Ten years in a Portsmouth slum

I have told you that Chance Street was the worst street in the parish, and therefore was the place where I felt I ought to live. But I thank God now that I did not go there at first, for, from the experience of four different houses, I learned the kind of house to build. First of all we lived in Spring Street, but we were soon squeezed out of that. Three of my old London boys appeared almost as soon as we had settled there. Then we had to provide room for Winchester men, and for all sorts of stray guests. One great help we had already gained there, Mary, who has been our housekeeper all through the ten years; but even her fertile imagination could not create bedrooms, and when I had been driven from the bath-room, where I had slept in the bath for two or three nights, to the landing outside, I felt I must see about moving. Naturally you will say, Why burden yourself with these people? But, I thank God, that during the ten years I have been at the Mission we have never sent away from the door anyone whom we thought we could benefit. To-day I got a letter from India from the first boy we ever sent into the Army—now a collar-maker in the Royal Artillery. He worked in a biscuit factory. His father and mother were dead. He kept himself, board and lodging, on 4s. a week. Sometimes we called him “Dodger,” because he stuttered and stammered; sometimes “My Lord,” because he was so consequential. I remember once finding him crying in the corner, and I found it was from sheer starvation. There was only one hope for him—three or four months’ food and exercise. It cost me, perhaps, £5. Think of it—£5—and a man made by it. He wrote me to-day, “I have lost my home, when you left Portsmouth, but, thank God, I have not lost you.” And then another, one of those strange phenomena out of the slums, in appearance and lack of energy a gentleman, so attractive, yet so disheartening, needing three years of continued watchfulness and unceasing prayer, to-day a prosperous steward on the Australian line.

And so the family began, not willingly, but of necessity, and when Spring Street was outgrown, then the Mission House in Conway Street was ready for us. There, too, we began another great expense, but blessed beyond all cost—the daily dinner. What hundreds of little children have grown to be men by it! How many working men have been coaxed by it back to health and bread-winning for their family! What a test it has been for tramps and for the unworthy! You can always measure the loafer by the fashion of his eating. What a school for learning truths about humanity—there where tongues were loosened under the influence of hospitality. With knife and fork in hand all men are at ease together, and so we learned to know them, and they to know us. The best school for our fellow priests, for the gentlemen who came down to learn something of this life, and for the Winchester men, has always been our dining-room. Sometimes I know I have marred it myself, for oftentimes when one is ill in body and ill in temper—who shall tell where one begins and the other ends?—my own moroseness has hindered the power of the lesson. But I have known, even in my worst days, a charm that has soothed me back to geniality. If I had been Saul, and David eating before me, it would have been more potential than playing on the harp. Over and over again I have seen the look of polite horror and disdain passing out of some cultured face, when the owner discovered that the shoeblack next him was quite as intelligent as himself. And then the splendid discipline of it all, that power of banter so cleansing for the priggish, that power of laughter so health-giving to the morose, chasing away the frown of set purpose fixed on the face. Eight long years of that common dining-table cost enormous sums of money, and entailed continuous outpouring of strength and of tact; but I doubt if, in all England, money has been better spent, and strength better expended.

Then, too, began the realisation of the danger of a sailor’s life. No words of mine are too strong to express the admiration I feel for Miss Weston’s magnificent social work. I doubt if there be one woman in England to whom England owes so much. But, surely, we had some duty towards them too, many of them on board the training-ship through our instrumentality, many recommended to us by clergymen who knew them. But all we could do then was one afternoon in the week, and Sunday afternoon; we had no room for more. With that we were content until we found that there were some boys who had no homes to go to for the Christmas holiday, and some who, having ceased to be boys, and, coming on shore, were led down, because they had no helping hand, to sin and death. That convinced us that we must move into a larger house.

