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 Illi 
 
 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BX5199.C72B92 1914 
 
 'We bless thy holy name for all thy serv 
 3 1924 011 508 896 
 
The original of tliis bool< is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 1 508896 
 
Especially 
 William, Bishop of Gibraltar 
 
 AND 
 
 Mary, His Wife 
 

 '4. 
 
 
 .*y 
 
 -^::y 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 "WAYSIDE LAMPS." 
 
 Short Stories. 
 
 Fcap. 8»o. 2s. 6d, net. 
 
 Contents; Mrs. Hutcher — Louie — Will Hammond — A 
 Workhouse Idyll — Corporal Thompson — The Request of our 
 Lips — Ubique — Forgotten? — Mr. Minter — Mrs. Thomas and 
 also Parkins— Going to Court. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO., 
 LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA. 
 
WILLIAM EDWARD COLLINS, 
 
 Bishop of Gibraltar, 
 
 1904-1911, 
 
"We bless Thy Holy Name for all Thy servants 
 departed this life in Thy Faith and Fear, 
 
 Especially 
 William, Bishop of Gibraltar 
 
 AND 
 
 Mary, His Wife" 
 
 l^EW IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 
 
 1914 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
First Edition, Sept., igii - - - 500 copies. 
 Second Edition, Nov., igii - - - 2000 copies. 
 Third Edition, Feb., igi2 - - 4000 copies. 
 Publication transferred to Messrs, Longmans, 
 Green, &• Co., March, 1913. 
 New Impression, January, X914. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 This small volume was originally limited to 
 private circulation and only intended for the 
 people of the Gibraltar Diocese who knew and 
 loved their Bishop. 
 
 Owing to the continued demand, it is now 
 ' felt to be right to let it be published. 
 
 The profits on the private sale of 4000 copies, 
 and also the profits on the volume of the Bishop's 
 sermons entitled " Hours of Insight " have been 
 devoted to paying the College fees of a candidate 
 for Holy Orders, for whom the Bishop had 
 wished to provide. 
 
 L. B. B. 
 
 February 22, 1913. 
 
^''Especially William, Bishop of 
 Gibraltar, and Mary, his Wife." 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 When a rich man becomes the proud possessor of a 
 wonderful portrait, it sometimes happens that he feels 
 he cannot keep it for himself. More people should 
 have the joy of looking at it than just his own family 
 and friends ; it should hang in a fuller light than his 
 own rooms give ; and though there must be many other 
 revelations of the same master, it may be their owners 
 will only the more gladly welcome a sight of this last 
 picture. 
 
 Yes, the treasure must go to a gallery ; it is far too 
 precious to be kept back. 
 
 Even so, I feel I should try to give others the chance 
 of sharing in my dear possession, my close friendship 
 with the Bishop of Gibraltar during the last years of 
 his wonderful earthly life. 
 
 Before I begin to put down my crowding memories 
 — and I want to do this now, at once, while our 
 Moorish Castle garden is still stately with the ranks of 
 the tall white arum lilies he watched unfold — I would 
 
 I 
 
2 ESPECIALLY V^llAAAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 say that I had no more claim to expect the friendship 
 of our Bishop than the woman at a well had a claim, 
 long ago, to special speech with the Greatest Friend of 
 the world. But the great things don't always come 
 by claim, and it has been given to yet another to know 
 " God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame ". 
 
 I first saw Bishop Collins at my second daughter's 
 Confirmation at Gibraltar on 27 January, 1907. The 
 cathedral was packed with people, and as the proces- 
 sion of clergy and choir passed into the chancel I first 
 saw the wonderful face with its mingled look of ex- 
 altation and utter submission, which was to grow so 
 unspeakably dear to us. As the service went on I 
 was greatly struck by the Bishop's method of address- 
 ing each candidate by name — there was a great number, 
 and the Bishop looked very ill, but his whole force 
 seemed to go into each question. "Dolores Mary," 
 the grave tender voice carried right through the cath- 
 edral — then, with lingering intonation, " Do you ? " 
 Dolores, being semi-Spanish and much be-flounced 
 with white lace and many satin ribbons, had possibly 
 had some distractions from the solemnity of what she 
 was about to promise; but one felt, with a sudden 
 thrill, that the little soul for which One died in Galilee 
 long ago would be drawn out by that voice then, and 
 could never quite sink down again. The warm Southern 
 sun poured through the windows, the big congregation — 
 rather mixed and restless as is usual in a foreign city, 
 where a religious ceremony is also a spectacle to be 
 discussed —became very quiet ; that nameless thrill 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 3 
 
 which some organ stops give, and which I began to 
 realise lived in the Bishop's voice, flowed down through 
 the crowd. It was the men's turn now, and the chap- 
 lains began to present a rank who were almost all in 
 the King's uniform, soldiers or sailors ; a lusty gunner 
 stood out, " John Frederick," then a slight pause, 
 just enough to make John Frederick know that he was 
 a personality by himself, not just a gunner of No. 6 
 Company, but a separate precious baptized member of 
 his Master. " Do you ? " Yes, John Frederick had 
 a lot of uphill behind him and steep work in front, but 
 he could answer to the tender gravity of that voice 
 which clearly understood all about his difficulties, and 
 so he could give quite a firm " I do," and show that 
 yes, he, John Frederick, certainly did. During the 
 charge the Bishop told one of his favourite stories, of 
 the Indian who composed a hymn which simply con- 
 tained the lines : " Go on. Go on. Go on," repeated 
 over and over again — " not a hymn suited for congre- 
 gational singing, but yet the very secret of the Christian 
 life ". I can hear his voice now as he repeated it again : 
 " Go on, go on, don't give up ". 
 
 A year later, when the Bishop came to Gibraltar 
 again, I was in better health and able to accept the 
 Government House invitation to meet him at dinner 
 — but the person who entirely seized my imagination 
 that evening was his wife ; we became extraordinarily 
 intimate in quite a few minutes, and she told me how 
 frightfully tired the incessant travelling made her, and 
 the crowds of fresh people at every place. 
 
 " We can never go to a quiet inn and rest, it is 
 
4 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 always receptions to meet the Bishop and crowds of 
 people waiting to see him everywhere, and I can't 
 spare him any of it ; they want him and I can't see them 
 instead. When we married I thought I could save 
 him from being killed with the life — but I can scarcely 
 help him at all." 
 
 And she looked across at the Bishop's frail figure 
 hemmed in by a little crowd of people waiting to get 
 a word with him — I never saw a more pathetic look. 
 I began to tell her some funny stories of people we 
 had both known at home — to make her laugh, and 
 presently she said : " Oh the Bishop will like that story, 
 do come and I'll get him to talk to you — why — you 
 do not even know him yet ". When I told her I would 
 much sooner talk to her, she couldn't believe it. We 
 met several times after that and they came up to tea 
 with us ; and then, while the Bishop had to go off 
 somewhere else, she stayed late, and we began to be 
 friends, and to tell each other thoughts and sorrows we 
 had not dreamt of letting other people know. Sunday 
 came and the Bishop had gone on to Tangier, but Mrs. 
 Collins remained here, and so she spent the day with me 
 and it was really that day that decided our friendship. 
 
 Hers was such a touching story, she did so utterly, 
 almost desperately, love her husband, and his heavy 
 work and endless journeys were so obviously exhaust- 
 ing him, and it was breaking her great heart that she 
 could not save him, and also was only able by immense 
 effort to keep going herself. For she had begun to 
 have piercing headaches and the first hour of boat or 
 train always brought on physical discomfort. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 5 
 
 I was so profoundly attracted by her I could not bear 
 to let her go, so, in pouring rain, I walked down 
 the hill with her back to Government House in the 
 evening. 
 
 I remember so well when I said something of what 
 a marvellous marriage theirs must be — both so utterly 
 devoted in the great work of their lives and to each 
 other — how she stopped short, in the middle of the 
 storm, and said with a sincerity of emphasis which 
 preached a whole Gospel, "Yes — but no marriage — no 
 earthly love can satisfy — one must have Him, Jesus. 
 Oh ! I could not go on living without Him — though 
 it's often only just saying His name to myself over and 
 over again." Now, doesn't that sound a simple 
 thing ? — one had heard and read words very like it a 
 hundred times before. But when Mary Collins stood 
 still in the rain and said it, the crowded narrow streets 
 of Gibraltar seemed to fade away, the years fell back ; 
 it could have been said as it was in Galilee — " When 
 they looked up they saw no man save Jesus only ". 
 
 I know she sent me home speechless and it was 
 more than rain that splashed my face as I climbed the 
 Castle hill. 
 
 When the Bishop came the next winter, I had hoped 
 Mrs. Collins would stay and rest with me, for we had 
 corresponded, and I felt she could be at home with 
 us, but she had begun to be ill — and he came alone. 
 
 I meant to go and hear the Bishop every time he 
 preached and he had asked me to do a little work for 
 him and bring it to him each morning in his study at 
 Government House ; but my tiny baby began measles 
 
6 ESPECIALLY WlLllAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 about the sixth day of his visit, and so she and I went 
 into quarantine in the nursery, and I sorrowfully sent 
 a note to the Bishop to tell him I could not hope to 
 have any more of the joy of him, but should just go 
 on trying to digest what he had taught me already. 
 
 But that evening when baby was asleep and the 
 ex-baby and I were sitting in the firelight, the door 
 suddenly opened and in came the Bishop, not at all 
 daunted by a little thing like measles. We put him 
 in a low arm-chair and Judith snuggled herself down 
 in his arms — no one I have ever known loved children 
 quite like the Bishop — and she continued to read aloud 
 the " Water Babies ". " But I thought Muddis was read- 
 ing to you?" "Oh no," said Judith, "I read to her, 
 and now I'll read to you" ; and so she did, with such 
 pronunciation of the long words as, in a lady of five, 
 might be expected. 
 
 It seemed to amuse and rest him, and so I let her 
 go on. Presently nurse came, and with a blessing and 
 many kisses it was bedtime ; but the Bishop held her 
 a moment longer. " Judith, when you say your prayers, 
 will you pray for me ? " 
 
 A very serious fat face contemplated him before 
 answering. "Well, Bishop, dear, I might put you in, 
 after nurse and baby; I couldn't put you in before." 
 "That will do beautifully, darling"; and so a great 
 compact was made, never since broken. 
 
 We sat very silently in the fading light after that ; 
 one could be quite silent with the Bishop and yet be 
 learning all the time. 
 
 We talked about his Mary and his anxiety for her, 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 7 
 
 and the doctors fancying her illness largely nerves — 
 and how with her strong will and wonderful self- 
 control this seemed so strange : utterly impossible, I 
 thought ; and I showed him her marking in my " Ring 
 and the Book " of the lines : " Work— Be unhappy, but 
 bear life," and recalled her saying : " How would one 
 ever get through without St. John and Browning ? " 
 
 I cannot remember what we spoke of further; but, 
 when he left, I seemed to know him much better and 
 to realize that somehow, for some blessed reason, he 
 found our quarters in the old Moorish Castle restful to 
 come to, in spite of the precipice one has to chmb to 
 get to it. 
 
 And so, an evening or two after, when he slipped 
 quietly in again, my pleasure was just as acute; why 
 it always was, it never could be more, or less, but I 
 was not surprised. We spoke then of the people he 
 had been seeing ; of the troubles I had known about, 
 and which he was healing ; of all manner of knots and 
 twists in Gibraltar which seemed quietly to untangle 
 and run smoothly directly his hand touched the 
 strings. 
 
 There were personal touches, too ; please God they 
 took root in my heart and life, but my memory will 
 not bring them back to-day. Not to-day, when his 
 loss is still new and raw to me as his three days' grave 
 must be at Smyrna. 
 
 But one moment stands out vivid as a searchlight 
 over the harbour of my grief. Something he said 
 broke down the last ropes of reticent convention (I 
 never had many), and I suddenly knelt down between 
 
8 ESPECIALLY y^lLLlAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 him and the fire, and almost cried out in my vehe- 
 mence : " Bishop, Bishop, I have always wanted to be 
 good, just to be good, but you break me down and 
 make me feel all wrong from the very beginning ". 
 
 " Why ? " asked the grave gentle voice. 
 
 " Oh, it's because you are wholesale — just whole- 
 sale all through — and I want to be — but when I am 
 with you I know, I know I'm not." 
 
 The Bishop put his hand up over his eyes, and it 
 was quite a long pause before his answer came, " / 
 wonder if I am ". 
 
 It must have been in May that year that Judith 
 observed in her crib one night : " Muddis, do you 
 notice that I still pray for the Bishop every night ? 
 Well, what I want to know is, do you suppose he 
 still prays for me ? " 
 
 " Well, Jude, I daresay he does sometimes, but you 
 see he has hundreds of other children to pray for, all 
 the people in Spain, and Portugal, and Italy, and all 
 along the Mediterranean coast." 
 
 " Oh, Muddis ! How awful ! poor dear man, he 
 must be kneeling up all night ! " 
 
 I was writing to Mrs. Collins that evening, and I 
 put in this little story to amuse her, but the answer 
 from Heidelberg came back in the Bishop's hand- 
 writing : — 
 
 " I am writing on my wife's behalf to thank you for 
 your letter ; for she is far too ill to write, though she 
 smiled and was glad to have it read to her this 
 morning. 
 
 " She has been very ill ever since January, now im- 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 9 
 
 proving a little and now going back again, and I have 
 just brought her here to place her under the care of 
 Professor Erb, who is a very good as well as dis- 
 tinguished specialist. We do not yet know precisely 
 what is the matter. There has been no sign of loss of 
 memory or perception, not a sign of irritability or the 
 like, only weakness, and loss of power, and if ever 
 strength was made perfect in weakness it is with her. 
 She is so sweet, and brave, and patient : that alone is 
 all in her favour, and she has a good nurse who is 
 absolutely devoted to her. But you will understand 
 that we are very anxious. 
 
 " And that makes us value your prayers all the more, 
 yours and little Judith's. Will you give her my love 
 and my blessing, and tell her that I do pray for her, 
 and had been doing so the very evening before your 
 letter came, God bless you all. My Mary sends you 
 her love, I have just asked her. 
 
 " I am due at Oxford on Whit-Sunday but expect 
 to return here immediately after. And in the inter- 
 vals, when she is well enough, I am due in North 
 Italy." 
 
 I thought of Mary's words to me the year before : 
 "It is just anguish to me when he has to leave me 
 even for twenty-four hours " ; and I remembered the 
 deep suppressed pain on the Bishop's face as he spoke 
 of her in January. " She is the very light of my eyes 
 — bless her — bless her " ; and one had not needed to 
 hear it, the fact had been so abundantly plain, and 
 now, "grave anxiety " — and yet he was still leaving her 
 to go about his work (Wist ye not that I must be 
 
10 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 about My Father's business ?) and quietly putting the 
 sea between himself and his heart's desire. 
 
 Oh ! Mary, Mary, I knew your own words must be 
 being tried to the uttermost depth then, " No earthly 
 love can satisfy — one must have Him ! " 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE ii 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Now it happened at this time, that my dear old home 
 in England, Eden Gate, was empty and unlet, and I 
 had determined that just for this once more I would 
 go up there, get servants together and furbish it up 
 and make it just as it used to be in the old times, so 
 that Chris and all the children should have one lovely 
 summer, not all crammed into the cottage as we had 
 been in recent holidays, but with the heavenly old 
 garden and dear big rooms of olden days. 
 
 So I went up to Westmoreland by myself to get it 
 ready for them. 
 
 I drove up to the house in the evening in heavy 
 rain, and as the hired carriage pulled up at the door, 
 my heart quite twisted with the pain of it all. We had 
 been such a cheery party there in the old days, and 
 mother was always waiting with such a welcome ; 
 there was no one now, only old Pax the retriever, and 
 the gardener and cook. 
 
 I wandered through the desolate rooms one after 
 another, the old familiar carpets stood up in rolls, and 
 the pictures and chairs and books were dusty and awry, 
 and all said the same thing, " We are left — but they — 
 they are all gone ". Mother, who really did think the 
 
12 ESPECIALLY yVllAAKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 world centred in Eden Gate ; the two soldier brothers 
 who had fallen, one in Egypt, the other in South Africa ; 
 the delicate sister, who had only died just a year 
 ago. 
 
 The sadness and echoing emptiness was really awful. 
 
 Next day, Sunday, still it rained, but I started down 
 across the dripping garden to go to Early Service, and 
 opened the little wicket gate to find — no church path 
 — not one sign of it : the tenants had never used it I 
 suppose ; anyhow it had grown entirely into part of 
 the big drenching hayiield, and it was far too late to 
 turn back and go all round by the road. 
 
 I mention these details, because it is the little things 
 which seem to break our hearts, and which, even in 
 this world, sometimes work out for us a far exceeding 
 weight of glory. If Eden Gate had not been so un- 
 bearable as it was, I might not have hurried to get in 
 women to clean and freshen all the shut-up rooms at 
 once, and men to re-cut and dig the church path ; as 
 it was, I set to, and we all worked hard, and in a week 
 the place began to look all sweet and useable and 
 cared for again. 
 
 Then one afternoon I walked across the fields to 
 fetch the second post, opened the paper, and saw that 
 Mary had died in town. Dead ! Oh poor Bishop, poor 
 poor Bishop. 
 
 Within an hour I was back at the post office again 
 with a letter. 
 
 I said that I knew words were useless, and that he 
 must have myriads of friends aching to serve him, and 
 that he was not to write, but that I was alone with 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 13 
 
 the servants at Eden Gate. If he wanted to get away 
 from everything and everyone, I could give him a set 
 of rooms all to himself where he could slip out down to 
 the river or up among the fells, and he need not even see 
 me at meals unless he liked ; he was to look at the list 
 of trains I enclosed, and only wire any minute and come. 
 
 Days passed and no word came and I scarcely ex- 
 pected it. The children were just due from school 
 and Chris landing from Gibraltar, when the Bishop 
 wrote that he was coming and had only waited to 
 finish some work, and " since he could not be in Para- 
 dise with his dear one he would sooner be at Eden 
 Gate than anywhere." (I think it must have been the 
 name that drew him.) 
 
 " You understand so well and love her so much that 
 I very much want to tell you more about it. For she 
 has been so wonderful and dear, and so brave and 
 patient. And if my sense of isolation is acute, it is 
 only because she has been, and is, so much to me : for 
 that which casts a shadow is infinitely more than the 
 shadow is ! And she is not really far away : the veil 
 is very thin, and death unites even more than it 
 separates. It is only like a longer and harder journey 
 away from her, but with the anxiety removed. 
 
 " And I bless God for it all — and for her. To-day 
 especially my mind is full of this : so few are blessed 
 with such perfect love as we, and yet all mankind 
 keeps its ideal of marriage pure and holy, however 
 little it may seem to be generally realized. And one 
 after another to-day has told me how our marriage 
 helped them to keep their ideal." 
 
14 ^^/'^C/^ZZF WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 I laid down the letter quite shakily. To think he 
 was really coming to stay with us in his trouble seemed 
 too great a thing to be true — and, oh ! what a good 
 thing it was that I had had the whole house put 
 straight, instead of only the rooms for the children, 
 for even if they all came whilst he was here (and they 
 all did) he could still have the big bedroom looking 
 on to the rose garden with the dressing-room and its 
 own bathroom leading out of it, and how comfy I 
 would make the library for him, and what a joy that 
 the pretty old short cut to church had been made 
 nice. 
 
 My only fear was, might not the noise of the children 
 disturb him ? But no, the Bishop wrote again in reply 
 to my query. " Please don't let anybody think of being 
 saddened or the like, for I shall love being with them 
 all and out-of-doors as much as possible. I don't think 
 it makes me sad. I trust it does not, where others 
 are concerned ; joy as well as strength comes with my 
 dear one, and she is always with me even when I feel 
 the emptiness most. 
 
 " You can't think how much I am looking forward 
 to it, but perhaps you can." 
 
 Of course I had waves of anxiety ; sickness and grief 
 and death I had often watched, in South Africa and at 
 home, but I knew our Bishop was made of so finely 
 tempered clay as to be hardly clay at all. We might jar 
 his quivering nerves at every turn, and the visit be a 
 misery rather than any sort of solace. 
 
 But the girls filled the house with flowers, and the 
 big chintz arm-chair in the window of his bedroom did 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 15 
 
 really face a most heavenly view ; rose garden beneath, 
 wood beyond, and then the swelling purple curves of 
 Roman fell and Helbeck. 
 
 The writing-table in the library was better still ; the 
 lawns slope down in terraces immediately under it, and 
 there is the Eden, murmuring, glittering, singing, over 
 the rocks and stones by the old bridge, you hear it 
 all day long ; and it is the sheltered side of the house ; 
 the big window would be always open, and the scent 
 of the climbing gloires coming in. 
 
 Dear old Elizabeth, too, was quite zealous : the 
 tenderest young ducks were ordered from the farm ; 
 the equally young green peas were "just ready for 
 them," a nice salmon from Carlisle must be sent for. 
 Tita, listening, was quite shocked. 
 
 " Really, Muddis, you can't think the Bishop will 
 care twopence what he eats ! " 
 
 No, I didn't dream he would even know, but oh, 
 why did it all begin to seem like an echo of the Great 
 Life long ago ? " I am not worthy that Thou shouldst 
 come under my roof," had been ringing in my head, 
 and now, here was Martha, careful and troubled about 
 many things. I must pull myself together and go 
 to the train. The day was clouding over, the carriage 
 ought to be partly shut. 
 
