Chapter III: Appendix: 241 (2)

Each club has its nominal lady manager. Miss Brown has governed the “Social” now for twelve years. It would be impossible to even measure the love which binds these girls together, love which proves itself in the highest acts of self-denial. I have known, when there was little doing at the factory, a girl lending another her good bonnet and jacket to come to church in on Sunday, she coming in her workday one. I have known, when another girl was sick, three of them arranging to surrender their own night’s rest, that the sick girl might have someone with her at night, though the illness lasted over six weeks. I have known a girl going with Miss Dolling into the worst streets, into the worst houses, looking for one whom we heard had gone astray. This spirit has spread even amongst the younger girls, and with it a spirit of self-respect, which has given them an absence of self-consciousness, and has very largely removed that horrid giggling habit so common amongst them. My sisters and I have taken them to spend the day with friends of our own in the country, as well as with Mrs. Bramston at Winchester--I like to call her Mrs. Trant--who does for the girls and women what Mrs. Richardson does for the boys and men. Wherever we go, their hosts always remark the same things--their naturalness and refinement.

And yet even with all this one felt that there was something wanting. There is a perfect naturalness and fitness in humanity, the want of recognition of which is oftentimes the overthrow of religious work. It is natural and proper for boys and girls to court, for men and women to marry. We had failed altogether with regard to this. We had excellent clubs for boys, excellent clubs for girls, and then just when you thought you had got hold of them your influence weakened. Soon they disappeared, and the reason was perfectly natural; they had begun to “walk out.” Then one discovered that the one great difficulty in all this was, that it was literally walking out, they had no place where courtship could be carried out. Two dangers in this will suggest themselves to any thinking person. First, the whole thing, as a rule, was done in secret; secondly, there was no outward moral restraint. To people without deep moral sense of right these two dangers would be very great, and they are the cause of most grievous consequences to large numbers of young people. You would naturally say, “Why cannot they use their own homes?” But if you lived with your father and mother, and many brothers and sisters, in one common feeding room, perhaps you would not be bold enough to present your _fiancée_. I have often known a marriage take place, and the parents on both sides have never been introduced to their new relative. I have more often known marriages take place because of necessity, when the religious ceremony was looked upon as a kind of whitewash. Naturally one talked a great deal both to boys and girls on the subject of courtship, and they soon showed what was one’s duty. We were bound to supply that which the circumstances of their life prevented, an opportunity of meeting and knowing each other. Then came the real difficulty. Where were they to meet, and what were they to do? The gymnasium was the natural meeting place, and so we tried a kind of social evening. But they proved anything but social--the young men on one side of the room, the young ladies on the other. If any male was bold enough to cross over, he was received with giggling, and as conversation was not our strong point--for we had never been taught, so to speak, to talk--he soon subsided, red-faced, amongst his fellows. Then we tried games, but they always ended in horrid romps. All games seemed to end in kissing, and forfeits brought forth witticisms which were not always conducive to propriety. At last my sister was bold enough to suggest, what had been on the tip of my tongue for weeks, why should they not dance? The girls had already learned in their own clubs. But excellent and good-natured as our girls are, we feared it would be putting their kindness to a hard test to ask them to become instructors, especially as all our men could not bring dancing pumps; and though a hob-nailed boot is very useful for most men’s daily work, it was not a pleasant reminder to a partner that she was good-natured enough to be dancing for the purpose of teaching someone else to dance. So I cleared out my dining-room one or two nights a week, and we taught the men as my sisters had taught the girls, and now for the last five years our dancing-class has been one of the most valuable parish institutions. Mr. Whittick, our blind organist, presides at the piano. Nearly all the members are communicants. I had to make this rule, because I must be able to stand over the character of every member. Everyone pays twopence, and we dance from 8 till 10.30 p.m.

