CHAPTER V
BEERS COOPERAGE
The Duchess of Trent would never call the little chamber which she used for her devotions an oratory, thinking that term savoured of Romanism. The furniture of the praying-closet was as downright and old-fashioned as its name. There was a little table against the wall, supporting a plain cross of silver, a Bible, a Book of Common Prayer, a small book of devotions called Bogatzky’s “Golden Treasury,” containing portions of Scripture, with hymns and prayers for each day. An armchair and a kneeling-cushion were the only other articles in the closet, except on the walls, which were hung with a few illuminated texts of Scripture, and a fine engraving of one of Holman Hunt’s pictures. It was such a room as might have been used by the pious Countess of Huntingdon, or one of those saintly dames who kept alive the lamp of Evangelical Christianity through the days of the Regency.
Here the Duchess was accustomed to spend many hours in pious meditation. Her nature was inclined to the tenets of the Quakers, but, like the royal mistress whom she had formerly served, she deemed that questions of ecclesiastical forms and government were unimportant, provided they did not come between the soul and its Maker. Her horror of Romanism had its root in the natural strength of her character; she revolted from the devotional practices of that communion as a healthy man might revolt from the use of crutches. Her education had taught her to consider that the claims of the Roman Church were a deliberate imposture, but she was too charitable to think evil of the individual members of its priesthood. The great wave of medieval reaction which was now sweeping over the English Church, and in a lesser degree over the Nonconformist bodies, had passed her by. The ecclesiastical subtleties which had exercised the mind of Newman and his followers were meaningless to her. She lived, as she humbly believed, in direct communion with God, whose Holy Spirit afforded her what light was necessary to salvation, and the Sacraments she regarded as mere outward tokens of a spiritual allegiance.
Believing thus, her piety overflowed, not in the observance of fasts, nor in attendance at public services, but in works of benevolence. In the country parish where she had formerly lived she had discharged all the duties of a curate, except those connected with public worship. The cottagers believed in her more than in the Rector; on several occasions she had been asked to baptize some new-born infant whose little life seemed to be guttering out. Those of such children who survived were regarded as singularly blest, and their parents showed great reluctance to let the ceremony be repeated in the church with the proper forms. She had been in still greater request as a peacemaker; no quarrel ever outlived her interference in that office. Yet she never scolded the people, and seldom rebuked them. Her method was to take the causes of mutual offence upon herself, and ask forgiveness from each in turn. It became imprudent for her to speak severely to any of the villagers, even when rebuke was called for. She found out once that a drunkard whom she had sternly reproved for ill-treatment of his children was set upon in consequence by the entire village and beaten dangerously. Her removal to London was felt like death. The whole country-side was downcast. She arranged to keep up the payment of all her alms by the hands of the Rector, but this was not felt as a consolation. Half the population of the parish followed her on the day she went away from them, the mothers crying and holding up their babes to take a last look at her, the children silent and hanging their heads. The fathers at work in the fields cast down their tools as the carriage went by, and came and stood in the road, with bared heads, till it had disappeared.
Afterwards the Rector, himself a well-meaning but dull man, meeting one of the men on his way home, said that he was glad to see so much love shown by the people for her Grace.
The man stared at him.
“Us love she, sir? Why, that’s nought. ’Twere her as loved we, sir, better than us love each other.”
When the Duchess settled in her son’s London house, she sought at once for the spot where such service as hers was most needed. She did not apply to the minister of the parish in which Colonsay House was situated, lest, tempted by her great rank, he might exaggerate the claims of his own district, and perhaps push out some humbler worker. For though every Calvinist is something of a republican, and the Duchess of Trent made it a point of conscience not to set value on the title she bore, a wise prudence taught her never to forget the importance attached to it by others, and the unwholesome influence it was likely to have over a certain class of minds. She knew how to distinguish with perfect clearness between the courtship paid to her rank and the love which she inspired on her own account; in this respect again resembling the monarch who was her friend.
After a careful investigation, carried out quietly by herself, the Duchess chose for her sphere of charitable labour a district lying in the south of the Thames, between Lambeth and Westminster Bridges. Here, under the shadow of the Archbishop’s Palace, she found heathendom as utter as, and vice more rank than that the Church was sending out missionaries to cope with in China and Hindustan.
The Vicar of the parish in which this region was included, whose name was Dr. Coles, was a pious, learned, and zealous divine, but he was believed to construe his ordination vows according to a code of honour more Roman than English. The services at St. Jermyn’s bore little resemblance to those of a Protestant place of worship, and it was suspected that they were but the outward and visible signs of a still deeper cleavage between the Doctor’s private beliefs and those affirmed in the articles of religion which he had subscribed. The Vicarage was the resort of a great number of young men from the theological colleges, among whom the Vicar of St. Jermyn’s appeared to enjoy an authority not explained by his rank in the Church.