demands on one’s own personality, and that the larger part of the
expenditure is in vain. And yet one has no right whatsoever to be
astonished at this, when we try for a moment to measure all the chances
that we have had in life, and then realise that these have never had
any chance at all. God has two infallible methods of education--He
hopes for everyone, He loves everyone; and yet many live in this world
for whom no one hopes and whom no one loves. As the Mission work became
heavier, I had to surrender much of this individual work, and then God
sent us one who could do it infinitely better than we had ever done
it; and, strangely, it was against all my own theories, for this time
it was a woman who was to do it. Night after night I have seen her
sitting in the midst of those whom decent society utterly refuse to
help. On our missing a face, she would answer, quite simply, “Oh, he
has gone to gaol for a little! Poor fellow, he cannot help fighting.”
Or, “The temptation was too great for him, and he took something which
did not belong to him.” She was the first to welcome him after his
trouble, to show him that she had forgotten it; never preaching,
never teaching, but with infinite tact dealing, in the truest sense,
with their souls. I have prepared many of them for confirmation; I
have heard the plain story of their whole lives simply and repentantly
told; I have known them get up at six o’clock in the morning, to go and
call each other for Communion; I have known them stand any amount of
ridicule and temptation; I have seen one stand up for his mate when the
rest thought he had brought disgrace on her whom they call “mother,”
because he knew that that would be “mother’s” wish. I see them come
home as soldiers and sailors, and from situations that we have got for
them at a distance, in the truest sense refined. I have given them
their Communions after days of earnest struggle against sin, or on the
mornings of their departures; I read as much of their letters as any
eye but hers may read. The world might call it almost miraculous, but
it is a miracle that could be reproduced in any single place, even the
worst, if we workers had but those methods of hope and love.
[Illustration: VISIT TO WINCHESTER, 1893.]
And God gave me later on another worker, with the same methods, perhaps
in an even more difficult sphere. All boys from fourteen to sixteen are
cruel and disagreeable. Passion, soon to find itself expressed in their
manhood, troubles them, irritates them, brings forth mischief. Where
there is the restraint of home or school, this is often mitigated,
and outwardly the boy looks delightful. Where there is no restraint,
“devilish” is the only adjective that represents him. Though the most
important class for a clergyman to touch, fearing, as they do, neither
God nor man, they remain as a rule untouched. You may cure them
individually, when they reach the age of twenty, but I always knew
that the only sound method of working would be to “_prevent_”
them. All of us at different times tried our hand on them. All of us
failed. I cannot speak of our last trial as successful, because it
only lasted two years, but I believe in my heart that it would have
been successful. It called itself a Brigade, but it was no more like a
Brigade than the Tower Hamlets Militia is like the Guards. There was a
semblance at first in the way of caps, and belts, and pouches, which I
paid for, but Dowglass found that all of that was more or less, as he
would call it, “tommy rot.” I remember bringing some ladies with great
pomp to see the drill, when the leader on the left flank suddenly beat
a hurried retreat, but not before we had seen that, in the exertion
of stooping, the braces which kept together an otherwise disunited
pair of trousers had given way. They were certainly the most ragged,
noisy, and disobedient crew that ever a clergyman gathered together.
The vision of one evening last August is vividly borne in upon my
memory. Dowglass had had to go up to town for the day, and Charlie
Davidson, our one-legged gymnast, who used to give them instruction,
was also away. But the Brigade were not to be thus put off. Some of
them effected an entrance into the gymnasium, and opened the doors
for the rest, who swarmed in and proceeded to turn it upside down.
Conibeere tried in vain to stem the torrent, and when I came in from
church utterly tired, Looey, who was rushing out to summon aid, nearly
fell into my arms, exclaiming, “Thank God, master, you are come. The
house is being wrecked.” My sudden appearance in their midst produced
no effect, except that the missiles, including a leg of the piano, were
now directed at me. I hurled them all out into Clarence Street, and
shut the doors, but three times did they burst them open.