It is extraordinary, the difference which this has effected in the manners of our people. The dancing is, perhaps, a little more serious than at a ball in Belgravia, for squares are danced with a due attention to the figures. It has given one the most happy opportunity of enabling our boys and girls to meet naturally together, and I am more and more convinced by experience that one of the greatest causes of sin, in places like ours, is this want. Many of our boys and girls have got engaged to be married through this chance, and if any of them get engaged to a girl outside the parish, the dance gives then an excellent excuse to introduce her to us. It would be very difficult to say, “You must come and see my parson.” It is very easy to say, “You must come and see my dancing-class.” In the last six years I do not think we have had one marriage amongst our people for which we have had cause to feel shame. In the last four years I do not think any of our people have been married without receiving the Holy Communion on the Sunday before, or on the morning of their marriage. Why cannot we talk far more plainly on these subjects to our people? This hideous demand for facilities for divorce, the extraordinary attitude of almost the whole episcopate to it, could never have arisen if we had taught plainly that marriage is a Sacrament, in which God gives grace enabling people to live in holy love together, and therefore demanding from people a preparation as rigid, I need not say more rigid, perhaps, than the preparations needed for the reception of other Sacraments. Think of the hideous vulgarity of modern marriages, the whole talk about clothes and feasting. Think of the behaviour in church. Amongst fashionable people the ceremony is as interesting as a Drawing-room. Amongst my class of people the ceremony is disfigured by ribald jests, oftentimes by the rudest horse-play. Our Lord not only consecrated by His own presence, but brought His Blessed Mother to Cana of Galilee as well. Oh, inestimable value of any saintly woman, who can show the girl why there need not be any amazement in the commencement of a new life, in which, unless she is prepared, there must be a strange and awful awakening.

Then the influence we gained amongst the girls reacted very much on their own homes. I had been very anxious about the elder women, for though, when I came, I found three mothers’ meetings, they were badly attended, and I was told that different streets would not amalgamate, for, in our little parish, there is just as much difference between one street and another as there is between Earl’s Court and West Kensington. I felt that this unchristian state of things must, at all hazards, be broken down, and that the best method was to try and make the meeting as much like a party as possible. And so the first use we made of the schoolroom attached to the gymnasium was to open it once a week, and, as numbers increased, twice a week, for a kind of At Home. At first it was difficult to make them understand that they need not bring a piece of work if they did not like. They might talk to each other, indeed gossip, and move about the room when there was no singing or reading going on, and there always was a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter. I heard a lady once, when I was lecturing, saying aside to a friend, as I spoke about this, “Fancy, encouraging them in their gossiping habits. Of course they will come if he gives them tea.” When the lecture was over I happened to stand behind her for a minute or two in the crush, and I can vouch for two cups of tea, several cakes, and a story to her neighbour, which I should call gossip. Do you suppose that there would be any afternoon visiting if there was no gossip and no afternoon tea? I should admire the courage of the lady who cared to make the attempt.

Of course our influence over these women was slow. On our first summer outing, seventy of us went to the Isle of Wight. It happened to be a very wet day, perhaps that was the excuse, but I noticed in many of their pockets, when coming home, the outline of a little bottle, the contents of which one could easily guess at by the ardour with which these old ladies skipped, for one had supplied a skipping rope, and by the character of the songs they sang. Luckily for us this was an impediment to quick disembarking, and so my sisters and I were glad to get off the boat, before we could be recognised as the guardians of the party. But soon all that passed away. Letting them talk gave us an opportunity of showing them what conversation might be made, above all showing them that vulgarity is seldom witty and never convenient. In 1894 they willingly gave up their summer outing, their one yearly enjoyment, to add to a fund which we were raising for the sufferers from the _Victoria_ disaster. Women are far more stay-at-home, and get far fewer treats than men, and therefore it was a great self-denial.

The girls, as I have said, soon induced their mothers to come, and thus we got an influence in the family. The vast majority of our mothers are regular communicants now, influencing their husbands and sons, giving me immediate warning when any spot in the parish is getting bad, with their Coal Club, their Blanket Club, their Penny Bank, carrying into every street in the parish the power of a homely religious influence, and paying back to me and mine tenderness, sympathy, and love, which people could only do who have become in the truest sense religious and refined. Remember how almost impossible it is to conquer old habits long indulged, how cursing, and swearing, and drinking, and bad talk take even deeper root in women’s hearts than in men’s, and just because their lives are far more commonplace, these are the harder to eradicate. I wish I dare tell you of how bravely month after month some have fought against some special besetting sin, coming to me regularly before Communion Sunday to report progress, so humbly, so trustfully. As I write these words, a letter comes from Portsmouth, “I hope you will be able to save many poor souls, as you have saved me. My husband says he hopes I will not break the pledge now you are gone, as he has had four years of comfort. But I will pray for the help of God to keep me up. I was at church this morning at eight, a very few. We are going to have service on Wednesday at a quarter to six, so that will give us all a chance to go. I remain your affectionate child in Christ.” (She is more than sixty.) This is only one out of a hundred miracles that the Blessed Sacrament has wrought among us. For years that woman had fought against Confirmation. It was the Blessed Sacrament that broke down the stubbornness of her heart.

