In 1879, “Jezreel” married Clarissa Rogers, the daughter of a New Brompton sawyer; and, assuming the name of “Queen Esther,” she paid a visit, with the prophet, to America. This precious pair made an extraordinary number of converts in their preaching tours, and, returning to England, made Gillingham the headquarters of their New House of Israel. Schools and twenty acres of various buildings were built there at a cost of £100,000, and the “Temple,” intended to hold 20,000 people, was commenced on Chatham Hill. But “Jezreel” died in 1885, chiefly of drink and the effects of sunstroke, before this work could be completed and the zealots, who were wont to go about with long hair tucked under purple-velvet caps, began to wake up to a sense not only of their sumptuary folly, but also of the phenomenal simplicity which they had exhibited in giving up their property to the House. “Queen Esther” was incapable of fooling these simple folk as completely as “Jezreel” had done, and minor prophets sprang up to dispute her sovereignty over the elect. Perhaps they were jealous of the state in which this quondam sawyer’s daughter drove about in a carriage and pair, attended by liveried servants. Perhaps also they had visions and Divine inspirations. At any rate, “Queen Esther” presently drooped, and died in 1888, in her twenty-eighth year; whereupon the sect swiftly collapsed under the rival seers who followed. Lawsuits succeeded to the fine religious frenzy in which the “Temple” was raised, and it still stands unfinished, visible on its hilltop over a great part of Chatham. It would be a pity to pull it down, or to complete it; or, indeed, to do anything at all to it, for, as it is now, it furnishes perhaps as eloquent a sermon on human wickedness and folly as could well be delivered.
The great tower, framed in steel and built of yellow brick with ornamental lines of blue Staffordshire brick, has stone panels carved with a trumpet with a scroll, “The Flying Roll,” suspended from it; with the Prince of Wales feathers and the motto “I serve,” and other devices. The unfinished tower itself cost £44,000. The foundation-stone was laid, as an inscription says, 19th September, 1885, “by Mrs. Emma Cave, on behalf of the 144,000. Revelations (sic) 7th, 4.”
It was understood that Mrs. Cave, who at that time owned a large part of Tufnell Park, found the money for the tower, selling her property for the cause. The unfinished tower was seized by the building contractors for debt, and offered for sale by auctioneers, who stated it “would do for a lunatic asylum, prison, infirmary, etc.” This suggestion failed, and the contractors, unable to sell the incomplete carcase, let it to the sect under a lease, which terminated in 1905. There were at that time Jezreelite workrooms and printing-offices in the basement. An American Jezreelite then appeared, one Michael Keyfor Mills, calling himself “Prince Michael,” and proposing to complete. The founder’s father-in-law, Edward Rogers, who had rented the place as a wholesale grocery warehouse, opposed him and secured an injunction against members of the sect who had supported the idea. Mills died at Gillingham in January, 1922, aged sixty-five.
In 1908 a company was formed to demolish the building and sell the materials; but when the upper floors had been taken down the concern became insolvent. In 1913 it was proposed to convert the building into a “Picture Palace,” but the idea came to nothing; and later, the property was offered at auction and withdrawn at £3,900.
If there be any surviving Jezreelites of the “New and Latter House of Israel,” who believe that the souls of only those who have lived since Moses can be saved, they will be able to look with satisfaction on the remains of their tower, which was built largely with the idea that five thousand of the elect would gather here at the destruction of the world.
But in its present condition a good many of that number would be left outside; and there might be expected an unseemly crush to get within, only that by this time the elect of this particular brand must be a very small coterie.
XXVI
Little else is to be seen or noted in leaving Chatham for Rainham. The shop in which that singular old gentleman lived, with whom little David Copperfield made acquaintance, is not pointed out to the curious, and the identity of that apostrophizer of his lungs and liver, who exclaimed “Goroo, goroo,” and tearfully asked David if he would go for fourpence, has been much disputed. “The House on the Brook,” to which the Dickens family removed when Mr. John Dickens’ fortunes were low, is still to be seen, but “the Brook” has changed for the worse, and the visitor to Chatham who takes up the local papers will discover that it is pre-eminently the place where the Order of the Black Eye is conferred, on Saturday nights in especial, but more or less impartially throughout the week.
UPCHRUCH WARE