The English Peasant/Wealden Life and Character
XI.
Wealden Life and Character.
(Golden Hours, 1874.)
That the South Saxon nature is a deeply religious one all we know of the people now and of the history of their forefathers tends to convince us. We see, moreover, in its manifestation from the earliest times to the present day a proof that the primal elements of character in a race, as in an individual, remain the same under every possible change of circumstance. The first we know of the South Saxon religiously is that he was a worshipper of Odin, "the terrible and severe god, the father of slaughter, the god that carries desolation and fire, the active and roaring deity, he who gives victory and revives courage in conflict, who names those that are to be slain." With the worship of Odin was associated in course of time that of Frigga, or Frea, his wife, the goddess of love, of pleasure, and sensuality. The most distinguishing feature of this primitive religion was its fatalism. Three Fates predestined the general career of men, while each individual had a special Fate who attended on him, controlled his life, and determined his end. In contests and fights an additional species of Fates called Valkeries, the direct emissaries of Odin, were employed to select the warriors who were to fall, and to be at once translated to Valhalla. In Valhalla they fought all day, and sat down at night to feast on the never-ending flesh of the boar Scrimner, washed down by deep draughts of mead drunk from the skulls of their enemies. To Niflheim were doomed all the poor in spirit, all who were not gifted with, or had not been able to attain to, a habit of self-confidence. Over its miseries Hela reigned supreme. "Her palace was Anguish, her table Famine, her waiters Expectation and Delay, the threshold of her door was Precipice, her bed was Leanness, and her look struck terror in every beholder."
Behind this grosser creed appears the dim shade of a more ancient faith. An almighty, omniscient Creator is spoken of who would one day manifest Himself. Then Odin and the whole Valhalla would disappear in a general conflagration, and from the chaos would spring forth a new heaven and a new hell. The final judgment would then take place, and each individual would receive an irreversible sentence determining his fate to all eternity.
Such was the faith by which the ancient South Saxon lived and died. More than a thousand years have passed away since the whole pantheon of Scandinavian gods and goddesses fell into the limbo of forgetfulness; but the primal characteristics of that faith appear in each succeeding generation, gathering round other names and permeating another theology. On this old vigorous Scandinavian stock the pure truth of Christ has been more than once grafted, producing for a time much precious fruit; but just as it is in the orchard, so is it amongst men—each generation of trees requires new grafting, or it will infallibly return to the original strain, and produce only crabs.
To such a condition the religious life of rural Sussex has long been tending, so that it would perhaps be easier now than in ages gone by to show that the faith of the typical Sussex man is marked by exactly the same characteristics as that of his pagan forefathers. It is true that he thinks that he worships only one God; but his conception of the Divine character is agreeable to ideas which seem to have become part of his nature during the long night of heathendom. The attributes of the eternal Creator have become mingled in his mind with those of Odin, the strong and severe god, who names those that are to be slain, and with those of the fates who determine and control the destinies of men. None but those whom Odin has selected, and who the fates have predestined to be slain, will reach the Valhalla; all others, even Balder, the beautiful god of light, are doomed to the miseries of Niflheim.
He pays his homage to Odin, he resigns himself to Odin's will; but he seeks relief from a worship so despairful at the shrine of Frigga, or Frea, the goddess of sensuality.
Fatalism and sensuality—this is the evil heritage of the South Saxon race, and it has produced its fruit in a deep-seated melancholy, and in a continual suspicion of God and man. Of their suspicion of man it is difficult to give an adequate idea. It is seen chiefly in the way in which the typical Sussex religionist regards all who differ from him. Instead of trying to enlighten their darkness, he shuns all religious connection with them as persons in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity. His suspicion of God is shown in his theology, its great object being to disprove the glad tidings of God's love to the world. From Sunday to Sunday the great work of his preachers is to assure those who have got to believe that God has a particular love for them as individuals that this is still the case. But it is hard work. On the other hand, many who do not attain to this belief have so little confidence in God that they suppose He permits them to be worried by malicious spirits, who bewitch them, frighten them with apparitions, and otherwise torment them.
