Soul of a Bishop | Page 9

the rare rural quiet of the Kibe
valley and the neighbourhood of her cousins the Walshinghams.
Unhappily it did not fall in with the inflexible resolution of each and
every one of the six leading towns of the see to put up, own, obtrude,
boast, and swagger about the biggest and showiest thing in episcopal
palaces in all industrial England, and the new bishop had already taken
a short lease and gone some way towards the acquisition of Ganford
House, two miles from Pringle, before he realized the strength and fury
of these local ambitions.
At first the magnates and influences seemed to be fighting only among
themselves, and he was so ill-advised as to broach the Ganford House
project as a compromise that would glorify no one unfairly, and leave
the erection of an episcopal palace for some future date when he
perhaps would have the good fortune to have passed to "where beyond
these voices there is peace," forgetting altogether among other
oversights the importance of architects and builders in local affairs. His
proposal seemed for a time to concentrate the rich passions of the
whole countryside upon himself and his wife.
Because they did not leave Lady Ella alone. The Walshinghams were
already unpopular in their county on account of a poverty and shyness
that made them seem "stuck up" to successful captains of industry only
too ready with the hand of friendship, the iron grip indeed of friendship,
consciously hospitable and eager for admission and endorsements. And
Princhester in particular was under the sway of that enterprising weekly,
The White Blackbird, which was illustrated by, which indeed
monopolized the gifts of, that brilliant young caricaturist "The
Snicker."
It had seemed natural for Lady Ella to acquiesce in the proposals of the
leading Princhester photographer. She had always helped where she
could in her husband's public work, and she had been popular upon her
own merits in Wealdstone. The portrait was abominable enough in
itself; it dwelt on her chin, doubled her age, and denied her gentleness,
but it was a mere starting-point for the subtle extravagance of The
Snicker's poisonous gift.... The thing came upon the bishop suddenly
from the book-stall at Pringle Junction.
He kept it carefully from Lady Ella.... It was only later that he found

that a copy of The White Blackbird had been sent to her, and that she
was keeping the horror from him. It was in her vein that she should
reproach herself for being a vulnerable side to him.
Even when the bishop capitulated in favour of Princhester, that
decision only opened a fresh trouble for him. Princhester wanted the
palace to be a palace; it wanted to combine all the best points of
Lambeth and Fulham with the marble splendours of a good modern
bank. The bishop's architectural tastes, on the other hand, were
rationalistic. He was all for building a useful palace in undertones, with
a green slate roof and long horizontal lines. What he wanted more than
anything else was a quite remote wing with a lot of bright little
bedrooms and a sitting-room and so on, complete in itself, examination
hall and everything, with a long intricate connecting passage and
several doors, to prevent the ordination candidates straying all over the
place and getting into the talk and the tea. But the diocese wanted a
proud archway --and turrets, and did not care a rap if the ordination
candidates slept about on the carpets in the bishop's bedroom.
Ordination candidates were quite outside the sphere of its imagination.
And he disappointed Princhester with his equipage. Princhester had a
feeling that it deserved more for coming over to the church from
nonconformity as it was doing. It wanted a bishop in a mitre and a gilt
coach. It wanted a pastoral crook. It wanted something to go with its
mace and its mayor. And (obsessed by The Snicker) it wanted less of
Lady Ella. The cruelty and unreason of these attacks upon his wife
distressed the bishop beyond measure, and baffled him hopelessly. He
could not see any means of checking them nor of defending or
justifying her against them.
The palace was awaiting its tenant, but the controversies and
bitternesses were still swinging and swaying and developing when
King George was being crowned. Close upon that event came a wave
of social discontent, the great railway strike, a curious sense of social
and political instability, and the first beginnings of the bishop's ill
health.
(4)
There came a day of exceptional fatigue and significance.
The industrial trouble was a very real distress to the bishop. He had a
firm belief that it is a function of the church to act as mediator between

employer and employed. It was a common saying of his that the aim of