My sisters, too, living a little distance from the parish, had found their work so increased that one felt it was a duty to relinquish the Mission House to them, and to move into a wretched cottage that we had bought in Clarence Street, next the Gymnasium, the walls damp, the floors rotten. Here we lived until the doctor discovered that I was getting very ill, and Mrs. Porter, who helped Mary, pushed her leg through the floor of my bedroom into my sitting-room below. Then we were forced to build. The house next door to that little cottage was a bad house, a shocking scandal left in the midst of a district otherwise nearly cleansed. We thought that there would be no difficulty in buying it, but the owner put a premium on its shameful success, and I felt that to buy it at the price demanded was only to abet and encourage sin. Luckily my architect, Mr. Ball, was the most patient and resourceful of men. Schools, parsonage, and church, all testify to his extraordinary cleverness, and he devised a plan by which we utilised the gallery of the Gymnasium for bedrooms, and were able to make an excellent parsonage. In the place of chief honour, because she ministered most to the comfort of our house, we placed the cook and our kitchen, and magnificently she fulfilled her charge, cooking, with the help of her friend, Looey, for an average of certainly not less than eighteen every single day, dining and teaing more than forty upon Sunday, a kind of miracle-worker, never requiring to know how many were coming, yet always enough for all who came. And then such splendid sleeping accommodation; four cubicles, one Winchester room, two other rooms with three beds each, and soon, because we had overstepped that accommodation, a long gallery built over one side of the Gymnasium, where we could put up at a pinch twelve or fourteen more. Our guests were received just as they came; we were tied and bound by no rules. As long as there was room, we accepted anyone whom it seemed likely we could benefit, always giving preference to those who seemed to need help the most. We laid ourselves out especially for three classes, the sick in body, the sick in soul, and those desirous of becoming healers. No one but myself knew the names or circumstances of our inmates, so that oftentimes a man has stayed with us for six months, and no one knew who he was but myself. To most people I gave a nickname, and that avoided all difficulty. The etiquette of the house—you cannot say rules—was very simple, punctuality at meals, not to annoy any inmate unless I gave permission, when the annoyance was for the other’s good, and always to be in by a quarter past ten at night. Anyone might leave when they liked even without telling me, and they might steal when they liked, if they could find anything worth stealing. The latter had its inconveniences. I remember once an invalided marine, a poor weak fellow in every respect, whom we had at last to turn out of the cubicles to sleep in the gallery, because he had so many companions that remained in the bed-clothes. When I remonstrated with him for this, and suggested that the public baths and carbolic soap were a ready way of ridding oneself of such friends, he left in a huff, taking with him the plain clothes of the sailor who, out of pity, had first brought him to the house. I remember, too, Tom—we never knew his other name—a North-country boy, who had slept in almost every workhouse in England, and yet who had extraordinary reserves of good in him. When, after staying with us four months, I had arranged to emigrate him, he offered, out of kindness, to clean Mary’s kitchen in the morning, but broke open her drawer and went off with £5 of house money; yet he had the grace to write from Liverpool and tell us that he had taken it; and, though we have never heard from him since, I believe some memory of S. Agatha’s remaining in his mind keeps near him some idea of human, if not of divine, love. Many, many tramps like him we have sheltered, some for a few days, some for a few months. Some have turned out splendidly abroad, in the army, or as stokers in the navy. Some have gone back, for the road has a mysterious attraction that it is very hard to break them of.

Then there were the sick in body. Ah! what miracles are wrought by a little food. We who waste so much surely never realise it. They came to us principally from London, sometimes out of the parish itself. It was not altogether the best house for invalids. Perhaps there was no more difficult task than to tell them so, and that they must go. Eating, too, is such a matter of fancy, the mind far more often than the stomach saying, “I cannot.” Our common table, eating all together all the same things, was a wonderful cure for this squeamishness of appetite. But illness from starvation, and starvation because of illness, far commoner maladies than we comfortable people are willing to confess—our own meat would often choke us if we did—renders it sometimes impossible for men to eat any quantity of food, especially meat. Can you realise that? There are thousands who could not eat meat if they had it, by reason of want of use, whose digestions have become destroyed by sheer starvation. And here was the great reward in this part of our work. Whereas you could not measure the moral progress; you always could the physical. Anæmic faces growing ruddy, gloomy faces growing gay; first, perhaps, just the vegetables eaten, then a little meat as well; then the whole plate cleared. How I have rejoiced to see a little bit of bread cleaning up the plate. Then a brave attempt at a second help, and we knew the man was cured. The dear old nursery story, “Top off, half gone, all gone,” and then, as a rule, his time was come, and he went.

Then the harder cases—the fellow who would really work if he could get work to do. Sometimes a footman, sometimes a clerk, sometimes a man who had been in one of the Services. Portsmouth was a bad place for this kind of fellow. There are no manufactories; every billet is in the hands of army or navy men, and I have never been able to get on with the authorities of either service.

