



Produced by Al Haines.





[Illustration: THE MARECHALE]




                            *THE MARECHALE*

                       (CATHERINE BOOTH-CLIBBORN)


                                   BY
                             JAMES STRAHAN

           AUTHOR OF "HEBREW IDEALS," "THE BOOK OF JOB," ETC.



                           HODDER & STOUGHTON
                                NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                          COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

                 _The right of translation is reserved_




                               Dedicated
                    WITH REVERENCE AND AFFECTION TO
                             THEODORE MONOD
               WHO TAUGHT US TO SAY TO OUR DIVINE MASTER
                     "NONE OF SELF AND ALL OF THEE"




                               *PREFACE*


This book is the unexpected result of a brief visit which the Marechale
paid her daughter and the writer in the spring of this year.  She was
daily persuaded, not so much to talk of the past, as to live parts of
her life over again, for in her case the telling of a story is the
enacting of a drama.  At a meal-time she rarely keeps her seat, though
she is apparently unconscious of leaving it and surprised that she
requires to return to it.  She begins to describe an incident, to recall
a conversation, to sketch a character, and straightway she is suiting
the word to the action, the action to the word, holding the mirror up to
nature, using her brilliant dramatic gift, which is as natural to her as
singing is to birds, to call up faces, to bring back voices, to restore
scenes, which are all, whether grave or gay, summoned out of a dead past
that has suddenly, as by the wave of a magician's wand, become once more
alive.

One day I said to her, "Have you never thought of giving all this to the
world?"  She answered, "I am often asked to do so, and some day I may."
Soon after she surprised me by saying, "I have come to the conclusion
that something ought to be written now, and you must write it."

A mass of materials in English, French and German--reports, letters,
diaries, magazines, and other documents--has therefore been put at my
disposal.  I have not used a tithe of what I have received, and much of
what is left is as good as what has been taken.  More will ere long, I
doubt not, see the light.  One of my best sources of information has
been the Marechale's own phenomenal memory, which I have tested times
without number, and found invariably accurate, except in dates.  Events
are apt to be associated in her mind not so much with years as with
homes and children, which are much more interesting.

With regard to the subject of the fourteenth chapter, the Marechale
would have preferred not to break the silence which she has maintained
for a number of years, but after reading her letters and diaries I have
urged her to let a brief statement be published, first because I feel
that she owes something to her old comrades in the fight, and second for
the sake of her own and her family's future work.  Members of the family
who have been consulted, as well as other friends, desire this even more
strongly than the writer does.

This book consists of a few sections from a life which, like Mrs.
Browning's pomegranate, "shows within a heart blood-tinctured." To a
heart of love add a spirit of fire, and you have the Marechale.  Blood
and fire--that is what she was at the beginning, and that is what she
will be to the end.  One has often heard her say that she has never been
more in her element than when, on entering some town, she has found
herself confronted, in a theater or casino, by "all the devils of the
place." She is happy whenever "Jesus is going to have a chance for a
night."  In the natural course of things her greatest battles are still
before her. England has need of her, France perhaps still greater need.
May it be long before the Marechale reaches her last campaign!
Meanwhile the old battle-cry, _En Avant!_

The subject of this sketch--written during a brief respite from other
work--is at present far away, but I know that what she desires to give
to the world is a sense of the Divine, the miracle-working power which
rewards a child-like faith, and that she will be glad if every reader
closes the book with a _Gloire a Dieu!_

J. S.




                               *CONTENTS*

                               CHAPTER I

Finely Touched to Fine Issues

                               CHAPTER II

A Girl Evangelist

                              CHAPTER III

The Secret of Evangelism

                               CHAPTER IV

Christ in Paris

                               CHAPTER V

Freedom to Worship God

                               CHAPTER VI

The Soul of France

                              CHAPTER VII

Woman's Vocation

                              CHAPTER VIII

The Renunciation of Home

                               CHAPTER IX

The Friendship of Christ

                               CHAPTER X

The Burning Question

                               CHAPTER XI

The Prodigal Son

                              CHAPTER XII

So Great Faith

                              CHAPTER XIII

Beauty for Ashes

                              CHAPTER XIV

To Thine Own Self Be True

                               CHAPTER XV

Sursum Corda!




