Chapter IV ARCHDEACON CROGHAN'S return from England--Foundation of the Diocesan Sisterhood--Rev. W. T. Gaul--Daily Celebration begun in the Cathedral--Second Session of the Synods--Installation of Canon Doxat--Bishop Webb's first visit to England--First steps towards a Mission in Bechuanaland.
ARCHDEACON CROGHAN returned from England on April 25th, 1874. His visit had won many new friends to the Diocese, and refreshed the zeal of others. At Dublin the degree of M.A. had been conferred on him, the cost being defrayed by some who had been his fellow-students, and who chose this way of showing their regard for him. But there were two special fruits of his visit which are present with us now. .
From the time of his coming to Bloemfontein, Bishop Webb had longed for the help of a Sisterhood both for educational and nursing work. There were no girls' schools in the Free State. Those who could afford it sent their daughters to the Colony, and principally to a Roman Catholic Convent in Grahamstown. On reaching England the Archdeacon had put the needs of the Diocese before the Rev. Thomas Chamberlain, of S. Thomas', Oxford, and the Community at Osney House, of which Mr. Chamberlain was Warden, had given Sister Emma of their community to return with the Archdeacon and be the first Superior of a Diocesan Sisterhood. One or two ladies came out with her, among them the present Sister Henrietta, of whom we shall speak later on, and Miss Grimes, whose devoted work as a Deaconess in Bloemfontein during the next twelve years have still an honoured place in our memories.
The second blessing secured to us by the Archdeacon was an assistant helper in the Cathedral parish in the Rev. W. T. Gaul, a graduate of his own University.
In writing these notes, we shall from time to time pass by without mention the name here or there of some Clergyman or lay-worker who came out to us, and after a more or less brief stay returned to England. But when for the first time we record such names as those of (Bishop) McKenzie or (Archdeacon) Gaul, the thought of the blessings which have accrued to the Church from their splendid gifts and devoted lives stays our pen with feelings of great thankfulness.
Mr. Gaul, then a master at Foyle College, Deny, had been urged to offer himself for foreign Mission-work during the first day of Intercession, 1873. Even earlier than this, he had had leanings towards such work. He had on one occasion, when listening to a speech made by Bishop Twells, felt the desire that some external call would correspond with the prompting within him to cast in his lot with the Mission. We wish we had space to reprint a letter written by him in 1876, after two years of work in the Diocese, on "Realities of Mission Life." Certainly life in the Mission has been from the first a real one to him. He was in Deacon's orders when he came, and was ordained Priest in the Cathedral in Lent, 1875.
Sister Emma found a school-work already begun in Bloemfontein. The Bishop had purchased the ground on which S. Michael's Home now stands, with a small house on it, which has long ago been swallowed up in the spacious building now occupied by the Sisterhood. Miss Peltre had come to the Diocese at the close of 1873, and a goodly number of girls were now being taught by her, with the aid of the Bishop's sisters.
The addition of so many Church workers enabled the clergy of the Cathedral to begin on April 29th, 1874, a daily Celebration in the Cathedral. This has in effect continued ever since. For about eight years, between 1884 and 1892, with a smaller clerical staff and the presence at S. Michael's Home of Sisters and others who were not strong enough to walk the mile between it and the Cathedral, the Holy Communion was celebrated on three days only in the church, and on the other three in the Sisters' Chapel; but the coming of more resident Priests, on the establishment of the Deanery in 1892, enabled the former order to be reverted to.
On July, 8th, 1874, the second session of the Diocesan Synod was held. This time it was attended by seven priests, four deacons, and nine lay members. The Constitution and other determinations of the session of 1872 were revised, and Acts of Synod passed providing for Election of a Bishop, and of Representatives to the Provincial Synod.
On the Sunday during the Session the Rev. F. W. Doxat, who had been appointed by the Bishop to a Canonry, was installed in the Cathedral at Evensong.
The military cemetery, consecrated by Bishop Gray in 1850, had from the foundation of the Diocese been left in the hands of the Church. An additional piece of ground was now given by the municipality, and consecrated on November 13th. [Sixteen years later, in 1890, a further addition was made and consecrated on August 31st by Bishop Knight-Bruce.]
At the beginning of 1874, Mrs. Isaac Williams had made the voyage to South Africa, to pay a visit to her son at Modderpoort. With her came another son, Mr. Anthony Williams, her sister, Miss Champernowne, and her nephew, Mr. Richard Keble Champernowne. Mr. Champernowne, who was an Oxford graduate, decided to remain in the Diocese, and was ordained Deacon in the Cathedral on Sunday, December 20th. Mr. Anthony Williams also remained with us for more than three years, and gave much help in the work.
On March and, 1875, the Bishop with his family left Bloemfontein for a visit to England. Six weeks later the sad news reached us, that his much-loved little daughter, Alice, had died while the steamer was still at Capetown, and had been buried by the side of Bishop Gray's grave in Claremont churchyard.
The Rev. G. Mitchell also paid a visit to England, leaving on April 2nd, 1875, but during June Mr. Widdicombe returned to the Diocese and went to live at Thabanchu. This set Mr. Crisp at liberty to pay a long-planned visit to Bechuanaland, under the following circumstances.
In 1873, Mr. Crisp had been sent by the Bishop to inspect a native work which had been growing up at the Diamond Fields, and especially round the village of Barkly. Shortly before, David Maramane, the father of Gabriel, the Bloemfontein catechist, had come to Bloemfontein, to seek the Bishop's aid. He had long been a Christian, having been a convert of the French missionaries at Bethulie. Lephoi's tribe of Batlhaping, to which he belonged, had become scattered (see above), and he had undergone many wanderings. But wherever he had been, he had tried to teach and hold service with those with him. He was now living on the northern bank of the Vaal, about sixty miles up the stream from Barkly. Mr. Crisp paid a visit of several days to him, and while noticing the poor estate of his little village, consisting of a few miserable reed huts, was delighted with the desire, sincerely manifested by the people, for spiritual assistance. Their place of worship was an enclosure fenced round with brushwood, but their earnestness more than made up for their poverty of circumstances. Five adults and six children were baptized, and the work thus begun was encouraged by frequent letters and messages from Thab-anchu.
In 1874, while the Bishop was visiting Barkly, two hundred natives, with David at their head, came to him seeking baptism; women with babies strapped on their backs, lads and lasses, old grand-parents, men in the prime of life. They had had hardly any food on the way, and bore evident marks of this. Yet they did not complain nor beg; baptism was all they asked for. Most of them had come from a Batlhaping town of some 3,000 people, called Phokoane, some twenty miles inland from David's village, to which three of the adults baptized in 1873 belonged. The Bishop baptized the infants and admitted the adults as catechumens, promising to send a priest to prepare them for baptism. It was to redeem this promise that Mr. Crisp's visit in 1875 was made. "S. John's on the Vaal," as David's village had been named, was reached on September 13th. During this visit six adults were baptized, and seventeen admitted to Holy Communion. Next a visit was paid to Phokoane, where sixteen adults were baptized and ten communicated. Mr. Crisp got back to Thabanchu at the beginning of November, having spent six weeks in South Bechuanaland.
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