Once, indeed, we had a great stroke of luck, when Lipton opened a shop in Portsmouth, and they allowed us to supply all the boys. That was, I suppose, five years ago, and some are there still. There is, perhaps, no sadder man in all the world than he who would and could work, and yet cannot get it. How terribly his cause is injured by the man who will never work under any circumstances! In London it was easy to deal with this class. A room opened as soon as the papers were published, a perusal of the advertisements, a hunch of bread and cheese, a cheery word of encouragement, a little perseverance in tramping on the part of the searcher, and work was generally found after a week or two. But in Portsmouth I have known them linger with us week after week. In reality the only chance was to get them away. This entailed large expenditure in advertisements, in stamps, and correspondence, until at last I have had to refuse to take in any more of these cases.

And then the most difficult cases of all—those just out of gaol, or who ought to be in gaol—each one demanding special individual care, and far more special prayer. There is no doubt that in many people stealing and drunkenness—these were the two sins we mostly dealt with—must really be looked upon as diseases. In that case the cause of the disease is the first thing to be ascertained, and that requires considerable time for true diagnosis; and here you have first to learn that all drunkards are liars, generally very successful liars, and many thieves as well. I have been taken in over and over again, and yet the only way to cure this is to make them feel that you believe in them. This in the long run shames most men into truth. I remember a lad who had tramped to us from Southampton with a most plausible story—concerning which I wrote—managing to intercept the letters, and so gaining three or four days more grace; caught in the act of stealing, so impressed with being forgiven that he told his true story, which was that he had been in gaol twice for stealing. Living with us for nine months, he became altogether changed, learning to pray, making a first confession, being confirmed, and everything was arranged for his going out to a friend of mine in America; he became so trusted that he carried all my letters to the post, and even my money to the bank; and then on the eve of one Derby Day, seeing the fatal odds quoted, he stole a letter of mine, in which he knew there was a postal order for £1. He had the grace, after he had stolen it, to telegraph to me the fact (that sixpence the first-fruits of his robbery), for I had just left home. Surely that is a disease; and yet one knows that every resistance to temptation is a tremendous gain towards its cure. A year ago he worked his way home from America in a cattle-boat just to stay two days with me, to tell me his failures and his successes. When last I heard from him he had been going on all right since his return. How magnificent are these efforts to do right, in spite of overwhelming temptation! How infinitely more heroic than our smug contentment at our own honesty, who have never had cause to steal. And yet falling, in a moment, discovery, gaol, despair. Has Christian society no better method?

I shall never forget the look on the face of Dr. Thorold one morning when I told him that the two companions he had chosen to sit with at supper the night before were both experienced thieves. One had been in gaol three times, the other twice; the former a clergyman’s son, the latter one of those curious instances, in which the lowest surroundings had not been able to obliterate outward signs of a better heredity. We generally sat at meals according to the order of our coming, but I thought he, being a Bishop, and unaccustomed to our ways, had better choose his own companions. I had only seen the lads the day before, and I watched the scene with amusement, qualified with terror for his ring and watch. However, he found them very pleasant, and when I told him what I knew about them, he could hardly believe it was possible. In three or four days’ time I discovered that, as far as I was concerned, the clergyman’s son was hopeless, but for the other there was every chance, and the diagnosis was pretty correct, for the one facilitated his departure by stealing some money, and, though I hear from him from time to time, he is, I think, at this present moment in gaol. The other emigrated, got into the hands of a good man, whose daughter he married, though I am proud to think he was honourable enough, even at the hazard of losing his love and his prospects, to tell his father-in-law the history of his past life.

I don’t think that even when we failed altogether with a man we were disappointed. How could we in a few months hope to set right what many years had made wrong? But over and over again letters have come to me, showing, at least, how our endeavours had not been altogether in vain. Ashamed, perhaps, to come back to us, because of the way they had treated us, they yet preserve in their minds a remembrance of us, a little salt to prevent wholesale corruption. To believe that someone loves me, is akin to believing God loves me, and I know that there are many in all parts of the world to-day whose only sight of the love of God was their sojourn with us. One longed to be able to devote many years to such a one, to give up all one’s time. Of course, that was impossible, we had a hundred other things to do, a hundred other people to help. People often ask, How long did you keep a man? As long as we saw that there was any hope. There is no such thing as time in dealing with cases like these. One poor Irish landlord, a perfect gentleman by birth, whom we put into a lodging, because it was not convenient to have him in the house, was with us until we left. We had had tremendous hopes of him. He began to go to church. His manhood seemed to be restored. Then in a fatal moment I allowed him to earn a little money in the town during the election. Quite old he was. And yet that pound meant drink, gambling, loss of all he had gained, then fear of us, until Conibeere discovered him almost naked and utterly broken down in health.

