presence forced beside some rather swell Wykehamist, or a budding
cleric with conceited notions about himself, this difficulty never
lasted more than for a moment. A look was always sufficient to make the
objector understand the real good he would gain, even if he carried
away to his personal inconvenience something from the man beside him.
But sometimes the devil was let loose for a space amongst us, and
everything went wrong. Boys stole from one another, men came in drunk,
sometimes acts of gross insubordination occurred, when my heavy hand
had to fall on the whole family. I remember once for three long days
we lived on bread and cheese. We had had a very large Christmas party.
Two or three days after Boxing Day, as I came into the Sunday dinner,
I heard piercing shrieks from Blind Willie,--you will hear about him
again, I expect. Someone had smashed up his hat, and no one would tell
who had done it. As a rule boys were ready to confess, but there was a
spirit of obstinacy in the house to-day, and no one would tell. In a
rash moment I ordered the dinner to be carried away,--alas! being in
the octave, it was a kind of repetition of the Christmas dinner,--and
having pointed out the wickedness of tormenting Willie, I said there
would be no more meat eaten in the house until I knew who had hurt
his hat. I remember well there were two inoffensive clergymen, a
member of Parliament, and a guardsman staying with us, and I have
reason to believe that they secretly refreshed themselves elsewhere;
but the house stood to bread and cheese rations until the Tuesday
morning. It was a very sharp and bitter lesson, but it is a fairly
good illustration of our universal method. Over and over again, in
dealing with mean and horrid ways, we have found this one of the most
effectual methods. I think that to share the consequences of sin often
prevents sinners, and everyone in the house realising that the burden
of punishment would fall upon the guiltless, and in some sense most
heavily upon myself, was a great deterrent. Vulgarity, ill manners,
or horse-play would have made a home like ours insupportable, and,
I think, by degrees we all learned tenderness and forbearance one
with another. I suppose this is the best test of being what is called
“gentlemen.” In the daytime my sitting-room, in the night-time my
bedroom, dominated the whole house. At half-past five every morning I
got up and called the boys who were going to work, or the sailors who
had to be on board at 6.30. I had a gas stove in my bedroom, and so I
could go back to bed again, and read or make sermons till six. This was
a very quiet hour, too, for scolding anyone in the house who needed
some special talking to. Then at seven I was in church to celebrate the
Holy Communion; at 7.40 we said Morning Prayer; another Celebration at
eight, which the religious men staying in the house usually attended;
at 8.30 breakfast, at which everybody was supposed to be present. When
I had a shorthand clerk he could take down most of my correspondence
while breakfast was going on. At 9.45 convalescents in body and mind
went out walking till 1 p.m., unless there was any work for them to do.
Sometimes it is best to let men be idle, sometimes to force them to
work. All the morning I saw people, parish people, inquisitive people,
people with real troubles, people with imaginary ones; but the door
was always open, and everybody came upstairs as they liked. They knew
if my study door was open that they could come in; if not, they must
wait till it opened. Sometimes a man wanting to learn was allowed to
sit in my study to see the people who came in, unless it was something
private, and to hear the advice given. One learns to be a very quick
judge of character, alas! oftentimes too quick, as my conscience
taught me, when each night I answered before God for every one who had
visited me that day. Then at one o’clock dinner, at which everybody had
to be present. As far as possible everybody except myself took exercise
in the afternoon, coming in to tea at 5.30. Service in the church at
7.30; then clubs, gymnasium, &c., till 10 p.m.; supper and prayers and
everybody in their room at 10.15 p.m. At 10.30 the door was locked, and
anyone coming in had to ring my bell. Sometimes I could entrust one
of my helpers to go down and open the door, but, as a rule, I tried
to do it myself. I have known many men shamed out of drunkenness and
loose habits by the knowledge that I should have to open the door. I
do not suppose in all the world there ever was a place better adapted
for acquiring a knowledge of human nature. Of course, many men took
advantage of it; but even from them what an immense deal we learned,
and I doubt if there was such a merry home or such happy people in the
whole of England. Thank God, as a rule, there were always a good many
Irishmen amongst us, and so there was ever a humorous side, even to the
darkest circumstances. It was one of our rules to talk nonsense, as far
as possible, at meals, and we generally brought in to dinner and tea
one or two little children. There is no possibility of being dull in
the presence of a little child, and in my saddest moments, when I was
feeling sick to death with worry and trouble, wounded oftentimes by my
own brethren, the laughter and merriment of a little child brought us
back to ourselves and to God.
