University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XLIX.

In the early summer of 1872 the vestry thought they could
safely begin the building of the new church. The old one was
accordingly pulled down and preparations made for putting up a
stone one on the same lot, but farther back from the street. The
severe and prolonged financial depression which began soon
after prostrated the resources of the country to such an extent
that it was not until June of 1875 that the basement of the new

building was ready for use. In the three years thus elapsing the
congregation was kindly permitted to worship in the Methodist
church on the morning of the first and the afternoon of the
other Sundays of each month. No charge was made for this
extension of Christian fellowship, but the vestry gladly contributed
out of their slender means several hundred dollars towards
the expenses of the Methodist congregation.

In the summer of this year a sea-voyage was prescribed for
Dr. Pendleton. His own slender means did not permit his going
farther than Halifax, Nova Scotia, whither he sailed, accompanied
by his daughter Lella. Through the instrumentality of Captain
Matthew F. Maury, Messrs. Allen, however, sent him a free passage
to and from Liverpool on one of their fine steamships, and
kind friends in Baltimore and New York generously made it
possible for him to make use of it in a short visit to England
and France. Both himself and daughter proved excellent sailors;
the weather was fine and the ocean travel yielded unmixed
pleasure. In London he was the guest of Rev. Dr. Tremlett, and
there, as elsewhere, met with great kindness. The number of
Southerners abroad prevented any feeling of loneliness; the entire
change and recreation proved of great benefit to his health,
and though not an enthusiastic sight-seer, he greatly enjoyed
visiting the scenes of historic interest to which he had access.
After climbing to the highest point possible on St. Paul's Church,
London, he was much amused at a stranger saying, "You must
be an American; only Americans make such foolish climbs."
On this journey his tendency to work showed itself. Sent
abroad to rest, he preached on shipboard, and again in England
where opportunity offered, and returning home much invigorated
and refreshed, soon began the preparation of his "Personal
Recollections of General Lee" formerly referred to. This he
first delivered in the chapel of Washington and Lee University,
at the request of the faculty, as a memorial address, on General
Lee's birthday, January 19, 1873, and afterwards repeated at
many points in the South for the benefit of the Memorial Church.
This exertion, added to such parochial work as he could perform
without any church, and the anxiety to get the new one in
habitable condition, together with causes of anxiety at home and
around him, proved very detrimental to his health, and several

times during the next two or three years his life seemed ebbing
away.

In the spring of 1873, shortly before setting out on his Southern
tour, he performed the painful service of burying his valued
friend and parishioner, Commodore Maury. Among the sad
consequences of his death was the removal from Lexington of
his wife and daughters and the family of his son, Colonel R. L.
Maury. Dr. Pendleton's intercourse with them had been very
intimate and affectionate. The younger family had been inmates
of the parsonage for several years, and the breaking up of such
cordial associations was a great trial to the pastor and his
family.

In the late fall of this year additional sorrow came to Dr.
Pendleton and his household in the death of General Lee's
daughter Agnes, followed in three weeks by that of her honored
and beloved mother, Mrs. Mary Custis Lee. These Christian
women had, during their eight years' residence in Lexington,
endeared themselves to the community, to the church, and especially
to their pastor, whose hands they strengthened by love
and good works. The influence of the daughter helped to elevate
and refine all who came in contact with her, and her labors
among the poor and suffering brought whole families to the
chancel for baptism, while the mother, in her Christian fortitude
under constant suffering, her cheerful activity in laboring with
her hands for the church, although unable to stand or move
without assistance, and her unfailing sympathy with the sorrows
and joys of others, when her own pain, helplessness, and bereavement
might well have engrossed her thoughts, illustrated
what the faith of the Gospel can do to ennoble and purify true
womanhood. Mrs. Lee had been a fit helpmeet to her husband,
and after his death the desire to build the new church as he
would have thought worthy of the house of God, and to honor
his memory in so doing, became the ruling desire of her life.