Of course, many have turned out splendidly. I remember one, who had been in gaol for eighteen months, coming to us as a very last resource. I remember how, day by day, we could notice the giving up of the slouch, the desire for a clean collar, for a bath, for rational talk, for intellectual books to read. And now from America he writes me letters full of the deepest interest on religious as well as secular matters, and underlying them all a modesty and a gentleness which shows him to be infinitely superior to what he was before he got into trouble.

Here is a very typical case, the last one we dealt with; perhaps someone who reads this may like to help him. I had known him sixteen years ago, for his two brothers, soldiers, were great friends of mine. He is one of the cleverest men at figures I ever knew, but he got into bad ways in London, and when the consciousness that he was a thief pressed out of him all hope, he walked down to Landport, craving to be saved. I felt at once that his repentance was only skin deep, that if I could have set him free, he would merely have gone on his way rejoicing till another temptation came. There was only one remedy, “You must give yourself up.” He thought it was a hard judgment, but he was wise enough to adopt it. Alas, how selfish personal distress makes one! And so in all the agony of our last five weeks I forgot all about him. I was taking supper with my sisters about ten days before we left. We had just heard that Canon Gore was going to send a Mr. Bull to take temporary charge, when a telegram arrived, “I will be with you at 7.30 p.m.” (Signed) “Bull.” Though we were very grateful that Mr. Bull could conscientiously come, I think for a moment we thought the telegram a little cool. While we were discussing it, a ring at the bell, and to my delight it was my lad from gaol. I took him up to London with me when I left, and kept him and his wife for a little time with me, and now I have sent him out to his brother in America, who is going to help him. The discipline of gaol gave him the grace of amendment. Our help restored to him faith in himself, and there is no doubt that he will do well; but he cost me over £15, and as I am utterly impecunious now, he will have to pay it, which will prevent his wife rejoining him. If this burden were removed from him by somebody paying it, I need not say it would be the completion to what I believe to be his reformation.

Drink, of course, was a much more difficult thing to cure, because the physical craving is an additional temptation. Perhaps this is the reason why drink, though not more deadly in the eye of God, is more deadly in its consequences than most sins, because it not only causes that dementia, which forces men to do outrageous and monstrous things, but it injures some brain tissue, which prevents a man using his self-will, and finally destroys self-will altogether. People got to know, I suppose, that we were willing to receive clergymen and others who had gone wrong through this, and so in the last eight years there have always been one or two inebriates resident in our house. If a man really wanted to be cured, it was merely a matter of time, but many came to us persuaded by their friends, having no real desire to amend. When, too, you preach to others, it is very easy to become a castaway yourself. When you have held the Sacrament in sacrilegious hands, you have voluntarily deprived yourself of the chief power of amendment. Some of the best workers and the noblest souls become slaves of this most awful curse. It has always seemed so strange a thing to me that there is no place for a clergyman who has gone wrong. If they are condemned to seek reformation in the workhouse, it is almost impossible to hope for their amendment. The very knowledge of the height from which they have fallen, the grace that they have despised and trodden under their feet, makes them, if there is any honesty in them, hopeless of ever amending themselves, and they grow callous and hard-hearted. They have often come to me from the workhouse, from the army shelter home, from gaol. Our house was manifestly bad for this purpose. It was impossible to have sufficient supervision. Then, too, the character of the clergyman never can be wholly laid aside, and as a rule, in a few days, even though in lay attire, they were recognised by the rest of the inmates, which made it particularly difficult for them. In all other religions I think there is a home for these poor lost sheep, or a monastery, or some place; but in this country, alas! left to themselves, they go from bad to worse. I remember well one, whom his friends had promised to supply with lay clothes, arriving an hour and a half late, dressed in clericals, so drunk that all the children in the street were mobbing him, and when I suddenly opened the hall-door to see what the row was, unable to stand, he fell prone at my feet. Even when we got him to bed he declared he had had nothing to drink but some milk. A doctor, who was with me at the time, tried to persuade him he was drunk, but he utterly refused to acknowledge it. We bore with him as long as we could, and at last I had to tell him that he would have to leave by a certain date. My Low Church brethren were willing to relieve me of anyone who could flatter them that it was our High Church ways they objected to, and so with ease he borrowed eighteen shillings from one of our brethren; but when he returned at night in an hilarious mood and was refused more, he promptly smashed the windows. I saw him in the workhouse afterwards. I promised that if he would stay there for six months I would try and do something for him. He thought me very hard-hearted and unkind, because I would not take him back again. Indeed I received a very amusing comment from him on the last sermon I preached at S. Agatha’s, which he had read in the paper. I had been expressing to my dear people my consciousness of many hard words I had said to them, and how often I felt a want of tenderness and forgiveness on my part had marred my ministry. Commenting on this, he said, “I am quite sure it was your treatment of me in the workhouse which you had in mind when you spoke those words.”

