WATER LANE
I HAD now reached the end of my fourth year at college, and it was time
for me to leave. I was sent down into the eastern counties to a
congregation which had lost its minister, and was there “on probation”
for a month. I was naturally a good speaker, and as the “cause” had got
very low, the attendance at the chapel increased during the month I was
there. The deacons thought they had a prospect of returning prosperity,
and in the end I received a nearly unanimous invitation, which, after
some hesitation, I accepted. One of the deacons, a Mr. Snale, was
against me; he thought I was not “quite sound”; but he was overruled. We
shall hear more of him presently. After a short holiday I entered on my
new duties.
The town was one of those which are not uncommon in that part of the
world. It had a population of about seven or eight thousand, and was a
sort of condensation of the agricultural country round. There was one
main street, consisting principally of very decent, respectable shops.
Generally speaking, there were two shops of each trade; one which was
patronised by the Church and Tories, and another by the Dissenters and
Whigs. The inhabitants were divided into two distinct camps—of the
Church and Tory camp the other camp knew nothing. On the other hand, the
knowledge which each member of the Dissenting camp had of every other
member was most intimate.
The Dissenters were further split up into two or three different sects,
but the main sect was that of the Independents. They, in fact, dominated
every other. There was a small Baptist community, and the Wesleyans had
a new red-brick chapel in the outskirts; but for some reason or other the
Independents were really the Dissenters, and until the “cause” had
dwindled, as before observed, all the Dissenters of any note were to be
found on Sunday in their meeting-house in Water Lane.
My predecessor had died in harness at the age of seventy-five. I never
knew him, but from all I could hear he must have been a man of some
power. As he got older, however, he became feeble; and after a course of
three sermons on a Sunday for fifty years, what he had to say was so
entirely anticipated by his congregation, that although they all
maintained that the gospel, or, in other words, the doctrine of the fall,
the atonement, and so forth, should continually be presented, and their
minister also believed and acted implicitly upon the same theory, they
fell away—some to the Baptists, some to the neighbouring Independents
about two miles off, and some to the Church, while a few “went nowhere.”
When I came I found that the deacons still remained true. They were the
skeleton; but the flesh was so woefully emaciated, that on my first
Sunday there were not above fifty persons in a building which would hold
seven hundred. These deacons were four in number. One was an old farmer
who lived in a village three miles distant. Ever since he was a boy he
had driven over to Water Lane on Sunday. He and his family brought their
dinner with them, and ate it in the vestry; but they never stopped till
the evening, because of the difficulty of getting home on dark nights,
and because they all went to bed in winter-time at eight o’clock.
Morning and afternoon Mr. Catfield—for that was his name—gave out the
hymns. He was a plain, honest man, very kind, very ignorant, never
reading any book except the Bible, and barely a newspaper save _Bell’s
Weekly Messenger_. Even about the Bible he knew little or nothing beyond
a few favourite chapters; and I am bound to say that, so far as my
experience goes, the character so frequently drawn in romances of intense
Bible students in Dissenting congregations is very rare. At the same
time Mr. Catfield believed himself to be very orthodox, and in his way
was very pious. I could never call him a hypocrite. He was as sincere
as he could be, and yet no religious expression of his was ever so
sincere as the most ordinary expression of the most trifling pleasure or
pain.
The second deacon, Mr. Weeley, was, as he described himself, a builder
and undertaker; more properly an undertaker and carpenter. He was a
thin, tall man, with a tenor voice, and he set the tunes. He was
entirely without energy of any kind, and always seemed oppressed by a
world which was too much for him. He had depended a good deal for custom
upon his chapel connection; and when the attendance at the chapel fell
off, his trade fell off likewise, so that he had to compound with his
creditors. He was a mere shadow, a man of whom nothing could be said
either good or evil.
The third deacon was Mr. Snale, the draper. When I first knew him he was
about thirty-five. He was slim, small, and small-faced, closely shaven,
excepting a pair of little curly whiskers, and he was extremely neat. He
had a little voice too, rather squeaky, and the marked peculiarity that
he hardly ever said anything, no matter how disagreeable it might be,
without stretching as if in a smile his thin little lips. He kept the
principal draper’s shop in the town, and even Church people spent their
money with him, because he was so very genteel compared with the other
draper, who was a great red man, and hung things outside his window. Mr.
