ill-will from owners of property. Once, feeling myself bound to make
a statement in one of my sermons, which got into a newspaper, I was
threatened with a libel action for £10,000. I remember quite well, when
the lawyer came to see me about it, his utter astonishment not only
when he discovered that what I had said was true, but even more when
the thought was revealed to him that a clergyman need not necessarily
be a fool, and the readiness with which he and his client abated the
nuisance was beyond all praise.
The abatement of these nuisances soon did away with the necessity of
our sending children to preventive homes. Some words that I had spoken
during my first year’s work induced a lady, who has since become
one of the Mission’s dearest friends, to undertake an Orphanage for
S. Agatha’s children. She opened with a little home in North End,
which accommodated about eight children. This was soon overcrowded,
and a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Kane, offered us, free of rent, a
splendid house in Castle Road, Southsea, where for the last eight
years this lady has been mother to more than twenty children. Like
all other of God’s gifts to us, this house came at the very moment
when we wanted it. It is impossible for me to describe the love with
which these children have been mothered, and I doubt if anywhere
in England there is any like institution, which is so thoroughly a
home. Like all other institutions--and yet that word institution
itself is its own condemnation, indeed, I do not think it has ever
been an institution--it has had its ups and downs, and we have had to
accommodate the method of working it to the age of the children. The
younger children coming to our own day schools were kept a little in
touch with the outside world, though this had its difficulties, for I
have known a time when four or five of the choir boys fell violently
in love with the girls. But I welcomed even this danger, from the
knowledge that the mixing with other children made the girls more
humane, and Wally Kimber, aged nine, surreptitiously offering an apple,
had his necessary use. There were also the dangers of measles, whooping
cough, etc., but I looked upon these as a development of the child’s
physical character.
[Illustration: OUR ORPHANS.]
While recognising to its very full the need of our Orphanage, for most
of our children were orphans, or practically so, because their
fathers were sailors, I still hold that an indifferent natural home is
better for the child than the best artificial one. There is a give and
take, a certain amount of bullying, a having to put up with things as
they are, sometimes very needless things, a stinting in diet, above
all a development of ministry, that I believe to be almost impossible
except in the natural home. All this is a formation of character which
enables the girl, as soon as she goes out in the world, to know her
own value, to judge for herself, and not to be dependent on rules
concerning every point, which private judgment would far more healthily
direct. Above all, she learns from her father and brothers, and from
their companions and friends, natural intercourse with men, which
prevents the first man she sees, after she has gone into service, being
an overwhelming attraction.
I hope these words will not sound very ungracious towards the very many
kind ladies who have taken our children into their Preventive Homes--I
bless God continually for many a girl whom their kindness has saved
from utter ruin, both of body and soul--and I think they themselves
will agree with me generally in what I say. But, on the other hand,
many parents are very glad to be saved the expense and trouble of
bringing up children in the days when they cannot earn. They even go
further than this. I remember, years ago, a great triumph of Mrs.
Waldron, when she prevailed on a father to sign the paper allowing his
girl to go into a Home. A few months afterwards he came, as I thought,
to thank me for having made provision for his child--the mother we
knew was a thoroughly bad character--but, after a few preliminaries,
he calmly demanded that I should pay him something, or else he would
remove the girl. I very soon removed him; but he was continually
annoying the sister in charge of the Home, and, as soon as the girl was
fifteen, and able to earn, he brought her back again to Portsmouth. I
thank God that she was wise enough to insist upon going into service,
and has kept herself all right; but it might have been just the other
way. Of course, if a mother is depraved, or a girl is beginning to
make friends with really bad characters, there is, I suppose, no other
remedy; but I am glad to think that, as a rule, such needs have largely
passed away from our parish.
