Part 19

I think, perhaps, I should have found seven weeks of Rhoscolyn more than enough, if it had not been for the rector. I had met him casually on an earlier visit, and looked forward to meeting him again. One evening, soon after I had arrived, I was walking for some distance behind him. He was in company with a Nonconformist minister, and at a turn in the road the two parted very amicably with a kindly shake of the hand. It is not always so in Wales. I ventured, when I got up to the rector, to make some remark to this effect. He did not at that time know whether or not I had any ecclesiastical leanings, and with great simplicity he remarked, “I must tell you this indeed, Judge Parry: we must be charitable, you know, even to Dissenters.” I have often wondered whether the phrase would be acceptable to the authorities if it were inserted in the Welsh Church Catechism. As it was uttered and acted upon by the Rector of Rhoscolyn, it could give offence to no one who had the least charity and sense of humour.

The post-office was between the rectory and the outer world, and so the rector came in that evening, and many another evening afterwards, and I was always glad to hear the heavy scrunch of his boots on the loose gravel in the front of the door. Seated in an armchair with a pipe, he would proceed to discourse at length of the affairs of the world and his parish with great simplicity and humour.

The recent Disestablishment Bill of Mr. Asquith had troubled him very much. “I must tell you this,” he said: “it has given rise to a great deal of ill-feeling. Very wicked things have been said indeed, and the pulpit has been used in chapels on the Liberal side.”

I was glad to meet a clergyman of the Church of England in Wales who did not approve of this use of the pulpit, and asked him the kind of thing that had happened. “I must tell you this indeed, though you will hardly believe it,” he began. “There was a preacher at the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel at Llan——, who, on the eve of the election, told his congregation this. He said he had once been at a hanging—I suppose,” said the rector with a pleasant smile, “that was the hanging of a late member of his congregation, but I do not know—and he went on to say it had been a terrible ordeal for him, and had made him very sick and ill. But he told his congregation quite solemnly that, if he knew any of them on the morrow were going to vote for the Conservatives, he would not only go to his hanging with pleasure, but he would be there to pull his legs.”

I am afraid I was more amused than shocked, for he added quickly, “I must tell you it was terrible, and it sounds very much worse in Welsh indeed.”

I dare say the story had little foundation in fact; but, like all these election stories, each side firmly believes them for the moment, and as the rector said, “it makes it very difficult not to be angry.”

The bitterness of the election seemed, however, to have quite passed away. By nature, the Welshman is Conservative, almost to the point of bigotry. This is particularly noticeable in his methods of agriculture, horticulture, and sanitation. When he is emancipated, and, like the Jew and the Catholic, his grievance is gone, it will be very interesting to note his further political development.

The rector was a great theologian, and enforced his views with liberal quotations from the Greek Testament, which he could recite in great quantity. He took a simple pride in his knowledge of the Greek, and used it on occasions, I must say, in a somewhat unsportsmanlike manner. He had much sympathy with the Baptists, and was an upholder of the ceremony of total immersion. He told me, more in sorrow than in anger, of the wicked outburst of a Particular Baptist whom he had encountered in a third-class carriage between Holyhead and Bangor.

“I must tell you this, Judge Parry—for you know I have a great weakness for the Baptists, and I should see no objection to the ceremony of total immersion being performed in our Church; well, to-day I met an old gentleman, a grave reverend man, with a white beard, in the train, and he asked me what views I had about baptism. Well, I told him, and then I found he wanted to speak very evil things about the ceremony of baptism in the English Church. So I quoted the Greek Testament to him to explain it, and I could see he did not understand it, so then I quoted a whole chapter to the fellow in Greek, and he got in a terrible rage and jumped up and shook his fist in my face, and said, ‘I will tell you what you are! You are nothing but a damned sprinkler. That’s what you are!’ Dear me, it was terrible for a reverend old gentleman with a white beard to use such language to a rector, was it not?”

I asked him if he had ever performed a ceremony of total immersion as a minister of the Church of England, and he told me he had not, but he was very near it on one occasion. “I must tell you this,” he continued; “it was when I was curate in Glamorganshire, a fellow, named Evan Jones, came to me and wanted to be baptized. Well, I knew he was a poacher and a bad fellow, and a Presbyterian, but he said he had never been baptized, so I said I would baptize him.

“‘But I want to be baptized like the Baptists do it,’ says he.

“‘Total immersion, you mean,’ says I. ‘Well, I will do it then for you, if my vicar will let me.’

