disappointed. How could we in a few months hope to set right what many
years had made wrong? But over and over again letters have come to
me, showing, at least, how our endeavours had not been altogether in
vain. Ashamed, perhaps, to come back to us, because of the way they
had treated us, they yet preserve in their minds a remembrance of us,
a little salt to prevent wholesale corruption. To believe that someone
loves me, is akin to believing God loves me, and I know that there are
many in all parts of the world to-day whose only sight of the love of
God was their sojourn with us. One longed to be able to devote many
years to such a one, to give up all one’s time. Of course, that was
impossible, we had a hundred other things to do, a hundred other people
to help. People often ask, How long did you keep a man? As long as we
saw that there was any hope. There is no such thing as time in dealing
with cases like these. One poor Irish landlord, a perfect gentleman by
birth, whom we put into a lodging, because it was not convenient to
have him in the house, was with us until we left. We had had tremendous
hopes of him. He began to go to church. His manhood seemed to be
restored. Then in a fatal moment I allowed him to earn a little money
in the town during the election. Quite old he was. And yet that pound
meant drink, gambling, loss of all he had gained, then fear of us,
until Conibeere discovered him almost naked and utterly broken down in
health.
Of course, many have turned out splendidly. I remember one, who had
been in gaol for eighteen months, coming to us as a very last resource.
I remember how, day by day, we could notice the giving up of the
slouch, the desire for a clean collar, for a bath, for rational talk,
for intellectual books to read. And now from America he writes me
letters full of the deepest interest on religious as well as secular
matters, and underlying them all a modesty and a gentleness which shows
him to be infinitely superior to what he was before he got into trouble.
Here is a very typical case, the last one we dealt with; perhaps
someone who reads this may like to help him. I had known him sixteen
years ago, for his two brothers, soldiers, were great friends of mine.
He is one of the cleverest men at figures I ever knew, but he got into
bad ways in London, and when the consciousness that he was a thief
pressed out of him all hope, he walked down to Landport, craving to
be saved. I felt at once that his repentance was only skin deep, that
if I could have set him free, he would merely have gone on his way
rejoicing till another temptation came. There was only one remedy, “You
must give yourself up.” He thought it was a hard judgment, but he was
wise enough to adopt it. Alas, how selfish personal distress makes one!
And so in all the agony of our last five weeks I forgot all about him.
I was taking supper with my sisters about ten days before we left. We
had just heard that Canon Gore was going to send a Mr. Bull to take
temporary charge, when a telegram arrived, “I will be with you at 7.30
p.m.” (Signed) “Bull.” Though we were very grateful that Mr. Bull could
conscientiously come, I think for a moment we thought the telegram a
little cool. While we were discussing it, a ring at the bell, and to my
delight it was my lad from gaol. I took him up to London with me when
I left, and kept him and his wife for a little time with me, and now
I have sent him out to his brother in America, who is going to help
him. The discipline of gaol gave him the grace of amendment. Our help
restored to him faith in himself, and there is no doubt that he will do
well; but he cost me over £15, and as I am utterly impecunious now, he
will have to pay it, which will prevent his wife rejoining him. If this
burden were removed from him by somebody paying it, I need not say it
would be the completion to what I believe to be his reformation.
Drink, of course, was a much more difficult thing to cure, because
the physical craving is an additional temptation. Perhaps this is the
reason why drink, though not more deadly in the eye of God, is more
deadly in its consequences than most sins, because it not only causes
that dementia, which forces men to do outrageous and monstrous things,
but it injures some brain tissue, which prevents a man using his
self-will, and finally destroys self-will altogether. People got to
know, I suppose, that we were willing to receive clergymen and others
who had gone wrong through this, and so in the last eight years there
have always been one or two inebriates resident in our house. If a man
really wanted to be cured, it was merely a matter of time, but many
came to us persuaded by their friends, having no real desire to amend.
When, too, you preach to others, it is very easy to become a castaway
yourself. When you have held the Sacrament in sacrilegious hands, you
have voluntarily deprived yourself of the chief power of amendment.
Some of the best workers and the noblest souls become slaves of this
most awful curse. It has always seemed so strange a thing to me that
there is no place for a clergyman who has gone wrong. If they are
condemned to seek reformation in the workhouse, it is almost impossible
to hope for their amendment. The very knowledge of the height from
which they have fallen, the grace that they have despised and trodden
under their feet, makes them, if there is any honesty in them, hopeless
of ever amending themselves, and they grow callous and hard-hearted.