                          *LIST OF PORTRAITS*


The Marechale... _Frontispiece_


Catherine Booth... 32

(_From a drawing by Edward Clifford, exhibited in the Royal Academy and
presented to Mrs. Booth_)


The Marechale in the Cafe... 114

(_From the painting of Baron Cederstroem_)


The Marechale... 160

(_From a photo taken in Paris, circa 1890_)


The Marechale... 302

(_From a photo taken in London in 1913_)




                              *CHAPTER I*

                    *FINELY TOUCHED TO FINE ISSUES*


In the summer of 1865 William Booth, Evangelist, found his life-work.
For some time back his imagination had been more than usually active.
He could not help thinking that all his past efforts had been but
tentative solutions of a difficult problem.  He felt the spur of a vague
discontent.  He seemed to be groping his way towards an unrealised
ideal. At length he got the inner light he needed. While he was
conducting a series of meetings in a tent pitched on the disused Quaker
burying-ground at Baker's Row, Whitechapel, he saw his heavenly vision
and heard his divine call.  He accepted a mission which was no less real
than those of Hebrew Prophets and Christian Apostles.  The words in
which he describes his vocation form part of the history of Christianity
in England.  "I found my heart," he says, "strongly and strangely drawn
out on behalf of the million people living within a mile of the tent,
ninety out of every hundred of whom, they told me, never heard the sound
of the preacher's voice from year to year.  'Here is a sphere!' was
being whispered continually in my inward ear by an inward voice... and
I was continually haunted with a desire to offer myself to Jesus Christ
as an apostle for the heathen of East London.  The idea or heavenly
vision or whatever you may call it overcame me; I yielded to it; and
what has happened since is, I think, not only my justification, but an
evidence that my offer was accepted."

Thus it was that on a memorable June night, having ended his meeting and
after-meeting, he rushed home, tired as usual, but with a strange light
in his face which indicated an unusual glow in his heart.

"Darling," he exclaimed to his wife, "I have found my destiny!"

His unexpected words, like the touch of Ithuriel's spear, proved the
quality of his life-mate's womanhood.  For a moment she trembled under
the test.  While her husband poured out his burning words about the
heathenism of London, and expressed his conviction that it was his duty
to stop and preach to these East End multitudes, she sat gazing into the
empty fireplace.  The voice of the tempter--so she imagined--whispered
to her, "This means another new departure, another start in life."  She
thought of five little heads asleep on their pillows upstairs, and
remembered that she had already passed through more than one time of
domestic anxiety.  But no woman living at that time was more ready for
acts of daring faith; few, if any, were so animated by scorn of
miserable aims that end in self.  After silently thinking and praying
for some minutes, she said:

"Well, if you feel you ought to stay, stay. We have trusted the Lord
once for our support and we can trust Him again."

Thus the die was cast, and the day ended with one of those scenes by
which our common humanity is ennobled.  "Together," he says, "we humbled
ourselves before God, and dedicated our lives to the task that it seemed
we had been praying for for twenty-five years. Her heart came over to my
heart.  We resolved that this poor, submerged, giddy, careless people
should henceforth become our people and our God their God as far as we
could induce them to accept Him, and for this end we would face poverty,
persecution, or whatever Providence might permit in our consecration to
what we believed to be the way God had mapped out for us."


One feels perfectly certain that these two modern apostles would have
fulfilled their destiny even if they had stood alone; but it could
scarcely have been so ample and glorious a destiny if God had not given
them children who inherited their gifts and helped them to realise their
ideals.  It is the simple truth that the ruling passion of each of their
eight sons and daughters has been the love of souls; each of them has
exulted to spend and be spent in the service of Christ, which is the
service of humanity; and if one of them has been too feeble in her
health to be a militant Salvationist, the great Captain of our salvation
accepts the will for the deed.

Among all the bold and original acts by which the breath and the flame
of a new life have been brought into the modern Church, none is more
striking, and yet none more simple and natural, than the revival, after
all these centuries, of the apostolic ministry of women.  Like Philip
the Evangelist of Caesarea, William and Catherine Booth "had four
daughters who did prophesy"; brave and gifted English girls who,
baptised with the Holy Spirit, used their dower of burning eloquence to
bring sinners to the mercy-seat. If to-day "the women that publish the
tidings are a great host," the fact illustrates the power of example.
In every new movement there must be daring pioneers and self-sacrificing
leaders.  For woman's "liberty of prophesying," as for every other form
of freedom, the price has had to be paid.  The purpose of this little
book is to sketch the life of the eldest of General Booth's four
daughter-evangelists, who was called to carry the spirit of the
Gospel--Christ's own spirit of love--first into many of the cities of
England, and afterwards, in fulfilment of her distinctive life-work,
into France and Switzerland, Holland and Belgium. If her story could be
told as it deserves to be, it would stand out as one of the most
remarkable modern records of Christian work, for there is perhaps no one
living to-day who has seen so much of what Henry Drummond used to call
"the contemporary activities of the Holy Ghost."

Catherine Booth the elder, the Mother of the Army, was already in her
thirty-second year when she wrote her famous brochure upon _Female
Ministry_, and, not without fear and trembling, delivered her first
evangelistic address in the Bethesda Chapel at Gateshead-on-Tyne, where
her husband was minister.  Little Catherine, who had been baptised in
that chapel, was in her second year when her mother began public
speaking, and in her seventh when her father found his destiny.
Probably no child ever had greater privileges than she enjoyed. Her
earthly home was a house of God and a gate of heaven; and from the first
she seemed to respond to all that was highest and best in her
environment.  She was one of those happy souls who have no memory of
their conversion, who cannot recall a time when they did not heartily
love the Lord Jesus Christ.

