Project Canterbury

Lead, Kindly Light:
Studies of Saints and Heroes of the Oxford Movement

by Desmond Morse-Boycott

transcribed by Mr Robert Stevens
AD 2000

XXI

Mother Kate

Katherine Anne Egerton Warburton was born on March 24, 1840, in the heart of Cheshire, in a village on the banks of the Mersey where, as she says, the cottages were smothered in damson-trees and "out-lying farms stretched away over a wild Moss, redolent with sweet gale."

There were many odd, old customs [that she witnessed with wide-open eyes], such as the Rush-bearing, when there was a sort of Wake, and carts decorated with flowers went about, and people were more or less tipsy. This took place about the middle of August, and [she supposes] was a relic of the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. On November 1^st the wilder young men used to go about with lanterns at night, one wearing a horse’s skull, which they called "Old Nobs," and went to the farmers’ homes for drink or money.

Her father was a keen Tractarian and wore a surplice.

No one would believe [she says] the storms elicited by preaching in a surplice! "Sacrament Sundays" were few and far between. Etiquette in many parishes prescribed that the squire, the parson, and other dignitaries, with their families, should communicate first, and then the common throng.

She remembers that there was once an uproar because a farmer's wife went to "First Table."

But the Tractarian leaven was working . . . a most wonderful episode was the story of the heroic deeds of the little band of Priests at St. Saviour’s, Leeds, during the cholera visitation of 1849-1850. . . . Sisterhoods were just making their first trial and (she remembers) hearing a good deal about Miss Sellon and her work at Devonport.

She describes a Churchman whose name is now forgotten, Mr. Rowland Egerton Warburton, of Arley, Cheshire—a kinsman. He was called "The Squire."

He had become Warden of Sackville College.

What [she says] I remember so specially about Dr. Neale is the sort of energetic way in which he threw himself into all the active work of the Community. . . . If it was a fine, bright half-holiday, and he thought it would do (his) orphans good to take them for a ramble into some distant wood, or to see a quaint church in some outlying village, he organized a party, and escorted two Sisters and the older girls to view whatever might be the object of interest, and while pointing out all the beauties of a wooded glade, where the crisp young bronzy oaks stood knee-deep in blue-bells, or some eminence which had been a Roman camp, or some soft gray distance from which rose the tower of some church, he intermingled with these, anecdotes of his travels in Dalmatia, Spain, and a hundred and one interesting places, full of stories of the Saints . . . The winter of 1860-1861 was a bitterly cold one, and there was much distress among the poor cottagers. He organized the Soup Kitchen . . . if a Sister was nursing in some lonely, out-of-the-way hamlet, he would always find time to go and see her, at least once during the period of her nursing. . . . Though so very particular about the neatness of the orphans’ dress, he never seemed to notice what he wore himself. His usual costume was a cassock, and white bands such as John Wesley’s portraits have, and out of doors he invariably wore a college cap. But he was perfectly unconscious of drops of wax from the candle being on his cassock, or of frayed and worn edges, and equally unconscious of it when a new one was provided for him. His own study was a marvellous place, literally lined with books—great folios, unsightly duodecimos, parchment bound, leather bound, every size, every variety, every age, every language—treating chiefly of Ecclesiastical History, Ecclesiology and Hagiography, thronged the shelves from floor to ceiling. And these were not enough; cross shelves filled up the middle of the room, packed and crowded with books, so that there was barely space to squeeze round from the door to the little fireplace in the corner, over which hung strange and valuable ikons, brought from Russia and Greece.

Such was the man whom they stoned, because he was an Anglo-Catholic!

After the solitude Soho, sickening, sinful, sottish Soho, where she was sent to assist at St. Mary’s in Charing Cross Road, which they are seeking to demolish now. Her memories of her early days there are very touching, especially so to me when she writes of the kind of children I met so often in the Somers Town of long ago.

Dear visions of the past! How their faces rise up from the cloudy memories of bygone years, and one wonders where they now are, and what they are doing! . . . How well I remember Farden’s first appearance in our school—a tallish, red-faced, black-haired Irish boy, out of the very Irish court opposite. His real name was Johnnie Grady, but he was introduced to me by his nom de guerre of Farden-a-dozen, "'Cos, Sister, his mother, she sells apples on a stall on the Dials, and Farden, he gets all the rotten ones and sells them a farden (farthing) a dozen to the kids!" Farden never had very much to say for himself in our presence, but I believe he was the hero who led the others on to war in every raid on sweet stuff, and old women’s apple stalls, and in every street fight. He disappeared entirely from the scenes after a year of our acquaintance, most likely being provided with a residence at Government expense. Certainly his lean prehensile fingers looked as if they must close on every article that came within his reach. He was one of the costermonger race. Watkin came from a family who got their living by the hod and shovel. Square built, rough and determined, he was the massive supporter of the lithe and wily Farden in all their forays. He, too, after a little while, was lost sight of in the ever-shifting, surging crowd of humanity which ebbed and flowed in Soho and S. Giles.