They have often come to me from the workhouse, from the army shelter
home, from gaol. Our house was manifestly bad for this purpose. It was
impossible to have sufficient supervision. Then, too, the character
of the clergyman never can be wholly laid aside, and as a rule, in a
few days, even though in lay attire, they were recognised by the rest
of the inmates, which made it particularly difficult for them. In all
other religions I think there is a home for these poor lost sheep,
or a monastery, or some place; but in this country, alas! left to
themselves, they go from bad to worse. I remember well one, whom his
friends had promised to supply with lay clothes, arriving an hour and
a half late, dressed in clericals, so drunk that all the children in
the street were mobbing him, and when I suddenly opened the hall-door
to see what the row was, unable to stand, he fell prone at my feet.
Even when we got him to bed he declared he had had nothing to drink but
some milk. A doctor, who was with me at the time, tried to persuade him
he was drunk, but he utterly refused to acknowledge it. We bore with
him as long as we could, and at last I had to tell him that he would
have to leave by a certain date. My Low Church brethren were willing
to relieve me of anyone who could flatter them that it was our High
Church ways they objected to, and so with ease he borrowed eighteen
shillings from one of our brethren; but when he returned at night in an
hilarious mood and was refused more, he promptly smashed the windows.
I saw him in the workhouse afterwards. I promised that if he would
stay there for six months I would try and do something for him. He
thought me very hard-hearted and unkind, because I would not take him
back again. Indeed I received a very amusing comment from him on the
last sermon I preached at S. Agatha’s, which he had read in the paper.
I had been expressing to my dear people my consciousness of many hard
words I had said to them, and how often I felt a want of tenderness
and forgiveness on my part had marred my ministry. Commenting on this,
he said, “I am quite sure it was your treatment of me in the workhouse
which you had in mind when you spoke those words.”
I believe there is only one hope for the drunkard, and that is
teetotalism, but there are a thousand other things which he needs
besides. Many of them have become drunkards through the bitterness
of poverty, to have to live like gentlemen, when they had no enough
income to keep body and soul together; many through the snobbishness of
the vicar, who often treats the curate as if he were in no sense his
equal, and is jealous of his mixing with the well-to-do people of the
congregation. Few people can measure the loneness of many a curate’s
life, especially if he is a little on in years, so that the female
part of the congregation do not admire him. Many become so because
of an inward rebellion against their own work; they feel more or less
that their preaching and teaching is humbug. Many become so because at
certain moments, when they have no energy, no vital force, they are
compelled, either in private or public, to make a great mental effort.
Many become so because of the utter discomfort of their lodgings, want
of proper food, etc. A drop of drink is such a swift miracle-working
remedy. The higher clergy, who have never been tempted in these ways,
ought to have infinite compassion for these men. There ought to be, in
several centres, places managed by the most loving, hopeful people, so
that, at any rate, they might have a generous chance, and the awful
scandal they do to the Church might be removed. Our lay drunkards were
infinitely easier to deal with than our clerical ones, and I have in my
mind many, who lived with us for a little time, who are now quite free
from their former temptations. You may imagine something of the burden
that this kind of work entailed on me, a burden that no one could
share, for I alone knew their histories, and therefore their needs.
But I do not want you to think for a moment that our house only
contained inmates like this. There are many excellent men, now priests,
who came to us to discover vocations, some ’Varsity men, some National
schoolmasters, some shopmen. Mostly two or three like this were
living with us, helping me in a hundred different ways, and learning,
I think, a good deal. How hideous the question of examination, the
gross unfairness of the system. For instance, the ’Varsity man can
be ordained at once, if he pass the Bishop’s exam. A literate, who
is very likely a far more valuable man, has not a look in in most
dioceses. The Bishops seem to think that a B.A. Oxford, Cambridge, or
Dublin, is the very best of educations. They are always saying, “We
want University men.” Nobody values Oxford and Cambridge more than
I do, especially their meals; there is a royal prodigality about a
breakfast at Oxford that is truly magnificent. There is also in those
four years of ’Varsity life a very delightful environment, a little
work crammed in as an excuse for much enjoyment, much idleness. Of
course, there are two exceptions to this--the man who reads, and the
man who plays games, a physical and intellectual training, which, if
combined, produces a really matured man. But the vast majority of
men saunter their time away, excusing themselves, I suppose, because
Oxford and Cambridge are holy ground. They gain a certain facility of
expression, a certain ease of manner, the tone, if they are at a good
college, of good society. Few take to religion, about them the less
said the better; somebody whispers in my ear--I hardly like to write
it--the word “smug.” On the whole, it has splendid advantages, it is a
time of easy growth, a time of making friendship, a time of acquiring
charm. But that it is a time of acquiring character for the priesthood,
hardness, endurance, mental struggle, intellectual activity, no one but
a Bishop can imagine. Wonderfully did these men add to the charm of
Landport.
