Soul of a Bishop | Page 8

William
Morris and learnt some Swinburne by heart, it was out of a conscious

wildness. He did not wish to be a prig. He had taken a far more genuine
interest in the artistry of ritual.
Through all the time of his incumbency of the church of the Holy
Innocents, St. John's Wood, and of his career as the bishop suffragan of
Pinner, he had never faltered from his profound confidence in those
standards of his home. He had been kind, popular, and endlessly active.
His undergraduate socialism had expanded simply and sincerely into a
theory of administrative philanthropy. He knew the Webbs. He was as
successful with working-class audiences as with fashionable
congregations. His home life with Lady Ella (she was the daughter of
the fifth Earl of Birkenholme) and his five little girls was simple,
beautiful, and happy as few homes are in these days of confusion. Until
he became Bishop of Princhester--he followed Hood, the first bishop,
as the reign of his Majesty King Edward the Peacemaker drew to its
close--no anticipation of his coming distress fell across his path.
(2)
He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home life at
the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of truth and reality.
London had not disillusioned him. It was a strange waste of people, it
made him feel like a missionary in infidel parts, but it was a kindly
waste. It was neither antagonistic nor malicious. He had always felt
there that if he searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would find the
completest recognition of the old rectory and all its data and
implications.
But Princhester was different.
Princhester made one think that recently there had been a second and
much more serious Fall.
Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside
savagely invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It
was scarred and impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion,
when the heather was not in flower it must have been a black country.
Its people were dour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and
knitted their brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown
and blistered by the gases from chemical works. Here and there
remained old rectories, closely reminiscent of the dear old home at
Otteringham, jostled and elbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron
cylinders belching smoke and flame. The fine old abbey church of

Princhester, which was the cathedral of the new diocese, looked when
first he saw it like a lady Abbess who had taken to drink and slept in a
coal truck. She minced apologetically upon the market-place; the
parvenu Town Hall patronized and protected her as if she were a poor
relation....
The old aristocracy of the countryside was unpicturesquely decayed.
The branch of the Walshinghams, Lady Ella's cousins, who lived near
Pringle, was poor, proud and ignoble. And extremely unpopular. The
rich people of the country were self-made and inclined to
nonconformity, the working-people were not strictly speaking a "poor,"
they were highly paid, badly housed, and deeply resentful. They went
in vast droves to football matches, and did not care a rap if it rained.
The prevailing wind was sarcastic. To come here from London was to
come from atmospheric blue-greys to ashen-greys, from smoke and soft
smut to grime and black grimness.
The bishop had been charmed by the historical associations of
Princhester when first the see was put before his mind. His realization
of his diocese was a profound shock.
Only one hint had he had of what was coming. He had met during his
season of congratulations Lord Gatling dining unusually at the
Athenaeum. Lord Gatling and he did not talk frequently, but on this
occasion the great racing peer came over to him. "You will feel like a
cherub in a stokehole," Lord Gatling had said....
"They used to heave lumps of slag at old Hood's gaiters," said Lord
Gatling.
"In London a bishop's a lord and a lark and nobody minds him," said
Lord Gatling, "but Princhester is different. It isn't used to bishops....
Well,--I hope you'll get to like 'em."
(3)
Trouble began with a fearful row about the position of the bishop's
palace. Hood had always evaded this question, and a number of
strong-willed self-made men of wealth and influence, full of local
patriotism and that competitive spirit which has made England what it
is, already intensely irritated by Hood's prevarications, were resolved to
pin his successor to an immediate decision. Of this the new bishop was
unaware. Mindful of a bishop's constant need to travel, he was disposed
to seek a home within easy reach of Pringle Junction, from which

nearly every point in the diocese could be simply and easily reached.
This fell in with Lady Ella's liking for