And yet I am quite sure that, given two or three years’ more work,
there would have been tremendous results. If the loafer class is ever
to be exterminated, if that menace to society, the unemployed, is ever
to disappear from the face of the earth, it will only be done by men
with large enough hearts and sufficient faith _preventing_ the
loafer.
[Illustration: VISIT TO WINCHESTER, 1894.]
In 1886 Mrs. Richardson--I had rather say Mrs. Dick, and I am sure she
won’t mind--invited me to bring a party of mission men to Winchester to
spend the day in College. About sixty went, I having to pay all their
railway fares, in some cases even paying them their day’s work--false
pride on my part, because I did not like College to think we had no
men to go. They broke into the warden’s garden, and stole his fruit;
they climbed over the wall of the bathing-place, and laughed at the men
who were learning to swim; they tried to kiss the ladies who waited
on them; they most of them got drunk before we went home. Mrs. Dick’s
invitation is as elastic as her own heart. Year by year more and more
men have wanted to go. This year we limited it to a hundred and sixty;
we had to refuse an equal number. All of them paid their own journeys,
except a few old men out of work, and some of the better-off men
clubbed together, so that no expense should fall on the Mission.
I don’t suppose men ever had a more delightful day. I am quite sure
no lady ever entertained a more delightful company. We visited the
cathedral, St. Cross, and all the places of interest. We had two
splendid meals. One whole day’s perfect enjoyment, everyone sober, not
a rude or rough word, and yet some of us were the identical people who
had gone ten years before, and all of the same class, all the Mission’s
children.
IV.
=Our Womankind.=
“I utterly disapprove of any club that takes girls systematically away
from their own homes. It makes them for the present unmaidenly, and in
the future bad wives and mothers,” so a very excellent clergyman’s wife
said to me at the end of one of my lectures. I tried to suggest to her
that this was not quite the standard to which she had brought up her
own daughters; but she soon answered that by saying, “Oh, that’s quite
different! my girls are ladies.” Thank God I was able to answer her,
“My girls are ladies too.” For in the truest and most real sense that
is what my sisters, and those who have worked with them, have achieved
at Landport--ladies in appearance and manners, in mind and in heart. It
has been, of course, a slow and tedious process, some disappointments,
but surprisingly few as compared with the work among boys and men. “How
have you done it?” people have often said to me, when sitting at one of
our dances. My sister answers, “By having ideals for them; they soon
live up to them.”
The good seed had been sown before we came, more efficiently amongst
them, I think, than in any other parochial work. Dr. Linklater had
started a club for girls called “The Social.” Almost all the original
members, certainly all who are living in Portsmouth, belong to it
still. They alarmed me very much the first time I saw them. I had half
expected to be asked to give a short address, but I found them in the
middle of a game of dumb-crambo. They very kindly soon put me at my
ease by telling me that they did not think my sermons were as good as
Dr. Linklater’s, but they did it in such a genuine kind way that I
could not be offended. Most of them, I found out, worked at the Stay
Factory; some of them were in service, and they all either lived in the
parish, or had been prepared for confirmation by one of the clergy. My
first great quarrel with them was because I thought them too exclusive;
and herein is the chief difference between work amongst girls and
amongst boys. At first you must be exclusive; you have almost reached
a point of perfection when you can afford not to be so. Quite rightly
their parents would have objected, and they themselves would have lost
caste in the factory, besides running a real danger themselves. Ah! how
often one wishes there was the same public opinion amongst men that
there is amongst women, and that the shady man had as much difficulty
in getting into good society as the shady woman. And yet I felt how
utterly useless our woman’s work would be if it remained at the point
of respectability. The very stay factories from which these girls came
were, in those days, places of great temptation. Many of the workers
were positively bad, and even amongst those who were not leading bad
lives there was great vulgarity of speech and manner, a want of all
true refinement. All that is changed to-day, and our Portsmouth
factory girls are, as a rule, most respectable and well-conducted.
