She and I Volume I Part 21

Our vicar, however, was not one of those who thus "pa.s.sed round the hat"

to strange laity! No, he made _his_ inst.i.tution entirely a self- supporting one; and his school-children had the additional pleasure of knowing, that, they a.s.sisted in paying for their treat themselves, earning it in advance, with no thanks to "charity," or strangers, all the same.

For some two months beforehand, the little ones used to deposit a weekly penny for this special purpose; and, when their contributions were thought to nearly amount to a s.h.i.+lling each, the fund was held sufficient to carry out the long-looked-for treat--although, of course, the vicar and other kindly-disposed persons would largely help to make the affair go off with the eclat and dignity suited to the occasion, all of which resulted in its being turned into a general picnic for the parish.

The anniversary of the fete this year, was celebrated with even grander effect than any former ones had been, imposing and satisfactory though they were held at the time to be. Richmond Park was the scene of our festivities; and, not only had the vicar caused to be provided a couple of roomy four-horse omnibuses, the leading one of which sported a band, to accommodate the rank and file of the juveniles under the escort of such of their mothers as could spare the time to accompany them; but, those children who had particularly distinguished themselves during the year for good conduct, were permitted to go in the gondola, in which we oldsters proceeded, to the same destination by water. It was arranged that the "'buses" should meet us at Richmond, where both descriptions of conveyances were to disgorge their motley contents; and, the several and hitherto-severed parties, joining issue, would set about making as pleasant a day of it as could be effected under the circ.u.mstances.

A "gondola" seems at first sight an anachronism on the Thames; still, on mature reflection, there does not appear to be any reason why we should not indulge in this respect equally as well as the inhabitants of much- idealised dirty Venice.

Whether you agree with me or not, however, I can tell you that there _are_ gondolas to be seen on our great watery highway--heavy barges, with bluff bows and fict.i.tious awnings and problematical cus.h.i.+ons, that may be had on hire for the asking, at most of the princ.i.p.al boating places along the banks from Chelsea to Chiswick.

On first starting, one missed the many romantic a.s.sociations with which the name of our floating vehicle was generally connected; yet, suggestive fancy could readily supply their place with kindred ideas culled from our more prosaic surroundings. We had, it is true, no crimson-sashed, ragged, ballet-costumed gondolier to "ply the measured oar;" because, in the first instance, we did not row up at all. We were a trifle too wise in our generation to pull up the river in a lumbering barge under a broiling sun, and fancy we were amusing ourselves! No, we had a horse and a tow-rope; and, went on our way gaily without exertion!

Just you volunteer, for once, to row an excursion party up to Richmond:--you'll enjoy it, I promise you! It is regular treadmill work; see, if you won't afterwards think our plan the best, and adopt it, too, or I'm no prophet, that's all!

Our gondolier "was not;" but the mounted jockey who bestrode our towing horse _was_; and, in lieu of waking the echoes with choice extracts from Ta.s.so in the liquid Venesian or harsh, gritty Tuscan dialect, _he_ occasionally beguiled his monotonous jog-trot with a plaintive ballad, in which he rehea.r.s.ed the charms of a certain "Pretty little Sarah;" or else, "made the welkin ring"--though what a "welkin" is, I have never yet been able to discover--with repeated injunctions to his somewhat lazy steed to "gee whup" and "gee wo!"

We had no "Bridge of Sighs," to pursue the parallel, where the roving eye might detect "a palace and a prison on either hand;" but, in its stead, we could gaze at the festooned chains of Hammersmith Suspension Bridge in all its simple beauty, and see the Soapworks and the Mall on the hither and further sh.o.r.e. Our course led, not through serpentine ca.n.a.ls and past Doges' palaces, gaudy with the lavish adornments of tricky Byzantine architecture; nor could we expect to see "lions" as historical as those which ornament the facade of Saint Mark's. However, as we glided up against the tide, in slow but steady progress, by willowy banks and osiered eyots, our boat yawning in and out and requiring a stiff weather helm to keep her course, we often caught glimpses of ivy-wreathed churches, charming villa residences and gothic summer-houses, peeping out from amidst the river-lining trees--with a verdant meadow here and there to break the view, its smoothly-mown surface sweeping down to the water's edge; while, we knew, also, that the stream which bore us on its bosom flowed over stakes and hurdles that our indigo-dyed ancestors, the ancient Britons, had planted in its bed, long before Caesar's conquering legions crossed the channel, or Venice possessed "a local habitation and a name."

You may say, probably, that all this is a regular rigmarole of nonsense; but, what else would you have?

It was a nice, beautiful, hot summer day, as our gondola glided on Richmondwards.

We were a merry party, all in all, pa.s.sing the time with genial and general conversation--and, occasionally, graver talk--as the mood suited us. The cheerful voices of the children, who were packed as tightly as herrings in a barrel in the bows of our craft, and their happy laughter, chimed in with the wash of the tide as it swept by the sides of our gallant barque, hurrying down to meet the flood at Gravesend. The larks were singing madly in the blue sky overhead. Each and all completed the harmony of the scene, affording us enjoyment in turn.