In the neighbourhood of Rotherfield I went to see a good old man of seventy-three who had lived in the parish ever since he was seven years old. He was in a weak, nervous state, and suffered from sleeplessness. In broad Sussex dialect, very difficult to understand, he told us tales of witchcraft and apparition. One story was of a man who came to see a girl who lived at his house, and how this man had declared that all the cocks and hens in the yard had their feathers turned the wrong way, and how he had seen a great boar-cat with flaring eyes in the hen-roost. This unhappy man, he said, was hag-ridden, Sussex for bewitched. Our informant had not the ghost-seeing faculty himself; but he had a boy that possessed it. This lad from earliest childhood had seen cats when no one else could; still more, on one occasion he had actually seen his Uncle William's ghost walking down the road, the uncle in question dying shortly after the ominous apparition. He accounted for the preternatural power on the part of the boy by his having been born in the middle of the night!
Of the depth of superstition, ignorance, immorality, and poverty which prevails in the Weald of Sussex, it is impossible for me to give any adequate idea. I will relate a few facts in illustration of these points; no doubt those who dwell in the district could relate many others still more striking.
In a parish contiguous to Mayfield the clergyman told me that an old woman came to him, and having informed him that her little grand-daughter was ill, she said in an insinuating way, "I think, sir, it 'ud do her good if she were to have little of the sacrament wine."
In another Wealden parish a minister said that it was his impression that not more than half of the population could read fluently; a few of the remainder very imperfectly, the rest not at all. On a jury, on which I think he said he had occasion to be present, composed of farmers, most of whom were well-to-do, only six could sign their names; on another, only one witness out of five could write.
Passing over Crowborough Common, I came upon a little cot not much higher than a man, and about ten or twelve feet in length. I looked in at the open door, and found it papered with odd bits of paper, and ornamented with a sheet of the Police News. My tap aroused a recumbent figure on a bed, which just filled up the whole of one end of the cottage. The gruff voice assured me that its owner was not ill, but merely taking a rest, as he worked hard all the week. He was a sweep, and lived here alone with his boy.
Grimes was not sullen, but very genial. He came and sat on a stool in front of an old fireplace, all burnt out and rusty. He could not read, nor his boy either. What was the use? His father and mother hadn't been able to read, and yet they pulled along, and went to America. He hadn't been able to read, and yet he had pulled along; indeed, he was in such repute, that if I was to offer to sweep his chimney ever so well, his customers wouldn't have me. What more, then, could his boy want than to be trusted and believed in, and allowed to sweep these same chimneys, until he in his turn could make the next generation of boys do it for him?
From what he said, it appeared that boys still climb chimneys in this Dart of the country. He had a machine, but it wag impossible to clean some chimneys; they had such ledges and such windings, you couldn't nohow get at the soot unless a boy went up. He didn't believe in boys being ill-treated; had heard of pricking boys behind, but didn't believe it. You must be very good to boys to get them to go at all. It was no use larruping them, or they'd sulk and refuse. When you'd taught them their trade, then if they put on you, you might larrup them.
If I were to relate the statements I received on the subject of morality, I feel sure that I should be accused of exaggeration. Suffice it to say that as regards the relation of the sexes, public opinion can scarcely be lower in any part of England.
I observe from the Report of the Agricultural Commission in 1868 that in some parts of West Sussex the demoralization was attributed to habits of drunkenness on the part of the labouring classes. This is not true of the Weald; the people really have no money to spend on drink.
Poverty, miserable cottages, and the want of a really Christian ministry,—these are the causes of much of the degradation to be found in the Weald of Sussex.
To realize this poverty and the wretchedness of their homes one must live amongst them, not as a mere bird of passage, or a summer visitor, or a gentleman resident, but as one of themselves. One must pass up and down the Weald in winter-time and in rainy weather, note how they have neither cisterns nor drainage, how therefore they suffer from thirst in the dog-days when all the springs are dry, and have floors swamped when the rainy season sets in, while the house-filth oozes out from a slit in the wall to trickle into the garden or wayside gutter. One must go into the cots themselves, blackened with ages of wood fires, and breathe the reeking smoke and foul air, see the mother and children cowering over a few poor sticks smouldering on some bricks under the great chimney, realizing Cowper's picture of the poor labourer's wife a hundred years ago—
"The frugal housewife trembles when she lights
Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear,
But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys.
The few small embers left she nurses well,
And while her infant race with out-spread hands
And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks,
Retires, content to quake so they be warmed."
