ST. GREGORY’S.
Probably, Eddy decided, after working for a week in Southwark, the thing
to be was a clergyman. Clergymen get their teeth into something; they
make things move; you can see results, which is so satisfactory. They
can point to a man, or a society, and say, “Here you are; I made this. I
found him a worm and no man, and left him a human being,” or, “I found
them scattered and unmoral units, and left them a Band of Hope, or a
Mothers’ Union.” It is a great work. Eddy caught the spirit of it, and
threw himself vigorously into men’s clubs and lads’ brigades, and boy
scouts, and all the other organisations that flourished in the parish of
St. Gregory, under the Reverend Anthony Finch and his assistant clergy.
Father Finch, as he was called in the parish, was a stout, bright man,
shrewd, and merry, and genial, and full of an immense energy and power
of animating the inanimate. He had set all kinds of people and
institutions on their feet, and given them a push to start them and keep
them in motion. So his parish was a live parish, in a state of healthy
circulation. Father Finch was emphatically a worker. Dogma and ritual,
though certainly essential to his view of life, did not occupy the
prominent place given to them by, for instance, his senior curate,
Hillier. Hillier was the supreme authority on ecclesiastical ceremonial.
It was he who knew, without referring to a book, all the colours of all
the festivals and vigils; and what cere-cloths and maniples were; it was
he who decided how many candles were demanded at the festal evensong of
each saint, and what vestments were suitable to be worn in procession,
and all the other things that lay people are apt to think get done for
themselves, but which really give a great deal of trouble and thought to
some painstaking organiser.
Hillier had genial and sympathetic manners with the poor, was very
popular in the parish, belonged to eight religious guilds, wore the
badges of all of them on his watch-chain, and had been educated at a
county school and a theological college. The junior curate, James
Peters, was a jolly young cricketer of twenty-four, and had been at
Marlborough and Cambridge with Eddy; he was, in fact, the man who had
persuaded Eddy to come and help in St. Gregory’s.
There were several young laymen working in the parish. St. Gregory’s
House, which was something between a clergy house and a settlement,
spread wide nets to catch workers. Hither drifted bank clerks in their
leisure hours, eager to help with clubs in the evenings and Sunday
school classes on Sundays. Here also came undergraduates in the
vacations, keen to plunge into the mêlée, and try their hands at social
and philanthropic enterprises; some of them were going to take Orders
later, some were not; some were stifling with ardent work troublesome
doubts as to the object of the universe, others were not; all were full
of the generous idealism of the first twenties. When Eddy went there,
there were no undergraduates, but several visiting lay workers.
Between the senior and junior curates came the second curate, Bob
Traherne, an ardent person who belonged to the Church Socialist League.
Eddy joined this League at once. It is an interesting one to belong to,
and has an exciting, though some think old-fashioned, programme. Seeing
him inclined to join things, Hillier set before him, diplomatically, the
merits of the various Leagues and Guilds and Fraternities whose badges
he wore, and for which new recruits are so important.
“Anyone who cares for the principles of the Church,” he said, shyly
eager, having asked Eddy into his room to smoke one Sunday evening after
supper, “must support the objects of the G.S.C.” He explained what they
were, and why. “You see, worship can’t be complete without it--not so
much because it’s a beautiful thing in itself, and certainly not from
the æsthetic or sensuous point of view, though of course there’s that
appeal too, and particularly to the poor--but because it’s used in the
other branches, and we must join up and come into line as far as we
conscientiously can.”
“Quite,” said Eddy, seeing it. “Of course we must.”
“You’ll join the Guild, then?” said Hillier, and Eddy said, “Oh, yes,
I’ll join,” and did so. So Hillier had great hopes for him, and told him
about the F.I.S., and the L.M.G.
But Traherne said afterwards to Eddy, “Don’t you go joining Hillier’s
little Fraternities and Incense Guilds. They won’t do you any good.