Snale was married, had children, and was strictly proper. But his way of
talking to women and about them was more odious than the way of a
debauchee. He invariably called them “the ladies,” or more exactly, “the
leedies”; and he hardly ever spoke to a “leedy” without a smirk and some
faint attempt at a joke.
One of the customs of the chapel was what were called Dorcas meetings.
Once a month the wives and daughters drank tea with each other; the
evening being ostensibly devoted to making clothes for the poor. The
husband of the lady who gave the entertainment for the month had to wait
upon the company, and the minister was expected to read to them while
they worked.
It was my lot to be Mr. Snale’s guest two or three times when Mrs. Snale
was the Dorcas hostess. We met in the drawing-room, which was over the
shop, and looked out into the town market-place. There was a round table
in the middle of the room, at which Mrs. Snale sat and made the tea.
Abundance of hot buttered toast and muffins were provided, which Mr.
Snale and a maid handed round to the party.
Four pictures decorated the walls. One hung over the mantelpiece. It
was a portrait in oils of Mr. Snale, and opposite to it, on the other
side, was a portrait of Mrs. Snale. Both were daubs, but curiously
faithful in depicting what was most offensive in the character of both
the originals, Mr. Snale’s simper being preserved; together with the
peculiarly hard, heavy sensuality of the eye in Mrs. Snale, who was large
and full-faced, correct like Mr. Snale, a member of the church, a woman
whom I never saw moved to any generosity, and cruel not with the ferocity
of the tiger, but with the dull insensibility of a cartwheel, which will
roll over a man’s neck as easily as over a flint. The third picture
represented the descent of the Holy Ghost; a number of persons sitting in
a chamber, and each one with the flame of a candle on his head. The
fourth represented the last day. The Son of God was in a chair
surrounded by clouds, and beside Him was a flying figure blowing a long
mail-coach horn. The dead were coming up out of their graves; some were
half out of the earth, others three-parts out—the whole of the bottom
part of the picture being filled with bodies emerging from the ground, a
few looking happy, but most of them very wretched; all of them being
naked.
The first time I went to Mrs. Snale’s Dorcas gathering Mr. Snale was
reader, on the ground that I was a novice; and I was very glad to resign
the task to him. As the business in hand was week-day and secular, it
was not considered necessary that the selected subjects should be
religious; but as it was distinctly connected with the chapel, it was
also considered that they should have a religious flavour. Consequently
the Bible was excluded, and so were books on topics altogether worldly.
Dorcas meetings were generally, therefore, shut up to the denominational
journal and to magazines. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Snale read
the births, deaths, and marriages in this journal. It would not have
been thought right to read them from any other newspaper, but it was
agreed, with a fineness of tact which was very remarkable, that it was
quite right to read them in one which was “serious.” During the whole
time that the reading was going on conversation was not arrested, but was
conducted in a kind of half whisper; and this was another reason why I
exceedingly disliked to read, for I could never endure to speak if people
did not listen.
At half-past eight the work was put away, and Mrs. Snale went to the
piano and played a hymn tune, the minister having first of all selected
the hymn. Singing over, he offered a short prayer, and the company
separated. Supper was not served, as it was found to be too great an
expense. The husbands of the ladies generally came to escort them home,
but did not come upstairs. Some of the gentlemen waited below in the
dining-room, but most of them preferred the shop, for, although it was
shut, the gas was burning to enable the assistants to put away the goods
which had been got out during the day.
When it first became my turn to read I proposed the _Vicar of Wakefield_;
but although no objection was raised at the time, Mr. Snale took an
opportunity of telling me, after I had got through a chapter or two, that
he thought it would be better if it were discontinued. “Because, you
know, Mr. Rutherford,” he said, with his smirk, “the company is mixed;
there are young leedies present, and perhaps, Mr. Rutherford, a book with
a more requisite tone might be more suitable on such an occasion.” What
he meant I did not know, and how to find a book with a more requisite
tone I did not know.
