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Charles Fuge Lowder
Assistant Curate of Street 1843-1844
Afterwards Vicar of St. Peter's, London Docks
He founded the Society of the Holy Cross
In some churches he is celebrated as a saint on 9th September.
First, two summaries from encyclopedias:
1. Charles Fuge Lowder (1820-1880).
Charles Lowder was one of the earliest and greatest of that line of Anglo-Catholic priests who brought incense and hope to the east end of London. An Oxford graduate, Lowder was on the staff at St Barnabas, Pimlico in 1851 during the period of anti-ritual protests; then, in 1856 he went as a curate to St George's in the East in order to join the St George's Mission in Wapping.
The mission, the first in the London slums, was a great success, and soon Lowder, now joined by Mackonochie, was in charge of a hired Danish church, an iron chapel, schools for 400 children, and a sisterhood. But in 1859 the church and its mission became the object of hooligan attacks. The conflict was brutal (both priests were physically assaulted) and complicated; at one point the bishop closed the church, and at another the police refused to protect men they regarded as law-breaking priests - and as in Pimlico a cohort of gentlemen defenders was pressed into service: this became the English Church Union.
The struggle had lasted for over a year when the rector was forced to resign. Father Lowder (who was a founder of the
Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament) battled on, raising the funds by 1862 to build St Peter's, London Docks, of which he became vicar. His work during the cholera outbreak eventually made his position secure, and by the time he died in 1880 he had become a heroic figure, whose funeral was attended by some three thousand people.
Charles Plouviez
2. LOWDER, CHARLES FUGE: London mission preacher; b. at Bath June 22, 1820; d. at Zell-amSee (40 m. e.s.w. of Salzburg), Austria, Sept. 9, 1880. He studied at King's College School, London, and at Exeter College, Oxford (B.A., 1843; M.A., 1845), and took orders in 1843. He was curate at Walton, near Glastonbury, 1843-44, chaplain of the Axbridge workhouse 1844-45, curate of Tetbury, Gloucestershire, 1845--51, then curate at St. Barnabas' Church, Pimlico, 1851-58. In 1856 he entered upon his life-work as head of the mission at St. George's-in-the-East. The scene of his labors was in East London, among the lowest classes. Through his efforts was erected St. Peter's Church, London Docks, which was consecrated in 1866. Lowder became vicar of the new church and remained in this charge till his death. He held Highchurch views, was a strict ritualist, and resembled a Roman Catholic priest in his celibacy and his general mode of life. He published, besides some pamphlets, Ten Years in St. George's Mission (London, 1867); and Twenty-one Years in St. George's Mission (1877). BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charles Lowder, a Biography, London, 1882; DNB, xxidv. 187.
Now the first of two longer pieces:
Project Canterbury
CHARLES LOWDER
"These are spots in your feasts of charity."-Jude v. 12.
The year is 1840. The scene is St. Mary's, Oxford, and it is a quarter to five on a Sunday afternoon in term time. The church is packed with people, among them hundreds of undergraduates.
The vicar of St. Mary's is standing in the pulpit wearing his black gown, and he had just announced this text from St. Jude, in those low, silvery tones which no hearer ever forgot: "These are spots in your feasts of charity." Mr. Newman, in whose mind the arguments of Tract XC is at this time taking shape, has been reflecting during the past week on the dangers attending a religious movement.
Amid a breathless stillness, he unfolds his subject in a series of short paragraphs, exquisitely enunciated, with those strange pauses between them which his listeners had come to find part of his charm. "A danger of the present time," said Mr. Newman, "arises from what may be called the luxury of religion. None can rejoice more than the preacher at the increased regard to ecclesiastical architecture and music, and to the ornamenting of our churches. But it must be reflected that these require to be accompanied by personal holiness, and even the spirit of devotion may become little better than a luxurious pleasure unless we maintain a spirit of self-denial in it, and remind ourselves that even devotion must not be so much a gratification to ourselves as a sacrifice to God."
If the preacher, unconsciously drawn by some magnetic attraction, had raised his eyes from his manuscript (a thing Mr. Newman rarely did) he might have met the eager gaze of a tall, handsome, fair-haired boy with a radiant face, shining among the rest because so very few youths have radiant faces. For Mr. Newman had done a great thing with that short paragraph. He had founded St. Peter's, London Docks.
Charles Lowder, the son of a well-to-do banker of Bath, had just come up to Exeter and was enjoying Oxford enormously. He had taken up rowing, and as he had tremendous spirits, charming manners, and was extremely good-looking, he was very popular. He had always taken a keen interest in public affairs. He had been sent to school at the age of nine, and his first letter home runs this:
"My dear Mamma,
"I like Mr. Simms very well. He wears a gown. We are to learn Caesar and Greek Delectus, and to read Goldsmith's History of Rome. O'Connell is to sit in Parliament."