We owe a special debt of gratitude to the Portsmouth Ladies’
Committee for Fallen and Preventive work. Through their indefatigable
secretary, Mrs. Breton, they have taken out of our hands many of our
most difficult cases. I know how often a clergyman’s work is marred
by the kind of pompous officialism of many Penitentiary workers. I
wish they could have the happiness of working with either Sister
Margaret, of the Deaconesses Home, or with Miss Young, of the little
Penitentiary in Somers Road, Southsea. Naturally, we came most in
contact with her; for when, on Mrs. Waldron’s departure, I shut up our
own Penitentiary, hers was open to us night and day. She is, perhaps,
the most unassuming and gentle person that ever lived--very delicate,
for she was nearly killed in a railway accident, four years ago, and
yet exercising a most extraordinary influence over even the rudest and
most boisterous girls. The remembrance of her tact and utter absence
of hideous rules emboldens me to say what has often been upon my mind
about penitentiaries generally--Could there not be a great deal more
individualism? And, above all, could there not be fewer prayers and
hours of silence? I remember, in my parish in London, a poor girl, who,
after many weeks of persuasion, at length entered a temporary Home. On
her journey down to a two years’ Home in the country, she disappeared.
Two days after, a railway porter brought me a shawl that one of the
Penitentiary ladies had lent her, with the message, “Tell Mr. Dolling
I could not stick all the prayers.” Perhaps even you and I, who call
ourselves religious, would find three set times for prayers a day, with
one or two silent hours, more than we could “stick.” And, then, surely
a great deal more use might be made of digging. It is far easier to
sweat out your evil humours and your sloth in a garden under the sky,
than in a wash-house under a roof. I know the infinite tenderness of
Penitentiary workers; I know the devotion of their lives; but it has
struck me oftentimes, from talking with girls who had been in Homes,
that there is a great danger of their looking upon the girl as created
for the Home rather than the Home for the girl; and I am sure that
if accommodation and workers render this individualism impossible, a
smaller number, of whose cure there might be more reasonable assurance,
would serve the end far more than a larger number not so successfully
dealt with. Above all, a protest needs to be made against a novel
system of three months’ Homes. There are in all these girls’ lives
times when either weakness of body, utter poverty, reaction against
the hatefulness of their life, or a bitter heart-disappointment--for
these poor children still have hearts--prompt them to go to a Home. By
all means let there be temporary Homes, where they can be taken in, but
for God’s sake do not let a whitewashing certificate lightly get them
into a house as a servant unless the mistress knows all about them.
Of course, there are many ladies living alone who could do no more
Christ-like act than to give such a girl a chance; but I have known
them sometimes in nurseries--I wonder if people realise how soon little
children can be injured by bad habits--and I have known them in houses
where there are growing-up sons and daughters, worse for the latter
than the former.
I hope you will pardon me for these two digressions, but my work in
Portsmouth has brought me in contact with so many poor girls whom
a Home seems to have hardened, and my work in the confessional has
brought me in contact with so many penitents, whose first temptations
to sin arose in their earliest days, and were generally suggested by
servants.
VII.
=Our House.=
I have told you that Chance Street was the worst street in the parish,
and therefore was the place where I felt I ought to live. But I thank
God now that I did not go there at first, for, from the experience of
four different houses, I learned the kind of house to build. First
of all we lived in Spring Street, but we were soon squeezed out of
that. Three of my old London boys appeared almost as soon as we had
settled there. Then we had to provide room for Winchester men, and
for all sorts of stray guests. One great help we had already gained
there, Mary, who has been our housekeeper all through the ten years;
but even her fertile imagination could not create bedrooms, and when
I had been driven from the bath-room, where I had slept in the bath
for two or three nights, to the landing outside, I felt I must see
about moving. Naturally you will say, Why burden yourself with these
people? But, I thank God, that during the ten years I have been at the
Mission we have never sent away from the door anyone whom we thought
we could benefit. To-day I got a letter from India from the first boy
we ever sent into the Army--now a collar-maker in the Royal Artillery.