Men coming to stay with us had often such heroic ideas of what they
would like to do, were so anxious to do people good. Of course, this
is a splendid notion, but it generally prevents one doing anything at
all, and I am sure I and my curates and most of my workers felt that
the house and family did us much more good than we did it, and so one
generally said to the man, “We don’t want you to do good, we want to do
you good.” The woman worker amongst the poor is sometimes not a prig;
alas! the man worker nearly always is. I have known men choked off the
very first day of their stay by some such treatment. They want to give
lectures, or to teach in night school or in Sunday School, or to get
up debating societies, or cricket clubs, or to boss concerts; in fact,
to do anything that means the assertion of their own cleverness or
good disposition towards others. How hateful it is! I always kicked at
this, sometimes kicked it. I expect these workers do infinitely more
harm to themselves than they do good to others. For ten long years,
day and night, there were lessons for me to learn, if I only had the
grace and modesty to learn them. Even in that in which men might know
more, knowledge, they are but as babes and sucklings in the presence
of those whom they condescend to teach, that is, if knowledge means
the knowing of things likely to be useful to the knower and to the
community. In speech, too, how much we have to learn; how terse and in
what few words do our dear people express themselves, while the man who
wants to harangue them wraps round with innumerable words, which darken
all counsels and prevent all understanding, the thought that the slum
lad expresses in three or four words to the point. And as to manners,
every single man in my home was a gentleman, that is, if thinking for
others, and treating them with forbearance and tenderness and love, and
striving to make them feel at home and at ease, means being gentlemen.
The roughest, rudest, most ignorant lad, after a month’s residence,
had obtained these graces. I have seen deeds of the purest chivalry,
self-sacrifice which the love of God alone can measure; I have seen the
withstanding of temptation even to tears and blood; I have seen agonies
borne without a word, for fear I should be vexed. I take them out of my
heart, where some of them have lain for eight long years--I take them
out one by one, thieves, felons, tramps, loafers, outcasts, of whom the
world was not worthy, having no place for them, no home for them, no
work for them. I read in their eyes a tenderness, and in their hearts a
compassion for me, a bearing with all my ill temper, and paying me back
a hundredfold in the richest coin of truest love.
[Illustration: SOME OF OUR VISITORS.]
VIII.
=Our Sailors.=
I daresay, as you read this account of our house, it may have been hard
for you to imagine that there was a great danger of our life becoming
monotonous. If no new inmate arrived in the course of a month, it was
very hard to go on inventing new jokes; and yet, in an atmosphere of
discipline and of sorrow, merriment was of the first importance, and
God sent this element to us in our sailor lads. The first hour I was in
Portsmouth I recognized that the sailors would be our chief difficulty,
our chief source of danger; but I hardly realized that they would
be the cheery, breezy element, driving away cobwebs, and preventing
monotony.
Naturally one’s first thought was for the boys on the training-ship
_St. Vincent_. First, because a good number of our parish lads
had joined her; secondly, because many clergymen in different parts of
the country wrote to us about individual boys; and, thirdly, because
they seemed to need us most. In one sense there can be no life more
wholesome or more improving than a boy’s life on a training-ship; its
splendid punctuality and obedience, healthy hours, sufficient food,
no single idle moment, great attention as to bodily health, and, as a
rule, very interesting and diversified employment. And, over it all,
a rough-and-ready give and take, which, if in certain individuals it
degenerates into cruelty, is, on the whole, I think, as merciful as
possible, when you consider that a thousand lads, rough and smooth,
educated and ignorant, gentle and brutal, are herded together. We have
sometimes come across gentlemen’s sons; once, I think, a Blue-coat boy;
very often sons of well-to-do shopkeepers and superior artizans. Many
of these boys suffer agonies for the first month or two, some through
the whole of their course; but I remember at Harrow some boys suffered
agonies all through their school-life. But take it as a whole, and for
the majority of boys, I doubt if there is a better training anywhere.
Two great blots, however, there are on this system, and I cannot see
how they can be amended. First, the great difficulty about religion.
I have known the most excellent naval chaplains in training-ships
getting hold of the boys by storm, impressing them not only at the
moment of their confirmation, but, I believe, through all their future
life. I know one chaplain who keeps a record of every boy who has
passed through his ship, not only discovering all about him at home,
but following him on through his career. He has a kind of guild, to
which those who care to do so may belong, and they carry a letter of
commendation to the chaplain of their next ship, and so on. If his
system could only be a little extended, enormous good might be done.
