CHAPTER VIII THE BRITISH CHURCH Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement | ||
8. CHAPTER VIII
THE BRITISH CHURCH
David had read hard all through Hilary term with Mr. Stansfield of the Inner Temple; he had passed examinations brilliantly; he had solved knotty problems in the legal line for Fraser and Warren, and as already related he had begun to go out into Society. Indeed, starting from the Rossiters' Thursdays and Praed's studio suppers, he was being taken up by persons of influence who were pleased to find him witty, possessed of a charming voice, of quiet but unassailable manners. Opinions differed as to his good looks. Some women proclaimed him as adorable, rather Sphynx-like, you know, but quite fascinating with his well-marked eye-brows, his dark and curly lashes, the rich warm tints of his complexion, the unfathomable grey eyes and short upper lip with the down of adolescence upon it. Other women without assigning any reason admitted he did not produce any effect on their sensibility--they disliked law students, they said, even if they were of a literary turn; they also disliked curates and shopwalkers and sidesmen ... and Sunday-school teachers. Give them manly men; avowed soldiers and sailors, riders to hounds, sportsmen, big game hunters, game-keepers, chauffeurs--the chauffeur was becoming a new factor in Society, Bernard Shaw's "superman"--prize-fighters, meat-salesmen--then you knew where you were.
Similarly men were divided in their judgment of him. Some liked him very much, they couldn't quite say why. Others spoke of him contemptuously, like Major Armstrong
Honoria's stories of his skill in fencing, riding, swimming, ball-games, helped him here. They were perfectly true or sufficiently true--mutatis mutandis--and when put to the test stood the test. David indeed found it well during this first season in Town to hire a hack and ride a little in the Park--it only added one way and another about fifty pounds to his outlay and impressed certain of the Benchers who were beginning to turn an eye on him. One elderly judge--also a Park rider--developed an almost inconvenient interest in him; asked him to dinner, introduced him to his daughters, and wanted to know a deal too much as to his position and prospects.
On the whole, it was a distinct relief from a public position, from this increasing number of town acquaintances, this broader and broader track strewn with cunning pitfalls, to lock up his rooms and go off to Wales for the Easter holidays. Easter was late that year--or it has to be for the purpose of my story--and David was fortunate in the weather and the temperature. If West Glamorganshire had looked richly, grandiosely beautiful in full summer, it had an exquisite, if quite different
David in previous letters, looking into his father's budget, had shown him he could afford to keep a pony and a pony cart. This therefore was waiting for him at the little station with the gardener to drive. But in a week, David, already a good horseman, had learnt to drive under the gardener's teaching, and then was able to take his delighted father out for whole-day trips to revel in the beauties of the scenery.
They would have with them a wicker basket containing an ample lunch prepared by the generous hands of Bridget. They would stop at some spot on a mountain pass; tether the pony, sit on a plaid shawl thrown over a boulder, and feast their eyes on green mountain-shoulders reared against the pale blue sky; or gaze across ravines not unworthy of Switzerland. Or they would put up pony and cart at some village inn, explore old battlemented churches and churchyards with seventeenth and eighteenth century headstones, so far more tasteful and seemly than the hideous death memorials of the nineteenth century. And ever and again the old father, looking more and more like a Druid, would recite that charming Spring song, the 104th Psalm; or fragments of Welsh poetry sounding very good in Welsh--as no doubt Greek poetry does in properly pronounced Greek, but being singularly bald and vague in its references to earth, sea, sky and flora when translated into plain English.
David expressed some such opinions which rather scandalized his father who had grown up in the conventional school of unbounded, unreasoning reverence for the Hebrew, Greek and Keltic classics. From that they passed to the great problems, the undeterminable problems of the Universe; the awful littleness of men--mere lice, perhaps, on the scurfy body of a shrinking, dying planet of a fifth-rate sun, one of a billion other suns. The Revd. Howel like most of the Christian clergy of all times of course never looked at the midnight sky or gave any thought to the terrors and mysteries of astronomy, a science so modern, in fact, that it only came into real existence two or three hundred years ago; and is even now only taken seriously by about ten thousand people in Europe and America. Where, in this measureless universe--which indeed might only be one of several universes--was God to be found? A God that had been upset by the dietary of a small desert tribe, who
"The Dinosaurs, my boy? No. What were they?"
David: "The real Dragons, the Dragons of the prime, that swarmed over England and Wales and Scotland, and Europe, Asia, and North America--and I dare say Africa too. One of the most stupendous facts of what you call 'creation,' though perhaps only one amongst many skin diseases that have afflicted the planet--Well the Dinosaurs went on developing and evolving and perfecting--so Rossiter says--for three million years or so--Then they were scrap-heaped. What a waste of creative energy!..."
Father: "Ah it's Rossiter who puts all these ideas into your head, is it?"