He worked in a biscuit factory. His father and mother were dead. He
kept himself, board and lodging, on 4s. a week. Sometimes we called
him “Dodger,” because he stuttered and stammered; sometimes “My Lord,”
because he was so consequential. I remember once finding him crying in
the corner, and I found it was from sheer starvation. There was only
one hope for him--three or four months’ food and exercise. It cost me,
perhaps, £5. Think of it--£5--and a man made by it. He wrote me to-day,
“I have lost my home, when you left Portsmouth, but, thank God, I have
not lost you.” And then another, one of those strange phenomena out of
the slums, in appearance and lack of energy a gentleman, so attractive,
yet so disheartening, needing three years of continued watchfulness and
unceasing prayer, to-day a prosperous steward on the Australian line.
And so the family began, not willingly, but of necessity, and when
Spring Street was outgrown, then the Mission House in Conway Street was
ready for us. There, too, we began another great expense, but blessed
beyond all cost--the daily dinner. What hundreds of little children
have grown to be men by it! How many working men have been coaxed by
it back to health and bread-winning for their family! What a test
it has been for tramps and for the unworthy! You can always measure
the loafer by the fashion of his eating. What a school for learning
truths about humanity--there where tongues were loosened under the
influence of hospitality. With knife and fork in hand all men are at
ease together, and so we learned to know them, and they to know us.
The best school for our fellow priests, for the gentlemen who came
down to learn something of this life, and for the Winchester men,
has always been our dining-room. Sometimes I know I have marred it
myself, for oftentimes when one is ill in body and ill in temper--who
shall tell where one begins and the other ends?--my own moroseness has
hindered the power of the lesson. But I have known, even in my worst
days, a charm that has soothed me back to geniality. If I had been
Saul, and David eating before me, it would have been more potential
than playing on the harp. Over and over again I have seen the look of
polite horror and disdain passing out of some cultured face, when the
owner discovered that the shoeblack next him was quite as intelligent
as himself. And then the splendid discipline of it all, that power
of banter so cleansing for the priggish, that power of laughter so
health-giving to the morose, chasing away the frown of set purpose
fixed on the face. Eight long years of that common dining-table cost
enormous sums of money, and entailed continuous outpouring of strength
and of tact; but I doubt if, in all England, money has been better
spent, and strength better expended.
Then, too, began the realisation of the danger of a sailor’s life.
No words of mine are too strong to express the admiration I feel for
Miss Weston’s magnificent social work. I doubt if there be one woman
in England to whom England owes so much. But, surely, we had some duty
towards them too, many of them on board the training-ship through our
instrumentality, many recommended to us by clergymen who knew them.
But all we could do then was one afternoon in the week, and Sunday
afternoon; we had no room for more. With that we were content until
we found that there were some boys who had no homes to go to for the
Christmas holiday, and some who, having ceased to be boys, and, coming
on shore, were led down, because they had no helping hand, to sin and
death. That convinced us that we must move into a larger house.
My sisters, too, living a little distance from the parish, had found
their work so increased that one felt it was a duty to relinquish the
Mission House to them, and to move into a wretched cottage that we
had bought in Clarence Street, next the Gymnasium, the walls damp,
the floors rotten. Here we lived until the doctor discovered that I
was getting very ill, and Mrs. Porter, who helped Mary, pushed her
leg through the floor of my bedroom into my sitting-room below. Then
we were forced to build. The house next door to that little cottage
was a bad house, a shocking scandal left in the midst of a district
otherwise nearly cleansed. We thought that there would be no difficulty
in buying it, but the owner put a premium on its shameful success,
and I felt that to buy it at the price demanded was only to abet and
encourage sin. Luckily my architect, Mr. Ball, was the most patient
and resourceful of men. Schools, parsonage, and church, all testify
to his extraordinary cleverness, and he devised a plan by which we
utilised the gallery of the Gymnasium for bedrooms, and were able to
make an excellent parsonage. In the place of chief honour, because she
ministered most to the comfort of our house, we placed the cook and
our kitchen, and magnificently she fulfilled her charge, cooking, with
the help of her friend, Looey, for an average of certainly not less
than eighteen every single day, dining and teaing more than forty upon
Sunday, a kind of miracle-worker, never requiring to know how many were
coming, yet always enough for all who came. And then such splendid
sleeping accommodation; four cubicles, one Winchester room, two other
rooms with three beds each, and soon, because we had overstepped that
accommodation, a long gallery built over one side of the Gymnasium,
where we could put up at a pinch twelve or fourteen more. Our guests
were received just as they came; we were tied and bound by no rules.
