Part 7

Mr. Woodward was a great politician and used to say that it was a perpetual temptation to him to sit over the papers in the morning instead of doing his work. But the result was that he always had something to talk about, and his visits were enjoyed by the least spiritual of his parishioners. He was of course eclectic in his politics, and combined a good deal of radicalism with an intense love and veneration for the past. He restored his church with infinite care and taste, and was for ever beautifying it in small ways. He used to say that there were two kinds of church-goers—the people who liked the social aspect of the service, who preferred a blaze of light, hearty singing, and the presence of a large number of people; but that were others who preferred it from the quiet and devotional side, and who were only distracted from the main object of the service by the presence of alert and critical persons. Consequently he had a little transept divided from the body of the church by a simple screen, and kept the lights low within it. The transept was approached by a separate door, and he invited people who could not come for the whole service to slip in for a little of it. At the same time there was plenty of room in the church, and as the parish is not thickly populated, so that you could be sure of finding a seat in any part of the church that suited your mood. He never would have a surpliced choir; and in the morning service, nothing was sung except the canticles and hymns; but there was a fine organ built at his expense, and he offered a sufficiently large salary to secure an organist of considerable taste and skill. He greatly believed in music, and part of the organist’s duty was to give a little recital once a week, which was generally well attended. He himself was always present at the choir practices, and the result of the whole was that the congregation sang well, with a tone and a feeling that I have never heard in places where the indigenous materials for choral music were so scanty.

Mr. Woodward talked a good deal on religious subjects, but with an ease and a naturalness which saved his hearers from any feeling of awkwardness or affectation. I have never heard any one who seemed to live so naturally in the seen and the unseen together, and his transitions from mundane to religious talk were made with such simplicity that his hearers felt no embarrassment or pain. After all, the ethical side of life is what we are all interested in—moreover, Mr. Woodward had a decidedly magnetic gift—that gift which, if it had been accompanied with more fire and volubility, would have made him an orator. As it was, the circle to whom he talked felt insensibly interested in what he spoke of, and at the same time there was such a transparent simplicity about the man that no one could have called him affected. His talk it would be impossible to recall; it depended upon all sorts of subtle and delicate effects of personality. Indeed, I remember once after an evening spent in his company, during which he had talked with an extraordinary pathos and emotion, I wrote down what I could remember of it. I look at it now and wonder what the spell was; it seems so ordinary, so simple, so, may I say, platitudinal.

Yet I may mention two or three of his chance sayings. I found him one day in his study deeply engrossed in a book which I saw was the Life of Darwin. He leapt to his feet to greet me, and after the usual courtesies said, “What a wonderful book this is—it is from end to end nothing but a cry for the Nicene Creed! The man walks along, doing his duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single-heartedness and simplicity, and just misses the way all the time; the gospel he wanted is just the other side of the wall. But he must know now, I think. Whenever I go to the Abbey, I always go straight to his grave, and kneel down close beside it, and pray that his eyes may be opened. Very foolish and wrong, I dare say, but I can’t help it!”

Another day he found me working at a little pedigree of my father’s simple ancestors. I had hunted their names up in an old register, and there was quite a line of simple persons to record. He looked over my shoulder at the sheet while I told him what it was. “Dear old folk!” he said, “I hope you say a prayer now and then for some of them; they belong to you and you to them, but I dare say they were sad Socinians, many of them (laughing). Well, that’s all over now. I wonder what they do with themselves over there?”

[Sidenote: THE PEACOCK]

Mr. Woodward was of course adored by the people of the village. In his trim garden lived a couple of pea-fowl—gruff and selfish birds, but very beautiful to look at. Mr. Woodward had a singular delight in watching the old peacock trail his glories in the sun. They roosted in a tree that overhung the road. There came to stay in the next village a sailor, a ne’er-do-weel, who used to hang about with a gun. One evening Mr. Woodward heard a shot fired in the lane, went out of his study, and found that the sailor had shot the peacock, who was lying on his back in the road, feebly poking out his claws, while the aggressor was pulling the feathers from his tail. Mr. Woodward was extraordinarily moved. The man caught in the act looked confused and bewildered. “Why did you shoot my poor old bird?” said Mr. Woodward. The sailor in apology said he thought it was a pheasant. Mr. Woodward, on the verge of tears, carried the helpless fowl into the garden, but finding it was already dead, interred it with his own hands, told his sister at dinner what had happened, and said no more.

But the story spread, and four stalwart young parishioners of Mr. Woodward’s vowed vengeance, caught the luckless sailor in a lane, broke his gun, and put him in the village pond, from which he emerged a lamentable sight, cursing and spluttering; the process was sternly repeated, and not until he handed over all his available cash for the purpose of replacing the bird did his judges desist. Another peacock was bought and presented to Mr. Woodward, the offender being obliged to make the presentation himself with an abject apology, being frankly told that the slightest deviation from the programme would mean another lustral washing.