One must see the children eating bread and butter for dinner, and drinking the hot wash they call tea; one must note the bleared eyes, the scrofulous skin, the ulcerated legs, the rheumatic agonized bodies,—one must see these things and a hundred others for oneself to realize the depth of their miserable poverty.
The benefit caused by any fresh industry which will give employment to a few hands, and thus bring a little runlet of the vast wealth of the outlying world into this impoverished district, may be seen in the villages which form the parish of Hurstmonceux. In this neighbourhood about twenty persons find profitable employment in making the flat baskets so much used for agricultural purposes,—such, for instance, as bringing potatoes from the fields. Many are sent over to France, the Hurstmonceux makers having established a reputation through one of the first of their number obtaining a prize at the Exhibition of 1851.
In speaking of Sussex commons, I have described how, in Heathfield and its neighbourhood, chicken-fattening has grown up into a large trade. The men who collect the chickens from the cottages which fringe the edges of the numerous commons, or which lie hidden in out-of-the-way lanes, are called higglers. You can scarcely traverse any road in this locality without meeting one of them,—lean sinewy men or youths, carrying an enormous wicker cage, full of chickens, on their shoulders, and a stout staff in their hands. Trudging along at one pace, they bear the burden of life in a brave though somewhat moody fashion.
Even among those who are better off, one is oppressed by a sense of the poverty of the Weald. The fires of wood and small-coal, the inferiority of almost every article of diet,—everything, in fact, repeats the same sad tale. However, this very poverty seems to tell in favour of the few tradesfolk to be found in every village, for it has prevented a rush of competitors. Unlike the poor labourers, who are wholly dependent on the good-will of the employers of the district, most of the tradesmen can afford to be independent of individual customers. As to the artificers—the builder, the wheelwright, the carpenter, or the smith—they are, generally speaking, masters of the situation, and can not only charge what they choose, but do their work how or when it suits them best. This enviable position produces a sort of crabbed independence, an illustration of which was given me in the character of one parish which was thus graphically sketched by its rector: "The people here wouldn't care twopence for a duke."
The more prosperous such people become, the more this disagreeable phase of character predominates, until the whole atmosphere becomes laden with petty jealousies, wounded selflove, and outrageous egotism, working up here and there into rancorous life-long animosities.
No mere formal religion, however perfect in theory, can do anything to prevent or heal this strife. People who are of the same blood, and dwell under the same roof, or who go to the same church or chapel and pronounce Shibboleth in exactly the same way, can still be sullen foes. Nothing but the true spirit of the kingdom of heaven can make a man at once independent and sympathetic; and such characters can be found in every sect and form of Christianity, and in the present disjointed state of Christendom unconnected with any denomination.
And they may be met with even in these dead Wealden towns. I know one, a smith, a type of the soft-hearted Sussex man. His wife, a pale, sickly woman, with the sad smile of the permanent invalid, is constantly at work, either attending to the shop or to a tribe of small children, whose presence both she and her husband seem to imagine constitute their greatest earthly happiness. Added to this, she is ever assiduous in 'helping her neighbours, nursing the sick, and promoting the good of the little Christian society in which both she and her husband find a continual spiritual impetus, making and keeping them what they are. Here is one among their many good works. A poor woman, whom she has nursed during her illness, is on her deathbed. "Ah," said the sick woman, "I could die happy if I knew you'd take my poor Liz." She consented, but what will the husband say? "Tom," the said, directly she got home, "I'm afeerd you'll think I've been an' done a foolish thing; I've promised to take charge of poor Mrs P——'s gal." I think I see him, innocent of coat and waistcoat, his shirt-sleeves tucked up, his grimy, brawny arms akimbo on his broad chest, his round genial face^beaming through the soot which envelops it, like the sun shining through a mirky atmosphere, looking down on his pale, anxious wife, and replying cheerily, "Not I, mother; don't you be afeerd; if you don't mind the trouble, I'm willing enough." So they took the little orphan into their own family, though her father lived in the town, and could earn enough to keep her himself if he would. Such people are deeply needed in these out-of-the-world spots. Calamities happen which no poor-law, no organized system of charity, could adequately relieve,—nothing, in fact, but the consoling sympathy of brotherly kindness arising from such simplehearted faith in a loving God and Saviour, as just described.