Leave them to people like Robinson and Wilkes.” (Robinson and Wilkes
were two young clerks who came to work in the parish and adored
Hillier.) “They seem to find such things necessary to their souls; in
fact, they tell me they are starved without them; so I suppose they must
be allowed to have them. But you simply haven’t the time to spend.”
“Oh, I think it’s right, you know,” said Eddy, who never rejected
anything or fell in with negations. That was where he drew his line--he
went along with all points of view so long as they were positive: as
soon as condemnation or rejection came in, he broke off.
Traherne puffed at his pipe rather scornfully.
“It’s not right,” he grunted, “and it’s not wrong. It’s neuter. Oh, have
it as you like. It’s all very attractive, of course; I’m entirely in
sympathy with the objects of all these guilds, as you know. It’s only
the guilds themselves I object to--a lot of able-bodied people wasting
their forces banding themselves together to bring about relatively
trivial and unimportant things, when there’s all the work of the shop
waiting to be done. Oh, I don’t mean Hillier doesn’t work--of course
he’s first-class--but the more of his mind he gives to incense and
stoles, the less he’ll have to give to the work that matters--and it’s
not as if he had such an immense deal of it altogether--mind, I mean.”
“But after all,” Eddy demurred, “if that sort of thing appeals to
anybody....”
“Oh, let ’em have it, let ’em have it,” said Traherne wearily. “Let ’em
all have what they like; but don’t _you_ be dragged into a net of
millinery and fuss. Even you will surely admit that things don’t all
matter equally--that it’s more important, for instance, that people
should learn a little about profit-sharing than a great deal about
church ornaments; more important that they should use leadless glaze
than that they should use incense. Well, then, there you are; go for the
essentials, and let the incidentals look after themselves.”
“Oh, let’s go for everything,” said Eddy with enthusiasm. “It’s all
worth having.”
The second curate regarded him with a cynical smile, and gave him up as
a bad job. But anyhow, he had joined the Church Socialist League, whose
members according to themselves, do go for the essentials, and,
according to some other people, go to the devil; anyhow go, or
endeavour to go, somewhere, and have no superfluous energy to spend on
toys by the roadside. Only Eddy Oliver seemed to have energy to spare
for every game that turned up. He made himself rather useful, and taught
the boys’ clubs single-stick and boxing, and played billiards and
football with them.
The only thing that young James Peters wanted him to join was a Rugby
football club. Teach the men and boys of the parish to play Rugger like
sportsmen and not like cads, and you’ve taught them most of what a boy
or man need learn, James Peters held. While the senior curate said, give
them the ritual of the Catholic Church, and the second curate said, give
them a minimum wage, and the vicar said, put into them, by some means or
another, the fear of God, the junior curate led them to the
playing-field hired at great expense, and tried to make sportsmen of
them; and grew at times, but very seldom, passionate like a thwarted
child, because it was the most difficult thing he had ever tried to do,
and because they would lose their tempers and kick one another on the
shins, and walk off the field, and send in their resignations, together
with an intimation that St. Gregory’s Church would see them no more,
because the referee was a liar and didn’t come it fair. Then James
Peters would throw back their resignations and their intimations in
their faces, and call them silly asses and generally manage to smooth
things down in his cheerful, youthful, vigorous way. Eddy Oliver helped
him in this. He and Peters were great friends, though more unlike even
than most people are. Peters had a very single eye, and herded people
very easily and completely into sheep and goats; his particular
nomenclature for them was “sportsmen” and “rotters.” He took the
Catholic Church, so to speak, in his swing, and was one of her most
loyal and energetic sons.
To him, Arnold Denison, whom he had known slightly at Cambridge, was
decidedly a goat. Arnold Denison came, at Eddy’s invitation, to supper
at St. Gregory’s House one Sunday night. The visit was not a success.