“‘Where will you do it?’ asked Evan.

“‘It would be good to do it at the pond in the middle of the village on a Saturday afternoon, when the school children are there to see, and we can have a hymn,’ said I.

“Well, Evan did not like that idea at all, and wanted me to go up to a pool on the hills by a little bridge on the old mountain road; and I did not care to go up the hills with him alone, for he was a bad fellow. But he did not want anyone to come with us, for his wife objected to him being baptized, and he was afraid she might get to hear of it and cause a disturbance. Well, I decided it was my duty to go with the fellow, and I told him I would do so if my vicar would allow me. Now my vicar was a very shrewd, wise old man, and I was very eager to do this if it was for the good of the Church, so I went to him at once.

“‘What is it, Hopkins, my boy?’ he said, looking up from a sermon he was writing.

“‘Evan Jones wants to be baptized.’

“‘Who is Evan Jones?’ asked the vicar.

“‘He is a poacher and a Presbyterian, and has never been baptized,’ I said.

“‘Well baptize him then,’ said the vicar.

“‘But he wants to be immersed.’

“‘Oh, indeed,’ cries the vicar; ‘Well, why not? Immerse him, if you like.’

“‘But he wants me to go up on the hills and baptize him all alone in the pool by the bridge.’

“‘What does he want that for?’

“‘I don’t know,’ said I.

“‘But I do,’ said the vicar. ‘He will just be drowning you in the pool, and we shall have all the Dissenters going about saying Hopkins fell in the pool late at night, when he was coming home drunk, and that will be a very bad thing for the Church. No, I will have none of it at all.’

“‘But what shall I tell him then?’ I asked.

“‘Tell him to go to—the Presbyterians,’ says the vicar, and I knew well what he meant.”

You rarely saw the rector going through the lanes without a few of the children of the parish at his heels. For they all loved him. He stuffed the pockets of his long black coat with sweets, and was never in too much of a hurry to have a chat with his young parishioners and hear the news of their families, and listen to the recital of a text from the Welsh Bible. He knew even more of his Welsh Bible by heart than his Greek Testament and would correct the least slips in the recital. But when the text was said, it was duly rewarded by bull’s-eyes and toffee, and a few kindly words of encouragement. I heard that, when he was dying, several of the shyest and wildest lads in the place used to haunt the rectory for news of their friend, and when the end came they would not believe that he was gone until they saw the coffin being carried from the house, and then they burst into a dismal howl of mourning and despair. Certainly, the Rector of Rhoscolyn was a friend to all the children under his care.

He did not shine as an English preacher, for to him it always remained a foreign language, though he was a great student of the English classics and always seeking to improve his English. Milton was a favourite author. His idea of winter happiness was to draw by the fire after his porridge supper and read Milton. As a Welsh preacher he was sought after and I have heard the chanting song of his eloquence through the open windows of the church, as I sat upon the hillside, many fields away, on a still summer evening. He read the service in English fairly well, with some curious tricks of pronunciation, and I remember that we “hurried and strayed from thy ways” rather than “erred,” which in these modern days sounded a very reasonable reading. But in a sermon, the foreign tongue with which he wrestled bravely and visibly sometimes threw him, and one still remembers with a smile phrases such as “I must tell you this, said St. Peter,” and “Excuse me”—another favourite form of words to gain time for translation—“Excuse me, but we are all mortal.” I think, in the use of the last phrase, there was an expression of his constant desire not to give pain, and perhaps a feeling that the well-dressed West-End English congregation that filled his little church from many miles round in the summer holidays were unused to hear these home truths in their own elegant tongue.

But the great charm of the service was the welcome he gave you. The Welsh service was ended, and the English service started at half-past eleven. The rector stood at the door of his church in a prehistoric but very square and dignified top-hat, shaking hands with all as they arrived. He used to scandalise the stricter brethren somewhat by his greeting to me. “Good morning Judge Parry, I am glad to see you. I saw you going down to bathe. I was afraid you would not be back in time for church. How was the water this morning?”

I think he was—like many another good man—at his very best in his own home. Many a visitor to Rhoscolyn will have taken part in one of his picnic cricket matches. We played in a field in front of the rectory, from which the grass had been recently mown with scythes. The pitch was of the nature of rough stubble; but as everyone played between the ages of two and seventy, without restraint of sex, there was, of course, no swift bowling, and the science of the game as we play it in the east was neither wanted nor missed. For there was great excitement and enthusiasm, and the heartiest cheering when the rector thundered across from wicket to wicket, and this was redoubled when, at length—having been technically out on several occasions—he gave up his bat from sheer fatigue, and hurried off to look after the preparations for his tea. His anxiety that the buns should arrive in time from Holyhead, and that the butter should be put on thickly, and that the tea should be well-brewed, makes his feasts more memorable to me than many an important banquet I have assisted at.