 But when I met him all my plans and outward 
 observances of respect fell down. Anyone so ill, 
 so spent, and weary, and yet so utterly submissively 
 patient and brave, and wildly unfit to be travelling, I 
 had never met. We drove along almost in silence. 
 The deep hollows under those gentle ibrown eyes;" the 
 
1 6 ^5/'^C/<4ZZF WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 fresh lines of pain in which the lips seemed set ; the 
 new huskiness of the voice — all spoke quite enough. 
 
 And yet, he was so wonderful ; he noticed each turn 
 and changing view, smiled and spoke now and then, 
 always of Mary, and how she would have liked it ; and 
 you could see he was broken to his heart's core and yet 
 absolutely undefeated. 
 
 We had tea in the big bow looking down on the 
 river, and no one came near us until he had rested 
 awhile. I thought the little ones would be too much 
 for him, but he was in quite a hurry for them, and 
 when Judith arrived and possessed herself of his knee, 
 he was presently laughing. She had told him it was 
 glorious to see him, but would he please not do just 
 one thing. 
 
 " What thing, Judith ? " 
 
 " Not read prayers. You see, Bishop Darying (this 
 became his family name) I know it's the sort of iing 
 Bishops do do, but you see Muddis always does it, 
 and she's very partikler, and I know you'll read the 
 wrong ones ! " 
 
 Children really are better than anyone in trouble. 
 Every night the Bishop was with us, he slipped away 
 early to dress, and I always found him along the wing 
 in Judith's room when the gong went. I should have 
 loved to hear their conversations ; they were a good 
 deal about angels and fairies I believe, but no one was 
 allowed to be present. One evening when I did over- 
 hear a fragment I found it rather patronising. " Well, 
 good night, Bishop Darying (sounds of earnest and 
 numerous kisses), I know you'd like to come and talk 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 17 
 
 to me in the mornings as well as the evenings, but 
 you can't, you know, Darying, we're so undecent when 
 we're dressin' ! ' ' 
 
 But it wasn't only Judith the Bishop thought for. 
 He worked hour after hour at masses of papers and 
 letters ; but his idea of rest was helping other people. 
 O He taught Doris about poetry, talked to his " own little 
 daughter Tita," as he called our second girl, whom he 
 had confirmed, about all her hopes and dearest dreams ; 
 and when our subaltern son arrived from India the 
 Bishop and he were talking so late at night in his room 
 that I had to sit up to see that they did really go to 
 bed at last. 
 
 I had not thought any human being could be so 
 heart-broken, so newly bereft of the love of his life, 
 and yet throw himself so marvellously into everyone 
 else's concerns. 
 
 On Sunday we went down the church path for Early 
 Service ; the hush of the most perfect summer morning 
 lying over the fells and the dewy Eden valley. 
 
 There was a special hush about the Bishop, too ; his 
 face, as we passed silently through the green dimness 
 of the little wood and out into the sunlit fields, showed 
 how it was with him. " Lift up your hearts." "We 
 lift them up (' We will keep on lifting them up ' was his 
 pet translation) unto the Lord." 
 
 Yes, he did not lift it up, now and again, as we do, 
 he kept on lifting it up, and the old cry of Job lay 
 about the corners of his mouth, " Though He slay me 
 yet will I trust in Him". 
 
 Our Vicar had asked beforehand if the Bishop would 
 
i8 ESPECIALLY VJILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 preach and I had been strong on its impossibility ; why 
 he was weary enough to need an arm before we got 
 down to the morning service ! 
 
 " Don't dream of taking anything but the blessing, 
 will you," I begged; but when it came to sermon 
 time, to my utter horror I saw him going up into the 
 pulpit. 
 
 Now I had rubbed the poor swollen ankles the even- 
 ing before and knew something of the state the heart 
 was in. The husky voice had difficulty in carrying 
 across a dinner table; how on earth he could preach 
 and come down alive was beyond me. I mustn't 
 think, I mustn't breathe, but I must watch, yes, watch 
 as one watches the dying, lest one miss one word, one 
 least sign. 
 
 The frail figure paused a minute, and looked 
 earnestly down at the village faces scattered sparsely 
 along the old oak pews beneath, before the tortured 
 voice strung itself together to reach them. 
 
 "And I said it is my own infirmity, but I will re- 
 member the years of the right hand of the Most 
 High." 
 
 Perhaps he preached for ten minutes; it might have 
 been ten years for the strain it must have given the 
 poor throat. 
 
 It was a very simple sermon, simple as St. John's. 
 He spoke of the hard days which had come to the men 
 of old and which must come to us all in our turn ; days 
 of trouble, days of pain and anxiety, days of over- 
 whelming — almost overwhelming loss — when the skies 
 seemed darkened and the clouds hung thickly and we 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 19 
 
 could not see the sun. "But the sun is always there, 
 behind the cloud, we must try never to forget that; 
 the clouds may come between, our infirmities may 
 seem to darken all our life, but it is not really so. If 
 we will look up we shall find God is still there, 
 caring for us just the same. When I came down the 
 road from Kirkby Station yesterday, your beautiful 
 Eden valley was almost blotted out with the mist 
 and the rain, but when I looked up, there was sun- 
 light on the top of the fells, the sun was still in the 
 sky ; our God is still in His Heaven although we can- 
 not see Him yet, — and presently — if we will only look 
 up to Him He will make it all clear." 
 
 There were tears in the pew next to mine, there 
 were awed looks on the young faces in the choir. It 
 was unlikely that six people in the church knew so 
 much as the title of the preacher, but a stricken heart 
 was pouring itself out to declare its one sure and cer- 
 tain Hope to others for their comfort when trouble 
 came to them also. I cannot think they would ever 
 forget it — for me, the haunting echo began again. 
 Were there not thoughts for others' comfort even in 
 the Passion, and oh, why did Lamentations keep ring- 
 ing in my head : " Is there any sorrow like unto My 
 Sorrow ? " No — no — there never could be anything 
 else in the least like it. It was almost blasphemous to 
 let the echo into one's brain, only, ah, dear God, what 
 awful depths of pain were in the Bishop's face. 
 
 It was very silent out on the terrace after church 
 I put my wicker chair only just within sight of the 
 Bishop's. I can see him quite plainly now, leaning 
 
20 ESPECIALLY VJIU-IAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 back in the warm sunshine — never too warm for him — 
 " Mary's Churchi Service " open on his knees, and old 
 Pax, the black retriever, a little uneasy at his feet. 
 Pax didn't want to be intrusive, but felt there was 
 sorrow somewhere, and a lick of affection every few 
 minutes might not come amiss, and at each lick a 
 gentle hand left the book to stroke the Bishop's 
 thanks. 
 
 It was not easy to keep as entirely off conversation 
 as I felt that grievously-inflamed throat required ; but 
 luckily we have always been great hands at telling 
 stories, and the Bishop delighted in them, and soon 
 took to quoting them just as we did. My troopship 
 captain's story of the sentry of volunteers, perilously 
 like sleep on the troop deck; and the enraged naval 
 officer's kick, and " Give over your orders ". They 
 were given: "Give over your orders in case of fire" 
 " In case of fire I goes to the Bridge and I wakens 
 the Naval Orficer!" Of the children's consolation in 
 war-time when I grew frantic over the delayed mails : 
 " Never mind, darling, father may be shot or drowned, 
 you know, and then he couldn't write ". Of my total 
 defeat by Doris when I wished to prepare her for 
 Judith's advent, and asked if she did not think it 
 would be nice if God were to send us a new baby, and 
 her thoughtful reply : " Well, Muddis dear, I'd much 
 rather He sent the new cob a foal ! " Of how the 
 little new maid from Bethnal Green, bursting with un- 
 required conversation, and deeply impressed with the 
 beauty of the big Persian Tom Cat, came into prayers 
 her first morning, and I, most stupidly, began to read 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 21 
 
 where I had left off the day before : " Now Thomas 
 was not with the Disciples " — " Please Mum," the 
 shrill voice was eager to allay anxiety — " He's all 
 right — he's under yer chair ! " 
 
 The stories came in for meal times ; we were very 
 quiet in the long mornings in the library. It sur- 
 prised me to find that the Bishop did not care to be 
 left alone long, he liked one to write and work in his 
 room as Mary had done. Beside the writing table, 
 an empty one had to stand to hold the packets 
 and packets of wonderfully sorted letters ; his pen 
 flew over the papers, he seemed to work with force 
 enough to turn a mill, and, doubtless, did turn many 
 mills in far scattered parts of the world ; for it was 
 quite an education in stamps to post and sort his 
 letters. Mary's picture was always propped up in front 
 of him, and there were some verses he had found, 
 which so well expressed his thoughts, that as he 
 ceased from his writing a few minutes, when his medi- 
 cine tray or egg flip came in, he used to say them 
 over until I began to know bits of them quite well. 
 
 She only died last week, and yet, 
 Suns might have risen, suns have set 
 A thousand — May's here like a bride, 
 And it was May when Mary died. 
 
 Incredible ! We might last week 
 
 Have kissed her, praised her, heard her speak. 
 
 Who now has travelled far, so far, 
 
 Beyond the moon and the day star. 
 
 Since she has gone, all time and space 
 Have lost their meaning. Mary's face 
 Grows dim in distance, like a light 
 Far down in darkness infinite. 
 
2 2 ^^P^C/^ZZ K WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 Last week 1 Why this new grief we have 
 Is old as Time — old as the grave 
 It was, and will be ; darkness spread 
 Over the world since Mary's dead. 
 
 Then at noon we would go down the garden and 
 walk along the path by the river. At Eden Gate 
 one takes everything down to the river ; the evening 
 psalms, one's love letters, the new baby for its first 
 walk, or the old friend. The boys used to slip down 
 to the bridge for a last try at the trout before they 
 went abroad with their regiments, and when the 
 awful cables came, one after another, to tell us they 
 would return no more, it was to the river one fled for 
 comfort, and thoughts of an Eden beyond the Gate. 
 
 The Bishop loved it directly, and it was there he 
 told me of Mary's illness, of their terrible last journey 
 from Heidelberg by motor and train in pouring rain, 
 and then the rough crossing when they had so yearned 
 for a quiet sea, Mary, too weak to turn her head as 
 they laid her on the deck, and his keeping his arm 
 about her, hour after hour. Then, at last, the reach- 
 ing Fellows Road, and Victor Horsley's verdict for 
 immediate operation in a nursing home, and the 
 Bishop's refusal to have her subjected to any further 
 move, and so, its being done in her own drawing- 
 room. Soon the rapid sinking, the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment, some hymns, and how while the Bishop and 
 one or two others were singing, yes, actually singing, 
 " How bright those glorious spirits shine," she passed 
 to her place in their ranks. 
 
 " But we sang on and finished the last verse." 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 23 
 
 Finished the last verse ! I was growing used to mar- 
 vels in the Bishop, but I had watched the parting 
 breaths of many many friends, in hospital, in cottage, 
 in barracks, and far away in South Africa, and well I 
 knew, that though with steady, forced-together voice, 
 one had commended their souls to God, to sing, and 
 go on singing, even if it were but the friend of one 
 hour's emergency who had passed away, would always 
 have been a world beyond me. Well — he had done it, 
 and there he stood to tell the tale, leaning over the 
 wicket gate. 
 
 " Lone on the land, and homeless on the water, pass 
 I in patience, till the work be done." 
 
 Did he think as he looked over the river, that God 
 does set limits to pain ? That even on the Great Best 
 Friday, before the moon had risen over a quiet garden, 
 the shadows had rested on a fresh-filled tomb ? No — 
 I did not think it seemed to strike him, how nearly 
 his own journey must be over too ; and so, presently, 
 I ventured to tell him what I thought. He looked at 
 me with candid amazement and oh ! such a joyful 
 amazement too — like a child, " You mean to say you 
 really think I am going to die quite soon?" "Why 
 my dear Bishop, of course you are, it's written on 
 your face; even the most ignorant can all see it." 
 " How soon ? " "I suppose it might be a year, if you 
 took any sort of care of yourself, I don't think it could 
 be much longer ; and I should think, from these ankles, 
 it might easily be very much sooner." Then a little 
 later, " But I must try to live, you know, or it wouldn't 
 be right — I must be willing to wait, or it won't be 
 
24 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 right ". " Yes, of course, still it will come all the 
 same, so why not just enjoy looking forward to it ? " 
 No— the Bishop wouldn't see that, one must just go 
 on he said, and if one lingered over the dear past or 
 hankered for the glory to come, one might miss what 
 one ought to be occupied with, in the immediate 
 present. 
 
 Yes — he was very strong on this point ; why, only 
 last month, here up in Moorish Castle, as he lay in 
 the window watching a wonderful sunset glory flood- 
 ing the harbour below, he was dwelling on that very 
 thought. " Doesn't it seem as if the Gates were al- 
 most open ? " he whispered. Yes it did ; I never knew 
 any place from which one day certified another in 
 quite such pomp of solemn gold and purple as it does 
 in Gibraltar; but when I went on to speak with some 
 hankering for the real opening to come, he reproved 
 me directly. " No, no, I think almost the first thing we 
 shall realize when we get there, will be the immense 
 value and importance of every minute we had down 
 here." He did not like people to dwell on details of 
 the life beyond ; it would be with Christ, that was 
 enough for him, and so that same evening, only last 
 month (only a month, why " Suns might have risen, 
 suns might have set a thousand ") he was so delighted 
 when I quoted Stephens to him. " Doubtless the poet 
 may be right when he tells us Heaven lies about us 
 in our infancy, but that's no reason why we should 
 lie about Heaven in our middle age." 
 
 There is a beautiful old house near us' up towards 
 the fells, which had been a sort of half-way house 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 25 
 
 between earth and heaven to me for many reasons 
 from early girlhood, and its mistress, always one of 
 my best and wisest friends, had a curious resemblance 
 to Mary Collins. I had seen it directly I met the 
 Bishop's wife, and so now I wondered if he might like 
 to meet her. Yes — he was eager to go, so her car- 
 riage was sent down to fetch us, and we drove up the 
 long steep drive, and he had tea at Helbeck, looking 
 down from its high quaint windows on the wonderful 
 view, which holds valley after valley and mile after 
 mile of such green sloping fields and rising moorland 
 as only Westmoreland can show. 
 
 When we were driving home, I said : " You do 
 see the likeness, don't you ? " Yes, he had seen it 
 directly ; it was less a likeness of feature than of vivid 
 expression and prompt speech always emphatically to 
 the point, perfectly clear and decided, and infinitely 
 well worth listening to on any subject. But Mary 
 Collins had surely used her every power to the full, 
 and this splendid woman seemed to me of necessity to 
 run somewhat to waste, living as she did so far out of 
 the world ; and I went on to describe to the Bishop 
 how even on a wild winter's night a lantern would 
 come glancing down the long steep drive from Hel- 
 beck, and the lady of the manor would trudge down 
 to the village to hold a G.F.S. class, which a very 
 scanty number of girls did not even always trouble to 
 attend. 
 
 But the Bishop saw no desperate waste of fine ma- 
 terial in this. " Think of the angels," he whispered. 
 " Why ? " I asked. " Why ? Why because they all 
 
26 ^5/'^C/v4ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 see her and understand all about it, and call to each 
 other, ' Isn't this jolly ? Come and look at dear Mrs. 
 B. going down to Brough in all this snow ! ' 
 
 " Don't you know the story of the Venerable Bede ? 
 It befell one day when the Venerable Bede was old and 
 blind, that some boys came to him and said : ' Come, 
 Venerable Bede, and preach, for all the people are 
 waiting for thee ' ; but they were ribald boys, and knew 
 that the people were not there, and they led him into 
 the pulpit. So the venerable man preached most 
 beautifully upon the love of God, ending, as was his 
 wont, with these words : ' The which thing may the 
 Lord grant to us through Jesus Christ, His sake '. 
 Whereupon all the holy angels made answer, ' Amen, 
 Amen, Most Venerable Bede,' for they would not 
 have him to know that the church was empty." 
 
 Ah well, those quiet days at Eden Gate were soon 
 done. Our dear son arrived early one morning from 
 India, on sick leave. The Bishop was almost as dis- 
 turbed as I was at his frantic effort to seem strong 
 enough to breakfast with us, and his rapid retreat to 
 bed. We wanted to have a thanksgiving for his safe 
 return, and so next day the Bishop arranged that we 
 should all have a Celebration in the library; even 
 Judith was to be there. I had not known in the literal 
 sense until he told us, that any house in which a Bishop 
 stays is, for that time, a church ; but it had been ra- 
 diantly clear to us all that it was so. 
 
 It was on the last day of his visit that a tiny thing 
 did momentarily disturb his composure ; it always is 
 the tiny things. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 27 
 
 In Benson's " Six Common Things," what broke the 
 husband down was finding in the shrubbery the croquet 
 ball that his wife had vainly looked for the evening 
 before she died. 
 
 It seemed that among the Bishop's manifold de- 
 vices to cheer his Mary's illness he had instituted a 
 weekly birthday present, and one had been a sub- 
 scription to " Punch ". Now, when the familiar roll 
 appeared with his stack of letters, it pierced him to 
 the heart. 
 
 "Whom shall we give it to?" he asked. "The 
 invalid up at the farm ? " " Yes, of course, let us take it 
 directly the writing is done," and so he did, and blessed 
 her, and listened to her detailed story of all her symp- 
 toms with the same unvarying sweetness and calm as 
 ever. 
 
 As we were putting away the Bishop's papers he 
 showed me a tiny folded note, which he always carried 
 in his pocket-book. 
 
 It had been written in a child's careful copyhand 
 more than forty years ago. 
 
 " My Dear Mamma, — Will you please ask God to 
 make me a better little girl ? 
 
 " Your loving child, 
 
 " Mary Sterland." 
 
 Somehow that little innocent note, written by the 
 Bishop's wife so long ago, went to my very heart. No 
 question but that prayer had been answered to the 
 uttermost. I thought of the grey figure I had seen 
 kneeling in the garrison church at Gibraltar, so liter- 
 
28 ESPECIALLY yNILLlAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 ally wrapt in prayer, and of the strain and the strength 
 in the face. Yes, God had " made her better," made 
 her almost perfect, I thought ; but I was glad the 
 little girl had not known what it was to cost. Bless 
 her. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 29 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I SUPPOSE it can only have been a very few days after 
 the Bishop left us, that a purchaser appeared for Eden 
 Gate and it was decided that it must be sold and I 
 was frightfully unhappy, but in the Bishop's reply to 
 my letter about it, he kept quietly to the bedrock of 
 things. 
 
 He might have been Juliana of Norwich with her con- 
 tinual refrain of " All is well and all will be well and 
 all shall be well ". " I know," he wrote, " and now, a 
 little more than I did, what it all means to you, and 
 am so sorry. Of course, really it is well : God is us- 
 ing it as part of the preparation for some other and 
 far better thing, in his fatherly love. But all the same, 
 one longs for the time when ' there shall never be one 
 lost good '. Tell ' Himself ' that I think he knows 
 as I do, how much can be said without words ; the 
 boy, that I hope he is really going strong ; Doris, that 
 she is to enjoy Gibraltar and try to see the life of the 
 Heavenly Jerusalem in all that she has to do there ; 
 my Tita, that she is to go on being a blessing to 
 everybody ; little Judith, that she is to go on loving 
 everybody and trying to do what her Guardian Angel 
 likes her to do ; baby — bless her, the darling." 
 
30 ESPECIALLY "WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 We had made a plan to prevent his returning to be 
 alone at the desolate house in Fellows Road after 
 his next journey abroad, and after some re-arranging 
 of dates it fitted in. 
 
 So the next letter was all about that, with a refer- 
 ence to Judith's latest which he often quoted afterwards. 
 For Jude, anxious really to be the better for the 
 Bishop's visit, had requested to be lent a large print 
 Bible which she could easily bear off (" to find things 
 about Heaven") and read them for herself; presently 
 returning with an anxious face to ask " what ' defiled ' 
 meant, as people who were defiled might not go 
 into the Holy City " ; it said so in " Reverations ". I 
 told her it meant people who spoilt beautiful things, 
 and were naughty, and did not care how much trouble 
 they gave. And so, later on, a delighted, fat person 
 announced with pride : " You've no idea, Muddis, what 
 a defiley mess I've been clearing up in the school- 
 room ". 
 
 The Bishop wrote : " But that is beautiful. I had 
 not hoped you could come, but sometimes when we 
 give a thing up we get that very thing back ; always 
 we get much more than the thing. Judith and Tita 
 will have to help me clear up ' a defiley mess ' in the 
 library here ! It's so hard to keep things tidy with no 
 time. I got back last afternoon from my hurried visit 
 to her sister at Braunton and her brother at Boscastle, 
 and brought with me heath to make a cross which I 
 took at once to the dear grave. She loves Boscastle 
 so, and its sea, and its moors. Just off to Canterbury 
 for Sunday and so full of interviews and other work. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 31 
 
 And Mary, bless her, is very near. God bless you all, 
 and always. 
 
 " P.S. — I've opened this again because I had for- 
 gotten to say that I am better. ..." 
 
 The next letter that I can find was from Venice 
 six weeks later, on his way back from a very difficult 
 and long journey to all sorts of remote spots at the 
 far end of Europe. Among other horrors, he had had 
 a rough voyage in the Black Sea on a tramp steamer 
 packed with, I think, Russian pilgrims ; and, being 
 filled with compassion for the festering sores on many 
 of the women's and children's faces, he had applied 
 ointment to them himself. Before landing at Odessa 
 it was discovered that they all had confluent small- 
 "pox, and so he had to be isolated in a terrible cabin, 
 " rather like a very hot deep well with only a little 
 port hole up near the roof". 
 
