INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL
That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light
in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus
Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in
the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester
at large.
Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so
like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for,
that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for
purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its
reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more
suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps
rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say
one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he
professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that
(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by
night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence
to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual
pastor, the young father of his flock.
Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of
Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct
relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though
he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus
Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have
found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not
long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the
non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that
gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a
personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some
work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man,
and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or
influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity.
To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art
of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this
Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity.
This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no
remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was
not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with
a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a
failure all in one.
I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be
a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of
blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting
quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand
of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made
himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he
was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were
qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for,
apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little
"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he
would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in
him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love
of laughter, and a mighty humanity.
Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and
partly something bigger and more effectively vital.
At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said
to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a
big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor
at New Zion.
This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not
attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of
Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he
could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the
point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in
terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He
would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but
that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise,
he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and
humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever
the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry
that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge
him, you must never make that mistake about him.