Part 37

Lady Brassey, with the assistance of medical men, has held classes in all the outlying villages about her home, and has arranged that simple but useful medical appliances, like plasters, bandages, and the like, be kept at some convenient centres.

At Trindad, and Bahamas, and Bermudas, when they stayed there in their travels, she caused to be held large meetings among the most influential residents; also at Madeira and in the Azores. A class was organized on board the Sunbeam, and lectures were delivered by a physician. In the Shetland Islands she has also organized these societies, and thus many lives have been saved. When the soldiers went to the Soudan, she arranged for these helpful lectures to them on their voyage East, and among much other reading-matter which she obtained for them, sent them books and papers on this essential medical knowledge.

She carries on correspondence with India, Australia, and New Zealand, where ambulance associations have been formed. For her valued services she was elected in 1881 a Dame Chevaliere of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

Her work among the poor in the East End of London is admirable. Too much of this cannot be done by those who are blessed with wealth and culture. She is also interested in all that helps to educate the people, as is shown by her Museum of Natural History and Ethnological Specimens, open for inspection in the School of Fine Art at Hastings. How valuable is such a life compared with one that uses its time and money for personal gratification alone.

In August, 1885, Sir Thomas and Lady Brassey took Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, and a few other friends, in the Sunbeam, up the coast of Norway. When they landed at Stavanger, a quaint, clean little town, she says, in the October Contemporary Review: "The reception which we met in this comparatively out-of-the-way place, where our visit had been totally unexpected, was very striking. From early morning little groups of townspeople had been hovering about the quays, trying to get a distant glimpse of the world-renowned statesman who was among our passengers." When they walked through the town, "every window and doorway was filled with on-lookers, several flags had been hoisted in honor of the occasion, and the church bells were set ringing. It was interesting and touching to see the ex-minister walking up the narrow street, his hat almost constantly raised in response to the salutations of the townspeople."

They sail up the fiords, they ride in stolkjoerres over the country, they climb mountains, they visit old churches, and they dine with the Prince of Wales on board the royal yacht Osborne. Before landing, Mr. Gladstone addresses the crew, thanking them that "the voyage has been made pleasant and safe by their high sense of duty, constant watchfulness, and arduous exertion." While he admires the "rare knowledge of practical seamanship of Sir Thomas Brassey," and thanks both him and his wife for their "genial and generous hospitality," he does not forget the sailors, for whom he "wishes health and happiness," and "prays that God may speed you in all you undertake."

Lady Brassey is living a useful and noble as well as intellectual life. In London, Sir Thomas and herself recently gave a reception to over a thousand workingmen in the South Kensington Museum. Devoted to her family, she does not forget the best interests of her country, nor the welfare of those less fortunate than herself. Successful in authorship, she is equally successful in good works; loved at home and honored abroad.

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Lady Brassey's last voyage was made in the yacht she loved: the Sunbeam. Three or four years before, her health had received a serious shock through an attack of typhoid fever, and it was hoped that travel would restore her. A trip was made in 1887 to Ceylon, Rangoon, North Borneo and Australia, in company with Lord Brassey, a son, and three daughters. While in mid-ocean, on their way to Mauritius, Lady Brassey died of malarial fever, and was buried at sea, September 14, 1887.

BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS.

We hear, with comparative frequency, of great gifts made by men: George Peabody and Johns Hopkins, Ezra Cornell and Matthew Vassar, Commodore Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford. But gifts of millions have been rare from women. Perhaps this is because they have not, as often as men, had the control of immense wealth.

It is estimated that Baroness Burdett-Coutts has already given away from fifteen to twenty million dollars, and is constantly dispensing her fortune. She is feeling, in her lifetime, the real joy of giving. How many benevolent persons lose all this joy, by waiting till death before they bestow their gifts.

This remarkable woman comes from a remarkable family. Her father, Sir Francis Burdett, was one of England's most prominent members of Parliament. So earnest and eloquent was he that Canning placed him "very nearly, if not quite, at the head of the orators of the day." His colleague from Westminster, Hobhouse, said, "Sir Francis Burdett was endowed with qualities rarely united. A manly understanding and a tender heart gave a charm to his society such as I have never derived in any other instance from a man whose principal pursuit was politics. He was the delight both of young and old."

He was of fine presence, with great command of language, natural, sincere, and impressive. After being educated at Oxford, he spent some time in Paris during the early part of the French Revolution, and came home with enlarged ideas of liberty. With as much courage as eloquence, he advocated liberty of the press in England, and many Parliamentary reforms. Whenever there were misdeeds to be exposed, he exposed them. The abuses of Cold Bath Fields and other prisons were corrected through his searching public inquiries.

When one of his friends was shut up in Newgate for impugning the conduct of the House of Commons, Sir Francis took his part, and for this it was ordered that he too be arrested. Believing in free speech as he did, he denied the right of the House of Commons to arrest him, and for nearly three days barricaded his house, till the police forcibly entered, and carried him to the Tower. A riot resulted, the people assaulting the police and the soldiers, for the statesman was extremely popular. Several persons were killed in the tumult.

Nine years later, in 1819, because he condemned the proceedings of the Lancashire magistrates in a massacre case, he was again arrested for libel (?). His sentence was three months' imprisonment, and a fine of five thousand dollars. The banknote with which the money was paid is still preserved in the Bank of England, "with an inscription in Burdett's own writing, that to save his life, which further imprisonment threatened to destroy, he submitted to be robbed."

