Father (drily): "I'm glad to hear you thought about something—serious—at any rate—then, in the midst of your scrapes and truancies—but go on, dear boy. It's a delight to me to hear you speak. It reminds me—I mean your voice does—of your poor mother. You know I loved her very tenderly, David, and though it is all past and done with I believe I should forgive her now, if she only came back to me. I'm sometimes so lonely, boy. I wish you'd marry and settle down here—there's lots of room for you—some nice girl—and give me grandchildren before I die. But I suppose I must be patient and wait first for your call to the Bar. What a dreary long time it all takes! Why can't they, with one so clever, shorten the term of probation? Or why wait for that to marry? I could give you an allowance. As soon as you were called you could then follow the South Wales circuit—well, go on about your Dinosaurs. I seem to remember Professor Owen invented them—but he never wavered in his faith and was the great opponent of that rash man, Darwin. Oh, I remember now the old controversies—what a stalwart was the Bishop of Winchester! They couldn't bear him at their Scientific meetings—there was one at Bath, if I recollect right, and he put them all to the right-about. What about your Dinosaurs? I'm not denying their existence; it's only the estimates of time that are so ridiculous. God made them and destroyed them in the great Flood, of which their fossil remains are the evidence—"
David however would desist from pursuing such futile arguments; feel surprised, indeed, at his own outbreaks, except that he hated insincerity. However new and disturbing to his father were these flashes of the New Learning, in his outward conduct he was orthodox and extremely well-behaved. The spiritual exercises of the Revd. Howel had become jejune, and limited very much by his failing sight. The recovery after the operation had come too late in life to bring about any expansion of public or private devotions. Family prayers were reduced to the recital from memory of an exhortation, a confession, and an absolution, followed by the Lord's Prayer and a benediction. Services in the church were limited to Morning and Evening prayers, with Communion on the first Sunday in the month, and a sermon following Morning prayer. There was no one to play the organ if the schoolmistress failed to turn up—as she often did. David however scrupulously turned the normal congregation of five—Bridget, the maid of the time-being, the gardener-groom, the sexton, and a baker-church-warden—into six by his unvarying attendance. In the course of half his stay the rumour of his being present and of his good looks and great spiritual improvement attracted quite a considerable congregation, chiefly of young women and a few sheepish youths; so that his father was at one and the same time exhilarated and embarrassed. Was this to be a Church revival? If so, he readily pardoned David his theories on the Dinosaurs and his doubts as to the unvarying evidence of Divine Wisdom in the story of Creation.
If any other consideration than a deep affection for this dear old man and repentance for his unwise ebullitions of Free Thought had guided David in the matter it was an utter detestation of the services and the influence of the Calvinist Chapel in the village, the Little Bethel, presided over by Pastor Prytherch, a fanatical blacksmith, who alternated spells of secret drunkenness and episodes of animalism by orgies of self-abasement, during which he—in half-confessing his own lapses—attributed freely and unrebukedly the same vices to the male half of his overflowing congregation. These out-pourings—"Pechadur truenus wyf i! Arglwydd madden i mi!"—extempore prayers, psalms chanted with a swaying of the body, hymns sung uproariously, scripture read with an accompaniment of groans, hysteric laughter, and interjections of assent, and a rambling discourse—lasting fully an hour, were in the Welsh language; and David on his three or four visits—and it can be imagined what a sensation they caused! The Vicar's son—himself perhaps about to confess his sins!—understood very little of the subject matter, save from the extravagant gestures of the participants. But he soon made up his mind that religion for religion, that expressed by the English—"Well, father, you are right—the 'British'"—Church in Wales was many hundred times superior in reasonableness and stability to the negroid ebullitions of the Calvinists. As a matter of fact they were scarcely more followers of the reformer Calvin than they were of Ignatius Loyola; it was just a symptomatic outbreak of some prehistoric Iberian, Silurian form of worship, something deeply planted in the soil of Wales, something far older than Druidism, something contemporary with the beliefs of Neolithic days.
Eighteen years ago, much of Wales was as enslaved by whiskey as are still Keltic Scotland, Keltiberian Ireland, Lancashire, London and wicked little Kent. It was only saved from going under completely by decennial religious revivals, which for three months or so were followed by total abstinence and a fierce-eyed continence.