We are not surprised that this charming young man, whose heart and conscience Mr. Newman had awakened, flung himself with enthusiasm on the Tractarian side when Dr. Pusey's Eucharistic teaching was condemned, and he was suspended without a hearing. Charles became a keen Tractarian, and made up his mind to take orders.
While Lowder was at Oxford, his father's bank failed, and he found himself impoverished. He took this with amazing dignity, sweetness and unselfishness. The boy was through and through sterling gold. He got a second in Greats, tried for a fellowship, in which he was beaten by Coleridge (afterwards Lord Chief Justice), and was ordained to a curacy and tutorship in Somersetshire.
Here he met the second great influence in his life, his fellow-curate, Merriman, afterwards Bishop of Grahamstown. Merriman was a missionary by vocation, and he interpreted Lowder to himself. He showed Lowder that the love at his heart was really the love of souls. Lowder tried to go to the mission field, but was prevented by the fact that he had to help the broken fortunes of his family. But the missionary spirit would not rest, and it seized on the work nearest at hand. Lowder got the spiritual charge of the neighbouring workhouse, and set to work at once to teach the older paupers and to improve the schools. He was remembered in his first parish as "the kind young gentleman who used to come and see us very often, and who said the prayers in church every day all by himself."
Picture him, still the radiant boy, on a wet winter morning. He unlocks the damp, old country church,and enters the cold, musty place in the dark. He kindles a candle or two and puts on a surplice, the old square pews stretch around him into the darkness. Above the reading pew rises the tall, gaunt pulpit, which hides the little table doing duty for an altar. The curate has tolled a few strokes on the bell; no one responds. After a while, the fresh young voice breaks the hollow stillness, and the prayers are recited "to the four walls," as the neighbours said, but really to the most Holy Trinity, and with the angels, the archangels, and the whole company of Heaven. Out of that acorn grew St. Peter's, London Docks.
Then came five years with his family at Tetbury, on the Cotswolds, five years of hard work under the limitations of those days. Tetbury was High Church, but I doubt whether the lowest church in London now has the sort of services Tetbury had in 1846. There were two churches, and each had two celebrations a month.
Lowder taught and taught and taught; he visited and visited and visited. What people called his beautiful, kind, noble face was seen everywhere. He was often surrounded by the children, and often carrying wild flowers. "Children and flowers," he said, "God made to make the world beautiful." He had the wonderful power with the children with is the gift of purity. He could soothe a crying baby when no one else could. When he went away the children felt that he had taken half the fun with him.
He went in 1851 and began his battle for God at St. Barnabas, Pimlico. Mr. Bennet had just been driven out of his living by the Prime Minister, the Bishop, and a Protestant mob. Mr. Liddell had been appointed to St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and he had installed Mr. Skinner as curate in charge of St. Barnabas.
The clergy of St. Barnabas and the choristers lived then in community as we do at All Saint's, Margaret Street. The order, the reverence and the music were of the best.
The Protestant riots had been going on for some time when Lowder arrived. The principal laymen had been sworn in as special constables, and they stood all through the service drawn up at the chancel screen to defend the choir. The ritual attacked was not the ritual of All Saints', Margaret Street, it was the ritual of St. Paul's Cathedral as it is now. The choir and clergy walking in two and two, the eastward position, cross and flowers on the altar, and coloured frontals for the seasons. The Bishop, to appease the mob, had ordered the cross and flowers off the altar. "I will have that cross removed if it costs me my see," he had said, with the gesture of a Christian martyr. He had stopped the office being sung in the chancel, and had ordered a reading place to be made in the nave. He had forbidden the priest to carry the chalice to the altar, and had characterized the plan of communicating the choir before the congregation as extremely ritualistic.
Nevertheless, the mob still battered on the doors, shouted through the windows, hissed in the aisles and charged the chancel gates. Lowder the junior was solid with his brethren that they must stand firm against this combination of tyrannies, but he was wholly immersed in his work among the poor in horrible slums, which then lay west of Ebury Square, and have since been cleared away.
Lowder was weak in imagination, he had no aesthetic taste or skill. His strength lay in logic and courage. To him ritual was a logical necessity, the employment of a natural law in the service of revelation. Given a human soul and a body for the instrument, the Catholic Creeds for the subject,and Almighty God for the object of faith and worship, then ritual is the only process by which Christian worship can be outwardly paid.
And then, suddenly, the third great influence entered into Lowder's life, and St. Peter's appeared on the horizon.
