EMANCIPATION
THE old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them
become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a
respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of Queen
Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century heretics still
testify against three Gods in one and the deity of Jesus Christ.
Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very meagre, but
they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-,
within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant. The income
was about £100 a year. The principal man there was a small general
dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village street, and I had
come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken to give his boy a few
lessons to prepare him for admission to a boarding-school. The money in
my pocket was coming to an end, and as I did not suppose that any
dishonesty would be imposed on me, and although the prospect were not
cheering, I expressed my willingness to be considered as a candidate.
In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach. I was
so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the Sunday
morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the chapel,
and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and opened a door
at the back. I explained who I was, and sat down in a Windsor chair
against a small kitchen table in the vestry. It was cold, but there was
no fire, nor were any preparations made for one. On the mantel-shelf
were a bottle of water and a glass, but as the water had evidently been
there for some time, it was not very tempting.
I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer
then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly,
asked me for the hymns. These I gave him, and went into the pulpit. I
found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two
hundred people. There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was
occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my right
and left being surrounded with faded green curtains. I counted my
hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including two
very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door. The gallery was
quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was called,
which was played by a young woman. The dealer gave out the hymns, and
accompanied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air. A weak
whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation, but nothing
more.
I was somewhat taken aback at finding in the Bible a discourse which had
been left by one of my predecessors. It was a funeral-sermon, neatly
written, and had evidently done duty on several occasions, although the
allusions in it might be considered personal. The piety and good works
of the departed were praised with emphasis, but the masculine pronouns
originally used were altered above the lines all throughout to feminine
pronouns, and the word “brother” to “sister,” so that no difficulty might
arise in reading it for either sex. I was faint, benumbed, and with no
heart for anything. I talked for about half-an-hour about what I
considered to be the real meaning of the death of Christ, thinking that
this was a subject which might prove as attractive as any other.
After the service the assembly of seventeen departed, save one thin
elderly gentleman, who came into the vestry, and having made a slight
bow, said: “Mr. Rutherford, will you come with me, if you please?” I
accordingly followed him, almost in silence, through the village till we
reached his house, where his wife, who had gone on before, received us.
They had formerly kept the shop which the dealer now had, but had
retired. They might both be about sixty-five, and were of about the same
temperament, pale, thin, and ineffectual, as if they had been fed on
gruel.
We had dinner in a large room with an old-fashioned grate in it, in which
was stuck a basket stove. I remember perfectly well what we had for
dinner. There was a neck of mutton (cold), potatoes, cabbage, a suet
pudding, and some of the strangest-looking ale I ever saw—about the
colour of lemon juice, but what it was really like I do not know, as I
did not drink beer. I was somewhat surprised at being asked whether I
would take potatoes _or_ cabbage, but thinking it was the custom of the
country not to indulge in both at once, and remembering that I was on
probation, I said “cabbage.”
Very little was spoken during dinner-time by anybody, and scarcely a word
by my hostess. After dinner she cleared the things away, and did not
again appear. My host drew near the basket stove, and having remarked
that it was beginning to rain, fell into a slumber. At twenty minutes to
two we sallied out for the afternoon service, and found the seventeen
again in their places, excepting the two labourers, who were probably
prevented by the wet from attending.
The service was a repetition of that in the morning, and when I came down
my host again came forward and presented me with nineteen shillings. The
fee was a guinea, but from that two shillings were abated for my
entertainment. He informed me at the same time that a farmer, who had
been hearing me and who lived five miles on my road, would give me a
lift. He was a very large, stout man, with a rosy countenance, which was
somewhat of a relief after the gruel face of my former friend. We went
round to a stable-yard, and I got into a four-wheeled chaise. His wife
sat with him in front, and a biggish boy sat with me behind.
When we came to a guide-post which pointed down his lane, I got out, and
was dismissed in the dark with the observation—uttered good-naturedly and
jovially, but not very helpfully—that he was “afraid I should have a
wettish walk.” The walk certainly was wettish, and as I had had nothing
to eat or drink since my midday meal, I was miserable and desponding.
But just before I reached home the clouds rolled off with the south-west
wind into detached, fleecy masses, separated by liquid blue gulfs, in
which were sowed the stars, and the effect upon me was what that sight,
thank God, always has been—a sense of the infinite, extinguishing all
mean cares.
I expected to hear no more from my Unitarian acquaintances, and was
therefore greatly surprised when, a week after my visit, I received an
invitation to “settle” amongst them. The usual month’s trial was thought
unnecessary, as I was not altogether a stranger to some of them. I
hardly knew what to do, I could not feel any enthusiasm at the prospect
of the engagement, but, on the other hand, there was nothing else before
me. There is no more helpless person in this world than a minister who
is thrown out of work. At any rate, I should be doing no harm if I went.
