Read CHAPTER XVIII of The Grimke Sisters‚ Sarah and Angelina Grimke, free online book, by Catherine H. Birney, on ReadCentral.com.

Sarah Grimke had always enjoyed such good health, and was so unaccustomed to even small ailments, that when a slight attack came in the beginning of August, 1873, in the shape of a fainting-fit in the night, she did not understand what it meant. For two or three years she had had an occasional attack of the same kind, but was never before conscious of it, and as she had frequently expressed a desire to be alone when she died, to have no human presence between her and her God, she thought, as the faintness came over her, that this desire was about to be gratified. But not so: she returned to consciousness, somewhat to her disappointment, and seemed to quite recover her health in a few days. The weather, however, was extremely warm, and she felt its prostrating effects. On the 27th of August another fainting-spell came over her, also in the night, and she felt so unwell on coming out of it that she was obliged to call assistance. For several weeks she was very ill, and scarcely a hope of her recovery was entertained; but again she rallied and tried to mingle with the family as usual, though feeling very weak. Writing to Sarah Douglass of this illness, she says:

“The first two weeks are nearly a blank. I only remember a sense of intense suffering, and that the second day I thought I was dying, and felt calm with that sweet peace which our heavenly Father gives to those who lay their heads on His bosom and breathe out their souls to Him. Death is so beautiful a transition to another and a higher sphere of usefulness and happiness, that it no longer looks to me like passing through a dark valley, but rather like merging into sunlight and joy. When consciousness returned to me, I was floating in an ocean of divine love. Oh, dear Sarah, the unspeakable peace that I enjoyed! Of course I was to come down from the mount, but not into the valley of despondency. My mind has been calm, my faith steadfast, my continual prayer that I may fulfil the design of my Father in thus restoring me to life and finish the work he must have for me to do, either active or passive. I am lost in wonder, love, and praise at the vast outlay of affection and means used for my restoration. Stuart was like a tender daughter, and all have been so loving, so patient.”

She continued very feeble, but insisted upon joining the family at meals, though she frequently had to be carried back to her room. Still her lively interest in every one about her showed no diminution, and she still wrote, as strength permitted, short letters to old friends. A few passages may be quoted from these letters to show how clear her intellect remained, and with what a holy calm her soul was clothed. To one nearly her own age, she says:

“You and I and all who are on the passage to redemption know that Gethsemane has done more for us than the Mount of Transfiguration. I am sure I have advanced more in the right way through my sins than through my righteousness, and for nothing am I more fervently grateful than for the lessons of humility I have learned in this way.”

To another who was mourning the death of a dear child, she writes: “My whole heart goes out in unspeakable yearnings for you; not, dearest, that you may be delivered from your present trials; not only that you may be blessed with returning health, but that you may find something better, holier, stronger than philosophy to sustain you. Philosophy may enable us to endure; this is its highest mission; it cannot give the peace of God which passeth all understanding. This is what I covet for you. And how can you doubt of immortality when you look on your beloved’s face? Can you believe that the soul which looked out of those eyes can be quenched in endless night? No; never! As soon doubt existence itself. It is this these central truths, the existence and the love of God, and the immortality of the soul, which rob death of its terrors and shed upon it the blessed light of a hope which triumphs over death itself. Oh that you could make Christ your friend! He is so near and dear to me that more than ever does he seem to be my link to the Father and to the life everlasting.”

