THE LIMA STREET MISSION
In the year 1875, when the strife of ecclesiastical parties was bitter
and continuous, the Reverend James Lidderdale came as curate to the
large parish of St. Simon's, Notting Hill, which at that period was
looked upon as one of the chief expositions of what Disraeli called
"man-millinery." Inasmuch as the coiner of the phrase was a Jew, the
priests and people of St. Simon's paid no attention to it, and were
proud to consider themselves an outpost of the Catholic Movement in the
Church of England. James Lidderdale was given the charge of the Lima
Street Mission, a tabernacle of corrugated iron dedicated to St.
Wilfred; and Thurston, the Vicar of St. Simon's, who was a wise,
generous and single-hearted priest, was quick to recognize that his
missioner was capable of being left to convert the Notting Dale slum in
his own way.
"If St. Simon's is an outpost of the Movement, Lidderdale must be one of
the vedettes," he used to declare with a grin.
The Missioner was a tall hatchet-faced hollow-eyed ascetic, harsh and
bigoted in the company of his equals whether clerical or lay, but with
his flock tender and comprehending and patient. The only indulgence he
accorded to his senses was in the forms and ceremonies of his ritual,
the vestments and furniture of his church. His vicar was able to give
him a free hand in the obscure squalor of Lima Street; the
ecclesiastical battles he himself had to fight with bishops who were
pained or with retired military men who were disgusted by his own
conduct of the services at St. Simon's were not waged within the hearing
of Lima Street. There, year in, year out for six years, James Lidderdale
denied himself nothing in religion, in life everything. He used to
preach in the parish church during the penitential seasons, and with
such effect upon the pockets of his congregation that the Lima Street
Mission was rich for a long while afterward. Yet few of the worshippers
in the parish church visited the object of their charity, and those that
did venture seldom came twice. Lidderdale did not consider that it was
part of the Lima Street religion to be polite to well-dressed explorers
of the slum; in fact he rather encouraged Lima Street to suppose the
contrary.
"I don't like these dressed up women in my church," he used to tell his
vicar. "They distract my people's attention from the altar."
"Oh, I quite see your point," Thurston would agree.
"And I don't like these churchy young fools who come simpering down in
top-hats, with rosaries hanging out of their pockets. Lima Street
doesn't like them either. Lima Street is provoked to obscene comment,
and that just before Mass. It's no good, Vicar. My people are savages,
and I like them to remain savages so long as they go to their duties,
which Almighty God be thanked they do."
On one occasion the Archdeacon, who had been paying an official visit to
St. Simon's, expressed a desire to see the Lima Street Mission.
"Of which I have heard great things, great things, Mr. Thurston," he
boomed condescendingly.
The Vicar was doubtful of the impression that the Archdeacon's gaiters
would make on Lima Street, and he was also doubtful of the impression
that the images and prickets of St. Wilfred's would make on the
Archdeacon. The Vicar need not have worried. Long before Lima Street was
reached, indeed, halfway down Strugwell Terrace, which was the main road
out of respectable Notting Hill into the Mission area, the comments upon
the Archdeacon's appearance became so embarrassing that the dignitary
looked at his watch and remarked that after all he feared he should not
be able to spare the time that afternoon.
"But I am surprised," he observed when his guide had brought him safely
back into Notting Hill. "I am surprised that the people are still so
uncouth. I had always understood that a great work of purification had
been effected, that in fact--er--they were quite--er--cleaned up."
"In body or soul?" Thurston inquired.
"The whole district," said the Archdeacon vaguely. "I was referring to
the general tone, Mr. Thurston. One might be pardoned for supposing that
they had never seen a clergyman before. Of course one is loath--very
loath indeed--to criticize sincere effort of any kind, but I think that
perhaps almost the chief value of the missions we have established in
these poverty-stricken areas lies in their capacity for civilizing the
poor people who inhabit them. One is so anxious to bring into their drab
lives a little light, a little air. I am a great believer in education.
Oh, yes, Mr. Thurston, I have great hopes of popular education. However,
as I say, I should not dream of criticizing your work at St. Wilfred's."
"It is not my work. It is the work of one of my curates. And," said the
Vicar to Lidderdale, when he was giving him an account of the projected
visitation, "I believe the pompous ass thought I was ashamed of it."
Thurston died soon after this, and, his death occurring at a moment when
party strife in the Church was fiercer than ever, it was considered
expedient by the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift the living was, to
appoint a more moderate man than the late vicar. Majendie, the new man,
when he was sure of his audience, claimed to be just as advanced as
Thurston; but he was ambitious of preferment, or as he himself put it,
he felt that, when a member of the Catholic party had with the exercise
of prudence and tact an opportunity of enhancing the prestige of his
party in a higher ecclesiastical sphere, he should be wrong to neglect
it. Majendie's aim therefore was to avoid controversy with his
ecclesiastical superiors, and at a time when, as he told Lidderdale, he
was stepping back in order to jump farther, he was anxious that his
missioner should step back with him.
"I'm not suggesting, my dear fellow, that you should bring St. Wilfred's
actually into line with the parish church. But the Asperges, you know. I
can't countenance that. And the Adoration of the Cross on Good Friday.