I can hardly bear to think of them now, for I know how especially desolate they are. And yet I know that their lessons have not been learned in vain, and that as long as they have the Blessed Sacrament, the supernatural graces which have refined them will still support and strengthen them. Many of them are very old, all of them are very ignorant, very poor. I wish you could see them at their day’s outing at Winchester, enjoying the rest and the beauty, so grateful for every attention, so careful not to appear greedy, and yet to do, as one said, “graceful justice” to the splendid food provided; or, better still, if you could see them at their own special service in church, in the truest sense at home in their Father’s house, their house, too, because it is His, and because some act of self-denial on their part has helped to build it; their dear old cracked voices singing all out of tune, their little sighing “Amens” and “Halleluias” in the middle of the prayer, their rapt attention during the sermon, the tear or the smile as the case might be, with sometimes a comment thrown in; a little impatience on the part of the younger, when the clock is reaching four, because the children will be home; a long lingering, sometimes for hours, on the part of those who live alone.

V.

=Our Children.=

The real answer to the loafer and the prostitute is the environment of the children. It is almost impossible to cure; it is, comparatively speaking, easy to prevent. And so, if we are going to make any real effort towards removing these two national disgraces and dangers, it must be in the treatment of our children. Even then you have fatal odds against you, for heredity marks down many for its own prey, and it will take many generations before heredity will be conquered. But environment may be improved, and I contend that every man and woman, who tries to train their children properly, creates the needed environment. If only we could reform the parents there would be very little difficulty about the children, and I believe that the truest measure of all work like ours is the care that parents take about their children. While the mother is actually nursing her child she will make for it every possible sacrifice, but, alas! as the well-springs of nourishment dry up, the well-springs of love dry up too, and you will oftentimes wonder why Almighty God gave such mothers so many children. Poverty and uncertainty as to wages have a good deal to do with the parents’ difficulty in disciplining their children. I wonder if well-to-do people ever consider these mothers. They have no servants; however ill they feel there is no one to do anything for the children but themselves; headaches, lassitude, even the knowledge of impending sickness, is for them no excuse. They have no strengthening diet, no power to satisfy the common wants of their children in food or clothes; no baize doors between the nursery and the bedroom. I speak advisedly of the mother alone as the trainer of her children, because the father, in work, has no time, out of work no heart. My wonder is, not that they slave so little for their children, but rather that they slave so much. Religion alone can mend all this--I have seen it work miracles in homes--the belief that the child is God’s gift, that He is its Father, that He will give her strength for her every need, and that the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” God will answer. My truest joy at Landport were these converted homes, but even these homes, and far more the homes of the careless, necessitate something more for the children. Religion quickens within the mother the power of creating a true environment round the child; but, alas! after ten years there are many parents untouched by religion in our parish. Of course we have done what we could with our Sunday School, though there is no greater mistake than to suppose that the Sunday School can in any way take the place of the home school. Our Sunday School has never attracted very many children. My desire has been to train a few children well, and the preserving of discipline, and insistence on outward reverence, in a parish like ours made our Sunday School unpopular; a mother once said to one of my sisters, “I shan’t let my boys go to your school any longer, because kneeling wears out the knees of their trousers.”

A child, who had lately joined, said to another sister, “I am leaving your school for the one round the corner, because you go to your treat in the train, and the other school goes in brakes.”

I do not suppose that we have ever had more than five or six hundred children in it, but thanks to a most excellent staff of teachers, many of whom have been with us all the ten years, our children are in perfect order, and answer extraordinarily well. We have always thought, too, that it was far more important for a child to come to the Children’s Celebration at ten o’clock than to the afternoon instruction. Indeed we very soon discovered that this ten o’clock celebration was the most important religious factor in the whole parish. It has been maintained oftentimes with great personal difficulty; I have often myself had to say four Masses on Sunday, and, until the Rev. John Elwes came to help us, one of us had always had to say two; but we felt that no amount of inconvenience could be a possible excuse for depriving our children of this most necessary factor in their religious education. Assuredly we have been well repaid.

I bless God for many things at S. Agatha’s, but for none more than the dignity of the younger acolytes, dear Barratt’s earnest leading of the children, the singing of the older girls who composed the choir, and the reverent behaviour of all the children, even the infants taking part in every word that was said or sung, thus enabling us to make the children’s service their chief education in all religion. If this service should ever be given up, I should indeed fear for the future of S. Agatha’s. With us the Sunday School has the merit of being perfectly voluntary, parents, as a rule, taking no trouble about making their children come; as long as they get rid of them they do not care whether they go to Sunday School or not, and, unless you have to punish a child, the parent often remains to you an unknown quantity.