In my perambulations about the district I met with a woman whose strange, familiar way of speaking and half-distraught manner seemed to compel me to listen to her. Her story wore an air of exaggeration and a tone of imposture, but I was afterwards assured on the best authority that there was no reason for doubting that she spoke the truth.
"It's three year," she said, "sin' I buried my husband; a kinder man never breathed. He'd been out all day surveying, and when he came home at night I said, 'Now, dear, let me make you some tea.' 'No,' said he, 'Em'ly dear; I have had a good tea, never ate more heartily in my life, yet for all that I didn't seem to have enough; I'll go to bed.' As he passed through the children's bed-room he kissed them all, and said, 'Jesus bless you, my little lambs;' and then he promised one should have a little present for her womanly ways. When he laid down we kissed each other, and he said, 'Good-night, Em'ly dear; if I lie on my left side, you'll turn me, won't you? 'I never woke till morning, and then I heard him making a strange noise. I started up and turned him, but he was quite blue; I rose him in my arms, called for a glass of water, but he fell forward and died. I was quite incautious until the inquest.
"You should see my little girls; they are the dearest children, though I say it. Often and often have they fallen down on their knees and asked the blessed Jesus to send us food." She told me how when they had once done so she looked into the garden, and saw, as she thought, one of the children's pocket-handkerchiefs. It proved to be a stranger's, and in the corner tied up in a knot was a shilling. The eldest child, she said, had been in the infirmary at Hastings with a bad leg, and was obliged to have it cut. "When," she continued, "the child was going to be put on the operating-table, the surgeon came and said, 'Now, Amanda dear, we are going to cut your leg.' ' Very well, sir,' she replied, 'I am ready; only give me five minutes that I may go into the lavatory.' 'What for?' 'That I may ask God to give me strength to bear it'"
The poor woman concluded by a bitter invective against the guardians. "Only let me be guardian for a week," she exclaimed, "and see what I'd do! Think of giving little children meat such as you would not give to hogs! Think of waking little children up at six in the morning, and not letting them have anything again until twelve! Would you like it? Of course they are hungry-like. Six hours be a long time for a child to wait. And then when they are sick, to have to apply to the Board, and perhaps wait a fortnight. It's a shame. Ah! that ——— is a brute. I should like to scrunch him, I should. He is a brute."
Near Waldron I met a bright, happy-faced boy, seventeen years old, who told me that he had worked ever since he was nine; left school then and went to service—first for fourpence a day, then for sixpence, then for eightpence, then for eighteenpence, then for two shillings; now he works in the fields, has eight shillings a week, and will shortly be raised. Some had lately gone from those parts to New Zealand, but he did not care to emigrate as long as he had two hands and there was work to be done. He went to a nightschool in winter, and gets on there a good bit; has a few books—"The Negro Servant," and a book about "Noah's Ark," and "The Tower of Babel," which he has read over and over again.
This boy had worked ever since he was nine. Sufficiently young, but in his case it appeared to be domestic service; not as I had seen just before I had met him, a child of that age actually employed in the fields. He was a little fair-haired boy, and came running to the side of the field to ask the time. He told me that he had to work from six in the morning until six in the evening, with an hour at twelve o'clock for his dinner. His job just then was pulling up a red weed in the corn. He had worked for three summers, and only went to school in the winter. I parted with him and his three little sisters at the gate of their father's cottage, where they had all come to welcome him home to his dinner—not of meat, but of gooseberry pie.
There are doubtless many parishes in England in which no voice is ever raised against the cruel wrong done to a young child in thus making him work eleven hours a day. But where a voice is raised to rebuke the parents who sell their children into slavery, and the farmers who buy their labour, whose voice is it? Whose is the counter influence, the only counter influence that can come with any weight against parental influence, against the exigencies of the sole employer, the exigencies of stern want? Only his who can claim them for God, who can remind parents and employers that these children have minds and souls which have a right to knowledge and education,—the much-abused parson!
Not that the best among them does more than he ought, or in many cases is half enough that champion of the poor which his high office calls him to be. For a clergyman's office is exactly that of Mr Greatheart in "The Pilgrim's Progress." He is especially appointed to be the defender of the women and children of his charge, and of all the Fearings and Feebleminds among the men; to struggle in their cause with the terrible giants which seek their destruction—Grim (want), Maul the oppressor (social custom) and Despair, the most cruel of all, who drives to drink and ruin those whom Grim and Maul have already half killed.