One day Lowder found the choirboys of St. Barnabas filling their pockets with stones and preparing to bombard a sandwichman who carried a Protestant sandwich board. "You must not hurt that unhappy man," said Charles, "it would be very wrong; it would not, however, be wrong to obscure the words he is carrying. Throw the stones away, and there is sixpence to buy rotten eggs with." Now, it was the year of the Great Exhibition, and Prince Albert had brought in the reign of plenty. Rotten eggs were very, very cheap that year, and you could get a lovely lot for sixpence. Consequently, the sandwich-board was successfully veiled in greenish yellow, and the Protestant Party complained to the Bishop. The Bishop was secretly rather amused and in private talked of Lowder's "ovation," but publicly he was very indignant and suspended Lowder for six weeks.
Lowder was deeply penitent at having given scandal. His brother said he had never seen anyone so brokenhearted. He went to France for the six weeks,and lived with a group of French clergy, and in France he came face to face with the man who fixed his career.
That man was St. Vincent de Paul, for he began to study the live and methods of St. Vincent, and St. Vincent sent him to London Docks.
At this time there had lived in the East End for fifteen years a depressed clergyman called Bryan King. He was rector of St. George's-in-the-East, a parish of 30,000, through which Ratcliff Highway ran. The parallelogram in which the church stood contained 735 houses, of which 40 were public houses and 154 houses of ill-fame. Many of these houses did a combined trade. Ratcliff Highway and its surroundings sheltered the scum of all Europe. There is no plague spot so bad as this in London to-day. Lowder and a little group of priests, all inspired by the example of St. Vincent de Paul, offered to give what help they could to Bryan King.
So one evening Lowder and a friend went down to a room in a court off Ratcliff Highway, and somebody rang a bell at the entrance of the court,and two or three of Mr. Bryan King's decent old women came, and nobody else.
A fortnight afterwards they tried another pitch in the worst alley in the neighbourhood. Here they were attacked by Irish Roman Catholics with wild fury. There were no stones handy, so the Irish smashed up a beer pitcher and pelted the priests with the pieces. The uproar went on for a week or two. Then the Irish got tired of it and stopped-but nobody came to listen. Lowder's companions began to drop off.
"Will you also go away?" said Bryan King to Lowder.
"On the contrary," said Lowder, "I shall come and stay."
They took a hideous and horrible old house left derelict in the slums, and made it the headquarters of a knot of priests, and so the mission began. Lowder prepared for it by going to the first retreat for priests held in the revival, at Dr. Pusey's house in Christ Church.
Lowder arrived on the scene in 1856. St. Peter's, London Docks, was consecrated in 1866. Lowder died in 1880. The twenty-four years were given to ceaseless labour for the salvation of souls in the worst quarter in London, and the building up of a devout Christian community of the souls thus saved. This work was helped greatly by the call to fight two terrible enemies, the attack of organized evil in 1860, under the guise of Protestantism, in the St. George's riots, and the epidemic of Asiatic cholera in 1866.
In considering Lowder's work, mark in what his power lay. He had no outstanding personal gifts, he was a poor preacher with a difficult manner; although the children liked having him better than anybody else, he did not catechise particularly well; the strain of his work made him seem cold and restrained to the people he worked with; naturally excitable, he had so schooled himself to self-restraint that his friends said that it was not until his bodily health weakened that the love within him could break through the self-denying ordinance, and shine forth at all times.
No, Lowder's power was simply the power of a human will entirely given to the salvation of souls for the glory of God; that was the power with which he applied the instrument of the Catholic Religion, and worked the miracle of London Docks.
He was marvellously tender with the sick; in illustration they sketch him ministering to the body as well as the soul of a woman dying of typhus. He was marvellously tender to the fallen: he established rescue homes for the poor girls he brought to the Sisters from the dens he found them in. A Sister describes his arrival once in the middle of the night with a girl he had saved from throwing herself into the docks. She was raving and struggling in his arms, and the Sister said that the calm love with which he looked down on her made his face shine with light.
On the Cotswolds Lowder had said that God made children to make the world beautiful. It could not be said the that world was made beautiful by the poor children of the docks. Half-naked, stunted, deformed, many half-witted, they lived in a vast brothel in which their parents, their brothers and sisters and themselves were all more or less implicated.
But they came to adore Lowder, and through love he reclaimed them, drew them into Christian schools, and gradually purified their homes and their lives. Lowder often stopped street fights, and for a long stretch of time faced infuriated mobs, but the characteristic picture of him shows him with a band of tinies about him, two or three of whom are spreading out his priest's cloak like a tent while the others struggle to get inside with shouts of laughter; or he is surrounded by a band of bigger boys and girls all listening with laughing eyes to his funny stories; or he is stroking a crew of rough lads on the river, and from all sides as they row by comes the cheery shout, "Hulloa, Father Lowder!" Such was the personality and spirit of the missioner, but these alone could not have created the community of Christians who worshipped at St. Peter's, London Docks. The missioner converted these people with the instrument he brought to bear on them, and that instrument was the Catholic Religion.
