,.,.. 1i§S!TviSS^ YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 1943 -//'•' fr VU 1 H/f Zllr^rf THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING # &-<4&. 9^Zy L0MDOJJ:EDWAHD ARNOLD' ¦5$t*£.4.,£&*r*'.5Si, THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING BY CHARLES E. OSBORNE 1 11 VICAR OF SEGHILL, NORTHUMBERLAND FOURTH IMPRESSION LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1903 Mhd5 0)6931 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE SISTERS OF ROBEET EADCLYFFE DOLLING, WHOSE UNTIRING LABOURS LIGHTENED THE BURDEN OF HIS TOIL, AND WHOSE UNFAILING SYMPATHY AND AFFECTION STRENGTHENED HIM IN ACCOMPLISHING THE WORKS WHICH GOD GAVE HIM TO DO. PREFACE When I was asked by his relatives to compile the memoir of my dear friend Eobert Eadclyffe Dolling, I hesitated at first to promise to do so, from a fear lest the pressure of various duties in a large parish should render the fulfilment of the promise impossible, or very long delayed. However, on con sideration, I felt that it would be wrong to allow anything to hinder the attempt to insure a permanent memorial of one whose life and influence, although already the cherished possession of many, yet ought to be still more widely known throughout the nation and the Church. Any author's profits accruing from the sale of this book will be devoted to the purposes of the Dolling Memorial Fund, of which some account will be found in Appendix II. A friendship with Eobert Dolling on my part, extending for over twenty years before his death, and the fact that for seven years of that time I was in daily and most intimate con tact with him, as one of his assistant clergy at S. Agatha's, Landport, have enabled me to write with a first-hand know ledge of many of the events recorded in the following pages, and of much of the inner mind of Father Dolling himself, and of his sentiments and line of action on various important subjects. I have tried to present to the reader a picture of him as he actually was. I have also aimed not only at truth fulness of general impression, but also at accuracy of detail, [ vii ] viii PEEFACE as far as possible, without burying the main interests of the story under a mass of minutiae, or losing its central thread in the needless following of side-issues. I have to thank Father Dolling's relatives for allowing me to see a good deal of matter of a more or less personal nature, and yet essential for fitting together the various portions of a life which, though comparatively short, was crowded with events and touched a multitude of interests. I have also to thank a very large number of people for recollections, etc., sent to me of him who had helped them, spiritually or tempor ally, in so many ways, and had so deeply and worthily gained the trust and affection of their souls. Owing, however, to the fact that this book had to be limited in size, it has been found absolutely impossible to use, even in the briefest way, a great deal of this material ; nor is it possible to name all who have so kindly helped, the number of them is so great. But I thank them, all the same, one and all. I have to return special thanks to my friend Mr. F. A. Thorold Eller for a great deal of time and trouble given to the work of arranging correspondence, MS. material, etc., for this life. Of Father Dolling's own correspondence I have been able to secure but a very little. His letters were, as a rule, of the shortest description. I will not unduly lengthen this preface by any considera tion of Father Dolling's position as a religious teacher, or as a leader in questions of moral and social reform. Such matters will present themselves with sufficient significance in the course of the narrative. I would only say here, let no one read this book as if it were merely the record of a set of opinions, religious, social, or political. Eobert Dolling had opinions, or rather convictions, on such subjects, and very strong ones. But the greatest thing about him was his intensely vital per sonality, and the strength of its influence for righteousness. PEEFACE ix To be near him was to feel alive, to be again buoyant, joyous, young in heart. Dulness, conventionality, hardness of mind and of feeling could not exist within the range of his potent influence. He was a unique force, with power ' to free, arouse, dilate ' the minds and sympathies of those who came in contact with him. No doubt this book may come into the hands of some who are not in complete sympathy with all or with much which Father Dolling so vigorously advocated at one time or another. Let them not, therefore, think that the story contained within it has no message for them. No honest man or woman can consider what Eobert Dolling was and did without feeling braced and strengthened, cleansed, and exhilarated ; it is ' as a breeze from places strong for life.' Charles E. Osborne. Seghill, April, 1903. CONTENTS GHAPTEE I PAGE Parentage and birth (February 10, 1851)— Early life at Kilrea, co. Derry, Ireland — School-life, Stevenage (Herts)— Harrow (1864- 1868)— Trinity College, Cambridge (1868-1869)— Life in Italy— His mother's death (1870) — Coming of age (1872)— Land agencies in Ireland — Work among men and lads at Kilrea 1-13 CHAPTER II Life in London — S. Alban's, Holborn — S. Martin's League — The Borough Road House — Work among the postmen — The Eev. George Tyrrell's recollections of this period 14-25 CHAPTER III A helper of his friends — He relieves distress in Donegal — BecoUections of him by Cardinal Archbishop Logue (1879-1880) — Death of his father (1878) — Life at Mountjoy Square, Dublin — Mother Kate's visit to Ireland— Lecture in Dublin on ' Our Boys ' (1878) 26-38 CHAPTER IV He decides to take Holy Orders — Salisbury Theological College (1882) — Mission work in S. Martin's parish, Salisbury (1882-1883) — Ordained Deacon by Bishop Moberly (May 20, 1883)— Curacy of Corscombe (1883), combined with work in Holy Trinity parish, Stepney, East London 39-46 CHAPTER V East London (1883-1885)— S. Martin's (Magdalen College) Mission, Maidman Street, Burdett Road— Ordination as priest by Bishop Temple (Trinity Sunday, 1885)— Resigns charge of the Mission (1885) - - 47-59 [si ] xii CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGE Vicar-Designate of S. Agatha's, Landport (1885-1895) — Appointment to the charge of the Winchester College Mission (1885) — Inter views with Bishop of Winchester and with the Headmaster of Winchester College — Condition of the district, and of Portsmouth generally — Origin and past history of S. Agatha's Mission- Father Dolling's preliminary operations — The man and the en vironment suited to each other - - 60-75 CHAPTER VII Father Dolling's band of helpers, clerical and lay — Their special departments of work — The social side of the mission — The work of his sisters and others with the women — The mothers — The girls — S. Agatha's dancing - class — Miss Wells' ' Home ' at Southsea - 76-87 CHAPTER VIII Father Dolling's building plans at Landport— His centres of work — Description of above in his leaflet ' The VIII. Milestones ' — The Parsonage and the mode of life there — The meals at the Parsonage — The Gymnasium — Father Dolling as a promoter of healthy recreation — His critics at Portsmouth - 88-99 CHAPTER IX The Winchester College Mission — Relations of Father Dolling with Winchester College : Old Wykehamists, masters, and men (Chapter contributed by the Rev. Dr. Fearon, ex-Headmaster of Winchester College) - 100-107 CHAPTER X The part taken by Father Dolling and S. Agatha's Mission in the V Catholic Movement in the Church of England — His relation to Ritualism — His sacramentahsm and ceremonialism — Three aspects of the Sunday services at S. Agatha's : (1) The Sung Eucharist and Solemn Evensong ; (2) the addresses to men in afternoons ; (3) the mission service at night - 108-120 CHAPTER XI Father Dolling's action in regard to social and poUtical matters — His principles of citizenship — Christian Socialism — The lectures at S. Agatha's by the Guild of S. Matthew (Lent, 1890)— Difficulty caused by letters in reference to the Rev. S. D. Headlam's lecture CONTENTS xiii — Resignation of Father Dolling — Meeting in Landport — Ex planation by Winchester College authorities — The resignation withdrawn — Father Dolling's sermon on ' The Christian Clergy man's Place in Politics ' (August 7, 1892) 121-132 CHAPTER XII Father Dolling as a temperance reformer in Portsmouth — Penitentiary and preventive work — Public-house licensing question (1894) — The Social Purity Association — The ' Open Letter ' to the Justices (August 18, 1894) — Tribute to Dolling's social work and influence, by a Nonconformist (Rev. E. C. Chorley) 133-144 CHAPTER XIII Sermon in London on ' Soldiers and Sailors ' : ' Lombard Street in Lent ' series (February 16, 1894) — Controversy caused by this with the Mayor of Portsmouth — Father Dolling as a friend of soldiers and sailors — Letters from officers and men in the services — An army chaplain's recollections of Dolling at Woolwich — Friendship with Bishop Corfe of Korea, then Naval Chaplain at Portsmouth — The St. Vincent boys — Lecture on the Victoria and Patriotic Funds (December 3, 1893) - - 145-157 CHAPTER XIV Parochial excursions from S. Agatha's to Winchester— The day- schools — The almshouses — Personal dealing with the suffering and poor 158-167 CHAPTER XV Father Dolling and the Bishop of Winchester— The ' Extra Services ' — Petition of Protestant Alliance to Bishop Harold Browne- Letter from Bishop Sumner, of Guildford— Dr. Thorold, Bishop of Winchester (1891 - 1895) — Father Dolling's relations with him— Bishop Thorold's love of the poor— ' The S. Agatha's Children's Book '—Bishop Thorold's letter to the Protestant Alliance (1892)— The 'Children's Book' revised and reissued 168-181 (1893) CHAPTER XVI Father Dolling in Ireland (1894) : at Kilrea and Trinity College, Dublin— The new S. Agatha's — Laying of foundation-stone (October 27, 1894)— Architectural features of the church— Its relation to Father Dolling's ideals of worship 182-189 xiv CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII PAGE Death of Bishop Thorold (1895)— Dr. Davidson, Bishop of Winchester — Parochial mission conducted by Father Maturin, of Cowley (1895)— Visit of Bishop of Southwell— Opening services of the new church (October 27, 1895)— Question of new license for church— Difficulty with Bishop of Winchester about ' third altar ' and other matters — Resignation of Father Dolling (December 8, 1895)— He leaves Portsmouth (January 10, 1896)— Subsequent history of S. Agatha's — Temporary charge, Rev. Paul Bull — Rev. G. T. Tremenheere, priest-in-charge (1896) — Consecration of church (May 14, 1898) and parish formed 190-207 CHAPTER XVIII Period between S. Agatha's, Landport, and visit to America (1896- 1897) — Father Dolling at Philbeach Gardens, South Kensington — Before leaving S. Agatha's, sermon in London, ' The Church and the People,' in series, 'A Lent in London' (1895) — General attitude in regard to Disestablishment — Action of Bishop of Durham in regard to the mission at S. Mary's, Tyne Dock — Dolling inhibited from preaching at Evesham by Bishop of Worcester (Dr. Perowne) — The ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum ' — He preaches in many churches in London and through the country for reduction of S. Agatha's debt — Special services (S. Agatha's Day) at S. Cuthbert's, South Kensington (February 5, 1896) — Sermons to men at S. Margaret's, Westminster (Lent, 1897)— Visits to Prinknash, Gloucester— Tour to Algiers (1897) —Sails for United States of America (May, 1897) 208-223 CHAPTER XIX Father Dolling's visit to America (1897-1898) — Lands at New York (May 26, 1897) — His impressions of the American Church (lecture to English Church Union in Portsmouth after his return) — He stays with the Rev. Dr. Mortimer, S. Mark's, Philadelphia — Conducts retreats at New York and Boston — Work in Western and Middle States — Friendship with Mrs. Stevens — He conducts mission at S. John's, New Brunswick (January, 1898) — Work at Boston and Buffalo — Visit to Chicago — Impressions of the city — Offered charge of the Cathedral (March, 1898) by Bishop of Chicago — Accepts living of S. Saviour's, Poplar, East London — Other English offers — Holy Week and Easter at Chicago — Con ducts Diocesan Retreat at Chicago — Visits Utah and San Francisco —Return to England from New York (July, 1898) - 224-252 CHAPTER XX Vicar of S. Saviour's, Poplar (1898-1902)— Instituted (July 22, 1898) — General circumstances of district — Dr. Chandler, Rector of CONTENTS xv PAGE Poplar— Will Crooks, Mayor of Poplar (1901)— Past history of the parish — Money-raising for necessary improvements — 'Social questions in Poplar— East London Water Famine (Meeting in S. Saviour's, 1898)— Overcrowding — Vaccination and the small pox epidemic (1901) - - 253-265 CHAPTER XXI Father Dolling as parish priest of S. Saviour's — His clergy and helpers — Social work — Dances — Mothers — Factory girls — Boys' camp at Broadstairs — Girls' camp at Hayling — Miss Wells' ' Home ' at Heathfield — The schools — Father Dolling as educa tionalist — Mr. Alfred Harmsworth's recollections of Father Dolling— Love for children 266-275 CHAPTER XXII Father Dolling's work with individuals — His friends' recollections of various incidents — Specimens of his correspondence — His speech at English Church Union meeting, S. James's Hall, on the Lambeth opinions (October 9, 1899) — His article to the Pilot on 'The Genius of the Church of England' (February, 1902) - - 276-309 CHAPTER XXIII Problem of religious indifference — Bishop Creighton's visit to S. Saviour's (June 24, 1900) — Imperialism — The South African War — Death of Queen Victoria and of Bishop Creighton (1901) — S. Saviour's Magazine — Father Dolling's 'Jubilee' (February 10, 1901) — His favourite books — His love of the theatre — Visit to Spain (May, 1901) and Aix-la-Chapelle (October, 1901)— Death of Miss Wells - - 310-326 CHAPTER XXIV Last writings in S. Saviour's Magazine and in Goodivill — Last Lent preaching (1902) — Last address in S. Saviour's (Easter Day, March 30, 1902)— Leaves parish for Philbeach Gardens— Sermons at Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair— Illness— Death (May 15, 1902)— Requiem services at S. Cuthbert's, South Kensington (May 20), and at S. Saviour's (May 21)— Burial at S. Alban's, Holborn, ground, Woking Cemetery (May 21, 1902)— Last words by Bishops of London and Stepney 327-343 Appendix I - - 344-350 Appendix II 351-352 Index 858-857 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING CHAPTEE I Parentage and birth (February 10, 1851)— Early life at Kilrea, co. Derry, Ireland —School -life, Stevenage (Herts)— Harrow (1864-1868)— Trinity College, Cambridge (1868-1869)— Life in Italy— His mother's death (1870) — Coming of age (1872) — Land agencies in Ireland — Work among men and lads at Kilrea. ' A youth without enthusiasm means a maturity without faith, and an old age without hope.' — Bishop Wbstcott : The Incarnation and Common Life. ' The child is father of the man.' — Wobdswokth. Eobert William Eadclyffe Dolling was born, February 10, 1851, in the old Eectory, Magheralin, co. Down, North of Ireland. His father was Mr. Eobert Holbeach Dolling, of Edenmore, Magheralin, and Tamlaght O'Crilly, co. Derry, who was the landlord of important estates in co. Down, and had been at one time High Sheriff of Londonderry. His mother was Eliza, daughter of Josias Dupres Alexander, M.P. (who was a director of the East India Company), and niece of the first Earl of Caledon. His mother's descent was partly from Scotch ancestors who had settled in Ulster, it is believed, in Cromwell's time, and partly from North-Country English people. Her early home had been in England. Although often considered to be a characteristic Celt, yet Eobert Dolling had little, if any, Celtic blood. If he had any, it was from French or Scotch sources ; there is no evidence that he had anything by race of the Irish Celtic strain. The fact of his strongly Protestant ancestry, from the Huguenots 1 2 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING- on the one side, and from the Puritan settlers in Ulster on the other, is also remarkable, and suggests the consideration that the religious temperament is often hereditary in a manner that any particular form of religious belief is not. Dolling's apparently Celtic traits were not so much the results of blood and heredity as of that mental and spiritual atmosphere of Ireland which penetrates all her children, and even, as it were, against their will, constrains the Anglo-Irish minority to exhibit a character often more akin to the Celts of their own land than to the English whom they so admire and imitate. On the father's side, Dolling, if directly English, was also indirectly French. The family of Dolling was living in France, near Toulouse, in the sixteenth century. About 1580 a cadet of the family, having become a Huguenot, fled to England, and settled in the Isle of Purbeck in Dorsetshire, where he was living in 1613, in the reign of James I. The present Dolling arms were granted in 1616. A certain Eobert Dolling, a descendant of this refugee, came to London, and his son James married Mary Eatcliff, only child of J. Eatcliff of Stockport and Hatton Garden, London, cousin- german to that famous last Earl of Derwentwater (known to readers of Besant's ' Dorothy Foster ') who was beheaded in 1715 as a Jacobite rebel. Mr. Eatcliff, who was also a Jacobite, was drowned near St. Albans, when escaping from the Flight of Derby (1745), as he was attempting to cross a brook swollen by heavy rains. James Dolling had an only son, the Eev. Eobert Eatcliff Dolling, D.D., Eector of Tilsey, Surrey ; Vicar of Aldenham, Herts ; and Eector of Bonhurst, Bedfordshire. He was also J.P. for Herts, and became Canon of Westminster and Chaplain to Admiral Lord Effingham. He married a Miss Mary Saunders, and it was their son (Dolling's grandfather) who migrated to Ireland. Like his father, he was a clergy man, the Eev. Boughey William Dolling, and had achieved the distinction of attaining a Fellowship at Exeter College, Oxford, when only eighteen years of age. He came to Ire land with Bishop Percy, having exchanged his living of Bon- MAGHEEALIN 3 hurst for that of Magheralin, co. Down. DoUingstown, a village in the same county, is named after the Eev. B. W. Dolling. He married Mary Short, daughter of John Short, of Solihull, Warwickshire. Their son was Mr. Eobert Hol beach Dolling, father of the subject of this memoir, who, therefore, on that side of the family was of purely English and French descent. The children of Mr. E. H. Dolling's marriage with Miss Alexander were two sons (of whom Eobert Dolling was the eldest) and seven daughters. They were born in the following order : May (who is married to Mr. James H. Staples, second son of the late Sir Nathanael Staples, Bart., of Lissan, Cooks- town, co. Tyrone), Elise, Adelaide, Geraldine, Nina, Eobert William Eadclyffe, Josephine, Ulrica (deceased) and Caledon. The parish of Magheralin, in which Dolling was born and of which his grandfather was rector (having been also land lord of the estates of Magheralin and DoUingstown), possessed ruins of great antiquity, it having been in early days a centre of Celtic Christianity of the type common to Ireland, Iona, and Northumbria. Dolling's birthplace, which is mentioned under the name of Lann in the ' Annals of the Four Masters,' was a spot hallowed by the memories of saints. It had pro duced a martyr, the Abbot Caomhanus, who was slain there by the Danes in 841. It was also of ecclesiastical importance in later times, for an episcopal house belonging to the See of Dromore stood there ; and the famous Bishop Jeremy Taylor, when occupant of that see, used to reside there, and often preached in old Magheralin Church. Eobert Dolling from his grandfather inherited an ecclesiastical chair believed to have belonged to Jeremy Taylor. In 1842 the Eev. B. W. Dolling built a new church at Magheralin, which Bishop Mant con secrated in 1845. By birth Dolling was connected with several county families both in England and in his own country. All the circum stances of his life— his Irish birth combined with English education; his family connections combined with his life among postmen, soldiers, sailors, and dockers; his quiet boyhood in his northern Irish home and his later years of 4 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING continental travel, and of roughing it here and there with all sorts of people ; the storm and stress of his ministerial life — all united to make him a very complete man, with a rich and varied experience of many phases of humanity such as has been granted to few men, and certainly to few clergymen, in the same degree. From the old Eectory, Magheralin, when Mr. Dolling senior had obtained the appointment of agent for the estates of Lord Eossmore, the family went to Monaghan. In 1859 Mr. Dolling senior was made agent for the important estates of the Mercers' Company in the North of Ireland, and moved with his family to the Manor House, Kilrea, co. Derry, where they lived for the rest of the time that they remained in the North. At Kilrea the members of the Dolling family endeared themselves to the people of the neighbourhood. One who lived with them writes as follows : ' The Eev. E. R. Dolling's father, Mr. Eobert Holbeach Dolling, was a most warm-hearted, genial man, full of wit and humour, with out one single touch of malice, abounding in loving-kindness to his fellow-creatures. In that quiet, remote Irish village his presence banished all dulness.' He was deeply and unaffectedly religious, of the Protestant Evangelical school, but not of the merely political variety of it common enough in Ireland at that time and since. He was a man of very strong prejudices. The Eoman Catholic Church and the High Church party in England were objects of his entire antipathy, but this altogether as against the causes and ideas, as distinct from the persons who upheld them. It was especially, however, Eobert Dolling's mother who was the good angel of the home. The friend of the family above quoted writes of her : 'Mrs. Eliza Dolling, Father Dolling's mother, was the truest Christian gentlewoman I ever met. She united in her person all the finest qualities of a woman — she was simple, gentle, unselfish ; a true woman, wife, and mother, and a high-bred lady in the highest and noblest sense of the word.' HIS MOTHEE 5 Eobert Dolling ever had for her a most tender veneration, and we think that when he alluded in his sermons, as he often did, to a mother's love and urged children to never bring a care into their mother's life, or an ache into her heart, that he was thinking of his own mother, to whom her children were so tenderly devoted. She was a deeply religious woman, and it was at her knees he first learnt to lisp his childish prayers. As one of his sisters writes, 'he was the child of many prayers.' In an article which he wrote for the Pilot in 1901, Dolling thus writes of his mother : ' I look back over forty-five years, and remember how my mother taught us children every day some little story from the life of Christ, and how real she made it by drawing pictures, and telling words which made us almost see the actual event. As I sit writing this, I see them now, those pictures which, please God, I shall never forget.' At a church in Eoath, Cardiff, in 1896, Dolling, when preaching, made a touching reference to his parents, speaking of the deep piety with which they both approached the Holy Communion at the monthly Celebration in Kilrea Church. In short, the Manor House was a home of genuine and unaffected religion, of innocent mirth, of intense family affections. It was also a centre of all kinds of active benevolence among the tenantry and other inhabitants around. There was the sort of family feeling that is likely to vanish as the cash nexuB establishes itself everywhere as the bond that alone holds life together. The house itself is of the old- fashioned type of country house, ample, spacious, and thoroughly comfortable. It is situated close to a lake, which is fringed by a picturesque grove or plantation. 'Master Eobert's garden ' extended through the trees to the edge of the adjoining lake. Here his Kilrea ' boys' worked for him in digging and planting. Though the scenery around is not exceptionally striking, yet there are delightful glimpses of wood and water, and a quiet air of old-world picturesqueness broods over the whole place. A large grove of trees forms the 6 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING ' rookery ' near the house. The town of Kilrea itself is not far off, with its market-house or court-house, where ' Master Eobert ' had his entertainments performed. For in regard to everything — family affections, benevolence, social instincts, religion, love of surrounding himself with ' boys,' power of organising recreations, even in his desire to get his own way, and his generally succeeding in getting it — in all these respects the child was father of the man. Kilrea Church is a plain, bare-looking building, very like a country kirk in Scotland. The present occupant of the rectory is the Eev. A. E. Sixsmith, but he was not, of course, the incumbent at the time we are writing of. The appearance of town, church, and people has about it a certain tone as of Scotland, but how far the people of Kilrea are originally of Scotch descent we do not know. As we have written elsewhere : 'Father Dolling was an outcome of the Orangemen of Ulster. Such strange surprises are, however, among the commonplaces of ecclesiastical history.' At any rate, his ready humour, his urbanity, his elastic sympathies were more characteristic of the Irish of the South than of the somewhat dour and unimaginative North. His large business capacities, however, and his go-ahead temper, which led some to call him an ecclesiastical Cecil Ehodes, constituted affinities rather with the grit of strenuous Ulster than with the dreamy, go-as-you-please disposition which, though varied by spasms of enthusiastic energy, is the more prevailing mental atmosphere of the distinctively Celtic portions of Ireland.' There was much pleasant freedom of intercourse of the Dolling family with the villagers and with the country people around — a freedom which Irish tact and courtesy can always prevent from degenerating into disrespect or contempt. At Kilrea people learned on both sides that ' it is love ' and not merely the almighty dollar ' which makes the world go round.' The river Bann flows not far from the house. It is the chief river of that part of Ireland, rising in the Mourne Mountains, pouring itself into Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the country (which is within measurable distance of Kilrea), and then making its way out again and going on its course until it enters the sea close to Coleraine. ANECDOTES OF CHILDHOOD 7 So Eobert Dolling's childish years passed, among these peaceful surroundings. Affectionate hearts met him at home and in the cottages around ; for all Kilrea was like one family. In these his early times there are noticeable two points — (1) his very early development of strong religious in stincts ; (2) his complete unselfishness. Some anecdotes of his childhood which have been preserved show that he early exhibited these traits. When his fourth birthday arrived (February 10, 1855) he was very ill, and the doctors despaired of his life ; but he was able to say, ' Mother, this is my birth day. Where is my cake ?' It was brought to his bedside. ' Cut a piece for everyone in this house ;' and then he added, ' And for those in the kitchen.' As has been truly remarked, ' those in the kitchen ' were never forgotten by him. The vocation for the ministry was innate in him, and early manifested itself. He was a little priest from the cradle, but never, as sometimes happens in such cases, a little prig as well. His instincts, if spiritual, were natural also. He used to make his sisters, when all alike were children, sit on chairs in the nursery, while he, vested in an improvised surplice, conducted service for them, ending with the inevi table ' few words.' At another time, when he was seven years old and his sister Josephine six, they were both being driven on an outside car through a very lonely part of the country, and as they passed under some thick trees, and darkness had come on, the children became frightened. Bobby said to his sister, ' We will pray, Joey, then nothing can hurt us ;' and then he said the collect, ' Lighten our darkness,' which he knew by heart. But his strongly religious nature took from the first a turn towards practical benevolence. His social and affectionate qualities prevented his devotional instincts from getting out of relation to the facts of human life. He had nothing of the acrid or sentimental precocity of the unnaturally religious children of a certain type of pious fiction, Catholic or Protestant. God's love was made manifest to Eobert Dolling in the love of father and mother, of brother and sisters, of the ' boys ' and children of Kilrea ; in fact, of every living thing with which 8 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING he had to do. His enthusiasms were always, all through his life, human, warm-hearted, and kindled by contact with the concrete. There was no touch in him of that fanaticism which marks the one-sided idealist whose human affections are weak or non-existent. As Dolling grew up he became the brother, friend, and helper of all the people, especially of all the lads of Kilrea. ' Master Eobert ' was the idol of the latter, nor will they ever forget him. The ' Dolling Guild ' (which binds together for mutual improvement and recreation the young men of Kilrea) perpetuates his influence and honours his memory. What is most remarkable is that even when the news of his proceedings in after-years as an extreme Eitualist penetrated to the North of Ireland, no difference of opinion could make those sturdy Orange Protestants, the men of Kilrea, ever regard him in any other light than as the noble-minded friend and brother whom it was their pride and pleasure to have known so well in the days that were past. We are grateful to one of them, Mr. Eichard McFadden, Hon. Treasurer of the Dolling Guild, for allowing us to print the following recollections of ' Master Eobert,' his dear old friend : 'Mr. E. H. Dolling came to Kilrea as agent to the Mercers' Company in 1859. Master Eobert was then an amiable boy of about eight years old. In the course of a few years he seemed to take a great interest in the school-treats that were given by the Mercers' Company to the children on the estate yearly. Afterwards he began to gather them around himself at the Manor House. Later on he held a night-school. All classes and creeds were welcome ; writing, spelling, and arithmetic were the subjects taught. It was mostly intended for boys who could not attend the day- school. He also held classes at the Manor House for boys to study the Bible and Prayer-Book. On these occasions he wore a brown cassock. On Sunday evening he held the class at the Manor House. About 4.30 o'clock, p.m. we were all marched to church, and sat in the gallery, he being a member of the choir. He was a believer in labour; sometimes he took a rood of ground in the country and planted it with potatoes, the labour being done by his boys. He made a beautiful flower-garden at Manor 'House, and in order to make this garden his boys had to stub out a portion of a plantation, EECOLLECTIONS FEOM THE DOLLING GUILD 9 where many a pick and spade were broken. Refreshments were supplied to the workers, and each got a new suit of clothes. Some times he would take about a dozen boys to the sea-side, especially those who were not strong, and when sitting on the rocks he would tell them beautiful stories about the sea, and the wonderful works of God. He also taught his boys many games. He himself was not very athletic, but he took a great delight in swimming, and of all his hobbies this was the chief. He practised in the river Bann, which was near to his home. On one occasion he had a swimming competition, and gave prizes, some of which were as high as £1. ' He had a library at home, in which every hoy was supposed to read one evening in each week. When a boy showed signs of a taste for the occupation, whatever he was, that he was most suited for, Master Eobert assisted him financially to carry out his ideas. In fact, every poor person who was in difficulties he assisted. There was no end of his charity. If there was a poor old woman in any district near Kilrea who was in want and he heard of it, he would give notice of a charity dance in that district, and would go himself and take some of his boys and a violin player, he him self dancing as an ordinary member of the ball. On many of these occasions there were large gatherings, and about thirty shillings would be collected for the poor person. In all cases of sickness among the poorer classes, he went daily to their houses, dressed wounds when necessary, carried them food, and supplied them with clothing, if required. I have known cases where he took the patient to a specialist in Belfast and paid £1 1 for advice and medicines. ' In fact, all the Dolling family were the very essence of charity and the very life of the poor. In all cases of home trouble he visited, prayed with, and comforted those who were sorrowful, and tried to make the dark cloud bright. His first appearance as a public speaker was at a meeting of the Kilrea Literary Society in the Town Hall, Kilrea. On this occasion he read a paper, entitled "Our Boys"; this he did with great credit to himself. On another occasion he gave a lecture in Tamlaght O'Crilly, co. Derry. His subject was "Home." All expressed.their high appreciation of his ability in handling the subject. 'Later in life he visited Kilrea. He preached to one of the largest congregations ever seen within the walls of this church. Many went to see and hear " the great High Church preacher," but to their great surprise he only wore a plain white surplice. He told the congregation how rejoiced he was to be present that evening, and to see so many of the dear faces of those he had so dearly loved, 10 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING and also the old family pew in the corner of the church, where father and mother, brothers and sisters, so often had knelt and worshipped God together. He said he loved every tree in the grove, every flower in the fields, and every stone on the streets of Kilrea. He said he hoped that every soul within that church felt thankful that God would be the Judge at the last great Day, and not our fellow- man, for with God there was great mercy for our poor fallen nature. On this occasion everyone said he was a true disciple of the Great Creator, and a meek and lowly preacher. In courtships he took a lively interest, but if a boy deserted his girl without sufficient cause, he was against it as a cruel and cowardly action.' We have been allowed to see a number of old photographs taken in Dolling's youth, representing him with his Kilrea boys (members of choir, night-schools, etc.), and also giving a view of the ' diggings ' or addition to the Manor House, in which he had his classes and ' boys' evenings.' We notice in these the keen, intelligent faces of the youths, the friendly, social character of the gatherings, and in many of the photo graphs the incipient ritualism manifested in banners, sashes, devices, badges borne by the office-bearers and members of the different organisations. We must remember, however, that the Orange Societies are accustomed to a florid ceremonial. The scarfs and banners were made by his sisters and by his cousin, Mrs. Moss, of Montrose, Belfast, and then Miss Montgomery, whose mother was sister to the elder Mrs. Dolling. In his boyhood Eobert Dolling spent many happy days with his uncle, the Eev. T. H. Montgomery, and his aunt at their house, Ballykeel House, co. Down. Every man has a sort of environment or background, which we mentally associate with him. That of Eobert Dolling was supplied by his ' boys.' We cannot think of him but as the centre of a social group, whether at the Manor House, Kilrea, or the London Postmen's League House, Borough Eoad, S.E., or 34, Mountjoy Square, Dublin, or the roughs at Maidman Street, East End, or the soldiers at Woolwich. The great gymnasium and club work at S. Agatha's, Landport, was but the culmination of all these earlier experiences. Of all men of any power, there never was one less alone, all through his SCHOOL LIFE 11 life, than Eobert Dolling. Troops of friends encompass him from first to last. He was not, however, at Kilrea during all the youthful period of his life, but only at intervals after he first went to school, and for longer periods when he took up land agency work. In 1861, when he was ten years old, he was sent to a preparatory school in England, at the Grange, Stevenage, Herts, under the late Eev. J. Osborn Seager, where he re mained until he entered Harrow in 1864. It was probably Dean Blakesley (whose son, Mr. T. H. Blakesley, afterwards became Master of the Mercers' Company), who recommended Mr. Dolling senior to send his son to Stevenage School. At school the latter was noted for truthfulness, and one of his old schoolfellows writes, 'He always hated cruelty in every form.' We are told that he once tried to run away from school in order to go to sea in company with another boy, Arthur Deline Eadcliff, but that as Eadcliff was climbing the garden wall Dolling repented of the rash attempt, and seized his companion by the foot to pull him back. Meanwhile the gardener arrived and captured both culprits. We may re mark that when the ' old boys ' of Stevenage wished to present a clock as a testimonial to Mr. Seager, Dolling was chosen to make the presentation. He entered Harrow in 1864, at the age of fourteen. Dr. Butler was then Headmaster, and Dr. Farrar (afterwards Dean of Canterbury) was his class master. He stayed with Mons. Euault, the French master, until the Eev. E. H. Vaughan (brother of the famous Master of the Temple) had room for him in his house. Mr. Bull, Mr. Vaughan's successor at Harrow, received a good account of him from the latter when Dolling passed from the charge of one to that of the other. He was noted at Harrow for his high standard of honour and purity. His was a chivalric, un stained boyhood. Even as a boy he gained the affection of children. Children always loved him all through his life. From Harrow he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spent about a year, ending with the Easter term of 12 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING 1869. He did not distinguish himself there in scholarship, nor did he take any prominent part in the physical exercises associated with University life, as his health about this time became extremely bad. Weakness of the eyes in particular made study well-nigh impossible for him. He never was, in any case, a man of books, though he was fond of exaggerating his own ignorance of academic studies. As his health got weaker, he left the University without completing his course and taking his degree. He made, however, many valuable friends at Cambridge. Among them was a remarkable man, who no doubt quickened the development of Catholic germs in Dolling's mind — Mr. Gerard Cobb, Fellow and Bursar of Trinity College. He was the author of a famous or notorious theological work, ' The Kiss of Peace ; or, England and Eome at One on the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist.' Dolling's chief friend in Cambridge, however, was a fellow Irishman, Henry G. Meara, now Vicar of S. Luke's, Maidenhead. After Dolling left the University he lived for some time abroad for his health, staying much in Italy and principally at Florence, where he gained entry into a set of English people of much literary and artistic taste. He became very intimate with Mr. Thomas A. Trollope, author of ' Paul the Friar and Paul the Pope,' and his wife, who was the authoress of several novels. Here also he met Eobert Browning. The death of Mrs. Dolling in January, 1870, was to her children not only the loss of a mother, but of the dearest companion and friend. In writing to his two youngest sisters soon after this time, Eobert Dolling said : 'May the remembrance of her you have lost, and who now is permitted to watch over you in heaven, be ever to you the great means of bringing you nearer to Himself.' Dolling was now much more in Ireland than he had been for some time, assisting his father with land agency work, and gaining that business experience which afterwards was so great an advantage to him in his mission labours. His coming EENT COLLECTING 13 of age (February 10, 1872) was marked by a visit to the family estates of Magheralin and DoUingstown, co. Down. There were enthusiastic proceedings on the part of the tenantry, and with genuine feeling his own virtues and those of his father and grandfather were extolled. They concluded by saying, ' We pray that you may be enabled to uphold the honourable, the Christian, the charitable, and the deathless name of your forefathers.' In his reply Dolling spoke of his father and relatives as having ever tried ' to rejoice with you in your joy and to sorrow with you in your grief.' Shortly after this time he made an enjoyable tour through the South and West of Ireland with his college friend (now ordained), the Eev. H. G. Meara. He also saw a great deal of other parts of Ireland than the North in his rent-collecting expeditions, for he had various agencies — one, for instance, for a Drogheda property. He became just as popular with the people outside Ulster as he had been with all those who knew him within that part of the country. A relative of his tells us the following : 'He had been appointed to collect rents at a certain place in Westmeath. The police warned him not to go, but he did. When he arrived he met the tenants in a barn. As soon as he began to speak they made such a noise that he could not be heard, so he quietly took out his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke, saying he advised them to do the same till they were more calm. After a little, when they were more inclined to listen, he spoke to them in his manly, straightforward way, and they all, to a man, came for ward and paid their rents.' He was almost unique in having been able to gain and to hold the affection equally of both sections of the labouring Irish people — Northern Protestants and even Orangemen on the one hand, and the Eoman Catholic people of other parts of Ireland on the other. Well might Mr. T. P. O'Connor say of him in M.A.P. : 'I mention with pardonable pride that Father Dolling was an Irishman. North of Ireland in blood and upbringing; South of Ireland in the tenderness of his heart and the readiness of his sympathy.' CHAPTEE II Life in London — S. Alban's, Holborn — S. Martin's League — The Borough Road House — Work among the postmen — The Rev. George Tyrrell's recollections of this period. ' " Society," saith the text, " is the happiness of life." ' — Shakespeare : Love's Labour's Lost. Mr. Dolling senior died September 28, 1878. Some little time before this the family had removed to Dublin from the North. At this time Dolling was constantly to and fro between England and Ireland. His plans were somewhat unsettled. He had often thought of taking Holy Orders, but two con siderations had seemed to oppose such a step — one that he thought he could do more good as a layman, especially with young men, as so many of the latter are ' shy ' of the clergy ; and the other, that for some time his father strongly opposed the idea. He knew that his son had great sympathy with Eitualism, which to Irish Churchmen of the elder Mr. Dolling's school of thought seemed to be assuming most dangerous pro portions in the Church across the channel, and he said he ' could not bear to see Bobby a Eitualistic priest,' and perhaps eventually a Eoman Catholic one. Shortly, however, before his death he became quite in sympathy with the idea of his son's being ordained, and also became much more tolerant towards the latter's religious position, saying on one occasion to his eldest daughter, ' I am sure dear Bob is all right. He has such firm faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' ' This intense faith,' adds the same daughter, ' was the keynote of the religious life of both of them.' Meanwhile the land troubles in Ireland got more and more acute. Dolling had some difficult experiences in Westmeath [14 1 HIS MIND UNSPECULA.TIVE 15 in 1877 collecting rents. But his immense popularity and his sang froid carried him through successfully. At a time when the life of almost every land agent in that part of Ireland was in the greatest peril, he would never carry a revolver, preferring to trust the people, and so much was he adored by them, notwithstanding his position and occupation as landlord and land agent, that any such precaution on his part would have been unnecessary, and, in his case, even ridiculous. Apart, however, from the disturbed state of the country, and the uncertainty of everything connected with Irish land, he seems to have felt that he had a call to distinctly religious work, and the thought of the priesthood seems to have haunted him. No intellectual difficulties kept him back. His cousin, Mr. Staples, says with truth : 'Dolling never showed critical or speculative ideas as to theo logical dogmas. His mind (and he had a very interesting one to me when he would allow himself to talk on such matters) seemed most uncritical, most unspeculative, and completely devoid of any desire to try and form for one's self a private judgment as to the truth or otherwise of any doctrinal formula or theory.' It is almost certain, from what he himself has said, that Eobert Dolling never passed through any period of anxious speculative trial as to the fundamental matters of the Christian faith. His difficulties and discipline were to be of a different nature. Yet he had no impatience with honest doubt, but intense sympathy with those passing through it, though never professing to ' be able to help them by intellectual means. ' Faith,' he would say, ' is the gift of God.' An expert in the world of practical moral action, he was not at home in that of speculation, and moved somewhat with difficulty in it. He disliked the needless raising of theological and philosophical questions which seemed to have no bearing on life. He was, on the one hand, as completely untouched by the analytic, disintegrating, and sceptical side of the thought of the age as he was, on the other, influenced to the depths of his being by the more constructive movements, religious and social, of the 16 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING present times. He loved Christianity under every form ; he accepted the Catholic (but not Ultramontane) form because of its greater depth and richness of devotion, as he believed, and its more assured and historic character. His only diffi culty lay in the application of the medicine of Christianity to the moral diseases of mankind. Of the efficacy of the medicine itself he had no more doubt than of his own existence. Hence he was saved from all that paralysing hesitancy which makes some unable to apply the cure effectually, because in their inmost hearts they are not absolutely certain as to the virtue of the ingredients and as to their power to expel the malice of the disease. Dolling about this time (1879), though still an Irish land agent, lived as much in London as possible, because of a great and new interest which had lately arisen for him there. A work fell into his hands in which he took from the first an absorbing interest — i.e., the wardenship of one of the houses in connection with the S. Martin's Postmen's League or Club, which had been started by Father Stanton of S. Alban's, Holborn, with the Postmaster - General and the Dean of S. Paul's as its official patrons. This first-rate work, carried out on thoroughly social and fraternal lines, had for a time an immense success. The famous or notorious Church of S. Alban the Martyr, High Holborn, was (at the time Dolling became connected with it — 1878 — through his friend Maxwell, then one of the curates) the centre of a warfare to which the attention of the whole Church of England was directed. The distinctively Protestant and Erastian parties, the Puritans and the ecclesiastical lawyers, felt that this church was by far the most audacious, the strongest, and the best organised of all the Eitualistic churches in the Anglican Communion. Things have never been done in a corner at S. Alban's. The High Celebration of the Holy Eucharist every Sunday, to which the name ' High Mass ' was openly given, was per formed with a dignity and grandeur of rite and music unrivalled for a church of its size anywhere in Europe; confessions were and are constantly and openly heard in S. Alban's as a matter of course, and this church has always S. ALBAN'S, HOLBOEN 17 been noted for the large number of men of all classes in life who can be seen making their confessions there, especially before such a time as Easter. The whole system of the belief and practice of Catholicism (in the form in which those who uphold it in the English Church believe the holding of it to be consistent with their position as Anglicans), was, and is, in S. Alban's presented to the people, and that in the very heart of London, in a bold, uncompromising, and attractive way, in a manner at that time hardly to be paralleled else where. Dolling was irresistibly drawn to S. Alban's. He did not, indeed, learn Catholic principles there for the first time, and before this he had made his first confession to the famous Bishop Forbes of Brechin, the great Anglo-Catholic theologian of the Scottish Episcopal Church. What Dolling found so satis fying to his nature at S. Alban's, Holborn, was the combina tion of sacramentalism and its ceremonial expression, and the system of Catholic teaching and worship, with strong human sympathies and vigorous social work. Each of the S. Alban's^ clergy had, and has, his distinctive sphere and activities. Of the assistant clergy (who formed with Father Mackonochie, the then incumbent, a sort of collegiate body of priests undei a responsible head), the Eevs. A. H. Stanton, E. F. Eussell, and G. E. Hogg have been at their posts for over twenty-five years — Mr. Stanton, indeed, for forty years. The entire con gregation and church officials also worked in complete harmony with the clergy, and especially with the Eev. Alexander Heriot Mackonochie, the unflinching vicar of the church. Dolling loved' and admired Father Mackonochie, a man who was pre-eminently distinguished by the combination of courage and faith, and who, as was said of another strong character, might be defined as ' if of granite, yet granite on fire.' But it was the Eev. A. H. Stanton who most attracted Eobert Dolling. Mackonochie, that high, self-denying, self- sacrificing spirit, was at the helm, facing the storms from bishops, law-courts, the Times newspaper, and hosts of minor adversaries — storms which broke upon S. Alban's as ' the head and front of the offending ' throughout the whole Church 2 18 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING of England. Stanton, at the same time, was drawing to that church a multitude of young men of all classes by his bold, unconventional preaching, and by that peculiar attraction of fraternal sympathy which makes such men so powerful with youthful souls. He had started, among other efforts, the London postmen's club, or federation of clubs or Houses of Best, numbering at this time 600 of the postmen, which has been alluded to above, and which was known as S. Martin's League. In one of his annual letters to the members, Father Stanton thus writes as to the objects of this League : 'When the question is asked "What good has the League done? Have you made the members High Church 1" No ! Talk as I will, I cannot get incense substituted for tobacco. "Well, but what have you done these three years ?" ' 1. We have thrown a bridge of friendship across that gaping chasm that separates the clergy from the working classes, and the interchange is mutually appreciated. ' 2. We have proved that such friendliness is not only duty but great enjoyment. ' 3. We have shown many that even Eitualistic parsons can care for something else besides candles and " clergymen's clothes.'' '4. We have supplied from our own resources wholesome and rational amusements. ' 5. We have made many comfortable whose duties involve great discomfort, and have given very many the opportunity of a seaside holiday. Are you content with this 1 I am ; and more than content.' At a later time Stanton calls the postmen 'My companions of ten years, whom I eherish with the deepest affection; who have kept the life in me when Church dignitaries had all but turned my blood into vinegar and my heart into stone.' He tells them that ' The experience gained by common fellowship on equal terms is the best education of all in this life that man can have. You have brought me out of that narrowness of ideas to which the social distinctions of English society condemn us all alike. You have done me good body and soul.' S. MAETIN'S LEAGUE 19 Again he says : ' In the League I find more than in any other society 1 know the practice of the new commandment of God (John xiii. 34).' Into this special work Dolling, the young Irish landlord from Orange Ulster, threw himself with keen enthusiasm. He was soon known as ' Brother Bob ' to all the postmen of London, so many of whom belonged to the League. The League houses were not the meeting-places of a guild with rules of Church attendance. They furnished the men with something of the nature of a social club, but a social club with a deep underlying spirit of religion on the part of its chief promoters. When among the young men who formed so large a part of the congregation of S. Alban's Sunday after Sunday Stanton looked for helpers in this postmen's work, he found none more keen than the young Irishman who, when in London, made S. Alban's his spiritual home. There were altogether four houses, all of them in London, belonging to the League, besides the S. Leonard's holiday house at the seaside, presided over by Mrs. Eoberson. When one of these houses, the S.E. House at 95, Borough Eoad, Southwark, was opened in 1879, Dolling became its Warden. He occupied rooms in that house, and always stayed there when in London at this time, making his home with the postmen. We are allowed to print the following by a distinguished philosophical thinker of the Jesuit Order, Father George Tyrrell, with whom the present writer has enjoyed the privilege of a personal friendship, uninterrupted by difference of religious Communion, from the time that both were boys together in Ireland. It consists of some very interesting recollections of Dolling's life in London and Dublin at this time, and of the stay of the writer of the letter with him at the Borough Eoad house : ' Richmond, Yorks, ' November 7, 1902. 1 My dear Osborne, 'My recollections of Dolling date from the time when he first came to live in Mountjoy Square, Dublin (1878). ' As I was then living close to him in Eccles Street, our paths to 2—2 20 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING and from Grangegorman Church, which we both attended, practi cally coincided, and it wast in walking back together from the early Celebrations that we first became acquainted. ' I wish I could give my impressions of him without speaking of myself, but I find it is metaphysically impossible. I remember he very soon made himself felt as a personality, and drew round him by the charm of his universal sympathy and human-heartedness a number of boys and young men, of whose interests he made himself the sharer — not distinguishing too nicely, as is the wont of some, between spiritual and temporal, but taking all their cares on his own shoulders. At this time I was about sixteen and he about twenty-six — a difference that counts for much in that stage of existence — and his formative influence over my own mind and character was very considerable, and left many a deep impression that will, I trust, remain with me always. I feel sure he saved me from many a narrowness, and set my feet in the broader ways. In my crude reaction from chaos towards an extreme sort of eccle- siasticism, he taught me that true Catholicism must be before all things evangelical — a religion not merely argued from mere texts of the Gospel, but filled with their anti-legalist democratic spirit. Her entrusted me with the arrangement of the library (chiefly theo logical) which he was then collecting, and with many hours devoted to the task our acquaintance grew into that lasting friendship which I account one of the greatest graces of my life. ' I fancy that even in these earlier days of his philanthropic efforts his methods were not altogether acceptable to the conservative and official mind, which is content with poorer returns on safer invest ments, and dislikes bold speculation. Dolling was a straight-to-the- point man, whose convictions were of that vivid kind that inspires a courage which seems rashness to those of duller feeling and apprehension. Perhaps he didn't always sufficiently allow for the difference, and may have credited the heart with the faults of the head ; but the sacrifice of souls to a reverence for rules and red tape was, at all times, a thing so exasperating to his ardent nature as to make a nice balancing of motives impracticable. More mediocre men may gain in the long-run by a diplomatic prudence in dealing with opposition, but such as he are better advised in following the instinct of their faith, trusting that their victories will outweigh a certain percentage of inevitable blunders. "He stirreth up the people " would, I suspect, be the truest formulation of his eccle siastical iniquities from first to last; for, indeed, his work lay mostly among people who needed stirring up, and he seemed to succeed FATHEE TYEEELL'S EECOLLECTIONS 21 where others had failed. But at the time of which I am now speak ing he was not yet in Holy Orders, and, moreover, was a young man " not yet fifty years old " — facts that made his relations with the official apostolate somewhat delicate. Himself an apostle born and not made, the governing motive of his life, and therefore of his thought, was a deep, affectionate love of the individual soul — the love of a man for men, not the love of a man for a system or religion for which he wants to secure proselytes or victims. He was not a subtle apologist or theologian, and could have given little account of his deepest convictions ; but I think in the last analysis it would have been found that his love for men was at the root of his faith in the Gospel and in the religion of humanity. ' To this great end of his life, he went always by the straightest means, not caring or asking whether his methods were borrowed from Rome, or from the Salvation Army, or even if they were within the respectable limits of the Book of Common Prayer. " A lawless man," said many, who did not see how strictly all these seeming irregularities were governed by one law, and how he brought every such means or method to the test of life and reality. That this test kept him so uniformly on Catholic lines will not surprise those who believe in Catholicism, while it will also explain why he incurred alternate charges of Popery and Protestantism from the indiscriminating adversaries of either cause. 'I fancy, however, that his Dublin environment was, in many ways, singularly uncongenial to the development of his energies, as those who know the spirit of the Irish Disestablishment will well understand. Its parties might then have been described as high- and-dry and low-and-dry, the former a timid minority. No sort of dryness was at all in his line. Hence he was not sorry when it was proposed that he should take up work in London in connection with S. Martin's League for postmen, an excellent, though now defunct, institution, which owed its origin to the ceaseless energy of the clergy of S. Alban's, Holborn. It was a system of free clubs for the use of postmen during the waste intervals between letter deliveries. It prpvided for their convenience and for their amuse ment, and while it offered them opportunities of religious help, it was in no sense a clerical trap or bait, as so many institutions of the kind unfortunately are. All denominations were equally welcome, equally unmolested. Why or how so admirable a work came to nought I have never understood. 'In the August of 1878 I left Dublin for Wexford, and during my stay there, in a town, namely, where Catholicism was at its 22 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING strongest and Protestantism at its weakest, I practically decided to throw in my lot with the former cause. On returning to Dublin at Christmas I told Dolling, who was in no way surprised ; I think he so feared my negative sympathies of that time that he almost welcomed my leaning in the opposite direction. He said, however, that I should give Anglo-Catholicism a fairer chance, that I had only seen it at work in straits and difficulties, that I should go and stay with him for a while in London and see it in full swing. Hence in the following April I went over to join him in a branch house of S. Martin's League, Borough Road, S.E., over which he was presiding, and there it was that I saw him in his full glory as a Christian Socialist. ' A fair nucleus of the League members were already connected with S. Alban's, and had imbibed Father Stanton's spirit of liberty, fraternity, and equality. These, with Dolling at their head, leavened the new-comers easily and quickly, so that the family feeling was quite infectious and irresistible. I dare say Dolling never had easier matter to deal with than these postmen, who belong to about the least spoilt and healthiest-minded class of society, and that there fore it may have been one of the happier experiences of his life ; but he certainly seemed very happy at this time, and full of hope. Needless to say, we all fed together, and sat together, and smoked together, and sang together, and, from the nature of the case, it was postmen morning, noon, and night, though the evening gatherings were more uproarious and hilarious. Surely to minister to the mere convenience and most innocent pleasure of these hard-worked and little-thanked servants of the public were an end quite worthy the devotion of a Christian priest or layman, quite apart from all pros pect of spiritual interference ! But without seeking Dolling found an abundance of opportunities of ministering to minds diseased, which more anxious soul-doctors seek in vain. The mere humanity of the man made him the natural recipient of such confidence as few official guides ever receive ; it was almost impossible not to tell him everything, for it was impossible to distrust his sympathy, and only some such distrust keeps men apart from one another. In the midst of all this riot and romping, " Brother Bob " (I remember the occa sion of his christening) was felt to be a man who cared infinitely about every soul present in an altogether personal and particular way as different as possible from that of the professional soul- hunter. 1 1 was with him till July, when he returned to Dublin for some months on business. I lingered on alone in London till October ' BEOTHEE BOB, LONDON ' 23 when I left for Cyprus, nor did I see him again till the following September (1880), when on my return from Malta I stayed with him at Borough Road for three or four days before I went to Manresa. He was the same as ever, nor either then, or at any time was there ever the slightest sense of a "silent subject" on which we had become divided, for there was no feeling on either side that would necessitate such a sensitive reserve. The only regret was that outwardly our lots must be wide apart. 'I spent my vigil of arms on September 7 with Dolling at a sing-song in a public-house on Blackfriars Road, a diversion oi which, as frequented by some of his lads, he wished to have more personal knowledge, and the remembered refrains of those elegant ditties mingled curiously with the first exercises and meditations of a Jesuit novitiate. " You will be out in six months " were his last words to me, which proves that being but man he could err. Though we corresponded at intervals, I did not see him again till we-w«re both in London in 1896. The interval was long enough to put most friendships to the test, but I honestly think that life had only deepened in both of us those sentiments and convictions that were the bases of our affection, and that the last state was better than the first. My visits to Poplar were necessarily few and far between, and the last time I ever saw him was, I think, when I found you there. In the last letter I ever had from him (April 2, 1902) he links us together with himself — "you, Osborne, and I" — and so we shall always remain. ' Ever your affectionate friend, 'G. Tyrrell.' We have received a number of letters from men who used to stay, when they were postmen, at the Borough Eoad house testifying to their affection for ' Brother Bob.' In fact, so well known was he to the letter-carriers of London that a letter directed ' Brother Bob, London,' was always certain to find him. One of the postmen tells an amusing anecdote : 'When at Borough Road, frequently on Sundays he had parties of poor boys — street scavengers, shoeblacks, newspaper sellers, and rough boys of that class. His method was generally to have the copper-fire lit, make them strip and have a good bath (he very frequently providing them with new underclothes), give them a good tea, and send them away at least clean and well fed. I re member one Christmas in particular a party he had who ate so 24 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING heartily of the good dinner that they could find no room for the Christmas pudding ; so presently the unusual spectacle was seen of a stout gentleman, followed by about twenty boys, running about six times round the squares. Then they came back and finished the puddings.' When the ' angels ' (or rough boys, so called because their rags suggested wings) were more than usually dirty, the post men protested, as the place was in danger of assuming the appearance, as one has said, of ' an entomological museum without the pins.' The Borough Eoad house thoroughly suited Dolling's Bohemian nature, and, did space allow, we could relate many true stories of the extraordinary people whom he got hold of at this time, having rescued them from sin or despair, and who are now leading honest and honourable lives, after having been emigrated by him to start better in a new country. Several pickpockets were thoroughly reclaimed by him. One starving lad who tried to steal from Dolling was reformed by him, and afterwards, as a private in one of the Guards regi ments, could scarcely be recognised for what he was when Brother Bob caught him in the act of theft. Dolling used to say of this young soldier that his last words as he died in hospital and as he bent over him were, ' I have kept straight.' Another who tried to steal his watch, and whom he chased and caught, was reformed, and emigrated to one of the colonies by his help, and prospered so well that he sent back money to help the mission work at Maidman Street. Eobert Dolling's work at this time was more directly indi vidual than perhaps at any other. He was not, as afterwards, a clergyman with the care of a parish organisation, and he had an extraordinary capacity for getting hold of cases which a clergyman under ordinary circumstances could hardly ever reach. Out of the moral and physical wreckage of London many a one, once a poor creature broken in soul and body, and fit only for a plunge into the river, blesses God to-day that He led their despairing footsteps across the path of ' Brother Bob.' IN A LONDON HOSPITAL 25 There are many other touching and well- verified stories of such cases for which we cannot find space. There is, how ever, one more which must be recorded. It comes to us from the direct testimony of one of Dolling's sisters, Miss Adelaide Dolling, who was the actual nurse in question. A poor labourer lay dying in a London hospital. The nurse who attended him having hinted to him that he had but a few hours to live, asked him if there was anyone whom he would specially wish to see. He replied that he had known nothing of any of his relatives for some time past, and that the only friend he had ' waB a chap they call " Brother Bob." ' He added, ' He was very good to me, and I want so much to see him, but I don't know where he is now.' In an hour or so Dolling was at his side, and shortly after the poor fellow died happily in the arms of his friend. CHAPTEE III A helper of his friends — He relieves distress in Donegal — Recollections of him by Cardinal Archbishop Logue (1879-1880) — Death of his father (1878) — Life at Mountjoy Square, Dublin — Mother Kate's visit to Ireland — Lecture in Dublin on ' Our Boys ' (1878). ' He had a kindness for the Irish nation.' — Boswbll : Life of Johnson. In 1879 Dolling was the instrument of helping in a very generous way to avert some great troubles which were im pending over some of his friends, who have asked us to record the circumstances. One of the family writes : ' In the spring of 1878 my mother, who for the three years since my father's death had been carrying on the management of a West End theatre, decided to take and rebuild a suburban theatre as a profitable investment. Soon after she withdrew from the West End house, the estimates for the rebuilding of the other theatre were so enormously exceeded that the result was the building was heavily mortgaged before it was completed in November, 1879. The theatre was not successful, debts accumulated. I saw my mother's brave spirit tried to the uttermost. She had always had a horror of debt, and now she was caught in its net, with no way out. But God answers prayer. Eobert Dolling's help was the answer. had known Mr. Dolling's sisters, and one day I confided our troubles to one of them. She asked if my mother would allow her brother Robert to advise her, as he was a very good man of business. The offer was accepted. From that day he was as a son to my mother. Lawyers, creditors, mortgagees he found time to meet and talk to. He threw himself heart and soul into my mother's troubles, behaving exactly as if they were his own.' This lady goes on to relate how Dolling's extreme generosity, combined with the most delicate tact in the way of offering his help, enabled her mother to die in peace, and the whole [ 26 ] MOTHER KATE 27 family to be tided over the imminent peril of complete bank ruptcy. He wrote to his sisters from Borough Eoad imme diately after he had attended the funeral of the mother who is alluded to above : ' A line, dearest children, to say that the funeral is over. I drove with them, and then came back and stayed to dinner, to talk and keep up their spirits. God has been good to me in letting me help so brave and true a woman in her trouble. I am very thankful for it.' Nothing gave this good man more sincere pleasure than to set someone free from a network of difficulty in which he or she might be entangled, especially where through no personal fault financial trouble threatened some comparatively blame less person. When he could no longer help from his own means, he used his influence with wealthy people, who trusted his good sense to bring such cases to their notice. In all such circumstances his business experience and capacity admirably seconded the promptings of his generous heart. Among his London friends at this time should be men tioned Mother Kate (Kate Egerton War burton), the head of S. Saviour's Priory, Haggerston, a branch of the S. Margaret's Sisterhood, East Grinstead, doing mission work among the poor of that part of London. Mother Kate was one of Dolling's oldest and most intimate friends, and has always been in complete sympathy with his work. Her own work and that of the other sisters with her among the working-class lads and girls of Haggerston is well known, and is conducted with a sympathy and an unconventionality that Dolling always rejoiced in. A visit to the Priory was often made by him whenever Mother Kate had a special social gathering or excursion on hand, and of such parties he was, whenever he came, the life of the whole affair. In connection with Mother Kate's work he also met Mrs. E. E. Tomkinson, who was also a great helper at the postmen's gatherings, and wbo is one of the oldest of all Brother Bob's London friends. The Misses Edith and Eva Layton were also among those friends of his who helped much at Borough Eoad. 28 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING His Eminence Cardinal Logue, Eoman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland, kindly allows us to publish the following recollections, which refer to this period of Father Dolling's life : ' I first made the acquaintance of the late Rev. Robert R. Dolling, when he was a young layman, towards the end of 1879. On July 20 of that year I was consecrated Bishop of Eaphoe, and in the following autumn I found myself brought face to face with a very severe crisis. Owing to the very wet and cold summer the crops were an almost complete failure, in consequence of which the people of Donegal were reduced to a condition bordering on starva tion. Indeed, were it not for the aid received from the charitable public in England and America — especially America — what was merely a season of acute distress would have become a season of absolute famine. ' Mr. Dolling was among the earliest to come to my assistance by forwarding sums which he had collected among his friends in London. His friend, the Rev. Mr. Russell, of S. Alban's, Holborn, also gave material assistance. I received several letters from Mr. Dolling in connection with this matter. They were mere business letters, and I have not kept them. 'In the early part of 1880 — I forget the precise date — Mr. Dolling came to visit me in Letterkenny, and stayed several days. In the summer of 1880 he and the Rev. A. Stanton, of S. Alban's, paid me another visit, and stayed a week or ten days. During these visits I was deeply impressed with the charming character of Mr. Dolling. He was simple-minded, earnest, and entirely devoted to works of charity. 'Later — I think it was in the same year — I passed through London on my way to make a visitation of the Irish College in Paris. At the earnest request of Mr. Dolling, I stayed a day with him at his house in London. I found he had turned it pretty much into a club for post-boys, where they could spend their time usefully and amuse themselves during the hours they were not on their beat. His proteges included Catholics as well as Protestants. I had an opportunity of a private interview with all the Catholics, and found, what I had anticipated, that Mr. Dolling never interfered in the least with their religious convictions. I should say he interfered in the, case of one Catholic whom he found to be negligent in the discharge of his religious duties. He sent him to me for a private lecture, and he wrote to me afterwards that the lecture had its BISHOP LOGUE AT BOROUGH EOAD 29 effect. He seemed to have a special tact for managing boys. He received very useful assistance from a number of ladies, some of whom I met ; but he had a horror of ladies who patronised the boys. Certainly those I saw did not patronise. They seemed as simple and unpretending as the boys themselves. On this occasion he brought me to S. Alban's, where I dined with the Rev. Mr. Mackonochie and his assistants. At dinner a little decanter of sherry, by no means full, was placed before me. Seeing the others taking water, I followed their example. Someone laughingly re marked that that little decanter of sherry had been placed before every stranger who dined there for the past six months, and had not been lessened a drop. After dinner I spent some time in the Rev. Mr. Russell's rooms, in conversation with him, Mr. Dolling, and one or two of the clergymen. ' After this visit, beyond meeting him casually in railway-carriages, I saw very little of Mr. Dolling. I had letters from him frequently which were not of much interest, and none of which I have kept. I have never met him or received a letter from him since he became a clergyman, and I often wondered why this was so. It certainly did not arise from any loss of cordial feeling between us, or any lessening of esteem for him on my part. I need not say that, in common with all his friends, I was sincerely grieved by his early death. ?J« ' Michael, ' Card. Logue.' The Dolling family had left Kilrea on June 11, 1877. After Mr. Dolling senior had resigned the Kilrea agency, it was taken by Mr. Holmes, formerly Bulgarian Consul. The death of Mr. Dolling senior took place September 28, 1878, not very long after their removal to Dublin, where they lived at 28, Gardiner Place, on the north side of the city, till November 22, 1878. They then went to reside at 34, Mount- joy Square, in the same neighbourhood. During this period, 1877-1882, Dolling was constantly to and fro between the two capitals — i.e., London and Dublin — and also in various parts of Ireland other than the capital. Most of his time in Dublin, when not actually engaged in business connected with his land agencies, was devoted to the same kind of work among lads and men that he did in London on so much larger a scale. His Dublin friends were, however, of more mixed types than his postmen; some of them were young clerks, 30 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING some were shop assistants. A good many were soldiers, as the Irish capital is a great military centre, and some of his London boys who had enlisted and were stationed in Dublin had procured for him the ' run,' if we may so say, of various barracks, introducing him to their pals as ' Brother Bob.' The present writer used often to be at Dolling's house in those days, and so may be allowed to reproduce a few sentences from a little article describing Brother Bob's life in Dublin, which he wrote for the S. Saviour's Magazine, Poplar, soon after the latter's death : ' He built a set of rooms behind his house at Mountjoy Square, Dublin, and there he gathered round himself a sort of family of young fellows, who met on certain evenings during the week for recreation — either gymnastics, cards, or singing, or simply for a chat and a pipe with " Brother Bob " (for the name given him by the London postmen had followed him to his Dublin home). 'On some nights religious meetings were held in a little im provised chapel ; but religion was never forced, and the tone of the place was as removed from that of the Young Men's Christian Association as it was from that of a public-house. The mental atmosphere was essentially healthy and natural, and the influence of Eobert Dolling was that of a young man with young men ; not, as might easily have been the case with a less strong personality, of a prig with a band of parasites as disciples. Everything was thoroughly healthy and manly, as well as unselfish and affectionate, and many a lad in barracks or behind the counter was glad of "Brother Bob's" friendship and of the privilege of spending the evening with other fellows where there was at once no evil tempta tion and no stilted religionism.' The church which Dolling communicated at when in Dublin was that of Grangegorman, already referred to by Father Tyrrell in the last chapter. The incumbent was the late Eev. W. Maturin, D.D., the father of that distinguished preacher and member of the Cowley Brotherhood, Oxford, who has since entered the Eoman Catholic Communion. Dolling knew the Maturins personally, but ' the Doctor,' to use the designation by which Dr. Maturin was universally known to his congregation, was a man of such an utterly DE. MATUEIN OF GEANGEGOEMAN 31 different type to himself that they could never have thoroughly worked together. Dr. Maturin represented the old Tractarian type in its nobility of character, its high pur pose, its stern reality, its clear and logical unworldliness. He made no concession to the ' modern spirit ' in any form. Neither of the directions in which the younger High Church men were moving in England had any attraction for Dr. Maturin. He distrusted the orthodoxy of the school after wards known as ' Lux Mundi ' on the one hand, and on the other the democratic movement which such men as Stanton and Dolling claimed for Christ, as giving opportunity for the triumph of a more generous and genuine, because more social, description of Christianity, he regarded as a manifestation of the author of all lawlessness. The vicar of Grangegorman lived in the world of the Caroline Divines, the Nonjurors, and the Tractarians ; Dolling's spiritual progenitors were rather S. Francis and John Wesley. Dolling soon became known among the small High Church circle of Dublin. But most of them disapproved of him. He was to them as W. G. Ward to the Tractarians, an enfant terrible. He was in many ways sui generis, and his chumming up with men and lads of the 'lower classes,' his 'free and easies ' at Mountjoy Square, where it was rumoured that there was solemn vespers in the oratory on one night and a smoking concert in the club-room with such songs as ' Ballyhooly ' on another — all this was calculated to distress minds whose ideas of the Church's influence were more associated with Miss Yonge's novels than with Arthur Stanton's sermons at S. Alban's. The Dublin High Church party had the nervous ness natural to a difficult and strained position between the opposing hosts of Protestantism and Eome. A Protestant opponent of theirs in the Dublin Synod said of them that ' they could all be put under a carriage umbrella.' Let us see Dolling at this time in Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland as he appeared to friends other than the present writer. When his relatives were living in Dublin, he invited Mother Kate and Mr. Walter Schroder (another friend, who was hon. treasurer of S. Martin's League) to accompany him 32 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING to Ireland. They stayed at Mountjoy Square for a time, and also visited some places in the country. Mother Kate wrote at this time from Queen's Hotel, Dundalk, to hers and Eobert Dolling's friend, Mrs. Tomkinson, as follows : ' My dear Mrs. Tomkinson, 'Brother Bob and Mr. Schroder and I are having a most delightful wild tour of two days, collecting rents. We left Dublin yesterday, and after two hours' railway journey drove on a car through the most lovely country. I think the Irish are the most delightful people. The poor country people Mr. Dolling went among were so very nice, and they are all Land Leaguers. After our rent- collecting we drove back to a little woodside station called Ennis- keen, but lost the train to Dundalk, so had to take a car, and had a lovely drive of eight miles, and the driver, a charming boy, told Mr. Dolling lots of stories of boycotting in the neighbourhood. At the hotel the people all looked very puzzled at us, as if I was a nun escaped from a convent. A soldier came to tea, and then we had a car and drove to the barracks. I think the Dundajk people never saw a thing that astonished them more than the car tearing through the streets with a " noon " and a soldier on it, and, as Mr. Dolling added, Mr. Schroder in his white hat and black band, " looking as if he had been to Ascot." Certainly such a car-full had never driven through Dundalk before. There were two of my boys, now soldiers, in the barracks, Jack's brother and another. We walked about and heard the band play, and then a nice sergeant took us to the sergeant's mess-room and the reading-room. There was a great cat, just like Eowdy, sitting on the table, petted by all the soldiers. The sergeant said it had been left by the last regiment, the " Bays," but they were going to send for it. It would be delightful if you were here, for we are enjoying ourselves immensely, and the people can't make us out at all. Sisters never go outside the convent walls in Ireland. [This is not the case.] We are to go to the barracks again this afternoon ; after that we return to Dublin from our delightful expedition ' Yours affectionately, 'KateS. S. M.' The above letter is accompanied by a delightful pen-and- ink drawing of the outside car and its occupants being driven through Dundalk, in the style of one of the little incidents AN EVENING WITH SOLDIEES IN DUBLIN 33 depicted in Thackeray's ' Irish Sketch-Book.' Mother Kate also alludes to this Irish visit in the beautiful notice of E. E. Dolling which she wrote after his death for her magazine, the Orient. Those who have not read this article will be glad to see some extracts from it here. She says : ' My little visit to the house in Mountjoy Square is one I always look back upon with great pleasure. The Miss Dollings were so kind and charming, and it was beautiful to see the affection and consideration shown to them by their brother, and most warmly reciprocated by them. There were some rooms built out at the back of the house, where Brother Bob spent a good many evenings in the week, surrounded by crowds of lads and young men, the greater part of them soldiers. He generally invited me to come down and spend an hour or so with them, and most delightful times I found them. There, enveloped in a thick cloud of smoke from the many pipes which were going, you saw him seated in the middle presiding over the happy mob ; spurs jingling, now and then the clipped-off, shrill accent of an Ortheris, or the rough doric of a Learoyd, striking in amidst the eager, excited voices of the many Mulvaneys, only instead of there being " soldiers three" it was a case of " soldiers thirty." Above all the babel of tongues, the clang of arms, and circling clouds of smoke, Brother Bob's clear, calm voice made itself heard, talking to everyone, regulating everything, and now and then breaking out into song. To hear him sing " The Wearing of the Green " was indeed a real treat. ' Beyond this meeting-room lay another, used as a little oratory, where he and his lads prayed together, and where he began to give those wonderful addresses and extempore prayers which so appealed to the hearts and sympathies of those among whom he worked long afterwards in his priestly capacity. Here he had his private talks with each one individually. I remember his asking a Lancer boy some question — I forget what — to which the boy seemed rather loth to answer, and Brother Bob said, " Never mind now, my dear ; you will tell me when we talk it over together presently." He was very down on any foolish parade of ritualism from High Church young men. He told them their religion was to be their life — their help of others — not a show of words and comparison of vestments. 'He was anxious I should have a glimpse of the country during my stay in Ireland, and so took me with him and Mr Schroder for two or three days rent-collecting at Dundalk. I was much struck 3 34 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING by the devotion of all the people, old and young, to him, from the old grannies with their broad-frilled caps, speared through and through with their knitting-needles when not in use, down to the little unkempt gossoons who played on the mud floors of the cottages beside the pig and the chickens. It was a happy time, and I came away with a pleasant memory of the bright sunshiny household, and of the wonderful power of this young man, who held, as it were, the souls of so many boys and lads in the hollow of his hand, to mould them for good. This visit to the Miss Dollings was in the August of 1881, and I went under the escort of Brother Bob and Mr. Schroder. I shall never forget the welcome that awaited Brother Bob at the Dublin landing-stage from a crowd of clamorous, warm-hearted Irish lads, who had heard he was coming, and all assembled to meet him. ' Of late years we had not come much in contact ; he was too busy a man, and I had, in my own small way, my time too much occupied. But he lives in my memory as a man who had a most marvellous gift of insight into character, which, joined to his great sympathy, enabled him to help all sorts and conditions of men in a way that few others could. There was a personality in his religion, a sort of realisation of what Lacordaire would call " the Man Christ Jesus," of the great Humanity of our Lord, which somehow seemed to bring him soul to soul most closely in his dealings with others. One always felt of him what Kegan Paul says of Charles Kingsley : " He was a man of prayer and piety, filled with a personal, even passionate, love to Christ, whom he realised as his Friend and Brother in a fashion almost peculiar to the saints." A great idea of his was, in his dealings with his boys and men, to make them not only help themselves, but to be helpful for others. I remember at Dundalk his wanting sometimes a sheet of writing-paper, and instead of getting one he would ask a soldier for a bit of his. I said, " Oh, can he afford it t I have some in my writing-case." " No," he said, "it is good for him to give it, and I know he likes to do it." So over and over again he got them to write letters and do numberless little things which, as he said, " were good for them to do.-" ' With regard to generalities, it was wonderful how he got the grasp of the situation. However involved and complicated it might be, he seemed to see through all the entanglements, and, vulgarly speaking, "to hit the right nail on the head." His tact was extra ordinary ; he always said the right thing in the right place, and at the right time. He always had a ready answer, a ready solution, for every difficulty and every proposition. I saw in one of the EECOLLECTIONS BY A DUBLIN FEIEND 35 daily papers that someone who went to consult him on a grave and religious matter, and found him sitting on a table and singing " Bally hooly " among his men, was astonished to find the deeply religious tone he took about the matter in question, and the sound, practical advice he gave on it. To us, who knew him well, this would be no surprise. It would just be Brother Bob. He had his Master's interests foremost in his heart, whether he was singing " Ballyhooly," or hearing a confession, or preaching a sermon ; it was all done for the greater glory of God and the salvation of souls.' Mr. E. W. Eodgers of Dublin, who was one of those who attended Brother Bob's social evenings and meetings at Mount joy Square, tells us the following : ' I first became acquainted with Brother Bob (the name by which he went, to his great delight, among us) some twenty or twenty-four years ago. I was introduced to him just the week in which I was confirmed, and had the benefit of his instruction for my first Com munion. I shall never forget that Easter if I live for one hundred years. When I first saw him he was seated in a small library in Mountjoy Square, Dublin, surrounded by about twenty young men of all classes. His features were hardly visible through the clouds of tobacco-smoke. I had not known him for half an hour till it seemed as if I had known him all my life. Such was his remarkable personality. Everyone he came in contact with loved him. I never saw him angry or put out when someone disappointed him. As an instance of this, there was one of us poor fellows who drank too much. He had great hopes for him, as he had been straight for some time. But one evening this boy came to Mountjoy Square very drunk. I came in soon after, and Brother Bob told me " came here to-night. I have put him on my bed, where he is sound asleep. He will be all right soon." As far as I know that fellow turned out well after. 'There was such a reflection of the character of Jesus in His servant. Truly he had a wonderful way with him. We were of all shades of religious profession. There were High and Low Churchmen, " No Churchmen," Roman Catholics, Methodists, Pres byterians, even Plymouth Brethren amongst us. To influence them for good he never proselytised. The Roman Catholics were sent to " their duty " and to Mass, Presbyterians, etc., to their own places of worship. But the little services held in the oratory were for Churchmen. There we were taught such a view of Catholic Faith 3—2 36 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING and practice as, speaking from my own experience, will never be effaced. ' He moved young men to confession where possible as a help and safeguard. Some of us availed ourselves of it at one of the Dublin churches. That Easter we spent Good Friday and the Saturday with him in devotion. The Stations of the Cross was part of it, and on Easter morning he came to the church we attended, and communicated with us at our first Communion. We spent that day, too, with him. On Easter Monday he brought some one hundred youths, mostly soldiers, with him on a picnic to the island off Howth Head called " Ireland's Eye," and home to dinner in the evening, which wound up with a variety entertainment. He had no cant in him ; that was part of his secret. There was no pride in him ; he was one of us. He used to say " It is hard to win a soul from the pulpit only." He is remembered still by all who had to do with him, and I know he did not live here in vain. Would we had more like him ! " May he rest in peace, and may eternal light shine upon him!'" On November 14, 1878, Dolling delivered a most interesting and characteristic address on the subject of ' Our Boys' before a meeting of the Irish Church Society, held in Dublin. The Irish Church Society was composed of Irish High Churchmen, its object being to defend and explain the Church principles of a definite and Catholic character which were opposed and misunderstood by Irish Protestants. The excellent paper which Dolling read on this occasion is now out of print, but a copy of it lies before us. It is of considerable length, and so we can only give some general account of it ; the whole of its tone, true to all Dolling's teaching, is at once thoroughly Catholic, thoroughly evangelical, and thoroughly natural and human. The main idea of it is the training up of lads as members of the Christian Family, the Church of Christ. In regard to Sunday-schools, he blames ' the want of definite dogmatic teaching. The histories of the Old Testament, "Jonah's whale and Goliath's bloody head," as they come to us from the lips of Toddie and Budge, are highly amusing, but can they be called edifying % The names of the Kings of Israel and Judah are, no doubt, when learnt by heart, an excellent test of LECTURE ON ' OUE BOYS ' 37 a retentive memory. But is this a proper method of training a child in the Catholic Faith ? I think not.' He goes on to urge the teacher to make himself the personal friend of the boys of his class. ' As soon as a boy comes to us he must find in us a real and sympathising friend, not only as regards what boys call " parson's shop," but as regards their whole life, their pleasures, their sorrows, their week-day as well as their Sunday life. Never forget that boys have bodies as well as souls. . . . All of us can show our boys that one of our chief objects in trying to gain influence over them is to try and make them happy, large-hearted, manly men.' He urges encouragement of outdoor games, paper-chases, bathing, boating, ' or tramps up the beautiful hills which surround our city.' He alludes to the temptations which beset youths just growing into manhood from ' second-rate theatres, low music-halls, public-houses, with their doors always invitingly on the swing.' We must ' supply some wholesome, humanising amusement. Not that I have one word to say against theatres. " Thank God," I suppose most of us can say, "for lessons learnt in them which we would never have learnt in Church." ' The more distinctively religious portion of the lecture is strongly sacramentalist, but the sacramentalism is entirely instrumental towards the all necessary evangelical end, the personal touch of Christ upon the youth's soul. We conclude by quoting some of the more striking passages : ' If in all our meditations and prayers we require the assistance of books, we are very like lame men on crutches thinking they are able to walk. How very soon, when they try, will they be undeceived ! This habit of prayer and spiritual communion is one of the chief means of feeding the inward spiritual life, the subjective part of religion. We can do little, except by prayer, to help on this inward spiritual life. This is the great aim we should ever keep in view the bringing of the soul more and more into union with its God, so that Christ may become, as it were, incarnate in the boy's soul, and the boy himself transformed by the renewing of his mind. To virgin hearts Jesus comes in perfection, and in perfection is 38 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING received, " for of such is His Kingdom." But if the stain of sin has once passed over the soul, labour, care, and toil must make the ground meet for the good seed. ' Here, above all things, beware of cant. That, if it ever becomes a permanent habit, dries up at once all the springs of true love and devotion. . . . Your work is unfinished, is, in fact, not begun, unless you have put the heart of him whom you are striving to train in some manner and degree en rapport with the sacred Heart of Jesus Christ.' CHAPTEE IV He decides to take Holy Orders — Salisbury Theological College (1882)— Mission work in S. Martin's parish, Salisbury (1882-1883)— Ordained Deacon by Bishop Moberly (May 20, 1883)— Curacy of Corscombe (1883), combined with work in Holy Trinity parish, Stepney, East London. ' Pectus facit theologum.' — Latin Ecclesiastical Saying. Towards the end of 1881, the outlook of affairs in Ireland forced Dolling to choose a profession other than one con nected with land, and, of course, the thought of Holy Orders was the most natural and immediate one. He was, however, most anxious that Orders should only be sought from entirely disinterested motives on his part, and not that, preferring to do good as a layman, he should be driven to seek Christ's commission in the ministry merely by a concurrence of cir cumstances. But, indeed, it was only his own scrupulous conscience that could have suggested such a possibility in his case. He writes to Mrs. Tomkinson from the Borough Eoad, January 16, 1882 : ' I am going to take Orders. We had hoped that, considering my case, my former work, and his need, the Bishop of Bedford [Dr. Walsham How] would have got me ordained, but he cannot. I have applied to Winchester, and if he will do it, all will be well. The want of a University degree is the difficulty. God bless you for your sympathy !' At this time he stayed for a few days with an old friend, the Eev. Horace Munro, Strathfieldsaye Eectory, Winchfield, Hants, who seems to have talked with him over the question [39] 40 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING of how best to get ordained. The outcome of it all was that Dolling felt that the various circumstances which forced him to resign the Borough Eoad house pointed to God's will for him as meaning clearly that he should enter the ministry. In regard to the qualifications required as a minimum for ordi nation, he decided, it is thought by Dr. Liddon's advice, to go to Salisbury Theological College, which he entered early in 1882. That college was then under the rule, as Principal, of the Eev. Edward Bickersteth Ottley, now Vicar of the Church of the Annunciation (formerly Quebec Chapel), Bryanston Square, London, W. Not only did Mr. Ottley, in his official capacity as head of the college, come in contact with Dolling, but he afterwards became one of his firmest friends, and Dol ling was a constant visitor to the Church of the Annunciation, where his sermons were much valued and help gladly given him for his work. His stay at Salisbury was a period of his life during which he was somewhat out of his element. His interests were not with the study of theology, Scripture exegesis, and Church history, but with questions directly bearing on the application of God's life to man's need. His type of religious character was not that of the student, but of the preacher and of the man of action, of Wesley, or Manning, or Spurgeon, rather than of Pascal, Butler, or Newman. Nor in any case do we think that Harold Browne ' On the Thirty-nine Articles,' the usual doctrinal text-book of that time, is exactly the type of theology which could have inspired his intelligence. In any case, as to matters of study, theological or otherwise, while his general mental grasp of a position was full of insight, his impatience of detail hindered his ever being an exact student. But an 'ignoramus,' as he often laughingly called himself, he certainly was not. Soon after his arrival at Salisbury, he writes to a friend : . ' The Bishop (Moberly), the Dean, and the other dignitaries have been very polite and civil. I spent yesterday afternoon at the Palace, and liked the Bishop and his daughters — very simple, kind, unaffected people.' ' NIHIL HUMANUM A ME ALIENUM ' 41 The Eev. E. B. Ottley writes of him as follows : ' It was some years ago that a rollicking, warm-hearted young Irishman, who had made himself an honourable name as a lay- worker in London, came to the Diocesan Theological College at Salisbury to prepare for his ordination. 'His high spirits and imperturbable good humour won the affection of all who came across him, while underneath lay a store of moral strength and enthusiasm that gradually and surely im pressed the minds and affected the lives of his associates. There was some singular — as it were mesmeric — force of pure humanness, genuine sympathy, philanthropy, brotherliness, about him amounting to a sort of genius. No man seemed so completely to embody the spirit of the words : " Nihil humanum a me alienum." This gave him a marvellous insight into character and an extraordinary quick ness to observe and understand all that expresses character, all that belongs to the clothing and framework of human life. 