As long as there was room, we accepted anyone whom it seemed likely we
could benefit, always giving preference to those who seemed to need
help the most. We laid ourselves out especially for three classes, the
sick in body, the sick in soul, and those desirous of becoming healers.
No one but myself knew the names or circumstances of our inmates, so
that oftentimes a man has stayed with us for six months, and no one
knew who he was but myself. To most people I gave a nickname, and that
avoided all difficulty. The etiquette of the house--you cannot say
rules--was very simple, punctuality at meals, not to annoy any inmate
unless I gave permission, when the annoyance was for the other’s good,
and always to be in by a quarter past ten at night. Anyone might leave
when they liked even without telling me, and they might steal when
they liked, if they could find anything worth stealing. The latter
had its inconveniences. I remember once an invalided marine, a poor
weak fellow in every respect, whom we had at last to turn out of the
cubicles to sleep in the gallery, because he had so many companions
that remained in the bed-clothes. When I remonstrated with him for
this, and suggested that the public baths and carbolic soap were a
ready way of ridding oneself of such friends, he left in a huff, taking
with him the plain clothes of the sailor who, out of pity, had first
brought him to the house. I remember, too, Tom--we never knew his other
name--a North-country boy, who had slept in almost every workhouse in
England, and yet who had extraordinary reserves of good in him. When,
after staying with us four months, I had arranged to emigrate him, he
offered, out of kindness, to clean Mary’s kitchen in the morning, but
broke open her drawer and went off with £5 of house money; yet he had
the grace to write from Liverpool and tell us that he had taken it;
and, though we have never heard from him since, I believe some memory
of S. Agatha’s remaining in his mind keeps near him some idea of human,
if not of divine, love. Many, many tramps like him we have sheltered,
some for a few days, some for a few months. Some have turned out
splendidly abroad, in the army, or as stokers in the navy. Some have
gone back, for the road has a mysterious attraction that it is very
hard to break them of.
Then there were the sick in body. Ah! what miracles are wrought by a
little food. We who waste so much surely never realise it. They came
to us principally from London, sometimes out of the parish itself.
It was not altogether the best house for invalids. Perhaps there was
no more difficult task than to tell them so, and that they must go.
Eating, too, is such a matter of fancy, the mind far more often than
the stomach saying, “I cannot.” Our common table, eating all together
all the same things, was a wonderful cure for this squeamishness of
appetite. But illness from starvation, and starvation because of
illness, far commoner maladies than we comfortable people are willing
to confess--our own meat would often choke us if we did--renders it
sometimes impossible for men to eat any quantity of food, especially
meat. Can you realise that? There are thousands who could not eat meat
if they had it, by reason of want of use, whose digestions have become
destroyed by sheer starvation. And here was the great reward in this
part of our work. Whereas you could not measure the moral progress; you
always could the physical. Anæmic faces growing ruddy, gloomy faces
growing gay; first, perhaps, just the vegetables eaten, then a little
meat as well; then the whole plate cleared. How I have rejoiced to see
a little bit of bread cleaning up the plate. Then a brave attempt at a
second help, and we knew the man was cured. The dear old nursery story,
“Top off, half gone, all gone,” and then, as a rule, his time was come,
and he went.
Then the harder cases--the fellow who would really work if he could get
work to do. Sometimes a footman, sometimes a clerk, sometimes a man
who had been in one of the Services. Portsmouth was a bad place for
this kind of fellow. There are no manufactories; every billet is in the
hands of army or navy men, and I have never been able to get on with
the authorities of either service.
