Six months passed, and a panic terror had seized London. It was one of
those epidemic frenzies which have fallen upon great cities in former
ages of the world. The public mind was filled with the idea that London
was threatened with a serious danger; that it was verging on an awful
crisis; that it was about to be destroyed.
The signs were such as have usually been considered preparatory to the
second coming of the Messiah--a shock of earthquake which threw down a
tottering chimney (somewhere in Soho), and the expected appearance of a
comet. But this was not to be the second Advent; it was to be a disaster
confined to London.
God was about to punish London for its sins. The dishonour lay at its
door of being the wickedest city in the world. Side by side with the
development of mechanical science lifting men to the power and position
of angels, there was a moral degeneration degrading them to the level
of beasts. With an apparent aspiration after social and humanitarian
reform, there was a corruption of the public conscience and a hardening
of the public heart. London was the living picture of this startling
contrast. Impiety, iniquity, impurity, and injustice were at their
height here, and either England must forfeit her position among the
nations, or the Almighty would interpose. The Almighty was about to
interpose, and the consummation of London's wickedness was near.
By what means the destruction of London would come to pass was a matter
on which there were many theories, and the fear and consternation of the
people took various shapes. One of them was that of a mighty earthquake,
in which the dome of St. Paul's was to totter and the towers of
Westminster Abbey to rock and fall amid clouds of dust. Another was that
of an avenging fire, in which the great city was to light up the whole
face of Europe and burn to ashes as a witness of God's wrath at the sins
of men. A third was that of a flood, in which the Thames was to rise
and submerge the city, and tens of thousands of houses and hundreds of
thousands of persons were to be washed away and destroyed.
Concerning the time of the event, the popular imagination had attained
to a more definite idea. It was to occur on the great day of the Epsom
races. Derby Day was the national day. More than any day associated with
political independence, or with victory in battle, or yet with religious
sanctity, the day devoted to sport and gambling and intemperance and
immorality was England's day. Therefore the Almighty had selected that
day for the awful revelation by which he would make his power known to
man.
Thus the heart of London was once more stormed, and shame and panic ran
through it like an epidemic. The consequences were the usual ones. In
vain the newspapers published articles in derision of the madness, with
accounts of similar frenzies which had laid hold of London before.
There was a run on the banks, men sold their businesses, dissolved their
partnerships, transferred their stocks, and removed to houses outside
the suburbs. Great losses were sustained in all ranks of society, and
the only class known to escape were the Jews on the Exchange, who held
their peace and profited by their infidelity.
When people asked themselves who the author and origin of the panic was
they thought instantly and with one accord of a dark-eyed, lonely man,
who walked the streets of London in the black cassock of a monk, with
the cord and three knots which were the witness of life vows. No dress
could have shown to better advantage his dark-brown face and tall
figure. Something majestic seemed to hang about the man. His big
lustrous eyes, his faint smile with its sad expression always behind it,
his silence, his reserve, his burning eloquence when he preached--seemed
to lay siege to the imagination of the populace, and especially to take
hold as with a fiery grip of the impassioned souls of women.
A certain mystery about his life did much to help this extraordinary
fascination. When London as a whole became conscious of him it was
understood that he was in some sort a nobleman as well as a priest, and
had renounced the pleasures and possessions of the world and given up
all for God. His life was devoted to the poor and outcast, especially
to the Magdalenes and their unhappy children. Although a detached
monk still and living in obedience to the rule of one of the monastic
brotherhoods of the Anglican Church, he was also vicar of a parish in
Westminster. His church was a centre of religious life in that abandoned
district, having no fewer than thirty parochial organizations connected
with it, including guilds, clubs, temperance societies, savings banks,
and, above all, shelters and orphanages for the girls and their little
ones, who were the vicar's especial care.
His chief helpers were a company of devoted women, drawn mainly from
the fashionable fringe which skirted his squalid district and banded
together as a Sisterhood. For clerical help he depended entirely on the
brothers of his society, and the money saved by these voluntary agencies
he distributed among the poor, the sick, and the unfortunate. Money of
his own he had none, and his purse was always empty by reason of his
free-handedness. Rumour spoke of a fortune of many thousands which had
been spent wholly on others in the building or maintenance of school
and hospital, shelter and refuge. He lived a life of more than Christian
simplicity, and was seen to treat himself with constant disregard of
comfort and convenience. His only home was two rooms (formerly
assigned to the choir) on the ground floor under his church, and it was
understood that he slept on a hospital bed, wrapped in the cloak which
in winter he wore over his cassock. His personal servant in these
cell-like quarters was a lay brother from his society--a big ungainly
boy with sprawling features who served him and loved him and looked up
to him with the devotion of a dog. A dog of other kind he had also--a
bloodhound, whose affection for him was a terror to all who awakened
its jealousy or provoked its master's wrath. People said he had learned
renunciation and was the most Christlike man they had ever known. He was
called “The Father.”