Disgusted apparently with our merriment and frivolity, Miss Spight, shortly after we started, introduced a polemical discussion.

"My dear sir," said she to the vicar, our captain and c.o.xswain in chief, who stately sat in the sternsheets of the gondola, "don't you think Romanism is getting very rife in the parish? They are building a new nunnery, I hear, in the main road; and they are going to set about a chapel, too, I'm told."

"That won't hurt us," said the vicar, sententiously. He disliked sectarian disputes excessively, and always avoided them if he could.

"But, don't you think," persisted Miss Spight, "that we ought to prevent this in some way?"

"I was going to speak to you on the very point to-day, sir," said Mr Mawley, before the vicar could answer. "Had we not better have a course of controversial lectures, each giving one in turn?"

"No, Mawley," replied the vicar, "since I have had the living, I have never yet permitted sectarian disputations to have a place in my pulpit; and, never will I do so as long as I live! We were instructed to preach the Gospel by our Saviour, not to wage war against this or that creed; and the Gospel is one of peace and love. Don't you remember how Saint John, when he was upwards of fourscore years, continually taught this by his constant text, 'Little children, love one another?' Let us allow men to judge us by our works. The labour of Protestantism will not be accomplished by the pharisaical mode of priding ourselves on our faith, and d.a.m.ning that of every one else! Our mission is to preach the Gospel pure and simple. Too much time, too much money, too much of true religion is wasted, in our common custom of trying to proselytise others! We should look at home first, Mawley."

"Still, sir," said the curate, "it is surely our mission to convert the heathen?"

"I do not argue against that," said the vicar. "G.o.d forbid that I should! But what I say is, that we are too apt, in seeking for foreign fields, to neglect the duty that lies nearer to us at home."

"It is a n.o.ble work, converting the heathen, though," said Miss Spight.

"That's just what I mean," responded our pastor. "All young minds are impressed with this romantic view of religion. It appears much n.o.bler to go abroad as a missionary to the burning deserts of Africa, and to run the risk of being eaten up by cannibals, to working in this benighted land of ours, which needs conversion just as much as the negroes and Hindoos! But, there's no romance about visiting dirty alleys in London!"

"There are the Scripture readers and district visitors, are there not?"

said Mr Mawley.

"True," replied the vicar, "and I would be the last to disparage their earnest efforts. What I meant was, that, while we give hundreds of pounds to foreign missions, pence are grudged for home work! There's the Society for the Conversion of the Jews, for instance, to which I have sometimes to give up my pulpit. Now, I dare say, it is a very meritorious society, but how many Jews does it gain over really to Christianity in return for the large sums that its travelling secretaries collect every year?"

"These travelling secretaries," said I, "are what the _Sat.u.r.day Review_ would call 'spiritual bagmen,' or 'commercial travellers in the missionary line.'"

"And not very far out, either," said the vicar, smiling. "They are paid a salary, at all events, if they do not get a commission, to beg as much money as they can for the society to which they belong; and they do their work well, too! They succeed in carrying off an amount of money from poor parishes, which if laid out in the places where it is garnered, instead of being devoted to alien expenditure, would do far more good, and better advance the work of the Gospel than the conversion of a few renegade Jews, whose reclamation is, in the majority of cases, but a farce!"

"But, my dear sir!"--exclaimed Mr Mawley, completely shocked at this overturning of all his prejudices.

"Hear me out," continued the vicar; "you must not misunderstand me. I'm not opposed to the principles of missions; but, to their being promoted to the disregard of all other considerations. Saint Paul says that we should do good to all, and especially to such as are 'of the household of faith.' Our missionary societies never seem to consider this. The endless number of charity sermons that we have to preach for their aid, not only extracts too much of what should be spent for the benefit of our own special communities, but militates against our getting contributions to other works of greater utility. Our congregations become so deadened by _these_ repeated onslaughts on their benevolence, that they b.u.t.ton up their pockets and respond in only a half-hearted way when we claim their a.s.sistance for _our own_ poor and parish. Let us, I say, look at home first, and reclaim the lost, the fallen, the dest.i.tute in our streets; let us convert our own 'heathen,'--our murderers, our drunkards, our wife-beaters, our thieves, our adulterers; and, _then_, let us talk of converting Hindoos and regenerating the Jews! Our duty, Mawley, as I hold my commission, is to preach Christ's gospel in all its truth and simplicity and love. We do not want to run down this or that creed, however reprehensible we may think it. Let us be judged by our deeds, and acts, and words. Let us show forth _our_ way of salvation, as we have learnt it: another authority, greater than us, will tell the world in his own good time which is _the_ faith!"

A short pause ensued, after the vicar had thus spoken; none of us cared, for the moment, to pa.s.s on to the empty nothings of every-day talk.

Seraphine Dasher was the first to break the silence.

Seeing that Miss Spight had turned to address Monsieur Parole d'Honneur, who sat by her side, the good-natured Frenchman having accompanied us, to "a.s.sist at the fete" of his friend, "the good vicaire," as he said, the wicked little seraph created a diversion.

"Gracious, Miss Spight," she exclaimed, "how you are flirting!"