May we live to see the day when a true priesthood in England, emancipated themselves from the thraldom of Grim, Maul, and Despair, shall rise to their true calling, and become the defenders of the poor, and the oppressed, and the suffering in every class against their foes!
But let the clergy look well to it, for by some means or other the hearts of the poor are more often than not alienated from them.
Not far from Cross-in-Hand I had a talk with a wheelwright, who was at work in his shop by the road-side. Most of the people thereabouts, he said, went to chapel. He went to a Wesleyan place of worship, where the congregation sometimes numbered two Hundred people. "Why did the people prefer chapel to church?" "Because they could understand better; the preaching was plainer than at church; they spoke more to the soul. You see, clergymen do it more for a living." "Do not people think it a benefit to have some one in the parish to whom they can always go?" "Never knew any one who did," was the answer. "The clergyman here is not bad to people when they are sick, but," continued the wheelwright, "I would not go to church for that sort of thing; it must end bad. What'll such people do when they come to die?"
This prejudice against the clergy on the part of those who are just beginning to realize their power to think and act with independence, arises from the fact that the rural clergy, as a class, have so closely identified themselves with the gentry as to give rise to the impression that they regard themselves as a sort of spiritual squirearchy.
When they shall have the courage to descend from their high social position, and to claim no status but a heavenly one; when they shall become willing to be regarded quite as much as labouring men as squires; when, in fact, they shall absolutely refuse to take any particular position in the social scale, but shall claim equality and fellowship with all, then they will be in a fair way to recover their influence with every class, and to find it tenfold greater than it ever has been.
If, too, the rural clergy would recover and retain their influence as pastors of the whole flock, they must strive in a spirit of deep sympathy to understand the real faith and character of those amongst their parishioners who dissent from the National Church.
Throughout Sussex the hyper-Calvinists are the most numerous body. Their churches were no doubt founded to maintain the same creed as that once held by the greater number of Baptist churches, a creed of which particular salvation was a distinctive point; but while the greater part of the denomination have become so affected by the modern evangelical revival as to sink or almost lose sight of this doctrine, the Baptists of East Sussex, coming under the influence of Huntingtonianism, have continued more and more to magnify its importance, until, like Aaron's rod, it seems to have swallowed up everything else. In most villages they will be found to have a chapel, the minister of which is not unfrequently himself a farmer or a labourer. At Buxted the pastor of the chapel proved to be an ancient labourer in a dark smock, a truly simple-minded, good old man.
While I was staying in an ancient Wealden town, a large new Calvinistic chapel was opened, creating for the day quite an unwonted excitement. The building was well filled, one might almost say crowded, by a respectable body of worshippers, mostly farmers, their wives and children, many of whom came long distances in chaises, waggonettes, and carts.
The preacher in the morning was one of the most eminent holding their peculiar views. It was evident that he knew that the people he had to deal with were a desponding race, entertaining the most melancholy ideas concerning the fate of mankind in general, for his sermon was entirely devoted to an attempt to assure as many individuals among them as he possibly could, that, come what might to the bulk of men, they at least were safe. His text was, "Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion, build Thou the walls of Jerusalem;" and the question raised was. Who were true Zionites? From his point of view the walls of the holy city became very extensive, for he asserted that any one who in the course of his life had felt five minutes" love to the Saviour was a true Zionite.
In the evening the minister of the place preached. He was a farmer, and lives miles away from his charge, but amongst these people the minister's office appears to be chiefly that of preaching. Every elect soul, they believe, has its appointed teacher, and every teacher has his appointed work. The former must go any distance to hear the right man; the latter any distance to do the right work. Thus in the course of this sermon the speaker spoke of having himself gone to hear a certain preacher, with the conviction that what he said would settle his fate. He came home with the joyful assurance that he was safe. So with reference to a preacher narrating his own experience. He said that poor souls listened and said, "That is just how I feel. If that man goes to heaven—and I am sure he will—I shall go too."
But for a genuine specimen of a hyper-Calvinistic preacher and a hyper-Calvinistic sermon, what I saw and heard at a little chapel on Crowborough Common' could not be surpassed.