Such was the man with whom the popular imagination associated the idea
of the panic, but what specific ground there was for laying upon him
the responsibility of the precise predictions which led to it none could
rightly say. It was remembered afterward that every new folly had been
ascribed to him. “The Father says so and so,” or “The Father says such
and such will come to pass,” and then came prophecies which were the
remotest from his thoughts. No matter how wild or extravagant the
assertion, if it was laid upon him there were people ready to believe
it, so deep was the impression made on the public mind by this priest
in the black cassock with the bloodhound at his heels, so strong was the
assurance that he was a man with the breath of God in him.
What was known with certainty was that the Father preached against
the impurities and injustices of the age with a vehemence never heard
before, and that when he spoke of the wickedness of the world toward
woman, of the temptations that were laid before her--temptations of
dress, of luxury, of false work and false fame--and then of the cruel
neglect and abandonment of woman when her summer had gone and her winter
had come, his lips seemed to be touched as by a live coal from the altar
and his eyes to blaze as with Pentecostal fire. Cities and nations which
countenanced and upheld such corruptions of a false civilization would
be overtaken by the judgment of God. That judgment was near, it was
imminent; and but for the many instances in which the life of the rich,
the great, and the powerful was redeemed by the highest virtue, this
pitiful farce of a national existence would have been played out
already; but for the good men still found in Sodom, the city of
abominations must long since have been destroyed. People there were to
laugh at these predictions, but they were only throwing cold water on
lime; the more they did so the more it smoked.
Little by little a supernatural atmosphere gathered about the Father as
a man sent from God. One day he visited a child who was sick with a bad
mouth, and touching the child's mouth he said, “It will be well soon.”
The child recovered immediately, and the idea started that he was a
healer. People waited for him that they might touch his hand. Sometimes
after service he had to stand half an hour while the congregation filed
past him. Hard-headed persons, sane and acute in other relations of
life, were heard to protest that on shaking hands with him an electric
current passed through them. Sick people declared themselves cured by
the sight of him, and charlatans sold handkerchiefs on pretence that he
had blessed them. He repeatedly protested that it was not necessary to
touch or even to see him. “Your faith alone can make you whole.” But
the frenzy increased, the people crowded upon him and he was followed
through the streets for his blessing.
Somebody discovered that he was born on the 25th of December, and was
just thirty-three years of age. Then the madness reached its height. A
certain resemblance was observed in his face and head to the traditional
head and face of Christ, and it was the humour of the populace to
discover some mystical relations between him and the divine figure.
Hysterical women kissed his hand and even hailed him as their Saviour.
He protested and remonstrated, but all to no purpose. The delusion grew,
and his protestations helped it.
As the day approached that was to be big with the fate of London,
his church, which had been crowded before, was now besieged. He was
understood to preach the hope that in the calamity to befall the city a
remnant would be saved, as Israel was saved from the plagues of Egypt.
Thousands who were too poor to leave London had determined to spend the
night of the fateful day in the open air, and already they were
going out into the fields and the parks, to Hampstead, Highgate, and
Blackheath. The panic was becoming terrible and the newspapers were
calling upon the authorities to intervene. A danger to the public peace
was threatened, and the man who was chiefly to blame for it should be
dealt with at once. No matter that he was innocent of active
sedition, no matter that he was living a life devoted to religious and
humanitarian reforms, no matter that his vivid faith, his trust in God,
and his obedience to the divine will were like a light shining in a dark
place, no matter that he was not guilty of the wild extravagance of
the predictions of his followers--“the Father” was a peril, he was a
panic-maker, and he should be arrested and restrained.
The morning of Derby Day broke gray and dull and close. It was one of
those mornings in summer which portend a thunderstorm and great heat.
In that atmosphere London awoke to two great fevers--the fever of
superstitious fear and the fever of gambling and sport.