The Vicar of the Parish

I have said that mother possessed a sort of foolish pride and independence of mind, and that had she been more pliable and clamorous, we need not have suffered much destitution. I fear I must confess, also, to seeing her once—only once—guilty of rudeness, and of speaking to a gentleman of position as if she were his equal, when in reality she was in want of the daily necessaries of life. I trust I shall be forgiven by those friends into whose hands this autobiography may fall—and the more readily because, by that time, the earth, a yard deep, will be covering my face—for believing that mine was the best mother in the world. But I should be dissembling, and unfaithful to my promise of telling the truth and the whole truth, did I hide her weaknesses. She was a woman of warm temper and strong feeling, and, I rather fancy, gloried a little in being a ‘plain speaker.” My experience of such people is that, while they excel in straightforwardness, they run the risk of forgetting the feelings of others and of showing a want of that suavity and good taste which should adorn the character of every true Christian.

In a small, quiet place, the “Vicar of the parish,” is at no time an inconsiderable personage. It often happens that there is a readiness, or an over-readiness, to acknowledge the importance of the fortunate occupant of the Vicarage. His irremovability from office has possibly a tendency to cause the Vicar, on his side, to receive, with a good grace, whatever of importance might be laid upon him, and sometimes a little more, just as he may be naturally inclined. Mr. Brown was no exception to the rule, and if there was a man in the town of my birth who was less respected than he deserved to be, that man was not Mr. Brown. He was a portly, double-chinned, genial gentleman, and although I would on no account insinuate that he “walked as men,” still he was, in the literal sense of the word, “carnal.” He bore about his person signs that his living, worth seven hundred a year, had not been without its blessings. And when I say that others were benefitted by his comfortable circumstances, I am paying his memory a tribute which it rightly deserves. Never was his ear heavy to the cry of the needy, nor his pocket buttoned against the poor and afflicted. In him the widow and the orphan found a kindly friend—especially if they attended Church. Although Mr. Brown, like everybody else, was obliged to remember that nearer is elbow than wrist, the wrist—that is to say, the poor Dissenter —was not altogether forgotten. When appealed to for help, if he could not see his way clear to contribute from his own purse, or from those legacies left him “as long as water ran,” by the departed whose names appeared on the walls of the church, he would invariably say a good word for the applicants to some guardian or other, so as to secure them a few pence from the parish. If anybody wanted a letter of recommendation, it was to Mr. Brown he went for it. No town’s movement, of any consequence, was complete if Mr. Brown’s name did not figure in connection therewith. However severe their rheumatism, the shaking old man and the bent old woman, must doff the hat and curtsey to Mr. Brown when they met him. Those idlers and loafers who hang around street corners, whose means of living no man knows, when they saw Mr. Brown, ceased their funning, hid their cutty- pipes in their palms and touched their hats to him as he went by. There was some kind of winsomeness, distinction, charm, I hardly know what to call it, about Mr. Brown’s manner at all times. I fancy everybody, at the time, was as much capable of describing the thing as I am now. It was something in the air which influenced all, aye, even the Dissenters. I remember Mr. Brown once honouring a Bible Society meeting with his presence. When he came in, never was there such a clapping of hands and stamping of feet heard. Some people, forgetting where they were, in the joy of the moment, exerted themselves until they were fairly out of breath. It is a fact that several Dissenters, to say nothing of Church folk, shed tears of joy on the occasion; the reason for such an extraordinary manifestation of feeling, doubtless, being a sincere respect for the good old Book, coupled with the knowledge that a gentleman of Mr. Brown’s rank and position had been secured as a patron for that Society whose object it is to give

Mr. Brown said but little at the meeting (he never could without a book), but he was there, and that spoke volumes, a fact which made some people, who thought they could read the signs of the times, rather fancy that the millenium was not far off.

