward Beecher said, “I never met a woman except my Own mother so strong in reason.” Her teacher of classics said, “I never saw the irregular verbs knocked about in this way before.” To one of the Revisers of the New Testament she repeated chapter after chapter of the epistles in Greek. Her German tutor certified, “She has a thoroughly critical knowledge of the German language.” Her French teacher said that three months’ residence in France would perfect her in the use of that dainty tongue. Her Italian professor refused his fee because of the delight which her proficiency occasioned him, and her German singing master was equally enthusiastic and generous. At one point she regarded herself as quite a failure: “I have not the least memory for poetry,” she would say. We once asked her to try to learn a short piece, but she smiled sceptically at the suggestion. She could remember grammar
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and criticism, argument and exposition, but poetry, never! She was sure of it, and xc were sure of the contrary. And for once, only once, we were right. She stored her memory with the richest poetry of the English language, and held the largest audiences enthralled by her dramatic recitations of Tennyson, BroAvning, and innumerable other writers. Her public recitations gave Emma manifold pleasure, especially (1) the pleasure of the intellectual excitement, and (2) the pleasure of increasing the funds of many deserving charities.
Probably the recital of these facts will be regarded as proof enough that her intellectual life was copious and energetic. But the half has not been told. Our house is full of her oil-paintings and water colours, — portraits, flowers, landscapes, and bits of Alpine rock and forest. For years Emma led the singing in the City Temple. For a considerable period she regularly reported my sermons in a weekly journal. She translated a story from the German of E. Werner and published it in two volumes. She reviewed books and wrote stories. Above all, and last of all, she published a bijou volume of poetry under the title of “Summer Sonnets and Other Verses,” which has been received with favour unanimous and emphatic.
Domestically? The whole house is a decisive reply. The house is in very deed the creation of her genius and taste. She chose it all, arranged it all, and prized it all. We loved our home. I cannot yet leave it, for it is hers, and will be hers for ever. She touched everything and gave grace and value to what she touched. I find her everywhere like a light, shaded, but quite visible to the looking heart. Domestically? Yes. Whose dainty stitching could compare with hers, women themselves being judges? From a child Emma was a model needlewoman. It is one of our little anecdotes that when she was but four years old she was surrounded by her Darlington relations as she sat on a stool showing them the first handkerchief she had hemmed. The friendly critics were of course paralysed, and so was the little woman who thus received her first hosanna. The first time I saw Emma she was sewing in company with her Martha-like mother, and within a few months of her last illness she was practising knitting in view of her old age! Emma, the brilliant, knitting, was a sight to break the heart! Domestically? Look at her household book-keeping for an answer. To some people book-keeping may come easy, but to Emma it came as a mystery and a burden too much for the endurance of flesh and blood. It was the balancing that broke her down and made her weak as other women. Great in languages, in music, in painting, in argument, and in stitching, she was simply nowhere in balancing her household books. She was ncA’er wrong in the pounds; it was an odd fourpence or an occasional sixteenpence that droA’e her to distraction. “What can I have done AV’ith that fourpence?” Yes, indeed, what? Then I was suspected of haA’ing made way with it, or mischicA-ously hidden it, or secretly invested it; but when all these suspicions came to nothing she wisely entered the fourpence under the irresponsible and much-lying item of “sundries.”
