Elizabeth Hope

Elizabeth Reid, Lady Hope (born Cotton; December 9th, 1842 - March 8th, 1922) was a British evangelist. It is generally believed that it is the Hope Lady who told in 1915 qu ' it had visited the British naturalist Charles Darwin little time before her death in 1882 and which proclaimed that, on his bed of death, the naturalist had abjured his doctrines of the evolution and had accepted Jesus-Christ like his saver.

The family of Charles Darwin forever accepted this account, insistent on the fact that Lady Hope “was not with her bedside during her last disease, nor even at any moment when it was sick. ” In a general way, this “Lady Hope Story” is recognized, even by a great number of creationnists, like false or at least unverifiable and, if there is truth, probably exaggerated. She does not remain about it less one very widespread urban legend, even if she is opposed completely to the designs on Christianity that Darwin had announced and that one knows.

Biography

Elizabeth Cotton was born in 1842 in Tasmanie (Australia); it was the girl of a British general, Sir Arthur Coton. At the 35 years age, in 1877, she married a widower, the admiral reprocesses Sir James Hope of it, 34 years her elder, becoming thus Lady Hope off Carriden. Sir James died just four years later.

She and her father belonged to the movement of temperance evangelist and, with the beginning of the year 1880, lived in Beckenham (Kent) with approximately 6 miles of Downe (where Charles Darwin died on April 19th, 1882).

She remaria in 1893 with T.A. Denny, an Irish business man of approximately 24 years her elder, but continued to use the name of “Hope Lady rather” than that of “Mrs Denny”. Her husband died in 1909. She travelled to the United States in 1913. It is there, in 1915,33 years after the death of Darwin, in Northfield in Massachusetts, that the history appeared for the first time.

She died of a cancer in 1922 in Sydney, in Australia, and is buried there.

History of Hope Lady

The history of Hope Lady appeared for the first time on August 15th, 1915 in an American newspaper the Baptist Watchman Examiner . The author was identified only like one “devoted English woman”, “Hope Lady”, but of research carried out by L.G. Fuck, a former editor association of Burke' S Peerage , could not find any other Lady Hope but Elizabeth Hope who was adult during the years 1880 and always alive in 1915.

The article was preceded by a ratio by four pages on a biblical conference of summer held in Northfield, which had taken place this year from July 30th to August 15th, 1915.

Original text of the article

It was by one of these glorious afternoon of autumn, which we enjoy sometimes in England. One asked me to enter and to sit down near famous professor Charles Darwin. He was almost nailed with the bed during the few months which preceded its death. By it seeing I always had the impression that it would be a remarkable subject of painting for our Royal Academy ; but I never thought it as strongly as of this occasion.

Sat in its bed, it wore a comfortable embroidered dressing gown, which threw a shade crimson.

Supported by its pillows, it looked with the outside; to far wood and the fields extended from corn, majestic in the light of one of these marvellous twilights which are the beauty of Kent and Surrey. Its noble face and its admirable features seemed to be enlightened of pleasure when I entered the part.

It agitated its hand towards the window by showing the scene with-outside, while in the other hand it held an opened bible, that it always studied.

“That do you read now? ” I asked by installing me his bedside. “Hebrews! he answered, always the Hebrews”. I call it “the Royal Book”. Isn't this something the extraordinary one? "

Then, placing its finger on certain passages, he commented on them.

I made some allusions to the opinions strongly expressed per many people on the history Creation, his size and then with the way in which they had treated the first chapters of the Genesis.

He seemed upset, its fingers trembled nervously and an anxious expression passed on its face when he said to me: “I was a young man with not formed ideas. I put questions, I made assumptions, by all the time questioning me on all and, with my surprise, the ideas took as a violent fire. People made a religion of it. ”

Then it marked a pause and after some other sentences on “the holiness of God” and the “size of this book”, by looking at the Bible which it held tenderly all the time, it said suddenly: “I have in my garden a house of summer which can accommodate approximately thirty people. It is there” while showing through the open window. “I hold much so that you speak there. I know that you read the Bible in the villages. Tomorrow in the afternoon I would like to bring together there the servants, certain tenants and some neighbors. Their will you speak? "

“About what will I speak? ” I asked.

“Of Jesus Christ! ” he answered of a clear and cordial voice, adding on a lower tone, “and of his safety. Isn't this the best subject? And then I want that you sing some anthems with them. You your small instrument, isn't this will bring? ” The radiation and the life on its face while he spoke, here something which I will never forget, because he added: “If you begin the meeting at three hours, this window will be opened and you will know that I take part while singing with vous."

How I regretted not having made a painting of this splendid old man and superb environment in this memorable day!

Refutation by the children of Darwin

The family of Darwin was unanimous to deny this history and fought it. Francis, his/her son, wrote in a letter of May 28th, 1918:

“What Lady Hope tells on the religious designs of my father is completely false. I publicly showed it lie, but never saw answer. The agnostic point of view of my father, one can see it in my Vie and Lettres of Charles Darwin , vol. I., p 304-317. You have any freedom to publish what I have just said. In fact, I happy if you it will be done. ”

After the history had been taken again in 1922, the girl of Darwin, Henrietta Litchfield, published in The Christian on February 23rd, 1922 an article entitled: Charles Darwin on his bed of dead: history of its conversion refuted by Mrs. R.B. Litchfield :

“I was present at his bed of death, Lady Hope was not there during his last disease, nor even at any moment when it was sick. I think that he even never saw it, and in any case that she did not have any influence on him in anything of her thought or her convictions. Never it abjured any of its scientific sights, at this moment or before. We believe that the history of its conversion was erected scaffolding in the United States… All this history does not rest on nothing the whole. ”

In 1958 the Autobiography of Charles Darwin was republished, revised by its grand-daughter Nora Barlow, who reintroduced various passages expurgés by Francis Darwin in the original edition of 1887. They included/understood the designs of Darwin on God, as well as of sour criticisms against Christianity.

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