He showed them his Master, Jesus Christ. He told them to come to Jesus, but he also showed them how to come, and when. He told them that the blood of Jesus cleanseth from all sin, but he also taught them how it is applied. These people came to believe that their children were regenerate in Baptism; they came to believe that the Holy Ghost in given in Confirmation; they came to believe hat our Lord has left power to His Church to absolve; they came to believe that the Blessed Sacrament has an inner part, and that it is the Body and Blood of Christ; they came to believe that there, there on that spot of ground where sin had reigned, there had now come the Power, and had begun to reign; they transferred their allegiance, and found themselves lifted up into peace and joy.
After five years of this work began the riots at St. George's-in-the-East, in which publicans and brothel-keepers fought our Lord with the weapons of Protestantism. I will not speak of the disgraceful attitude of the Church authorities. I content myself with saying that the police refused protection to the priests as far as they could. Bryan King and his curate broke down, and Lowder and Mackonochie, who came to help him, faced the music. The mob seized the choir stalls, pelted the altar with bread and butter and orange peel, tore down the altar cross, spat on and kicked the clergy. One day they would have thrown Lowder into the docks if his friends had not made a cordon across the dock bridge, and enabled him to get to the Mission House by a back way.
Lowder said that much good came out of this. It was a grand advertisement. The lowest and vilest were made to think about religion. His reply to the riots was to buy the site on which St. Peter's stands to-day.
St. Peter's had just been consecrated when the cholera came. Of all plagues this is the most awful, far worse than bubonic plague or the Black Death. In Asiatic cholera fiends appear to have seized the victim, and to be tearing him in pieces.
In this visitation the Anglo-Catholics won their spurs. Dr. Pusey came down to help, laymen, among them Lord Halifax, came to work with Lowder and his priests. Morning after morning they met for communion in the newly-consecrated St. Peter's, and separated for the appalling labours of the day, each recognizing that the day might be his last.
When at length the cholera vanished, it left Lowder completely master of the field. Nobody wanted to attack him or his methods again.
As he was seen carrying some cholera-stricken child in his arms to the hospital, the people began to call him "Father." Thus was the title "Father" won for the secular clergy of the Anglo-Catholic movement: it is a title which they will only retain as long as they are true to this ideal.
My tale is told. After the cholera, Lowder's work lay in holding the field he had won for our Lord.
There came a night, fourteen years after, which had a significance unrecognized at the time. It was school treat day, and in the evening nineteen large vans crammed within and without with happy, cheering children came home from Epping Forest, and rolled over the dock bridge, Father Lowder in the midst with a baby on each knee.
To their complete surprise they found the whole parish en fête, banners and coloured lights decorated all the windows, cheering crowds filled the streets, and the parish band played the Father home.
Six weeks afterwards the over-strain found him out, and he died suddenly on his holiday in the Austrian Tyrol.
Once more the streets are crowded but now by silent crowds. St. Peter's stands open far into the night, and is crowded by the poor. The Masses begin at 3 a.m., hundreds receive Holy Communion. Later in the morning the people go to the confines of the parish to receive the Father's body. It is borne across the bridge which his friends had once held to save his life in the days when the police would not intervene, but now the police are there in reverence to clear a way, for the crowd is thronging round the bier, and trying to lay their loving hands upon the pall made holy by the Father's body.
So they carried his body to his church, and laid it before the altar which he had built with his life's blood.
Those who say the scene all marked one feature-at every point the crowd was fringed with little children who were crying inconsolably.
So I make my first point. To the morale, that is to say, to the inspiring and controlling spirit of a true Anglo-Catholic movement, the first essential is a thirst for souls.
The second longer piece about Lowder:
Project Canterbury
Charles Fuge Lowder
London: The Catholic Literature Association, 1933.
IN the year 1820 a young wife, shortly expecting to become a mother, prayed thus daily for her yet unborn child: 'Bless it, O God, in mind as well as in body; endue it with understanding capable of knowing thee; with a heart strongly bent to fear thee; and with all those holy and good dispositions that may make it always pleasing in thy sight. Make me a joyful mother of a hopeful child who may live to be an instrument to thy glory, and, by serving thee faithfully and doing good in its generation, may finally be received into thine everlasting kingdom.' And this touching prayer was answered in the fullest manner by the birth and life of Charles Lowder, who was destined to be the founder of the first Home Mission in the Church of England, and to exercise great and wide-reaching influence in the Catholic Revival.
The first-born of his parents, Charles and Susan Lowder, Charles first saw the light at Bath on June 22, 1820, and in the following month was baptized, receiving as his second name his mother's maiden name. His parents, we are told by one who enjoyed their friendship, were a remarkably 'beautiful' couple in that true sense of beauty which bespeaks nobility of character, sanctified by grace as well as in the ordinary sense of physical form. Mr. Lowder was partner in the Old Bath Bank, and a comparatively rich man, which enabled him to do much for the poor of the city, so that he was often and deservedly spoken of as 'the poor man's friend.' The failure of his bank some years later deprived him of wealth and worldly position in the heyday of health and vigorous usefulness; but the affliction was borne with exemplary patience and resignation to the Divine Will.
