“Thank you sir. Good day,” said Prince. He stood, bowed slightly and turned to the door. Before reaching it he heard Ollivant chuckle and turned enquiringly.
“Forgive me Prince, but I’ve remembered somethin’ funny. Know anythin’ about Carlyle? Thomas Carlyle?”
“No sir.”
“I’m glad. He’s a Scotch Radical pamphleteer who’s all for the French Revolution. London society tolerates him because his wife is both pretty and witty. In their younger days the Carlyles and Edward Irving were so close that the present Mrs Carlyle nearly became Mrs Irving. A pity she did not. She has since been heard to say, If Irving had married me there would have been no gift of tongues. Good, isn’t it haha? If Irving had married me there would have been no gift of tongues. I am sure Mrs Prince is also a sensible woman.”
Charlinch lay in a valley between dark green wooded hills, the fields on lower ground divided by thick hedges and narrow winding roads. The village, never large, had shrunk smaller around 1800 when the chief landowner enclosed the common, evicted smallholders and let their fields to richer farmers. It was now a crossroads with cottages housing families of ploughmen, a shop that was also the Post Office, a dame’s school and a small, dilapidated church on a hill. The dilapidation had happened because local gentry who owned carriages now attended larger churches further away. The churchyard had become a wilderness of overgrown plots with broken and sinking stones. There was a path through it to the adjacent rectory which was large and well-built, in a garden with high walls sheltered by trees. Here Brother Prince began his new life as a country priest under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and here his forty-five year old wife spent the unhappiest months of her life.
The rectory was rent free, well furnished, well carpeted, with cupboards of fine linen and bedclothes. This was fortunate as the curate’s stipend was small. Income from Martha’s investments let them hire local women as cook, house-maid and laundry-maid, but they could not afford a housekeeper and Martha had no experience of household management. She saw rooms were not being thoroughly cleaned, that Henry’s shirts were badly starched and clumsily folded, that under-cooked cutlets and over-boiled vegetables were served on stone-cold plates, but could not tell her servants how to do better — they seemed to understand her instructions as little as she understood their dialect. She might have resigned herself to these misfortunes had they not hurt Henry. The Spirit guiding him accepted badly-served food and badly-laundered linen as minor forms of crucifixion, but his wife knew how much better his mother managed a household so his almost inaudible sighs, sometimes with eyes closed in prayer, struck Martha like rebukes. Pains she had patiently suffered in Widdicombe Crescent worsened. One night after a dinner where both had eaten only a few mouthfuls she openly wept. He sat by her, patted her hand, said in the soft, remote voice habitual with him, “Perhaps you should send for mother.”
Mrs Prince arrived in an irritable mood that she hid from her son but not from her daughter-in-law. She spoke severely to housemaid and laundry-maid, dismissed the cook, hired in her place another local woman and severely lectured her also before returning to Bath. For a while the house was managed a little better, though not much better. Martha still had cause for tears, Henry for sighs and silent prayers, and his sufferings had a more than domestic cause. Despite marriage he found Charlinch an even more miserable place than London where, a lonely medical student, his fastidious nature had excluded him from the rude conviviality of social equals. At Lampeter he had made friends and visited people who recognized his spiritual authority: Charlinch was a whole parish of souls to be saved, yet he could persuade none of their deadly peril.
The Anglican prayer book, printed by Royal Command, dictated the church services in words carefully composed to exclude radical politics and personal remarks. Only the sermon gave a chance of impressive speech, and Henry failed to impress. His pulpit overlooked a floor boxed into pews rented by the wealthiest and most respected local families, each box with its own little door. Labourers and servants sat on benches between or behind these. There was a gallery for singers and two parishioners who played a cornet and a bassoon. When Henry announced the sermon’s text in his clear sweet voice he saw his listeners compose themselves for a state resembling slumber, even if they did not close their eyes. He could have wakened the nearest at once by talking straight down to them, but his words must reach everyone including many who were more haggard, worse dressed and (when their mouths opened for responses and hymns) more gap-toothed than any congregation he had seen. Words he uttered with passionate conviction had no visible effect on anyone.
That Dr Ollivant had foreseen this was not consoling. The rectory study had many bound sermons but, “I will not mouth the words of dead men.” Henry told himself, glaring at them. He knelt and begged God to let him speak with the simplicity of a little child, and the simple words came, but had no effect, even when spoken in the parishioners’ homes. Nobody in Charlinch was of higher social standing than Henry so the farmers’ wives were at first delighted with his visits. They served him afternoon tea and when asked about the state of their souls assured him that these were quite all right. When he told them this was unlikely and insisted on more heart-felt answers they turned resentful or embarrassed. Most took it as an insult that he wished to confer with their servants, and when he said poorer folk also had souls to be saved the faces of their employers indicated doubt. In Welsh Lampeter he had enjoyed several passionate dialogues with sick or dying people and, compared with them, the Somerset natives seemed pagan. “If God don’t want my soul after all he’s put me through,” said an old labourer, crippled by arthritis and lying between blankets stained by his bed sores, “He may do without it.”
“Hell fire! Hell fire!” whispered Henry.
“Can’t be worse than this,” said the man, “but give me a sup of gin or brandy and I’ll gladly hear you tell me all about hell fire till the cows come home.”
The school children could chant the Lord’s Prayer and parts of the Shorter Catechism in unison, but no matter how intensely he lectured and questioned them they answered with monosyllables or giggles or dumb grins. At length, having prayed to God for guidance and receiving assurance that God wished this, Henry told the schoolteacher he was abandoning her pupils until they asked for him. He visited two consumptive little girls in their home until their mother told him to stop frightening them. When he ignored her she fetched her husband from a nearby field who expelled Henry with threats to fling him out. Henry told the man’s employer, suggesting the labourer might allow Christ’s ministry if threatened with dismissal. The farmer said, “I couldn’t do that sir. He may be stiff-necked but he’s an honest worker.”
“I do not ask you to dismiss him but to threaten him with dismissal.”
“Too risky, sir. He’s so stiff-necked he might take offence and leave me, and bein’ widely known as a honest good worker he’d have no trouble gettin’ employment elsewhere.”
Henry’s only happiness now was in writing to his Lampeter Brethren, some still at college, some of them curates like himself. His letters asked searching questions about the state of their souls, discussed their replies in detail, contained prayers and exhortations applicable to their weakness and troubles. He mentioned the sad state of his parishioners but not his own unhappy state. One of the Brethren, inspired and consoled by his letters, suggested making a book of them. Henry borrowed back the best, copied them out with improvements, raised money by subscriptions from the Brethren and had them printed in Bristol. Copies posted to Church of England magazines were kindly reviewed. This modest fame did not lessen his grief at the state of Charlinch parish. Martha was increasingly troubled by backaches with hot and cold flushes, swollen limbs, and constipation alternating with diarrhoea. Henry prayed to God that these were not symptoms of incurable dropsy. A doctor summoned from Bridgwater comforted him slightly by diagnosing sub-acute dropsy, and prescribing a strict diet, laudanum drops and rest. Martha returned to stay with his mother in Widdicombe Crescent until her health improved, but it never improved. Henry remained in Charlinch to hope, pray, correspond with the Brethren and conduct services that seemed spiritually fruitless.