Here I am reminded that from an early period Emma was able to make little sums of money, but never able to keep them. Herein she was her kingly father over again, for without exception he Was the hest-giving man I ever knew, unless, indeed, my own father alone excelled him. But I am speaking of Emma’s early prizes. Once in walking with an uncle great beloved, something or other which was perhaps only one field ofP she impetuously described as “miles away.” Her uncle, who was always critically accurate, said, “Now, if you will tell me what figure of speech that is I will give you sixpence.” In a moment she answered, “Exaggeration,” and she got the money. “Exaggeration” is a long word for a little girl of ten to know. On another occasion Emma was walking with the same uncle — a man devoted to the love of books — when he said, “Noav, which would you like to have as a little present — a shilling or a book?” It was a critical moment for the girl. After a pause she shyly answered, “A shilling.” Many a time in referring to this incident she said, “I kneAV that in choosing a shilling instead of a book I was falling in Uncle Robert’s estimation, but I really wanted the shilling to make presents to my brothers.” One of these brothers, the next in age to herself, is at this moment erecting a Avortliy memorial AA^indoAv to her honour in the Sunderland church in which he lovingly serves as one of the deacons. Thus our little “presents” come back to us in forms of noblest appreciation. Emma’s heart always devised liberal things. “I put a sovereign in the sacramental box for you, my dear, this morning,” said I on returning from the City Temple during her last illness. She smiled her sweet young smile and said, “That was not very much.” Always her way! I never proposed to give a sovereign to anything without her saying, “Give two.” Thus she continually enlarged my ministry and brought down upon it the richest blessing of God. I can never forget the delight with which after hearing James Chalmers, the apostolic missionary of New Guinea, preach in the City Temple, she said on reaching home: “My dear, I would not have missed it for the world. You must send that man a hundred pounds, and send it at once.” To my shame I confess that I compromised for fifty, but some day and in some way and to somebody I must pay the balance for her sake. She shall not blush for me in the presence of the angels.
In Emma’s unfolding life I could not fail to trace the influences under which she came during her happy schooldays. For eight years and a half” she attended a school in Darlmgton pr^sided over by two Quaker ladies, Jane and Elizabeth Proctor, whose names she held in gnieful and reverent affection. Emma often said that she loved the Quakers, and that she was sure they held an honoured place in the religious history of the world. During her eight and a half years’ school residence at Polam she was brought under the stimulating influence of many public lecturers who visited the thriving and enterprising town of Darlington, notably George Dawson, Henry Vincent, John B. Gough, Elihu Burritt, together with such visitors and speakers as Mazzini and Orsini, both of whom stayed in her father’s house and both of whom wrote their names in her greatly treasured album. Kossuth wrote: “May your stars be bright, and may your destiny be propitious! Darlington, May 23, 1856. L. Kossuth.” Emma was then a month short of ten years old.
After eight years and a half at Polam, Emma proceeded to Middlethorpe Hall, York, to continue her education. She was the only Nonconformist in the school! Whenever the name of Oliver Cromwell came up in history, all the girls darted glances upon her as if something terrible might at any moment occur. One of the more tender-hearted and sympathising girls — a girl evidently destined to a work amongst the heathen — delicately approached her with the inquiry,” EmAia, do you believe in God and Christ, as we do
The girl’s voice trembled as she put the solemn question, but Emma’s voice did hot tremble in reply. She merely said, “As ioe do,” and then significantly smiled.
Entering heartily into very varied public relations as the wife of a Congregational minister before she was nineteen years of age, her judgment, her feeling, and her tact were subjected to no ordinary test. It is doing her memory but the simplest justice to say that the test never placed her at the slightest disadvantage. Rich and poor alike accorded her the fullest confidence and admiration. On the day of her burial one beneficiary remarked with overflowing emotion, “After all, it is we poor folks who will miss her most.” Could Emma have heard this testimony she would have desired no higher eulogy. She lived to ease the burdens and dry the tears of others. That she was often defrauded by unworthy applicants she well knew, but she always said, “I would rather be taken in ten times than neglect one worthy case.” January was her favourite month for helping a certain class of needy and struggling friends. It is the London month of “sales,” when great “bargains” are mistakenly supposed to be possible. Accordingly to the “sales” she diligently repaired, always returning with dresses and ribbons, mantles and bonnets, bodices without skirts and skirts without bodices, and many other articles which I dare not attempt to name. This was for poor Mrs. A, and that was for poor Mrs. B, and the other was the very thing for poor, shivering Miss C, “for it makes my heart ache to see her this wintry weather in a thin, unlined cape.”
“But,” I would say, “if these people are so very poor, how can they afford to pay for the making of such dresses?”
Emma smiled. I was but a man. “Do you suppose,” she would say, “that we are going to give away unmade dresses? Of course we shall pay for the making — of course.”