In 1874, when the minds of Virginia churchmen were much
exercised on the growth of ritualism and the question of Prayer-Book
revision, Dr. Pendleton was a member of the committees
on these subjects, and took vigorous part in the discussion of
them, both with his pen and in the Council. In October of this
year he was present in New York during the General Convention,

and frequently in consultation with the Virginia delegation, whose
position on the great questions of the day was in sympathy with
his own.

Dr. Pendleton to his wife:

In March of 1875 Dr. Pendleton found himself so enfeebled
by protracted illness that he requested the vestry to procure the
services of an assistant or associate rector, and desired them to
take half the sum hitherto paid himself to add to the salary for
such additional minister. On Trinity Sunday, 11th of June of
this year, the congregation had the happiness of again assembling
for worship in their own church, the basement of which had been
completed and fitted up through the exertion and self-denial of
themselves and generous contributions from outsiders. Dr. Pendleton
baptized four children, preached from Ps. cxxii. 1, "I was
glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the
Lord," and administered Holy Communion.

In October the Convocation, of which Dr. Pendleton had for
nearly ten years been so active a member, met once more in the
new basement, and shortly afterwards the Rev. G. W. Nelson
became associate rector of the parish. The burden upon the
congregation of providing for the two ministers—five hundred
dollars and the parsonage for the rector and twelve hundred
dollars for the associate rector—was, however, so obviously beyond
their means that Mr. Nelson felt it his duty to resign after
holding the position a little more than a year.

Not long after this, in 1877, feeling greatly concerned for the
growth of the Church in Lexington and the outlying stations in

the surrounding country, Dr. Pendleton requested the vestry to
secure as his assistant Mr. James R. Winchester, recently ordained
deacon. Mr. Winchester was an alumnus of Washington
and Lee University, had acted as lay-reader in Grace Memorial
Church for several years, and during his seminary vacations, and
had become a candidate for orders under the recommendation of
the vestry, who were very fond of him. To secure his services Dr.
Pendleton not only offered to furnish for him a home and board,
but requested the vestry to take from the six hundred dollars
paid himself two hundred dollars towards the second salary.
"In view of the great difficulty of providing for their large debt,
and the stringency of the times," the vestry did not find it expedient
to call an assistant, but assured their rector of "the gratification
with which they witnessed his heroic efforts to sustain the
burdens placed upon him," declared their "earnest wish to make
these burdens as light as possible," and that he would find the
congregation "satisfied with whatever ministrations his strength
was fully equal to. His own ability, with constant reference to
the preservation of his health, should be the measure of his
labors. Under the blessing of God these may be as effectual as
more elaborate efforts."

His regular "ministrations" from this time to the close of his
life consisted of one service and a sermon on Sunday, an afternoon
service and lecture on Wednesday, a service at the V. M. I.
every Thursday evening, communion on every first Sunday, and
three weekly services in Lent. For several summers after this
time the bishop, at his request, sent Dr. Pendleton a theological
student to help him as he thought best. The Rev. J. Thompson
Cole and the Rev. F. M. Burch assisted him in this way year
after year. Alternating with these young assistants he held service
during the summer months at Goshen, Glenwood, and
Balcony Falls, laying the foundations for the churches since
established at those points.

Work among the colored people also occupied him. A colored
Sunday-school flourished in his church for some years before his
death, and his daughter Rose taught a mission parish school for
young negroes in Lexington for several years, and only gave up
the work when funds to carry it on utterly failed.

To this ministerial work and the numberless daily calls upon a

busy, helpful man, he added regular teaching of the boys in his
house, diligent attention to whatever could provide for the wants
or increase the comfort of his household, and untiring efforts to
secure money for completing the Memorial Church and the
monument for General Lee's tomb.

Valentine's recumbent statue was finished in 1875, brought to
Lexington, and securely stored until some suitable place to contain
it could be provided. General Pendleton preferred an independent
mausoleum, but the majority of the committee decided
to build the present structure in rear of the University Chapel,
and he became active in endeavor to have it finished.