As she complained only of weakness, Sarah’s friends hoped that, when the cool weather came on, she would regain her strength and be as well as usual. But though she continued to move about the house, trying to make herself useful, there was very little perceptible change in her condition as the autumn passed and winter came on. Thus she continued until the 12th of December, when she took a violent cold. She was in the habit of airing her bed every night just before retiring, turning back the cover, and opening wide her window. On that day it had rained, and the air was very damp, but she had her bed and window opened as usual, insisting that Florence Nightingale asserted that damp air never hurt anyone. That night she coughed a great deal, but in answer to Angelina’s expressions of anxiety, said she felt no worse than usual. But though she still went down to her meals, it was evident that she was weaker than she had been. On Sunday, the 14th, company coming to tea, she preferred to remain in her room. She never went down again. Her breathing was much oppressed on Monday and her cough worse, but it was not until Tuesday evening, after having passed a distressing day, that she would consent to have a physician called. Everything was done for her that could be thought of, and, as she grew worse, two other physicians were sent for. But all in vain: it was evident that the summons to “come up higher” had reached her yearning soul, and that a bright New Year was dawning for her in that unseen world which she was so well prepared to enter.

She lingered, suffering at times great agony from suffocation, until the afternoon of the 23d, when she was seized with the most severe paroxysm she had yet had. Her family gathered about her bed, relieved her as far as it was possible, and saw her sink exhausted into an unconscious state, from which, two hours later, she crossed the threshold of Eternity. Her “precious Nina” bent over her, caught the last breath, and exclaimed: “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!”

The gates of heaven swung wide to admit that great soul, and the form of clay that was left lying there seemed touched with the glory that streamed forth. All traces of suffering vanished, and the placid face wore

“The look of one who bore away
Glad tidings from the hills of day.”

Every sorrow brings a peace with it, and Angelina’s sorrow was swallowed up in joy that the beloved sister had escaped from pain and infirmity, and entered into fuller and closer communion with her heavenly Father.

She and Sarah had promised each other that no stranger hands should perform the last offices to their mortal remains. How lovingly this promise was now kept by Angelina, we must all understand.

The weather was very cold, and in order to give her friends at a distance opportunity to attend the funeral it did not take place until the 27th. One of the last requests of this woman, whose life had been an embodiment of the most tender chanty and the truest humility, was that she might be laid in a plain pine coffin, and the difference in price between it and the usual costly one be given as her last gift to the poor. She knew divine soul! that her cold form would sleep just as quietly, be guarded by the angels just as faithfully, and as certainly go to its resurrection glory from a pine box as from the richest rosewood casket. And it was like the sweet simplicity of her whole life, nothing for show, all for God and his poor.

Her request was complied with, but loving hands covered every inch of that plain stained coffin with fragrant flowers, making it rich and beautiful with those sincere tributes of affection and gratitude to one whose memory was a benediction.

The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Francis Williams, pastor of the Unitarian Church of Hyde Park, and eloquent remarks were made by him and by Wm. Lloyd Garrison.

Mr. Williams could only testify to Sarah’s life as he had known it since she came to live in the village.

“To the last,” he said, “while her mind could plan, her pen could move, and her heart could prompt, she was busy in the service of humanity, with her might and beyond her strength, in constant nameless deeds of kindness to those in need in our own neighborhood, and far to the south, deeds which were wise and beautiful, help to the poor, sympathy with the suffering, consolation to the dying. She has fought the good fight of right and love; she has finished her course of duty; she has kept the faith of friendship and sacrifice.

“We will more truly live because she has lived among us. May her hope and peace be ours.”

Mr. Garrison gave a brief summary of her life, and ended by saying: “In view of such a life as hers, consecrated to suffering humanity in its manifold needs, embracing all goodness, animated by the broadest catholicity of spirit, and adorned with every excellent attribute, any attempt at panegyric here seems as needless as it must be inadequate. Here there is nothing to depress or deplore, nothing premature or startling, nothing to be supplemented or finished. It is the consummation of a long life, well rounded with charitable deeds, active sympathies, toils, loving ministrations, grand testimonies, and nobly self-sacrificing endeavors. She lived only to do good, neither seeking nor desiring to be known, ever unselfish, unobtrusive, compassionate, and loving, dwelling in God and God in her.”

The last look was then taken, the last kiss given, and the coffin, lifted by those who loved and honored the form it enclosed, was borne to its resting-place in Mount Hope Cemetery.