'He had the gifts of a great dramatist. But his power was primarily and originally of the heart — wonderful warmth and tenderness of love. He had, in unique degree, the power of enter ing into the lives, thoughts, feelings of others, and particularly of what was best, truest, most human and divine in them, and this not with reference to any class or either sex, but to each and all. Men were impressed by his manliness, his strength and courage. Women found he understood them, revealed them to themselves with scarce credible accuracy of insight. Children found him ever in heart a child. Many boys almost idolised him. Eich and poor ; working men in their curious reserve and outward cynicism, with their democratic independence and radicalism; men of the world, with their devotions to duty or to pleasure ; soldiers and sailors of what ever rank ; the shawled and hatless East End girls in their rowdy humours, and the fastidious promenaders of the park; men or women servants in smart houses ; or a boy at a public school ; he seemed inspired to understand the life, the ideas of each and all — to see with their eyes, to feel with their hearts. ' It must be confessed that as a student he was not in all respects successful. He was not adapted to student life, and he came to the college at Salisbury too old, after too long a spell of active mission work in London, to settle down to strenuous " reading." He threw himself into the limited opportunities of active service in the parish of S. Martin's, Salisbury, and instantly, of course, made himself felt as a lay missioner. Though his qualifications in theology were not 42 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING all that might have been desired, there could be no question as to the Tightness of presenting a man of such character and such gifts for ordination. Accordingly, he received deacon's orders at the hands of the venerable and beloved Bishop Moberly in 1883.' Since then, Mr. Ottley goes on, ' Dolling's noble and self-sacrificing service to the poorest of his brethren for Christ's sake, in combination with such unique qualities of heart, is almost without a parallel in our times.' In his Whitsun sermon at the Church of the Annunciation, delivered (1902) immediately after Father Dolling's death, Mr. Ottley said, in reference to him : ' His mental powers were considerable, but his intellectual develop ment was to some extent, I think, hindered by his overpowering longing for practical service to his brethren. It was almost impos sible to induce him to read, and certainly he was not altogether without reason in urging, as he used, that he could and did study to good purpose in the course of his strenuous endeavours to uplift the whole lives of the poor and wretched, among whom he loved to live and work. He was certainly possessed of very extraordinary — indeed, in many respects, almost unique — gifts. But the source and centre of his power was the great love that filled his heart. It enabled him to enter into the lives of the poorest and most miser able with a fulness and reality of sympathy almost beyond imagina tion. In order to enter into closest union with them, he stooped, he sacrificed himself to the uttermost. To get near them, to identify himself with his people, he gladly cast aside every comfort ; he gladly went short at times even of the necessaries of life. As far as possible, he shared every condition, every poverty-stricken limita tion of the existence of the poorest classes. They felt and knew that he really cared for them, felt for them, longed to make them happy for this life and for the next. As one remembers him one thinks of the saying, " Greater love hath no man than this — that a man lay down his life for his friends." Not alone in its pathetic and premature ending, but truly, from first to last, he laid down his life for others.' The present Principal of Salisbury (Dr. Whitefoord) tells us DOLLING AND HIS FELLOW-STUDENTS 43 that those clergy who were contemporaries of Eobert Dolling at the College have told him that ' he lived largely apart from his fellows, and was quite indifferent to the common life. He was very rarely present at any lectures, and seemed to grudge any time spent away from the Mission Church in S. Martin's parish. Nothing would sometimes be seen of him for whole days together. I think he must have regarded his time spent here as an irritating interruption or postponement of the life's work awaiting him. With all his wonderful powers in other directions, his weak point lay in a thinly disguised contempt for formal study. For myself, I have no doubt that but for this failure he would have filled a still greater place in the history of the Church of this land. But his passion for work did not include books. I do not wish to depreciate him. How could one, since he was such a lover of the souls of men 1 But I think that scholarship and accurate theological thinking spelt pedantry to him.' His greatest friend at Salisbury was one of his fellow- students, now Eev. Peter Barnes, Vicar of S. Columba's, Stratford, East London. Dolling at first was not understood by the majority of the students, and he probably felt it a vital necessity that he should create some interests outside the College. He felt drawn to S. Martin's parish because it was poor, and because its patron saint was the same as that of the Postmen's League. The Eector of S. Martin's (Eev. C. N. Wyld, now Vicar of Grittleton, Chippenham) was wise enough to be eager to have his help. It was arranged that he should constantly preach in the Mission Church of S. Mary Magdalene, and that he should conduct a service in a small room which had been hired by some of the ladies of the close. He also threw him self strongly into temperance work, and was a teetotaler at this time. During his stay at Salisbury, there arrived at the College a deacon of the Holy Orthodox Church of the East, a Greek, named Mons. Feroupoulos ; he came to stay for a few weeks, and at Dr. Liddon's request Dolling and Barnes took charge of him. The two latter asked him many questions about the beliefs and practices of the Greek Church, in which, however, 44 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING Dolling took no very direct interest. His foreign travel had not brought him to Russia, or to the portions of Christendom which are in the Communion of the East. Mons. Feroupoulos was much interested in the Anglican Church. We do not know if he took Dolling as an ordinary representative of it. We are told that, though this Greek deacon attended the cathedral services, including the Celebrations, regularly, yet he would not communicate. Some of the then students tell us that the choral services at the cathedral on Sundays, which were compulsory for them all, were a great trial to Dolling. During the anthem he invariably read some volume, presumably of a religious character, or would audibly remark to his companion on the length and weariness of the service. His rooms in the College were continually visited by working men whom he had got to know in Salisbury. Dolling's nickname among several of the students was ' the Land Agent'; some thought that occupation an unsuitable preparation for the office of a clergyman. Few of them could sympathise with Brother Bob's ideas. His work with the rough men and lads of Salisbury was very remarkable. It is strange what extreme ' hooliganism,' and even depravity, can cluster round the confines of a cathedral close. Some of the worst slums in England (though not, of course, greatest in extent), most overcrowded, unsanitary, and often immoral in lives of the inhabitants, are to be found in some of the cathedral towns. We are told by a gentleman who is an old resident in Salisbury that the roughest people in the town became like lambs in Dolling's hands. He says : ' His personality was felt everywhere outside the College. Im mediately he penetrated the back courts and alleys, and very soon he was a friend to the rough youth, over whom he gained an enormous influence. He practically, by his sympathy, cast the mode of mission work in Mr. Wyld's, and afterwards in other parishes, into quite a new mould. The whole system of mission work now existing in S. Martin's, and, I may add, the city parishes generally, originated with him. After he left working men would CUEATE OF COESCOMBE 45 constantly ask me if I had seen him, or had any news from him. His book on his work at Portsmouth was read by many in Salisbury. He often used my house for interviews, and I was struck by the strange people who used to come to see him. The Ven. Archdeacon Sowter, of Dorset, who had as warm an affection for Dolling as the latter had for him, writes the following to explain the circumstances under which he became his curate, when he (Archdeacon Sowter) was Vicar of Cors- combe, West Dorset : ' Old memories came back upon me when I received a delightful affectionate note from Dolling, after my break-down. I was intro duced to him by Bishop Walsham How about the time when Dolling's rents were reduced, and his tenants burning bonfires in his honour, at a time when many Irish landlords were much more likely to be burnt themselves. I had been taking counsel with Bishop How as to the possible combination of town and country work, to the mutual advantage of both sides. After a course at Salisbury Bishop Moberly gave Dolling a title to Corscombe, with the under standing that we should work on some mission premises which had been secured in the East of London, with the goodwill of the vicar. But I don't think that, after his ordination, Dolling spent more than a few Sundays at Corscombe. Those who knew him, and know how different he was from any other man who ever lived, will easily understand that a " country parson" was perfectly hopeless even as a temporary substitute for him in London, as the work there gathered round himself, and his personality was the secret of it all. I am bound to add that, apart from incompetence, and much as I loved him, I could not have accepted all his views. 'The things about Dolling that most impressed me were the wonderful way in which his life was a commentary on " the good shepherd going after the lost sheep until he find it," and the deep sense of the supernatural grace and of the presence of the Lord by which, mingling with a perfect freedom and a complete understanding of their needs, with the wildest and waywardest souls, he was pre served in a wonderful purity of character.' Eobert Dolling was ordained deacon in Salisbury Cathedral by Bishop Moberly on May 20, 1883. He entered on his ministerial work in a very original capacity, a combination of curate of Corscombe and missionary deacon under Bishop 46 , THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING How in the East End of London, being put in charge of the most difficult district of the great parish of Holy Trinity, Tredegar Square, E., the Vicar of which (with whose consent, of course, the arrangement was made) was then the Eev. J. Greaves, now Eector of Epworth, Lincolnshire. But, as Archdeacon Sowter tells us, the arrangement was better on paper than in reality. It was only made at all in order to afford an outlet for the deBire of the Vicar and people of Corscombe at once to secure part of Dolling's services, for they all loved him heartily, and also to keep their interest up in the missionary work going on in East London, the money raised for his stipend serving, as it were, for this double purpose. However, after a little time the Corscombe Vicar and parishioners, much as they loved their strange curate, yet were content, for the sake of God's work in wider pastures and among the sheep in the wilderness, to allow him to remain almost entirely in East London, paying them only an occasional visit to tell them about the work, while they generously supplied him with part of the sinews of war in the form of a stipend. A young man now living at Salisbury has told us that when he was a little lad at school at Corscombe he used to go with the other boys to gather wild flowers to send to Brother Bob's East End boys and girls. This was because the Corscombe children loved the latter, for their dear friend, Eobert Dolling, had gone to live among those children in the great city of London as for a little time he had lived among and loved themselves amid the life of country sights and sounds, among the quiet fields and trees. CHAPTEE V East London (1883-1885)— S. Martin's (Magdalen College) Mission, Maid- man Street, Burdett Road — Ordination as priest by Bishop Temple (Trinity Sunday, 1885) — Resignation of the mission (1885). ' I met a preacher there I knew, and said : " HI and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene ?" " Bravely," said he : " f or I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the Living Bread." ' Matthew Arnold : Sonnet, ' East London.' The district in Holy Trinity parish, Stepney, over which Dolling was put in charge as missioner, with a nominal connection with the parish church (for it was little more than nominal at any time), was called by him S. Martin's Mission. It was thus the third time that he worked under the patronage of that great Bishop of Tours, who is famous both for his charity (as represented by the division of his cloak with the beggar) and for a rarer virtue in the age in which he lived — his hatred of methods of cruelty used in the cause of God, his protest against the beginnings of religious persecution. Both at the Postmen's League House, and at the Mission Church at Salisbury, this saint of charity and wisdom had given his name to the work. So now Dolling placed his first centre of ministerial labour under the same kind patron. A picture of S. Martin, while yet a military officer, bending from a prancing steed to give the beggar a portion of his garment, graced the walls of the mission. Like many other sacred pictures, the artistic qualities displayed in it were not of the highest order. The district was a populous and then a very poor one, near [ 47 ] 48 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING that end of the Burdett Eoad where the great Nonconformist ' Tabernacle,' at that time ministered to by the Eev. Archibald Brown, is situated. When Dolling invited the present writer (then a layman) to spend some time with him in the autumn of 1883, so as to gain some knowledge of work in the East End, the latter made his way to Maidman Street (an insignificant street off the Burdett Eoad), and, on asking for ' S. Martin's Mission,' was shown a building of the warehouse description, which had been fitted up in an extraordinary manner. True to the view that the secular and spiritual elements should inter penetrate in one religious unity of social life, the house, which was a sort of embodied symbol of this idea, consisted mainly of two or three very large rooms, besides various cubicles for missioner, lay helpers, general visitors, and nondescripts. One of the rooms was entirely used at night for a men's club, ' sing-songs,' etc., and it also served as a common room for meals in the daytime. There was another room for the women's work, such as mothers' meetings, for S. Martin's soon had one of the largest and certainly the most uncon ventional of these meetings in the East End. The top room was the chapel, for religious worship alone. The first night the present writer was there, the lowest room was crowded with the roughest type of East End men, but also a tall Highlander named ' Sammy ' (one of Brother Bob's old Kilrea boys), and some of the postmen were present. Brother Bob, or Father Dolling, as the people of his district quite naturally (not by artificial High Church pressure) began to call him, was king of the whole assembly. His eye kept the roughest characters in order. Very soon we got to know them all ; to be ' the Father's friend ' was a passport to the courtesy of all. We have never, before or since, seen a place so full of the spirit of real Christianity in its most attractive form as S. Martin's Mission, Maidman Street. Dolling had a wonderful genius for creating true friendship around him wherever he went, and he knew that the way to make people friends is to get them to do little acts of kindness MISS DOLLINGS' HOUSE 49 and help for one another, and this on both sides, not mere condescending patronage on the one hand and passive re ceiving of favours on the other. A delightful spirit of fellow ship was, as it were, the common medium in which all moved. But behind all this was something more than good nature. The Presence of the Christ was surely there, and the influence of His religion was like the guardian spirit, the genius loci of the mission. At this time Dolling received the accession to the number of his helpers of his sisters, Elise, Geraldine, and Josephine, who, having left their spacious and comfortable house in Dublin, gave up their whole time and thoughts to labouring for and with their brother, often under the most unwholesome and cramped surroundings, in his East End work, as after wards two of them did at Portsmouth, and finally at the East End again, until the close. The graces of tact and sympathy, the power of unlimited self-sacrifice, and, above all, the art so essential to religious workers, especially among the poor, of making religion lovable, and, in a true sense, human, have been granted to these ladies in a very marked degree. Added to this, they have those business capacities and gift of organisation the possession of which by their brother was also such an addition to his spiritual influence. The co operation of his devoted sisters saved S. Martin's Mission from being too exclusively a work among men, like those federations of East End clubs which are not always found the best adapted for facilitating personal and individual influence. True Christianity, the religion of that Christ who is ' the Son ' not so much of Man as ' of Humanity,' must be at once masculine and feminine. It must draw out what is best in both sexes, and make each minister to the fulness of the complex life of which each is a part. The arrival of Miss Dolling and her sisters at S. Martin's Mission, and their residence in the ' Miss Dollings' house,' a dwelling as simple as that of any of the people around, enabled S. Martin's Mission to touch the family life, in every part of it, of the great district in which it was placed. The spiritual side of the work also developed along with the 4 50 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING social one, though always naturally and gradually. The deacon-missioner at its head was more experienced than many rectors, perhaps even than some dignitaries of the Church. God seemed to bless the mission in a wonderful way. It grew day by day under the very eyes of its originator. Helpers of all kinds came forward. Money, too, began to come from his West End friends and others. The little company seemed to get from God everything they asked for. Priests, too, came forward to celebrate the Holy Eucharist for this deacon, so that ' the pure offering ' might not fail, and there might always be bread for the children in the Father's house. Canon Mason, then Vicar of All Hallows, Barking, sent some of his clergy to help in this way, and assistance of the same kind was given by a priest then connected with S. Alban's, Holborn, and by other clergy. In 1884 Dolling received a visit from a Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford, who wished to meet him in reference to bringing that college, and Oxford University generally, into closer connection with East End work. The result of this conference was a visit of Brother Bob to Magdalen to kindle interest in the East End, and the beginning of that wide spread influence which he gained over the younger men, not only of that college, but of other colleges in Oxford. Another result was that, although he was not himself the suggester of the idea, it was resolved that Magdalen College should adopt S. Martin's, Maidman Street, as its mission. This spontaneous suggestion was taken up and carried through. There was never, however, owing to a number of obvious circumstances, that constant personal connection between Magdalen under graduates and S. Martin's Mission that there was afterwards between the Winchester College masters and men and S. Agatha's, Landport. At the Chapel of S. Martin's, Dolling aimed at securing the union of the two elements of dignity and homeliness, of adoring worship and human fellowship, an ideal in regard to which he used sometimes to say that Eome has retained the grandeur of worship and Dissent the simplicity, while we of the Church of England have lost both. EASTEE AT MAIDMAN STEEET 51 The present writer remembers on one occasion, in 1884, bringing in some young men from Woolwich (where he was then curate at the Church of SS. Michael and All Angels) to see S. Martin's Mission. We went by ferry and train by the dismal North Woolwich line, getting out at Burdett Eoad Station. After a few minutes' walk we were in the Maidman Street Mission House. It was in Easter week. A special service was being held, and the chapel upstairs was full. The latter place was packed to the doors with a type of persons never (or except on the rarest occasions) seen within an Anglican, or perhaps any English, place of worship. The altar was first lighted up by a boy in scarlet cassock and cotta or alb. Presently began the solemn vespers. It was a sort of worship more elaborate than that at the oratory at Mount joy Square, Dublin (where, however, incense was used and vespers sung by members of the Episcopal Church of Ireland, even in 1880, and where the sight of a crucifix much distressed one of Dolling's young Orangemen from Kilrea when he came to see ' the young master '). On this night at S. Martin's Mission, at the entry of the officiant, who was Dolling himself, vested in a richly embroidered cope, processional lights were carried by acolytes, and there was all the dignity of ceremonial which has ever attended the worship of the Catholic Church, manifest even in germ as she ministered in her strange underground life during the age of persecution. The people had the Vespers in little books provided for them, and easily followed the service, which consisted mainly of psalms, short lesson, Magnificat and hymns, including the office hymn. The psalms were sung lustily, being the fixed Vesper ones, and were known practically by heart. The Magnificat took its due place as the ritual centre of the service, the great hymn of the Incarnation. There was no stiffness, and there was no vulgarity. Though it was distinctly a ceremonial service, yet there was really nothing ritualistic about it, in a frivolous or artificial sense, from beginning to end. Not one person engaged in this service, except Dolling and a few of his helpers, knew of High Church or Low Church, or Eoman 4—2 52 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING or Sarum or Protestant modes of worship. They were simply men and women who had first been gathered in off the streets, or from the neighbouring houses, having never known what Church of England worship was like of any description. They came to worship God in the way their dear friend and God's minister, the only friend besides God of many of them, had taught them to do. But the really remarkable thing was the sermon. The deacon-missioner, the cope being removed, sat down at the altar-step and talked to his people about Jesus during the forty days of His risen life, of the walk to Emmaus, and 'the breaking of bread,' of how the Lord appeared 'in the midst ' in a homely upper room like that in which they were then sitting, of how He knew each one personally and made Himself known to each — to Peter, who had denied Him, to Thomas, who doubted about Him, to poor Mary Magdalene, whose soul He had cleansed. It was a talk which seemed as if of what the speaker himself actually saw. It was as if one were in some assembly of the Primitive Church, or among the first disciples, the lovers of Jesus, waiting for the manifes tation of His presence, the power of His resurrection. As we have heard Dissenters say of Dolling, ' I don't care whether he's a Eitualist or a Eoman Catholic, he preaches Christ in a way I have never heard before, and hardly ever expect to hear again.' On other nights there would be a prayer-meeting, ' one of our little Dissenting services,' as Dolling would call it, with an amused twinkle in his eye, to some very High Church lady, a member of the congregation of some dignified Eitualistic church in the West End, who had come down all the way to Maidman Street in order that she might see ' that remark able man, Mr. Dolling, whom we have heard so much about.' But let us hear him for himself in regard to S. Martin's Mission. We quote from a document called '.A Tract,' which he issued to all the inhabitants of his district. ' A rum tract,' he says, some will call it. It is undoubtedly out of the common run of such literature : ' A ECM TEACT ' 53 ' December 31, 1884. ' Dear Friend, ' Will you take a tract ? I see always outside music-halls and chapels in our dear East End the tract distributor. As we are a sort of chapel and music-hall combined, I follow suit and offer a tract. If I had offered you one eighteen months ago, likely you might have used it for a pipe-light ; but now we know each other so well that I hope in the truest sense you will " put it in your pipe and smoke it." Eighteen months is not such a very long time, and yet it seems to me as if the last eighteen months made up the biggest part of my life. If to make friends be the best work in life, surely no future part of my life can ever be as well spent as the part which ends with 1 884. 'Coming as a stranger here in May, 1883, told the first night that the mission was opened that they "did not care to have truck with parsons down this way," it was in fear and trembling that I faced the work of getting to know you ; but the fear and trembling soon disappeared, for words would fail me to tell of the friendships, tenderness, and love I have met with from every single one of you. From men, from women, from children, it has been always the same. Sometimes, of course, a passing frown, for my words are sharp, and my hand has been heavy ; but I don't think that the sun has gone down on mutual wrath. And this is what I have to thank you most of all for — that you have trusted me in spite of my being a parson. 'And now what shall I say about my work1! I speak of our mothers first. Dear Mrs. Hirom (how we should have missed her laugh !) comes all the way from Stratford. Some have emigrated, some are dead, but none are really lost to us, and the dear old familiar faces give us the completest, cheeriest afternoon in the whole week. ... As to the Sunday afternoon classes for lads and girls, do try to make them come out to these classes ; at any rate, make it easy for them to come. Wash up yourselves instead of " dossing " after dinner, and give them a chance. . . . May I give one word of advice \ Do what you can to discourage fringes, and I don't think a girl under seventeen years of age ought to "keep company." ' As to the men : when I think of the men's club at first I some times think I can only imagine what it was ; but surely the general riot, the destroying of cards and papers, the chucking about of draughts and dominoes, are not imagination. I would wish that some hasty blows of mine and some cruel words were ; and yet they 54 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING had, I suppose, their necessary place in our reformation. Thank God they are over now and for ever ! only I hope we are not getting too respectable — we all seem to wear collars and ties now. ... It is wonderful how we amuse ourselves. We have two good bagatelle tables ; we play cards, dominoes, draughts ; we box, we have a gymnasium downstairs, and we often have a concert among ourselves. I don't think you could find in all London better step- dancing than Sullivan's. He has a benefit early in January. The boards of our theatre have been occupied by distinguished amateur companies. Last time there was an audience of nearly 300. In all this great improvement I miss sometimes the music of dear Balmy's tongue, or the merry sound of his ceaseless heels ; but still, order is everything, and I must to each single member of the club say a real word of thanks for assistance incalculable in the keeping of order. . . . ' And now you will say, " What a rum tract ! there is nothing pious in it." Well, sometimes it is hardest to speak of that which one feels most deeply about. Now, to be quite straight, religion — I don't mean pious talk or long faces ; I do mean love to God and for His dear sake to our neighbours — is the one object and intention of any act we try to do. I know no other way of worship, for nothing else in all the world is real or true. And so our chapel is the real centre of all, and surely it has grown strangely into a very deep place in our hearts. The bell dear Salt gave us makes its little voice heard in all the district. (I hope it is not a great nuisance to our neighbours.) Everything else in the chapel has a voice as well. Dear S. Martin's picture, the beautiful curtains and hangings that loving hands have made, the gentians on the altar-cloth, coming to us, as it were, from the grave ; the one memorial board telling us of our thirteen holy dead perfecting in the Paradise of God, the other telling us of the emigrants; the psalms that we nearly all know by heart, the mission hymns. And yet a more real voice — God's Holy Spirit creating over 200 children of God in Holy Baptism, God's Holy Spirit confirming with His sevenfold grace the firstfruits of the mission, and, above all, the real voice of the dear Lord Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament of His love. 'All these voices— or, rather, this one voice — make the chapel preach God and His love to us continually. I say — and I say it from my heart — the mission has done you very little real good unless in some way or another the chapel has become to you the dearest spot in all the house. May God's love be with you, making FATHEE DOLLING AS SHEELOCK HOLMES 55 you all more truthful, more honest, more loving in your lives ! May His love be around you, teaching you how to live, teaching you how to die ! ' Your affectionate friend, ' R. R. Dolling.' Certainly a different style of tract to that which asks you where you expect to spend your eternity, and yet probably more efficacious. Several of the youths who came to the club had been con nected with gangs of thieves. On one occasion a thief, who was a pal of one of these lads, attempted a burglary in the mission, but Dolling and the lay-helper awoke in time to cause him to take fright and get away by breaking a window before effecting his theft, but leaving his boots behind. These Father Dolling grasped in triumph and kept for some time, trying to rival Sherlock Holmes in detection of crime. Ulti mately he did discover the youth, but refused to prosecute, and succeeded in turning him into a steady member of society. On another occasion a great service of reparation was held for the supposed theft of the sacramental vessels, when the real culprit returned in the form of one of the clergy officiating for Dolling, who had in the latter's absence, fearing the pre datory tendencies of some of the flock, removed the vessels to what he considered to be a place of greater security elsewhere than any in the mission. We learn the following story from a friend of Father Dolling's. It belongs to this period of his life, though not directly relating to S. Martin's Mission. A fraudulent person whom Brother Bob had befriended personated him, and so obtained a loan from a London money-lender. Not long after Dolling had occasion to expostulate with the same money-lender as to his dealings with a public-school boy. The money-lender replied, ' It is pretty cool of you to take this high tone with me when you owe me three hundred pounds.' Dolling wrote back : ' I always knew you were the greatest rascal in London, but I didn't think you would have accused me of owing you three hundred pounds.' On receiving this the money-lender took a hansom and 56 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING drove to the Magdalen Mission, Maidman Street. On seeing Dolling, he said at once, ' You're not the man.' Dolling replied, ' No ; but you may pick him out from this heap of photo graphs ; I have a good many disreputable friends.' The photo graph turned up, and the money-lender accepted Dolling's assurance that he would never get anything from that quarter. But the incident had not terminated, for soon after news came from Dublin that a detective had been making inquiries as to Mr. Dolling's character and solvency, whereupon he wrote to the money-lender and said, ' You have been taking away my character in my own home, and if you don't send me fifty pounds I shall prosecute you for defamation.' The fifty pounds was sent. Trinity Sunday, 1885, was the date of Dolling's ordination to the priesthood. It took place in S. Paul's Cathedral, that great church from the pulpit of which his voice has from time to time been heard. The mission had been going on splendidly, and all the ' mothers ' of S. Martin's made an expedition with Dolling's sisters to S. Paul's to see their dear friend fully commissioned as Christ's servant and ambassador. But one of those extraordinary storm-clouds which were always gathering round Dolling's path as a minister of the Church of England, and which he certainly took but little trouble to avert, was about to break upon him, and in the process to practically destroy S. Martin's Mission. His relations with Dr. Temple (the late Primate), then Bishop of London, had been up to this not unsatisfactory on the whole, though the Bishop was not satisfied with him for telling him he could ' not read,' as he had other work to do ' all day from 7 a.m. to 12 p.m.' The missioner of S. Martin's did not come, however, into much direct contact with Bishop Temple, as he was under the Suffragan Bishop (of Bedford), Dr. Walsham How, who had always recognised his peculiar gifts. Bishop How had evidently hoped that it would be possible for him, when ordained priest, to get a sort of permit or license from the Bishop of London which would enable him to be directly under himself (Bishop How), and so ' A BITTER P.S.' 57 not to be licensed, in the ordinary way, to the Vicar of Holy Trinity; and Dolling felt that the work had grown so quickly and so strongly that it could not go on as a sort of precarious annexe of the parish of Holy Trinity, but that it ought to be made into a parish, he being responsible to raise the money to work it. Nor, Dolling believed, would the Vicar have objected, provided certain conditions were arranged in a satisfactory manner to himself and to Holy Trinity Church. However, Bishop Temple refused to consider the matter, treating the missioner of S. Martin's as if he were simply an ordinary curate, and refusing to recognise anything excep tional in his work or influence. Dolling was handed a license, which he refused to accept, in which he was licensed as an ordinary curate to the Vicar of Holy Trinity. The Bishop of Bedford was unable to obtain any better terms. The result was Dolling's resignation and departure with his sisters. On July 1, 1885, he and his helpers left the Maidman Street House. The work was taken on by Eev. Algernon Tollemache, and afterwards by the Eev. A. Osborne Jay, now Vicar of Holy Trinity, Shoreditch (both of them acting under the Vicar of Holy Trinity, Stepney). At last the house was shut up, and the mission came to an end. The following is from a leaflet appended to the last of Dolling's reports sent to subscribers to the funds of S. Martin's Mission : ' Postscript. — A lady's P.S. is the best part of a letter, but this is a bitter P.S. We are going to leave on July 1st.' Then follows an explanation of the necessity for the mission being made a permanent parish. ' However, the whole matter has been laid — I know both tenderly and lovingly, for it has been done by the Bishop of Bedford — before the Bishop of London, and he refuses even for a moment to enter tain the idea. ***** ' Very likely you might know of some place where such work as ours is needed. I and my four workers are ready to go to any place 58 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING where the present parochial system does not adequately provide for the people. ' You would think that, after all the appeals we read, there were such places in East London, but the Bishop of Bedford tells me there are not. ' Knowing the state of my people when I came, their temporal and spiritual destitution, and that the streets that we wish for are pretty much in the same state, truly the present parochial system seems to be the obstacle in the way of preaching the Gospel to the poor.' No doubt there was something to be said on the other side ; no doubt there were difficulties of a serious kind as to creating one of the districts of Holy Trinity, Stepney, into a new parish. But the mistake made was the total lack of insight involved in refusing to see in Dolling's capacities and his actual work at S. Martin's a special opportunity for the Church of England in East London. It was on the altar of red-tape that his work at S. Martin's Mission, with splendid capacities and oppor tunities, was sacrificed. Dolling could be no doubt on occa sion very difficult, but this was only because of his own indomitable zeal, and he need not have been so had he been met by the recognition, by authority, of the case of S. Martin's as an exceptional opportunity, as it actually was. True statesmanship takes account of, and uses exceptions, exceptional men, exceptional circumstances. So felt Pope Innocent III. when he gave his sanction to the otherwise irregular proceedings of the deacon Francis of Assisi. But such risks of statesmanship, justified by results, could perhaps scarcely have been expected under the conditions usual in the Church of England, in spite of Bishop How's heartfelt desire to bring together the Church and the people of the East End. At any rate, Dolling's departure was a genuine cause of regret to the Bishop of Bedford, who felt for him a sincere affection, and who perceived in him a force beyond the ordi nary. The Bishop wrote the following sonnet in his honour. BISHOP HOW'S SONNET 59 It was published among some other sonnets of his called ' My Clergy ': ' At morn he fed his soul with angels' food, Holding with Heaven high mystic communing, That from the mount some radiance he might bring Down to the weary earth-bound multitude. At night among the restless throng he stood, Sharer of all their mirth and revels gay, Yet holding over all a watchful sway, And tempering every rude ungracious mood. Not in cheap words he owned mankind his kin ; For them his life, his all, he yearned to spend, That he their love and trust might wholly win, And all their rough ways to his moulding bend, Shielding them from the unholy grasp of sin, And owned by them a brother and a friend.' CHAPTEE VI ST. agatha's, landport Vicar-Designate of S. Agatha's, Landport (1885-1895) — Appointment to the charge of the Winchester College Mission (1885) — Interviews with the Bishop of Winchester and with the Headmaster of Winchester College — Condition of the district, and of Portsmouth generally — Origin and past history of S. Agatha's Mission — Father Dolling's preliminary operations — The man and the environment suited to each other. ' Oh, it is great, and there is no other greatness, to make some nook of God's creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God ; to make some human hearts a little wiser, manfuller, happier — more blessed, less accursed.' — Carlyle: Past and Present. After Dolling had resigned the charge of the Maidman Street Mission, he took a rest in a characteristic way : he went to stay at the sea-side house at S. Leonard's used by the Post men's League. The present writer well remembers, when serving as curate of S. Michael's, Woolwich, in the summer of 1885, receiving a letter from Brother Bob asking him to spend a day with himself and with some of the postmen at the S. Leonard's house, and adding that there was a special reason for the invitation. This reason was, that as he had been offered and accepted the charge of Winchester College Mission (S. Agatha's, Land- port, Portsmouth), he wished to form his staff of assistant workers as soon as possible, and to ask the present writer to join him as assistant curate of the mission. After some con sideration the offer was accepted, with the result that in January, 1886, the writer of this book entered upon duties at S. Agatha's, Landport, which he attempted to fulfil during [60] « SIMPLICITY, UNITY, AND SOLIDITY ' 61 seven years, until 1893, when his direct connection with the Winchester College Mission ceased, owing to his being offered and accepting a Crown living in the colliery districts of Northumberland. Father Dolling has left, in the sketch of his Landport work (now out of print), entitled ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum,' a graphic description of his interviews with the various persons from whom, in different senses, he received the charge of the Mission. The first was with Dr. Fearon, the then Headmaster of Winchester College. We intend to give evidence of Dolling's relations with Winchester in a sub sequent chapter. What we desire to direct attention to here is the strong bond of mutual affection and respect which, from the first, existed between the mission priest of S. Agatha's on the one hand, and the masters and boys of Winchester on the other. Dolling's initial interview with the Headmaster, and his introduction to the school authorities by Dr. Linklater (the former missioner of S. Agatha's), had left on his mind, as he tells us, an abiding impression of the ' simplicity, unity, and solidity ' of the ethos and general system of the school. This first visit was the beginning of a friendship between himself and Dr. Fearon which, followed by similar relations with other of the masters, made his connec tion with Winchester unique, in regard to its personal char acter, among all the public-school missions of our time. The first interview with the Headmaster was but a happy augury of Dolling's immense popularity with the boys. If Dr. Linklater had, as one of the dons said, ' taken all their hearts by storm,' the hold gained was certainly not lost by his successor, who writes in his ' Ten Years ' of those first cheers which greeted him at Winchester as continually ring ing in his ears as ' incentive in the hour of sloth, as rest in the hour of weariness ever since.' Owing to the genuine and extraordinary affection which existed between Dolling and the Winchester 'men,' they became a distinct group among his ' children,' in addition to the postmen of his earlier days and to the soldiers, sailors, and artisans of Portsmouth. S. Agatha's Mission, though, in reality, very largely 62 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING practically autonomous, within wide limits, as to its methods, yet was in some sense under at least three superior authori ties, in different degrees and for different spheres of its action. The first and most important of these, extra to the mission priest himself, was, of course, the Bishop of the Diocese (Winchester) in which Portsmouth is situated. The second (though ever since the district was separated this was practi- ally the expression of an almost nominal connection) was the vicar of the great mother parish of All Saints, with its 23,000 inhabitants (or 18,000 exclusive of S. Agatha's). The third was the mission committee, representing Winchester College. The consent of the last-named was requisite in regard to the more secular arrangements of the work, such as building, etc., so long as appeals for its support went forth to the public from the chief missioner, with the support of the name and sanction of the college. This did not, however, involve any right of interference by the committee with the mode of con ducting Divine worship, and in practice, even in more secular matters, the members of that body were content to follow Dolling's advice, and to be guided by what they recognised as his superior experience in regard to the necessary expenditure required, and to the nature of the buildings to be erected for the purposes of the Landport campaign. At least, if there was any criticism among the committee antagonistic to his plans, it found no expression in the printed reports of the recommendations of that body in regard to the mission. It was to Farnham Castle that the new missioner next made his way (after his first interview with Dr. Fearon), in order to hear from the then Bishop of Winchester, Dr. Harold Browne, his advice as to S. Agatha's and the line of conduct expected from the priest who was to undertake the charge of the Land- port Mission. It is remarkable that a region so essentially modern, inartistic, and democratic as S. Agatha's district should be connected by ties of ecclesiastical allegiance with two places so fragrant of the charm and poetry of the past as Winchester and Farnham. Dolling found Bishop Harold Browne to be ' as simple, solid, and balanced ' in character as were the Winchester dons, but he also thought him a little BISHOP HAEOLD BEOWNE 63 nervous in manner, as having, he writes, ' heard strange stories about me !' The good Bishop was destined to hear yet stranger as time went on ! Dolling was struck from the first by the deep and unpretend ing piety of the Bishop, and by the profound sense of re sponsibility which the latter had in regard to the duties of his high office. For Portsmouth especially the Bishop had a deep desire to secure a better degree of spiritual life and of moral well-being than had previously prevailed. The town in question was the chief centre of population in his diocese, and, on account of varying circumstances, presented a unique series of problems for solution to the religious teacher and the social reformer. From its connection with the Eoyal Navy, its relationship to the life of the Empire is of an unrivalled description, and the fact that so many of its adult male population are, in one sense or another, servants of the State, and not under private employment, seemed to direct special attention to its crying needs on the part of the National Church. Bishop Browne, though only occasionally visiting the town, or combination of towns to which the name of Portsmouth is applied, was yet in full possession of the facts as to the urgent necessity for missionary work among its population. He must have known much of this from at least three persons, his own friends, and officially or informally connected in various ways with the life of the Winchester Diocese. These persons were Canon Jacob (now Bishop of St. Albans), who, as its vicar, had, with the aid of the largest staff of curates in England, thoroughly reorganised and re vived the church life of the vast parish of S. Mary's, Kingston, Portsea, building also a great church by the help of a generous layman and statesman, the late Mr. W. H. Smith; Mother Emma, the head of the S. Andrew's Deaconesses, a large Com munity of self-sacrificing Christian women to whom Ports mouth owes much ; and Mr. John Pares, who was, with the late Admiral Hornby, the layman chiefly concerned in the work of the Commission which, shortly before Dolling came to S. Agatha's, had brought to light the serious facts as to the inadequacy of the then existing Church (clergy, buildings, or 64 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING organisations) to grapple with the spiritual and moral destitu tion of the place. The Bishop, therefore, was awake to the need of missionary work in the district in charge of which Dolling, who had practically accepted the offer of Winchester College, now was about to enter. Dr. Harold Browne was, however, a thorough representative of the old-fashioned Anglican Via Media, alike in his dislike of anything approaching to fanaticism or eccentricity, in his extreme caution, and, we should add, in his real and unostentatious piety. He must have sanctioned Dolling's nomination by Winchester not without a certain amount of inward trepidation. Dolling's closing remembrances of the interview at Farnham were of the Bishop's kindly hope that the missioner ' would not do anything foolish,' and of his own having to pawn his watch in order to secure a bed in an inn, as he could not get back to London on the same night. The third person, after the Headmaster and the Bishop, with whom he had personal dealings in regard to his appoint ment was the ex-missioner, Dr. Linklater, whose resignation of S. Agatha's was caused by his appointment by Mr. Glad stone, the then Premier, to the important London parish of Holy Trinity, Stroud Green. Dr. Linklater was, like Father Dolling, an Irishman, and, like him, also, overflowing with buoyancy and humour. When Dolling arrived on his first visit to S. Agatha's at the Portsmouth railway platform, Link- later hurried him into the next train to Eowland's Castle, and, amid the oasis of rest afforded by the country round that charming spot, the ex-missioner drew before the mental view of his successor a plan of campaign, to part of which Dolling adhered, but other parts of which he altered as the life of S. Agatha's developed. He never changed the arrangements which had been made before his time merely for change's sake, but only when they seemed to him to be unsuitable or im possible in regard to his own method of operations. He could not fight with armour and weapons which, however well they might have been suited to the use of others, yet were unwieldy for him. He had to play the game in his own way or not at DE. LINKLATEE, THE FIRST MISSION PRIEST 65 all. With all his socialism, he had a strong vein of sturdy and invincible individuality at the basis of his character. On the return of the two priests to Portsmouth, after their few hours' trip to its country surroundings, the ex-missioner introduced the new one to the church-workers in old S. Agatha's Church, which at that time was used for pur poses not only of worship, but also of social intercourse, owing to the lack of other accommodation at the disposal of the mission. Friendliness and geniality characterised the intro duction of the new priest to his flock by its former pastor. The fact that both were Irishmen gave a peculiar flavour of unconventionality and good-fellowship to the ecclesiastical life of S. Agatha's which made that mission probably the least prim and the most human of any parochial district in the Anglican Communion. But, indeed, the circumstances of Portsmouth from 1882-1895 inclusive (i.e., from the starting of S. Agatha's Mission until the opening of the great basilican church), were such as to demand methods characterised by heart, zest, and passion, if the enterprise which Linklater came to start was to be in any sense ' a going concern.' It was on the Advent Sunday of 1882 that the mission was started by Dr. Linklater by an evening service in the Bell School, Clarence Street, at which only about two or three persons were present. Linklater had previously been joined in the work by Eev. E. W. Sergeant, formerly a Winchester House Master, and one who gave to the mission the help of a wise and well-stored mind. While Linklater practically hypnotised the wild youth, the Ishmaels of the Landport streets, and rushed them into civilising clubs, where they tried to the full his Celtic temperament, even while they loved him, as they could not help doing, Sergeant arranged the liturgical dignity of the services of the mission, as the capacity for worship developed, and he formed a class for the intelli gent study of the great questions of religion from among the more thoughtful of the working men and clerks of Ports mouth. Linklater's second clerical helper was the Eev. Gordon Wickham, now Vicar of Bradford Abbas, Dorset, whose chief work lay with the younger people, especially in the Sunday- 5 66 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING schools. His staying on for some time as assistant to Dolling, as well as Sergeant's constant visits to the mission (after the latter had ceased to be one of its clergy), alike served to link the newer developments at S. Agatha's with its earlier period. The abandonment, however, by Dolling of Linklater's favourite project of the High Schools outside the district, on the Com mercial Eoad, threatened to cause a certain lapse of sympathy between the chief missioners of, the old and of the new regime. Dolling did not consider that the High Schools were sufficiently parochial in their scope to justify him in con tinuing them when many necessary parish objects clamoured for support. The Mission Church, so dear to many now scattered all over the world as ' old S. Agatha's,' was opened by Bishop MacDougall, Canon of Winchester, on July 24, 1884, the foundation stone having been laid by Dr. Fearon on Easter Tuesday, April 5, of the same year. On September 29, 1885, the Feast of Michael, the warrior archangel, Father Dolling entered, as its duly commissioned leader, on the spiritual war fare which the Landport Mission had been waging and was still further to wage against the darkness and devilry which are always present where uncared-for people are huddled together as ' sheep having no shepherd.' Before the building of the Mission Church the services had been held in schoolrooms outside S. Agatha's district. The afternoon children's service was for a time allowed to be held in Holy Trinity Church, Portsea, whose aged vicar, Eev. T. D. Piatt, has lately been called to his rest. The conduct of a number of the big boys was, however, says Dr. Linklater, only to be described as ' diabolical.' It was so bad that the vicar of the church in question withdrew from the chancel, saying to Linklater, ' I leave my church to you and to your savage crew.' Even after old S. Agatha's was built the conduct of the same type of boys was still lacking in repose and recol lection : 'Two boys,' wrote Father Dolling in his 'Ten Years,' 'calmly lighted their pipes and began to smoke. One remedy alone seemed possible — to seize them by the back of the neck and run them out of A CHILDEEN'S SEEVICE 67 church, knocking their heads together as hard as I could. Amazed at first into silence, their tongues recovered themselves before they reached the door, and the rest of the children listened, delighted, to vocabulary which I have seldom heard excelled. We had no sooner restored order than the mothers of the two lads put in an appear ance. As wine is to water, so was the conversation of the mothers to their sons. I wish I could have closed the children's ears as quickly as I closed the service. But they listened with extreme delight, even following me in a kind of procession, headed by the two ladies, to my lodgings. The contrast between this, my first procession, and the last, which took place when my church was opened, is a true measure of the difference which ten years have made.' In considering the condition of things, of which the above incident is an indication, it is necessary to understand the peculiar situation and circumstances of S. Agatha's district, especially of its main artery, Charlotte Street. These were caused by the fact that the parish lies between the older part of Portsmouth, the region surrounded by the moats, on the one hand, and the vast industrial districts of Kingston on the other, while the Commercial Eoad, which bounds S. Agatha's in one direction, forms the main channel of traffic for the entire town. The quaint, old-world aspect of some bits of Portsmouth proper, close by the harbour and the docks, has still managed to preserve itself amid all the changes of recent years. Portsmouth Parish Church (dedicated to S. Thomas of Canterbury, and architecturally of two periods, medieval and post-Eeformation) — the church in which Charles I.'s favourite, Buckingham, is buried — has still something about its aspect that recalls the period when Felton stabbed the Duke before the ill-starred expedition to the Isle of Bhe". The older houses of the wealthier type are such as might form the background for ' In Celia's Arbour,' Besant's novel of Portsmouth life. The curious shanties by the harbour, with the 'ancient and fish-like smell' which pervades their environs, are such abodes as Quilp, the dwarf of Dickens' ' Old Curiosity Shop,' would have found to his liking. Dickens himself was born in the town, and the old-fashioned portions 5—2 68 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING that are left are such as his imagination would have peopled with suitable denizens. Captain Cuttle seems to need old Portsmouth as a background. The spirit of Dickens, or of E. L. Stevenson, would have found the place vastly in keeping with many of their most creative moods. This old town has, however, long since overflowed its boundaries, the moats, and it has done so in two different directions. Towards Kingston it has developed into a vast community of artisans and mechanics, mainly in State employment in the Eoyal Dockyard. In another direction it has become Southsea, a watering-place the permanent inhabitants of which, besides lodging-house keepers, are naval and military people, but the population of which is increased in the summer months by an immense concourse of visitors. The splendid performances of the military bands at the piers night after night, the constant facilities for yachting in the Solent and for rowing about the harbour, the ever interesting battleships, whether the ironclads or the old ' wooden walls ' of the Victory or the St. Vincent, carrying back men's thoughts to the struggle with Napoleon for the supremacy of the sea, all combine to make Southsea of more interest than is the ordinary sea-side resort. The glimpses of the ancient castle of Portchester seen amid the trees as one rows inland (its water-gate said to have been constructed by the Eomans) give a touch of the poetry of the past to a scene otherwise too exclusively dominated by the great ships of war with which the harbour is filled. The district of S. Agatha's, Landport, however, has neither the antique flavour of Portsmouth proper, the industrial com fort of large parts of Kingston, nor the Brightonlike aspect of the gay Southsea ' front.' It was when Linklater, and after him Dolling, lived and worked in its midst, a huddled mass of miserably small and overcrowded dwellings, a sort of municipal Cinderella, sitting in rags amid its better-cared-for sisters of the borough. Its slaughter-houses were scented from afar, especially those contiguous to S. Agatha's Parsonage. It had no less than fifty-one ' publics ' — an enormous proportion to the population (5,000) of the district — THE LIFE OF LANDPOET STEEETS 69 most of them with ' sing-song ' rooms of a low type. The many houses of ill fame, those nests of nameless evil which were so foul a feature of certain of the streets of the district in Dolling's time, and most of which he succeeded in uprooting ; the utter want of restraint or discipline of any kind in the entire life of the place ; the unmeasured use of language dis playing often an ingenuity of inventiveness in its profanity — all served to present peculiar temptations to the thoughtless and the young. It is true that several of the streets in S. Agatha's district were thoroughly decent in regard to the conduct of their inhabitants. It is also true that no doubt a great improve ment has since taken place in the character of the neighbour hood, alike physical, social, and moral, largely due to Dolling's untiring exertions as a citizen and to the quickened sense of municipal responsibility for its disgraceful condition — a con dition which its vicar-designate, amid storms of obloquy from all the ' comfortable moles ' and vested interests of Ports mouth, persisted in courageously dragging to the light of day. The evil, however, of the district was not of that sodden and sordid type which is so absolutely hopeless. It was a life full of excitement and laughter which poured itself daily along the Landport streets and paraded nightly up and down the Commercial Eoad. The free and easy gait of the men-of-war's men, those splendid fellows who, with the courage of lions and the hearts of children, are yet so often and so easily led into any sinful indulgence that has about it the fierceness of excitement, after the restraint of the life at sea; the manly stride of the ' red Marines (E.M.L.I.), or of their brothers in blue, the Eoyal Marine Artillery, those first-rate specimens of well- set-up soldiers ; the great facilities for all kinds of horseplay and street-romping (the latter much in dulged in by mixed parties of both sexes) ; the larks and practical jokes played in the streets which save the public life from dulness; above all, the joys of Saturday night, the cheap-jack sales, the waxwork shows, the exhibition of freaks or fat women at one penny entrance fee, the flare of the im- 70 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING provised lamps by the light of which fried fish or hokey-pokey is dispensed, the swing-boats which used to hoist their scream ing cargoes at the waste space which was then beside the Edinburgh Eoad — all made up a scene in which the curious observer might find unfailing food for interesting contem plation of all sorts and conditions of men and women, so far, at least, as the masses are concerned. Later on the public- houses poured forth their patrons ; the voice of intoxicated expostulation proceeds from husband to wife, or wife to husband ; not seldom a free fight prolongs the noises of the night. Meanwhile the tramp of the picket is heard, warning back to ship or barracks the erring brother who has no justification for his absence. Certainly the Landport ' Satur day Night ' was of a different type to that celebrated by Burns. So late was the noise protracted that often scarcely had the sound of skirmishing in the streets subsided into silence than the bell calling the faithful to the earliest Celebration on Sunday at S. Agatha's began its shrill reminder. When, as on great festivals, the first Eucharist was at 5 a.m., the persons who had just risen from bed for purposes of devotion met the last remnants of the strayed revellers of the streets staggering on their homeward way. The life of that part of Landport, whatever its faults, could certainly never be accused of smug respectability or of decorous dulness. It was not ' the ghastly smooth life, dead at heart,' of which Browning writes. It sinned, but openly, riotously, and with a sort of flaunting jest and good-humour. In the words of Father Dolling in his ' Eeport ' issued September, 1886, after his first year's initial effort : ' The first thing you would notice in our streets is the number of soldiers and sailors, the second the number of boys and girls wandering about all the evening. These two circumstances are our difficulty. Soldiers and sailors are the best fellows in the world, but they are a source of infinite danger to our boys and girls — indeed, to our older people ; their talk, their example, their very good-nature, their homelessness, is a constant temptation to others. This pleasant example leads our boys and girls to seek their pleasure DOLLING SUITED TO LANDPOET 71 in the streets ; parents lose all control, many marry over-young ; the husband marches away or goes to sea ; if the former, his wife often gets nothing ; if the latter, 30s. or £2 paid at the end of the month. Trying her very best, what can she do 1 ' The whole district is leavened with a low moral tone ; in fact, sin is no shame. Many of our people are hangers-on at the dock yard, men who go out of work when there is the smallest reduction of hands ; with very few exceptions, we are all poor. Till three years ago the Church of England did absolutely nothing. The mother parish was too large, the Nonconformists occupied the ground in two or three different centres, so nearly all our religious and respectable people are Dissenters; but even some of the Dissenters lost heart, and, as in the case of the Baptists, migrated to more favoured places. But practically many of our people have grasped a certain spasmodic religion, very dangerous, a religion that insists as the one dogma of faith on the forgiveness of God continually being exercised, without any respect as to repentance and amendment, which confesses continually "I am a sinner," but refuses to say " I have sinned," and so virtually any actual system of true morals and belief has passed away, and with them all idea of obedience and discipline. 1 1 have dealt at great length in this statement, I fear, for I want you to understand the position, moral and religious, of many of our 7,000 people.' One chief secret of Dolling's success as priest of S. Agatha's lay in the extraordinary way in which the environment suited the man and the man the environment. Cardinal Manning is reported to have said of his house, when certain defects were pointed out in it, ' It fits me like an old shoe.' Father Dolling might have said the same of his parsonage and of the Landport streets. Here at least was no case of 'the round man in the square hole,' and of the squandering, humanly speaking, of gifts of heart and intelligence by the placing of their possessors in the places where their distinctive faculties are of least avail. In the case of Father Dolling as priest of S. Agatha's, Landport, for once the organism struck root in an environment which suited it. Landport was made for such a man as Dolling to wrestle with, to overcome, and to lift its people a little nearer to God and to one another, and 72 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING certainly Dolling was made for Landport. His heartiness ; his bonhomie ; his capacity for being supremely happy, smok ing with a crowd of soldiers as he chummed up with them in a barrack-room ; his power of conceiving and carrying through large plans for dealing with masses of the hungry, the ignorant, or the vicious, for civilising, teaching, Christian ising them according to their needs ; his realisation of Christ as the Workman of Nazareth and the fraternal Comrade of the people; his dislike of effeminacy and sentimental whining ; his clearing his mind from cant ; the fact that, while tender and in a true sense childlike in heart, he was essentially a ' men's man,' sturdy, stubborn, and devoid of fear — all these gifts and qualities pointed Eobert Dolling out as the one of all others whom God meant and prepared to be the priest of such a place as Landport, and, ' at the end of the day,' as a 'faithful shepherd to come,' bringing his ' sheep in his hand.' Here was no case of what the Eev. C. L. Mar son, that caustic critic of the Church of England, thus describes in the Commonwealth for December, 1901, in reference to the hap hazard system, or want of system, in regard to clerical appointments in ' the National Establishment ' : ' In time,' he says to an imaginary candidate for Orders, ' you will get a living, a huge house with august stables, if the income is small. If your tastes are urban, it will be in the country, and vice versd. You will be pitchforked into any place which may chance to fall vacant. Have you a gift for coaxing spinsters, you will be sent to a University town. If you are powerful with colliers, you will be called to the Isle of Wight. If cabbages are your delight, you will be pent in Peckham.' Far different to this was the case of S. Agatha's and its vicar - designate. Amid the streets of Landport Father Dolling was no deplorable misfit. Excitement did not weary him, it stimulated his efforts ; and Portsmouth, whatever its faults, is not dull. The dashes of colour afforded by the uniforms of the soldiers and sailors who fill the streets ; the constant music of A LOVEE OF TOWN LIFE 73 the bands as the troops swing past from route-marching ; the summer concourse of all sorts of odd people to the sea-front (just like the individuals who fill up so many of John Leech's drawings in the best days of Punch) ; the briny atmosphere, as it were, that pervades the whole place— suited him thoroughly. Dolling would have died of ennui amid suburban villas. Landport, even when he employed his most lurid colours in the painting of it, was far more congenial to his mind as a place to live in than any region of prim decorum could ever have been. Its very vices afforded a perpetual challenge to his indomit able combativeness. They gave his boundless energies the em ployment of grappling with them. He was no Laodicean trifler with the great facts of life. He loved to view the pageant of existence, or, rather, to take an active part in it. He preferred making history to studying its pages by the aid of midnight oil. City or town life was of inexhaustible interest to his eager, kindly, and, in a good sense, inquisitive mind, whether as displaying itself at some Continental festa, or amid the Saturday-night throng of Portsmouth Commercial Eoad. His tastes were rather those of Dr. Samuel Johnson, with whose sturdiness of character and manly piety he had much in com mon, or of the human-hearted Charles Lamb, that lover of theatres, than those of George Herbert, the country priest of Bemerton, or of Wordsworth, the hermit poet of the lakes. ' The spirit that is among the lonely hills ' could not long satisfy a mind that was continually saying with Miranda in The Tempest, ' 0 brave new world, how beauteous mankind • is !' When on visits to his relatives at Braemar, he soon tired of Lochnagar and Ben Macdhui, and craved for return from their silent grandeur to the turmoil of his beloved S. Agatha's. With Dr. Johnson he could truly say that, in his opinion, there was ' no prospect finer than a walk down Fleet Street.' The badinage of the men's club, or the rough yet tender hearted fellowship of the dear lads — soldiers, sailors, working men, or nondescripts — who gathered round him night by night at his big table in the games compartment of the gymnasium, all this was more to Eobert Dolling than the most entrancing 74 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING scenery with man left out of the picture. He had all the delight of Walt Whitman, the apostle of 'the love of com rades,' in human nature and human beings as such, combined with a deep sense of man's more spiritual needs, which seems not so evident amid the rugged and powerful productions of the American poet. Dolling, however, with all his large heart, was no mere evangelist of good-nature. He was prepared for disappointment and ingratitude, and he often met with them in ways that cut him to the quick. Yet still to the day he left Portsmouth the very magnitude of its problems and the unregulated energy of its life seemed to call forth in him a corresponding buoyancy of hope. He lived, however, in no fools' paradise. He was practical to the finger-tips. Below are some words from his initial address to the people of S. Agatha's on his entry into office as the head of the mission. They are emphatically the words of a priest who knows his business, and yet who is also no mere clever clergyman, ' good at organising ' and working his church and parish as a statistic-producing ecclesiastical machine. They are the words of a firm and kindly elder brother rather than of ' the resident gentleman in every parish,' the thought of whose presence multiplied over the land brings such consolation to the mind of the writers of the leading articles in the Times. ' My dear friends,' Father Dolling says, ' I, on my part, will try my very best to carry on whatever Mr. Linklater has begun. I think we shall soon get to know and trust each other, and that is, above all things, what I aim at. Some way I feel already as if I was friends with many of you, for I get so many pleasant nods as I pass through the streets, and surely acquaintance must ripen into friendship, and friendship into trust, and if we once get to trust each other the future is secure ; but even before you get to know me, I think I have a right to claim one thing from you— I mean your prayers that God may give me grace to be a true minister among you all, your own servant, having the will, even if I lack the power, of serving you in all things. Let me feel that I shall have a strong body ready and willing to help me, and that you will have the old familiar faces who have helped to make the mission dear to A PASTORAL LETTEE 75 you. Let us all, then, pray that each one of us, laying aside all selfish thoughts, may labour, in our different places, to perfect the work that God has called us to — the bringing of every man, woman, and child in the district to the knowledge of the love of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. ' Your faithful servant, ' R. R. Dolling.' Such was the evangelical motive so deeply underlying the entire range of his social activities. CHAPTEE VII Father Dolling's band of helpers, clerical and lay — Their special depar t- ments of work — The social side of the mission — The work of his sisters and others with the women — The mothers — The girls — S. Agatha's dancing-class — Miss Wells' ' Home ' at Southsea. ' I dream'd in a dream I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth ; I dream'd that was the new city of Friends.' Walt Whitman. Father Dolling knew well the importance of co-operation and delegation, and the absolute necessity of these in all work that is not to depend solely on the evanescent conditions of the purely personal influence of one individual. His interferences with the work of his subordinates were comparatively rare, and in the main his willingness to allow them to take their own line, within reasonable limits, was very remarkable in so active and capable a personality, and one of a temper the very opposite to that of the phlegm which often passes for patience. On the whole, the intercourse between Father Dolling and his large staff of fellow-workers, clerical and lay, was seldom marred by any unpleasantness or misunderstanding. It was essentially the life of a family interior to the larger family of the whole district of S. Agatha's, and permeating it with a characteristic influence of which Dolling himself was the strong and genial focus. This co-operative mode of work was the more necessary in Dolling's case as he was never at any period of his ministry a house to house visitor. It was not possible for him to be so consistently with the enormous calls upon hiB time for other necessary purposes, made even at Maidman Street, and, far [ 76 ] THE MISSION WOEK CO-OPEEATIVE 77 more, at Landport. As he never visited any except special cases (and of course always including sick-beds, where his ministry was perfect in its tact and tenderness), he was forced to rely very largely on the efforts of his staff in this kind of work — seeing the people in their own homes — on which he laid the very greatest importance. He could not do much of this personally, through holding in his hands the reins of the whole work all day long, being practically hard at work at one thing or another from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., except for about an hour or two's rest, often a walk to Portsdown Hill or the sea, in the afternoon. He knew, however, the details of every case, as he was constantly in communication with his curates and lay workers, through whom he touched every room in the most crowded of the courts and lanes around S. Agatha's. Besides this, a great part of every day was devoted to ' seeing people,' as he called it, that is, interviews with all sorts of individuals sent to him by his helpers, or who spontaneously sought his help or advice, seldom going away without a lighter and more thankful heart than when they came. Some casual hearers of Dolling's sermons, or readers of his ' reports,' noting the air of strong determination which per vaded his announcements of his plans, might have conceived the idea that he was an ecclesiastical autocrat, a person of the ' aut Caesar aut nullus ' type, leaving no room for any other individuality to develop freely in his immediate neigh bourhood. This impression, however, would not be true. Few powerful religious leaders have been more tolerant of differ ences in mental life, and even, to a certain degree, in ideas, than was Dolling with his fellow-workers, so long as there was loyalty of action, sympathy, and a general agreement on main principles. We think that the following extract from one of his ' Quarterly Letters ' (that for September, 1893) will be sufficient to dissipate any impression that his fellow clergy and other helpers were solely the pliant and unthinking instru ments of one masterful will. ' There has always been a danger lest you who kindly read these Quarterly Letters should imagine that the word " I " stands for " I 78 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING myself." It is easier to write in the first person, and it is certainly gratifying to take the work of many people and express it under the word " I "; and if I have not made this explanation in every letter, yet I think I have honestly hoped that you would understand the word "I " in this more general sense.' Whatever other troubles Dolling had, he never had to endure the trials of loneliness. God granted to him a large band of willing and devoted helpers. These workers might be divided into three classes : Firstly, the assistant clergy (always two in number, and sometimes three, besides constant help from clerical visitors). With these may be classed the resident laymen, often candidates for Holy Orders, of whom there were always some living at the mission, and at work among the lads and men. There were also constant lay visitors, often from one or other of the Universities, who gave a helping hand with the clubs or gymnasium. Secondly, the resident lady workers, living at ' Miss Dolling's house ' in Conway Street. With these may be included the penitentiary worker, who lived in a small cottage adjoining the ' Ladies' House.' Thirdly, there was a large band of district visitors, non resident, whose work involved several hours' substantial labour weekly. To take a district from Father Dolling meant that the visitor was required to know the people in it, as far as possible, with personal friendship. We think it may be said that whatever the blunders and failures of any of the above, there was a sincere desire to bring the Christian faith as a principle of life to the hearts of the people, and to do this as friends, not as patrons. Two convictions of Father Dolling which underlay all his ministry in the Church of England were also shared by his principal associates : 1. The Catholic faith must be popularised if the Church of this country is to be a thing of living souls, and not only an academic tradition existing in books. Eitualism was valued as' a means of teaching by the eye. NEITHER PIETISM NOR PATRONAGE 79 2. The Church of Christ ought to be the main instrument for the social as well as spiritual regeneration of the people. The exclusive possession of the Church of England by certain classes of the community must be broken down if she is to be in reality as well as in name the National Church. Hence in the main the sympathies of Dolling and of those who worked at S. Agatha's with him were at once Catholic and democratic rather than of the usual Anglican High Church type. They were at once more advanced in one sense and broader in another than the distinctively 'Via Media' or ' Moderate High ' school, a school which has, of course, in cluded devoted men and hard workers, but which still is singularly ill-adapted for kindling and sustaining enthusiasm, especially among the multitude and the ignorant. Of the various workers (all of whose names it is impossible to mention), Thomas Greene with the lads and men generally, . Rev. W. Dowglass with the gymnasium fellows, Cornibeer and Hays with the sailor boys from the St. Vincent, Miss Nance (now Mrs. Cator) with her 'roughs,' Miss Dolling and the other ladies with the girls, one and all worked on the same principle : to desire, for Christ's sake, to serve and help the people without either pietism or patronage. The same ideals underlay also the peculiarly difficult work of Anna Waldron (now with God) among the fallen women of Landport, and the girls in danger of moral pollution, and also the labours in the cause of temperance of Miss Archer among the apparently hopeless cases of alcoholism of which S. Agatha's district, with its fifty-one public-houses, afforded such abundant •examples. But how did Dolling get his helpers ? As a rule he picked them up in an apparently haphazard way. We will take a striking instance of this. Thomas Greene (then a young layman, now Rector of Kilowna, British Columbia) was one, the influence of whose strenuous and manly personality, with his large sympathies and genial humour, was inestimable among the men and boys in the earlier days of S. Agatha's. He was first attracted to the mission as the result of a visit which he paid to his friend Eev. C. F. Newell (now Eector of 80 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING Templepatrick in the North of Ireland, and at that time one of the curates of S. Agatha's). Greene was at first little in sympathy with much which he heard and saw at S. Agatha's. He was a sturdy Ulsterman, with plenty of that ' grit ' which abounds among North of Ireland Protestants, and which, in his case, was saved from being repulsive by his large-hearted humanity and his readiness to admire good wherever he saw it. He was at that time, we believe, a member of the Orange Society, but, though strongly Protestant, he was also a Church man, and not a mere undenominationalist. He was a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and had been engaged in scholastic work, but also he had strong thoughts of Holy Orders. Greene had a perfectly unritualistic mind, and S. Agatha's, with its processions, its incense, its coloured vestments, and its dramatic mode of worship, must have been to him, an honest Irish Protestant, a considerable surprise. Dolling and he, however, conceived for each other from the start a warm affection. In fact, Father Dolling magnetised him as he did so many other people, although Greene did not accept every thing straight off just because Dolling held or practised it. Greene was essentially manly in character ; he had the mens sana in corpore sano, nor had he the slightest sympathy with the sickly sentimentalism which Catholic devotion, when per verted, is often apt to breed. If Protestantism tends often to become hard, dull, and prosaic, Catholicism of every kind, when untempered by the healthy development of individuality, often runs to seed in the direction of an exclusively feminine or even well-nigh hysterical type of piety, the type which raised the ire of Charles Kingsley. From such a danger the presence of such persons as Greene, next to Dolling's strong manliness of character, saved S. Agatha's. The objectionable type of ' pious female ' or sentimental youth had either to go to other pastures in search of their appropriate spiritual nutriment, or else, if they stayed, to add a little common-sense to their store of devotion. Unless hopeless, they soon ' got the nonsense knocked out of them,' as Dolling used to say. He generally accomplished this by setting such persons some practical EXAMINATION OF THE 'ANGELS' 81 work to do not involving any highly-wrought feelings ; as when a High Church youth fell on his knees saying, ' Father, I crave a habit ' (i.e., a monastic one), Dolling replied, ' If you want to do something useful, get up and dust and arrange those books ; that will about suit you,' pointing to his large and very disordered library. The devotee soon tired of this. It was this library of which the story is told that when a boy was sent to sort the books, putting all the volumes on Holy Scripture and religious subjects by themselves, among these latter was afterwards found Eider Haggard's 'King Solomon's Mines' wedged in beside Dean Stanley's 'Sinai and Palestine,' the amateur librarian evidently thinking the first-named work to be connected with the criticism of the Old Testament. Greene, like his vicar, and like most of the workers at S. Agatha's, had a keen sense of humour. Certainly the incidents of the Landport work afforded many opportunities for the exercise of that quality. The sordid dulness of much of the East End of London is not a characteristic of the Portsmouth slums. Possibly the soldier and sailor element, as we have before hinted, may account for the greater vivacity of the latter, but the fact is certain. We remember when Greene on one occasion having got hold of a band of street-arabs, the prowling skirmishers of the courts and alleys of the district, had formed them into a Bible-class, of the advance of which in religious knowledge- he was very proud. One evening he invited the Father to conduct an examination to test the knowledge of the Gospel story by the members. The ' angels,' as these young scamps were called, were seated in order. Great was the anxiety of their friend for their success in the catechising. Father Dolling, in cassock and biretta, sailed in, very paternal and authoritative, accompanied by an entourage of ladies. The examination began. First question, ' Who was John the Baptist ?' Answer, ' He was a parson.' The catechism could not be continued. Another of the ' rough boys,' who had been emigrated, sent 6 82 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING back a letter from St. Louis de Feraque, from which we extract the following : ' I do not go to church very often, as there is no special minister, but they pay one when they can get the chance to find one. The last one they got preached about the Prodigal Son, and said he could fancy the old father hugging his son like he would hug a girl if he had one, which set all the people laughing outright, and he had to apologise.' Most of the men who worked at S. Agatha's, whether clergy or lay helpers (resident or occasional) managed to catch something, without mere imitation, of Dolling's peculiar spirit, a union, not so very common, of a sense of duty with a sense of humour. They learnt to know the right time to laugh and the right time to be serious, since human affairs, in this very mixed and apparently illogical world, afford natural motives for both moods. The men who worked with Dolling became, in many cases, strong friends with the soldiers, sailors, and young artisans who were rapidly attracted to the mission by the gymnasium and other social centres. There is a frank generosity in youth, when unspoiled by snobbery or priggish- ness, which made it possible for undergraduates, or men of a similar stamp attached to the mission, to get to know young fellows of the working classes in that spirit of comradeship of which Walt Whitman is the singer. That this personal intercourse, at parsonage, club, and gymnasium, remained thoroughly manly and wholesome, absolutely free from sickly sentimentalism, on the one hand, or riotous vulgarity on the other, was due, humanly speaking, to Dolling's extraordinary gift for bringing people into right, human relations with one another, and enabling barriers of caste to imperceptibly drop aside, without, at the same time, losing the essential restraint and control without which social intercourse becomes a bear garden. This feature of the life at S. Agatha's was almost unique, and its possibility was due to the genuine and infectious genius for friendship — for it was nothing short of genius — possessed by its unconventional missioner. Among the assistant clergy who worked at S. Agatha's under THE IEISH HIGH CHUECH 83 Father Dolling should be mentioned the Eev. C. F. Newell (before alluded to). His kindly nature made him a general favourite. His father, the present Eector of Kilbehenny, co. Cork, was a frequent and welcome visitor at the mission. The work among the rough lads which Greene had com menced was well carried on, after his departure for America, by the Eev. W. P. Dowglass, now priest in charge of S. Wilfrid's Mission, Newcastle, and one whose prowess on the football field made him a representative of muscular Christianity. Men of his type do much to dissever religion from an exclusive association with tea-parties and ecclesiastical gossip. Certainly among the multitude of youths who loaf at the street-corners of Landport and lounge in its ' pubs,' Dowglass found ample material for his indomitable energy to exercise itself on. He was, like several of the other clergy and helpers, an Irishman, though ordained in England. ' Where do you go of a Sunday?' one old woman at Landport was heard to ask another. ' I attend the Irish High Church ' (i.e., S. Agatha's) was the answer. Much of the work of the mission involved office labour of an exacting kind. Statistics as to conditions of poverty, names of men out of work, arrangements for emigration, poor relief (the latter, in times of distress, of a very extensive kind), the sending out of the ' Quarterly Letters ' to friends and sub scribers, the receipt and acknowledgment of money — all this involved constant desk work. Father Dolling's study was generally more like the office of the head of a great business concern, or the bureau of a department of public works than the ordinary type of clergyman's room. In all this incessant and often most tiresome and unattractive though necessary labour, he found in Mr. J. H. E. Abbott, of Hertford College, Oxon (since ordained), a strenuous voluntary helper. This help was the more valuable as such work was the most drudging, in many ways, of all connected with the mission, and the least likely to attract the notice of the public. Much vigorous help was given, both in the parish and as to the arrangements of Divine worship, by the Eevs. C. E. Eoe and Stanley Gresham (both now of S. Paul's, Brighton). The 6—2 84 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING latter helped much in regard to the musical character of the services. Dolling was grateful for this. He was on excellent terms with his choirmen, and with the blind organist, Mr. Whittick, to whose musical taste and skill so much of the beauty of the worship at S. Agatha's was due, yet he was not himself musical, nor was he en rapport with surpliced choirs, dreading their craving for elaborate Church music, which he detested. No adequate account of Dolling's helpers could be given without alluding to the band of Christian women whose tact, sympathy, faith, and patience, combined with an untiring and undespairing cheerfulness, bore such splendid fruit in that work among the ' mothers ' and the younger women and girls, which was so strong an element in the life of S. Agatha's. Men's clubs cannot solve of themselves the question of home life. In fact, the older he lived the less Dolling believed in what he called ' salvation by clubs ' — i.e., by such things in themselves, especially when managed in a merely mechanical and business way, without real friendship, personal influence, or religious spirit. The home and the family, the true unit of society, must be vitally touched. To do this women must be influenced, especially the wife and mother, the guardian genius of the home. This is impossible without . the labours of Christian women who unite consecrated common-sense with Christ-like sympathy for the trials and difficulties of their sisters. What Father Dolling and the assistant clergy and the laymen were to the men and boys of S. Agatha's district, that Elise and Geraldine Dolling and the ladies working with them (some living with them, others non-resident) were to the girls and women — unfailing friends, at once kind and firm, weary with no drudgery, disappointed with no ingratitude. It is a long time before the gracious, womanly influence of Miss Dolling in particular will be forgotten by those who were among her ' girls ' in Landport. Miss Geraldine Dolling's gift of organisation and sound judgment had also much to do with the development of the very large mothers' meetings in connection with S. Agatha's, while her unfailing cheerfulness and sense of humour made THE MOTHEES 85 these the occasions of a real gathering of friends, in which the ladies from the more respectable and decorous artisan quarters learnt to know better their sisters from the streets of overcrowded and unskilled labour. A ' reading aloud ' (often of Dickens) by Mrs. Crowe (whom the dramatic world also knew as Miss Bateman) generally occupied the time of sewing. After this came a cup of tea and a friendly clatter of tongues (with, we think, no spiteful gossip). 'A few words' from one of the clergy — always an inevitable feature of everything at S. Agatha's— ended the meeting. When Dolling spoke, it was almost always some point of home life to which he alluded. ' My dears ' was his usual mode of address to the mothers. If Miss Geraldine Dolling was usually the presiding spirit of the mothers' meetings, Miss Dolling was (seated beside her brother) of the dances which were so marked a feature of S. Agatha's social life. At these dances boys ceased to be rude and girls to giggle, and both learnt how to enjoy themselves without coarseness and vulgarity on the one hand, or stilted affectation on the other. Many other ladies helped well in the work among the girls, which, indeed, had been commenced by one of them before Dolling came to Ports mouth ; but it is especially to Miss Dolling's influence that is due the development among the younger women of a spirit at once religious and naturally wholesome. To Miss Dolling's friendship at Maidman Street, at S. Agatha's, and at Poplar is due, humanly speaking, the redemption from evil of the life of many a young girl who would else have been too weak and helpless to avoid being, easily caught in the devil's toils. Florence Wells, whom since that time God has taken to Himself, was sister to the late Eev. Ashton Wells, an old Wykehamist, and formerly one of Dr. Linklater's curates. Possessed of private means, the business and pleasure of her life lay in the service of others. When Mrs. Kane, an old friend of Father Dolling's, and then resident in America, granted him for mission purposes the use of a fine old house with spacious grounds (formerly the Blind Asylum) in South sea, he installed Miss Wells there as head of a home and 86 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING school for little girls taken from conditions of squalor, some times even from surroundings of an infamous character. He wrote thus of this home to the subscribers : 1 Our one object is not to fit the girls for living a life of rules in retirement, but for living honest, pure, free lives in the midst of the temptations of the world.' It was a charming sight to see Father Dolling and Miss Wells sitting in the quaint old garden of the home, a sort of pleasance, and watching the games of the little children. For the latter the days on which Father Dolling visited them were indeed worthy of a white mark. The real goodness of these two good people, childless them selves, seemed all the greater through their simple pleasure in the children's joy. Although Dolling thought such a home a necessity for certain cases, yet he tried to make it as really homely and as little of an ' institution ' as possible. He also wrote very wisely on this subject as follows : ' But, after all, the use of such places must be necessarily excep tional. Under all ordinary circumstances nothing can stand instead of a father's care and a mother's love. All other arrangements for children, though sometimes necessary, have a danger of becoming unnatural and artificial.' Before we leave the subject of the women's work at S. Agatha's, it may be well to quote Dolling's own tribute to five good women, the resident women workers of S. Agatha's. It is the dedication of his book, ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum ' : ' To my sisters, Elise and Geraldine, to Lina Blair, Florence Wells, and Matilda Rowan, who for the sake of God bore with me for ten years, in all gratitude I dedicate this book, which is virtually an account of their work.' There was one woman who filled a humbler position in the history of the mission whose name ought not to be forgotten ; Mary Pursglove, Father Dolling's housekeeper, whose devotion to ' the master,' as she always called him, was only equalled MARY'S EESOUECEFULNESS 87 by her extraordinary resourcefulness as a caterer in meeting those frequent occasions when her temper and capacity would be taxed to the uttermost. She provided for the 'all sorts and conditions of men ' who were invited to sit down at the ' common table,' including, it might be, a colonial Bishop, an M.P., some Wykehamist prefects, a few man-of-war's men, a private in the Dragoons or Lancers on furlough, and always some of the nondescripts whom the Father picked up, or who gravitated to him by an inevitable attraction. But ' Mary ' was equal to every emergency. She was, in her way, as un conventional as Father Dolling himself, to whom she was absolutely devoted. She did not live to see him return from America. From servants Dolling always received the most spontaneous and ready ministry. He treated them as human beings, not as machines. We have heard him preach more than once on the question of the honourableness of service, when dwelling on the theme of the ' Lavipedium,' the Christ washing the feet of His disciples, as the Servus servorum, the slave of the human race. CHAPTEE VIII Father Dolling's building plans at Landport — His centres of work — Description of above in his leaflet 'The VIII. Milestones' — The Parsonage and the mode of life there — The meals at the Parsonage — The Gymnasium — Father Dolling as a promoter of healthy recreation — His critics at Portsmouth. 1 Of joy in widest commonalty spread.' — Wordsworth. Besides 'workers, buildings were required in order to enable Father Dolling to carry through his plans for the Landport mission. Some buildings, especially the old mission church, existed before he came, but widely extended operations de manded larger and more ample accommodation and increase of plant. The generous and unfailing support of Winchester College people and other subscribers was one great strength to him, humanly speaking ; the other was his large staff of active, enthusiastic, and, on the whole, competent fellow labourers. Whatever other trials Dolling had, money poured in, and a large band of zealous friends gathered round and, in several cases, shared his life in the slums of Landport. As to the buildings, in each case, for Dolling a building was not an object in itself, but, as it were, the shell of a living social organism. We quote for a full account of these centres the letter printed in the Wykehamist (the Winchester College magazine), which Dolling addressed to Wykehamists and all other supporters of S. Agatha's Mission, dated October 9, 1895, on the very eve of the opening of the great basilican church on October 27 : ' " When Linklater first spoke to us in school he took the whole school by storm." [ 88 ] 'THE VIII. MILESTONES' 89 ' This was a comment made to the writer of this article when he first took charge of the mission. Of course, such enthusiasm cannot last long. Naturally, the school mission must be content with a very small place in the daily life of Winchester, but I think we may be well content with the place that it has filled in men's hearts, tested by what it has extracted out of their pockets. Not that the giving of money is in any sense the truest test. Love and prayer were surely a truer. But love we Englishmen have no easy way of showing ; of prayer One can alone judge ; and yet I am bold to say there has been no lack of these. Visits to Oxford and Cambridge, casual meetings in London, letters from India — indeed, from all parts of the world — many a handshake, sometimes even a jest, have proved over and over again that a true memory, I believe a real love, and therefore I know a spirit of prayer, exists towards the mission. But on the threshold of a great departure like the new church it is well to count up the milestones on the road we have travelled together, Wykehamists and I, for the last nine years. ' Milestone I. : Our great gymnasium, costing over £2,000, is the centre of that magnificent work of reformation, in body at any rate, of many hundreds of Landport lads. Here they first learn discipline and order and self-respect. From it have gone out soldiers, sailors, emigrants without number. It is the centre, too, of all our social work, where every week eighty or a hundred boys and girls learn to dance together, to talk together, to know each other without embarrassment, without giggling, and with that mutual respect without which, as you will readily conceive, the thing might be a danger instead of a blessing. ' Milestone II. : The large room in Chance Street, costing over £700, witnesses the mothers' meeting, which brings into lives, sordid and monotonous beyond conception, a little light and hope fulness and change ; where 200 children and twenty old people are fed twice a week. Here many of the trade and beneficial societies meet, and on disengaged nights the very roughest of our lads are here first got into hand. It is a work that more ebbs than flows, and yet leaves something better than wreckage on the shore of self- respect. ' Milestone III. : Miss Dolling's house, costing over £500, has diffused an atmosphere of true compassion and understanding over the whole parish, winning the love and confidence of girls and women without number, extracting from the very roughest and most degraded traits of self-sacrifice and devotion. Many a poor drunkard and sinner sits there clothed and in her right mind. It is 90 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING this influence which has tended so wonderfully to change the factory girl of Portsmouth. In that day when the secrets of the mission are disclosed the truest seeds will be found to have been sown here. ' Milestone IV. : Our twelve almshouses, costing over £500, enable six old married couples, seven old widows, and two widows with families, to live without going to the workhouse. These are the most to be pitied of any class. All of them in their day and genera tion doing their best, and now, through no cause of their own, houseless and homeless, if it were not for this provision. ' Milestone V. : My own Parsonage, costing over £1,500, will be known to many of your readers who have stayed here, for it welcomes all sorts. I don't know if any house is so elastic. All day long the door is open, with a continuous stream of people want ing something — kicks or halfpence, as the case may be, both being administered with courtesy and yet with force. The meals make one think of Elijah, for the wisdom of the housekeeper has solved the problem of accurately defining — not, indeed an unknown quantity, but what satisfies an unknown quantity. It is a terrible drain on our finances — over £4,000 in nine years ; but of all our expenditure by far the most useful, by far the most remunerative. 