All this made us very anxious to acquire Day Schools, and, like everything else, God sent them to us, when we were ready for them. One little corner of our district had been cut off, because the mother parish wished to preserve her schools, built in the year 1823. In 1889 they had fallen into such decay that they were practically unfit for use, and were condemned by the Education Department. The then vicar offered them to the Board. I saw at once that God meant me to take them. I called all our people together, and told them that the real difficulty was money, for I should have to lay out £1000 on the schools immediately. I knew, of course, that they could subscribe no money, but we have ever found at S. Agatha’s that praying people are more potential than giving people. They decided that they would devote one day a month to perpetual prayer, beginning at half-past five in the morning and continuing till ten at night. We have kept that custom up ever since. It is an extraordinary sight to see poor ignorant people coming in for their half-hour’s prayer, each one responsible for their own time, and, if they cannot attend, sending someone else, so that the chain of intercession is never broken. Sometimes in the afternoon, when the women have leisure, or in the evening, when work is all over, there are fifty to a hundred people all praying silently for what we need. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved all day, and the poorest bring their flowers to deck the altar. No spot in the world will ever be so beautiful to me as that little flower-covered altar. At any rate the intercession worked the first miracle for us, for in just over two months we had collected the £1000 we needed for the first outlay upon the schools, and the getting of this money was all the more wonderful because there was such a strong feeling in the diocese, and elsewhere, against us. I insert a letter received from the Bishop of Guildford, himself a most ardent supporter of Church Schools, which you will see was not intended for publication, but which his Lordship has very kindly allowed me to publish, as a proof of how really miraculous it was that we got that sum.

“THE CLOSE, WINCHESTER,
“_October 30, 1889_.

“DEAR MR. DOLLING,--I have not answered your letter
hurriedly because I wanted to think over it before I did so. The
pleasantest plan for me personally would be simply to accede
to your request, but I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to
do so. It may perhaps already have struck you that I have not
responded to appeals for pecuniary help for your mission. This
has not arisen from inadvertence. I am always ready and glad to
do all I can as regards Episcopal or Archidiaconal ministrations
in your parish, and I can honestly say that the confirmation
which I held in your chapel was one of intense interest to me.
I can also perfectly honestly wish you heartily ‘God speed’ in
your work, and honour you for your work’s sake. But I do long
that the views which you hold were not of the very extreme
character which, judging from utterances which I occasionally
see in print, they are; and that the ritual which you think it
your duty to carry out were of a simpler character than it is,
and used in accordance with the wishes of our own Bishop, who
certainly does not make a man an offender for a word. I need not
enlarge upon this point, but, feeling it as I do very strongly,
I could not conscientiously _help forward_ a scheme which
would bring the children of the district referred to under your
direct church teaching. It seems to me a wholly different thing
for me in my position as Suffragan to come and minister in Holy
things as a Bishop to those who are, as a fact, under your
spiritual charge, and by my own free act and deed to endeavour
to bring your influence to bear upon children who are not as
yet, at any rate ecclesiastically, a portion of your flock. I
hope you will give me credit for thus acting from conscientious
motives, and believe that I can still quite truly and
unfeignedly pray that a blessing may rest upon your labours, and
that all our mistakes and errors may be pardoned and over-ruled
for good.

“I am, dear Mr. Dolling,
“Always yours very truly,
“GEORGE HENRY GUILDFORD.

“REV. R. DOLLING.”

In all, the schools have cost me over £3000; but they have a splendid record, and I do not grudge one single penny. In 1889 the average attendance was 350, the Government grant £276; in 1895 the average attendance was 519, the grant £476. Let me say, at once, this was due to our teachers. Never have any schools had such devoted teachers, their one object in view not the gaining of the grant, but the moral character of the child.

The ease with which my sisters and others have been able to mould our younger girls into their present excellent state, is very largely due to the splendid foundation laid by Mrs. Berrow, the mistress of the girls. Her indefatigable labours during many years in which she has managed the girls’ school, are beyond all praise. Over and over again, when in utter amazement I have said to a girl, “Who warned you of that danger which you have been able to avoid? who put before you that path of duty which you have had the grace to follow?” the answer was, “Oh, Mrs. Berrow, of course!” The “of course” is so characteristic, because it just shows how perfectly naturally the most difficult duty was performed. I would that I had words to express the gratitude I feel to this most Christian lady.