“Dear friend,” wrote Angelina to me, before yet the last rites had been performed, “you know what I have lost, not a sister only, but a mother, friend, counsellor, everything I could lose in a woman.”

The longer our loved ones are spared to us, the closer becomes the tie by which we are bound to them, and the deeper the pain of separation. It was thus with Angelina. She could rejoice at her sister’s blessed translation, but she keenly felt the bereavement notwithstanding. Their lives had been so bound together; they had walked so many years side by side; they had so shared each other’s burdens, cares, and sorrows, that she who was left scarcely knew how to live the daily life without that dear twin-soul. And so tender, so true and sacred was the communion which had grown between them, that they could not be separated long.

Angelina continued, as her feeble health permitted, to do alone the work Sarah had shared with her. The sick, the poor, the sorrowing, were looked after and cared for as usual; but as she was already weighed down by declining years, the burdens she tried to bear were too heavy. Sarah used to say: “Angelina’s creed is, for herself, work till you drop; for others, spare yourself.” Now, with no anxiously watchful sister to restrain her, she overtaxed every power, and brought on the result which had been long feared, the paralysis which finally ended her life.

Those who have read Mr. Weld’s beautiful memorial of his wife, with the touching account of her last days, will find no fault, I am sure, if I reproduce a portion of it here, while to those who have not been so fortunate, it will show her sweet Christian spirit, mighty in its gentleness, as no words of mine could do. In vain may we look back through the centuries for a higher example of divine love and patience and heroic fortitude; and, as a friend observed, her expressions of gratitude for the long and perfect use of her faculties at the very moment when she felt the fatal touch which was to deprive her of them, was the sublimity of sweet and grateful trust.

The early shattering of Angelinas nervous system rendered her always exceedingly sensitive to outward impressions. She could not look upon any form of suffering without, in a measure, feeling it herself; nor could she read or listen to an account of great physical agony without a sensation of faintness which frequently obliged her, at such times, to leave the room and seek relief in the open air. The first stroke of paralysis occurred the summer after Sarahs death, and was brought on in a singular manner. Mr. Welds account of the incident and its consequences is thus given:

“For weeks she had visited almost daily a distant neighbor, far gone in consumption, whose wife was her dear friend. One day, over-heated and tired out by work and a long walk in the sun, she passed their house in returning home, too much overdone to call, as she thought to do, and had gone a quarter of a mile toward home, when it occurred to her, Mr. W. may be dying now! She turned back, and, as she feared, found him dying. As she sat by his bedside, holding his hand, a sensation never felt before seized her so strongly that she at once attempted to withdraw her hand, but saw that she could not without disturbing the dying man’s last moments. She sat thus, in exceeding discomfort, half an hour, with that strange feeling creeping up her arm and down her side.

“At last his grasp relaxed, and she left, only able to totter, and upon getting home, she hardly knew how, declined supper, and went at once to bed, saying only, ‘Tired, tired.’ In the morning, when her husband rose, she said, ‘I’ve something to tell you.’ Her tone alarmed him. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ she said. To his anxious question, ’Pray, what is it?’ she said again, ’Now you mustn’t be troubled, I’m not; it’s all for the best. Something ails my right side, I can’t move hand or foot. It must be paralysis. Well, how thankful I should be that I have had the perfect use of all my faculties, limbs, and senses for sixty-eight years! And now, if they are to be taken from me, I shall have it always to be grateful for that I have had them so long. Why, I do think I am grateful for this, too. Come, let us be grateful together.’ Her half-palsied husband could respond only in weakest words to the appeal of his unpalsied wife. While exulting in the sublime triumph of her spirit over the stroke that felled her, well might he feel abashed, as he did, to find that, in such a strait, he was so poor a help to her who, in all his straits, had been such a help to him. After a pause she added: ’Oh, possibly it is only the effect of my being so tired out last night. Why, it seems to me I was never half so tired. I wonder if a hard rubbing of your strong hands mightn’t throw it off.’ Long and strongly he plied with friction the parts affected, but no muscle responded. All seemed dead to volition and motion. Though thus crippled in a moment, she insisted upon rising, that she might be ready for breakfast at the usual hour. As the process of dressing went on, she playfully enlivened it thus: ’Well, here I am a baby again; have to be dressed and fed, perhaps lugged round in arms or trundled in a wheel-chair, taught to walk on one foot, and sew and darn stockings with my left hand. Plenty of new lessons to learn that will keep me busy. See what a chance I have to learn patience! The dear Father knew just what I needed,’ etc.