Billy Day, a fair-haired, apple-cheeked lad, was a sort of aristocrat, as his father owned a coal shed and a cart and pony, and Billy asserted his dignity in all the glories of a coal-smudged face, with the same conscious pride as an Indian brave puts on his war-paint. Mr. Billy was altogether rather too grand a man for us to have much to do with, still he condescended from time to time to give a grimy look into the schoolroom, and to join, in a sort of d³gag³ way, in any lark which seemed particularly interesting—never forgetting he was the son and heir of W. Day, coal dealer.

Fatty! well, I know nothing more of him than that he was Fatty, the bosom friend and sworn companion of Farden. I never knew what his name was, or where he came from. He resembled a calf’s head in his face—fat, white and small-eyed: his clothes were more burst out than those of others, because they had the daily friction, not only of joints, but of solid fat. .

And Lygo, my poor, dear Lygo! Oh, what a big cowardly lout you were! Your comrades called you Bullocky, on account of your enormous head, thatched with shock manes of hair, and your large, grave, round eyes, resembling those of an ox. And yet you, the prince of louts, had the sweetest, prettiest little fairy of a sister that ever danced at the Olympic Theatre! You, I believe, got on during pantomime season as some sort of an animal, I never exactly ascertained what. Do we not remember you lumbering into the schoolroom one afternoon, with your knuckles to your eyes, sobbing and roaring, "Farden's hit me!" and little Punch from Newport Market, who reached nearly to your elbow, running up and saying, "Never mind, Bullocky, I’ll lick him for you after school." I believe Punch made some excuse for both his friend’s cowardice and his big head by saying, "Bullocky had tried to smoke some cigars one day, and all the smoke got into his head and had never come out again."

An organ-blower being wanted for the church, Lygo was promoted to that office, for which he was to receive two shillings a month. Should pressing and important business prevent his being at his post—such as helping his father occasionally, who was a scene-shifter at the Olympic Theatre, or, I fear, sometimes business on his own account in the rearguard of the forces of Messrs. Farden & Co., on a foraging expedition in Newport Market—he was to pay another boy a penny a right to take his place. A sharp little fellow, called Brads, from the Prince’s Row Mission, was usually his substitute, but after several wrangles over the pence which Brads claimed and Lygo was unwilling to hand over, they came to a regular dispute, which the boys decided was to be settled by single combat, after dark, in the lonely purlieus of Soho Square. Brads, yearning for revenge and pennies, could not control his impatience till the settled night, but pursued Lygo after church, and, amidst an admiring circle of choirboys, attacked Lygo (who was twice his size) in the street. Lygo, roaring and howling, fled, pursued by the wasp-like Brads, and never rested till he was safe in his mother’s room up three pair of stairs. His organ-blowing days were, however, brought to a premature end by his bringing a pocket full of hot jam tarts to church one Sunday night, intending them for refreshment during the sermon, and upon the organist expostulating and confiscating these dainties, he flung himself on the floor and kicked everyone who came near him.

At Easter there was a terrible visitation of small-pox in Soho and S. Giles. A number of the children were laid up, and the school had to be closed in consequence. Some of our workers in the home also caught it, and had to be nursed until they could be moved into the country. I had gone away for a few days’ rest and change, returning one evening late in April. Doubly dingy did dear Soho look after the blue skies and pink and white apple and pear blossoms, and banks of primroses under the budding hedgerows that divided the newly ploughed fields, where the rooks stalked in solemn procession along the freshly turned furrows, from the woody coverts where the rabbits scudded over the tender young grass. There in the country everything was bright and sunshiny, and spoke of renewed life and spring; but, as I turned out of the bustle of Oxford Street, down the narrow, dusky windings of Crown Street, all seemed black and hushed, to speak of death rather than life, of decay sooner than of spring.

The dear old classroom had been whitewashed, and the haunted old house cleaned and renovated, and, after a discussion of plans for work, etc., we retired for the night. Ring, ring, came the bell-sharp, repeated rings, as of somebody who wanted something, and not one of the runaway tinkies given by some of the louts who shacked about the public-house opposite. And we found it was a poor woman, in very great and terrible distress. She lived in Rose Street: her husband and children had, and were still having, the small-pox, and a child of three was lying dead. By some negligence on her part, the body had not been removed, as it should have been, to S. Anne’s Mortuary, and now the husband declared he would cut his throat unless it were taken away, as the child had been dead five days.

"There is nothing for it but for us to go," said Sister Mary. "You"—to the woman—"go home, and we will both be round directly." Provided with a roll of wax taper and a box of lucifers, we turned out into the street; a still, dark night, for the Easter moon was in its last quarter, and the white stars scintillated in the deep blue sky in cold contrast to the yellow, flaring gas lamps down below. The entrance to the court opposite, usually blocked up by a crowd of ragged, villainous-looking young thieves, was empty; they were all outside the theatres, picking pockets. The public-house across the street was within a quarter of an hour of closing, and the din of voices rose and swelled most audibly, mingled with here and there a piercing shriek or laugh from some poor wretched girl. Outside, on the kerb, a faded-looking woman, thin, haggard, wrapped in a ragged shawl, was singing plaintive songs in a rich contralto voice, for which she might get a few pence, and now and then, when the publican was in a good temper, he sent her out a little something by the potman.

