Old Men in Love

by Alasdair Gray

  “I am here to speak of the redemption of the body, by which I mean, its deliverance from the power of Satan, who is the author of all evil, whether it is sin in the soul, or disease and death in the body. All evil, I say, including headache, stomach ache and toothache. Jesus Christ came to destroy Satan in the soul of man, but his blesséd Gospel made no provision for the flesh, which is God’s greatest enemy. But you are flesh! You are of the earth, earthy! Behold, He is coming to judge the Earth! Believe me, the bridegroom already stands outside the door! O, how will you bear it when you behold Him?”

  Suddenly he cried aloud, “I will tell you – You will not bear it! You will burn, like chaff, in the fire of his unending love, which you will feel as eternal torture if you now reject His mercy!” He paused for a moment then said, quietly again, “But do not the Scriptures say we shall be changed, those of us who are alive and await the coming of the Lord? Behold, declares Isaiah, the prophet, Behold, I create new Heavens!

  “That prophesy is being fulfilled. The day of judgement has come. God is creating the new Heaven through me: Brother Prince. Be glad therefore, and join me in that which I create, for behold, I build the New Jerusalem, rejoicing! At Spaxton in Somerset an Abode is arising, an Abode where those of you who leave their houses, wives, husbands, parents, children and lands for My sake will enter and live for ever in the Pure Enjoyment of the Love of Angels! But do not tarry. God still sits in his Mercy Seat, but not even I – a Branch of the Tree of Life whose fruit I bear for you – not even I know how soon He will leave it, consigning to eternal darkness all who linger outside the gates. When the world is burning into ashes, and the sky is melting in the fervent heat, what use then will be your flocks and herds? Rank and state? Property and capital? Shares, dividends and financial securities? Do you hope to ride on horses to the throne of grace? Or drive in carriages to the judgement seat? Sell what thou hast is the Divine Injunction to the called. Will you stand on the edge of doom and dispute the Words of God? Or will you, at the end of the Christian era, do as did all who answered Christ’s call at the start of it? – Join with those who, believing in Him, entered the Peace of God and His heavenly kingdom by giving up to Him everything they had?”

  Henry retired to his seat, obviously exhausted by the passionate working of the Spirit in him. Nothing he had said was wholly unexpected – his audience had heard some of it before from Starky, Thomas, Price and the Belovéd himself – yet an intense murmuring arose and subsided as Starky and Thomas again came forward.

  “Our Abode of Love,” Starky announced, “Shall be known as Agapemone.”

  “At the back of this hall,” said Thomas, “Brother James Rouse, our attorney, has opened the Book of Mercy where he will register the names of those willing to enter the Agapemone by giving their All to it.”

  Said Starky, “Only your intention will be recorded today, as the legal transfer of property to our Abode will take a little longer. I and Brother Thomas will be foremost in setting our names there.”

  He and Thomas left the platform together and strode side by side to the back of the hall where Julia, Mrs Starky and Price waited to sign their names.

  In Belfield Terrace that evening donations indicated in The Book of Mercy were compared with the estimated costs of the estate. Henry’s seven most faithful followers discussed these while he, wearing quilted dressing gown, velvet smoking cap and slippers, lay back in an armchair and only spoke when a final decision was needed. The book registered the following: –

  4 clergymen (not counting Henry) – Thomas, Starky, Price and the Swansea Curate

  a civil engineer – William Cobbe

  a landed proprietor – Hotham Mayber

  a surgeon – Arthur Mayber, Hotham’s brother an attorney – James Rouse

  7 fund-holders – 3 Nottidge sisters and Mayber’s 4 sisters

  2 annuitants – Julia and a widow called Paterson

  3 farmers, 1 with five hundred acres employing thirty labourers

  a twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of Mrs Paterson

  9 house servants, one of them male

  6 laundresses

  2 dressmakers

  3 helpers in stables

  3 carpenters

  a mason

  a groom

  a post-boy

  a shoe-maker

  a tailor

  “An excellent beginning – really excellent,” said Starky, “Though, alas, the All our brothers and sisters are willing to donate is less that the amount our greater Abode requires.”

  “Because some are not donating their All, like we in this room!” said Julia sharply, “Our lawyer James Rouse is withholding a very great deal. His income must be much larger than he admits – he says nothing about the savings or the value of his properties. Which of us should speak to him about that?” she asked Henry. He murmured, “Nobody, as yet.”

  “It would be unwise to estrange him,” said Mayber, “while he is drawing up deeds of gift for signature by our Belovéd’s other followers.”

  “Then what about the Nottidge girls?” demanded Julia, “Each offers the thousand a year interest on her capital, but not the capital itself.”