'Milestones VI. and VII. are our day-schools, costing over £2,500. These were a great venture of faith, which nearly broke us up and drove us to despair ; but now all is paid except about £300. They are of infinite importance in a parish like ours. If anywhere the difficulty of children exists, it exists here. There is no discipline, love is altogether unreasonable : at one time kisses, and at another blows. The difficulties of the schoolmaster can hardly be ex aggerated ; the patience and tact of the teachers are beyond praise. ' Milestone VIII. : The additional site for the church, bought by Dr. Linklater at a cost of over £500, is the very best conceivable spot. In the middle of the parish, surrounded by the most sordid houses, with approaches from two streets, our only need is to extend it. ' I fear I have wearied you in this long journey, but the father is ever garrulous about his own children. May I mention just two more things'! Over £1,200 was spent in penitentiary work, in reparation for our own many sins. Over £800 was spent in emigration, in reparation for the terrible waste we have made of our own life's chances. Of course, all this money has not come from Winchester ; it is only honest to say that much of it has come from my own friends, much of it has been coined out of my own brains and blood. But a very great deal has come from Winchester, and, AN ECCLESIASTICAL CECIL EHODES 91 at any rate, Winchester has been the centre which has attracted all the rest. 'And now we reach the summit, crowned with the magnificent church, to be the glory of our effort and the abiding proof that Winchester believes that Jesus Christ and His religion are the only possible solution of those terrible problems which are continually suggesting themselves to every thoughtful man. I believe Win chester, through the mission, has endeavoured boldly to face these problems, and her endeavour has met with no small measure of success, a success partly due, indeed, to the efforts of the workers in Landport, but due in an equal proportion to the self-sacrifice, the faithful confidence, may I add also, the prayers of the school. Of necessity, Landport methods cannot be Winchester methods. But as I thank you for money that has fed us, for clothes that have covered us, for youthfulness that has kept us young, above all I thank you for that trustful confidence that has enabled us always to do our work here in our own way. 'R. R. Dolling.' It is a wonderful record, and not one word of it is an ex aggeration. It is wonderful as a witness to that spirit of statesmanship which enabled Dolling like a capable general to grasp position after position. Truly from his watch-tower in that extraordinary ' parsonage ' he was like an ecclesiastical Cecil Rhodes, planning ever fresh developments. Each of these ' milestones,' as he calls them, witnesses to the versa tility and variety of the methods adopted ; each stands for a special aspect of the entire organism of S. Agatha's Mission. The old Mission Church itself, well-nigh hidden, unlike the present imposing structure, amid surrounding rookeries and warehouses, did not in any sense outwardly dominate the life of the district. Indeed, except for its well-nigh unceasing and very unmusical bell, the building might scarcely have been noticed amid the old clothes shops, fried fish emporiums, and public-houses which hemmed it in on all the sides touching on the street. It was, indeed, the soul of the work, but, like the soul, it manifested its power, not in tangible form, but by the influence which proceeded from it. It was no temple exceed ing magnifical, but a little conventicle, which, were it not for the cross over its entrance door, might well have been mis- 92 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING taken for the house of prayer of one of the humbler and less prosperous of the Dissenting communities. But we shall treat more fully of the Mission Church when we come to deal with the questions which arose out of the character of the services performed in it. It is the parson age, to use Dolling's favourite word for it, which now claims our attention. Though the present parsonage was not built till 1889, yet the system which it represented prevailed from the moment Dolling arrived in Portsmouth. No doubt failures and mistakes attended many of his practical methods, but the ruling spirit that underlay them all was a singularly beautiful one — of this the parsonage was the visible type and embodiment — it was the Franciscan spirit ; the honour of poverty; the dignity of simplicity; the joy of fellowship with all men ; that ' joy in widest commonalty spread ' of which Wordsworth sings ; above all, the glory of the service of the suffering, the reverence ' for the sense of tears in mortal tilings ' which yet is quite compatible with natural joyousness and sunshine of heart. Eobert Dolling's place among the servants of Christ is in the group so loved and loving of which S. Francis is the chief. He was of the type of character of which the sweet saint of Assisi is the supreme model, and of which S. Philip Neri, the human-hearted saint, whose house was called ' the home of Christian mirth,' and S. Vincent de Paul, with his love for outcasts and for children, are also attractive specimens. Father Dolling's was no cloistered virtue. Like the early Franciscans his natural instinct was to get into the very centre of the people's life, to leaven the life of the multitude, sharing their feelings, their hopes, their interests, their poverty, their laughter, and their tears, sharing all save only their sins. The life of Eobert Dolling owes its supreme interest to this Franciscan spirit, this mind of the ' little poor man of Assisi,' reproduced not in its temporary accidents, but in its undying principles in the Church of England to-day. We have called this spirit the mind of S. Francis, but was it not even more the mind of Christ, who bid each follower when he made a feast ' call the poor, the maimed, the lame, THE PARSONAGE, THE HEAET OF THE WOEK 93 the blind '? Few Christians along the ages have taken this literally. S. Francis of Assisi and his followers did in one age. Among those who have actually in the present day taken to their houses the poor and unfortunate with personal fraternal love (as distinct from managing or subscribing to institutions), the name of Eobert Dolling should never be forgotten. His place is not with the great contemplatives, the seers in the watch-tower, but with the human-hearted saints, more helpful to ordinary humanity, the brothers and sisters of the poor. Father Dolling's parsonage was the heart of his work, as the Mission Chapel was its soul. The parsonage communicated with the gymnasium, and was connected with it in such a way that it was possible to go from one to the other without passing through the outside street. In fact, the parsonage and gymnasium formed practically one block; partly dwelling- house, partly house of recreation, exercise, and social gather ings. The religious and the social sides of the work were thus housed together and touched each other in a natural and inevitable way. There were a number of cubicles constructed in the gallery of the gymnasium for sailor lads with leave-out permits, or for others allowed to stay at the parsonage, and there were also hammocks in another gallery, also used by St. Vincent boys and other sailors from time to time. All was so arranged to communicate with the parsonage itself, that in case of any nocturnal quarrelling the ' governor ' could in a few minutes be present on the scene of action. The proximity of the parsonage to the gymnasium also associated the idea of religion with the social life and recreation of the younger members of the flock, and with that spirit of joyous health which the athletic exercises and the dancing carried on con stantly in the gymnasium seemed to claim as an integral part of the religion of the Incarnation. But the parsonage indeed touched all varieties among the parishioners, not only the young and vigorous, but also the aged, the suffering, the broken-down in mind or body, or morals or reputation, the 'out-of-works,' the human odds and ends, and strange pieces of social wreckage that naturally 94 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING drifted by a kind of instinct or by a Divine guidance into Dolling's way. Much of his life was spent in what Kingsley called ' helping lame dogs over stiles,' and most of this work was done in the parsonage. Beds and food were given to men and lads in all cases where the Father felt that such help would tide a poor fellow over a difficult time, and assist him ' to get on his legs ' again. The ' common table,' however, that phrase so dear to Father Dolling's heart, did not mean that anyone who wished could walk in from the street and demand a meal. Not the riches of Croesus could have financed a mission conducted on such a principle. No person was allowed to use the hospi tality of the parsonage who had not first been interviewed and approved by the Father, and the usual type of worthless tramp found, in Dolling's case, that the process known ' as kidding the parson ' was not quite so easy as might have been antici pated. At times the Father appeared to combine a little of the capacity of Sherlock Holmes with the spirit of S. Francis. His natural sharpness of perception, and his extraordinary varied experience of ' human nature, made him a difficult person for an impostor to tackle. The tramp, the cadger, and the text-quoting beggar very soon found Father Dolling not quite so ' soft ' as they had anticipated. One who knew him well said, ' I never knew any man who could " size " a fellow up so quickly as Dolling could.' His nature was a rare mixture of two qualities not often combined — shrewdness and compassion. The first was as acute as the second was profound. There were as few rules as possible for those staying at the parsonage, but what rules there were, were strictly enforced, and were intended to secure cleanliness, decency, good con duct, and good temper. An essential rule was one which involved being in by a reasonable hour at night. The fact that the meals were often shared by such varied types of people sometimes led strangers to make ludicrous mistakes. For instance, a member of one of the old aristocratic families of England, and a man of considerable culture, was mistaken for a labourer out of work, because his clothes were almost to SOLDIEE FEIENDS ON FUELOUGH 95 affectation plain and unfashionable. What was the astonish ment of one sitting near him when the supposed ' out-of- work ' individual showed a considerable knowledge of the teaching of S. Thomas Aquinas on the subject of some point of economic morals. In truth, not even the regular members of the staff knew whom they would meet from day to day, or who were all the men sitting with them at the table on any occasion. Individuals in uniform of one sort or another were, of course, always known, such as clergy, soldiers, or sailors. To great numbers of soldiers Dolling was rather the kindly brother (the ' Brother Bob ' of his earlier days) than the ' Father Dolling ' of S. Agatha's. He was their old and dear friend. Yet in some real way they also felt, if they had any touch of respect for things unseen, that he was Christ's minister as well. There was seldom a time at which spurs were not heard clanking up and down the stairs of the parsonage. Perhaps if some good lady came to talk to Father Dolling about a case she was interested in, or about some family trouble, she would find him taking a hasty half-hour's relaxa tion, sitting in his study smoking with two or three of his soldier boys on furlough, part of which they were spending under the parsonage's hospitable roof. The Father would put down his cigar and say to some tall Dragoon or Guardsman : ' Now, sonny, I want to talk to this lady. Put on your cap and take a walk down the Commercial Eoad, and if you are in to tea I will take you and some of the gymnasium fellows to the theatre.' With a pleasantly natural ' Yes, Father ; all right,' the six-foot ' boy ; would adjust his cap smartly and depart for his walk, while Father Dolling would be plunged into the mysteries of a case of conscience of an intricate type, his cigar laid aside, his biretta retained. ' How incongruous !' says alike the man of the world and the devotee, and yet both would be wrong. The chaff and joke with*his Tommy Atkins friends a few minutes before, the prayer and wise, loving advice bracing the will and hearten ing the spirit in a few minutes after were all of a piece. ' It was Dolling.' To have known him was to have known the essential harmony of his character. This double aspect of his 96 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING made, on the one hand, human-hearted people religious, and, on the other, religiously-minded people human. Quite naturally he would pass in a few minutes from the atmosphere of chaff and comradeship to that of deepest spiritual help. He could, in a good sense, ' be all things to all men.' His extraordinary comprehensiveness of sympathy made this versatility possible and natural, not forced and artificial. Dolling's soldier-boys abounded all over the globe, their photographs lined, in part, the walls of the parsonage, and whenever they had leave and were in England, some of them were sure to be staying at the house. It was impossible to realise that many of these smart, well-set-up young fellows had once been underfed and neglected lads whom Dolling had got hold of in former years and pulled up out of the social abyss. They were all his ' dear boys,' and wherever they were, all over the world, he followed their careers with true affection, as General Gordon did his ' kings.' Two classes of guests staying for ' week-ends ' were especially a joy to the staff of the parsonage. We allude to the St. Vincent boys, the young fellows from the great naval training-ship in Portsmouth Harbour, where they are taught their future work as men-of-war's men, and those Winchester prefects and boys who had leave to stay at the mission. The visits of both classes were delightful to Dolling, and, indeed, to all at the parsonage. The ' sailors ' or ' saint boys ' brought with them, as it were, into the Landport slum the breath of the sea, and the others brought that love and sympathy of Winchester which never failed to uphold the S. Agatha's workers, even when leaBt encouraged by any other circumstances. The atmosphere of the parsonage was surprisingly free from either officialism or pietism, the former the evil genius of Established churches, and the latter of sectarian Christianity. The house did not suggest ' the resident gentleman in every parish,' upholding the sober decencies of the National Estab lishment, but neither did its tone lead one to Buspect that its friendliness and humanity were crafty bait, to conceal some soul-hunting design. Yet, broadly human as was the tone of THE BIDDING GYMNASIUM 97 the place, it was also genuinely Christian. Dolling's person ality as its presiding influence secured it both from pious sentimentalism — or, in other words, cant — on the one hand, and irreligious rowdiness on the other. The ' Bidding Gymnasium,' as Dolling called it, after Bishop Bidding, the founder of the mission, had been originally a Baptist chapel, which, having become disused through the migration of its principal upholders to less squalid surround ings, was on the point of being purchased by the Salvation Army, when he secured it. Beneath the floor of the chapel had been buried the remains of two Baptist ministers. These were not exhumed, as their representatives refused to under take the expense of the process. Opposite to the gymnasium stood a large slaughter-yard, to which in the summer were due the strong scent and the blue-bottle flies which visited the clergy-house. Several of the young ' butchers,' men and boys, who worked at this and other numerous places of the same kind (for ' Bloody Eow ' was the former name of an adjoining street) patronised the gymnasium, and by their means the Father and his men helpers came to know many of them. Indeed, had Father Dolling wished, he could have raised a bodyguard of butcher lads to Becure him against all comers, just as S. Cyril went to the Council of Ephesus attended by a band of the boatmen of the Nile. Any attempt to interfere with ' Father Dolling ' would not have been conducive to the interferer's personal comfort had the ' boys ' been allowed to employ the controversial methods in his defence which would have appeared to them to be the most readily effective. A far more serious evil than the contiguity of the slaughter houses and the fried-fish shops consisted in the fact that the house next to the parsonage was a flagrant centre of sin. Ultimately Dolling succeeded in clearing out this nest of corruption by getting possession by sale of the house in question. We remember a scene which took place at the dedication of the newly-built parsonage in 1889. A procession of choir, acolytes, and priests was moving from room to room with 7 98 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING lighted candles and clouds of incense. At the end came Father Dolling, in a gorgeous cope, saying the office of bene diction for each part of the building, the crowded congregation meanwhile filling up all the vacant spaces in the house and the gymnasium. In the intervals of the devotions raucous shrieks were heard proceeding from the harridan who was responsible for the house next door, and who in its back-yard was heard invoking many curses both loud and deep upon the heads of ' old Dolling and his pack of Catholics.' Like the silversmiths of Ephesus, she felt, no doubt, that her gains were likely to be interfered with. If the gymnasium taught the men and lads that bodily strength and dexterity and suppleness of limb and muscle are gifts of God to be perfected in a right way and for right uses, the dancing-class and the ' social evenings,' which were fre quently held, taught the young people that grace of movement and courtesy of manners and intercourse have also their right uses in the development of manhood and womanhood. But all this recreation in connection with religion did not escape some trenchant criticism, which expressed itself as follows. We quote from the report of a meeting in the Ports mouth Evening News of that time : 'AWFUL SIGHT AT PORTSEA. 'Rev. Lindsay Young shocked. 'A very successful tea, to which about 250 sat down, was given in the Welcome Mission Hall, Edinburgh Road, Landport, on Tuesday evening. The tea was followed by a well-attended social meeting of Christians holding Evangelical and Protestant principles. The chair was occupied by the Rev. Dr. Kennedy Moore, who was supported by the Revs. H. Lindsay Voung (Vicar of St. John's, Portsea), J. Kemp, J. S. Wyard, J. H. Batt, etc. 'The chairman denounced the introduction of Romanistic principles into certain sections of the Protestant Church, and contended that what Christians wished was to have the Bible taught as it was given, conveying the simple truth. ' The Rev. H. Lindsay Young, Vicar of St. John's, referred to the awful effects of theatres. He said that certain clergymen were not OUTSIDE CRITICISM 99 merely advocating the theatre as a training ground and a means of education, but were actually showing their advocacy of it by taking stalls and enjoying themselves in witnessing the performance. He contended that actors and actresses knew full well that when they were converted to Christ it was an absolute necessity to leave the stage. He also referred to the introduction of cards into so-called Christian institutions, and accused certain clergymen of actually taking cards to teach the rising generation to play. He had never seen a more awful sight during the fourteen years he had been in this town than last Saturday, when he was passing through Prince George Street and saw numerous little girls dancing and kicking up their legs round a barrel-organ; and he was still more disgusted to see, on going round the corner, a notice of a Communicants' Dancing Guild. He denounced, in very strong terms, what he called the fashion of clergymen of the present day in patronising race meetings. He believed that even now there were Jesuits at work among the Nonconformists.' 7—2 CHAPTEE IX Belations of Father Dolling with Winchester College — Old Wykehamists, masters, and men. ' A royal spirit lives in thee, So loftily descended, Through five great centuries attended By true posterity. Sons on each hand, Safe dost thou stand, So plenteously befriended.' Lionel Johnson, Winchester College (From ' Ireland and Other Poems '). The following chapter has been supplied to us from the pen of the Eev. Dr. Fearon, ex-Headmaster of Winchester College. From Dr. Fearon' s personal friendship with Eobert Dolling, and his intimate knowledge of all the circumstances of the relations of the latter with the College, he is well qualified to deal with that side of Dolling's life which is expressed by the title of ' the Winchester College Mission ' given to S. Agatha's, Landport : ' Other departments of Robert Dolling's laborious life were neces sarily at times overclouded. His relation to Winchester College was pure unbroken sunshine. It is hoped that, in his pressing anxiety and earnest struggle for his fellow men, he found perpetual refresh ment and buoyant hope in the bright interests of the school. Certainly his presence there never failed to bring a new joy and a larger meaning to the life of the school. Of all the blessings which, in later generations, Wykehamists have enjoyed, few have been richer or deeper than the friendship and influence of their dearly loved missioner. When, in 1885, it was necessary to find a clergy man to take charge of the Winchester College Mission at Ports- [ 100 ] A BOY WITH THE BOYS 101 mouth, the Headmaster's care was, not unnaturally, more for the college than for Portsmouth. A school mission, to attain its ends, must touch the hearts of the boys ; it must bring home to them as reality of experience the need of those less privileged than them selves, and must arouse an active sympathy towards their fellow- men. Yet the barriers of school interest are so marked and strong that it is most difficult to break through them — mo t difficult to make the school really care or feel intensely about their mission work. 'This difficulty Robert Dolling completely overcame. It was perhaps the supremest of his gifts that, during the whole period of his eleven years at S. Agatha's, he succeeded in making the school feel a personal pride and vital share in the mission work ; not as an alien interest, but as an essential part of the daily life of the school. The influence that this had both for the immediate good of the school and for the after-effect on the life of its members is in calculable. In the school itself his influence was perpetually felt on the side of all that was right and true and noble. When the Head master was searching for his missioner, he told one from whom he was inquiring that what he chiefly needed was a man who would be an elder brother to the boys, and do for them all that a best elder brother could do. ' Robert Dolling was selected to perform this service, and right truly did he carry out his mission within the school. The boys rapidly came to know him and to trust him. They made him their confidant ; they discussed all sorts of topics of school politics, even school secrets, freely with him, and took his advice upon them. He lived on the most intimate terms of friendship and affection with them, and also with many of the masters ; and yet there was never the smallest suspicion of his having betrayed the confidences, freely given, on either side. It required something more than gentlemanly tact to avoid the obvious pit-falls : his success was the outcome of large love and fellow-feeling for his friends. Some of the masters, seeing the dangerous possibilities of his unique position, were shy of admitting him to close intercourse. But the present writer can assert, after special opportunity for testing the truth of his assertion, that there was never any misuse of the confidence given, and that the intimacy was of unmitigated benefit, most helpful on both sides, a real power for good in the school. And there can be no doubt that many a Wykehamist has been helped by Dolling's influence and Dolling's example to form a higher resolve for life, to recognise the obligation, in whatever profession he might adopt, to do something 102 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING for the bettering of his fellow men — to find his ideal in serving rather than in enjoying. It is difficult to measure the influence on their after-lives of his unselfish service, but it was unquestionably great. 'Whence came this influence? No doubt, in the first place, it may be said that the unselfishness and the devotion could hardly fail to impress. But boys are not always ready to mark or appreciate these things at their real worth. Again, it may be said that there was a magnetic influence in his personality which appealed to young as well as old, and this, no doubt, is true. And, analyse the situation as we may, there is much, after all, that defies analysis, and, in the end, all that we can say is" that it was Dolling ; yet it may be worth while to try and fix some of the factors in this unique result. ' And, first of all, we would say that Dolling was essentially a boy to the end of his life. With all the profound sympathy he had for the suffering and outcast, with all the intensity with which he felt the deep problems of life, he had the boy's power of throwing off, or seeming to throw off, for the time the thought of these things, and entering with frank abandonment into mere boys' fun and jokes. His laughter on these occasions was a joy to hear. Indeed, some times at Winchester he seemed so light-hearted that he has even been charged with ignoring overmuch the graver side of life's problems. But the fact was that he was most fully alive to the danger of allowing a morbid feeling of overconscientiousness to grow up in his young friends. And one of the most touching and pathetic features of his intercourse with them, both in his more public addresses and in his private talk, was the perfectly natural intermixture of the grave and the gay. It was natural and effective because it was true to the man — indeed, it was the man himself. One who knew him intimately as a boy at Winchester writes : ' " I think what used to strike us first was the ease with which Dolling accommodated himself to our enjoyments and interests. There was no feeling of restraint on our part, no posing on his. He never improved the occasion except by infusing the natural course of conversation with a wider and more vivid interest than usual. One was influenced without knowing it — without, so to speak, seeing the works. I think why he helped one so much was because one felt that there was no aspect of life (certainly of boy's life), no part of human nature which he could not sympathise with and see the good in. All our enjoyment of school life — the games, the jokes, whatever it was — he appreciated so intensely. One knew IS DOLLING COMING?' 103 he had no desire to curtail any impulse which was frank and healthy. He never was a superior person come down to do us good and because he had to tell us of work which we did not wish to hear about, but a friend who was keenly concerned in all we did." ' And again the same boy friend writes : ' " I suppose one can hardly conceive a person who could with greater ease and less jar turn from jocularity to gravity, and who could at one moment be holding you in helpless laughter, and at the next be touching straight home to your conscience. I suppose it was because the secular and religious were not nearly such distinct spheres as with most people. I shall not forget him in his church the night before it was consecrated, walking about it radiant with joy, patting the architect on the cheek, joking with the workmen and laughing aloud, and then immediately turning into the old church and addressing a congregation of men on the end and purpose of religion in that stirring way of his, with his whole presence, which we had all been laughing at in turns, transfigured with enthusiasm." ' Then, secondly, Dolling was always most excellent company. He carried out most completely S. Paul's rule of becoming all things to all men. Wonderful was the power he had of adapting himself to the temper of those around him, gauging at once their interests and attitude, and throwing himself into their point of view. His varied experience of life, his copious knowledge of many men and many cities, his large store of anecdotes, his own personal adven tures, all helped to make his visits to Winchester, whether to boys or masters, refreshing incidents in the daily routine of life. " Is Dolling coming 1" would be a common question asked if any inter esting day were expected. If he were, the school were sure, not only of the sight of that kindly and sympathetic presence, but also of some increase of fun which would add to the gaiety of their life. 'For, tempering all his utterance, all his intercourse with the school, was that salt of Irish humour which gave piquancy and tone, and not infrequently strengthened the impression even of his most solemn words. The Irish qualities of character deserve to be popular with boys, and in the best sense of the word he was every bit an Irishman. Warm-hearted, generous, absolutely self-for getting, he never failed to seize the humorous aspect of life's incon gruities, and especially enjoyed the joke of any situation that concerned himself. " Will I come in the pepper and salt, or in the cassock?" was a post-card sent to the Headmaster when asked to 104 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING some special function at his house. His other garments were in pawn. ' But, after all, what won him his unique influence with the boys was the man himself ; they knew him, they trusted him, they loved him, largely because they were certain that he loved them and cared for them, and would take any pains and go through any self- denial to help them in any difficulty. He was their ideal of what they meant by a religious God-fearing man — a true man, without the smallest suspicion of cant or professional piety, yet one who could with the utmost naturalness and ease suddenly raise the whole tone of the company among whom he was by striking a higher, truer note than was common to them — a higher note which they knew to be true. The boy friend, who has been already quoted, ' " Certainly, though Dolling revelled so in all the pleasures of life, and we liked him because he did, one could never mistake what was the basis of his life and the focus of his actions. I think he was able to see the good of more things than most people and to enjoy them, but only because he was able to bring more things within the range of religion. That is what, I think, lifted much of what might strike people as vulgar on to a higher plane. His con versation was so daring, he was so honestly human, that you were tempted sometimes to wonder whether he was the man you had taken him to be. But when you knew him, you saw all that against the background of his generous affection, his courage, his love of life, and, above all, his burning sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men. That was the extraordinary fact. He had got an unerring eye for the 'smug' and the blackguard, and could criticise them roundly, and yet could love them all. At the back of our minds I am certain that many of us had the assurance that, however wrong we might go, we might go to Dolling, and that he would go to the very depths with us, and stay there till he had brought us out. I think it was in this sense of support, of some body to fall back on, that Dolling's influence could most clearly be marked." ' So healthful, so invigorating was Dolling's intercourse with the school. But what was the machinery of that intercourse ? There were three regular and systematic methods by which it worked, and perhaps the least important and effective was that which was most regular and systematic. Twice every year, in January and Sep tember, at the beginning of the two main terms, he officially visited the school, addressed the boys in the big school on Saturday after- PREACHING IN CHAPEL AND CHANTEY 105 noon, and preached in the College chapel, and generally also in the junior chapel or chantry on Sunday afternoon, having usually driven up from Portsmouth, after taking a whole series of services at S. Agatha's from early dawn till midday. His sermons in the chapel, still more in the chantry, produced a considerable impression, and were no doubt largely helped by that rjducri ttmj-tis, which is, after all, perhaps, the most valuable asset of the preacher. Even those younger boys, who had not yet come to know him, had heard that he was a man to believe in, and knew that Dolling's sermon was a great school institution. He rarely made any allusion to the mission work itself — some of us thought too rarely. His sermons were rough, direct, and simple, appealing to his auditors as Christians, rather than as schoolboys, and therein largely lay their force. But he was, in the opinion of the present writer, a better speaker than preacher, for an audience of boys. His addresses on the Saturday afternoons no doubt at times shocked some of the elder members of his audience by his utterly unconventional mode of speech, and his daring allusions to subjects of school gossip ; but they not unfrequently rose to heights of most pathetic eloquence through the transparent love he had for his people, while his rapid passage from some humorous incident to some parish tragedy would send the whole audience into peals of laughter, and the next moment bring tears into many eyes. ' His second regular method of intercourse was by periodical visits to each separate school-house. His rule was to visit each house where the house-master was willing to welcome him, as nearly all were, once each term. He would come up early in the afternoon, and spend the afternoon and evening with the boys, living in the boys' part of the house, taking his evening meal with them, hearing all their gossip, engaged in banter and fun with them — boy with boys. This gave a wonderful opportunity for studying the social life of the school, and the influence and character of the seniors, and he knew the way to make most full use of the opportunity. By seeing boys in their natural school surroundings without any restraint, he was able to gauge accurately their relations to one another; occasionally he was able to remove some misunderstanding, or to strengthen some hesitating prefect, or to check some too masterful spirit ; but his main purpose in these visits was not to act or to correct, but simply to enjoy the boys' society, and share their life with them. 'But probably the most effective— certainly the most original — of his ordinary methods of intercourse was through the weekly 106 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING visits which the seniors paid to him at Portsmouth every Saturday and Sunday. Very early in his time at S. Agatha's the practice was begun of allowing two of the seniors to go down to Portsmouth every Saturday afternoon, to stop at the mission till Sunday even ing. Many qualms were felt about this practice ; there was no little opposition offered to its commencement — and no wonder. There were obvious difficulties and dangers to be risked. It was pleaded that parents might object, that infection might be brought in, that the liberty might be abused ; and yet, in spite of initial opposition, the practice has gone on most happily for sixteen years, till it has long ago been regarded as one of the established usages of the school. It is equally to the credit of the boys themselves, and to the influence of the mission over them, that during those sixteen years there has been no instance recorded of any misconduct, or any abuse of the leave so freely given. It is probable that during those sixteen years four-fifths of the boys who have left Winchester in the upper part of the school have made personal acquaintance with the mission, have done some'work in it, and have seen the people ; while not a few have paid frequent visits, in which they have acquired an intimate knowledge of the mission life, and have gained a personal interest in some individuals in the district, which has lasted on after they have left school. 'There were other more sporadic, more special ways in which Dolling's influence was felt. He was rapidly adopted within the Wykehamical family, and was what the school would have called " a most patriotic Wykehamist." At the football matches, at Eton match, and all other school contests, he was, of course, a prominent figure on the ground, more angry than most if our side lost, jubilant in victory. Again, at house suppers he was an invaluable guest. Friends at Winchester still love to remember " his warm, affectionate speeches, now brimming with fun and merry Irish humour ; now, while the laughter and the cheers were still ringing, turning with sudden and yet marvellously skilful transition to some thought which in the mouth of anyone else would have seemed almost too solemn and serious for such surroundings, only to change back again to the hearty rollicking fun which made him so uniquely welcome in all festivities." Or, again, to pass to another sphere, when the boys remained at school in 1891 and in 1894 after Easter, it was natural to turn to Dolling to give solemnity and reality to the observance of Holy Week. On the first four afternoons of each week he came up to Winchester and held a short special service of his own arrangement at half-past five each day. The service, to HOLY WEEK AT WINCHESTER 107 his own special joy, was entirely voluntary. It was very largely attended, especially in 1894, and contributed greatly to making those Holy Weeks important epochs in the religious life of the school. But more valuable, probably, than all was the spontaneous and unlooked-for interest and affection of Dolling for the individual boy. He very rapidly came to know the individual, and somehow he knew of his difficulties ; and, if he knew, this was enough to insure his help. What exactly his practice was at the time of the school Confirmation the present writer does not know, but it is within his knowledge that certainly in some years he either wrote to or saw very many, if not all, of the boys who were to be confirmed, and thus gave each boy the joy of knowing that at this most solemn hour of his school-life he was thinking of him and praying for him. Anyone who came into close contact with him could see most easily what effect he produced on the religious life of the school. To quote once more the boy friend in reference to this influence : " Here was a man," he says, " who was obviously one of us, who enjoyed what we enjoyed, and knew the temptations which met us, and yet who equally obviously lived his life in the presence of God, to whom religion, was an intense reality." ' Only one word more. Dolling's religious methods and ritual were much out of harmony with the staid orthodoxy of the school religion. No doubt at times some strain was put on the consciences of parents, masters, and boys by the claim to support a mission con ducted on such lines, and at times, also, some strain was put upon the school authorities in meeting what were reasonable objections. But what stands out most in the memory is the extraordinary for bearance of many, and the extraordinary loyalty of their acqui escence in much that was distasteful to them. What strengthened and justified this loyalty was, in the first place, the absolute certainty on everyone's part that Dolling would never attempt any propagandism in the school; he was himself far too loyal to the settled sobriety of the established rule, too proud of everything Wykehamical, to dream of disturbing the accepted conditions ; and, in the second place, the knowledge that, if their scruples had to swallow something, it was worth doing it for the sake of the school. If Bishops or parents complained, the answer that could be given, and that often was given, was, " You have no idea of the blessing he is to the boys. There has not been for many a long year past any such aid to a better and truer life as Dolling's presence among us." ' CHAPTER X The part taken by Father Dolling and S. Agatha's Mission in the Catholic Movement in the Church of England — His relation to Bitualism — His sacramentalism and ceremonialism — Three aspects of the Sunday services at S. Agatha's : (1) The Sung Eucharist and Solemn Even song ; (2) the addresses to men in afternoons ; (3) the mission service at night. ' Fair gleams the snowy altar cloth, The silver vessels sparkle clean, The shrill bell rings, the censer swings, And solemn chaunts resound between.' Tennyson : Sir Galahad. ' I saw the fiery face as of a Child That smote itself into the bread and went.' Tennyson : The Holy Grail. Father Dolling's Ritualism was, in many respects, sui generis, shaped and coloured by his own strong personality, as everything else about him was. His robust, genial appearance was as unlike that which lady novelists usually associate with Ritualistic clergymen as can well be conceived. The latter are generally represented as akin in appearance to the 'lean and hungry Cassius,' like men who have long accustomed themselves to rigorous fasts and unsparing castigations. But the lady novelist's ' ad vanced ' clergyman is about as like the reality, in many cases, as the stage Irishman with his knee-breeches and shillelagh is like the genuine article across the Channel. Father Dolling, especially when in holiday attire, was as unlike the typical presentation of his school as can well be imagined. Common -sense is about the last quality with which those called ' Ritualists ' would be credited by the man of the world. Yet if the latter conceived of Dolling as ' one of those mad [108] HIS RITUALISM NO DIGNIFIED TRIFLING 109 Eitualists,' yet he very soon found out that there was a method in his madness, and discovered that he was no impracticable idealist, occupied rather with the abstract fitness of a stately ritual than with its utilitarian worth in regard to the needs of the worshippers of to-day. Dolling had a clear sense that ritual was made for man, and not man for ritual. He hated all finicking and nervous worrying about correctness, and he sometimes, we think, made his ignorance about ceremonial details an excuse for introducing into a function some little action or motion of his own, where it seemed advisable for the convenience or better understanding of the people. He is said to have once replied to the liturgical request of one of ' the sacred ministers,' ' Pray, sir, a blessing,' with the sotto voce reply, ' That's all right.' He had no mind for biretta-kissing and ceremonial minutiae generally, though he loved anything which he thought expressed the incomparable dignity of the Blessed Sacrament. Eitual, however, was always second with him, not first, and a long way second. He tells a story in his ' Ten Years ' of his boxing the ears of a Eitualistic youth, who was distressed by his ' incorrectness ' in his mode of holding his hands at the altar. This was characteristic of his attitude towards that Chinese type of religion which revels in ritual correctness of a minute type. Life, Dolling thought, was too short for those discussions about tiny pieces of correctness which fill the correspondence columns of the High Church newspapers. Dolling's Eitualism was no mere dignified trifling: it sur rounded and centred in the great Sacrifice of the Altar. Vestments, lights, incense, sanctus bell, were but for him the dramatic and historical setting of that which has ever, since the days of the Apostles, been the central service of Christendom. One of the chief objects of Father Dolling's life, considered as a priest of the Church of England, was the popularising the Catholic Faith, especially as regards the Holy Eucharist. He disliked indirect methods of teaching, hence he seemed to needlessly outrage the susceptibilities of Protestants and of old-fashioned Churchmen when he was 110 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING only considering what he believed to be the need of definitely instructing his own people. He never shuffled in his teaching. He always drove the nail home. Whether people agreed with him or not, they, at least, could not mistake what he meant, and that he was in earnest about it. His love of putting strongly what he believed caused him to use the word ' Mass ' as applied to the Office for the Holy Com munion, and constantly he used to say in lectures and ser mons : ' What we have got to do in the Church of England is to put the Mass into its proper place.' In explanation of the above we quote a passage from his parochial magazine, when he was afterwards Vicar of S. Saviour's, Poplar (November, 1899) : ' I am very glad that two or three of you asked me why the word " Mass " is in one of the children's lessons. We put it on purpose, because it is by far the most convenient word to use when we describe the Blessed Sacrament. It has no actual meaning of its own, and is derived, as most authorities think, from the last words said in the old Latin service, lie, missa est, freely translated,.," The service is ended ; you can go." ' All the other titles of the service represent one part of an act which contains many parts : ' 1. " The Lord's Supper " represents, if we may reverently call it so, the social aspect, a party of friends to whom a loving Host pre sents food common to them all, by which they become partakers of one bread, and therefore are one with each other, and one with their Host. ' 2. The " Holy Communion " implies the receiving of the Body and Blood of Christ Himself, our daily supersubstantial Bread, which strengthens us, body and soul, to eternal life. ' 3. The " Holy Eucharist " implies that Sacrifice of Praise which we, in common with Angels and Archangels, offer to God the Father in this mystery for the Life and Sacrifice of His dear Son. ' 4. The " Holy Sacrifice " implies that re-presentation of the Sacrifice which our Lord Jesus Christ, throughout His whole life, at the Last Supper, and upon the Cross, made for the sins of the whole world, which He now presents to His Father in heaven, and which we present here on earth by the shewing forth of His Death until He comes again. THE MASS IN THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND 111 ' 5. The " Blessed Sacrament " represents this Sacrament as above the others, because it is the actual communication of Jesus Christ in His Divine and Human Natures to the soul. ' Now, the word " Mass " represents all these aspects of the Holy Communion. In our own Church, for instance, early in the morning on Sundays, almost everyone receives the Holy Communion; at 11.30 the majority of the people do not; and therefore you want a word that conveniently expresses what all these people have been doing, and so the short form, "to hear Mass," or "to assist at Mass," comprehends it all. I much prefer the latter term, because it implies the Priesthood of everyone present, and that they are joining with the priest in doing whatsoever he does. ' The objection that the word is used by Roman Catholics is surely a foolish objection, because almost all the words we use in religion we use in common with the Roman Catholics. Bible, Creed, Collect, Offertory, Oblation, Sanctus, Gloria — these are all survivals of the old use, and anything that binds us to the past and to the rest of Christendom is invaluable. Besides, there can be no policy more fatal than the surrendering of terms, unless they are in themselves wrong, to other bodies of people ; because Dissenters use the word " conversion," therefore we ought not to use it ; because the Roman Catholics use the word " Mass," therefore we ought not to use it ; the consequence of which error has been the Church of England fifty years ago had largely lost any idea either of conversion or of the Blessed Sacrament. That the word in itself is not wrong for us is manifest by its being used in the First Prayer-Book of Edward VI., 1549, the first English Prayer-Book. (In that book the title of the service is " The Supper of the Lord, or Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass.") ' Moreover, the word is specially endeared to us by our Lord's birthday being called Christ's Mass (Christmas), and St. Michael and All Angels' Day is also Michaelmas.' Again he says, in regard to this whole subject : ' All baptised Christians in a Christian country ought to be con scious of their duties and of their benefits as members of the Church of Christ, and I believe the reason why so many people in England are ignorant of them is because, for the last three hundred years, the Church of England has practically forgotten to teach the people by means of the Sacraments. The pulpit and the clergyman have taken the place of the Altar and of Christ.' 112 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Anyone who has had experience of the best methods of getting a movement to grip the popular mind will agree that the first requisite is to translate it out of the language of the academy into the language of the people. Dolling had a firm grasp of Catholicism, as he understood it, though he never was in the least near to the distinctively Roman system. His con viction was that the Catholic Faith and Historical Christianity — that is, a full and adequate Christianity — are one and the same thing. This conviction delivered his utterances from the stammerings of hesitancy. He had no reserves of limita tion in the background of his mind. What he believed he believed fully, simply, and unreservedly, and you could not be in his presence for five minutes without seeing that he was transparently sincere. His boldness of utterance was in him the outcome not of notoriety -hunting, but of candour and unconventionality. He once said at a homely Instruction at a Sunday ' After- meeting ' in S. Agatha's : ' Some, in teaching Catholic principles, are like a bathing woman who coaxes the child in by gradual stages : in this Church we are like one who plunges the child in at once from head to foot.' This method was calculated, as might have been expected, I to produce results similar to those in the kill or cure system. J The patient either took the prescription, or else immediately left the physician in disgust. In all this Father Dolling was an unconscious disciple of Richard Hurrell Froude rather than of Keble or Isaac Williams. ' Reserve in communicating religious knowledge ' would certainly not be the best way of describing his method. ' What thou hearest in the ear that proclaim on the house-tops,' might have been taken rather as its justification. But secretly sinister, and of the spirit of a cabal — the kind of thing identified with the Oxford Movement by Mr. Walter Walsh — the ways of S. Agatha's, Landport, whatever their faults, certainly were not. Dolling's plan was, indeed, largely justified by results, and that in unexpected ways. For instance, two old men, office bearers or ministers of some sort in some special Baptist A EOMAN CATHOLIC ESTIMATE 113 denomination, attended the Sung Mass, in order ' to see the mummery for themselves.' They were riveted by Dolling's most evangelical discourse, which outbalanced in their minds the incense smoke, the tapers, the vestments, the elevation, and the sanctus bell. They came again and again to the same service at eleven o'clock on Sundays, and ended by being prepared for confirmation, and by becoming singularly devout communicants. Mere Eitualists they never became, nor did they lose one whit of their original evangelical belief, but they perfected it by sacramental truth, and found its adequate expression in Catholic worship. Such people as these never passed through the stiff legalist ' High Church ' phase. As was written of Dolling after his death, in a remarkable article contributed to the Pilot by ' a Eoman Catholic friend ' : ' As one who knew him intimately for a quarter of a century, the writer of this article, who, to a large extent, owes his faith to Father Dolling, never at any time regarded his submission to Rome as humanly probable. Incredible as it may sound to Protestants who looked upon him as a Romaniser of the extremist type, he was, in spite of his easy adoption of nearly the whole system of Catholic dogma and practice, an Evangelical to the backbone ; that is to say, his whole interest was in the saving of those individual souls — and they were thousands — with whom he came in contact, and not in any ecclesiastical system for its own sake. He cared as little for theology and scholarship as did S. Francis or John Wesley, and it was because he discovered by intuition and experiment that Catholic beliefs and practices were efficacious for the sole end he cared about, that he adopted them fearlessly without much deference to Bishops or Articles. For the same reason he took over boldly, and to the scandal of ecclesiastical dilettanti, such elements of Methodism as by their efficacy with the multitude had proved their right to survive. A lawless mind it might seem to some, but only because it was governed by a somewhat neglected law which puts the absolutely necessary end before any dispensable and less necessary means. The Times, in stigmatising him as "injudicious," utters the verdict of a large number of prudent persons, chiefly ecclesiastical. Well, he was an Irishman, no doubt. But when, pray, since the days of Christ, or S. Paul, has any great work been done for the Church save by these straight-to-the-point men who take to the 8 114 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING stone and the sling, and cast aside impatiently the cumbersome armour of intrigue and diplomacy ? Of these a hundred may fail, but here and there one will do more by some happy shot than gray- headed prudence will effect in a century. Sacramenta propter homines, the priest for the people, and not the people for the priest, was a Catholic principle that had taken deep root in a soul governed, as his was, by a passionate devotion to the multitudes ; and it was because he fancied that an inversion of this principle was not a transitory accident, but an inherent characteristic of the Church of Rome, that his affections remained alienated from her to the end. ' Indeed, the egoisms known as " Sacerdotalism," " Prelacy," and " Absolutism " were offensive to his democratic spirit of Christian brotherliness wherever they might prevail, whether inside or out side his own Communion. He was impatient of the " respectability " and "culture" of the Church of England, and perhaps of its root- cause — the Establishment ; nor for all his so:called Ritualism could he tolerate the ecclesiologists whose neo-Rabbinism would sacrifice the worship of the heart and intelligence to liturgical punctilious ness ; hence he was the despair of finicking rubricists. 'Of his boundless powers of sympathy with all sorts and con ditions of men, women, and children ; of his genial boyish hilarity, which a world of troubles and worries could not crush; of his apostolic spirit of charity and liberality ; of his childlike faith and deep personal love of Christ, it is needless to speak to those who knew him ; idle to those who did not. His soul goes before God, fortified by the love and the prayers of thousands of hearts.' While S. Agatha's, Landport, was, in one sense, one of the most advanced Ritualistic or Anglo-Catholic mission churches in England, yet, amid any mistakes which may have been made by its clergy, it never was a hotbed of that sickly type of so-called Ritualism which arises from an almost exclusive attention to external, as distinct from internal, religion. Amid, no doubt, many failures and mistakes, the ceremonial vesture of the great realities of religion was never made a substitute for those realities themselves, nor was there either inclination or opportunity to cultivate ecclesiastical whims, or to waste time on fads or side-issues. A broad, simple, forcible pre sentation of the main Catholic and Evangelic truths is what was aimed at, however imperfectly. THE MEN'S SERVICES 115 There is a story told of a youth of Ritualistic tastes who had come a considerable distance to S. Agatha's, in order to attend some special observance which he thought would be held there ; but, finding this non-existent, he went home deeply saddened to offer a blue lamp before Our Lady's image in his private oratory, as a reparation for the un-Catholic conduct of the clergy of the mission. One great preservative of S. Agatha's from an overmuch and disproportionate attention to matters of ceremonial detail was the splendidly manly tone of the conferences or addresses to men which Dolling gave monthly on Sunday afternoons, and on all Sundays in Lent. Who that has been present on those occasions can ever forget them? Dolling, when giving those addresses, was, in our opinion, at his very best in such an environment. S. Agatha's then presented a remarkable aspect, crowded to the doors by men of all classes and social types in Portsmouth, though mainly of course of the working classes. Many a young fellow owes to these services the revelation that Christianity is not a mere feeble skulking from the battle of life, but that men who are Christ's followers ought to be real men, with pluck and energy, and with keen enthusiasm for the emancipation and betterment of mankind. Dolling was at these ' Men's Services ' like Charles Kingsley at his best. Sometimes he had the tone even of a Savonarola. All prophets are not necessarily ascetic solitaries, and with all Dolling's cheery geniality and unconventionality there was something prophet-like about him in the way in which he hailed the coming of a type of Christianity that should be the instrument of the redemption of man, of body as well as soul, of society as well as of the individual. The depth of his faith in Christ's Gospel as the sufficient solution of the social problem was only equalled by the ardour of his fraternal heart and by his boundless hopefulness for man. Many a young fellow from every part of Portsmouth, clerk, shop-assistant, soldier, sailor, artisan, looked forward to the address to men as an inspiration sent by God straight from a brother's heart. Applause took place at times, but never in 8—2 116 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING an unseemly way, and even an Agnostic section who frequently attended behaved with marked respect for the sacred character of the place. Not infrequently a leading merchant of the town, or a military or naval officer, would be seen keenly intent on Father Dolling as he gave a good hour of what he called one of his ' straight talks.' He always hit out from the shoulder, and was loved all the more for it, even by those who felt that he had hit them hard. Radical as he was on most subjects, several convinced Conservatives and Unionists were among his most constant auditors. Indeed, he gained the confidence of almost all good men of every description in the borough of Portsmouth. His hatred of lies, shams, and cruelty, was an infection and a flame. It was impossible to be mean-spirited and attend Father Dolling's ' Talks to Men.' There was a thorough fraternity, too, about these services. A colonel might be seen sharing his mission hymnal with a private soldier, a merchant with a shop-boy. The spirit of the Comrade Christ, the symbol of whose crucifixion hung beside the preacher's platform, seemed to pervade the assembly. Lacordaire, or Frederic Denison Maurice, would have rejoiced at the sight. Of the Socialist aspect of these addresses we shall write in a subsequent chapter ; suffice it to say here that when politics were alluded to, it was from the aspect rather of Christian citizenship and human development than of the partisan interests of the hour. Most of the addresses were on such subjects as purity, family life, the Christian view of labour, etc. All questions of human well-being were claimed as Christian in the name of the Carpenter of Nazareth. We can never [forget the tremendous force with which the neces sity of chastity to true manliness and the terrible consequences of the degradation of fallen women was, on one occasion, pressed home on a closely-packed concourse of men. But what we are chiefly concerned with here is to note that the ceremonial at the Sung Mass and other services could be safely employed with fitting dignity when it was felt to be not the swathings of a dead Christ, but the robe of a living one. THE AFTER-MEETINGS 117 The ministry of the priesthood is in no danger of dispro portionate exaggeration wherever it is exercised side by side with the prophet's insight and courage and the evangelist's zeal and love. In spite of the power and vitality of Dolling's message as given at the Men's Services, he was perhaps most of all him self at the distinctive Mission Service, the ' After-meeting,' on Sunday nights. At the conclusion of the Solemn Evensong and sermon came the above service, which Father Dolling regarded as his own special province, and which, when at home, he invariably conducted himself in a highly uncon ventional and yet always impressive and edifying manner. Imagine a stuffy brick mission church, the fumes of in cense used at the previous service still hanging about the building, and with the aspect of having been used by all sorts of people, mainly the poor, from the early morning of the Sunday — that sort of aspect which meets one so rarely in an English church, a sort of mixture of religious mystery and of homeliness of behaviour ; a collection of people also of a kind seldom or never seen within a Church of England place of worship, dropping into it, one by one, or in twos and threes, in ragged coats, poor thin shawls, battered old bonnets. Kind friends, men and women, have been during the sermon at Evensong seeking these people and bringing them in to what the clergy and workers used to call ' our Dissenting worship.' Then such a hymn as ' I need Thee, precious Jesu ' (to the tune of ' Home, sweet Home '), and Father Dolling walks up and down the aisle in his cassock — no formalities of any kind. He pats a ragged-looking man on the back, or gives a kindly smile to one of the ' mothers,' as he strolls about during the hymn, which he shouts lustily all the time. Sometimes ' Master, the tempest is raging ' is sung, when the roof seems almost to shake. At this Mission Service at night Dolling was most entirely and characteristically himself. It was the talk of a father to his children — affection, humour, even playfulness penetrated by the energies of a living faith and of an untiring and un- despairing love. Extempore prayer was used by Father 118 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Dolling at these services. No one was forgotten — ' Our dear soldier lads,' some sailor boy gone to sea, the mothers, the children, the ' out-of-work ' people ; finally, ' our dear dead,' 'for all live unto Him.' Hearty amens are interspersed from many of the flock. Then all sit. Father Dolling sits, too, his favourite teaching attitude (like a primitive Bishop). The address begins with ' Now, my dears.' Some old ladies in the front sigh or purr in acquiescence with the Father's teaching, while, like the ancient female in the little chapel of Browning's 'Christmas Eve,' they 'maternally devour the pastor.' It was indeed as a pastor that Dolling shone at those 'After-Meetings.' His humanity, his tenderness, his evan gelical piety, his playful humour, all had their part in the most delightfully unconventional addresses which he gave on such occasions. The Mission Service congregation was of those who attended the church the most ignorant, the least in touch with or ganised religion, but not the least loved by the priest of S. Agatha's. Writing of such in his ' Ten Years,' he says : ' I have seen deeds of the purest chivalry, self-sacrifice which the love of God alone can measure; I have seen the withstanding of temptation even to tears and blood ; I have seen agonies borne without a word for fear I should be vexed. I take them out of my heart, where some of them have lain for eight long years — I take them out one by one — thieves, felons, tramps, loafers, outcasts, of whom the world was not worthy, having no place for them, no home for them, no work for them. I read in their eyes a tenderness, and in their hearts a compassion for me ; a bearing with all my ill- temper, and paying me back a hundredfold in the richest coin of truest love.' We conclude this chapter by quoting the words (from ' Ten Years ') in which Dolling explains what he calls the ' method ' of his religious teaching and spiritual and social work. It will be seen to be a profound and poignant statement of the intimate connection with which his unshaken faith as a believer in the religion of the Incarnation, and his conscious ness about the Christian Sacraments, were united in his mind with that boundless hope for and trust in man which this THE METHOD OF SACRAMENTALISM 119 brother of humanity had learnt from the fraternal Heart of Christ. ' I know,' he writes, ' but one method hy which this change of character can be effected — the method of Jesus Christ, not merely to show to people the perfection and beauty of His character, that oftentimes might lead only to despair, but to enable them, by the means which He Himself has ordained, to be partakers of His very nature. To say to a poor, sin-ruled creature, whom you know all his old companions, every public-house door as it swings open, will allure into the ways of sin again, " Be like Jesus : be good," is only making a demand that you yourself know can never be fulfilled. But to be able to say to him, " Here is this Jesus, who for your sake became real Man, as you are man ; who worked in the carpenter's shop, earning with the sweat of His brow daily bread for Himself, His dear Mother and her husband; who was disappointed and injured by His friends as well as by His enemies ; who was really tempted by the devil ; whose life in many respects was just like your own ; who never turned away His face from any poor wretched outcast, but spoke to them tenderly and gently words of love and hope ; who, when He could do no more for you by way of example, willed to die for you : having nothing else to give, He gave His own life-blood,' and in the giving of that won for you a power of union with Himself ; that, though you must do your part, and be sorry for your sins, and try to be better, He will as surely do His part by letting His precious Blood wash away your sin, and strengthen you to live an amended life. Here is this Jesus stand ing, as it were, between the living and the dead — so few, few living, so many, many dead — dead with a death more terrible far than the worm and corruption can effect (for they but touch the outward covering of a man), with a death that has destroyed the real life, the knowledge that God was their Father, that they had souls that were capable of everything that is beautiful and true. Here is Jesus, who can give even to the clumsy, vulgar body the power of doing gracious acts, of speaking true words ; who can give to the intellect the power of realising true, noble ideas, and so assimilating them that they become a very fibre of their thoughts." ' In almost all our people there was this death, this living, hope less, faithless death. Who could deliver them from the body of this death ? One who could restore to them faith in the super natural, hope in themselves, love towards their fellow-men. No preaching can do this. I believe nothing can but the Blessed Sacra- 120 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING ment. The compassion which Jesus learnt in the trials of His life taught Him to realise that man, if he is to be touched, must be touched in his entirety, that an attempt to deal with him spiritually alone is bound to fail. How Christ-destroying is all that theology that tries to be wiser and more spiritual than the Christ ! The Blessed Sacrament is not only the prolongation of the Incarnation in the world, but it is a means by which Jesus wills that He shall be apprehended of the multitude. And so ten and a half years ago I set upon myself this as the method of my ministry. Some, I know, make the Blessed Sacrament the crown of their religion. I desired to make it the foundation as well. As the Incarnation is the revela tion to us of God the Father, so the Divine Son wills to be known in the Breaking of Bread.' CHAPTER XI Father Dolling's action in regard to social and political matters — His principles of citizenship — Christian Socialism — The lectures at S. Agatha's by the Guild of S. Matthew (Lent, 1890)— Difficulty caused in reference to Bev. S. D. Headlam's lecture — Besignation of Father Dolling — Meeting in Landport — Explanation by Winchester College authorities — The resignation withdrawn — Father Dolling's sermon on 'The Christian Clergyman's Place in Politics' (August 7, 1892). ' I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.' William Blake. ' This is true liberty, when freeborn men, Having to advise the public, may speak free.' 'Euripides,' translated by Milton. In the last chapter we have considered Father Dolling at S. Agatha's as a religious leader and spiritual teacher, as evangelist, priest, and preacher. In this it will be useful to look at his action in social and political matters, and to trace the events which led to certain serious difficulties in regard to these questions, in connection with a lecture delivered at S. Agatha's by the Rev. Stewart D. Headlam, warden of the Guild of S. Matthew. To see Father Dolling only at the altar of S. Agatha's, or preaching from its pulpit, was by no means to have exhausted the resources of his work for the betterment of the people's bodies and souls. Often might he be seen in his study in the evening in a well-worn cassock, a cigar in his mouth (for he was an inveterate smoker), and around this robust, genial priest, looking in every inch of him the man and the citizen as well as the pastor and religious teacher, a heterogeneous [ 121 ] 122 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING company. It would be a special night, not one of those when he was seated at the gymnasium or the club, marking the attendance or taking a hand at whist with some of the fellows, nearly always including some of the bodyguard of soldiers or sailors who looked in at S. Agatha's social gatherings from time to time. This would be a more serious evening — no chaff, no cards, no comic songs, but a gathering of men who meant business, strenuous, keen-faced, level-headed men. Most of these would be of the working class and of its aristo cracy ; several of them Nonconformists of the human rather than Calvinistic type ; occasionally even a minister of one of the non-Episcopal bodies, some minister who read Gore and F. D. Maurice, and was touched with Christian Socialism. Temperance workers were often to be seen in Father Dolling's study, labour leaders and trades unionists also, and officials of the great artisan benefit societies. Many of these he got to know through his presidency of a large debating society, most of the members of which were working men. The subjects discussed at these informal gatherings at the parsonage were no mere theories, but the best way to ' go for ' some crying abuse in the town, such as flagrant cases of overcrowded dwellings, or sweated labour, or badly-con ducted public-houses. A conference between Father Dolling, a leading Nonconformist named Eev. C. Joseph, and some of the Labour Party resulted in the bringing the force of public opinion to bear upon the question of the excessive hours for which the shop assistants of the town had to work. Dolling asked the shop assistants to use the clergy house as a place for committee meetings in forming a union, and it was in working for reform in this direction that he and Mr. Joseph (the leading pastor of the Baptists in Portsmouth) came to know each other in a very friendly and cordial way. Both of them had in their congregations a number of growing lads and girls whose physical health was injured and their mental and spiritual development rendered impossible by the condi tions of their labour, caused by the selfishness and greed of a few of the Landport shopkeepers, who would not agree to any reasonable measures of early closing. Scarcely a minister of CHEISTIAN SOCIALISM 123 religion in the town took up this question or spoke about it with the exception of this Eitualistic priest and this Baptist minister. Dolling held, in regard to social politics, that while the Church must not be tied up with any one political party, yet that the subservience of the Church of England in the past to the interests of political Conservatism, and her timid hesitancy (semper pavidi, as her rulers have been described) or total apathy where social wrong ought to have been rebuked, have largely forfeited for her the confidence of those who are in any sense leaders of their fellows in intelligence among the working classes of this country. In inviting the Guild of S. Matthew to send lecturers to give some addresses on social and other subjects in connection with religion, Dolling introduced to Portsmouth the warden of the guild, the Eev. Stewart D. Headlam, a well-known London clergyman, whose convictions, as well as those of the guild of which he is the head, are expressed, in regard to the matters we are now dealing with, by the words ' Christian Socialism.' This phrase is capable of many different shades of meaning. Mr. Headlam uses it as before him did Charles Kingsley and Frederic Denison Maurice, and as many Con tinental writers and workers, both Catholic and Protestant, have done, and still do. Bishop Westcott would not probably have refused the title of a ' Christian Socialist.' Father Dolling was not afraid of the term, though as a rule he dis liked all labelling of himself in these matters. We suppose, whatever the differences that divide many of them from each other, that all of the school we are alluding to agree in this main principle : the belief that mere commercialist Indivi dualism is inadequate and morally unsatisfactory as a solution of the problem presented by the vast inequalities in the distri bution of wealth, and of the opportunities for legitimate human development. The common point of agreement in this increasing school in all Christian churches lies in its rejection of laissez faire as the expression of an unchanging law, like those of Nature, and in its regarding it rather as a generalisation from a condition of things in the past largely 124 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING due to the unrestrained play of selfish and solely personal interests unchecked by higher moral considerations. The little Guild of S. Matthew was the pioneer of the larger and more widely-extended Christian Social Union, which now numbers even bishops among its officers and members. Dolling asked the help of this guild, because of the great prevalence of Secularism at that time among the Eadical working men's clubs of Portsmouth. The guild aimed at removing the prejudices of Secularists both by showing that Catholic Christianity is not identified with the crude Puri tanism, with its Sabbatarianism, Verbal Inspiration, and material Hell, which so many intelligent working men confuse with the Christian religion, and also that Christ's mission was not intended by revealing Heaven so to dwarf earth into insignificance that Christianity should be indifferent to true social development and to the progressive betterment of man kind. One chief object of the lectures and addresses given by the guild was to call attention to the fact that the faith of the Incarnation deals with man as a whole, with his body and intelligence as well as with his soul, with his social condition here as well as his immortal future hereafter. Five addresses to men were arranged in connection with S. Agatha's, to be given by members of this guild. They were on the following subjects : (1) ' Christian Socialism ;' (2) 'Why men do not believe the Bible ;' (3) ' Why is the Church of England a failure ?' (4) ' The Incarnation : its value to Humanity ;' (5) ' Prayer.' The first lecture, which was by Mr. Headlam, was announced for February 23, 1890 (first Sunday in Lent), in the Mission Church. The rest of the addresses were to follow on subsequent Sundays. Meanwhile some persons in Portsmouth of the Mr. Podsnap or Mrs. Grundy type got hold of the fact that Mr. Headlam had got into difficulties with the then Bishop of London in regard to his advocacy of the ballet as a graceful form of theatrical performance. We know that Dolling, enthusiast as he was for getting boys and girls to dance together, was no great admirer of the ballet. It bored him, and he thought it stupid. However, not only did the Portsmouth papers fill PEOPAGANDA OF THE BALLET 125 their columns with letters from very indignant people, mostly ladies, describing Mr. Headlam as a clergyman who went about as a propagandist of the ballet, but Father Dolling was accused of sharing in the same vile proceedings. The Guild of S. Matthew and its lecturers received an extensive gratuitous advertisement, and Southsea held up its hands in startled propriety at 'Mr. Headlam, Father Dolling, and that awful S. Agatha's.' The hapless dancers of the London theatres also came in for much reprobation. On the afternoon of Mr. Headlam's lecture — the lecturer meanwhile had grown in the pages of the local press into ' a priest suspended by his own bishop ' (which was absolutely untrue) — S. Agatha's was packed with men from end to end. No doubt, however, many had come from curiosity. If, how ever, they expected anything sensational, they were disap pointed. Mr. Headlam's appearance was not that of an incendiary, but of a quiet and self-possessed clergyman of the Church of England. His address was on ' The Social Question ' in general. It was directed rather to the head than to the heart. It had little of Dolling's moving passion, and rather seemed to avoid senti ment than otherwise. It was an address characteristic of one who as an eminent and most useful member of the London School Board is essentially practical and business-like. The earlier part of the address was mainly on the lines of Maurice and Kingsley, urging with blunt directness, what, indeed, the congregation of S. Agatha's had often heard before, that Christianity, if it is a living thing, must deal with man as a whole, with his body as well as his soul, with society as well as with the individual. Towards the end, however, land reform was advocated, and the lines of the ' Single Tax ' appeared to be pointed out as the course to aim at. ' Free Education,' which then (so quickly have we since moved) was regarded as a very extreme measure, and free breakfasts in Board Schools to poor children were also mentioned as de sirable things. Socialism in the strictest sense was not directly dealt with, but the whole tone of the lecturer was certainly not calculated to reassure anyone who mainly valued 126 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING the Church of England as a form of the police force in the interests of landed estates and of property generally. In a day or two a storm burst over Dolling's head. Mr. Headlam's address had been prominently reported in the Portsmouth papers, and some influential subscribers to the mission wrote to announce, in consequence of the lecture, the withdrawal of their subscriptions. They had, of course, a perfect right to do so ; nor did Dolling resent it. One cannot take the line he did without being prepared to suffer some criticism and opposition. Originality in all departments of life must pay a penalty for getting itself listened to. What was, however, more serious was that both the Bishop of Winchester (Dr. Harold Browne), and the Warden of Winchester College (the late Eev. G. B. Lee), wrote to express their strong disapprobation of what Mr. Headlam was reported to have said, and their censure of Dolling for inviting him to speak on such a subject. Bishop Browne did not probably know that a little time before Bishop Thorold of Eochester had preached a sermon for the Guild of S. Matthew. Win chester was not a diocese the clergy of which were brought into touch with modern problems in the way those of London and the South London part of Eochester Diocese were. The Winchester episcopal regime, with all Bishop Browne's learn ing and goodness, was not well adapted to grapple with such a question as the relation of Christianity to the social evolu tion involved in modern democracy. The Warden of Win chester College, it must be remembered in regard to this discussion, was only the nominal head of the school ; the head de facto was, of course, Dr. Fearon. Both the Bishop and the Warden implied that should Dolling not publicly dissever himself from the utterances of Mr. Headlam, they would be compelled to sever their connection with him as head of the mission. The Bishop hinted this ; the Warden plainly expressed it as follows : ' With your ultra High-Church proclivities on the one hand, and your Socialist teaching on the other, no sober-minded and loyal citizen can be expected to support the mission, my connection BISHOP AND WAEDEN ALAEMED 127 with which must now be severed so long as you continue to be the head of it.' The Bishop wrote in a milder strain, and very kindly to wards Dolling personally. He was pathetically unable to see that the kind of Socialism so dreaded is often only the ex aggerated reaction from an unreal Christianity false to the teachings of fraternity delivered by its Divine Founder, and that the official Church has too often done nothing to oppose evils which are in direct contradiction to the teaching of Christ. One of the Radical papers represented Bishop Browne as writing to Dolling that he should teach the poor ' contentment with their lot here, and a bright and happy home in the world to come.' This was not exactly what he wrote, but it was an exaggeration of it from a hostile pen to which his letter to Dolling easily laid him open. The Bishop had concluded his letter by writing : ' This so-called Christian Socialism as exhibited in Mr. Headlam's address, in the writings of Count Leo Tolstoi and others, appears to me to strike at the very root of all Christianity. I have, as you know, declined to interfere with your proceedings, lest I should mar your mission work . . . but I must consider whether the good of your mission is not more than counterbalanced by the evil of those whom you associate with yourself, and whether I can suffer it to go on under my authority.' Father Dolling, in his reply, consented that the remain ing lectures should not be given in the church, but insisted that they should be continued in the gymnasium on the Lent Sunday afternoons. He also wrote to the Bishop, saying that he must protest against the way in which his lordship had spoken of the lecturers, some of whom, we believe, were con templating measures of legal redress. Dolling wrote also : ' I fear that in all honesty I must tell you, though I hate paining your lordship, that I hold myself, and have preached, and must continue to preach, all that Mr. Headlam's lecture taught, except on some matters of detail.' The last sentence we believe referred to the ' Single Tax ' method as the best solution of the land difficulty. 128 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Dolling resolved to resign, as he considered that the Warden would not have written as he had if he had not voiced the mind of the school authorities, and he had no wish also to force the Bishop to more definite measures. As a missioner he had, of course, no freehold, even had he wished to fight the matter. The lectures went on in the gymnasium. The title of one of them, 'Why is the Church of England a Failure ?' gave much offence in Southsea, especially as at this very time the Church Defence Society was placarding the town with ' Working men, what has the Church of England done for you? She has gained Magna Charta.' Dolling remarked, ' That was in 1215, wasn't it ? Rather a long time ago.' Dr. Fearon, who was a strong friend to Dolling all through, was deeply distressed at the possible loss of the missioner, and tried to arrange matters, but for a time it looked as if an impasse had been reached between the latter and the ecclesiastical authorities. The direct difficulty, how ever, was the Warden's letter. The Bishop had not as yet written anything which necessarily involved the missioner's resignation. On Sunday, March 9, 1890, Father Dolling announced his resignation in a sermon at S. Agatha's to a congregation mainly composed of men, and many standing to the doors. His text was, ' Thy Will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.' He said that he ' dared not go on ministering there without letting men know that he believed every social question was a question of the Lord Jesus Christ.' No sooner was the resignation known than a strong feeling was excited in Portsmouth, where Father Dolling was by this time one of the leading citizens, as well as one of the most respected clergy. Many who were opposed to some points in Mr. Headlam's lecture were eager to retain Dolling in the town. A crowded and enthusiastic meeting was held on Thursday, March 13, in Fuller's Hall, Landport, on this subject. The chair was taken by General Harward, a member of the Primrose League. A memorial was handed in signed by 2,000 of the parishioners. General Harward expressed his disagreement with Mr. Headlam's lecture, but his intense A NONCONFORMIST FRIEND 129 admiration for the priest of S. Agatha's. A deputation was appointed to wait on the Bishop. During the meeting it was announced that the Dean of Manchester (the late Dr. Oakley) had wired to Father Dolling to ask him to preach in his Cathedral. We may quote the last speech at this meeting, as it was by a leading Nonconformist of the district : ' Mr. A. J. Owen, as an outsider and a Dissenter, said he felt that his knowledge of Mr. Dolling's work compelled him to put in an appearance at their meeting. Though he differed from Mr. Dolling in his opinions, yet he must admit that he had performed in that district a work which he did not think any other man had ever done or attempted before. They were there that night to recognise a man who had devoted his life to the poor, and in that respect was following in the footsteps of Him whose life and sacrifice he preached. He said the poor were never tired of talking of Mr. Dolling's good ness to them. As a Nonconformist, he thought he should speak in recognition of the fact that when a Dissenting minister (Mr. Griggs), who laboured in Mr. Dolling's district, fell suddenly ill and died, Mr. Dolling was one of the first to visit the widow, and one of the first to subscribe to the fund for her relief. He had gone occasionally to Mr. Dolling's church, and was surprised at the number of young fellows who went there to listen to his words and counsel. He could bear testimony to the character of the work Mr. Dolling was doing, and he trusted that the petitioners would be successful in retaining amongst them in the neighbourhood the services of our friend, your friend, and my friend, for one who laboured for the good of humanity was a friend to every man.' After arrangements were made to take the petition to the Bishop, Major Arnold proposed a vote of thanks, and the proceedings terminated. The same evening of this meeting Father Dolling and the present writer had gone to Winchester College by invitation of Dr. Fearon. The latter assured Dolling that the Warden had only acted in his private capacity as a subscriber and disclaimed all idea of conveying an official censure. The Bishop meanwhile had withdrawn from the contest. Dolling consented to withdraw his resignation if the Warden would publicly in print repeat what Dr. Fearon had felt authorised to say in regard to the letter which had caused the trouble. 9 130 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING In a few days the Warden wrote to the Portsmouth papers as follows : ' I am not, and never have been (as is commonly supposed), the head of the Winchester College Mission. I have never been even a member of the committee.' As soon as this letter appeared, Dolling wrote to Dr. Fearon and the Bishop to withdraw his resignation, and the storm became a thing of the past, buried by the troubles caused by other and even more serious storms to come. Dolling, in his next ' Quarterly Letter,' says : ' I fear the fact that I am Irish makes the putting up with me a real Christian exhibition of patience, and certainly no man has ever had a support, a tenderness, a forbearance like that which I have experienced from Winchester.' We may add that no loss of cordial affection for their missioner from the school followed at this time, and, what is really extraordinary, considering the very Conservative views held by many of the subscribers, neither did the mission suffer in any pecuniary way, although the dispute was matter of public property, being fully reported in the London papers. Dolling's generous helpers loved him and trusted him with their support and money to the end, even when some of his sayings and doings were not wholly to their liking. Many of them were strong Conservatives, some were even old- fashioned high Tories, some were Low Church, several were Broad Church, and many no Church. Still, they all agreed in loving Dolling. His extraordinary personality held them to the end. This is a fact worth remembering, when we are told that unless the clergy are cautious and safe they will get no money for their work. We may also note the way in which Dissenters stood by him at this time. He writes in his ' Quarterly Letter ' : 'What surprised us most was the intense sympathy of the Dissenting clergy. In our great trouble only one Church clergy man wrote to me, but in three Dissenting meeting-houses public THE PRIEST IN POLITICS 131 prayer was offered for us, and many of them sent me messages of sympathy by their deacons and others. We are the last Church one would suppose they would sympathise with.1 We append to this chapter an extract from a striking address to men which Father Dolling delivered in S. Agatha's on August 7, 1892, entitled, ' The Christian Clergyman's Place in Politics.' It was preached as a justification for his action in speaking for the Radical Candidate M.P.s of that time at Portsmouth, because they promised to support the social reforms about which he was keen. ' I feel an interest in politics, and express that interest, first of all, because I am a Christian, and, secondly, because I am an English man. There was a day, you know, when in a large measure the Church of God exercised a mighty influence by speaking the truth upon political subjects. If you take, for instance, the Old Testa ment, you will find that in the Book of Psalms, which are, I sup pose, the part of the Old Testament most read by modern Christians, the chief idea which underlies large parts of that wonderful collection is the right of the poor to be heard alike by God and man in all their needs and necessities, and to gain the redress of their wrongs. If you go farther into the Old Testament, and take the lives of God's prophets and their words, you will find that, as a rule, they were essentially political and social reformers, speaking with the authority of the voice of God, and under the influence of a power which carried them into the palaces of kings and made their voice heard throughout the land of Israel, and even penetrated into the countries which were brought in contact with their own nation. You find these inspired men of God having one single purpose, and that was to preach of the God of Justice, a purpose the execution of which involved a most vigorous onslaught on every kind of oppres sion and on every species of wrong. ' In fact, I suppose there has never been gathered together in any volume such magnificent statements of the rights of the weak and the helpless as you will find in almost every one of the writings of the prophets of the Old Testament. ' Then you must remember that these are but the forerunners of Jesus Christ, that He is in Himself the gatherer up of all that the psalmists sung, of all that the prophets foretold, and therefore you may expect to find in Him also the Champion of the weak and oppressed, and something more than that — the One who preached 9—2 132 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING with a voice which is still sounding throughout all the world the royalty of every single man, who revealed to man His Divine origin, and showed not merely God's unceasing care for humanity, but God's desire that by his own actions, by using the powers which He had given him, that man should be lifted up even to the very highest of all ideals, that there should be no altitude of virtue or intelligence that it should not be possible for man to attain to, if he were but true to the power which God had placed in his soul. Look ing round on the world, Christ discovered that there were those who had, as it were, absorbed or monopolised these human rights, and rendered well-nigh impossible the development of man, and who had by that very monopoly denied to him the possibility of his attain ment to the ideal which God had willed for him. Therefore the voice of Christ, whether it speaks from Galilee or whether it speaks in the courts of the temple, sounds and resounds to-day, and it shall never cease to re-echo as long as the world has Christianity existing in its midst. It bids a man not merely to be free in the sense in which human laws could give freedom — that is, to be free rem the bondage or the oppression with which the cruelty of others had bound him — but to be free in a much higher and truer sense, that he may reach the stature which our Lord Himself foresaw for him when He made him in the Divine Image. And if there be in any country in which men live any custom, any privilege of others which denies to men this opportunity, the Christian, be he priest or be he layman, must never cease raising his voice until such restriction is removed, until such privilege has been abolished, and the man is able in the fulness of his Manhood to realise God's eternal Will for him.' CHAPTER XII Father Dolling as a temperance reformer in Portsmouth — Penitentiary and preventive work — Public-house licensing "question (1894) — The Social Purity Association — The open letter to the Justices (August 18, 1894) — Tribute to Dolling's work as a social reformer by a Noncon formist (Eev. E. C. Chorley). ' The zeal and talent of thousands of young men who would dare and do a great deal for Jesus Christ, but who are now kept back from want of an inspiring voice that would tell them " Go, and throw in all your resources of mind and body to destroy the empire of Belial, and to extend the empire of Christ." ' — Bev. P. A. Sheehan: The Triumph of Failure. We now proceed to deal with Dolling's action in regard to those questions of intoxication and moral impurity which faced him, as all other Christian ministers and workers, in the streets of Portsmouth. Dolling's love of the people was, next to his love of God, the deepest passion of his nature. Every lad staggering in drink through the Landport slums, every poor girl flaunting her tawdry finery along the streets by the Hard, was to him a brother or sister. ' Not in cheap words he owned mankind his kin.' The social sense, the conviction that we are members one of another, was as strong in him as it is weak in most men. A passion for social well-being was as much the mainspring of his nature as regard for self-interest is of that of the majority of mankind. He writes thus in his Annual Report for 1887 (September 27). As to 'the elder girls, from fourteen to seventeen years of age, we want badly more personal influence to be brought to bear on them. I am more anxious about this class than any in my parish. I noticed something shifty in one of my Confirmation candidates, a [ 133 ] 134 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING girl of fifteen. I found that nearly every night she was at a sing song in one of our worst publics, getting drunk with boys and loose girls.' The honour due to the human body was a strong conviction of Dolling's life and principle of his teaching. He thought, with Kingsley, that many Christians are, in practice, Manichees, not realising that the Incarnation is God's supreme witness to and manifestation of what Browning calls ' the value and significance of flesh' ('Fra Lippo Lippi'), and that, in the words of Martensen, ' corporeity is the goal of God's way.' Hence Dolling's keenness about gymnastics and swimming- baths as ministering to the grace, health, and strength of the bodies of the people, and his encouragement of dancing as helping the lads and girls he worked among to be less hulking and awkward in their movements and rude or suspicious in their manners. To Dolling the drunken or immodest man or woman was a living sacrilege, defiling the flesh, the shrine and sacrament of the soul. The defacement of the Divine in man, this was to him well-nigh the unpardonable sin. Hence he was remorse less in tracking down with unsparing punishment the wilful injurers of the purity of others, the crafty tempters of innocence for the sake of gain. He held strongly the con viction that God wills the perfecting of the physical, mental, and spiritual nature of man, and so, as he fought against such conditions of labour as dwarfed the mind and weakened the body, so he also threw himself into the conflict against the twin devils which possessed so many, and especially the young, in Portsmouth — drunkenness and uncleanness. He was able during his ten years at S. Agatha's to close at least fifty houses of shame. He said of such places that in several instances quite respectable people (to outward appearance), living at a distance, were the landlords of them, and did not want to have the truth about their property brought before their notice, because the existing occupants ' paid more rent than others, and paid it regularly.' Dolling never rested until he found out the person actually owning disreputable property, whether shameful houses or drinking shops where THE TEEATING TEMPTATION 135 intoxication was encouraged. In one case, having all his facts, he threatened to name in public a highly respectable individual who owned such property, and, we believe, he did name the gentleman in question at one of the men's addresses in S. Agatha's. Legal proceedings were threatened, but Dolling said he would welcome this as an opportunity of making a terrible exposure, as the person in question had been frequently informed of the facts. The result was that the landlord improved the moral condition of his property instead of prosecuting its critic. So also with regard to the low public-houses which swarmed in S. Agatha's district. Most of them were ' tied houses,' so that the publican generally had to sell as much of the brewer's beer as possible in order to retain his position. Attached to many of these places were (or are) sing-song rooms, where boys and girls were encouraged to sing songs of often the lowest kind for the delectation of those who wished to sit and drink at leisure. The fact that Dolling, though no fanatic on the drink question, was yet, for a considerable part of his life, a total abstainer iB significant. He felt, with most of those who live among the working classes, that the fact that almost all the best leaders of those classes are abstainers proves the impor tance and utility of this as a measure of precaution for those exposed to the constant ' treating ' temptation, and also as a means of help that others can give to the tempted by them selves being abstainers. He believed, however, with regard to this, as to other evils, that decent and wholesome recreation is necessary, and reform as to housing vital, and that mere negative precautions by themselves can little avail. Much of this state of things was due to the presence in the Landport streets of the soldier and sailor element to such a large degree. The easy good-nature of Jack Tar and Tommy Atkins, and the absence of all moral restraint or healthy public opinion in the district where the mission began its operations rendered possible such a scene as the following, which Dolling describes in his book as greeting him shortly after his entry into Landport : 186 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING 'My first Sunday afternoon, as I was walking in Chance Street, I saw for the first time a Landport dance. Two girls, their only clothing a pair of sailor's trousers each, and two sailor lads, their only clothing the girls' petticoats, were dancing a kind of break down up and down the street, all the neighbours looking on amused, but unastonished, until one couple, the worse for drink, toppled over. I stepped forward to help them up, but my endeavour was evidently looked at from a hostile point of view, for the parish voice was translated into a shower of stones, until the unfallen sailor cried out, " Don't touch the Holy Joe ; he doesn't look such a bad sort.'' I could not stay to cement our friendship, for the bell was ringing for the children's service, and, to my horror, I found that some of the children in going to church had witnessed the whole of this scene. They evidently looked upon it as quite a legitimate Sunday afternoon's entertainment.' Again, he writes in his ' Quarterly Letter,' September 29, 1888 : 'We have in our district 1,321 houses, contained in thirty-six streets, and about ten small courts. This is the oldest part of the town, and so the great improvement which has taken place in South sea, and in the newer parts of Landport, has left these streets what they were fifty years ago. Few of the streets have more than two lamps ; some have only one ; the courts, as a rule, have none. Sir Charles Warren has just pointed out how terribly this want of light may explain much of the dangers of East London. Then we have nineteen slaughter-houses in our very midst. Amongst our boys it is no uncommon thing to find one who eats raw meat and drinks blood. Our little children are continually acclimatised to the smell of blood, and the sight, if not of the actual death of animals, at least of their after-preparation for the market ; and many of their toys are actually part of this refuse, and their games are connected with the sights of death thus constantly presented to them. ' Then, you know, we are a town really existing for soldiers and sailors, and therefore the licensing Justices have supposed the chief object of our streets is to contain public-houses ; our little area is blessed with fifty-one. I do not venture to blame the people who keep these publics — they are mostly all in the hands of the brewers ; the business of the keeper is to sell the brewer's beer, to make the house pay ; if he does not, he soon gets his conge\ You must pre suppose fifty-one men of immaculate virtue, if for a moment you SING-SONG BOOMS 137 would imagine that they would not use every method, legitimate and otherwise, to attract customers. Advisedly I use the word legitimate, for I suppose the only legitimate use of a public-house is to supply needed refreshment to people as they pass by, or to enable people who cannot keep casks of beer to have beer brought to them in their own homes. But this would hardly, I conceive, make a public here pay. What the publican must do is to induce people to remain in the house and drink. Some of these publics have regular sing-song rooms attached, where regular concerts of a kind are held on certain days during the week, and nearly all encourage itinerant musicians, and thus create, from time to time, sing-songs in the bar or elsewhere. There is generally some sailor or soldier good-natured enough to stand treat, and so free drink is often an added attraction. I believe it is a fact that very many young girls, as well as grown-up women, spend their evenings in these places. I leave you to guess the result ; but if you had the patience to take a walk any evening through our crowded thoroughfares, you could see the result in these very women, now lost to all shame. ' Again I say I do not blame the publican — he must live ; but I wish I had the power to compel the brewers to face the awful respon sibility that lies upon them. Surely they are bound to see whether the money that comes to them has been gained by pandering to the worst vices of men, and practically been earned at the cost of many a young girl's womanly hope and everlasting salvation. Have they ever visited, during the night-time, one of their own publics ? Would they allow their wives or their daughters to go down and spend the evening in them t I know many of them to be good and religious men, and therefore I would plead, if only I had the chance of making them hear it, that, for their own sake, and for the sake of my poor people here, they would try and realise what the gaining of their money costs us.' In Dolling's book, ' Ten Years,' he shows how with a popu lation of 159,255 Portsmouth had 1,040 places licensed for drink, or one license to 153 people, or, deducting 25 per cent. for children and total abstainers, one license for every 115 people. He points out that this average is greatly above that of almost all the other large towns in England, even including seaports and the other dockyard towns. Towards the end of 1893 an important movement was set on foot in Portsmouth by Dolling and the Eev. C. Joseph 138 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING (then pastor of Lake Eoad Baptist Chapel) to grapple with this state of affairs, which they found to be so injurious to the young people among whom they worked. The dangers to young girls from the condition of many of the lower type of public-houses, and the undisciplined way in which the latter were carried on, were known directly to Dolling from the untiring labours of a noble-minded Christian woman, the late Mrs.Waldron, who came to live in S. Agatha's district as penitentiary worker, and to use every effort in order to save girls from the hideous dangers of the Landport streets. Anna Waldron was one of the most unselfish and devoted of souls, never sparing herself, hoping always for the women and girls among whom she laboured, and tending leprous and tainted souls with delicate womanly tact, combined with Christ-like patience and Christ-like hope. She lived in a few rickety rooms in the very heart of the district where she worked, and her house was a home to the most degraded of her sisters whenever better thoughts led any of them to sicken of their miserable condition and grasp at the hope of rescue. Left a widow, Mrs. Waldron had no family claims, and so was able to devote herself to this noble work, which Miss Dolling well continued after the former had left the mission through failure of health in grappling with the difficulties of Land- port. Anna Waldron literally wore herself out in the service of her sisters, and many a woman now living a modest Chris tian life remembers her as her earthly saviour. She had Christ's passion for sinners and Christ's compassion for them as well. Like several other workers at S. Agatha's, Mrs.Waldron was Irish. Her brother, the late Prebendary Grier, formerly Vicar of Eugeley, was one of the best of those clergy whom Ireland has given to the English Church. He was an honoured and welcome visitor to S. Agatha's whenever he came to see his sister. He practically shortened his life by his labours in the rough colliery parish of Hednesford, Stafford, which he undertook when no longer young, having resigned the less arduous work of Eugeley by an act of splendid self-sacrifice. DEPUTATION TO TOWN COUNCIL 139 When Dolling took up these matters other ministers of religion and several well-known citizens, including some of the leading doctors responded to his initiative. Strength was given to the movement by the adhesion of Canon Jacob (the present Bishop of St. Albans). As a result a 'Portsmouth Social Purity Organisation ' was formed, consisting of clergy, Nonconformist ministers, doctors, and other citizens, as well as some of the working-class labour leaders. Canon Jacob acted as president and Mr. Joseph as secretary. The first conference was held on November 28, 1893, and the Eevs. Canon Jacob, Dolling, and Joseph threw their energies into the difficult struggle. A committee of twenty members was appointed to make a thorough investigation of the condition of the whole borough of Portsmouth as to intoxication, breach of licensing laws, number of licensed houses in pro portion to population, manner of conducting public-houses, dancing and singing saloons, etc., and the moral condition of the streets. On -February 26, 1894, the committee presented their report, showing that the investigation amply justified the apprehensions entertained. A deputation was appointed, which waited on the Mayor and Town Council on March 15, and brought to their notice a series of facts to which im mediate attention was called. The Mayor, Mr. Emmanuel, had not long before pronounced Portsmouth to be in quite an excellent condition as to sobriety and moral temptation. This was in denunciation of Dolling for having in a sermon in London, to which we shall afterwards allude, described the town as ' a sink of iniquity.' The Mayor was in a somewhat difficult position. He might attempt to treat Father Dolling as a fanatic; but he could scarcely ignore this influential committee of citizens, with the Vicar of Portsea at its head, presenting a document full, not of sentiment, but of hard facts — a document the result of thorough investigation, and proving up to the hilt those statements of Dolling's which had raised the virtuous indignation of the municipality at his daring to besmirch the fair fame of their ancient town. The immediate result of this deputation was certainly an 140 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING increased vigilance on the part of the Chief Constable of Portsmouth. But, not content with this, the organisation, on August 18 of the same year (1894), addressed an ' Open Letter to the Licensing Magistrates,' who were about to sit for the granting of licenses, and this ' Open Letter ' was circulated through the whole borough. Amid a mass of hard facts in this pamphlet — facts as to the enormous proportion of public- houses to the population — there occurs such a terrible sentence as this : ' Our evidence goes to show that in some parts of the town licensed houses are used as recruiting- grounds for this unholy calling.' The chief use of this ' Open Letter ' was in developing and strengthening a better public opinion in Portsmouth, and in giving encouragement to the magistrates in refusing to grant or renew licenses — at least, to the lavish extent previously pre vailing. It let in the light, which is the chief thing required in such cases, as there are modes of making gain which, like most kinds of noxious creatures, only thrive in the darkness, when they can pursue their operations unobserved and un- harassed. Shortly before this, on August 10, Dolling delivered an address in S. Agatha's on the question to a crowded con gregation of men. He claimed that the working classes them selves must take up the matter of licensing reform. He told his audience that apathy when righteous citizenship is called for is a sin. He concluded as follows : ' I speak for myself and for many other ministers in the town. I love Portsmouth, though some people think I try to pull it down. Do you, men, go round to the public-houses in your districts, and see if the law is infringed. If you discover what is illegal, write and give us (the association) the benefit of your opinions. Do this for the sake of your little children — the lads and girls — the men and women who have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ, and who are going to death ruined by the sins which you can make less.' We add to this chapter some interesting recollections of Father Dolling at this time and his action in connection with the events related above from the pen of the Eev. E. C. Chorley, REV. E. C. CHORLEY'S ACCOUNT 141 a Wesleyan minister, then stationed in Portsmouth, but now in the United States. 