Charles, we are told, was a very sweet, bright, and courteous little fellow, and every inch a boy. His bodily strength and activity kept pace with mental growth. His sister says that he was looked upon as leader among his companions and was foremost in all sports, and she recalls how he used to march out at the head of his schoolfellows valiant and radiant of face, armed with a wooden sword to defend or attack the lion's den in the pretty village of Charlecombe, near Bath, where he lived.
When seven years old he was sent out to school, and his letters to his mother when he was only nine show the beginning of that interest in politics which became keen in his youth and early manhood. In 1835 he passed on to King's College School in London, under the head-mastership of Dr. Major, who wrote of his pupil's 'steadiness of character and fixedness of principle, based, I am convinced, upon a firmer foundation than mere human strength, which will enable him to resist successfully the temptations with which his career may be beset.'
It was not until October, 1836, when he was sixteen years old, that he was confirmed, an extraordinarily late age as we now regard it; but in those days bishops would not accept young candidates, even though, as in the case of Charles, evidence of preparedness was abundant at a much younger age.
II
At King's College he won an honourable position, standing at his final examination first in theology, second in classics and in German, and sixth in mathematics. It was during this period of his career that he had the advantage of being brought into close contact with the two distinguished men who succeeded, in turn, as principals of the college--Hugh James Rose and Dr. Lonsdale, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield.
He left King's in 1829, and before proceeding to Oxford made, in the company of his father and an old friend, his first acquaintance with the Continent, which he visited again and again with ever-increasing interest until, as it fell out, his earthly pilgrimage was brought to a close amid the mountains of the Austrian Tyrol which he knew and loved so well.
In February, 1840, Charles entered Exeter College, Oxford, having the previous year unsuccessfully competed for a scholarship at University College. No sooner had he gone into residence at Oxford than he came under the influence of the three great leaders of the Catholic Revival, which was then in its very flower and vigorous freshness--Pusey, Keble, and Newman--although their teaching was no novelty to him, but was rather the strengthening and filling in of outlines already familiar.
Before one-half of his University career was passed a severe and searching trial befell him and his family in the failure, as before mentioned, of the Old Bath Bank, in which his father was partner. Although it was caused by misplaced confidence in others, and not the slightest reflection rested on the integrity of any of the partners, the distressing fact remained that the Bank had failed, and that the means of providing for their families was gone. It was only by the generosity of a family friend that Charles was enabled to continue and conclude his University education; and by the generous kindness of the same friend he spent the long vacation of 1842 with a reading party at Heidelberg.
At Easter, 1843, Lowder took his degree, his name appearing in the Classical List among the second-class men, and he was then persuaded to try for a college Fellowship, in which, however, he was defeated by Lord Coleridge, who afterwards became Lord Chief Justice. Soon after taking his degree he accepted the offer of a title for deacon's Orders from Lord John Thynne, Rector of Walton-cum-Street, near Glastonbury, and Sub-Dean of Westminister, and on September 24, 1843, he was made a deacon by Bishop Denison of Salisbury.
While at Walton the desire for the life of a missionary was developed, and he proposed to his family that they should all emigrate to New Zealand, and work there as a Christian family for their maintenance, he devoting himself to the duties of his spiritual calling. The scheme met with ready approval, but there arose practical obstacles to its accomplishment, and the idea had to be abandoned.
The young deacon was advanced to the priesthood on December 22,1844, in Wells Cathedral, by Bishop Denison of Salisbury, acting for the aged and infirm diocesan, Bishop Law, who, by the way, lived with and was tenderly cared for by Mr. and Mrs. Lowder during the last three years of his life. Immediately after his ordination as priest, Charles entered zealously upon his new duties as chaplain to the Axbridge Workhouse, a post undertaken temporarily with the bishop's permission, while the plans for the family's migration were maturing, plans which, as was seen above, failed to materialize.
During the few months of his chaplaincy, which only lasted until the following September, Lowder directed his special efforts with conspicuous success to the improvement of the Workhouse schools, the beginning of interest in the important work of education which advancing years increased rather than diminished, and which induced him to apply for the then recently founded office of Government Inspector of Schools; but this he failed to obtain, in spite of high recommendations from his bishop and vicar.
Soon after leaving Axbridge, he was appointed to the senior curacy under the Revd. John Frampton, Vicar of Tetbury, which enabled him to provide a home for his parents and sisters in the Old Vicarage House, in which the reunited family lived happily for the next five years. While there, on his initiative, many improvements in the services of the Church were effected, including the daily public recitation of the choir offices, a point upon which he always held strong views. He also introduced public catechizing. One who knew him at that time wrote after his death: 'I well remember the first time I saw that beautiful, noble face. He was not only a perfect saint in his life, but he was so good with children, and full of playfulness towards them. All the time he was leading a life of holiness quite different from most other men.' His love of children was a marked characteristic of his whole life. 'God made flowers and children to make the world beautiful' he used to say, and his love for both never lessened.