 No wonder that he wrote : " My poor throat is 
 so bad that I must go to the specialist directly I get 
 to England. We shall know the reason of all these 
 things some day, shall we not ? And already it is 
 easy enough to see some of the good that the dear 
 Lord works through them, besides making us want 
 Him more," and then there was a postscript : " I have 
 her ever in my heart so that it ought to be easy to 
 wait, oughtn't it ? But it is desperately lonely." 
 
 Yes, I was very sure of that, and so Tita and I 
 went up to him at Fellows Road for the week end 
 before I sailed, 29 October. I would not take Judith, 
 although he pressed an invitation ; I doubted his being 
 equal to her in a town housd 
 
32 ESPECIALLY yNllAA^M, BISHOP OF 
 
 Somehow, things seemed much more unbearable at 
 Fellows Road. I was to have Mary's room, with 
 Mary's books in it just as she had had them, and 
 Mary's photographs of her husband, at every age, 
 hanging all round the walls. The Bishop lingered 
 lovingly over each room and thing he showed me. 
 Mary's taste (it was most excellent taste), and her 
 extreme sense of almost severe order and fitness, 
 showed out for itself, or was pointed out by him at 
 every turn. The pretty dinner service which had taken 
 so long to get because it must be a special design and 
 must be leadless glaze ; even the marmalade at break- 
 fast. " Mary always says it must be the Oxford 
 sort, no other kind is really good." It was always 
 " Mary likes," " Mary thinks " ; he never used a past 
 tense. 
 
 His Malta chaplain, " a dear man," plainly devoted 
 to the Bishop, was there the first day, and we all 
 went out to Southgate to lay flowers on Mary's grave. 
 It is quite a pilgrimage to get there, a walk to Chalk 
 Farm, underground, several changes, and I should 
 say an hour of trains before we reached Southgate, 
 and then it was quite a long suburban street, and up 
 a steep and a more country-like road, before at last 
 we were at the cemetery. 
 
 The Bishop had done the hill with valour, but the 
 effort was obvious, and as he passed on ahead the 
 chaplain whispered : What did I think of him ? 
 Was he not surely very ill ? Could I not use my 
 influence to induce him to spare himself more ? Yes, 
 the illness was plain enough, it had made frightful 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 33 
 
 strides since August and Eden Gate, but my influence 
 — I had not one drop to use. 
 
 We laid the flowers about the quiet mound. " Keep 
 some for Edith," the Bishop whispered, " Mary loved 
 Edith so much " ; and so we laid sonie on the sister's 
 grave close by as well ; and then we knelt a few 
 minutes, and then the Bishop rested a moment on a 
 seat near, and then, and then, he had to turn away. 
 It was simply agony to him, I know it was. He 
 hadn't a single personal longing left except to lay 
 himself down beside her ; and he was worn, and spent, 
 and weary, and sleepless, and his voice was almost 
 gone (I should have said quite gone but that I had 
 yet to learn how much fainter it could still become), 
 and yet he had to turn away ; he was leaving England 
 again directly, and it was always present with him 
 each time he crossed the sea, that he might never 
 return, and it might be, his body could not be brought 
 back to hers. 
 
 On Sunday, he Celebrated in the minute chapel 
 beside his study. Mrs. B. came to it from her 
 house near by, and it was good to meet Mary's friend 
 and to hear more of her and her amazing courage, 
 from a fresh source. But Mrs. B. and Tita, the house- 
 keeper, and I, made almost too big a congregation 
 for the chapel, and it was an airless morning. I longed 
 to " keep my heart lifted up," and not be too over- 
 powered by the aching sense of pain about the house 
 and the almost rasping sound of the Bishop's 
 struggle to be audible. I saw, too, the fig tree, " like 
 Nathaniel's," outside the little window which I had 
 
 3 
 
34 ESPECIAZZY WILLIAM, BISUOP OF 
 
 heard about before, as one, if not the attraction which 
 had drawn them to take the house; and even that, 
 with the touch of coming winter on its scanty leaves, 
 was depressing. My Tita knelt, young and fresh, 
 beside me, and not feeling these things so much as 
 the extreme joy of being with her best beloved Bishop 
 again. But even Tita had sorrow close in front of her, 
 for before she went back to school at Bath next day, 
 we had to part, and Gibraltar is not very near when 
 mother and child are especially one. 
 
 We went to a beautiful bright service, though, that 
 morning, at a church near by. One of those London 
 churches which are pure refreshment to people coming 
 from corners of the world as I did, and sometimes 
 tempted to think the earth was weak and most of the 
 inhabitants, at any rate in the barracks thereof, and 
 really one couldn't bear up the pillars of it. It was 
 crammed with people who plainly were praying the 
 prayers and most truly singing the Psalms, and Canon 
 Scott Holland's sermon delighted the Bishop. 
 
 It was a plea for the beautifying of East End churches. 
 " Do let them have one other place that is bright 
 and cheerful and attractive besides the public-house." 
 " Dear Scott Holland," said the Bishop on coming 
 out, " weren't those nice paradoxes ? and oh ! how 
 good it is to hear a sermon. I hardly ever can." 
 
 Next day was All Saints, and again we had a Cele- 
 bration in the infinitesimal chapel, and this time a 
 Miss W. came too. I was very much impressed by 
 her and her capable, efficient way of quietly doing all 
 sorts of things for the Bishop; from sending a cable 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 35 
 
 for him to Italy in an incredibly rapid expedition to 
 a post office, down to washing the fair linen of the 
 chapel, which she did equally well. And she told me 
 a great deal about Mary, for she had helped to nurse 
 her at Heidelberg, and then to bring her home. I 
 did not know as I listened to her, in the short time 
 that we were alone after breakfast, how thankful I 
 should feel this spring, when I knew that she would 
 meet the Bishop at some Italian port and help him 
 over his voyage to Constantinople. 
 
 In the afternoon I had to see my Tita off at Pad- 
 dington, and there wasn't much spirit left in me when 
 I joined the Bishop at tea at Mrs. B.'s. Her baby 
 boy, and his godson, was a daily comfort to the 
 Bishop just then. Tiny David knew him quite well 
 and would lie on his lap and gaze up at his face in a 
 wonderful calm trance of interest, unlike any baby I 
 have known. Mrs. B. was a comfort to me too ; for 
 although it seemed quite natural that Eden Gate and 
 I and mine should wait upon their suffering Bishop 
 hand and foot, I had felt many pangs as to how he 
 fared in his incessant journeys and new places, for he 
 was a person with only very rudimentary views of 
 how to take care of himself, and I knew what Mary 
 had given her life in doing. But I soon saw that this 
 other house and these other people were just as much 
 at his disposal as we were, and with far greater power 
 to be it efficiently, and so I took heart of grace and 
 reflected that further comfort might be thought of 
 for him by other families all along his huge and 
 scattered diocese. One does not bear up the earth, 
 
 3* 
 
36 ^5/!£:C/^ZZF WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 mercifully for its occupants, and it has myriads of 
 pillars. 
 
 I am thinking of that now, as I hurry on with these 
 pages of memories ; there must be a crowd of far more 
 intimate and older friends of the Bishop's; famous 
 men and women who can, and surely will, write of 
 him with infinitely greater power and longer know- 
 ledge ; but Browning's poem of "The Boy and the 
 Angel " will bear a human analogy, and I must do 
 my bit, and I want to do it now, at once, while 
 
 Still the rose is on its spray 
 That budded when he went away. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 37 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Next day I left, and we sailed for Gibraltar that 
 week. The Bishop expected to follow us there shortly 
 but was to see his specialist first. The next letter I 
 have kept told me different news, quite what one had 
 feared, and yet the naked fact always falls like a 
 blow. 
 
 "This is the promised word to say what is to be 
 done with me. They take a rather more serious view 
 than I thought they were going to, and in particular, 
 say that the wide spread and rapid growth of the mis- 
 chief is serious. So I am to have a regular open-air 
 cure for the whole winter, at Bordighera under Dr. 
 H., a man whom I like and trust. I shall not 
 be allowed to move, so Christmas at Gibraltar is out 
 of the question, nor preach, nor speak (so an occasional 
 Confirmation is ditto), nor walk much, for they say 
 that the slight feverishness which for years has followed 
 fatigue with me may be connected with this, i.e. a 
 tendency long held back, now showing itself rather 
 suddenly. But I may do as much work as I_Hke in- 
 side these limits — so there! I don't think people at 
 large need know all this, need they ? " 
 
 It was only this winter that I understood the reason 
 
38 ESPECIALLY ^NllAAAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 of the Bishop's great dislike to his people knowing 
 just how ill he was. If chaplains thought him too ill 
 to be worried, they might do things without consult- 
 ing him, or let business wait over, and this led to 
 trouble. If it got into the papers that he was ill, as it 
 did on two or three occasions when there was no new 
 cause for anxiety, the Bishop would have from fifty to 
 a hundred extra telegrams and letters of inquiry to 
 answer. 
 
 After this, I had a few lines written in the train 
 after he had been to Algiers, and admitting it " had 
 been severe," and he was on his way to Bordighera. 
 
 The next letter is 26 November, igog, written 
 from Poggio Ponente, and begins : " Here I am in my 
 place of treatment, or rather near it. For Father 
 H. (the doctor here) insists that I am to go into 
 a little villa by myself, for open-air treatment with 
 a nurse. There is a lodge close at hand which 
 will do ; four rooms above the terrace, and a kitchen 
 below; they have found a servant who can cook. 
 And I have May B. coming from Cannes to nurse 
 me ! Also I am to be absolutely dumb, not to 
 speak a single word, but to communicate with people 
 in writing, and not to see visitors of any kind until 
 further notice. That is fairly severe, isn't it ? but they 
 think that the illness has been taken in time and that 
 they are going to make me well, and detain me here. 
 So that is how things stand ! And ' in His Will is 
 our peace,' as Dante says." 
 
 The rest of the letter is full of concern for a young 
 man the Bishop wished me to try and help, and a 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 39 
 
 delicate lady who wanted befriending. Ah well. I 
 did not believe in any real recovery of health for him, 
 but I was delighted he was to have his Mary's beloved 
 nurse. 
 
 The next letter of 7 December is also full of care 
 for other people's welfare in Gibraltar. The Bishop 
 never dreamt that the extremity of pain or weakness 
 in himself could be a reason for not being vitally con- 
 cerned in any of his people's quite minor troubles. 
 But he went on to say how severe he found the open- 
 air treatment in the high winds and storms, and added, 
 " I'm not doing very well. I have more cough and 
 am very weak, so that I can't even walk alone. That, 
 however, should improve the doctor says. It is 
 wonderful how quickly one gets used to silence, i.e. 
 to using paper or deaf and dumb language instead of 
 a tongue ; and it doesn't get wearisome. I am quite 
 happy, and my dear one is close to me always, bless 
 her. But you know I am setting my will entirely 
 
 towards getting well, however glad I might be if . 
 
 It saves so much worrying if you know that the Lord 
 has it all in His keeping, and that He makes good all 
 our miserable failures too, if we will only let Him, and 
 bears the marks of the nails and spear and thorns 
 for that very reason." 
 
 The next letter is 17 December, and is written to 
 Tita at school. There had come to be a very tender 
 and special tie between this sixteen-year-old daughter 
 of ours and her Bishop. He had spared no pains or 
 time in helping to develop her, and she had a knack 
 of nursing and used to wait upon him in all the little 
 
40 -E^ilE:CZ4ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 tiny ways which are a comfort, and yet guess when 
 it was better to slip away lest she should be a worry. 
 " My dearest Tita, It is nearly a month since I 
 had your letter. In spite of the fact that I have practi- 
 cally nothing to do except read and write, my diocesan 
 correspondence takes up most of my time ; it isn't 
 often that I can write other letters. I have to do 
 exactly what my dear nurse and the doctor bid. 
 However, it is doing me good and my throat shows 
 real signs of getting better. And this is a lovely 
 place to be shut up in, and we have the most beautiful 
 views along the coast and out over the sea. How 
 excellent to be making a beginning with Greek 1 even 
 if you never have an opportunity to go far with it 
 (yet I hope you will), it is a great thing to be able to 
 look up passages in the Greek Testament, even a little, 
 and to understand the point of the explanations in 
 Commentaries or the like. In fact the grammar of 
 the Greek Testament is, in some ways, quite as well 
 worth studying as Classical Greek Grammar, and at 
 the same time, easier. I have a little Greek Testa- 
 ment Grammar which might help you, but it's in 
 London, and I don't know how to tell anyone where 
 to find it. If you will remind me when I am there I 
 will send it to you. How you will be thinking of 
 them all at Gibraltar this Christmas my child, and 
 wishing that you were with them or they with 
 you ! But it mustn't be a sad Christmas for that, 
 must it ? We all meet in the Eucharist, and meet in 
 thought in the Holy Birthplace where we learn to be 
 all one great family. If I am well enough they are 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 41 
 
 going to let me celebrate the Eucharist here, with 
 nurse and one other friend ; provided that, first, I am 
 to shorten the service as much as possible ; second, to 
 sit and rest at intervals ; third, not to speak above a 
 whisper. And then, in the afternoon, I am to be 
 taken over in one of your chairs (a bath chair) to a 
 villa close by here, with a little chapel, where we are 
 going to have evensong with hymns. You know how 
 we long for hymns. God bless you, my child, Tita." 
 
 Tita heard, a little later, that this careful Christmas 
 programme was carried through. " I did manage to 
 celebrate on Christmas Day, of course only in a 
 whisper, and with intervals of sitting down which are 
 not provided for in the Prayer Book ! " and also he 
 had achieved the evensong at the little chapel, and 
 the hymns. " The first I have had for six weeks or 
 more. I need not tell you how I enjoyed them. But 
 it seems to have been too much. Anyhow I have 
 been in bed practically the whole week, but am now 
 sitting out on my little terrace for the first time 
 since, with such a lovely view of sea and mountain 
 in front." 
 
 When I come to turn over my own letter from the 
 Bishop that Christmas, I realize that I must have been 
 sending him rather a dose of my own bothers. My 
 health was giving way, and if one lives in a foreign 
 garrison town, and tries to do one's duty, the front 
 door scarcely ceases to open or the telephone to ring. 
 And I was horribly anxious about a great friend, 
 unhappy in mind and seriously ill, whom distance 
 wholly prevented my seeing. 
 
42 ESPECIALLY V^ILLIAU, BISHOP OF 
 
 The Bishop's letter dwells on my worries or I need 
 not have mentioned them. 
 
 " Your last letter of ii December sounds unhappy, 
 and if I were within a hundred miles of Gibraltar I 
 believe I should set out at once for Moorish Castle to 
 see if I could help you. For I don't like your chariot 
 wheels to drive heavily. They needn't, you know, 
 and it isn't really sad when we leave the bright things 
 behind ; no, nor yet when we seem to have come away 
 from blessed fruitful work to the barren days and drab- 
 coloured skies. The real reason why we can't do 
 without the season of Advent is not that we get on so 
 well without Him, but that we get on so badly ; not 
 that we are so fit to meet Him, but that we are so 
 absolutely unfit to go on without Him any longer, and 
 that there is that in us which we need Him to burn 
 out, let it hurt never so much. And what you really 
 want now, as before, is just — Jesus. I am praying 
 that in these days you may feel the touch of His 
 hand, just that and nothing more. Do you know this 
 little American poem written by a soldier, wounded 
 in their great war ? In spite of the little touch of 
 cleverness in one line, I think it is almost the finest 
 thing I know from that side of the Atlantic. 
 
 I am not eager, bold, 
 
 Nor strong — all that is past: 
 
 I am ready not to do, 
 
 At last, at last. 
 
 My half day's work is done 
 And this is all my part : 
 I give a patient God 
 
 My patient heart. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 43 
 
 And grasp His banner still 
 Though all its blue be dim : 
 These stripes, no less than stars. 
 Lead up to Him. 
 
 " But you must not think this means that I have 
 reached that blessed point. Because it looks as if I 
 am not to have my heart's desire, or rather, as if God 
 has work for me still to do here. I am very much 
 better this last week, and, more, the lungs are de- 
 cidedly better the doctor says, and I have gained 
 solidly in weight, and anyhow, all the conditions 
 look like improvement. And if so, you know, my 
 dear, I won't say I am sorry : but can I, how can I 
 say I am glad ? Thank you for sending me the pre- 
 cious letter you had kept of my darling wife's ; how 
 she goes to the root of anything ! Now I shall have 
 to think of you during Christmastide instead of seeing 
 you, but I shall think much. Don't try and fight 
 too much even against fatigue, or irritability if that 
 comes, or pain or weakness either : we are not stoics, 
 are we ? but Christians. We don't think that we 
 were put here to overcome the world, but we are to 
 be of good cheer because He has overcome it. So 
 be still and wait upon God, and make room for the 
 Saviour Who comes as a little child to lead us. I 
 don't often|^ write about this (the special) anxiety, but 
 remember that the Saviour bears that too, your share, 
 and the watching and yearning. You see it's just 
 when things are humanly hopeless that faith's joy 
 and triumph comes in. We shouldn't have needed the 
 Saviour if things were in our power. So it is still the 
 
44 ESPECIALLY WILUKM, BISHOP OF 
 
 Lord's business, and He doesn't think, as we do, that 
 that business is to be measured by the standard of a 
 human life. I love to think of the Pope's words in 
 the ' Ring and the Book '. 
 
 So may the Truth be flashed out by a blow 
 And Guido see one instant, and be saved. 
 
 Only just because the Pope had that hope before him, 
 he did not wrap Guido up in blankets but signed 
 the warrant." 
 
 I have copied out this wonderful letter almost in 
 full, but I did not think the friend for whom I was 
 concerned was in the least like Guido, and I fear I 
 continued to put on the blankets. That was one of 
 the great things about the Bishop : he gave his whole 
 mind to your difficulty, but he did not seem vexed if 
 you declined to accept his solution. 
 
 A fresh complication over this same thing arose 
 even as he wrote, and so the next letter goes on in 
 reply to another of mine telling him about it. 
 " Strange .1 had been writing of this trouble just 
 before your letter came. Had I received it I might 
 have written differently in word, but I should not 
 really have wished to say anything else, you know. 
 I thank God every minute that He is there, and that 
 when we fall, we fall into His hands, for very great 
 are His mercies. It is the best place to be, rather 
 than in any world which puts patches on and draws 
 curtains over the unpleasant things. And it is the 
 best place for you too. You wouldn't really Hke 
 to refuse our Lord's invitation to enter into the 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 45 
 
 fellowship of His sufferings, would you ? And it is 
 nothing less than that. And never mind if it does 
 come to you that it has all been a failure ; failure 
 does His work if it makes me realize more my 
 need, not of plasters and anodynes, but of something 
 better — Him. And never mind if you lose faith, or 
 what you call faith ; for the very meaning of faith is 
 letting it all go and simply accepting it all as coming 
 from Him, and offering it up to Him again, and doing 
 for His sake what you can't do for your own. You 
 know well enough what I mean ; faith begins in the 
 will, not in the power of perception ; and the will to 
 do the highest and holiest, even when it doesn't seem 
 to touch us personally at all, is the faith that is as a 
 grain of mustard seed." 
 
 My next letter is dated 15 January. " I wish you 
 and little Christian could come here by telegraph. 
 My nurse is devoted to children and would take such 
 care of her. And you would have to bring Judith 
 too ; for she would talk to me, if I can't to her. Did 
 you know that Bordighera was becoming the centre 
 of the universe ? C W. is here with her friend 
 Miss B., and W. B. and L. are coming next 
 month, and the Archbishop and Mrs. Davidson, and 
 Queen Margherita has just gone ; and I shouldn't 
 wonder if the dear Pope and the Dalai Lama come 
 before long ! " (This struck me as more serious than 
 amusing : why were his friends all gathering there ?) 
 " Canon Body, too, is coming to say evensong for 
 me next Sunday, and probably the Bishop of St. 
 John's the Sunday after." The letter begins afresh 
 
46 ESPECIALLY WILLIKM, BISHOP OF 
 
 here, 17 January. " There now, I had to break off, 
 and yesterday was a bad day. I managed to cele- 
 brate early in my room, with little nurse and Violet 
 Bentinck for a congregation, whispering of course, but 
 was absolutely exhausted at the end. My throat has 
 started again, which means a good deal of incon- 
 venience. Well, I lay quiet all the morning, sat up 
 to lunch, walked to my bath chair ; was drawn to 
 Poggio Ponente, about 200 yards away, and carried 
 upstairs in a chair to the little chapel, where we had 
 evensong and hymns, which I delighted in : one of 
 them, ' Father of all, to Thee,' with its ' Breathe Thou 
 the silent chords along ' ; can you realize, I am sure 
 you can, how I long to praise with my voice again ? 
 But by that time I was utterly collapsed. This tells 
 you what a bad day is like, but there are not so many 
 of them ; I am miles better in myself." (I really did 
 wonder in which part ?) " And unless the London 
 doctor forbids it as plainly wrong, I am quite thinking 
 of the possibility of starting easily after Easter, and 
 going to some places where things are waiting — Con- 
 firmation at Cannes ; consecrations of churches at 
 Rapallo and Siena ; visits to Florence, Rome, Naples, 
 and so to Sicily, Malta, perhaps to Gibraltar, and so 
 to England by the easier Spanish places. Of course 
 this is only a dream as yet. And even so, I don't 
 know what it would mean ; you see, when I came here, 
 I could make myself heard, but it had none of the joy 
 of speaking (which perhaps doesn't matter), and used 
 up such an amount of energy that I know I should 
 break under it before long. Still, if no improvement 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 47 
 
 came, I should not feel justified in waiting indefinitely 
 and doing nothing. I should not think it right to 
 stand in the way of this work being done by some- 
 body else ; and happily it isn't necessary to think 
 what becomes of me. God can be trusted to manage 
 His business : only I should not think it true to stand 
 in the way of the proper care of the flock that He has 
 committed to me and then say that that was His busi- 
 ness ! Here's a long prosy letter ! and meanwhile I 
 am much more wishful to hear about you, and talk of 
 other things. 
 