'During the years 1893-1896 I was stationed in Portsmouth as a minister of the Wesleyan Methodist Church, and in that time was brought into very intimate association with Mr. Dolling. I saw him under many conditions : in the room in the parish-house which he used as an office and a study ; seated at the head of his table in the dining-hall with a motley collection of guests, ranging from a visiting clergyman to a soldier on leave, a bluejacket, and a news boy from the streets ; at his famous Sunday afternoon services for men only, when old S. Agatha's was packed with men anxious to hear his unconventional talks; in the mass meetings held in the noble Town Hall to discuss some aspect of the social problem ; and in the quiet of committee rooms, where his wisdom in counsel was equalled by his boldness in action. ' As is well known, Mr. Dolling's parish lay in the lowest parts of a crowded district in old Portsea. He had to deal with all those evils inseparable from life in a great military and naval town. To reach his church on Sunday mornings you had to walk down a street where not only was every shop open, but the streets were almost impassable because of the costers' barrows. Houses of ill- fame abounded and carried on their trade under the shadow of the Mission Church. In those days Portsea had a population of 15,260 people, and there were 145 licensed houses. When I knew the late priest he was a sworn foe to vice in any shape or form, and the saloon-keepers and those interested in brothels feared him more than all the police and magistrates put together. I well remember one instance of his fearlessness which created an immense sensation in the town. He discovered in his parish that a house used as a brothel was the property of one of the senior magistrates of the borough. He then wrote to the magistrate, informing him to what a vile use his property was put, and asking him to exercise his rights as landlord to eject the tenant. No notice was taken of the com munication, and the evil practices still continued. He sent a second letter, which was likewise ignored. Righteously indignant that a justice of the peace should thus openly violate the law, Mr. Dolling, on the following Sunday, stated the facts thus recited at his men's service, and announced the name of the offender. He was threatened with an action for libel, but was unmoved, and in a few days a lame apology from the solicitors of the man in question appeared in the public press, and the house was closed. 142 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING ' My main purpose, however, is to outline the story of Mr Dolling's connection with the Portsmouth Social Purity Association, in which he took a very prominent part. 'In those days the police administration in Portsmouth, to say the least, was extremely lax. There was one license to every 153 of the population. Deducting 25 per cent, for young children and total abstainers, it gave one license to every 115 people. Owing to the laxity of the police and the unwillingness of the magistrates to convict publicans for breaches of the licensing laws, the conduct of the liquor business left much to be desired. In certain low parts of the town the congestion of licenses was almost incredible, as, for instance, in the old parish of Portsmouth, where there was one license to every sixty-nine people. In that parish there were seventy-five drink-shops and only thirty-one food-shops of all kinds. In the military and naval districts prostitutes were allowed to stay for hours in the public-houses ; and in those licensed houses possess ing music and dancing licenses grave disorder and graver misconduct were allowed. Solicitation was openly carried on in the streets, and the social condition of the town was deplorable. 'The situation became so intolerable that a private meeting of representatives of the Churches was convened, and presided over by the present Lord Bishop of St. Albans, then Vicar of S. Mary's, the mother parish of Portsea. It was then decided to form a Ports mouth Social Purity Association, and two committees were appointed, one to deal with the licensing problem, and the other the question of prostitution and solicitation. Of the former, I was appointed Hon. Secretary and Mr. Dolling a member. Canon Jacob was President. Both committees set out to collect facts, and in that work Mr. Dolling was by far the most valued helper, for he had an unrivalled knowledge of the actual state of affairs. It was largely owing to him that when the ascertained facts were made public, though the trade showered abuse upon us most plentifully, not a single statement made by the Association could be controverted. ' Dealing specifically with the licensing work of the Association, an "Open Letter to the Licensing Magistrates of the Borough of Portsmouth" was prepared and published in August, 1894. The preparation of that letter involved an enormous amount of labour. The facts were collected mainly from the official records kept, as directed by law, by the clerk to the licensing justices. At first every obstacle was placed in our way. The register of licenses, which the Act requires to be kept up to date, had not been entered up for seven years. I vividly remember the mornings Mr. Dolling MASTERY OF FACTS AND FIGURES 143 spent with me at the Town Hall studying the documents and books, and compiling the facts and figures, and the informal lunches we had — sometimes in the kitchen, because we were late, of the parish- house — are among the most pleasant recollections of life in Ports mouth. In so far as the information collected concerned municipal administration it was presented to the Town Council at a private meeting of that body specially convened for the purpose. ' One other matter arising out of that agitation deserves mention. One of the leaders in the movement was the Eev. Charles Joseph, the popular pastor of a large Baptist church close by S. Agatha's. In a speech Mr. Joseph made some reference to the action of the magistrates who had just dismissed a charge against a publican brought by the police. An action for libel was brought against the speaker, and was heard before the Court of Queen's Bench before the late Justice Hawkins and a jury. The case went against Mr. Joseph, and he was condemned to pay £75 and costs, the whole sum amounting to about £900. It was widely felt that Mr. Joseph should not be left to face the music alone, and a fund was started to raise the money. At that trying period we had no warmer friends, wiser counsellors, and stronger helpers than Canon Jacob and Mr. Dolling. The entire sum was raised and presented at a mass meet ing in the Town Hall. ' Looking back upon my three years' association with Mr. Dolling I found him unconventional, true as steel, absolutely fearless. He was to a remarkable degree the friend of all and the enemy of none. He had an unrivalled influence on the immense number of artisans in the Dockyard, He was a helper of the helpless and a friend to the friendless. His name was a household word in Portsmouth, and men who hated his ecclesiastical views yet loved and respected the man. In the annals of that borough there is no name more respected than that of Robert Radclyffe Dolling.' This agitation of • 1894 was naturally not likely to bring Dolling into friendly relations with the brewing interests of the town. It is therefore interesting to know that the follow ing letter was received by him, shortly before he left Ports mouth, from one of its chief brewers : ' Dear Mr. Dolling, ' While perhaps there are many who have not agreed with all your methods in carrying out the very difficult task you under took amongst us, yet on all hands it is granted that you have done 144 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING a great and noble work while in charge of your mission, and have courageously faced difficulties before which many an earnest, good man would have quailed, and have overcome them. You have un doubtedly set a great and noble example to your brother clergy, who are possibly too ready to believe that there is a stratum of society which their ministrations can never hope to reach. This, you have proved, is a fallacy, and we earnestly hope your successor will emulate your courage in following on after you. I am not aware of any personalities that have left any sting behind, and I don't think that such exist. Anyhow, you may be sure we shall only remember what is good of you after you have left us. 'Yours faithfully, CHAPTER XIII Sermon in London on ' Soldiers and Sailors ' : ' Lombard Street in Lent ' series (February 16, 1894) — Controversy caused by this with the Mayor of Portsmouth — Father Dolling as a friend of soldiers and sailors — Letters from officers and men in the services — An army chaplain's recollections of Dolling at Woolwich — Friendship with Bishop Corfe of Korea, then Naval Chaplain at Portsmouth — The St. Vincent boys — Lecture on the Victoria and Patriotic Funds (December 3, 1893). ' A soldier's a man.' — Shakespeare : Othello. While Dolling's mind was full of the facts alluded to in the last chapter he went to London to preach, on February 16, 1894, one of the Lent sermons to men for the Christian Social Union, at S. Edmund the King, Lombard Street. The subject on which he preached was ' Soldiers and Sailors.' The sermon was afterwards published, with the others of the series, in a volume entitled ' Lombard Street in Lent,' the preface to which was written by the late Bishop Westcott, the then pre sident of the Christian Social Union. Most of the address is of a practical and almost statistical character, but the beginning of it contains a remarkable utterance in regard to the question of the abolition of war. He starts abruptly, ' Gentlemen,' and goes on : ' I must begin by making the awful and solemn declaration that after eighteen centuries of Christianity the object of the " Prince of Peace " has not been attained. War still exists, and therefore it is necessary to speak of soldiers and sailors. But the Divine Carpenter will have His revenge, and His revenge will be complete when by means of labour which He emancipated and glorified, war shall cease throughout the whole world. In a large measure, labour is already organised in England, and the working man is learning day by day [145 ] 10 146 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING his own value, but this is at best but a partial step towards peace, and it needs that the English example should be followed upon the Continent, and the movement become cosmopolitan. When once the foreign workman has realised his own powers — powers which surely we can teach him can be asserted without anarchy and the disruption of society — when shameful wages and shameful hours and the abominable sweating system, depriving men of the fruits of their labours, shall have ceased universally, as they have begun to cease in England, then the patient pleadiDgs of the Carpenter of Nazareth will be realised, and man — the temporal redeemer of the earth by the sweat of his brow — shall refuse to be manipulated by his brethren, either in the sweating dens of financiers, or on the battle-field, or in the armies maintained at present at an impossible cost by poli ticians or by monarchs for their own selfish purpose. ' The Carpenter will have His revenge, and therefore it is not Utopian to suppose that a day will come when war shall cease. ' But while it is well to have these higher ideals before us, it is certainly foolish not to look things in the face and realise what they are at the present moment. And above all, it is our duty, as their employers, to recognise the crushing evils which to-day exist among our soldiers and sailors.' We think that among any of Dolling's sermons or addresses of which record has been kept, there is no more striking idea than that of the austere figure of ' the Divine Carpenter,' the Man of Nazareth, waiting His time until men sicken of the bloody game of war, and His turn comes, and He has His revenge. It reminds us of the question of Julian the Apostate to a Christian, ' What is the Carpenter doing now ?' and of the answer which followed, ' He is making a coffin.' It was Dolling's faith from first to last that the Carpenter was, in truth, through the centuries, slowly yet surely ' making a coffin ' for every evil and every wrong. The rest of the sermon is occupied with criticism of army mismanagement, and with a statement as to the temptations soldiers and sailors are exposed to, and to which they expose others. In the end of the sermon, which we must remember was delivered to men only, he spoke of ' such sinks of iniquity as Portsmouth, Plymouth, Chatham, Aldershot, and other garrison towns.' A GLOOM CAST OVER PORTSMOUTH 147 He then went on to expose the proportion of public-houses to other buildings on the Portsmouth Hard, and mentioned other facts about the condition of the town, alluded to in the last chapter. When Dolling arrived at the Portsmouth terminus on his return from London, he found the town placarded with the following newspaper heading : 'A TERRIBLE INDICTMENT, Local Clergyman calls Portsmouth a Sink op Iniquity, when Preaching in a London Pulpit.' The papers teemed with letters, and it was announced that the Mayor himself would reply in public to this unpatriotic and disgraceful stigma upon Portsmouth's fame. Many shop keepers and lodging-house-keepers, who feared that Southsea might suffer as to its summer visitors, joined with the Mayor (Mr. Emmanuel) and the publicans in the general outcry. A storm of denunciation fell on Dolling's devoted head. Meanwhile the members of the Northsea Cycling Club and their friends mustered for their annual dinner at the Dairy man's Arms, Stamshaw. At this meeting the Mayor broke out against Dolling as follows : ' I may say that a gloom has been cast over Portsmouth by a reverend gentleman who has been referred to. I have had the pleasure of being born and bred in Portsmouth, and I am proud to stand here to-day as the chief magistrate. I think it is my duty to refer for a few moments to the scandalous speech or sermon delivered by a Portsmouth clergyman last week. Would he have dared to have preached such a sermon in Portsmouth % No. He goes from the town, he preaches in the Metropolis, and sorry indeed am I to have to stand here to-night and denounce the greater part of his sermon — that portion referring to the army and navy of this garrison and port. He says we are " a sink of iniquity." Surely if any Christian would think for a moment he would see that he was doing an injury to the town in which he lived, and to the hotels and the lodging-houses in the part of the borough upon which we have spent so much money. The stigma which he has cast upon the town is not true.' 10—2 148 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Now follows the account by the Mayor of his famous nocturnal pilgrimage : ' I started last night at 9.40 in company with an inspector of police. I visited fifty public-houses and beerhouses in the worst part of the borough between the hours of 9.40 and 11 p.m. At each house I took the number of persons drinking or sitting down or talking, and in the fifty houses there were 460 men and women. Where would you send these people to 1 There was not one drunken man on the premises. Surely with 10,000 sailors in port, and nearly 6,000 troops in garrison, I am not saying too much when I say we are proud of our town, and I congratulate the brewers and the occu piers of public-houses and beerhouses on the admirable manner in which these houses are conducted.' Another speaker at the same meeting said : ' He knew of no town so moral, and so little drunken, and so estimable alto gether, as Portsmouth ; indeed, he was proud to call himself an inhabitant of it.' Let us finish the account of this incident in Father Dolling's own words (' Ten Years ') : ' I was threatened with a public indignation meeting. I only wish that Mr. Joseph and myself had had the chance of addressing such a meeting. We wanted to ask the Mayor whether there was any other town in England in which, between the hours of 9.40 p.m. and 11 p.m. — that is, eighty minutes — fifty public-houses could be entered, let alone thoroughly visited ; whether he knew anything of the character of the houses which he passed in going from public to public ; whether it could be desirable for the inhabitants to have so many licensed premises close together ; and whether he believed that there were fifty other publics anywhere in England which, at that hour in the evening, were without people whom he (the Mayor) called " jolly." Surely his defence was the very best proof possible of my allegation. However^ the public meeting never came off; discretion was the better part of valour. I believe myself that the row did the town a great deal of good.' As it was the address in London on ' Soldiers and Sailors ' which caused all this commotion, this may be a suitable place in which to insert, from a number of letters sent to us about Father Dolling by his friends of all ranks in the army and THE ALTAR A PART OF EVERYDAY LIFE 149 navy — for he was equally a favourite with officers and men — a few specially characteristic recollections. Like Charles Kingsley, Dolling was essentially ' a chaplain to Esau.' He was a supreme favourite with soldiers and sailors, and could have done far more than he did among them in Portsmouth, had it not been for other more immediate and necessary duties. The following notes are written by an army chaplain who enjoyed the privilege of Dolling's friendship for many years : ' I was a newly-fledged deacon, with all the orthodoxy of Oxford still on me, when I was told of a strange being who was also a deacon, whose work was but a few yards from mine. The descrip tion was an enticing one, of a rotund, good-natured man, of years distinctly of discretion, garbed always in cassock and biretta, with the adornment of a tobacco-pipe nearly always surmounting all ! His workshop in the East End (at Maidman Street, Burdett Road) was a converted warehouse, with a club on the lower floor, where recreative provision was made for East London " blokes " to amuse themselves with games, while occasionally concerts and theatricals were given by Dolling's own friends from other parts of London. One looked up through the ceiling, and saw there, through an open ing surrounded with railings, an altar. And it was disconcerting, distinctly so, to the stern orthodoxy of a new deacon. One realised that wreaths of tobacco-smoke curled up into the very presence of that Holy Table, and that East End conversation, sometimes bluer than the smoke-clouds, also found its way to the same place. But orthodoxy was speechless before the gentle explanation that it was good that everyday life should be presented there, and that the altar should be part of the everyday life, and not a separate thing. Pure fun was to Bob Dolling one of God's best gifts, and the first link that attached to him many a heart was forged by his Irish humour. Afterwards, if God gave opportunity, the chain of attach ment was supplemented by better gifts from Him. That Maidman Street Mission always seemed to me as the characteristic revelation of the man, whose broad sympathies and genius for hearts found room for so much in his practical life. "The human are so ungodly, and the godly are so inhuman ; that is the difficulty," he once said to me, and his great talent was the marvellous combination in him self of the human and the godly ; such an irresistible combination of power. 150 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING ' It was in this very East End Mission that I first met soldiers. Very often indeed the Queen's uniform was seen there, a speck of brightness amid the dulness of squalor. Some of these were his own lads. He knew the environment of their homes by heart, and he judged that the Army had a redemptive influence for such. Some he enlisted because times were bad, and temptations as well as other hardships were overcome in present distress by the constant provision made by the Army. But some were friends he had made outside the Mission. I remember soldiers coming frankly to him when in trouble — and trouble of a kind that, as far as I know soldiers, they would have been very chary of telling their own chum, but there was the loving heart of the " Father " — and not the worst case was in any way spurned. So it came about that I, too, received an invitation to accompany him to a barrack-room dinner at Woolwich. 'To an East End parson even the air of Woolwich had a sniff of the country, so we started abnormally early. I remember to-day the delight of that morning of pure laziness, and how, sinning against all orthodoxy, we lay lolling on the grass, smoking pipes. Presently there was marched by a fatigue party of men, clad in the first khaki I ever saw. Someone made a remark, and then there came an un authorized " Eyes right !" followed by a salute of guffaws and laughter. It was a trifle disconcerting, and I am sure I tried to suppress blushes. Dolling forthwith entered into a discourse on army religion, with this as a text. That, he said, was the typical attitude of the soldier to the chaplain. The salute that chaplains were said to delight in was but an artificial state of things. A gulf of officer position separated the men from the chaplain, and so orth. 'He regaled me with a story of Father Stanton, who had once accompanied him as I did that day. A soldier who sighted them approaching barracks exclaimed in most audible tones to his mate, " Look at those two Popes !" garnishing the expression with expletives. When, later, excellent relations had been established with the barrack-room, Father Stanton asked this dear Tommy, in a most innocent way, why he had hurt their feelings so much by calling them Popes, whereas " they were respectable Protestant clergymen of the Establishment." Dolling went on to say that there was a certain amount of religiousness among soldiers, but that the type of religious Tommy was offensively priggish. ' Dinner ! and what dinner ! Tommy is always hospitable indeed to his friends. The dinner for the whole room had been so DINNER AT WOOLWICH BARRACKS 151 arranged as to provide two extra portions, and these were allotted on the principle of Benjamin's mess. When not quite a quarter of the way through I was about to hold up hands and surrender, but Dolling spied me, and with a tone of him who must be obeyed in formed me that I should for ever wound their feelings if I left any. It was hard work at that dinner for even Bob to keep the conversation going. Tommy was on his best behaviour, for had he not two live parsons in the room ? Good behaviour implied almost being silent, as in the presence of an officer. But dinner over, there was an object-lesson of the rarest kind. There was not a treasured curio or photo, no matter even if the face was very plain, but Brother Bob went to examine it. Interest in the original, or gentle chaff about " the best girl," or something else, but always new, was poured forth. The men were irresistibly drawn to a circle of which he was the centre. It was the irresistible personality, its fund of fun, of sympathy, that was showing itself able in a moment to forge links of friendship with men brought up utterly unlike himself, a Harrow boy and a Cambridge man. ' The day ended as all other days do, and very tired he was in the train going home, but he told me that all those men would be at the Garrison Church when he preached on Sunday evening (the volun tary service) in ten days' time. When he preached to soldiers there was nothing of the traditional military reception of the preacher, with, after a short time, shuffling of feet, bad fits of coughing, clanking of swords. ' When I wrote to him that I wished to be an army chaplain, he wrote to me the most appalling philippics, beseeching me to do nothing of the kind. He insisted that if one wanted to do some thing for soldiers, one was far better able to do the work from out side. Inside the Army, he said, the officer position was a hopeless bar to reality. If one were asked wherein lay his great power with soldiers, it would seem to have been, quite apart from rare natural and spiritual gifts, the fact that he had not a grain of pompousness or conceit of position. He was simply a man whose heart went out very directly and fully to any other man, saint or sinner. The accident of class was nothing to him. Soldiers knew well enough that he enjoyed their company. This simplicity drew to him the hearts of all he met, whether they were Winchester boys, or New College men, or private soldiers. Sympathy and unfeigned simpli city, with a marvellous knowledge of the general tone and language of the class to which each belonged. From the letters which I have received from soldiers in all parts of the world, there were many 152 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING hearts in the army that felt themselves the poorer when it pleased God to take him to his well-e,arned rest. Under Dolling's influence Esau (as well as Jacob) felt that there was a Gospel for him.' We quote the following from a letter from a private soldier received after Dolling's death : ' Not only do I miss him, but hosts of others do so, too, soldiers and sailors all over the world. He had the way of making one feel at ease, and encouraged soldiers and sailors to talk about themselves. Unlike some of the clergy he did not commence by cramming religion down the throats of soldiers. He first of all made the earthly life a little smoother and easier, and gradually brought one to think of the higher ; and by his forbearance taught us a lesson which all the sermons in the world could not teach. He once told me of a certain learned clergyman being asked to take a sermon for one of the chaplains at a garrison church at the parade service, and telling the soldiers that " if they looked in their Greek Testaments," they would find something special about a particular passage. He laughed much over this story. [The story is true. The clergyman in question was doing some temporary duty in Ports mouth.] When he himself preached to soldiers he gave plain, homely talks.' A young Sergeant of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders writes of him : ' I really believe the secret of his successful dealings with soldiers, as a rule, was nothing more than using a little tact with them, studying each individual and acting accordingly, and never forcing religion down their throats. He would make each one feel at home and gradually draw them out. He was manly himself, and, as a rule, a soldier admires anything manly, especially in a clergyman. Even sitting with three or four fellows on leave round the fire in his study, smoking a pipe or cigar, has done them more good than going to church for a year. For, as a rule, at the church parade service the average Tommy is only too pleased when the service comes to an end ; he takes it just as an ordinary parade. So that kind of thing would take until the end of the world before the soldier and the preacher got to know one another. For myself, I have lost in Mr. Dolling one of the best and dearest friends I ever had — more than a friend. Mr. Dolling was not only a true friend, he was a MISSED BY SOLDIER FRIENDS 153 real " father " to many a young soldier. Hundreds of soldiers will miss him. Many a young soldier who was going wrong, when he got to know him, became straight again.' The following extract is from a letter from Lieutenant Roland Wilberforce, Royal Sussex Regiment (son of the present Bishop of Chichester), to his mother from South Africa. (Lieutenant Wilberforce is an old Wykehamist.) ' June 7, 1902. ' One bit of news from home made me very sad, and that was the news of dear old Dolling's death. I can't tell you what an admira tion and affection I had for him. I saw some of his work down at Portsmouth, and the real happiness that he brought into the lives of the very slummiest people there. He was the most extraordinarily sympathetic man I have ever met, and nothing was too big or too small for him to undertake if it was to be the means of making others happy. He was simply bubbling over with Irish wit all the time. I don't suppose anyone can properly estimate the amount of good he has done, but he will be missed all over the world. To young soldiers and sailors his loss will be irreparable.' During Dolling's time at Poplar, he gave Holy Communion in West London to a party of young officers who were just starting for the South African War, having a private inter view also with several of them. We do not know that they were very religious, but they knew Dolling, and felt that he was the one man they could talk to, or could allow to talk to them on these serious matters, before facing the possibility of never returning home. A Colonel wrote to one of Father Dolling's sisters after the latter's death : ' Your brother had an influence on me which no other man ever had. I always felt that what he said came from his heart direct. There was no one between him and Almighty God.' An officer writes as follows about him to the writer of this book : ' It seems hardly possible for me to realise now that Dolling, my best man friend, the deep thinker, the golden-tongued speaker, the 154 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING big, honest man, the man who made life different to me and to hundreds of others, is gone. It is impossible that he is now lying in the grave. Surely somewhere or other his soul goes marching on.' Colonel the Hon. A. H. Henniker wrote as follows from South Africa, on hearing of Dolling's death : ' Dear Miss Dolling, ' Your brother was to me the ideal of all that is good and beautiful in a human being. I do not think his place can be filled. He knew a soldier's failings, as he did those of other people, men and women, and yet no one ever went to him who did not get sympathy. His example shines out brightly in this too often sad world.' One of Dolling's oldest friends was Colonel Barrington Foote, R.H.A., who had known both him and the Rev. A. Stanton from the earlier S. Alban's days. In his ' Quarterly Letter ' for June 25, 1895, Dolling tells the following story which illustrates his knowledge of soldiers : ' Only last month a discharged soldier called on his way home from India to show me a piece of a Prayer-Book which a dying comrade had given to him, telling him that he was to be sure to come and tell me when he came to England that, though he had never written to me, he had never forgotten his communion at S. Agatha's, and that that was part of the Prayer-Book which I had given him. I could not remember even the name of the boy, so hopelessly careless are we about our most needed duties.' Of the visits of the St. Vincent boys to the mission we have written already. As each of these grew up, it meant an addi tion to the number of men-of-war's men known to Father Dolling and his helpers, and by the latter time of his stay at Portsmouth, he had got to know a large number of sailors, and took great delight in their company, as they in his. We do not know that he knew many in the merchant service ; his friends of the sea were mostly bluejackets, but indeed his friends were everywhere. He knew a good many Marines, both ' red ' and ' blue ' (the latter Marine Artillery), as Ports mouth is, of course, a chief centre for that branch of the service. MID-DAY ADDRESSES AT THE DOCKYARD 155 Among naval chaplains he had a special affection for the Rev. C. J. Corfe. Dr. Corfe is now Bishop in Korea, and one of his former clergy there, the Rev. M. N. Trollope, has succeeded Father Dolling at S. Saviour's, Poplar. Bishop Corfe was from time to time at S. Agatha's Church and parsonage, and was always a welcome visitor. He writes as follows : ' Dolling did me a good turn once in the Dockyard Church. He took the course of mid-day addresses to men in Holy Week. His subject was characteristic of him : " Christ : the Perfect Gentle man." The procedure was simple. Dolling appeared in a cassock, and talked for a quarter of an hour in that affectionate but uncom promising way which was so well known to the men of Portsmouth who came to hear him. Of course there were very many men at those services who very much disapproved of S. Agatha's. Yet I have always thought that indirectly I was the means of doing S. Agatha's a good turn by those services, as they brought many men who suspected and disliked Dolling, not only to hear him, but to be brought under his Christlike influence.' Bishop Corfe writes also of the pleasure which a Sunday at S. Agatha's gave him when he came there as a Bishop. In regard to Dolling's character, he writes of the mingled capacities of anger and of pity which were strangely blended elements in it. Anger against unpunished wrong, and pity for the unfortunate and distressed were indeed so mingled in him that his nature was at once sternly and even fiercely masculine and tenderly feminine in its delicate tact and compassion. We derive the following, a lighter reminiscence, from an officer in the Royal Navy : ' Father Dolling came to our ship at my invitation with two of his friends. He had tea in the mess. Father D. kept everyone in good humour. Afterwards he retired for a smoke. I left to change into mufti, and heard the following : ' A. " Who's that parson Johnnie in the smoking-room ?" 'B. "Don't you know1? Why, that's old Dolling, you know ; down in Charlotte Street." ' A. " Who's he come off to see ?" 156 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING 'B. "Hush! Old asked him." 1 A. " Are you sure that's Dolling V ' B. " Positive introduced him." ' A. " Well, I thought Dolling quite a different fellow. He came into the room, sat in an easy-chair, had a smoke, commenced to chat, and kept us all in roars. I'll be hanged if he didn't know more about the service than any naval parson I've been shipmates with I'm going up to have another yarn with him." 1 It was arranged for us to leave the ship at 5.15. We did not go till 6.45. I have a suspicion that our missing the first boat was a design on the part of one or two who had met Father Dolling for the first time. I am, however, convinced that the smoke, the chat, and that significant shake of the hand on parting company at the Dockyard made more impression than any number of sermons would have done. In fact, up to that time, none on our ship who met him that afternoon would have given him a hearing before, such is the force of prejudice. Four men were deeply interested; his influence took hold of them, and I believe extended through them to others.' Dolling showed his sympathy for soldiers and sailors by his efforts to secure a better mode of distribution of the money intended for their widows and orphans, and, as he believed, mismanaged and kept back with culpable dilatori- ness by the authorities of the Patriotic Fund. Soon after the great disaster to the Victoria, in which so many men whose wives resided at Portsmouth were lost, Dolling raised a large sum from S. Agatha's congregation and friends for the Victoria Relief Fund, but he refused to allow this £95 to be handed on by the Mayor of Portsmouth to the Patriotic Fund. On December 3, 1893, he delivered in S. Agatha's and after wards published an address to men, entitled, ' The Victoria Fund. The Real Truth about the Patriotic Fund: How England's Generosity is stifled by England's Red Tape.' In this he says : ' It ought to be the first duty of the nation, before any other debt is paid, before anyone else is honoured, to honour the dead, as far as we can to pay the debt we owe them. In all ages the widows and orphans of heroes have been a sacred charge, and these men of the Victoria are especially heroes. To die in the midst of battle, that THE DEATHS OF HEROES 157 were easy, but to die by the mistake of one man, to die by a little fault in the machinery, to go down in a calm sea under the blue sky, to stand in order in your place without murmuring, as orderly as if you were in the barrack square, that was splendid, that was sublime. ' I have no fear for the generosity of England, yet would I rather call it justice. It is for our sakes, our prosperity, our happiness, our commerce, that they deprive themselves of their homes, that they dare the tempest, that they bravely die.' CHAPTER XIV Parochial excursions from S. Agatha's to Winchester — The day-schools — The almshouses — Personal dealing with the suffering and poor. ' How best to help the slender store, How mend the dwellings of the poor ; How gain in life, as life advances, Valour and charity more and more.' Tennyson : To the Bev. F. D. Maurice. The history of Dolling's work at Portsmouth is so marked by storm and opposition, culminating in the circumstances which led to his resignation, that one who had not been a resident at S. Agatha's might have imagined from the newspaper reports that there was a harsh and combative temper domi nating and embittering the life of the mission. Two things, however, prevented this from being the case, either in regard to Dolling himself, or to the mission generally. The first was, that there was in some real sense a religious spirit, an instinct of worship in the place. The other was the human fellowship, kindliness, and sense of humour which Dolling created, and without which opposition so easily breeds uncharitableness, and zeal becomes corrupted into fanaticism. Dolling's sense of enjoyment, and his appreciation of the need of recreation for the people, balanced that side of his nature to which fighting was congenial. His warfare against various public evils might have made him a Puritan were it not for his love of the colour, sound, movement, and laughter of all the varied drama of life. Few men so laughter-loving and urbane as he have also been such keen fighters against evil. As a rule the two types of character are seldom combined in one personality ; but they certainly were so in Dolling's case. [ 158 ] MRS. DICK'S INVITATION 159 The various excursions organised in connection with the mission also supplied an element of wholesome enjoyment which became more rational and civilised as years went on. In the earlier period of the mission it was not unknown for a rather too boisterous hilarity to suggest suspicions in the onlookers as to this or that person on the brakes returning through the ..Landport streets. Even Dolling, whose sten torian voice and imposing presence could quell the most undisciplined of his flock, often found it difficult to keep some within bounds ; but this became easier the more the mission-workers and the people came to know and understand one another, and the life of S. Agatha's developed as that of the social existence of a Christian family. Treats and excursions are, of course, in the present day a necessary feature of the social side of any religious organisa tion, and therefore there is no need to linger over those held in connection with S. Agatha's. An exception, however, must be made in regard to those delightful excursions to Winchester College, which had a special charm as distinct from expeditions of a more ordinary type. They served to sustain the links between the mission and the College, its original source. At Winchester the various parties of people from S. Agatha's were greeted as friends by friends. These visits were long looked forward to at Landport, and long remembered. They were days full of difficulty at first — some shyness, perhaps, on the part of the entertainers, not quite understanding the tastes and expectations of the guests, some rudeness on the part of the guests not quite realising the genuine friendship, the simplicity and cordiality of the welcome of the hosts. As Dolling himself wrote in his book : ' In 1886 Mrs. Richardson — I had rather say Mrs. Dick, and I am sure she won't mind — invited me to bring a party of mission men to Winchester to spend the day in college. About sixty went. They broke into the Warden's garden, and stole his fruit ; they climbed over the wall of the bathing-place and laughed at the men who were learning to swim ; they tried to kiss the ladies who waited on them ; they most of them got drunk before we went home. ' Mrs. Dick's invitation is as elastic as her own heart. Year by 160 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING year more and more men have wanted to go. This year we limited it to 160; we had to refuse an equal number. All of them paid their own journeys, except a few old men out of work, and some of the better-off men clubbed together so that no expense should fall on the mission. I don't suppose men ever had a more delightful day. I am quite sure no lady ever entertained a more delightful company. We visited the Cathedral, S. Cross, and all the places of interest. We had two splendid meals. One whole day's perfect enjoyment, everyone sober, not a rude or rough word, and yet some of us were the identical people who had gone ten years before, and all of the same class, all the mission's children.' In his ' Quarterly Letter ' for June 24, 1893, Dolling describes a little token of affection and respect which was made to Mrs. Richardson by the men of the mission. He wrote : ' Our Men's Outing in Winchester was a great success ; about 130 of us went. Mr. Attree (the Dockyard organist), who kindly plays for us on Sundays at two of our many services, took his camera and made a very good photo of us. The men were very anxious to show Mrs. Richardson how much they appreciated her great kindness ; for though she is helped by many of the Winchester ladies, we know the greater part of the trouble and management falls on her shoulders. So we got the photographs pasted into a book, and wrote her a letter, all signing our names.' On the outside of this book appears these words : ' In memory of a very happy day spent at Winchester College. To dear Mrs. Richardson.' Inside is written the following, no doubt of Father Dolling's own composition, and in his own handwriting : 'Winchester College Mission, ' Landport, ' June 10, 1893. * We want you to keep this book in remembrance of many happy days we have spent with you and other kind friends at College. We hope you will like our pictures, and if ever you are sad, our happy faces will show you many that you have made glad. We are your affectionate friends.' (Here follow the signatures, R. Rad- clyffe Dolling's being the first.) A WINCHESTER OUTING 161 We quote the following description of one of these ' men's outings ' at Winchester from the pen of an old Wykehamist : ' At one o'clock the company would assemble, ready to do full justice to the ample fare provided for it. When all were assembled Dolling would say grace, and paternally advise them to eat slowly, Mrs. Dick interrupting him with a genial "Make it as long as possible ; let them gradually fill up." So the meal began. Great was the bustle, carving and filling of plates and glasses. Great was the heat, for it was high midsummer. Every guest had four or five helpings — one is recorded to have had seven — so that the waiters and waitresses were busily employed. Not only the College servants were there, but masters with their wives and daughters. Even the Headmaster handed round potatoes as if to the manner born. One of the young ladies was a special favourite of the soldiers and sailors, and when the older folk were not sup posed to be looking plenty of innocent chaff went on. One vould beckon to her, " I say, miss, won't you marry me V and another would interrupt him, " No, no, miss, don't take 'im ; 'e's no good ; 'ave me," and so on. She was quite able to hold her own, and smilingly replied: "That's very kind of you. I'm very much flattered, and I will think about it. In the meantime won't you have some more beef f 'In and out among the tables hovered Mrs. Dick. Her com fortable and sympathetic presence invited confidences, and one and another would beckon to her. " What have you got to tell me f she would say, and the burden of their reply would be, " Isn't he splendid, that Dolling ! How we all love him !" Then one or another would tell her of something he had done for them, and she would answer, "We don't know what to do without him, either." After some songs Dolling said grace, and in a beautiful little speech — the total silence of that noisy throng while he spoke was very impressive — dwelt upon their visit there and the entertainment given to them as a proof of the love which united them to Win chester, the parent and supporter of the mission. 'So the meal ended, and the men dispersed, some to climb " hills," others to visit S. Cross, others to play cricket. The infirm and crippled sat under the trees, watched the others, and enjoyed the scene. Dolling himself has described it in his book : " There is, perhaps, no playfield as beautiful in the whole of England. In front of you S. Catherine's Hill, with its crown of trees. On one 11 162 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING side the College Chapel, on the other S. Cross ; everywhere gleams of beauty, and even on the sultriest day a delightful breeze." ' Miss Dolling's factory girls' club went also for very happy days to Winchester, where Mrs. Bramston (wife of one of the masters of Winchester, the Rev. John Trant Bramston — ' Mrs. Trant,' as Dolling often calls her in his book) used to make the same sort of kindly and ample preparation for the girls as Mrs. Richardson did for the lads and men. Dolling says in his report for 1887 : 'Our "social" for factory girls has answered splendidly. We never giggle now. Mrs. Bramston entertained fifty of them at Winchester this summer. These out-days are splendid !' There is one feature of the work at S. Agatha's of which we have as yet said little, and yet it was one of the most impor tant of all — i.e., the Day Schools. The reader may remember that among the ' eight milestones ' which Dolling had planted during his ten years' progress (from 1885-1895), were the Boys' and Girls' Schools. These, which were situated in Thomas' Street, Landport, or at least the then school build ings on that site, were known originally as the Bell Schools, and had been worked as Church of England Schools in con nection with All Saints (the mother parish) by its then Vicar, the Rev. E. B. C. Churchill, who was succeeded in 1890 by the present incumbent, the Rev. W. Hawksley, always a kind friend to the S. Agatha's Mission, the daughter district of his own great parish. When Mr. Churchill was about, in 1889, to offer these schools to the Board, as the buildings had been condemned, and there were no resources to fulfil the require ments of continuance, Dolling offered to take them over. He found that £1,000 must be raised at once to effect repairs or practically to erect new buildings. As he was then engaged in some differences as to ritual with Bishops Harold Browne and Sumner, he had to appeal to the public, without episcopal or archidiaconal backing. In two months the £1,000 required was subscribed, and the schools became the S. Agatha's Church Schools, being among the very best in the borough of Portsmouth. It was for the purpose of getting this money DOLLING AS EDUCATIONALIST 163 that one of the special days of intercession was observed in S. Agatha's, the church being used by many persons, for this purpose, in turn, from morning till night. In Mr. Saunders Dolling secured one who was at once an efficient headmaster, a keen educationalist, and an intelligent and enthusiastic Churchman. The influence also of Mrs. Borrow, the headmistress, with the girls was regarded by Dolling as only second to that of Miss Dolling herself, and as an admirable foundation for the latter' s subsequent dealings with them. The boys' fife and drum band and the large boys' Bible class were due to Mr. Saunders, and next to Dolling himself, few have done more for the lads of S. Agatha's than the headmaster of the Boys' Day Schools. Not only was Dolling an enthusiastic educationalist in regard to his own schools, but he also held an important position on the Portsmouth School Board. He was never a believer in undenominational education, or the Cowper- Temple clause, but he was a strong advocate for efficiency as being in the long-run the most economical policy for education, and he totally rejected the alliance of the Church with the ' cheap and nasty ' line in this matter. In the very midst of his ten years at Portsmouth, Father Dolling was able to report (March 24, 1891) to his subscribers the following results, as far as such things could be tangibly estimated. He knew, of course, there were deeper results beyond the power of being reckoned : ' One hates publishing statistics, but I think at a time like this it ought to be right to let you know what your subscriptions have enabled us to do in the last five years. 'We have put into the army 39 young men, into the navy 57 young men. We have emigrated to Australia, America, and elsewhere 63. We have started in life over 100 young men who lived with us. We have reformed 25 thieves just out of gaol. We have sent to service and into shops about 100 girls. 25 girls have passed through our training home for from two to five years ; there are 19 in it now. We have turned many drunkards into self- respecting, church-going people. We have rescued 144 fallen women, and got them into Homes. We have maintained, and are main- 11—2 164 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING taining, in preventive Homes 124 children, snatched from the brink of ruin. We have shut up in the district over 50 brothels, and have changed the whole aspect of the place. We house 6 old couples free of rent.' [Some others were for an almost nominal rent.] 'We feed for a halfpenny a meal 180 children, and 25 old people free, twice a week during the winter. We teach over 500 children in our Sunday-schools, and 600 in our Day-schools. We have a large gymnasium, clubs for "rough lads" and "smooth lads," for intel lectual young men, and for card-playing old men. We have " socials" for our factory girls, mothers' meetings for our older women. We have a nigger-troupe, an acrobatic troupe, dancing-class, and glee club; a sewing-class; a large temperance society, and Band of Hope; a lending library, and three penny savings banks.' It is certainly a remarkable record, and although a good deal of it was rendered possible by his large staff of assistants, clerical and lay, male and female, yet the oversight or bird's- eye view, as it were, of the whole plan of the campaign, and the entire raising of the sinews of war, were due to Dolling alone. Nothing in S. Agatha's district was dearer to its priest than a row of clean and tidy cottages in Chance Street, which, when he came to Landport, were mainly houses of shame. He raised money to buy them, and to make them decent in every sense. Having done so, he put in some of them five or six old ladies, and in the others a few aged couples. Six pence or a shilling a week was paid by each tenant, which was enough to refund rates and repairs. He writes in his ' Quarterly Letter,' June 28, 1895, referring to the purchase of such houses : ' I am sure that if any of you could have seen the joy and peace of one old widow over eighty, Lavinia Myrtle, who died of cancer after a very long and painful illness, you would have thought that the whole of the money spent on the two houses was well spent. I thank God continually that I had no holiday last year, otherwise this poor old soul would have died in the workhouse.' The workhouse of all English institutions Dolling liked the least. As a prominent member of the Portsmouth Board of Guardians he tried not merely to consider the interests of the CAEE OF AGED POOR 165 ratepayers (though he was a man of business and opposed to needless extravagance), but still more the decency and peaceful comfort of the aged poor, and the healthy conditions of the ' House ' for all its inmates. But even at its best the work house seemed to him not to be a really human institution, but one to a great extent unnatural in its vast barrack arrangements and its separation of aged married people. Dolling, with all his organising powers, believed in its being best, when possible, to leave people under a roof of their own, and in a room of their own. He disliked all herding and cataloguing of human beings. He respected the idiosyncrasies of each. Lavinia Myrtle, mentioned in the above letter, was, though the inhabitant of a Landport slum, yet by nature an old gentlewoman, as quaint and gracious as her name. Perhaps the most Christlike trait in Dolling's character was his extraordinarily tender respect for the suffering and the unfortunate. All poor human ' odds and ends ' and wreckage on the stream of life were the objects of his special devotion. Before suffering he bent with reverence as if before the mystery of Calvary. The lonely, the misunderstood, the scorned were the objects of his special and peculiar regard. He used to say of such, ' They find a home within the Heart of God.' Cardinal Newman, in one of his ' Parochial and Plain Sermons,' has beautifully described the Christian Church as ' the home of the lonely.' It was Dolling's ideal for S. Agatha's that it should be such. Hence his detestation of the mvasion of the Church of England by that spirit of smug respectability which is as much the evil genius of reformed Christendom as unbridled superstition often is of the unreformed type. We think that the above largely explains Dolling's love for the ' Stations of the Cross,' on the one hand, or for extempore leadings in prayer, on the other. Anything, he thought, to drive out this self-satisfied gentility from that supremacy over Anglicanism which has been as much the curse of the latter system as ecclesiastical absolutism has been of the Papacy and of the great Communion of Rome. Three of the suffering and unfortunate ones who were specially dear to Dolling were either altogether or almost 166 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING entirely inmates of the parsonage. He describes them in his book, in the chapter ' Our Saints,' and certainly all of them were touched by what he called ' the sacrament of pain,' and their religious devotion was entirely without affectation or pretence. Of these the first, and the dearest to Dolling, was a young man named Henry Ross. Bad health had made the ordinary life of a young artisan impossible for him. He had been for some time a tram-conductor. When that calling had to be abandoned, as he became still weaker than before, Dolling took him into the parsonage, giving him some light pieces of work to do for the household or for himself. He was a youth of high principles, of true refinement of mind, and of a very affectionate nature. The patience of Ross's life under much suffering, and the spirit of simple religion which sustained him, made him a sort of good genius in the parsonage. After his death, it was as a memorial to him that the painted panels were inserted in that special altar, which, when moved into the new church, became the occasion of so much difficulty. Willy Dore had been a mudlark on the Portsmouth common Hard, wading in the slime of the harbour for halfpennies tossed to him and other boys by the sailors. He was taken up by the Rev. J. Lloyd, then of the Mission of the Good Shepherd, Portsea, and was by him introduced to S. Agatha's, where his strange appearance became known to all the con gregation. He had a feeble intelligence, being well-nigh half witted, and yet his features, which seemed only to indicate a wandering mind, and were at first sight almost repulsive, used to light up when he was asked any question bearing on religion, of which, indeed, he had an extraordinary knowledge. His almost negro-like appearance was the outward mask of a soul that sincerely loved God. He was a living proof that there are many secret avenues by which God wills to reveal Himself to the soul besides the intelligence alone. Though at the time of his death he was in years a young man, Willy remained a child in mind and in body, and he also became first partially and then entirely blind. Yet ' Blind Willy,' to INMATES OF THE PARSONAGE 167 use the name by which in love and compassion rather than in scorn he was universally known in that part of Landport, had that strange ardour of passionate religious devotion which, at the present day, is rarely found out of Russia or of Ireland. For the Sacrament of the Eucharist he had a wonderful spiritual appetite ; he seemed to grasp the idea of Christ as its mysterious gift, and his devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament seemed the result of a sort of instinct, for the channel of intelligence became more closed as time went on. He died in the imbecile ward of the Union Infirmary, to which he had to be removed ; but even when all else of mind had gone, he could still whisper a prayer into Dolling's ear as the latter bent over his death-bed. His devotion to his friend and benefactor was doglike in its patient fidelity. With these two (Ross and ' Blind Willy ') Dolling classes the crippled boy, little Harry, fourteen years old, yet looking only seven, who was his special and tender charge. Harry -was always wheeled in daily to stay at the parsonage while his father went to work, his mother being in a lunatic asylum. Resembling the great Dr. Samuel Johnson in some other respects, as in his delight in town life and crowded streets, and also in the union in his character of sincere religion and of the spirit of humour and humanity, Dolling also resembled him in his love of filling his house with persons whose only claims upon him were their infirmities and their helplessness, and the only reward they could give him their affection and their prayers. Ross, Willy Dore, and little Harry were, in a humble way, to Father Dolling what the blind Anna Williams and Mrs. Desmoulins and Levett were to the great-hearted Johnson. Amid the incessant conflicts and turmoils of the priest of S. Agatha's, his ' battles civil ' and ' battles ecclesi astical,' as he calls them, he yet could always find time, by some playful expression or by some thoughtful suggestion, giving them some little thing to do for him, to bring a ray of sunshine into the lives of these his poor pensioners — lives neglected by the world, yet in which his unerring spiritual instinct discerned the mark of the friends of God. CHAPTER XV Father Dolling and the Bishops of Winchester — The ' Extra Services ' — Petition of Protestant Alliance to Bishop Harold Browne — Letter from Bishop Sumner, of Guildford— Dr. Thorold, Bishop of Win chester (1891-1895) — Father Dolling's relations with him — Bishop Thorold's love of the poor — ' The S. Agatha's Children's Book '— Bishop Thorold's letter to the Protestant Alliance (1892)— The ' Children's Book ' revised and reissued (1893). ' And, worst of all, the good with good Is at cross-purposes.' F. W. Faber. Because we have been occupied up to this solely with the opposition to Dolling's social and political action, it does not follow that the Ultra-Protestants of Portsmouth (which used to be a stronghold of Orangeism) regarded with silence the extension of Catholic doctrines and practices of which S. Agatha's was one of the centres. Dolling hated contro versy for its own sake, but the calumnies circulated about S. Agatha's and similar churches were so gross and numerous, the charge of treachery to the Church of England and of taking her pay on false pretences being one of the mildest of them, that he invited his old friend, Dr. Belcher (a medical man before he was a priest), the Rector of Frampton Cotterell, Bristol, to give a lecture in the Victoria Hall, Southsea, on the subject ' Why Catholics ought to remain in the Church of England.' The hall was packed with people, for Dolling was to be chairman, and whatever there might be at a meeting over which the Vicar-Designate of S. Agatha's presided, people knew, at least, that there would not be dulness if the chair man could prevent it. The meeting was certainly not a dull one. Dr. Belcher was [168 ] PROTESTANTS IN THE VULGATE 169 uncompromising as a representative of Anglo- Catholicism, and repudiated Protestantism as a true representation of the posi tion of the Church of England. Shortly after, Dr. Potter, Rector of Hollescroft, Sheffield, a well-known Protestant champion, asked to be allowed to address the meeting, and this having been granted, he ascended the platform with an armful of books. Dr. Potter met the state ment of the lecturer that the word ' Protestant ' is not to be found in the Bible or the Prayer-Book by appealing to the Latin version of 2 Chron. xxiv. 19, where ' protestantes ' occurs in the Vulgate. ' Show me that book,' said Dr. Belcher sternly. The other handed it to the lecturer, who, showing the audience that on its title-page were prominently em blazoned the papal arms, triple tiara, etc., said : ' Why, gentlemen and ladies, this is the Popish Bible ! Look at the Pope's arms on it. The Rev. Doctor is a Jesuit in disguise.' The laughter was too much for Dr. Potter, who collapsed. Dolling, however, as a rule, avoided controversy in religious matters; he thought it did little good. Vice and indifference, not Ultra-Protestantism, he believed to be the real enemies he had to fight. For ' High Churchism ' of the high and dry ecclesiastical variety he had little regard. The Oxford Move ment he believed to have been true in regard to its principles, but he used constantly to say that it suffered from its initial peculiarity ' that it was made up out of books.' He held that it was unfortunate it had not more immediately taken root in the hearts of the people, as Methodism did. His evangelistic zeal for Christianity and for the Catholic presentation of it as the fullest and most adequate is the real explanation of Dolling's apparent contempt for the Book of Common Prayer. His language about that book was not intended to apply to it as a storehouse of regulated devotion for instructed Church people, but in regard to its missionary capacities. He did not mean that the Prayer-Book was un- Catholic in itself — had he done so he would have certainly been disloyal — but that it was not by itself an adequate mis sionary vehicle for popularising and extending the Faith among 170 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING a nation the majority of which has practically lapsed from it — lapsed, that is, not through wilful apostasy, but through ignorance and neglect. If this seemed a pessimistic criti cism Dolling would attempt to prove it by bidding those who denied it face the facts as to the attendance of the popu lation at Christian worship of any description. It was this sense he had of the non-missionary character of the Prayer-Book (as being for a people already instructed in the faith) which induced Dolling to introduce at S. Agatha's those ' extra services ' which led, even more than the ritual, or dressing up of the more liturgical offices, to those re monstrances from bishops and dignitaries which formed a constant undercurrent to what the Vicar-Designate of S. Agatha's used to call his ' big rows ' (as, i.e., that already described with the Mayor of Portsmouth). It is only fair to admit that it must have been very trying for Bishop Harold Browne, or Bishop Thorold, or for the pre sent Primate, then Bishop Davidson, to be continually the recipients of complaints about Dolling and S. Agatha's. The ' extra services ' which Dolling introduced were (with the exception of certain devotions in connection with the re served Sacrament, practised towards the end of his stay in Landport) not really of as ' extreme ' a nature as might at first be imagined by outsiders. There was certainly nothing distinctively or essentially Romanist about them, and they were introduced, not with any view of imitating Rome, but from their adaptability to popular and missionary needs. Most, or all, of these services took place on the week- nights at S. Agatha's, when on most evenings (generally on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays) there was a short address or instruction, after the evening devotion, by one of the clergy. The following was the usual routine of the famous, or notorious, ' extra services ' : Mondays, a Prayer-meeting, ' our Dissenting service ' Dolling often called it. Bishop, clergy, soldiers, sailors, emigrants, sick, sinners, all were prayed for at this service, ' our dear dead ' being remembered at the end. Sometimes an office of intercession from the Cowley Manual was used, but if Dolling THE EXTRA SERVICES 171 took the service himself he preferred to offer extempore prayer of a homely and simple character. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings the Prayer-Book alone was used. On Thursdays there was ' Vespers of the Blessed Sacrament.' This service, which has no connection with Reservation, is simply the Vesper Service consisting of some fixed psalms, short sacramental lesson from 1 Corinthians, hymn, Magnificat, and collects. As the office for the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament and for many communicants' guilds it has, in several dioceses, we believe, been allowed by the Bishop to be used, and it is of a thoroughly Scriptural character. We ought to add that at S. Agatha's it was sung solemnly — i.e., with a certain amount of ritual, the officiant wearing a cope, and incense being used at the Magnificat. The censer used on this and other occasions was a gift which had been made to the mission by some students of the Divinity School of Trinity College, Dublin. It bears an in scription to this effect, and is still used at S. Agatha's when ever incense forms one of the external features of the worship. On Friday evenings there was the ' Stations of the Cross,' or ' Way of the Cross.' Each feature of the Passion formed a subject of special devotion, as the priest who took the services moved with his assistants from one to another of the pictures on the walls, which at intervals represented the stages of the sufferings of the Saviour. The legend of S. Veronica was not included. Dolling said, ' It is not in the Bible.' Nor were there the pictures of the two legendary falls. Dolling generally gave the address on the Friday evenings himself. His power of drawing Christian lessons from the Passion was well-nigh inexhaustible. On Saturday nights Compline was generally said. This, of course, needs no explanation or defence. It is said, we be lieve, nightly in the crypt of S. Paul's Cathedral, and is one of the most beautiful and Scriptural of all the older offices of the Church, as well as one very widely used in Christian 172 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING households, and by guilds and religious associations in the Church of England to-day. The above, which is an accurate statement as to the nature of these ' services extra to the Prayer-Book ' as used at S. Agatha's, shows that the titles were to old-fashioned people more frightening than the words of the services in themselves. But Dolling considered that such objectors could easily find other churches to go to, and that he was sent, not to them, but to his own people, whose special needs required special and missionary methods. The week-day services of the early mornings at S. Agatha's were invariably Matins and the Daily Eucharist. All the permanent resident workers, clerical and lay, were expected to attend church every morning, but in the evenings only the priest who took the service, the others being engaged each at some special work. Although Evensong was not publicly said daily, yet Dolling always recognised that at least the private recital of it as well as of Matins was required of the clergy by the Prayer-Book and the law of the Church. Besides which it must be remembered that S. Agatha's was not a consecrated parish church, in which the daily choir offices might claim to be rendered with regular publicity, but rather a mission chapel amid almost a practically heathen population. At any degree, it was a conviction of Dolling's, unshaken to the end, and the result of almost unique experience of religious work among those below the church- or chapel-going stratum, that the Prayer-Book language is uncomprehended by the multitude, and that missionary work among them demands a flexibility and elasticity as to methods of worship wider than that which the letter of the Prayer-Book can afford. This conviction is shared by an increasing number of persons in no sense disloyal to the Prayer-Book, but yet not making it a fetich ; although they are by no means in exact agreement among themselves as to the best way of supplementing it. All these questions Dolling looked at from the point of view of an evangelist and a missionary, rather than of a liturgical scholar, which he never professed to be, and certainly was not. However, he could scarcely have expected that the SUGGESTIONS OF BISHOP SUMNER 178 Bishops would not make some demands for alteration in his services, or in the mode of conducting them. Such demands, it is only right to say, were always made in a conciliatory spirit, and with no desire to ignore Father Dolling's devoted labours. It was as inevitable that the demands should be made, from one point of view, as it was inevitable from the other that compromise should be found difficult or impossible. In 1889 Bishop Sumner, of Guildford, Suffragan to the Bishop of Winchester, requested or suggested that, in order to meet Bishop Harold Browne's objections, the following changes should be made at S. Agatha's : Giving up (1) in cense ; (2) Compline, ' in which the choir absolve the priest '; (3) extempore prayer ; (4) Vespers of the Blessed Sacrament, with cope ; (5) Vespers of the Dead. Bishop Sumner went on to add that this would mean only the removal of certain excrescences, and the gaining to the work of episcopal approval. The Bishop of the diocese himself had previously written, some time before, to Dolling as follows : ' to suggest that you should be satisfied with what is purely Anglican as sufficient for all purposes of devotion, and not likely to create suspicion or to stir up strife. Stations of the Cross, acolytes in crimson cassocks, incensing the Magnificat, and the like, cer tainly excite bitter animosity in an eminently Protestant town like Portsmouth.' The petition which caused Bishop Harold Browne to write as above was got up at a large meeting mainly composed of Orangemen, with some Nonconformists of the strongly Puritan type. This meeting was held at a building called the ' Pro testant Hall' of Portsmouth, the exterior of which is adorned with the busts of eminent Sixteenth-Century Reformers. Of the persons who attended to denounce S. Agatha's, we should think there was hardly one who was a resident in the Win chester College Mission district. Most of the audience were of the lower middle class from other and more respectable parts of Portsmouth. Bishop Browne himself wrote of the petition in question : ' I do not think that the persons appealing to me have any locus standi.' Nevertheless, the result of the petition was a request from the Bishop to Dolling ' to confine 174 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING his services and mode of worship within the confessedly legal ritual of the Church of England.' Dr. Browne made no attempt, however, to exactly define what those precise limits were. He said that no complaints had reached him from S. Agatha's district itself, but that he believed ' with good reason that those clergy in Portsea who are doing great work in formerly neglected regions feel that the scare produced by advanced ritual is seriously detrimental to them.' At the meeting in the Protestant Hall an address was delivered by a gentleman from London, who made a violent attack on Dolling, ending with ' If we had a clergyman like Mr. Dolling in our neighbourhood, we would soon take him by the back of the neck and kick him out of the parish.' A voice from the gallery was heard to shout, ' He weighs fifteen stone, and you might find it difficult.' Solvuntur tabulce risu. Through all this it is only right to state that Bishops Harold Browne and Sumner wrote to Dolling in terms of affec tionate regard, fully recognising his special gifts as an evange- liser. The desire, however, to avoid disturbance at all costs, and the wish to steer the Church's ship through peaceful waters, dominated in their minds almost all other considera tions. Dolling himself also was the first to recognise the high character and deep piety of Bishop Harold Browne, nor did he at any time actually defy the Bishops, as he was always ready to resign should episcopal remonstrances with which he disagreed become episcopal demands which he could not conscientiously obey. He was also, as a rule, on excellent personal terms with the prelates whose public line of action was not that of complete approval of the doings at S. Agatha's. Such a state of affairs, both politically and even ecclesiastically, is common enough in English life, but practically unknown in other countries where differences on public matters generally or often involves strong personal antipathies or estrange ments. The translation of Bishop Anthony Thorold from the See of Rochester to that of Winchester, after Dr. Harold Browne's death, brought Dolling into contact with a Bishop more con versant with the views and the proceedings of that section of BISHOP THOEOLD 175 the younger clergy with which the staff of S. Agatha's on the whole might be classed, than Dr. Browne ever had been. Bishop Thorold had preached for that Guild of S. Matthew by which Bishop Browne had been so troubled ; he had been head of a diocese — Eochester — which, as it contains South London, was one in which Eitualism was at its strongest, including some of its best -worked centres, and he had gradually abandoned his policy of ' isolating ' such churches, in favour of a more tolerant line of action. Originally an Evangelical of a some what narrow, though always deeply devotional type, his mind had broadened under the teaching and influence of his friend, the famous Bishop Phillips Brooks of Massachusetts, but without losing any of the intensity of its earnestness and piety. He was emphatically a good man, unworldly and disinterested, yet shrewd and sensible, and his somewhat stiff and precise manner concealed a heart of unselfishness and affection. We think he had a very warm feeling for Dolling; certainly the latter felt towards him in a similar way. Considering that Bishop Thorold was in no sense a High Churchman even of moderate type, the extent to which he went in his comprehensiveness was very remarkable. This was especially so, as he soon began to receive complaints from many quarters about ' the notorious Mission Church in Landport,' and this was soon after the time that the secession of one of his own family to the Church of Eome might have been likely to make him more prejudiced against the entire Eitualistic party than before. Two things, however, made Bishop Thorold feel warmly towards Dolling and S. Agatha's, in spite of so much with which he could not be expected to be in agreement. Firstly, both he and Dolling were evangelical in the truest sense. The Bishop's theology, though originally evangelical in a narrower interpretation of that word, had become so much more generous than in his earlier days that he could afford to recognise in this extreme Eitualist whom party Protestantism denounced a sincere lover of the same Lord and Master to whom his own heart was devoted. What men like Bishop 176 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING Thorold dislike in so-called Ritualistic clergy is the tendency of some of the latter to be formalists, but he knew that Dolling was as great an enemy of formalism as he was himself. Secondly, Bishop Thorold had a deep love of the poor. His mind had been much occupied when he was in South London with the question of their condition, and with the need of religious evangelisation and social improvement going hand in hand in the slums. He forgave Dolling a great deal of his Ritualism because of his devotion to those ignorant ones ' out of the way ' over whom his own heart also yearned. It seemed hard to realise that this somewhat prim- looking and reserved Church dignitary was continually exer cised by the desire to bring into conscious communion with Christ the masses upon whom religion has lost hold. One singularly touching story will always be associated with the pastoral zeal of Bishop Thorold's heart. It is that of his close association with the case of a young soldier who was condemned to death for shooting, in a fit of passion, one of his comrades at Hillsea Fort, near Portsmouth. The Bishop him self attended the lad in the condemned cell, found him ignorant of even the rudiments of religion, brought him to a sincere repentance, instructed him and had him baptised, and himself confirmed him, and gave him his first Communion under cir cumstances of unspeakable pathos. It was a story worthy of the Bishop in ' Les Miserables.' Bishop Thorold wrote in his diary (quoted in his ' Life ') in reference to the last Communion on the morning of the execution : ' Captain Hill (the captain of the gaol) communicated, kneeling, as before, at the condemned man's side. Poor fellow ! he put out his hands so eagerly for the Elements. When the service was over he came and knelt before me, and I whispered into his ear some words of kindly farewell, assuring him that he was going back, like the Prodigal, to his Father's house, and that soon he would see more than we saw, and know more than we know.' No wonder that Bishop Thorold and Father Dolling were drawn to one another. The accession of Dr. Thorold to the See of Winchester took place in October, 1890. He recorded in his diary that three A GOOD HONEST TALK 177 places in Portsmouth especially interested him. These were the great Church of S. Mary's, Kingston, built by Canon Jacob, with its daughter missions ; S. Andrew's Deaconesses' House, Southsea, under its Superior, Sister Emma ; and S. Agatha's Mission, Landport. He visited the latter for the first time on April 22, 1891, when he met Dolling, with whom he had never before been in personal contact. ' This mission,' writes the Bishop's biographer, the Rev. C. H. Simpkinson, referring to S. Agatha's, 'was destined to cause the Bishop grave anxiety. But its origin, the character of its chief, the daring and successful assault which its clergy and lay-workers had made upon vice and sin in the wickedest quarter of the great town of Portsmouth, called out all his impulsive enthusiasm. He might differ widely in opinion from many of its ritual practices, but how could he dare not to encourage a work so zealously done for Christ V ' " Dolling was very nice in consulting me," wrote the Bishop in his diary, "about his scarlet acolytes, with whom I dispensed. The con firmees were most attentive. This is a remarkable place. The next day I had breakfast with Dolling and his curates and the miscel laneous residents, some of them just out of prison. In the chapel, over the lists of the names of the Departed, there is nothing said to imply prayer for their souls, but Dolling very straightforwardly told me it was his habit. I told him he should not do so — it was contrary to the practice of the English Church." ' A few weeks later Dolling was with Dr. Thorold in London. The latter wrote of this interview : 'We had a good, honest, friendly talk. We had prayer, and I gave him my benediction.' In the Bishop's diary occurs under April 28, 1892 : At the Diocesan Conference 'Dolling spoke well, perhaps shocking a few by telling us of his dancing parties. I amused the Conference by saying I had visited Dolling's gymnasium, but had never seen him dance/ The Bishop also said, glancing at the robust proportions of the Vicar of S. Agatha's : ' Though I am sure he does that as well as he does everything else.' 12 178 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Later on, as we learn from his biographer, Bishop Thorold continued to cultivate 'most friendly relations with S. Agatha's Mission; and, indeed,' adds Mr. Simpkinson, ' he had come to attach an almost dangerous importance to the one criterion of "faithful work" which, as the years advanced, appeared to him the supreme proof of love for Christ. He repeated over and over again that- he would not " throw Dolling to the lions." ' In June, 1891, Bishop Thorold wrote to Dolling : ' You are always honest with me. It is in your face as well as nature.' Again : ' When you commemorate the dead, it should be in the way of thanking God for their rest and peace, and of praying that God will hasten His kingdom, and accomplish the number of the elect. This is Scriptural and beautiful and pathetic' Again he writes, in 1892 : ' Your practice of habitual confession, prayers for the dead, vest ments, are as alien as possible from my own ways and likings. But I pass this over, as if they did not exist, for your work's sake, and give you ampler toleration than any other clergyman in the diocese.' To the end, although more strained relations arose and con tinued for a time, Dr. Thorold, we believe, never allowed any difference of opinion to destroy his admiration for Dolling's goodness and self-sacrifice. Even the difficulties in question were only of temporary duration, not constituting any per manent breach of mutual affection and respect. The differences referred to arose as to the employment by S. Agatha's Sunday-school children of a little book (adapted from one in use at S. Alban's, Holborn) called ' The S. Agatha's Sunday Scholar's Book.' This book contained an ' Instruction on the Blessed Sacrament,' and certain ' Prayers and Hymns ' which involved Eucharistic and other teaching of what would popularly be called an 'advanced' type. The children generally attended a sung Celebration of THE PROTESTANT ALLIANCE 179 the Holy Eucharist at 10 a.m., usually known at S. Agatha's as the Children's Mass, though adults were also present at it. At one of these services on a Sunday in November, 1892, a gentleman, sent from London as an emissary of the Protestant Alliance, was present as a critic, with the aid of an opera-glass and note-book. He published a very inflammatory account of the service. The entrance of the celebrant was thus described : ' Last came Father Dolling, a biretta perched on his most dis loyal head.' The Protestant Alliance having received the report of their employe and a copy of one of the children's service-books which this gentleman had ' conveyed,' wrote to the Bishop to tell him of the book, and of the service, and to implore him to withdraw the licenses of the clergy of S. Agatha's, or else to compel them to act as ' ministers of the Protestant Reformed Religion of this country.' Bishop Thorold wrote (early in 1893) to the Alliance through its secretary, Mr. A. H. Guinness, a long letter, not intended for publication, in which he said that he had pro cured the book referred to, and added : ' I have referred the book to one of my examining chaplains, in whose learning and judgment I have great confidence.' The Bishop gave as his opinion and that of the chaplain in question that ' the general substance of the book is quite irreconcilable with the Eucharistic teaching of the Church of England.' He went on to highly praise Dolling's labours in Portsmouth, but added : ' Though his work is disfigured by errors and eccentricities which I, in common with not a few of his truest friends, sincerely deprecate.' He concluded as follows : ' In my opinion, the substantial good he is enabled to effect by his self-denying and Christian activities far outweighs by its useful ness any distress that may be caused to those who are gravely alarmed by doctrines and practices which they consider to be quite inconsistent with the standards of the Reformed Church.' He added that he hoped for a solution in Dolling's accept ance of his (the Bishop's) ' fatherly direction.' The Protestant Alliance at once sent this letter for publica- 12—2 180 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING tion to the Portsmouth and London papers, without the Bishop's consent, and to his decided annoyance. He had telegraphed to Father Dolling and the present writer to ' dine and sleep ' at Farnham Castle, so as to talk over the situation. His kindness was extreme, but the unforeseen publication of his letter made matters more difficult than they need have been had not the public been taken into confidence. The impasse was that the Bishop held that the teaching of the little book was outside the comprehensive limits of the Church of England in regard to Eucharistic doctrine. Dolling ad mitted it went beyond the positions maintained in Waterland's ' Treatise ' or in Harold Browne ' On the Thirty-Nine Articles,' but he refused to accept these writers as representing the farthest limits of legitimate Anglican teaching on the subject. The incriminated passages were referred to one who knew the writings of the older Anglican divines better than most clergy — i.e., the late Rev. H. R. Baker, then Vicar of S. Michael's, Woolwich. Having carefully read the book, he gave it as his opinion that not one word in it went beyond the teaching of Pusey, Bishop Forbes, or Keble (' On Eucharistic Adoration '), and he urged Dolling to ask the Bishop and his chaplain if they intended to include these eminent theologians in their condemnation of S. Agatha's book, as they certainly were logically bound to do so. Mr. Baker also compiled a catena of passages from our older divines of the Laudian period and subsequently down to the late Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury, and including John Wesley, all teaching doctrine far beyond the Waterland limit to which the ' safe ' Anglican party at this time attempted to confine the teaching of the Church of England on this mysterious subject. In fact, as the late Archbishop Temple said in his recent charge on the Holy Eucharist, and as Bishop Thirlwall (a Broad Churchman) had said before him, short of the scholastic definition of Transubstantiation, there is no Eucharistic doctrine so advanced as to be outside Anglican comprehension. Mr. Baker's tractate (the more valuable as he was rather a follower of Dr. Pusey than of the more recent type of THE CHILDREN'S BOOK 181 Ritualism) was drawn up by him and by the present writer, and was presented by Dolling to Bishop Thorold. The latter expressed himself as much gratified that Anglican writers had been appealed to, as if he had expected Roman Catholic authorities to be produced by S. Agatha's clergy. Dolling consented that the parts of the book objected to — i.e., princi pally the preface — should be revised by using statements taken exclusively from Anglican authorities. The result, however, was not calculated to satisfy the Protestant Alliance, and, as a matter of fact, when the book so revised was pre sented to the Bishop he still objected to passages which were proved to be actually taken from writers legitimate as references in the Anglican Church. We think that Dolling and Bishop Thorold were both glad of some modus vivendi. They were each of them men of that type of mind to which controversy for the sake of victory over theological antagonists presents no attraction. Though they both had strong convictions, they really wanted, from mutual respect, to be at peace with one another. Bishop Thorold was called from this world in 1895, but he lived long enough to see and approve of the plans for the new S. Agatha's, of the basilican type of the architecture of which he was strongly in favour. His relations with Father Dolling had before his death resumed all their old cordiality, which, indeed, had only been temporarily interrupted, and that solely in regard to strong disagreement of theological opinion. CHAPTER XVI Father Dolling in Ireland (1894) : at Kilrea, and Trinity College, Dublin — The new S. Agatha's — Laying of foundation-stone (October 27, 1894) — Architectural features of the church — Its relation to Father Dolling's ideals of worship. 