David (flushing); "Oh dear no! I used to think about them at (is about to say 'Newnham,' but substitutes 'Malvern')--at Malvern--"
Father (drily): "I'm glad to hear you thought about something--serious--at any rate--then, in the midst of your scrapes and truancies--but go on, dear boy. It's a delight to me to hear you speak. It reminds me--
David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated insincerity. However new and disturbing to his father were these flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox and extremely well-behaved. The spiritual exercises of the Revd. Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight. The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a
If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he--in half-confessing his own lapses--attributed freely and unrebukedly the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. These out-pourings--"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd madden i mi!"--extempore prayers, psalms chanted with a swaying of the body, hymns sung uproariously, scripture read with an accompaniment of groans, hysteric laughter, and interjections of assent, and a rambling discourse--lasting fully an hour, were in the Welsh language; and
Eighteen years ago, much of Wales was as enslaved by whiskey as are still Keltic Scotland, Keltiberian Ireland, Lancashire, London and wicked little Kent. It was only saved from going under completely by decennial religious revivals, which for three months or so were followed by total abstinence and a fierce-eyed continence.
Just about this time--during David's extended spring holiday in Wales (he had brought many law books down with him to read)--there had begun one of the newspaper-made-famous Revivals. It was led by a young prophet--a football half-back or whatever they are called, though I, who prefer thoroughness, would, if I played football, offer up the whole of my back to bear the brunt--who saw visions of Teutonically-conceived angels with wings, who heard "voices," was in constant communication with the Redeemer of Mankind and on familiar terms with God, had a lovely tenor voice and moved emotional men and hysterical, love-sick women to tears, even to bellowings by his prayers and songs. He had for some weeks been confined in publicity to half-contemptuous
The infection of his meetings however penetrated to the agricultural district in which Pontystrad was situated. Five villages went completely off their heads. The blacksmith-pastor had to be put under temporary restraint. Quite decent-looking, unsuspected folk confessed to far worse sins than they had ever committed. There arose an aristocracy of outcasts. Three inns where little worse than bad beer was sold were gutted, respectable farmers' wives drank Eau-de-Cologne instead of spirits, several over-due marriages took place, there were a number of premature births, and the membership of the football clubs was disastrously reduced. Such excitement was generated that little work was done, and the illegitimate birth rate of west Glamorganshire--always high--for the opening months of 1903 became even higher.
David was enlisted by the employers of labour, the farmers, chemical works, mining and smelting-works managers, squires, and postmasters to restore order. He preached against the Revivalists. Not with any lack of sympathy, any apology for the real ills which they denounced. He spoke with emphasis against the loosening of morality, recommended early marriage, and above all education; denounced the consumption of alcohol so strenuously and convincedly that then and there as he
Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of Welsh--all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically true was that taunt of Dizzy's--"Inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity!").
And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the
The Revd. Howel let him have his way (This was after David had returned to Fig Tree Court) and by the following June a stalwart young curate was lodged in the village and took over the bulk of the progressive church work from the fumbling hands of the dear old Vicar. He was a thoroughly good sort, this curate, troubled by no possible doubts whatever, a fervent tee-totaller, a half-back or whole back--I forget which--at football, a good boxer, and an unwearied organizer. Little Bethel was sold and eventually turned into a seed-merchant's repository and drying-room. The curate in course of time married the squire's daughter and I dare say long afterwards succeeded the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams when the latter died--but that date is still far ahead of my story. At any rate--isn't it droll how these things come about?--David's action in this matter, undertaken he hardly knew why--did much to fetter Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent attempts to disestablish the British Church in Wales.
What did Bridget think of all this, of the spiritual evolution of her nursling, of his identity with the vicious, shifty, idle youth whose uncanny gift of design seemed to have been completely lost after his stay in South Africa? David Vavasour Williams had left home to the relief of his father and the whole village, if even to the half-pitying regret of his old nurse, in 1896. He had
Well: miracles were easily believed in by Bridget. Perhaps his father's prayers had been answered. Providence sometimes meted out an overwhelming boon to really good people. David was certainly a Vavasour, if there was nothing Williamsy about his looks.... His mother, in Mrs. Bridget Evanwy's private opinion, had been a hussy.... Was David his father's son? Hadn't she once caught Mrs. Howel Williams kissing a young stranger behind a holly bush and wasn't that why Bridget had really been sent away? She had returned to take charge of the pretty, motherless little boy when she herself was a widow disappointed of children, and the child was only three. Would she ever turn against her nursling now, above all, when he was showing himself such a son to his old father? Not she. He might be who and what he would. He was giving another ten years of renewed life to the dear old Druid and the continuance of a comfortable home to his old Nannie.
They talked a great deal up at Little Bethel of a
However, at all costs, she would stand by David ... and without quite knowing why, she decided that on all future visits she herself would "do out" his room, would attend to him exclusively. The "girl" was a chatterer, albeit she looked upon Mr. David with eyes of awe and a most respectful admiration, while David on his part scarcely bestowed on her a glance.
CHAPTER VIII THE BRITISH CHURCH Mrs. Warren's Daughter: A Story of the Woman's Movement | ||