The above story testifies to the sort of position which Mr. Woodward held in his parish; and what is the most remarkable part of it, indicates the esteem with which he was regarded by the most difficult members of a congregation to conciliate—the young men. But then Mr. Woodward was at ease with the young men. He had talked to them as boys, with a grave politeness which many people hold to be unnecessary in the case of the young. He had encouraged them to come to him in all sorts of little troubles. The men who had resented the loss of Mr. Woodward’s peacock knew him as an intimate and honoured family friend; he had tided one over a small money difficulty, and smoothed the path of an ambition for another. He had claimed no sacerdotal rights over the liberties of his people, but such allegiance as he had won was the allegiance that always waits upon sympathy and goodwill; and further, he was shrewd and practical in small concerns, and had the great gift of foreseeing contingencies. He never forgot the clerical character, but he made it unobtrusive, kept it waiting round the corner, and it was always there when it was wanted.

[Sidenote: THE PROFESSOR]

I was present once at an interesting conversation between Mr. Woodward and a distinguished university professor who by some accident was staying with myself. The professor had expressed himself as much interested in the conditions of rural life and was lamenting to me the dissidence which he thought was growing up between the clergy and their flocks. I told him about Mr. Woodward and took him to tea. The professor with a courteous frankness attacked Mr. Woodward on the same point. He said that he believed that the raising of theological and clerical standards had had the effect of turning the clergy into a class, enthusiastic, no doubt, but interested in a small circle of things to which they attached extreme importance, though they were mostly traditional or antiquarian. He said that they were losing their hold on English life, and inclined not so much to uphold a scrupulous standard of conduct, as to enforce a preoccupation in doctrinal and liturgical questions, interesting enough, but of no practical importance. Mr. Woodward did not contradict him; the professor, warming to his work, said that the ordinary village sermon was of a futile kind, and possessed no shrewdness or definiteness as a rule. Mr. Woodward asked him to expand the idea—what ought the clergy to preach about? “Well,” said the professor, “they ought to touch on politics—not party politics, of course, but social measures, historical developments and so forth. I was present,” he went on, “some years ago when, in a country town, the Bishop of the diocese preached a sermon at the parish church, the week after the French had been defeated at Sedan, and the Bishop made not the slightest allusion to the event, though it was the dominant idea in the minds of the sensible members of the congregation; the clergy ought not only to preach politics—they ought to talk politics—they ought to show that they have the same interests as their people.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mr. Woodward, leaning forward, “I agree with much that you say, Professor—very much; but you look at things in a different perspective. We don’t think much about politics here in the country—home politics a little, but foreign politics not at all. When we hear of rumours of war we are not particularly troubled;” (with a smile) “and when I have to try and encourage an old bedridden woman who is very much bewildered with this world, and has no imagination left to deal with the next—and who is sadly afraid of her long journey in the dark—when I have to try and argue with a naughty boy who has got some poor girl into trouble, and doesn’t feel in his heart that he has done a selfish or a brutal thing, am I to talk to them about the battle of Sedan, or even about the reform of the House of Lords?”

The professor smiled grimly, but perhaps a little foolishly, and did not take up the challenge. But Mr. Woodward said to me a few days afterwards: “I was very much interested in your friend the professor—a most amiable, and, I should think, unselfish person. How good of him to interest himself in the parish clergy! But you know, my dear boy, the intellectual atmosphere is a difficult one to live in—a man needs some very human trial of his own to keep him humble and sane. I expect the professor wants a long illness!” (smiling) “No, I dare say he is very good in his own place, and does good work for Christ, but he is a man clothed in soft raiment in these wilds, and you and I must do all we can to prevent him from rewriting the Lord’s Prayer. I am afraid he thinks there is a sad absence of the intellectual element in it. It must be very distressing to him to think how often it is used; and yet there is not an allusion to politics in it—not even to comprehensive measures of social reform.”

[Sidenote: MR. WOODWARD’S SERMONS]

Mr. Woodward’s sermons were always a pleasure to me. He told me once that he had a great dislike to using conventional religious language; and thus, though he was in belief something of a High Churchman, he was so careful to avoid catch-words or party formulas that few people suspected how high the doctrine was. I took an elderly evangelical aunt to church once, when Mr. Woodward preached a sermon on baptismal regeneration of rather an advanced type. I shuddered to think of the denunciations which I anticipated after church; indeed, I should not have been surprised if my aunt had gathered up her books—she was a masculine personage—and swept out of the building. Both on the contrary, she listened intently, rather moist-eyed, I thought, to the discourse, and afterwards spoke to me with extreme emphasis of it as a real _gospel_ sermon. Mr. Woodward wrote his sermons, but often I think departed from the text. He discoursed with a simple tranquillity of manner that made each hearer feel as if he was alone with him. His allusions to local events were thrilling in their directness and pathos; and in passing, I may say that he was the only man I ever heard who made the giving out of notices, both in manner and matter, into a fine art. On Christmas Day he used to speak about the events of the year; one winter there was a bad epidemic of diphtheria in the village, and several children died. The shepherd on one of the farms, a somewhat gruff and unsociable character, lost two little children on Christmas Eve. Mr. Woodward, unknown to me at the time, had spent the evening with the unhappy man, who was almost beside himself with grief.