 " I know, my dear, that God was there all the while 
 when you were doing all the work you have done in 
 the past, and that the Lord was doing His work of 
 ministering to sick and to whole through you. And 
 it is His love when He makes us realize that even the 
 work is less than Him, and nothing without Him, and 
 calls us back to Himself. Only, all the same, every- 
 thing that was good in the work that we can't do now, 
 perhaps, was really His, and came from Him ; there 
 was nowhere else and nobody else for it to come from. 
 And we don't really need to disown them when we 
 find our need of Him. We come to Him as we are, 
 but if we left behind all the things we tried to do for 
 Him in the past, however imperfectly, I am sure He 
 will send us back to fetch them ! And that is what I 
 meant (anent Guido) by a death sentence too ; a death 
 sentence is only a merciful and lovely thing to them 
 who know that One Who hath the power of death and 
 the keys of the grave. What it means is simply that 
 I c3Ln put it all upon Him, in whatever shape the put- 
 
48 ESFJSCIAZZY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 ting may be. It is His business now, not mine. 
 And I don't give up what I trust in His hands, for He 
 cares more than I do. ' God keeps a niche in Heaven 
 to hold our idols.' " 
 
 Ah me, that is a very deep letter surely, wrung out 
 from "the whole tide of the world's great anguish, 
 forced through the channels of a single heart ". 
 
 Our next letters crossed. 
 
 "19 January, — I must send you a word to thank 
 you for your dear letter of 12 January. . . . Yes, I 
 know you would come off at a moment's notice to help 
 me, and bless you for it. But, indeed, as my last 
 letter will have told you, I am much better again and 
 all goes well. Yes, that photograph I sent you was 
 one of three, joined together, that Mary used to keep 
 near her always. But they haven't reproduced them 
 very well, have smoothed them out too much, or 
 something. I should wish to be taken, ' warts and 
 all,' like Oliver Cromwell ! Dear S. M. ! Yes, there 
 are nice people in the world. Indeed, the God's gift 
 is to see the good that there is in everybody — for 
 there is — and to treasure it all up, as He does. I 
 told you, didn't I, that I am going straight back to 
 England, should there be any hope — or sign — I ought 
 to say, of the call ? For you know I really am going 
 on well, though I can't make you believe it ! The 
 throat, if no better, is no worse, and in fact seems to 
 have got into a chronic stage, and in other ways I am 
 very much better. Only I shall have to pay a visit to 
 Gibraltar to make you believe it ! And I am making 
 plans — of a sort — to go to Fiesole for a change just 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 49 
 
 after Easter, and then, after a month more, with a 
 good doctor at Florence, to begin travelHng, taking 
 Confirmations and a few other important things, but 
 not attempting to preach, and, if necessary, writing 
 charges and asking a chaplain to read them. In that 
 way I plan going through Italy, Malta, Gibraltar 
 (end of May ?), and up through Spain : not going to 
 any of my beloved mines or out-of-the-way places, but 
 still doing what I can by talking in a low tone of 
 voice. Of course this may not come off; the doctors 
 may forbid it utterly. But I think it will come. We 
 shall see. Only the one thing that is clear is, that I 
 am not yet going where I should wish to be : and you 
 know I can only try to stay if it be His will. And if 
 nobody had ever got well of tubercle of the throat, 
 what of that ? There's no reason why I shouldn't if 
 He wills it. And, as a matter of fact, there is no 
 doubt that they have. I had not asked them to pray 
 for me at King's Chapel or at the Cathedral, or indeed 
 an3rwhere else, because they already pray for me in 
 the Liturgy, and I know well that very many, both at 
 Gibraltar and all over my jurisdiction, are already 
 doing so. But they are already doing so in a great 
 many places, and I am very glad that they are there 
 also." 
 
 The next letter in February mentions that he was 
 only allowed to write for three hours a day, and that 
 even Miss W.'s help as secretary could not keep him 
 quite abreast of his letters, " because it is a serious 
 hardship to a secretary when you can only communi- 
 cate in deaf and dumb language "...." I go on 
 
 4 
 
so ESFECIALZY WILLIAM, BJSKOF OF 
 
 much the same, but decidedly on the up grade with 
 everything except the throat. The other night I 
 dreamt that God had ' breathed the silent chords 
 along/ and that when I tried to hum a tune it some- 
 how resembled one. So I woke up and tried, but 
 there was nothing but a muffled ' squawk ' like the 
 ghost of the croak of a sick raven ! There are all sorts 
 of rumours going about on the Riviera. How easy 
 it is to talk if one knows little enough about the facts ! 
 But the talking itself means kind interest, even if it 
 does get perverted into wrong forms. So many thanks 
 for all you have been doing. If we could only see 
 it, it is so far better that a thing should be plainly 
 right than it should be easy ; the difficult things are 
 not the hard ones, but the doubtful ones. And 
 here, in this thing, it is so plainly right that you 
 should leave it all in God's hands; or, better still, 
 that you should not simply leave it, as we leave what 
 we can't help, but go on ' with a will,' putting it as it 
 touches you, in His hands. Let's see. I told you 
 that probably I go to Fiesole just after Easter for a 
 month ? It is to the lovely Villa Degli AngeH of 
 my dear chaplain, Mr. J,, who was called home last 
 autumn. My dear love to you all, and especially to 
 my little Judith. 
 
 "3 March — This is to report progress. I go on 
 well, and have been for more drives, but a voice is as 
 far off as ever. By a bold act of faith, or was it rash 
 temerity ? I had made arrangements for two Con- 
 firmations in the early part of Holy Week, and meant 
 to have taken them myself, if it so fell out, writing a 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 51 
 
 charge and making my chaplain read it, if need be. 
 It couldn't have been easy, but of course it would have 
 been possible had it been necessary. But it turns out 
 that the Bishop of Southwark, who is on his way back 
 from India, will be here for that very week, and he 
 has promised to take them for me. So now I have 
 nothing (except a meeting of the Gibraltar Diocesan 
 Trust, which I can preside over from my bed, if it- so 
 falls out !) till, please God, the consecration of the 
 church at Rapallo on St. George's Day. That, of 
 course, would mean a great deal more voice. But 
 the best of it is, that it is God's business, not mine, 
 and I only have to serve as far as I can. No, I don't 
 think it will be long for Mary, bless her : she will be 
 wanting me all the time, but it will not be allowed to 
 seem long. Perhaps, when I come, she will just look 
 up and say, in heavenly wise, but just as she always 
 does : ' Why there you are : I wanted you so badly '. 
 Alas, no, that Lent paper was never revised ; in fact 
 I can't find it, though I thought I had brought it 
 away amongst my papers. God bless you all and 
 always. Ever your affectionate friend and servant, 
 W. E., Gibraltar. P.S.— Who has a right to call 
 himself, or herself, a servant if a Bishop hasn't ? " 
 This last, of course, refers to some recent signature of 
 my own. 
 
 The next letter is from the Villa of the Angels at 
 Fiesole on 25 April, where the Bishop and Nurse May 
 and an Italian maid, who was also a trained nurse, 
 were in a little separate cottage. He gives the Flor- 
 ence specialist's opinion (not very favourable), but 
 
 4* 
 
S2 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM., BISHOP OF 
 
 dwells on other hopeful points, and continues : " They 
 talk of my going some sea voyages presently, perhaps 
 about 12 May, and then, perhaps, going home by sea. 
 It would be good were it your P. & O. ' Morea,' but 
 I hardly think it can be. Meanwhile I sit on a bal- 
 cony with the loveliest views over Florence . . . and 
 there's a cuckoo who has not ventured to start for 
 England yet (though he must be getting his bag 
 packed I think), and to-day a nightingale has begun 
 practising. As for blackbirds, they are ' nothing 
 accounted of,' dear things. But I am so sorry that 
 you have been so ill . . . to be at home with Tita 
 will be as good for you as anything can be ; but I am 
 so sorry for the poor husband. And you know you 
 will have to come and see me somehow. Where, I 
 don't quite know, but it will certainly be Fellows Road 
 for part of the summer. I have business in July which 
 must be done somehow, diocesan meetings and the 
 Consultative Body appointed by the Lambeth Con- 
 ference at Lambeth, and if I can't talk to you, you 
 can to me ! " 
 
 A letter to Tita at school, from Alexandria, dated 
 8 June, gives some account of this voyage. 
 
 " My Dearest Tita, — You will not know how 
 glad I was to get your letter if you only judge by the 
 time I have been in answering it, but I know that you 
 will not do that ! And I know that you also had 
 plenty to do with a full school term. I am glad that 
 it has been a happy one, and by now, I hope, your 
 mother will be with you, which will be good for you 
 both. I hope you will not find her looking very much 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 53 
 
 worn ; it has been a tiring year for her I am afraid, in 
 many ways. 
 
 " Yes, what a sorrow the passing of King Edward 
 has brought to all his people ! We shall not know for 
 a long while all that it means to us, but he has done 
 really great things for us that will endure. It has 
 been so strange to be away all the time and only hear 
 the far-off echoes : for you see, I cannot get to any 
 services in church, even on the very infrequent occa- 
 sions when we are near one. But it will not be for 
 very much longer, please God. I am very much 
 better, and stronger in every way, though the mischief 
 is not gone from the throat yet and my rule of silence 
 still holds in full force. 
 
 " This has all been very interesting. I started from 
 Venice (with my nurse) on ig May, and came down 
 the Adriatic, touching at Ancona and Brindisi, thence 
 to Alexandria, Beirout, Larnaca in Cyprus, Messina, 
 Alexandretta, Latakia, Tripoli, Haifa, Jaffa, thence 
 back to Beirout and here. In a few hours we start 
 for Italy, Messina, Naples, Livorno, and Genoa. Then 
 we change into a North German Lloyd, and return to 
 Southampton and London via Algiers and Gibraltar. 
 Of course I haven't been able to sight-see, nor (alas !) 
 to visit all the mission stations at these Eastern places ; 
 but we have generally gone ashore for a drive. So 
 you see, I have just set foot in Palestine, and looked 
 for the house of Simon the Tanner and that of Tabitha. 
 Haifa and Jaffa have become regular tourist places, but 
 behind, both from them, and from the ship as you go 
 along the coast, you can see the 'hill country of 
 
54 ESPECJALLY VflLLlKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 Judea and of Galilee ' and can picture * those Holy 
 Fields'. 
 
 " But I want to see Him face to face, more than to 
 be able to reconstruct the scenes of His earthly life, 
 don't you ? 
 
 " I wonder if there is any hope of our meeting ? 
 Are you likely to be in London, both of you ? " 
 
 The Bishop got great good from the sea voyages, 
 and when he returned to London on 23 June and 
 went to see his doctors, he reported that they found 
 him marvellously better. In fact, one had said, " more 
 improved than he could have believed possible and if 
 I liked to say it was the power of prayer, he should 
 not deny it ". This, and much more, did not, however, 
 convey the impression of vast new strength, to my 
 reading of his letter, but there were plans for more sea 
 air and some yachting to acquire it, and then he was 
 to come to us in Devonshire, where we had taken a 
 farm-house between Bideford and Clovelly. Suggested 
 visits to him in Fellows Road we were not able to 
 accept just then, but I wrote of further possibilities for 
 Devonshire. 
 
 On 4 July, he wrote : " I've just come back from a 
 consultation of doctors. The lungs are wonderfully 
 better but none the less the outlook is rather perplex- 
 ing. Both say that I must not attempt to get about 
 this winter, but must stay in one place, keep silence, 
 and take just as much care as last. I asked, what if 
 I don't ? T. says, well, you might get through as far 
 as lungs are concerned. M. says, you would be dead 
 in six months. If I do this another year, they both 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 55 
 
 think I ought to be able to travel and do all I have 
 done before except preaching. Of course this means 
 that I must seriously consider the future as it concerns 
 my diocese. It isn't a thing that needs deciding in 
 a hurry, and I am not going to be worried about it, 
 please God. But I should not be doing right not to 
 consider this fully. Will you ask that I may have the 
 Holy Spirit to guide me ? 
 
 " Now as to the nearer things, I feel that I want to 
 talk things over with you more still now, but it is im- 
 possible for me to get away at all this month. If I 
 can come in August, I can lie on a hearth-rug and 
 enjoy it. But what after that ? Can you come here 
 then, i.e. after the middle of September ? for it looks 
 as if I may be here later than I had intended now, 
 and it would be so good to have you here. 
 
 " Yes, it is empty, but very dear. Nurse M. is still 
 with me till late in this month. . . . And it is so wet 
 that I haven't been able to get to Southgate yet !" 
 
 Now, this letter troubled me greatly. I felt sure 
 the Bishop unconsciously saw his condition and his 
 doctors' opinions through coloured spectacles. I never 
 nursed anyone with his type of ailment who did not 
 invariably think that however ill they felt to-day, they 
 would certainly be better to-morrow. And as he wrote 
 of wishing to talk things over (which might entail 
 talking me over) I felt constrained to risk seriously 
 vexing him, by writing quite clearly my really humble 
 but perfectly firm opinion. 
 
 This is his reply ; " So many thanks. No, of course, 
 you mustn't run up now. I expect you are not fit to 
 
56 ESPECIALLY fNlLLlKM, BISHOP OF 
 
 do so, physically, especially with the strain that it 
 would involve as things are, only all that would not 
 weigh with you ! But I think it will really be more 
 helpful if you come later on, when the main question 
 is more or less clear and all the details have to be 
 faced. Yes, I 'had my chance of dying' last 
 autumn and would not take it, of course not. But 
 that wasn't simply in order to keep on the surface of 
 the earth, not by any means. And it doesn't follow 
 now that, because death would be joyous and yet not 
 to be given way to, I ought to do what might conduce 
 to the longest period, of life. I ought to do what is 
 most useful, and that means, sticking to my work, 
 whatever the consequences, so long as I can do more 
 good by doing so than by giving place to somebody 
 else. And as far as I can see at present, it is better 
 for the work that I should go on, under limitations, 
 than that I should give it up. 
 
 " Well, if so, all sorts of questions will want talking 
 and thinking over, and later on, better than now. 
 And I will think of your farm-house and come if it 
 can be . . . and you must come here if you anyhow 
 can, later on." 
 
 Again it was perplexing that the Bishop evidently 
 meant to stay in our farm-house lodgings and not at 
 a good hotel or kindly offered house close by it. I 
 had never seen the farm ; it might have the wrong 
 aspect, steep stairs, smoking chimneys, any number of 
 drawbacks to an invalid ; and it was certainly a long 
 way from a doctor, and a station. Besides, the cook- 
 ing might be bad, and Chris was in Gibraltar ! 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 57 
 
 But the Bishop was never daunted, and wrote : 
 " How very delightful that you can have me ! Only, 
 please don't think of looking for another place for me ; 
 the stable will do, so long as it is near you all. You 
 know I got used to stables in Kurdistan. ... I 
 could come on 3 or 4 August for a week or ten days. 
 The yacht has to lie up with some trifling ailment or 
 other. 
 
 " I have just come back from the quiet resting-place 
 and from keeping myself from wishing that I rested 
 there too, or trying to keep myself from wishing ! 
 
 " I am sure you are right about that poor rich man. . . . 
 And you know, a needle's eye is a very little thing, 
 and they must need some shoving ! And please will 
 you send me the address again ? I have had out 
 masses of papers to be sorted and indexed, and have 
 overlaid the address. And I'm so tired that I can't 
 get through any more at present — ought perhaps to 
 go to bed, but I don't want to if it can be helped. 
 Have written to the Governor but no news yet." 
 
 This last refers to our beloved Governor of Gibraltar 
 who was devoted to the Bishop and the Bishop to him. 
 My husband had written how very ill he looked when 
 he said good-bye to the officers before sailing for home, 
 and so I had sent the Bishop his London address in 
 case he could go and see the Governor before he left 
 town. 
 
 After this came two postcards as full of glee at 
 getting off as if the Bishop were a schoolboy. "Hur- 
 rah for the early train on 3 August," and "Which 
 line ? " and " Wish I could come before ". 
 
58 ESPECIALLY WYLLIKM, BISHOP OF 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The children and I went down to Bowood some days 
 earlier. It streamed with rain, and though the views 
 all round were heavenly, the house faced a high garden 
 wall. The stairs were steepish ; the little sitting- 
 rooms were very stiff, and the church was certainly 
 too far off for the Bishop to walk there, and alas, the 
 sea was further still. But it was no use fussing, and 
 Tita and I comforted each other with reflections that 
 at any rate the air was quite glorious ; the cooking, 
 the junkets, and the cream were excellent. We could 
 hire a carriage from Bideford to come every day, and 
 if the worst happened, and it continued to rain, at any 
 rate Judith and baby would be cheerful, and we could 
 all give him the atmosphere of family affection which 
 he always seemed to revel in. 
 
 And so, once more, I met the Bishop's train, but 
 when it drew into the platform, crowded with holiday 
 people, it was a desperate shock to find in bare reality 
 the realization of one's worst fears. He could not 
 cross the platform without help ; could not make him- 
 self heard at all. The porter and I had almost to lift 
 him into the carriage, and I dared not let him start on 
 the three mile drive until I could get a cup of tea 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 59 
 
 brought out from the hotel close by. I did not feel 
 any certainty that he would live out his visit. He 
 did not look to me as if he could. 
 
 But he was radiantly cheerful in the comments he 
 made on his little writing tablet as we drove along, 
 and quite determined that everything was, and would 
 be, quite perfect. It was : " Ah ! the sea ! " "I re- 
 member this coast so well. I walked all along 
 from Westward Ho to Hartland Point one vacation." 
 " Mary and I came here in 1901." Ah, that ex- 
 plained some of the eagerness to come again. But I 
 found the first sight of those little writing tablets very 
 painful, and what could I say worth the labour of a 
 written answer ? 
 
 It was a big relief when at last the carriage turned 
 in at the farm gate, and there were the children all 
 looking out for us; even baby, whose age was meas- 
 ured still in months, rushed at once to those eagerly 
 welcoming arms, and, when asked who it was, confi- 
 dently replied : " Dear Bishie ". And oh ! what a 
 mercy it was that one was old and white-headed, and 
 could help him to his room and pour out his water 
 and wait upon him as he sorely needed. And, after 
 all, even if he were almost dying, he could still find 
 intense pleasure in all sorts of little things : the sea 
 air coming in at the window, the countless broods of 
 tiny chickens running all about the grass plot just 
 outside, even the fresh-made cut-rounds for tea 
 heaped with Devonshire cream. The Bishop never 
 seemed to know what he ate at other times ; but there 
 is poetry in the very wrinkles on Devonshire cream. 
 
6o ^^P^C/^ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 and its nourishing softness just suited the poor raw 
 throat ; and so we never had a meal without it. 
 
 Judith's weakness for pleasant food was an old re- 
 membered sin. I fancy it was that first evening that 
 the Bishop, noticing it afresh, made some gently re- 
 proving comment, but Judith was cheerfully reas- 
 suring. 
 
 " Never mind. Bishop Darying, I love you, you 
 know, better even than chocolate pudding! " 
 
 But the Bishop was never easily cajoled. " How 
 do you know that you do, Judith ? " 
 
 " Easily, Darying. Why, look here, I've prayed for 
 you every night for years, and I've never mentioned 
 chocolate pudding to God once ! " This closed the sub- 
 ject, as it was probably meant to do. 
 
 Happily, Bowood had quite a fair sofa, and a good 
 fire could be lighted directly the evening drew in, and 
 the large window left open to let in the softness of the 
 west country air, and the sound of the sea breaking on 
 the pebble ridge a mile away. The Bishop could rest 
 a little then, and the firelight within and the stars 
 without were better than any lamp. He could talk 
 more comfortably, too, with my chair touching his 
 sofa, and Tita probably possessed of his hand on the 
 other side. And often we had hymns to which he 
 was devoted. Always at morning prayers he insisted 
 we should have one, and as the daughter of the farm 
 had a nice voice that helped us. 
 
 At first we took the Bishop for drives along the lanes 
 and roads to Instow, to Westward Ho, and one memor- 
 able day we had two horses and took our luncheon and 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 6i 
 
 went to Clovelly. I never saw the Hobby drive look 
 more lovely than it did that day ; perhaps one has to 
 live on a rock like Gibraltar for a year or two to 
 appreciate fully the exquisite shadowy greenness and 
 the foam of ferns in a great wood ; but in any case 
 even Americans know that there is nothing quite like 
 Clovelly Hobby; and, to my dismay, behold, as we 
 turned down to the tiny village, there were hundreds 
 of these zealous sight-seers filling all the little street 
 and pouring up from the beach below. " Never mind," 
 whispered the Bishop, " think how good it is for 
 them." 
 
 But the Bishop was very weak that day, and we 
 secured a private slip of a field and carried the cushions 
 and seat of the carriage into it, and made a regular 
 couch for him against a rising bank. 
 
