James Hannington, first bishop of eastern equatorial Africa : a history of his life and work, 1847-1885 / by E.C. Dawson

Front matter

i

V

Mp S. <i/

Chapter I. Parentage And Childhood*

(1847—60.)

“ I judge him of a rectified spirit.”

Ben Jonson.

11 Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand ;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.”

In Memoriam .

There were Hanningtons in England in very early times. Domesday Book records their existence. Whether my dear old friend, whose too brief life I am now trying to set forth, was directly connected with any of these is likely to remain for ever uncertain. Nor does it greatly signify to know. The chief interest of pedigrees to the wise is, surely, to trace by their help the transmission of certain individual characteristics and the development of them. If, therefore, we do not possess a careful record of the lives and characters of a manJs ancestors, we can easily dispense with their mere names. Those only are of any real value to us whose persons and deeds, manners and words, throw some light upon the life of the man in whom we are interested, and offer some clue to its unravelment.

The first among the ancestors of James Hannington who steps with any definable form out of the shadows is his great-grandfather. We find the following reference to him

J in his Journal : — cc About the middle of the eighteenth century my great-grandfather and two brothers sailed in a boat from Dover and came into Shoreham River to seek their fortunes ; in those days, doubtless, a very great under* taking. Here my great-grand father married a lady of high family. She was the last of the ancient stock of the De Meophams, Saxon nobles in the year 970 a.d., the best known to posterity of v/hom was Simon De Meopham, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, whose tomb may be seen in Canterbury Cathedral.”

Of this great-grandfather we wish that more had been recorded, since he seems to have possessed at least one marked characteristic in common with his great-grandson. The diary continues u Almost all that I have heard of him is that he was a man of superhuman strength. On one occasion, passing by where a cart v/as stuck fast in the mud, and six men unable to move it, he bade them stand clear, and lifted it out by himself.” Like his descendant James, who was always eagerly to the fore in any accident, or upon any occasion when active assistance was required, he evidently could not resist the impulse to step in and bear a hand.

After his death, which took place early, the greatgrandmother was left with two sons, Charles and Smith Hannington. The elder of these is described as u a man of brilliant talents and inventive genius, but who constantly failed in all his undertakings.” In fact, his careless extravagance drained his mother’s resources, and made it necessary that his younger brother should be apprenticed to a trade in Brighton.

This younger brother, the grandfather of James, was of different metal : steady, keen and industrious to a wonderful degree. His grandson writes of him : u He toiled in a most marvellous manner.” In after days the impression left by the old man upon the younger generation, who were often urged to take example by him and to walk in his steps, was that of u a shrewd man of business, who never wanted a holiday, and never thought that other people wanted one. Thoroughly liberal, upright and religious ; no man more so ; a firm and strict master, greatly loved, but also greatly

Grandfather and Grandson .

feared.” In which description in spite of the unlikeness, we cannot but recognize the texture of the stock from which the subject of this biography was hewn. One trait very remarkably characterized both grandfather and grandson, — a devoted attachment to the mother. This mother-love was a controlling influence of great power in the life of James. He can never write of his mother but his pen frames some new term of endearment. She is to him a the gentlest mother, the sweetest, dearest mother that ever lived. ” If he is in any trouble, u her darling hand ” has always power to soothe him.

And it is told of the grandfather that, when quite a young man, he had a highly advantageous offer of partnership from the owner of a large business in the North of England, but he refused it, tempting as it was, because his mother could not accompany him, and he would not leave her alone.

Mr. Smith Hannington married a lady of renowned beauty, of which traces remained even in James’s time, and by her had five children, the eldest of whom, the father of James, settled in Brighton and carried on the business which had been there commenced. For some time he continued to reside in Brighton, in accordance with the wise old adage too often neglected in these days, u Prepare thy work without, and aftenvards build thine house.*” * There seven children were born, but in the year 1847, just before the birth of James, ability and attention to business having produced their usual result, Mr. Charles Smith Hannington purchased the property of St. George’s, Hurstpierpoint, which henceforth became the home of the family.

James Hannington writes: u I was born on the third of September, 1847. The only peculiar circumstance connected with my birth was the fact that my father was in Paris at the time. Can this have anything to do with my passionate love of travelling ? Because none of my brothers seem thus affected.”