Hillier, usually the life of any party he adorned, was silent, and on
his guard. Arnold, at times a tremendous talker, said hardly a word
through the meal. Eddy knew of old that he was capable, in uncongenial
society, of an unmannerly silence, which looked scornful partly because
it was scornful, and partly because of Arnold’s rather cynical
physiognomy, which sometimes unjustly suggested mockery. On this Sunday
evening he was really less scornful than simply aloof; he had no concern
with these people, nor they with him; they made each other mutually
uncomfortable. Neither could have anything to say to the other’s point
of view. Eddy, the connecting link, felt unhappy about it. What was the
matter with the idiots, that they wouldn’t understand each other? It
seemed to him extraordinarily stupid. But undoubtedly the social fault
lay with Arnold, who was being rude. The others, as hosts, tried to
make themselves pleasant--even Hillier, who quite definitely didn’t like
Arnold, and who was one of those who as a rule think it right and true
to their colours to show disapproval when they feel it. The others
weren’t like that (the difference perhaps was partly between the schools
which had respectively reared them), so they were agreeable with less
effort.
But the meal was not a success. It began with grace, which, in spite of
its rapidity and its decent cloak of Latin, quite obviously shocked and
embarrassed Arnold. (“Stupid of him,” thought Eddy; “he might have known
we’d say it here.”) It went on with Peters talking about his Rugger
club, which bored Arnold. This being apparent, the Vicar talked about
some Cambridge men they both knew. As the men had worked for a time in
St. Gregory’s parish, Arnold had already given them up as bad jobs, so
hadn’t much to say about them, except one, who had turned over a new
leaf, and now helped to edit a new weekly paper. Arnold mentioned this
paper with approbation.
“Did you see last week’s?” he asked the Vicar. “There were some
extraordinarily nice things in it.”
As no one but Eddy had seen last week’s, and everyone but Eddy thought
_The Heretic_ in thoroughly bad taste, if not worse, the subject was not
a general success. Eddy referred to a play that had been reviewed in it.
That seemed a good subject; plays are a friendly, uncontroversial
topic. But between Arnold and clergymen no topic seemed friendly.
Hillier introduced a popular play of the hour which had a religious
trend. He even asked Arnold if he had seen it. Arnold said no, he had
missed that pleasure. Hillier said it was grand, simply grand; he had
been three times.
“Of course,” he added, “one’s on risky ground, and one isn’t quite sure
how far one likes to see such marvellous religious experiences
represented on the stage. But the spirit is so utterly reverent that one
can’t feel anything but the rightness of the whole thing. It’s a rather
glorious triumph of devotional expression.”
And that wasn’t a happy topic either, for no one but he and Eddy liked
the play at all. The Vicar thought it cheap and tawdry; Traherne thought
it sentimental and revolting; Peters thought it silly rot; and Arnold
had never thought about it at all, but had just supposed it to be
absurd, the sort of play to which one would go, if one went at all, to
laugh; like “The Sins of Society,” or “Everywoman,” only rather coarse,
too.
Hillier said to Eddy, who had seen the play with him, “Didn’t you think
it tremendously fine, Oliver?”
Eddy said, “Yes, quite. I really did. But Denison wouldn’t like it, you
know.”
Denison, Hillier supposed, was one of the fools who have said in their
hearts, etc. In that case the play in question would probably be an
eye-opener for him, and it was a pity he shouldn’t see it.
Hillier told him so. “You really ought to see it, Mr. Denison.”
Arnold said, “Life, unfortunately, is short.”
Hillier, nettled, said, “I’d much rather see ‘The Penitent’ than all
your Shaws put together. I’m afraid I can’t pretend to owe any
allegiance there.”
Arnold, who thought Shaw common, not to say Edwardian, looked
unresponsive. Then Traherne began to talk about ground-rents. When
Traherne began to talk he as a rule went on. Neither Hillier nor Arnold,
who had mutually shocked one another, said much more. Arnold knew a
little about rents, ground and other, and if Traherne had been a layman
he would have been interested in talking about them. But he couldn’t and
wouldn’t talk to clergymen; emphatically, he did not like them.
After supper, Eddy took him to his own room to smoke. With his unlit
pipe in his hand, Arnold lay back and let out a deep breath of
exhaustion.