Once, indeed, we had a great stroke of luck, when Lipton opened a shop
in Portsmouth, and they allowed us to supply all the boys. That was, I
suppose, five years ago, and some are there still. There is, perhaps,
no sadder man in all the world than he who would and could work, and
yet cannot get it. How terribly his cause is injured by the man who
will never work under any circumstances! In London it was easy to deal
with this class. A room opened as soon as the papers were published, a
perusal of the advertisements, a hunch of bread and cheese, a cheery
word of encouragement, a little perseverance in tramping on the part of
the searcher, and work was generally found after a week or two. But in
Portsmouth I have known them linger with us week after week. In reality
the only chance was to get them away. This entailed large expenditure
in advertisements, in stamps, and correspondence, until at last I have
had to refuse to take in any more of these cases.
[Illustration: LIPTON’S BOYS.]
And then the most difficult cases of all--those just out of gaol, or
who ought to be in gaol--each one demanding special individual care,
and far more special prayer. There is no doubt that in many people
stealing and drunkenness--these were the two sins we mostly dealt
with--must really be looked upon as diseases. In that case the cause
of the disease is the first thing to be ascertained, and that requires
considerable time for true diagnosis; and here you have first to learn
that all drunkards are liars, generally very successful liars, and
many thieves as well. I have been taken in over and over again, and
yet the only way to cure this is to make them feel that you believe in
them. This in the long run shames most men into truth. I remember
a lad who had tramped to us from Southampton with a most plausible
story--concerning which I wrote--managing to intercept the letters,
and so gaining three or four days more grace; caught in the act of
stealing, so impressed with being forgiven that he told his true story,
which was that he had been in gaol twice for stealing. Living with us
for nine months, he became altogether changed, learning to pray, making
a first confession, being confirmed, and everything was arranged for
his going out to a friend of mine in America; he became so trusted that
he carried all my letters to the post, and even my money to the bank;
and then on the eve of one Derby Day, seeing the fatal odds quoted,
he stole a letter of mine, in which he knew there was a postal order
for £1. He had the grace, after he had stolen it, to telegraph to me
the fact (that sixpence the first-fruits of his robbery), for I had
just left home. Surely that is a disease; and yet one knows that every
resistance to temptation is a tremendous gain towards its cure. A year
ago he worked his way home from America in a cattle-boat just to stay
two days with me, to tell me his failures and his successes. When last
I heard from him he had been going on all right since his return. How
magnificent are these efforts to do right, in spite of overwhelming
temptation! How infinitely more heroic than our smug contentment at
our own honesty, who have never had cause to steal. And yet falling,
in a moment, discovery, gaol, despair. Has Christian society no better
method?
I shall never forget the look on the face of Dr. Thorold one morning
when I told him that the two companions he had chosen to sit with at
supper the night before were both experienced thieves. One had been in
gaol three times, the other twice; the former a clergyman’s son, the
latter one of those curious instances, in which the lowest surroundings
had not been able to obliterate outward signs of a better heredity.
We generally sat at meals according to the order of our coming, but I
thought he, being a Bishop, and unaccustomed to our ways, had better
choose his own companions. I had only seen the lads the day before,
and I watched the scene with amusement, qualified with terror for his
ring and watch. However, he found them very pleasant, and when I told
him what I knew about them, he could hardly believe it was possible. In
three or four days’ time I discovered that, as far as I was concerned,
the clergyman’s son was hopeless, but for the other there was every
chance, and the diagnosis was pretty correct, for the one facilitated
his departure by stealing some money, and, though I hear from him from
time to time, he is, I think, at this present moment in gaol. The other
emigrated, got into the hands of a good man, whose daughter he married,
though I am proud to think he was honourable enough, even at the hazard
of losing his love and his prospects, to tell his father-in-law the
history of his past life.