I believe there is only one hope for the drunkard, and that is teetotalism, but there are a thousand other things which he needs besides. Many of them have become drunkards through the bitterness of poverty, to have to live like gentlemen, when they had no enough income to keep body and soul together; many through the snobbishness of the vicar, who often treats the curate as if he were in no sense his equal, and is jealous of his mixing with the well-to-do people of the congregation. Few people can measure the loneness of many a curate’s life, especially if he is a little on in years, so that the female part of the congregation do not admire him. Many become so because of an inward rebellion against their own work; they feel more or less that their preaching and teaching is humbug. Many become so because at certain moments, when they have no energy, no vital force, they are compelled, either in private or public, to make a great mental effort. Many become so because of the utter discomfort of their lodgings, want of proper food, etc. A drop of drink is such a swift miracle-working remedy. The higher clergy, who have never been tempted in these ways, ought to have infinite compassion for these men. There ought to be, in several centres, places managed by the most loving, hopeful people, so that, at any rate, they might have a generous chance, and the awful scandal they do to the Church might be removed. Our lay drunkards were infinitely easier to deal with than our clerical ones, and I have in my mind many, who lived with us for a little time, who are now quite free from their former temptations. You may imagine something of the burden that this kind of work entailed on me, a burden that no one could share, for I alone knew their histories, and therefore their needs.

But I do not want you to think for a moment that our house only contained inmates like this. There are many excellent men, now priests, who came to us to discover vocations, some ’Varsity men, some National schoolmasters, some shopmen. Mostly two or three like this were living with us, helping me in a hundred different ways, and learning, I think, a good deal. How hideous the question of examination, the gross unfairness of the system. For instance, the ’Varsity man can be ordained at once, if he pass the Bishop’s exam. A literate, who is very likely a far more valuable man, has not a look in in most dioceses. The Bishops seem to think that a B.A. Oxford, Cambridge, or Dublin, is the very best of educations. They are always saying, “We want University men.” Nobody values Oxford and Cambridge more than I do, especially their meals; there is a royal prodigality about a breakfast at Oxford that is truly magnificent. There is also in those four years of ’Varsity life a very delightful environment, a little work crammed in as an excuse for much enjoyment, much idleness. Of course, there are two exceptions to this—the man who reads, and the man who plays games, a physical and intellectual training, which, if combined, produces a really matured man. But the vast majority of men saunter their time away, excusing themselves, I suppose, because Oxford and Cambridge are holy ground. They gain a certain facility of expression, a certain ease of manner, the tone, if they are at a good college, of good society. Few take to religion, about them the less said the better; somebody whispers in my ear—I hardly like to write it—the word “smug.” On the whole, it has splendid advantages, it is a time of easy growth, a time of making friendship, a time of acquiring charm. But that it is a time of acquiring character for the priesthood, hardness, endurance, mental struggle, intellectual activity, no one but a Bishop can imagine. Wonderfully did these men add to the charm of Landport.

Once I was giving a parochial retreat in Holy Week. I noticed a man with a hard, strong, strangely kindling face. When the day’s work was over, painfully rubbing his knees, for he had never knelt so long before, he told me he had come from Ireland, and wanted to stay with us a little. He had been the master of an endowed school there, who had saved enough money out of his pitiful salary to take a degree in Dublin by examination. He intended to stay a week, but he stayed with me for more than two years. He is one of the strongest, noblest characters I have ever known. He would have been an invaluable priest, but, alas! he could not afford to live up in Dublin, and so could not take the Divinity Testimonial. He is now a priest in Canada, and very likely will some day be a Bishop.

