"Oh, I am in for a little affair in connection with Lusby's Music Hall," said Mr. Charrington with a smile.
The other chuckled. "Well, I never!" he said, "so am I! I sneaked a 'am from the bar of the same 'all."
There were others in that dismal company who recognised the young evangelist who had worked so earnestly among them for so long. He seized the opportunity. He prayed with these derelicts of the night, and ere they were ushered into the court to stand their hurried trials, they had all sung a hymn together, the police standing reverently by in complete sympathy with what Mr. Charrington did. The evangelist was liberated at once, the magistrate remarking that the charge was perfectly unfounded, and that, if he wished. Mr. Charrington would have his legal remedy for false imprisonment. It is hardly necessary to say that the evangelist brought no action against the police or their instigators. Of all the men I have ever met, he has realised and applied the words of the Gospel to practical life. He has always turned the other cheek.
Here is one picture. Come with me now into the debating-room of the London County Council and see Frederick Charrington, well-dressed, well-groomed, strikingly handsome, and with the manner of the polished man of the world, quietly, but forcibly, combating the emissaries and paid supporters of vice.
I believe that this, his first prominent appearance in the London County Council, was the occasion of much surprise.
Although he had never advertised himself at all, his name was, of course, familiar to his colleagues. Buried in the East End as he was—and has always been—he was, nevertheless, not unknown by rumour. The assembled members of London's parliament expected to see an elderly, bearded man—the typical missionary among the poor. They saw, instead, a slim and debonair gentleman, aristocratic in appearance, and self-possessed in manner. Such shocks to preconceived notions are not nearly so rare as people suppose. A type—of this or that vocation—gets fixed in the public mind in some odd way. The reality is often startlingly opposed to the expected.
Every one who looks at the photograph of Mr. Charrington in evening clothes, which I made him have specially taken for this book, will agree with what I say. Indeed, during his whole life in the East End, people who have never met him before, have called upon him for spiritual or material assistance, and have not left him without expressing their surprise and wonder at his personal appearance. A man once came to him who would hardly believe that he was "the" Mr. Charrington.
"I thought I was going to see an old bloke," he mumbled in clumsy apology, "you know, one of them old blokes with a white beard, seeing as I'd 'eard of you for so many years."
So, when Frederick Charrington stood up to oppose the licenses of certain notorious music halls in the West End in the London County Council, his personal appearance and manner created a vast amount of surprise, and, if what I have heard is true—and I have no reason to doubt it—something of consternation also.
The Licensing Committee of the London County Council met in the Clerkenwell Sessions House, to consider applications for music, dancing, and theatre licenses. Mr. T. G. Fardell, Chairman of the Committee, presided, and there was a very full attendance of members.