 As we entered the Hobby he had taken off his hat 
 and murmured, "Holy ground," and I knew that he 
 and Mary had been together there in 1901, and that 
 unspeakable memories of that time were almost too 
 much even for his calm courage. He could not walk 
 that day, even to cross the little field, and he did not, for 
 once, want to read, or to be talked to. The effort to 
 get down from the carriage to the improvised couch 
 was a painful struggle, and one could only leave him 
 quietly and go apart, about a stone's throw away. The 
 old echo I heard at Eden Gate comes strongly back as I 
 dwell upon the August afternoon at Clovelly. Please 
 God, angels came and ministered unto him. But the 
 climbing sorrow in his face grieved me into thinking 
 of my own little son's words when first he went away 
 
62 ESPECIALLY VJILLIKU, BISHOP OF 
 
 to school : " Where do people keep their love, Muddis ? 
 Mine's in my throat ! " 
 
 The drive home went better though, and oh ! what 
 silly little things hook themselves into one's brain. 
 Not one word can I recall during all those miles. But 
 I can see, as though it were before me now, an im- 
 mense cock which came stalking through a gate when 
 we had stopped to enjoy a view at the turn of the 
 hill. It looked at the Bishop with such an extra- 
 ordinary expression of interest, that I, not realizing 
 in the least what I was saying, said : " That cock 
 thinks you are connected with St. Peter," and my 
 horror at my own words directly they were out of my 
 lips, and the instantaneous and piercing crow of the 
 horrid fowl, quite upset him with laughter. 
 
 Those quiet days at Bowood were very regular. 
 The Bishop was always ready when one went to help 
 him down to breakfast. Ready ? Why, he seldom 
 said his matins later than six, and if he had four 
 hours' sleep that was a good night.' But he would 
 glide into the dining-room with as fresh a smile every 
 morning as if pain and he had never met. The truth 
 being that he had conquered pain and then made a 
 friend of it, as he did of everything that came near 
 him, including the farm-house chickens which used to 
 climb all over him as he sat in the garden, and 
 Judith's Persian kitten "Mapuss," who was his special 
 pet, and sat indifferently on parchments for Lambeth, 
 or inside the episcopal hat. 
 
 After breakfast and prayers on sunny mornings 
 there was a brief breathing space when the babies 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 63 
 
 and the chickens were given all the Bishop's attention, 
 as he lay back in a long chair just outside the porch. 
 Crumbs were collected and put around him. It was 
 a common sight to see tiny chicks perching on one of 
 his knees, and a breathlessly excited fat baby on the 
 other. How children did adore the Bishop. Weeks 
 after he had left us I found my baby (not then two 
 years old) trotting off quite alone down the road ; and 
 on calling in amazement to ask wherever she was off to 
 all by her tiny self, received the happy reply in firmest 
 shrillness : " Baby's doin' to meet dear Bishie ! " 
 
 From 9.30 to 12.30 the Bishop worked with im- 
 mense concentration and rapidity : we tried at first to 
 make out-door shelters where he could write, but even 
 at Bowood visitors would appear, or wind, or showers 
 disturb him. So it became the rule that he and his 
 " secretary daughter Tita," spent the mornings shut 
 into the little sitting-room, and I only ventured an 
 occasional peep through the open window to see that 
 he was not looking any worse. 
 
 The cliffs at Greenacliif, a mile from Bowood, be- 
 long to cousins of mine. They are only approachable 
 by fields and a particularly and gloriously overgrown 
 lane, too narrow for any carriage ; so at first, although 
 the cliffs had been my idea of an earthly paradise 
 from early childhood, and I longed to see what the 
 Bishop thought of them, I did not see how we were 
 to get him there. But a kind note from the owner 
 told us that orders had been sent for gates to be 
 opened, and the bailiff to lead our pony carriage 
 across country, even over the crops, and we could 
 
64 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 then get to the very edge of the cliff. This now gave 
 us all our happiest afternoons. 
 
 We were off soon after two o'clock, Tita or I driv- 
 ing the Bishop and the others walking on in front to 
 order the tea to be brought down from the farm. Such 
 a sweet Devonshire lane to drive down, and such 
 flowers, and such ferns, and blackberry sprays in the 
 great hedges, almost brushing the sides of the little 
 pony cart as we sauntered along, and the Bishop 
 loving every sniff of it. And then, when we got to 
 the farm, such nice people to lead the pony over the 
 smoothest parts of the fields, and then help carry 
 out the carriage cushions to make the couch at the 
 nearest safe edge of the cliff. 
 
 For nature (some call it nature, but some call it 
 God) had arranged that ground exactly right for us. 
 First the cliff had thought of tumbling down, and then, 
 after sinking a couple of feet, it had changed its mind 
 and decided there was no hurry for another fifty years 
 or so. And this indecision resulted in a perfect natural 
 couch of firm close turf all tapestried with tiny flowers, 
 every one of which the Bishop knew and loved, and 
 on which we could rest in absolute luxury. 
 
 And the view ! The soft deep curve of the wide 
 bay, often wooded to the edge ; the little coombes 
 running down to the sea, each of which held a village 
 nestled in its arms. One could lie and look across 
 the breaking surf at every one of them in turn, until 
 one's eye was held by Clovelly itself lying like a white 
 pearl in the deepest coombe of all. 
 
 The Bishop loved the place directly, and so we 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 65 
 
 went there day after day. Sometimes a cousin joined 
 us, who rapidly achieving the family feeling, was also 
 adopted by the Bishop, who would say, " Shan't we 
 ask our cousin Grace ? " 
 
 We took books down there, not for work but just 
 to deepen the pleasure: George Herbert's "Poems," 
 Myers' " St. Paul," Browning. I see in Tita's copy 
 of Herbert, the Bishop marked the last bit of "The 
 Collar," which was his favourite poem in the book : — 
 
 Tie up thy fears, 
 He that forbears, 
 To suit and serve his need 
 Deserves his load. 
 But as I raved, and grew naore fierce and wild, 
 
 At every word, 
 Methought I heard one calling, Child, 
 And I replied, My Lord. 
 
 Then Tita would unpack the baskets and spread 
 the cream and jam upon the fresh-baked cut-rounds, 
 and with some scrambling and jumping down the 
 steep banks would convey the nursery portion to the 
 children generally down on the pebble ridge below. 
 The pretty girl would come down from the farm with 
 the teapot, and make up the fire of sticks in the old 
 lime-kiln close by, and we would have a little picnic 
 meal, which, considering the circumstances, was nearly 
 idyllic. 
 
 It was then that I told how my dream of absolute 
 bliss at the age of twelve had been to spend a long 
 afternoon at these beloved cliffs in uninterrupted con- 
 versation with the Rector of Bideford, the earliest hero 
 on my lengthy list. 
 
 5 
 
66 ESPECIALLY WYLLlhU, BISHOP OF 
 
 " And now I am forty-five, and once more I am 
 back at the cliffs, and behold it is a great Bishop to 
 whom I am talking for hours on end." 
 
 " And the bliss is far from being perfect yet," said 
 the Bishop. 
 
 Indeed, though I never met any man who was a 
 more delightful, and invariably lucidly instructive 
 companion, the Bishop had a faculty for impressing 
 one with a sense of the awfulness of life, which, to me, 
 at any rate just at this time, was almost overwhelm- 
 ing. It was not only the pathos of the voiceless 
 chords, and the broken heart ; or the eager brain left 
 with so little physical strength for expression ; partly 
 it was these, but also and far more it was the con- 
 tinual spectacle of one who, moment by moment in 
 earnestly following his Master, had also had laid upon 
 him a cross of fearful weight. Easy optimism died 
 down before sorr'ow like this. One could not but feel 
 that here was one indeed who had " entered into the 
 fellowship of His sufferings " ; and were we ready to do 
 the same ? 
 
 But there was happiness in those picnic teas, and it 
 was always with many a "need we redly go quite 
 yet ? " that we saw the carriage brought down to end 
 the afternoon. I see that Tita speaks in her diary of 
 the waiting, as they drove up the fields, to watch a 
 sudden golden ray over a soft grey sea, made by the 
 westering sun, the Bishop sitting with uncovered head 
 and repeating lines from Tennyson's " Follow the 
 gleam ". 
 
 There would be a second post to cope with when 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 67 
 
 we returned, but only vital letters could be dealt with 
 then ; the sofa and the fire was all that the Bishop 
 was equal to after he had changed for dinner and had 
 a few minutes by Judith's crib on his way downstairs. 
 She had been naughty one evening I remember, and 
 sent early to bed, and had fallen fast asleep ; but when 
 I looked in at her door, there was her Bishop patiently 
 sitting beside her ; he had come to be with her and 
 to pray for her just the same. 
 
 Of all the tales we used to tell, to try and relieve 
 the strain for a while, the Bishop liked tales of children 
 best. He told us a beauty himself one evening of, I 
 think, one of the Archbishop Benson's little sons, who, 
 on being told of a brave school boy who had knelt to 
 say his prayers, the only one in a dormitory of six 
 others, had observed: " I don't call that so very brave. 
 I'd call it brave if there were six bishops in a dormi- 
 tory, and one wouldn't say his prayers ! " 
 
 But his favourite story of mine was one about an 
 officer's little girl I had known years ago. Her 
 mother had given her a lesson on the still small voice 
 of conscience one Sunday. Next day they went 
 down into Aldershot, and Frida, espying a very 
 glittering tin tea-set in the well-known " Tommy 
 White's" shop window, besought her mother to buy 
 it for her. 
 
 "Nonsense, Frida," said her mother. "You have a 
 nice china tea-set, and a wooden one at home, you 
 know. That tin one is not half as nice and would 
 be very scratchy." But Frida was much tried by 
 this decision and continued to murmur that " Frida 
 
 5* 
 
68 ESPECIALLY V^llAAKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 would like that tin tea-set" for most of the way 
 home. 
 
 In the afternoon I went up to tea at the Hut and 
 had the joy of hearing the sequel. Frida came in, a 
 vision of beauty as usual, and went straight up to her 
 obdurate parent. " Mummie, Frida has been hearing 
 that still small voice all the afternoon!" " Have you, 
 darling?" asked the pleased mother. "And what did 
 it say ? " "It said, ' Frida, go at once to Tommy White's 
 and buy that tin tea-set !'" 
 
 Ancient houses were another delight to the Bishop, 
 and of course he knew far more about them than even 
 their owners. Twice we got him down to Coombe, 
 the cousins' dear old gabled house, and he knew its 
 date without looking at the figures in the deep stone 
 porch ; knew how the panelled oak room came to have 
 such a wonderfully carved ceiling, " Italian," he pro- 
 nounced. " Some Italian workmen were imported 
 about that date and had done some other work like 
 it in one or two great houses in the West country." 
 And it was the Bishop who taught us to see the 
 beauty of the old stone font in the church with its 
 carved rope around the base. " That is to show that 
 the Church is our ship, there are a few fonts like it in 
 Cornwall," and he named the places. 
 
 There was no early Celebration that Sunday, and I 
 could not induce the Bishop to ask the Vicar for a 
 special one, nor would he communicate at midday. 
 So once again we had it privately, and only " our 
 cousin Grace " came up to the farm to swell the 
 congregation. We had no beautiful table to use, as 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 69 
 
 at Eden Gate, but we were able to convert a recess 
 into a tiny altar with fresh flowers and Tita's picture 
 of the Crucifixion hung above it, and if our voices 
 were rather shaky in "Bread of Heaven" and "The 
 King of Love," that could scarcely be avoided, for 
 the pain of listening to the struggling whisper and the 
 increasing difficulty of the Bishop's breathing was no 
 slight strain. 
 
 And every day I grew more uneasy as to his condi- 
 tion, and, what seemed to me, the terrible autumn 
 programme which he was calmly arranging for him- 
 self. I tried to think that this was not my business, 
 for well I knew that the Bishop did not appreciate 
 opposition as he did affection ; but the still small voice 
 with me was not pressing for any toy, but urged that 
 an affection which would take no risks was a poor 
 variety. I must take my courage in both hands, and 
 when the evening had grown quiet, and even Tita 
 gone reluctantly to bed, I would spoil the peace of 
 our usual last half hour in the fire-light. I must tell 
 his dear lordship that, although he had not really 
 talked things over as he had promised, but had merely 
 announced as being perfectly natural, that he would 
 be in Spain and Portugal in October and at Gibral- 
 tar later on, in my most humble but equally firm 
 opinion, . if the diocese were not to be resigned at 
 present, then the Bishop should engage either a per- 
 manent travelling chaplain, a good trained nurse, or 
 a reliable man-servant to go with him. 
 
 I had my say and was allowed to say it ; the poor 
 broken voice could hardly cope with my vehement 
 
70 ESPECIALLY VfTLLlKTA, BISHOP OF 
 
 sentences had it wished ; my Bishop was not angry, 
 but he did not like it. He gave me a few reasons for 
 totally declining to accept either of my suggestions, 
 and I could not see that they were any reasons at 
 all. He took my arm as usual to help him up the 
 little staircase, and I did the usual little services of 
 pouring out his heavy water pitcher, opening the 
 window as far as he wished and so forth, and went 
 sorrowfully off to bed, well aware that the only likely 
 result would be less sleep for both of us. 
 
 Nevertheless, as a letter shows later on, a chaplain 
 for part of the tour was engaged, and a nurse for 
 another; but there was a fatal vacuum after that, 
 which cuts one to the heart now, and costs far far 
 more than any seeming cruelty of candour did last 
 August. 
 
 When the day came for the Bishop to leave us, I 
 pretended business in Exeter in order to see him 
 safely for part of the way, but it was a difficult 
 journey; the two first-class tickets were returned to 
 me, and I was told he must go third; and it was a 
 market-day train. We were nearing Exeter before 
 the carriage cleared, and for all my impertinent ad- 
 vice it seemed that the Bishop was not glad to go, for 
 he looked out over the pleasant Devonshire fields and 
 woods very wistfully, and presently whispered : "If 
 only the train were going the other way!" I tried 
 to hold forth on indifferent subjects to beguile the 
 time, but the silences grew longer and more uneasy, 
 and, finally, my apology had to come blundering out 
 as best it could. I left the wisdom of his decisions to 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 71 
 
 himself; surely, surely, he ought to know best if any- 
 one did, and but that I knew so well the influence of 
 his particular illness on the mind (only I could not 
 say this to him) I never could have questioned it 
 at all. 
 
 So it seemed best just to admit wholesale penitence 
 for having given him one moment's worry, and the 
 complete folly of one's deepest desire to help him 
 even when one opposed him. The Bishop had no 
 words but " Bless you, bless you," and stood with up- 
 raised hand at the carriage door as the train bore him 
 away out of Exeter station. 
 
72 ESFEC/ALZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 After his visit to us, the Bishop spent a week at Ham. 
 His first note speaks of his safe arrival ; of his throat 
 being worse. The next is as follows : — 
 
 " 19 August, 1910 — I dare say you have said a good 
 many times during the last week, though if you have, 
 I'm sure you haven't believed it, ' There now, that 
 Bishop has gone away and forgotten all about us '. 
 Anyhow he hasn't, and he thinks of you all, and 
 ' them at Coombe,' and the farm, and the beloved 
 cliffs, very often. But I have an immense amount of 
 writing to get through just now, and somehow the 
 chariot wheels are driving rather heavily, and every- 
 thing takes twice as long, about, as it used ; so I don't 
 get very much time. It is nice being here, but I am 
 longing to get back to Mary's house, and can't help 
 it. I shall be there to-morrow and go off again on 
 Monday to Oxford for a few days. Then, after that, 
 probably next Friday, Nurse May comes and I expect 
 to be in London most of the time. And mind you 
 let me know when you know your marching orders. 
 The idea of your going anywhere else but to me ! 
 God bless you all." 
 
 " 22 August, 19 10, Oxford — Sailing the first week 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 73 
 
 in October. I hope it will be the week after at least, 
 and above all for my own sake, for it so happens that 
 I have a housefull just then. . . . But if not, I can't 
 help it, and shall just kick the people I have asked 
 out to make room for at any rate a few days. I'm 
 here till Friday and writing in a tearing hurry. My 
 dear love to all of you." 
 
 But a card came to Bowood next day, saying that 
 letters had changed his plans, and so my date would 
 fit in exactly. " It is quite likely that I may be told 
 to start the second week in October, not for Gibraltar, 
 but for Corunna and other places in the north, getting 
 to Gibraltar at the end of the month. It is tiresome 
 to have one's plans so indeterminate, but it's part of 
 the load ! " 
 
 The next letter, dated 28 August, from Stratton 
 Strawless, is chiefly about my son's affairs, but the 
 postscript runs as follows : "I'm writing on my knee 
 in the garden, in the middle of a maze of yew, the 
 only place without wind. When you asked me to 
 pray for you (in your letter) you didn't want me to 
 pray only in general did you ? And Tita, the other 
 day, asked what she should pray for, for me. It al- 
 ways seems to me that (i) our prayers want to be 
 as particular as possible, (2) that there are certain 
 regions where they can't be particular, e.g. it becomes 
 ignorant, and irreverent, and unprayerlike (to invent 
 a word that ought to have been invented long ago) 
 if you ask God to plan out your own life, or anybody 
 else's life, according to your pet programme at this 
 moment. On the other hand, prayer degenerates 
 
74 ESPECIALLY V^llAAkyi, BISHOP OF 
 
 quickly into vague good will unless it is particular. 
 Well, isn't it the way out, to make your intercessory 
 prayer bear as directly as possible on the actual counts 
 of life, to plead that a or 6 or c may be helped in the 
 difficulties which you know are there, and the tempta- 
 tions of to-day and so on ? The end of that is, that 
 prayer comes to be the Godward side of life itself, so 
 that every thought becomes, regarded from another 
 point of view, prayer. God keep you all, each one 
 of you." 
 
 The next letter of 5 September, is from 12 Fellows 
 Road, and refers to what, to us, was the sudden death 
 of our beloved Governor of Gibraltar, Sir Frederick 
 Forestier Walker. " It is good to hear from you, only 
 I don't like to hear from Tita, who in such a matter 
 is a better witness than you, that you are so unwell. 
 Not that I can wonder. . . . Don't think I am inter- 
 fering, my dear, and don't take any notice of what I 
 have said, if you like, only I cannot doubt what is the 
 right line. If you don't expect people to be strong, you 
 help them not to be. 
 
 " Yes, the dear Governor, I did not think that his 
 call would be before mine. Now, I wish I had seen 
 him in Town ; you know in his letter, just before leav- 
 ing London, a beautiful and precious one, he seemed 
 so full of visitors that I thought it would be kinder to 
 wait till he got back, especially as he made light of 
 the illness. It would have been a privilege to see him 
 again ; but yet it was not needed ; he is before me as 
 clearly as if we had just parted, as the very type of a 
 true and loyal Christian gentleman. Can you not 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 75 
 
 fancy ' The trumpets sounded as he passed over to 
 the other side,' as Bunyan says ? 
 
 " I am much the same, not a bit worse than I was 
 or better : a lot of uncomfortable little throat-bursts 
 instead of one big one. But, perhaps, some day it 
 will be warm again. God bless you all." 
 
 " 12 Fellows Road, 12 September. Yes, do please 
 come on your way, before you start for Gibraltar. 
 The house will be empty and swept and garnished 
 for you. (But what an awkward way of expressing it !) 
 And Mrs. Birkenhead will be smiling, if you don't 
 need to be told that you will make me happy. Only, 
 it is one of the rules of the establishment that no 
 welcome guests (there's no rule as to the other sort) 
 are allowed to stay for a single night 1 I'm very 
 sorry, but it's not my rule ; it was made by Cyrus and 
 Xerxes and all that lot, and it's quite impossible to 
 get at them now to ask them to alter it. In cases of 
 absolute necessity, the law admits two nights, but 
 prefers three at least. 
 
 " But I don't a bit like to hear of your being bad 
 again, and do trust that you are doing the right 
 things. You have evidently given yourself a heart 
 strain, and the extent can't quite be measured by 
 rate of pulse (I am habitually up to a hundred part 
 of most days), but regularity or irregularity and 
 such like. Anyhow, the remedy is tiresome but 
 essential, and almost sure to help, and I hope Tita 
 will apply it rigidly. Lie down at least two hours a 
 day, and rest a bit after meals. You will, won't you ? 
 
 " I am feeling decidedly better just now, but you 
 
76 ESPECIALLY V^lLLlhM., BISHOP OF 
 
 know where my heart is. The dear spot looks very 
 peaceful. I was there this afternoon. My especial 
 love to Tita. How I wish she were coming too ! 
 And God bless you all. P.S. — It looks as if I should 
 only be a week at Gibraltar at present, about All 
 Saints' time." 
 
 The next letter from Fellows Road on 21 Sep- 
 tember, 1910, was quite cheering. " No, it isn't 
 stuffy here, very cold, but quite sunny each morning, 
 and fine day after day. I'm really well, for a damaged 
 article, of course, and not a temperature going at all. 
 
 " The man who was going to go to north Spain with 
 me as chaplain for a fortnight, on the way to Gibral- 
 tar, has fallen sick and can't come, to his great grief. 
 I've written to three other possible men ; what shall 
 I do if they all want to come ? What if they all can't ?" 
 
 After this came a card on 23 September : " That is 
 kind and good ; you will be gorgeously welcome. . . . 
 I have secured one chaplain already, an old pupil, 
 formerly in my jurisdiction, now R.N. The other 
 two haven't had time to answer yet, but another man 
 who has heard of the failure of the first writes and 
 asks if he may come. ..." 
 
 When the Bishop had left Bowood he had left me 
 a cheque to use for the medical treatment of the 
 daughter of the house, who had roused all our sym- 
 pathies by the amount of hard work she got through, 
 though she was plainly very delicate and was growing 
 rapidly deaf. His next letter refers to this. 
 
 " 26 September. Why, of course, use the balance 
 for books; it couldn't be used better." (This was in 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 77 
 
 reference to my habit of taking any odd sums I got, 
 in order to bu}' Gore and the Bishop of London and 
 give them away !) " I had been meaning to ask how 
 Frances was but always forgot when I was writ- 
 ing. How is she ? And of course we will ask your 
 Sir Arthur (my brother-in-law) to dine, it will be 
 such a pleasure to meet him. It is definitely decided 
 that I start on 13 October by a Dutch boat from 
 Dover to Corunna. God bless you all." 
 