I really think that kind of thing creates unnecessary friction."
Lidderdale's impulse was to resign at once, for he was a man who found
restraint galling where so much passion went to his belief in the truth
of his teaching. When, however, he pondered how little he had done and
how much he had vowed to do, he gave way and agreed to step back with
his vicar. He was never convinced that he had taken the right course at
this crisis, and he spent hours in praying for an answer by God to a
question already answered by himself. The added strain of these hours of
prayer, which were not robbed from his work in the Mission, but from the
already short enough time he allowed himself for sleep, told upon his
health, and he was ordered by the doctor to take a holiday to avoid a
complete breakdown of health. He stayed for two months in Cornwall, and
came back with a wife, the daughter of a Cornish parson called Trehawke.
Lidderdale had been a fierce upholder of celibacy, and the news of his
marriage astonished all who knew him.
Grace Lidderdale with her slanting sombre eyes and full upcurving lips
made the pink and white Madonnas of the little mission church look
insipid, and her husband was horrified when he found himself criticizing
the images whose ability to lure the people of Lima Street to worship in
the way he believed to be best for their souls he had never doubted.
Yet, for all her air of having _trafficked for strange webs with Eastern
merchants_, Mrs. Lidderdale was only outwardly Phoenician or Iberian or
whatever other dimly imagined race is chosen for the strange types that
in Cornwall more than elsewhere so often occur. Actually she was a
simple and devout soul, loving husband and child and the poor people
with whom they lived. Doubtless she had looked more appropriate to her
surroundings in the tangled garden of her father's vicarage than in the
bleak Mission House of Lima Street; but inasmuch as she never thought
about her appearance it would have been a waste of time for anybody to
try to romanticize her. The civilizing effect of her presence in the
slum was quickly felt; and though Lidderdale continued to scoff at the
advantages of civilization, he finally learnt to give a grudging
welcome to her various schemes for making the bodies of the flock as
comfortable as her husband tried to make their souls.
When Mark was born, his father became once more the prey of gloomy
doubt. The guardianship of a soul which he was responsible for bringing
into the world was a ceaseless care, and in his anxiety to dedicate his
son to God he became a harsh and unsympathetic parent. Out of that
desire to justify himself for having been so inconsistent as to take a
wife and beget a son Lidderdale redoubled his efforts to put the Lima
Street Mission on a permanent basis. The civilization of the slum, which
was attributed by pious visitors to regular attendance at Mass rather
than to Mrs. Lidderdale's gentleness and charm, made it much easier for
outsiders to explore St. Simon's parish as far as Lima Street. Money for
the great church he designed to build on a site adjoining the old
tabernacle began to flow in; and five years after his marriage
Lidderdale had enough money subscribed to begin to build. The
rubbish-strewn waste-ground overlooked by the back-windows of the
Mission House was thronged with workmen; day by day the walls of the new
St. Wilfred's rose higher. Fifteen years after Lidderdale took charge of
the Lima Street Mission, it was decided to ask for St. Wilfred's,
Notting Dale, to be created a separate parish. The Reverend Aylmer
Majendie had become a canon residentiary of Chichester and had been
succeeded as vicar by the Reverend L. M. Astill, a man more of the type
of Thurston and only too anxious to help his senior curate to become a
vicar, and what is more cut £200 a year off his own net income in doing
so.
But when the question arose of consecrating the new St. Wilfred's in
order to the creation of a new parish, the Bishop asked many questions
that were never asked about the Lima Street Mission. There were Stations
of the Cross reported to be of an unusually idolatrous nature. There was
a second chapel apparently for the express purpose of worshipping the
Virgin Mary.
"He writes to me as if he suspected me of trying to carry on an
intrigue with the Mother of God," cried Lidderdale passionately to his
vicar.
"Steady, steady, dear man," said Astill. "You'll ruin your case by such
ill-considered exaggeration."
"But, Vicar, these cursed bishops of the Establishment who would rather
a whole parish went to Hell than give up one jot or one tittle of their
prejudice!" Lidderdale ejaculated in wrath.
Furthermore, the Bishop wanted to know if the report that on Good Friday
was held a Roman Catholic Service called the Mass of the Pre-Sanctified
followed by the ceremony of Creeping to the Cross was true. When
Majendie departed, the Lima Street Missioner jumped a long way forward
in one leap. There were many other practices which he (the Bishop) could
only characterize as highly objectionable and quite contrary to the
spirit of the Church of England, and would Mr. Lidderdale pay him a
visit at Fulham Palace as soon as possible. Lidderdale went, and he
argued with the Bishop until the Chaplain thought his Lordship had heard
enough, after which the argument was resumed by letter. Then Lidderdale
was invited to lunch at Fulham Palace and to argue the whole question
over again in person. In the end the Bishop was sufficiently impressed
by the Missioner's sincerity and zeal to agree to withhold his decision
until the Lord Bishop Suffragan of Devizes had paid a visit to the
proposed new parish. This was the visit that was expected on the day
after Mark Lidderdale woke from a nightmare and dreamed that London was
being swallowed up by an earthquake.