



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