 The letter of 26 September is written from Lam- 
 beth Palace, and contains minute directions as to the 
 care which the deaf girl required, and as regards 
 himself, only states that his doctors' reports were 
 " medium ". 
 
 When the nursery party and myself got to Fellows 
 Road on 5 October for the elaborately arranged two 
 nights before we boarded our P. and O. for Gibraltar, 
 I was amazed to find that the Bishop was really 
 better. He was doing quite heavy work, and yet he 
 seemed to have more voice and he certainly was 
 much stronger, as far as being able to walk and go 
 up and down stairs. Was it possible we were to 
 keep him with us for another winter after all ? It 
 seemed so. But I did not see very much of him 
 during the visit. Judith had to be taken to the Zoo 
 while the Bishop's morning was spent with innumer- 
 able chaplains. The children's requirements en- 
 grossed our meal times, and the only real stretch of 
 time together was our long afternoon drive out to 
 Southgate to Mary's grave. It was a bright October 
 day, and I hoped it would be very peaceful ; but the 
 
78 ^S/'^C/^ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 Bishop had been overworried by his interviews, and 
 the driver would only make his horse go at a slow 
 unvarying joggle trot, which shook the carriage and 
 sorely tried him. I wanted to keep him from using 
 his voice, and it was not a time for funny stories ; so 
 I told him a sad one, using the name of the person it 
 concerned, and asking the Bishop if there were any 
 chance that he could see the man to try and comfort 
 him, as they were slightly acquainted. But the Bishop 
 looked at me quite sternly : " Why have you told me 
 this ? There was not one chance in a hundred that I 
 could really go and see him ! " No, I supposed there 
 was not, when I came to consider the matter. " Then 
 you should not have betrayed what was his secret. 
 It was very wrong." " But, my dearest Bishop ! I 
 have only told you. I have been keeping the thing 
 hidden from all his friends and relations with the 
 utmost care ! " " It was very wrong to tell me," said 
 the Bishop. And so it was ; and though I was 
 thoroughly ashamed of myself, I could not but think 
 how much better one might become if more friends 
 corrected one so firmly. Only, as I confided to the 
 Bishop, no doubt it would be fairly unpleasant at the 
 time. We were out in the country beyond Hamp- 
 stead by then, and with less rattle of passing traffic 
 and the horse going at a walk up a long hill, things 
 grew more peaceful. The Bishop could quote from 
 memory beyond anyone I ever met. He had heard 
 Bishop Brent preach in the Abbey in July, and taught 
 me some verses quoted in the sermon. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 79 
 
 If Jesus Christ is a man, 
 And only a man ; I say, 
 Of all mankind I cleave to Him, 
 And will cleave to Him alway. 
 
 If Jesus Christ is God, 
 And the only God: I swear, 
 I will follow Him through heaven and hell, 
 The earth and the sea and the air. 
 
 When we had left the carriage, and come to Mary's 
 grave, we stayed there a long time. The cross of 
 Cornish granite had been put up, and we knelt and 
 prayed for a little space ; and then we weeded a little 
 and put our fresh flowers on, and still we lingered. 
 The cemetery faces a beautiful hill-side, and the 
 autumn tints were tender in the rising blue mist of 
 the afternoon. A robin near was singing his heart 
 out, when at last we turned away. I do not think 
 the Bishop ever went there again. 
 
 After dinner that evening when my brother-in-law 
 was with us, the conversation turned upon various 
 men of the day ; on those who had risen and gone 
 on, and on others who had fallen out of the ranks. I 
 recall how struck Arthur was by the reason the 
 Bishop gave for the frequent failure of brilliant young 
 men to realize their friends' confident expectations. 
 " They find that they can do some things easily and 
 so they do those things, and they slip out of the dis- 
 cipline and self-denial which other men have to learn 
 from the beginning. In the end it is character 
 which weighs, even without gifts; and gifts without 
 character soon become useless." 
 
 The early parting next day was not sad. I was so 
 
8o ^5/'^C/4ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 pleased that there was to be a chaplain to take care 
 of the Bishop for the coming journey, and he was to 
 follow us to Gibraltar within the month. And, yes, 
 he was better — I felt sure of it — and so, once more, 
 hope sprang eternal in the human breast, and we 
 were off. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 8i 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A LETTER to Tita, written on the " S.S. Hollandia," 
 in the Bay of Biscay on 15 October, describes part of 
 the Bishop's voyage. 
 
 " My Dearest Tita, — We ought to be arriving at 
 Corunna now, but as we are not, and cannot be there 
 till to-morrow morning, I may as well take the oppor- 
 tunity of writing to you. ' We ' means my chaplain, 
 Mr. B., and myself, who are on our way to Spain and 
 Portugal for a fortnight's work there, after which I go 
 on to Gibraltar. We were due to leave Dover at 1 1 
 a.m. on Thursday; but a gale sprang up just before 
 then, and as there was only a tug available, and this is 
 a fair-sized ship, it was impossible to force our way 
 out of the harbour. We were kept there all day and 
 till six o'clock the next morning, and then we nearly 
 fouled the pier in getting out. Since then the weather 
 has improved, and we have had a pretty good passage ; 
 but of course it was quite impossible to make up 
 the time that we have lost. It is tiresome, because I 
 wanted to get out to Ferrol to-night to give their 
 Communion to-morrow to those of our people amongst 
 the shipbuilders who are making the new Spanish fleet 
 there. Of course we shall go just the same, and try 
 
82 ESPECIALLY V^WAAKU, BISHOP OF 
 
 to give them their Communion early on Monday, 
 before they go to work. It is unfortunate in another 
 way. There is a sort of chapel there which I wanted 
 to borrow for a service to-morrow evening ; but the 
 owner, a ' Plymouth Brother,' does not see his way to 
 lend it. So I had hoped for a good leng time there, 
 either to get to know him, or else to get to know as 
 many of the people as possible, and so arrange for an 
 open-air service or something. Now there will be no 
 time to prepare the ground at all. But we must do 
 the best we can ; and anyhow, ' Why should I worry ? 
 it's not my fault,' as Archbishop Temple said when 
 they asked him whether his defective sight was not 
 ' a great worry '. 
 
 "(Interval of five minutes, while I held up a little 
 boy to see porpoises. And now it has come on to 
 rain torrents, as if it were being poured out of a 
 watering-can; and just behind the sun is shining 
 brilliantly.) 
 
 " I don't expect to find any trouble in Portugal 
 when we get there ; the change has so long been de- 
 sired by the greater part of the people (and with such 
 good reason in one way, for the Government and 
 everything connected with it was very base) that there 
 will not be much reaction. But things looked badly 
 in France when we started, and I don't know what 
 may have happened when next we hear of it all. It 
 is a good thing that the present French Government 
 is known to be friendly to labour, so that it cannot be 
 regarded as only a conflict of class against class. 
 
 " We have such a strange collection of passengers 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 83 
 
 on board — Dutch, Portuguese, and South Americans, 
 and a few English and French, one Hungarian, two 
 negroes, and in the steerage quite a number of Russian 
 peasants, with one or two Galicians,, the latter of 
 course are from the Austrian Galicia ; they will prob- 
 ably take on .board some Spanish Galician peasants, 
 GalUgos as they call themselves at Corunna. All the 
 words mean the same, and Gauls and Galatians too, 
 for one people has left its traces right across Europe 
 and into Asia. 
 
 " My journeys in the north of Spain promised to be 
 rather difficult, for the distances are great, the trains 
 bad (in many parts there are none), and the roads 
 poor. But I am to have the loan of a motor, which 
 will simplify things not a little, and on one piece of 
 line, which is British, a special train, so that it ought 
 not to be difficult after all. 
 
 " God bless you, my little daughter." 
 
 A short note from Lisbon on 24 October preceded 
 the Bishop's arrival at Gibraltar, asking me to arrange 
 some matters for him, and continued as follows : — 
 
 " Everything is so wonderfully quiet here that it is 
 hard to believe that there has been a revolution. But 
 they probably have troubles to come. I have managed 
 so far, but am very weary, and very lonely. Does 
 anybody occur to you who could read my charge at 
 theConfirmation ? feel inclined to ask your Chris, 
 but it wouldn't be fair. My boat is due on Sunday, 
 the 30th, at 2 p.m., a Dutch one." 
 
 Now all the clergy here are good, and all those who 
 
 knew their Bishop loved him dearly, and anyone of 
 
 6* 
 
84 ESPECIALLY V^llAAKM, BISHOP OF 
 
 them would be proud to read his charge, but I felt it 
 would be anguish for the Bishop to hear it read for 
 him, while he sat silently by, and the only possible 
 alleviation would be that the voice which read it, 
 should be that of a stranger, and also be a very quiet, 
 far-carrying voice, which could reach to the end of the 
 cathedral, and would be fresh to the majority of 
 the congregation. So I asked a newly-arrived army 
 chaplain, and awaited the Bishop's arrival in faith. 
 
 Another question was, where was the Bishop to 
 stay during this visit ? Previously he always went to 
 Government House, but our new Governor was away. 
 Our dear Dean would have loved to have him, but his 
 house was up on a hill and had many flights of steps. 
 Our own quarter in Moorish Castle is on top of a 
 precipice, and the cathedral and town at the bottom of 
 it, and though our drawing-room and garden are ideal, 
 we have only three bedrooms, and they held six people. 
 Besides, the Bishop must have a private sitting-room 
 for all his interviews. So it came to pass that our 
 Artillery General was to have the honour. I had only 
 known General and Mrs. P. for a week, but they were 
 the very people ; they might have been made on pur- 
 pose, and perhaps they were. 
 
 The Bishop's Dutch ship from Lisbon had thirty- 
 one expelled Jesuits, priests, and students on board, 
 who were brought on to the steamer under a guard of 
 soldiers, the popular excitement against them being 
 so great. " They seemed very miserable (I quote 
 from his own words now, in a letter to Tita), but 
 perked up on board ; and as many of them knew 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 85 
 
 nothing but Portuguese, we had quite long conversa- 
 tions on board, I using my Spanish where I could 
 not remember more Portuguese. But I could not 
 quite do with their heroics, and when one of them 
 introduced another to me as ' one more of our con- 
 fessors ' (confessor, next to a martyr, you know) I 
 could not hold myself in, and told him that I did not 
 think clergymen ought to call themselves confessors, 
 when their own people dislike them so much that 
 they had to be protected by the police." 
 
 I have heard a sequel to this within the last week. 
 A few days after landing at Gibraltar one of these 
 Jesuits died, and a Requiem Mass was said at the 
 Spanish Cathedral. A Roman Catholic gentleman 
 who was present told a friend of mine that he noticed 
 a priest with a very saintly face come in and kneel 
 down close to him, following the service in his book 
 and praying with such devotion, that he wondered to 
 which of the Portuguese orders he belonged. While 
 leaving the Cathedral he whispered to a man he knew, 
 " Isn't that a wonderful face, which of them is he? " 
 and received the reply, " That man ? He isn't one 
 of them at all, he's the English Protestant Bishop." 
 " And if only he had not been gone by then, I declare 
 I should have liked to kiss his feet," concluded the 
 man. My friend said that this was not the whole of 
 the story, for as our Bishop came out of the door the 
 people pressed about him, Spanish fashion, to kiss his 
 hand. " But I am the English Catholicus," the Bishop 
 whispered in Spanish. " We know who you are," 
 was their reply. 
 
86 ^5/lEC7^ZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 During this visit of the Bishop's I was almost en- 
 tirely kept to my bed and sofa ; I did achieve the 
 Confirmation and one or two drives, but that was all ; 
 and Doris, our eldest girl, had the joy of running all 
 his errands, fetching him in the pony cart and driving 
 him about whenever she had an opportunity. But I 
 did not really lose much, for the General's house has 
 no garden, and it was essential that the Bishop should 
 do as much resting as possible in the open air, so 
 when the letters and the interviews and business were 
 over, either before luncheon or soon after, a telephone 
 message would ask Doris to drive down the hill for 
 him, or a cab would rattle up to the castle gate, and 
 in another moment the little green door in the garden 
 wall would open, and the Bishop would be with us 
 again ; at any rate until after sunset time, and very 
 often until later. He could not do with long dinners 
 and constant visitors. But in Gibraltar we have a 
 pleasant custom of hanging a small tin card box on 
 our gates with " Not at home " painted across it, and 
 as the Bishop came in the little box went up. All 
 the rest of the day he could be basking in the sun- 
 shine on a long Madeira chair, under the shelter of 
 the old castle wall. A Moorish wall, massive and 
 mighty, and frowning enough, no doubt, centuries ago, 
 but now, a wall to lie and dream about, so wonderful 
 are its greys and purples and aged tender pinks ; so 
 sweet its draperies of heliotrope, jasmine, and tangled 
 chain of the big blue morning glory. Down below 
 one's eye travels over the crowded, many coloured 
 roofs of the town, to the blue waters of the harbour 
 
GIBRALTAR AND MARY, HIS WIFE 87 
 
 stretching out to he Spanish hills, and Algeciras 
 gleams white across the bay. 
 
 As he came in, and one of us gave him an arm to 
 cross the garden, he would look so spent and worn, I 
 used to say, "Now, Bishop Darying, not one word, 
 not one," but the dear smile always lit up his face as 
 the invariably disobedient reply came, " Oh, how good 
 it is to be here \ how good!" Sometimes he would 
 be there for an hour alone with his papers or books 
 to look over ; but he liked best to have just one person 
 close by, he had not to force his voice for us, and 
 liked to whisper now and again as a thought struck 
 him, to some one sewing or reading in a chair touch- 
 ing his. 
 
 Often a luncheon table was brought out to save 
 him from moving, and from the too much chatter of 
 the family meal. We would allow Mr. F. in some- 
 times (the chaplain who was to read the charge), and 
 as a huge favour he was even allowed to join in the 
 out-door lunch once, but no one else. It was sad; 
 one would have liked the multitude to come, one at a 
 time, through the little green door, to spread their 
 griefs before him, and be healed ; but there was very 
 very little strength, and much journeying and many 
 visits waiting. Whatever power could be kept in 
 reserve, must be. 
 
 The day of the Coniirmation I drove down to tea 
 at the General's, and in my capacity of nurse was sent 
 out with the Bishop in the big carriage afterwards, to 
 guard his quiet airing before the service. We only 
 went a little way, just along to the bit of the eastern 
 
88 £SFi:CIAZZY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 beach where no one comes, and he could lie back on 
 the cushions and look out in absolute silence over 
 the wide space of calm sea and soft evening sky. A 
 Confirmation is a solemn day for the candidates; I 
 learnt then, without any need of speech, the awe, 
 almost trembling awe, with which it filled the Bishop. 
 
 It seemed to me, as we sat there and he gazed 
 steadfastly over the sea to the Light Beyond, that the 
 last touch of earth was purged from him. I never saw 
 him as anything after that but a sheer transparency, 
 " transparent as it were clear glass," with the Spirit 
 of God shining through him. 
 
 The service was at six; the cathedral filled. To 
 me, it was simply anguish ; I dared not look up to see 
 the faltering steps which must find the Chancel so long 
 to cross. The Dean's voice read the Preface. The 
 question seemed to be asked by a strained silence fill- 
 ing the whole building, and the " I do '' burst out 
 from the candidates like a great sob. 
 
 The rows waiting before the altar looked almost un- 
 ending. I knew that each one of those, as they felt 
 the touch of the Bishop's hands, would also hear his 
 voice, though the tortured throat might break ; but 
 to us, down in the long darkened aisle, only part of 
 one word, the word, reached, again, and again, and 
 again, " Spirit," and the efforts which made it audible 
 to me seemed marked with blood. 
 
 Afterwards, after the quiet reverently read charge 
 and the almost grating choruses of hymns (so much 
 voice to use seemed rather hateful), afterwards, the 
 congregation poured out into the warm darkness of 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 89 
 
 the night, and the Bishop, still in his robes, stood out- 
 side the east door, facing the open square, to shake 
 hands, as was his wont with each candidate before 
 they passed into the crowd. But this was no usual 
 Confirmation. The Bishop's people, drawn though 
 they were from many lands, and numbers of whom 
 could never have seen his face before, for the popula- 
 tion of a foreign port is always changing ; the people, 
 who could not " hear him gladly," had seen, what 
 drew them without speech. They surged up to the 
 doorway under the electric light, to the quiet, stricken, 
 waiting figure, for his blessing, and that echo cannot 
 have been heard by me alone, for a poor woman forced 
 her way up through the crowd with a little child, 
 crying : " Bishop, Bishop, bless my little boy, too ! 
 he's lame 1 " 
 
90 ESPECIALLY VilLLlAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 There are many other days clear-cut in my mind ; 
 the Sunday when the Bishop was present at four 
 services, to sit by, while his sermon was read, himself 
 a sermon beyond even that. (I am so thankful now 
 that since I could not go to hear him, being so weak, 
 he sent me up his manuscript, and I, loath to give it 
 back, asked for a few days' loan to get a typed copy, 
 and so ultimately, was given leave to have it privately 
 printed and Mr. F. bore it off in triumph.) The de- 
 lay in the arrival of the ship by which he was to leave 
 us, and so, two beautiful extra days, when being sup- 
 posed to have left, we could have him in special peace 
 and comfort up here. 
 
 Nurse M. was coming by the ship, to go with him 
 to Malta, which was a blessed relief, but when it came 
 into sight pouring rain came too. I could not drive 
 down to see him off, but Doris drove Miss B. up to 
 see me ; it was nice to know the gentle-faced person 
 who was to do what I so longed to do, and I have 
 the note which she brought, still. 
 
 " What a day ! I'm sure you mustn't come down 
 in this weather but I want you to see M., and so she is 
 coming up with Doris. Only please may Doris come 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 91 
 
 back too, if there's time ? God keep you. It is so 
 good to hear that you have had a good night. Till 
 the middle of January or when God will. It will 
 surely come, it will not tarry." 
 
 Thank God, the rain did clear off, just before he had 
 to embark, but before we could get down our long hill 
 to the dock the ship had sailed. 
 
 As we turned away we passed the Naval Recreation 
 Ground ; the Gunners were playing the Navy at hockey, 
 and Chris said : " Look, there's your friend, Ralph. 
 How he can run ! " I noticed the scuffling group, and 
 I saw the eager, handsome face of Ralph, as he dashed 
 across the ground, and then I said : " Don't let us 
 watch; let us go home". I was so grieved to have 
 missed what I dreaded might be a last sight of the 
 Bishop, the strong young officers jarred upon me. 
 
 I never dreamed that before the week was over the 
 boy would have fallen in a gun accident, and that 
 when I saw him again the light of another world 
 would be on his face, and that as I whispered the 
 last prayers Ralph would pass fearlessly " Home on 
 promotion". 
 
 The next letter which came from the Bishop refers 
 to this : — 
 
 " Bishop's House, Sliema, Malta, 24 November. 
 What a long time it seems since I came away from 
 Moorish Castle that evening. And it has been such 
 a constant rush here since we arrived that I have 
 not yet made time to write a word except that card 
 directly we landed." (And this post card I never 
 got.) " But it has only been the regular work, trying 
 
92 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 to set the house going again and getting forward with 
 arrears of letters and seeing people, and trying to take 
 my place in this very tangled life, for somehow Malta 
 is a curiously tangled place. My predecessor used to 
 say, ' Malta is a very unpleasant place for an Anglican 
 Bishop to stay in,' but I don't find it that exactly. 
 They are kind enough to me personally, and give 
 what I say more consideration than I have any right 
 to claim for it ; but it seems as if I had always to be 
 in opposition. However, si muove, which is good. 
 
 " But I haven't been standing by the Open Door, 
 like you. How good that you were able to be with 
 the lad, and to help him I cannot doubt, and to send 
 comfort to his poor people. Of course we heard the 
 news here, and I remembered him in the Eucharist; 
 but there was nothing to show whether he had been 
 called away instantaneously or not. 
 
 " It was a very empty house to come to here ; Mary 
 was so ill when we last left it, and I had done all her 
 packing and put things away as well as I could, so it 
 has been going over the dear ground at every step. 
 But it is good to have May here to housekeep and 
 look after us, and Shaw is so glad to have me to make 
 much of. And I am no worse, certainly, only very 
 tired and a little unsleeping. 
 
 " I am going to bless the new little church at Tigne, 
 and to preach (through another) in the morning, and 
 in the evening to preach at St. Paul's, Valetta. But 
 that (just interrupted by a General to see me) doesn't 
 mean that I'm going on at the same rate. 
 
 "I've not thanked you for the delicious tea on 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 93 
 
 the voyage yet; it was good and made afternoon a, 
 pleasure in a new way." (This refers to a tray and 
 blue Barum tea-set, biscuits, and so on. Nurse 
 M. thought of it.) " And to think of just missing 
 you at the dockyard by our punctuality. Nobody 
 seems to have seen anything of Lady H. yet; she 
 arrived two days before us with bad bronchial asthma, 
 and isn't up yet." 
 
 " 8 December. I have just got your St. Andrew's 
 Day letter ; surely you must have heard from me in a 
 day or so ? Of course letters from here take longer 
 than those coming eastwards, because we have no 
 ships calling at Gibraltar on their way homeward. 
 