In 1847 the Bishop of Cape Town invited Lowder to take charge of Port Natal, which the bishop described as 'a most spiritually destitute place, but a most promising opening for missionary efforts,' and this proved to be a tempting offer to the young priest, whose missionary ardour had not abated; but it was not to be. He yielded his inclinations and deferred to the judgment of those whom he consulted when they advised him that his duty to his parents required his remaining in England, and so the offer was reluctantly declined. Perhaps, if he ever allowed himself to think of himself, he was in later years thankful to have escaped being under the episcopal authority of the notoriously heretical Bishop Colenso.
IV
In his book Twenty-One Years in St. George's Mission, Fr. Lowder tells how he was attracted to London work, and, in particular, how he ardently desired to be associated with the experiment being tried at St. Barnabas', Pimlico, of establishing parish work on collegiate lines; and how remarkably his desire was realized. He accepted a curacy at St. Barnabas' while the disgraceful Protestant riots were in full swing, which continued with almost unabated fury for ten months.
In connexion with the riots occurred an episode which influenced his whole after-life. The choir boys, inflamed by the sight of 'Vote for Westerton,' an avowed and antagonistic Protestant churchwarden, carried by a 'sandwichman,' and conceiving a fierce desire to do battle with the innocent bearer of the obnoxious placard, entreated to be allowed to throw something at the man. Charles bade them not to throw stones or anything that would hurt, but he gave them sixpence to buy stale eggs as missiles. The boys were not slow in carrying on the war in Ebury Street, and the bespattered 'sandwich' naturally complained to his employers, who speedily invoked the aid of the law against the assailants and their instigator.
Lowder took upon himself all the blame of inciting the youngsters, and when before the magistrate, he publicly repeated his admission of indiscretion and his profound sorrow for it, which he had already made privately, and the case was dismissed with more than acquiescence on the part of the prosecution; but in the then state of affairs at St. Barnabas', his fault was more than ordinarily full of mischievous consequences and distress to his colleagues and superiors. The newspapers made large capital out of the occurrence, and Bishop Blomfield took the matter up with great severity, suspending him from the exercise of his ministry for a period of six weeks.
To this harsh sentence he submitted in all humility, and wrote thus to his Bishop: 'Feeling as I do most deeply the sin of causing this scandal to the Church, I am almost thankful to be allowed to bear some ecclesiastical punishment at your Lordship's hands.' The letter (of which this is but a short quotation) seems to have touched the Bishop, who replied: 'I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, which is in all respects what it ought to be.' The Revd. W. J. E. Bennett at once wrote to him: 'Take heart and be not dispirited. I do not see that anything done by you in this affair involves an iota more than thoughtless indiscretion.' But the little episode of the 'ovation,' as the Bishop playfully called it in private, was for long a sore subject to Lowder, and one of which he never ceased to be heartily ashamed.
Soon after the sentence of suspension was imposed, Lowder betook himself to the Continent on a visit, which in his mind was a pilgrimage of penance and humiliation in reparation for the great offence which he keenly felt he had committed against the Church, but which to all those acquainted with the circumstances appeared nothing more than a boyish prank.
On arrival at Rouen on May 22, 1854, he wrote to his mother: 'It is a great deprivation to be away from dear St. Barnabas'; however, I must bear it patiently, as it is only my own fault.' Part of his time in France was spent at Yvetot in Normandy, and at the Petit Seminaire, a school for boys, where he was the guest of the Superior, the Revd. M. 1'Abbe P .L. Labbe, to whom he had introductions and by whom he was warmly received. One day in the library of the Seminary, he took up the biography of St. Vincent de Paul, the perusal of which so fascinated him that long afterwards he wrote of the deep impressions made upon his mind by the life and work of the great French churchman, and from that moment he registered his great resolve that henceforth his life should be devoted to work for and among the virtual heathen of the London slums; but not yet had come the definite call to labour in the East End.
When the six weeks' suspension was over he returned to St. Barnabas', but with a somewhat unsettled mind, as the thought of joining some kind of community of mission priests had taken hold of him, and although he performed his parochial duties with the same thoroughness as heretofore, it was with a growing conviction that the time was not far distant when his aspirations would be realized.
'It was not until the early part of 1856 that Father Lowder, while still attached to St. Barnabas', began his great life-work which made his name famous throughout the English-speaking world, but the exigencies of space put the story of St. George's Mission outside the present booklet, though it may be stated that the Mission was projected under the aegis of the Society of the Holy Cross, which a year or two previously Father Lowder had helped to found, and of which he was Superior (technically, Master) for a year, the office being an annual appointment. The actual life of 'The Father' (as later on he began affectionately to be called) and the history of his Mission are so interwoven that it is all one story, though in this booklet only the more personal features of his biography can be recorded.