When our boys’ school had reached its lowest ebb, discipline and teaching having been twice condemned by the Inspector, I asked my dear friend Saunders, whose father was a very valued friend of mine, to lead a forlorn hope in the boys’ school. The ardour with which he commenced his work has never for a single moment slackened. He found the school the worst in the town. I leave it under his management, one of the very best. But I do not value his teaching powers so much as his influence over the boys’ futures. He has created a school library and a school band. He has managed for three years the best continuation school in the whole district. The Bible-class, into which he gathers on Sunday the lads who have left him, is one of the most valuable helps to religion in the whole parish. It would vex them if I were to tell you of the extraordinary sacrifices they have made for S. Agatha’s schools; but, as I believe God gave me the schools, so I believe He gave me my head teachers, and the rest of the school staff; and I am confident, as long as the schools remain under their management, there will ever be an influence amongst those of the flock most dear to our Lord, such as He Himself desires His little ones should be affected by.

No one can measure what England owes to the Board Schools; it would have been impossible for the Church to have kept pace with the increase of population, and with the new thought, which has not yet been half realised, that every child has a right to the best education. But there is one truth that I am sure we shall all, sooner or later, hold--it is not the business of the State to teach religion. If some means could be devised by which each denomination might appoint teachers to give the religious instruction, the education difficulty might be solved. But we are told this is impossible--an impossibility, I fear, arising largely from the laziness and jealousy of those who ought to be the religious teachers. If religion is taught in a school it is the most vital of all subjects; it needs the most skilful handling, the most God-sought and God-given tact, and yet it is just the one subject upon which no enquiry can be made as to the fitness of its teachers. In fact, it is possible for a child to be taught by teachers of every, and of no, religious opinions. Then there is no such thing as unsectarian religion: the very words are contradictory. Every teacher has his own bias, and he would be more than human if he did not convey this to the children. People think that this does not matter, because children are too young to understand, or because such teaching can do them no harm. But it is far easier to teach a dogmatic truth than to make a child understand, or gain any benefit from, a whole chapter of the Bible. To hold up Christ as an example, and His words as precepts, and not to teach the child the method by which Christ conveys to him the power of copying the example, is a cruel wrong. I believe even in many Church Schools there has been a great want of definite teaching. We have taught far too much, yet far too little--far too much about the Old Testament and the services of the Church; far too little about those saving truths which even quite young children can apprehend, and assimilate to themselves. Just before Christmas we were asked to take in a little soldier from Aldershot, a lad of about sixteen. His father and mother had died when he was four. An uncle, who played a whistle outside public-houses in the southern parts of Scotland, had adopted him. When he came to us he said that, until he had joined the army, six months before, he had never slept three consecutive nights in the same place; indeed, most nights a doorstep or a hayrick had been his bed. It is almost impossible to conceive a worse bringing up. On Sunday he went to church with our own boys; and Conibeere, who looks after them, remarked, on coming out of church, “I think he must be a Roman Catholic, because he was so reverent.” Alas! soldiers, sailors, and tramps coming from all parts of England are seldom reverent. That Sunday night he told me all about himself. It was almost impossible to believe that so pure a soul should have matured under circumstances so adverse, but he had a talisman that had never failed him; he had never forgotten the few soul-saving truths he had learned as a little child. Bishop Virtue, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, very kindly confirmed him, and now the little man is on his way to India. But he wrote us before he sailed that he would never forget S. Agatha’s, for there he had first learned what a home was. He knew nothing about the Bible, Old or New Testament; but he knew what repentance meant, what prayer meant, what communion meant. He knew it so thoroughly that neither the temptations of the street nor of the barrack-room had robbed him of it. Surely that is what we ought to teach every child. Let us recognise that some children are born religious--I mean they love the Bible and the lives of the saints; they have a power of expressing much fervour--I do not know that they are always the best children--and they will certainly acquire all the unnecessary part of religion. But every child has the capacity for acquiring the necessary part, and surely it is the duty of the Church to see that all her children have the chance of its acquirement. Every energy is now being put forth by the Church to retain, or even to increase, her schools. Thirty years ago she had almost the whole of the schools of England in her hands. Was she true to her enormous chance? Did she turn out Churchmen and Churchwomen? Are the Sacraments frequented to-day by those whom she taught? In all honesty let us face this question, Why this anxiety to-day? and let us earnestly pray Almighty God that it means her united effort to teach her children as they ought to be taught, refusing to accept diocesan schemes that insist on an amount of teaching altogether unnecessary and superfluous; and, above all, the getting rid of that hideous system of examinations which ruins not only religious, but all secular, education.