Once I was giving a parochial retreat in Holy Week. I noticed a man
with a hard, strong, strangely kindling face. When the day’s work was
over, painfully rubbing his knees, for he had never knelt so long
before, he told me he had come from Ireland, and wanted to stay with us
a little. He had been the master of an endowed school there, who had
saved enough money out of his pitiful salary to take a degree in Dublin
by examination. He intended to stay a week, but he stayed with me for
more than two years. He is one of the strongest, noblest characters I
have ever known. He would have been an invaluable priest, but, alas!
he could not afford to live up in Dublin, and so could not take the
Divinity Testimonial. He is now a priest in Canada, and very likely
will some day be a Bishop.
You know how hard it is for men to overcome shyness, especially in
speaking about religion to others, and very soon after we got to
Landport I noticed one young man who always brought two or three with
him. When I got to know him, I discovered that this missionary spirit
was very deep down in his heart, and his one hope was that some day he
might be a priest. He worked very hard, for his was a Landport shop,
and the hours were late, but I promised him if he would teach himself
Latin and Greek I would look upon it as a proof that he was fit for the
ministry. Some two years afterwards he came to me and said, “I think,
if Mr. Osborne would examine me, I could satisfy you that I have tried
to learn.” But even this courage and determination availed nothing with
the English Episcopate. He too is now doing an excellent work as a
priest in America.
Of course, there were many men who came to us with no vocations at
all. Concerning that the Bishops did not seem to make any inquiry.
They practically know nothing of their candidates, and yet surely this
might be a valid excuse for the monstrous possession of a palace, and
for an income which would enable them to keep S. Paul’s rule, “to
be given to hospitality.” I fear it is rather the influential laity
and dignified clergy on whom they exercise this virtue. I am, of
course, willing to allow that great discrimination would be needed in
discovering this vocation. Many young men came to us with no vocations;
a few were utterly vicious. One, I remember, moved with pity at my
ill-health and overwork, inaugurated a collection so that I might
have a holiday, kindly suggesting that the people asked to contribute
should not mention the matter to me, as I might refuse it. He went
for a nice holiday himself, and afterwards was aggrieved because I
would not recommend him to another clergyman. But men like this are
soon choked off, and the discipline of laughter in our house was
particularly wholesome. The discipline of labour, too. Once I remember
a man almost prostrating himself at my feet, and saying, “All I crave
is a habit.” It was before I sold my library, and I saw that the books
were very dusty, so getting a cloth I made him clean them, and then
begin a catalogue. Before a week was over, tired of the catalogue, he
had fled. Oh, most blessed catalogue, what a number of vocations it has
discovered as non-existent!
Many men would come because of the exaggerated account of our ritual.
Mattins, said plain, at 7.30 a.m., was a great stumbling-block to
them, and when they discovered that our own altar-boys knew nothing
about ritual, except the part that they themselves had to perform,
they thought that we were strangely behindhand. One having to serve
at my celebration, because the usual server was ill, screamed out in
an agony after the service was over, “Oh, Father, when your hands are
extended your fingers are unjoined. Could you not join them?” His ears
discovered whether I could or not. And with these ritualists came many
of the same character, men coquetting with Rome or with unbelief. They
were utterly dumbfounded to discover it all dealt with as a matter of
want of wholesome employment of body and intellect, to be recommended
to try a little real activity, to find that neither Rome nor unbelief
was regarded as a very terrible danger to them, but that their
credulity or doubts were only another spelling of self-importance. If
they were good fellows they soon fell into line again. Of course, there
were exceptions to these, those with whom one watched through agonies,
and in those agonies discovered prayer, and in prayer rediscovered
the sight of God, souls very heavy and sick to death, of tenderest
conscience, most noble, most suffering. It has been a privilege beyond
all words to be to these what the Blest Three refused to be to Christ,
and I for one am bold to say that, whether Romans or unbelievers
to-day, a compassionate Heart understands, knows, and blesses. Many
such, I think, went away comforted and strengthened, though perhaps
more by the cheeriness and good fellowship of our house than by
anything we were able to say.