For all this, Mr. Brown himself was an unassuming man, the deference paid to whom would have made many another lose his head. Even his warmest admirers admitted he had one drawback—he could not preach. His delivery was slow and painful, but, like a wise man, he took care never, at any time, to tire his hearers with verbosity. He had a habit, when in the pulpit, of turning up the whites of his eyes, which was to some people “as good as a sermon.” Besides, his shortcomings in the pulpit were made up, possibly more than made up, by the fact that he was a justice of the peace, which character gave him an influence over some whom he could never have reached within the walls of the church. “Ned the Poacher,” seeing him on the street, would “make sly eyes” at Mr. Brown, and it was easy to read in his face the consciousness of an unusual width of pocket in the skirts of his velvet coat. “Drunken Tom,” too blind to see anyone else, would perceive Mr. Brown from afar, and after a stagger and a glance through his half-open eyes, as through a mist, would make a desperate attempt to walk straight until Mr. Brown had passed. Had he not, in his magisterial character, come into contact with these gentry on Monday mornings in the County Hall, Mr. Brown’s influence with them would have been nil. Not to be too minute, Mr. Brown was a man of considerable importance amongst all classes, and it was said of him that he feared no one but the owner of the Hall. I am forced to conclude that Mr. Brown was pretty much what he ought to be, or mother would never have esteemed him so highly; because, as I have more than once intimated, her prejudice against Church of England people was something awful. As to Mr. Brown, I heard her praise him many times, only she always took care to qualify the eulogy by the remark —“as a neighbour.” It was “as a neighbour” alone she gave him a good word. In speaking of religion, she unhesitatingly expressed her fear that Mr. Brown had not ‘proved the great things.” One observation of hers, with regard to him, I shall never forget. She happened to be talking to Margaret Peters. who was a Churchwoman, in praise of a Methodist preacher, when Margaret said, “Our Mr. Brown is a very good man, only he is not much of a hand at preaching.” To which my mother replied:—“That’s exactly the same, Margaret, as if you were to say James Pulford is a very good tailor, only he can’t stitch.” Margaret must have felt the force of the observation, for, as they sometimes say in the House of Commons, “the subject then dropped.”

As might have been expected, the conviction and sentence of my brother Bob by Mr. Brown and the owner of the Hall, did not increase my mother’s respect for the former. She considered the magistrates had manifested a want of judgment and an unpardonable haste. Whether it was his concern for us as his parishioners, or a consciousness of shame for the part he had taken in the trial, that brought the reverend gentleman on a visit to us, I cannot, for certain, say. Very willing am I to place the best construction upon his conduct and to believe that his motive was pure and praiseworthy. When I call that visit to mind, I become ashamed of the reception mother gave our visitor, especially when I consider the respect paid to Mr. Brown by the generality of people. Perhaps I ought to say that, although Mr. Brown was Welsh on his mother’s side, it was but imperfectly he spoke our old Cymric tongue.

“Good morning, Mrs. Lewis,” said our vicar, panting for breath and wiping the perspiration from his red face and sleek, fat neck.

“Good morning,” said mother stiffly, and without the least attempt at a curtsey, or as much as asking him to take a seat. But Mr. Brown sat, unasked, upon an old chair by her side, which, like all the rest in our house, was so terribly ricketty that I dreaded every minute it would give way beneath the unusual load now laid upon it, the more so because it was horribly uncomfortable, and creaked like an old basket.

After a brief, painful silence, Mr. Brown said:—

“Very fine day, Mrs. Lewis.”

“The day is right enough, Mr. Brown. Were everything like the day, no one would have cause to complain,” replied mother drily, and taking to that old habit of pleating her apron, which indicated always that she had something on her mind to which she wanted to give utterance.

“How do you get on, as things are now, Mrs. Lewis? Do you have enough food?” Mr. Brown asked, kindly.

“I get on better than I deserve, and have had enough food to keep body and soul together; although I have no one to thank for it but the One who feeds the young of the raven, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust,” was mother’s answer.

“You say very good; you ’cognise the hand of the Great King,” observed Mr. Brown.

