“Sir George Jessel pretended to have the child’s interests at heart:  in reality he utterly ignored them.  I offered to settle L110 a year on the child if she was placed in the charge of some trustworthy and respectable person, but the Master did not even notice the offer.  He takes away the child from plenty and comfort, and throws her into comparative poverty; he takes her away from most tender and watchful care, and places her under the guardianship of a man so reckless of her health, that he chose the moment of her serious illness to ask for her removal; he takes her away from cultured and thoughtful society to place her among half-educated farmers.  Nay, he goes further:  Dr. Drysdale’s affidavit stated that it was absolutely necessary at present that she should have her mother’s care; and Sir George Jessel disregards this, and, in her still weak state, drags her from her home and from all she cares for, and throws her into the hands of strangers.  If any serious results follow, Sir George Jessel will be morally, though not legally, responsible for them.  In her new home she can have no gentle womanly attendance.  No Christian lady of high character will risk the misconstruction to which she would be exposed by living alone at Sibsey Vicarage with a young clergyman who is neither a bachelor nor a widower; the child will be condemned either to solitary neglect at home, or to the cold strictness of a boarding-school.  She is bright, gay, intelligent, merry now.  What will she be at a year’s end?  My worst wish for Sir George Jessel is that the measure he has meted out to me may, before he dies, be measured out to him or his.”

There is little to add to the story.  I gave the child up, as I was compelled to do, and gave notice of appeal to the Court of Appeal against the order of the Master of the Rolls.  Meanwhile, as all access to the children was denied me by the father, I gave him notice that unless access were given I would sue for a restitution of conjugal rights, merely for the sake of seeing my children.  As the deed of separation had been broken by his action, I supposed that the courts would not permit it to be broken for his advantage while holding it binding on me.  Unhappily, at this critical point, my health gave way; the loneliness and silence of the house, of which my darling had always been the sunshine and the music, weighed on me like an evil dream:  at night I could not sleep, missing in the darkness the soft breathing of the little child; her cries as she clung to me and was forcibly carried away rang ever in my ears; at last, on July 25th, I was suddenly struck down with fever, and had the rest of pain and delirium instead of the agony of conscious loss.  While I was lying there prostrate an order was served on me from the Master of the Rolls, granted on Mr. Besant’s application, to restrain me from bringing any suit against him.  As soon as I recovered, I took steps for contesting this order, but no definite action