For thirty years he represented Westminster, fearless in what he considered right; strenuous for the abolition of slavery, and in all other reforms. Napoleon said at St. Helena, if he had invaded England as he had intended, he would have made it a republic, with Sir Francis Burdett, the popular idol, at its head.

Wealthy himself, Sir Francis married Sophia, the youngest daughter of the wealthy London banker, Thomas Coutts. One son and five daughters were born to them, the youngest Angela Georgina (April 21, 1814), now the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Mr. Coutts was an eccentric and independent man, who married for his first wife an excellent girl of very humble position. Their children, from the great wealth of the father, married into the highest social rank, one being Marchioness of Bute, one countess of Guilford, and the third Lady Burdett.

When Thomas Coutts was eighty-four he married for the second time, a well-known actress, Harriet Mellon, who for seven years, till his death, took excellent care of him. He left her his whole fortune, amounting to several millions, feeling, perhaps, that he had provided sufficiently for his daughters at their marriage, by giving them a half-million each. But Harriet Mellon, with a fine sense of honor, felt that the fortune belonged to his children. Though she married five years later the Duke of St. Albans, twenty-four years old, about half her own age, at her death, in ten years, she left the whole property, some fifteen millions, to Mr. Coutts' granddaughter, Angela Burdett. Only one condition was imposed,--that the young lady should add the name of Coutts to her own.

Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts became, therefore, at twenty-three, the sole proprietor of the great Coutts banking-house, which position she held for thirty years, and the owner of an immense fortune. Very many young men manifested a desire to help care for the property, and to share it with her, but she seems from the first to have had but one definite life-purpose,--to spend her money for the good of the human race. She had her father's strength of character, was well educated, and was a friend of royalty itself. Alas, how many young women, with fifteen million dollars in hand, and the sum constantly increasing, would have preferred a life of display and self-aggrandizement rather than visiting the poor and the sorrowing!

Baroness Burdett-Coutts is now over seventy, and for fifty years her name has been one of the brightest and noblest in England, or, indeed, in the world. Crabb Robinson said, she is "the most generous, and delicately generous, person I ever knew."

Her charities have extended in every direction. Among her first good works was the building of two large churches, one at Carlisle, and another, St. Stephen's, at Westminster, the latter having also three schools and a parsonage. But Great Britain did not require all her gifts. Gospel work was needed in Australia, Africa, and British America. She therefore endowed three colonial bishoprics, at Adelaide, Cape Town, and in British Columbia, with a quarter of a million dollars. In South Australia she also provided an institution for the improvement of the aborigines, who were ignorant, and for whom the world seemed to care little.

She has generously aided her own sex. Feeling that sewing and other household work should be taught in the national schools, as from her labors among the poor she had seen how often food was badly cooked, and mothers were ignorant of sewing, she gave liberally to the government for this purpose. Her heart also went out to children in the remote districts, who were missing all school privileges, and for these she arranged a plan of "travelling teachers," which was heartily approved by the English authorities. Even now in these later years the Baroness may often be seen at the night-schools of London, offering prizes, or encouraging the young men and women in their desire to gain knowledge after the hard day's work is done. She has opened "Reformatory Homes" for girls, and great good has resulted.

Like Peabody, she has transformed some of the most degraded portions of London by her improved tenement houses for the poor. One place, called Nova Scotia gardens,--the term "gardens" was a misnomer,--she purchased, tore down the old rookeries where people slept and ate in filth and rags, and built tasteful homes for two hundred families, charging for them low and weekly rentals. Close by she built Columbia Market, costing over a million dollars, intended for the convenience of small dealers and people in that locality, where clean, healthful food could be procured. She opened a museum and reading-room for the neighborhood, and brought order and taste out of squalor and distress.

This building she presented to the city of London, and in acknowledgment of the munificent gift, the Common Council presented her, July, 1872, in a public ceremony, the freedom of the city, an uncommon honor to a woman. It was accompanied by a complimentary address, enclosed in a beautiful gold casket with several compartments. One bore the arms of the Baroness, while the other seven represented tableaux emblematic of her noble life, "Feeding the Hungry," "Giving Drink to the Thirsty," "Clothing the Naked," "Visiting the Captive," "Lodging the Homeless," "Visiting the Sick," and "Burying the Dead." The four cardinal virtues, Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude, and Justice, supported the box at the four corners, while the lid was surmounted by the arms of the city.

The Baroness made an able response to the address of the Council, instead of asking some gentleman to reply for her. Women who can do valuable benevolent work should be able to read their own reports, or say what they desire to say in public speech, without feeling that they have in the slightest degree departed from the dignity and delicacy of their womanhood.

Two years later, 1874, Edinburgh, for her many charities, also presented the Baroness the freedom of the city. Queen Victoria, three years before this, in June, 1871, had made her a peer of the realm.

In Spitalfields, London, where the poverty was very great, she started a sewing-school for adult women, and provided not only work for them, but food as well, so that they might earn for themselves rather than receive charity. To furnish this work, she took contracts from the government. From this school she sent out nurses among the sick, giving them medical supplies, and clothes for the deserving. When servants needed outfits, the Baroness provided them, aiding in all ways those who were willing to work. All this required much executive ability.