Uncle Julius, whose health was rapidly declining, received my mother with many tears on our return. I have a vivid recollection of that first evening. My mother read "Bless the Lord, O my soul," at evening prayers, and said she always read that after a journey, with "He healeth all thy diseases"—so true of her. We went to Hastings for Uncle Julius's Charge to the clergy, which produced much enthusiasm amongst them, very different from his lengthy sermons in Hurstmonceaux, under which the whole congregation used quietly to compose themselves to sleep, probably well aware that they would not understand a word, if they tried to attend. The effect was sometimes most ridiculous of the chancel filled with nodding heads, or of heads which had long since done nodding, and were resting on their elbows locked in fastest slumber. I believe Mrs. Sherwood describes a similar scene in one of her stories. Aunt Esther and the curate would try in vain to keep themselves awake with strong lavender lozenges during Uncle Julius's endless discourses. And then "There's Mrs. Hare asleep on one side of the Archdeacon and the curate on the other," the people would say, and he would go droning on with a sermon preached fifty times before. There were, however, days on which Uncle Julius would emerge from the vestry with clenched hands and his face full of pale enthusiasm, and then I would whisper to my mother: "Look, Uncle Julius is going to do Lady Macbeth!" There were no slumbers then, but rapt attention, as Uncle Julius in his most thrilling (and they were thrilling) tones went through the whole of the sleep-walking scene, wrung his hands over the pulpit-cushion, unable to wash out the "accursed spot" of sin. This was generally about once a year. Though Hurstmonceaux did not comprehend them, there are, however, many fragments, especially similes, in Uncle Julius's ordinary parish sermons which will always have an effect, especially that of grief at a death—the heavy plunge when the person goes down, and the circles vividly apparent at first, then gradually widening, till they are lost and disappear altogether. And though they did not understand him, his parishioners loved Uncle Julius, for he always acted up to his own answer to a question as to the value of a living—"Heaven or hell, according as the occupier does his duty."
Uncle Julius had published a versified edition of the Psalms. He thought his Psalter would be adopted by the whole Church, and it was never used in a single church except Hurstmonceaux. During the service, he had the oddest way of turning over the pages with his nose. "The sixteenth morning of the month," he gave out one day. "No, 'tain't," called the voice of Martin the clerk from below, "'tis the seventeenth." "Oh, the seventeenth morning of the month."
There certainly was a curious absence of ritual in the services at Hurstmonceaux. Yet one felt that Uncle Julius's whole heart was in the way he read the prayers. What was wanting arose from his personal characteristics, the same which made him always hopelessly unpunctual, which caused him to waste his mornings in hopeless dawdling just when there was most to be done, which so often sent him off for his afternoon walk just as the dinner-bell rang.
I was more than usually tried during the weeks spent at home this autumn by the way in which Mrs. Alexander was set up on a pinnacle of worship by Uncle Julius and Aunt Esther—everything and everybody, especially my mother, being expected to give way to her. My journal, however, has many touching reminiscences of quiet evenings in our home life at this time—when I read aloud to my dearest mother, and she played and sang "Comfort ye," I sitting on the little sofa by her side, the light from the candles falling upon "the Reading Magdalen" over the pianoforte—and of her simple, earnest prayers aloud by the little round table in her own room that "the pleasures given us in this world might not draw us out of the simple way of God." Especially touching to me is the remembrance of our last evening together this summer, for it was then almost first that she began to allow the part my life bore in hers. "O God," she prayed, "be with us at our parting: and oh! prepare us to meet when parting will be at an end." As I kissed her afterwards she said, "You are a dear good child to me, darling. I may blame you sometimes, and find fault with your opinions, but you are a dear, good, dutiful child to me."
As I was returning to Oxford I paid a visit to Hugh Pearson at Sonning.
To MY MOTHER.
"Sonning, Oct. 21, 1854.—The thought that my mother is well now and does not need me enables me to bear having only paper-conversation again for a little while. But how I long to know each hour of the day what my dear mother is doing, and wish that she could see me—very happy here in this peaceful little spot.
"H. P. was dressing when I arrived, but came to my room to welcome me, most warmly, as he always does. There was a party at dinner, but they left early, and I had a long talk afterwards with my host over the fire. There is really no one I like so much. He gave an amusing description of his church-restoration, very gradual, not to shock people's prejudices. At last, when he put up a statuette of the patron saint—St. Andrew—over the entrance, Bishop Wilberforce came in high delight—'No other man in my diocese would have dared to do such a thing.'[98] Bishop Blomfield rather admired his stone pulpit, but said, 'I don't usually like a stone pulpit; I usually prefer a wooden one, something more suited to the preacher inside.'
"After breakfast we went out to pick up apples to feed H. P.'s pet donkey with. What a pretty place Sonning is! The river winding round, with old willows and a weir; the site of the palace of the Bishop of Sarum marked by an old ash-tree; and the church—'all as like naughty Rome as it dares,' says H. P., but very beautiful within.... 'What a rate you do write at, child,' he says as he is working tortoise-pace at his sermon by my side."