Then the Commercial Road and the Southsea Common were a perpetual
menace. Those places, in which the girls delighted to walk, were
full not only of rollicking, good-natured, thoughtless soldiers and
sailors, but of those most hateful of all living creatures, the older
profligate, the zest of whose pleasure is the innocence of his victim.
Many of these girls, too, see sin continually in the streets in which
they live. They see other girls who have no work to do--would to God
they knew more plainly the awfulness of the work they do do!--able
to dress well and go to places of amusement continually, while they
themselves too often are unable to earn enough to keep themselves in
the actual necessaries of life, with a hundred wretched old women ever
on the look-out to tell them how easily money can be made. Take a walk
any night you like down the Commercial Road, and, however prejudiced
you might be against clubs that keep girls away from their own homes,
you would be converted. And so our “Social” gradually added to its
numbers, became courageous enough to take in one and then another who
really wanted a helping hand, and thus led the way for opening two
other clubs for younger girls, so that now, I suppose, there are more
than a hundred girls attending every week. I can never tell what I owe
to my elder girls, many of them Sunday School teachers and temperance
workers, all of them communicants, every one helping a circle of
younger girls, the truest, purest, most loving friends I have in the
world.
Each club has its nominal lady manager. Miss Brown has governed the
“Social” now for twelve years. It would be impossible to even measure
the love which binds these girls together, love which proves itself in
the highest acts of self-denial. I have known, when there was little
doing at the factory, a girl lending another her good bonnet and jacket
to come to church in on Sunday, she coming in her workday one. I have
known, when another girl was sick, three of them arranging to surrender
their own night’s rest, that the sick girl might have someone with her
at night, though the illness lasted over six weeks. I have known a girl
going with Miss Dolling into the worst streets, into the worst houses,
looking for one whom we heard had gone astray. This spirit has spread
even amongst the younger girls, and with it a spirit of self-respect,
which has given them an absence of self-consciousness, and has very
largely removed that horrid giggling habit so common amongst them. My
sisters and I have taken them to spend the day with friends of our
own in the country, as well as with Mrs. Bramston at Winchester--I
like to call her Mrs. Trant--who does for the girls and women what
Mrs. Richardson does for the boys and men. Wherever we go, their hosts
always remark the same things--their naturalness and refinement.
And yet even with all this one felt that there was something wanting.
There is a perfect naturalness and fitness in humanity, the want of
recognition of which is oftentimes the overthrow of religious work.
It is natural and proper for boys and girls to court, for men and
women to marry. We had failed altogether with regard to this. We had
excellent clubs for boys, excellent clubs for girls, and then just
when you thought you had got hold of them your influence weakened.
Soon they disappeared, and the reason was perfectly natural; they had
begun to “walk out.” Then one discovered that the one great difficulty
in all this was, that it was literally walking out, they had no place
where courtship could be carried out. Two dangers in this will suggest
themselves to any thinking person. First, the whole thing, as a rule,
was done in secret; secondly, there was no outward moral restraint. To
people without deep moral sense of right these two dangers would be
very great, and they are the cause of most grievous consequences to
large numbers of young people. You would naturally say, “Why cannot
they use their own homes?” But if you lived with your father and
mother, and many brothers and sisters, in one common feeding room,
perhaps you would not be bold enough to present your _fiancée_. I
have often known a marriage take place, and the parents on both sides
have never been introduced to their new relative. I have more often
known marriages take place because of necessity, when the religious
ceremony was looked upon as a kind of whitewash. Naturally one talked a
great deal both to boys and girls on the subject of courtship, and they
soon showed what was one’s duty. We were bound to supply that which the
circumstances of their life prevented, an opportunity of meeting and
knowing each other. Then came the real difficulty. Where were they to
meet, and what were they to do? The gymnasium was the natural meeting
place, and so we tried a kind of social evening. But they proved
anything but social--the young men on one side of the room, the young