[Sidenote: THE CHRISTMAS SERMON]

In the sermon he began quite simply, describing the scene of the first Christmas Eve in a few picturesque words. Then he quoted Christina Rossetti’s Christmas Carol—

“In the bleak mid-winter Wintry winds made moan,”

dwelling on the exquisite words in a way which brought the tears to my eyes. When he came to the lines describing the gifts made to Christ—

“If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb,”

he stopped dead for some seconds. I feel sure that he had not thought of the application before. Then he looked down the church and said—

“I spent a long time yesterday in the house of one who follows the calling of a shepherd among us.... He has given _two_ lambs to Christ.”

There was an uncontrollable throb of emotion in the large congregation, and I confess that the tears filled my eyes. Mr. Woodward went on—

“Yes, it has pleased God to lead him through deep waters; but I do not think that he will altogether withhold from him something of his Christmas joy. He knows that they are safe with Christ—safe with Christ, and waiting for him there—and that will be more and more of a joy, and less and less of a sorrow as the years go on, till God restores him the dear children He has taken from him now. We must not forget him in our prayers.”

Then after a pause he resumed. There was no rhetoric or oratory about it; but I have never in my life heard anything so absolutely affecting and moving—any word which seemed to go so straight from heart to heart; it was the genius of humanity.

A few months after this Mr. Woodward died, as he always wished to die, quite suddenly, in his chair. He had often said to me that he did hope he wouldn’t die in bed, with bed-clothes tucked under his chin, and medicine bottles by him; he said he was sure he would not make an edifying end under the circumstances. His heart had long been weak; and he was found sitting with his head on his breast as though asleep, smiling to himself. In one hand his pen was still clasped. I have never seen such heartfelt grief as was shown at his funeral. His sister did not survive him a month. The week after her death I walked up to the rectory, and found the house being dismantled. Mr. Woodward’s books were being packed into deal cases; the study was already a dusty, awkward room. It was strange to think of the sudden break-up of that centre of beautiful life and high example. All over and done! Yet not all; there are many grateful hearts who do not forget Mr. Woodward; and what he would have thought and what he would have said are still the natural guide for conduct in a dozen simple households. If death must come, it was so that he would have wished it; and Mr. Woodward could be called happy in life and death perhaps more than any other man I have known.

20

[Sidenote: MR. CUTHBERT]

Who was to be Mr. Woodward’s successor? For some weeks we had lived in a state of agitated expectancy. One morning, soon after breakfast, a card was brought to me—The Rev. Cyril Cuthbert. I went down to the drawing-room and found my mother talking to a young clergyman, who rose at my entrance, and informed me that he had been offered the living, and that he had ventured to call and consult me, adding that he had been told I was all-powerful in the parish. I was distinctly prepossessed by his appearance, and perhaps by his appreciation, however exaggerated, of my influence; he was a small man with thin features, but bronzed and active; his hair was parted in the middle and lay in wiry waves on each side. He had small, almost feminine, hands and feet, and rather a delicate walk. He was entirely self-possessed, very genial in talk, with a pleasant laugh; at the same time he gave me an impression of strength. He was dressed in very old and shabby clothes, of decidedly clerical cut, but his hat and coat were almost green from exposure to weather. Yet he was obviously a gentleman. I gathered that he was the son of a country squire, that he had been at a public school and Oxford, and that he had been for some years a curate in a large manufacturing town. As we talked my impressions became more definite; the muscles of the jaw were strongly developed, and I began to fancy that the genial manner concealed a considerable amount of self-will. He had the eye which I have been led to associate with the fanatic, of a certain cold blue, shallow and impenetrable, which does not let you far into the soul, but meets you with a bright and unshrinking gaze.