But such chaplains are few and far between, not because they do not
desire to do all they can, but because all men have not the method of
dealing with lads of this description.
I remember one most excellent man, just appointed to the _St.
Vincent_, most anxious to do all he could. In the middle of our
conversation I said, “You had better come and have a cup of tea.” But
when, on entering the dining-room, he saw that it entailed sitting down
with eight or ten of his own boys, he was anything but comfortable.
An awful silence for a few moments, and then he jerked out, looking
round at them with a grin, “I think this is the first time you have had
the honour of taking tea with me.” Why should such a man be sent to a
training-ship?
The best chaplain we ever had at Portsmouth was taken away after six
months, because he was a naval instructor as well, and therefore had to
go to a ship where there were middies; but I am sure in the day when
every man’s work is tried, those six months will be the most fruitful
and abiding.
If only some system could be devised by which the most suitable
chaplains could be retained in the training-ships--indeed, one might
go further, if it were possible, and suggest that the captain, and
more especially the first-lieutenant, should be chosen for their
aptitude for this kind of work, understanding the needs of boys,
with a genius for discovering the methods of the instructors and the
warrant-officers, the gain would be enormous. We need in England
sailors perfectly trained for their work. This they will never be,
unless they love their work. The first eighteen months, as a rule,
either creates or mars this love. If in those eighteen months there
could be a little individualising, a little less treating everybody
like a machine--and this can only be done by those who have daily and
hourly intercourse with the boys, as instructors in the schoolroom
or in their different squads--if there could be a little sympathetic
compassion and understanding of them, they would turn out much more
valuable men. And this practically almost altogether depends upon the
first-lieutenant, and could depend, I think, a good deal upon the
chaplain.
The other difficulty is the utter loss of all idea of home. There are
some boys who never come ashore from week to week, and when they do go
home for their leave, so unaccustomed are they to all the gentle side
of what home means, all that part of it which springs from woman’s
influence, that they are very soon tired of it. You must realize
that these lads of fourteen are far older in experience than lads
of the same age in another class, and this eighteen months in their
life is just the time when they turn from boys into men, the real
turning-point; new passions, new powers, are developing every day.
Body and intellect, both wholesomely treated, are developing with
extraordinary rapidity, but the soul has hardly any opportunity of
growth. And, therefore, the sailor oftentimes remains a boy, or rather
a man who has never matured, if our manhood consist of soul as well as
body and intellect. I think this was the thought which struck us most
as the _St. Vincent_ boys began to use our house more and more.
And very glad we were that they should use our house, for Portsmouth is
not the best place for boys to be in. Whether they land at the Hard or
at the Point, there is generally temptation very near them, temptation
which has a special attraction for them, because they have a special
desire to play the man, and manliness in certain classes is only
another word for sin. Every Thursday and Saturday, their half-holidays,
and every Sunday afternoon, we opened our house freely to them. We
devised all kinds of amusements, and wearied ourselves with inventing
sports, which were never received with very much _verve_. Our
great gymnasium, of course, was always a source of joy. I remember one
time, when the _Saint_ possessed the best gymnastic, football, and
cricket team, I should think, in any boys’ institution in the world,
when Jimmy Caulfield was lieutenant, the best fellow I ever knew with
lads. We gave them a football in the gymnasium, and never realized,
till the house was nearly blown up with an explosion of gas, that a
football was likely to smash all the burners. Then we tried singing,
with somebody to play the piano, but when the accompanist had gone
away, the sailors discovered that feet produced better music than
hands. This emulation to play proved a great misfortune to us, for when
we locked up the piano, some of them tore away the silk which covered
the front of it, and broke a lot of the keys. On Sundays, too, this
music led to hymn singing. I think I objected to that more than to
anything else. It seems to me nothing can be more irreverent or likely
to destroy religion, than the bawling out of the most sacred words
and names, without one single thought as to what they mean. I myself
believe that comic songs would be far less harmful. But the fittest
always survives, and we discovered, what common sense might have taught
us at first, that being very much employed all the rest of their time,
what they really liked best was loafing, mixed with conversation,
pictures, reading, and writing home.