ladies on the other. If any male was bold enough to cross over, he
was received with giggling, and as conversation was not our strong
point--for we had never been taught, so to speak, to talk--he soon
subsided, red-faced, amongst his fellows. Then we tried games, but they
always ended in horrid romps. All games seemed to end in kissing, and
forfeits brought forth witticisms which were not always conducive to
propriety. At last my sister was bold enough to suggest, what had been
on the tip of my tongue for weeks, why should they not dance? The girls
had already learned in their own clubs. But excellent and good-natured
as our girls are, we feared it would be putting their kindness to a
hard test to ask them to become instructors, especially as all our men
could not bring dancing pumps; and though a hob-nailed boot is very
useful for most men’s daily work, it was not a pleasant reminder to a
partner that she was good-natured enough to be dancing for the purpose
of teaching someone else to dance. So I cleared out my dining-room
one or two nights a week, and we taught the men as my sisters had
taught the girls, and now for the last five years our dancing-class
has been one of the most valuable parish institutions. Mr. Whittick,
our blind organist, presides at the piano. Nearly all the members are
communicants. I had to make this rule, because I must be able to stand
over the character of every member. Everyone pays twopence, and we
dance from 8 till 10.30 p.m.
It is extraordinary, the difference which this has effected in the
manners of our people. The dancing is, perhaps, a little more serious
than at a ball in Belgravia, for squares are danced with a due
attention to the figures. It has given one the most happy opportunity
of enabling our boys and girls to meet naturally together, and I am
more and more convinced by experience that one of the greatest causes
of sin, in places like ours, is this want. Many of our boys and girls
have got engaged to be married through this chance, and if any of them
get engaged to a girl outside the parish, the dance gives then an
excellent excuse to introduce her to us. It would be very difficult to
say, “You must come and see my parson.” It is very easy to say, “You
must come and see my dancing-class.” In the last six years I do not
think we have had one marriage amongst our people for which we have
had cause to feel shame. In the last four years I do not think any of
our people have been married without receiving the Holy Communion on
the Sunday before, or on the morning of their marriage. Why cannot we
talk far more plainly on these subjects to our people? This hideous
demand for facilities for divorce, the extraordinary attitude of almost
the whole episcopate to it, could never have arisen if we had taught
plainly that marriage is a Sacrament, in which God gives grace enabling
people to live in holy love together, and therefore demanding from
people a preparation as rigid, I need not say more rigid, perhaps,
than the preparations needed for the reception of other Sacraments.
Think of the hideous vulgarity of modern marriages, the whole talk
about clothes and feasting. Think of the behaviour in church. Amongst
fashionable people the ceremony is as interesting as a Drawing-room.
Amongst my class of people the ceremony is disfigured by ribald jests,
oftentimes by the rudest horse-play. Our Lord not only consecrated by
His own presence, but brought His Blessed Mother to Cana of Galilee as
well. Oh, inestimable value of any saintly woman, who can show the girl
why there need not be any amazement in the commencement of a new life,
in which, unless she is prepared, there must be a strange and awful
awakening.
Then the influence we gained amongst the girls reacted very much on
their own homes. I had been very anxious about the elder women, for
though, when I came, I found three mothers’ meetings, they were badly
attended, and I was told that different streets would not amalgamate,
for, in our little parish, there is just as much difference between
one street and another as there is between Earl’s Court and West
Kensington. I felt that this unchristian state of things must, at all
hazards, be broken down, and that the best method was to try and make
the meeting as much like a party as possible. And so the first use we
made of the schoolroom attached to the gymnasium was to open it once a
week, and, as numbers increased, twice a week, for a kind of At Home.
At first it was difficult to make them understand that they need not
bring a piece of work if they did not like. They might talk to each
other, indeed gossip, and move about the room when there was no singing
or reading going on, and there always was a cup of tea and a piece of
bread and butter. I heard a lady once, when I was lecturing, saying
aside to a friend, as I spoke about this, “Fancy, encouraging them in
their gossiping habits. Of course they will come if he gives them tea.”