Hurst, as the inhabitants call it for brevity’s sake, is a pretty little village in the south of Sussex. On the side next

# Prov. xxiv. 27.

to Brighton, from which it is distant some eight miles, the horizon is bounded by the wavy line of the high downs. Beyond these, hidden behind their windmill-crowned ramparts, is the sea. On the other side lies a wide stretch of fair view — such a view as is peculiar to the south of England. Pretty undulating country, well wooded, here and there the warm red of old brick farm-steadings catching the level rays of the setting sun, and glowing into crimson on tall chimney-stalk and tiled roof ridge ; everywhere free flowing curves topped with foliage, melting, in the far distance, into the dim uncertainty of broken tree-line.

The mansion of St. George^s is pleasantly situated near the entrance to the village. It stands within its own large garden and grounds. At the back a glass door opens upon a flight of wide steps descending to the lawn. All around are shrubberies full of deep nooks, wherein children may hide and play. Not far off are two lakelets, among the spreading weeds of which, and between the broad lily leaves, myriads of mysterious creatures skim and dart, and send up bubbles to the surface from strange and unknown depths. Then, outside the iron railings which bound the lawn, are the fields spangled with golden buttercups, and beyond all stretches the illimitable country that opens out upon the world. A very child’s paradise !

Here, there, and everywhere, through this pleasance, went little baby James, with the keenest of inquiring eyes : of that we maybe sure. There was no nook in the grounds, from the holly bush where the blackbird had swung that cunning nest of hers with the four mottled eggs in it, to the bank where the humble bee burrled out from some hole behind the broad dock leaves, into which his paddling, sturdy little feet had not taken him. Before long there was no secret of moss or flower or hidden chrysalis, in garden or shrubbery, that had not been probed by his busy, eager fingers. He was a born naturalist. One of the earliest sayings of his, treasured up and recorded by his father, is, a I have just seen a big bird, which could only be a thrush or an eagle ! ”

To the end of his life he could not resist turning aside to see some strange insect or to note some new plant, or

JE t. i— 13.] A Young Naturalist .

examine some interesting geological specimen. Of this faculty for observation and interest in that book of Nature, the pages of which are opened wide-spread before him who has eyes to see, we shall find many traces in his letters and journals. u Beetles ” and u mosses ” always bulked largely in his estimate of the desirability of any spot in which to spend a holiday.

His very youthful peccadilloes took their form from this early developed love of “ specimens.” Other boys might steal sugar or jam when the cupboard was by chance left unlocked ; his baby hands itched for the wondrous things behind the glass doors of the library museum. He says, “No portfolio or cabinet was safe from my nasty httle fingers.” Once it was a rare Babylonian seal, at another time a trayful of selected minerals, which were abstracted, and with much glee hidden away among the miscellaneous articles which formed his peculiar treasure.

This tendency to observe and “collect” was both inherited from and encouraged by that “ sweetest, dearest mother,” who made a companion of her wayward, erratic little son, and both fostered and directed his natural love of science in many branches. As he grew older, the delight of James was to pore over the treasures of his ever-increasing cabinets with his mother, and to arrange and classify the specimens and relics which they had collected, during their travels, from land and sea.

Taking his education, however, as a whole, we cannot feel satisfied that the best plan was adopted in the upbringing of the child. There seems to have been much liberty, checked by an occasional vigorous application of the birch rod, but little systematic teaching or sustained and orderly training. Now, liberty tempered by the birch rod can never be a very safe system under which to bring up any lad, especially a headstrong and passionate boy with a marked individuality like that of our little James. We are inclined to think that a little less of both in the days of his childhood would have saved him the necessity for more than one lesson hard to be learnt in the days of his manhood.

He himself blames the old-fashioned severity with which any fault, when brought home to him, was punished. u I am not quite certain, ?? he says, u that it did not destroy my moral courage. I have none, and I think that it was from fear that I lost it. To this very day I am afraid out of my wits to ask my father for the simplest thing ; and yet I know that there is no likelihood of his refusing me/’ He also attributes a certain reserve of character and unwillingness to unfold himself to the inspection of others, to the same cause. With regard to this self-criticism we may say that he perhaps may have been reserved to this extent, that he never found it easy, either by letter or in conversation, to convey to another what he felt most deeply. He was not given to unburdening himself, except to his most chosen intimates, who were the privileged recipients of his confidences. This may have been natural, or it may have been the result of his peculiar training. We are inclined to think that both may be held, in a measure, responsible for it. Lacking in moral courage I do not think he was — certainly not to any conspicuous extent : rather the reverse. It may have been that moral courage was not natural to him. In that case there belongs to him the greater honour of acquiring it.