I have been wonderfully helped in my management of these afternoons
by two men, to whom the mission owes a good deal besides, William
Hays and Albert Conibeere. Urged by the former of these, we made a
new departure, and asked leave that boys whom we knew, or who were
recommended to us, might use our house as if it were their own home,
sleeping on Saturday nights. This gave us the opportunity of speaking
a word privately about religion, because any boy, whom we knew on the
ship, who wanted to go to Holy Communion, could do so with more hope of
preparation and of quiet than he could on board. So “Dolling’s party,”
as the master-at-arms would call them as they left the ship, became an
established fact. Once or twice this liberty has been abused. Once a
lad used it as an opportunity for running away. Five or six times boys
came home the worse for drink. But considering that for five years
eight or nine lads used our house every Saturday night, except when
away on leave, transgressors were extraordinarily few. Once I remember
having to threaten to stop this party altogether because two boys got
drunk, and we had the most piteous and abject apologies from a large
number of them. As a rule, every boy had to be in at a quarter-past
ten. Most of them spent all the evening in the gymnasium. If they
asked leave, however, they might go to the theatre, or if they had
any special friends in the town, whom I approved of, they might be a
little later. Latterly those coming have been chosen by Conibeere. He
kept a book in which all the boys’ antecedents were written down, the
number of visits each had paid us, whether he was a Communicant, etc.
The boys spending the afternoon could tell Conibeere who wanted to
come, and privately whether they wanted to go to the Holy Communion.
Thus I always got a chance of saying a word of advice and a word of
prayer with each one, but we were most careful never to press religion,
or show more hospitality to the religious; if anything we erred,
perhaps, on the other side. There can be no greater danger than making
religion pay, a danger, I think, into which those who manage Soldiers’
and Sailors’ Institutions are most prone to fall--a danger which often
leads sailors, at any rate, into a fear of making friends with the
chaplain, or of going to Communion, lest their mates should misjudge
them as being crawlers or hypocrites. It is wonderful, for instance,
how popular teetotalism becomes if some officer is specially interested
in it, or how well a Bible Class is attended if patronised by some one
in authority. This oftentimes is a great stumbling-block to the modest
man, who is really religious, and yet is afraid of his religion being
misunderstood by his mates.
And if you ask me about the after results of all this labour, I am
afraid I can say very little. Sailors seldom, or never, write. I
have known lads use our house continually for eighteen months, then
be ordered abroad, and walk in in three years’ time, saying, “Oh, I
lost your address,” or “I didn’t know what to say, so didn’t write.”
And then they would use the house again as if they had only left
it yesterday, very likely showing us that they had thought about
us by bringing us some impossible gifts--“curios” they would call
them--sometimes a monkey, sometimes a bird; oftentimes astonishing me
by coming into my study on Saturday night, and talking about their
Communion the next day, with a wonderful, simple story of their
difficulties, perhaps of their sins. And yet, in spite of all their
temptations, there was a remembrance of God, which I believe at any
rate they had partly learned from us. But, dear friend, surely all
statistics are abominable, and especially religious statistics, so I
prefer to give none.
Of course, amongst the older sailors we could hope to do very little,
unless they actually lived in the parish. They are very much a race by
themselves, and don’t mix well with civilians, and, as we had neither
men nor plant, we dared not in any way add to our responsibilities by
opening a Home for them, though I doubt if there is any disgrace for
which the Church of England deserves to suffer more than the fact that
there is no Church of England Sailors’ Home in Portsmouth. One would
think that shame, if no higher motive, would compel her to try and do
her duty towards her sailors. But if she fails, there is one name that
ought never to be mentioned without thanksgiving to Almighty God for
her unceasing labour, and her truest and tenderest devotion to Jack
ashore or afloat, the name of Agnes Weston. Her Home, close to my own
parish, is worked on the most admirable lines in all secular matters,
excellent food and sleeping accommodation, and, above all, personal
kindness and sympathy. She has, too, a very bold and broad view of
many measures by which the Service could be benefited, and a very able
and willing tongue to express them either in public or in private, at
drawing-room meetings or before a Committee of the House of Commons.
Perhaps there is no one in England to whom the nation owes a deeper
debt of gratitude, for a real elevation on the part of a most important
factor in the nation’s welfare and prosperity, than to Miss Weston.