In the pulpit was a tall man, with a gaunt face, high forehead, and sad eyes, looking as if bowed down by deep mental distress. In low tones he opened the service by reading the psalm, "Why art thou cast down, O my soul?" Then a bluff old worthy, the very reverse of the minister, gave out the hymn, which was led off by a young man with an accordion. A prayer followed, picturesque and poetical in language, its imagery drawn from the Bible and " The Pilgrim's Progress." Then another hymn; and then the sermon, from the text, "Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed." "How often," he said, "is a child of God wounded in the house of his friends! How I remember to have aggravated my dear old father! 'You old people,' says I, 'have some curious crotchets in your heads, but you are not to expect us young ones are going to take up with them all,—why, you don't know what you believe yourself.' As I turned away I saw the tear trickle down the old man's eye, and now I know that I persecuted that godly father. So, too, the devil sometimes comes between a man and his wife, and poor souls find that just where they ought to get most help, there they meet with nothing but cruel words and unkind insinuations, so that they are almost driven to distraction, and to doubt if the root of the matter be in them. Thus Job's wife said, 'Curse God, and die.' "Then he told a most apocryphal anecdote about a woman whose husband threatened to put her into a heated oven if she persisted in going to a certain chapel; however she went, came trembling home, begged for five minutes' prayer, her steadfast faith so affecting her persecutor that he gave up his cruel design. Then he dwelt on the antagonism there has ever been between two classes of men in the world. All are from one federal head, but God has chosen some for Himself, according to the words, "A people have I formed for Myself." These must be persecuted by the others. From the time of Cain and Abel it ever has been so. Some saints are surprised. "I never have any one to see me now," is the frequent complaint. "Get a fiddle, my friend, begin to scroop away, invite the people to a dance, and see how they will flock around, and call you 'good fellow, 'good woman,'—only another word, as my father used to say, for a fool.
"The way of persecution is the King's highway, the divine college to which He sends all His dear ones." He dwelt on this thought with extraordinary force, and it seemed to give relief to his soul. I had observed that though he had commenced by saying that he was so weak that he trembled from head to foot, as he proceeded his voice got stronger and stronger, until at last he had entirely recovered his equanimity, and appeared quite happy. He had delivered his soul.
The display of literary food in a bookseller's shop in a Wealden town was suggestive of the intellectual character of the district. First and foremost were Huntington's books, in company with others of a kindred theology, their favourite hymn-book by Gadsby, Owen and Boston's theological works. Side by side with all this theology we have the London Journal, the Half-penny Magazine, and Reynolds's Miscellany. The only agreeable fact is, that even here Bunyan and Defoe find their way. Thus they cater for the two races of mankind, while for polemics against the one great power which threatens some day to devour them all, they have nothing to offer but that dreadful-looking little bock called Maria Monk. If any one would measure the enormous difference between Sussex and Northumberland, let him compare the literature sold in this shop with that in a village bookseller's in Northumberland.
Calvinists are not the only Dissenters in a Sussex village. There are those who represent a more modern style of Nonconformity. From the pulpits of their chapels may almost always be heard sermons in harmony with what is widely known as Revival preaching. Its favourite text is, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life;" and its favourite hymn, "Just as I am, without one plea." This ministry, when exercised by a gentle, loving-hearted man, has calmed many a troubled heart, and such scenes as the following seem to suggest progress towards a real unity.
It is Sunday evening, the service is over, and the majority of the congregation have gone. The forms and seats are pushed back, and the little table, at which those who led the singing usually sat, is spread with a small white cloth, a bottle of wine, a large wine-glass, and a small plate of bread. The communicants gather round—old and young, poor and better off. Boys are there of eleven or twelve years of age, and one little girl about eight, two or three of the small maid-of-all-work type, making the number of the young an unusual and interesting feature. The pastor sits down among them, and reads the passage, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and entered into His glory? "Then singing and prayer and eating the bread, singing and prayer and drinking the wine, another hymn, the offertory, and benediction. Thus concludes this great act of Christian worship, in all its parts perfectly harmonious and beautiful, because the spirit which pervaded it was one of true adoration and love.
And yet such men, working day by day in God's name, and for the love of Christ, cannot be recognised and encouraged, because, providentially, they have been brought into the work by other channels than those of the Established Church; while on the other hand, they must be quite cast out of the synagogue, because they do not make election the beginning, middle, and end of all their sermons.