 " I'm so sorry that you should have been so long 
 letterless, but not prayerless I assure you. But it's 
 such hard and uphill work here . . . and every minute 
 full, till I'm almost, but not quite, fagged out. O dear, 
 I shall be glad when you have Tita as well to take 
 care of you, for it is most piteous to think of you 
 being so weak. Do rest, and lie down whenever you 
 can ; I know it is uncomfortable, but the relief of the 
 heart's work is so great that it is a thing worth trying 
 to teach the body to do. And it's worth teaching 
 the body lessons as much as the spirit, isn't it ? Else 
 we shall be cases of unequal development when we 
 wake up on the other side, and that won't be pretty. 
 
 " How I wish that I could help more, and that we 
 could conquer distance more than we know how yet 
 Only be very sure that I think of you constantly, and 
 have you in my prayers as well as my heart. And I 
 am sure you must work at getting well; there's so 
 
94 ESPECIALLY VfllAAKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 much for you to do. Don't work at anything else 
 just now, it's rest time, and even prayers ought to be 
 turned into sitting still by the Lord's side and letting 
 Him speak. See ? 
 
 " Of course I will remember your poor Serjeant and 
 try to see him when I come. 
 
 " God keep you ; I'm going to try and get this off 
 by the Marseilles boat to-day, by which M. returns 
 next week." 
 
 The following is an extract from a letter to my 
 eldest daughter, Doris, written at about this date : — 
 
 " My dear, don't lose heart. Rome wasn't built in 
 a day, and the Heavenly Jerusalem is better than 
 Rome. The only thing to do is to face one's bad 
 times and go on trying to do the right thing, even 
 when you don't seem to care to do it. The slack 
 times will pass if you hold out, 'and all the bad times; 
 only the good can go on, which is a comfort. My 
 love to all and a kiss to baby and to Judith, and tell 
 her, please, how glad I am that she is trying to be 
 good. God bless you always." 
 
 " 17 December, 1910, Bishop's House, Sliema. 
 I don't like to hear of your being so weak, but if the 
 doctors really don't see cause for fresh anxiety, I sup- 
 pose the only thing to do is to take it as a lesson in 
 being 'ready not to do,' a very hard lesson, my dear. 
 And you've got to go on trying to live, and that's a 
 harder lesson still. 
 
 "'Will you pray that the Lord will soon take me 
 home ? ' said an invalid to G. H. Wilkinson when 
 first he went to St. Peter's. ' No. I will pray that 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 95 
 
 you may be willing to wait His time,' was the 
 answer. 
 
 " Your poor serjeant, of course I will see him when 
 I come. But I expect you have really helped him. 
 Owning up to ignorance and pride is likely to be the 
 first step, as it is for most of us. 
 
 " I have seen a good deal of Lady H. and like her 
 very much. But my difficulties just now centre in 
 the distance of everything. It is three miles to Valetta 
 by road, and I can't manage the ferry because I get 
 so tired of the steps. And San Antonio, where the 
 H.'s are, is three miles off too, in another direction. 
 
 " I'm not very well, pain and swelling in my throat, 
 and earache again ; it is not conducive to clear think- 
 ing meanwhile. And M. has gone back to her work 
 at Cannes. And there are fussy troubles in the most 
 various regions that come to me for judgment, at 
 Rapallo, and Tunis, and Constantinople. 
 
 " And I positively ache- with longing for my Mary. 
 Well, Christmas is real, and that makes everything 
 bearable. Did I tell you, in igoi we were going 
 to the West Indies with a little coloured boy whom I 
 was taking to Hayti ? On Christmas Day he suddenly 
 announced that it was his birthday. I said : ' Why, 
 Jim, I thought you said you were born in June ? ' 
 ' Christmas Day's everybody's birthday,' he replied. 
 Isn't it lovely and true ? 
 
 " I don't yet know when it will be possible to get 
 to Gibraltar. All being well, S. and I leave here for 
 Sicily on 2 or 3 January for about a fortnight, and 
 then come westward as soon as I can find a ship. 
 
96 ESPECIALLY V^lUAhM, BISHOP OF 
 
 " God bless you all and give you every Christmas 
 gift, and all that He sees to be best in the New Year. 
 We don't really want anything else, do we ? " 
 
 My next letter, dated 9 January, 1911, was written 
 in the train to Marsala. " I am on the move again, 
 so your letter of 27 December only reached me at 
 Palermo this morning, just before we started. We, 
 Canon S. (as he now is) and me, for he is with me 
 during this Sicilian journey. And all being well, I 
 leave Palermo again on Sunday afternoon, arriving at 
 Gibraltar about Wednesday, 18 January. 
 
 " You are a brick, and it is like you to have thought 
 of Miss W., but even if it were not too late I should 
 not have needed her. You see I don't need a nurse 
 now, else M. would have stayed. I'm bound to say 
 that for the last fortnight the throat has been ravaging 
 like a wild beast of the field, and both ears bad, too. 
 You see, if it doesn't get better. May could come 
 away at very short notice from Cannes, and it doesn't 
 take long to get to Gibraltar. 
 
 " Malta ended up very happily, and it is easier now 
 to see that all the struggling there has been to some 
 purpose. Deo gratias. 
 
 "The Bath plan sounds good. Remember that 
 there is a house in London that would dance for 
 joy if it learned that it could be of any use between 
 times or other times. 
 
 " No. I haven't seen Tita's picture, bless her. 
 How good it will be to see her, too, in about ten days. 
 
 " Surely, ' I'm back at Clifton, grinding in the mill,' 
 is in the ' Golden Treasury,' II ? It was written by 
 T. E. Brown, who also wrote, 'A garden is a love- 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 97 
 
 some thing'. How delightful Lady H. is. I saw a 
 good deal of her latterly, and we made good friends. 
 I think she has found the city that hath foundations. 
 She was so wishing that you could have joined her in 
 the quiet of San Antonio and those lovely gardens. 
 
 " Well, I must stop. This is written under difficul- 
 ties, on a light Sicilian railway that does its seventy 
 miles in five hours, express ; the slow trains take 
 much longer. And it joggles like an omnibus. So 
 I had better betake myself to prayers instead, which 
 don't joggle but go straight. God keep you. It is 
 so good to think of seeing you so soon, in fact it may 
 be before this reaches you. 
 
 " Judith's ' latest ' is lovely. Bless her. She will 
 go on trying to make the best of this world's good 
 till she finds that it isn't really worth it, but I'm sure 
 that what she really cares about is the other." 
 
 Judith's " latest " had occurred on Christmas morn- 
 ing when her perfect bliss had been disturbed by the 
 arrival of a nice present from a little boy to whom 
 she had sent nothing. " Muddis, isn't it awful? Do 
 you think I might send George the book Cousin Alice 
 sent me yesterday ? It's a lovely one, you know, and 
 she didn't put my name in it." " You can if you 
 like." " Well, you know, Muddis, I've simply hated 
 George lately, and you know you said we couldn't lay 
 down our lives for people ; but if we give up things 
 it was like laying down a bit of our life. Well, I'd 
 like to lay down a bit of my life for George : so I will. 
 And besides, what really comforts me most is, I can't 
 bmy the book I " 
 
 7 
 
98 ESPECIALLY y^lUJlKU, BISHOP OF 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was 19 January when the Bishop came again ; his 
 ship was an uncertain one, and we had been watch- 
 ing for his arrival for some days ; then, when it did 
 come, it was early morning, and no one met it. He 
 was to stay at Government House this tiifte, as Sir A. 
 and Lady H. had arrived, and so the first thing that 
 I knew, was a telephone message to say that he was 
 coming up to see us in the afternoon. 
 
 A trouble, of which I had previously noticed the 
 beginnings, became full grown at this time. " Infec- 
 tion " began to be talked about, doctors were urgent 
 that there was grave danger for children, or anyone 
 in delicate health. It would have been so much 
 pleasanter to lie down and die for the Bishop than to 
 tell him anything of this; but at any rate, no one 
 fussed about out-of-doors intercourse, and so one could 
 thank God that the winter storms still kept off and 
 we could have tea in the garden for that first day at 
 any rate. The Bishop did so love a garden, and ours 
 was lovely then, with literally hundreds of great arum 
 lilies lifting their white chalices all down the paths. 
 
 I knew he would repeat again his pet verse about 
 gardens, and so he did, and wrote it out for me on 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 99 
 
 the fly-leaf of my " Roadmender ". I have just turned 
 to it again, and there it is in his clear firm handwrit- 
 ing :— 
 
 A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot I 
 Rose plot, 
 Fringed pool, 
 Ferned grot — 
 The veriest school 
 Of peace ; and yet the fool 
 Contends that God is not — 
 Not God ! in gardens ! when the eve is cool ? 
 
 Nay, but I have a sign ; 
 'Tis very sure God walks in mine. 
 
 And SO -once more we welcomed him, and with 
 fuller hearts than ever. And we were a thankful 
 party as we clustered round his chair under the sunny 
 old wall, for Tita had come out from England the day 
 before, and so we were all there except Garry, and yes, 
 the Bishop, in spite of everything, and in defiance of 
 doctor's expectations, was looking better, far better, 
 Tita thought, than he had looked at Bowood, certainly 
 better, I fancied, than he had looked in November. 
 
 I think now, as I look back, that in reality this only 
 seemed so to us, because the Bishop was using fewer 
 precautions ; he talked more out-of-doors, and used 
 no more writing tablets ; and because he was less 
 feverish, perhaps he had more strength for walking. 
 
 But when Tita had seen him off and he had said he 
 would come for tea and dinner next day and Tita 
 must spend the morning in his study, I knew I must 
 let him know, as best I could, that this was not ac- 
 counted quite safe by the doctor for an overgrown 
 
 7* 
 
100 ESFEC/AZZY WILLIAU, BISHOP OF 
 
 girl, and she must bring the writing to copy out up 
 here. 
 
 I thought this might hurt the Bishop cruelly, but I 
 had to write the note and let it go. 
 
 But if he were hurt, he only showed it by address- 
 ing the envelope enclosing his answer " Dearest 
 Muddis," and the note was to tell me that his specialist 
 had said he could nurse babies, visit the sick, and go 
 anywhere without jeopardy to others, and' he would 
 be up early, directly after his drive with Tita. 
 
 And so my terrors came to naught, in fact I was 
 like the old man the Bishop had told me of, who said, 
 " I've had a deal o' trouble, my Lord, a deal o' trouble. 
 To be sure a lot of it never happened, but still, I've 
 had a deal o' trouble ! " 
 
 And we did compromise to the extent that the 
 writing was not done in the study, and we kept the 
 children more away when indoors, but thank God, he 
 was here every day, and just as much as before. 
 
 There was a reception for people to meet him at 
 Government House, and some dinner parties, but when 
 he was here, it was for rest, and so only one of us 
 would have tea with him, and if it turned chilly out- 
 of-doors, the summer house which is glazed and over- 
 looks the whole harbour was always warm until after 
 sunset, and then he would come in and lie on the 
 couch by the drawing-room, and have his own little 
 dinner there. 
 
 He was only here for a week, but he used every inch 
 of strength in the time. And his Sunday ! Two 
 celebrations and three services ; people to meet him 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE loi 
 
 at luncheon, out to tea at the Colonial Secretary's, 
 and out to supper at the General's. 
 
 The only speck of comfort was that church did 
 really rest and uplift him beyond anything, and I 
 fancied he had grown more accustomed to hearing his 
 sermons preached for him. 
 
 I see Tita has described in her diary how the Bishop 
 ' entrusted her with his Doctor of Divinity's hood to 
 mend. 
 
 She writes : " The silk lining had split away from 
 i^e stuff in one or two places and the Bishop knew 
 exactly how it ought to be mended. He could sew 
 perfectly beautifully. I shall never forget the darned 
 knees to which he would point with pride, he had 
 done thfem himself! Before I left, he told me why 
 the lining of the hood is that particularly soft, al- 
 most unearthly shade. In the thirteenth century the 
 Cambridge Doctors of Divinity were famous all over 
 Christendom for their learning. The Pope issued a 
 decree in which he stated that these doctors being 
 well known for their divine learning, should wear a 
 hood, the lining of which was to be the colour of the 
 breast of a dove, in honour of the Holy Dove ' from 
 whom all learning doth proceed '." 
 
 I only drove once with the Bishop on this last 
 visit, as that was a daily treat which the girls could 
 -have in turn. But one afternoon I drove him down 
 near the cemetery, thinking he would rest quietly in 
 the sunshine while I took some flowers to Ralph C.'s 
 grave. 
 
 But directly he knew where I was going, he whis- 
 
I02 ESFEC/AIZY WILLIAM, BISHOP 0¥ 
 
 pered, "Do give me an arm and let me come too. I 
 have so often thought about him and wished I could 
 see it." I suppose my description of my friend's 
 sleeping-place beneath the towering great rock had 
 fascinated the Bishop just as it did me. And so, with 
 some pauses to rest as we went down the winding 
 path, I led him slowly down to the gallant little 
 corner near the palm trees, where, as it happened, 
 several young officers have been laid together ; a 
 subaltern of engineers, a middy, a cadet, and now this 
 dear splendid boy in the gunners whose death had 
 left the whole garrison mourning. And, as the word- 
 ing of the crosses told us, all had been called suddenly, 
 one killed at polo, one in an accident at sea, and now 
 Ralph. 
 
 The Bishop loved the spot directly, just as I do ; 
 and whispered, " Under the shadow of a great rock in 
 a weary land" ; he sat for a long time while I weeded 
 the low mound with the white narcissus flowering 
 round it, and then before we turned away we knelt 
 together there, blessing His holy name for all His 
 servants departed this life in His faith and fear. 
 
 The Bishop used to bring up some of the books 
 and papers he was reading, and when I did not know 
 some other book as 1 ought, would send home for it 
 for me. I had Wesley's "Veterans" in this way, and 
 now he sent for Dr. Hort's " Life " and Bishop West- 
 cott's, and as he noted and marked his books, it was 
 fifty times better than new copies. 
 
 One quiet morning I was reading to him out of 
 the Epistles of St. John, and asked him to explain, 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 103 
 
 " Brethren, if our heart condemn us, God is greater 
 than our hearts and knoweth all things," because my 
 heart did condemn me as I looked back across the 
 years. "Yes," said the Bishop, "but you see God is 
 greater than your heart and knows all things, and all 
 about you, better even than your own heart knows, 
 and He 'knows all, yet loves us better than He 
 knows,' as Keble said, and 'The end of judgment' 
 is not to find out the holes, they are plain enough, but 
 to sift out every little bit of good, and 'Then shall 
 every man have praise of God '. And so we stop 
 worrying about our hearts ; we are failures, of course 
 we are, but it was to save failures that Christ died, 
 and so we think about Him, and then, as St. John 
 tells us later on, then ' we have confidence towards 
 God"." 
 
 Another morning the Bishop said, speaking of a 
 friend, " She is a dear good woman, rather cumbered 
 with much serving just now. Do you understand 
 about a yoke? It is always double, it rests upon two 
 oxen. Christ calls the weary not to bear the whole 
 yoke, but to share it with Him." 
 
 After this week at Gibraltar the Bishop had planned 
 a long tiring Spanish tour, and he had rejoiced Mr. 
 F.'s heart by asking him to go with him. The very 
 day before, Mr. F. became ill, and the Bishop would 
 not take a substitute. Nor would he put off all the 
 people who were expecting him. He went just the 
 same (except that the cheque for chaplain's expenses 
 was given to the poor). 
 
 Tita and I felt that at least we must see him across 
 
104 JESPEClAZZy WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 the bay and into the train for Seville, if we could only 
 give him an arm down the long pier and carry his 
 rug, but it was sadly mysterious why he need go alone, 
 and why I couldn't have kept a decent heart together 
 another year, for then Tita and I might have gone too. 
 
 And it was 26 January, the seventh anniversary 
 of his wedding day ! We did the little that we could, 
 and we had a wire sent off to Ronda to ask that tea 
 might be brought to his carriage, but he never got it, 
 and at dinner time at Bobadilla the steps to* the 
 restaurant were too steep for him ; but he lived to 
 go on, still alone, with those fearful journeys by some 
 miracle, and the cost must have been bitter, but there 
 was one unending mercy, " The yoke was double ". 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 105 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 No one ever kept their lightest promises, I think, 
 more carefully than the Bishop ; and so, when I 
 wished aloud on the Algeciras boat that I could have 
 given him a packet of ready-addressed Spanish post 
 cards with "still alive" written on them to post to 
 me, he said that I should have one daily ; and so, to 
 our great relief, every evening one arrived. 
 
 "Seville, 27 January, igii. Not a bad journey, 
 but no teapot and no dining car on the train, and a bad 
 change at Bobadilla. ... I mustn't face such a change 
 alone again, and at night ; but I got a friendly waiter 
 to lend me an arm, and there are no other changes of 
 trains in the course of this journey. Arrived at 12.15 
 a.m., and I am rather a wreck this morning. But 
 there is plenty to do : business about Sailors' Home 
 and Church, and a reception, and I'm quite up to 
 it. . . ." 
 
 " Seville, 28 January, 1911. Just leaving for Hu- 
 elva. Rain all night, and still raining a little. Got 
 through all right yesterday, and I think all goes on 
 happily : anyhow it is a wonderful change from what 
 it used to be six or seven years ago, which is some- 
 thing. Very weary, and glad to lie down when I 
 
io6 ESPECIALLY VJTLLIKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 wasn't actually with people ; but a better night last 
 night, and throat, I hope, making up his mind to play 
 the game. . . ." 
 
 " Minas de Rio Tinto, 29 January. Still rather a 
 ' crock,' but a little better, as who could help being, 
 with all the kindness that is showered on me ? It's 
 cold here (1600 feet up or more) but nothing out of 
 the way. ... I have two baptisms this afternoon, 
 as well as other things." 
 
 " Train, 30 January. Such a wet day to come down 
 to Huelva on . . . and bitterly cold. But as always, 
 I'm no worse for Sunday. Throat not good, but 
 earache rather better, which is pure gain. To-night 
 church, and then a ' Social Abscess ' (with apologies !) 
 to go on till midnight. Bless you all." 
 
 " Train to Seville, 31 January. Another thoroughly 
 wet day, but I'm none the worse, really ; only tired 
 and looking forward to getting it done. And so 
 much talking : everybody eager for a few words, and 
 it is impossible not to let them have them. I must 
 remember to tell you of my sick man to-day. ..." (I 
 think this was the engineer who had made the rail- 
 way, and who lay dying at Rio Tinto. He had 
 written to say that he should try to wait until the 
 Bishop came.) 
 
 " Seville, i February. Just leaving for Jerez. Still 
 very damp : and earache at it again in full force. 
 Found a huge pile of letters waiting here.: some from 
 Malta, as well as the Gibraltar ones. I don't feel fit 
 for much to-day. However, I have got through, 
 which is what matters most." 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 107 
 
 "Jeres de la Frontera, The Purification, 191 1. 
 Just after I had written yesterday, my delightful 
 budget of letters arrived with yours, and Doris's, 
 and Tita's ; so welcome in the cold and damp of 
 Seville. I'm so glad the Mount party (Tita's com- 
 ing-out dance) went off happily, and shall at 
 least look out for you at Tangier. My Spanish 
 ship is due to leave there on Saturday at 2 p.m., 
 but I don't know how much earlier it arrives : the 
 time-table wisely avoids committing itself on the 
 point. To-day it is fine and bright, though cold, and 
 my throat is so far, less troublesome, though I am 
 rather breathless. Just off to church for the Euchar- 
 ist : can't have any other service as I am alone. God 
 keep you all." 
 
 " Cadiz, 3 February, 191 1. . . . I have to leave 
 this hotel at six, as my boat leaves at seven to-morrow. 
 But there has been a good deal of east wind and I 
 should think it would be somewhat lumpy in the 
 Straits. All's well, but so tired that I hardly know 
 what to do. Well, I'm near this journey's end any- 
 way, which is so much to the good. God keep 
 you all." 
 
io8 ^5/'^CZ<4ZZK WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Saturday, 4 February, dawned bright and calm, 
 and Tita and I got safely off to Tangier. 
 
 We should go to the hotel and the Bishop would 
 be at the Legation, but if he needed us we should be 
 near, and at any rate we could look after him on the 
 return sea journey. 
 
 It takes three hours by boat to get across, and it 
 was late afternoon when we went up through the 
 strange old Eastern city to take the Bishop's packet 
 of letters and telegrams to the Legation. Moors and 
 Turks, Jews and Infidels, swarmed about the narrow 
 cobbled streets ; and not only these, but Soudanese 
 and Kaffirs up from the desert, black slaves, and 
 withered old Riff women in huge basket hats. 
 
 I felt sure the Bishop accounted them all as part of 
 his flock, and would have a sense of possessive ten- 
 derness, not only for them and for the crowds of tiny, 
 beautiful children playing among the very feet of the 
 strings of laden little Moorish donkeys, but even for 
 the patient beasts themselves, and the train of mum- 
 bling, grunting camels who suddenly came along be- 
 hind us. 
 
 We turned into an impressive archway, and a 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 109 
 
 white-headed old Moor who kept the gate said : 
 "Yes, yes — Bishop here — you come this way"; and 
 there in a quiet study we safely found him. Very 
 white, very worn, but full of people to be seen, writ- 
 ing to be done, and then a dinner party. " But quite 
 ready for Sunday and the Confirmation," he said. 
 And, having seen that for ourselves, we did not linger, 
 but left him to his work. 
 
 The English Church at Tangier is at the very edge 
 of the Soko, the great open market. We went up early 
 on Sunday moi"ning and stood at the gate of the gar- 
 den in which the church is built. 
 
 From here we could look down on the crowded 
 mass of sellers and buyers between the rows of low 
 brown tents, then the dazzling white houses, spires, 
 and mosques of the town stretching down to a pea- 
 cock-coloured sea below. 
 