But in his own study, when two or three were gathered together, he was even more at ease and at home. He had never been a rich man, and had always been a lover of books, and his shelves were crowded with the most unkempt collection of dear friends that ever a book-lover had gathered together. Bindings were in many cases conspicuous by their absence, and in a series of volumes one or two were often missing. These were bargains he had picked up on some of his rare visits to English towns. The most of his books were theological, and many were Welsh; but the English classics were well represented. There were no decorative books. Favourite volumes were placed lengthways on the shelves instead of upright, with slips of paper in them, so that the passages he wished to read again could be readily found. He was, I fancy, a slow reader and a thoughtful one. I was often astonished at the passages from Milton and Shakespeare he could quote. These he translated in thought, he told me, into Welsh, to get their real meaning into his mind.

I have heard say that he was eloquent in extempore prayer, and I can well believe it. He used to be very indignant over the alleged shortcomings of some of the Nonconformists in this respect. “I must tell you this indeed,” he said: “there are fellows who will repeat the most beautiful passages of our beautiful Prayer-book in a chapel, and pretend to the poor people it is extempore prayer. I wonder what they think! Do they think God has never heard our Prayer-book at all?” Then he would speak with great respect of the powers of extempore prayer of some of the great Welsh Nonconformist divines, but he always wound up in a spirit of sportsmanlike churchmanship rather than boasting: “Excuse me, but I think I could pray extempore against any of them.”

One of the sights of the rectory was the kitchen. It was a bright example of cleanliness, comfort, and hospitable warmth. In it was the only musical instrument in the house, an harmonium, and here, of an evening, the rector came to play over the Welsh hymns which he and his servants loved to sing. The rector was always rather in fear of his housekeeper and spoke of her with the affectionate awe that a capable domestic rightly inspires in a confirmed old bachelor. I have no doubt that his habit of friendliness with all the children of the parish who visited the rectory freely, and at their own moments, made dirt and trouble for the household authorities, whose views of children were more practical than the rector’s, and born of a wider and different experience of their ways and habits.

I remember him telling me, one Sunday evening, a story that, I think, must have been very characteristic of the man and his methods with the little ones about his gate. The story arose quite naturally, and he told it with pleasure, but without the least suspicion that it was in any way a story to his own credit.

“Did you see that young fellow at the church door this morning with a top-hat and a black coat, and a gold watch-chain?” he asked.

“I did not notice him,” I said.

“Dear me! I must tell you this,” he said. “Have I never told you of ‘Schoni-bach’?”

The name “Schoni-bach”—the “Sch” was soft, and the “o” moderately long—was, I felt sure, a Welsh equivalent for Little Johnny, and I waited with interest to hear more about him.

“It is a long time ago,” continued the rector, “since Schoni’s father died. You know the thatched cottage on the shore! Well, he lived there. He was the strongest man in the parish, and he could get underneath a cart, a big farm cart, and lift it on his back. On market day, he would go to Holyhead and make bets he could lift a cart, and he would win a lot of money, as much as half-a-crown or three shillings sometimes. But he was not a temperate man, and one day he had been drinking in Holyhead, and they got him to lift a cart, when he slipped, and the cart broke his back, and he died. Well, his widow had three little children, and Schoni-bach was the eldest. And they wanted her to go to the workhouse, but she would not go. And they were very poor, for she was not strong, poor woman, and there was very little work for her to do, and the little children were often starving. They were wild, naked, shy little things, and would never come near anyone. The poor mother had frightened them by telling them that they would be taken to the workhouse, and if a stranger came near the house, they ran up to the mountain-side and hid among the heather. However, one day I found little Schoni on the hillside near the rectory. He looked very thin and starved, so I brought him down the hill, and gave him a slice of bread and some butter-milk, and he ate it like a dog, I tell you. I told him to come down again, but I was out next day, and he came with his wet, bare feet into the kitchen, and my housekeeper sent him off, I think. However, the day after, I was writing my sermon, and there came a tap at my own side-door—a very gentle, little tap—and I went to the door, and there was Schoni-bach, a little ragged, yellow-haired urchin with bare feet. So I went round to the kitchen, and got a loaf and some butter-milk, for the housekeeper was in the laundry, and the coast was clear. So I asked him where his little brother and sister were, and he went behind the laurel bush and dragged them out. For there they were in hiding all the time, more like little wild foxes than children. Well, indeed, after that, Schoni-bach would always bring them down and tap at my side-door, and he always found out when the housekeeper was away; but how he did it I don’t know. He must often have been lying hid about the house, waiting for an hour or more, but he was good friends with my dog, Gelert, who never barked at him at all. But he was very frightened of the housekeeper, who had scolded him for his dirty feet.