Just about this time—during David's extended spring holiday in Wales (he had brought many law books down with him to read)—there had begun one of the newspaper-made-famous Revivals. It was led by a young prophet—a football half-back or whatever they are called, though I, who prefer thoroughness, would, if I played football, offer up the whole of my back to bear the brunt—who saw visions of Teutonically-conceived angels with wings, who heard "voices," was in constant communication with the Redeemer of Mankind and on familiar terms with God, had a lovely tenor voice and moved emotional men and hysterical, love-sick women to tears, even to bellowings by his prayers and songs. He had for some weeks been confined in publicity to half-contemptuous paragraphs in the South Wales Press. Then the Daily Chronicle took him up. Their well-known, emotional-article writer, Mr. Sigsbee, saw "copy" in him, and—to do him justice (for there I agreed with him)—a chance to pierce the armour of the hand-in-glove-with-Government distillers, so went down to Wales to write him up. For three weeks he became more interesting than a Cabinet Minister. Indeed Cabinet Ministers or those who aspired to become such at the next turn of the wheel truckled to him. Some were afraid he might become a small Messiah and lead Wales into open revolt; others that he might smash the whiskey trade and impair the revenue. Mr. Lloyd George going to address a pro-Boer meeting at Aberystwith (was it?) encountered him at a railway junction, attended by a court of ex-footballers and reformed roysterers, and said in the hearing of a reporter "I must fight with the Sword of the Flesh; but you fight with the Sword of the Spirit"—whatever that may have meant—and I do not pretend to complete accuracy of remembrance—I only know I felt very angry with the whole movement at the time, because it delayed indefinitely the Daily Chronicle's review of my new book. Well this Evan—in all such movements an Evan is inevitable—Evan Gwyllim Jones—with the black eyes, abundant black hair, beautiful features (he was a handsome lad) and glorious voice, addressed meetings in the open air and in every available building of four walls. Thousands withdrew their names from foot-ballery, nigh on Two Millions must have taken the pledge—and not merely an anti-whiskey pledge but a fierce renunciation of the most diluted alcohol as well; and approximately two hundred and fifty thousand confessed their sins of unchastity and swore to be reborn Galahads for the rest of their lives. It was a spiritual Spring-cleaning, as drastic and as overdone as are the domestic upheavals known by that name. But it did a vast deal of good, all the same, to South Wales; and though it was a seventh wave, the tide of temperance, thrift, cleanliness, bodily and spiritual, has risen to a higher level of average in the beautiful romantic Principality ever since. Evan Gwyllim Jones, however, overdid it. He had to retire from the world to a Home—some said even to a Mental Hospital. Six months afterwards he emerged, cured of his "voices," much plumper, and—perhaps—poor soul—shorn of some of his illusions and ideals; but he married a grocer's widow of Cardiff, and the Daily Chronicle mentioned him no more.
The infection of his meetings however penetrated to the agricultural district in which Pontystrad was situated. Five villages went completely off their heads. The blacksmith-pastor had to be put under temporary restraint. Quite decent-looking, unsuspected folk confessed to far worse sins than they had ever committed. There arose an aristocracy of outcasts. Three inns where little worse than bad beer was sold were gutted, respectable farmers' wives drank Eau-de-Cologne instead of spirits, several over-due marriages took place, there were a number of premature births, and the membership of the football clubs was disastrously reduced. Such excitement was generated that little work was done, and the illegitimate birth rate of west Glamorganshire—always high—for the opening months of 1903 became even higher.
David was enlisted by the employers of labour, the farmers, chemical works, mining and smelting-works managers, squires, and postmasters to restore order. He preached against the Revivalists. Not with any lack of sympathy, any apology for the real ills which they denounced. He spoke with emphasis against the loosening of morality, recommended early marriage, and above all education; denounced the consumption of alcohol so strenuously and convincedly that then and there as he spoke he resolved himself henceforth to abstain from anything stronger than lager beer or the lighter French and German wines. But he threw cold water resolutely on the fantastical nonsense that accompanied these emotional outbursts of so-called religion; invited his hearers to study—at any rate elementarily—astronomy and biology; did not run down football but advised a moderate interest only being taken in such futile sports; recommended volunteering and an acquaintance with rifles as far preferable, seeing that we always stood in danger of a European war or of a drastic revival of insolent conservatism.