The man who is naturally gifted with physical courage has no fear of exposing his body to rude assaults. And perhaps we may define moral courage as a certain fearlessness in exposing the inner self to possible laceration or rebuff. Insensibility to fear is popularly accounted bravery ; but he, surely, is no less brave, rather more so, who, though he vibrates through all his nervous system, and shrinks from exposure to pain or violence, yet schools himself to encounter them without flinching. And as the courage of that general, who, preparing to lead his men into the hottest forefront of the battle, thus addressed his trembling knees: uAh! you would quake worse if you only knew where I am going just now to take you/’ — is justly considered to have been of a higher order than the stolid insensibility which carried others calmly enough into the jaws of death — so, he who resolutely masters his moral cowardice, and faces his duty manfully, must be considered the most truly morally brave.

£t. i— 13.] Moral Courage. 7

[f it be true, then, that Janies Hannington, who possessed the attribute of physical courage in so marked a degree, was naturally deficient in that moral courage which is the more important of the two, we can only say that to him belongs the credit of overcoming his natural weakness in a very marvellous manner. To those who observed him closely, there were not wanting signs that it was an effort to him to expose himself— that is, his sensitive, inner self— speaking from the heart to the heart, as must be done when a man wishes to influence another souk But with whatever severity he may have judged himself, to his friends he always appeared as a man who might be relied upon to do his duty unflinchingly; to speak out what was in his mind, and to abide by the issue. He would sometimes class himself with such characters as Mr. Feeble-Mind, or Mr. Ready-to-Halt ; but to us he appeared rather Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, with his sword ever ready to his hand.

The mixed and broken nature of his early education had, at least, this advantage. It set him free to think for himself, and possessing as he did unusual powers of observation, and naturally disposed to make use of them, he gained, while still a lad, a sturdy independence of character, and a knowledge of men and things, quite beyond those of his own age.

The first thirteen years of his life, then, were spent at home, and in travelling and yachting with his parents.

Many stories are told of his fearless and excitable nature. He was always, with the best intentions, in some mischief. Always on the verge of a serious accident; almost always escaping without much harm done, since the perfectly fearless rarely suffer by their own rashness. It is recorded how, at the age of seven, he clambered unnoticed up the mast of his father’s yacht, and was at last discovered high aloft, suspended on some projection by the seat of his trousers. And many other such adventures. He must have kept his mother constantly upon the tiptoe of nervous expectation as to what would happen next.

He was eleven years of age when he was permitted to make his first yachting trip alone with his elder brother.

Samuel. He says : cc My father hired for us a small cutter, of about thirty-two tons. A very slow old tub she was, and, therefore, named the 4 Antelope/ Sam was at this time between sixteen and seventeen years old, but very manly for his age. Everything on board was of the roughest description. We used to wait upon ourselves, make our own beds, and do all that sort of thing. Sea pies and plum duff were our standing dishes. All this mattered little to us \ we were as happy and contented as the days were long. The first day, being slightly qualmish, I lay on the deck in the sun, and the next morning was in the most miserable plight, my whole face one mass of blisters, piteous to behold.” So, starting from Brighton, they went round the Isle of Wight, past Portland, and as far as the Land’s End ; visiting Torquay, Dartmouth, Penzance, St. Michael’s Mount, and almost every place of interest accessible to them. The brothers also made an excursion to the famous Loggan Rock, hard by the Landes End ; and James tells the story of that unfortunate practical joker who paid so dearly for his folly — that Lieutenant of a Revenue Cutter, who landed a party to throw the great rocking-stone over the cliff, “ to make a grand splash.” He only succeeded in moving the mass a few inches, but it rocked no more. The owner of an inn, to which the balanced stone attracted visitors, sued the luckless lieutenant for damages, and he was condemned to replace the stone in its original position. This he did with partial success, but only by special machinery, and at such cost that “he was reduced to beggary.” James draws a suitable moral from this, and concludes : cc Alas ! I am scarcely in a position to preach ; I have been so fond of playing practical jokes myself.” He continues : cc We returned in our own time to the Isle of Wight. My father came down to Portsmouth and settled with Redman (the captain and owner). That very night I was awaked by a great disturbance on deck, a crash of bottles, and a sound as of fumbling in our wine locker. Ah ! I always told Sam, thought I, that our wine went too fast; there they are in the act. Urchin as I was, I don’t think that, in those days, I knew fear. I struck a light,

First Yachting Trip .