'The carved and pictured chapel — its entire surface animated with image and emblem — made the parish church a sort of book and Bible to the people's eye.' — Emerson : Essay on Beligion. The end of 1894 was marked by the laying of the foundation- stone of the new S. Agatha's. It was at once the crown of Dolling's labours at Portsmouth on the one hand, and on the other ' the beginning of the end.' Those ten years at Ports mouth (1885 to 1895) were the period of Dolling's life at which he was at the height of his powers. Although also he had such immense sums of money to raise when at Ports mouth, yet the labour of collecting it did not hinder him from giving of his best energies to civic and social work. For this, he had less time and opportunity afterwards when Vicar of S. Saviour's, Poplar. ' S. Agatha's Mission,' says one, ' fitted Dolling like his clothes.' But before entering on the questions connected with the new church, we may note a pleasant series of incidents which marked the few days immediately after the laying of the foundation-stone (October 27, 1894). He had by this time become a preacher and lecturer of great note, and by this means was able to raise part of the large sums required for starting the series of undertakings connected with the Win chester College Mission. In his ten years as missioner he had raised actually £50,000, of which only £760 came from diocesan funds. This was a well-nigh incredible achieve- [182] TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 183 ment, especially from one whose teachings on many subjects were likely to run counter to those of the wealthier classes. But wherever he went troops of new friends were made, and many of them became enthusiastic supporters. He was well known at Braemar at one end of the kingdom (through the residence there of his uncle, the late Mr. Bracken), and at Torquay at the other. He conducted some missions at the latter place with lasting effect. He was always a welcome visitor to S. Paul's Cathedral, the pulpit of which was offered to him even when he was least in favour with the ecclesiastical authorities generally. But the incidents we now relate were especially pleasing to him because they involved one of the most pleasant visits he ever paid to his native land after he had left his house in Dublin to be prepared for ordination in the English Church. He was invited to speak at the opening meeting of the Theological Society of Trinity College, Dublin, on Novem ber 12, 1894. This Society is representative of the Divinity School of the Church of Ireland, existing in connection with that great University. The subject of the opening address of the Auditor (or student chosen to preside for the ensuing year) was ' The Church and the Poor.' We believe that Dolling's speech on the subject of the address was one which carried the audience away with him. Most of his hearers were undergraduates of Trinity College, Dublin. He strongly appealed to many of them, who were candidates for Holy Orders, to consider the spiritual needs of the multitudes in England who are not, as is the case with the Roman Catholic Irish working- classes, severed from young Churchmen who are about to become clergy by the impassable barrier of a difference of religious communion. Could it have been possible for Robert Dolling to have been a minister of religion in any of the chief religious bodies of Ireland, there can be little doubt that his peculiar type of eloquence, combined with his unselfish devotion and affection- ateness of disposition, would have given his influence an immense range and power. In political or civil life also in Ireland, in any department where his special gifts would 184 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING have had scope, he might have led a large number of his fellow-countrymen. His qualities were of that order which most appeals to Irish hearts and attracts the Irish imagination. In his speech in Trinity College on this occasion he said : ' Irishmen had three great qualities which they in England largely lacked. One was the simplicity of their living ; the second was the tact and the sympathy that they were able to show when they in England could only feel these things ; and the third was that they had a sense of humour which, in a work like that in Portsmouth, was perhaps the most important of all.' Before fulfilling his engagement at Trinity College, Father Dolling had made an expedition to revisit Kilrea, at the invi tation of the Rector, the Rev. A. E. Sixsmith. He arrived late on Saturday, November 10. At once the whole town was astir. Handshakings, embraces, and greetings marked his pro gress from door to door. He was still ' Master Robert,' the dear companion of so many in the old days. On Sunday, November 11, he preached three times. In the morning he spoke ' without a note ' for an hour, having offered up an extempore prayer before his sermon, which was on Heb. v. 8. In the afternoon he addressed the children, and in the evening he preached for a full hour and a quarter on S. John ii. 25. We are told by one who was present that as the congrega tion left the church the only regret was that the sermon ' was not twice as long.' Many strong Orangemen were present who had heard a lurid rumour that ' Master Robert was now a Roman,' but who went away delighted, saying they 'had never heard a more Evangelical man.' We are told that crowds from great distances round, and of various religious bodies, went to hear him. Our informant tells us that 'though so many of the men of Kilrea and its neighbourhood are strong Orangemen, yet there is no greater proof of the late Mr. Dolling's power over human hearts than that, in spite of malicious statements against him from outside sources, those who experienced his excellence remained unshaken in their loyalty to him.' We are told also that 'Almost all who had attended his classes in their youth are still distinguished by their superior intelligence and character.' FOUNDATION-STONE OF NEW CHURCH 185 In the following year, 1895, he was again invited to Ireland to speak, with another visitor from England, a learned Church dignitary, at the proposed Irish Church Conference at Derry. However, as a report had arisen that his fellow guest had attended Roman Catholic worship when in the West of Ireland, Dolling, though not himself accused of any overt act of offence, was yet involved in the other's condemnation, and in the Irish Synod of the same year was mentioned as a ' notorious Ritualist.' The end of the whole matter was that the invita tions to himself, to the supposed offender, and to everyone else, were cancelled, and the proposed Conference did not come off. But to return to Portsmouth — the years 1894 and 1895 were largely employed in making plans of the new S. Agatha's and raising money to pay for its erection. The crown and climax of all Dolling's work at Portsmouth, the last of what he called his ' eight milestones,' was the impressive building, which, erected and opened in 1895, was consecrated, after Dolling had left Portsmouth, as the Parish Church of S. Agatha's, Landport, in 1898. The foundation-stone was laid by Mrs. Fearon on October 27, 1894, amid torrents of rain. Almost all the Winchester College masters and their families, and over 300 out of 400 Winchester boys, were present. After the Winchester contingent returned home, Dr. Fearon wrote as follows to Dolling : ' My dear Dolling, 'Just one line to thank you from us all for the admirable arrangements you made for us to-day. I thought nothing could have been more perfectly managed; it was delightful to see the order and reverence of all the proceedings, and we all appreciated your kindness greatly. If the weather had not been so cruel it would have been a perfect day ; but the rain . I congratulate you heartily on the day. Yours affectionately, ' W. A. Fearon.' In sending to the subscribers an account of the building plan, with pictures of the proposed church, Dolling wrote : ' I have signed a contract for £7,000, which will pay the actual cost of the building, without any ornament whatsoever. The 186 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING treasurer of the College Mission Committee has £5,000 in hand, but we still need to collect £2,000 before next October, 1895, when the church will be ready for use. The very fact of our people being poor demands a magnificent church. The very fact that the church represents Winchester necessitates its being magnificent. Magnifi cence consists in harmony of proportion, solidity of construction, and beauty of detail. The two first we intend to achieve, the third we leave to the piety of future Wykehamists and the self-denial of S. Agatha's parishioners. To you the plans may look unusual, but I am completely convinced that they are just the ones suited to a work like ours. The church must impress everyone who enters it. The altar, the centre of our worship, can be seen by every wor shipper. It will accommodate about 900 people, and we have, I believe, congregations to fill it. The side-chapel, into which we shall carry bodily all that is movable out of our present Mission Church, will be home at once to our people. The picture of the litany stool and lectern will show you the splendid character of the memorials already given. I am proud to think that we have got a Portsmouth architect, builder, workmen, and wood-carver. God demands our very best. We are trying to offer it to Him here.' The architect was Mr. J. Henry Ball, A.E.I.B.A., who also drew up the plans for the parsonage and gymnasium, and for the rebuilding of the schools. The builder was the late Mr. Light of Portsmouth. The building was erected so as to be capable of extension by the addition of an extra aisle. The style of the building is (as being by Dolling's conviction the best for mission purposes among the people) of the basilican type ; not the Eenaissance basilican of Palladio (the pseudo- classical, as some would call that style), but the Eomanesque variety of North Italy, and suggested to Mr. Ball by studies of the churches of Lombardy, though not a copy of any one of those churches. The two styles of church architecture which Dolling loved were the Norman and the Eomanesque basilican. He cared little for the later Gothic developments. He often said how much grander Winchester Cathedral would have been if it had been left in its Norman condition. The general effect of S. Agatha's is akin to that of the new Eoman Catholic Cathedral at Westminster, though the exterior has not such a Byzantine appearance. The whole church has inside an effect of great dignity combined with warmth ' A HOUSE EXCEEDING MAGNIFICAL ' 187 and homeliness of aspect — Dolling's ideal for the House of God and for His worship. The material is in the main brick, but with granite, alabaster, and oak work, the combined effect of which is to give the impression of ' a house exceeding mag- nifical.' Of the five pillars which separate the nave from the south aisle two were erected in solid granite, and two of the remaining three cased in alabaster, one of the latter at a cost of £41 being a gift from ' College,' past and present. A magnificent pillar of granite, faced with alabaster, with panels of a green tint, was the gift of Miss Dwyer (one of a family very dear to Father Dolling) in memory of her father, mother, ¦ brother, and of her nephew, Denys Dwyer, a young midship man, whose early death was much regretted. There are also two granite pillars on the north side. An alabaster screen marks off the sanctuary, but it is low enough to enable the high altar to be seen by all. This screen, which is of rare beauty, was a gift, costing £120, in memory of the Eev. C. Cubitt. The pavement of the sanctuary and the high altar, with the baldachino surrounding and surmounting the latter, were to be in marble, but were not completed when Dolling left Portsmouth. The high altar and the pavement have since been completed, but the balda chino, which, according to the design, is to be of singular magnificence, is not yet erected. The cost of this will be £450. A semicircular apse forms the background of the high altar. Dolling's original idea of a T-shaped building was further developed by the addition to the plan of a chapel in the south aisle with a smaller apse, and westward of this chapel a narrow aisle, finished at the west end by a tower in the base of which is the baptistery. Of the various movable adjuncts of Divine worship, the Litany desk and lectern are specimens of oak carving of rare excellence. They are the work of a local carver, Mr. Hoare of Southsea, acting on designs suggested by Mr. Ball from similar objects in foreign cathedrals. Dolling wished to leave a good deal to be done for the church as time went on, especially as to rich hangings, curtains, and fresco-painting. His dream was that of a great 188 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING church in the centre of the thickly populated hive of Land- port, which, like S. Mark's, Venice, should be a sort of pictured Bible for the people — ' Biblia Pauperum ' — the sacred story of redemption displayed along its walls. The S. Agatha's people themselves paid for the altar, the litany desk, the altar furniture, the vestments, and the Stations of the Cross. The latter, quite free from the crude realism often seen in such pictures, were the works of Mr. Roe, an artist, who was brother of one of the assistant clergy. All these gifts from S. Agatha's congregation cost £400. The oak lectern was bought with money left to the mission by a little Winchester boy, Edward Cruddas, of Mr. Wickham's house, who died in 1888. The church is lighted by electric light. All was done by local work with the exception of the inlaid wood-flooring and the marble work, which were executed by a London firm. The workmen of the latter were Italians, and a Trades Union difference between them and the Portsmouth workmen caused the opening of the church to be delayed from the beginning of October till the 27th of the same month, 1895, exactly one year since the foundation-stone was laid in 1894. But before we proceed to the subject of the opening services we ought to make special mention of the decoration in sgraffito and mosaic of the Lady Chapel, or South Chapel, of the new church. It is the work of the well-known artist, Mr. Heywood Sumner, who also designed the carving of two capitals of pillars in the main body of the church. It was singularly appropriate that Father Dolling, who was, above all things, a preacher of the Incarnation, should have been able before he brought his Portsmouth labours to a close to see in the new church the little chapel of Jesus' infancy and Mary's purity adorned with decoration so worthy in its sweet and gracious refinement to suggest the mysteries of the Mother and the Child. But we will describe this chapel in Mr. Sumner's own language : ' The s'emidome of the apse is a " field "of blue-starred mosaic ; in the centre is the Blessed Virgin, holding in her arms the infant Christ, who is in the act of blessing. Lilies, Mary's flower, stand THE LADY CHAPEL 189 between each of the five small windows and complete the mosaic treatment of the semidome. The windows in question are filled with single figures of Zacharias, S. Elizabeth, S. John the Baptist, Anna, and Simeon. Below are the following subjects in sgraffito : The Salutation, the Annunciation, Christ among the Doctors. Over the arch of the apse, on the east wall, is a treatment of the Nativity ; on the left the Magi (representing the rich) ; on the right the shep herds with their flocks (the poor) ; iii the centre, over the apse, the manger-shed, with the Holy Family and the Infant Christ stretching out His arms to welcome the comers on either side, while groups of adoring angels stand or kneel around the shed.' The new church was to a great extent the outcome of ideals in Dolling's own mind, as both Mr. Ball and Mr. Sumner testify. It proves three things in regard to him : (1) That he had not lost a sense of true refinement amid the necessarily rough character of his missionary life ; (2) that he was able to conceive a church and its fittings suited for Catholic worship on more unconventional and less artificial lines than those generally recommended' by the commercial purveyors of ecclesiastical goods to whom the clergy have resort ; (3) that having got hold of real artists to work for him, he knew how to trust them, and to uphold them by his sympathetic encouragement. Mr. Sumner writes : ' Mr. Dolling was an ideal client, and I have always felt grateful to him for his inspiring confidence and appreciation.' . The total cost of the church, in the condition in which it was after Dolling's resignation, amounted to £10,^61, including the expense of the decoration of the Lady Chapel. Some months before .the opening Dolling writes : ' The new church is raising its stately proportion in our daily sight. It more than satisfies my anticipations, and I am glad to say that almost everyone who sees it is struck by the beauty of its proportions and the wealth of its opportunities.' During the erection he asked, more than once, for prayers for the workmen engaged in the building. It filled all his thoughts, and was the embodied symbol of his ideal of Chris tian life and Christian worship. CHAPTER XVII Death' of Bishop Thorold (1895) — Dr. Davidson, Bishop of Winchester — Parochial mission conducted by Father Maturin, of Cowley (1895) — Visit of Bishop of Southwell — Opening services of the new church (October 27, 1895) — Question of new license for church — Difficulty with the Bishop of Winchester about ' third altar ' and other matters — Besignation of Father Dolling (December 8, 1895) — He leaves Portsmouth (January 10, 1896) — Subsequent history of S. Agatha's — Temporary charge, Bev. Paul Bull — Eev. G. T. Tremenheere, priest- in-charge (1896) — Consecration of church (May 14, 1898) and parish formed. ' The Parting of Friends.' — Cardinal Newman : Title of last Oxford Sermon. It could scarcely have been conjectured that circumstances would arise to lead to Dolling's immediate resignation in con nection with the opening of the new church. Two Bishops connected with the mission gave the architectural plans of the new S. Agatha's the highest commendation : one of these was the diocesan, Bishop Thorold, who much preferred basilicas for town centres ; the other was the founder of the mission, Bishop Ridding, of Southwell, who said of the new church to the Winchester College Committee in 1896 : ' It is a most noble church. The features and outline are not only original and unconventional, but it is a work of unconventional beauty, and has a very great distinction in its usefulness, as well as in the striking style in which it is designed.' The death of Bishop Thorold in 1895 almost immediately preceded the unexpected event of Dolling's resignation, an event, however, which was unexpected rather in its circum stances than in the fact itself, since he had told Dr. Fearon at an earlier period that he intended to resign S. Agatha's, [ 190 ] THE THIRD ALTAR 191 because of the need of rest, soon after the new church was complete. But he did not realise, until the real strain of departure came, how deep and tender were the ties which bound him and his people to one another. Bishop Thorold had told Dolling that he thought the little altar decorated in memory of Henry Ross, and at which Requiem and other Celebrations took place, to be the ugliest thing he had ever seen. In old S. Agatha's it stood as specially dear to many because around it were on wood panel ling the names of departed communicants of the mission. A Calvary formed its reredos. When the arranging of the interior of the new church took place Dolling settled to have this altar carried into the basilica and placed against the wall at the centre of the south aisle. To Dolling this altar was the object of special affection, because of the memory of Henry Ross, who has been alluded to in a previous chapter. With all Dolling's masculine strength, he had also immense reserves of deep sentiment. In this his character was in a noble sense feminine, if in another sense he was essentially manly. All this tinctured, or rather dominated, his theology, so that in regard to anything connected with the dead — the Requiem Eucharist (or ' Mass for the Dead '), and prayers for the faithful departed — his deep affection for those gone before was a powerful factor which he was incapable of omitting from the consideration of the question, leaving it to be settled by exegesis of Scripture, by Church history, by logic alone. He knew, of course, that it is an historical fact that, even within the first three centuries, and practically from the days of the Apostles, the Eucharistic Sacrifice was pleaded or offered, by 'the proclaiming of the Lord's death till He come,' at least on every Lord's Day, both for the living and the departed (the whole family of God), and not only for those in this world. We may add, that the Eucharist pro defunctis or pro dormitione, for the repose of the souls of individual members of the Church of Christ, was celebrated at the burial (being itself the primitive burial office), and at certain fixed intervals after the death of the individual remembered, as Tertullian and S. Cyprian bear witness, even before the. 192 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Nicene Age. In this sense, as distinct from the later materialised views about purgatorial torture and from the Mass traffic, ' Mass for the Dead ' is not merely medieval, but is primitive. But the historical argument weighed little with Dolling. The need to remember our dead in prayer, and so remembering them to associate them specially with the Lord's death and sacrifice at the Eucharistic Celebration, was to him an imperative necessity of Christian faith. It was a need of natural affection which Christianity was not intended to destroy, but to consecrate, to satisfy, to provide an outlet for. But let us see how this question came so prominently to the front in connection with the new S. Agatha's. On September 28, 1895, Dolling wrote to Bishop Davidson (the present Primate), who had succeeded Dr. Thorold in the See of Winchester, to tell him that the new church would be opened on October 27, and that Bishop Thorold had thought that no new license would be required, as the old and the new church were practically joined together by the vestry. (There was no thought of consecrating the church at this time, as the district had not yet been formed into a legal parish.) On October 17 Bishop Davidson wrote to say that a new license would certainly be required, and that he had requested the Rural Dean, Canon Jacob, to inspect the new building and to send his report to him. The question of the old or of a new license was not one of mere red-tape. Behind it lay another of great importance — indeed, vital, as Dolling be lieved, to all his hopes of conducting his ministry in the new church with the same elasticity of method that he had done in the old. If no new license were required, there would be no need for an overhauling by the Bishop of the various arrangements as to the ' extra services ' and other usages at S. Agatha's additional to the directions of the Prayer-Book, or, in some cases, apparently contradictory to the latter. If a new license were necessary, Dolling probably feared it would not be granted without a reduction of the mode of worship to what are often called ' sober Prayer-Book lines ' — lines which, as usually interpreted, he held to be quite ineffectual for those missionary purposes among the masses to which he believed RURAL DEAN'S VISIT 193 God intended his ministry to be mainly directed. The Rural Dean's visit resulted in his being told by Dolling, in regard to the third altar, that ' There we intend to say the Masses for the dead.' It was not, however, we believe, exclusively used for Requiems, but also for other Celebrations. On October 24 arrived a long letter from the Bishop, stating that, while the Rural Dean admired the general character of the building, he had felt bound to tell him what Dolling had said as to the proposed uses of the third altar, and that he (the Bishop) had decided not to grant the new license at all, unless the question of the third altar were submitted to the proper authorities, or the altar itself removed. He also requested Dolling to come immediately to Farnham, which the latter did on the next day, October 25. The Bishop, though most kind, said at once : ' Mr. Dolling, this is no red-tape question of three altars, but of the services said at those altars.' Of course, neither the mind of the present Primate nor that of Father Dolling was in the least of the merely red-tape order. Probably the Bishop and Dolling were thinking, as it were, on different planes. No doubt the authorities of the Church did not realise Dolling's intense conviction that to be tied down by the Acts of Uni formity to exact obedience to Prayer-Book rubrics would be for him to lose all the vitality and elasticity of methods already apparently most wonderfully blessed during his ten years at S. Agatha's, and especially to sacrifice their missionary character. The result of the interview was that the Bishop agreed that the new church should be opened by the Bishop of Southwell on the day appointed, October 27, but that, until his own decision in the matter of the third altar and other questions was arrived at, that altar should for the present be screened off from the rest of the church. It was the privilege of the present writer, then no longer one of its clergy, to be staying as a visitor at S. Agatha's during those days of this time, and certainly they were days never to be forgotten. A great parochial mission was in full swing at S. Agatha's during the fortnight before the opening 13 194 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING (from September 30). It was conducted by one of the most powerful preachers then in the Anglican Communion, if not in Christendom, Father B. W. Maturin, then of the Society of S. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford, assisted by Father Robinson, also of Cowley. Dolling's idea was that the close of the mission should also be the occasion of a kind of 'in exitu Israel ' of S. Agatha's, and its system of worship, into the adjoining basilica, a sort of successful transference of the swarm into a new hive. It was like the change from the homely tabernacle in the wilderness, ' the tent of meeting,' to the stately temple. It was not altogether joy. There was the feeling on the part of many that ' the old was better '; that the homeliness of the little mission chapel beside the rag-store and the fried-fish shops, with its cracked bell and its family gatherings, would evaporate amid the alabaster and oak and hangings of the magnificent basilica. Besides this, the inner circle of the mission knew that its relations and those of its head with Farnham Castle were strained as never before in its history, and that both Dolling's line and that of the Bishop was unlikely to be relaxed on either side. The preaching of Father Maturin at this parochial mission was that of this preacher at his best, which means something not easily to be surpassed in power, effect, and grasp of the congregations subjected to his influence. Personally an old friend of Dolling's from early days in Dublin, they had not seen much of each other for many years. Maturin had been much in the United States of America, where his preaching had been listened to by immense congregations. Few men can be more lovable and simple in private life, and more masterly and powerful in what has been called ' the tribunal of the pulpit.' We remember a magnificent address of Maturin's on ' Christ before Pilate,' delivered on a Sunday afternoon during this mission, by which he riveted for con siderably over an hour the attention of a congregation of men of all classes who filled the old mission church to the doors. Dolling, by whose influence the men were gathered together, sat listening in the chancel. Not long after, of these two remarkable men, the missioner of that time and the Vicar of EXODUS TO THE NEW CHURCH 195 S. Agatha's, the former had sought rest in the Roman Com munion, and the latter was wandering without a pulpit, altar, or flock of his own. On Sunday, October 27, the opening of the new church took place. The Bishop of Southwell celebrated at eight o'clock in old S. Agatha's. All the communicants of the ' League ' (the congregational guild, with no rules except a monthly Communion) received the Blessed Sacrament at one or other of the early celebrations as a farewell act of devotion before bidding good-bye to the old S. Agatha's. Bishop Ridding has left it on record how greatly he was pleased and touched at the farewell service by the simple earnestness of the communicants. Lady Laura Ridding, a warm friend to the mission, was also staying at S. Agatha's for that Sunday. At eleven o'clock the exodus took place. The procession moved through the streets from one church door to the other. Among the clergy who took part in it were, besides the exist ing staff, most of the former assistant clergy, and the Rev. W. Hawksley, Vicar of All Saints, the mother parish. Behind the other clergy came Bishop Ridding in his Convocation robes, and last of all Father Dolling, the Vicar-Designate, in a magnificent cope, the work of the S. Agatha's Embroidery Guild. Behind Dolling walked the churchwardens, Messrs. White and Claxton, and after them the congregation. The general effect of this ceremonial procession with crucifix, banners, and incense through the Landport crowds was more Continental than English, were it not for the dull October sky which overhung the scene. The procession was, really, as Dolling said everything at S. Agatha's ought to be, ' at once dignified and natural.' It was certainly regarded with respect, to judge by their demeanour, by the multitude in the street, who, before the work of Linklater and of Dolling, would have hailed it as afford Jng convenient opportunity and objects for practice in the dissharge of missiles of various unpleasant descriptions. The Solemn Eucharist commenced as soon as all had reached their places. Father Dolling, of course, was cele- 13—2 196 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING brant. The choir, as usual at the new S. Agatha's, occupied the west gallery, the ritual chancel being reserved for the acolytes and other ministers of the altar. Incense was used ceremonially at the places usual in such a service. It was a service of real dignity, but quite without stiffness or artifi ciality. Many of the poorer members of the congregation had never been present at any other kind of Christian worship. In regard to this, we remember a lad, brought up at S. Agatha's, and knowing nothing of other churches, who, after he went away to service in a ' low church ' or ' moderate ' household, wrote back to one of S. Agatha's clergy : ' I do not know if the church here is Church of England at all ; they have no vestments, or incense, or anything.' On the occasion of this opening service the Bishop of Southwell, who occupied a temporary throne in the chancel, preached the sermon. His text was Ephes. v. 15-22. He said in the course of his sermon : ' This noble church now marks the passage for this mission, which had been so faith fully serving God, from childhood to manhood.' He hoped that the buoyancy of childhood would live, although, as he hinted, there must be, in a church of the kind they had now taken possession of, more conformity to ordered rule and custom than in the more childlike days of the mission. The whole sermon had, however, nothing in it harsh or magis terial, but breathed a spirit of affectionate interest in the cul mination of a work in the original starting of which Bishop Ridding had had so much to do. During the entire service the great basilican church, as was of course natural at its opening, was full from end to end with all classes and conditions of people, but mainly, of course, with the actual members of S. Agatha's. The offertory at this the first sung Eucharist in the new church, amounted to £96, in addition to which £70 was sent to be added to the offerings by friends who were unavoidably absent. In the afternoon Dolling preached splendidly to an audience of 600 men. This day, October 27, 1895, was undoubtedly the greatest and the happiest day of his life. Besides an enthusiastic and devoted congregation, the members of which THE GREATEST DAY OF HIS LIFE 197 were singularly united to him and to one another, he had also round him on this day a great number of old friends and former helpers from all parts of England, and from all classes of society — clergy and laity, men and women, rich and poor, soldiers and sailors on furlough, some of his old East End people, friends from the Ireland which he loved, and, above all, his own devoted sisters, who saw in some sense in this beautiful church filled with earnest worshippers a sort of answer from God to the venture of their own faith and courage in coming over to England to throw in their lot with their brother in the slums first of East London and then of Portsmouth. Long before Evensong on the same Sunday the church was so full that crowds could not gain admission. Before the service a solemn procession with incense and crucifix went through the whole parish. Father Maturin, who was still staying at the mission, was the evening preacher. It was a memorable occasion, a combination of a great church just inaugurated for worship, an immense congregation, and a sermon which for over an hour riveted the attention of all. The subject was the combined definiteness and comprehensive ness of Catholic Christianity, from the text : ' Lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes ' (Isa. liv. 2). Dolling went to rest that Sunday with a feeling of universal affection and respect surrounding him, from the Bishop of Southwell down to the street-arabs of Landport. There remained, however, a sign of quickly impending trouble — the third altar, screened off, the only omen of approaching difficulty, but a real one. A few days after the opening of the new church a petition was circulated for presentation to Father Dolling. It was signed by 5,000 people of all classes and political opinions, and even of almost all religions in Portsmouth, urging him to reconsider his original plan of resigning after the next Easter, and to stay permanently, or at least for some longer time, in the town. This was probably caused by some apprehension of an approaching crisis. Such a compliment has seldom been paid to any clergyman, especially to one whose line of 198 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING speech and action had often been so provocative to many and powerful interests as Dolling's had been. In spite of opposi tion from various quarters, he had gained in those ten years that had just ended an enormous popularity, and that far outside the range either of Church people of his own way of thinking, on the one hand, or the poor and the working classes on the other — the two types of persons naturally most likely to support him. He writes in his book that this, and also the discovery that the debt on the church was larger than he had anticipated it would be, decided him not to leave at the time he had at first spoken of doing, but to stay on for a longer time, unless the Bishop should impose conditions as to licensing the new church which would be in his opinion impossible for him to accept. To stay and resist was a course which he never contemplated ; nor had he a legal freehold even had he wished to adopt such a course. Whatever may be thought of Father Dolling's line of action at this time, he was certainly not disobedient. Where resigna tion is possible it is always an honourable alternative to acquiescence in conditions imposed by the will of a superior. A servant, for instance, may be said to be unreasonable for resigning his situation rather than fulfil certain commands or acquiesce in certain prohibitions, but he cannot be said to be disobedient and lawless. To stay and defy the Bishop was a course that Dolling never contemplated for a moment. He would in that case have become practically a schismatic. He had no legal and canonical parochial charge in the strictest sense of the word, and held his authority over S. Agatha's district solely by revocable license or permit from the Bishop. The strongest opponents of Father Dolling could, as to his difficulties with Bishop Davidson, only charge him with being unreasonable, though he had in his own mind plenty of reasons which seemed to him ample justification for his action, and which he expressed to the public and to his friends in various ways. Disobedience to the Bishop in any lawful matter no one can charge him with who follows the course of this most unfortunate controversy. To resign may THE OPENING OCTAVE 199 be sometimes unwise, but it is certainly not the same as to stay on in defiance of lawful authority. The day after the opening, Monday, October 28, was SS. Simon and Jude's Day. The Eev. B. W. Maturin preached again a powerful sermon to a congregation large for a week day at the eleven o'clock Sung Mass, and later on in the day the Winchester College masters and men came to see the new church. They spent the afternoon with Dolling and the mission workers, and there was also a short service for them in the church, at which the Bishop of Southwell gave an address. This week of the opening was a time during which the new church presented a striking appearance. Free to the entrance of all, all day long, it was never quite empty, and the frequent worshippers dotted over the building, as well as its mingled aspect of grandeur and homeliness, gave the whole place the appearance of a Continental basilica without the various * cults ' common in the latter. Every evening during the octave the church was practically filled. Some of the former members of the clerical staff preached in the evenings of the week, as also one or two of Dolling's old London friends. Among the latter was the Eev. Arthur Tooth, of Woodside, Croydon, formerly Vicar of the once noted Church of S. James, Hatcham. Altogether this octave was a time of much deepening of religion. The sense of some impending trouble seemed to make even the most thoughtless touched — at least to some little degree — by the spirit of reverence and prayer. On November 15 Dolling had another interview with the Bishop at Farnham Castle. He was, on this occasion, in a very overworked state, and quite out of sorts. He was therefore especially unfitted at that time to enter into an explanation of his teaching as to the mysterious subject of the condition of the faithful departed in the Intermediate State, and as to the precise benefits to them to be expected from prayers, and the offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice on their behalf, or, in other words, 'Mass for the Dead.' In any case, he never professed to be a scientific theologian. 200 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING As the Bishop rightly said, the whole question of ' Prayers for the Dead' covers an immense range. Some Broad Churchmen, such as the late Dean Plumptre, strongly advocate the practice, and so, in the interests of superstition and fraud, did a Tetzel before the Eeformation. The practice often appeals to the most spiritual and affectionate natures on the one hand, and to the most credulous and superstitious minds on the other. In one form it is thoroughly Catholic, in another late medieval. It is probably true that the losses of friends and relatives in the South African War have done more to make many English Church people think sympa thetically of ' Prayers for the Dead ' than anything else at any previous period since the Sixteenth-Century Eeformation. Of course, the subject of ' Mass for the Dead ' involves a further consideration — i.e., that of the sacrificial side or character of the Eucharist as the Memorial before God of the death of Christ and as the earthly counterpart of the presentation of His sacrifice in heaven. It would be unfair to say that the Bishop condemned altogether the practice of ' Prayers for the Dead,' but he wanted to arrive at what Dolling's teaching on the matter actually was, and what was implied in the special use of the third altar. He interrogated Dolling, apparently not unkindly, but in a businesslike way, and took notes of the latter's answers to his questions. One unfortunate answer was that the effect of Prayers and Mass for the Dead was ' to shorten the time ' of their purgation, thus introducing that element of time which the deepest theologians have ever excluded from the subject, and which seems to lend itself so easily to a good deal of objectionable superstition of calculation of years in pur gatory, etc. It is not the idea of purification hereafter which is questionable in the popular Eoman conception of purgatory. That idea has been held by Catholic Christendom, in one form or another, from the days of the Apostles. The English Church condemns, in Article XXII., as Charles Kingsley (in his letter on the Athanasian Creed) pointed out, ' Doctrina Eomanensium de Purgatorio ' (the doctrine of the Eoman Schools about pur gatory), rather than all teaching of progressive cleansing and NOT A THEOLOGICAL EXPEET 201 increase of light in the Intermediate State. Even the word ' purgatory ' is defended, for instance, by so un-Eomanist a theologian as the great Danish writer, the Lutheran Bishop Martensen (in his ' Christian Dogmatics '), provided it is freed from superstitious associations. It is the introducing of the idea of periods of time into the conception which so promotes a localised and materialised view of this mysterious subject, and Dolling's answer certainly seemed to favour this. We know that he afterwards regretted the way in which he had worded his answer, which was given extempore and on the moment. He was not suited to be a theological expert treading the byways of difficult and controversial subjects, though he was certainly never an ' ignoramus,' as he some times laughingly called himself, but had a clear grasp of all the main positions of the Catholic faith, and a marvellous power of bringing them within the comprehension of the multitude, a power which very often learned experts entirely lack. He was also at this time highly wrought, out of health, and suffering from that nervous reaction which often comes after the accomplishment of a great design. As he says pathetically in his ' Ten Years,' p. 170 : ' I was suffering from a bad attack of influenza at the time. I am quite conscious of not being a theologian, and I am since aware that I used an expression, which the Bishop afterwards quoted in his judgment, which may be very liable to misconstruction.' What Father Dolling needed immediately after the new church was built was to go away for rest and change, and not to have to gather his mind together for the purpose of making theological definitions on a singularly difficult subject and under singularly difficult circumstances. On December 7 arrived the Bishop's judgment. Dolling wrote in his book : 'I believed directly I read it that the judgment forbade us to say our Mass for the Dead or to have Celebrations without com municants. The surrender of these two points I felt it impossible to make. An error has largely arisen that I left because I could not have a third altar in my church, but this is quite incorrect.' 202 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING By the two points mentioned he means (1) Celebration with special Requiem Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, and publicly announced as for the faithful departed, and (2) Celebration with less than ' the legal three ' communicants, extra to the celebrant. He felt that he was called on to surrender both of these practices. To give way on the first point meant to him the obscuring of the doctrine and use of ' Prayers for the Dead,' and the universal and primitive practice of offering the Holy Sacrifice, by which Christ's death is pleaded, on their behalf. To give way on the second meant either the surrender of the daily Mass (since though always a certain number attended it, yet three did not always receive), or else the artificial manufacture of communicants, a thing which Dolling always felt was injurious to the souls of his people. So, then, on December 8, the day after the Bishop's decision arrived, Dolling sent in his resignation as school missioner to Dr. Fearon, and on the 9th he wrote to inform the Bishop of the same. As far, however, as the third altar itself, the immediate fons et origo of the crisis, was concerned, Dolling offered to remove it if the services usual at it would be allowed at another altar. The communicants of S. Agatha's also made the same suggestion. Finally, this proposal was formally made, with Dolling's consent, by Mr. John Pares, a well- known Churchman of Portsmouth. Of all men the latter was the best fitted to act as mediator, for he had been in close touch both with Bishops Harold Browne and Thorold, and had been one of the special Commission to consider the spiritual needs of the town, and he was also an enthusiastic admirer of Dolling's work, and was one of his personal friends. The Bishop replied to Mr. Pares' letter as follows : ' Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to learn that Mr. Dolling is willing to remain at S. Agatha's, and to bring his services into general harmony with the due order of the Church of England. He says not a word to lead me to think that he would feel such a course to be possible.' The Bishop added 'Please note the exact words' (i.e., ' general harmony with the due order,' etc.). MANY LETTERS 203 To another correspondent the Bishop wrote : ' Mr. Dolling and I are alike members of a Church to the definite rules of which we have pledged ourselves to conform.' Meanwhile letters came to Dolling from all sorts and conditions of people — from violent Protestants, from violent Ritualists. Several came from Dissenters expressing love for him in spite of his altars and Masses, and many from citizens of Portsmouth puzzled at the precise nature of the difficulty, and yet recognising the philanthropic value of his work to such a district as they knew Landport to be, a work which they thought it a misfortune should be injured by what seemed to many of them to be only a trumpery dispute as to the number of altars in a church. Dolling consented to remain for a few days (including the Christmas festival) at S. Agatha's until the arrival of the Rev. Paul Bull of the Community of the Resurrection, who was allowed by the head of that community (then Canon Gore, now the present Bishop of Worcester) to undertake temporary charge of S. Agatha's, with the consent of the Bishop and of the Headmaster of Winchester. Father Bull was appointed by the Rev. W. Hawksley, Vicar of the mother parish, who did everything to help S. Agatha's at this trying time. During his short charge of S. Agatha's, Father Bull gained the affection and confidence of its people. In a letter written to the Church Times (December 6, 1895), Dolling takes the opportunity of defending his own position at this critical period. He writes : ' I venture to retranslate two old reproaches into more modern language : "The Prayer-Book and the Prayer-Book alone the religion of English Catholics"; " Man was made for the Book of Common Prayer, not the Book of Common Prayer for man." . . . Has the year 1895 discovered the infallible moment when all progress and development in ritual improvement is to cease 1 The Bishops fifty years ago believed honestly that they were forbidding things which were not according to the mind of the Church of England, just as the Bishops believe to-day. But the history of the last fifty years shows they were mistaken. . . . The truth is that through our past sins the Church of England is once again a missionary Church ; 204 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING she has to convert the multitude as well as edify the faithful. Above all, she has the Gospel to preach to the poor, the vast majority of whom never come to Communion and very few to church. And to do this a dual kind of worship is required, the one full of stateliness and grandeur, showing how the creature may worship the Creator ; the other, full of simplicity and personal directness, showing how the sorrowing, poverty-stricken, sinful, oppressed soul can speak to a Father.' In regard to the liturgical worship he wrote in the same letter : ' Surely there is only one divinely appointed service, the Holy Eucharist. Our bad and un-Christian habits for many years have put other services in its place, so that Matins has become the service of obligation on Sundays for our people. It would surely be very insular to say that our form of this service of Matins, even as administered in the most carefully regulated churches, is the highest type of liturgical dignity, and yet even this fitness of service has only been won by a consistent refusal to accept the interpretation of the rubrics held by former Bishops. . . . Men have discovered that our liturgy can only be worthily interpreted by the study of other liturgies^in fact, that our liturgy was only incomparable so long as men had no other liturgies to compare it with. . . . Restore extempore prayer, and you will have gone a long way towards recovering earnest Dissenters — I don't mean respectable Dissenters who ape the Church. Restore dignity of worship, and you will soon recover the lapsed communicants. Let the clergy set themselves free of the red-tape which fetters them, and they will rediscover their own personality.' At about this time the communicants of S. Agatha's con sulted Father Dolling as to what points they ought to request from the new Vicar, whoever he might be, as essentials to the full use of the Catholic worship and Church life to which they had been accustomed. Dolling, who believed, with Mr. Augustine Birrell, M.P., that, after all, ' it is the Mass that matters,' advised as follows : That they should ask for — 1. The Sunday Sung Mass to be kept in its proper place as the chief and central service, so that the Solemn Eucharist, with full Catholic ritual, should be continued every Lord's FATHER DOLLING'S ESSENTIALS 205 Day. This as the chief essential, and that they should accept no compromise as to this. 2. Confessions to be heard openly in the church, and as a recognised part of the Church's system, for all requiring such ministrations. 3. Daily Mass. 4. Requiem Mass from time to time. We believe that all the above have been fully secured under the new Vicar, the Rev. G. T. Tremenheere, who was well known as a hard worker on the clerical staff of the Holy Redeemer, Clerkenwell, and who was appointed by Winchester College in charge of S. Agatha's on February 21, 1896, and licensed by the Bishop on March 2. We believe after this appointment the patronage of S. Agatha's lapses to the Bishop of Winchester. Mr. Tremenheere became legally Vicar in 1898, on the consecration of S. Agatha's on May 14 of that year. Under him there has been a complete continuity of Catholic teaching and worship, so that the Puritan party has gained little or nothing in that way as the result of Father Dolling's resignation. Before the latter left Portsmouth he received an address signed by a large number of the most respected of the High Church clergy of the Winchester diocese, which, while ex pressing agreement with him as to ' the efficacy of the Holy Eucharist ' for the departed as well as the living members of the Church, yet reminds him that ' it may be pleaded for any purpose from one altar as well as another.' The object was to secure by his surrender of the third altar a modus vivencli which would prevent his departure. Matters, however, as we have noticed before, had gone too far on both sides to make this possible. There was, indeed, practically a hearty and well-nigh universal regret that he was leaving Portsmouth. To this there were, however, two ex ceptions : first, those people whose selfish interests were threatened by his courageous exposure of their questionable or depraving practices; and, second, those Bourbons of the Establishment who learn nothing and forget nothing— the Ultra-Protestant section of the Church of England. Some of 206 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING the latter class in Portsmouth are said to have held thanks giving meetings for his departure. On the other hand, several of the Nonconformist bodies offered prayer that he might be enabled to stay. Sunday, January 5, 1896, was the last Sunday when Dolling was with his people of S. Agatha's as their pastor. At Evensong there was an immense attendance, some hundreds of people having to stand through the service. He preached from Isa. xliii. 2 : ' When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee.' His theme was the invincible power of faith in God, and especially in regard to prayer. He made no allusion to the theological matters in dispute, but in regard to himself he said that ' ten years ago, naked and empty, he came to that place, and he would leave it, naked and empty, on Friday.' He urged the congregation to cultivate a spirit of faith. On Thursday, the last day of his stay, the Blessed Sacra ment was reserved all day. This had been generally the custom at S. Agatha's on all great days of intercession for any special object in order to kindle a more earnest devotion. Reservation in cases of sickness had also been practised there always, and was practically necessary for decency and rever ence, in a large number of cases. At the Solemn Vespers, on that last night of his charge of the mission, at 7.30 p.m., Father Dolling uttered his farewell to his own immediate people. Throughout the great congre gation present on that night the emotion was natural and genuine. It was, indeed, that saddest of all things to those who have hearts, ' the parting of friends.' Very quietly, and comparatively unperceived, Dolling and his sisters quitted Portsmouth the following morning, Friday, January 10, 1896. In his last ' Annual Report ' of the Win chester College Mission, issued at this time, he concludes thus : ' Many hard things are being said against us, many doubt our loyalty to the Church of England ; but you will believe us, I am sure, when we say that we have had but one single aim — to bring some poor people in a slum in Landport to the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. CONTROVERSIES AND PERSONALITY 207 Shortly before he left, as he tells us in his book, he re ceived the following pregnant and pathetic message from the friend whom he calls ' one of my dearest children,' Father George Tyrrell : ' God allows you to build the fibre of your brain, the blood of your heart, into a temple for His glory, and then with one breath of His nostril o'erturns it, that He may see whether you will bear this also.' The Saturday Review, in an estimate of his character, when alluding to this period of Robert Dolling's life, and pointing out that it must be remembered that his strongest points were not those which are involved in academic and scientific study or the tact of diplomatic finesse, but rather those of the zeal and sympathy of a loving, devoted servant of God and man, said truly, ' His life and work shrivelled to miserable ashes the ritual controversies that burned around him.' It was necessary to give some account of those controversies because of the difficulties they involved him in, but they are not the part of his life which constitute its really permanent and characteristic portions. Dolling was too large-hearted and too little influenced by abstract logic to be at home or at his best in the world of religious polemics, and he will be longest remembered, not by his share in doctrinal and ritual dis cussions, but by the vital and redemptive influence of his Christ-like personality. CHAPTER XVIII Period between S. Agatha's, Landport, and visit to America, 1896-1897 — Father Dolling at Philbeach Gardens, South Kensington — Before leaving S. Agatha's, sermon in London, ' The Church and the People,' in series, ' A Lent in London ' (1895) — General attitude in regard to Disestablishment — Action of Bishop of Durham in regard to the mission at S. Mary's, Tyne Dock — Dolling inhibited from preaching at Evesham by Bishop of Worcester (Dr. Perowne) — The ' Ten Tears in a Portsmouth Slum ' — He preaches in many churches in London and through the country for reduction of S. Agatha's debt — Special services (S. Agatha's Day) at S. Cuthbert's, South Kensington (February 5, 1896) — Sermons to men at S. Margaret's, Westminster (Lent, 1897) — Visits to Prinknash, Gloucester — Tour to Algiers (1897)— Sails for United States of America (May, 1897). ' Our dusted velvets have much need of thee ; Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws.' Tennyson : Sonnet to J. M. K. It was not only in regard to ritual matters and sacramental teaching that Father Dolling had been getting during his stay in Portsmouth into more and more opposition to the ' safe ' party in the Church. The question of the Welsh Church Disestablishment was much to the front, and at this time he was a strong advocate of the severance of the ties between Church and State, and voted against a resolution to ' save the Welsh Church ' at the Landport ruridecanal meeting summoned to express its opposition to the proposed measure. The S. Agatha's branch of the English Church Union, which was a large and vigorous one, was also, we think, the only branch of the Union which ever passed a resolution in direct support of Disestablishment. In his later years Father Dolling was less inclined to regard that measure as necessarily the inauguration of a better [ 208 ] THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE 209 condition of Church life. He feared that all power might get into the hands of the wealthier laity, who would practically dictate the line which the clergy should take. But a ' Church Defender ' so-called he never was, or never would be, at any period, believing that the existing condition of the English Establishment is bound up with Erastianism, or the popular conception of the Church as a State department. Eras tianism in any form he detested as strongly as did Mr. Gladstone or the seceders of the* Free Kirk movement in Scotland. He regarded it as the death of true Christianity, as fettering the Church, regarded as part of the great Catholic Society, and also tending to numb and check the efforts of personal and enthusiastic religion. We here reproduce a sermon which he preached on the subject of ' The Church and the People,' as one of the special Christian Social Union addresses delivered in 1895, and pub lished under the title of 'A Lent in London.' The first of the series was delivered by the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Benson), and it is this one the conclusions of which Dolling daringly ventured to criticise in his own address. Had it been a matter of academic scholarship or abstract philosophy or some point connected with the by-paths of Church history, he would have had too much modesty and good sense to express disagreement, at least in public, with so eminent an authority as the great prelate to whom he alluded. But the Archbishop had spoken of the relations of the Church to the working classes, past and present, and that was a subject on which Father Dolling was an expert, and had certainly gained some right to be heard. The little sermon must be taken as a whole, and his criticism of the weak side of the English Church is one that, however shocking j or those to acknowledge who prefer the ostrich policy in regard to unpleasant facts, is none the less one that most unprejudiced observers are likely to ratify. His statement about the English Reformation is amply justi fied by what such learned Anglican writers as Dr. Watson Dixon in his 'History of the Church of England,' or Dr. Jessopp in his essays on ' The Great Pillage,' tell us. Dolling's 14 210 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING loyalty to the Church of England was genuine. He never wavered towards Rome for an instant, even when most solicited that way, and his Catholic and sacramental principles made Dissent impossible for him, much as he personally loved many Dissenters. But he did not conceive of ' good Churchman- ship ' as involving shutting our eyes to plain facts. The following is the sermon in question : ' " There is a Church question to-day. Something wants doing." I would thus venture to translate Prince Bismarck's famous words. The very fact that I am asked to speak upon the question of Town Missions, and that one of the Church papers has for the last six or seven weeks delivered itself over to the discussion of the question, "Why don't Working Men come to Church?" surely proves con clusively that something wants doing. For the last eighteen years of my life I have lived amongst working men, the vast majority of whom are altogether untouched by the Church of England. Work ing as a layman I saw this more plainly than I do to-day, though I have tried, even after I was ordained, to preserve my common-sense. When I was ordained I was sent by Bishop How to a district containing 7,000 people in the East End of London. I don't believe that twenty -five of these were influenced by the Church of England. ' Nine years ago I took charge of my present district in Landport. It contains between five and six thousand people. Dr. Linklater had had charge of it for two years. When he came there were not five communicants living in it. Nor is this to be wondered at. The parish from which it is taken contained 23,000 people, and was worked by a vicar and a curate. I thank God there were five active centres of Dissenting worship in my own district alone. In the county of Hampshire there are practically three great towns : Winchester, with a population of over 19,000, has twelve beneficed clergy, dean, archdeacons, canons, minor canons, etc. ; Southampton, with a population of over 65,000, has fifteen beneficed clergy ; Ports mouth, with a population of over 159,000, has sixteen beneficed clergy. Canon Jacob, in Portsmouth, with splendid self-denial, keeps nine curates ; but there are few Canon Jacobs in the Church of England. ' The real difficulty is that those in authority know nothing about it. Bishops give timely notice before they visit parishes, and generally see things through the spectacles of the clergyman or of the ecclesiastical layman, generally a much more ecclesiastical RED TAPE AND THE FREEHOLD 211 person than the clergyman himself. If they want to know the real truth let them get a census made of the male communicants. It is far wiser to know your weakness than to know your strength. Many believe that increase of population will explain our present failure. But did you ever know a new district springing up without some Dissenting worship being offered to the people ? I don't believe it is a want of liberality on the part of Church people that prevents the Church of England doing the same. It is the red tape of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners and the freehold of the parochial clergy. But even in places where there has been no increase of popu lation — the large mother parishes of London and the little village churches where for the last thousand years there have been priests and Sacraments — what is the proportion of regular communicants ? ' Don't think for a moment that I mean to say that the working man of England has lost his respect for religion. I once read in a French author, " You in England have two Sacraments, the Bible and Sunday. You retain them both. We had seven, and have well- nigh lost them all." I would to God that I could impress upon you how much the maintenance of this respect for religion has depended on our English Bible and our English Sunday ! Let us be very cautious before we dare by act or word to weaken their influence. Don't let us be ashamed to confess what we owe to the splendid work of the Dissenters. It makes me oftentimes sick at heart to hear the way in which the newly-ordained, strong in the orthodoxy of his High-Church collar and of his grasp of doctrine, speaks of these class leaders, at whose feet he is unworthy to sit. ' And yet, thankful as we are to God for the self-denying and consistent witness that they have borne to Jesus, a present Saviour, we cannot but recognise that without the Church men cannot be perfected. The Church has lost its hold on them, and they have lost their hold on the supernatural. The Reformation in England, the work of the King and the aristocracy, never really touched the common people, and because it lacked a popular element, lost its democratic side, the chief power in the Catholic Church for revo lutionising the world. The parish became the property of the incumbent, the diocese of the Bishop. You remember the story of the wife of an Established minister in Scotland remonstrating with her husband when she saw all the people crowding into the Free Church, and his answer, " He, my dear, may get the people, but I have got the tithes in my pocket." The incomes given in the pre- Reformation times partly for services now discontinued, or only now just being gradually restored, and partly for the good of the 14—2 212 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING poor, their education and their needs, the clergyman being then the only man of light and of learning, has become now the prey of his wife and his sons and daughters, enabling them to be educated like ladies and gentlemen, and to take their part in upper-class society. Not only is the money their prey, but oftentimes the management of the parish as well. Do you think that you will get working men, or any other men, interested in that in which they have neither part nor lot 1 Practically the clergyman is forced upon the parish, and in turn enforces his own methods, perchance even those of a Low- Church wife or of a Ritualistic daughter. Does "vicaress" spell " vicarious " ? 'And there are far graver scandals than these. Men, perfectly incompetent through age and illness, must linger on because, for sooth ! of their families. Everyone pities them, but, for God's sake, let us pity them out of our own pockets, and not out of God's tithe. Sometimes it is the clergyman who is really to be pitied. He would do anything he could to touch the people, but how can he, seeing he has never learnt % A public school, a university, does not train a man to understand artisans or farm labourers. Five per cent, of his parishioners, his equals, he does understand; 15 per cent., those hungering after gentility, he may guess at ; the 80 per cent, he is practically hopeless with. Then he is bound to consider the feelings of those with whom he mixes most freely, who support his charities, and very likely with many true kindnesses help himself. There is a deeper meaning in S. James' scathing words than the actual localities mentioned. ' And then the terrible difficulty of the Book of Common Prayer, containing as it does but one popular service, the administration of the Holy Communion, which has been till quite lately reserved for a few of the elect, shorn of all the assistance which music might have rendered to make it understood, with no dignity of glory about the rendering of it, frigid simplicity according to the mind of the Church of England falsely interpreted. Morning and Evening Prayer were at best services for clerics or for the really spiritually instructed, full of difficulties, full of perplexities. Is it any wonder that men preferred the warm and loving and personal worship that they found in the chapel 1 Is it so long ago since many dignified clergymen believed that the chapel was really more suitable for common people ? ' And if the Church of England suited the working man so badly in ecclesiastical matters, did her attitude on social questions suit him better ? You have been told how largely the very roads and MISSIONS THE LEAVEN 213 bridges, the art and education of England, were due to the clergy ; that liberty in England is due to the undauntedness of Bishops ; that the history of the Church of England is " a progressive tale of the upward march of men." I am constrained to believe this because of the authority of him who said it. But in all earnestness I pray you ask yourselves, Are there ten working men in England that believe it 1 Perhaps you will answer back to me, " All this can be reformed." A free Church can reform herself, a fettered Church never. And if your heart is aflame to defend the Church of England, first, at any rate, see that you cleanse her. And you will never do this until you have the courage, not only to think, but to speak the truth about her ; to put away from ourselves all tall talk, and in a spirit of true and real humility begin by confessing where we fail. Let those in authority put the question to the test, let them through Convocation propose the needed reforms ; and if our Establishment forbids us to reform, let us burst our bonds and set ourselves free. ' And now I believe that the Missions in the Church of England are practically doing this very thing. They are indoctrinating the minds of the younger clergy with the spirit of divine discontent with their methods and themselves. Just as from the slums of Holborn and London Docks the restoration of the beauty of worship arose, which, attracting the multitude, has enthroned the Sacra ments in the hearts of understanding and intelligent worshippers ; the life of poverty and degradation, of meanness, of utter want, which those pioneers in mission work shared with their people, by the sharing enabled them to understand their minds, their longings, their desires, so as to translate into a language which they could understand the Catholic learning of Oxford schoolmen; so to-day it is the contact with the suffering and degraded and im poverished that enables men to translate into actual amelioration the theories and statistics which Oxford and Cambridge Christian Socialists have, at the cost of so much toil, evolved. Splendid as the individual and personal work is of so many of our present Missions, yet their actual achievements are as nothing compared with their power as centres of education. They are the leaven which, little by little, is leavening the whole lump of the Church of England. And if I might venture to suggest, like all true educational centres, they make terrible demands on the teacher. If to go down and stay at the Oxford House is merely a fashion, an interesting way to spend a few weeks in the year ; or if men from the universities or public schools for change do a little slumming, as 214 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING fashionable women did ten years ago, the use of Missions will soon cease. It is the enduring of hardness, it is sharing the life as far as possible, the very food, the understanding of the thoughts, the realising of the difficulties, the carrying away out of sight poverty which degrades men and women made in the image of God, a dis content with the luxury, the " needed comfort " as it is called of modern life, that will create amongst the educated classes a true enthusiasm for the righting of wrongs that cry out continually into the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth, for which, if we do not repent of them, England's Church, at any rate, because she has not dared to speak out the truth, must expect her punishment. ' And for those of you who cannot from circumstances take part in this actual work, do not let other burdens besides that of personal suffering and labour fall on those who are doing this work for you. It is possible by denying yourselves — and surely this season of Lent speaks of that — to remove in a large measure one of the most wearying of these burdens. During the ten years in which I have been privileged to conduct Missions I calculate that I have spent at least eight hours a week in begging. It would be perfectly possible for the congregation that hears me to-day to relieve me of this. Let each one of us put it to our own conscience whether we are doing our duty to Almighty God and our fellow Christians in this respect.' No wonder that, apart from ' third altars ' or ' extra services,' Dolling's relations with the ecclesiastical authorities were seriously strained when he left S. Agatha's at the beginning of 1896. Even before his departure there came also the implied condemnation of his line of action from one whom, of all the English prelates (along with the Bishop of Rochester), he felt himself nearest to in regard to the great social questions of the day — i.e., the late Bishop of Durham, Dr. Westcott. Dolling was to have taken a parochial mission at S. Mary's, Tyne Dock, in that Bishop's diocese, early in 1896, but the Vicar, the Rev. G. King (now Bishop of Madagascar), wrote to say that the Bishop of Durham had requested that he should be asked not to come because of his action at Landport. This was immediately after his resignation of S. Agatha's. Bishop Westcott added, in his letter to the Vicar of S. Mary's, that, in his judgment, ' submission to authority is essential for the corporate life of the Church.' BISHOP WESTCOTT AND TYNE DOCK 215 Dolling's natural criticism on this was that he had not resisted authority, but had resigned when he could not con scientiously submit to its requirements. He felt much pained by Bishop Westcott's action, but it is pleasant to record that just before the time of his going to America, in 1897, Dr. Westcott wrote him a long and friendly letter, in which he speaks of Dolling's ' exceptional powers ' and of the great pain and sorrow the line he felt bound to take about Tyne Dock (which he said was only a request to the Vicar, not an inhibition of Dolling) had given him. The letter ends : ' I feel that the surrender of our own will and judgment to our responsible rulers is vital to the permanent success of our work, and I pray that God may give you this with all other blessings in the fulfilment of your service. ' Yours, with every goodwill, 'B. Dunelm.' The one direct and open inhibition of Dolling as a preacher at this time proceeded from the then Bishop of Worcester (Dr. Perowne), who sent a peremptory document to the Rev. G. Napier Whittingham, Vicar of Evesham, forbidding him to allow Dolling the use of his pulpit for a proposed course of sermons in Lent, 1896. The Vicar and churchwardens of Evesham urged Dolling to deliver the course in a public building in their town, but Dolling declined, writing : ' It would not be right for me to accept your people's very kind offer, for I am very desirous never to disobey a Bishop.' The churchwardens sent a strong remonstrance to Dr. Perowne. A large number of the beneficed clergy in all parts of England invited Dolling to preach or lecture at this time, and if he was regarded as a ' suspect ' by some of the Bishops, he certainly was welcomed by a multitude of the priesthood and a large section of the laity. Such pulpits as those of S. Paul's Cathedral, S. Margaret's, Westminster, and many other less noted churches were occupied by him at times during this his ' out of work ' period, and in many of the great West End churches he was a most frequent and welcome preacher. In the pulpit he was felt to be unconventional, fresh, and 216 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING powerful, speaking with manifest sincerity, in a good sense a man of the world, and yet enthusiastic, never dull, and yet even in his boldest ventures never really vulgar. During this period (January, 1896, to May, 1897), except for these various preaching and lecturing expeditions, and for an excursion for health to Algiers in 1897, he was staying in London with his sister, Miss Josephine Dolling, at 48, Wetherby Mansions, Earl's Court. The presence at this house of a dear little child, Leah Hunter, grandchild of Mrs. Crowe, Miss J. Dolling's friend (formerly the famous tragic actress, Miss Bateman), was a great joy to Father Dolling. His love for children, which was a marked feature in his character, often saved him from depression and vexation. It would fill too much space were we to trace all his move ments at this time. His preaching engagements brought him all over the country. He generally asked (and received) large offertories in order to pay off the building and other debts on S. Agatha's, so as to relieve the new Vicar of so great a load. His efforts to raise money for his ministerial and social works were so incessant, and, we may add, so successful, all through his life, that he said in one of his printed letters that his epitaph ought to be, ' Now the beggar died.' But he did not forget to help the good works of his friends as well. He was especially interested in Miss Violet Oakley's Children's Home, the Barry Orphanage, Dulwich. He loved it because, like Miss Wells' S. Agatha's Home at Portsmouth, it is managed in a human rather than mechanical way, as a family rather than as merely an institution. On February 5, 1896, S. Agatha's Day (the patronal feast of the Landport Mission), a special day for intercession for Father Dolling and for S. Agatha's was observed at the well- known Church of S. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens, Earl's Court. He gave a talk there to his friends in London gathered together on that day. Not only, as we have seen, was Dolling invited to preach in ' Ritualistic ' Churches, but in many others of various descrip tion. His clerical friends were not all of one theological complexion. He met with an affectionate reception in many VISITS TO THE NORTH 217 a rectory, in spite of his plain speaking about the Church and the clergy, and in every new place he went to he left fresh friends behind him. No man ever had more of what Shake speare calls ' troops of friends.' He made some visits to the North at this time. On one of these occasions, when on his way to stay with his friend, Sir John Riddell, at Hepple, Rothbury, he went down Hartley coal-mine, where he was delighted with the spectacle presented there of healthy, vigorous, and splendidly organised labour in the very bowels of the earth, and of the utilisation of scientific inventions and appliances to increase the efficiency of the coal industry. He preached in some of the Newcastle churches, especially in S. Thomas', Barrass Bridge, an important church, of which the well-known Christian Evidence writer, the Rev. A. J. Harrison, is the incumbent. The latter writes : ' Dolling spent all Sunday, July 19, 1896, with us. He took all our hearts by storm. It really was love at first sight, and he never lost our hearts.' He had preached often at S. Luke's. At All Saints', Edinburgh, he preached for a week, at the beginning of November, 1896, to a crowded congregation at 3.30 and 8 p.m. daily. Many Presbyterians attended his ministry on this as on other occasions in Scotland. We are told that at one of these Edinburgh addresses he much amused some of the clergy in the congregation by saying : ' I often think we clergy are the most ridiculous body of men going, and as to the jokes that are made about us on the stage, we have only ourselves to thank for them.' We may quote the following from a lady in Scotland, living in the country, whom he visited at this as well as at other periods : ' Mr. Dolling's visits always seemed "to me to make us all — servants, guests, mistress — feel happier and better able to fight the daily round of life, with its constant small troubles and frictions. But R. R. D.'s personality and presence seemed to cast a halo upon everything, and I can truly say young and old loved him when they fell under his influence. He was ready to join in everything, and 218 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING had a wondrous power of thinking himself into people's interests. I lament over the loss of our dear friend's presence. His little addresses on Sunday in Scotland, either in a tiny church or in a room set apart for prayer, were wonderful, and were attended by very many. He actually had among his congregation Roman Catholics and Presbyterians, and people used to come four or five miles to hear him. The Roman Catholics were told not to attend. They obeyed in the letter, but not in the spirit, as they came and sat under the open windows of the tiny chapel and heard every word. Nor were they asked to come.' In the early part of 1896 much of Dolling's time was occupied in composing, at his sister's house, the book ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum,' which contains the story of his labours and of those of his helpers at S. Agatha's. It was his only publication of any length, although he published some occasional addresses, and also in his last years contributed articles to the Pilot on the subjects on which he knew most. Many of his sermons, which were always without fully- written MS. (although often with extensive notes), were re ported, and the newspaper records of several have been pre served. His book is a bold, unconventionally written record of his work and ministry as head of the Winchester College Mission, Portsmouth, and of the general history of the mission during his ten years in Landport. It had a wide sale, and received praise from the most unexpected quarters. Among Nonconformist papers, the Methodist Recorder, in an article (May 20, 1902) published shortly after his death, writes thus of this book, ' Ten Years ' : ' We shall never cease to be thankful for his " Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum," and shall cherish the memory of a life wholly devoted to lifting up the destitute and outcast. His love of sinners was his glory.' The book is now unfortunately out of print. At this time, and often before and since, Dolling spent some time at the house of a friend in Gloucestershire, Mr. Thomas Dyer EdwardeB, whose residence, Prinknash Park and Manor, among the Cotswold Hills, is one of the most interesting places from its historical associations among the ancient PRINKNASH PARK 219 homes that are the architectural glories of England. Mr. Edwardes frequently asked one or other of the clergy of S. Agatha's to stay there, from time to time, for rest and change, and a more delightful transition from the slums of Landport it would be hard to imagine. Prinknash House was the summer residence of the last Abbot of Gloucester, Abbot Parker, in the days when the glorious cathedral of Gloucester was S. Peter's Abbey. Queen Elizabeth Wood- ville on one occasion, and Henry VIII. and his Queen, Anne Boleyn, on another, are believed to have slept under the roof of Prinknash. After the Dissolution the house passed into the hands of an unscrupulous supporter of the New Monarchy, Sir Anthony Kingston, who harried the monks, and after wards, in Mary's reign, complying with all the changes in religion, led the Eeformer Bishop Hooper, to be burnt at Gloucester. S. Peter's Chapel, adjoining the house, is said to have been dedicated by Laud, afterwards the martyred Archbishop, who was a friend of the then owner of Prink nash. The park, with its thickly - w'ooded plantations, monastic gardens and fish-ponds, and the nightly hooting of its solemn owls, is a fitting setting for the grand old house itself — a splendid historical relic, touched with all the en chantment and poetry of the past. The associations of the park are relieved by the vista of open landscape seen through the broad spaces where the sunlight strikes in between the mystery and the shadow of the woods. A place more different from S. Agatha's Parsonage, amid the slaughter houses and fried-fish shops of Landport, it would be hard to conceive. Here Father Dolling was always an honoured guest, minis tering and preaching on Sundays when at Prinknash in the chapel, which, as an ancient ' Peculiar,' enjoys special rights as being not only the private chapel of the house, but also the parish church of the estate. Mr. Dyer Edwardes has supplied us with a few of his remembrances of Dolling as follows : 'I was, and still am, a resident in the winter months at the Eiviera, and about fifteen years ago I used to attend a small 220 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING Anglican chapel at Nice. In this little chapel I heard Father Dolling preach on behalf of his Landport Mission, and he at once captivated me with his bright and then almost boyish personality. He spoke with a tenderness and originality the like of which I had never come across before. He afterwards asked me to come and see him at Landport on my return. His magnetic personality captivated you; you felt as if taken possession of. I gained in him that priceless thing — a true friend, on whom one can rely in joy and in sorrow. The addresses which he gave in Prinknash Chapel touched all hearts. I was constantly asked, "When will Father Dolling be coming down again?" The people who heard him never forgot him. He dedicated the new altar and apse in the chapel, and he once held here a retreat for many of the local clergy. I was told by his sisters that in his last illness he was con stantly talking of Prinknash, and hoping that, if God spared his life, he might be able to go down there again and lie in a chair on the lawn, but it was not to be.' During this ' out-of-work ' time Father Dolling revisited Portsmouth more than once, much to the joy of all his old friends there. Several attempts were made during these eighteen months which intervened between his Landport and American ex periences to get him a suitable sphere of work, but some hitch seemed to occur in every case. The Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's might have appointed him to S. Mary's, Somers Town, had it not been that a previous six years' clerical work in London was a necessary condition for the occupant of the, post. Dr. Marshall invited him to take S. Eaphael's, Bristol, but it was practically a chaplaincy to a sisterhood rather than a parochial sphere. There was a probability of an ' Episcopal ' Church in Glasgow being offered to him, but the idea fell through, and in any case the post would scarcely have been suitable. We may mention here that while he was in America a mission district in Middlesborough, Yorks, was offered to him by the Eector of S. Paul's in that town, but Dolling's reasonable stipulation that it must first be made a legal parish could not be entertained. We ought to note here that while Dolling was out of work a remarkable offer was made to him from South Africa. INVITATION TO SOUTH AFEICA 221 The Bishop of Mashonaland wrote to ask him to undertake a work of extreme interest at Buluwayo, involving splendid opportunities of influencing a large and important class of young men. Though Dolling declined this, as being rather too old for the peculiar kind of work required, yet he was much touched and gratified by the Bishop's offer, coming, as it did, at a time when most English prelates seemed to regard him with fear and trembling, in some cases privately asking those of their clergy who wished to have his ministra tions not to do so, for fear of giving offence and aggravating the much-exaggerated ' Church crisis,' which was then beginning, and so of endangering the Establishment. The Bishop of Mashonaland writes about this offer the following letter, which he kindly allows us to publish : ' Church House, 1 Salisbury, Bhodesia, ' DEAR Sir, ' December 29, 1902. 1 The Bishop of Pretoria has forwarded your letter re Father Dolling to me for reply. Yes, it was I who gladly offered dear Dolling the work at Buluwayo at the time when the Church at home was afraid of him and his splendid enthusiasms and aspira tions — practically showing him a dignified cold shoulder, unable, seemingly, to hold or use his gifts. I offered the work to him, firstly, because there was a great work to be done, and I knew he could do it ; and, secondly, because it burnt into my soul to think of the shame of acknowledged failure on the part of the mother Church to keep such gifts as his in her service. Dolling wrote to thank me, but felt he could not begin at his time of life to grapple with the problems of colonial work. I expect he was right so far, but had he come we should all have felt honoured by his fellowship and inspired by his example as " One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward ; Never doubted clouds would break ; Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph : Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake." His was a truly evangelic, martyr spirit. His religion was from his boyhood a business, and his business was religion. Is the Estab lishment too select for such ? 'Yours very faithfully, ' W. Mashonaland.' 222 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING The parish of S. Nicholas, Deptford, in the Diocese of Eochester, was vacant during part of this time, and strong influence was brought to bear on the patron in order to secure it for Dolling. It would have suited him admirably. It is mainly inhabited by persons engaged in the foreign cattle trade and in slaughter-houses (there are over seventy of the latter in Deptford), and all its population is of a type which could only be effectually dealt with by a personality such as that of Father Dolling. But the effort to secure this parish for him fell through, and as time passed on it really seemed as if the rulers of the Church of England, semper pavidi, did not want such men as Dolling, and as if the Anglican, self-complacent temper had learnt nothing from the terrible examples of its failure to deal with Wesley and his followers in one generation, and with Newman and his disciples in another. The failure of this effort — the only one, we think, of those suggested the success of which would have thoroughly gratified Dolling by affording him a suitable environment for his peculiar powers — led him to think of the United States as affording a possible sphere, and so he accepted an invitation from the Eev. Dr. Mortimer, Eector of S. Mark's, Philadelphia, to cross the Atlantic on a tour of preaching, conducting missions, etc., in America. Before he left England he had delivered a remarkable series of sermons to men, during the Lent of March, 1897, in the historic church of S. Margaret's, Westminster. The subjects were : ' The East End Loafer.' ' The West End Loafer.' ' The Prostitute.' ' The Society that Breeds Them.' ' The Church that does not Save Them.' These were daring subjects and daring titles. Few sermons of his made a deeper impression. Several Members of Par liament attended them, and large numbers of men of all classes also. ' Father Dolling,' said a well-known M.P., ' was one of the few clergymen I could ever listen to with pleasure. He was so human.' THE WESTMINSTEE SEEMONS 223 In his treatment of the third subject the preacher insisted most powerfully and pathetically upon the crime of the murder of womanhood, the defacing the Divine image in a human being, and encouraging the sale of God's temple for the vilest sacrilege. It was a subject that had burnt itself into his soul. In regard to the Church, he said, what he so often repeated, that ' since the Eeformation, the Church of England had been lost to the masses ' ; that it is a Church which, whatever its excellencies in other directions, has been out of touch with the interests and ideas of the ' common people ' of England. The great ground-text, the bedrock, as it were, of Dolling's social and religious teaching, the very nexus of his Gospel, is Gen. i. 27 : ' And God created man in His own image ; in the image of God created He him.' This sublime faith in the grandeur of man's capacities and vocation, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, was to Dolling the incentive of all his labours, the foundation of all his hopes. He could have repeated with profound and joyful agreement the grand words of the Catechism of the Kirk of Scotland : ' The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' Hence he insists on the necessity of opportunities of virtue and goodness for all. He will not have woman sacrificed that man may indulge. He insists that society should dare to be just in its judgments, to speak of the ' fallen man ' as well as of the ' fallen woman.' These Westminster sermons of Dolling's were no beatings in the air. They were blows straight from the shoulder, not aimed at some abstract heretical notions of past centuries, but at the living devils of to-day. He always spoke plainly of much that is wrong and anti - Christian in existing social arrangements, and the vital root remedy for reaching the source of these evils he proclaimed to lie in the more sincere acceptance by all classes of society of the purity and self- sacrifice presented to us in the Person and the Gospel of Christ. CHAPTEE XIX Father Dolling's visit to America (1897-1898) — Lands at New York (May 26, 1897) — His impressions of the American Church (lecture to English Church Union in Portsmouth after return) — Stays with Eev. Dr. Mortimer, S. Mark's, Philadelphia — Conducts retreats at New York and Boston — Work in Western and Middle States — Friendship with Mrs. Stevens — He conducts mission at S. John's, New Brunswick (January, 1898) — Work at Boston and Buffalo — Visit to Chicago — Impressions of the city- — Offered charge of cathedral (March, 1898) by Bishop of Chicago— -Accepts living of S. Saviour's, Poplar, East London — Other English offers — Holy Week and Easter at Chicago- Conducts Diocesan Betreat at Chicago — Visits Utah and San Francisco — Beturn to England from New York (July, 1898). ' Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education ; in the elder, a part of experience.' — Lord Bacon : Essay on Travel. ' Beligion stands on tiptoe in our land, Beady to pass to the American strand.' George Herbert : The Church Militant. On May 26, 1897, Father Dolling landed in New York, having crossed the Atlantic by the steamer Majestic. He bore with him letters commendatory from several English prelates to their American brethren. The Bishop of Eochester wrote of Dolling's life as being one of ' entire self-sacrifice in the spirit of brotherly fellowship with all sorts and conditions of men,' and asked the Episcopate of the United States to give him a ' most friendly and fatherly reception.' The Bishop of South well described him as ' a devoted clergyman who has dealt with very poor districts in very large towns with singular power and success.' The present Primate (then Bishop of Winchester) wrote : ' I gladly testify to my profound respect for the devoted work be has done in toy diocese, and I entertain for Mr. Dolling personally a very sincere regard.' [ 224 ] A KINSMAN'S LETTEE 225 The Primate of Ireland (Dr. Alexander, Archbishop of Armagh) also wrote as follows to Dolling, who was his cousin : ' The Palace, Armagh, ' June 15, 1897. ' My dear Robert, ' What I can say with all my heart is that you are a Christian and a gentleman, that you have a loving heart and noble gift of utterance, that you have the spirit of self-sacrifice, received, as I am sure, from Christ Himself. I cannot say that you always express yourself as I might do, or interpret Scripture and the Church upon my lines ; but that men may learn much from you, and especially the mode of dealing with those who are " out of the way " in this world of sin and sorrow, I feel assured. ' Your affectionate friend and kinsman, 'William Armagh.' A very great many other friends also wrote to him to wish him a prosperous voyage and ' a good time ' in America, as well as, if it were God's will, a speedy return to some con genial sphere of work, in which all memories of previous conflicts and misunderstandings might be forgotten. We do not add 'forgiven,' as neither on Dolling's part, nor on that of his ecclesiastical superiors, nor even of his strong theological or political opponents was there, we believe, any bitter personal feeling. Many of those who disliked his teaching and methods yet regarded his character with respect and his self-sacrifice with admiration. He himself was incapable of nourishing vindictive feelings, and was too large-minded to fail to realise what was to be said for the usual Episcopal position in regard to Ritualism, as well as for that of the 'advanced' or 'extreme' men among whom he himself was generally reckoned. It was especially gratifying to him that the crisis at S. Agatha's did not involve the slightest overclouding of his affectionate rela tions with so many of the Winchester masters and men. Amid all the difficulties between Dolling and the present Primate, Winchester College, as represented by its responsible autho rities, acted with a tact, wisdom, and generosity which deserve special recollection. They gave the Bishop the loyalty which he had a right to expect from them, since he, and not the 15 226 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Headmaster, was responsible for the spiritual oversight of S. Agatha's, both of its clergy and its people. They also never allowed any possible irritation at Dolling's uncom promising position as to matters on which they were not as a body in sympathy with him to hinder the expression of gratitude to him for the efficiency of the mission, and for his good influence at Winchester, or of affection for his personality and admiration for his character. From several letters sent to him by Wykehamists at this time we may quote the follow ing from the Rev. Reginald Waterfield, an old Wykehamist, then a master at Rugby, and now Principal of Cheltenham College : ' BUGBY, 1 May VI, 1897. 'Dear Mr. Dolling, ' I cannot tell you with what sorrow I am thinking of your departure from England the day after to-morrow, and I send you these few words of affectionate farewell. May God bless you always and everywhere ! May the love that really, in spite of all, knits Winchester to you and you to Winchester pervade your life, and bud afresh in your path in new affections, which shall recall, rather than deaden, the old ; and if it is His good pleasure, may He who is watching over you now, as He has done through long years of trial, bring you back to us before your work on earth or ours is finished. ' Your affectionate friend, 'Reg. Waterfield.' Before dealing with any of Father Dolling's sayings and doings in America, let us first hear some of his own im pressions of the United States, especially in regard to the American Church. We quote from a lecture which he gave on this subject to the Portsmouth branch of the English Church Union on November 15, 1898, after his return to England. ' After a year in America,' he said, ' he had come back again, though,' he added, ' a certain gentleman had said it was not permitted for cranks and fanatics to come into this good town of Portsmouth.' He went on : ' I have always been a " crank," and I suppose I always shall be. I suppose, also, I have always been a " fanatic." I take it that such USES OF CRANKS AND FANATICS 227 persons have their use in any forward movement. A crank is a person who represents a small minority, and who is therefore called a crank by wiser people. (Laughter and cheers.) I take it that if there had not been that kind of person in the Church of England for the last fifty years we should be now what some people would like us to be — a very quiet, decent sort of people, with a very quiet, decent, respectable sort of religion — a religion without that enthusiasm for souls which is willing to do all and suffer all in order to win them. I feel that, while cranks are often very dis agreeable to the moderate party, still, the members of this moderate party often find themselves after a time just where the cranks and fanatics were a few years ago. Then all the moderate people say, " Well, this is all owing to us ; we did it all "; and the cranks and fanatics are perfectly willing that it should be so, and in the end the glory of God is achieved and the message of the Church proclaimed. ' But I think it is dangerous to look upon the present state of things as in any way satisfactory. The Reformation Settlement is still incomplete, and if you paid a visit to the Church in America this is just what you would discover. ' The Church in America owes her present dangers and weakness in great measure to the fact that the Church of England was " established " when English people went to America, the result of which was that all the different sects — Baptists, Congregationalists, etc. — were allowed to go and possess the land because, for political reasons, the Episcopate was forbidden to go there. So from genera tion to generation it happened that the needs of the English Churchpeople were tended only by some devoted priests, and large numbers of children were never confirmed. Naturally they said, " England considers one religion as good as another, and is ashamed of the Church which she has established at home." You find the result of this to-day in America. When the scandal got too great, and they felt that the Church could not exist without the Episcopate, they had to go to the Church of Scotland for their first Bishop. This ought, surely, to make English Churchpeople ashamed of them selves, and this accounts for many of the present difficulties of the Episcopal Church in America. She is very largely a missionary Church still, with far fewer members than other denominations. ' Then England has something else to answer for. We are con stantly sending out a great number of emigrants to America, and they are mostly the kind of men who are marked by these three characteristics : (1) They think they know everything about 15—2 228 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING religion ; (2) they think they ought to get everything for nothing ; (3) they are nearly always not upon the side of the "cranks and fanatics." The consequence is that we English people do not help on the Episcopal Church in America. ' The whole future of the world, from a Christian point of view, may very likely depend on the progress of true religion in America. Meanwhile we are continually pouring into that great country numbers of people who are Churchpeople in name only, but not in reality. Christians of all the different sects in America all know why they belong to a certain denomination, but English Churchmen who go out there seem hardly ever to have any clear idea of what the Church of England really is and means.' Father Dolling landed in New York on the eve of the Ascension, 1897, and at once went on to Philadelphia to stay with the Rev. Dr. Mortimer at S. Mark's Clergy House in that city. He preached at High Mass in that church on the following day (Festival of the Ascension). On the next day, Dr. Mortimer tells us that, to quote his own words, ' the servant said someone wished to see Mr. Dolling, and I thought probably it was a reporter, and so went down to head him off ; but I found a well-dressed, middle-aged man, who told me he had read in the papers an account of Dolling's sermon the previous day and so learned that he was in America, and at once came to see him. He proved to have been a poor Irish boy, whom Dolling remembered very well as having been very ill-treated at home, and whose fare he had paid out to the States some twenty years before. The man was now married and was very prosperous, and had a good house. Dolling went to dine with him. There were several similar cases while he was in the States.' The former housekeeper of the London Postmen's House in the Borough Road, which we have described in an earlier part of this book, writes in regard to the men whom Dolling had helped to make a new start in America in the earlier part of his life : 'There was a young man staying at the Borough Road house whom Mr. Dolling had brought from Dublin, and kept him at the League House for two months. Then he gave him an outfit, and sent him to sea. This young fellow fell off the topmast of a ship, CONDUCTOR OF RETREATS 229 broke his leg, and was taken to a hospital in America. The doctors there took a fancy to him and made him a medical student, and afterwards he became a doctor. He wrote to me several times and spoke so kindly of Mr. Dolling, and how well he had got on with his help. He said since he had been out there he had met several young men whom Mr. Dolling had helped and sent out there, and they often had a talk together about him.' Soon after his arrival in the States, Dolling conducted two Retreats at Dr. Mortimer's appointment in connection with the U.S.A. Branch of the Sisters of S. John the Baptist, Clewer. One Retreat was for the sisters at their branch house, S. Hilda's, Morristown, and the other for the associates at the mother house in New York City. He also took similar Retreats at Louisburg Square, Boston, Massachusetts, for the S. Margaret's sisters. One who was present at the Retreat for the associates of S. John the Baptist in New York tells us that there were about fifty ladies at this Retreat. Some were quite young, just beginning to enter on adult life ; others were governesses and ladies working with the sisters under the Superior, Mother Gertrude Verena, in various ways. Some were women of years of experience and of mature knowledge and use of Christian privileges ; others were ' feeling their way ' towards definite religion, and were persons to whom the idea of a Retreat was quite new. Their worldly circumstances were also widely different, some being wealthy, others the reverse. It was a great experiment on Dolling's part, taking a Retreat like this after being only a week in the States ; but his extraordinary faith, sympathy, compassion, and insight triumphed over all obstacles. By the end of the first day all felt as if he knew their needs and difficulties in New York as well as if he had always lived among them. ' To sit at the back of the chapel,' says our informant, ' and notice the smiles and tears and eager looks of his congregation was a lesson in itself.' The meditations were on the great fundamental questions of religion — sin, death, God, the Incarnation, the Passion, the work of the Holy Spirit — full of solid teaching, and yet always 230 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING practical, homely, and intensely sympathetic with human needs. He blended together spiritual and secular duties, home life and care of health, as well as prayer and Bible- reading, and right use of the Sacraments and of all means of grace. 