Before proceeding farther it will not be out of place to interpose some notes of historical interest.
Within a few months of his return from his 'banishment,' Lowder assisted in the formation of a branch of the Guild of St. Alban, in Pimlico, from which he hoped great results. The establishment of a guild was in itself a bold thing to do in those days, and shows that the young priest was not to be deterred through fears of public opinion from making use of any opportunities presenting themselves.
It is also interesting to note that, before settling down in the East End, he attended at Dr. Pusey's house one of the very earliest of the Retreats for clergy ever held in the English Church, which have since become an established and widespread practice throughout the Anglican Communion.
A few years later, at Bedminster, near Bristol, he organized and conducted the first parochial Mission ever held in an English parish. His biographer says: 'His lack of eloquence makes his success in mission work all the more remarkable. It may have been that, as a layman observed, "the people had heard others call them brethren from the pulpit; they had never before seen anyone else become so truly and really a brother, living among them in poverty and wholly at their call and service, but Mr. Lowder was indeed their servant, as he was the servant of Christ."'
In the following Advent (of 1862) he assisted at the inauguration of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, of which he had the honour of being, with the late saintly Canon Carter, one of the founders.
In 1874 he formed one of a deputation from the E.C.U. to the Archbishop to protest against the Public Worship Regulation Act, but sorrowfully admits that little impression was made on his Grace.
VI
The St. George's Mission, inaugurated on February 6, 1856, was conducted at first by clergy living at a distance; but in July of the same year, the newly appointed head resigned his curacy in the West End, and entered on permanent residence in Wapping, and plunged at once into the work of initiating and organizing the many activities which came into being as the Mission developed.
The coming of the Mission, to which was assigned the two outlying parts of the large parish of St. George-in-the-East, greatly strengthened the hands of the rector, the Rev. Bryan King, who for fifteen years had been carrying on a heartbreaking struggle to lift his parish out of the condition of terrible neglect, vice, and degradation into which it had fallen (there were 733 houses, of which forty were low beer-shops, and unsavoury dancing saloons, and 145 were houses of ill-fame), and the improvements effected within the first three years after the starting of the Mission so thoroughly alarmed the proprietors of these dens and stirred their hostility that they set to work, successfully, to incite their customers to active opposition to the clergy, and this quickly developed into rioting within the church itself, of a most violent and appalling character.
The rioting went on, Sunday by Sunday, throughout the year, and never a word of sympathy or help came from the Bishop of the diocese, but only reproaches that the clergy would not surrender their principles to mob law; and the police authorities refused the protection to which, at least, as citizens, the clergy were entitled. Peace eventually was attained only by the retirement of the devoted rector.
The outrages and violence and profanation that went on at this time in the sacred name of religion, however, hardly belong to the story of Charles Lowder (even were there space to recount them), as the rioters did not, except on two occasions, invade the mission districts; but its clergy, of course, could not but be adversely and deeply affected by the continued rioting.
In 1866, Father Lowder had the felicity of seeing his ten years' work crowned by the consecration of the permanent Church of St. Peter, but, alas! the rejoicings had scarce eased down when the awful plague of cholera broke out, and a terrible time for the new parish ensued. Prebendary Mackay in his recently published book, Saints and Leaders, writes: 'Of all plagues, this is the most awful, far worse than bubonic plague or the black death. ... In this visitation the Anglo-Catholics won their spurs. Dr. Pusey came down to help; laymen, among them Lord Halifax, came to help Lowder and his priest. Morning after morning they met for Communion in the newly consecrated St. Peter's, and separated for the appalling labours of the day, each recognizing that the day might be his last.
'When, at length, the cholera vanished, it left Lowder completely master of the field. Nobody wanted to attack him or his methods any more. As he was seen time after time, carrying some cholera-stricken child in his arms to the hospital, the people began to call him "Father." Thus was the title "Father" won for the secular clergy; it is a title which they will retain only so long as they are true to his ideal.'
VII
Just prior to Easter, 1868, Father Lowder received a shock by the sudden and entirely unexpected secession to the Roman Church of three of his four assistant clergy, and it so prostrated him that he was unfitted to carry on, and was obliged to go away for four months, Father Benson, the Superior of the Cowley Fathers, as on a former similar occasion, kindly coming to take charge of the parish meanwhile. It was said that Father Lowder never got over this blow, and that it remained engraved on his heart to the day of his death.
