A long three miles leads direct from Mapledurham to Reading—a lovely road through woodlands, by way of Caversham; but Caversham spoils it all, at the end: Caversham, the cross-river suburb of Reading, where the new streets impinge upon the fair face of the country, and where the gasworks and the destructors, and suchlike evidences of civilisation abound, and crying children and angry mothers cry and spank. If I were a Blount and owned Mapledurham, I would not journey from it by way of Caversham, that is quite certain! The best way is undoubtedly by river, past delightful Purley; or by the road along the Berkshire bank, through Upper Purley, and past Tilehurst railway station.
Purley might well be thought to lie outside the strife of the wicked world. The “lea” down in which the village lies is so secluded that none others than those who live here, or have business in the place, ever come into it—unless they be stalwart or inquisitive explorers of the calibre—shall it be said?—of the present writer. The “village,” of a few rustic cottages, lies down below the high road, between the tall embankment of the Great Western Railway and the river. You may hear the trains numerously rushing by, swishing with a curious sound past the dense trees that fill this little nook and flourish upon the embankment itself, but you cannot well see them: only the arm of a tall signal-post wagging continually between the signal to proceed or to stop. The trains tell the villagers, plainly enough, that there is a busy world; and they can see it, plainly enough, when they go for their weekly marketing to Reading; but the business of it all passes by, out of sight, in the manner typified by those swiftly-moving trains.
There should be no ill in this place; but since they are human beings that live here, and not angels, there has been of late a good deal of trouble, well-known to local people in what was styled by the Berkshire newspapers of 1907-8 “The Purley Scandal.”
There need have been no scandal, so far as the outer world was concerned, had it not been for the action of the rector of the parish.
But let a summary of the case, extracted from one of the newspapers, here be given:
“A Mrs. Moule had been head mistress of the Purley Church of England school for twelve years, and had conducted it during that time efficiently, with nothing to be urged either against her abilities or her character. But Mrs. Moule had a daughter who loved not wisely but too well. The result was that the girl had to get married hastily. She left the village until the child was born; then she went to stay with her mother for a few days. The rector of the parish—one of those nice, charitable Christian gentlemen with whom our readers are by this time well acquainted—demanded that Mrs. Moule should turn her daughter out of doors for at least six months. The mother refused, her ‘conduct’ was brought to the notice of the school managers by the holy man aforesaid, and she was dismissed her employment. The Education Committee of the Berks County Council supported the parson and the managers in their monstrous act of injustice, and tried to burke discussion. The whole question was then raised at a special meeting of the Council, when the decision arrived at was ‘that this Council expresses a wish that the Education Committee will, should opportunity offer, sanction Mrs. Moule’s appointment to a similar post to that which she recently held.’”
Here we see in working that truly British love of compromise, which has been aptly defined as a middle course by which neither party is satisfied.
The church of Purley lies quite remote, at the end of the scattered cottages, and through a woodland path. The body of it has been rebuilt, but the red-brick seventeenth-century tower remains, with a sculptured heraldic shield of the Bolingbrokes on its south face.