At his request I accompanied him to church and vicarage. At the latter, he said to me frankly that he was a poor man, and that he would not be able to keep it up in the same style—“Indeed,” he said with a smile, “I don’t think it would be right to do so.” I said that I didn’t think it very material, but that as a matter of fact I thought that the perfection of Mr. Woodward’s arrangements had had a humanising influence in the place. At the church he was pleased at the neatness and general air of use that the building had; but he looked with disfavour at the simple arrangements of the chancel. I noticed that he bowed and murmured a few words of prayer when he entered the building. When we had examined the church he said to me, “To speak frankly, Mr. ——,—I don’t know what your views are,—but what is the church tone of this place like?” I said that I hardly knew how to describe it—the church certainly played a large part in the lives of the parishioners; but that I supposed that Mr. Woodward would perhaps be called old-fashioned. “Yes, indeed,” sighed Mr. Cuthbert, looking wearily round and shrugging his shoulders. “The altar indeed is distinctly dishonouring to the Blessed Sacrament—no attempt at Catholic practice or tradition. There is not, I see, even a second altar in the church; but, please God, if He sends me here we will change all that.”

Before we left the church he fell on his knees and prayed with absolute self-absorption.

When we got outside he said to me: “May I tell you something? I have just returned from a visit to a friend of mine, a priest at A——; he has got everything—simply everything; he is a noble fellow—if I could but hope to imitate him.”

A—— was, I knew, a great railway depôt, and thinking that Mr. Cuthbert did not fully understand how very rural a parish we were, I said, “I am afraid there is not very much scope here for great activity. We have a reading-room and a club, but it has never been a great success—the people won’t turn out in the evenings.”

“Reading-rooms and clubs,” said Mr. Cuthbert in high disdain; “I did not mean that kind of thing at all—I was thinking of things much nearer the heart of the people. Herries has incense and lights, the eucharistic vestments, he reserves the sacrament—you may see a dozen people kneeling before the tabernacle whenever you enter the church—he has often said to me that he doesn’t know how he could keep hope alive in his heart in the midst of such vice and sin, if it were not for the thought of the Blessed Presence, in the midst of it, in the quiet church. He has a sisterhood in his parish too under a very strict rule. They never leave the convent, and spend whole days in intercession. The sacrament has been reserved there for fifteen years. Then confession is urged plainly upon all, and it is a sight to make one thrill with joy to see the great rough navvies bending before Herries as he sits in his embroidered stole, they telling him the secrets of their hearts, and he bringing them nearer to the joy of their Lord. Some of the workmen in the parish are the most frequent at confession. Oh! he is a noble fellow; he tells me he has no time for visiting—positively no time at all. His whole day is spent in deepening the devotional life—the hours are recited in the church—he gives up ten hours every week to the direction of penitents, and he must spend, I should say, two hours a day at his _priedieu_. He says he could not have strength for his work if he did not. His sermons are beautiful; he speaks from the heart without preparation. He says he has learnt to trust the Spirit, and just says what is given him to say.

“Then he is devoted to his choristers, and they to him; it is a privilege to see him surrounded by them in their little cassocks while he leads them in a simple meditation. And he is a man of a deeply tender spirit—I have seen him, dining with his curates, burst into tears at the mere mention of the name of the dear Mother of Christ. I ought not to trouble you with all this—I am too enthusiastic! But the sight of him has put it into my heart more than anything else I have ever known to try and build up a really Catholic centre, which might do something to leaven the heavy Protestantism which is the curse of England. One more thing which especially struck me; it moved me to tears to hear one of his great rough fellows—a shunter, I believe, who is often overthrown by the demon of strong drink—talk so simply and faithfully of the Holy Mass: what rich associations that word has! Nothing but eternity will ever reveal the terrible loss which the disuse of that splendid word has inflicted on our unhappy England.”

I was too much bewildered by this statement to make any adequate reply, but said to console him that I thought the parish was wonderfully good, and prepared to look upon the clergyman as a friend. “Yes,” said Mr. Cuthbert, “that is all very well for a beginning, but it must be something more than that. They must revere him as steward of the mysteries of God—they must be ready to open their inmost heart to him; they must come to recognise that it is through him, as a consecrated priest of Christ, that the highest spiritual blessings can reach them: that he alone can confer upon them the absolution which can set them free from the guilt of sin.”

I felt that I ought not to let Mr. Cuthbert think that I was altogether of the same mind with him in these matters and so I said: “Well, you must remember that all this is unfamiliar here; Mr. Woodward did not approve of confession—he held that habitual confession was weakening to the moral nature, and encouraged the most hysterical kind of egotism—though no one was more ready to listen to any one’s troubles and to give the most loving advice in real difficulties. But as to the point about absolution, I think he felt, and I should agree with him, that God only can forgive sin, and that the clergy are merely the human interpreters of that forgiveness; it is so much more easy to apprehend a great moral principle like the forgiveness of sin from another human being than to arrive at it in the silence of one’s own troubled heart.”

Mr. Cuthbert smiled, not very pleasantly, and said, “I had hoped you would have shared my views more warmly—it is a disappointment! seriously, the power to bind and loose conferred on the Apostles by Christ Himself—does that mean nothing?”