I pondered over the matter a good deal, and then reflected that in a case
where every opening is barred save one, it is our duty not to plunge at
an impassable barrier, but to take that one opening, however unpromising
it may be. Accordingly I accepted. My income was to be a hundred a
year, and it was proposed that I should lodge with my friend the retired
dealer, who had the only two rooms in the village which were available.
I went to bid Mardon and Mary good-bye. I had not seen either of them
since the night of the song. To my surprise I found them both away. The
blinds were down and the door locked. A neighbour, who heard me
knocking, came out and told me the news. Mardon had had a dispute with
his employer, and had gone to London to look for work. Mary had gone to
see a relative at some distance, and would remain there until her father
had determined what was to be done.
I obtained the addresses of both of them, and wrote to Mardon, telling
him what my destiny for the present was to be. To Mary I wrote also, and
to her I offered my heart. Looking backward, I have sometimes wondered
that I felt so little hesitation; not that I have ever doubted since,
that what I did then was the one perfectly right thing which I have done
in my life, but because it was my habit so to confuse myself with
meditative indecision. I had doubted before. I remember once being so
near engaging myself to a girl that the desk was open and the paper under
my hand. But I held back, could not make up my mind, and happily was
stayed. Had I not been restrained, I should for ever have been
miserable. The remembrance of this escape, and the certain knowledge
that of all beings whom I knew I was most likely to be mistaken in an
emergency, always produced in me a torturing tendency to inaction. There
was no such tendency now. I thought I chose Mary, but there was no
choice. The feeblest steel filing which is drawn to a magnet, would
think, if it had consciousness, that it went to the magnet of its own
free will. My soul rushed to hers as if dragged by the force of a
loadstone.
But she was not to be mine. I had a note from her, a sweet note,
thanking me with much tenderness for my affectionate regard for her, but
saying that her mind had long since been made up. She was an only child
of a mother whom her father had loved above everything in life, and she
could never leave him nor suffer any affection to interfere with that
which she felt for him and which he felt for her. I might well
misinterpret him, and think it strange that he should be so much bound up
in her. Few people knew him as she did.
The shock to me at first was overpowering, and I fell under the influence
of that horrible monomania from which I had been free for so long. For
weeks I was prostrate, with no power of resistance; the evil being
intensified by my solitude. Of all the dreadful trials which human
nature has the capacity to bear unshattered, the worst—as, indeed, I have
already said—is the fang of some monomaniacal idea which cannot be
wrenched out. A main part of the misery, as I have also said, lies in
the belief that suffering of this kind is peculiar to ourselves. We are
afraid to speak of it, and not knowing, therefore, how common it is, we
are distracted with the fear that it is our own special disease.
I managed to get through my duties, but how I cannot tell. Fortunately
our calamities are not what they appear to be when they lie in
perspective behind us or before us, for they actually consist of distinct
moments, each of which is overcome by itself. I was helped by
remembering my recovery before, and I was able now, as a reward of
long-continued abstinence from wine, to lie much stiller, and wait with
more patience till the cloud should lift.
Mardon having gone to London, I was more alone than ever, but my love for
Mary increased in intensity, and had a good deal to do with my
restoration to health. It was a hopeless love, but to be in love
hopelessly is more akin to sanity than careless, melancholy indifference
to the world. I was relieved from myself by the anchorage of all my
thoughts elsewhere. The pain of loss was great, but the main curse of my
existence has not been pain or loss, but gloom; blind wandering in a
world of black fog, haunted by apparitions. I am not going to expand
upon the history of my silent relationship to Mary during that time. How
can I? All that I felt has been described better by others; and if it
had not been, I have no mind to attempt a description myself, which would
answer no purpose.
I continued to correspond with Mardon, but with Mary I interchanged no
word. After her denial of me I should have dreaded the charge of
selfishness if I had opened my lips again. I could not place myself in
her affection before her father.
My work at the chapel was of the most lifeless kind. My people really
consisted of five families—those of the retired dealer, the farmer who
took me home the first day I preached, and a man who kept a shop in the
village for the sale of all descriptions of goods, including ready-made
clothing and provisions. He had a wife and one child.
Then there was a super-annuated brass-founder, who had a large house
near, and who nominally was a Unitarian, having professed himself a
Unitarian in the town in which he was formerly in business, where
Unitarianism was flourishing. He had come down here to cultivate, for
amusement, a few acres of ground, and play the squire at a cheap rate.
Released from active employment, he had given himself over to eating and
drinking, particularly the drinking of port wine. His wife was dead, his
sons were in business for themselves, and his daughters all went to
church. His connection with the chapel was merely nominal, and I was
very glad it was so. I was hardly ever brought into contact with him,
except as trustee, and once I was asked to his house to dinner; but the
attempt to make me feel my inferiority was so painful, and the rudeness
of his children was so marked, that I never went again.
There was also a schoolmaster, who kept a low-priced boarding-school with
a Unitarian connection. He lived, however, at such a distance that his
visits were very unfrequent. Sometimes on a fine summer’s Sunday morning
the boys would walk over—about twenty of them altogether, but this only
happened perhaps half-a-dozen times in a year.