'Behind it all lay such fatherly kindness and love for souls that every heart was won.' Several, after seeing him for Confession or advice, said : ' No one ever helped me so much before ; he understood all about me.' An old lady said : ' This is my forty-fifth Retreat, and it is the best of them all.' Another old lady, an old- fashioned Churchwoman, who knew nothing of what a Retreat would be like, and had come with her daughter with some hesitation, had a conversation with him after one of the addresses. She said afterwards : ' No one ever spoke so to my soul. He reached difficulties in my life that I thought no one ever could help me about. My gratitude for contact with him and his teaching will be lifelong.' To this day, we are told, any reference to this Retreat brings from those who attended it such words as : ' Dear Father Dolling ! there is no one like him.' In regard to the Retreat for the Sisters of S. John the Baptist, the Mother Superior tells us : ' He said it was the first Sisters' Retreat he had ever given, and he only hoped he might give many more. He chose for his general subject the " Call of the Prophet Isaiah " (Isa. vi.) The meditations were simple, but so beautiful, and at the end there seemed to be no part of life he had not touched. He spoke to us as fellow-workers, out of his own experience, whenever it could illustrate a principle. In September he returned to us to give a single day's Retreat. It was clear that during the summer he had been studying the life of the American people. Of the poor little children he said : " I hoped things were better with you than in England, but when I walked in your parks and looked at the faces of the little children I saw that it was the same — they had not proper care." ' One who attended his preaching during part of his visit to the States, and at whose house he sometimes stayed, writes of some effects of his influence on the American Churchpeople who met him : AMERICAN FRIENDS 231 ' My impression was of the joyous simplicity of faith evident in every one of his acts and words, and I believe one of the in cidental results of Father Dolling's visit to this country must have been to turn some Catholic-minded priests and people from an unhealthy conventionality to a simple and true use of Catholic customs.' He thus writes home to a friend in Portsmouth after a month's stay in the States : ' I have just finished my fourth Retreat, besides preaching twice each Sunday. I have been at New York, Philadelphia, and Boston — big cities — and Hoboken and Jersey, suburbs of New York. In one month since I arrived I have preached or given addresses sixty- nine times. The people are delighted and delightful. Sunday I preach at a place called Norwich in Connecticut ; Tuesday I am in the State of New Jersey, south of New York, at the laying of the foundation-stone of a new church ; Thursday I lecture to a big Dissenting Convention on " Peace and War " at Eliot, in the State of Maine ; and then get off to Chicago. I met Portsmouth people, my Irish emigrants, everywhere, besides new friends.' Among the last-named were two ladies either of whose respective houses was his home while he was in the Eastern (or New England) and the Middle States, where he stayed for the remainder of 1897. One of these was Mrs. Charles Wheeler, of Philadelphia, at whose Boston house Dolling stayed. The other was the well-known Mrs. Edwin A. Stevens (since deceased), of Castle Point, Hoboken, New York. Both these ladies had attended his New York Retreat for the associates of S. John Baptist, and met him first after that occasion. Mrs. Stevens (who was a widow) and her grown-up family became his intimate friends, and their palatial house at Castle Point was one where he stayed much at this time, and was always heartily welcomed there. We reproduce here a little recollection of the late Mrs. Stevens and her family, which Father Dolling wrote for his S. Saviour's Magazine, Poplar, for May, 1899, when the sad news was cabled to him of her death at the Easter festival of that year : 'I wish you could have seen New York as I saw it the first night I stayed at Castle Point — nine or ten miles of a city front, 232 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING stretching from Giant's Monument, and seeming to reach the great statue of Liberty in the middle of the bay, all the ugliness of its wharfage hidden by the night shadows and yet visible, mysteriously illuminated by thousands of lights; buildings twenty stories high and more, all now fairy castles ; no actual sound of the city coming across the Hudson, but a deep undertone of continuous life, like Niagara, heard and yet not heard ; and almost every moment plying up and down the river steamers or ferry-boats, all dressed with many-coloured lights, passing so swiftly as to seem like a rainbow. As I watched it that first night I knew that I had never seen anything like it before, and I don't suppose I ever shall again, for in the sunshine of the next day the beauty was but a memory. ' I was staying in the one house from which alone this view could be seen — Castle Point, the home of the Stevens family. A great demesne surrounds this home — a wonderful oasis in the midst of all the bricks and mortar and sordid streets and unfinished warehouses, which make up the larger part of the city of Hoboken, a city with 70,000 inhabitants to-day, fifty years ago with only twenty-one ' With every step in this increase the initiative for all that has made for refinement, for education, for true charity, has come from Castle Point. The first public schools, the great Stevens Institute, famed not only in America, but in Europe, as one of the best engineering colleges, the hospital down town, the Episcopal Hospital on the heights, the penitentiary of S. Catherine, the Free Library, the Technical Schools, the beautiful Church of the Holy Innocents, and many institutions besides, but, above all, the great ferries, which have made Hoboken, are the fruit not only of this great generosity, but of a far more meritorious personal care. In the midst of all this is Castle Point, the ideal not only of beauty and benevolence, but of a simple Christian home, where the widow and her children have by the simplicity of their lives kept ever before those who lived around them the highest truths. ' It would be impossible for me to tell all the kindness I received from them while I was in America. And who would not prize a magnificent hospitality, which followed me wherever I went in the States, not only by letters of introduction, which made me a welcome guest in many houses, but even arranged for me in the larger cities where I stayed the hospitality of magnificent hotels, and which put at my disposal a large yacht, thus permitting one to see in the most delightful manner the beautiful American seaside CASTLE POINT 233 places ? All these things seem to me almost a dream in the gray- ness of London and of the Thames. ' But, above all, I value the knowledge it gave me of a true American home. So many English only see Americans in hotels and in the cars. They never see America at all. Every day that I knew more and more of Mrs. Stevens I discovered more clearly the secret which had enabled her through so many tremendous difficulties to achieve such a success — the life of true humility, and yet so penetrated with a consciousness of God's help that she was not only minister to all those amongst whom she lived, but wise and beneficent ruler as well, gaining that strength day by day by the Celebration that I or some neighbouring priest offered in her little chapel. Left a widow very young, with five sons and a daughter to educate and this immense business to manage, and this great wealth wisely to dispose of, true judgment very seldom failed her, because she spared no trouble to discover God's will, and when she knew it, to do it with all integrity. It was this that enabled her so wisely to govern her children and her great revenues. And yet, with all this stress of business and of duty, no house was ever fuller of merriment. Surrounded by her grandchildren, from Archie, a young man at Princeton, to two or three little babies in arms, she shared, too, the ideals and prospects of the elder ones while planning all kinds of parties and amusements for them, and even romping and playing with the babies. One who is so near God can never grow old. Almost the day I left America she had some sort of seizure, but she soon regained strength ; and almost every week a letter from her told me what these, my dear friends — numbering forty in this family — were doing, so that through her I might keep in touch with them all. On Holy Thursday the priest of her Church of the Holy Innocents gave her her last Communion, and on Easter Eve she "fell on sleep." I had just finished my Celebration on Easter Day when the news reached me by cable, and I am looking now at an envelope directed by herself which came four days after containing £10 for our Poplar Easter. 'I am writing all this in the magazine because I want you to know something of those to whom I owe all the health and strength that I brought from America. I went to America very despondent, very down-hearted. It is to Castle Point that I owe all my re covery.' One beautiful sentence in the above might have been applied to Father Dolling himself as well as to the gracious lady and 234 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING dear friend of whom he wrote it : ' One who is so near to God can never grow old.' In September of this year (1897) the Bishop of Rochester and Mrs. Talbot were in the States. Both Dolling and the Bishop had wished to meet, but it was found not to be possible. For Bishop Talbot he had had ever a true affection and regard. The Bishop wrote to him before starting for home : ' Your Hoboken plan [for a yacht voyage] was out of our power. ... It seems we were not to meet. But among my American memories, so many and so delightful, will be one of your friendship and cordiality.' During these last six months of 1897 Dolling preached much at the beautiful Church of the Holy Innocents, Hoboken, which was built by Mrs. Stevens on her property in memory of a daughter who had died in childhood. The rector, the Rev. J. Ernest Magill, tells us in reference to these occasions : ' Rev. R. Dolling preached at the Church of the Holy Innocents for the first time on Trinity Sunday, June 13, 1897, at Solemn Mass, and again at Solemn Evensong. On the eve of Corpus Christi Day, June 19, he preached to the Stevens Cadets and the Fife Drum and Bugle Corps. It having been decided to hold a mission in the parish in October, preparations for it were begun on Friday, July 30, when a service of intercession with intention for the mission was conducted by Father Dolling. . The mission began on Saturday night, October 13, and closed on Wednesday night, October 24. Father Dolling also gave three instructions in Advent. He preached here also at the blessing of a new set of Stations of the Cross, also on Thanksgiving Day, and on several other occasions.' One who attended the mission at Hoboken writes : ' I do not think his power with the people who heard him in the States lay so much in his capacity as a preacher as in his great hold over the hearts of those he met. There was no great crowd at the Hoboken Mission, but I know of many lives of persons that have been turned to God by it, and who are still faithfully carrying out his precepts. ' He did not preach much in the large churches in New York I fancy his preaching made more of a stir in the West than it did here. Though his name as a preacher in New York was not on LETTER TO THE REV. J. T. BRAMSTON 235 every tongue, nor constantly in the newspapers, as was the case when Canon Knox Little was here, yet there were probably none who heard his preaching who were not touched and helped. There are certain sermons that one will never forget — the tone of voice, the earnestness, the touching stories of his experiences, above all, his own dear personality. My mother attended a Retreat which he gave at the Sisters' House. She came home saying that she had never heard anything like it ; that he had made them all both laugh and cry.' Father Dolling was much delighted with the facility of travel, under a most delightful form, afforded to him by the use of, Mrs. Stevens' yacht, which was placed at his disposal whenever he wished to use it. He went to stay with the Stevens family, also, at Bernardsville, when they went there, and gave a ' talk ' or lecture there on his Portsmouth experi ences which made, we are told, a wonderfully lasting impres sion. Though he made several extensive journeys when in America, yet Castle Point was, in the main, his home, and one of Mrs. Stevens' family tells us ' each time he returned he grew dearer to us all.' In a letter to the Rev. J. T. Bramston, the Winchester master, Dolling writes from Washington in January, 1898 : ' I am here delivering two conferences a day. I leave on the 17th, preach at numerous places till I get to New Brunswick in Canada, where I preach a mission, another mission at Boston [this was for fourteen days at the Cowley Fathers' Church], then Ash Wednesday at Buffalo, and each week in Lent a different place, spending Passion tide and Easter at Chicago — two or three sermons every day. From my landing on May 26 till December 31 I preached 261 times in fifty-eight different churches in thirty-five cities and towns. This will almost continue as long as I stay. It is full of extraordinary interests. God bless you all !' As another instance of his constant remembrance of Winchester, we may quote part of a letter written by him from America to Mr. F. Zimmern, on the latter's entering on his duties as Prefect of Hall : ' Commoners and College have so much to learn from each other. It is so easy in keeping aloof from others to magnify one's self and 236 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING depreciate others, and when we do it as a body there is a false idea of esprit de corps which is very deceptive. Nothing but continued intercourse can remove all that. I used to hope that I was a kind of go-between read otherwise. The highest office of the Son of God Himself is At-one-ment. I appreciate what you say about games, and I think that if men learned that their bodies are a sacred trust, the world would be more natural and wholesome. I pray for Win chester every day, always by name for the Headmaster and the head men. God bless you always. This country is splendid.' The subjects of Dolling's conferences at Washington, de livered in the parish church, were as follows : ' The Child Life,' ' The Life of Religion,' ' The Life of Business,' ' The Life in Society,' ' The Life God taught,' ' The Life Sacrament fed,' 'The Life of Pain,' 'The Life of Obedience,' 'The Life of Gradual Growth.' He also delivered a special sermon on ' Christian Marriage ' on the last Sunday of his stay there. Dolling's visit to S. John, New Brunswick, was his only point of personal contact with the life of British North America. He held a mission there from January 27 to February 5, 1898. He was already known there by report, as a former helper of his at S. Agatha's, Mr. William Hays (who is now one of the clergy of S. Michael's, Edinburgh), had gone out to New Brunswick, received ordination, and was working as one of the Anglican clergy of the town of S. John, at S. John the Baptist's Mission, under the Rev. M. Daven port. Mr. Hays had told many about Father Dolling's powers as a preacher, but not about his physical appearance, and the people of S. John the Baptist's Church had, we are told, pictured him as a tall, spare, ascetic-looking individual. Their surprise may therefore be imagined when a stout, burly- looking priest, muffled in a huge great-coat and scarf (the thermometer was about zero), was seen making his way up the side aisle to the vestry. By the end of ten days he had won the hearts of all the people of S. John's Church. We are told that each morning of the mission he might have been seen ploughing his way through the deep snow in the centre of the street, looking thoroughly happy and cheerful, and that he was full of boyish hilarity. PREACHES ON CONFESSION AT BUFFALO 237 There can be no doubt that he thoroughly enjoyed his visit to America, and that he ' took to ' the Americans whom he met as much as they did to him. Although he was still uncertain as to his future sphere of work, yet he had the pleasure of gradually, yet surely, clearing off the debts in connection with S. Agatha's, and also of paying for the necessary rebuilding of the Infant School. All this he succeeded in doing by the large sums of money which he was able to raise in America both by offertories and by the extensive sale of his book, ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum.' On his return to the States from New Brunswick he preached at S. Andrew's, Buffalo. We are told by some of the American papers of that time and locality that his preaching in Buffalo attracted large crowds of people, especially of young men. A sermon in the above church on ' The Cure of Sin ' was very fully reported. Part of it was a defence and explanation of the right use of confession, but from a common-sense rather than controversial point of view. Father Dolling's stay in Chicago constituted one of the most important of the crises of his life. Before we allude to the more serious side of his visit, we here reproduce some recollections of its more secular aspect contributed by Mr. Ronald Ogilvie, a son of the late Col. Ogilvie of Southsea, and member of a family who were intimate friends of Father Dolling and his sisters. Most of the family had gone to live in the States, and at Chicago Dolling was met by Mr. R. Ogilvie. The latter tells us : ' Father Dolling had already been in Chicago for some few days when I arrived, and knew just what he wanted to see, and how to get ' there. On the first morning we went up to the top of the Masonic Temple and the Auditorium Observatory Tower, the two highest buildings in the city. While we were on the " Temple " roof he showed me his map of Chicago, on which he had marked out the worst streets, which he wished to see for himself. Afterwards we walked down South Clark Street. I had heard such awful tales of the place that I was not very keen about accompanying the Father on his tour of investigation. But go he would. ' We rubbed shoulders with a strange crowd — Jews, Chinese, and 238 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING niggers— and saw a little of everything. As we sauntered along, gazing at the different sights, one old Jew rushed at Dolling and tried to drag him off to show him his goods, which were all dis played on the outside of his very dirty-looking clothes store. Then we visited some extraordinary places — the "Dime Museums," where they exhibit all sorts of monstrosities (two-headed lambs, Siamese twins, etc.), charging for admission a dime (ten cents). In one a woman allowed herself to be bitten by snakes. Father Dolling watched intently the countenances of some men and boys who were gambling at a " gambling scheme," worked by a man with a wheel. In another room were some Egyptian dancers, and a great show was just on, in which a man was to allow himself, apparently, to be nailed to a cross. Father Dolling found the man had once been in an English regiment, but he was not communicative about himself. ' Then we explored the " Department Stores," enormous places, where one can buy everything imaginable almost. In one there was a large fountain, with seats all round it, and near this the "soda-water fountain," where one could get all sorts of drinks. We read the list, and decided to try a "strawberry ice-cream soda," which we drank perched on high stools, and watched the crowd of shoppers go by. ' He was also much interested in the people at the hotel where we stayed. He was struck by the immense number of Jews, and said: "I hear they call this place the New Jerusalem." He enjoyed sitting in the large hall or lobby of the hotel and watching all the different people, who made it a sort of rendezvous. ' One morning he decided to go to the " Stock Yards " and see the " Armour Packing House." At .the yards he saw a boy in blue overalls, spattered with blood, eating a piece of pie, which seemed to astonish Father Dolling more than anything else he had seen. 'After a little time he went to stay with Father Larabee, at whose church he was to preach during Holy Week. He talked of all the people he had met, and he seemed to have met every American of note. That which impressed him most was the great generosity and kindliness of the people with whom he had come in contact. 'I may say that the majority of the people who met him in Chicago were very much impressed by his preaching and work. The young men with whom he came in contact were simply devoted to him. I have heard it said that " a fellow didn't mind going to Confession to him ; he seemed to understand, and though he might KEEN INTEREST IN CHICAGO 239 give you a good slating, he would stand by you, and help you along."' We are told by those who knew Father Dolling in Chicago that, during Holy Week there, in 1898, a great many persons went to him for confession, including many men, and that all Easter Even, from early in the morning till very late at night, he was hearing confessions at the Church of the Ascension, and yet that it was wonderful how, after giving of his sympathy, help, and counsel to the many who sought him in the confes sional, he seemed to show no fatigue at the end, carried on by his love for God and his zeal for the salvation of souls. We are told that he seemed to love Chicago from the first, and that the terrible nature of its gigantic problems, Bocial and religious, appeared to cry aloud to him to throw himself into the very centre of its fierce life and to claim that life for his Master. He was constantly seen in the early morning in the streets of Chicago, when on his way to church, gazing eagerly down Clark Street or other notorious regions, as if longing to be at work in them. Father Larabee, Rector of the Church of the Ascension, Chicago, writes of Dolling : ' Some weeks ahead he engaged to come to us at the Ascension for Passion Week and Holy Week. I was eagerly awaiting his arrival in the city the Saturday before Passion Sunday, 1898. Late in the afternoon he arrived at the house with Ogilvie. I supposed that, of course, he had just reached the city that day, but found to my great surprise that he had been in Chicago a whole week without making himself known to any of the clergy. I do not think there was much about the city which he did not already know when he came to me. With the trained eye of an expert in all social questions, he had taken our measurement in this typical American city, and he could have given a report of what he had found which for thoroughness would have surprised any of the clergy here. He was especially interested in the conditions sur rounding the work at the cathedral, and made himself thoroughly acquainted with that neighbourhood, not, I am sure, without a deep longing to plunge himself into the work of rescuing that dark quarter of Chicago. He gave addresses to our Lenten afternoon congregations, and in the evening conducted in his own tender and beautiful way what our people could not quite get used to calling, as 240 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING he insisted upon calling them, "Prayer-Meetings." He preached while staying with me in other of our city churches, but gave us most of his time. At the Three Hours on Good Friday, which he conducted for us, the church was filled. He also gave addresses at noon during this visit at Handel Hall, in the centre of the city: He was limited to twenty minutes in these addresses, but some of the most beautiful and wonderful of his sermons were thus preached, and they made a deep impression on the growing numbers of those who heard them.' We extract the following from an American newspaper : 'FATHER DOLLING IN CHICAGO. 'Father Dolling spent Passion and Holy Weeks and Easter in Chicago; He visited and gave instructions and addresses in many of the city parishes, and preached forty times in the Church of the Ascension. On Holy Saturday he was hearing confessions all day until late at night with but little interruption. On Easter Day he gave Communion at the three early Celebrations, and preached at High Mass and Solemn Evensong, as well as at the Workhouse and Lagrange. His addresses at the Three Hours' Service on Good Friday were intensely practical. He preached to the people listen ing to him as though he knew the special needs, dangers, and temptations of those particular people, and addressed himself to those alone. The first word from the Cross suggested to him forgiveness, human as well as divine ; the second, social conditions ; the third, home life ; the fourth, honest doubt and perplexity, which he distinguished from shallow scepticism ; the fifth, carnal sins and temptations. Each one of these subjects was intensely practical, and applied to Chicago of to-day as if it was Jerusalem of old. The sixth and seventh words were applied directly to Christ's person and work. The Bishop of Chicago, it is said, is very anxious to have him take up work at the cathedral, where the social conditions are similar to those at S. Agatha's, Landport.' It was the offer alluded to in the last sentence of the above which was so important, and which certainly would have been accepted had not Dolling, almost immediately before it was made, cabled to England acceptance of another offer made a few hours before, of S. Saviour's, Poplar, from the Rector of Poplar, Mr. Chandler, the patron of the living. CHICAGO CATHEDRAL OFFERED 241 S. Margaret's, Aberdeen, and a church in Nottingham were also offered within a few hours. The Bishop of Chicago, Right Rev. Dr. McLaren, has kindly allowed us to publish the following, which explains the circumstances referred to, and throws much light on Dolling's stay in that city : ' Chicago, ' December 22, 1902. ' The Rev. Father Dolling called on me at the episcopal residence some time in May, 1898. I had previously heard of his career at Portsmouth, and of his remarkable aptitude for the kind of priestly labour which such a field demands. The cathedral of SS. Peter and Paul in this city was established prior to 1860 by my predecessor, the Right Rev. Dr. Whitehouse, and was the first venture of that character in the American Church. It was a modest beginning, and was met with no little criticism in certain directions. Subsequently the nave, of fair proportions, but by no means suggestive in size of one of England's glorious minsters, was enlarged by the addition of transepts and apsidal chancel. During the present episcopate the clergy house, the sisters' house, the dispensary, the choir house, and the home for friendless girls have been added. Since the days of Bishop Whitehouse, in the process of events, the character of that part of the city has undergone a radical change, and of late years the cathedral has found itself in the very heart of a population where the virtuous poor are few, and the vicious are numbered by thousands. Few priests are adapted to the peculiarities of such a field. ' It happened that when Father Dolling was in America I was looking for a man who by qualities and experience could be en trusted with leadership in the work. He had heard from stime source that I had him in my mind, and, as I afterwards learned from himself, he visited (incognito) the cathedral and its group of buildings, and quite searchingly inspected its environment. From the moral point of view he found that the half had not been told him; but he said, while a bright glow of faith illuminated his countenance, " I think the neighbourhood might be revolutionised after five years of hard work." ' It was on the occasion of his call that I proposed to him that he should take charge of the cathedral, and become the leader of its work and workers. His reply was that if the invitation had reached him twenty -four hours sooner he would have returned an immediate16 242 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING and grateful acceptance; but that, on the evening before, he had received from England an appointment to a field in East London, in which he discerned a call from his Master, sand which, for that reason, had a paramount claim on him. ' It was evident that his decision to accept S. Saviour's, Poplar, was simply the merging of his own will in that will of God to obey which was the joy of his life. My disappointment would have been more keen had I not tried to profit by the beautiful example he set me of prompt adhesion to the orderings of Providence. ' Father Dolling officiated in several of the churches in this city, and always with spiritual unction and much profit to the people. One remark of his, not made in public, showed him to have pos sessed the faculty of seeing the humorous side of things. At his week-day services, and, I suspect, on Sundays too, the gentler sex was most in evidence. " I notice," he said, " that in your congrega tions the shirt waists predominate !" 'Father Dolling was asked to conduct our annual Diocesan Retreat for the clergy, which was begun in 1877, and has been continued with few exceptions through the succeeding years. I called the Retreat for Monday, June 13, the place being Waterman Hall, which is our Diocesan school for girls. It is a lovely spot in a rural region, and the young ladies being absent for the summer vacation, the building was admirably adapted for the purpose. I think there were more than fifty of the clergy present, and some candidates from the seminary. The impression made by his medi tations and instructions through three and a half days was profound. By common consent his words were recognised as a message from Heaven sent to strengthen our hands and to rehabilitate our courage for the great conflict with the forces of evil in which we are engaged. In some instances, where at first he commanded intellectual admira tion, it was not long before he won spiritual sympathy. There were moments when, with closed eyes, bowed head, and clasped hands, he seemed like one possessed with the awful afflatus of inspiration, and his words were in solemn accordance with his manner. 'The Retreat closed at six o'clock on the morning of the 16th with the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, and a Te Deum. Father Dolling left Chicago a day or two afterwards, and many there are in this city who look back upon his visit with affection and grati tude. The tidings of his departure to another stage of the life ever lasting were received here with no ordinary sorrow — sorrow not for him, but for the Church, which in the prevalent dearth of heroic DIOCESAN RETREAT AT CHICAGO 243 sanctity needs such high-born spirits as his to lighten the darkness and to reflect the splendour of the Sun of Righteousness. 'W. McLaren, ' Bishop of Chicago.' The Rector of the Church of the Atonement, Chicago, who was present at the Retreat, tells us : ' The effect upon the clergy who were present, and indeed upon the spiritual tone of the whole diocese, is felt to the present day. Father Dolling chose Isa. vi. (the prophet's call) for the subject of his meditations. The searching and practical applications were the marvel of all who heard him. Many thoughts in the medita tions were suggested, no doubt, by his private conferences with several of the clergy, the addresses plainly taking the tone sug gested by the various phases of difficulty or inquiry developed in these private interviews. ' One feature of the Retreat which commended itself to the interest and gratitude of the clergy was the way in which Father Dolling, at the various times of devotion, introduced prayers for the people and nation of the United States, and especially for their soldiers and sailors. It was during the time of the Spanish- American War, and the tenderness and appropriateness of these special petitions were most affecting. Dr. Fleetwood, the rector of the school, had a son who was then with the American troops in Cuba sick with typhoid fever.- At each service Father Dolling prayed earnestly and touchingly for " our dear soldier boy sick and away from home." ' Every one of the clergy present has since cherished a thankful memory of the blessedness of the Retreat, and all heard with pro found sorrow and a sense of personal bereavement of Father Dolling's death.' We have been allowed to see the notes of the addresses given by Dolling on these days of the Priests' Retreat for Chicago Diocese, and here reproduce some of them, as follows : Subject : The Prophet's Call — Isa. vi. ' I am a man of unclean lips ': God's call to us a reason for self- inquiry as to ourselves and our methods. The live coal: (1) kindled = the Incarnation; (2) 'touched thy lips,' applied = the Sacraments. 16—2 244 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING God's call and my answer to it by apparent failure. The seraph represents the ministry of the priest. Clergy of Chicago, test your ministry by two tests : (1) your worship — the worship of the seraphim : ' before Him ' they stood ; (2) your service to man. The seraph carried the coal to touch the unclean and make him clean. Are you bringing the personal touch of Jesus to sinful souls by your service and by your life ? Jesus is the Atonement — At-one-ment : (1) Between God and man ; (2) between man and man ; (3) between man and himself. When the prophet sees God, he sees his own uncleanness as never before. In His Fatherhood I see my rebellion, in His wounds my sin. 1 The live coal ': The method of communicating God's knowledge and grace to man is the sacramental method. God knew that for man what is everywhere is nowhere. Man needs something objec tive, because he is man, body and soul, hence sacramentalism. ' Whom shall I send V He does not take this work solely on Him self. Think of His generosity. Having won graces for all men, He puts them into our hands to use them. He puts souls into our hands. ' This people's heart is waxed hard ': There are two kinds of failure— (1) The Divine failure of Christ. No man ever failed like our Lord. He had to die before He could succeed. He had to die for the ideal, in order to make it real. (2) But there is another failure — a sinful failure — the hardened heart. The priest may be a failure in this sense, by want of personal piety ; feeding others, yet not fed himself. Or the priest may be a true Christ-like failure, for Christ had to die before He could conquer. This is true also of us. Death is the final victory for ourselves and for others. Our failure is His success. God allows us priests to be often apparent failures — (1) That we may trust Him more humbly ; (2) that we may distrust ourselves more. Had the offer from Poplar not been made, and had Dolling's life been spared for longer than it was after his return to England, he would have found in Chicago a field of work adequate to all his energies. We quote a part of the account given of a Sunday in Chicago from the striking articles called ' America at Work ' which are being contributed to the York shire Post by their special correspondent, Mr. John Foster Fraser (to be published in book form when complete), and which A FIELD FOR DOLLING'S ENERGIES 245 are attracting much attention from those interested in the problems of American life : 'THE CHICAGO SUNDAY. ' Comparatively few of the churches are open on Sunday night. All the theatres, and music-halls, and saloons, and low resorts cer tainly are. To wander along State Street on a Sunday evening is to witness sights the equal of which is to be seen in no other city in the world, and as to what may be seen in other cities of the world I have not a small experience. There is no suggestion of Sunday evening. The shop-doors are closed, but all the windows are a blaze of light, and before them are crowds of women looking at the bonnets, on slowly revolving discs, or watching the electric appli ances that dazzle the eye with sudden gleams of tinted globes. Crowds surge about the lower-class theatres. There is the beating of a drum and the shriek of a hurdy-gurdy to attract to a dime museum. At one street-corner is a man yelling anarchy. He has a big crowd. At another street-corner is a sallow, curly-haired indi vidual demonstrating that the earth is flat. He has 200 listeners. At another corner is a semicircle of Salvationists, and a tall woman in a poke bonnet is nasally yelling in prayer that God would strike Chicago to Hell. There are not more than a dozen onlookers.' We may quote another section — as to the condition of children in the slums of Chicago — 'A wretched sight was the children running the streets— little Jews, Italians, Hungarians, Swedes, Poles, Russians — a motley pack of half-starved, bare-footed, ragged-clad little ones, quite happy, however, paddling in the stenching overflow of sewage. I had a long talk with Mr. Davies about the employment of children. This was his subject, the one dearest to him, the one he is wrestling with, and it is his ambition to crush the evil in Chicago if the law will let him. He told me there were lots of children under the age of twelve working in Chicago. When I refused to believe him he took me to his office and brought out report after report of inspectors who had found children of twelve earning their little four shillings a week amid the horrors of Chicago slaughter-houses. The law of Illinois State is that employers shall not knowingly engage children under fourteen. To safeguard themselves the employers make the parents sign a declaration that the lads are over fourteen. These parents 246 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING are nearly all freshly-arrived immigrants, the dregs of Europe. They lie, for they need the dollar. ' Everything and everybody in Chicago is judged by money value. The streak of the dollar obtrudes into religion.' The now famous ' Mr. Dooley ' has given us, while certainly not a rose-coloured view of Chicago, as seen from the ' Archey Road,' yet a more genial and humorous one than the above of Mr. Foster Fraser. Whether, however, the terrible con clusions of the latter observer be too absolutely pessimistic or not, it is at least certain that had Dolling become Dean or Rector of the Chicago Episcopal Cathedral, with its slum sur roundings of the type so described by all, he would have faced a work compared with the gigantic proportions of which Landport, with its worst problems, would have been but child's play. But it was not to be. The Bishop of Chicago seems to have had a sort of premonition that Dolling would not live to be an old man, for, in a letter to him after he was settled at Poplar, he writes : ' God has given you enormous physical vitality and a mind to use it without stint. But do not hasten the end too speedily. I have come to believe that occasional attacks of indolence are praise worthy.' After he left Chicago, Dolling made his long-planned expe dition to Montana, Utah, and California, visiting both Salt Lake City and San Francisco. Among other remarkable incidents on this journey, he had an interview with Mrs. Eddy, the high priestess of ' Christian Science.' In regard to 'faith -healing,' so akin to this question, Dolling was a profound believer in the power of prayer in cases of sickness ; and as a priestly ministry of intercession in accordance with S. James v. 14, 15, he was a strong advo cate of the restoration of the sacramental rite of Unction of the Sick, when administered with some hope of recovery, as in the Scriptural use. He agreed with the statement of the late Bishop Forbes of Brechin, his friend of earlier years, and his instructor in Catholic principles, that this lesser sacra- EOSHEEVILLE EECALLED AT UTAH 247 ment, as it may be called, is ' the lost Pleiad of the Anglican firmament,' and that the omission of the form in the First Prayer-Book for its use, if desired by those in serious illness, is one of the things to be regretted in the 1552 and subse quent Prayer-Books. The discovery of the Canons of Hippo- lytus and of the Pontifical of Bishop Serapion, with their liturgical blessing during the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the 'prayer-oil' for the sick (as the Eastern Church styles it) when required, has again drawn attention to the primitive and Catholic character of this rite. We believe that its use was authorised or allowed in the Diocese of Chicago by the Bishop about this time, and that this was partly, at least, by Father Dolling's influence. At any rate, it was so stated at the time in some of the English Church papers. As we have alluded to Mrs. Eddy, we may say that the propagators of some of the American ' fancy religions ' seem to have come into contact with Dolling, but that while they, as well as the hypnotisers and other similar dabblers in the occult, interested him greatly, they could make little of him. He paid a visit to the Mormon Tabernacle at Utah, and was much astonished and struck by it, though not agreeably so. This occasion was not, however, without its touch of humour. Of this we give his own account, in regard to a curious inci dent which befell him there. We quote from S. Saviour's Magazine, Poplar, for August, 1900 : 'Ever since I first came to live in London I have heard that Eosherville was the place to spend a happy day. I proved this twenty years ago when I went down with dear Mother Kate and a large party from S. Saviour's Priory. Curiously in America the joys of Rosherville were all brought back to me, for the leader of the orchestra of the great Mormon Tabernacle was chief cornet player there before he was converted. I don't know that there was anything in my appearance to suggest that I was a frequenter of Rosherville, or in my accent to show that I was at Poplar. But after he had told me all the wonderful things about Brigham Young and the Mormon religion he became quite a different man, when we fell back upon old times, and he recounted all the beauties of Rosherville, the place that he still loved well.' 248 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Dolling, however, did not confine his attention to those more eccentric bodies by which American religion is often exclusively judged. He frequently, when in the States, lectured before gatherings of those great Protestant non- Episcopal communities, Presbyterian and others, who bulk so much larger both in numbers and prestige in America than at home (being the leading denominations of the United States), and he was received by many of their members with the greatest respect and cordiality. On one occasion he lectured by special invitation to a number of young men of Princeton University in a Presby terian chapel, taking part in the service, we are told, quite naturally. The Presbyterian minister, who was with him on the platform, said to him : ' I did not know that anyone in your Church could make an extempore prayer like that, and you have given me a new understanding of the meaning of " wholesomeness." ' We are told that he much disliked the elaborate choral services, with orchestral music, common in the American Episcopal Churches, especially on festivals, and that at Chicago he seemed as if he could throw the surpliced choirs into the lake. ' Father Dolling's soul was sorely tried at our solemn mid-day service,' writes an American clergyman. ' The elaborate service for which the choir had been preparing for some weeks (it was a great festival) was torture to him, though we thought it fine. I am sure that could he have had his way, he would have sent the choir arid orchestra packing, and then have given out some simple hymns for the people to sing.' Father Dolling also noticed that the women's bonnets in the churches were bright with all the colours of the rainbow, and the ' smug ' type of congregation (to use his frequent expression) to be found so often in America under the aegis of well-to-do Anglicanism was not to his liking. He found it hard to pierce the integument of its self-satisfaction ; but, on the whole, he returned with great hopes for the American Church, and with feelings of deep affection for many of its members, both clergy and laity. AMERICANISM AND THE PAULISTS 249 We do not think that he came into personal contact with any of the great leaders of the Roman Catholicism of the States, such as those remarkable prelates Gibbons, Ireland, and Spalding, whose large-minded and sympathetic mode of dealing with modern problems, and the combina tion in whose teaching of Catholic Christianity with genuine enthusiasm for social progress, naturally strongly appealed to him. At a meeting of the gathering of London clergy, known as ' Our Society,' held soon after his return to England, Dolling spoke with hope and interest of the movement in the Roman Catholic Church in the States popularly described as 'Americanism.' It interested him intensely, and he foresaw in the more liberal tone of the Roman Catholicism of the United States a possible factor towards the Reunion of Chris tendom, in a sense that the ' Vaticanism ' pure and simple of the Italian type could not be. This was on an occasion when the present writer, by an invitation of ' Our Society,' read a paper on ' Father Isaac Hecker, the Founder of the Paulists,' who was, in many respects, the spiritual progenitor of men of the school of Bishop Spalding. The paper was based on Father Elliott's book. Canon Hensley Henson, Dolling, and others spoke on ' Roman Catholic Americanism ' at that meeting. While in the States Dolling inspected some of those philan thropic and social institutions which there, as at home, are managed on lines independent of connection with any organised religious body. When at Chicago he visited Hull House, a ' Settlement ' conducted on purely secular lines. He called there, with one of the clergy of the city, when a Socialistic meeting was being held. An animated discussion was in progress. It was just what Dolling wanted to hear, and the kind of meeting where he might have been expected to be welcomed, or at least admitted. But he and his com panion were told that it was not thought advisable to allow ministers of religion to be present. Dolling's disgust was much increased when, after a consultation behind closed doors, he was told that were it not for his clerical garb he could 250 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING have got in — that ' mufti ' would have passed him. When the high authorities of Hull House, as an ultimatum, offered to admit him to the ' kindergarten ' of their establish ment, the last straw was laid upon and broke the camel's back. The constant pressure of Father Dolling's preaching and lecturing in the States was relieved, as we have seen, by a great amount of kindly hospitality and pleasant social inter course, often of the most cordial description. His sense of humour made his visit specially enjoyable to him, though he never used this for the purpose of 'taking off' any of his new-made friends and acquaintances in an unkind way. Sometimes, however, very risible incidents occurred. While he was at Newport a well-known lady gave a luncheon for him, at which he was the only man present. It rather tickled him, we are told, to hear on this occasion one lady say sotto voce to another, ' A very lovely man, my dear.' He did not know exactly what she meant by ' lovely,' until a young lady asked him to call upon her mother, who, she said, was a 'perfectly lovely woman.' When 'Dolling called he found a very charming lady, but not exactly, he said, what he would call ' lovely.' He went on to say, in describing the incident, that at first he thought she could not be the mother he was supposed to call on, so he asked her, and when she seemed rather surprised, he explained that Miss had said that her mother was a ' perfectly lovely woman,' and he did not think she could be the one he was looking for. Whereupon the lady, understanding the situation, told him that in America the expression ' perfectly lovely,' when applied to a person, did not necessarily imply beauty of face, but rather charm of manner and sweetness of disposition. We ought to add that the above is Father Dolling's own account of the incident in question. He was much amused, when in Boston, by a good lady who asked him to excuse her for saying that, while she was much edified by what he had said, she ventured to express a hope that he would ' try to be more particular about his English.' An Irish lady, who has lived for a con siderable time in America, writes : ' I HAVE BEEN LIVING IN THE SUNSHINE ' 251 ' When we met Father Dolling we took him off to our boarding- house, and he kept all of us there either in roars of laughter or else ready to cry all the evening. The lady of that boarding-house, who is an intimate American friend of mine, has never forgotten him since, and gave me money to send him for his work for several years. We must draw this long chapter to a close by noticing that the institution of Father Dolling as Vicar of S. Saviour's, Poplar, was fixed for July 22, 1898. He hurried back from the Pacific shore across the continent to the Atlantic (taking Chicago again on his return), so as to be in London in time to enter on his Poplar duties by the date appointed. We conclude this chapter about his memorable visit to the States by a delightful passage in his first ' Quarterly Letter ' from S. Saviour's, when the elixir of the air of America seemed still to be within his veins : 'It is just about fourteen years since I left dear S. Martin's Mission, a mile distant from this. I hope that during those years I have learnt to be wiser and, I hope, more patient, trying very imperfectly to translate into my own life some of that Divine com passion which makes Jesus the true sharer in the tears and laughter of men. I come back, thank God, feeling stronger, and, I believe, younger than when I went away, for this year in America has done for me a hundred times more than any words of mine can express. I have been living in the sunshine ; it has got into my bones, into my marrow. Travelling from the Atlantic to the Pacific, I have seen deserts turned into gardens, great cities of many hundred thousand inhabitants almost of spontaneous birth, inland seas, mighty rivers, mountains whose foundations are iron, and out of whose sides men dig gold and silver. I have seen all these things in the truest sense the servants of man's daily use, and indomitable ¦ courage illuminated by an unfailing invention teaching him to subjugate them. ' Above all, I have seen that which may fitly be called the youth of the present humanity. I am not blinded in my judgment, for youth possesses many faults, but in spite of these many faults, the glory beyond all glory, the glory of being young. The deep tones of Niagara, the never-ceasing pulse of Chicago, the thousands of 252 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING their choicest and goodliest young men, from the drawing-rooms of New York or the prairies of the West, going forth to the war ; it is all one vast, inexpressible song, " Eing out the old, ring in the new." 'I bring back, then, to my work, I hope, something of the enthusiasm of this echo — at any rate, much of the warmth and affection of its love.' CHAPTEE XX Vicar of S. Saviour's, Poplar (1898-1902)— Instituted (July 22, 1898)— General circumstances of district — Dr. Chandler, Eector of Poplar — Will Crooks, Mayor of Poplar (1901) — Past history of the parish — Money-raising for necessary improvements — Social questions in Poplar — East London Water Famine (meeting in S. Saviour's, 1898) — Overcrowding — Vaccination and the small-pox epidemic (1901). ' But welcome fortitude and patient cheer, And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! Such sights, or worse, as are before me here : Not without h'ope we suffer and we mourn.' Wordsworth : Picture of Peal Castle in a Storm. The patron to whom Dolling was indebted for being enabled to resume his ministry in the Church of England with a settled sphere of operations was the then Eector of Poplar, the Eev. Arthur Chandler, now Bishop of Bloemfontein, South Africa. Dr. Chandler, while quite dissimilar to Dolling, as being a man of books and having been of high academic distinction as an Oxford Don, was yet in complete sympathy with him as to the two main interests of his life and work. The Eector of Poplar, like the new Vicar of S. Saviour's, was both a thorough-going Sacramentalist and an uncom promising teacher of Catholic beliefs on the one hand, and on the other, in strong sympathy with the upward advance of the manual workers of this country and with the Labour Move ment generally, in which, indeed, he took a practical part in Poplar, being treasurer to the Poplar Labour League. After Dolling came to S. Saviour's there were for some years three men ' of high character who were in that part of Poplar leaders in every movement for the redemption [ 253 ] 254 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING of the inhabitants from bad conditions of life. Unlike what is often the case, two of these were clergymen of the Church of England, who were certainly not content to do what the clergy so often acquiesce in doing — i.e., reflect the prejudices in these matters of the comfortable middle classes of this country, and be satisfied with the position of chaplains to the bourgeois, rather than trustees of the moral, and there fore social, interests of the people as a whole. These three were the Eector of Poplar (then Mr. Chandler), Father Dolling, the Vicar of S. Saviour's, and Mr. Will Crooks, himself a working man, who became Mayor of Poplar in 1901, and who is now M.P. for Woolwich. Dolling writes of Dr. Chandler thus in the S. Saviour's Parish Magazine : 'I owe Mr. Chandler a great deal. He had the courage to present me to this living, but I owe him a great deal more than that ; the sight of an Oxford Don, giving up all his delightful, intel lectual surroundings, concentrating his well-balanced and instructed mind on the social problems that beset us here is a lesson that no one ought to forget.' As to the Mayor, Dolling writes in 1901 : ' I am rejoiced to find my dear friend Will Crooks, the Mayor of Poplar. I have not seen him with his gold chain and red robes, though I half believe he ought to come to our " social " on December 3 thus dressed, notwithstanding that I like to see him best in his shirt-sleeves and carpet slippers, having just jumped from his breakfast to give advice, counsel, comfort or help to some poor soul standing at his door. No one knows as he does the needs of Poplar. No one has greater tact in representing those needs, greater courage in demanding that they shall be satisfied.' Certainly no district more required disinterested and un selfish leaders, social and religious, than the region in which Dolling now found himself after his institution as Vicar of S. Saviour's by the then Bishop of Stepney (Dr. Ingram), acting for the then Bishop of London (the late Dr. Creighton). A Protestant gentleman in the congregation, a non- INSTITUTION OBJECTED TO 255 parishioner, objected to the institution on the ground that the new Vicar was a notorious ringleader of the sect of the Eitualists, ' who are everywhere spoken against.' Dr. Ingram, however, assured the objector that the Bishop of London was quite aware of Mr. Dolling's past. The gentleman in question came into the vestry after service to renew his protest, but without effect. Dolling politely asked him ' to come into the vicarage and have a cup of tea. It is such a hot night.' The truth is that Dolling knew that the ' Church Crisis,' so called, which was then beginning, was largely artificial and ' faked up,' as he said, by various newspapers and individuals, some of them acting through honest prejudice and misunder standing, and others from less excusable motives. He knew that in the minds of most of those who really think, and therefore ultimately in those of the multitude, the days of pure and simple Protestantism, as a doctrinal and disciplinary system, are numbered, and that the real religious struggle of the future lies between Historical and Catholic Christianity, in some form or other, on the one hand, and ' Undenomi- nationalism,' or indifference to definite belief, combined with a vague residuum of Christian sentiment, on the other. Dolling was therefore not much distressed about Ladies' Leagues or Eeformation Societies, and he says with truth (in February, 1899) : 'As to the present so-called crisis, the real crisis, the one that ought to make Churchmen, cleric or laic, on their knees in penitence before God confess their negligence, is that the vast majority of English people care nothing for the Church, many even nothing for God. If we learn this lesson, then all the present distress is cheaply purchased.' The apathy, the numbness of soul to higher interests, spiritual or even mental, which marks such great districts of East London, as so many other similar regions, was accentuated in Father Dolling's new parish by its peculiar situation and circumstances. It is a district cut off by a network of small intervening streets from the two great arteries of East End traffic near it, 256 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING the East India Dock Road on the one side, and the Burdett Road on the other. The parochial buildings, as Dolling received them, consisted of a church to seat eight hundred people, schools for nine hundred children, a vicarage, a mission house (exclusive of a house for clubs in Giraud Street). These buildings form a little oasis in the parish, and are surrounded by rows of mean and small houses of that dreary sameness so usual in the East End, and which makes that part of London so much more dull and uninterest ing in aspect than many of the old English towns and cities in which survive here and there touches of the enchantment of the Middle Ages, or of the quaint ornate domesticity of the Elizabethan period, or of the old-world soberness of Hanoverian times. Portsmouth, for instance, is not without several of these embodied and localised reminiscences of the past. S. Saviour's, Poplar, has no link with history on the one hand, no direct touch with the great thoroughfares of modern life and business on the other. The old-world air of much of Portsmouth, the fierce new-world feeling of such a centre as Chicago are alike lacking. If a slum, S. Saviour's parish is without the constant shifting movement and colour of the slums of a naval and military centre such as Portsmouth. It is, as one called it, a ' back slum ' in the East End. To any one who has lived or worked in that part of London no further description is needed to show the kind of place and the sort of people with which Father Dolling, now nearly fifty years old, and already feeling the effect of years of overwork, had to grapple at this time. The very fact that S. Saviour's district was already a settled ecclesiastical parish was rather an added difficulty to a man of his temperament and methods. He was essentially the zealous pioneer, evangeliser, and missionary rather than the patient, plodding pastor of a fixed and stereotyped region. Owing to the decline of the Port of London, the labour of the inhabitants had become every year more of the unskilled and casual type, the men picking up odd jobs at the docks, but being often out of work, in many cases, for days or weeks together. The parish covers forty-four acres, and contains ARCADIA STREET 257 10,000 people, packed very close together. Though a crowded district of working-class people and of others of a more shifting and nondescript population, it was, as we have hinted, quite unlike S. Agatha's parish, Landport, Dolling's former sphere of action. There was none of the variety and fierce excite ment that marked S. Agatha's district on a Saturday night — no flash or touch of colour from the uniforms of soldiers passing continually through the crowds, or of the 'lads in blue ' swinging leisurely along the streets. ' This dullest, grayest parish in East London,' so Dolling pathetically describes his Poplar charge. He had here no glimpses as of Portsmouth Harbour and the Isle of Wight ; no strolls to Portsdown Hill ; no crowds of summer visitors to Southsea, vulgar often, but always amusing; no St. Vincent boys on leave-out days ; above all, no weekly joy of the visit to Winchester College. The docks themselves, which afford the only touch of picturesqueness to the neighbourhood, are on the other side from S. Saviour's of the main artery of thorough fare. That kind of quaint riverside Thames life touched off so inimitably in Mr. Jacob's tales, the ' Many Cargoes,' or earlier described in some of Dickens' novels, is conspicuous by its absence from the sameness of the district over which Dolling now took charge, and which was not on the river, although most of its people gained their livelihood by it. ' A tale of mean streets,' rather than of a riotous slum, is a true description of the work in this his new parish. It was no Alsatia, no Landport Charlotte Street, with the excitement of the incursions of the picket after some strayed reveller in the form of a sailor or marine. The very vice of such a district is lacking in passion ; it is bloodless and anaemic. We do not mean that there were not and are not a number of true-hearted and earnest men and women in the district in question, as well as everywhere else, but certainly the prevailing element is one of moral and mental drabness. Soon after he arrived, Dolling writes of the vicarage garden, ' the piece of ground, the filthy grass-plot, with two or three mangy trees, called a garden for the same reason for which the street I live in is called " Arcadia Street." ' The latter 17 258 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING title was certainly given on the principle of lucus a non lucendo. The nomenclature of this street so struck Dolling's old friend Mother Kate that she inserted in the pages of her admirable little magazine, the Orient, the following lines written by a contributor : 'THE SHEPHERDS OF POPLAR. ' To the shepherds of Poplar we ought to wish well, In a manner both cheery and meet ; For I find that they all most appropriately dwell In Arcadia — a pastoral street. And we hope that this flock in a thoroughfare bold Neither virtue nor colour will lack, But that good Brother Bob will ne'er find in his fold Any sheep that is palpably black.' In the midst of this teeming, semi-heathen population the former clergy of S. Saviour's had tried for thirty-four years to keep up some public witness to the Christian religion. Dissenting chapels are non-existent in the parish, so entire is the religious indifference which prevails. The S. Saviour's Schools were opened and a mission district formed in 1864, the work being started by the Rev. E. Bray, who was before that time curate of the mother parish of Poplar. In 1874- 1875 the church was consecrated and the district formed into a separate parish. Mr. Bray, who is now Rector of S. Paul's, Shadwell, was succeeded in 1882 by the Rev. Vivian E. Skrine, now Rector of Leadenham, Lincoln, who resigned S. Saviour's in 1889 in order to take the charge of Dingley, in the Peter borough diocese. The Rev. J. Beardall, Dolling's immediate predecessor, became Vicar in 1889. His resignation in 1898 was caused by his accepting the living of Southgate, Middlesex. The fact that so many people came to S. Saviour's on Monday, June 12, 1899, to take each a period of the continuous inter cession for Mrs. Beardall's recovery from a serious illness (a recovery which happily took place) proves the feeling of the congregation towards her husband when he was Vicar of the parish. Indeed, it ought to be recorded that from the first a quiet but none the less real and self-sacrificing work HANDICAPPED BY DRAINS 259 had been done at S. Saviour's, and a band of helpers had been gathered round the clergy, some of whom remained with Father Dolling and still continue with the present Vicar, the Rev. Mark N. Trollope. The fact that Dolling had to raise money by appeals to his friends and subscribers, in order to alter the drainage of the schools, vicarage, and mission-house, and to practically rebuild the schools (the latter item costing £3,000) was a circumstance for which his predecessors could scarcely in fairness be blamed. They had worked well, but had not the same number of wealthy subscribers as Dolling managed to retain all through his ministry. It seems, indeed, to be almost a necessary incident of any priest's taking over a new sphere of work in the Church of England that he has at the start to lay out a considerable sum of money on drainage or similar matters, so strange are the present business arrangements of the ' Establishment,' and so prohibitive often of any man without private means taking one of its benefices. It would have been to almost anyone except Dolling a crushing weight, handicapping all spiritual and evangelising work at the start, to have had to raise the large sums reported by the architect as absolutely necessary for alterations required for the health of the workers, the teachers, and the school-children. As it is, the huge weight of this money-raising for drainage alterations, building re construction, etc., was a burden that loaded even Dolling, that coiner of money, with extra difficulty. It is one of the weights that no Church managed on sensible principles ought to impose upon the shoulders of the priest who under takes a mission, or any other spiritual charge, rightly involving necessary anxieties to the mind of its pastor without these extra difficulties. Two questions of larger interest — the one locally important in the East End, and the other of a pressing character every where — thrust themselves upon Dolling's notice immediately after his entrance upon his Poplar work. The first was the East London water famine of 1898, the second, that ever- present and most complex problem, the overcrowding question. With regard to the first of these matters, the new Vicar of 17—2 260 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING S. Saviour's helped to stir up, as usual, ' divine discontent ' by printing the following characteristic notice in the parish magazine : ' The East London Water Company divides a dividend of 7 per cent., oftentimes more. They have a monopoly to supply us with water. We are bound to pay our rates, whether we get the water or not. In the very worst time of the year, at a time when diph theria and scarlet fever always increase among us, at a time when we are sweltering in heat, and when little children are at death's door continually, they restrict us to six hours a day, and that not regularly supplied. Our good churchwardens feel with me that it is our duty to invite all male parishioners to express their opinion on this point, and I thank God that it is in His house that we are going to meet ; and I hope that .we shall not cease from our agitation until this Company is dispossessed of its powers, and they are placed under public control.' The meeting had an excellent effect, but the fact that it was held in the church (for want of room elsewhere) was resented by some of the more strait-laced. Dolling, how ever, maintained that the bodies of the people, being the temples of God, are even more sacred than the stones of a building, and that the health and decency of the physical life of his parishioners were in danger through the action of the Water Company. Like the great medieval Churchmen, who even sanctioned the performance of religious dramas with humorous episodes in them in the churches, he wished to see each parish church in England what it once was before what Dr. Jessopp rightly calls ' The Great Pillage,' perpetrated by the ultra-Protestants of Edward VI. 's reign — the house familiar to, as well as venerated by, all the spiritual family of the parishioners, and not, as it too often is in country districts, the spiritual annexe of the squire's mansion. His ideal was that each parish church, as such, ought to be the common roof-tree, as it were, of the Christian family in the place, and, as such, the centre of social righteousness to the whole district. But the prim type of High Church person, who writes indignant letters to the Church Times if some waif who has strayed into S. Paul's Cathedral is seen munching HIGH CHURCHISM AND DIVIDENDS 261 an apple within the sacred building, or a tired woman is observed sitting during some part of the service at which the rubric says to stand, was now on Dolling's trail. If his Prayer-Meetings in church would call down from such the condemnation, 'Mr. Dolling is a regular Dissenter,' his meetings about the Water Company would lead them to utter a more severe judgment — ' Mr. Dolling is an irreverent Secularist!' The following indignant anonymous letter, received from some person who was probably a dividend-holder in one of the water companies, as well as a horrified High Church man, is characteristic of a certain type of ecclesiastical mind: ' September 19, 1898. ' Will Mr. Dolling permit one who was a Catholic member of the English Church before Mr. Dolling was born to recommend to him the use of the collect for rain as much more likely to attain the desired end than holding meetings for the abuse of laymen at least as honourable as Mr. Dolling? The withholding of rain from a district is God's punishment, and to ninety-nine Catholics in a hundred the present visitation upon the East End of London is consequent upon the appointment of Mr. Dolling to S. Saviour's, whilst he has not done penance for his misdoings at S. Agatha's. 'A Member for over Thirty Years of the C.B.S.' The initials stand for the well-known Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament. It would fill pages to quote the extraordinary letters, anony mous and otherwise, which Dolling received from time to time all through his ministry. The tone of some of them was one of antagonism, of others of enthusiastic approval, of a third of critical inquiry, whether real or pretended. A clergyman wrote to know if the rumour which he had heard was really true — that at the men's services, instead of a hymn, such songs as ' What ho ! she bumps ' were fre quently in use. A zealous Ritualistic lady, during some of his many difficulties with the Bishops, wrote a postcard urging 262 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING no concession in these terms : ' Sit tight, dear Father — sit tight !' Of the evils of overcrowding, Dolling writes in December, 1899, as the result of years of an experience of life among the poor unrivalled in England : ' In this London, the richest city in the world, there are districts to live in which is actual pollution for body, soul, and mind; in which all wholesomeness, modesty, and godliness is impossible ; in which is bred that army of loafers, gaol-birds, and "Hooligans," which is the greatest of national disgraces. There must be a cure, if it were not that personal interests — and these oftentimes the interests of quite good and respectable persons— make the drastic remedies which alone can effect a cure impossible. The majority of our own Poplar people must live in this neighbourhood; their work, such as it is, lies here. Rents have enormously increased, partly because the Jews are getting nearer and nearer to us.' This is a most serious and growing difficulty, as most East End clergy and social workers can testify. The greatest rack- renters among East End landlords are, it is well known, foreign Jews, who are the most numerous among the swarms of aliens that have lately poured into that part of London. ' To meet this increase of rent, our own people are forced either to sub-let, or to give up their three rooms to go into two.' He goes on to suggest two remedies — the power of such authority as the London County Council to acquire land at its present value beyond the overcrowded areas, and the means of creating cheap and quick means of transit. He says : ' There must be compulsory purchase of the land at its present value, without the unearned increment which the approach of popu lation always creates. That, of course, has been the initial wrong ; the value of land has sometimes multiplied itself many hundred fold without a penny being spent upon it, and all that profit has gone to the owner. Unless, therefore, the present letting value is taken as the basis of compulsory sale, any creation of really cheap houses would be impossible.' DIVINE DISCONTENT 263 After stating that ultimately the railway monopoly must also be dealt with, he adds : ' What is needed, of course, is a system of light railways and of electric cars run continually along every great thoroughfare which leads out of London, for the cost of travelling must not only be very cheap, but the opportunities of travelling must be constant.' The words with which he concludes are a sort of summary of the work of his own life : ' But when statesmen have spoken their last word the Christian has still a word to speak. Create within the respectable poor the longing for all these things ; stir the soul till it is utterly discon tented with and abhors its present surroundings ; make the father and mother realize that all duty to their children is impossible as things are. The task seems well-nigh impossible. The truth is we have not got the vigour of body or the keenness of mind to care about these things. We have always lived in them; we feel we cannot alter them. And nothing but Christian enthusiasm can alter them — ay, Christian enthusiasm could alter even the loafer and his slum. And so, while we must do our best to insist upon present legislation being put into force and future legislation being created, Christianity must labour on in making the heart and conscience of the man right, and then he will insist upon an environment which will be possible for himself and his fellows.1 The following leaflet was distributed at Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, on one of the many occasions when Dolling was invited to preach for his work : 'MAYFAIR! POPLAR! 'A Greater Contrast than this does not exist in the World. ' Everything here makes for health and happiness. ' Everything there makes for sickness and sorrow. ' Here you have good houses, good air, open spaces, amusement, pleasure, and plenty of money to buy everything you want ; there we have bad houses, ill-drained, overcrowded ; no baths, no amuse ment, no money. You are all going for a holiday ; none of us can, unless someone pays for us." 264 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING He goes on to tell of 600 Poplar children whom he wants to send for a good fortnight's fresh air to the country. A special question on which he came into collision with the Poplar Board of Guardians was the vaccination one, owing to the small-pox outbreak of 1901. The anti- vaccinators had, strange to say, a majority on the Board, and their influence, and that of the general apathy — the main characteristic of the district — had to be fought against. The dispensary at the Mission House was largely used at this time for vaccina tion, as Dolling believed that sufficient facilities were not given by the local authorities for this purpose. The impor tance of this precaution was urged on the people by him as a most necessary duty for themselves and their children in view of the possible spread of the epidemic. His attitude at Poplar, as at Landport, was the same as that of a well-known London priest of similar convictions, who, when accused of using his office as a spiritual teacher to interfere in merely secular matters, said : ' I speak out and fight about the drains because I believe in the Incarnation.' ' The redemption of the body ' was to Dolling essentially a practical truth, and a most vital part of the Christian religion. It supplied to him the motive power of his ceaseless efforts as a social worker. He was a scourge to anyone who degraded, dishonoured, or ill-treated the body of any human being, just as to those who stunted the mind, or polluted the soul, or made money out of others' innocence or happiness or peace. Such people felt for Robert Dolling the instinctive dislike that a rat does for a terrier. They accused him of unceasingly worrying them, and with great truth, for he gloried in doing it. They hated him as vermin do the light. He regarded all such as enemies of Christ whom He would have denounced as He did the Pharisees, and whom His Church ought to expose in every way. He had a grand sceva indignatio against injustice, which explains his love for Amos' Prophecy, and his contempt for the action or inaction of many of the clergy in the presence of complacent wrongdoing. His ideal of the clergy was that they were to be, like the prophets of Judaism, ' Domini canes ' (the Lord's watch-dogs), not ' ALWAYS FOR THE UNDER-DOG ' 265 ' dumb dogs that cannot bark,' sleek with domesticity and 'fulness of bread.' He had a complete contempt for that ' sober worldliness ' which paralyses the tongue of the minister of Christ when he ought to speak for those who have no one else to plead for them. Dolling could have made, as has been said, Hecker's motto his own — 'I am always for the under-dog.' The cross up lifted in his hands as an evangelist was also the sharp sword, the sword of Michael, to smite and spare not in the name of the Crucified. His ideal was not that of a Church that gives offence to nobody, that never startles any vested interest, or annoys any wealthy individual who could finance the institu tion. His ideal of the priesthood was not of men who regard discretion as the better part of moral courage, and when the helpless are stripped and wounded pass by with decorum upon the other side. He had ' not so learned Christ.' CHAPTER XXI Father Dolling as parish priest of S. Saviour's — His clergy and helpers — Social work — Dances — Mothers Factory — girls — Boys' camp at Broadstairs — Girls' camp at Hayling — Miss Wells' 'Home' at Heathfield — The schools — Father Dolling as educationalist — Mr. Alfred Harmsworth's recollections of Father Dolling — Love for children. ' Education does not mean teaching people to know what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is the training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls.' — Buskin : Crown of Wild Olive. Whatever difficulties and troubles Dolling had to encounter in his life — and it was full, as we have seen, of conflicts and trials — they were not such as beset the labourer who has to work for God under circumstances of loneliness and im poverishment, with scarcely one near him who understands his motives and his aims, and with one opportunity after another lost through the lack of the means, both helpers and money, to grasp each at the critical moment as it comes. Dolling had often a stiff battle to fight, and many and em bittered opponents, but he had always around him an enthusiastic cohort of willing helpers and the generous trust, constant through all the shocks he gave to some of them, of a large body of subscribers, whose friendship, confidence, and support was proved in the most practical way by the unfailing financial backing which kept him always well supplied with the sinews of war. Once only in all his ministry did this help fail him, and that very temporarily for a few weeks at Land- port, when he was reduced to selling his library, which was a comparatively large one, though the books were of very [ 266 ] HELPERS AT S. SAVIOUR'S 267 unequal value and importance. This brief decline in financial help was due, probably, to causes apart from any lack of con fidence in Dolling or his methods. At any rate, it was soon followed by subscriptions as substantial as before. As to his helpers at S. Saviour's, the principal members of his body of clerical assistants were as follows : The Rev. C. E. Curtis, who had worked with Mr. Beardall, and stayed on for some time under Dolling's vicariate ; the Rev. W. Hays, from New Brunswick, as a temporary helper ; the Eev. J. Elwes, a former fellow-student of Dolling's at Salisbury; the Eev. B. E. Waud, now of All Saints', Edinburgh ; the Eev. A. J. S. Melville, now at Plaistow ; and the Eev. John Lloyd (an old friend of the clergy of S. Agatha's at the time when he had charge of the Mission of the Good Shepherd at White's Eow, Portsea), now Eector of Sutton-on-Derwent, Yorks. Of the lay-helpers, the Misses Elise and Geraldine Dolling also, as twice before (at Maidman Street and S. Agatha's), threw in their lot with their brother, and undertook the women's work. 'Miss Geraldine,' as usual, made 'the mothers' her special care, and Miss Dolling gained a wonderful hold over the factory girls ; each carrying on the distinctive line of work to which she was accustomed at Portsmouth. Miss Blair and Miss Eowan also worked with Father Dolling at S. Saviour's as before at S. Agatha's. A large band of other women workers gathered round the above, several coming to reside in the neighbourhood, others coming from other parts of London as often as they could to help in the mothers' meetings, * socials,' etc. Miss May Ogilvie, an old friend from Portsmouth times, came to reside with Miss Dolling, and took in hand the dispensary and nursing work, and some of Mr. Beardall's lady workers (Miss Baiss and Miss Clark) also remained in evidence. The health of Miss Wells, Father Dolling's friend, who had presided over the Girls' Home at Southsea, did not permit her to live in Poplar, but she had now opened a house at Heathfield, in Sussex, for rest and health-recruiting for tired and delicate children and adults, especially for those recovering from 268 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING illness, and this home (for it was such in reality as well as in name) was practically affiliated to S. Saviour's parish, or, at least, always available for its people. It provided a splendid sanatorium, amid beautiful scenery and healthful air. In this good work Miss Wells was well seconded by Miss Knight. S. Saviour's parish, under Dolling, was singularly happy in opportunities for enabling the parishioners to get away occasionally outside its monotonous confines into good air and brighter scenes. The factory girls and others were often invited by Mrs. Goodlake to visit her beautiful place, Denham Fishery, Uxbridge, and spent there many a delightful day from time to time. To the generosity of Mr. Alfred Harmsworth was due the splendid ' boys' camp' yearly held for S. Saviour's lads at Broadstairs, North Foreland, Kent, near Mr. Harms- worth's place, Elmwood. After a little time, also, a summer camp for girls was started at Hayling Island, near Portsmouth. A large disused vessel, moored in the creek, was chartered for this girls' camp. Miss Dolling presided over the latter, as her brother over that for the boys. A great difficulty as to boys' sports and games, when not at the camp, was presented by the want of open spaces in the neighbourhood of S. Saviour's, but this was partially overcome by taking the lads to a ground procured at some distance. A rowing club, also, on the Lea was started by the Eev. B. Waud. In order to make this possible, two excellent boats were pre sented for S. Saviour's use, one by Mr. Walter Eiddell, of Christ Church, Oxford, and the other by Colonel Hon. A. H. Henniker. The Hon. Mrs. Henniker was also a practical friend to S. Saviour's. She often came to present the prizes to the school-children, as also did Mrs. A. Harmsworth on other occasions. Mrs. Henniker also arranged a drawing-room meeting at her house, at which over £70 was raised for the work at S. Saviour's. Mr. Abbott (since ordained) helped Father Dolling much by voluntary work as secretary, and he and his friend Mr. Cornibeer worked among the lads, as also did Mr. F. Bowen, Mr. Creal, and other laymen. To Mr. Cornibeer was largely due the great success of the Sunday- school. A successful men's club, with hardly any rules, and AN ADVOCATE OF DANCING 269 with more personal influence than red tape, was carried on by the Rev. J. Lloyd. Most of the clubs were held in the Mission House, Giraud Street. It is pleasant also to mention that Dolling's old Winchester College friends, especially the Fearons, Bramstons, and Richardsons showed a lively interest in his new work and people. On Whit-Monday, 1899, the Vicar, wardens, choir, and acolytes of S. Saviour's paid a delightful visit to Win chester, and were entertained at dinner by Mrs. Bramston and at tea by Mrs. Eichardson, with the usual thoughtfulness and hospitality of those ladies. ' The whole success of the day,' said Dolling of this excursion in his next ' Quarterly Letter,' ' was that we were friends among friends.' He was not to have the pleasure of working with a public school in con nection with S. Saviour's. Uppingham School, with which the parish had been connected, had withdrawn their mission from it on Dolling's appointment. In the winter, when outdoor expeditions were not possible, the dancing-class and the ' socials ' were the centres of inter course and recreation among the younger people. Dolling believed that, properly conducted, dancing enabled lads and girls to meet one another in a pleasant way, without romp ing or rudeness on the one hand, or unwholesome slyness and secrecy on the other. All through his life he was a strong advocate of turning to good uses the theatre and the dance, the two amusements which used to be viewed with most suspicion by the religious world, whether by old- fashioned Puritans or ascetic Catholics. Dolling was as anxious to get young people to dance together in his parish- as the Cure d'Ars was to stop them from doing so in his. It was only, of course, a difference in point of view. The dances so zealously practised at Poplar under Father Dolling's kindly eye were, no doubt, of a very different char acter to those indulged in by the villagers of the parish over which the saintly Cure presided. Dolling's conception of an ideal parish was rather that of the 'merry England' of old on its best side, when the Catholic religion shared in men's laughter as well as their tears, than 270 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING of the pastures under the control of ascetics, however holy and devoted. Self-sacrificing himself to an intense degree, his self-sacrifice was that of human fellowship, simplicity of living, and the needful discipline, discomforts and trials of a life of service rather than any asceticism for its own sake. As regards the mens sana in corpore sano, he sided rather with Kingsley than with some of the Tractarians, and he used to point out how often Christ frequented feasts, and that if the ascetic ideal was, per se, the highest, we must logically arrive at the impossible and un-Christian conclusion that the mode of life of S. John the Baptist was a higher and holier one than that of Our Lord. On this subject he writes : ' I am quite sure that if we measure the character of Jesus Christ, the first thing He would have done here would have been to have fed the hungry, and to have piped to the people that they might dance, till he had exorcised the numbness which poverty and dul ness always produce. He could not have otherwise touched that Divine spark, the likeness of God, which is in us by right of our creation in His image.' Dolling was full of the Franciscan spirit of joy. Jesus Christ, in Father Dolling's conception of Him, was not only the Man of Sorrows, but also the Divine Orpheus, as He is represented in the Catacombs, with pipe and song driving out the madness of evil passions by the strains of beauty, har mony, and joy. As He says of Himself : ' We have piped unto you, but ye have not danced.' Of a visit to the theatre from S. Saviour's its Vicar writes : ' By the generosity of Mr. Compton, the lessee of the Dalston Theatre, we took the mothers and the day-school children to the pantomime there, a perfectly clean, unvulgar, and amusing panto mime. I don't know whether it speaks better for the excellence of the pantomime, or worse for our theology, that on the disclosure of the transformation scene a little boy said to Mr. Matley : " Isn't this just like the kingdom of heaven V And yet that brings my ending of this story of our Christmas amusements to be very like my beginning. If we can realise more of the spirit of joy, we shall have learnt to realise more of the kingdom of God.' A LOVEE OF CHILDEEN 271 He was himself never ashamed of making use, in due measure and season, of life's opportunities of joy, though always finding his highest enjoyment in that of others. ' I knew you were in the theatre, Mr. Dolling,' a lady once said to him ; ' I knew your laugh, and I heard it above them all.' Amid many disappointments at Poplar, none the less cruel to him because he never wearied his friends with his trials, Dolling's great happiness and hope were in the children of the parish. All his highest interests centred in the day-schools of S. Saviour's, which he made the most efficient probably in East London, with clean, wholesome surroundings, well- appointed buildings, and every encouragement to the scholars to strive for proficiency in their studies. He had a most capable educational staff (which still, we believe, remains at S. Saviour's). Mr. Matley, the Headmaster, was to Dolling at Poplar what Mr. Saunders was to him at Landport, and Mrs. Chisam well superintended the girls' school. Few schools also had one who, like Mr. Ealph Darling, could be at once teacher, leader, and friend to the boys, and whoBe example and presence was a constant strength to Dolling in his efforts to establish relations of a permanent and personal kind between the boys on the one hand and the Church on the other. The clergy of the parish were constantly seen in the schools, and gave religious instruction in them daily. Messrs. Matley and Darling also went to the boys' camp as principal officers, and their work there, where everything was carried out with military discipline, was of the greatest im portance. The night-schools were also a part of the work which was of great promise. We quote a passage relating to S. Saviour's Schools from Father Dolling's ' Quarterly Letter ' for June, 1899, especially as it shows the reason why he valued supremely the opportunity given him by the possession of Church day- schools : ' It won't bore you if I am a little garrulous about the schools. I have spent on the drainage, making new entrances for boys and girls, boys' cloak-rooms and lavatories, and doing up the infants' school, £1,392, and I have collected £1,333.' 272 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING He goes on to say that, besides the £60 debt, £1,200 will be required for repointing and painting purposes in regard to all the school buildings, and adds : ' You will say to me, " When you have got it done, what do you gain ? Give me statistics of how many have been confirmed through your schools, how many are loyal members of the Church of England through them." Those are questions which ought not to be asked, certainly ought not to be answered. If ever we cease to do our duty because of failure or success, we have denied in toto the Master's method. Let me say it once for all : the teaching in the Board Schools round here is excellent. I am not prepared even to say that my children would pass a better religious examination than theirs ; indeed, I am not sure whether our whole system of teaching religion, even in my own schools, is at all good. But there is an atmosphere in a Church school that you cannot get in a Board School.' [May we not say there ought to be, rather than there is?] ' There is the presence of the clergy and the workers in and out of the school all day ; there are a hundred little things in the way of friendliness and encouragement that touch the children not in school hours only. It is this that makes me say without fear of contradic tion that I look upon my schools as the most valuable thing in my whole parish, and that I will not rest myself, or, if I have the power, let you rest, until I have made them all that they ought to be.' Dolling valued the work with the children all the more, inasmuch as it cannot be denied that he did not get into the same direct contact or exercise the same personal influence over many of the grown-up people of S. Saviour's parish that he had done in regard to those of Maidman Street Mission, or of S. Agatha's, Landport. They seemed harder to get to know — the better ones more reserved, the worse ones more suspicious. Of course, this does not apply to all. At S. Saviour's, as elsewhere, he made devoted friends among the poor, but he was slower in establishing with his people the affectionate and mutually trustful relations that had prevailed elsewhere. He says in his ' Quarterly Letter ' for December, 1898, writing, in regard to social entertainments, of the stiff spirit of respectability of some of the better behaved people ME. HAEMSWOETH'S FEIENDSHIP 273 in the parish, a spirit in which, however, he quite recognised a good side amid so much depravity and evil : ' Here we are nothing if not respectable and decorous, and yet one quite understands the enormous safeguard that this is, and how, if a young man or a young woman is really to reach a society which will help instead of hinder, they must fashion themselves as that society demands, and I fear it would be a matter of great danger to hope for much relaxing of this much-needed respectability. So from the bottom of one's heart one blesses God for manners and customs that may appear a little stilted, but the usefulness of which is more apparent when one has grasped the need of them. ' On the other hand, I need not say how continuously I long for the kind of club I had at Maidman Street, Mile End, a perfectly rough-and-tumble place, where we boxed, played skittles, step- danced — a place in which I could say to all these dear street-corner, out-of-work people, " Come in and spend an evening whenever you like,'' the only needed passport good behaviour when inside. The higher society does, and will, affect the elite of our parish. Nothing else but this rough kind of club, one for boys and one for men, can affect the vast majority of my parish. Alas ! we are so tightly packed together that even an empty shop or shed cannot be found, even if I had the money to pay for it ; but I shall never feel that I am doing my work here till I achieve this.' In the above speaks the true Dolling, the Bohemian Celtic strain coming to the surface — ' always for the under-dogs ' — ' the dear street-corner, out-of-work people.' No wonder he found himself completely out of sympathy with the ethos, the ' elderly common-sense,' as one has called it, of the ordinary, well-to-do ratepayer. His unfailing joy was in the camps, especially the boys' camp at Broadstairs, the entire cost of which was borne, as we have already told our readers, by Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, proprietor of the Daily Mail, who had become in the later years of Dolling's life one of his closest friends. This friend ship is all the more remarkable as in former years at Portsmouth Father Dolling had opposed Mr. Harmsworth's candidature for Parliament when the latter stood for that borough. 18 274 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING We print the following recollections of Father Dolling from the pen of this the most intimate friend of his last years : 'The "Daily Mail," ' Carmelite House, E.C. ' My friendship with Mr. Dolling was not of as great a duration as that of many of his friends. I first met him in 1895. He appealed to me, primarily, by reason of his great and somewhat unequalled power of organization. He not only knew how things ought to be done, but he was able to make the most unlikely people do them. He knew how to make weak people self-reliant, how to check the zeal of the exuberant. He was able to take a man who had been a failure the greater part of his life and make him a success towards the end of it. It is not necessary to particularise, but I feel sure that all who were intimately connected with his career will agree that the human material employed in the development of his numberless schemes was of the most unlikely nature. Mr. Dolling never said, " That is an unsuccessful man ; I will avoid him." He would rather take an unsuccessful man, and see what could be made of him. Nor was it all done by kindness. ' Of the religious part of Mr. Dolling's work it is not for me to speak. The methods he adopted for controlling the many forms of human mechanism which he had at hand were just those that are adopted by any great organiser. Firstly, he inspired confidence in himself. Then he persuaded the human instrument that he, too, was worthy of confidence. Finally, he adopted the somewhat rough but effective method of throwing him into the swimming-bath, and letting him get out as best he could, if I can use such a metaphor. People did things for Father Dolling because they had to do them. I was associated with him in a very small degree in the management of a camp for poor boys at the seaside. In this matter, as in all other things he undertook, he had a really first-class man at the head, Mr. Matley. He also had the assistance of his clergy, and one or two active lay-helpers. But for the rest, the services of all kinds of persons were called in, not excluding some of his human derelicts — those odd, mysterious people with histories who were often to be found at his table at S. Agatha's or Poplar. ' An immense worker himself, he was a perpetual example to those around him to do likewise. The seaside camp was situated at a promontory of land at Broadstairs, some seventy-seven miles from London. He had also at the same time a camp for girls at Hayling Island. I have known him to get through such a day's artillery as THE BOYS' CAMP 275 this : Leave Broadstairs in the morning at seven o'clock, go to London, transact business, then down to Hayling Island and settle some knotty point in connection with the management of the children, return to London, and then back to Broadstairs, arriving by a slow train on the London and Chatham Eailway. He would, that same night, be full of life and energy at 10 p.m., and able to sit up and amuse people long after others had gone to bed. But it was that kind of thing, in my judgment — and I saw much of him in his latter days — that eventually killed him. I have known him go through such a day as that, and be down at the camp, a mile away from the house, shortly after daybreak next morning. 'Insight and foresight were two of his great attributes as an organiser. He was always ready for the unexpected. In designing a camp, he knew where it should be put, what kind of tents would stand a gale, the kind of provision that should be made for the superintendents, the system of delegation and organisation by which a certain number of the lads could rule the rest. He knew instinc tively the kind of danger that should be avoided in managing so great a number of boys. ' The test of all was that, throughout a number of years, in good weather and in bad, amidst all the various amusements of the usual games (which had to be taught to these boys, by the way), amidst the dangers of sea-bathing, and of trips to France, not one of the hundreds of lads ever experienced any mishap. He was among the very best men of business I have ever met, the dearest and most loyal of friends, a unique personality. , Alfked HARMSW0Rm, This camp at Broadstairs seemed to turn Dolling himself into a boy again, though, indeed, he always was one at heart. He delighted in seeing the youngsters learning to swim, sporting in the water ' like troutlets in a pool.' He felt pride in the smart, soldierly aspect of the lads in their khaki uniforms as they ' fell in ' to the sound of the bugle on the sands or in the fields. There was thorough enjoyment, and yet also thorough discipline, at the boys' camp, and the combination of the two rejoiced Dolling's mind, at once so buoyant and genial, and with such powers of organisation. He could always be young with the young, and his wholesome, affec tionate nature never really grew old. Avarice, suspicion, jealousy, envy, the things that age men, in the worst sense, found no entrance to his natural, kindly heart. 