In 1871 the Father paid his memorable visit to Oberammergau, and was present at the Passion Play, which so deeply impressed him that he wrote: 'It is very difficult for me to write just after coming from the Passion Play, for it is like coming out of a Retreat. ... I trust I shall always be better for having witnessed it.' A great ambition of his was to make the ascent of the Gross Venediger, a very beautiful snow mountain, and after his visit to Oberammergau he was able to realize his ambition, the ascent being made with Canon Body (the then famous mission preacher) and Mr. Parker. He described the view from the summit as 'a sight never-to-be-forgotten' and then he finished up his holiday by wandering among the Dolomite Mountains, where he witnessed a double rainbow, 'the grandest sight of its kind I have ever seen.'
In January, 1875, his health was so broken that he had to give in, and he again went abroad, where he remained--travelling from place to place--until Easter Day, when he received a telegram saying his sister Kate had died on Easter Eve. He at once set out for home, and travelled three days and nights without stopping, arriving very much knocked up and looking distressingly ill. He very soon broke down again, and was unable to resume residence at the London Docks for many months, but, to be within easy reach of St. Peter's, he made Chislehurst his temporary dwelling-place.
He returned to active work in his parish in 1876, and in the same year made every arrangement to go out to the seat of war (between the Turks and Bulgarians), first proceeding to East Grinstead to organize a band of sisters who had promised to accompany him. But the competent advice that the religious prejudices of the Turks would be stirred up by the sisters' dress prevented the plan being carried out.
On September 9, exactly four years to the very day when his own earthly pilgrimage would end, his venerable and saintly father died in his eighty-seventh year, a loss deeply felt by his eldest son. His sisters being abroad in 1877, he felt that after twenty-one years in East London he might take a long holiday and devote himself to cheering and helping them, but it happened to be a busy year for him in London, and he could not join them until the middle of October. A month before that he wrote: 'I shall be very glad to get off, for I am getting very tired, and though I have been away from home a good deal, I have not had a continuous rest, and the year has been a particularly trying and anxious one.' At last he was able to get away, and, with Lord Nelson's son as companion, he joined his sisters in Italy, and stayed six weeks in Florence, and for the same period in Rome. In the course of his rambles in the Holy City he picked up sufficient pieces of marble to make a credence table there from for St. Peter's sanctuary.
At Easter in the next year he returned to his parish, and in the autumn was greatly heartened by a testimonial of sympathy and confidence in him, signed by 1,700 of his people, as a set-off to the agitation which a 'Wapping Protestant' had engineered against the Vicar of St. Peters, for his 'so-called ritualistic practices, but which the Bishop refused to entertain He threw himself with renewed ardour into his pastoral work, which it delighted nun to take up again, but those about him perceived with sorrow that he was beginning to break; he shrank from society, and seemed soon exhausted if he had to talk much or listen to others. At midsummer in 1870 he took a house at Chislehurst for his sisters and generally slept there two or three nights a week.
On August 2, 1880, he left England on his last holiday, going by way of Treves to Coblentz on the Rhine, visiting many interesting places with his sister Rose, who accompanied him to the Passion Play at Oberammergau, which he enjoyed, though he admitted it had not made the same impression on him as it had done ten years before. This was on August 17 and until September I he did a good deal of walking which his companions thought he thoroughly enjoyed, but he evidently overdid it, and on the 4th arrived at Zell-am-See in heavy rain, alone, wet, and exhausted, and the next day had to keep his bed, suffering from a severe attack of colic. Some friends of his sister quite providentially happened to be staying in the same hotel, and they readily attended him in his illness, which became rapidly worse. At times there was great pain but early on the morning of the 9th, the pain was gone, and on the anniversary of his father's death, in perfect calm and peace, he breathed his last among strangers in a strange land. His body was brought to England and laid to rest at Chislehurst, which had been a second home to him for very many years whenever he was ailing.
This brief and inadequate sketch of the life of one of the many notable and saintly leaders of the Catholic Revival maybe closed with the following quotation from The Life of Charles Lowder, by Miss Trench, which has been freely drawn upon for the particulars recorded in these pages:
'They said who knew the truth, that when the tidings from Zell-am-See reached St. Peter's and spread through court and alley, there were stricken hearts in homes so poor and wretched that they might be thought beyond the sympathies of life, crouching over the few embers of the grate, too crushed to speak, almost too crushed to think, but trying in a dazed way to take in the meaning of the terrible words: "Father Lowder's dead."' And the following from The Church Review of September 24, 1880:
'The funeral of good Father Lowder took place on Friday amidst circumstances and surroundings which are described in another column. We have called it a funeral in compliance with established phraseology but in truth it was a triumphal procession through the crowded streets of East London such as England has never before seen in this nineteenth century.'
Father Lowder is dead, but that he is not forgotten was shown by the pilgrimage on the fiftieth anniversary of his death in 1930, when upwards of 200 persons, on a pouring wet afternoon, stood around his grace in Chislehurst churchyard, to pay loving and grateful homage to his memory.
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Friday 12th of March 2010