Then he made his appeal to the women. He spoke of the dangers of this hysteria; the need there was for level-headed house-keeping women in our councils; how they should first qualify for and then demand the suffrage, having already attained the civic vote. (Here some of the employers of labour disapproved, plucked at his arm or hem of his reefer jacket, and one squire lumbered off the platform.) But he held on, warming with a theme that hitherto had hardly interested him. His speeches were above the heads of his peasant audiences; but they were a more sensitive harp to play on than the average Anglo-Saxon audience. Many women wept, only decorously, as he outlined their influence in a reformed village, a purified Principality. The men applauded frantically because, despite some prudent reserves, there seemed to be a promise of revolt in his suggestions. David felt the electric thrill of the orator in harmony with his audience; who for that reason will strive for further triumphs, more resounding perorations. He introduced scraps of Welsh—all his auto-intoxicated brain could remember (How physically true was that taunt of Dizzy's—"Inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity!").
And the delighted audience shouted back "You're the man we want! Into Parliament you shall go, Davy-bach" and much else. So David restored the five villages to sobriety in life and faith, yet left them with a new enthusiasm kindled. Before he departed on his return to London and the grind of his profession, he had effected another change. Because he had spoken as he had spoken and touched the hearts of emotional people, they came trickling back to his father's church, to the "British" Church, as David now called it. Little Bethel was empty, and the pastor-blacksmith not yet out of the asylum at Swansea. The Revd. Howel Williams trod on air. His sermons became terribly long and involved, but that was no drawback in the minds of his Welsh auditory; though it made his son swear inwardly and reconciled him to the approaching return to Fig Tree Court. The old Druid felt inspired to convince the hundred people present that the Church they had returned to was the Church of their fathers, not only back to Roman times, when Glamorganshire was basking in an Italian civilization, but further still. He showed how the Druids were rather to be described as Ante-Christian than Anti—with an i; and played ponderously on this quip. In Druidism, he observed—I am sure I cannot think why, but it was his hobby—you had a remarkable foreshadowing of Christianity; the idea of the human sacrifice, the Atonement, the Communion of Saints, the mystic Vine, which he clumsily identified with the mistletoe, and what not else. He read portions of his privately-published Tales of Taliessin. In short such happiness radiated from his pink-cheeked face and recovered eyes that David regretted in no wise his own lapses into conventional, stereotyped religion. The Church of Britain might be stiff and stomachered, as the offspring of Elizabeth, but it was stately, it was respectable—as outwardly was the great virgin Queen—and it was easy to live with. Only he counselled his father to do two things: never to preach for more than half-an-hour—even if it meant keeping a small American clock going inside the pulpit-ledge; and to obtain a curate, so that the new enthusiasm might not cool and his father verging on seventy, might not overstrain himself. He pointed out that by letting off most of the glebe land and pretermitting David's "pocket-money" he might secure a young and energetic Welsh-speaking curate, the remainder of whose living-wage would—he felt sure—be found out of the diocesan funds of St. David's bishopric.
The Revd. Howel let him have his way (This was after David had returned to Fig Tree Court) and by the following June a stalwart young curate was lodged in the village and took over the bulk of the progressive church work from the fumbling hands of the dear old Vicar. He was a thoroughly good sort, this curate, troubled by no possible doubts whatever, a fervent tee-totaller, a half-back or whole back—I forget which—at football, a good boxer, and an unwearied organizer. Little Bethel was sold and eventually turned into a seed-merchant's repository and drying-room. The curate in course of time married the squire's daughter and I dare say long afterwards succeeded the Revd. Howel Vaughan Williams when the latter died—but that date is still far ahead of my story. At any rate—isn't it droll how these things come about?—David's action in this matter, undertaken he hardly knew why—did much to fetter Mr. Lloyd George's subsequent attempts to disestablish the British Church in Wales.