18—2 CHAPTEE XXII Father Dolling's work with individuals — His friends' recollections of various incidents— Specimens of his correspondence — His speech at English Church Union meeting, S. James's Hall, on 'the Lambeth opinions (October 9, 1899)— His article to the Pilot on ' The Genius of the Church of England ' (February, 1902). ' Personal influence the means of propagating the truth.' — Cardinal Newman : Parochial and Plain Sermons. ' Surely whosoever speaks to me in the right voice, Him or her I shall follow, As the water follows the moon, silently, With fluid steps anywhere round the globe.' Walt Whitman. At Poplar, as before all through his life, an immense amount of work was done by Dolling in the recovery of individuals from the effects of misfortune or of sin. Continually persons were coming to stay with him, by his invitation, in order to be set right, like those who came to David in the cave of Adullam, ' everyone that was in distress, and everyone that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented.' Still Dolling's sympathy for those who had received the hard knocks of the world, his love ' for helping lame dogs over stiles,' did not lead him to be a mere credulous believer of tales of misfortune. His great experience and his keen insight into character balanced his human kindness and that Bohemian strain in his temperament which led him to sympathise with Bohemians ; and so he kept lines consistent with reasonableness and com mon-sense in his dealings with the multitudes of ' eases ' (for their number was legion) which came before his notice. In his accessibility to individuals needing moral and spiritual help (while without necessarily pressing his own form of 1 276 ] TEEATMENT OF INDIVIDUALS 277 Christianity upon them), as well as his sympathies with all movements for the emancipation of labour, and in his cordial personal relations with Protestant Dissenters, he much re sembled the late Cardinal Manning. His was the Manning rather than the Newman order of Christian activity and influ ence. We are not alluding to the more diplomatic aspects of Manning's career. We have heard of a gentleman who, owing to some difficulties in England, was leaving for Australia, and who, though an Anglican, went to see Cardinal Manning immediately after his farewell interview with Father Dolling, and was much helped by the sympathy and judgment of both. He said that Manning asked him about his Anglican friend Dolling, of whose goodness the Cardinal had heard. His power in dealing with individuals consisted in his capacity of restoring self-respect by trust and confidepce. He made the man believe in his own God-given capacity to rise out of the slough of despond and stand upright as a man, holding Christ's hand, for he never taught mere self-reliance of the Btoic kind apart from Christian faith. He brought out any good there was left in the man by his own trust in him. He treated the convicted thief as if he were an honest man. He would ask the apparently hopeless drunkard to do little acts of kindness and usefulness for him to show that he did not abhor him. Dolling was often blamed for the severe language he used about his brother clergy, and certainly the higher his concep tion of their office, the heavier the demands which he felt that people had a right to make upon their capacities and their lives. It must, however, not be forgotten that there are many priests who owe, humanly speaking, to his loving patience, his hopeful firmness, and his tenderness of heart, the fact that they are now restored to the happy and useful exercise of their ministry, a ministry no longer stained by intoxica tion or impurity, or, it may be, dishonoured by theft. If the moral recovery of a priest is more difficult than that of a layman, there is probably no one in the English Church, as many of her own Bishops could testify, who has more fre quently and more successfully restored his clerical brethren 278 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING from despair or hardness of heart to learn to exercise their priesthood as a sphere of honest, manly penitence than has Eobert Dolling. As to his influence with individuals, we have received an immense amount of correspondence and recollections from people of all ranks and classes in society whom he has helped and strengthened, set right, or kept right in body, mind, or spirit, in the most various ways : in a multitude of cases through the exercise of ' absolution with spiritual counsel and advice ' in sacramental confession, administering this special help and discipline in accordance with the directions of the Church of England, which so plainly claims to retain and to exercise that ' power of the keys ' which Christ has committed to His Church ; often through a personal interview of a confi dential and religious nature ; often through the daily inter course and influence of friendship — that natural sacrament, as / he always regarded it — yet always with the result of cleansing, bracing, kindling the soul, if any capacity for good remained in it at all. No priest probably ever dealt with a greater variety of souls. There lie before us proofs of this in regard to some of the highest of the aristocracy of the land, and in regard to Landport butcher-boys, for instance. In all cases there was the same personal longing regard for the individual's good. He used to remark that Christ took as much trouble and care in dealing with the peasant woman of Samaria as with the rich and learned Sanhedrist, Nicodemus. But the best evidence of this will be given by quoting from a few of the mass of letters which have been received either by his sisters after his death, or by the present writer in regard to this biography. A great deal of this matter, though of extreme interest, could not be inserted without unduly enlarging the present volume. A clerk writes as follows : ' The warfare of good against evil, as evidenced in a single being's life, has had of late years no better personification than in him who is now no more. While with him and under his eye I was a sturdy Protestant, and am so still, but I can only say that a more real, trusting, heart-whole Christian man I never met. The pressure of the world is very great against an outspoken man of Mr. Dolling's FEIENDS OF ALL KINDS 279 type. I fear he felt it of late years, and wore himself out in the stress. I often think of the small dark S. Agatha's of 1892, when I attended the men's services, and where we used to sing his favourite hymn, " Thy kingdom come, 0 God." ' The same writer, who had been employed in the London postal service, writes also as to the S. Martin's League days : ' The spirit of comradeship was the one requisite, and this was at its highest at the annual League supper in the Holborn Town Hall, when enthusiasm reigned. On that night scores of postmen in uniform, and sorting-lads out of it, might have been seen at a late hour going over Blackfriars Bridge in a long string singing, en route to Borough Road house, previous to dispersal, finishing up with an earnest request from Brother Bob that no one would be late for next morning's early duty at G.P.O. or branch.' A tramway driver writes to the Commonwealth : ' We workers want men to-day like the late Father Dolling. Lord keep his memory green !' An actress whom he had known from childhood writes : ' When Father Dolling came into the pit of the Theatre Royal, Portsmouth, I was playing Sophia Freelove in " The Road to Ruin." I saw his face, surrounded by many "boys," and heard his hearty laugh loud above all others. How he enjoyed a joke, didn't he? Dear Mr. Dolling !' The following is a letter of a different kind from a well- educated young man who had wasted his chances, and whom Dolling had sheltered at St. Agatha's parsonage, with the hope of putting him straight : ' My dear Mr. Dolling, ' I don't know how to write and tell you what a cad I have been. I stole your cheque-book on Saturday, but, thank God, I have not got anything from it. I filled in three cheques in my madness, which I return to you, so that you may see that I have had nothing. I am so awfully sorry, and I am especially thankful to God that He stopped me in time from fraud. You will understand that I am really repentant, because if I had burnt the book and the cheques it 280 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING never would have been found out. Will you, can you, ever forgive me ? I have asked God to do so, and I hope and believe He has. My reason was this — I owed some money. Fancy, after you being so good a friend to me, my doing such a thing ! But I feel I must confess it like a man. Please write and tell me you forgive me. I am so sorry, but still let me call myself, ' Your affectionate friend, A clergyman's widow writes : ' My husband was in great distress, and although we were entire strangers to Father Dolling, directly he heard of it he sent instant relief. He also made a most wonderful offer to my husband, who was seriously ill at the time, and who had been ordered to go to a more genial climate. Father Dolling offered him, free of rent, a beautiful house in the Isle of Wight, and sent a cheque of £6 to cover travelling expenses. My husband only lived for six weeks, and after his death I received the enclosed letter. Mr. Dolling's sympathy and goodness saved me from despair.' The following is the letter referred to : ' My dear Mrs. ' I am very sorry about your dear husband, and yet I bless God for it. He is saved from more pain, and the end was quiet and peaceful. I am sure you will be in difficulties about money. Please accept this from me. God strengthen and bless you ! ' Yours very faithfully, 'R. R. Dolling.' The following is from an old Wykehamist, now filling an important official post in connection with one of the depart ments of State : ' The sight of Dolling and the knowledge of him were good for us all — the fact of him in fact — a man obviously a good sort, and obviously brave, unselfish, hard-working, self-denying, who was at once cheerful and humorous, and also certainly in earnest. Dolling did not teach so much as exist. One found one's self glad to be with him, and realised that one was glad because he was good.' Another Old Wykehamist writes, in reference to Dolling's intercourse with the Winchester College men : , UNCONVENTIONALLY 281 ' He did not talk to them about religion — " pi jaw " it would have been called ; he did not pose as a priest, but simply lived among them as a boy. During one of his visits to Oxford, where social intercourse took the form of breakfasts, lunches, etc. (everyone being anxious to secure him as a guest), he met a well-known Evangelical clergyman. The latter said to him, " I hope, Mr. Dolling, you are making good use of your opportunities among all these young men," meaning, of course, "you are speaking to them about religion." Dolling's reply was, " Oh ! I'm having three square meals a day." Needless to say, no irreverence or impertinence was intended. 'As an instance of his unconventionality, I may mention the following : Once while he was watching the Eton and Winchester cricket match, in the midst of the well-groomed and daintily-dressed crowd that assembles on that great occasion, he turned to "Mrs. Dick " and said, " I say, Mrs. Dick, my collar is undone at the back. Can you put it right V She, nothing abashed, being as unconven tional as himself, replied, " All right, come along," and so before the whole company she searched for and restored the erring stud to its place, Dolling all the while being quite unconscious that he and Mrs. Dick were the centre of attention from the polite crowd around.' The well-known journalist, Mr. Eaymond Blathwayt, writes of him, among the ' Pen Portraits ' of the Daily Mail : ' A sturdy Anglican priest, broad-shouldered, thick-set, with smiling, clean-shaven face, . and with all the best traditions of an English public school about him, Father Dolling was emphatically the right man in the right place. He had plenty of romance diluting an abundance of good, sound common-sense.' He was a very broad- minded man. The modern High Churchman generally is broad and liberal. Father Dolling, like Father Ignatius and Father Stanton, never hesitated to take a leaf out of the Dissenting minister's book, if he thought well to do so. A queer but attractive combination — - ultra-Catholicism with extreme Evangelicalism — and a very clever one. And therefore on account of this and other like concessions Father Dolling had an extraordinary influence everywhere, and with all sorts of people and denominations.' Eev. C. Jupp, founder and warden of the great orphanage at Aberlour, Strathspey, tells us that Dolling once said to him in regard to the work of Dissenters in slum districts : 282 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING ' Sir, thousands in the slums are perishing, both in body and soul. If these people are helping to save one or both, God forbid that you or I should put a stumbling-block in their way!' An officer who was an old friend of Dolling's writes : ' On one afternoon when I called on him at S. Agatha's, he said, " I wish you would take out Piggy for a walk." ' [Piggy was one of the then residents of the parsonage.] 'So Piggy and I took not one walk, but many, varied by tea at my own house. After Piggy had been emigrated to the uttermost parts of the earth, Dolling told me, in a most matter-of-fact way, "I thought it better for Piggy to go about with you, as he was just out of prison, and he might have got loafing about with anybody and have got into mischief." Once, when I was residing at the opposite side of the Harbour, I had to telegraph to him to say that my little son, an infant, was not likely to survive the night. Presently the dear man appeared at the front door, his head enveloped in a shawl, and his hat in his hand. It appeared that he was ill in bed when my telegram arrived, and, although suffering from an abscess in the jaw, he had got up and crossed Portsmouth Harbour in an open boat in order to baptise the little one.' A Rector in Suffolk tells us the following : 'Early in August, 1891, we met him at a hotel in Rotterdam. I was to be known as a priest by my dress, but the reverend Father's costume was neither distingue" nor distinctive. He was going for a tour down the Rhine, the expenses of which were to be paid by the kindness of Winchester College people, who insisted that he must go. Father Dolling spent a long morning with my wife and myself at Utrecht. Great was his horror in entering the cathedral, which belongs to the Dutch Protestants — a horror which found vent in copious quotations from the Psalms of David, particularly 74th and 79th. He seemed to have absolutely no knowledge of the nature of the Dutch religion, and when he saw the splendid Gothic interior whitewashed and all the seating apparatus facing sideways to the sanctuary towards a big ugly pulpit, and — horrendum dictu — the place of the altar itself occupied by a large marble tomb on which lay the recumbent effigy of a fat, ill-clad Dutch admiral, his indignation and surprise knew no bounds. Later on we visited the Jansenist churches. The Jansenists seem to lack enterprise and even HELPING PEOPLE TO GET STRAIGHT 283 knowledge of their position as distinct from Rome. Towards the evening Father Dolling decided he must leave the dreariness of Utrecht for the sunny Rhine, to which his dear boys would have him go.' One who is now in Deacon's Orders writes thus : ' When I first met Father Dolling I was left alone with shattered ideals; I loathed everything and everybody, especially religion. I had well-nigh made shipwreck of my faith, and life seemed a chaos. "You had better stay with us a few months," he said, " till you get straight." I worked with him for a longer time. I became reju venated — a new man.' A lady writes : ' His influence reached to all sorts of people living practically alone in the great town of Portsmouth. How lonely the life of a high-school mistress can be only those who have tried it know. He made S. Agatha's to me, what it was to so many others, a home.' Another lady writes : ' The last time I saw Father Dolling I met him in London on an omnibus. As usual he had with him some of his "lambs." He said to one, " Sonny, get up and make room for this lady." This "son" I should not like to have met in a country lane alone. I noticed then how stout he was growing, but he had the same jovial voice and a face beaming with love for the outcast and rejected.' We quote the following from some interesting recollections sent to us of visits to Father Dolling at S. Agatha's paid by an Irish Church Rector from the South of Ireland : ' Has it occurred to you that Dolling had in his character a blend of the self-willedness and determination of the Saxon and all the love and sympathy and impulsiveness of the Celt ? It was the union of these characteristics which made him what he was. You will remember, too, that the scene of Columba's labours in Derry and Donegal was the scene of Dolling's youth. He seems to have inherited in no small degree a share of Columba's sympathy and love. ... I cannot forget seeing Father Dolling administering 284 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Holy Communion at 5 o'clock a.m. to a number of bluejackets who had got permission to be off their ship. ... He was a great Christian Socialist, a reformer of abuses of every kind, but the principle of the Incarnation formed the working principle of his life. He gave his life to the people, lived among them, worked among them, died among them. He was barely tolerated, in the main, by the Church authorities — at least, up to his Poplar period. No doubt a better and juster appreciation of the man was setting in before his death, and I am of opinion that this will go on advancing. The scant sympathy shown to Dolling is a blot on the history of the English Church of our time. The Episcopal policy of accentuating the " not otherwise " of the Act of Uniformity, as proved by the result, must ever be a ruinous policy to the best interests of the Church. The Church has, through the instrumentality of "not otherwise," suffered the loss of thousands of her children, men and women, who might have continued hers, but who are now often her bitterest enemies. There should be for such men as Wesley and as Dolling exceptional freedom of action, much less rigidity of rubrics. Dolling was an extraordinary and exceptional man, exceptionally fitted to effect what the clergy of the "not otherwise" school had miserably failed to effect, and therefore he should have had exceptional freedom of action. In the district of Landport, in which Dolling's mission was situated, there were, I think, 16,000 souls; and although I dare say the "not otherwise " system of the Church of England had been faithfully carried out there, yet what was the result1! Thousands of these people were practically heathens, leading material, animal lives, morally and socially sunk in degradation. These people never entered a church. The " not otherwise " services never touched them. Dolling felt, was this to go on for ever f This Rector goes on to say that, while at S. Agatha's, he gave some help in pastoral visitation, and he writes : ' I remember a poor dying woman in Moore Square ' [the worst slum in the district, consisting of hovels built round a slaughter- yard]. ' What had taken a powerful hold on this poor woman's heart was the sacramental teaching of the Church. She told me that the words of Christ, " This cup is My Blood," were ever present to her mind during her illness, so great was her faith in the reality of the Blessed Sacrament, and in this faith she died. I remember adminis tering the Eucharist to a young married man, who told me that he owed his conversion to Father Dolling. He died of consumption, IRISH FRIENDS 285 and I perceived in his case also how powerfully Dolling's sacra mental teaching affected and supported him. The people's love for Dolling was extraordinary. The children delighted in S. Agatha's, and the Eucharist which they attended on Sundays was so sung that a skilled musician, a very dear friend of mine and of Father Dolling's, the late Arthur Patton, a distinguished graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, has told me that he was so attracted by the musical beauty of the service that he came the whole way from Durham to Portsmouth before leaving England to hear it.' Arthur Patton, mentioned above, was an Irish friend of Dolling's, one of the few Trinity College, Dublin, men whom the latter knew intimately, and one of the very few laymen in Ireland who understood and sympathised with the main aims and principles of the Catholic Movement in the Anglican Church. He was no mere Ritualist, but a well-read theologian in addition to his other gifts, some of them of a brilliant character; and his delightful humour, kindliness, and generosity of heart made him one whose memory will never be effaced from the minds of those who knew him as his friends. Dolling had for him the most cordial affection, although in regard to Irish politics they had little in common, Arthur Patton doing considerable work for the Unionists, and Dolling being a supporter — at least, at that time — of the Irish Home Rule Party. The following estimate of Dolling's attitude towards the policy of the * safe ' and Establishment- loving section of the English Church is supplied to us by a very old friend of his, who is a priest of much experience, not only in educational, but in parochial work, having been for several years one of the staff of All Hallows', East India Docks, London — the Rev. A. H. Kennedy, now Diocesan Inspector of Schools for the Wakefield Diocese. It exactly describes Dolling's view of the situation, aB distinct from that of those who correspond to Cardinal Newman's sober and well-meaning persons, ' who steer the ship of the Church through the channel of No-meaning, between the Scylla of Ay and the Charybdis of No.' Mr. Kennedy writes : ' In regard to all the great questions of life, there was in Dolling the same endeavour to look at things as they are. He refused 286 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING to allow himself to be blinded by polite and conventional phrases, or to take things for granted because it was pleasant to believe them. He measured the work, for instance, which he had to face in Land- port or Poplar, not on the assumption that he was a priest of the Church of England, ministering in a Christian country, but accord ing to the facts of the case. He knew well that the Church of England is the Church of only a small minority of the English people, and that we have not to keep, but to win, the great town populations. But there was something greater, more divine, even than any agreement of the intelligence with his ideas that made so many to be his friends. It was the moral attraction. This the character of Dolling enforced on our attention. Everybody felt and saw the width of his love, the breadth of his sympathy, with all sorts and conditions and ages of men and women.' The following, which we regard as singularly true in its insight, is from one who, when a naval officer, first knew Dolling at Portsmouth. The writer, as he tells us, is now a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and the reasons he assigns as keeping Dolling from the same Communion seem to us just the true ones in his case, and we can state this as the result of several conversations with the latter on the Roman question : ' What principally constituted to me the charm of the mission at Landport was that there the ideal and the real, aspiration and action, seemed to be less disconnected than usual. What one would usually call " views " were there raised to the dignity of convictions — i.e., they found an issue in action, instead of, as is ordinary, beginning and ending in a futile exaltation of sentiment. Opinions on matters social or religious were not there like uneasy, disem bodied spirits, nor was the " common round " a lifeless corpse. The former animated and informed the latter ; the latter gave body and reality to the former. In matters strictly religious I knew him even less than in other matters, but if I may single out a point, it shall be that in spite of the eager desire which his great power of sympathy produced in him to be in tune with the spirit of the age (so that I do not think he could have remained altogether separate from any opinion enthusiastically held by large numbers of people — such an opinion as Imperialism for instance), his faith was quite "unsicklied o'er by the pale cast of thought'' in such a matter as the efficacy of prayer. He took prayer for all sorts of temporal ATTITUDE TOWARDS ROME 287 gifts very much au sdrieux. I remember being much put out because lie prayed for, and got, a sum of money wanted for some special object in connection with the new church. As regards his attitude to the religion of my adoption (the Roman Catholic), what I have said above applies — it was not in him to be otherwise than sympa thetic towards so widely held a belief ; but, no doubt, much in the Church ran directly counter to his strongest instincts. The un questioning obedience, which we think the first of all the virtues (as in a way containing them all), did not, I think, make any appeal to him. Certainly he would not have imitated a man as keenly sympa thetic as himself with the outcast, S. Peter Claver, S.J., who ceased his good works promptly when ordered by his superiors to do so. Another reason of alienation from us was that he recognised the gulf which separates the main body of the English nation from Popery. A third arose from his confident belief in his own priest hood. In conclusion, I may say that although his views and actions in matters economic and religious were often of a kind to give scandal to a mere theorist, yet he remains to me the nearest approach to a great man with whom I have ever come into personal contact.' In regard to the allusions to the attitude of Dolling towards the Roman Church in the above letter, we may quote here what we have been told of an interview which a layman friend of his, a University graduate, now taking a leading part in University Extension lecturing work, had with him imme diately after the ultimatum arrived from the Bishop of Winchester, which led to his resignation of S. Agatha's : ' I went straight to Mr. Dolling's house, and found him sitting in an armchair reading a novel. He was in his gray frieze coat, which always suggested to me the word "sportsmanlike." There was no trace in him of commotion or irritation. I asked him what it all meant. "It means," he said, "that they want me to join the Church of Rome, and I'm not going to do it." This alluded, no doubt, to some of his accusers, and to certain false analogies drawn between him and the well-known Father Maturin, who had preached in S. Agatha's a singularly able sermon on S. Paul just before he joined the Church of Rome. But, as a matter of fact, Mr. Dolling was much more undenominational than he was Roman, and between him and the Church of Rome there was an impassable gap of what may be called English instinct.' 288 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING The following letter is from one of a class — medical men — with many of whom Father Dolling had constant relations as friends and as co-operators in work for the relief of suffering humanity. It was written to Miss Dolling after her brother's death : 'Madam, ' As a Roman Catholic doctor, whose life has been spent amongst the poor of the East End of London, may I be permitted in this hour of your bereavement to offer you the sympathy of a heart which is also bleeding for its own loss. We of the East End well know what our poor have lost in the death of, your saintly brother, and we of the Roman Church can perhaps best appreciate the value of noble priests like Father Dolling. If the Church of England is to hold its position amongst the masses of the people, it is only by such men as Father Dolling, Stanton (my own dear friend), and Adderley, that it can be done. You will forgive the offer of my poor sympathy. Its only value is that as a Roman Catholic I know what a devoted celibate priest can do for his flock. My firm belief is that Christianity in England can only be saved by the influence of men like your brother. May Christ, the Consoler, the Comforter, and the God of all consolation, be with you in this hour of sorrow. ' Yours faithfully, 'X. Mrs. Cashel Hoey, the well-known writer, who much valued Father Dolling's friendship, wrote as follows on hearing of his death : ' This sad world is incalculably the poorer for the loss of him. How absurdly insignificant the so-called great people and great aims and deeds of this world look when we place them side by side with such a man and such a life !' A gentleman who constantly went to hear Father Dolling preach writes of the peculiar union in his preaching of strong rugged sincerity with an exquisite power of management of the voice in such a way as to express sympathy and pathos. These characteristics are not often found combined in one preacher — i.e., unconventional reality and perfect voice modu lation. A gentleman filling an important position as an ' GO STRAIGHT AND PLAY THE GAME ' 289 owner of property in one of our English counties writes of Father Dolling : ' My heart is still full of grief at his loss, and it will never be otherwise with me. I have lost my best and dearest friend and adviser.' One of Dolling's strongest supporters, Mrs. Barrow-Simonds, of Abbott's Barton, Winchester, has, since his death, also passed away to the activities of the world beyond. Although her main interests lay with the Church of S. Mary Magdalene, Munster Square, she had ever been a constant helper of S. Agatha's since its foundation, and she combined strength of character and mental power with a deep devotion to the Catholic Faith. One whose work among the masses is not dissimilar in its thoroughness and evangelical character to that carried on by Dolling — i.e., the Rev. J. Burn, Vicar of All Saints', Middlesborough, wrote of him after he had paid a welcome visit to All Saints' : ' I think I admired and loved him more than any priest I have ever seen.' The Rev. Dr. Belcher, Eector of Frampton Cotterell, who has been mentioned before, tells us that he can never forget the ' Eetreat ' which he took for soldiers and sailors at S. Agatha's, which had been arranged and prepared for by Dolling. The fact that such a thing, an event well-nigh unique, was possible shows the wisdom of Dolling's methods with such men (and they were not the strictly ' pious ' class). He once said to the Eev. E. Armitage, now chaplain at Woolwich, that he never tried to force religion on his soldier friends, but encouraged them simply to ' go straight and play the game.' In time, however, his influence generally went deeper, and Mr. Armitage tells us that 'when he preached to the men he held them spellbound. As a preacher to soldiers he was splendid. In the barracks they followed him about in crowds.' But this striking side of his work — i.e., among soldiers — we have already described at length in a previous chapter. Dr. Belcher also tells us that on one occasion at S. Agatha's Dolling introduced him to two of the women communicants, a mother and daughter. Both were 19 290 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING then earnest Christian women and workers for the Church, but before their conversion the mother was the keeper of one of the most notorious houses of shame in Portsmouth, and her •.daughter was living an evil life. This case, which the present writer also knew of, was one of the most wonderful moral miracles of which Dolling was the instrument, but there were many similar ones. We may be allowed to insert here a few words from an account sent to us of Dolling's influence with the rough youths of Landport by a lady (then Miss Nance, now Mrs. Cator), who managed a club for those fellows, under his sanction, when he was at S. Agatha's. ' Mr. Dolling and S. Agatha's Mission was the only kind of religion that ever appealed to them, and I feel sure I could never have persuaded them to go and talk about their lives to anyone else. They said, " Oh, he's different ; we don't mind him." I could tell of miracles of healing under Mr. Dolling's touch. One young soldier said to me, "He laid his hand on my head, and, I don't know why, I told him all I had ever done." ' They always thought, when they went to church and anything was said that fitted them, that Mr. Dolling was meaning them. When once he said, in an address, " Are you a thief 1 Do you give as much of your wages as you should to your mother V they had an idea that he knew all about them. I remember one very bad fellow whom I persuaded to come to the mission service. Mr. Dolling, seeing him, prayed for him, and he has led since an abso lutely reformed life. ' It was rather pathetic at the time Mr. Dolling was resigning. These rough youths came to me and said, " We hear it's about that little altar. Of course, he doesn't like to pull it down ; but we don't mind doing it for him, and then he need not go." ' The following is part of a letter sent from Ontario by one of the 'rough boys,' who was emigrated, but had first * taken religion,' and been instructed and confirmed : 'You talk about hot. Hot is no name for it, for when I am milking the cows the sweat runs faster than the milk ; but it is a lovely place where I am, for on one side is a mountain, and on the other is the lake where I often go to bathe or catch fish. I went to PEEACHES OFTEN AT SOUTH MIMMS 291 Communion on the first Sunday in the month, but I shall only take it every other month, as they don't have it in the proper way. They have Communion here after morning service, and they don't believe in going without their breakfast. The people here say I am High Church, but I don't know whether I am or not. ' Dear , the pipe that you gave me I found out was olive- wood, which came from Palestine ; but when I got here I lost the stem, so, as the people here object to smoking, I have given it up, and drinking, too, for they say it is more for my benefit than their own.' One who constantly attended South Mimms Church, Middlesex, when Dolling preached there, as he often did for his work both at Landport and Poplar, tells us that persons who seldom entered the church crowded there from all parts around, even on weekdays, and that the painters working at a neighbouring house asked if they could leave off in order to hear Father Dolling, and that they all went to hear him. We may insert here two letters to Dolling, showing the variety in type of his friends. First, from a soldier who wished to get into civil life in order to marry, and from the girl he was engaged to : 'Dear Sir, ' I am writing to thank you for purchasing my discharge. I will pay you back most truly as soon as I get my money. That will not be for another twelve months. ' Hoping you are quite well, from ' George and Bessie.' Second, from a young farmer — a line of remembrance : 'Dear Me. Dolling, 'We are having very mild weather here now. I hope it will continue, so that the March winds won't cut off the young crops. . . . ' Accept love and best wishes from ' Yours truly, 'Jim.' The following letter was sent to the secretary of the Dolling Memorial Fund soon after the first Memoir of Father Dolling appeared : 19—2 292 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING 'Dear Sir, ' I have been deeply moved by reading Mr. Clayton's " Memoir of Father Dolling," the story of whose life and work was new to me. ' I had, of course, heard of his great work at Portsmouth, but had no idea that he was one who had such an intense love for his fellow- men, utterly putting to shame, as it does, our own shortcomings in the service of the same Master. Indeed, I must confess that a deep hostility to Ritualism prejudiced me against his very name until reading the book. I have now learnt to love the man, and to long to have more of his Christ-like love to the lost and the down trodden. . . . ' Yours very truly, 'X, ' Late missionary in Central India.' Of letters written by Father Dolling himself we have seen but few which could be reproduced. Letters about him abound. Letters of his own are brief, nor have we been able to procure many of them. His ministry was not of the nature of an apostolat 'epistolaire. He wrote, generally, tiny scraps, in a hand very difficult to decipher. Of all the materials for his biography his correspondence is the least significant or fruitful. This is remarkable in the case of one who had such a multitude of friends, besides a great number of penitents who had profited by his ministry in confession, and spiritual children of all descriptions. Many of his friends also were scattered all over the world. Still, even to them he seldom wrote more than a few lines at a time. We reproduce, however, a few of his letters. The following relates to circum stances as to which we have no knowledge. It is character istic in its brevity and its reality of tone : 'My dear , ' I am so sorry. Give him my love, and tell him that there is only God, who always forgives and always loves. ' Ever yours, 'R. R. Dolling.' From Scotland to that great friend of his, the Rev. John Trant Bramston, one of the Winchester College masters : ' GOD-SPEED AND GOD'S STRENGTH ' 293 ' July 25, 1896. 'Dearest Trant, ' For the first time after two years I miss your house supper. It is a real sorrow to me, and if it were possible, I should be with you. I wish I could tell you what a help and strength your house has always been to me, and how thankful I am to you for enabling me to know some of my truest and best friends. You and dearest Mrs. Trant will know how in spirit I am with you, and heartily to those who are leaving I say " God-speed," and to those who remain I say " God's strength." ' Yours affectionately, ' R. R. Dolling.' To a clergyman about his mother's death, and about the secession to Rome of one known to both Dolling and his correspondent : 'Dearest , ' I have just seen about your dear mother's death. You and your missus will miss that daily visit very much. May God grant us all the like end ! One day's illness, senses and memory clear, the Blessed Sacrament from hands that we love. 'X. wrote to me about himself months ago. Our Church has done nothing for him, and he has naturally a deeply religious mind. His father seems to have acted very kindly. He will indeed be a loss to the English Church. ' Yours affectionately, ' R. R. Dolling.' To a young working-man contending against some special temptation : 'My dear , ' I do not forget to pray that God may give you grace with your besetting sin. I am so glad you have got work. ' God bless you and your wife always ! 'R. R. Dolling.' Extract from a letter to a young Oxford man disposed to Neo-Pagan ideas : 1 The worship of beauty for itself degenerates into sin. It was the curse of the Renaissance. The worship of strength has its climax in Baal, the worship of beauty in Ashtaroth. Beauty is 294 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING God's great refinement of the world, but it must be used in God's spirit. All love except that learnt in the heart of God is selfish or sensual.' Letter to Mrs. , a very old friend : 'S. Agatha's, Landport, ' April 26, 1886. 'My dearest Friend, ' I am so glad to get your letter, but sorry for what you say of yourself. I think you have been doing too much, and you ought to make a resolution to leave off work when you really feel tired, and certainly not to begin work when you are tired. Of course iron [the medicine] is good. I have swum in it. ' I am glad you like Mrs. . ... Of course, in that respect, she is silly, but she has a great heart. ' Why won't you come to stay a little at Portsmouth ? X. and his missus [two mutual friends] are splendid. ' God bless and keep you ! ' Yours always, ' R. R. Dolling.' Many of Dolling's letters end with, ' Come and see me,' or some similar invitation. He seldom attempts to deal with the difficulty at length by correspondence where an inter view was possible. A thought sent to one in doubt is : ' Why should you expect your faith to be made any easier for you than your morals ?' Another frequent saying of his on this subject is : ' Faith is to my soul as my eyes are to my body. Faith is God's gift just as eyesight is, and I can injure it as I can my eyesight.' From a letter to a gentleman whose little child was in a dangerous illness : ' The most pathetic thing in the world — a little child in pain.' Letter to a gentleman on the death of his wife : ' My dear Friend, 'I hardly dare to write. It seems no one can enter into a sorrow so deep. But death only joins those we love closer and nearer to us because they are now nearer to God. The true union LEO XIII. AND ANGLICAN ORDERS 295 is of spirit, and the material having passed away, that barrier is now removed, and when we are also delivered from the burden of this flesh we shall not only see God, but also see each other as we are. I do pray this for you both, and I know that the little son, her son, will be a great motive for the highest consecration of life. God help and bless you always ! ' Yours always, ' R. R. Dolling.' To one troubled as to the Anglican Church : ' I must write you a line. It is all possible in the English Church. This is just the moment, and God has granted us the grace of witness.' To a person disappointed by Pope Leo XIII. 's condemnation of Anglican Orders : ' I think anyone who knew must have known how the Pope must decide. If he had said otherwise, he must have convicted his pre decessors for the last three hundred years of the grossest acts of sacrilege in re-ordaining unconditionally English priests. The acts of the Holy See have been the best exponent of the teaching of the Holy See. So I always expected this. The reasons given, however, in his judgment (and why he gave them I cannot for a moment think) are not good. ' If the Sacrament of Orders were tied to one form of words, as Baptism and the Blessed Sacrament are, then of course there could be no question ; but they never have been. ' East and West use different forms of words in ordaining, and it is just the question on which Pope Eugenius, I think, made an historical error long ago by saying that the Sacrament of Orders depends on the " Giving of the Vessels," and this Pope was histori cally wrong in this. No doubt at the Reformation individual Bishops had not the intention of conferring what we know to be Orders when they laid on hands, but if that invalidated ordination, whose ordination would be insured ? But if the English Church had wished to get rid of Episcopacy and the Priesthood there was a very easy way to do so — i.e., to do as the Continental Reformers did — i.e., give up the names and give up the distinctive offices conferred in ordination. . . . ' The question of Jurisdiction is, of course, quite different to that of Orders.' 296 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING He goes on to say that if the Episcopate is such by virtue of its union with the Pope, then, of course, Anglicans are in the wrong, but ' if the Episcopate exists by virtue of its continuous succession from the whole college of Apostles, then the question is decided on the English side.' The above is the most distinctively theological letter of his we have seen, and almost the only one of that kind which is of any length. To a friend in great trouble : ' I do pray for you every blessing. Never think that I feel any one a burden. In the midst of troubles to have to force one's self to enter into another's troubles is ever a great gain. You can under stand how self-centred we are.' An answer to one who had been forbidden by a medical adviser to communicate fasting on Easter Day, owing to bad health : ' If you cannot communicate fasting without being unwell, then break your fast ; but if you can do so without being ill, then it is better, for the sake of preserving a universal custom of the Church, to receive fasting.' To his cousin, the late Rev. R. Dolling, Rector of Hinton S. George, Crewkerne, on the death of his son, a young clergyman, who had gone to work at Qu'Appelle, in British North America : ' My dear, dear Radclyffe, ' I cannot say that I am sorry, for it seems as if it was just God's very best way of dealing with the dear lad. It was so great a blessing to you his having actually given himself to God in his year in Canada, and God using that gift made to Him in the way of leading the lad more quickly home than in His mercy He sees fit to lead us. It will all make a sad Easter, but that brighter treasure of love, that having, as it were, a special interest in Paradise, how good it is ! Do come to us whenever you can ; you are both more than welcome. ' Yours affectionately, 'R. R. Dolling.' THE USES OF PAIN 297 The following extracts are from letters written to a lady whose brother had died in Central Africa, and who was not likely to be helped by the more obvious kinds of consolation : ' As humanity is now, it must be perfected by suffering. Some of us believe this is true of the individual himself, and that this being perfected is visible, and can be measured year by year ; some of us go further, and say that what we see in germ here is fulfilled hereafter. Every pain and discipline of the Now, when seen in the perfect knowledge of the After, has its recognised use in the result. ' But if we do not believe this of the individual, we can, and must, of the human family. It moves towards perfection, and this move ment is marked by pain, suffering, self-sacrifice, and the highest, death. The heroes of the future perfection are those who suffer for it. He laid down His life. What exact proportion each act of self- sacrifice has to the whole we cannot measure. What the civilization of Africa means to the world's perfection future history will relate. But the smallest wheel or chain in the great machine is as necessary as the greatest. . . . Where does God come in 1 The whole of the Body of Humanity — our body — moves towards its perfection, a ten dency towards righteousness. It is made up of every nation, kindred, and tongue quite foreign to each other, each group quite distinct from the fellow groups, different capacities, different opportunities and aims, and yet all move towards one point, all meet in the ocean that ends all — ends all, that is, as far as conflict is concerned. What is the Centre of attraction, that irresistible Force which draws men against their own instincts, against self, to the higher ideal, an ideal — at any rate at present — outside the Now 1 We call it God. The name does not matter much. We mean the same thing. Some think that the individual man is lost in that perfect Whole. We believe he remains, his own individuality still abiding. My instinct teaches me that as well as other things teach it to me.' The following letters were written by Dolling from S. Saviour's to one of the Bishops, not his own diocesan, at the recent time when efforts were made to revive the authority of the Act of Uniformity in order to curb the Ritualists : ' My dear Lord Bishop, ' Member 4, 1899. ' A most excellent cook, whom I have known for a number of years, came to me yesterday. She told me a story that I cannot possibly believe, but I venture to send it to you. There is one 298 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Celebration a month in her parish church, and that after morning service. In the winter there is no service after 3.30 on Sundays. There are no week-day services whatever. Even on S. 's Day (the Patron) the church was closed. I know you are " taking order " about those who are disobedient to the Archbishop's idea, or your own idea, of the Act of Uniformity, for many of the priests and people of your diocese have revealed to me a very distressed state of mind. Might I venture to crave for my poor cook, who attends S. 's, the possibility of obeying the Apostolic injunction 1 She thinks her church is in your diocese. If it is not, I should be glad to communicate with the prelate within whose jurisdiction it is. ' Yours very faithfully, ' E. R. Dolling.' Also a second letter in reference to the same : 1 November 8, 1899. ' My dear Lord Bishop, 'I do not mean to be ironical. I thought the contrast so extraordinary. I know and ' [naming two ' Ritualistic ' churches within the Bishop's diocese], ' priests and people. I know what your conscientious action has cost them. This girl came to me. Surely her parish priest is far more to be blamed than the clergy of those other churches? He breaks the Uniformity Act every day, and sometimes more than once a day ; these others only on Sunday once. Here, surely, is a case in point — a case to prove whether things are forbidden all round, or only to certain clergy. If so, why 1 This is a question asked me every day by souls in great distress, who feel that the episcopal action is almost more than they can bear. One attempt to deal with the same justice would be surely a great encouragement to believe that the government was not one-sided. I wonder sometimes how far we realize each other's difficulties — we yours, you ours. If we misjudge, forgive us, and may God forgive us too. But it is full of difficulties. Perhaps some of us have too many people's burdens to bear, so that we lose our sense of proportion. . . .' The rest of the letter is on a more private matter. In a letter of reply from the Bishop in question the latter says that the parish alluded to is ' a relic of the past. Your letter will give me an opportunity. I think it may be claimed for the Bishops, or some of them, that UNSOUND ON THE ESTABLISHMENT 299 they have tried to see things from your point of view, and to show consideration for it — at least, as much as you have for ours.1 In regard to above correspondence, whatever the differences between Father Dolling and the Bishops generally, they did not consist in his advocating Mariolatry or such devotional practices as the Worship of the Sacred Heart, for he regarded most of the persons (after all but few) who are eager to intro duce modern Roman cults into the Church of England as of a decadent type. His vital difference with the ecclesiastical authorities was in the conceptions held respectively by them and him as to the importance of the Establishment to the Church's spiritual mission and character. To most of the Bishops the Establishment is, in the philosophic language of the late Bishop Westcott, the ' spiritual organ of the nation.' It sometimes appears as if they regard it as even the articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesice. Dolling, on the other hand, could have taken John Wesley's words as his own : ' Let the Establishment stand or fall as God wills, but let us build the city of God.' Indeed, he would have gone farther, for the Establishment was to his mind one root cause of the ' sober worldliness,' as Dean Church styled it, which has ever been the evil genius of Anglicanism, and the explanation of the almost entire absence of ' the common people ' from the parish churches of England. Nor did Dolling believe much in reforms merely initiated to stave off Disestablishment, or talked of periodically, and then relegated to committees. ' The Church Reform League,' he wrote in the Pilot, ' has been bishoped out of existence.' He was, in the main, frankly anti-Establishment, and a ' Free Churchman ' in principle. His hatred of Erastianism and his democratic sympathies — in fact, both the theological and political sides of his mind — concurred in this. This, and not copes or chasubles or incense, was in our opinion the underlying root difference between Father Dolling and the Bishops. In a word, he was ' unsound ' on the Establishment. It was not, however, only in cor respondence that he took the opposition side at this time. He plunged in medias res by criticising the entire policy 300 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING expressed by 'the 'Lambeth Opinions' in a vigorous speech which he made at the crowded English Church Union demon stration in the S. JameB's Hall on October 9, 1899, a speech which was afterwards published and obtained a wide circula tion. We quote a part of it in regard to the attempt to make the Tudor Acts of Uniformity the absolute living rule as to the details of worship in the modern Church of England, or, rather, to do thiB as against one section of the Church, while the natural meaning of the Ornaments Rubric is openly dis regarded by the Broad and Low Church parties, and all except ' the Ritualists ' are allowed to act as they please. Dolling did not give exaggerated value to ceremonial details as such, but he thoroughly agreed, though from a totally different point of view, with Mr. A. Birrell (the author of ' Obiter Dicta '), that ' it is the Mass that matters,' and with the statement of one of a different theological position to that of Mr. Birrell, the late W. E. Gladstone, that ' the greatest object qf all is the re-establishment of the Eucharist in its proper and Scriptural place as the central act qf at least our weekly worship.' It was one of the main aims of Dolling's life and ministry to advance this object which Mr. Gladstone so accentuates in the above passage reproduced among Mr. G. W. Russell's recollections of that great statesman's theo logical and religious convictions. Father Dolling believed that the bringing of the service which the first Prayer-Book recognised as ' The Holy Communion, commonly called the Mass,' out of the secondary and occasional position into which it has fallen in the Church, of England, and the making it once more the crown and climax of each Lord's day, is the chief liturgical reform necessary in the Anglican Communion. He therefore deplored the episcopal attempt to suppress the use of incense, because it seemed to him to be a concession to the efforts made to check the restoration of eucharistic worship, with its historic and appropriate ritual, in the Church of England. ' I must say my experience of to-night teaches me that if there is going to be any war on the clergy, the person who tries to make war won't get much of a chance. It seems to me that the Act THE SACRAMENTS LOST TO ENGLAND 301 of Parliament which is supposed to have been put in motion by the Archbishop of Canterbury is of so drastic a character that nobody need be in the least afraid as to what he will be doing in a year or two, for he will certainly be in gaol according to that statute. I got a clever mathematician to make up some statistics about it, and he informs me that every clergyman has had hanging over his head since perhaps three days after he was ordained the possibility of going to gaol for life. This is the penalty for three offences of anybody who adds any word to, or leaves any word out of, the Book of Common Prayer, or who adds any ceremony whatever, whether he be a Bishop or only a common clergyman. Therefore there will be no Archbishop to try anything, and there will be nobody to bring any question before them to be answered ; for anybody who abets the clergyman in doing this— that is, all the acolytes and the choir, and, I suppose, even the kind ladies who are present who have anything to do with the ornaments of the altar or working the vestments, because they thereby abet, they also will have to go to gaol for life. Then anyone who interrupts the clergy man is liable to severe penalties. And last of all, every layman and, I suppose, every laywoman, though they are not mentioned, who does not go to church every Sunday and every Saint's Day, and listen to all the morning prayer and the sermon, will be fined tenpence and be excommunicated, and not paying the fine, will also go to gaol ; so that at the end of three years the whole Church of England will be in gaol, and will have practically committed suicide. ' I know, however, that the purpose for which I was asked to speak here to-night is not this question about which I have been speaking ; others understand that better than I. But I understand one thing, and will say, without fear of contradiction, that whatever has been the message of the Church of England, up to fifty years ago it was a message without Sacraments; the Sacraments were practically lost to England. They may have been enshrined in the Book of Common Prayer, but they were lost as far as the majority of men and women in England were concerned ; and this is evident whether you go down to East End parishes like my own, or whether you go to country villages, like one at which I was recently preach ing. I will give you a test : Go and ask some chaplain at Aldershot how many of the lads, whether officers, who come from every public school in England, or privates coming from every city or from every little village place, how many of them on Easter Sunday last received the Holy Communion'? How many of those dear lads, 302 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING who are starting out to die if necessary for England, are going out in the strength of the Sacraments 1 The awful question to be driven home is that, as far as England is concerned, the Sacraments are lost ; and I challenge any clergyman, or any layman, or any Bishop, in the whole of England, to say that he can in any sense be satisfied with the methods by which the Sacraments are received in England to-day. ' And if I were asked, Could you point out a parish where more people are brought to the Sacraments than in any other place 1 it is ten to one it would be one of the very parishes that this present message of the Archbishops is directed against. It was not until at Holborn and down in the London Docks, and then in a hundred other churches, men had been brave enough to face the rebukes of their Bishops, that the Sacraments were again popularised by the old Catholic method. Therefore what you and I should demand, at whatever cost and at whatever hazard, is that which belongs to every branch of the Church — namely, power to bring home the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the present times and the present needs ; because, as He Himself is for all time and over all persons, so the application of His Gospel and His Sacraments cannot be bound by the methods of 300 or 350 years ago.' A pressing Church question of a practical nature with which Dolling often dealt during the last few years of his life was that of the failure in the supply of candidates for the ministry, and the incapacity of many who were accepted and ordained to do any evangelistic work. Purely speculative questions of abstract theology interested him but little. He could cordially have re-echoed the great saying of S. Ambrose prefixed by Cardinal Newman to his ' Grammar of Assent ' : ' Non in dialectics, complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum ' (Not by logic did it please God to save His people). As to the ' New Criticism,' Dolling's position was liberal, though also orthodox, and he would probably have seen nothing in the ' Hastings' Bible Dictionary ' to disturb or frighten him. ' It does not matter,' he would sometimes say, ' whether there be one Isaiah or two, or forty, provided the book so called contains a message from God.' But most cer tainly these were not the problems amid which he found his special mdtier. The causes of the failure of the Church of A CLASS CHURCH 303 England to develop vocations for the ministry in all classes, and the remedies for this, were essentially questions, on the other hand, after Dolling's own heart, and in dealing with which he was thoroughly at home. We may quote here the following words spoken at S. Stephen's, Walbrook, in one of the Christian Social Union sermons for Lent, 1903, delivered there by the secretary of the Union, the Rev. Percy Dearmer, on March 12, as they exactly express Dolling's message, continually insisted on, on this point : 1 THE CHURCH'S NEED— A NATIONAL MINISTRY. ' The Church of England to-day is a " class " Church, and not national, as it was intended to be. Prior to the Reformation the clergy were drawn from all classes, and a peasant had as good an opportunity as anyone of rising to be a Bishop. To-day it is not so, and money plays too great a part in reference to candidates for Holy Orders. The "call of God" seemed a minor consideration. But in spite of man's disapproval, God was calling poor men to-day to serve Him in the Church, and the way would assuredly be opened for them.' We may refer also to the excellent book, ' England and the Church,' by Father Kelly, founder of the Society of the Sacred Mission, Mildenhall, who has himself been instrumental in starting an important training-place there where candidates for the ministry abroad and at home are prepared amid simple and disciplined surroundings. The college which is in its infancy at Mirfield, in connection with the Community of the Resurrection, and the hostel at Hooton Pagnell, Doncaster, in connection with Lichfield Theological College, are also pro mising efforts to enable vocations to be fulfilled by persons without the pecuniary and other resources which have been in the past practical essentials for entrance into the Anglican ministry. Work in connection with King's College, London, is also likely to be developed in this direction. At a meeting in Zion College, called to consider this ques tion, shortly before Dolling's death, the latter was one of the speakers. A paper on the subject was read by the Rev. Dr. 304 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Bernard, Archbishop King's Lecturer in Divinity, Trinity College, Dublin, and since Dean of S. Patrick's. Another Irishman, Dolling's old friend and East End neighbour, whom he had known M'ell in the Maidman Street days, the Rev. Dr. Wallace, Vicar of S. Luke's, Burdett Road, was in the chair as President of Zion College. In Dolling's speech he assailed the Anglican ' resident gentleman in every parish ' heresy, and pointed out that in England social position was too often the basis of the parish priest's influence — the ' freehold ' and the vicarage — whereas in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, for instance, a peasant might rise to be a prince of the Church, and that there respect was given to the spiritual office of the priesthood and episcopate, and the social sur roundings connected with them counted for little in com parison. In saying this, of course he was not ignoring the advisability of liberal culture for the clergy where it can be had, but he urged the accentuating and developing of the spiritual side of their office and character as the first and great essential, and that regardless of the desire not unfre- quently manifested by county families, or by the newly enriched who imitate them, to annex the Church of England as their peculiar religious appendage. Of the immense prejudice still existing among representa tives of that which calls itself the ' sober Church of England spirit ' against any other than a class ministry, a ministry to which certainly none of the twelve Apostles could have gained admittance, we may, as an instance, quote words spoken at a meeting in support of the Queen Victoria Fund in Preston on March 18, 1903, by a noble lord who represents earnest and honest Anglicanism of the Establishment type : ' He pointed out that the clerks in mercantile offices were re ceiving far higher salaries than many of the clergy, some of whom had 16,000 people under their care. He stigmatized the condition of things that prevailed as a disgrace and a scandal. It was not surprising, under the circumstances, that there was a falling off in the number of candidates for Holy Orders. It had been suggested that the remedy was to draw candidates from a lower stratum, but as a layman he strongly opposed any such suggestion.' A GENIUS FOR DESTROYING ENTHUSIASM 305 The speaker apparently would scarcely have recognised as a clergyman Chaucer's ideal priest, the ' Poor Parson,' for ' With him he had a ploughman was his brother.' This seems to be a suitable place in which to print some parts of an important article on ' The Genius of the Church of England ' which Father Dolling contributed to the Pilot of February 15, 1902, exactly three months before his death. It is worth reading, as containing a criticism of the existing ecclesiastical situation in regard to the genius of that moderate churchmanship most favoured in the Church of England by those who steer her course. It also contains some remarks of interest and insight as to the sources of supply of candidates for Holy Orders to which we have alluded above : 'There are, I think, two reasons why the Church of England Cannot supply the needs of England. First, she is tied and bound by a system that practically admits of no rearrangement as to incomes. A little town like Winchester, for instance, has more clergy than Portsmouth. The City of London has many more clergy and churches, and far more aggregate income than many of the great London boroughs teeming with population. If she were a body managed by any common-sense at all, this would all be altered at once, and she would be able to deal in a much more efficient way than anybody supposes with the terrible disgrace of leaving hundreds of thousands of people without any clergy or any church. This is, however, a very small part of the real question, and I pass to my second reason, which, I believe, is at the root of the matter. She is not only tied to a perfectly unworkable system, with no power of adapting herself to modern needs, but she has had now for many generations, and still has, a perfect genius for destroying all enthusiasm, and until she is able to evoke enthusiasm among our best young men of all classes she will never get a ministry adequate in number and power. Has there ever been a failure to respond to this call of enthusiasm on the part of our best 1 The War Office stifled it, and the fiasco in South Africa was the result. The war demands it, and it has been responded to from everywhere. And think of the development in India, of our Empire in other parts of Africa, of our great dependencies in Australia, of our trade victories over the whole world, now, indeed, languishing because our manu facturers have become comfortable and ceased to be enthusiastic. 20 306 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING What is the explanation of the English flag floating everywhere^ The ready response on the part of her best to a call of enthusiasm, perfected by dogged determination to win. Why cannot the Church get young men from our public schools and universities — the only sea in which the Bishops up till now have fished — to answer to the call ? It is because there has been no demand upon their enthusiasm. It has been a nice easy profession, in which they could live com fortably, settle down and marry, and live very like their brother the squire, but on a poorer scale. If they were really clever and had good interests there was something better in store for them. During the last twenty years these inducements have been ceasing little by little, until of late, with very few exceptions, they have practically ceased altogether. It is little to be wondered at if the supply is ceasing, and must go on getting less and less. A genius for getting rid of her best, unless her best will become commonplace — is this too hard a descrip tion of the Church of England 1 What else explains the extraordinary growth of Nonconformity, for which, since the Church of England would not do her duty to her children, I thank God, and surely all who love souls must, for had it not been for their ministry many a soul would have died without a knowledge of Jesus, and many a place would have been left in outer darkness ? But like it or not, we must accept it as a fact, and a fact largely due to the Church of England. Is it for a single moment to be supposed that the natural man would prefer the whitewashed little chapel, with its oftentimes ignorant and unlearned preacher, to the parish church, with its wonderful wealth of sacraments and traditions ? Surely it was because the parish church never had a chance ; its sacraments were hidden away, its traditions were denied. The whole treatment of the Methodist Movement was an attempt to put down enthusiasm. It was not in the least on religious grounds that the Bishops objected to them, and the squire had them stoned and driven out of the village. It was because their preaching and lives witnessed against the preaching and lives of the clergy. It was because their enthusiasm for the Incarnation, perhaps not always correctly expressed, led them to look upon every soul as one for whom Christ died, and therefore for whose salvation every effort must be made. But you will say that this has been altered now. I am not so sure that it has. There have been persecutions in our times. Men have been driven out of the Church of England. What will ever intel lectually compensate for the loss of Newman ? What of the ignorant riots of S. George's-in-the-East ; the sending of priests to gaol ; the 'BE COMMONPLACE, BE RESPECTABLE' 307 closing of perfectly harmonious centres of work, due always to a vulgar mob, with the Bishop's authority behind it? And though to-day nearly all the things which the Bishops condemned twenty years ago they recognise and approve, still, they have but one opportunist canon of conduct : Be commonplace, be respectable after the sober manner of the ritual of the Church of England. On the day of Pentecost it was said of some that they were drunk with new wine. Would to God we could see our prelates thus inebriated, or, at any rate, permitting some of their followers to be so ! Indivi dually, I suppose, spiritually and intellectually, there are no more pre-eminent men in the world than the Bishops of the Church of England. Three great prelates have occupied Augustine's chair in my time, each with special gifts far above the common man, but with one gift pre-eminent that has been fatal to their brethren — the destruction of all individuality on the part of diocesans. I wonder if it is true that there is a bedroom in Lambeth that each prelate sleeps in on his first visit ; that in that room there is a bed which has the power of elongating or compressing each occupant to a certain uniform stature. At any rate, we can see the effect of this process — those that are down go up, up, up, and those that are up go down. On no question of any importance, religious or social, have the Bishops given any leading to their people unless they have been driven to it by the man in the street, and the advice they invariably give is festina lente — very wise, indeed, when you occupy the whole position, but fatal when you are leading a forlorn hope. And this attitude of theirs has been reproduced in modified forms elsewhere. I was addressing a large number of those interested in college and public-school missions the other day, and the difficulty everybody seemed to feel was to get a missioner who could create enthusiasm amongst the boys and young men by showing them things likely to evoke their enthusiasm. This instance is an indica tion to me of the causes which, I believe, lie at the root of the whole matter. Once let the demand be made on the score of self-sacrifice and self-denial, and difficulties to be overcome, speak of it as a forlorn hope, and you will get as many volunteers as ever you wish. But for God's sake don't let the Bishops put the enthusiast into the unifying bed. But you must go one step further back : you must equip the enthusiast, and I don't believe that a public school or a university is the best place for this equipment. It turns him out an excellent clergyman for the last century, just suited to the work that was demanded of him then. But the same young man won't offer himself now. Surely in the Church of England there are 20—2 308 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING thousands of men with vocations. What, then, is the work of the Bishop, the Rural Dean, and, above all, the Archdeacon, now and again the Parish Priest? — To discover the man with the vocation. Is he related to the peerage? Does he eat with his knife? Can his father pay £1,500 for his education ? What does it matter ? If he has got the vocation, his blue blood, the splendid chance of his training, will enhance it. Having eaten with his knife will teach him the tact to enable other people to overcome the habit. There is a sense in which it were wise to teach those who are up to go down, down, down, and those who are down to go up. How is the money to come to do it ? Oh, be a little reckless about money, have a little faith about it ; but if you want to get money don't let the Bishops have anything to do with it. Why does the Church Pastoral Aid Society, nourished by a small and ever-dwindling section of the Church, get as much as the Additional Curates' Society, and the Church Missionary Society get three times as much as the S.P.G. ? The very Church Reform League has been bishoped out of existence. Again it is the fatal hand. I wonder if all this is too hardly written. The only claim that the Church of England has a right to make is that she stands a servant as her Master did. How poorly she has fulfilled that duty any Church statistics will show. Go into the little villages on a Sunday, stand in the centre of one of our great city parishes, and your own eyes will show you that the want of enthusiasm in our workers of the past has left nothing to be enthusiastic about in the present. It has left only a complacent failure. And is there in all the world a more deadly thing than a complacent failure ?' Whatever may be thought of Father Dolling's opinions, or rather convictions (for he was not a merely ' viewy ' person), no one can deny that he was, above all things, straightfor ward in his expression of them. He could with all his heart have re-echoed Cardinal Newman's sentence in the ' Apologia ' — that the first necessity for those who would teach religious matters to English people to which they are unaccustomed is to realise 'that the truest expedience is to answer right out when you are asked ; that the truest economy is to have no management ; that the best prudence is not to be a coward ; that the most damaging folly is to be found out shuffling ; and that the first of virtues is to " tell truth and shame the devil." ' THE SIRENS OF THE ATHENAEUM 309 Dolling's article quoted above, with its ' straight talk,' was not meant by him as mere querulous carping, but as that kind of honest facing the facts which the truest loyalty to the Church demands, instead of the ostrich-like method of evading or denying them. In the end, the shallow optimism which makes safeness the ideal, and exalts moderation into the position of the queen of the hierarchy of virtues, for getting that ' moderation is only a virtue at all when grafted on the stem of zeal,' represents a policy which is bound to hasten the very dangers which it seeks to avert. In fact, an increasing number of Churchmen, as this policy demon strates its hopeless inadequacy, and kills all keenness and vividness of life, are likely to feel that, in spite of the various bumps and shocks he gave them, ' Was not Dolling right, after all ?' As Canon Scott Holland writes in the Commonwealth for February, 1903 : ' In these ' — i.e., ' vital spiritual principles ' — ' and not in any worldly expediencies, lies all the hope of the Church's true policy. . . .' ' Bishop Davidson's point of danger here is not the Court. He has survived its perils with a singular simplicity. Rather, it is to be sought at the Athenasum. There dwell the sirens who are apt to beguile and bewitch him. They have ceased to be mermaids with harps, and have adopted the disguise of elderly and excellent gentlemen of reputation, who lead you aside into corners, and in impressive whispers inform you what will not do, and what the intelligent British public will not stand.' He goes on to say that, though our rulers in the Church may have ' a deep veneration for the judgment and the wisdom of important laity of this type, yet the Athenasum is not the shrine of infallibility. Its elderly common-sense has no prophetic afflatus.' CHAPTER XXIII Poplar — Problem of religious indifference — Bishop Creighton's visit to S. Saviour's (June 24, 1900) — Imperialism — The South African War — Death of Queen Victoria and of Bishop Creighton (1901) — S. Saviour's Magazine — Father Dolling's ' Jubilee ' (February 10, 1901) — His favourite books — His love of the theatre — Visit to Spain (May, 1901) and Aix-la-Chapelle (October, 1901)— Death of Miss Wells. ' Do you love your people ?' — Father Dolling : Word to the Clergy. Dolling had undertaken the charge of S. Saviour's at a period when he was especially likely to feel the weight of the problem presented by the spiritual and mental apathy of the people. It was the beginning of that slack time upon which we have entered when the great religious movements of the last century seem to have spent their force. At the same time triumphant democracy is not without its disappointments. Its comfort-worship, its idolatry of sport and pleasure, its selfishness towards those still struggling in the social abyss, its lack of intellectual and spiritual ideals, are features all too painfully apparent. This was one movement into which Dolling had thrown himself with sympathy ; as to the other, that to which the title the ' Catholic Revival ' is given by its adherents, it can hardly be denied that a large element of triviality, pettiness, and internal division has made itself manifest, and that the deep, strenuous spirit of earlier days, the spirit of the ' Lyra Apostolica,' is apparent no more. The movement is broader, more diffusive, yet also shallower ; its temper more artificial, its enthusiasms more thin and on the surface. On all sides, in the Church and in the nation, is heard the cry of [ 310 ] NECESSITY OF TWO KINDS OF WORSHIP 311 disappointed idealism, the complaint of the disillusioned, ' Neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all !' This from the few. As far as the many are concerned, contented apathy. Personally and locally, also, Dolling had much to disappoint him. The communicants' roll, and the general attendance of S. Saviour's — the latter on even Sunday evenings often only 200 out of 10,000 population — was not, even after some years of work, an augury of much encouragement as far as the adults were concerned. The children, however, were wonder fully hopeful, and their intelligence and affection were to him a continued joy. No doubt, had his life been spared, he would have built up out of them a congregation of earnest worshippers, both men and women, as years went on. It was the children which made him resolve, even should another post be offered, to stay (as he told his friends shortly before his death) at least five years more at S. Saviour's. As for the adults generally, he certainly did not touch them as he had touched others during his life, from the people of Kilrea onwards. Although, of course, he raised around him a number of earnest and devoted people, yet the larger spiritual influence through the parish was not so apparent. He wrote in the Pilot for May 4, 1901, on ' Religion in East London ' (the italics are ours ; they mark the points he constantly accentuated) : ' I am doing all I can to make my little band of religious people share this work, and say to themselves continually : " We must never be content with the little knot of worshippers who form our congregation, but we must launch out into the deep amid these heathen people. We must throw off, if necessary, the garments of our respectability, and get into the water ourselves to bring the net to land." But here, of course, one is met with a terrible difficulty : when you have got them into the Church, what can you do with them ? I hold that what is needed are two opposite extremes of worship, the one rendering the other wholesome. We want a stately worship full of magnificence that strikes the eye and enthrals it, and forces the man, however ignorant, to know that he is really taking part in an act of worship to a God who demands all that is beautiful and magnificent ; and, on the other hand, a simple method of addressing a living Father in prayer — praying about the things that interest those 312 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING who are praying ; praying for bodily as well as spiritual needs, for the bodily are felt in the spiritual ; praying in their own language, showing them tliat their Father does not want them to talk some one else's language. It is very easy to pray for the things the people want in their own tongue.' ' We must not only have our hearts bubbling over with thanks giving and joy in our Father's presence ; we must also take off our shoes from our feet, because we are on holy ground. There is a danger in the emotions being too much aroused unless the prayer be truly one of real adoration, and so the prayer made must be only a step towards Eucharistic adoration. There one does get away from what is selfish, because there we are joined with the whole family of God in heaven and earth, each with his own individual note, but each note must be in harmony with all the rest. How is it possible to do this by any other method than the offering of the Great Sacrifice? Often it seems to me that we Englishmen are too proud to use our eyes. We think ourselves so clever and so intellectual that we can afford to dispense with those religious helps which do very well for ignorant Irish or superstitious Italians.' In a previous article (November 10, 1900) he wrote : ' I suppose that at the Reformation, which in England came from the reigning and upper classes, and, not, as in Scotland, from the people themselves, the people in a large measure lost the idea of the supernatural. Beauty, art, music, and all like things, passed out of their lives, or became completely secularised, and the God that remained, seen through the eyes of Calvinism, became a tyrant, who could not for long maintain His rule. ' The great increase of printing and education, easy journeying in and out of the country, all added their part in breaking down these bonds, and when this Calvinistic God disappeared there was no other to take His place. Private judgment had deprived men of any authoritative voice to which they could listen. The Church was in a large measure the servant of the upper classes, and had no message to, or attraction for, the lower. ' Of course, I know there is a deep Christian instinct in England, an instinct that has come down to us through many generations, and for the last 400 years, at any rate, founded in a large measure on Puritan belief, fed by what may be called the "two Puritan Sacraments" — the Bible and Sunday. The religion of God was enforced upon everybody, and, no doubt, trained many pious souls, THE PEOPLE DO NOT CARE 313 and maintained a broad idea that to be outwardly religious, at any rate, was what was demanded by respectability. ' The last forty years has been a period of loosing these bonds. Few people read the Bible, fewer still observe Sunday. As M. Renan, I think it was, said, " We began with seven Sacraments in France and lost them ; you in England had two and kept them " — meaning thereby Sunday and the Bible. If he were alive now, I do not think he would say the same thing. These bonds being loosened, religion has, so to speak, gone to pieces. In every class of life this is visible, but it is specially visible among those amongst whom I live. ' The natural reaction against Puritanism (in the English Church) took the form of a Catholic Revival, which has, no doubt, largely influenced the upper classes and certain little circles in which the preachers of it have been zealous and self-sacrificing men, but the great masses here and elsewhere are practically untouched by it. ' There remains, indeed, the instinct for religion, an admiration for, if not an acceptance of, what may be called the " natural virtues," and a kind of superstitious belief in God, but a belief that makes no demand upon the conduct, far less upon the devotion of him that believes. We live here without God — that is, by far the greater majority of our people do not pray, do not read their Bibles, do not come to church, far less frequent the Sacraments, and live, as a rule, altogether unconscious of the supernatural. ' There is no opposition ; we do not care enough to oppose. Within the memory of some readers of this article there was a riot in S. George's-in-the-East because a clergyman wore a surplice in the pulpit ; a few weeks ago a procession marched through a large part of Poplar with crucifixes, vestments of every description, and a Bishop in cope and mitre, and nobody said a word. It is not because the cope and mitre have seized the people; it is that the people do not care, and that is the real difficulty of the question. ' The religious instinct is not there. The only sunshine is the excite ment of the public-house or the hidden ribaldry of some low music- hall, or the loss or gain of a little money in some form of gambling. I call this sunshine because it is the only bit of colour, and the rest of the life is all the same, deadly dull. ' God is not in any of our thoughts ; we do not even fear Him. We face death with perfect composure, for we have nothing to give up and nothing to look forward to. Heaven has no attraction, because we should be out of place there. And Hell has no t errors. 314 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Why, then, should we care about religion ? The day of street- preaching and missions, we have got so accustomed to it that we will not even stop to listen. The Salvation Army, with its splendid organisation and wonderful self-sacrifice, seems to be burnt out. What can I do ? I believe that man — body, soul, and spirit — must be treated as a whole, and just as I try to learn how to perfect each part of him, I learn that no part can be perfected without the other. I may do all I can to make his body as strong and noble as possible, and his mind acute and vigorous, and yet leave him a poor, maimed, imperfect creature. And so I believe that to try to touch his soul without taking into consideration the rest of him will prove futile and use less. Just as the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of thee, so the soul cannot say to the body, I have no need of thee. The whole method of God's teaching is full of common-sense, and surely this is a common- sense view.' The South African War caused him to try to touch the people's hearts and teach them to pray by the constant homely intercessions ' for our dear soldiers at the war,' especially naming, of course, any men from S. Saviour's parish. He told the people of two Winchester men very dear to him who were at the war — one Arthur Burton, who was killed, and another Frank Festing, badly wounded. Bishop Creighton's visit to confirm on Sunday, June 24 (S. John the Baptist's Day), 1900, was a day of encourage ment. Amid much ceremonial the Bishop blessed a parochial flag, thus linking, as Dolling believed, patriotic feeling and sane Imperialism with the spiritual influence of the Church. Though holding that Christianity is bound to work for the abolition of war, yet Dolling's love for soldiers and sailors, his friendship with so many of them, and his sense of the value of military discipline, as well as his susceptibility to be in fluenced by all the broad popular waves of feeling of his time, combined to make him in some degree an Imperialist, and to sever him from the ' little England ' party. His Imperialism no doubt modified, though it never destroyed, his earlier Radicalism. But if he acknowledged something great in the idea of the Empire, yet the Empire which touched his imagi nation was not a mere aggregate of opportunities for com mercial speculation, but a federation of free and self-respecting LESSONS OF THE CORONATION 315 Commonwealths, finding their palladium and central symbol of unity in the ancient crown of the Motherland. The same feeling came out strongly in his sermons and articles in S. Saviour's Magazine on the death of the late Queen Victoria, for whose high disinterestedness of character and devotion to duty he had always had a profound regard. He says of her reign that there has been ' no truer example of unstinted labour ' than those sixty years, and he couples with them as a kindred instance of strenuous service the four years of Bishop Creighton's episcopate, who died almost at the same time as the Queen (1901). Dolling tried to make his people see the moral significance underlying the ceremonial vesture of the coronation as binding King and People together, and linking in one by a common symbolic action of unity the various members of the great federation of free peoples, of which England's King is the head and representative. When the young Duke of Albany entered upon the rank and duties of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg, Father Dolling, who had already met the Duchess of Albany in connection with philanthropic work, wrote to the latter to convey his sense of sympathy and the assurance of his prayers for the Duke at the time of so important a change in his life. He received from the Duchess a reply in which she says : ' Most gratefully I thank you for your kind words, and I am much touched by your thought of us at this time.' So much was Dolling's mind filled in these last years by his thoughts of the grandeur of the mission which England could, if she would, discharge for the moral well-being of the world, that as he lay dying his sisters heard him, while unconscious, preaching a sermon, as if to his boys' brigade, on the lessons of that coronation which, indeed, he did not live to see. There is an Imperialism which finds its appropriate and gross outcome in ' mafficking,' and which on its religious side presents poor honest John Bull in the unconscious role of the Pharisee of the nations. There is a nobler Imperialism, the spirit of which is that of Kipling's 'Recessional,' an Imperialism based on the sense of great responsibilities, not to be lightly shaken off 'through craven fears of being great.' 316 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Father Dolling's sympathies, it is needless to say, had nothing in common with the former variety. Towards the end of his life he was less and less able to do much direct pastoral visiting, owing to pressure of necessary organising work, money collecting, etc., taking up nearly all his time when not at the altar or in the pulpit. In preaching at this time, as before, he dwelt a great deal on the impor tance of realising the twofold forces of heredity and environment in dealing with the redemption from evil of the bodies and souls of men. The thought of natural law as God's law tempered and mingled with (as in Kingsley'B preaching) the more evangelical and sacramentalist elements of his teaching. During those last years, if Dolling's sermons at S. Saviour's were poorly attended, all over London he was preaching to crowded congregations, and probably these were finer and more really effective sermons than those delivered at any previous period of his ministry, except some of those at S. Agatha's. In the pulpit of S. Paul's Cathedral he was a welcome visitor. The protest against him as a preacher in S. Paul's made by the Rev. R. C. Fillingham, Vicar of Hexton, in the Lent of 1899, was a ridiculous fiasco, from which even the late Mr. Kensit stood aloof. It was a strange contrast to Dolling to return from addressing the immense and interested crowd under the dome of the Metropolitan Cathedral to find on the next Sunday only forty men, includ ing those from the clergy house, gathered to hear the men's address in his own church. The apathy and deadness of his district was a greater trial to him than any storms of obloquy or misrepresentation could have been. The impact of opposition struck fire, as it were, from his nature. With stagnant tempers he was powerless. Though never a writer to any extent, being rather a speaker and man of action, Dolling wrote more in these years at Poplar than at any previous time, with the exception of 1896, when he wrote that intensely human document, ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum.' Constant articles of the most varied description, and most of them excellent, appeared from his pen in the little S. Saviour's Magazine, which is quite a INSIGHT INTO CAUSES 317 unique production among church parish monthlies. It attained great circulation among his multitude of friends, not only in England, but also in America. It enabled him to chat to them delightfully every month. He also wrote several articles on Church matters and on the condition of the people for the Pilot, at the editor's (Mr. Lathbury's) invitation, to some of which we have already referred. His unconvention ally created a telling style of his own which is singularly effective when he is dealing with the subjects of which the experience of his life had made him a master. Shortly before his death he meditated starting ' The Arcadian Library,' a series of volumes to emanate from or in connection with S. Saviour's, and to which he asked some of his friends to contribute each a volume. His own contribution was, we believe, to have been an autobiography, which for some time he had meditated writing. We insert here the editorial notice which appeared in the Pilot after Father Dolling's death, alluding specially to his contributions to that ably- conducted review : ' The death of Mr. Dolling is, in some ways, an irreparable loss to the Church of England. He had a singular faculty for attracting and enlisting in his undertakings a variety of workers little inclined by temperament or by position to sympathise with his end, while his keen insight into the causes which so often paralyse the best efforts of the clergy has more than once been shown in these columns. There are greater men in the Church than Robert Dolling, but we know of none whom it will be more difficult to replace.' February 10, 1901, was Father Dolling's fiftieth birthday. It was kept by him as his ' Jubilee.' His friends sent him for that day many contributions for the various objects needed for his parish and his work, and also many personal gifts. He mentions in his magazine among the latter several boxes of cigars, a year's subscription to Mudie's Library, and also to the Times and the Pilot. He wrote before this : ' If you want to give me a really jubilee birthday present, you must help me to start my new buildings here. My ministerial life 318 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING has been so short, for I was not ordained until I was over thirty, that I have not half had the chance of doing the things that I wanted to do before I lay down my ministry at my Master's feet.' He did not know that he would be called, so to lay it down in little more than a year from the time he wrote these words. Indeed, we note often in his magazine from this time the recurrence of thoughts tender and solemn which have to do with death, as in regard to the death of the late Queen and of the late Bishop Creighton, and later, among his own personal friends, of Florence Wells, who has been mentioned more than once before in this book. Similar thoughts also appear in his article on ' November : the Month of the Holy Souls,' written for that month of 1901. In the ' Quarterly Letter ' in which he refers to his jubilee he goes on to say pathetically : ' This is a dull place to be put down in when you are fifty years old, and you need energy to force you to keep your blood vitalised and your faith and hope active. I hope you will forgive my putting it so plainly as this, but when you get to be fifty you know how quickly the years pass by, how much there is to be done, how little time to do it in.' In a similar strain he wrote in the Pilot about eight months before this, July 21, 1900, in an article on ' Work in Poplar ' : ' If you have reached any measure of success, the rungs of the ladder on which you climb are your failures — not the failures of those among whom you work, but your personal failure in dealing with them. I have been two years in Poplar now, and I feel this more keenly every day, for no two places in the world are so com pletely different as this and Landport. There my parish touched the great Government dockyard, with its vast army of well-paid and always employed artisans, tending to create a high conception of energetic workmen ; here it touches the banks of the Thames, from which nearly all the great ship-building yards and workshops have departed, leaving only docks, where the work is very precarious, tending to create nothing but loafers. There the great ships and the barracks poured a continual stream of soldiers and sailors amongst us, for our good, indeed, and for our ill. Here, if a soldier or sailor comes to stay with me, the whole parish turns out to see LANDPORT AND POPLAR : SATURDAY NIGHT 319 him. There, every street differed from every other street ; I might almost say every house differed from every other house. Here, every street, every house, is identically the same. There we lived a rollicking, jovial, if sinful, life ; here we manage to exist much less viciously, because we are as a whole bloodless and anaemic. There one's chief duty was to repress ; here it is to incite. A Saturday night at Landport was a joyous experience, even if one sorrowed over the sin ; a Saturday night here is as dull as ditch- water. Of course it has its compensations — very great compensa tions. We have no gangs of thieves ; we have no streets wholly given over to sin. The public-houses, too, are better in every respect— bigger, and less sordid. How, then, does my Landport experience help me here ? Only to teach me to be profoundly dis trustful of my own methods, and to give courage to try and try again, if in any measure I may succeed.' To return to Father Dolling's jubilee, he asked in S. Saviour's Magazine, as his best birthday present, for the prayers of his friends, and added, ' I suppose the greatest blessing God has given me are my friends.' His writing about a subscription to Mudie's leads us to mention that Dolling was a great novel-reader, generally having a novel on hand in the intervals of his work and of more serious things. In this, as in regard to the theatre, he was no Puritan. His taste in fiction was very catholic and eclectic, ranging from Gaboriau's detective mysteries, which he loved to unravel, to George Meredith's robust message. ' Diana of the Crossways ' was one of his favourite books, and another of Meredith's also, ' Sandra Belloni,' he read several times. Indeed, he loved grappling with Meredith's obscure yet virile prose, and dis entangling the essential core of his meaning. We do not think he knew much of the ' minor poets,' nor in literature, except for a recognition of Ibsen's powerfulness, did he travel very far off the main highway of taste, or get himself involved in the passing literary enthusiasms of the hour. He liked mental food of a solid description better than the temporary whims of literary coteries. He admired Kipling's force and genius, but he rejected his representations of the private soldier as a true picture of present-day barrack-life and barrack-room inmates, and no one not actually a military man 320 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING knew the English soldier better than Dolling did. He knew several artists as his personal friends, as he did also men of letters and members of the dramatic profession. All this saved his social and religious enthusiasms from becoming stark and fanatical, and brought him into contact with the life of those who minister to the colour, urbanity, and recrea tion of the world, as well as to the grander aspects of exist ence. He did not profess to be a judge of pictures. But in regard to the theatre, however, it was different. He did not hesitate to distinguish, often very decisively, between a good and a bad play, either as to composition or acting. He did not share, for instance, in Mr. Gladstone's and the Bishop of Truro's admiration for 'The Sign of the Cross.' The drama and the theatre were the departments of art he under stood and appreciated best. Among men of letters his chief friend was the late Lionel Johnson, whom he knew as an old Wykehamist, but of whom he did not see much in the last few years. The Irish blood and Celtic sympathies of this brilliant scholar, critic, and graceful poet were strong points of contact with Dolling's own mind, for the latter was Irish to the core. So also were Lionel Johnson's Catholic convictions in religion, although he took the step, which Dolling did not, of entering the Com munion of Rome. Dolling was not much of a reader of poetry. Parts of Robert Browning's works, however, were very con genial to him. He liked them, as he did Meredith's novels, for their force and robustness. What he knew of Browning he read for himself, only asking help in the way of suggestions as to possible selection from the poems from others. He once, during a time when he was confined to the house, read through nearly all of the ' Ring and the Book,' and enjoyed it. This is no mean undertaking, even for one more literary in taste than Dolling was. We do not think he was a Shake speare student to any extent. Dickens he loved for his humour and humanity, though he did not read much of his works in later years. As with many other admirers of that writer, Dickens was to him mainly a mellow recollection rather than a present pleasure. Dolling must be added to the number of THE BIBLE HIS SUPREME BOOK 321 admirers of Miss Yonge's novels, though her Keble-like type of Church feeling was not exactly his. His was rather the temper of R. Hurrell Froude and of ' Ideal ' Ward. The life of the latter by his son, Mr. Wilfrid Ward, he much enjoyed reading. His literary judgment was, on the whole, instinctively good. As might have been expected, philosophical works deal ing with subjects of abstract speculation did not appeal to him. He had no taste for metaphysics. His intelligence was only capable of dealing with the concrete. Hence abstract Theism, apart from the religion of the Incarnation, did not appeal to him, and he could not long have stood on the narrow ledge of the Unitarian creed. The English Bible was his supreme book. He was no expert at various readings, but he was saturated with the mind and language of Holy Scripture especially of the Gospels and the Psalms. He knew the Psalter almost, if not quite, by heart. Psalm xxiii. was all through life his favourite psalm. As to the ' New Criticism,' he was not frightened by it when presented in a sane and reverent form — a form which we distinguish from that marking the ' Encyclopeedia Biblica.' But he objected to steering the boat of the Church broadside on, and puzzling simple people by brandishing the ' Higher Criticism ' from the pulpit in a superficial and unspiritual way. Among sermon writers F. W. Robertson's extraordinary insight into the perfections of our Lord's human heart and character much delighted him. He scarcely did justice to Newman's ' Parochial and Plain Sermons.' Their severe spirituality seemed to him, we should imagine, as if deficient in warmth and glow, like a perfect statue which yet lacks the veins and arteries filled with the life-blood of humanity. But his character was not that of one well fitted to appreciate the force of Newman's hidden fires. The Newman of the Tract period was not sufficiently broad or evangelical enough to attract the type of mind to which Dolling, with his popular religious instincts, belonged. Newman was a preacher to the ' remnant ' rather than to the multitude. Dolling cared for nothing that could not touch the popular heart. F. W. Faber's glowing style he felt more in sympathy with, though not in 21 322 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING regard to that writer's hyperflorid extravagancies of language and doctrine. Indeed, Father Dolling was altogether a very partial disciple of Tractarianism, and not by any means a direct product of its influence. Like Ward at an earlier period, he ' cut into ' the High Church Movement and tried to turn it at his own angle so far as his influence went. Theories of development in regard to science, religion, and life strongly appealed to him. Though he knew nothing of science, the ' Evolution ' conception fascinated his mind, and he saw in it nothing inconsistent with Christianity. Of the two great principles of the Christian religion — detachment and fellowship — it was the latter which was more exhibited in him, as the former was in the Oxford leaders. At the same time he was entirely spiritual and inwardly devout. He had absorbed eagerly the sacramentalism of the Oxford Movement, but not its learning or austerity, and much of his teaching was more akin to that of F. D. Maurice than to that of Dr. Pusey or Dr. Neale, for instance. His Catholicism was more warm-hearted, social, and human, though, of course, less learned and philosophical than that of the Tract writers. ' The Oxford Movement,' he often said, ' was made up out of books.' His own style of preaching was rich and impassioned, rather than restrained or severe. He loved to paint in words the scene of the incident he preached about, but never in a tawdry, vulgar manner. The vivid picturesqueness of Dean Stanley's ' History of the Jewish Church ' much attracted him, and he often used to consult this book before preaching on Old Testament subjects. He was a great admirer and constant reader of the religious philosophy of his friend, Father George Tyrrell, S. J., in ' Nova et Vetera,' ' Hard Sayings,' and the lectures on ' External Religion : its Use and Abuse.' Though Dolling read little of philosophy as such, having neither time nor inclination for it, and was no student of theology, yet Tyrrell's works held him by their human interest. A theological book of a different description to the above, which he read with keen enjoyment, although parts of it hit Anglo-Catholic positions hard as well THEOLOGICAL BOOKS 323 as Roman ones, was 'The Lectures on the Infallibility of the Church,' by Dr. Salmon, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Dolling borrowed it to read, and was fascinated by its racy touches of Irish humour, and by its mingled wit and logic. He said it confirmed him in the Anglican rejection of the Papal Monarchy, but he thought its weakness lay in a failure to realise that the ordinary posi tion of Protestants as to Bible authority apart from the Church was open to even greater objection. We mention his attitude to this book, as it shows his extreme openneBS of mind in regard to religious as to other questions, since it is a work not at all on what are called ' High Church ' lines. But though emphatically not a student or a man of books, but rather one of action and ' of affairs,' Dolling, when he did read, never confined himself within the limits of one school of thought in theology or otherwise. His was too restive and discursive a nature, too roaming and inquisitive (in a good sense of the latter word) to be content to be always tethered amid the pasture of the ' Anglican paddock,' to use Professor Dowden's expression. Dolling's want of sympathy with what he conceived to be the stiff and unevangelical character of what is often called distinctively the ' Prayer-Book School ' of Churchmen caused him, we think, scarcely to appreciate adequately the perfect English of the greater part of the Book of Common Prayer, its sober majesty of diction. But he was accustomed to point out the wordiness of some of the exhortations. Most ' manuals ' of private prayer he disliked, or at the best regarded as props for inexperienced learners or crutches for the limbs of weak devotion. 