Who can estimate the influence of such a woman upon my public life? Think of the continual inspiration, the ennobling graciousness, the summer-like brightness and joy!
Never a complaint, never a murmur, ar ’ an unworthy criticism. Surely God s(,ine-^^ j holy and most tender heart to reordc«iel*’^^ day by day to the apostolate of Calvary. nif i this richest of Heaven’s blessings I would v H> out ceasing thank God with an overfit Hvi]^ love. Emma was my pastor at home. ShjiS ld the gift of healing in a marvellous degree, combined with an equal gift of insight, the whole life adorned and sanctified by a modeity steadfast and incorruptible.
“You have a wonderful gift for acquiring languages,” I would say.
“Nothing of the kind; anybody could do it who would take pains.”
“Take pains! That is what she did in all her work. Emma read every word of Macaulay’s History, every word of Eroude’s History, every word of the German Bible, every word of the Erench Bible, and every word, preface included, of every book sent her for review. As for the current literature of the day and the best fiction of the olden time, she practically knew Scott and Dickens, George Eliot and Thackeray, Tennyson and Browning, by heart. Emma was a great bookbuyer. “People ought to encourage authors,”
she frequently said, and to the letter she was true to her creed. She kept a book-register, in which she carefully entered the date on hich she began a book and the date on which she finished it; and few things of the kind more gratified her than to meet a friend with whom she could discuss books which they read in common. From all this it might be inferred that my wife would be a severely critical hearer of sermons. Yes and No. Yes, if the preacher wittingly or unwittingly tried to palm off a fallacy; No, if the preacher delivered a noble message in a sincere spirit. Emma was my best hearer, whether approving or disapproving. Many a new idea I have taken to her without bringing it back again. An idea needed to be more than novel if she was to accept it; the idea must at least be rational, and true to the higher experience, if it was to be approved and utilised. As to orthodoxy, she cared nothing if it could not vindicate itself at the bar of present intelligence and scholarly criticism. It was nothing to Emma if an idea was merely old; she quietly pensioned it off with a proper and regularly paid amount of respect, and insisted that it should never stir out of the Almshouse which bears the legend, “It hath been said by them of old time, but”
About the hundred and seven days of her last illness my heart will not permit me to say much. Wearier and sadder days for me were seldom passed by mortal man. But during the whole time no complaining word passed those sweet and eloquent lips.
“What a mercy, my dear,” said I, “that you have no pain!”
“My dear,” said she, “there has been nothing but mercy.”
This was the spirit in which she lived and died, — no, not died, — say, rather, ascended. Her sick-room was turned into a garden of choice flowers by many tender and generous hands. Day by day the fragrant flowers came. Day by day the gates of the higher garden opened more and more widely. Day by day the wilderness encroached upon my own withering life. Through all the weary days Emma encouraged me to go on with my work.
“You will preach to-morrow,” were almost the first words she said on returning to consciousness after the surgical operation she underwent on that never-to-be-forgotten Saturday: November 12th, 1898.
“If you wish it, my love.”
“Certainly.”
I preached — at what cost of heartache can never be known.
A hundred and five days, a hundred and six, then a hundi’ed and seven, — and the end! My heart breaks as I think of it. “Keep me — hold me,” were her last words; then the panting, succeeded by the long breathing — then the lessening respiration — then less — then heaven!
In that dark hour I became almost an atheist. How could I be otherwise, — my chief joy taken from me — my only joy — the joy that gave gladness to everything else — the joy that made holy work a holy sacrament? O the Gethsemane bitterness! the Calvary solitude! I had secretly prayed God to pity me by sparing her, yet He set His foot upon my prayers, and treated my petitions with contempt. If I had seen a dog in such agony as mine I would have pitied and helped the dumb beast; yet God spat upon me and cast me out as an offence, — out into the waste wilderness and the night black and starless. “My feet had wellnigh slipped.” Then a cruel voice said: “Renounce Him! Defy Him! He forsook His own Son on the cross. Hate Him, and join us, whom He derides and torments as devils! “My soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death. In that anguish I heard another voice say, “My dear, all is well;
A PREACHER’S LIP^E
the mystery will be explained. Even at sixty-eight your work has hardly begun.” I knew her tone. It sounded clearly in my soul’s soul, by which sign I knew that this radiant daughter of God had seen the beauty of the King. From that hour I was enabled to take up my ministry and to do the divine bidding with a warmer zeal. God help me, and God help all stricken souls!
