History of a literary radical, and other essays

by Randolph Silliman Bourne

At the first stroke of the ten o’clock bell, Gilbert would rush to Garna’s room, where he would find her putting on her black silk dress and little lace collar. Her black bonnet with its long crêpe veil, which Gilbert soon learned meant that grandfather was dead, would be spread out on the bed. When the last bell began to ring, and Garna had not yet put on her bonnet, an icy fear gripped Gilbert’s heart. They would be late! The maddening slowness with which Garna put the last touches to her bonnet used to send Gilbert into a delirium of anxiety. Finally they were out on the elm-shaded streets, Gilbert fairly tugging and straining to get them there before service began. Mother and Olga were always late, but that was because Olga cried. He could abandon them. He did not know what would happen to Garna and him if they were late, but he felt that it would be something namelessly awful.

But they were never late. They would sit there in the pew several minutes while the organ played and the great bell boomed outside, up in the tower. Then the minister would come in, and a sense of security and peace would steal over Gilbert, listening to the hymn and looking up at Garna, so glossy and placid next him in the pew.

In prayer-time, Gilbert would have liked to put his head down on the pew-rail in front of him, just as Garna and all the other people did, but he could not reach it. So he had to be content with ducking his head into his hand, and holding his eyes very tightly shut until he heard the “Amen” which sent them all upright again. Why people had to conceal their faces while they prayed Gilbert did not know, but it gave him a very solemn feeling to keep his eyes closed, and an even more solemn one to open them surreptitiously and look over the wilderness of bent backs.

The ceiling was very far away, and very blue, with queer indented squares that shot out reddish lines. Out of it came two enormous chandeliers of brass, with a ring of lights around, which were sometimes lighted on a dark day and made a chain of dancing lamplight. There were galleries running down each side of the church, held up by slender white pillars. Outside, just at the top of the pillars, ran a narrow ledge. Gilbert’s imagination would perform perilous adventures along that ledge. You would walk along, along, and around the back and up the other side, dizzily perched above the congregation, clinging to the brass rail, and you would come to the choir behind the minister’s desk. From the ledge to the choir was a gap of a few feet, but Gilbert saw himself jumping it, and his heart would beat faster. And then he would return painfully, exhilaratedly, around that ledge, holding on so tightly.

When Gilbert got tired of this play he would look up at the strange figures that were fastened to the under side of the ledge. They looked like playing-cards, little square raised blocks marked with black points, at regular intervals down the gallery. Gilbert sometimes imagined that they were really cards, and that a hooded figure moving down the aisles would touch them with a wand, and they would lose their frozen state and fall to the floor. From where Gilbert sat, lines went out from him in all directions: lines of the pews, lines of the aisle ahead which went along under the gallery, angles of the walls, lines of the windows. Sometimes, as his gaze wandered around the church, the line of a pillar would coincide with the line of a window, and Gilbert would hold them there together, getting a sudden satisfaction out of holding them in coincidence, and letting them go reluctantly, only when his eye would mount to the queer people in the gallery, whose bonnets and eyes and noses you could just see over the brass railing.

Sometimes in the summer when Uncle Marcus’s family was away, Garna and Gilbert sat in their pew at the back of the gallery, a pew that was as big as a house, with great arm-chairs and cushions for your feet. In front of you was the clock, the face of which you could not see, for it looked out straight towards the minister, but whose ticking you could hear. Gilbert felt very public and self-conscious when he sat there, under the high ceiling, with two long arms of the gallery, crowded with its two tiers of people, stretching away on either hand. Yet it was all very august, and religion seemed to have attained its most solemn worthiness when you sat in Uncle Marcus’s pew.

The minister was very large and very loud, and he wore a white tie. Gilbert did not altogether like him when he laid his moist and unctuous hand on Gilbert’s head, as he sometimes did in Sunday School. For after you had gone to church with Garna, you let her go home, and you stayed to Sunday School. You went into an old brick building, which stood a little distance from the church. The light poured through the big windows, and you could see the lilac-bushes outside. The room swam with very fluffy little girls, but when they had sung several hymns, Gilbert and half a dozen other little boys were shepherded into a corner and sat on their little chairs in a circle around Miss Fogg, while she taught them the lesson for the day. Gilbert always knew his golden text, and he was often the only little boy who did. Miss Fogg would smile at him, which would make him uncomfortable, and he would be glad when they all stood up and marched around the room to drop their pennies into a basket which Miss Fogg held while they sang:

“Hear the pennies dropping,
Listen while they fall,
Every one for Jesus.
He will have them all.”

Gilbert did not doubt that Jesus would have them all, and he was not in the least interested in what Jesus did with them when he had them. It was part of the ceremony, to which you resigned yourself unquestioningly, and when the penny-dropping was over, Gilbert ran home as fast as he could go, to the wonderful dinner of roast beef and potatoes that Mother had for them on Sundays.

Sunday School was a neutral, colorless event in his life. Every Sunday as they left the Sunday School, each child would receive a little leaflet; those who had known their golden texts would get a card with a golden star on it. Gilbert always cried a little if he lost his card while running home, and he cherished his leaflet for a day or two. But he never tried to read it, and he soon mislaid his golden star. Good boys, after they had got a prodigious number of golden stars, were each supposed to receive as a reward a Bible all of his own. But when Gilbert was seven years old, Garna gave him a beautiful thick black Bible, with his name—Gilbert Shotwell Harden—stamped on the cover in golden letters. Besides, it did not appeal to him to grub along for a prize. Far better to have things, glorious, imposing, come to you out of the blue sky. Once Aunt Shotwell promised him fifty cents if he would learn the Westminster Catechism, but Gilbert never got farther than “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Something obscure, unconscious, revolted in him at the base commerciality of the transaction, and although he did not question that this was the chief end of man indeed, he did not want to be bribed into proclaiming it.