And if there is any man who needs such a resting-place, and especially
in the good town of Portsmouth, it is the sailor. Quiet as it may seem
in the daytime, there are few worse streets at night in the whole
world than Queen Street, Portsea. I am sure there are no courts in
the world worse than those which crowd around it. I am sure there are
no characters worse than those which infest it. If the Admiralty will
only gather statistics from our Naval Hospitals as to the health of our
sailors, and put themselves in correspondence with the authorities of
Chatham, Plymouth, and Portsmouth, I am sure a tremendous reformation
could be effected. The Admiralty and the municipalities, working
together, could bring great influence to bear upon the licensing
magistrates as to the number of public-houses, and their character, and
upon the police authorities to vigorously put in motion the existing
law as regards common decency in the streets. Why, because you have
gathered into one place a large number of young, unmarried men,
specially prone to temptation by the very manner of their life, should
almost every house in a neighbourhood which they are bound to pass
through, offer temptation? If England has no nobler incentive for this
reformation, her own safety, depending upon the health of her sailors,
might, at any rate, move and compel her. I am conscious that these
words may wound many of my friends in Portsmouth, but I cannot refrain
from writing them.
I have said that the sailor often remains a boy. There is no greater
proof of this than the imprudent manner in which very often he marries;
often when he has known the girl only a very few weeks, and has no
knowledge of her antecedents, hardly of her disposition. Sometimes
I have even known sailors marry those whom they knew had been bad
characters. And if you ask him the reason, “Oh! the girl was unhappy;
I thought I would make a home for her”; or, “I was afraid she might
go wrong”; or even, “I wanted someone to leave my half-pay with.”
Marriages made like this, as you may guess, do not always turn out
happily, sometimes not well; especially as the man is often away
three years at a time. For, after all, the half-pay is too often very
little--seven and sixpence or ten shillings a week, paid monthly,
the first payment seldom being received before he has been away two
months, which means that the poor girl gets into frightful debt
before she receives anything. I believe that in the Mercantile Marine
a woman can always get an advance note cashed. I trace back many
grievous misunderstandings between husbands and wives, many children in
semi-starvation, the first downward step in pawning, borrowing money
at usurious rates, getting into such difficulties that only the most
hateful remedy, which I dare not mention here, was possible, all to
this difficulty of payment. Then, too, the sum, when received, is, if
the woman has children, utterly inadequate. Surely the nation is bound
to see that it is not so. It is for her sake that the sailor’s wife and
children are separated from the husband, that he has to keep a kind of
dual establishment. And believe me, the nation cannot get rid of the
responsibility by saying he ought not to have married. It is for your
sake he is separated from his wife and family. It is for your sake that
they are in poverty. I don’t write these words lightly or inadvisedly.
I have seen, over and over again, homes without food, children without
clothes, wives without hope. I have come in more than once just in time
to stop the wife earning money by the only method open to her.
And if the wife cries out and shames you, the widow of the sailor is,
without exception, the greatest of England’s disgraces. Even when
the nation’s pity becomes universal, and money flows in like water,
as in the case of the _Victoria_, the charity of the nation
is strangled by the red tape of an Official Commission. I myself
prevented starvation in more than one house which should have been
sacred to England, and I believe that if it had not been for Miss
Weston, many would actually have died of starvation. The cruelty of
the methods--they were actually contemplating using the police to make
investigations; the tardiness of the relief given--they made Miss
Weston’s generosity an excuse, and the niggardliness of the pittance
to be doled out, until public opinion forced them to increase it,
should create a national scandal. The Commission has over and over
again received money for a certain purpose, and not used it, but rather
hoarded it up. I thank God I have been summoned to give evidence
before a Parliamentary Commission, now enquiring into this soulless
corporation, bereft of all bowels of compassion. The enormous sum
of money given to its charge for providing for the wives and others
dependent on old Crimean warriors is so tied up, that although at
the death of every present pensioner there will be a surplus of over
£70,000, yet countless widows of Crimean soldiers, and Crimean soldiers
themselves, are living and dying in the workhouse; and though, some
years ago, a sum of over £7000 was released from its original trust,
and they were enabled to apply this in pensions for sailors and
soldiers who died in active service, or in consequence of wounds or
illness incurred in active service, they have never discovered one
pensioner yet, though I suppose the _Edgar_ disaster was known to
every man and woman in England except the Commissioners. What one hopes
to see is the creation of a new trust, which, by means of humane and
competent Christian persons, should discover anyone who is entitled,
by the death of a relative, to help from any special fund. When these
have been liberally dealt with, the surplus should be the nucleus of a
great pension fund for all sailors and soldiers. From the liberality
with which appeals for the _Victoria_ disaster were responded
to, I have no doubt that the heart of England is perfectly sound on
this question. Above all, let humane Christian hearts be the channels
through which England’s generosity pays back her debt to those who
suffer so gallantly for her sake.