“You were very rude and disagreeable at supper,” said Eddy, striking a
match. “It was awkward for me. I must apologise to-morrow for having
asked you. I shall say it’s your country manners, though I suppose you
would like me to say that you don’t approve of clergymen.... Really,
Arnold, I was surprised you should be so very rustic, even if you don’t
like them.”
Arnold groaned faintly.
“Chuck it,” he murmured. “Come out of it before it is too late, before
you get sucked in irrevocably. I’ll help you; I’ll tell the vicar for
you; yes, I’ll interview them all in turn, even Hillier, if it will make
it easier for you. Will it?”
“No,” said Eddy. “I’m not going to leave at present. I like being here.”
“That,” said Arnold, “is largely why it’s so demoralising for you. Now
for _me_ it would be distressing, but innocuous. For you it’s poison.”
“Well, now,” Eddy reasoned with him, “what’s the matter with Traherne,
for instance? Of course, I see that the vicar’s too much the practical
man of the world for you, and Peters too much the downright sportsman,
and Hillier too much the pious ass (though I like him, you know). But
Traherne’s clever and all alive, and not in the least reputable. What’s
the matter with him, then?”
Arnold grunted. “Don’t know. Must be something, or he wouldn’t be
filling his present position in life. Probably he labours under the
delusion that life is real, life is earnest. Socialists often do....
Look here, come and see Jane one day, will you? She’d be a change for
you.”
“What’s Jane like?”
“I don’t know.... Not like anyone here, anyhow. She draws in pen and
ink, and lives in a room in a little court out of Blackfriars Road, with
a little fat fair girl called Sally. Sally Peters; she’s a cousin of
young James here, I believe. Rather like him, too, only rounder and
jollier, with bluer eyes and yellower hair. Much more of a person, I
imagine; more awake to things in general, and not a bit _rangée_, though
quite crude. But the same sort of cheery exuberance; personally, I
couldn’t live with either; but Jane manages it quite serenely. Sally
isn’t free of the good-works taint herself, though we hope she is
outgrowing it.”
“Oh, I’ve met her. She comes and helps Jimmy with the children’s clubs
sometimes.”
“I expect she does. But, as I say, we’re educating her. She’s young
yet.... Jane is good for her. So are Miss Hogan, and the two Le Moines,
and I. We should also be good for _you_, if you could spare us some of
your valuable time between two Sunday school classes. Good night. I’m
going home now, because it makes me rather sad to be here.”
He went home.
The clergy of St. Gregory’s thought him (respectively) an ill-mannered
and irritating young man, probably clever enough to learn better some
day; an infidel, very likely too proud ever to learn better at all, this
side the grave; a dilettante slacker, for whom the world hadn’t much
use; and a conceited crank, for whom James Peters had no use at all. But
they didn’t like to tell Eddy so.
James Peters, a transparent youth, threw only a thin veil over his
opinions, however, when he talked to Eddy about his cousin Sally. He
was, apparently, anxious about Sally. Eddy had met her at children’s
clubs, and thought her a cheery young person, and admired the amber gold
of her hair, and her cornflower-blue eyes, and her power of always
thinking of a fresh game at the right moment.
“I’m supposed to be keeping an eye upon her,” James said. “She has to
earn her living, you know, so she binds books and lives in a room off
the Blackfriars Road with another girl.... I’m not sure I care about the
way they live, to say the truth. They have such queer people in, to
supper and so on. Men, you know, of all sorts. I believe Denison goes.
They sit on a bed that’s meant to look like a sofa and doesn’t. And
they’re only girls--Miss Dawn’s older than Sally, but not very old--and
they’ve no one to look after them; it doesn’t seem right. And they do
know the most extraordinary people. Miss Dawn’s rather a queer girl
herself, I think; unlike other people, somehow. Very--very detached, if
you understand; and doesn’t care a rap for the conventions, I should
say. That’s all very well in its way, and she’s a very quiet-mannered
person--can’t think how she and Sally made friends--but it’s a dangerous
plan for most people. And some of their friends are ... well, rather
rotters, you know. Look like artists, or Fabians, without collars, and
so on.... Oh, I forgot--you’re a Fabian, aren’t you?... Well, anyhow, I
should guess that some of them are without morals either; in my
experience the two things are jolly apt to go together. There are the Le
Moines, now. Have you ever come across either of them?”
