A hostess of course never stayed in her room for a meal except during her confinements, and these were carried out with the same unfailing regularity as were all other engagements in this completely planned life.
Nowadays, both guests and servants are always going and coming, and it is almost impossible to arrest their rapid flight for long enough to invite them to family prayers. Also, people’s servants are too often paid strangers, rather than family friends, and with them most people would be too shy to suggest praying. Sometimes this cowardice is misplaced. In Bishop Donaldson’s drawing-room at Salisbury a year or two before his death, there was one day a conversation about family prayers. The Bishop asked if many people still had them, and nearly everyone said ‘ No’. Mrs. Buckley was one of the exceptions, and she said that one of her reasons for keeping up the practice was that her servants liked it so much.
‘In fact,’ she went on, ‘it’s all I can do to prevent my guests from coming too.’
‘Prevent them from coming?’ asked the Bishop, astounded.
‘Of course. They would make me far too shy.’
Everybody laughed, but she was quite right. Reading prayers is a very frightening thing. I am used to reading aloud, and I like doing it. In fact I often compel the guests in my house to listen while I indulge in this pastime. But when I have once or twice found myself on my knees, reading collects which are quite familiar to me and are quite easy to read, then a most extraordinary tremor comes into my voice. It floats up and down to an accompaniment of little sobs which nothing can control. I remember being suddenly called upon to read prayers when my mother was ill, when my voice sounded so exactly as if I was crying, that the servants left the room in tears too, thinking that I must have heard the invalid’s death warrant. After that, I often read prayers when my parents were ill, but I never allowed even my sister to hear me doing so.
After the war, when the Women’s Land Army was being dissolved, I was present at an evening service on its last Sunday, at one of our Wiltshire hostels. It was read by a welfare officer in charge, and as we began, she turned to me and said:
‘You will give a Blessing at the end, won’t you?’
There was no time to say no. The service had begun, and never shall I forget how my heart beat through those seemingly interminable prayers. Fortunately I have a good memory for hymns, and a very short one came into my mind. When the moment came, I faltered out No. 551 in Hymns, Ancient and Modern. Everyone in the room had often sung it, but they failed to recognize it when they heard it spoken; and they thought my ‘ Blessing’ was a completely original inspiration.
My aunt, Amy Eden, who always seemed able to meet any situation, sympathized with and shared this panic. She told me that she was once called upon to read prayers at Eden Court when my grandfather and his chaplain were both out. She got on well till the last prayer of all, when she saw, printed before her:
‘The Grace of our Lord, etc’.
She read those five words aloud, and then her mind became a blank. She stared speechless, through what seemed an endless pause. At last a voice rose up from that part of the room where the servants were patiently ‘smelling their chairs’, and the little prater was finished by James, my grandfather’s old servant.
Of course he should have been chosen from the first to be the deputy chaplain, for he was extremely episcopal. I only once remember my grandfather’s staying at Wilton, for I was not very old when he died; but when Grandpapa and James arrived together, we were much confused. We knew that one of them was a bishop, and we could not imagine which. Grandpapa was very gay and lighthearted, while James was unfailingly solemn, and we decided that it must be he. So when one day my father found my small brother in the hall and asked: ‘Where’s the Bishop?’, Harold promptly answered: ‘In the pantry.’
Every Monday morning, at Wilton Rectory, the final collect at family prayers was the one I liked best in the week. This is how I heard it.
‘The sisters mercifully O Lord, in these our supplications and prayers. And dispose the way of Thy servants toward the attainment of everlasting salvation; that, among all the changes and chances of this mortal life, they may ever be defended by Thy most gracious and ready help; through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
Wonderful it always seemed to me that there could exist a prayer made specially for Mamie and Mildred and me; and even more wonderful that it should have in it words of such peculiar beauty. Sometimes a little suspicion fluttered into my mind that we were really meant to pray for Nuns and Sisters of Mercy, but I would not listen to this. I wanted the prayer for ourselves.
Not for years did I learn that the first two words in that Collect were really ‘ Assist us’. How empty and desolate it then sounded in my ears, denuded of that sudden splendid cry to heaven for ‘The sisters’, left henceforth to wander bewildered, undefended among the changes and chances of this mortal life! Still, to have heard it thus wrong for the first ten years of my life gives me, to this day, a sense of personal possession in that prayer. Those childish mistakes were among the things which made the practice of family prayers most worth while.
People sometimes enjoy discussing what it is which makes the most fundamental difference between life to-day, and life in Queen Victoria’s time. I should say it was something like this. Nowadays, home life is almost entirely free from regulation of any kind.