In the presence of such ignorance, superstition, immorality, bigotry, and consequent suspicion and disunion how can we be surprised that Romanism is replanting itself in the Weald? Although at present no effort is made at proselytising, it would be idle to suppose that the Jesuits have chosen this locality wherein to build two noble orphanages, and to found a nunnery on the site of an ancient archi-episcopal palace, without any ulterior purpose of propagating their faith among the people.
The nunnery is contiguous to the parish church, and being a restoration of the ruins of the palace built about the same period, the two buildings will, in course of time, seem to belong to each other. The great hall, a fine apartment, which formerly possessed an open roof, has been turned into a chapel. On the walls have been placed a series of beautiful bas-reliefs representating the stations of the cross. Two figures of Jesuit saints—SS. Stanislaus and Alphegius—stand before the altar, apparently guarding it. The nuns call themselves "the Sisters of the Holy Child."
The orphanages being in lofty positions, are visible for miles round. They have both been built at the expense of the Duchess of Leeds, and are said to have cost, the one £15,000, the other £20,000. I made a pilgrimage to one, and found its arrangements all that could possibly be desired. The door was opened by one of the brothers who acts as cook; another brother was sent for, who very courteously showed me over the building. I was taken into the chapel—a plain building with an altar decorated with flowers, and a statue on one side of St. Joseph and the Child, on the other of the Virgin Mary. She was also surrounded with flowers; it had lately been the feast of the Assumption. My cicerone told me that a Dutchman named Reinkens was the founder of their fraternity, and that they were called Xavierian Brothers, after St. Francis Xavier, and were a branch of the great Ignatian Society.
He took me into the dormitory—a vast apartment which seemed to extend the whole length of the building. It was divided by a number of arches down the centre, filled in to about the height of a man's breast, so cutting the dormitory in two without lessening the quantity of air. The elder boys slept on one side, the younger on the other. When they enter the room for the night, each boy stands at the head of his bed, and taking hold of the white counterpane, folds it up. Then, at a given signal, they all kneel down and say their evening prayer. These acts, and every other, are all done by rule, the whole company being directed by a single brother, who stands on a step by one of the arches.
In the schoolroom the boys appeared seated at desks, or standing in a half-circle. They were reading out of a lesson-book, the subject being "The Third Foe to Salvation—the Flesh." In the upper part of the building was another large apartment, and used at present as a play-room, but intended for another dormitory, but as yet the orphanage only contains fifty boys, whereas it is constructed for two hundred.
The brothers, I think, were ten in number, and are liable to be removed and sent elsewhere at any time. Their vows are the three ordinary ones,—poverty, chastity, and obedience. Their chief work is educating the young, and they have such faith in their system that this brother said that if a boy six years of age were placed in his hands he would undertake to mould him according to his own will. When the boys grow up they are rarely devoted to the priesthood. On the contrary, they are sent into various secular stations abroad, or in England. Carpentering, tailoring and baking are taught in the house. But they are educated not only for artisans, but some even enter the liberal professions. One was already in the Ordnance Survey, and two were clerks in London. They all wear a brown holland skeleton suit in summer, and a corduroy one in winter. A friend asked one of the boys, who was working in the garden, how he liked it; he gave no direct answer, but replied in this characteristic fashion,—"If I were to speak against the orphanage, should I not be an ungrateful boy?"
Faith still lingers in the Weald, genuine and powerful. "I never saw such beautiful death-beds as I have seen in Sussex," said a clergyman to the writer. Among the cottages I visited was one in a drear, dilapidated row. I entered. It was a large, bare room, with a brick floor. I was invited, however, to ascend the staircase, and there in the upper room lay a pale, intelligent woman. She had been ill for years, and was so weak that she could not speak, spelling out all she wished to say by means of a large alphabet. She had had a bad husband, and now was partially supported by the parish. On her bed were a number of religious papers and tracts, which she gave to every one who came, so that there was not a house in the town without one. It was easy to see that she was carefully tended by those who loved her. A little lad sat by her bed-side—a neighbour's child, she said. An atmosphere of calm peace and love reigned around. The Divine light shone all the brighter for its bare, poverty-stricken surroundings.