“Well, in the summer, they did not come so often, for there were bilberries and blackberries to gather, and more chances of work and food, and before winter came Schoni’s uncle, who was a farmer in Canada, sent for him and paid his passage out, and a little after that he sent for his mother and the other children, and so they went away, and a very good thing it was, too, for all of them.

“Well, all this was many years ago. And last Thursday I was writing my sermon, and I heard old Gel start up and growl, and there was quite a gentle little tap at my side-door. I went to the door, for my housekeeper was out, and there was a big fellow with a top-hat and a black coat, and a gold watch-chain. I knew what he would be after, so I said to him, ‘It is no use coming here to sell cattle spice and patent foods and gold watches, for we don’t want them, indeed, in Rhoscolyn!’

“The fellow laughed a bit, and said: ‘Don’t you know me, Mr. Hopkins?’

“‘Not a bit of it,’ I said.

“‘I have often knocked at this door before,’ he said.

“‘I don’t believe you, indeed,’ I replied.

“‘Well, it is true,’ he said. And he looked straight at me, and I looked at him, and then I began to see him again just a little ragged, yellow-haired boy, and I cried out: ‘It is Schoni-bach! Little Schoni come back!’ And I must tell you this, that I was so full of joy to see him again, I could have fallen on his neck and wept. Dear me, but I was glad to see him yet alive!”

The rector sighed to think of the old days, and then went on; “Yes, that was little Schoni outside the church this morning. He was a great fellow among all the young men there, indeed. ‘What do you think of Canada, Schoni?’ they kept asking him. And all he did was to keep his hands in his pockets and rattle his money. That made them stare, I can tell you. Schoni-bach, with a black coat and a top-hat, and a gold watch-chain, and his hands in his pockets rattling his money. That was something for these fellows who have stayed at home to see, wasn’t it? Schoni-bach rattling his money—or, perhaps, it was only a bunch of keys. He was always a smart lad, was Schoni-bach.”

These stories of the old rector’s seem very colourless without the music of his accent, the constant pauses for the whiff of the tobacco, and the kindly smile that accompanied them. To those who never knew him, any written portrait of the man must give but a faint echo of his personality; but to the many English visitors, artists, sportsmen, and others, who have found their way beyond the Four Mile Bridge to the ultimate corner of Anglesey, and there been made welcome by the rector, these recollections will, I doubt not, call to mind the memory of a kind friend, and a holiday made the brighter by his cheerful hospitality. Characters such as his seem to grow rarer day by day. Few men of his energy and enthusiasm would remain nowadays for a quarter of a century in so narrow a sphere, content with such a simple life. But the Reverend John Hopkins was more than content—he was happy. He had sprung from the people, and was by nature a farmer, and to live upon the land was to him to be at home. But, above all things, he was enthusiastic in his ministry. His qualities are set out without flattery on a bronze tablet that his friends erected in the church he loved so well:

“A servant of God, in true simplicity of soul, he loved books, music, and happy human faces, but his chief delight was in the services of the Church.”

I have written what I remember of the man, and not of the priest, and though I should have no right to chronicle or criticise his ministerial career, I saw enough of him to understand that the keynote to the cheerfulness and simplicity of his character is sounded in the text that the friends amongst his congregation have chosen for his memorial:

“Llawenychais pan ddywedent wrthyf: Awn i dy’r Arglwydd.”

“I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord.”

FOOTNOTES

[1] This was written prior to The Oaths Act 1909.

[2] The figures of 1909 are given because in June, 1911, when this was revised, no later figures were then published.

[3] In 1883, 43,344 warrants of commitment were issued; and, in 1909, 136,630 warrants of commitment were issued.

[4] This was published in April 1909. The Oaths Act 1909, 9 Edw. vii. c 39 abolished the practice of kissing the book.

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