However, the next time, in my folly, I tried a selection from George
Fox’s Journal. Mr. Snale objected to this too. It was “hardly of a
character adapted for social intercourse,” he thought; and furthermore,
“although Mr. Fox might be a very good man, and was a converted
character, yet he did not, you know, Mr. Rutherford, belong to us.” So I
was reduced to that class of literature which of all others I most
abominated, and which always seemed to me the most profane—religious and
sectarian gossip, religious novels designed to make religion attractive,
and other slip-slop of this kind. I could not endure it, and was
frequently unwell on Dorcas evenings.
The rest of the small congregation was of no particular note. As I have
said before, it had greatly fallen away, and all who remained clung to
the chapel rather by force of habit than from any other reason. The only
exception was an old maiden lady and her sister, who lived in a little
cottage about a mile out of the town. They were pious in the purest
sense of the word, suffering much from ill-health, but perfectly
resigned, and with a kind of tempered cheerfulness always apparent on
their faces, like the cheerfulness of a white sky with a sun veiled by
light and lofty clouds. They were the daughters of a carriage-builder,
who had left them a small annuity.
Their house was one of the sweetest which I ever entered. The moment I
found myself inside it, I became conscious of perfect repose. Everything
was at rest; books, pictures, furniture, all breathed the same peace.
Nothing in the house was new, but everything had been preserved with such
care that nothing looked old. Yet the owners were not what is called
old-maidish; that is to say, they were not superstitious worshippers of
order and neatness.
I remember Mrs. Snale’s children coming in one afternoon when I was
there. They were rough and ill-mannered, and left traces of dirty
footmarks all over the carpet, which the two ladies noticed at once. But
it made no difference to the treatment of the children, who had some cake
and currant wine given to them, and were sent away rejoicing. Directly
they had gone, the elder of my friends asked me if I would excuse her;
she would gather up the dirt before it was trodden about. So she brought
a dust-pan and brush (the little servant was out) and patiently swept the
floor. That was the way with them. Did any mischief befall them or
those whom they knew, without blaming anybody, they immediately and
noiselessly set about repairing it with that silent promptitude of nature
which rebels not against a wound, but the very next instant begins her
work of protection and recovery.
The Misses Arbour (for that was their name) mixed but little in the
society of the town. They explained to me that their health would not
permit it. They read books—a few—but they were not books about which I
knew very much, and they belonged altogether to an age preceding mine.
Of the names which had moved me, and of all the thoughts stirring in the
time, they had heard nothing. They greatly admired Cowper, a poet who
then did not much attract me.
The country near me was rather level, but towards the west it rose into
soft swelling hills, between which were pleasant lanes. At about ten
miles distant eastward was the sea. A small river ran across the High
Street under a stone bridge; for about two miles below us it was locked
up for the sake of the mills, but at the end of the two miles it became
tidal and flowed between deep and muddy banks through marshes to the
ocean. Almost all my walks were by the river-bank down to these marshes,
and as far on as possible till the open water was visible. Not that I
did not like inland scenery: nobody could like it more, but the sea was a
corrective to the littleness all round me. With the ships on it sailing
to the other end of the earth it seemed to connect me with the great
world outside the parochialism of the society in which I lived.
Such was the town of C-, and such the company amidst which I found
myself. After my probation it was arranged that I should begin my new
duties at once, and accordingly I took lodgings—two rooms over the shop
of a tailor who acted as chapel-keeper, pew-opener, and sexton. There
was a small endowment on the chapel of fifty pounds a year, and the rest
of my income was derived from the pew-rents, which at the time I took
charge did not exceed another seventy.
The first Sunday on which I preached after being accepted was a dull day
in November, but there was no dullness in me. The congregation had
increased a good deal during the past four weeks, and I was stimulated by
the prospect of the new life before me. It seemed to be a fit
opportunity to say something generally about Christianity and its special
peculiarities. I began by pointing out that each philosophy and religion
which had arisen in the world was the answer to a question earnestly
asked at the time; it was a remedy proposed to meet some extreme
pressure. Religions and philosophies were not created by idle people who
sat down and said, “Let us build up a system of beliefs upon the
universe; what shall we say about immortality, about sin?” and so on.