Then, too, there were Romans desiring to become Anglicans, I fear
the worst lot of all. I suppose one ought to rid oneself of one’s
instinctive dread of these persons, but I have met such hideous frauds
amongst them. Almost my first day in Portsmouth I was persecuted by a
wretched priest, whom, as soon as he had opened his mouth, I discovered
to be a drunkard and a liar. He arrived one evening about five with a
little bag in his hand. When I told him I was too busy to talk to him,
he said, “I will leave my bag, and return at dinner-time.” Then when I
told him there was only dinner for two, and neither I nor my secretary
would share ours with him, he said, “Oh, it does not matter; but I will
return to sleep.” And when I told him that there were but two bedrooms,
and neither I nor my secretary would share these with him, the mask
fell off his face. He had been received into the Church of England, and
the Church of England was bound to support him; he would soon make it
too hot for me in Portsmouth. I never stood face to face with a more
hideous blackmailer, but it was not until I had opened the door and had
taken him by the back of the neck that he retired.
Then came a most innocent monk, demanding rest and peace to meditate
on the errors of his past religion, to discover the beauty of mine.
Correspondence with his former superiors proved he was utterly
unworthy; but then there are always two sides to every question, and
one felt bound to give him a patient hearing. Those who shared his
room said he not only went prayerless to bed, but in the same shirt
he had worn during the day. This latter habit they much objected to.
Alas! in him the habit did not make the monk. But when I discovered
that Ally Sloper was his favourite reading, my mind was more perplexed
about him, and I thought that this course of study could be as
advantageously pursued at his father’s, a respectable grocer in the
North of England, and so I made him the offer of either sending him
back to his monastery, or to his own home. That day came a wonderful
conversion in him, his face all radiant with delight. He had been
spirit-led, as he said, to the Presbyterian minister’s, and the
minister and his wife had so expounded religion, that he had discovered
that the Church of England was quite as false as the Church of Rome,
and now peace and happiness was reigning in his heart. Not long after
the town was covered with placards, “A monk will expose the enormities
of monasteries.” The lectures, however, fell rather flat. Gossip said
they were not spicy enough; I imagined invention had failed. We used
to see him as he lived in comfort at the minister’s, but he cast
pitying glances on us. Some time after the police called--they wanted
information concerning him; and a year’s retirement, free of charge,
was granted him for obtaining money under false pretences. Alas! this
did not suffice to really convert him, for some time ago he got a
further term for the same thing in Ireland.
The mention of this monk’s shirt reminds me of a difficulty we often
experienced, even amongst our nicest visitors. We discovered that not
merely pyjamas, but night-shirts, were the exclusive property of the
upper classes; and I remember once providing these garments for all who
were without them, on condition that they would wear them every night.
I had forgotten all about it until I heard one of the boys--I think it
was Tommy--say, with conscious pride, to another, “I always wear my
night-shirt.” This roused my curiosity, and, on making investigations,
I discovered that he did wear it, but over all his other clothes,
except coat, waistcoat, and trousers.
I suppose there were generally fourteen of us living in the house,
besides two curates who lodged outside, because I hardly considered it
fair to compel them always to live in public, while at almost every
meal there were what we call probationers. If, after watching these for
a day or two, we discovered that there was a chance to really reform
them, they would be taken from the lodging where they had been placed,
and brought into the house. Then there were countless sailors coming to
stay a day or a month, as the case might be, disappearing for two or
three years, and then turning up as if they had never been away. Then
the convalescent and those out of work, so that our dinner generally
doubled our regular number of inmates. Can you imagine a better school
for men who desired to learn their fellow men? Over it all there was a
spirit of good fellowship and kindliness that seldom failed.
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS PARTY, 1893.]