Measure the increase in good education which has taken place since the passing of the Education Act, and every true Englishman will surely rejoice. Recognise that all that the State ought to do is to teach secular education. If the Church, by possessing schools, can help the State in this matter, and therefore get a better opportunity of teaching her own children, let her rejoice, but let her recognise her twofold responsibility, that the religious education must be ample and complete, the secular education the best that can be given. If she fails in either of these two duties she has no right to remain a teacher, and it would be fatal to her duty if, for the sake of gaining a little money, and thereby lessening the continual burden of subscription, she either gives an inferior education, or has inferior buildings, unsanitary or such like, which the State should not for a moment permit, or else allows some outside control to interfere with the religion which she is bound to teach, or with her method of appointing teachers. It is easy to accept unfettered money from a Conservative Government, but no party remains in power very long in England, and the taking of money now may possibly be an excuse for another Government to enforce its own terms. I had the honour to serve on the School Board in Portsmouth for three years. I know the zeal and energy with which its members manage the schools in the town. I am grateful beyond expression for the benefits they have conferred on education in Portsmouth. I confess that their energy has been the incentive to all the Church Schools to progress, for they set a standard of education which is extremely useful to the whole district. But I, for one, would far rather have seen them merely imparting secular knowledge. I believe that, if we knew that no religious teaching was given, every Dissenting minister and every Church clergyman would throw far greater energy into the work of teaching religion to their own children. I believe that oftentimes the knowledge that religion is taught is a salve to the conscience, an excuse not to realise our duty towards our children far more than we do. It is an awful thought, that of a Godless England. It is a thought that should strike terror into the conscience of every single man, whether he be cleric or laic; yet I believe that there are thousands of children to-day who, if a year after they leave school were questioned about their religion, would, as far as actual knowledge went, be discovered to be Godless.

My service on the Board, I think, taught me another benefit in Church Schools. The daily visit of the clergy and other Church workers is not only an enormous encouragement to the teachers, but creates altogether a more humane atmosphere. It tends, too, to more softened ways and more refined manners on the part of the children, and it gives often a greater opportunity for getting work for children and keeping a hold over them when they have left school. I think that there were a few members of the Board who tried to do something in this way, but the most of us were far too busy. I am told that under the London School Board this omission is corrected by a system of managers, who are in touch both with the children and the teachers. I fear in the Portsmouth Board we should have been jealous of delegating any authority. I believe, too, that if there had been a more personal touch between the members of the Board and the teachers, several little difficulties, which have lately arisen, would have disappeared. Indeed, I blame myself very much that during my three years’ service I did not get more personally acquainted with the teachers, though I threw open my gymnasium twice a week to the younger ones, and many joined our debating society. The increase of population in Portsmouth has been so abnormal, that the expenditure of the Board in creating places and plant has necessarily been very great, and consideration for the ratepayers’ pockets is the reason why our salaries do not compare favourably with those in like-sized towns. And there were some other little vexatious arrangements, which I believe more personal intercourse between the Board and the teachers could easily have re-arranged.

I say all this because I am conscious that the two difficulties which Englishmen must face with regard to the Board School question are these--first, that the State cannot, and therefore ought not to be expected to, teach religion; and secondly, that a danger exists in all elected bodies that they may become merely machines, and so create in those they employ a merely mechanical habit of performing their duties.

VI.

=Our Penitentiary Work.=

When society is brave enough to say a “fallen man,” as well as a “fallen woman,” the so-called fallen woman will soon disappear. Alas! we talk so glibly of young men’s “wild oats,” oftentimes speaking of sin as a necessity, as if to do wrong in this direction, being human, is natural, that it has become almost recognised that the so-called fallen woman is a necessity. This kind of thing was said over and over again to me by clergymen and others, when I talked to them about the state in which I found my parish, until I was forced to recognise that I must look at this question from two points of view--first, the reclaiming of the sinner; secondly, the removing from amongst my own children the awful danger of infection. I want you to pray, before you read this chapter, that no word of mine may hurt or wound you, as I am praying God the Holy Ghost to give me grace to write it bravely and wisely.