  They glanced toward Henry who said quietly, “Do not worry; the Lord will provide. Show me the plans again please.” Cobbe laid them on his knees saying, “The church at least is completed, apart from the spire.”

  “It needs no spire,” said Henry, “It needs, however, a conservatory or at least a corridor joining it to the main residence.”

  “What a good idea!” cried Mrs Starky, “Because, you know, we can then go back and forth to divine service quite untroubled by the weather until . . . until . . . ”

  She frowned uncertainly. Thomas suggested, “Until time stops, eternity begins and the weather is as heavenly as God will make it?”

  “Yes! That is exactly what I meant.”

  “I too look forward to that blesséd day,” said Starky, “though I am sorry for the doomed multitude who will never enjoy it.”

  “You should not be sorry, they will have brought it on themselves,” said Julia.

  A few weeks later Starky told the Nottidge sisters that the Spirit required them to travel with him, Henry and their wives to view the work going forward at Spaxton. They went by coach into Somerset and stopped in Taunton where the Princes and Starkys rested at Giles’ Hotel, the three spinster ladies at the nearby Castle Inn. Early next day Henry sent for Harriet. She put on her bonnet and crossed to the Giles’ Hotel where he received her kindly but solemnly. In the presence of Julia and the Starkys he explained that it would be for the Glory of God if she married his young friend, the Reverend Lewis Price. Harriet blushed and agreed. Henry bade her return in peace to the Castle Inn and lock this secret closely in her heart. This she did.

  Then Henry sent for Agnes, a less biddable woman. In a voice as kind as he had used with her sister but more solemnly he said, “Agnes, God is about to confer on you a special blessing; but ere I tell you what it is, you must give me your word to obey the Lord and accept His gift.”

  Agnes gave her word after the slightest of hesitations. Henry said, “In a few days you will be united in marriage to our Brother George Robinson Thomas.”

  Agnes, confused by the news, cried out, “In a few days?”

  “Such is God’s will.”

  “But – but – but I have relations to consult, legal settlements to make!”

  “You need none of these things. You must not think of the world, but of God.”

  “But my mother must be told!” Agnes pleaded.

  “God is your father and mother,” said Prince.

  “But lawyers take time . . . ”

  “Why do you want a lawyer, dear?” asked Mrs Starky, looking up from her knitting.

  “Well . . . for the children’s sake.”

  “You will have no children!” said Prince, patiently. “Your marriage with our Brother will be spiritual only; your love to your husband will be pure, according to the
Will of God. And now,” he added more warmly, “take tea with us, Agnes, and know that this blesséd moment is a happy one.”

  Later in the day the two sisters dined with the Princes and Starkys at the Giles’ Hotel where they met their new fiancés, Thomas and Price. Two days later Clara was similarly engaged to William Cobbe. The three sisters now wished to return to their mother’s home in Stoke for a while, but Henry said God forbade that and also forbade them to tell anyone by letter before the marriages. Meanwhile Harriet and Clara willingly signed their fortunes over to Henry. Agnes refused, but finally signed an agreement that her husband Thomas could invest her property in their joint names. All these details were arranged through communal prayers led by Henry. A fortnight later the three marriages were solemnized in Swansea by one of the Brethren, Starky giving the brides away and Henry looking on.

  By these means eighteen thousand pounds of Nottidge money was added to the Agapemone fund. Continuous inflation during the twentieth century has made it almost impossible to convert such a sum into a modern equivalent – in those days servants who ate and lodged with a family were often paid a pound a year or less. Postal rates may give another clue. In Victoria’s reign an early Socialist had organized the Royal Mail to deliver any letter in Britain for the price of a penny stamp. It was a first class service – there was no second class. In 2006 a first class stamp costs 33 pence, but multiplying the Nottidge £18,000 by 33 would still be too little, for in Britain’s pre-decimal days a pound contained 240 pence. By a conservative estimate Henry acquired by these three marriages more than a million modern pounds sterling, which was a fraction of what he got from other followers when income tax was so small and such a recent innovation that important statesmen (Gladstone was one) proposed abolishing it. The estate was now perfectly solvent.

  Henry called Julia and the Starkys, Thomas and Price, Mayber and Cobbe, “my seven-branched golden candlestick”. One evening, after calculating all the moneys transferred to Henry’s account, an awestruck silence befell them. Mrs Starky broke it by saying, “Well, Belovéd, you must now certainly have your own carriage and pair.”

  Henry had hitherto hired a carriage when he needed one. Owning a one-horse carriage was then a mark of middle-class prosperity: a carriage and pair signified a much higher social standing.

  “No!” cried Julia, “A carriage and four! With outriders! Your dignity demands it, Belovéd.”

