Old Men in Love

25: STOKE, BRIGHTON, WEYMOUTH

Henry and Julia’s wedding very soon after Martha’s death shocked or amazed many and amused some (though Sam Starky conducted it). The couple bore these reactions meekly as they had married for the glory of God, not for earthly profit. One of Starky’s relations gave Henry the parish of Stoke in Suffolk, where his Father in God was Dr Allen of Ely, a bishop friendlier than Law of Bath and Wells toward a new breed of evangelical clergy. Meanwhile Starky remained rector of Charlinch and obtained as his new curate George Thomas, one of the early Lampeter Brethren.

Two years later Henry, with Julia’s support, had raised such a storm of annoyance in Stoke that Dr Allen summoned Henry to the episcopal palace and said, “What are we to do with you, Mr Prince?”

“Who does Your Lordship signify when he says we?”, murmured Henry.

“By we I signify the Church of England by Law Established, the Church you have studied to join, and which has made me your unhappy Father in God.”

He sighed. Henry waited. Dr Allen pointed to a desk saying, “That heap of letters contains more complaints than I can properly answer. Once again you are promoting domestic and social strife.” “May I remind Your Lordship of Christ’s own words? He said Think not that I come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace; but a — ”

“Yes yes! May I remind you of Shakespeare’s words? The devil may cite the scriptures to his advantage.”

“Is it devilish of me to prefer the words of Christ to Shakespeare’s, Your Lordship?”

“No, but I assure you Christ’s words nowhere entitle a priest to exclude Christians from his services.”

“A Christian, Your Lordship, is someone who does more than chant words in unison. Services are a senseless mockery if not performed by hearts experiencing new birth through The Spirit, after which, says Jesus, the wheat must be divided from the chaff, the sheep from the goats.”

“He was speaking of the last days of mankind — the time of the general resurrection. Do you believe we are living in these last days?”

Henry did not reply.

“Will you persist in excluding parishioners from your services?”

“I will do as the Holy Spirit commands, Your Lordship.”

“Might it occur to you, Mr Prince, that in the Church of England the Holy Spirit commands you through me, your Bishop?”

Henry said nothing.

“If you do not concur I must withdraw your licence to preach in English Episcopal Churches.”

“Your Lordship will do precisely what God allows you to do.”

“If that is all you have to say, you may leave.”

Henry bowed and left.

This interview and its outcome had been foreseen and had stimulated Julia’s practical intelligence. She said, “The advowson of Stoke is still in our family’s gift. My baronet uncle will appoint one of the Brethren in your place here also, no matter what Dr Allen wants, so the best of your followers in Stoke will not be lost to us. Who would you like to choose — O Belovéd forgive me! — Who would the Holy Spirit choose in your place here?”

“Lewis Price, I suppose.”

“That will make him very happy. Shall we now discuss the new situation with Sam, since he is similarly placed?”

Henry nodded agreement. He had come to believe a saying of Thomas à Kempis, that silence is usually wiser than speech.

Complaints to the Bishop of Bath and Wells had continued after Henry and Julia left Charlinch because Starky and his new curate, George Thomas, were ardent Princeites, as some of the Lampeter Brethren were now being called. Most people in the Church of England thought their appointed clergymen adequate, but Princeites believed Henry — at first or second-hand — was essential. His Charlinch followers flocked so closely around Starky and Thomas that the rest, feeling excluded, at last persuaded Bishop Law to withdraw Starky’s licence. Thomas lasted longer. His popular sermons so increased Prince’s Charlinch following that when the Bishop eventually expelled him too nearly half his congregation also left. They now worshipped God in a Princeite farmer’s barn renamed the Charlinch Free Church. Here Thomas and Starky conducted services while a curate from a neighbouring parish led Sunday services in the established Charlinch church. Starky retained the rectory, so here he and Henry and their wives conferred.

“Things are working out wonderfully well, Belovéd!” said Starky. “We who have left the Church of England for conscience’ sake must now be as many as the first few Christians who separated from the Jews. With your following in Stoke and elsewhere we may soon be as many as the Children of Israel who followed Moses into the wilderness!”

“We have not left the Church of England Brother Starky,” said Henry firmly, “The Church of England has left us, or some of us. Our faith is unchanged. I have told the Lampeter Brethren this by letter. It is an important distinction.”

“Most of the Brethren are still Anglicans,” said Julia, “We should not needlessly estrange them.”

“You are quite right — I stand rebuked,” said Starky happily.

“Another wonderful thing is the better class of people joining our free church — not just milkmaids, road-menders and inferior farming people but people with money and land and respectable professions. We have a civil engineer with the Bristol and Exeter Railway!”