never went to see whether Sam was awake, but marched into the forecastle and looked at the men. They were both sound asleep, and a stranger lying on the floor asleep too. I then slipped up the forecastle ladder, and should have sallied right up to the offending parties, had not Sam waked and seen me, and called me back, fearing I might get hurt. I had, however, time to see old Redman fearfully tipsy ; a woman with him on deck, and a man in a boat holding on by the side. As I did not dare disobey Sam, I crept back into bed, and we heard the woman say, c I will have the silver spoon, uncle Joe ; give us the silver spoon.3 Here the boatman interposed, saying it was past three o^clock, and he would wait no longer ; so the female had to go without the spoon, and Redman stumbled down to his bin, amid straw and broken bottles. Next morning, daring young imp, I called him out of his berth before I was dressed. However, he did not appear until about one o’clock, and tried to look as if nothing had happened. Sam did not quite know how to introduce the subject ; we were both very young, and did not like to rebuke such an elderly sinner. At last I went up to him with all the assurance of eleven years, and asked him before everybody why his niece wanted our silver spoon. He tried to look surprised, and said, c I don’t understand you, sir ! ’ But Sam now found his opportunity, and opened up the subject till Redman was, I remember, ready to drop on his knees that nothing more might be said. We forgave him. We had enjoyed the cruise beyond measure, and the little adventure of 4 Uncle Joe ’ only added spice to it.”

The result of this trip was that young James quite made up his mind to u go to sea.” This might, perhaps, have been his lot, but the death at sea of an elder brother had determined his parents not to allow another son to enter the navy. So the country lost a daring seaman, but she has gained thereby the priceless legacy of the memory of a Christian martyr.

Another adventure we must chronicle, not merely as illustrating the courage of the boy, but as explaining a conspicuous physical defect— the absence of the thumb upon his left hand.

He was bent upon taking a wasp’s nest, and had just been initiated into the mystery of making damp gunpowder squibs, or u blue devils.” Full of his new acquirement, he sought out Joe, the keeper's son, and together they got possession of a broken powder-flask. “ In a few minutes,” he says, “ blue devils were in a state of readiness, but we must needs, before starting, try one with touch-paper. The result was not so satisfactory as we had expected, and Joe Simmons says I tried to pour a little powder on the top of it. The spring of the flask was broken, and in an instant a terrific explosion took place. The flask was blown to atoms, and I was to be seen skipping about, shaking my hand as if twenty wasps were settling on it. Simmons senior rushed up at the report, and binding up my hand in his handkerchief, led me off to the house, about a quarter of a mile distant, my hand all the while streaming with, blood, so as to leave a long red streak in the road. When I reached the garden I was so faint that Miles, the gardener, took me up and carried me. The first person I met was my mother. She at once saw that something was wrong, and, in spite of my saying that I had only cut my finger a little, she sent off for the doctor. I was soon under chloroform, and my thumb was amputated. It was quite shattered, and only hanging by the skin. I was very prostrate from the great loss of blood, but, through the mercy of God, I soon got well again. 1 never suffered with the lost thumb, I may say, at all. I used to feel the cold in it; but that also has passed away, although even now I cannot bear a blow upon it without considerable pain. It is a great wonder that I was not taken off by tetanus ! ”

About a year after this, in the summer of i860, James went with one of his brothers and their tutor for a tour through Wales. One or two extracts from his diary are worth quoting, as instancing that keen sense of humour which was one of his striking characteristics. Upon the top of a coach, near Aberystwith, they encountered a certain Unitarian. At him the tutor, a young man reading for orders, straightway launched himself. The conflict was an unequal one. The stranger turned out to be the a fathei

/Et. i — 13.] Sense of Humour. 1 1

of two senior wranglers, whom he had educated himself.” The fiery orthodoxy of the tutor, in spite of his newly-acquired theological battery, was no match for the dogmatism of the father of the wranglers. James writes, evidently

with gleeful remembrance of the scene : “ Mr. rushed

at him single-handed ; words waxed very warm ; the Unitarian's arms flew about like the sweeps of a windmill. We were ordered not to listen to the profane babbler, but we could not help hearing our tutor scream in a very loud voice, c But you won't let me get a word in edgeways.’ c And I don't mean toj replied his adversary, in still louder tones. I fear he had the fight pretty much his own way, for our tutor said that he was a nasty, rude man, and forbade us to speak to him again.” Do we not see them ? That raw young man, with his thin veneering of theological lore, and that hot-blooded Welsh mathematician, butting against each other in direst conflict ?

