LADY HENRY SOMERSET.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1910, 19 November 1913, Page 2

LADY HENRY SOMERSET.

LIFE & ACHIEVEMENT. "One of the finest things accomplished at this dawn of a new ago is the knocking down of.-, a small Suit intonsoiy gloomy skittle, before which our fathers sat, cheeso in hand, utterly despairful: They believed, nearly every inan of them, that while a masculine dipsomaniac might bo more or loss restored to tho likeness of respectable humanity, a feminine drunkard was unreachable," writes Mr. Harold Begbie in the London "Daily Chronicle;" "Well, it was a woman who sot out to disprove this postulate of Victorian pessimism, and after 20 years of modest, unobtrusive, and self-crucifying labour, she now publishes a victorious refutation of the melancholy postulate'. ' "Lady Han.ry Somerset, who gavo horsolf more than 20 years ago to the healing of women stricken with alcoholism, and who now publishes to,the world in as quiet and modest it way as can well be imagined the results of lier labour*so far, that is, as results which have to do with tho soul of a human being can bo reduced to arithmetic and sot forth in printer's ink—tells maiikhid not only that women can be cured of akcholisnj, and not only how they may bo cured, but attests that the work—so ugly and heartbreaking from a joy to the doer. From, suffering she has come to peace; 'she herself has received beauty for ashes'. And 'religion is tho secret. ; '

—"Her really wond.erful' work is attractive, is beautiful, arid, is illuminating, because she has breathed into every sinb-lecubic ■ mchofher institution the Spirit of religious devotion. Sua-has Hot sought only to cleanb.tho 'bodies-of her patients, but to fill their souls" with a iiew hop© and' a. new lov.e. -She has not desired njorely to cure'drunken women, but to make bad women-into good- women,, weak, women into.holy -women, and foolish women into- pure women.- And if you pay a visit to Buxhurst, which is roally an enchanting A.ircady, you wEI see that everything in'tho community ;■ from the work at fie looms to the least service rendered to children, in The.Nest,is _ consecrated. and made beautiful •' by thna spirit of Divine-love.' ""

"Lady Henry Somerset has cured 73 per cent, of tho women who remained 1 : one year at Duxhttrst, and among these ■i 3 per ,-coiit, are women w f ho were sunk ' to tho bottom of the moral abyss when she .stretched out her hand te- save them. Think what this means. Think 1 what it means that 73 out-of broken women who have lived for a year in the religious atmosphere of Diixhurst are now rescued from ruin,- redeemed'from 8 past of -horror, and strengthened to live useful, perhaps oven boaiitiful,':.and holy lives. ■ • ' . .. .-V, '•...'• _ "But _ what a 'eomihflntaijy'on out.; national life, t'hai.a-womah who has"dorio.' this quite herp'Jß and perfectly'splclidid work,, who has .givon money' and. life to: this neglected field of human sympathy, should have to be worried and fretted and driven, to perpetual' appeals for the two or three thousand 'pounds a year necessary to balance tho colony's 'accounts'l ' . .

" If.- peopfe only .know,' she said to me the other day, 'how this question of temperance, which seems to- them on tho surface so dull and hanal and unimportant, is really inextrioably' bound". up With ail our social and political diffieuf toes, they would -be more ansiOffs, I think, and mote.tfoiefmirie''d,''X''nope,''tesee it settled. I gave myself'many years ago to the. temperance movement,- net like a temperance fanatic.,., but ra,ther, as .a focial reformer, Seeing "id tho : drink qjiestion a root of infinite, social mis.eryi When'l weftt among,the houses of the dockers, during the late strike-I found that-.this'question still remained. ■ < And.' -it always will remain till -fihe State takes ctoo of the'traffic. Jiff. Arthur, Sher* well, is the one man ..who seems, to me to ,U.naers'tand the whole' matter;' for the rest, I' fear temperance reformers are narrow, intolerant, too bigoted, and dull. I want io see the sale -of intoxicants en-, tirely in the hands of municipalities..'"'