“The men are mostly bachelors and the women spinsters or widows,” said Mrs Starky. “I sometimes feel quite strange, being one of the few married people.”

“The engineer is Brother William Cobbe,” said Starky, “His sister, Miss Frances Cobbe, is the well known writer on social problems. He is so devoted to us that he has drawn plans for our very own church building and will pay for the construction! A site has been found for it only two or three miles away by Brother Hotham Mayber, a lovely spot at Spaxton Bottom where he owns land.”

Henry said thoughtfully, “At Stoke there is also a wealthier class of people among my faithful.”

He was silent for a time. The rest waited patiently until The Spirit moved him to say, “I must meet Brothers Cobbe and Mayber at Spaxton. But it is time, Brother Sam, for us to spread the Word of God to fresh pastures in less rural places.”

Which happened. Henry and Julia moved to Brighton where he rented a hall to preach in; Sam and wife went to Weymouth and did the same.

These pleasant seaside resorts contained many who had retired from cities like London where their money had been made, and where polluted air and water reduced life expectancy, even among the rich. Most of the retired were no longer young and often worried about the health of their bodies and souls. Those who overcame the first shock of attending Princeite meetings (which diverged more and more from traditional Anglican services) found unusual comfort in them. At least once a week Starky joined Henry in Adullam Hall, Brighton, or Henry joined Starky in a Weymouth tavern where they rented a room. Instead of the usual sermon they stood side by side making short speeches, turn and turn about. Their passionate duet first said all mankind was living under a dreadful impending catastrophe, then offered listeners a mysterious escape route.

Prince might begin by saying sadly, “What a beautiful thing was the human body when it came fresh from the hand of the Maker! Even now it is a noble thing, though it is but a temple in ruins! But in Eden it was bright with the beautiful image of God; it bore on its noble front the name of Him who made it, and man was the honoured link between Spirit and matter, Earth linked to Heaven by his living soul, united to Earth by his living body. His eye, his ear, his taste, his touch, his smell, his skin, his every sense was conscious only of good. Because Adam was a creature of sense rather than thought. Eve also. Their senses were alive in God, giving them the bright sun and the heaven in its clearness, the flowers in their sweetness, the streams in their gentleness. All these were mediums by which their Maker ministered to them as flesh.”

Starky said, “Adam, Eve and we their children would be living in eternal happiness to this day, as God wished, but that subtle serpent Satan tempted them to doubt God, yes, doubt God who had told them they would die if they ate fruit giving knowledge of good and evil! For to know evil is to become evil. They doubted God’s word, ate that fruit, were ashamed of their nakedness, and thought to hide themselves from God’s eye. Yes, doubt and knowledge and thought brought us all to sin, shame and death. So at last God took another woman — a virgin in Nazareth, Judaea — and made in her flesh Jesus Christ through whom the souls of believers will be redeemed. But where does that leave our bodies?”

“Look on the human body now!” cried Prince, “Look at those shrivelled anatomies of once human men, women and children starved by the failure of the potato crops in Holland, Belgium and Ireland! But why look so far? London is now the largest, richest, most scientifically governed city in the world and capital of an empire ruling, in every continent, a full quarter of the world’s people. Yet poisonous sewage has turned the Thames into the foulest river on earth. On its banks great lords and senators sitting in the Westminster Palace can hardly stand the stink, yet know not how to cure it. At night gas candelabra light up every London lane, street and public building but what does that light reveal? Filthy and turbulent mobs!”

“Look into any hospital,” cried Starky, “Into any prison — workhouse — factory — sweatshop — gin palace — tenement — slum. Are not even the mansions of the wealthy repositories of misery and sin? Can you see among so many weak and unhealthy bodies, so many painful forms of torn humanity, the lines of beauty and the mark of God? What do you see in all this? Death reigns. Death reigns. Need it always reign?”

“It shall not always reign!” cried Henry, “We have been sent by The Spirit to offer you redemption of the body!”

Then with alternating quotations from the Old and New Testaments he and Starky showed that God would now destroy most mankind as he had done before in the deluge that drowned all but Noah and his family; but here in England another family of the faithful would be made immortal if they cleaved to someone sent by God to save them.

“That pure Vessel of the Holy Spirit stands among us!” cried Starky, “But it is not yet time to utter his name.”

“Those who have ears to hear, let them await in readiness and soon they shall hear,” said Henry, “And believing, they will receive eternal life. Amen, Amen and Amen.”