As far as the reformation of this sinner goes, it can only be effected by the loving compassion of a good woman, and God sent me in the hour of my need a woman who practically worked miracles. She is dead now, so I may call her by her name, Mrs. Waldron, a sister of Prebendary Grier. She lived in one of the little cottages which now form the site of the new church, weak in body, yet of such an untiring courage and energy that I have often known her for more than twelve hours at a stretch without food or rest, labouring for some poor soul. I gave her _carte blanche_ when she came, asking no questions, discussing no case unless she desired to discuss it with me, but I know that in a short time more than a hundred poor girls had made their determination for a better life under her influence. And it was no wonder, for harder than marble would have been the heart that resisted her love. In the lives of the saints one reads of those who, nursing the lepers, rejoiced to kiss their sores. That is a physical action, which I suppose anybody could accustom themselves to do. But to touch with your soul a leprous soul, to bear with the blasphemy, the vulgarity, of those who have lost all shame, and perhaps never have had any, to bear with it continually day by day, to have your kindness and hospitality repaid by having all your things stolen, and yourself flouted to your face, mocked at and derided; to find that poor one sick and tired just at the moment when change is possible, to bring her home again without one word or even look of reproach, to do it all without any excitement, any telling of it to anyone else, loving the most hideous for the dear Lord’s sake, treating them in the dear Lord’s own way, no wonder the success was phenomenal. And joined to this an even harder work, to persuade parents to allow their children, their girls of ten and eleven and twelve, to go into preventive homes. For when we first went to Landport that was the only solution of the difficulty possible. We discovered many, many little children from whom no secret of sin was hidden; and we could not remove in a moment their awful instructors, who, directly they were old enough, and that age came sometimes as young as thirteen or fourteen, would give them an easy opportunity of turning instruction into practice. So, though I have never myself been in favour of taking children from their own homes, there was nothing else that we could do.

I determined that by God’s help I would not only endeavour to get the girls out of the bad houses, but the houses out of the parish. The present law is so very difficult to put in force, that I felt that, even if I was successful in invoking the law in a few instances, I should create great prejudice against the work, and effect practically very little reform. So by degrees, with the help of my sister and some of our most earnest mothers, I got a complete list of all the bad houses in the parish. I wrote to all the owners, taking for granted that they did not know the bad purposes for which their houses were being used. I have written these letters week after week, in the hope of shaming them by my persistency or worrying them into taking some steps. After a time, I generally wrote to the Superintendent of Police, and he very kindly did all he could. If there were little children in the house, Mr. Silk, the School Board officer, was also an efficient helper. Then at last the owner, wearied or ashamed, as a rule gave notice to his tenant, and thus in detail, and one by one, our plague spots were removed, until just before I left the parish I bought for £250 the only bad house remaining. The poor woman, now in a lunatic asylum, was her own landlady, and that was why it was so difficult to move it.

You will be quite sure that every effort was made by dealing personally with all the inmates, for when Mrs. Waldron left us, one of my sisters undertook this special work. It would be unbecoming of me to speak of her tact and tenderness; nay, by reason of the salutary rule we had of never talking over cases, I hardly know of them myself; all that I do know is that no poor girl ever left my parish without having the truest womanly love offered her--love which, after seeking her in the worst streets of the town, often found her in the wards of the hospital or poor-house; love which she had refused in the day of her strength, and which now triumphed in the day of her weakness.

Of course, this cleansing of our parish produced a great deal of ill-will from owners of property. Once, feeling myself bound to make a statement in one of my sermons, which got into a newspaper, I was threatened with a libel action for £10,000. I remember quite well, when the lawyer came to see me about it, his utter astonishment not only when he discovered that what I had said was true, but even more when the thought was revealed to him that a clergyman need not necessarily be a fool, and the readiness with which he and his client abated the nuisance was beyond all praise.

The abatement of these nuisances soon did away with the necessity of our sending children to preventive homes. Some words that I had spoken during my first year’s work induced a lady, who has since become one of the Mission’s dearest friends, to undertake an Orphanage for S. Agatha’s children. She opened with a little home in North End, which accommodated about eight children. This was soon overcrowded, and a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Kane, offered us, free of rent, a splendid house in Castle Road, Southsea, where for the last eight years this lady has been mother to more than twenty children. Like all other of God’s gifts to us, this house came at the very moment when we wanted it. It is impossible for me to describe the love with which these children have been mothered, and I doubt if anywhere in England there is any like institution, which is so thoroughly a home. Like all other institutions--and yet that word institution itself is its own condemnation, indeed, I do not think it has ever been an institution--it has had its ups and downs, and we have had to accommodate the method of working it to the age of the children. The younger children coming to our own day schools were kept a little in touch with the outside world, though this had its difficulties, for I have known a time when four or five of the choir boys fell violently in love with the girls. But I welcomed even this danger, from the knowledge that the mixing with other children made the girls more humane, and Wally Kimber, aged nine, surreptitiously offering an apple, had his necessary use. There were also the dangers of measles, whooping cough, etc., but I looked upon these as a development of the child’s physical character.