Although my congregation had a freethought lineage, I do not think that I
ever had anything to do with a more petrified set. With one exception,
they were meagre in the extreme. They were perfectly orthodox, except
that they denied a few orthodox doctrines. Their method was as strict as
that of the most rigid Calvinist. They plumed themselves, however,
greatly on their intellectual superiority over the Wesleyans and Baptists
round them; and so far as I could make out, the only topics they
delighted in were demonstrations of the unity of God from texts in the
Bible, and polemics against tri-theism. Sympathy with the great problems
then beginning to agitate men they had none. Socially they were cold,
and the entertainment at their houses was pale and penurious. They never
considered themselves bound to contribute a shilling to my support.
There was an endowment of a hundred a year, and they were relieved from
all further anxiety. They had no enthusiasm for their chapel, and came
or stayed away on the Sunday just as it suited them, and without caring
to assign any reason.
The one exception was the wife of the shopkeeper. She was a contrast to
her husband and all the rest. I do not think she was a Unitarian born
and bred. She talked but little about theology, but she was devoted to
her Bible, and had a fine sense for all the passages in it which had an
experience in them. She was generous, spiritual, and possessed of an
unswerving instinct for what was right. Oftentimes her prompt decisions
were a scandal to her more sedate friends, who did not believe in any way
of arriving at the truth except by rationalising, but she hardly ever
failed to hit the mark. It was in questions of relationship between
persons, of behaviour, and of morals, that her guidance was the surest.
In such cases her force seemed to keep her straight, while the weakness
of those around made it impossible for them not to wander, first on one
side and then on the other. She was unflinching in her expressions, and
at any sacrifice did her duty. It was her severity in obeying her
conscience which not only gave authority to her admonitions, but was the
source of her inspirations.
She was not much of a reader, but she read strange things. She had some
old volumes of a magazine—a “Repository” of some kind; I have forgotten
what—and she picked out from them some translations of German verses
which she greatly admired. She was not a well educated woman in the
school sense of the word, and of several of our greatest names in
literature had heard nothing. I do not think she knew anything about
Shakespeare, and she never entered into the meaning of dramatic poetry.
At all points her path was her own, intersecting at every conceivable
angle the paths of her acquaintances, and never straying along them
except just so far as they might happen to be hers.
While I was in the village an event happened which caused much commotion.
Her son was serving in the shop, and there was in the house at the time a
nice-looking, clean servant-girl. Mrs. Lane, for that was my friend’s
name, had meditated discharging her, for, with her usual quickness, she
thought she saw something in the behaviour of her son to the girl which
was peculiar. One morning, however, both her son and the girl were
absent, and there was a letter upon the table announcing that they were
in a town about twenty miles off and were married.
The shock was great, and a tumult of voices arose, confusing counsel.
Mrs. Lane said but little, but never wavered an instant. Leaving her
husband to “consider what was best to be done,” she got out the gig,
drove herself over to her son’s lodging, and presented herself to her
amazed daughter-in-law, who fell upon her knees and prayed for pity. “My
dear,” said Mrs. Lane, “get up this instant; you are my daughter. Not
another word. I’ve come to see what you want.” And she kissed her
tenderly. The girl was at heart a good girl. She was so bound to her
late mistress and her new mother by this behaviour, that the very depth
in her opened, and she loved Mrs. Lane ever afterwards with almost
religious fervour. She was taught a little up to her son’s level, and a
happier marriage I never knew. Mrs. Lane told me what she had done, but
she had no theory about it. She merely said she knew it to be the right
thing to do.
She was very fond of getting up early in the morning and going out, and
in such a village this was an eccentricity bordering almost on lunacy.
At five o’clock she was often wandering about her garden. She was a
great lover of order in the house, and kept it well under control, but I
do not think I ever surprised her when she was so busy that she would not
easily, and without any apparent sacrifice, leave what she was doing to
come and talk with me.
As I have said, the world of books in which I lived was almost altogether
shut to her, but yet she was the only person in the village whose
conversation was lifted out of the petty and personal into the region of
the universal. I have been thus particular in describing her—I fear
without raising any image of her—because she was of incalculable service
to me. I languished from lack of life, and her mere presence, so
exuberant in its full vivacity, was like mountain air. Furthermore, she
was not troubled much with my philosophical difficulties. They had not
come in her path. Her world was the world of men and women—more
particularly of those she knew—and it was a world in which it did me good
to dwell. She was all the more important to me, because outside our own
little circle there was no society whatever. The Church and the other
Dissenting bodies considered us non-Christian.
I often wondered that Mr. Lane retained his business, and, indeed, he
would have lost it if he had not established a reputation for honesty,
which drew customers to him, who, notwithstanding the denunciations of
the parson, preferred tea with some taste in it from a Unitarian to the
insipid wood-flavoured stuff which was sold by the grocer who believed in
the Trinity.