You know how hard it is for men to overcome shyness, especially in speaking about religion to others, and very soon after we got to Landport I noticed one young man who always brought two or three with him. When I got to know him, I discovered that this missionary spirit was very deep down in his heart, and his one hope was that some day he might be a priest. He worked very hard, for his was a Landport shop, and the hours were late, but I promised him if he would teach himself Latin and Greek I would look upon it as a proof that he was fit for the ministry. Some two years afterwards he came to me and said, “I think, if Mr. Osborne would examine me, I could satisfy you that I have tried to learn.” But even this courage and determination availed nothing with the English Episcopate. He too is now doing an excellent work as a priest in America.

Of course, there were many men who came to us with no vocations at all. Concerning that the Bishops did not seem to make any inquiry. They practically know nothing of their candidates, and yet surely this might be a valid excuse for the monstrous possession of a palace, and for an income which would enable them to keep S. Paul’s rule, “to be given to hospitality.” I fear it is rather the influential laity and dignified clergy on whom they exercise this virtue. I am, of course, willing to allow that great discrimination would be needed in discovering this vocation. Many young men came to us with no vocations; a few were utterly vicious. One, I remember, moved with pity at my ill-health and overwork, inaugurated a collection so that I might have a holiday, kindly suggesting that the people asked to contribute should not mention the matter to me, as I might refuse it. He went for a nice holiday himself, and afterwards was aggrieved because I would not recommend him to another clergyman. But men like this are soon choked off, and the discipline of laughter in our house was particularly wholesome. The discipline of labour, too. Once I remember a man almost prostrating himself at my feet, and saying, “All I crave is a habit.” It was before I sold my library, and I saw that the books were very dusty, so getting a cloth I made him clean them, and then begin a catalogue. Before a week was over, tired of the catalogue, he had fled. Oh, most blessed catalogue, what a number of vocations it has discovered as non-existent!

Many men would come because of the exaggerated account of our ritual. Mattins, said plain, at 7.30 a.m., was a great stumbling-block to them, and when they discovered that our own altar-boys knew nothing about ritual, except the part that they themselves had to perform, they thought that we were strangely behindhand. One having to serve at my celebration, because the usual server was ill, screamed out in an agony after the service was over, “Oh, Father, when your hands are extended your fingers are unjoined. Could you not join them?” His ears discovered whether I could or not. And with these ritualists came many of the same character, men coquetting with Rome or with unbelief. They were utterly dumbfounded to discover it all dealt with as a matter of want of wholesome employment of body and intellect, to be recommended to try a little real activity, to find that neither Rome nor unbelief was regarded as a very terrible danger to them, but that their credulity or doubts were only another spelling of self-importance. If they were good fellows they soon fell into line again. Of course, there were exceptions to these, those with whom one watched through agonies, and in those agonies discovered prayer, and in prayer rediscovered the sight of God, souls very heavy and sick to death, of tenderest conscience, most noble, most suffering. It has been a privilege beyond all words to be to these what the Blest Three refused to be to Christ, and I for one am bold to say that, whether Romans or unbelievers to-day, a compassionate Heart understands, knows, and blesses. Many such, I think, went away comforted and strengthened, though perhaps more by the cheeriness and good fellowship of our house than by anything we were able to say.

Then, too, there were Romans desiring to become Anglicans, I fear the worst lot of all. I suppose one ought to rid oneself of one’s instinctive dread of these persons, but I have met such hideous frauds amongst them. Almost my first day in Portsmouth I was persecuted by a wretched priest, whom, as soon as he had opened his mouth, I discovered to be a drunkard and a liar. He arrived one evening about five with a little bag in his hand. When I told him I was too busy to talk to him, he said, “I will leave my bag, and return at dinner-time.” Then when I told him there was only dinner for two, and neither I nor my secretary would share ours with him, he said, “Oh, it does not matter; but I will return to sleep.” And when I told him that there were but two bedrooms, and neither I nor my secretary would share these with him, the mask fell off his face. He had been received into the Church of England, and the Church of England was bound to support him; he would soon make it too hot for me in Portsmouth. I never stood face to face with a more hideous blackmailer, but it was not until I had opened the door and had taken him by the back of the neck that he retired.

