27: HEPWORTH DIXON’S REPORT
Hepworth Dixon was a journalist, novelist, editor and one of those busy, worldly, free-thinking yet discreet men who, in a phrase fashionable in late 19th century England, were said to have gone everywhere and done everything. In the Baltic provinces of East Prussia — in Salt Lake City and Oneida Creek, U.S.A. — in England at Spaxton Bottom he noticed communities who had scandalized public opinion by practising new kinds of marriage. He investigated these communities and, in a two volume study called Spiritual Wives showed how they differed from highly sensational accounts in the popular press. His book was published in 1867. Here is his description of a visit to the Agapemone:
“No stranger is admitted into the Agapemone,” says Murray’s Handbook.
“The Abode of Love,” said Sir Frederick Thesiger, speaking as a prosecuting council, “is a family consisting of four apostate clergymen, an engineer, a medical man, an attorney, and two bloodhounds.”
“The Agapemone”, says Boyd Dawkins, the latest lay writer who has paid attention to this subject, “is surrounded by a wall from twelve to fifteen feet high.”
These statements are untrue. The Saints who are gathered at Spaxton have audacities and heresies enough without being charged with these idle tales.
As your carriage rolls from the quaint old streets of Bridgwater into the green country lanes, you seem to pass from the age of Victoria into the age of King Alfred. Saxon Somerset was, I fancy, as green and bright, with corn-sheaves on these slopes; stone homesteads, snug with thatch, upon these knolls; with village towers and spires among the trees; and with a slow but sturdy population, like those of Spaxton and Charlinch. The road is bad, the mire is deep, the descents are sharp. The lanes are sunk below hedges of thorns and briars, so that an unfriendly invasion would find it no easy task to push their way from town to town. Pull up the horses on the brow of this hill. The scene is beautiful with the beauty of western England. In front springs a dome of corn-field, crowned with the picturesque nave and tower of Charlinch church. At the base of this hillock flows the soft wooded valley towards Over Stowy, a place renowned in the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. But what, in this valley at our feet in the winding lane on our left, is that fanciful group of buildings; a church to which the spire has not yet been built; a garden, cooled by shrubs and trees; a greenhouse thronged with plants; an ample sward of grass cut through by winding walks; a row of picturesque cottages on the road, a second row in the garden; high gates by the church; a tangle of buildings in the front and rear; farms, granaries, stables, all of the crimson with creeping autumnal plants? That group of buildings is the Agapemone; the home of our male and female saints.48
In a few seconds we alight in front of the Abode of Love. The large gates are closed, but a side door stands ajar. The man who drives me seems surprized — he too had been told that no one is admitted into the Abode of Love. Once in his life, however, he had been taken into the stables by a groom who was proud of his horses, as he might very well be, since they had come from the royal stud. My driver tells me with a shudder that the strange people in the Abode play billiards on a Sunday in their church. He does not mind a game of nine-pins in the ale-house yard with other poor fellows on Sunday afternoons; but that is very different from gentlefolks hitting ivory balls in a church. As I entered by the open door a gentleman in black came from the house and shook my hand. This was the Rev. George Robinson Thomas, once a student of St David’s College, Lampeter, afterwards a curate at Charlinch, then a witness for Brother Prince and now First of the Agapemone’s Two Anointed Ones. His figure was tall, spare and well made, crowned with an intellectual head and pair of sharp blue eyes in a face no longer youthful, but whose every line showed he had been a scholar and preacher. Such was the gentleman known to me from report as the husband of Agnes Nottidge, the hero of an ale-house comedy, and defeated party in a scandalous court case.
Thomas led me into the chief room, which I saw at once was a church. Three ladies were seated near a piano at which one of them was playing. My name was mentioned to them; they curtseyed and left, their own names not having been pronounced. One of them, as I afterwards found by a lucky guess, had once been Julia Starky, daughter of a clergyman with high standing in society and of high repute in the English Church. She was now the second wife of Brother Prince but not, then or afterwards, made known to me by her married name.
After the usual remarks had been made about the fine morning and pleasant drive, I mentioned that the Agapemone farm — or farms? — were reputed to be the best managed in Somerset. Thomas said, “Under the old dispensation some of our Brethren were farmers. Would you like to visit Brother Prince’s room?”
I said I should first like to ask him four or five questions. He bowed, and bent himself to answer; but seemed ill at ease while we remained alone. Our talk was now and then broken by the entrance of some sister who slipped into the room, listened for a moment, then went away. I began to see that it is not the habit of this place to allow any brother or sister to hold private conversations with a guest. Each Saint appears to keep watch upon his fellow. Prince may dwell apart and hold himself accountable to none, but his people only speak in each other’s presence, moving in pairs, trios, and septets. I was soon struck by the fact that I was never left alone with either man or woman, a thing I never experienced in the homes of either German or American Saints. If we lounged in the lovely greenhouse, took a turn in the garden, idled about the stables and offices, either Sister Ellen, Sister Annie, or some other lady would slip in quietly to our side, and take her share in any talk that might be going on. In short, some sister kept me in sight and hearing until I drove away from the Abode of Love.
I first asked the reason for the high wall that Professor Dawkins says surrounds the estate. Thomas said, “There is no such wall. Dawkins may have got the idea from an equally mistaken local guide book. Soon after coming here we had a short length of wall built on the road-ward side of this church, to stop neighbouring rustics gazing in at us through the windows. They used to do that.” “Why do you keep bloodhounds?”
“We have none now but once we needed their protection. On several occasions we were physically assaulted by neighbours. In public.”
“Did you not seek redress through the courts?”
“Yes. We were awarded a farthing damages. It is now said that anyone can knock down four of us for a penny.”
Thomas cut short my four or five questions by leaving the room. In a minute he returned to offer me food — a cup of coffee, a biscuit, a glass of wine. Being fresh from my early meal and cigar I was declining his offer with thanks when his way of pressing his little courtesies struck me as like the manner of an Arab sheik, who offers you bread and salt, not simply as food but as a sign of peace. “Let it be a glass of wine.”
A woman brought in a tray with biscuits and two decanters; one of good dry sherry, the other of a sweet new port. She laid them on a table, bid me help myself and left. For half an hour I was left alone with these two bottles in the church.
Yes; in the church; lounging on a red sofa, near a bright fire, in the coloured light of a high lancet window filled with rich stained glass; soft cushions beneath my feet; a billiards table on my right; oak panelling round the walls; and above my head the sacred symbol of the Lamb and Dove, flanked and supported by a rack of billiard cues. This room, I knew, was that in which the Great Manifestation had taken place; that mystic rite through which living flesh is said to have been reconciled to God. Lovely to the eye, calming to the heart, this chamber was, and is. A rich red Persian carpet covered the floor, in contrast with the brown oaken roof. Red curtains draped the windows, the glass in which was painted a mystical device, a lamb, a lion and a dove — the lion standing on a bed of roses, with a banner on which these words are inscribed,