In little more than a year Brighton and Weymouth, Charlinch and Stoke had each a hive buzzing with expectant Princeites. There was even a cluster of them in Swansea, where one of the Lampeter Brethren had let Henry and Starky preach to his congregation. Princeites who knew what they expected could not be counted because they discussed it in low voices and groups of two or three. In 1846 Henry was five years older than Jesus when He entered Jerusalem. Henry’s followers might have begun to doubt his Heaven on Earth had he not started building it by first gathering the most devoted into one place. As Brighton was a notorious haven for weekend adulterers he and Julia joined Sam and Mrs Starky in Belfield Terrace, Weymouth. To an adjacent house came Harriet, Agnes and Clara Nottidge, daughters of a London merchant who had retired with his family to Stoke. There the three sisters became such ardent Princeites that they had followed Henry to Brighton. In Belfield Terrace they joined the Princes and Starkys for breakfast and morning prayers, also for evening prayers and supper. Henry now commanded enough spare rooms to house all his richest followers and occasionally those with businesses outside Weymouth, but who occasionally needed strengthening by close contact with him. Two of these were William Cobbe and Hotham Mayber.

“I call our Belfield houses Agapemone,” he told them, “which is Greek for the dwelling place or abode of love. Here even we who are husbands and wives live in perfect spiritual harmony and happiness, quite free of fleshly sin because we are brothers and sisters whose only parent is Almighty God. But this little abode is the seed of something larger — a great estate with a mansion that can comfortably accommodate at least thirty gentry with as many servants. There must be gardens around the mansion and space for it to be made larger if that is needed, also an extensive home farm with cottages for labourers and other servants. You, Brothers Cobbe and Mayber, are of all men the most practical who have faith in me! Through you God has chosen the site of his New Jerusalem. Brother Mayber, that land you gave to our free church at Spaxton Bottom — can more be obtained?”

Mayber smiled and shrugged saying, “Apart from cathedrals, army barracks, royal palaces and dockyards there is no part of England that cannot be bought for ready money. The land at Spaxton is good agricultural land so cannot be bought cheap, but it has no mineral deposits and is far from any railway line, so will not be unusually dear.”

“There is a house near the church?”

“Yes, and unoccupied, but it is not much larger than Charlinch Rectory.”

“Brother Cobbe!” said Henry, “Survey the land round Spaxton Bottom, mapping buildings and farmlands needed by our estate. Consult with Brother Mayber in deciding its extent. The house near the church must be enlarged by adding wings. Design it beautifully. You are building God’s final earthly home.”

Stroking his beard thoughtfully Cobbe said, “We can do all that, Belovéd. I can ensure the mansion has gas lighting with every modern plumbing facility. But such building may cost almost as much as the land itself. Will Mayber and I offend the Holy Spirit if we ask — in all humility — for you to name purchase prices and construction costs we should not exceed?”

“The Holy Spirit is not offended by your question,” said Henry, smiling, “because it does not hear it. The Spirit merely requires you to survey the ground, map the estate and design a house fit for the Lord of All the Earth and His followers. The Spirit asks Brother Mayber to begin negotiating the purchase. Do not doubt that the Spirit will provide what we need to complete God’s Holy Work. Let us pray.”

They knelt with him in prayer then, glad and determined, went to do as he said.

Then Henry sent letters inviting all the Lampeter Brethren to a special conference in the Weymouth Royal Hotel, to stop them losing contact with each other. The mood of this well-attended meeting was at first cordial because so many Brethren were glad to meet again. They found themselves among many they did not know: excited, fashionable ladies and gentlemen, and common people in their best Sunday clothes. The Reverend George Thomas started the business of the day by mounting a platform and proposing that Henry James Prince be elected chairman, since he had called the meeting. Nobody opposed that; the motion was carried by a great show of hands. Henry mounted the platform and sat gravely behind a table there. From the floor of the hall Lewis Price now moved that George Thomas be the minutes secretary, a motion also seconded and accepted without opposition. Thomas, producing a notebook, mounted the platform and sat beside Henry who called the meeting to order and asked Brother Starky to open it.