Then came a most innocent monk, demanding rest and peace to meditate on the errors of his past religion, to discover the beauty of mine. Correspondence with his former superiors proved he was utterly unworthy; but then there are always two sides to every question, and one felt bound to give him a patient hearing. Those who shared his room said he not only went prayerless to bed, but in the same shirt he had worn during the day. This latter habit they much objected to. Alas! in him the habit did not make the monk. But when I discovered that Ally Sloper was his favourite reading, my mind was more perplexed about him, and I thought that this course of study could be as advantageously pursued at his father’s, a respectable grocer in the North of England, and so I made him the offer of either sending him back to his monastery, or to his own home. That day came a wonderful conversion in him, his face all radiant with delight. He had been spirit-led, as he said, to the Presbyterian minister’s, and the minister and his wife had so expounded religion, that he had discovered that the Church of England was quite as false as the Church of Rome, and now peace and happiness was reigning in his heart. Not long after the town was covered with placards, “A monk will expose the enormities of monasteries.” The lectures, however, fell rather flat. Gossip said they were not spicy enough; I imagined invention had failed. We used to see him as he lived in comfort at the minister’s, but he cast pitying glances on us. Some time after the police called—they wanted information concerning him; and a year’s retirement, free of charge, was granted him for obtaining money under false pretences. Alas! this did not suffice to really convert him, for some time ago he got a further term for the same thing in Ireland.

The mention of this monk’s shirt reminds me of a difficulty we often experienced, even amongst our nicest visitors. We discovered that not merely pyjamas, but night-shirts, were the exclusive property of the upper classes; and I remember once providing these garments for all who were without them, on condition that they would wear them every night. I had forgotten all about it until I heard one of the boys—I think it was Tommy—say, with conscious pride, to another, “I always wear my night-shirt.” This roused my curiosity, and, on making investigations, I discovered that he did wear it, but over all his other clothes, except coat, waistcoat, and trousers.

I suppose there were generally fourteen of us living in the house, besides two curates who lodged outside, because I hardly considered it fair to compel them always to live in public, while at almost every meal there were what we call probationers. If, after watching these for a day or two, we discovered that there was a chance to really reform them, they would be taken from the lodging where they had been placed, and brought into the house. Then there were countless sailors coming to stay a day or a month, as the case might be, disappearing for two or three years, and then turning up as if they had never been away. Then the convalescent and those out of work, so that our dinner generally doubled our regular number of inmates. Can you imagine a better school for men who desired to learn their fellow men? Over it all there was a spirit of good fellowship and kindliness that seldom failed.