In May of 1876, a few weeks after the death of Bishop Johns,
two requests for a division of the diocese were laid before the
Council,—one from West Virginia asked that it should be set
off as an independent diocese, and another desired that Virginia
itself should be divided by the line of James River into two dioceses.
To both of these propositions Dr. Pendleton was opposed
on the same grounds he had taken ten years before. West Virginia
became a diocese in 1877, and in 1878 the question of
further division was settled for the time by Bishop Whittle, who
declined to sanction it because he believed that a large majority
of the people of Virginia were opposed to it. In this year and
again in 1879 Dr Pendleton was active and energetic in conciliar
work, being a leading spirit in recommending to the Council
that the original voluntary Convocations, which had been
productive of so much good in the State, should not be superseded
by a canonical Convocation system, with metes and
bounds laid down by the Council, and also that the vestry law
in the diocese should not be changed. Both these recommendations
received the sanction of the Council.

Dr. Pendleton to his wife.

In February, 1879, Bishop Whittle addressed to the rectors
and vestries of the diocese a pastoral letter on a subject on which
Bishop Johns and himself had more than once instructed the
Council,—the introduction of innovations and novelties into the
.service in Virginia churches. Finding these instructions without
avail, the bishop now pronounced to his presbyters and their
congregations his "godly monition" and "godly judgment" that

"the services of the Church should be conducted as prescribed
by the Rubrics in the Book of Common Prayer, without adding
thereto or subtracting therefrom," and going on to state that the
introduction into the Church of evergreens and flowers at Easter,
or of fruits, flowers, and vegetables on Thanksgiving-day, and
also the use of different-colored altar-, pulpit-, and desk-cloths
at different seasons in the ecclesiastical year, were "novelties,"
" innovations," and "new and strange things in the Church in
Virginia, and ought not to be done or allowed."

This letter created quite a ferment in the diocese. Fair-colored
altar-cloths, etc., were not widely used, but flowers at Easter had
for several years been placed in churches of the most conservative
tone. Among these was Grace Church, Lexington, and
it had become, there as elsewhere, a labor of love in the households
to provide plants for such decoration. Mrs. Pendleton
and her daughters had taken part in this movement with the
full approval of the rector. But he immediately acquiesced in
the bishop's decision, notified the congregation that he felt it his
duty to forbid any flowers at the approaching Easter service, and
at once began to use all his influence to strengthen the bishop's
hands. In the ensuing Council, when the whole subject came
before that body, he was one of the committee which declared
that the bishop had the right to regulate such matters of ritual,
and urged upon the clergy and laity that it was their duty to
yield "cheerful and willing obedience" to the bishop's views and
admonitions.

When in 1880 the subject of providing for increased episcopal
visitations, either by electing an assistant bishop or dividing the diocese,
was again brought before the Council, Dr. Pendleton was an
earnest advocate for an assistant, and one of the committee which
recommended that the General Convention be requested to give its
consent to such an election, on the plea of extent of territory; and
very great was his disappointment when this request was refused
by that body. Not foreseeing that in the next three years the
temper of the general Church would have changed and Virginia
allowed an assistant bishop, the venerable presbyter now began to
study up the question of division and settle in his own mind what
dividing line would best promote the interests and preserve the
evangelical tone of the Virginia Church. In investigating this

subject he was untiring in collecting information as to the needs,
claims, and resources of the different portions of the diocese.
It is not a little significant of the wisdom of his final decision
that, when in 1891 the committee appointed the previous year
met to determine some line of division to present to the Council,
they unanimously agreed to recommend one presented by Dr.
Hunckel, of Charlottesville, which was the very line suggested by
Dr. Pendleton and drawn by his own hand. Not only in this
direction did he, as it were, foresee and voice the judgment of
his brother churchmen, but he not infrequently declared that if
Virginia could secure an assistant bishop, "Randolph, of Baltimore,"
was the man to whom his vote would be given. Again
and again during these years he tried to get the Council to meet
in Lexington, and was greatly pleased when such meeting was
agreed to in 1882. Circumstances, however, prevented this, and
the bishop appointed Richmond instead.

Dr. Pendleton to his wife, absent on a visit to her brother in
Hanover County.

Ex-President Jefferson Davis to General W. N. Pendleton.