Starky began by saying it was an overpowering honour for him to speak first, because of all ordained Lampeter Brethren he was certainly the last and least, having studied divinity at Cambridge — not Lampeter. For most of his life he had been a sick man, a wholly formal Christian, and a completely useless priest. He described at great length how his Belovéd Brother Prince had miraculously restored him to health and the love of Jesus, then described at greater length the mighty works of The Spirit in creating Charlinch Free Church and other wonderful Christian congregations in Stoke, Brighton and Weymouth. It was plain (he said) that an even mightier Work of the Spirit impended, and he demonstrated this with biblical quotations from the start of Genesis to the book of Revelations. But this Work must be wrought through a human instrument and where would such a Vessel of The Pure Spirit appear? Surely not in the corrupted Catholic Church, mighty and widespread though Rome still was. Surely not in the Churches of Czarist Russia and Greece, or the fragmented Protestant sects of Europe and America; nor could this saviour stand high in the Church of England, which was ruled by very worldly men. This Vessel could only appear among the Lampeter Brethren. He ended by saying, “I, Samuel Starky, firmly believe — indeed, I know — that this Vessel, this Man we call Branch foretold in the Scriptures, is among us here now. I hereby move that this meeting call upon that Man to reveal himself! Who will second my motion?”

Starky’s words excited all his listeners except Henry who sat behind the table with folded hands and downcast eyes. A great number now gazed at him, their right arms straining above their heads and shouting, “Yes yes!” “I second that!” “Hear hear!”, but most of the Lampeter Brethren present stared around as if lost or looked enquiringly at each other. The chairman raised his head, then his hand and there was silence. He said, “Does anyone oppose that motion?”

“May I say a few words?” said a voice from the floor. “Certainly,” said the chairman.

“Thankyou, Brother Henry. You will know that I am Laurence Deck, who attended our old college at Lampeter. You invited me here to discuss the present state of the Lampeter Brethren, and I am delighted to find us surrounded by so many from Brother Starky’s south coast congregation and probably your own. You did not ask the rest of we Brethren to bring members of our congregations, probably because we live far from Weymouth and our congregations are mostly too poor to travel. My accent tells everyone here that I am Welsh, and we Welsh greatly admire England’s love of fair play. I ask every honest English man and woman present, is it fair for them to help three or four priests outvote a larger number, simply because that larger number have brought no followers?”

Deck sat down. A murmuring that had started during his speech now broke out into cries of, “Nonsense!” “Pedantry!” “Turn him out!”, yet whispering in the audience showed many quieter voices were discussing his words. On the platform Starky and Thomas looked appealingly to the chairman who again sat with downcast eyes until another voice from the floor said, “Brother Henry, I am Arthur Rees from Sunderland in Northumbria. May I speak?”

“Certainly,” said Henry.

“When Brother Starky says a Vessel of the Holy Ghost may be among us, does he refer to Christ’s second coming?”

“Eh. . yes! I do! But in The Spirit!” cried Starky, then added hastily, “And in the body too. . of course. . also in the body.”

“Thankyou for being so clear,” said Rees. “True Christians should always expect Christ’s second coming at any moment, for if we do not we may miss it, as the foolish virgins missed the bridegroom in the parable. That is why we Christians have been expecting Christ ever since His resurrection. But can we be sure His second coming is now so very near? Brother Starky says the world has grown as wicked as when God drowned nearly everyone in Noah’s flood, but is not the world today, with its many admitted evils, better than it was in the days of the Emperor Nero? Or before the Protestant Reformation? I agree with him that many Church of England clergy are worldly men with worldly motives, but do not agree that there are no pure-hearted Christians outside the Lampeter Brethren. In other churches there are many pure believers. I myself am thinking of joining the Baptists. .”

This caused a muffled commotion in which a woman screamed, “Shame!”, then tried to look as if she had not. Rees cried, “Surely we should only do what Jesus commanded! Let us love the Lord our God with all our hearts and souls and minds and our neighbour as ourselves! Let us even love neighbours who ignore us, mock us or treat us as enemies! God still wants Christians to love and serve fallen humanity, especially if we are priests.”

He sat down in a sudden, respectful silence which lasted some seconds before hands were raised by many eager to speak. The chairman suddenly looked up and in a strange sing-song that disconcerted everyone chanted, “Brother Deck again has the floor.”

“I d-d-do not wish to suggest anything of-of-of-offensive to Brother Prince and his followers,” said Deck, confused by the strange voice that singled him out but swiftly mastering his stammer, “I only suggest that Brother Starky’s motion is prem — is premature. Let all the Lampeter Brethren and their congregations watch for signs that Christ is returning or has returned, because surely these signs will be miracles that none who see them can doubt, and that no show of hands, no counting of heads can set in train. I move that all in the Lampeter Brotherhood correspond with each other, perhaps using our minutes secretary, Brother Thomas, as a kind of central post office. If any of us encounter a miracle showing that Christ has returned, let him share that news, not confine it to one circle of ad-ad-ad-admirers.”

“Let Brother Deck’s commands be obeyed!” Henry almost screamed in his peculiar new voice, “This meeting is now at an end! Amen, Amen, and Amen!”