“Soon after breakfast she gave herself a lesson in writing with her left hand, stopping often, as she slowly scrawled on, to laugh at her ‘quail tracks.’ After three months of tireless persistence, she partially recovered the use of her paralyzed muscles, so that she could write, sew, knit, wipe dishes, and sweep, and do ’very shabbily,’ as she insisted, almost everything that she had done before.

“During the six years that remained of her life here, she had what seemed to be two other slight shocks of paralysis, one about three years after the first, and the other only three weeks before her death. This last was manifest in the sudden sinking of her bodily powers, preeminently those of speech. During all those years she looked upon herself as ‘a soldier hourly awaiting orders,’ often saying with her good-night kiss, ’May be this will be the last here,’ or, ‘Perhaps I shall send back my next from the other shore;’ or, ‘The dear Father may call me from you before morning;’ or, ’Perhaps when I wake, it may be in a morning that has no night; then I can help you more than I can now.’

“Many letters received asked for her latest views and feelings about death and the life beyond, as one expressed it, when she was entering the dark valley.’ The ‘valley’ she saw, but no darkness, neither night nor shadow; all was light and peace. On the future life she had pondered much, but ever with a trust absolute and an abounding cheer. Fear, doubt, anxiety, suspense, she knew nothing of; none of them had power to mar her peace or jostle her conviction. While she could speak, she expressed the utmost gratitude that the dear Father was loosening the cords of life so gently that she had no pain.

“When her speech failed, after a sinking in which she seemed dying, she strove to let us know that she knew it by trying to speak the word ‘death.’ Divining her thought, I said, ‘Is it death?’ Then in a kind of convulsive outburst came, ‘Death, death!’ Thinking that she was right, that it was indeed to her death begun, of what could die, thus dating her life immortal, I said, ’No, oh no! not death, but life immortal.’ She instantly caught my meaning, and cried out, ‘Life eternal! E ter nal life.’ She soon sank into a gentle sleep for hours. When she awoke, what seemed that fatal sinking had passed.

“One night, while watching with her, after she had been a long time quietly sleeping, she seemed to be in pain, and began to toss excitedly. It was soon plain that what seemed bodily pain was mental anguish. She began to talk earnestly in mingled tones of pathos and strong remonstrance. She was back again among the scenes of childhood, talking upon slavery. At first, only words could be caught here and there, but enough to show that she was living over again the old horrors, and remonstrating with slave-holders upon the wrongs of slavery. Then came passages of Scripture, their most telling words given with strong emphasis, the others indistinctly; some in tones of solemn rebuke, others in those of heart-broken pathos, but most distinctly audible in detached fragments. There was one exception, a few words uttered brokenly, with a half-explosive force, from James 5: 4: ’The hire of the laborers, kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries are in the ears of the Lord.’...

“As we stood around her, straining to catch again some fragmentary word, she would turn her eyes upon our faces, one by one, as though lovingly piercing our inmost; but though all speech failed, the intense longing of that look outspoke all words....

“Then there was again a vain struggle to speak, but no words came! Only abortive sounds painfully shattered! How precious those unborn words! Oh, that we knew them!”

Thus quietly, peacefully, almost joyfully, the life forces of the worn and weary toiler weakened day by day, until, on the 26th of October, 1879, the great Husbandman called her from her labors at last. She lived the life and died the death of a saint.