When we turned into Rose Street, all was quiet, and inside the open doorway of No. — everything was pitch dark. We lit our coil of wax and stumbled up the shallow, old-fashioned stairs to the top-floor, from whence proceeded a sickening odour of chloride of lime. Inside the room everything was splashed with and steeped in it. A bit of candle burned feebly in a tin candlestick, showing a tub, half filled with a heap of clothes in chloride of lime; a bed, a mere heap of rags, in one corner of the floor, containing two children, thick out with small-pox; in the other corner a bedstead, on which lay the little dead child. Crouching over the fire, wrapped in a shawl, was a gaunt-looking man, his face also seamed and scarred with small-pox, and his bleared eyes glancing every now and then with a half-fierce, half-frightened look at the form on the bed. The wife was moving up and down, wringing her hands and crying wildly.

After ten minutes waiting, with the children wailing on the floor, the man shuddering and insisting that he would destroy himself unless the body went out, we heard the wife’s steps returning, followed by the heavy, lumbering tread of a man, and she re-entered the room, together with a rough, brick-laying sort of individual, reeling and lurching in, with a pipe in his mouth and his hat all aslant on his head. After much drunken protestation, he was induced to accompany us in quest of the coffin.

sad and sick of heart, I journeyed up to London. Arrived in Ash Grove, and preparing to ring the bell of St. Mary’s Priory, I was beckoned by Sister Louisa, who appeared at a door opposite, and I found that through Father Mackonochie’s exertions a small house had been secured as a refuge for the Sisters, the Priory itself being the property of the seceders. . . . Left by our comrades in arms, deserted by her, who, as our leader, not only here, but in the past years in Soho, judge how we felt!

Continue it did, but they had to move. To remain opposite the deserters was too painful and confusing. Another house was found and a new chapter begun, in abject poverty, as the seceders had all the money. Katharine, now "Mother Kate," says: ". . . we struggled on through our first year, and young, and full of hope, we rather enjoyed the struggle. . . . Oh, the pleasure of finding a farthing in an old coat when we had not a penny in the house. . . ."

The Sisters slept in one room, their beds touching each other, their only dressing room the shelter of a cupboard door; whilst she slept on a table. At times their only food was cabbage, gained by selling old bottles at the rag and bone shop.

Here I must leave the dauntless Mother, whose devotion during the small-pox epidemics is a golden page of Anglican history. "The rest of her life was less a series of events than a development of its inner spirit and its outward activities." She died on the Feast of St. Luke, October 18, 1923. But more must be said of Mackonochie.

Broken by litigation, driven from St. Alban’s, he took a holiday with the Bishop of Argyll. One day a telegram arrived. It ran: "Our dear Brother Mackonochie has been taken to his rest." Mother Kate writes:

The surroundings of his last moments are grand beyond measure. He who had lived his whole life, spending and being spent in the service of God and His Church amidst the throng and battle of mankind, in the din of the crowded city, gave up his spirit on the lonely mountain side, surrounded by the everlasting hills, alone with Him Whom he had loved and served all the days of his life.

He had set out on a long walk on the morning of December 15, 1887, accompanied by the Bishop’s dogs. He was overtaken by a violent storm, and in the darkness could not fight against the howling wind, and lay down in the snow.

The night came, and he never returned, and the Bishop and several parties of gillies and shepherds sought for two nights and two days unsuccessfully; and on the Saturday evening, despairing and sick of heart, were about to abandon the search as unsuccessful, when one of the men, glancing up the hill-side, saw the silhouette of the deer-hound sitting bolt upright against the snowy background, and immediately sent to tell the Bishop, who was with another party of searchers. When he arrived, he found the whole band of keepers and shepherds drawn in a semi-circle in a snowy hollow, kept at bay by the two dogs, who refused to let a creature approach, till they caught sight of their master, when they sprang forward with a cry of joy. . . . There, in a snow wreath lay the weary body of Christ’s faithful soldier and servant, his head pillowed on his hands, and a pall of spotless snow veiling the features. . . . As the Bishop knelt to detach the head from the snow wreath in which it lay, the dark clouds broke behind the mountains of Glencoe, and the whole west was flooded with a glorious golden light.

One would hesitate, in charity, to say that the Church Association was responsible for Mackonochie’s death, but I believe that it broke him mentally and physically. Of him it may be said, and it suffices:

We were weary, and are
Fearful, and are in our march
Fain to drop down and die.
Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckonedst the trembler, and still
Gavest the weary thy hand!
If in the paths of this world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing! To us thou wert still
Cheerful and helpful and firm.
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And at the end of the day,
O faithful Shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.

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