Again, how graphically he tells the story of that abominable old Welshwoman, “an ancient dame, rheumatic and lame,” who u was got on top of the coach by means of a ladder and ropes, two or three men pushing and pulling with all their might” ! The driver, an ex-colonel in the army, rated at the old dame, and u vowed he would not stop the coach for such a time. However, they at last got her up, and she sat coughing and groaning. We soon began to speculate about her descent, and it became a matter of conjecture as to how she was to be got down. Two or three hours afterwards we arrived at Harlech, and the horses were changed. While this was being done the colonel and other passengers darted in to get some refreshment. Old mother was cruelly left on the box to take care of herself. Thinking, of course, that she was safely housed, the money for her fare had not been taken. Not two minutes elapsed — in fact, the colonel only gave himself time to swallow a hasty glass of beer, when he returned to look at his new team. Lo ! that ancient dame had jumped down, baskets, bundles, and all, and had given him the slip, if he cursed her in his heart because she took such a long time to get up, he cursed her ten times more because she took such a short time to get down ! It was the joke of the day — even the colonel could not help laughing, although he had lost his money.”

Poor little James had now reached the age when children begin to be uncomfortably conscious of their own personal appearance and deficiencies. Though he was in later life singularly free from susceptibility of this kind, and never seemed to wince beneath any most pointed personalities that might be thrust at him by maliciouslyminded friends, there is a touch of boyish pain in the following record. An overflow of third-class passengers had filled their compartment with a number of roysterers, who cursed and swore forth profane vulgarities all the way home. “ I perfectly well recollect,” he writes, cc that one of these cursers, much to my annoyance, noticed that I had lost my thumb, and I was very impressed, as he was the first stranger” (brutal fellow !) “ that had remarked it to me.”

F”

Chapter II. Schooldays

“ My bonnie laddie’s young, but he ’s growin’ yet.”

Old Scotch Ballad .

Very shortly after the Welsh tour referred to in the last chapter, the tutor left to take a curacy. What was to be done with the boys ? James was now thirteen, and not very easy for a tutor to manage. Good-natured and warm-hearted, but withal quick tempered, and an inveterate tease : capable of great industry when the subject — as that of natural history — interested him ; but otherwise seemingly incorrigibly idle, and utterly averse to apply himself to the dull routine of the classical mill : it was evident to his parents that he and his brother Joseph ought to go to school. It was only, however, after long thought and some demur that it was finally decided that they should enter the Temple School at Brighton.

u Alas ! 55 he writes, “ it was only a private school, and we were allowed to go home every Saturday to stop till Monday morning.”

The home-bred boy was at first, naturally enough, very unhappy. The memory of the day when he was left, pale, nervous, and shivering, in the schoolroom, among his new companions, always clung to him. Do not most of us recall such a moment ? The kindly manner of the head-master, however, made things easier for both the brothers, and they soon fell into their places.

Hannington criticizes with some severity the private tutor and private school system, with frequent visits home, under which, by a mistaken kindness, he had been brought up. He writes in his journal, u I knew absolutely nothing, the result of private tutorage, and I was put into the fourth class, which was bottom but one.” Again, speaking of the time when he left school, he adds : cc I only remained at school until I was fifteen and a half, and then left for business, with as bad an education as possible ; I may say as bad as my father’s was good. I was no more fit to leave school than to fly, and yet I was then in the first class. So much for private tutors and private schools. I believe that both systems are equally pernicious.” All of which I transcribe without either endorsing the opinion or otherwise, except so far as to remind the reader that what is one boy’s poison may be another boy’s food. As regards a boy of Hannington’s type, it can scarcely be doubted that the system he condemns was open to serious objections. As he says of himself : u I was naturally idle, and would not learn of myself, and I was unfortunate enough always to be sent to places where I was not driven to learn. Would that I had been driven ! ” In the later years of his short life, his industry and application were unwearied and immense. No one could accuse him of trifling with his time, or of the smallest degree of self-indulgence. He was scrupulously painstaking in the execution of any work which he undertook, and his undertakings he meted out to himself with no scant hand. But no one can doubt that his university course, upon which so much of a man’s future depends, would have been quite other than it was, perhaps even a brilliant one, had he possessed the advantage of a more thorough and systematic early training.

Hannington had plenty of intelligence ; was as sharp as a needle ; quick to learn what he chose to learn ; and what he once learned he always retained. Volatile and excitable as he was, he could be serious enough when the occasion seemed to demand it, and in the midst of all his extravagances a certain solid good sense generally kept him within bounds, so that he never committed any act which could cause himself or others serious regret. He soon became a prime favourite at school, both with the masters and boys. That the former should have been the case is more strange than the latter. He soon proved himself to be a confirmed jEt. I3 — 15.] School Fights. 15