 And, almost at once, there was the Bishop, frail 
 and breathless from walking, and thankful for an arm 
 to help him to a seat in the church garden, but smil- 
 ing and bright with a special Sunday look of holy 
 joy on his face which made one feel that a joyful 
 Eucharist was about to begin the moment one saw 
 him. 
 
 It was a dear little church, so fresh and nicely kept, 
 and the singing quite good. It might have been a 
 nice village church in England, on a warm summer 
 Sunday morning, but for a distant cry now and again 
 from the Soko below, to tell us that we were in the 
 very middle of a heathen city. 
 
 The sermon, read for the Bishop by the chaplain, 
 
no ^5/IE:C/^ZZF WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 was from the text : " The servants that drew the 
 water knew". I will not quote from it now, well as 
 I can recall it, for I hope that this, and the five other 
 sermons, which were so carefully written out by the 
 Bishop to be read by the voice of another, will soon 
 be published. 
 
 Afterwards, kind people who had asked us out to 
 their villa on the mountain, sent mules and Arab ser- 
 vants to bring us there, and it was such a mercy, as 
 one of the mules could carry the Bishop back from 
 church ; he was not fit to walk. 
 
 We were at church again in the afternoon, but the 
 Confirmation was just over and Evensong beginning 
 before our mules put us down at the gate. 
 
 The Bishop rode down to tea with us at our hotel, 
 and we got an easy chair for him and a good fire, and 
 he seemed to enjoy being with us and to be loath to go, 
 though I rather dreaded the cold night wind for him 
 riding back. He was in trouble about some one, and 
 wanted to talk it over, and when I hit upon a little 
 thing that I could do to help, it so rejoiced me that 
 we had come, it was so good to hear his " Oh ! how 
 you do uplift my heart ". 
 
 As we all started back on the boat together next day, 
 the Bishop, Tita, and I, we had deck chairs and a big 
 fur rug for him, and it was calm and warm enough for 
 June, but before we had crossed the Straits an icy 
 wind got up, and he began to look very ill as we 
 got into Gibraltar, where the Governor's launch was 
 waiting for him. 
 
 When he followed us up to the Castle half an hour 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE iii 
 
 later he was plainly unfit for anything but bed, and 
 I had to be ruthless with his friends who came for 
 a few last words, and cut their interviews down to 
 barely five minutes. I put brandy in his tea and per- 
 suaded him to have an egg with it, and then I meant 
 him to lie and rest on the couch by the fire while I 
 wrote letters at the other end of the room ; but as I 
 passed him to draw a curtain he caught my hand. 
 " Can I do anything more, Bishop Darying? " " Yes, 
 stay beside me." So I sat there, and scarcely a word 
 said or a sound in the darkening room but an ash 
 falling now and again on the hearth. 
 
 There was nothing to say ; he was leaving next 
 morning, and I could not hope ever to see his face 
 in this world again. I would have done anything for 
 him, and I could do nothing. I had tried a poor sug- 
 gestion or two on the boat. Couldn't he think it 
 right to go with Nurse M. to a proper open-air or 
 warm-air cure, and just rest and write for the short 
 span left to him, and give the diocese up ? 
 
 But I had only said it very briefly; it was useless 
 to try to turn him. The echo was clearer than ever ; 
 he had set his face, also, " steadfastly to go up to 
 Jerusalem ". 
 
 Often at this quiet hour he would have his evensong 
 with me ; he whispering the prayers, and I reading him 
 the psalms and lessons for the evening ; but that last 
 hour I could not break the stillness even for that. 
 
 Then the door opened and the girls came in, bring- 
 ing Judith, radiant in blue dressing-gown, and baby 
 in her nightdress, to say " prayers to dear Bishie ". 
 
112 ESPECIALLY WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 He held out his arms for her and she knelt upon 
 the sofa and whispered them, the little chubby cheek 
 pressed against his wan face. " Pease God, bress 
 evrybody and make baby a dood did," and she stroked 
 his hair as he blessed her. 
 
 We had one more moment alone ; his cab waited ; 
 he was gone. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 113 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A POSTCARD from Marseilles was the next I heard. 
 The Bishop dates it " Shipwreck of St. Paul ". (This 
 day being kept by the Roman Catholics at Malta, the 
 Bishop thought our Anglican Church there should 
 keep it also, and he had lately drawn up a special 
 service to be used in Malta on 11 February.) " Only 
 a word to say that I arrived here after a good but 
 windy passage, and leave this morning for Algiers. 
 God bless you all." 
 
 But my letter, written three days later, on the ship 
 between Algiers and Genoa, brought tidings of what 
 was in very truth the beginning of the end. 
 
 " Stoomschippe ' Oranje,' Algiers to Genoa, 14 Feb- 
 ruary, igii. Here's a go ! I've been and gone and got 
 pleurisy, not very bad, but enough to be rather tire- 
 some. I only knew quite certainly yesterday, when I 
 came on board the ship, and lunched, and found 
 myself next to the doctor, a nice broad Hollander, 
 who talks English like a Briton. I happened to 
 cough, a bad one that regularly tied me in a knot, 
 and he said he'd like to examine me afterwards, if I 
 had no objection. He at once said that I had pleurisy, 
 
 not very bad, and improving, but as it's cold, and the 
 
 8 
 
114 ESPECIALLY -WIUAAU, BISHOP OF 
 
 wind piercing, I am C.B. (confined to barracks), or 
 rather to quite a decent cabin till we get to Genoa 
 (I lay low about the throat). 
 
 " But the fact is, that I had already diagnosed it my- 
 self . . . and it has only been by relaxing or collapsing 
 directly I was by myself, that I have got through. 
 First I used mustard leaves, and then began diligently 
 painting with iodine, etc., and so, as you see, it's better. 
 Fortunately this boat is before its time, so we ought 
 to reach Genoa on Wednesday morning, and I needn't 
 go on to Venice till Friday, so I shall go straight to 
 a comfortable hotel in Genoa and lie low till then. 
 Of course if this doctor insists upon it, I must see 
 another there, there are one or two decent ones, but 
 I don't think he will. Only I shall have to be careful 
 still, and keep warm, which alas, on board ship, means 
 avoiding the deck, the only place which is tolerable 
 The doctor can't make out how I went on working. 
 I tell him that we are not accustomed to stop working 
 when it hurts, and that as I have no voice just now, 
 I couldn't cry out 1 But ' honest injun,' I think it's 
 under control now, and I shall be able to get through 
 to the Embassy at Constantinople by 25 February 
 And that will be a safe address till 20 March or there- 
 abouts, though I shall be moving about a good deal 
 between whiles. . . . God bless you always." 
 
 In his next letter, the Bishop refers to my having 
 wished to go home to see a dying sister-in-law. He 
 always felt for all our griefs and prayed for our dear 
 ones, no matter how many other urgent needs were 
 before him. 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 115 
 
 " British Embassy, Constantinople, 37 February, 
 1911. It is good to have your first letter here, and now, 
 others from you all. And I do wonder whether you 
 have set off for England again. It doesn't sound 
 very good for you, but others will be thinking of that, 
 and we have a right to believe when we do our best, 
 that the Lord ordereth a good woman's stayings as 
 well as her goings. 
 
 " I have had rather a hard time. At Genoa I bettered 
 enough to decide that it was right to go on, not back, 
 but did not venture to tell M. (his nurse at Cannes) 
 till I was out of reach, lest she should throw up what- 
 ever case she was nursing and come and look after me. 
 Since that I haven't been nearly so well, and though 
 it was fine and not really cold at sea, I had rather a 
 bad time. Night after night in a bunk, sleepless and 
 coughing and choking isn't good. C. W. turned up 
 at Ancona and is a brick. Now I'm here in comfort, 
 and am trying to do what is best for me, and generally 
 lying about. I'm due to start for Odessa for a short 
 visit on Thursday (Bucharest postponed) but may put 
 it off if I'm not up to it, or if the news speaks of too 
 much ice and snow there. 
 
 " Even a little pleurisy is a severe pain, isn't it ? I'm 
 reading William James's ' Psychology,' and find him 
 discussing how many distinct sensations one can ex- 
 perience at identically the same moment, whether 
 only one, or two, or three. He's wrong anyhow, for 
 part of the time there were six distinct pains all going 
 at once — throat in two places, both ears, and back, 
 
 and front ; of course now and then they got a bit 
 
 8* 
 
ii6 ■ ^SP^C/^ZZ r WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 mixed. . . . Now the pains are better, but I'm 
 breathless and coughing . . . perhaps that's only 
 temporary. 
 
 " Anyhow I stand to win, for the worst of it seems 
 over, and if it isn't the Other is far better. 
 
 " And you are not to let the thought of it make 
 you anxious or sad, my dear. We all stand to win 
 anyhow, if only we try to be good ; for He will not let 
 us get our deserts. 
 
 " When this ' tyranny is overpast ' we shall see 
 whether I am back to my ordinary level, or whether 
 it has done any permanent damage; of course it is 
 impossible to tell yet. 
 
 " How good of you to let me see your dear little 
 Baptist saint's letter (a missionary in Marrakesh); 
 that does one good. And to share the watching and 
 praying for your sister-in-law. God bless and keep 
 you all. I'll write again, if it's only a card, in a day 
 or two." 
 
 "British Embassy, Constantinople, 2 March, 191 1. 
 How wonderful of you ! Here was I thinking that 
 there could be no letters for a long time, and lo and 
 behold, a bundle forwarded from England, and in it 
 yours of 9 February. I was glad to have it, and 
 so very glad to know how you had enjoyed Bishop 
 Westcott's ' Life '. 
 
 " You see he was so wonderful that nobody could 
 do him justice, and we were all disappointed with 
 A. Westcott's book, both for its lack of his best letters, 
 etc., and in other ways. 
 
 " But I doubt we did injustice to it ; he was not 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 117 
 
 writing for us, but for those who did not know. And 
 it is plain, from what you say, that he (A. W.) did 
 reveal, and far more than I had realized. 
 
 " He always stands out before one, not only as 
 prophet and teacher, but as a great man above all 
 I have ever known, with the greatness that comes 
 from putting first things first and caring for what really 
 matters. 
 
 " An animal is really far greater than a man, as a 
 rule, in that he is a far finer animal than we are fine 
 men. A lion, for instance, is so, eminently. You 
 may call it self-centred, but it is really heart and soul 
 absorbed in lionitude, whereas most of us are only 
 playing, more or less, at the things which really count, 
 and which are of the very essence of our nature. Do 
 you know what I mean? He was strangely lionlike 
 at times. I fancy Archbishop Benson speaks of it 
 when he was answering the questions as a Bishop- 
 elect. Those marvellous questions which stand out in 
 one's memory always as an ideal, and, alas ! a measur- 
 ing rod, to show how poor are we who watch for the 
 Chief Shepherd of the sheep." 
 
 "4 March. I'm going on in bed, for my chill 
 hasn't passed away, nor the pains yet. In fact the 
 difficulty of breathing got worse two nights ago, and 
 the oppression, and the embassy doctor here has put 
 me on a nourishing and sustaining diet of oxygen and 
 milky food. Between them, and above all the oxygen, 
 they have done wonders already, and I had no suffo- 
 cating (except a little bit) last night, and actually two 
 hours of proper sleep, the first I have had excepting 
 
ii8 ESPECIALLY "NILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 uneasy dosing, ending up in a choke, for over a week. 
 Ihave a nurse for these nights, but the doctor says I 
 really ought to be ready for work again in three or 
 four days, 
 
 "Only it plainly means that I must knock off and 
 lie about again, as soon as the opportunity occurs, 
 and I can get back nearer to Cannes. And meanwhile 
 poor M. has been ill too (at Cannes) with really bad 
 pleurisy. She has been in bed for a fortnight, and 
 although she is up again she is evidently far from well 
 still. 
 
 " I wanted to write more about Bishop Westcott, 
 but that has all gone into my head. At least, I hope 
 the prayers we can't pray in detail because we are too 
 tired, and the thoughts that get dispersed when tem- 
 peratures go up, or pain comes, don't really fly away ; 
 they only sink in and go by some safer road, please 
 God. 
 
 " May He keep you all. Ever your loving W. E., 
 Gibraltar. 
 
 " P.S. — Just for a little while when I was choking 
 and suffocating the other night it did seem as if I 
 might wake on the other side ; but it has pleased God 
 that it should not be so." 
 
 The next letter is one written to congratulate Tita 
 on having passed her London Matriculation Examina- 
 tion. 
 
 "Bed, 6 March. My Dearest Tita, — Your letter 
 with the news of the examination has just come, so I 
 must write a word to you to say how glad I am. I 
 feel as proud as if I had done it myself! Of course 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND , MARY, HIS WIFE 119 
 
 honours would have been better still, but with the 
 London method there is a good deal of arbitrary 
 chance about that. . . . 
 
 " I'm still in bed, not allowed to see anybody or 
 write much, with a night nurse and everything done 
 for me, and living on oxygen + slops. But the lungs 
 and bronchial tubes are gradually clearing, and I don't 
 choke half as much, and the heart is getting back its 
 tone, and I hope to be up by Saturday and allowed 
 to confirm next Sunday. It is, of course, the result of 
 a severe and long-suppressed chill, but the embassy 
 doctor says I ought to regard it, not as an extraor- 
 dinary thing, but as an acute state of what I have to 
 think of as chronic, if you see what that means. 
 Muddis will, and I think you will. 
 
 " Your day at Algeciras must have been lovely, 
 and the bull-ring after all has such messages ; its own 
 natural beauty and the very picture of the place of 
 most early Christian martyrdoms. Only it's the poor 
 animals who suffer now, and we who persecute with- 
 out the same excuse as they who did it then. 
 
 " My dear love to you all, and God bless you, little 
 daughter. 
 
 " I'm so glad you have learned to skip in reading ; 
 it is a real and great gift provided that you have already 
 learned to read conscientiously, as you have. Sometimes 
 people do it who haven't ; then it is a wicked habit ! " 
 After this letter I only received post cards, one 
 every alternate evening up to the evening of 26 
 March. 
 
 The post cards were as follows : — 
 
120 ^5/'^CZ4ZZ y WILLIAM, BISHOP OF 
 
 "7 March, igii. Only a word to say that all goes 
 well. Not very good nights, but I no longer stop 
 breathing instead of breathing, as if it were the most 
 natural thing to do. And we hope that I shall be up 
 in three or four days, all being well. Will you tell 
 Tita that of course I want to give her her Greek Tes- 
 tament ? God bless you all." 
 
 " Constantinople, g March, igii. Yours has just 
 come with the news of the setting free of your ' Bertie ' 
 (my sister-in-law). I thank God for you and make 
 remembrance of her. But I'm so sorry to hear that 
 you are back again, and that it is a little owing to 
 being naughty, climbing up the front of the house 
 when you were forbidden to go upstairs " (this refers 
 to my walking up a hill, by a side way). " Rest, rest, 
 rest ; it is always right to accept what comes, but it 
 is even righter to remember that this ailment need 
 not go on, and so my right attitude to it is, that it 
 ought not. Not quite so well to-day, heart trouble in 
 the night (pot and kettle ?) but I think it owing to chill. 
 ... I don't think bed all day is doing me any more 
 good now, and I'm going to ask to be allowed up, of 
 course keeping my room. I ought to sleep better so, 
 and I think, breathe better, too. Promoted to chicken, 
 still oxygen." 
 
 " Saturday, ii March, igii. Getting on slowly : 
 but to-day I have taken the bull by the horns and in- 
 sisted on sitting up for a time. And although I am 
 very weak the change of position, and the ' natural 
 massage ' of a new position is doing good. The 
 second lung is nearly cleared now, and the heart is 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 121 
 
 giving most difficulty, with cough. And please God 
 I hope to confirm on Monday ! God be with you all, 
 W. E. G." 
 
 " 13 March, 191 1. Only a word to say that all goes 
 well. I have sat up again, and to-day I am actually 
 going to hold this wonderful Confirmation here (you 
 remember), God willing. I'm going to be carried down, 
 taken through the open streets in a carriage and then 
 through the lanes of Pera in a sedan chair to church : 
 and there are nearly thirty candidates in all. Isn't 
 it splendid ? But I shall be rather a wretched sort of 
 Bishop, can hardly sit up straight, still less walk in 
 procession without an arm, whilst how I am to get 
 up the steps (it is a lofty choir) this deponent knoweth 
 not. But it will be all cared for, and this card will 
 not be posted till after we get back to the embassy, if 
 I can arrange it so. Blessings with you all, W. E. G." 
 
 After this, a post card came for Doris. 
 
 "Constantinople, 14 March, igii. It's only a 
 skimpy return for a letter, isn't it ? to send you one 
 of my post cards. But although everything went well 
 yesterday and I appreciated the eighteenth century 
 feel of being carried through the streets in a sedan 
 chair, it was a very fatiguing day, and to-day my 
 breathing is in a poor state and I am being dosed with 
 oxygen, etc. 
 
 " Still, it is done, and is a new point to start conva- 
 lescing from on a higher level. Yesterday cold and 
 dreary, to-day a warm sun. Admiral Poe is here, and 
 from my window I see the Turkish fleet, decorated in 
 his honour. God bless you all." 
 
182 ESPECIALLY VilUA^M., BISHOP OF 
 
 And then I had two more. 
 
 " Yours of 8 March just received. Poor brave 
 heroine of Helbeck ! I'm not getting up at all to-day, 
 having had a poor night, but hope to be all the better 
 for it to-morrow. God keep you, W. E. G." 
 
 " Constantinople, i8 March, 1911. A word to say 
 that I am slowly getting back strength and hope to 
 leave here on Thursday via Smyrna and other places 
 for Naples. This last is a change of plans made 
 necessary by the fact of quarantine difficulties. It has 
 been a long slow business, and 1 trust that the sea will 
 be kind, for although I shall have a nurse with me to 
 Naples, I am still very helpless. All good be with 
 you all. Ever your loving, W. E. G." 
 
 I had felt sure that Confirmation would be held, if 
 the Bishop were carried in his bed to the church. 
 I knew he would try to force a rally, once that was 
 done, and try to get off nearer home to his dear Nurse 
 M. He always said that he should start home 
 directly he felt the end was near, home, to be laid 
 beside Mary. And so, I should have been prepared, 
 but one never is prepared. 
 
 I was writing to him on the morning of the 25th, 
 and Tita left me to answer the telephone bell in the 
 hall. I heard a sound of flying feet. She rushed back, 
 wide eyed and stricken, 
 
 " Muddis I Oh Muddis ! The Bishop ! He is dead ! 
 He died at sea, off Smyrna." 
 
 " All the trumpets had sounded as he passed over 
 to the other side." 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 133 
 
 ADDENDA. 
 
 " Enoland, yune, igii. 
 
 " Dear Men and Women who Loved the 
 Bishop, — You will not mind, if you have read thus 
 far, a few words from the woman who put her know- 
 ledge of him down on paper for your sakes, and I can 
 tell you a little more, from hearsay, of how he fought 
 his fight to the very end. 
 
 " His friends at Constantinople besought him not 
 to leave, but he could not be persuaded. Was there 
 not a Confirmation waiting for him to take at Smyrna ? 
 and was not every plunge of the ship a plunge nearer 
 England and his wife's grave ? 
 
 "And so, on the afternoon of 23 March, he was 
 carried on board, and steadfastly bid them all good- 
 bye. 
 
 " Kind Lady L. had seen to it that he had a hos- 
 pital nurse to go with him as far as Naples ; but the 
 journey was shorter than that. Our Bishop sat up 
 for the evening meal, and before he lay down for the 
 night he asked his nurse to unpack his robes and lay 
 them out on the other berth in the cabin, in readiness 
 for landing in them and going direct to the Con- 
 firmation, for the ship was only to wait a short time. 
 
124 ESPECIALLY \NIUJIKM., BISHOP OF 
 
 " But the breathing became worse, and the nurse 
 grew uneasy and presently felt his pulse. He looked 
 up at her (can't you see the kind, gentle look, and 
 hear the broken whisper ? I can) and said : — 
 
 " ' Don't be anxious. I only want to rest a little. 
 Bless you.' And then he sank away gently in his 
 sleep. Once he murmured something to himself and 
 nurse thought she caught the words : ' The fellowship 
 of loneliness '. 
 
 " That was so likely, for it was his constant thought, 
 the sharing and the fellowship of Christ's sufferings ; 
 and if, as his weakness so rapidly increased, it came 
 to him that this was the end, he would know that his 
 heart's desire to reach England was not to be, and 
 he would willingly drink that last bitter drop of his 
 cup of suffering, just as he had willingly drunk the 
 slow-poured draught from the first. 
 
 " It was early morning and the hills of Smyrna 
 were coming into sight when the last breath released 
 his valiant spirit, and the Bishop went home to God. 
 
 " Dear men and women along the Mediterranean, 
 life isn't very easy, is it ? And sometimes it seems so 
 very long ago that God's own Son came down from 
 Heaven to show us how to live it. 
 
 " But never again can you and I think that to 
 ' walk with Christ,' day in and day out, on toilsome 
 journeys or in dreary quarters, in sickness or in heavy 
 work, in poverty or in heart break, cannot still be 
 done. For the Bishop did it. 
 
 " You could not look at him, now could you ? and 
 not ' take knowledge of him that he had been with 
 
GIBRALTAR, AND MARY, HIS WIFE 125 
 
 Jesus'. That was why we all loved him so. We 
 could not help but love him. 
 
 " And he would have laid down his life for any 
 single one of you. Our Blessed Lord did. So did 
 the Bishop." 
 
 ABERDEEN : THE UNIVERSITY PRESS