'Learn to pray in your own words,' was his constant advice. Even in church he loved ' free prayer ' as much as any Dissenter, and fought with the Bishops for the right to use it. But to resume our story of this closing year. In March, 1901, Father Dolling's health began to show signs of serious failure. He was ordered to go abroad for a complete change, and so he went to Spain, a country which he had never before visited. He reached Madrid on Easter Tuesday at 7 a.m., and went, 21—2 324 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING during this tour, to the more ancient Spanish towns, Cordova, Seville, and Granada (reading while at the latter place Washington Irving's 'Alhambra'). He went on to Malaga and Algeciras, and from that place crossed to Tangiers, in North Africa. (He had visited Algiers in 1897.) He re turned to Spain, visiting Cadiz and Toledo. The cathedral of Toledo he describes as leaving on his mind ' a remembrance of great magnificence and beauty.' He found Burgos ' a town under the domination of the clergy, and one of the most ignorant and backward towns in Spain.' He was away alto gether for four weeks, but returned with health unimproved. He writes of ' the wonderful beauty and strange pathos ' of Spain, but also tells of poor fare at bad hotels, and of roughing it with mule-riding. He did not get the rest he required. Hence in September of the same year (1901) he was ordered to take a course of baths for six weeks at Aix-la-Chapelle. He sent home to his parishioners, through the magazine, an account of his stay, from which we reproduce the following : 'At 6.45 I drink cups of sulphur water, and drinking, bathing, douching, etc., goes on till 9.30; then I have breakfast. In the afternoons, at 2, we start for the forest on an electric tram. The forest is beautiful, with good walks all laid out and seats every where, and generally after an hour we come to a restaurant, where we have tea or coffee. One of the ladies I usually walk with is very energetic, and drives us all along, so that very often we walk six or seven miles till we come to another tram, and so home about 5.30 and rest till dinner. I am in bed before ten. ' There is a lending library, and I take out a novel every day, and generally finish it. Old novels that you have read before, and know the ending of, are very restful. ' My hotel is close to the cathedral. The bells begin at 5.30, and ring every half -hour till 9.30. There are always many people at each Mass, and on Sundays you can hardly get in. All the churches here are very well attended, especially by men on Sunday after noons between 5 and 6.30. I have looked into six or seven, and all are quite full. All the shops shut on Sundays. On week-days they have popular services, with hymn-singing, sermons, and Benedic- IN COLOGNE CATHEDRAL 325 tion, and the church full. It is very different from Poplar. It is not the least like Spain or Italy — few images and pictures, the religion much more severe and manly ; at least, so it seems to an outsider, and yet one does not feel an outsider, for there is a spirit of real worship wonderfully helpful to oneself.' After this Dolling spent a fortnight in Belgium, staying first, however, at Cologne for All Saints' Day, where he was much impressed by the intelligent devotion of the crowded congregation at the High Mass in the world-famed cathedral of this great centre of German Catholicism. The Archbishop of Cologne, he tells us, presided on this occasion. On February 6, 1902, the death took place, very suddenly, of one who was a dear friend and true helper to him and his sisters, Miss Florence Wells. At the same time he records his thankfulness for the recovery from a dangerous illness of the young schoolmaster, Mr. Ralph Darling, to whose help and example he attributed, with that of Mr. Matley, so much of the great success of the boys' school. February 10, 1902, was the last earthly birthday that Robert Dolling was to have. He was now fifty-one. The Daily Chronicle selected his name for its birthday greeting on that day, with the following appropriate garland of quotations, a sort of birthday ' posy ' in the Shakespearian sense, such as that paper is in the habit of presenting day by day to ' men of renown ' of various sorts : 'Father Dolling, February 10, 1851. ' " A bold spirit in a loyal heart." — Shakespeare. ' " There are men who think — men — the plucking of sinners out of the mire a dirty business." — Meredith. ' " Thou shalt not heed the voice of man when it agrees not with the voice of God in thine own soul." — Emerson. ' " Good, the more Communicated, more abundant grows." Milton. ' " Good old Robert." — Shakespeare. 326 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING ' " For he had power of confession, As saide himself, more than a curate." Chaucer. ' "Thanks for your pains." — Talfowd. ' "Courage, father, fight it out." — Shakespeare.' Of this Dolling writes to his parishioners in his magazme ; ' For your sakes I could wish it was more true.' CHAPTER XXIV Last writings in S. Saviour's Magazme and in Goodwill — Last Lent preaching (1902) — Last address in S. Saviour's (Easter Day, March 30, 1902) — Leaves parish for Philbeach Gardens — Sermons at Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair — Illness — Death (May 15, 1902) — Eequiem services at S. Cuthbert's, South Kensington (May 20), and at S. Saviour's (May 21)— Burial at S. Alban's, Holborn, Ground, Woking Cemetery (May 21, 1902) — Last words by Bishops of London and Stepney. ' Cor Cordium.' — Inscription on Shelley's Tomb. ' In His Will is our Peace.'— Dante. Towards the end of Father Dolling's life he wrote several short articles of considerable interest, other than those con nected with the troubles in the Church. The death of the Queen was not only, as we have already noticed, made the occasion by him of paying to her memory a genuine and heartfelt tribute, but also of explaining the value and impor tance of the Eequiem services, and especially of the Eequiem Eucharist, for the departed monarch, which were held in S. Saviour's, as in many other churches, at that time. We may note that he believed that the craving for ' memorial services for the departed ' — as, for instance, in connection both with the losses in the war and with the death of the Queen — must lead in time to a recognition of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, the great ' memorial service ' of the Lord's death, as the proper and appropriate means of satisfying this natural and pathetic instinct. We may remark also that the beautiful prayer offered in the Jewish synagogues for the soul of the departed Queen is sufficient evidence that such a devotional usage is not exclusively Eoman, not even exclusively Chris tian. It is as follows : [ 327 ] 328 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING ' We beseech Thee, 0 Lord, recompense her work, and may a full reward be given her of Thee, under whose wings she has eome to trust. May her soul be bound in the bond of life everlasting with the soul of the husband of her youth, and with the souls of her beloved kinsfolk, who have gone to their eternal rest.' In regard to political and social questions and to matters of public life, we have already mentioned Dolling's keen interest in the South African War. On this question he was some what divided, as we have hinted, from several of his former Eadical friends, as, though no mere Jingo, he was not a pro-Boer. Those subjects of English statesmanship, on which he had been so thoroughly a Gladstonian — i.e., government of Ireland by Irish ideas, and anti-Turkish policy in regard to the Eastern Question — were points on which he still felt strongly ; for he always regarded England's past treatment of Ireland and her alliance with the murderous despotism of Turkey, including the gigantic blunder of the Crimean War, as the two greatest blots upon her fame as a just and Christian power. One of his greatest addresses at S. Agatha's was on the Armenian question, as showing the practical non- Christianity and immoral character of European public policy in regard to the toleration of the devilry existing under Turkish misrule. But in regard to many questions he be came quite disengaged from the Liberal Party, though still in a larger sense a Liberal to the end. The last article which appeared over his name, being printed shortly after his death in Goodwill (his friend Father Adderley's excellent little monthly magazine) was sent by him to that paper some time before his illness. It is called, ' How the Good in Every Man is to be Beached.' He says in this : ' The old religions had little place in them for the love of God, and our religion has, I fear, little place in it for the justice of God, and so, unfortunately, as our aspect of God rules our conduct towards men, our duty towards our neighbour has become rather a matter of what is called charity than of justice. . . . ' God knows the number of His own children, and He has created sufficient for all : health and time and money, and all that money produces — refinement, education. THE PEOPLE UNCONSCIOUS OF GOD 329 ' Now, since God has committed these to the members of the family, He wills that any member having excess should see that no member suffers loss because of that excess, for no one can be said to deal justly with his God until he has dealt justly with his fellow- men. Christ, indeed, was no divider of men's goods in individual cases — that would have created Him a tyrant — but He laid down the principles by which we learn how to deal justly. ' Can anyone for one moment say that, however much in theory the Church of God teaches this now, the practical result witnesses to the success of her teaching ? God teaches me that all men are made in His image, and yet I live amongst thousands of people who are altogether unconscious of any true ideal of God, far less that they themselves are created divine. As long as they get enough to eat and drink, and a little amusement, oftentimes another word for sin, always for vulgarity, they have fulfilled all the destiny they ever dream of. ' I would not have you for one moment think they are bad people — very far from it ; oftentimes their charity is heroic, their endurance magnificent. It needs but the ideal to be presented to them, and their souls quickened to respond to it, to create them heroes and saints. Are they to blame? Certainly not. They have never been dealt justly with. Think of the houses that they are born in, the overcrowding, the drains, the damp. Think of the state of the health of their mothers. Why, the expense of one nursery in Bel- grave Square would enable forty poor children to attain their natural bodily development. If this be true of the body, how much more true of the intellect ! No doubt a great deal is spent in elementary education, but the fierce competition of life compels parents to take away their children from school before they have learnt what educa tion means. Many boys leave school at thirteen, and work as errand-boys fourteen hours a day. Of course it is against the law, but so are the unhealthy and overcrowded houses ; but the law that safeguards the poor is always in the hands of those who do not (unless compelled by strong public opinion) put it into force. But you say they have their own soul development in their own hands ; religion in England is offered to everyone ; that, at any rate, the rich man does not keep to himself. But practically he does. 'When shall we realise the awful words, "Ye have taken away the key of knowledge ; ye enter not in yourselves, and they that were entering in ye hindered " ? For if those who have this world's goods really entered into the spirit of Christ, that spirit would make them utterly dissatisfied until every gift of God they had in excess, 330 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING whether for the development of body, soul, or spirit, was expended on those who have not, those who are allowed by God to have it not, that those who have it should supply what is lacking. If these words seem to you too severe, it is just because I know the good that lies hidden away in all these unrefined, non-religious souls. For the last twenty years I have been living amongst them. I know how easily all this wrong could be set right. No almsgiving, no patronage will ever do it. "I give it to you because it is your right to get it. I give you temporal surroundings, in which your body may develop, intellectual surroundings, in which your mind may grow ; above all, I give you love and sympathy, that your heart may grow too. I do it as an act of pure justice, because far too many of these things have been wasted on me. Alas ! 1 have wasted them upon myself. I confess to you that I have seen my brother had need, that I have shut up the bowels of my compassion. I realise that there was no love of God in me." Believe me, such a method will never fail. I know the hearts of these people — men lost to all sense of right, with nothing before them but sin, gaol, despair, women who have ceased to be women. There are thousands of them in England. Charity only makes them meaner and baser, and they will chuckle as they deceive you. They know as well as you do that this charity is in a large measure a kind of insurance against evil in this world, against evil in the world to come. But go to them having faith in them, as a man has in a man, and time will show you. If this be true of the utterly depraved, how much more true will it be of those who in the darkness are striving after light ! Go to them in a spirit of justice and of love, and you will be to them as Christ was to humanity, the revelation of a God they desired to see.' Father Dolling had promised to write an article for The Oxford Point of View on ' The Work of Varsity Men in the East End,' but his illness came before it could be done. This was also the case with an article promised to The Treasury on ' A Working Parson's Day.' In regard to the former of these, the editor of the Oxford paper in question tells us that Father Dolling was about to dictate the article, but at the time arranged he felt too ill to do so. Our informant continues : ' I walked about with him in the square that day — one of those days in spring when the sun is just beginning to make itself felt. NO LONGEE AT THE DAILY EUCHAEIST 331 Together we watched the children playing, while we talked of Oxford, and planned a visit for him when he was better. That day he was quite cheerful, and chaffed the children in his own delightful manner.' In reference to this closing period of his life, a lady, who was one of his many friends, writes : ' The last time Father Dolling came to see us he laughed and told my daughter, who had been an invalid for years, that she was a fraud, and that he believed she would live longer than he would. We little thought then that his words would prove true.' During the last Lent of his life and ministry (1902) Father Dolling had an immense number of preaching engagements, from all of which offertories were to come for the work at S. Saviour's. But his health was giving signs of an impend ing breakdown, and in his own church he used to feel so tired that his usual mode of preaching was from a chair, and that he would hardly ever give an address standing. It did not appear as if the treatment at Aix-la-Chapelle had really reached the root of the evil. One sign of ill-health which was singularly touching, and showed how weak he felt, was that all that Lent he was not seen at the daily Celebration. All through his life, whenever possible, this had been his strength and joy. Every morning at Landport, in all weathers, he was to be seen making his way through Charlotte Street to S. Agatha's for the daily Eucharist. To those who knew what he felt about the Sacrament of the Altar as the ' daily Bread ' and the ' daily Pleading ' this seemed afterwards as a sign that God was giving him ' meat to eat that man knew not of,' and that he was drawing near to that state within the veil where the sacramental media are no longer needed in the more immediate access to the Presence. An accident accelerated his physical collapse. After one of his Lent sermons at Tonbridge, when he was getting into the station, a drunken man fell against him, and caused such an injury to one of his feet that he was in serious pain for days after, though concealing the full extent of this at first in order to fulfil his immense list of Lent engagements, on which so 332 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING much depended for money for his work. He writes hopefully in his magazine : ' On Easter Monday I am going to put myself in the doctor's hands, and he is going to put me perfectly right.' In reality he passed a Lent of great pain and discomfort, but bravely battling on in hope of Easter rest. That Easter rest came in a different and grander sense than he expected. His last Sunday at S. Saviour's was Easter Day, March 30, 1902, a year since he had gone to Spain in search of health. The afternoon Children's Vespers was a special service, since, in addition to the Easter festival, it was the farewell to Mr. A. E. Cornibeer, to whom the success of the Sunday-school was largely due, and who was going to be ordained in order to serve at the Sacred Trinity Church, Salford ; and it was also the last Sunday at S. Saviour's of one of the assistant clergy, Eev. J. Lloyd, who had accepted the living of Sutton-on-Derwent, in Yorkshire. Father Dolling's address to the children at this service was his last public act of teaching or preaching in S. Saviour's, as he was too weak to appear at the Easter Sunday Evensong. He loved the S. Saviour's children and all children so deeply that it is a touching and beautiful circumstance that his last act of public ministry in his own church was one in which he was sur rounded by crowds of the little ones. No priest ever more faithfully fulfilled his Master's precept, ' Feed My lambs.' To a friend who sat with him that Easter evening instead of going into church he spoke much of the thought that true success can only come out of failure, true life out of death. He spoke as full of hope about S. Saviour's, partly, no doubt, from his own indomitable faith, but also from the great encouragement which the very successful work among the children — the men and women of the future — had given him, amid many other things which were causes of depression. On the next day an operation was performed, at the Vicarage, on his foot, which cured that part of his physical trouble, but deeper evils remained. As soon as he could move after this he went to stay with one of his sisters, Miss J. Dolling, at 88, Philbeach Gardens, South Kensington. Not again was SEEMONS AT BEEKELEY CHAPEL 333 his tired body to come to S. Saviour's until it returned in the repose of death. Unfortunately, at this time an offer of a very important pulpit was made to him, to plead for his work, at Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, where he was already well known, during the Sunday mornings after Easter. He insisted that he was sufficiently recovered, after the operation, to accept this offer, but two sermons of the course plainly proved to him and to others that its continuance was impossible. This preaching must have been done with extreme weakness and pain. This was the last pulpit he ever occupied. He preached on April 13 and 20, and on the last occasion made all kneel in the middle of the sermon to pray for peace in South Africa in regard to the negotiations then going on. He returned to his sister's house on Sunday, April 20, not to leave it again alive. The present writer was able to take his place at Berkeley Chapel for a few Sundays until, shortly before Father Dolling's death, the course was stopped. Although Dolling got very much weaker, yet to the end strong hopes of recovery were entertained. He even insisted that he was well enough to see a deputation of Shrewsbury schoolboys relative to a school mission. He was so intensely vital that it was hard for himself and for others to realise that his life forces, so enormously taxed, were now really, though slowly, ebbing away. Meanwhile constant Eucharists and intercessions were offered not only in S. Saviour's, but in many churches in London and throughout England for his recovery. The Confirmation at his own church which had been arranged for took place during his illness, and was practically a service of intercession for him as well as a Confirmation service. The Bishop of Zanzibar officiated, and asked all most earnestly to pray for their Vicar. Ascension Day at S. Saviour's was practically a day of continuous intercession through the great ascended High Priest that the life of His servant might be spared. There was also a special 'Day of Intercession ' for this object at S. Saviour's, and in a number of other churches, and the Holy Sacrifice was pleaded continually for his recovery. 334 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING The nightly prayer-meeting at S. Saviour's brought, besides the regular worshippers, many to the church ' to say a prayer for Father Dolling ' (or, at least, to show they would do so if they knew how) who had never attended the church when he was among them. His last illness, so patiently borne, was one of the noblest of all his sermons. He did not fret or worry about the parish and his work, but left all in God's hand, and, as long as he retained consciousness, was cheerful to the end. As he grew worse, the services of Drs. Farr and Corner, his usual medical attendants, were reinforced by the special attendance of his old friend, Dr. Einger, and of the well-known specialist, Sir Lauder Brunton. The Sunday after Ascension was a most anxious day at S. Saviour's, and the great sorrow that seemed to be impend ing appeared, as it advanced, to make even the most thought less and selfish, in some small degree, prayerful and religious. Meanwhile, what proved to be the last Communion he was to receive on earth was administered to the now dying priest by the Vicar of the parish, Eev. H. Westall, of S. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens, who had always been Dolling's friend, and who had put S. Cuthbert's at his disposal for Celebrations and other purposes during the time between the latter's leaving S. Agatha's and his visit to America. During the next few days Father Dolling got still weaker. The secret of his sickness was undeveloped internal trouble, while no stamina or strength was left to resist it. Still his sisters and friends kept on hoping against hope, until about two or three days before the end came the doctors announced that pneumonia had appeared, and that the case was hope less. Towards the end he was only conscious at intervals, wandering much in mind, though without pain. While still conscious, he had asked one of his sisters to write to an old Wykehamist, Mr. Paul Eeubens, and to send to the latter his congratulations on the success of his play, ' Three Little Maids.' He also asked for his cheque-book, in order that he might send payment for some expenses of a young friend whom he had helped to take Holy Orders. THE DEPAETUEE 335 On the evening of May 14 he was unconscious, and talked much of his friends the Alexanders (Mrs. Stevens' near rela tives), in America. He called them ' those dear kind people,' and seemed to think that he was with them on some country picnic or excursion. A little time before, while still uncon scious, he tried to preach the coronation sermon to his Boys' Brigade, of which we have elsewhere written. On May 15 he was sinking rapidly. His spirit passed away peacefully on the afternoon of that day at a little after half- past four o'clock. The present writer had the great privilege of offering up the last prayers of the Church by the bedside of the dying priest, who, however, never regained conscious ness, except for an occasional recognition of one or other of his sisters. The latter — Elise, Geraldine, Adelaide, Nina, and Josephine — along with a few other intimate and old friends, were present at the last. At his sisters' request, Father Dolling's favourite Psalm (Ps. xxiii., 'The Lord is my Shepherd ') was said by the bedside more than once as the end seemed immediately approaching, and shortly after this he yielded up his spirit to the God from whom it had come, and the fulfilment of whose will had been, in Christ's strength, the inspiring motive of his life from beginning to end. Amid the profound sorrow which filled the chamber of death, it was felt to be a matter of unfeigned thankfulness that he whom God had taken had been mercifully spared any considerable degree at the last of physical pain. His tired yet happy soul sank to rest as in an untroubled sleep. Perfect peace folded him round as the perfected consecration of his strenuous life, or rather as the introduction to a life yet more strenuous, in the clearer air of the great Beyond — ' The mountain-top freedom of generous souls.' The news of Father Dolling's death was known almost immediately at S. Saviour's, and the tolling of the church bell gave information of it to all the parish. It was the loss of their dearest and best friend to many of the parishioners, and even of the least hopeful people their better nature seemed to be touched by the news. 336 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING The next Sunday was Whitsun-Day. The body still lay at the house in Philbeach Gardens, and the Holy Eucharist was celebrated in the chamber of death by the present writer on the morning of that Feast of Pentecost, a festival which the deceased priest especially loved as being both the celebration of the Holy Spirit's work and person, and the birthday of the Catholic Church as the great Family of God. At S. Saviour's it was a day more solemn than ever before in the history of that church. In addition to the great affec tion felt for Father Dolling, the latter was the first Vicar of the parish who had been removed by death. It seemed as if, during that Sunday of Pentecost, all good influences were awake at S. Saviour's, active from the living personality, and not merely from the memory of the dear friend who had passed away from sight. The preacher at the eleven o'clock Solemn Eucharist was the Eev. B. E. Waud, who spoke simply and pathetically of the privilege of Father Dolling's friendship, and of his never-to-be-forgotten love. There was an immense congregation in the evening, as so many friends of the deceased priest had come to S. Saviour's from all parts of London. The preacher on this occasion was the present writer. Not alone in S. Saviour's, but in other parts of London, and in very many churches in England, and beyond it, did thoughts of Eobert Dolling's noble life, personality, and character find expression from the pulpit on that Sunday. In saying this, we may include several Nonconformist places of worship, as well as those of the Church of England. At 8.30 p.m. on Whitsun Monday (May 19) most of the priests who had worked with Eobert Dolling at Landport and at Poplar assembled at Philbeach Gardens. After prayers had been offered in the house the clergy and choir of S. Cuthbert's parish came across to lead the body into S. Cuthbert's Church, which was full from end to end. Vespers of the Dead was then sung solemnly, and a watch was commenced by friends which was kept up all night. On Tuesday morning (20th) a Solemn Eequiem Mass was celebrated, the celebrant being the Eev. Spooner Lillingston. SOEROW OF RICH AND POOR 337 This service was attended by a very large congregation. At 5.30 p.m. the funeral procession left S. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens, in order to go across London to S. Saviour's, Poplar. Thus, as in his life Robert Dolling brought rich and poor together in common Christian brotherhood, so by his death he cemented this fellowship in the sharing of a common sorrow at the altar and at the grave. The procession arrived at S. Saviour's parish at 7 p.m., where it was met by the lads of the Boys' Brigade in their khaki uniforms ; the little fellows whom the deceased priest had so loved, and of whom he had been so proud, his hope for the parish. At their head was their chaplain, the Rev. B. E. Waud, and a large number of S. Saviour's people followed. At the church the body was received by the choir, the parochial clergy, and other clergy who had worked with Father Dolling in former years. After the body was brought into the chancel, Ps. Ii. was sung kneeling. At 8.30 p.m. the church was full for Vespers of the Dead. A short address was then given. The coffin, sur rounded by the usual lights, was covered with an immense number of floral wreaths and crosses. One little offering may be specially noted. The children of the Infants' School sent a wreath of forget-me-nots. We may mention also that the children of a family at Tonbridge, whom he loved, sent forget-me-nots to be thrown by their father's hand into the grave. All night a solemn watch was kept by clergy, relatives, friends, and parishioners. Until midnight the church was visited by a great many people, and all night there were constant worshippers, besides those who were appointed watchers. From 4 a.m. on, during the next morning, crowds of working- men visited the church, for Robert Dolling was known and loved by East End workers far outside the limit of his own congregation. The men came in for a few minutes in their working clothes, and then went on to work, ' just simply and naturally,' as he would have said himself. No priest in modern times ever so loved the working classes as Dolling did, and gave himself so fully to raise and help them, and. the 22 338 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING love they felt for him in all the places in which he had laboured was far wider than church attendances could measure. From 4.30 to 9 a.m.# there were half-hourly Celebrations of Holy Communion, each of Father Dolling's former colleagues being celebrant in turn. The children attended the Celebration at nine o'clock, and at ten o'clock the Solemn Requiem Mass was celebrated ; the celebrant was the Rev. J. Elwes, the senior curate, who had been placed in temporary charge of the parish. The church was densely crowded, numbers being unable to obtain admission. The immense congregation was in black, relieved only by some uniforms of soldiers. In front of the chancel stood two soldiers (two of Father Dolling's boys), with arms reversed, who remained there to the end of the service. The congregation included about one hundred clergy from all parts of London and the provinces, and persons re presentative of almost every class and type in the community. Mr. W. H. Hill and Mr. Athelstan Riley attended for the English Church Union ; the Mayor of Poplar (Mr. W. Crooks) and Mrs. Crooks were also present. The mode of rendering the Requiem, both as to cere monial and music, was singularly, impressive and pathetic, and was marked both by dignity and simplicity. It was a grand and fitting 'Vale' — the farewell of the Catholic Church — 'farewell, but not for ever,' to the brother whose body rested before the altar of God. For him, as for all the family of God, was pleaded in Christ's own way, in the Eucharistic Mysteries, the one Perfect Sacrifice. The Sequence was that usual at the Burial of the Dead in Western Christendom, the Dies lrce. At the Offertory was sung 'Christ enthroned in highest heaven,' and at the Ablutions, ' Now the labourer's task is o'er.' Throughout the entire service the words of the Book of Common Prayer for the Holy Communion Service were strictly followed, except that the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel were taken from the office for the Burial of the Dead in Edward VI.'s First Prayer- Book. After the Mass, the celebrant, having exchanged his chasuble for a cope, censed and asperged the coffin. The service was concluded with the Nunc Dimittis. A FAITHFUL PRIEST 339 Both the Bishop of London (Dr. Ingram) and the Bishop of Stepney (Dr. Lang), who had specially wished to conduct the Burial Service, now entered the chancel. During the interval before this, however, the Bishop of London had laid a cross of flowers with his own hands on the coffin, kneeling after wards in prayer before the altar. The Burial Service com menced at twelve o'clock. The two Bishops were vested in black copes, the Bishop of London also wearing his mitre. The Bishop of London delivered an address, in the course of which, speaking to the congregation as his ' fellow-mourners,' he said that ' His heart was very full and his voice was very unsteady. The picture rose before him of only a few years back, when he stood at those chancel steps with their dear priest, who was then full of health and vigour. The keynote of his ministry which he (the Bishop) gave to him was, " I will raise me up a faithful priest." He could see him as he (the Bishop) tried to paint what a faithful priest was. He was to be, first, God's man ; second, a man wholly devoted to the service of his fellow-men ; third, loyal to his Church. He could bear witness that their dear friend had been a true and faithful priest — faithful to his God and faithful to his Church. Certainly one of the secrets of Robert Dolling's wonderful power was his combination of attachment to Catholic cere monial with an earnest evangelical personal love for our Lord Jesus Christ. He had been told that at Prayer-Meetings Robert Dolling seemed to speak personally to the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not suppose that a more loving heart ever beat. He remembered that at a Church Congress at which they were both present the burden of his speech to the clergy was, "Do you love your people?" ' When everybody else had given a man up, it was always said, " Dolling will take him." Thousands felt that day as if they had lost their best friend on earth, and often the only earthly friend they had. He had died, worn out by work and worry.' The Bishop concluded by praying ' That eternal peace might rest upon him ; that eternal light might shine upon him ; and that his untiring spirit might yet find work beyond the veil.' 22—2 340 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING The Dead March in ' Saul ' was played on the organ as the burial procession, headed by the crucifix, moved down the church to the west door. The coffin was borne by six soldiers in uniform. Of these one was a colour-sergeant of the Grenadier Guards, another a sergeant in the Royal Artillery ; the others were one from the Royal Marines, two from the East Surrey Regiment, and one from Kneller Hall. All these soldiers had come to perform this last sad office from true affection for Robert Dolling, whose personal friends they had been. An immense assemblage of people filled the streets outside, and the utmost respect was manifested. The place of interment was Woking Cemetery, in the beautiful portion where S. Alban's, Holborn, burial-ground is situated, and by permission willingly granted by Father Suckling, the Vicar of S. Alban's. The grave lies next to that where rests the body of Father Mackonochie. (It is worth noticing that when Dolling himself had been in charge of the Maidman Street Mission, he had felt so strongly the impor tance of reverent regard for the graves of the departed members of his flock that he procured a special piece of ground at Bow Cemetery for the use of S. Martin's people, that they might be a family in death as in life.) The chief mourners who followed the body from S. Saviour's were the sisters and other relatives of the deceased priest, together with immediate personal friends. The clergy who had been Father Dolling's fellow-helpers at S. Agatha's and S. Saviour's, as well as the various workers of the latter parish, also joined in the proces sion from the church. A special Necropolis train was taken for the Woking Cemetery, Brookwood. At the latter place a large number of other friends met the company from Poplar, including among them groups representing various phases and interests of Robert Dolling's crowded life during its different periods. A number of City men who had been much helped by Father Dolling's Lent addresses in the City churches arranged to be present at a special memorial service on Wednesday, May 20, the day before the burial, not being able to attend the latter. This service was held at S. Laurence Jewry, Gresham Street, E.C., by the special consent and con- OLD FRIENDS SURROUND HIS GRAVE 341 currence of the Rector, the Rev. J. Stephen Barrass. Among many from Scotland and Ireland who wrote expressing their presence in spirit at the burial was the Bishop of S. Andrew's, who sent to the mourners an affectionate expression of his sympathy with them and his deep regard for the departed priest. Also an immense number of other letters were received from persons unavoidably hindered from attending. A large contingent was present from S. Agatha's, Landport, including its present Vicar, the Rev. G. T. Tremenheere, and the choir, acolytes, teachers, workers, and other friends to the number of nearly one hundred. Winchester College was well repre sented ; its love was with him to the end. Dr. Fearon (ex- Headmaster), Dr. Burge (Headmaster), the Rev. J. T. Bram- Bton, and Messrs. M. J. Rendell, F. Morshead, and A. K. Cook (masters) were present, also the Rev. E. W. Sergeant of Bournemouth, ex-master of Winchester, and formerly one of the clergy with Dr. Linklater at S. Agatha's. The Winchester boys sent a wreath ' In affectionate remembrance,' and some of them, as well as several old Wykehamists, were present. One of Robert Dolling's Harrow masters, the Rev. W. Done Bushell, attended the burial. From the Gordon Boys' Home, in which Father Dolling took great interest (for, dissimilar as he was in many things to General Gordon, he shared with him, besides his Christian faith, his interest in boys and his love of the outcast), came Colonel and Mrs. Purchas, Major Collins, and the Rev. H. D. Madge. Prominent among the clergy were Fathers Suckling and Stanton, S. Alban's, Holborn, and Father Wainwright, Vicar of S. Peter's, London Docks. Some of ' Brother Bob's ' old postmen friends had been also at the service in S. Saviour's. The theological students of King's College, London, where he had spoken shortly before his death, sent a cross of flowers. When the procession entered the Woking cemetery it moved through the sunlight of a beautiful spring day, and amid the singing of birds, to the grave, which is surrounded with fir- trees, in a spot where everything around suggests the peace and hope of the faith of Christ. The Bishop of Stepney read the last part of the Burial 842 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Service, and after that said a few simple, natural, and most touching words. He said that he desired to lead all around, fellow-mourners in a common sorrow, in thanksgiving for all Father Dolling had done, been, said, and taught to his people ; in prayer for his light, rest, and peace ; in prayer for those he left behind ; his sisters, the people of his parishes at Poplar and Portsmouth, the clergy who had worked with him, his soldiers and sailors all over the world, the Winchester boys, and all the tired and despairing ones to whom he had been so true a friend. As all moved quietly past and looked down into the grave there arose without a doubt in many a soul the ' vows that bind the will in silence made ' — the resolve to aim higher and to live more truly because of the friendship of the noble heart that is now in this world stilled. At the head of Father Dolling's grave stands a Celtic cross with this inscription : 'ROBERT RADCLYFFE DOLLING, Priest, May 15, 1902, R.I.P.' It would be hard to imagine a more suitable spot for the last resting-place of Robert Dolling's tired body than that in which it lies, beside that of another brave and faithful servant of God, among old friends of the S. Alban's days, beneath the green fir-trees, the singing of birds around, and over all the Cross — over his grave, and on the rood that marks this portion of the ground — the Cross of Christ, the only lasting thing amid the ceaseless changes of the world. It would be out of place to close this book with any long- drawn eulogium. The story of Robert Dolling's life tells its own tale of untiring and unselfish devotion to the highest ends of existence. We might have expected to find in his character the scars of the many conflicts through which he passed in the course of his comparatively short yet stormy Father Dolling's Grave, All Saints' Day, 1902. ' MULTUM DILEXIT ' 343 life, but his soul was in reality unsinged and unsullied by the fierceness of controversial fires. He bore witness to many great principles both in the life of the Church and of the nation, but it is not as the champion of a party that Robert Radclyffe Dolling will be finally remembered. It is as that of one ' who loved much ' that his name will live. No better words can be used to describe his personality and character than those which were engraved on Shelley's tomb, and which we have placed at the heading of this final chapter of his life's history : Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts). APPENDIX I A.— SUBSEQUENT HISTORY OF S. SAVIOUR'S, POPLAR. The Rev. J. Elwes continued in charge until the nomination of the Rev. Mark Napier Trollope, and the latter's acceptance of the living. The patron of S. Saviour's, by whom the nomination was made, is the Rev. H. Mosley, who succeeded Dr. Chandler as Rector of All Saints', Poplar, in 1902. The Rev. M. N. Trollope was instituted as Vicar of S. Saviour's, October 2, 1902. He was before this one of the priests of the mission in Korea, working under the Right Rev. Bishop Corfe. It is interesting to note that Bishop Corfe was a dear friend of the late Father Dolling. Under the Eev. M. N. Trollope complete continuity of teaching and mode of worship has been insured at S. Saviour's. B.— THE GOOD-BYE OF FATHEE DOLLING'S SISTERS TO THE PEOPLE OF S. SAVIOUR'S. ' The Girls' Camp, ' North Hayling, 'August, 1902. ' My dear Friends, ' Miss Geraldine and I will not be able to say good-bye to you all, so we send this little line of farewell through the magazine. ' The sad circumstances which caused us to leave Poplar prevented us having a farewell social party ; we could not have borne it, and I think you would not have desired it ; everyone would have missed the kind and genial presence of one who too really, for the last few years, was the light and life of our parochial gatherings. We wish you all happiness and prosperity in the future. I am sure that you will support and assist who ever is chosen in my dear brother's place in the same kind and loyal way you did him. It is by so doing that you can best raise a lasting memorial to his memory, and this is the memorial he would have liked best and chosen first. 'To all the Communicants of S. Saviour's, both old and young, our loving farewell. [ 344 ] APPENDIX I 345 ' To all Mothers connected with the Mothers' Meeting, our loving farewell. ' To the G.F.S. Girls, our loving farewell. ' To the Sunday-school Teachers and Children, our loving farewell. ' And to my dear Factory Girls, our loving farewell too. ' In fact, to all we know, and who knew us, we say God bless you and good-bye. From your friends, ' Elise Dolling. ' Geraldine Dolling.' C. Out of an immense number of notices of Father Dolling imme diately after his death, and of expressions of sympathy with his relatives, we extract a few which seem to be of a specially charac teristic type. They show how widespread in its range and how varied in its nature was the sorrow felt for his loss. The Select Vestry of Kilrea, Co. Derry, Ireland, desired — 'to convey to the Misses Dolling and to the clergyman in charge of S. Saviour's, Poplar, the all-inadequate expression of the intense sorrow felt by everyone in Kilrea who still remembers " Master Eobert's " life of active Christianity and practical benevolence during the years in which he dwelt amongst them, and to say, further, that several members of the Select Vestry present at this meeting had had the great privilege and benefit of attending his classes long ago, when as a layman he had taken immense trouble to elevate and enlighten and help the young people of the neighbourhood.' Resolution passed by the Dolling Guild, Kilrea, at the Opening Meeting of the Ninth Session, October, 1902. ' We, the members of the Dolling Guild, hereby express our most heart felt sympathy with the family and friends of the late lamented Rev. R. R. Dolling (from whom this society takes its name) in the great bereavement which so suddenly befell them, and we wish to renew our expression of love for his memory who, in the noblest spirit of true charity for the love of Christ, devoted his entire self to the uplifting of his fellow-men.' The Portsmouth Board of Guardians sent a special vote of 'sincere and heartfelt sympathy' with the sisters of the Rev. R. R. Dolling. They add: 'Your late brother was beloved and respected by all who knew him.' The Portsmouth Working Men's Radical Club expressed its sense of 'the unflinching manner that he displayed when dealing with unpopular causes.' 346 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING The Times, while criticising what it called ' his injudicious rash ness,' and adding that ' he elevated injudiciousness into a fine art,' and that, with regard to Winchester College, ' parents, whose ideas of Churchmanship were of a steady-going order, were apprehensive at the extremes with which their sons might be led to sympathize by the strong personality of the missioner,' yet also stated : ' It is impossible to do justice to his missionary zeal in a densely popu lated neighbourhood. It was the denseness of it that attracted him, for it is still questionable whether any Metropolitan slum presents circum stances which call for Church extension so loudly as several districts in Portsmouth.' Another extract may be quoted from the same article : ' His influence at Winchester was a real power among the boys.' Truth said : ' The present age is not fertile in saints, and apparently it either does not know one when it meets with him, or prefers his room to his company. That, at any rate, is the conclusion that I should draw from the life of Father Dolling. So far as one can judge from report, he deserved the title of Saint as truly as any subject of Papal canonisation. And he possessed other gifts than those ordinarily associated with the title. He was not only blameless in Ufe and character, utterly without thought of self, and boundless in his sympathy for less perfect mortals, but he possessed great powers of speech of a rough and unconventional order, s,ound practical sense, and extraordinary influence over all men, but especially over the least tractable of them. The ecclesiastical builders, however, according to their wont, rejected what might have been the headstone of the corner. His life was harassed and- his work hampered by disputes over forms and ceremonies. He was outlawed in one diocese because he refused to toe the line of official orthodoxy. He was studiously relegated to the humblest spheres of parochial work, and he has been allowed to kill himself by labour and self-denial, while comfortable bene fices and exalted stations are bestowed on men who are not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes. But what the Church lost by its attitude towards him the poor and the sinner gained. Thousands of them are mourning their loss to-day.' A Bit of Father Stanton's Whitsun Sermon at S. Alban's, Holborn, 1902. ' Just place before you Robert Dolling. There is no doubt he was a strange man. People speak of " his magnetic personal influence." This is the secular view. We Christians say " one who is illuminated by the Holy Ghost.'' You who knew him will never know another, never see the like again. His life was so unlike what we see in the world. He APPENDIX I 347 lived in obscurity, caring nothing for money or position, never resting, labouring in the slums in complete unworldliness and intense sympathy. You met him, and his interest centred in you. There was no stint ; his sympathy was so wide. It was neither pro-Boer nor pro-British, but — pro- Mankind. It was given irrespective of morality. To be in need was to be sure of his help. He is gone from us, But his work is here. It has started a new enthusiasm, poured into the Church a new vitality, for it was the power of the Holy Ghost. Compassion is Divine Redemption, not sentiment. The Lord Jesus was full of compassion. Through it, He died on Calvary. Robert Dolling brought himself to an early grave ' through his compassion; if yours is divine it will kill you.' Let us pass from the above sermon, preached at High Mass at S. Alban's, to cite some testimonies from the Nonconformists, among many of whom Father Dolling, in spite of all his thoroughgoing Catholicism and Sacramentalism, was an object of the deepest affection. The Baptist for May 31 tells us : 'A memorial service was held for Father Dolling in Lake Road Baptist Chapel, Portsmouth, on Sunday morning last. The pastor, Rev. G. Roberts Hern, preached, and paid a high tribute to the deceased, whose work in the slums of Portsmouth commanded the attention and admiration of all, and won for him the esteem and love of people of all denominations. The name " Father " was not assumed by him, but was the spontaneous tribute of the poor, who recognised in him the paternal qualities of protection for the weak and sympathy for the poor.' The Baldock Free Churchman (Herts) tells us of a ' Memorial Service for Father Dolling,' held in the Town Hall, Baldock, under ' Free Church ' auspices, on Sunday, June 8, 1 902. The preacher said: ' A man holding opinions upon things entirely opposed to my own ; practising rituals with which I have no sort of sympathy ; belonging to a religious society to which I am most strongly averse. What was there in Father Dolling which draws me to think of him and to speak of him to-night with a reverence that is almost akin to worship ? How comes it that a Free Churchman is constrained by love for this Ritualistic priest to frame to-night some poor words of appreciation and affection for his memory ? What was the secret of that constraining power which over came all differences of opinion and of practice and led hundreds of men who had no sympathy with his creed to find in Father Dolling a brother greatly beloved, a beautiful human soul whose life was an inspiration, and whose memory is a treasured possession ? How dwarfed do all the little things which separate us as Christians become in the light of that splendid devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ which was his all-pervading passion I' 348 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING The service was concluded by the hymn, 'All hail the power of Jesu's name,' and a prayer of thanksgiving ' that such as he have lived and died.' An Appreciation of the Rev. Father Dolling was the title of an address given to the S. Paul's Congregational Young People's Guild (Congregationalist) at Newcastle-on-Tyne, by their leader, Mr. Arthur E. Wray. The paper concluded as follows : ' I want to make my position perfectly clear. I honour, and will honour, all Christian men, be they Catholic or Protestant. Was Dolling less a Father because he said Mass ? Was Dolling less a Saviour of men because he was a Ritualist ? Was Dolling less a Christian because he had other ideas to ours 'I Unhesitatingly I say " No." I rejoice that my Master has permitted me to work in the same cause as men like Father Dolling. Many a heart is sad because Father Dolling has been called away. Many a one feels the way of righteousness more difficult, and the way of sin easier because of his absence. Many a prayer in his memory will be said by young men and women who were led to the Saviour by him, and many a child will live to bless the day that a man named Dolling turned their garret into a home, and brought a smile to their mother's face. And I leave this thought with you : Can Father Dolling ever die ?' The British Weekly, one of the chief organs of English Noncon formity, had (on May 22, 1902) an eloquent appreciation at much length of Father Dolling's life and work, in which he is represented as one of the great religious figures of the century just ended, and as an illuminated disciple of such as S. Francis or Wesley. The article is one of great generosity of feeling, as the writer was evidently well aware of Father Dolling's religious position in regard to much that Nonconformists reject. The article concludes as follows : ' Had he been spared for another twenty years, his great abilities must have secured some adequate recognition. He had the dust without the palm. But the officer who falls in obscure and arduous warfare serves his country not less gloriously than his comrade who survives to coin titles and world-wide fame. He has left behind him the inestimable treasure of a pure and saintly memory, and for himself there was at the final hour no suffering or conflict.' The above testimonies are from Nonconformists. We append one from one of the leading Roman Catholic magazines of the United States, the Catholic World, New York, for February, 1903 : ' The life of Father Dolling is the life of an Apostle. Never have we read the history of a man more consecrated to God and to abandoned souls. APPENDIX I 349 He was an Anglican, but so Christ-like were his interior life and his external labours that we hesitate not to call him a very prince in that communion of just souls which is the invisible kingdom of God's Holy Spirit. For almost twenty years he worked in the slums of Portsmouth and London. Despising conventionalities, irritated with officialism, but all absorbed in real tenderness, he gave himself, body and mind and heart and soul, to the salvation of little children, the reformation of the criminal, the reclaiming of the outcast. Every day at his table from ten to forty of the poor and the unfortunate broke bread with him, and in this " sacra ment of a common meal," as his striking phrase is, took heart of hope from his inspiring presence, his paternal kindness. Until he could preach no more, until his toil-broken body lay down in final rest last May, he begged and sweated for his poor. God give him sweet repose ! No man whose vocation is to work for souls can read of his glorious life without feeling lifted up to purer love for the world's Redeemer and to more vehement zeal for those unhappy multitudes who know not yet what it is to have been redeemed.' Extract from King's College Review, June, 1902 : ' The Theological Faculty of King's College, London, shared the sorrow of the many thousands bereaved by the death of the Rev. R. R. Dolling. A wreath was placed on his bier on behalf of the faculty, and we were represented by one of our number at the funeral, who left cards on behalf of the Principal and Vice-Principal. Very affectionate ties seemed to bind us to Father Dolling; we had been stirred and inspired by his unique addresses in our chapel on several occasions, and it is well-known that more than one of his " young men " have passed through the faculty. And Mr. Dolling thought well of King's, and we know that he was glad to come and speak to us. It so happened that while he was lying ill — and, we more than half suspected, dying — we were studying that early portion of the Epistle to the Philippians in which the Apostle avows himself swayed between two conflicting emotions, longing to depart and be with Christ, " for it is very far better," yet anxious to remain, if it may be so, to be of further benefit to the Church ; and no doubt it occurred to many of us that this might perchance be a picture of Father Dolling's state. Though he has gone, his life and work may well be an inspiration for us all.' We conclude this selection from a multitude of notices and tributes by the following poem, which appeared in the Spectator over the signature of ' A. St. J. A.' (A. St. John Adcock) : 'FATHER DOLLING. ' Fold the white hands in sleep : the day is o'er ; He has laid down the cross he gladly bore For love of those who had so much to bear, And we that knew him know him here no more. 350 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING ' Such zeal for God and man within him burned, He was more worthy of the fame he spurned Than many a saint who sits in orieled bliss, And wears a halo he has never earned. ' But carrying balm for wants and sufferings grim, And light of heaven where light of earth was dim, He knew that some were happier for his work, And that was more than praise or fame to him. ' Let us thank God amid our dust and heat, Our fierce self-love in triumph or defeat — Let us at least thank God that he has lived And helped to keep our human nature sweet.' APPENDIX II THE DOLLING MEMORIAL. As the result of a widely-expressed wish on the part of Mr. Dolling's friends, a private meeting was held, by the invitation of the Bishop of Stepney, at his residence, 2, Amen Court, on June 2, 1902, to consider the question of a memorial. The following resolutions were adopted : 1. To provide for the comfort of Mr. Dolling's two sisters, with out whose devoted labours it would have been impossible for their brother to have carried on his work, and who were dependent upon him. 2. To provide a small convalescent home for working girls. 3. That the Misses Dolling should be asked to undertake the management of this home. 4. That the benefits of the home should, in the first instance, be for those recommended by the authorities of S. Agatha's, Landport, and S. Saviour's, Poplar, the scenes of Mr. Dolling's chief labours. The appeal issued by the committee was generously responded to, and the committee was able to carry out the first part of its scheme without delay by the purchase of a Government annuity for the Misses Dolling. The following gentlemen were then appointed as a permanent committee to carry out the second part of the memorial scheme : T. Dyer-Edwardes, Esq. (chairman). Colonel Barrington Foote. Alfred Harmsworth, Esq. Alfred H. Tarleton, Esq. (hon. treasurer). This committee has acquired the freehold of a most suitable house at Worthing, and a ' Home of Rest ' has been opened under the management of the Misses Dolling. [351 ] 352 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING The details as to the working of the ' Home ' are not yet settled, but it is intended that there shall be free beds for the benefit of the parishes of S. Agatha's, Landport, and S. Saviour's, Poplar, in special memory of Mr. Dolling's work in those parishes, and also some beds to be available for paying patients. It is estimated that the sum of £20 will maintain a bed for a year. Full particulars will be issued in due course. The ' Home ' committee has already received most generous promises of support from many quarters, and confidently appeals for subscriptions and donations. These may be sent to the hon. treasurer, Mr. Alfred H. Tarleton, at Breakspears, Uxbridge, Middlesex, or to the Manager, London and County Bank, Worthing, for the credit of the ' Dolling Memorial Home of Rest.' A special wish has been expressed by many of Mr. Dolling's friends that every opportunity of helping should be given to those countless numbers who knew and were helped by Mr. Dolling, and whose circumstances make it impossible for them to send large sums. The committee, therefore, desires to make it widely known that promises of annual subscriptions of 5s. will be most gladly welcomed from those who feel they cannot do more. Special donations for the ' equipment ' of the Home are most acceptable. Miss Gascoigne, of 51, Warwick Square, London, S.W., has been appointed hon. secretary, and will furnish any information desired. INDEX Abbott, Eev. J. H. E. , at S. Agatha's, 83 ; at S. Saviour's, 268 Albany, Duchess of, letter to Dolling, 315 Alexander, Archbishop, of Armagh, letter to Dolling, 225 Archer, Miss, 79 Armitage, Eev. E., 289 Baiss, Miss, 267 Baker, Eev. H. R., tractate on S. Agatha's 'Sunday Scholar's Book,' 180-181 Ball, Mr. J. Henry, 186 Barnes, Eev. Peter, 43 Barrass, Rev. J. Stephen, 341 Barrow-Simonds, Mrs., 289 Barry Orphanage, Dulwich, 216 Beardell, Rev. J. (Vicar of S. Saviour's, 1889-98), 258 Belcher, Eev. Dr., 168, 169, 289 Benson, Archbishop, of Canterbury, Dolling's sermon in reply to, 209-214 Berkeley Chapel, Mayfair, sermons at, 263, 333 Berrow, Mrs., 163 Blair, Miss Lina, at S. Agatha's, 86 ; at S. Saviour's, 267 Bowen, Mr. F., 268 Bramston, Eev. J. T., letters to, 235, 293, 341 Mrs., 162, 269 Browne, Bishop Harold, of Winchester, interview with, 62-64 ; letters from, 126, 127, 173, 174 Bull, Mr., 11 Bull, Eev. Paul, temporarily in charge at S. Agatha's, 203 Butler, Eev. Dr. (Headmaster of Harrow), 11 Cator, Mrs., 79, 290 Chandler, Eev. Dr. (now Bishop of Bloemfontein), appoints' Dolling to S. Saviour's, 253, 254 Chicago, charge of Cathedral offered to Dolling, 240, 241 ; extracts from description of, by Mr. John Foster Fraser, 244-246 Chisam, Mrs., 271 Chorley, Eev. E. 0., 140, 141 Churchill, Eev. E. B. C, 162 Clark, Miss, 267 Claxton, Mr., 195 Christian Social Union, sermon by Eev. Percy Dearmer 303 Cobb, Mr. Gerard, 12 Corfe, Bishop, of Korea, 155 Cornibeer, A. E., 268, 332 Creal, Mr., 268 Creighton, Bishop, of London, holds Confirmation at S. Saviour's, 314 Crooks, Mr. Will (now M.P.), 254, 338 Crowe, Mrs., 85, 216 Cruddas, Edward, 188 Curtis, Rev. C. E., 267 Baity Chronicle, greeting on Dolling's fifty-first birthday, 325, 326 Darling, Mr. Ralph, 271, 325 Davenport, Rev. M„ 236 Davidson, Bishop, of Winchester (now Archbishop of Canterbury), letters from, 192, 193 ; interviews with, 193, 199, 200 ; letter to Mr. Pares, 202 ; 203, 224 Dearmer, Rev. Percy, 303 Dolling, Adelaide (sister), 3, 25, 335 Rev. Boughey William (grand father), 2 Caledon (brother) 3 ¦ Elise (sister), 3 ; at S. Martin's Mission, 49 ; at S. Agatha's, 84, 85 ; at S. Saviour's, 267, 335 ¦ Eliza (mother, n(e Alexander), 1, 2, 4 ; Dolling's veneration for, 5, 12 ; death, 12 Geraldine (sister), 3 ; at S. Martin's Mission, 49 ; at S. Agatha's, 84, 85 ; at S. Saviour's, 267, 335 Josephine (sister), 3 ; at S. Martin's Mission, 49 ; 216, 332, 335 May (sister, Mrs. James Staples), 3 [353] "354 THE LIFE OF FATHEE DOLLING Dolling, Nina {sister), 3, 335 ¦ Robert Holbeach (father), 1 ; his character, 4 ; death, 14, 29 Rev. Radclyffe (cousin), letter to, 296 • Rev. Dr. Robert Ratcliff (great grandfather), 2 ¦ Ulrica (sister), 3 Dolling, Eobert William Radclyffe, parentage and birth, 1-3 ; early life at Kilrea, 4-11 ; at school at Steven age, 11 ; at Harrow, 11 ; at Trinity College, Cambridge, 11 ; in Italy, 12 ; land-agency work in Ireland, 12, 13, 15, 32 ; in London, 16 ; S. Martin's Postmen's League, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24 ; at Mountjoy Square, Dublin, 29-38 ; decides to take Holy Orders, 39 ; at Salisbury Theological College, 40-44 ; work in S. Martin's Parish, Salisbury, 43 ; ordained Deacon, 45 ; curate of Corscombe, 45 ; in charge of S. Martin's Mission, Maidman Street, Stepney, 47-58 ; ordained priest, 56 ; resignation, 57 ; appointed to charge of Winchester College Mission, S. Agatha's, Land- port, 60 ; correspondence with regard to the Rev. Stewart Headlam's lec ture, 126, 127 ; resignation, 128 ; withdraws resignation, 130 ; difficulty about third altar and ' prayers for the dead,' 191-202 ; resigns a second time, 202 ; departure from Land- port, 206 ; inhibited from preaching at Evesham, 208 ; preaches in London and elsewhere, 215-223 ; at Wetherby Mansions, Earl's Court, writes ' Ten Years in a Portsmouth Slum,' 218 ; tour in Algiers, 216 ; attempts made to find him work, 220-222 ; visit to America, 224-252 ; accepts living of S. Saviour's, Poplar, 240 ; other English offers, 241 ; offered charge of Cathedral by Bishop of Chicago, 240-242 ; instituted Vicar of S. Saviour's, 255 ; ordered abroad for his health, 322 ; visit to Spain, 323 ; and to Belgium, 324 ; meets with accident at Tonbridge, 331 ; opera tion, 332 ; moves to Philbeach Gardens, 332 ; death, 335 ; burial at Woking Cemetery, 340-342 , articles, sermons, and speeches by : on the training of lads, 36-38 ; S. Martin's Mission, 53 - 55 ; S. Agatha's, 66, 67, 70, 71, 74, 78, 86, 118, 163, 164; 'The VIII. Mile stones,' 89-91 ; the 'Mass,' 110, 111 ; the ' method ' of his religious teach ing and missionary work, 119, 120, 263, 314 ; ' The Christian Clergy man's Place in Politics,' 131, 132; public-houses, 136, 137, 140, 148 ; 'Soldiers and Sailors,' 145; the Patriotic Fund, 156, 157 ; excursion to Winchester, 159 ; ' The Church and the Poor,' 183; 'New S. ¦ Agatha's,' 186, 189 ; liturgical wor ship, 203, 204 ; ' The Church and the People,' 209-214 ; the Church in America, 226-228 ; his tour in America, 231-233, 251 ; Dr. Chand ler, 254 ; Mr. Will Crooks, 254 ; the East London Water Famine, 260 ; overcrowding, 262 ; cheap transit, 263 ; the spirit of joy, 270 ; the theatre, 270 ; the schools at S. Saviour's, 271, 272 ; social enter tainments, 273 ; the Church of England and the Sacraments, 300- 302, 305-308 ; the problem of re ligious indifference, 311-314; Poplar, 318, 319 ; his life at Aix-la-Chapelle, 324, 325 ; ' How the Good in Every Man is to be reached,' 328-330 Dolling, letters from : to Rev. J. T. Bramston, 235, 293 ; Bishop Harold Browne, 127 ; Rev. R. Dolling, 296 ; Mr. F. Zimmern, 235 ; a bishop, 297, 298 ; a widow, 280 ; 27, 39, 40, 231, 292, 295-297 , letters to : from Archbishop Alexander, 225 ; Bishop Harold Browne, 127, 173 ; Eev. Dr. Fearon, 185 ; Bishop Talbot, 234 ; Bishop Thorold, 178 ; the Warden of Win chester College, 126 ; Eev. Eeginald Waterfield, 226; Bishop Westcott, 215 ; a Portsmouth brewer, 143 144 ; 82, 261, 278-280, 291, 292. 298 , recollections and apprecia tionsof: by Eev. E. Armitage, 289 Rev. Dr. Belcher, 289 ; Mr. Ray mond Blathwayt, 281 ; Mrs. Cator, 290 ; Rev. E. C. Chorley, 141, 143 Bishop Corfe, 155 ; Mr. Dyer Ed wardes, 219, 220 ; Rev. Dr. Fearon. 100-107 ; Mr. Alfred Harmsworth! 274, 275 ; Rev. A. J. Harrison^ 217 ; Mrs. Cashel Hoey, 288 ; Rev. C. Jupp, 282 ; ' Mother Kate,' 32 35 ; Rev. A. H. Kennedy, 285 286; Father Larabee, 239, 240 Cardinal Logue, 28, 29 ; Mr. Richard McFadden, 8-10; Bishop McLaren 241, 242 ; Rev. J. E. Magill, 234 Bishop of Mashonaland, 221 ; Rev, Dr. Mortimer, 228 ; Mr. T. P. O'Con INDEX 355 nor, M.P., 13 Mr. E. Ogilvie, 237, 238 ; Rev. E. B. Ottley, 41-43 ; Mr. R. W. Rodgers, 35, 36 ; Archdeacon Sowter, 45 ; Father Tyrrell, 19-23 ; Rev. Dr. Whitefoord, 43 ; an army chaplain, 149-152 ; officers, 153, 154, 282, 286, 287; soldiers, 152, 155, 156; postmen on 'Brother Bob,' 23, 24, 279 ; a Roman Catholic doctor, 288 ; ' a Roman Catholic friend,' 113, 114 ; Methodist Recorder, 218 ; Pilot, 318 ; Saturday Review, 207; 13, 26, 44, 55, 56, 129, 184, 189, 217, 228-231, 240, 243, 251, 280-285, 287, 292, 331 ; Appen dix I., 0., 345-350. Dolling, his views on sundry questions : books, 319-323 ; Roman Catholicism, 16, 28, 35, 50, 170, 184, 286, 287, 295 ; the Church of England, 79, 114, 165, 206, 209-214, 255, 298- 302, 304-308 ; 'the New Criticism,' 15, 302, 321 ; the Prayer-Book, 21, 169, 170; 172, 192, 203, 323; politics, (Imperial) 116, 131, 132, 314, 315, 328, (social) 122, 124, 127, 145, 146, 262-264; recreation, 30, 31, 37, 73, 93, 149, 170, 273 ; dancing, 85, 89, 124, 269 ; the theatre, 37, 296-271 ; 'Religion' and 'Ritualism,' 17, 54, 78, 108-115, 191, 192, 200, 244, 248; schools, 163, 271-2 ; temperance, 133-144; work with individuals, 24, 25, 33, 84, 166, 167, 276-278 ; the workhouse, 164, 165. See also his articles, sermons, and speeches Dore, Willy, 166, 167 Dowglass, Rev. W. P., 83 Dublin, Dolling family remove to, 29 ; 195 Dwyer, Miss, 187 Eddy, Mrs., interview with, 246 Edwardes, Mr. Thomas Dyer, 218, 219 Elwes, Rev. J., 267, 338 'Emma, Sister,' 63 English Church Union : lecture to Portsmouth Branch, 226-228 ; speech before S. James's Hall meeting, 300-302 ; represented at funeral ser vice by Mr. Athelstan Riley and Mr. W. H. Hill, 338 Farrar, Dean, 11 Fearon, Rev. Dr., interview with, 61 ; on Dolling's relations with Win chester, 100-107, 128 ; letter from, 185 , Mrs., 185 Feroupoulos, M. 43, 44 Fillingham, Rev. R. C, protest by, 316 Foote, Col. Barrington, 154 Forbes, Bishop, of Brechin, 17 Gaul, Bishop, of Mashonaland, offers Dolling work at Buluwayo, 221 Goodlake, Mrs., 268 Greene, Rev. Thomas, 79-81 Gresham, Rev. Stanley, 83 Grier, Rev. Prebendary, 138 Harmsworth, Mr. Alfred, 268, 273- 275 , Mrs., 268 Harward, General, 128 Hawksley, Rev. W., 162, 195, 203 Hays, Eev. W., 236, 267 Headlam, Eev. Stewart D., 123 ; his lecture at S. Agatha's, 125, 126 Henniker, Col. Hon. A. H., 154, 268 , Hon. Mrs., 268 Henson, Canon Hensley, 249 Hill, Mr. W. H., 338 Hoare, Mr., 187 Hoey, Mrs. Cashel, 288 Hogg, Eev. G. R., 17 Holland, Canon Scott, on the Church's true policy, 309 How, Bishop Walsham, of Bedford, 56-58 ; poem on Dolling, 59 Hunter, Leah, 216 Ingram, Bishop, of Stepney, institutes Dolling as Vicar of S. Saviour's, 254, 255 ; funeral address, 339 Jacob, Canon, now Bishop of St. Albans, 63, 139, 142, 143, 192 Jay, Rev. Osborne, 57 Johnson, Lionel, 320 Joseph, Eev. O, 122 Jupp, Eev. O, 281 Kane, Mrs., 85 'Kate, Mother' (Kate Egerton War burton), 27, 31 ; her visit to Ireland, 32-35 ; verses in Orient, 258 Kennedy, Eev. A. H., 285 Kilrea, Dolling family remove to, 4 ; life at, 5-11 ; the Dolling Guild at, 8, 9 ; visit to, 184 King, Eev. G. (now Bishop of Mada gascar), 214 Knight, Miss, 268 Lang, Bishop, of Stepney, 339, 341, 342 Larabee, Father, 238, 239 23—2 356 THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING Layton, Misses Edith and Eva, 27 Lee, Eev. G. B., action with regard to Mr. Headlam's lecture, 126 Light, Mr., 186 Linklater, Eev. Dr., interview with, 61, 64 ; original missioner of S. Agatha's, 65 Lloyd, Eev. John, 166, 267, 332 Logue, Cardinal, 28, 29 Mackonochie, Eev. A. H. , 17 McLaren, Bishop, of Chicago, offers Dolling work, 240-242 ; letter from, 246 Magdalen College Mission. See S. Martin's, Maidman Street Magheralin, Dolling's birthplace, 1 ; visit to, on coming of age, 13 Magill, Rev. J. Ernest, 234 Mason, Canon, 50 Matley, Mr., 271 Maturin, Rev. Dr. W., 30, 31 , Father B. W., conducts a mission at S. Agatha's, 194, 199 Mayor of Portsmouth on the condition of the town, 139, 147, 148 Meara, Eev. Henry G., 12 Melville, Eev. A. J. S., 267 Monaghan, Dolling family remove to, 4 Mormon Tabernacle, Utah, visit to. 247 Mortimer, Rev. Dr., invites Dolling to America, 222, 228 Munro, Eev. Horace, 39 Nance, Miss (Mrs. Cator), 79, 290 Newell, Eev. C. F., 79, 80, 83 Ogilvie, Miss May, 267 , Mr. Eonald, 237-239 Osborne, Rev. C. E., 48, 60, 181 193, 249, 333 Ottley, Rev. Edward Bickersteth, 40- Pares, Mr. John, letter to Bishop Davidson, 202 Patton, Mr. Arthur, 285 Perowne, Bishop, of Worcester, inhibits Dolling from preaching at Evesham, 215 Potter, Rev. Dr., 169 Protestant Alliance, action of the, 179 Hall, Portsmouth, meeting in the, 173, 174 Pursglove, Mary, 86, 87 Reubens, Mr. Paul, 334 Richardson, Mrs., 159, 160, 269, 281 Eiddell, Sir John, 217 Ridding, Bishop, of Southwell, 190 ; at the opening of new S. Agatha's, 195, 196, 224 , Lady Laura, 195 Riley, Mr. Athelstan, 338 Rodgers, Mr. R. W., 35 Roe, Mr., 188 Roe, Rev. C. E., 83 Ross, Henry, 166, 167, 191 Rowan, Miss Matilda, 86, 267 Russell, Rev. E. F., 17 S.Agatha's, Winchester College Mission: started by Dr. Linklater, 65 ; ' Old S. Agatha's,' 66, 91 ; description of Landport, 67 - 71, 73, 135 - 137 ; Dolling's band of helpers, 76-87 ; ' The VIII. Milestones,' 89-91 ; the parsonage and life therein, 93-96, 122, 166 ; the Ridding gymnasium, 97 ; mission services, 115-118, 179 ; Rev. Stewart Headlam's lecture at, 123-125 ; temperance crusade, 133- 144, 147, 148 ; the day-schools, 162, 163 ; the cottages in Chance Street, 164 ; the ' extra services,' 170-172 ; the ' Sunday Scholar's Book,' 178 ; ' New S. Agatha's,' 182, 185-189 ; parochial mission conducted by Father Maturin, 194 ; opening of the new church, 195-197 ; the ' third altar,' 191, 193, 197, 202; tempo rarily in charge of Father Bull, 203 ; in charge of Rev. G. T. Tremenheere, 205 S. Alban's, Holborn, 16, 17 S. Cuthbert's, Philbeach Gardens, Day of Intercession at, 216 ; Requiem Services at, 336 S. Laurence, Jewry, Memorial Service at, 340 S. Margaret's, Aberdeen, offered to Dolling, 241 , Westminster, sermons at, 215, 222, 223 S. Martin's Mission, Maidman Street, adopted by Magdalen College, 50 ; Dolling's work at, 47-58 S. Matthew, Guild of, lectures at S. Agatha's, 123-126 S. Paul's, sermons at, 215, 316 S. Saviour's, Poplar, description of district, 255-258 ; its difference from Landport, 256, 257, 318, 319 ; Dol ling's action with regard to the Water Famine, 260, 261, overcrowd ing, 261-263, and vaccination, 264 ; his band of helpera, 267, 268 ; the schools, 271, 272; the camp at Broadstairs, 275 ; visit of Bishop INDEX 357 Creighton, 314 ; Requiem Services at, 337-340 Saunders, Mr., 163 Sergeant, Rev. E. W., 65, 341 Sixsmith, Eev. A. E., 6, 184 Skrine, Eev. Vivian E. (Vicar of S. Saviour's, 1882-1889), 258 South Mimms Church, 291 Sowter, Archdeacon, 45 Stanton, Eev. A. H., 16-18, 150 Staples, Mr. James, 3, 15 , Mrs. James (ne'e May Doll ing), 3 Stevens, Mrs. Edwin A., 231-233, 235 Sumner, Bishop of Guildford, 173, 174 , Mr. Heywood, 188 Talbot, Bishop, of Rochester, letters from, 224, 234 Temple, Bishop, of London, 56, 57 'Ten Years in a, Portsmouth Slum,' extracts passim ; written, 218 Thorold, Bishop, of Winchester, 174- 181 ; interviews with, 177 ; 190, 191 Tollemache, Rev. Algernon, 54 Tomkinson, Mrs. R. E., 27, 32, 39 Tooth, Rev. Arthur, 199 Tremenheere, Rev. G. T., takes charge of S. Agatha's, 205 ; 341 Trollope, Rev. Mark N., 155, 259 Trollope, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A., 12 Tyrrell, Father George, 19-23 ; message from, 207, 322 Vaughan, Eev. E. H., 11 Waldron, Mrs., 79, 138 Wallace, Eev. Dr., 304 Waterfield, Eev. Reginald, letter from, 223 Waud, Rev. B. E., 267, 268, 336, 337 Wells, Miss Florence, her work at Southsea, 85, 86 ; her ' home ' at Heathfield, 267 ; death, 325 Westall, Rev. H., 334 Westcott, Bishop, of Durham, 214 ; letter from, 215 Wheeler, Mrs. Charles, 231 White, Mr., 195 Whitefoord, Rev. Dr., 43 Whittick, Mr., 84 Whittingham, Rev. G. Napier, 215 Wickham, Rev. Gordon, 65 Winchester College Mission. See S. Agatha's Winchester, Dolling's relations with, 61, 91, 100-107, 126-130, 159-162, 185, 225, 226, 236, 269, 281, 341 Zion College, meeting at, 303, 304 THE END BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD SELECTIONS FROM MR. EDWARD ARNOLDS LIST. BIOGRAPHIES. MEMORIALS OP DEAN LAKE (Dean of Durham, 1869-1894). Edited by Katharine Lake. 8vo., 16s. 'A vivid impression of a remarkable man.' — Pilot. THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ZACCHARY MACAULAY. By the Viscountess Knutsford. With Portrait. Demy 8vo., 16s. ' A welcome addition to the records of the famous group of philanthropists.' — Atkenaum. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DEAN MERIYALE. Edited by his daughter, Judith Merivale. With Portrait. Demy 8vo., 1 6s. 1 Reveals a wealth of humour such as is rarely found in private letters.' — Scotsman. LETTERS OF MARY SIBYLLA HOLLAND. Selected and Edited by her son, Bernard Holland. Second Edition. Crown 8vo., 7s. 6d. net. ' A very charming collection of letters.' — Guardian. ARNOLD TOYNBEE: a Reminiscence. By Viscount Milner, G.C.B. Crown 8vo., 2s. 6d. ( An admirable sketch, at once sympathetic and discriminating, of a very remarkable person- ality. It is a masterly analysis of a commanding personal influence, and a social force of rare potency and effect.' — Times. SERIES OF LIVES OF HOLY MEN* FRANCIS: the Little Poor Man of Assisi. By James Adderley, Author of ' Stephen Remarx,' etc. With photogravure Frontis piece. Second Impression. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. ( Mr. Adderley has written a pleasant, sympathetic, graphic account of the most fascinating of medieval saints. We can heartily recommend Mr. Adderley's book. It is thoroughly up to modem knowledge, and contains references to works as recent as M. Sabatier's publication of the "Tractatus de Indulgentia S. Maria; in Portiuncula." A useful abridged translation of the Franciscan rule is appended.' — Guardian, MONSIEUR YINCENT. A Sketch of a Christian Social Reformer in the Seventeenth Century. By James Adderley. With photogravure Frontispiece. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. ' It is the most profitable life of the saint at present accessible to English readers.' — Church Times. HUGH OF LINCOLN. By C. Marson, Vicar of Hambridge. With photogravure Frontispiece. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 'A life-like portrait of one of the noblest-natured men that ever adorned humanity.' — Morning Post. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD. SELECTIONS FROM MR: EDWARD ARNOLD'S LIST. DEAN HOLE'S WORKS. THE MEMORIES OF DEAN HOLE. By the Very Rev. S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester. With the original illustra tions from sketches by Leech and Thackeray. Popular Edition, one vol., crown 8vo., 6s. 1 One of the most delightful collections of reminiscences that this generation has seen.' — Daily Chronicle. MORE MEMORIES. Being thoughts about England spoken in America. With Frontispiece. Demy 8vo., 1 6s. ' There is not a page in this volume without its good thing, its touch of wit or wisdom, quaint drollery, apt illustration, or quick association, kind counsel, grave truth, or happy anecdote.' — World. A LITTLE TOUR IN AMERICA. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo., 16s. ' The author touches almost every subject of human interest, and in doing so he brings into use a keen and searching criticism, and, on less serious occasions, all the wit and humour of which his genius is so particularly possessed.' — Church Times, By CANON HENSON. CROSS-BENCH VIEWS ON CURRENT CHURCH QUESTIONS. By H. Hensley Henson, Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret's. Demy 8vo., 12s. 6d. ' Whatever else we may think of Canon Henson's writings, we always expect to find them lively and interesting, and his latest work certainly comes up to our expectations.' — Guardian. A REPORTED CHANGE OF RELIGION. A Selec tion from letters received by Mr. Beevor when it was reported that he had become a Roman Catholic. By Onyx. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. PHASES OF MY LIFE. By the Very Rev. Francis Pigou, Dean of Bristol. Sixth Impression. Crown 8vo., 6s. ' A Niagara of anecdote. We have never handled a volume of reminiscences so crammed with good stories as this.' — Academy. BENJAMIN JOWETT, MASTER OF BALLIOL. By the Hon. Lionel A. Tollemache. Fourth Impression. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. 1 Rather Boswellian, and extremely amusing.'— Speaker. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD. July, 1903; Mr. Edward Arnold's New and Popular Books. Telegrams : 37 Bedford Street, ' Scholarly, London.' Strand, London. NATURE'S LAWS AND THE MAKING OF PICTURES. By W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A. With over eighty illustrations from drawings by the author, and a few finely executed reproductions of famous paintings in the National Gallery. Super Royal 4.I0. 1 $s. nett. The subject of Perspective remains an interesting mystery to the majority of the picture-loving public, and to not a few artists as well. The fact is that, although there are a number of excellent and lucid handbooks upon the subject, the general reader and the student seem to be attacked too often from the mathematical side — the side which to the artist-nature is the least sympathetic. It is therefore confidently expected that this lucid volume by so well-known an artist as Mr. Wyllie will receive a warm welcome. Containing, as it does, a luminous and exhaustive exposition of a subject of which the author is an undoubted master, and illustrated by a large number of first-rate reproductions of his own sketches, specially drawn for this work, the book should help to make the science of perspective thoroughly intelligible to all readers, and thus largely facilitate their mastery of the pictorial art. LONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD, 37 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND. RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOWN BOY AT WESTMINSTER, 1849-1855. By CAPTAIN F. MARKHAM, Late Rifle Brigade. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations. 10s. 6d. nett. The School and Precincts— -Dr. Liddell— 'Up Grants '— Daily Routine — Practical Jokes and Adventures — School Servants — Shops and Shopkeepers — 'In Bounds' and 'Out of Bounds' — Football in ' Green ' — Yacht-building — 'Water ' — The Barges — The Pancake Grease — St. David's Day Ditch-jumping— The Westminster Play — ' Mills ' — The Duke of Wellington's Funeral — Skipping up Town — Speeches and Epigrams. THE LIFE OF FATHER DOLLING. By the Rev. C E. OSBORNE. Vicar of Seghill, Northumberland. Demy 8vo. With Portrait. 12s. 6d. nett. Fourth Impression. The life of the late Father Dolling was in many ways an exceedingly remarkable one. He is probably best known to the world in connection with his work at Landport in charge of the Winchester College Mission. It was at Landport that he was first in a position, to give full scope to his ideas, many of them quite out of the ordinary run, on the social and religious reclamation of the poor and outcast. The Rev. C. E. Osborne knew Father Dolling intimately for over twenty years. He was closely interested in his earlier efforts, and for over seven years was his principal helper at Landport. He had thus exceptional opportunities of gaining an insight into Father Dolling's character and aims, and is, perhaps, in this respect, better qualified than any other man to undertake the writing of the present volume. At the moment of his early death last year Father Dolling was con templating the publication of an autobiography. Those who knew him and loved the Irish raciness of his style will more than ever regret that he did not live to carry out his intention. It is believed, however, that Mr. Osborne has succeeded in presenting a worthy and sympathetic picture of his friend, which will be welcomed, not only by Wykehamists, but by all who desire to promote the welfare — spiritual, moral, and physical — of their less fortunate fellow-men. Mr. Osborne desires to state that any profits which may accrue to him from the sale of this volume will be devoted to the purposes of the Dolling Memorial Fund. THE TALE OF A TOUR IN MACEDONIA. By G. F. ABBOTT. Demy 8vo. With Illustrations and a Map. 14.J. nett. Second Impression. The Tour described in this book was undertaken by Mr. G. F. Abbott, of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, under the auspices of that University, with a view to the collection of materials for a work on Macedonian folk-lore, to be issued shortly by the University Press. ' Mr. Abbott's delightful account of his recent tour in that distressful but pic turesque country has a topical interest nearly equal to its literary charm. Mr. Abbott has a genial sense of humour, a strong intelligence, and a limpid style, which in combination have enabled him to produce one of the best books of travel in Turkish dominions which has appeared since Kingslake's ' ' Eothen," and one which has a great deal in common with that immortal work. ' — Spectator. ' We have seldom read such a captivating volume of travels.' — New Liberal Review. ' No one can fail to be interested, instructed, and entertained by ' The Tale of a Tour in Macedonia'; it is one of the wisest and wittiest of modern books of travel, written by a scholar accustomed to observe accurately and form just and independent conclusions.' — Birmingham Daily Post. ' The writer has a quick eye for scenery, a keen perception of the humour of a situation, and a brisk, epigrammatic style ; so that his book is very pleasant reading. . . . We can understand after reading Mr. Abbott's narrative, which takes us by highways and byways, even to Mount Athos, why statesmen dread the Macedonian question, and almost despair of any peaceful solution. ' — Standard. THE MINOR MORALIST. By Mrs. HUGH BELL, Author of { Conversational Openings and Endings,' ' The Arbiter,' etc Crown &w., 4s. 6d. nett. Second Impression. This is a volume of Essays on the Art of Every-day Conduct which may be particularly recommended to parents with growing children, though it would be hard for anyone to read them without benefit. Among Mrs. Bell's subjects are the following, which indicate the nature of the book : — ' On the Better Teaching of Manners ;' ' On Some Difficulties Incidental to Middle Age' j 'Concerning the Relation between Mothers and Daughters '; ' On the Merits and Demerits of Thrift, and of Certain Proverbs regarding it '; and ' The Lot of the Servant' ' All seven essays are, we think, very good ; two of them seem to us to be quite charming, full of common-sense and humour, without a touch either of censoriousness or cynicism.' — Spectator. 'The essays all have a 'literary grace much more winning than usually goes to the composition of such discourses. They make a book which should be read with a like interest by gentle women and by thinking men.' — Scotsman. WORDSWORTH. By WALTER RALEIGH, Professor of English Literature in the University of Glasgow. Author of 'Style,' 'Milton,' etc Crown 8vo. 6s. This, the latest volume from Professor Raleigh's pen, will be welcomed by all who recognise the brilliant qualities of his study on Milton, with which, in size and scope, the present volume is uniform. The following is a summary of its Contents : — Introduction. I. — Childhood and Education. II. — The French Revolution: Coleridge. III. — Poetic Diction. IV. — Nature. V. — Humanity. VI. — Illumination. VII. — Conclusion. ' The publication of a critical study by Mr. Raleigh is a literary event. ... He gives us a book which is systematic, and yet full of the sympathy which is so much more than system. ' — Times. ' Since Matthew Arnold's famous essay on Wordsworth, there has been none so illumi nating as this of Professor Raleigh's.' — Daily Telegraph. WITH MACDONALD IN UGANDA. By Major HERBERT H. AUSTIN, C.M.G, D.S.O., R.E., Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Demy 8vo. With numerous Illustrations and a Map. i$s. nett. ' The story of the march ... is dramatic, and could scarcely have been better told. . . Will possess a permanent interest in the literature of Central Africa.' — Standard. ' The story of both the military and exploring expeditions is full of interest, and brings home to us once more what may be done by a small force of determined men cast loose in the midst of unknown dangers.' — Academy and Literature. ' The whole is as stirring a piece of soldiering and surveying as anyone could desire. It combines happily the excitement of a story of adventure with the work of a scientific expedition.' — Northern Whig. JOURNALS OF FIELD-MARSHAL COUNT VON BLUMENTHAL, for 1866 and 1870-71. Edited by Count ALBRECHT von BLUMENTHAL. Translated by Major A. D. GILLESPIE-ADDISON. Demy 2>vo. With Portraits and Maps, 12s. 6d. nett. ' The book, valuable as a document of history, isfinvariably interesting to read.' — Scotsman. A very interesting peep behind the scenes of German military life.' — St. James's Gazette. ' The book is of great value from every point of view, and has been excellently trans lated.' — Daily Mail, THE HOUSE OF SELEUCUS. By EDWYN ROBERT BEVAN, Author of the Recently Published Translation of ' Prometheus Vinctus.' Two Volumes. DemySvo. With Portraits, Plates and Maps. $os.nett. This book treats of a phase of Greek civilization of immense impor tance, and yet singularly neglected — the Greco-Macedonian rule in the East after Alexander the Great. It deals with the dynasty which played the principal part in the Greek East — that founded by the Macedonian Seleucus. There is no modern book, even in German, which makes a special study of the history of the Seleucid kingdom. The period is of vital consequence in many ways : (i) A great deal in the Roman imperial system was taken over from the Greek monarchies, and in them many of the elements of the great European tradition took shape. (2) The episode of Antiochus Epiphanes and the Jews, which marks an epoch in the history of our religion, belongs to Seleucid history also. (3) The Greek civilization, which these rulers repre sented, was identical in germ with our own, and the English who to-day are the chief representatives of that civilization in its contact with the East may look upon the Seleucid kings as their forerunners. The work contains, besides two full-page portraits of Antiochus III., reproductions of the very complete series of coins issued under the Seleucid dynasty. * It is seldom that the critic welcomes a work of so much ambition and achieve ment from a new historian as ' ' The House of Seleucus." . . . The first serious attempt made in modern times to treat the Seleucid realm as a whole, apart from the other Macedonian kingdoms. The result is astonishingly successful. ... As an authority on authorities Mr. Bevan's book will long retain a very high value.' — Times. ' Mr. Bevan shows himself complete master of his subject. . . . Such writing as this makes us hail in Mr. Bevan the appearance of a new historian fit to stand beside the best of the French or German specialists. ' — Athenceum. ' " The House of Seleucus " should undoubtedly be read by all who take an interest in ancient history.' — Saturday Review. 'A book which will be indispensable to all who do not make Alexander's death the limit of their interest in Hellenic things. ... A work of great and lasting interest.' — Cambridge Review. NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION. A MEMOIR OF ANNE J. CLOUGH, Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge. By her Niece, BLANCHE A. CLOUGH. Crown 8vo. With Portrait. 6s. THE HULSEAN LECTURES, 1902-1903. CHRISTIAN DIFFICULTIES IN THE SECOND AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES. A STUDY OF MARCION AND HIS RELATION TO MODERN THOUGHT. By F. J. FOAKES JACKSON, Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and Honorary Canon of Peterborough. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. nett, BIBLICAL HISTORY OF THE HEBREWS UPON THE LINES OF THE HIGHER CRITICISM. By F. J. FOAKES JACKSON. Crown 8vo. 6s. THE UNWRITTEN SAYINGS OF CHRIST. WORDS OF OUR LORD NOT RECORDED IN THE FOUR GOSPELS, INCLUDING THOSE RECENTLY DISCOVERED. WITH NOTES. By C. G. GRIFFINHOOFE, M.A, St. John's College, Cambridge, Rector of Strethall. Crown 8vo. 3s. nett. THE DEAN OF ST PATRICK'S. A PLAY IN FOUR ACTS. By Mrs. HUGH BELL. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d. nett. A DAY DREAM AND OTHER POEMS. By E. H. CLUTTERBUCK. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. nett. -' The work is always cultured, thoughtful, and fine ; and the book is sure to charm a studious mind.' — Scotsman. ERINNA. A Tragedy. By J. GURDON. Crown 8vo. $s. 6d. nett. ' This is an excellent piece of work, as full of promise as anything that we have seen for some time ; worthy to be ranked with Mr. Swinburne's " Atalanta in Calydon." '—Spectator. NEW NOVELS. Crown 8vo. 6s. each. THE PAVILIONS OF LOVE. By MILDRED SHENSTONE. THE ABSURD REPENTANCE. By ST. JOHN LUCAS. THE TAINT OF THE CITY. By CHARLES EDDY. Author of 'Winifred and the Stockbroker.' ' An extremely diverting and instructive comedy of the Stock Exchange. The unfailing vivacity of the dialogue and the excellence of the portraiture keep the readers interest enchained from first to last. ' — Spectator. Second Impression. THE LITTLE RED FISH. By- PHILIP LAURENCE OLIPHANT. ' We confess to finding this story absorbing from the first page to the last, and we read it with the additional pleasure that comes from the work of a man who has learned to write with ease and distinction.' — Yorkshire Post. ' " The Little Red Fish" makes very good reading.'— Morning Post. ( A capital tale.' — St. James's Gazette. Second Impression. THE TEMPLARS. By E. H. LACON WATSON. ' A love story told with no lack of humour and a grateful quality of freshness.'— The Times. CHANGES AND CHANCES. By ANTOINETTE WEBER. RECENTLY PUBLISHED. Second Impression. DONNA DIANA. By RICHARD BAGOT, Author of 'Casting of Nets,' etc. Second Impression. THE THOUSAND EUGENIAS, AND OTHER STORIES. By Mrs. ALFRED SIDGWICK, Author of ' Cynthia's Way.' 8 ARNOLD'S CITY SERIES OF COMMERCE AND FINANCE. Edited by F. HARCOURT KITCHIN. Crown 8vo. $s. each, nett. Mr. Edward Arnold has pleasure in announcing that he has made arrangements for the issue of a Series of Handbooks on Commercial and Financial Subjects, which it is hoped will meet the present serious deficiency in popular and authoritative books on these important matters. The series will be under the editorship of Mr. F. Harcourt Kitchin, a well-known expert on life insurance and kindred subjects. The following volumes are in preparation, and are intended to appear shortly : THE STOCK EXCHANGE : Its Organisation and Management. By G. D. INGALL and GEORGE WITHERS. BRITISH RAILWAYS: Their Organisation and Management. By HUGH MUNRO ROSS, B.A., late Exhibitioner of Lincoln College, Oxford. LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANIES : Their Organisa* tion and Management. By F. HARCOURT KITCHIN, B.A., late Scholar of Selwyn College, Cambridge. SHIPPING COMPANIES: Their Organisation and Management. By BENEDICT GINSBURG, LL.D. Camb., one of the Counsel of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade. PUBLIC COMPANIES : Accounts and their Audit. By H. C. EMERY. Mr. Emery is not only a skilled accountant, but a solicitor whose speciality is Company Law. Volumes on The Produce Markets and Exchange, Lloyd's, Fire and Accident Insurance, Gas and Water Undertakings, and Municipal Trading, are also in contemplation. NEW SERIES OF NAVAL AND MILITARY BIOGRAPHIES. Edited by Professor C. W. Oman, Author of ' The Art of War in the Middle Ages,' ' The Peninsular War,' etc. Large Crown 8vo. is. 6d. each. The following volumes have already appeared : MY ADVENTURES DURING THE LATE WAR: A Narrative of Shipwreck, Captivity, Escapes from French Prisons, and Sea Service in 1804-14. By DONAT HENCHY O'BRIEN Captain R.N. With Photogravure Illustrations and Maps. 1 It would be difficult to find a better book of adventure than Captain O'Brien's, now for the first time reprinted under the auspices of Professor Oman. Simple and direct as a story by Defoe, it carries the reader breathlessly along, and causes him one regret only — that he cannot read it fast enough.' — Spectator. ' It is the best book of real adventures published this season. ' — Liverpool Mercury. ' It is most interesting from cover to cover, and will make a splendid addition to any school library. . . . We heartily recommend the book to all our readers.' — School World. ADVENTURES WITH THE CONNAUGHT RANGERS, FROM 1809 TO 1814. By WILLIAM GRATTAN, Esq., late Lieutenant Connaught Rangers. With Photogravure Illustrations, Plans, and Maps. ' No one interested in this stirring period of our military history should omit to read this well-edited book, which from beginning to end necessarily bears the mark of actual experience. ' — Field. ' He is very well worth reading, and altogether to be enjoyed.' — Guardian. ' It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. Grattan's book provides very interesting and amusing reading.' — St. James's Gazette. ' It is a marvellous book.' — Military Mail. 2 IO ESSEX HOUSE PRESS PUBLICATIONS. Mr. Edward Arnold has much pleasure in calling attention to the fact that almost without exception these interesting books have all been bought up and become out of print before publication, while one or two that have found their way into the sale-rooms have commanded a high premium. These books are printed by the Guild of Handicraft, at Essex House, on the hand presses used by the late Mr. William Morris at the Kelmscott Press. Members of Mr. Morris's staff are also re tained at the Essex House Press, and it is the hope of the Guild of Handicraft by this means to continue in some measure the tradition of good printing and fine workmanship which William Morris revived. Subscribers to the complete series of Essex House Publications are given priority for any new book issued, and the number of subscribers is constantly increasing. Intending subscribers and persons who desire to receive announcements of the forthcoming publications are recom mended to enter their names as soon as possible. ORDERS MAY NOW BE GIVEN FOR THE FOLLOWING s Heine's 'Selected Songs.' Edited by Edmond Holmes. With frontispiece by Reginald Savage. Printed in the original German. 250 paper copies at I guinea, and 12 vellum copies at 2 guineas each. The Guild of Handicraft Song-Book. With cuts and music in four-page sheets at is. a sheet, to be issued in sets of ten at a time, or bound up subsequently by arrangement. Cicero's 'De Amicitia' in Latin and English (John Harrington's translation, Elizabethan). THE PUBLICATIONS ALREADY ISSUED ARE: 1. Benvenuto Cellini's Treatises on Metal Work and Sculpture. By C. R. Ashbee. 600 copies. A few still left. 35s. nett. 2. The Hymn Of Bardaisan, the first Christian Poem, rendered into English verse from the original Syriac, by F. Crawford Burkitt, of Trinity College, Cambridge. 250 copies. [Out of print. 3. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Edited from the earlier editions by Janet E. Ashbee, with a frontispiece by Reginald Savage. Vellum cover. 750 copies. 30s. nett. 4- The Church of Saint Mary Stratford atte Bow. 250 copies. [Out of print. 5. Shelley's AdonaiS. Vellum series. 50 copies. [Out of print. 6. Shakespeare's Poems. 450 copies. [Outofprin- ESSEX HOUSE PRESS PUBLICATIONS— continued. 7. The Eve of St. Agnes. By John Keats. Vellum series. 125 copies. £2 2s. nett. [Out of print. 8. The Courtyer of Count Baldesar Castilio, divided into Foure Bookes. Done into Englyshe by Thomas Hoby. 200 copies. [Out of print. 9. Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. The third of the Vellum Series. 125 copies. [Out of print. 10. Walt Whitman's Hymn on the Death of Lincoln. 125 copies. [Out of print. n. An Endeavour towards the Teaching of John Ruskin and William Morris. By C. R. Ashbee. 250 copies. [Out of print. 12. John Woolman's Journal. 250 copies. [Out of print. 13. Erasmus' Praise of Folly. 250 copies. £3 3s. [Very few. 14. Penn's Fruits of Solitude. 250 copies. [Out of print. 15. Spenser's Epithalamion. 150 copies. [Out of print. [6. American Sheaves and English Seed Corn. By C. R. Ashbee. 300 copies. 30s. nett. 17. The Doings Of Death, Folio Volume of Large Woodcuts. By William Strang. 140 copies. £6 6s. 18. The Psalms of David : in the Version of the Anglican Prayer-Book, hut according to the Original Orthography and Arrangement of the Cranmer Bible. Limited editions of 10 copies vellum at £16 16s. nett (all sold), and 250 copies at £4 4s. nett (very few left). 19. The Old Palace of Bromley. By Ernest Godman. With an Introduction by C. R. Ashbee. Limited to 350 copies, of which 200 are for the use of the Committee for the Survey of the Memorials of Greater London, leaving 150 for sale. 21s. nett. 20. A Coronation Masque, entitled The Masque of the Edwards. By C. R. Ashbee. With a series of pictured pageants by Edith Harwood. Limited to 300 copies at £3 3s. There will also be 20 copies on vellum. coloured in water-colours by the artist, at ^12 12s. 21. Chaucer's Flower and Leaf. Vellum series. 165 copies. [Out of print. 22. Burns' 'Tam O'Shanter.' Vellum series. 150 copies. With a hand-coloured frontispiece by William Strang. [Out of print. 23. Milton's Comus. Vellum series. 150 copies. [Out of print. 24. The ' Parentalia ' of Sir Christopher Wren. The Life and Account of the Works of the Great Architect by his Son. Containing a series of illustrations of the remaining City Churches. ,£3 13s. 6d. nett. These volumes are published on behalf of the Essex House Press by Mr. Edward Arnold, and can be ordered either from him or from any Bookseller. 12 KING EDWARD THE SEVENTH'S PRAYER-BOOK. This will be a sumptuous edition of the »Book of Common Prayer, which, by gracious permission of His Majesty, will be entitled ' King Edward the Seventh's Prayer-Book.' The new Prayer-Book will be hand printed at the Essex House Press, and whilst conforming to the Authorized Version will rank, as a piece of typography, with the Great Prayer-Book of Edward VI. It is to be in new type designed by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, with about one hundred and fifty woodcuts, and is to be printed in red and black on Batchelor hand-made paper. There will also probably be a special binding of green vellum with a gold block design and clasps. Exceptional circumstances connected with the Book of Common Prayer render it essential that this work, in order to be of historic value, shall be issued with the imprint of the King's printers ; the Prayer-Book will therefore be published by his Majesty's printers, Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode, acting under the Royal Letters Patent, who will superintend the work of the Essex House Press. Mr. Edward Arnold, publisher to the Essex House Press, is now entering subscriptions for the work, and as the few available copies are being rapidly taken up, those who desire to possess this important work are recommended to apply as soon as possible. The edition will be strictly limited to a total of four hundred copies for England and America, at a price of Twelve Guineas (^12 12 s.) nett. There will also be five copies for England on vellum at Forty Pounds (^40) nett, all of which are already sold. PORTFOLIO OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF SCOTLAND. With a Preface by His Grace the DUKE OF ARGYLL. Edition de Luxe, limited to 350 copies, containing Forty Photogravure Reproductions on Japanese Vellum. Demy folio. £\o xos. 13 FICTION. About. TRENTE ET QUARANTE. Translated by Lord Newton. Crown 8vo., 3s. 6d. Adalet. HAD J IRA : A Turkish Love Story. By Adalet. Cloth, 6s. Adderley. PAUL MERCER. A Tale of Repentance among Millions. By the Hon. and Rev. James Adderley. Third Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d. Bagot. CASTING OF NETS. By Richard Bagot. Tenth Impres sion. 6s. Bagot. DONNA DIANA. By Richard Bagot. Second Impression. 6s. Bell. THE ARBITER. By Mrs. Hugh Bell. Crown 8vo., 6s. Browne. THE BETTALEY JEWELS. By Miss E. M. Balfour Browne. Crown 8vo., 6s. Bunsen. A WINTER IN BERLIN. By Marie von Bunsen. Translated by A. F. D. Second Edition. Crown 8vo., 5s. Burneside. THE DELUSION OF DIANA. By Margaret Burneside. Second Edition, crown 8vo., 6s. Charleton. NETHERDYKE. By R. J. Charleton. Crown 8vo., 6s. Cherbuliez. THE TUTOR'S SECRET. (Le Secret du Pre"cepteur.) 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