JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN.
The pattern life of a public-spirited country gentleman closed, when James Cropper of Ellergreen, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated, entered rest.
Come of an old Viking stock,—for his name is found in the Landnama Bok of Iceland,—he had inherited the best traditions of true philanthropy from his grandfather, who, with Zachary Macaulay, had worked for the emancipation of the slave. In him, too, ran something of the spirit of good old Quaker blood. Whole-hearted Churchman as he was, he loved as the Friends love, simplicity in form and directness in religious expression. In earliest days he had cared for social and industrial problems, and the sorrows of the labouring poor entered into his heart. It was his good fortune to be able, by becoming an employer of labour, in his paper mills at Burneside, to face these problems and to become, as he always wished to become, the father rather than the master of his workmen.
He lived to see Burneside become, under his fostering care, a model village. He lived to see some of his endeavours, notably his idea of Co-operative Stores for the people, find acceptance far and wide. The guardianship of the poor was a sacred trust to him. As Chairman of the Board of Guardians at Kendal for twenty-five years, and as Vice-President of the Northern Poor Law Congress, he both learned and taught wisdom. Almost the last thing he talked with me about was a scheme for caring for that most helpless class of our poorer friends, the pauper imbeciles of Cumberland and Westmoreland.
He was in early days a keen politician, and represented his neighbouring town of Kendal for five years in Parliament. Latterly he had felt that he could not be a partisan, or rather that partisanship dulled sympathies, and though it was a grief to him at the time to leave the House at the redistribution of seats, he found so much more of home politics to hand for him to do, that he ceased to regret it.
When the County Council in Westmoreland met for its first time in 1888, they unanimously elected James Cropper to be their chairman, and to the day of his death his heart was in the work.
The Queen Anne's Bounty Board gave him the chance of helping the church of his love. The late Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, had no truer friend; and the present Bishop Bardsley testified to the constant help to church work in the diocese that this most earnest layman was always willing to bestow.
But it was the cause of education—elementary, secondary, public school, or university—that was nearest to his heart. As one of the Governors of Sedbergh, and Heversham and Kendal Grammar Schools, his counsel was constantly sought. As a believer in women's education, he founded a scholarship at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and a bursary at the Edinburgh Medical School for the training of native Indian women as doctors.
JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN.
He was Chairman of a Kendal Education Society which anticipated much of the present endeavour of the Code to secure better instruction for elementary teachers. He was never so happy as when he could gather the teachers on the lawn at Ellergreen, and hold counsel with them as to their future aims and their present progress. The idea of a pupil-teachers' centre at Kendal was his, and as Chairman of the County Council he was able to lend it substantial aid. When the Voluntary School Association came into being, he took up the idea warmly, and personally visited every school within his area, and made its wants and its difficulties his own.
There was not a day that this public benefactor did not do something to help his time. And if one asked oneself why it was he had the power to be a pillar of good in his generation, a kind of beacon and standard for higher and happier life in all classes of society round about him, the answer seemed to be that he had a heart which was for ever young, in a body that seemed as if age could not touch it—that his sympathies were not with the past, but with the present and the future; that his enthusiasm for the better time coming never failed him; that he believed that all things work together for good to them that fear God and keep His commandments.
The grace of this abundant hopefulness flowed out in all he did and said. 'Age could not stale his infinite variety,' because he never grew old. To see him with young men or little children was to see him at his best. To know him in his home life was a privilege for which to be thankful.
But deeper than all his spring of hope and sympathy with the young and the new lay the fountain of poetry at his heart. He did not, I think, write poetry, but the love of it was a continual presence. He had the poet's heart, and entered into the poet's mind. For him, the practical public county magistrate and councillor, the spirit of the innermost was the joy of the imagination. This was the secret of his swift sympathy with nature and with man.
We met by appointment in the Tapestry Room of the Spanish Palace at the Paris Exhibition on October 12th, 1900. He was as cheery as ever.
'I have had a delightful week,' he said, 'I wish all my friends could have seen this wonderful exhibition. Yesterday I was at Chartres Cathedral. I never knew what stained glass was before; pray visit Chartres. It is a revelation to one.' Then he turned to the Spanish tapestries and went with deepest pleasure through the historic scenes that the needles of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have left on deathless record. He seemed as young-hearted as a boy, and as fresh in his enthusiasm as if this Paris Exhibition was the first he had ever seen, but he was seventy-seven and had seen more than falls to most of us to see, of all this world can show. I did not know as I shook hands and parted that Death already had shaken him by the hand.
That night the sharp pain of pneumonia was upon him. I saw him once again, at the bedside celebration of his last Holy Communion, and then I saw him dead. His beautiful lace without a wrinkle in it with all the look of youthfulness come back—but, alas, without the bloom, beneath that ample crown of snow-white hair which for years past had added such dignity to his refined and kindly presence. As I gazed, the one thought that came to me was this, did ever man pass so little weary, so full of keen interest and unabated enthusiasm after so long a pilgrimage, right up to the doors of that other world where, as we trust, all his fullest powers shall find full play, or enter these gates of life with so little pain?
He died in France and his body was borne across the sea and laid to rest in the valley he held most dear. It seemed as if all Westmoreland and Cumberland had come to Burneside to do him honour at the homegoing.
The coffin, covered with wreaths, was laid upon a simple wheeled bier in front of the doors of Ellergreen, and so taken by hand from the house to the church. It was his wish that no hearse should be used, and that this simpler method of carrying the body to its rest should be employed. Before the procession moved, many of those present came up to the coffin to see the beautiful photograph taken after death; and side by side of it the picture of his bride taken on her honeymoon. Beneath these two pictures were written the words from Christina Rossetti's poem:
'Think of our joy in Paradise
When we're together there,'
and beneath this a little note stating that these were the words which he had begged might be inscribed upon his tombstone.
Those who knew how ideal had been their wedded life, knew also how through all the long years of widowerhood and the grief of separation that lent its pathos to his fine face, there had been one sweet music to which he moved—the music of the hope of a sure reunion, that had surely come with joy at last.
The sunlight faded from the near fells, and sorrow filled the air. A single robin sang a note or two and was silent, and the leaves fell audibly to the ground. But all who gazed out east saw the blue Howgills and the further Pennine range shine out like burnished silver and gold, and thought of the glory of that far land to which our friend had gone.
The procession went up the drive and into the lane, and so down into the village, where every head seemed bowed and every home a house of mourning. The service, simple throughout, included his favourite hymn:
'Lord, it belongs not to my care
Whether I live or die,'
and at the grave side a third hymn was sung which had been chosen by his daughter as expressive of the continuity of happy life in the world beyond. The bishop pronounced the benediction, the mourners placed their wreaths at the grave side; silently the vast crowd melted away, and left to its long rest the body of one of the most public-spirited servants of the common good that Westmoreland has known. He will be as sorely missed as he will be surely mourned.