Unless there had been antecedent necessity there could have been no
religion; and no problem of life or death could be solved except under
the weight of that necessity. The stoical morality arose out of the
condition of Rome when the scholar and the pious man could do nothing but
simply strengthen his knees and back to bear an inevitable burden. He
was forced to find some counterpoise for the misery of poverty and
persecution, and he found it in the denial of their power to touch him.
So with Christianity.
Jesus was a poor solitary thinker, confronted by two enormous and
overpowering organisations—the Jewish hierarchy and the Roman State. He
taught the doctrine of the kingdom of heaven; He trained Himself to have
faith in the absolute monarchy of the soul, the absolute monarchy of His
own; He tells us that each man should learn to find peace in his own
thoughts, his own visions. It is a most difficult thing to do; most
difficult to believe that my highest happiness consists in my perception
of whatever is beautiful. If I by myself watch the sun rise, or the
stars come out in the evening, or feel the love of man or woman,—I ought
to say to myself, “There is nothing beyond this.” But people will not
rest there; they are not content, and they are for ever chasing a shadow
which flies before them, a something external which never brings what it
promises.
I said that Christianity was essentially the religion of the unknown and
of the lonely; of those who are not a success. It was the religion of
the man who goes through life thinking much, but who makes few friends
and sees nothing come of his thoughts. I said a good deal more upon the
same theme which I have forgotten.
After the service was over I went down into the vestry. Nobody came near
me but my landlord, the chapel-keeper, who said it was raining, and
immediately went away to put out the lights and shut up the building. I
had no umbrella, and there was nothing to be done but to walk out in the
wet. When I got home I found that my supper, consisting of bread and
cheese with a pint of beer, was on the table, but apparently it had been
thought unnecessary to light the fire again at that time of night. I was
overwrought, and paced about for hours in hysterics. All that I had been
preaching seemed the merest vanity when I was brought face to face with
the fact itself; and I reproached myself bitterly that my own creed would
not stand the stress of an hour’s actual trial.
Towards morning I got into bed, but not to sleep; and when the dull
daylight of Monday came, all support had vanished, and I seemed to be
sinking into a bottomless abyss. I became gradually worse week by week,
and my melancholy took a fixed form. I got a notion into my head that my
brain was failing, and this was my first acquaintance with that most
awful malady hypochondria. I did not know then what I know now, although
I only half believe it practically, that this fixity of form is a
frequent symptom of the disease, and that the general weakness manifests
itself in a determinate horror, which gradually fades with returning
health.
For months—many months—this dreadful conviction of coming idiocy or
insanity lay upon me like some poisonous reptile with its fangs driven
into my very marrow, so that I could not shake it off. It went with me
wherever I went, it got up with me in the morning, walked about with me
all day, and lay down with me at night. I managed, somehow or other, to
do my work, but I prayed incessantly for death; and to such a state was I
reduced that I could not even make the commonest appointment for a day
beforehand. The mere knowledge that something had to be done agitated me
and prevented my doing it.
In June next year my holiday came, and I went away home to my father’s
house. Father and mother were going, for the first time in their lives,
to spend a few days by the seaside together, and I went with them to
Ilfracombe. I had been there about a week, when on one memorable
morning, on the top of one of those Devonshire hills, I became aware of a
kind of flush in the brain and a momentary relief such as I had not known
since that November night. I seemed, far away on the horizon, to see
just a rim of olive light low down under the edge of the leaden cloud
that hung over my head, a prophecy of the restoration of the sun, or at
least a witness that somewhere it shone. It was not permanent, and
perhaps the gloom was never more profound, nor the agony more intense,
than it was for long after my Ilfracombe visit. But the light broadened,
and gradually the darkness was mitigated. I have never been thoroughly
restored. Often, with no warning, I am plunged in the Valley of the
Shadow, and no outlet seems possible; but I contrive to traverse it, or
to wait in calmness for access of strength.