Who shall dare to say when and where the echoes of her soul died away? Not in vain such lives as hers and her beloved sister’s. They take their place with those of the heroes of the world, great among the greatest.

One last thing I must mention, as strongly illustrative of Angelina’s modesty, and that shrinking from any praise of man which was such a marked trait in her character. She never voluntarily alluded to any act of hers which would be likely to draw upon her commendatory notice, even from the members of her own family, and in her charities she followed out as far as possible the Bible injunction: “When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”

Her husband relates the following:

“In November, 1839, in making provision for the then to her not improbable contingency of sudden death, Angelina prepared a communication to her husband, filled with details concerning themselves alone. This was enclosed in a sealed envelope, with directions that it should be opened only after her death. When, a few days after her decease, he broke the seal, he found, among many details, this item: ’I also leave to thee the liability of being called upon eventually to support in part four emancipated slaves in Charleston, S.C., whose freedom I have been instrumental in obtaining.’”

It is plain from the wording of the letter that she had never stated the fact to him. She lived forty years after writing it and putting it under seal; and yet, during all those years, she never gave him the least intimation of her having freed those four slaves and contributed to their support, as she had done. Even Sarah could not have known anything of it. Her brother Henry, to whom the bill of sale was made out, as they could not be legally emancipated, was probably the only person who was aware of her generous act. He became technically their owner, responsible for them to the State, but left them free to live and work for themselves as they pleased.

Angelina’s funeral took place on the 29th of October, and to it came many old friends and veteran co-workers in the anti-slavery cause. The services were in keeping with the record of the life they commemorated. They were opened by that beautiful chant, “Thy will be done,” followed by a touching prayer from the Rev. Mr. Morrison, who then briefly sketched the life of her who lay so still and beautiful before them. He was followed by Elizur Wright, who, overcome by the memories with which she was identified, memories of struggles, trials, perils, and triumphs, that he stood for a moment unable to speak. Then, only partially conquering his emotion, he told of what she did and what she was in those times which tried the souls of the stoutest. “There is,” said he, “the courage of the mariner who buffets the angry waves. There is the courage of the warrior who marches up to the cannon’s mouth, coolly pressing forward amid engines of destruction on every side. But hers was a courage greater than theirs. She not only faced death at the hands of stealthy assassins and howling mobs, in her loyalty to truth, duty, and humanity, but she encountered unflinchingly the awful frowns of the mighty consecrated leaders of society, the scoffs and sneers of the multitude, the outstretched finger of scorn, and the whispered mockery of pity, standing up for the lowest of the low. Nurtured in the very bosom of slavery, by her own observation and thought, of one thing she became certain, that it was a false, cruel, accursed relation between human beings. And to this conviction, from the very budding of her womanhood, she was true; not the fear of poverty, obloquy, or death could induce her to smother it. Neither wealth, nor fame, nor tyrant fashion, nor all that the high position of her birth had to offer, could bribe her to abate one syllable of her testimony against the seductive system.... Let us hope that South Carolina will yet count this noble, brave, excellent woman above all her past heroes. She it was, more than all the rest of us put together, who called out what was good and humane in the Christian church to take the part of the slave, and deliver the proud State of her birth from the monster that had preyed on its vitals for a century. I have no fitting words for a life like hers. With a mind high and deep and broad enough to grasp the relations of justice and mercy, and a heart warm enough to sympathize with and cherish all that live, what a home she made! Words cannot paint it. I saw it in that old stone house, surrounded with its beautiful garden, at Belleville, on the banks of the Passaic. I saw it in that busy, bright, and cheery palace of true education at Eagleswood, New Jersey. I have seen it here, in this Mecca of the wise. Well done! Oh, well done!”

Mr. Wright was followed by Robert F. Walcutt, Lucy Stone, and Wendell Phillips.