Who could live with a wife so gifted, so spiritual, and so childlike, and live with her four-and-thirty years, without being deeply affected by her holy influence? As I thought of our unbroken and ever-ascending home-life I have often been reminded of the words: “No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon; but the redeemed shall walk there.” There was always with us “One like unto the Son of man,” so that never once were we conscious of solitude or incompleteness of joy. Yet who could be so lively as Emma when surrounded by congenial society? She talked, she sang, she recited, she told anecdotes, she exchanged repartee, and in every way made herself, without effort and without encroachment, the centre of every circle that welcomed her. For this reason she was distressingly missed by friends and admirers in every station of life.
“In Edinburgh,” said one friend, “many of us felt that by Mrs. Parker’s removal we had sustained a painful personal loss.”
“I have been so struck,” said the wife of a professor, “by the kind references to Mrs. Parker made by many shop assistants in Hampstead; they seem to miss her so much.”
“We had all learned to love her,” wrote the excellent and gifted wife of Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh.
After leaving a friend’s hall in Yorkshire, one of the daughters ai)propriated the soap with which Emma had washed her hands, another insisted upon occupying the chair she had sat upon, and a third seized her towel and would let no one else touch it. These are little things, but they mean much.
“I think,” said I, in banter, to a Scotch lady, “when I visit you again I will come alone.”
“Then never show your face at our door!” was the quick and warning reply.
In every possible form of expression this feeling made itself known. How otherwise can we accoimt for the marvellous demonstration of interest and affection which marked, her illness and interment? Day after day three people spent hours in merely opening the letters which poured in upon us. We received letters, messages, wreaths, flowers, and telegrams from all sections of general and professional society; for example, to name only a few contrastive or representative instances, — from the Bishop of Calcutta, Sir Henry Irving, Mr. J. L. Toole, Mr. George Grossmith, Canon Benham, the President of the Wesleyan Conference, the principals of seven Nonconformist colleges, the President of the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, Mr. G. J. Holyoake, Lady Henry Somerset, Ian Maclaren, the Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, the President of the Baptist Union, the President of the Primitive Methodist Conference, the Council of the London Congregational Union, Dr. Alexander Whyte, Dr. Marcus Dods, Dr. McLaren, Canon Barker, Mr. T. P. O’Connor, many Memhers of Parliament, as well as resolutions from county associations, free councils, Congregational Churches, in addition to telegrams and letters from Borne, Grindelwald, Nice, Finland, Toronto, Cape Town, Virginia, New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and the Transvaal.
These are but typical instances of an inexhaustible list. The value of such condolence is, to me, in the fact that it arose out of deep personal appreciation of Emma herself. Two friends, quite strangers, sent their cards from Aberdeen, bearing the significant and grateful words, “We heard her sing.” As for the friends at the City Temple, I dare not trust myself to speak of them in detail. Their love was beyond expression. The flowers, the fruits, the visits, the prayers, the tears, hoAV could I write in fitting terms of love so tender and exquisite! The deacons of the City Temple simply surpassed themselves. They loved her, — that explains it all! Words would only weaken any expression of my over-flowing alfection for colleagues who have made our home a song and our ministry an unceasing delight.