While recognising to its very full the need of our Orphanage, for most of our children were orphans, or practically so, because their fathers were sailors, I still hold that an indifferent natural home is better for the child than the best artificial one. There is a give and take, a certain amount of bullying, a having to put up with things as they are, sometimes very needless things, a stinting in diet, above all a development of ministry, that I believe to be almost impossible except in the natural home. All this is a formation of character which enables the girl, as soon as she goes out in the world, to know her own value, to judge for herself, and not to be dependent on rules concerning every point, which private judgment would far more healthily direct. Above all, she learns from her father and brothers, and from their companions and friends, natural intercourse with men, which prevents the first man she sees, after she has gone into service, being an overwhelming attraction.

I hope these words will not sound very ungracious towards the very many kind ladies who have taken our children into their Preventive Homes--I bless God continually for many a girl whom their kindness has saved from utter ruin, both of body and soul--and I think they themselves will agree with me generally in what I say. But, on the other hand, many parents are very glad to be saved the expense and trouble of bringing up children in the days when they cannot earn. They even go further than this. I remember, years ago, a great triumph of Mrs. Waldron, when she prevailed on a father to sign the paper allowing his girl to go into a Home. A few months afterwards he came, as I thought, to thank me for having made provision for his child--the mother we knew was a thoroughly bad character--but, after a few preliminaries, he calmly demanded that I should pay him something, or else he would remove the girl. I very soon removed him; but he was continually annoying the sister in charge of the Home, and, as soon as the girl was fifteen, and able to earn, he brought her back again to Portsmouth. I thank God that she was wise enough to insist upon going into service, and has kept herself all right; but it might have been just the other way. Of course, if a mother is depraved, or a girl is beginning to make friends with really bad characters, there is, I suppose, no other remedy; but I am glad to think that, as a rule, such needs have largely passed away from our parish.

We owe a special debt of gratitude to the Portsmouth Ladies’ Committee for Fallen and Preventive work. Through their indefatigable secretary, Mrs. Breton, they have taken out of our hands many of our most difficult cases. I know how often a clergyman’s work is marred by the kind of pompous officialism of many Penitentiary workers. I wish they could have the happiness of working with either Sister Margaret, of the Deaconesses Home, or with Miss Young, of the little Penitentiary in Somers Road, Southsea. Naturally, we came most in contact with her; for when, on Mrs. Waldron’s departure, I shut up our own Penitentiary, hers was open to us night and day. She is, perhaps, the most unassuming and gentle person that ever lived--very delicate, for she was nearly killed in a railway accident, four years ago, and yet exercising a most extraordinary influence over even the rudest and most boisterous girls. The remembrance of her tact and utter absence of hideous rules emboldens me to say what has often been upon my mind about penitentiaries generally--Could there not be a great deal more individualism? And, above all, could there not be fewer prayers and hours of silence? I remember, in my parish in London, a poor girl, who, after many weeks of persuasion, at length entered a temporary Home. On her journey down to a two years’ Home in the country, she disappeared. Two days after, a railway porter brought me a shawl that one of the Penitentiary ladies had lent her, with the message, “Tell Mr. Dolling I could not stick all the prayers.” Perhaps even you and I, who call ourselves religious, would find three set times for prayers a day, with one or two silent hours, more than we could “stick.” And, then, surely a great deal more use might be made of digging. It is far easier to sweat out your evil humours and your sloth in a garden under the sky, than in a wash-house under a roof. I know the infinite tenderness of Penitentiary workers; I know the devotion of their lives; but it has struck me oftentimes, from talking with girls who had been in Homes, that there is a great danger of their looking upon the girl as created for the Home rather than the Home for the girl; and I am sure that if accommodation and workers render this individualism impossible, a smaller number, of whose cure there might be more reasonable assurance, would serve the end far more than a larger number not so successfully dealt with. Above all, a protest needs to be made against a novel system of three months’ Homes. There are in all these girls’ lives times when either weakness of body, utter poverty, reaction against the hatefulness of their life, or a bitter heart-disappointment--for these poor children still have hearts--prompt them to go to a Home. By all means let there be temporary Homes, where they can be taken in, but for God’s sake do not let a whitewashing certificate lightly get them into a house as a servant unless the mistress knows all about them. Of course, there are many ladies living alone who could do no more Christ-like act than to give such a girl a chance; but I have known them sometimes in nurseries--I wonder if people realise how soon little children can be injured by bad habits--and I have known them in houses where there are growing-up sons and daughters, worse for the latter than the former.

I hope you will pardon me for these two digressions, but my work in Portsmouth has brought me in contact with so many poor girls whom a Home seems to have hardened, and my work in the confessional has brought me in contact with so many penitents, whose first temptations to sin arose in their earliest days, and were generally suggested by servants.

VII.

=Our House.=