The Farringdons | Page 4

Juvenile Offering. The former treated
of youthful saints at home; and its white paper cover was adorned by
the picture of a shepherd, comfortably if peculiarly attired in a frock
coat and top hat--presumably to portray that it was Sunday. The latter
magazine devoted itself to histories dealing with youthful saints abroad;
and its cover was decorated with a representation of young black
persons apparently engaged in some religious exercise. In this picture
the frock coats and top hats were conspicuous by their absence.
There were two pictures in the breakfast-room at the Willows which
occupied an important place in Elisabeth's childish imaginings. The
first hung over the mantelpiece, and was called The Centenary Meeting.
It represented a chapel full of men in suffocating cravats, turning their
backs upon the platform and looking at the public instead--a more
effective if less realistic attitude than the ordinary one of sitting the
right way about; because--as Elisabeth reasoned, and reasoned
rightly--if these gentlemen had not happened to be behind before when
their portraits were taken, nobody would ever have known whose
portraits they were. It was a source of great family pride to her that her
grandfather appeared in this galaxy of Methodist worth; but the hero of

the piece, in her eyes, was one gentleman who had managed to swarm
up a pillar and there screw himself "to the sticking-place"; and how he
had done it Elisabeth never could conceive.
The second picture hung over the door, and was a counterfeit
presentment of John Wesley's escape from the burning rectory at
Epworth. In those days Elisabeth was so small and the picture hung so
high that she could not see it very distinctly; but it appeared to her that
the boy Wesley (whom she confused in her own mind with the infant
Samuel) was flying out of an attic window by means of flowing white
wings, while a horse was suspended in mid-air ready to carry him
straight to heaven.
Every Sunday she accompanied her cousins to East Lane Chapel, at the
other end of Sedgehill, and here she saw strange visions and dreamed
strange dreams. The distinguishing feature of this sanctuary was a sort
of reredos in oils, in memory of a dead and gone Farringdon, which
depicted a gigantic urn, surrounded by a forest of cypress, through the
shades whereof flitted "young-eyed cherubims" with dirty wings and
bilious complexions, these last mentioned blemishes being, it is but fair
to add, the fault of the atmosphere and not of the artist. For years
Elisabeth firmly believed that this altar-piece was a trustworthy
representation of heaven; and she felt, therefore, a pleasant, proprietary
interest in it, as the view of an estate to which she would one day
succeed.
There was also a stained-glass window in East Lane Chapel, given by
the widow of a leading official. The baptismal name of the deceased
had been Jacob; and the window showed forth Jacob's Dream, as a
delicate compliment to the departed. Elisabeth delighted in this window,
it was so realistic. The patriarch lay asleep, with his head on a little
white tombstone at the foot of a solid oak staircase, which was covered
with a red carpet neatly fastened down by brass rods; while up and
down this staircase strolled fair-haired angels in long white nightgowns
and purple wings.
Not of course then, but in after years, Elisabeth learned to understand
that this window was a type and an explanation of the power of early

Methodism, the strength whereof lay in its marvellous capacity of
adapting religion to the needs and use of everyday life, and of bringing
the infinite into the region of the homely and commonplace. We, with
our added culture and our maturer artistic perceptions, may smile at a
Jacob's Ladder formed according to the domestic architecture of the
first half of the nineteenth century; but the people to whom the other
world was so near and so real that they perceived nothing incongruous
in an ordinary stair-carpet which was being trodden by the feet of
angels, had grasped a truth which on one side touched the divine, even
though on the other it came perilously near to the grotesque. And He,
Who taught them as by parables, never misunderstood--as did certain of
His followers--their reverent irreverence; but, understanding it, saw that
it was good.
The great day in East Lane Chapel was the Sunday School anniversary;
and in Elisabeth's childish eyes this was a feast compared with which
Christmas and Easter sank to the level of black-letter days. On these
festivals the Sunday School scholars sat all together in those parts of
the gallery adjacent to the organ, the girls wearing white frocks and
blue neckerchiefs, and the boys black suits and blue ties. The pews
were strewn with white