Our loved ones come ])ack to us in many sacred memories — pictorial, musical, social. It is wonderful how the past becomes thus specialised, and, as it were, set in expressive miniature. There are mountains, low or high, in every grateful retrospect, to which we lovingly revert in recalling our shadowy yesterdays. In many a sacred picture Emma revisits the memory of my desolated heart, yet I hardly know which of the pictures I value the most, I could not part with one of them. When Emma was hut a girl I saw her whirl round her father’s large drawing-room (at that time unfurnished) in a lonely dance, whose natural grace and poetic fire recalled the figure and the sweep of Ayacanora’s heroic and graceful movement. Then I see her on her wedding day, December 22nd, 1864, a bride sweet and pure as if new-come from heaven: a dream, a song, the “sound of a grand Amen.” Then I see her as the central figure in many a pastoral scene, notably presiding over meetings of poor women (mothers’ meetings), opening the simple conferences with prayer, then reading to the poor women, or telling them stories, or singing songs, or delighting them with recitations. Quickly the vision changes, and I see the gentle creature nursing the sick night and day, and waiting on them with a patience and a skill worthy of the best training in the best school. One scene I noted without her knowing that I was looking on. Her father had died in our house after a long and most painful illness. I never saAV a kinglier face as he lay in his coffin — the face of one who had fought and won. Suddenly I heard a heart-breaking sob proceeding from the room where he lay. Quietly opening the door of the bedchamber, I saw Emma kneeling beside the coffin, her hands clasped, her breast heaving wildly, her voice choked with sorrow. Truly she was praying before a most holy altar, and getting quick answers to the cry of her soul. I closed the door a better man and a better minister for the sight I had seen. From that hour Emma was more than ever precious to me, for was she not a priestess who through Christ had power with God? One of the most pathetic incidents was the preparation for the press of her charming little book, already referred to, “Summer Sonnets, and Other Verses.” She corrected the proofs on her death-bed. The one thing in literary occupation which she disliked above many was the irksome task of correcting proofs, but not a word or a comma or an apostrophe escaped her watchful attention. She saw the book completed, and with her own hand, sadly weakened and tremulous, she inscribed copies for friends who had in many ways sympathised with her literary efforts. With what bitter sorrow I watched her! How I hastened
A PREACHER’S Lff^E
out of her sight lest my flooding tears should disturb her! How quick she was in detecting even on a smiling face the traces of ncAvly-dried sorrow! Oh, the pain of it all! the agony — the Gethsemane!
When the hour of separation came I had quickly to decide on the adoption of one of two courses: either to take up my work at once, or abandon it for ever, — abandon it and sink in despair! “Begin at once,” was the instantaneous and emphatic judgment of the family circle. I stood at her grave on Monday and I stood in the pulpit on Thursday of the same week, preaching from the text, “And none spake a word unto him, for they saw that his grief was very great.”
EXTRACT FROM EMMA’s WILL.
“I particularly request and direct that at my death those who love me will put on no sign of mourning, Imt that they will think of me as promoted to a higher school, where I shall meet my Lord and know even as I am known.
‘’Feb. l.s ’88.”
And on January 80th, 1899, as we wended our way to Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green, there was not a vestige of black clothing to be discovered. A more beautiful picture was never seen under such circumstances. The open hearse, the crosses, the harps, the crowns, the garlands, all made of the richest flowers that love could select and gold could buy, constituted a summer in January — a heaven quite near at hand. No “mourning,” — darksome, pagan, hopeless; no “Weeds of woe “; but when the richlytreasured casket reached the bottom of the grave there went forth from that saintly crowd a sob as of orphanage and as of life made desolate. In that heart-breaking moment I entered on my old age, and owned with bitterness that death had Avon a battle Avitli as strong a love as ever fought the last enemy.
What the outcome is to be Ave may not even ask. God has handed to me, after fifty years’ service in His Gospel, the cup of misery, and He stands over me until I drink its very dregs. May not the unbeliever mock and the reviler ask me to join the ranks of resentful hostility? I must wait and wonder and keep silence. God has driven me into the dark path, and for the moment has handed me over to the cruel tormentor. My faith is undergoing the agony of crucifixion. To what end I know not. Not a gleam of relieving light caji find its way into the secret cave of such lonely distress. Life seems now — perhaps only for a moment — not worth living. I have lost my other heart. My soul’s treasure has been stolen. I am poor indeed. Tears are to me day and night as my meat and my drink, while they say continually unto me, “Where is now thy God?” Noav and again her own clear voice says to my spirit: “Hope thou in God. Do not cease to work. A little while and the light will come; and again a little while, and out of the cold river you will pass into God’s own bosom.” Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly. I am so lonesome, so desolate, so helpless.