for nearly ten years after we came to golden end, the parish was administered by an elderly clergyman, who had already been over twenty years in the place. he was little known outside the district at all; i doubt if, between the occasion of his appointment to the living and his death, his name ever appeared in the papers. the bishop of the diocese knew nothing of him; if the name was mentioned in clerical society, it was dismissed again with some such comment as “ah, poor woodward! an able man, i believe, but utterly unpractical;” and yet i have always held this man to be on the whole one of the most remarkable people i have ever known.
mr. woodward
he was a tall thin man, with a slight stoop. he could not be called handsome, but his face had a strange dignity and power; he had a pallid complexion, at times indeed like parchment from its bloodlessness, and dark hair which remained dark up to the very end. his[119] eyebrows were habitually drawn up, giving to his face a look of patient endurance; his eyelids drooped over his eyes, which gave his expression a certain appearance of cynicism, but when he opened them full, and turned them upon you, they were dark, passionate, and with a peculiar brightness. his lips were full and large, with beautiful curves, but slightly compressed as a rule, which gave a sense of severity. he was clean shaven, and always very carefully dressed, but in somewhat secular style, with high collars, a frock-coat and waistcoat, a full white cambric tie, and—i shudder to relate it in these days—he was seldom to be seen in black trousers, but wore a shade of dark grey. if you had substituted a black tie for a white one you would have had an ordinary english layman dressed as though for town—for he always wore a tall hat. he often rode about the parish, when he wore a dark grey riding-suit with gaiters. i do not think he ever gave his clothes a thought, but he had the instincts of a fine gentleman, and loved neatness and cleanliness. he had never married, but his house was administered by an elderly sister—rather a grim, majestic personage, with a sharp ironical tongue, and no great indulgence[120] for weakness. miss woodward considered herself an invalid, and only appeared in fine weather, driving in a smart little open carriage. they were people of considerable wealth, and the rectory, which was an important house standing in a large glebe, had two gardeners and good stables, and was furnished within, in a dignified way, with old solid furniture. mr. woodward had a large library, and at the little dinner-parties that he gave, where the food was of the simplest, the plate was ancient and abundant—old silver candlesticks and salvers in profusion—and a row of family pictures beamed on you from the walls. mr. woodward used to say, if any one admired any particular piece of plate, “yes, i believe it is good; it was all collected by an old uncle of mine, who left it to me with his blessing for my lifetime. of course i don’t quite approve of using it—i believe i ought not even to have two coats—but i can’t sell it, and meantime it looks very nice and does no harm.” the living was a wealthy one, but it was soon discovered that mr. woodward spent all that he received on that head in the parish. he did not pauperise idle parishioners, but he was always ready[121] with a timely gift to tide an honest man over a difficulty. he liked to start the boys in life, and would give a girl a little marriage portion. he paid for a parish nurse, but at the same time he insisted on almsgiving as a duty. “i don’t do these things to save you the trouble of giving,” he would say, “but to give you a lead; and if i find that the offertories go down, then my subscriptions will go down too;” but he would sometimes say that he feared he was making things difficult for his successor. “i can’t help that; if he is a good man the people will understand.”
the church
mr. woodward was a great politician and used to say that it was a perpetual temptation to him to sit over the papers in the morning instead of doing his work. but the result was that he always had something to talk about, and his visits were enjoyed by the least spiritual of his parishioners. he was of course eclectic in his politics, and combined a good deal of radicalism with an intense love and veneration for the past. he restored his church with infinite care and taste, and was for ever beautifying it in small ways. he used to say that there were two kinds of church-goers—the people who liked the social[122] aspect of the service, who preferred a blaze of light, hearty singing, and the presence of a large number of people; but that were others who preferred it from the quiet and devotional side, and who were only distracted from the main object of the service by the presence of alert and critical persons. consequently he had a little transept divided from the body of the church by a simple screen, and kept the lights low within it. the transept was approached by a separate door, and he invited people who could not come for the whole service to slip in for a little of it. at the same time there was plenty of room in the church, and as the parish is not thickly populated, so that you could be sure of finding a seat in any part of the church that suited your mood. he never would have a surpliced choir; and in the morning service, nothing was sung except the canticles and hymns; but there was a fine organ built at his expense, and he offered a sufficiently large salary to secure an organist of considerable taste and skill. he greatly believed in music, and part of the organist’s duty was to give a little recital once a week, which was generally well attended. he himself was always present at the choir practices,[123] and the result of the whole was that the congregation sang well, with a tone and a feeling that i have never heard in places where the indigenous materials for choral music were so scanty.
mr. woodward talked a good deal on religious subjects, but with an ease and a naturalness which saved his hearers from any feeling of awkwardness or affectation. i have never heard any one who seemed to live so naturally in the seen and the unseen together, and his transitions from mundane to religious talk were made with such simplicity that his hearers felt no embarrassment or pain. after all, the ethical side of life is what we are all interested in—moreover, mr. woodward had a decidedly magnetic gift—that gift which, if it had been accompanied with more fire and volubility, would have made him an orator. as it was, the circle to whom he talked felt insensibly interested in what he spoke of, and at the same time there was such a transparent simplicity about the man that no one could have called him affected. his talk it would be impossible to recall; it depended upon all sorts of subtle and delicate effects of personality. indeed, i remember once after an[124] evening spent in his company, during which he had talked with an extraordinary pathos and emotion, i wrote down what i could remember of it. i look at it now and wonder what the spell was; it seems so ordinary, so simple, so, may i say, platitudinal.