When the lecture was over I happened to stand behind her for a minute
or two in the crush, and I can vouch for two cups of tea, several
cakes, and a story to her neighbour, which I should call gossip. Do
you suppose that there would be any afternoon visiting if there was no
gossip and no afternoon tea? I should admire the courage of the lady
who cared to make the attempt.
Of course our influence over these women was slow. On our first summer
outing, seventy of us went to the Isle of Wight. It happened to be a
very wet day, perhaps that was the excuse, but I noticed in many of
their pockets, when coming home, the outline of a little bottle, the
contents of which one could easily guess at by the ardour with which
these old ladies skipped, for one had supplied a skipping rope, and
by the character of the songs they sang. Luckily for us this was an
impediment to quick disembarking, and so my sisters and I were glad to
get off the boat, before we could be recognised as the guardians of
the party. But soon all that passed away. Letting them talk gave us
an opportunity of showing them what conversation might be made, above
all showing them that vulgarity is seldom witty and never convenient.
In 1894 they willingly gave up their summer outing, their one yearly
enjoyment, to add to a fund which we were raising for the sufferers
from the _Victoria_ disaster. Women are far more stay-at-home, and
get far fewer treats than men, and therefore it was a great
self-denial.
The girls, as I have said, soon induced their mothers to come, and
thus we got an influence in the family. The vast majority of our
mothers are regular communicants now, influencing their husbands and
sons, giving me immediate warning when any spot in the parish is
getting bad, with their Coal Club, their Blanket Club, their Penny
Bank, carrying into every street in the parish the power of a homely
religious influence, and paying back to me and mine tenderness,
sympathy, and love, which people could only do who have become in the
truest sense religious and refined. Remember how almost impossible it
is to conquer old habits long indulged, how cursing, and swearing, and
drinking, and bad talk take even deeper root in women’s hearts than in
men’s, and just because their lives are far more commonplace, these are
the harder to eradicate. I wish I dare tell you of how bravely month
after month some have fought against some special besetting sin, coming
to me regularly before Communion Sunday to report progress, so humbly,
so trustfully. As I write these words, a letter comes from Portsmouth,
“I hope you will be able to save many poor souls, as you have saved
me. My husband says he hopes I will not break the pledge now you are
gone, as he has had four years of comfort. But I will pray for the help
of God to keep me up. I was at church this morning at eight, a very
few. We are going to have service on Wednesday at a quarter to six,
so that will give us all a chance to go. I remain your affectionate
child in Christ.” (She is more than sixty.) This is only one out of a
hundred miracles that the Blessed Sacrament has wrought among us. For
years that woman had fought against Confirmation. It was the Blessed
Sacrament that broke down the stubbornness of her heart.
I can hardly bear to think of them now, for I know how especially
desolate they are. And yet I know that their lessons have not been
learned in vain, and that as long as they have the Blessed Sacrament,
the supernatural graces which have refined them will still support
and strengthen them. Many of them are very old, all of them are very
ignorant, very poor. I wish you could see them at their day’s outing
at Winchester, enjoying the rest and the beauty, so grateful for every
attention, so careful not to appear greedy, and yet to do, as one said,
“graceful justice” to the splendid food provided; or, better still,
if you could see them at their own special service in church, in the
truest sense at home in their Father’s house, their house, too, because
it is His, and because some act of self-denial on their part has helped
to build it; their dear old cracked voices singing all out of tune,
their little sighing “Amens” and “Halleluias” in the middle of the
prayer, their rapt attention during the sermon, the tear or the smile
as the case might be, with sometimes a comment thrown in; a little
impatience on the part of the younger, when the clock is reaching four,
because the children will be home; a long lingering, sometimes for
hours, on the part of those who live alone.
V.
=Our Children.=