“I hope I do,” said mother, tartly. “But while recognising the Great King’s hand, I can’t shut my eyes to somebody else’s hand also. Those wretched people of old who saw the hand of the God of Israel, knew something of Pharaoh’s too.”

“Yes, very bad man, Pharaoh, Mrs. Lewis.”

“Bad enough,” returned mother; “and though he was drowned in the Red Sea, his children were not, more’s the pity. There is reason to fear that some of his offspring, and of Og’s the king of Bashan, live to persecute God’s people to this day, even though the Bible says that Og was utterly destroyed.”

“You know deal of Scripture, Mrs. Lewis,” remarked Mr. Brown, approvingly.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Brown,” said mother, ‘that like many more, I know a deal more than I do. ‘Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.’”

“We must all try keep the commandments, Mrs. Lewis, or we never enter into the life,” said our visitor.

“We must, as a rule of conduct,” replied mother. ‘But we’ll never enter into the life unless we do something more. I know this much of divinity, that we were shut out for ever on Sinai and that, if we wish to enter into the life, we must turn elsewhere for the foundation of our hope. That’s what the Bible and Charles’s Preceptor teach us. And I believe them, whatever the Common Prayer may teach. I say nothing about that.”

“You chapel people know nothing ’bout Common Prayer. Common Prayer very good book, Mrs. Lewis; same as the Bible,” said Mr. Brown.

“I say nothing about your Common Prayer, Mr. Brown, but I’ll say this, that God’s Book is the Bible, and I have no fear in saying, further, that the next book to that is Charles’ Instructor, and if I were to live to a hundred, no one will change my opinion upon the point,” declared my mother vehemently.

Mr. Brown, smiling at her simplicity, remarked:—

“Well, we’ll leave it be so, Mrs. Lewis. I do like to see people zealous. But what I was thinking of was, how ’re you getting along, now Bob’s in jail? Do you have enough to eat, you and the boy here? Though you don’t come to Church, I was thinking, Mrs. Lewis, to give a bit of—of assistance to you, or to get a little from the parish, till Bob comes back.”

Mr. Brown spoke in a kindly tone, and I have no doubt that he sympathised greatly with mother and me in our distress. But his words touched a cord in mother’s self-reliant nature which elicited a response I considered rude and altogether unbecoming towards a gentleman occupying a position and enjoying a respect like Mr. Brown’s. I think I can remember, word for word, all she told him in reply.

“Mr. Brown,” she said, “I know only of One who can give a bruise and heal it, who is able to cast down and raise up; so, if you came here thinking to put a plaister upon the hurt you gave, your errand has been in vain. A kick and a kiss I call a thing of that sort, Mr. Brown. After you had put my innocent boy in prison, it would be very difficult for me to take any help from you, let my distress be what it might. Perhaps you will say I am making bold, and so I am; but I must speak the thing which is on my mind; I’ll feel easier then. I am surprised at you, Mr. Brown! I used to think well of you, as a neighbour; but, if it makes any difference to you, you have gone down ten degrees in my sight. I think I know with whom I am speaking; because, as Thomas of Nant said:—

And I don’t much fancy, Mr. Brown, that God guides you when you associate and co-operate with a man like the owner -of the Hall, who cares for nothing on this earth but his racehorses, fox-hounds, and furniture.”

“Mrs. Lewis! Mrs. Lewis!” remonstrated Mr. Brown.