yet i may mention two or three of his chance sayings. i found him one day in his study deeply engrossed in a book which i saw was the life of darwin. he leapt to his feet to greet me, and after the usual courtesies said, “what a wonderful book this is—it is from end to end nothing but a cry for the nicene creed! the man walks along, doing his duty so splendidly and nobly, with such single-heartedness and simplicity, and just misses the way all the time; the gospel he wanted is just the other side of the wall. but he must know now, i think. whenever i go to the abbey, i always go straight to his grave, and kneel down close beside it, and pray that his eyes may be opened. very foolish and wrong, i dare say, but i can’t help it!”
another day he found me working at a little pedigree of my father’s simple ancestors. i had hunted their names up in an old register,[125] and there was quite a line of simple persons to record. he looked over my shoulder at the sheet while i told him what it was. “dear old folk!” he said, “i hope you say a prayer now and then for some of them; they belong to you and you to them, but i dare say they were sad socinians, many of them (laughing). well, that’s all over now. i wonder what they do with themselves over there?”
the peacock
mr. woodward was of course adored by the people of the village. in his trim garden lived a couple of pea-fowl—gruff and selfish birds, but very beautiful to look at. mr. woodward had a singular delight in watching the old peacock trail his glories in the sun. they roosted in a tree that overhung the road. there came to stay in the next village a sailor, a ne’er-do-weel, who used to hang about with a gun. one evening mr. woodward heard a shot fired in the lane, went out of his study, and found that the sailor had shot the peacock, who was lying on his back in the road, feebly poking out his claws, while the aggressor was pulling the feathers from his tail. mr. woodward was extraordinarily moved. the man caught in the act looked confused and bewildered. “why did you shoot my poor old[126] bird?” said mr. woodward. the sailor in apology said he thought it was a pheasant. mr. woodward, on the verge of tears, carried the helpless fowl into the garden, but finding it was already dead, interred it with his own hands, told his sister at dinner what had happened, and said no more.
but the story spread, and four stalwart young parishioners of mr. woodward’s vowed vengeance, caught the luckless sailor in a lane, broke his gun, and put him in the village pond, from which he emerged a lamentable sight, cursing and spluttering; the process was sternly repeated, and not until he handed over all his available cash for the purpose of replacing the bird did his judges desist. another peacock was bought and presented to mr. woodward, the offender being obliged to make the presentation himself with an abject apology, being frankly told that the slightest deviation from the programme would mean another lustral washing.
the above story testifies to the sort of position which mr. woodward held in his parish; and what is the most remarkable part of it, indicates the esteem with which he was regarded by the most difficult members of a congregation[127] to conciliate—the young men. but then mr. woodward was at ease with the young men. he had talked to them as boys, with a grave politeness which many people hold to be unnecessary in the case of the young. he had encouraged them to come to him in all sorts of little troubles. the men who had resented the loss of mr. woodward’s peacock knew him as an intimate and honoured family friend; he had tided one over a small money difficulty, and smoothed the path of an ambition for another. he had claimed no sacerdotal rights over the liberties of his people, but such allegiance as he had won was the allegiance that always waits upon sympathy and goodwill; and further, he was shrewd and practical in small concerns, and had the great gift of foreseeing contingencies. he never forgot the clerical character, but he made it unobtrusive, kept it waiting round the corner, and it was always there when it was wanted.
the professor
i was present once at an interesting conversation between mr. woodward and a distinguished university professor who by some accident was staying with myself. the professor had expressed himself as much interested[128] in the conditions of rural life and was lamenting to me the dissidence which he thought was growing up between the clergy and their flocks. i told him about mr. woodward and took him to tea. the professor with a courteous frankness attacked mr. woodward on the same point. he said that he believed that the raising of theological and clerical standards had had the effect of turning the clergy into a class, enthusiastic, no doubt, but interested in a small circle of things to which they attached extreme importance, though they were mostly traditional or antiquarian. he said that they were losing their hold on english life, and inclined not so much to uphold a scrupulous standard of conduct, as to enforce a preoccupation in doctrinal and liturgical questions, interesting enough, but of no practical importance. mr. woodward did not contradict him; the professor, warming to his work, said that the ordinary village sermon was of a futile kind, and possessed no shrewdness or definiteness as a rule. mr. woodward asked him to expand the idea—what ought the clergy to preach about? “well,” said the professor, “they ought to touch on politics—not party politics, of course, but social measures,[129] historical developments and so forth. i was present,” he went on, “some years ago when, in a country town, the bishop of the diocese preached a sermon at the parish church, the week after the french had been defeated at sedan, and the bishop made not the slightest allusion to the event, though it was the dominant idea in the minds of the sensible members of the congregation; the clergy ought not only to preach politics—they ought to talk politics—they ought to show that they have the same interests as their people.”