The indignation of the austere virgin, and the warmth with which she repelled this accusation, caused us all so much amus.e.m.e.nt, that in another moment or two we were in the full swing again of our ordinary chatter.

As we pa.s.sed under Barnes railway bridge, where the tide was rus.h.i.+ng through the arches with all the pent-up waters of the reach beyond, Min, who had been hitherto apparently distrait, like myself, not having spoken, observed, that, the sight of a river flowing along always made her feel reflective and sad.

"It recalls to my mind," said she, "those lines of Longfellow's, from the _Coplas de Manrique_.

"'Our lives are rivers, gliding free, To that unfathom'd boundless sea, The silent grave!

Thither all earthly pomp and boast Roll, to be swallowed up and lost In one dark wave.'"

"I prefer," said I, "Tennyson's _Brook_. Our laureate's description of a moving river is not so sombre as that of the American poet; and, besides, has more life and action about it."

"How many different poets have sung the praises of the Thames," said Miss Pimpernell. "I suppose more poetry,--good, bad, and indifferent-- has been written about it, than for all the other rivers of the world combined."

"You are right, my dear," said the vicar; "more, by a good deal! The Jordan has been distinguished in Holy Writ especially; Horner has celebrated the Xanthus and Simois, and Horace the tawny Tiber; the rivers of Spain have been painted by Calderon, Lope de Vega and Aldana; the Rhine and its legends sang of by Uhland and Goethe and Schiller--not to speak of the fabled Nile, as it was in the days of Sesostris, when Herodotus wrote of it; and the Danube, the Po, and the Arno,--all rivers of the old world, that have been described by a thousand poets. But, above all these, the Thames has furnished a more frequent theme, and for great poets, too! Every aspirant for the immortal bays has tried his 'prentice hand on it, from Chaucer, in excelsis, down to the poet Close at the foot of the Parna.s.sian ladder!

"We were talking of the Thames," continued the vicar, pouring out a flood of archaeological reminiscences--"The great reason why it is so suggestive, beyond the great practical fact that it is the silent highway of the fleets of nations, is, that it is also indissolubly bound up, as well, with by-gone memories of people that have lived and died, to the glory and disgrace of history--of places whose bare names we cherish and love! Every step, almost, along its banks is sacred to some n.o.ble name. 'Stat magno nominis umbra' should be its motto. Strawberry Hill reminds you of witty, keen-sighted Horace Walpole, and his gossiping chit-chat concerning wrangling princes, feeble-minded ministers, and all the other imbecilities of the last century.

Twickenham brings back to one, bitter-tongued Pope, his distorted body and waspish mind. Richmond Hill recalls the Earl of Chatham in his enforced retirement, his gout, and the memorable theatrical speech he made on the floor of the House of Lords, at the time of our greatest national triumph and exertion, that closed his public life. Further up the stream, we come to old Windsor Castle, to be reminded of bluff Bluebeard, bigamous, wicked, king Hal; higher still, we are at Oxford, the nursery of our Church, the 'alma mater' of our learning. Lower down, at Whitehall stairs, we are face to face again with Roundheads, and regicides, and gunpowder plots; lower still, and we are at the Tower, with its cruel tyrannies and beheadings of traitors and patriots; and then, we find ourselves amidst a sea of masts which bear the English flag to the uttermost parts of the earth. No wonder our river has been so poetical:--it has deserved it! But, really, if all the poems that have been written in its honour could be collected in one volume, what a prodigious tome it would be!--what a medley of versification it would present!"

"Sure you've forgotten the Shannon entirely," observed Lady Dasher in her plaintive way.

She was certainly waking up from her normal melancholic condition; for, before this, she had been seen to smile--a phenomenon never noticed in her before by her oldest acquaintance.

"You have quite forgotten the Shannon! My poor dear papa, when he was alive, used to say that it was the finest river in the world. I remember he had a favourite song about it--I don't know if I quite recollect it now, but, I'll try."

"Do, Lady Dasher, do," said Mr Mawley, who, having been paying great attention to Bessie the while, wished, I suppose, to ingratiate himself with her mother.

"I must put on the brogue, you know," said she, looking round with an affectation of shyness, which was most incongruous on her melancholy visage; it was just like a death's head trying to grin, I thought to myself;--and then, she commenced, in a thin, quavering voice, the lay of the departed earl, her "poor dear papa."

"'O! Limerick is be-yewtifool, as iveryba-ady knows, And round about the city walls the reever Shannon flows; But 'tis not the reever, nor the feesh, that preys upon my mind, Nor, with the town of Limerick have I any fault to find!'"

"Ah! Very nice indeed! Thank you, Lady Dasher, thank you!" said the vicar, when she had got thus far, and succeeded in arresting the progress of her ladys.h.i.+p's melody; otherwise, she might have gone on the live-long summer day with the halting ditty, for it consisted, as she subsequently told us, of no less than five-and-forty verses, all in the same pleasant strain!

"I don't think," said I, to change the conversation, "that poetry is nearly as highly regarded in the present day, as it was some forty years back or so--if one may judge by the biographies of literary men of that time."