Her father was the centre of all her childish thoughts and most vivid
recollections, and nothing could ever really dislodge him from the first
place in her affections.  An interesting page from her earliest memories
may be reproduced.  When she was three or four years old, her father was
a Wesleyan Pastor in Cornwall, where his ministry led to a revival in
which hundreds of souls found salvation. One night Katie was taken by
her nurse to the meeting, and, on arrival, found herself before a flight
of steps leading up to the gallery. Thinking herself quite a big girl,
she wished to climb, but nurse, fearing the crowd, snatched her up and
carried her to the top.  At length they were inside, and what the child
then saw and heard remained for ever vividly impressed on her
imagination.  The great building was crammed.  Away down on the platform
stood her father, with her mother sitting beside him. He was leading the
singing, keeping time with his folded umbrella, and this was the chorus:

    Let the winds blow high, or the winds blow low,
    It's a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah!

How well did the eager-hearted little maid enjoy that voyage, and how
proud she was of her captain!  The winds blew low and the sun shone upon
her in those days.  But it could not always be fair weather.  Often
since that far-off Cornish time have the winds blown high, and sometimes
the mariner has felt herself tossed, chartless and rudderless, on dark
tempestuous seas; but ever the winds have fallen, the sun has shone out
again over the waves; and to how many tens of thousands has this
daughter of music sung, with sweet variations, her father's song--"It's
a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah!"

The Booth children were left in no mist of doubt as to their future.
There was an end, a point, a purpose, in their life.  They grew up in an
atmosphere of decision.  Many children are made timid, diffident,
ineffective by their training.  They are constantly told how naughty
they are, till they begin to believe that they are good for nothing.
The Booth parents acted on a different principle.  They had faith in
their children and for their children.  When Katie was still a little
girl in socks, her mother would say to her, "Now, Katie, you are not
here in this world for yourself.  You have been sent for others.  _The
world is waiting for you._"  What a phrase that was to send a little
girl to bed with!  There she turned the words over and over in her own
mind.  "Mother says the world is waiting for me.  Oh, I must be good....
How selfish I was in taking that orange!"  The lesson was worth L1000 to
a child.  In the development of Katie's mind and character her mother's
influence was naturally very strong.  The fellowship between them soon
became peculiarly intimate, and it was the mother's joy to find her
_alter ego_ in the daughter who bore her name.

Katie's memories of her early London life were bound up with the
Christian Mission. Hand in hand with her sister Emma, and often singing
with her "I mean with Jesus Christ to dwell, will you go?" she walked
every Sunday morning along the great road leading to Whitechapel.
Ineffaceable impressions were made on her sensitive mind by the open-air
preaching at Mile End Waste, Bethnal Green and Hackney; by the apostolic
spirit of holy enthusiasm; by the Friday morning prayer-meetings, where
the officers met alone to plead with God and wrestle in tears for more
power.  All this became the warp and woof of her own spiritual life,
preparing her for her high calling.  And, though she could not remember
the day of her new birth, she clearly recalled several times when she
consecrated herself, body and soul, to God.  In a great whitewashed
building in the East End her father preached on "The King's daughters
are all glorious within," and she prayed that she might have the inner
purity which would make her a child of God.  From a meeting of Christian
workers she ran home to her room, shut herself in, and deliberately gave
her heart and life to Christ.  She could not, perhaps, realise all that
her covenant meant, but one thing she understood--that she was called to
yield herself completely to do His will and to save souls.

There was plenty of laughter and fun in that home.  The Booth children
were all born with the dramatic instinct, and the spirit of the
Christian Mission invaded the nursery.  Not only were the great dramas
of the Bible--Joseph and his brothers, David and Goliath, Daniel and the
lions, and a score of others--enacted there, but the meeting and the
penitent form, the drunkard and the backslider, the hopeful and the
desperate case were all reproduced in the plays of the children.  Katie
and Emma brought their babies to the meeting, and the babies generally
insisted on crying, to the despair of Bramwell or Ballington, who
stopped preaching to give the stern order, "Take the babies out of the
theatre," against which the mothers indignantly protested, "Papa would
not have stopped, papa would have gone on preaching anyhow."  But the
dramatic masterpiece was Ballington dealing with an interesting
case--generally a pillow--coaxing, dragging, banging the poor reluctant
penitent to the mercy-seat and exclaiming, "Ah! this is a good case,
bless him!... Give up the drink, brother."  That is a scene which is
still sometimes re-enacted to the delight of new generations.

Jesus Himself watched the games of the children who piped and mourned in
the market-place.  Life is none the less strenuous for its interludes of
mirth.  Catherine, who was dramatic to the finger-tips, was very early
mastered by a sense of the sacredness