“The women of to-day,” said Lucy Stone, “owe more than they will ever know to the high courage, the rare insight, and fidelity to principle of this woman, by whose suffering easy paths have been made for them. Her example was a bugle-call to all other women. Who can tell how many have been quickened in a great life purpose by the heroism and self-forgetting devotion of her whose voice we shall never hear again, but who, ‘being dead, yet speaketh.’”

The remarks of Wendell Phillips were peculiarly affecting, and were spoken with a tenderness which, for once at least, disproved the assertion that his eloquence was wanting in pathos.

“Friends,” he said, “this life carries us back to the first chapter of that great movement with which her name is associated, to 1835, ’36, ’37, ’38, when our cities roared with riot, when William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets, when Dresser was mobbed in Nashville, and Macintosh burned in St. Louis. At that time, the hatred toward abolitionists was so bitter and merciless that the friends of Lovejoy left his grave long time unmarked; and at last ventured to put, with his name, on his tombstone, only this piteous entreaty: Jam Parce Sepulto, ‘Spare him now in his grave.’

“As Friend Wright has said, we were but a handful, and our words beat against the stony public as powerless as if against the north wind. We got no sympathy from most northern men: their consciences were seared as with a hot iron. At this time a young woman came from the proudest State in the slave-holding section. She came to lay on the altar of this despised cause, this seemingly hopeless crusade, both family and friends, the best social position, a high place in the church, genius, and many gifts. No man at this day can know the gratitude we felt for this help from such an unexpected source. After this came James G. Birney from the South, and many able and influential men and women joined us. At last John Brown laid his life, the crowning sacrifice, on the altar of the cause. But no man who remembers 1837 and its lowering clouds will deny that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery movement greater or more impressive than the crusade of these Grimke sisters through the New England States.

“When I think of Angelina, there comes to me the picture of the spotless dove in the tempest, as she battles with the storm, seeking for some place to rest her foot. She reminds me of innocence personified in Spenser’s poem. In her girlhood, alone, heart-led, she comforts the slave in his quarters, mentally struggling with the problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, child-like conscience. The two old, lonely Quakers rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North at last, she makes her own religion one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above, all forms, the dove floats at last in the blue sky where no clouds reach.... This is no place for tears. Graciously, in loving kindness and tenderly, God broke the shackles and freed her soul. It was not the dust which surrounded her that we loved. It was not the form which encompassed her that we revere; but it was the soul. We linger a very little while, her old comrades. The hour comes, it is even now at the door, that God will open our eyes to see her as she is: the white-souled child of twelve years old ministering to want and sorrow; the ripe life, full of great influences; the serene old age, example and inspiration whose light will not soon go out. Farewell for a very little while. God keep us fit to join thee in that broader service on which thou hast entered.”

At the close of Mr. Phillips’ remarks a hymn was read and sung, followed by a fervent prayer from Mr. Morrison, when the services closed with the reading and singing of “Nearer, my God to Thee.” Then, after the last look had been taken, the coffin-lid was softly closed over the placidly sleeping presence beneath, and the precious form was borne to Mount Hope, and tenderly lowered to its final resting-place. There the sisters, inseparable in life, lie side by side next the “Evergreen Path,” in that “dreamless realm of silence.”

A friend, describing the funeral, says:

“The funeral services throughout wore no air of gloom. That sombre crape shrouded no one with its dismal tokens. The light of a glorious autumn day streamed in through uncurtained windows. It was not a house of mourning, no sad word said, no look of sorrow worn. The tears that freely fell were not of grief, but tears of yearning love, of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a life in its rounded completeness, such an example and testimony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what might of peril or loss, even unto death.”

Florence Nightingale, writing of a woman whose life, like the lives of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, had been devoted to the service of the poor, the weak, the oppressed, says at the close:

“This is not an in memoriam, it is a war-cry such as she would have bid me write, a cry for others to fill her place, to fill up the ranks, and fight the good fight against sin and vice and misery and wretchedness as she did, the call to arms such as she was ever ready to obey.”