If a very disagreeable-looking or dirty person was intruded, and his presence forced beside some rather swell Wykehamist, or a budding cleric with conceited notions about himself, this difficulty never lasted more than for a moment. A look was always sufficient to make the objector understand the real good he would gain, even if he carried away to his personal inconvenience something from the man beside him. But sometimes the devil was let loose for a space amongst us, and everything went wrong. Boys stole from one another, men came in drunk, sometimes acts of gross insubordination occurred, when my heavy hand had to fall on the whole family. I remember once for three long days we lived on bread and cheese. We had had a very large Christmas party. Two or three days after Boxing Day, as I came into the Sunday dinner, I heard piercing shrieks from Blind Willie,—you will hear about him again, I expect. Someone had smashed up his hat, and no one would tell who had done it. As a rule boys were ready to confess, but there was a spirit of obstinacy in the house to-day, and no one would tell. In a rash moment I ordered the dinner to be carried away,—alas! being in the octave, it was a kind of repetition of the Christmas dinner,—and having pointed out the wickedness of tormenting Willie, I said there would be no more meat eaten in the house until I knew who had hurt his hat. I remember well there were two inoffensive clergymen, a member of Parliament, and a guardsman staying with us, and I have reason to believe that they secretly refreshed themselves elsewhere; but the house stood to bread and cheese rations until the Tuesday morning. It was a very sharp and bitter lesson, but it is a fairly good illustration of our universal method. Over and over again, in dealing with mean and horrid ways, we have found this one of the most effectual methods. I think that to share the consequences of sin often prevents sinners, and everyone in the house realising that the burden of punishment would fall upon the guiltless, and in some sense most heavily upon myself, was a great deterrent. Vulgarity, ill manners, or horse-play would have made a home like ours insupportable, and, I think, by degrees we all learned tenderness and forbearance one with another. I suppose this is the best test of being what is called “gentlemen.” In the daytime my sitting-room, in the night-time my bedroom, dominated the whole house. At half-past five every morning I got up and called the boys who were going to work, or the sailors who had to be on board at 6.30. I had a gas stove in my bedroom, and so I could go back to bed again, and read or make sermons till six. This was a very quiet hour, too, for scolding anyone in the house who needed some special talking to. Then at seven I was in church to celebrate the Holy Communion; at 7.40 we said Morning Prayer; another Celebration at eight, which the religious men staying in the house usually attended; at 8.30 breakfast, at which everybody was supposed to be present. When I had a shorthand clerk he could take down most of my correspondence while breakfast was going on. At 9.45 convalescents in body and mind went out walking till 1 p.m., unless there was any work for them to do. Sometimes it is best to let men be idle, sometimes to force them to work. All the morning I saw people, parish people, inquisitive people, people with real troubles, people with imaginary ones; but the door was always open, and everybody came upstairs as they liked. They knew if my study door was open that they could come in; if not, they must wait till it opened. Sometimes a man wanting to learn was allowed to sit in my study to see the people who came in, unless it was something private, and to hear the advice given. One learns to be a very quick judge of character, alas! oftentimes too quick, as my conscience taught me, when each night I answered before God for every one who had visited me that day. Then at one o’clock dinner, at which everybody had to be present. As far as possible everybody except myself took exercise in the afternoon, coming in to tea at 5.30. Service in the church at 7.30; then clubs, gymnasium, &c., till 10 p.m.; supper and prayers and everybody in their room at 10.15 p.m. At 10.30 the door was locked, and anyone coming in had to ring my bell. Sometimes I could entrust one of my helpers to go down and open the door, but, as a rule, I tried to do it myself. I have known many men shamed out of drunkenness and loose habits by the knowledge that I should have to open the door. I do not suppose in all the world there ever was a place better adapted for acquiring a knowledge of human nature. Of course, many men took advantage of it; but even from them what an immense deal we learned, and I doubt if there was such a merry home or such happy people in the whole of England. Thank God, as a rule, there were always a good many Irishmen amongst us, and so there was ever a humorous side, even to the darkest circumstances. It was one of our rules to talk nonsense, as far as possible, at meals, and we generally brought in to dinner and tea one or two little children. There is no possibility of being dull in the presence of a little child, and in my saddest moments, when I was feeling sick to death with worry and trouble, wounded oftentimes by my own brethren, the laughter and merriment of a little child brought us back to ourselves and to God.

Men coming to stay with us had often such heroic ideas of what they would like to do, were so anxious to do people good. Of course, this is a splendid notion, but it generally prevents one doing anything at all, and I am sure I and my curates and most of my workers felt that the house and family did us much more good than we did it, and so one generally said to the man, “We don’t want you to do good, we want to do you good.” The woman worker amongst the poor is sometimes not a prig; alas! the man worker nearly always is. I have known men choked off the very first day of their stay by some such treatment. They want to give lectures, or to teach in night school or in Sunday School, or to get up debating societies, or cricket clubs, or to boss concerts; in fact, to do anything that means the assertion of their own cleverness or good disposition towards others. How hateful it is! I always kicked at this, sometimes kicked it. I expect these workers do infinitely more harm to themselves than they do good to others. For ten long years, day and night, there were lessons for me to learn, if I only had the grace and modesty to learn them. Even in that in which men might know more, knowledge, they are but as babes and sucklings in the presence of those whom they condescend to teach, that is, if knowledge means the knowing of things likely to be useful to the knower and to the community. In speech, too, how much we have to learn; how terse and in what few words do our dear people express themselves, while the man who wants to harangue them wraps round with innumerable words, which darken all counsels and prevent all understanding, the thought that the slum lad expresses in three or four words to the point. And as to manners, every single man in my home was a gentleman, that is, if thinking for others, and treating them with forbearance and tenderness and love, and striving to make them feel at home and at ease, means being gentlemen. The roughest, rudest, most ignorant lad, after a month’s residence, had obtained these graces. I have seen deeds of the purest chivalry, self-sacrifice which the love of God alone can measure; I have seen the withstanding of temptation even to tears and blood; I have seen agonies borne without a word, for fear I should be vexed. I take them out of my heart, where some of them have lain for eight long years—I take them out one by one, thieves, felons, tramps, loafers, outcasts, of whom the world was not worthy, having no place for them, no home for them, no work for them. I read in their eyes a tenderness, and in their hearts a compassion for me, a bearing with all my ill temper, and paying me back a hundredfold in the richest coin of truest love.