“oh, yes,” said mr. woodward, leaning forward, “i agree with much that you say, professor—very much; but you look at things in a different perspective. we don’t think much about politics here in the country—home politics a little, but foreign politics not at all. when we hear of rumours of war we are not particularly troubled;” (with a smile) “and when i have to try and encourage an old bedridden woman who is very much bewildered with this world, and has no imagination left to deal with the next—and who is sadly afraid of her long journey in the dark—when i have to try and argue with a naughty boy who has got some poor girl into trouble, and doesn’t[130] feel in his heart that he has done a selfish or a brutal thing, am i to talk to them about the battle of sedan, or even about the reform of the house of lords?”
the professor smiled grimly, but perhaps a little foolishly, and did not take up the challenge. but mr. woodward said to me a few days afterwards: “i was very much interested in your friend the professor—a most amiable, and, i should think, unselfish person. how good of him to interest himself in the parish clergy! but you know, my dear boy, the intellectual atmosphere is a difficult one to live in—a man needs some very human trial of his own to keep him humble and sane. i expect the professor wants a long illness!” (smiling) “no, i dare say he is very good in his own place, and does good work for christ, but he is a man clothed in soft raiment in these wilds, and you and i must do all we can to prevent him from rewriting the lord’s prayer. i am afraid he thinks there is a sad absence of the intellectual element in it. it must be very distressing to him to think how often it is used; and yet there is not an allusion to politics in it—not even to comprehensive measures of social reform.”
[131]
mr. woodward’s sermons
mr. woodward’s sermons were always a pleasure to me. he told me once that he had a great dislike to using conventional religious language; and thus, though he was in belief something of a high churchman, he was so careful to avoid catch-words or party formulas that few people suspected how high the doctrine was. i took an elderly evangelical aunt to church once, when mr. woodward preached a sermon on baptismal regeneration of rather an advanced type. i shuddered to think of the denunciations which i anticipated after church; indeed, i should not have been surprised if my aunt had gathered up her books—she was a masculine personage—and swept out of the building. both on the contrary, she listened intently, rather moist-eyed, i thought, to the discourse, and afterwards spoke to me with extreme emphasis of it as a real gospel sermon. mr. woodward wrote his sermons, but often i think departed from the text. he discoursed with a simple tranquillity of manner that made each hearer feel as if he was alone with him. his allusions to local events were thrilling in their directness and pathos; and in passing, i may say that he was the only man i ever heard who[132] made the giving out of notices, both in manner and matter, into a fine art. on christmas day he used to speak about the events of the year; one winter there was a bad epidemic of diphtheria in the village, and several children died. the shepherd on one of the farms, a somewhat gruff and unsociable character, lost two little children on christmas eve. mr. woodward, unknown to me at the time, had spent the evening with the unhappy man, who was almost beside himself with grief.
the christmas sermon
in the sermon he began quite simply, describing the scene of the first christmas eve in a few picturesque words. then he quoted christina rossetti’s christmas carol—
“in the bleak mid-winter
wintry winds made moan,”
dwelling on the exquisite words in a way which brought the tears to my eyes. when he came to the lines describing the gifts made to christ—
“if i were a shepherd
i would bring a lamb,”
he stopped dead for some seconds. i feel sure that he had not thought of the application[133] before. then he looked down the church and said—
“i spent a long time yesterday in the house of one who follows the calling of a shepherd among us.... he has given two lambs to christ.”
there was an uncontrollable throb of emotion in the large congregation, and i confess that the tears filled my eyes. mr. woodward went on—
“yes, it has pleased god to lead him through deep waters; but i do not think that he will altogether withhold from him something of his christmas joy. he knows that they are safe with christ—safe with christ, and waiting for him there—and that will be more and more of a joy, and less and less of a sorrow as the years go on, till god restores him the dear children he has taken from him now. we must not forget him in our prayers.”
then after a pause he resumed. there was no rhetoric or oratory about it; but i have never in my life heard anything so absolutely affecting and moving—any word which seemed to go so straight from heart to heart; it was the genius of humanity.
[134]
a few months after this mr. woodward died, as he always wished to die, quite suddenly, in his chair. he had often said to me that he did hope he wouldn’t die in bed, with bed-clothes tucked under his chin, and medicine bottles by him; he said he was sure he would not make an edifying end under the circumstances. his heart had long been weak; and he was found sitting with his head on his breast as though asleep, smiling to himself. in one hand his pen was still clasped. i have never seen such heartfelt grief as was shown at his funeral. his sister did not survive him a month. the week after her death i walked up to the rectory, and found the house being dismantled. mr. woodward’s books were being packed into deal cases; the study was already a dusty, awkward room. it was strange to think of the sudden break-up of that centre of beautiful life and high example. all over and done! yet not all; there are many grateful hearts who do not forget mr. woodward; and what he would have thought and what he would have said are still the natural guide for conduct in a dozen simple households. if death must come, it was so that he would have wished it; and mr.[135] woodward could be called happy in life and death perhaps more than any other man i have known.
