The Farringdons

by Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

In those days—and, in fact, in all succeeding ones—Elisabeth lived in a world of imagination. There was not a nook in the garden of the Willows which was not peopled by creatures of her fancy. At this particular time she was greatly fascinated by the subject of heathen mythology, as set forth in Mangnall's Questions, and had devoted herself to the service of Pallas Athene, having learned that that goddess was (like herself) not surpassingly beautiful, and was, moreover, handicapped by the possession of gray eyes. Miss Farringdon would have been horrified had she known that a portion of the wood was set apart by Elisabeth as "Athene's Grove," and that the contents of the waste-paper basket were daily begged from the servants by the devotee, and offered up, by the aid of real matches, on the shrine of the goddess.

"Have you noticed, sister," Miss Anne remarked on one occasion, "how much more thoughtful dear Elisabeth is growing?" Miss Anne's life was one long advertisement of other people's virtues. "She used to be somewhat careless in letting the fires go out, and so giving the servants the trouble to relight them; but now she is always going round the rooms to see if more coal is required, without my ever having to remind her."

"It is so, and I rejoice. Carelessness in domestic matters is a grave fault in a young girl, and I am pleased that Elisabeth has outgrown her habit of wool-gathering, and of letting the fire go out under her very nose without noticing it. It is a source of thanksgiving to me that the child is so much more thoughtful and considerate in this matter than she used to be."

Miss Farringdon's thanksgiving, however, would have been less fervent had she known that, for the time being, her protégée had assumed the rôle of a Vestal virgin, and that Elisabeth's care of the fires that winter was not fulfilment of a duty but part of a game. This, however, was Elisabeth's way; she frequently received credit for performing a duty when she was really only taking part in a performance; which merely meant that she possessed the artist's power of looking at duty through the haze of idealism, and of seeing that, although it was good, it might also be made picturesque. Elisabeth was well versed in The Pilgrim's Progress and The Fairchild Family. The spiritual vicissitudes of Lucy, Emily, and Henry Fairchild were to her a drama of never-failing interest; while each besetment of the Crosbie household—which was as carefully preserved for its particular owner as if sin were a species of ground game—never failed to thrill her with enjoyable disgust. She knew a great portion of the Methodist hymn-book by heart, and pondered long over the interesting preface to that work, wondering much what "doggerel" and "botches" could be—she inclined to the supposition that the former were animals and the latter were diseases; but even her vivid imagination failed to form a satisfactory representation of such queer kittle-cattle as "feeble expletives." Every Sunday she gloated over the frontispiece of John Wesley, in his gown and bands and white ringlets, feeling that, though poor as a picture, it was very superior to the letterpress; the worst illustrations being better than the best poetry, as everybody under thirteen must know. But Elisabeth's library was not confined to the volumes above mentioned; she regularly perused with interest two little periodicals, called respectively Early Days and The Juvenile Offering. The former treated of youthful saints at home; and its white paper cover was adorned by the picture of a shepherd, comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock coat and top hat—presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter magazine devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad; and its cover was decorated with a representation of young black persons apparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture the frock coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence.

There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. The first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting. It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning their backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead—a more effective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting the right way about; because—as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned rightly—if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose portraits they were. It was a source of great family pride to her that her grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm up a pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he had done it Elisabeth never could conceive.

The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit presentment of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at Epworth. In those days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so high that she could not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that the boy Wesley (whom she confused in her own mind with the infant Samuel) was flying out of an attic window by means of flowing white wings, while a horse was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him straight to heaven.

Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed strange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sort of reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, which depicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through the shades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings and bilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is but fair to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. For years Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant, proprietary interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would one day succeed.

There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by the widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased had been Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a delicate compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window, it was so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little white tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered with a red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and down this staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns and purple wings.

Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with our added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous in an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of angels, had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even though on the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He, Who taught them as by parables, never misunderstood—as did certain of His followers—their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that it was good.

The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary; and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews were strewn with white hymn-sheets, which lay all over the chapel like snow in Salmon, and which contained special spiritual songs more stirring in their character than the contents of the Hymn-book; these hymns the Sunday School children sang by themselves, while the congregation sat swaying to and fro to the tune. And Elisabeth's soul was uplifted within her as she listened to the children's voices; for she felt that mystical hush which—let us hope—comes to us all at some time or other, when we hide our faces in our mantles and feel that a Presence is passing by, and is passing by so near to us that we have only to stretch out our hands in order to touch it. At sundry times and in divers manners does that wonderful sense of a Personal Touch come to men and to women. It may be in a wayside Bethel, it may be in one of the fairest fanes of Christendom, or it may be not in any temple made with hands: according to the separate natures which God has given to us, so must we choose the separate ways that will lead us to Him; and as long as there are different natures there must be various ways. Then let each of us take the path at the end whereof we see Him standing, always remembering that wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein; and never forgetting that—come whence and how they may—whosoever shall touch but the hem of His garment shall be made perfectly whole.