“My name is Mary, Mr. Brown. I’m but a poor woman, and I don’t want to be ‘mistressed,’ if you please. But I tell you again—your place is not on the bench, hearing every cause, clean and dirty. A priest has quite enough to do to look after the souls of his congregation, if he has that work at heart, without meddling with other matters; and if I were queen, I would say to every priest, and preacher too, for that matter, as the Lord said in another case—and one which it would be well for you and I to think more of—‘What hast thou to do to declare my statutes?’ That I would. Paul, before his conversion, was on the way to Damascus with his pockets stuffed with summonses for putting good men in prison; but, after that great event, I warrant you he tossed them all over the hedge, and nobody ever heard of his sending anyone to gaol again; he had better work to do by a great deal. Another thing, Mr. Brown, I don’t know how you can expect a blessing, or give sleep to your eyes, or slumber unto your eyelids, when your heart knows, by this time, that you have hurried an innocent lad to gaol, one who—and it is not because I’m his mother I say so—has a good deal more in his head than many who think themselves somebodies; one who, although, more’s the pity, he does not now profess religion, has led a life against which no one can say a word. I have no wish to hurt anybody’s feelings, but my son never, in his life, touched a drop of intoxicating drink, nor was he ever in the Red Dragon playing boogoodell, or whatever you call it. And although he was but a common collier, I think as much of him as other people do of their children who have been brought up in bordin’ schools, and taught to frivol, and to feed their pride and fulfil the desires of the flesh; that I do. No one need have spoken to me of help from the parish, if you, Mr. Brown, and the owner of the Hall had not wrongfully imprisoned my son. I hope, still, to be kept from going on the parish, although there are many to whom it is useful. But as to going to Church, I never will. As you know, I’ve been there several times at thanksgiving services; but, I am bound to tell you, I never found anything for my soul there. Methodis’ have I always been, and, by the help of God, Methodis’ I shall always remain. I’ll try and rough it, somehow, till my son comes back, without help of either parish or parson.”

Mother delivered this address fluently, and with a withering scorn upon her face which I never knew it wear, before or since. Constant fear that the chair would give way under Mr. Brown, and deep shame for my mother’s audacity, threw me into a great sweat. I was glad from the bottom of my heart to. hear her put an end to her lecture. Mr. Brown seemed thunderstruck and wounded; and not without cause. But he was not the man to defend an act, though it were his own, if he thought it to be unjust. Mother knew him well enough to make bold with him in this. She knew, also, that if the belief were common in the town that Bob and his companion had been wrongfully imprisoned, no one could be more fully aware of the fact than Mr. Brown, who was never, at any time, a stranger to public opinion. Mr. Brown did not attempt to defend himself. When he got up to go I felt mightily relieved, because I was convinced, now, that the chair would not break. Before leaving, he said, morosely almost,—

“No one ever spoke like that to me before, Mrs. Lewis; and p’raps you’ll want assistance from me yet.”

“I don’t deny the first, Mr. Brown,” returned mother, “because I hope you never before put an innocent lad in gaol. It is no harm in the world for you to hear a bit of the truth sometimes, and I feel very much what-d’you-call-it after telling you what I have. But as to the other thing, namely, that I’ll come to ask you, next time, I have nothing to do but trust in Providence; only, if I ever throw myself upon your good mercy, you may be sure that I shall have first tried everybody else in vain.”

Mr. Brown left, fuming.

“I said nothing out of the way to him, did I?” mother asked, when he had gone.

I replied that I feared she went a little too far, and had hurt his feelings.

“Don’t talk rubbish,” she rejoined. “His skin is much thicker than you imagine. The Saviour and his Apostles spoke plainer truth, a good deal, to the High Priest than I did to Mr. Brown. I knew very well where I stood, and I’ll defy him to send me a summons, big a man as he is.”

That night, Abraham Jones, the overseer at the Red Fields Pit, came to our house to notify mother that good and constant work was being kept for Bob by the time he came home, and that whatever money she might stand in need of, meanwhile, was to be had, Bob to make re- payment from his wages as best he could. Mother having cried a little, and expressed her thanks, over and over again, gave Abraham—a zealous Congregationalist—particulars of the parson’s visit, which diverted him greatly. On leaving, he handed mother a sovereign by way of loan. She looked at the coin on every side and from every angle, as one looks at an old friend whose face he has almost forgotten.

“A good man showeth favour and lendeth,’” she said; “he will guide his affairs with discretion.’ Do you know what? I had nearly forgotten the sort of person our Queen was. I remember a time when I was right well acquainted with her. I hope we’ll see each other oftener in the future. Long life and grace, both to her and her children, is the sincere wish of my heart.”