“I’ve just met Cecil Le Moine. He’s rather charming, isn’t he?”
“The sort of person,” said James Peters, “for whom I have no use
whatever. No, he doesn’t appear to me charming. An effeminate ass, I
call him. Oh, I know he calls himself frightfully clever and all that,
and I suppose he thinks he’s good-looking ... but as selfish as sin.
Anyhow, he and his wife couldn’t live together, so they parted before
their first year was over. Her music worried him or something, and
prevented him concentrating his precious brain on his literary efforts;
and I suppose he got on her nerves, too. I believe they agreed quite
pleasantly to separate, and are quite pleased to meet each other about
the place, and are rather good friends. But I call it pretty beastly,
looking at marriage like that. If they’d hated each other there’d have
been more excuse. And she’s a great friend of Miss Dawn’s, and Sally’s
developed what I consider an inordinate affection for her; and she and
Miss Dawn between them have simply got hold of her--Sally, I mean--and
are upsetting her and giving her all kinds of silly new points of view.
She doesn’t come half as often to the clubs as she used. And she was
tremendously keen on the Church, and--and really religious, you
know--and she’s getting quite different. I feel sort of responsible, and
it’s worrying me rather.”
He puffed discontentedly at his pipe.
“Pity to get less keen on anything,” Eddy mused. “New points of view
seem to me all to the good; it’s losing hold of the old that’s a
mistake. Why let anything go, ever?”
“She’s getting to think it doesn’t matter,” James complained; “Church,
and all that. I know she’s given up things she used to do. And really,
the more she’s surrounded by influences such as Mrs. Le Moine’s, the
more she needs the Church to pull her through, if only she’d see it.
Mrs. Le Moine’s a wonderful musician, I suppose, but she has queer
ideas, rather; I shouldn’t trust her. She and Hugh Datcherd--the editor
of _Further_, you know--are hand and glove. And considering he has a
wife and she a husband ... well, it seems pretty futile, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” Eddy wondered. “It depends so much on the special
circumstances. If the husband and the wife don’t mind----”
“Rot,” said James. “And the husband ought to mind, and I don’t know that
the wife doesn’t. And, anyhow, it doesn’t affect the question of right
and wrong.”
That was too difficult a proposition for Eddy to consider; he gave it
up.
“I’m going to the Blackfriars Road flat with Denison one day, I
believe,” he said. “I shall be one of the Fabians that sit on the bed
that doesn’t look like a sofa.”
James sighed. “I wish, if you get to know Sally at all, you’d encourage
her to come down here more, and try to put a few sound ideas into her
head. She’s taking to scorning my words of wisdom. I believe she’s taken
against parsons.... Oh, you’re going with Denison.”
“Arnold won’t do anyone any harm,” Eddy reassured him. “He’s so
extraordinarily innocent. About the most innocent person I know. We
should shock him frightfully down here if he saw much of us; he’d think
us indecent and coarse. Hillier and I did shock him rather, by liking
“The Penitent.”
“I wonder if you like everything,” grumbled Peters.
“Most things, I expect,” said Eddy. “Well, most things are rather nice,
don’t you think?”
“I suppose you’ll like the Le Moines and Miss Dawn if you get to know
them. And all the rest of that crew.”
Eddy certainly expected to do so.
Six o’clock struck, and Peters went to church to hear confessions, and
Eddy to the Institute to play billiards with the Church Lads’ Brigade,
of which he was an officer. A wonderful life of varied active service,
this Southwark life seemed to Eddy; full and splendid, and gloriously
single-eyed. Arnold, in sneering at it, showed himself a narrow prig.
More and more it was becoming clear to Eddy that nothing should be
sneered at and nothing condemned, not the Catholic Church, nor the
Salvation Army, nor the views of artists, Fabians, and Le Moines,
without collars and without morals.