He swiftly left the platform and room, followed closely by Starky, Thomas, Julia, Mrs Starky and Rees. The remaining Lampeter Brethren and Princeites were so confused that they mutteringly left the hotel without more public discussion.

A fortnight after the Royal Hotel meeting Arthur Rees and Laurence Deck called on Prince at Belfield Terrace, Weymouth. He received them as he received all visitors nowadays, Julia seated on one side and Starky on the other. He arose as Rees and Deck entered — murmured a welcome — shook their hands warmly — sat calmly smiling as the visitors, on a sofa facing them, exchanged remarks about the weather with his followers. Suddenly Rees said wildly, “O Brother Prince, I do not know how to start saying what we are here to say!”

“Yet say it.”

“This letter in my hand — Brother Deck has also received a copy — purports to be minutes of our last meeting of the Brethren. It is not! I doubt if Brother Thomas wrote a word of it!”

“He wrote every word of it,” said Prince mildly, “I know this because he wrote down what The Spirit dictated to him through my lips. The voice was mine but the words were God’s. Brother Thomas then made a copy in his own hand while Sisters Julia and Starky made other copies. The Spirit directed that Thomas’s manuscript epistles be posted to you and Deck. The other copies went to the other former Brethren.”

“Who are as shocked as we are! The only Lampeter Brethren it mentions as present are you, Starky, Thomas and Price!”

“Because we were the only Brethren present in heart and soul. You and the rest were not. You heard Brother Starky knocking at the door of your hearts, begging you to open and admit salvation through the Holy Spirit’s love. You preferred to shut it out.”

“O Brother Prince! O my dear, dear Brother Henry!” cried Rees, starting to weep.

“Are we brothers?” murmured Henry.

“Yes! Brothers in God from the moment we first confessed and prayed together in your room at St David’s College, Lampeter, brothers-in-law since I married your sister!”

Henry said absently, “I regret that. There is still enough fleshly inclination in my heart to regret that you are no longer, in truth, my brother.”

He closed his eyes and kept them shut until Rees and Deck left the room.

“Brother Prince — for I insist on still calling you so — ” said Deck, “This letter lies when it says the meeting ended with everyone present unanimously voting you to be the Redeemer foretold in the Bible.”

“That letter tells a truth you did not see, and cannot see because you are blind.”

“But it stands to reason! —”

“I am not reasonable, Deck,” Henry interrupted smoothly, “If I fell so low as to reason with you I would become the old, selfish, fleshly Henry Prince you once knew. I would have to agree with you. But that Henry Prince is dead. I am now as a little child who says only what The Spirit wishes. Sometimes I hardly understand what it says through me, but I know it is eternal damnation not to believe it.”

Deck stood up saying, “Rees, we had better leave,” but Rees begged, “Let me try once more! Henry, on our way here yesterday we stopped in Brighton where I questioned some who have heard you preach. .”

“You were spying, in fact,” said Julia.

“I was enquiring. One said you and Starky claimed to be the two witnesses of Revelations, another that you call yourselves the Prophet Elijah and the Holy Ghost made flesh. Is this true?”

Henry said, “I am not permitted to reply”.

“We do not say we did, neither do we say we did not,” Starky explained.

“O my poor Brother Henry!” sobbed Rees, standing up, “You were the best of us at Lampeter — the purest, bravest and most truly humble. O what has turned you into such a dreadful, such a silly creature?”

At this impiety Julia and Starky stared aghast at Henry. One of his eyes may have flickered open and shut, otherwise he did not move for two or three seconds then whispered, “Get thee behind me, Rees. Get thee behind me, Deck.”

Julia stood up saying coldly, “I will show you out, Mister Rees, Mister Deck. Our Belovéd carries many heavy burdens. You have failed to add another.”

Shortly after returning to his family in Sunderland Arthur Rees received a letter with a south coast postmark, addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand. As was then common the envelope was fastened with a circular blob of sealing wax, but remarkably big, and black instead of the usual red. He broke the seal and took out two sheets of thick, good-quality paper called mourning card, because printed with a black border for people sending news of a death or funeral. The first card had these words written large in the unknown hand:

JUDAS!

Guide to them that took

THE HOLY ONE

Go to thine own place!

The second said:

Let his days be few!

Let another take his Office.

Let his children be fatherless

and his wife a widow.

Let their names be blotted out.

Below the last sentence a row of names was made illegible by ink blots, so Rees could not see if they were names of him and his wife and children, or of him and other Lampeter Brethren who doubted Henry’s divinity. Rees groaned, knelt on the carpet and begged God to cure Henry of a blasphemous delusion.