When I was at my worst I went to see a doctor. He recommended me
stimulants. I had always been rather abstemious, and he thought I was
suffering from physical weakness. At first wine gave me relief, and such
marked relief that whenever I felt my misery insupportable I turned to
the bottle. At no time in my life was I ever the worse for liquor, but I
soon found the craving for it was getting the better of me. I resolved
never to touch it except at night, and kept my vow; but the consequence
was, that I looked forward to the night, and waited for it with such
eagerness that the day seemed to exist only for the sake of the evening,
when I might hope at least for rest. For the wine as wine I cared
nothing; anything that would have dulled my senses would have done just
as well.
But now a new terror developed itself. I began to be afraid that I was
becoming a slave to alcohol; that the passion for it would grow upon me,
and that I should disgrace myself, and die the most contemptible of all
deaths. To a certain extent my fears were just. The dose which was
necessary to procure temporary forgetfulness of my trouble had to be
increased, and might have increased dangerously.
But one day, feeling more than usual the tyranny of my master, I received
strength to make a sudden resolution to cast him off utterly. Whatever
be the consequence, I said, I will not be the victim of this shame. If I
am to go down to the grave, it shall be as a man, and I will bear what I
have to bear honestly and without resort to the base evasion of
stupefaction. So that night I went to bed having drunk nothing but
water. The struggle was not felt just then. It came later, when the
first enthusiasm of a new purpose had faded away, and I had to fall back
on mere force of will. I don’t think anybody but those who have gone
through such a crisis can comprehend what it is. I never understood the
maniacal craving which is begotten by ardent spirits, but I understood
enough to be convinced that the man who has once rescued himself from the
domination even of half a bottle, or three-parts of a bottle of claret
daily, may assure himself that there is nothing more in life to be done
which he need dread.
Two or three remarks begotten of experience in this matter deserve
record. One is, that the most powerful inducement to abstinence, in my
case, was the interference of wine with liberty, and above all things its
interference with what I really loved best, and the transference of
desire from what was most desirable to what was sensual and base. The
morning, instead of being spent in quiet contemplation and quiet
pleasures, was spent in degrading anticipations. What enabled me to
conquer, was not so much heroism as a susceptibility to nobler joys, and
the difficulty which a man must encounter who is not susceptible to them
must be enormous and almost insuperable. Pity, profound pity, is his
due, and especially if he happen to possess a nervous, emotional
organisation. If we want to make men water-drinkers, we must first of
all awaken in them a capacity for being tempted by delights which
water-drinking intensifies. The mere preaching of self-denial will do
little or no good.
Another observation is, that there is no danger in stopping at once, and
suddenly, the habit of drinking. The prisons and asylums furnish ample
evidence upon that point, but there will be many an hour of exhaustion in
which this danger will be simulated and wine will appear the proper
remedy. No man, or at least very few men, would ever feel any desire for
it soon after sleep. This shows the power of repose, and I would advise
anybody who may be in earnest in this matter to be specially on guard
during moments of physical fatigue, and to try the effect of eating and
rest. Do not persist in a blind, obstinate wrestle. Simply take food,
drink water, go to bed, and so conquer not by brute strength, but by
strategy.
Going back to hypochondria and its countless forms of agony, let it be
borne in mind that the first thing to be aimed at is patience—not to get
excited with fears, not to dread the evil which most probably will never
arrive, but to sit down quietly and _wait_. The simpler and less
stimulating the diet, the more likely it is that the sufferer will be
able to watch through the wakeful hours without delirium, and the less
likely is it that the general health will be impaired. Upon this point
of health too much stress cannot be laid. It is difficult for the victim
to believe that his digestion has anything to do with a disease which
seems so purely spiritual, but frequently the misery will break up and
yield, if it do not altogether disappear, by a little attention to
physiology and by a change of air. As time wears on, too, mere duration
will be a relief; for it familiarises with what at first was strange and
insupportable, it shows the groundlessness of fears, and it enables us to
say with each new paroxysm, that we have surmounted one like it before,
and probably a worse.