  The idea astonished and excited nearly everyone present – a carriage drawn by four horses was seldom used except by royalty and lords travelling in state processions. If it occurred to the horsemen present that a carriage and four would need unusually skilful management on the twisting roads of southern England they did not say so. When, with a slight chuckle, Henry asked, “What is the sentiment of this meeting toward Sister Julia’s somewhat audacious suggestion?” they all smiled, delighted that the Spirit was allowing their Belovéd to unbend in a joke.

  “Yes, you must have a carriage and four Belovéd!”, cried Starky, “It is owed to the Spirit moving you!”

  “Hear hear!” cried the others so Henry, amused yet resigned, murmured, “If I must, I must.”

  Julia and Mrs Starky devized sober yet eye-catching suits of livery in two shades of grey for the Belovéd’s coachman and footmen. These were cut by Samuel Tricksey, the Agapemone tailor, a small man who fancied himself as a jockey. To stop the harness tangling at sharp bends he gladly rode one of the foremost horses when Henry drove outside Weymouth. This splendid equipage astonished commoners who had seen nothing like it and annoyed gentry who thought it a vulgar display of ill-gotten wealth.

  One day Henry urgently summoned George Thomas to the Weymouth Agapemone, and Thomas answered that he could not come at once as he and Agnes were going on holiday to his mother in Wales. Henry had not met such disobedience since his days as a Charlinch curate and had never before found it in Thomas, one of the earliest Lampeter Brethren and also the preacher on whom, after Starky, he most depended. Thomas was obviously now under his wife’s bad influence. When the sinful couple came to Belfield Terrace on the way back from Wales they were put on trial before Henry and Julia, Sam and Mrs Starky. The main accusers were Agnes’ sisters and their husbands. Thomas had never been rebuked by Henry before. He wept, knelt on the floor, confessed his sin and begged forgiveness. Agnes stared at him in astonishment tinged with contempt that struck the rest as open defiance. Thomas leapt to his feet and cried out in as terrible a voice as he could manage, “Agnes! I command you to obey henceforth the Spirit of God in me, made known to me through our Belovéd servant of the Lord!”

  Agnes crept to her bedroom in a house that felt more like a Spanish inquisitor’s jail than an abode of love.

  Worse followed. Harriet, Agnes and Clara had a younger sister Louisa, a woman of forty who still lived with their widowed mother and was also heiress to a big slice of their father’s fortune. In the next few days Agnes realized Louisa was being invited to join the Agapemone too, so began writing a letter advizing her not to come. In a commune privacy is almost impossible. Thomas found the letter and showed it to Henry. When Agnes went to her bedroom that night her husband stood in the doorway and said, “You are lost, Agnes. From now on any room where I am is locked against you, is an empty room as far as you are concerned. Go and beg for a sleeping space from one of the female servants in the basement or attic. You will not find her so easy to corrupt as you have corrupted me once, but never again! I have repented and have been forgiven. You have twice defied the Servant of the Lord and now can never be forgiven.”

  Next day Agnes was left in Belfield Terrace with two servants when Henry, Thomas and other chief Princeites went by carriage to Spaxton, where a row of cottages had been made habitable for them. A week after that a letter from a servant at Weymouth told Henry that Agnes was certainly pregnant. Thomas wrote to her at once, commanding her to go and live with his mother in Wales. Instead she returned to her own mother’s house near Stoke where she gave birth to a son a few months later.

  Louisa Nottidge, despite the sufferings of her sister Agnes, despite the opposition of her mother and other relatives, came to live in one of Henry’s completed cottages at Spaxton. One evening a carriage arrived containing her brother, a clergyman-cousin and a stranger who turned out to be a police officer. They said they had come to take her home because her mother was ill. She refused to believe them so was forced into the carriage, fighting and screaming, and driven to a private hospital near London where she was locked up as a madwoman. Harriet, Clara and their husbands could get no news of Louisa’s whereabouts from her mother. After eighteen months Louisa managed to send word of the madhouse address to William Cobbe, her brother-in-law. Cobbe applied to the Commissioners of Lunacy who investigated, found imprisonment was damaging Louisa’s health, that she had religious delusions but was otherwise sane. When freed she legally transferred all her property to Henry and returned to the Abode.

  The Spaxton Agapemone was then complete and the one in Weymouth abandoned. There is no record of how Henry finally entered the great new Abode but surely he did it splendidly, going with Julia and the two Starkys in the carriage and four down long lanes through woodlands, two liveried footmen seated behind, and in front beside the coachman on the box, a postillion blowing a long horn to herald the Belovéd’s approach. I imagine as outriders beside the carriage all the Agapemone male gentry – three clergymen, two Maybers, William Cobbe and the attorney Rouse. A groom rides one of the foremost horses because the tailor – Samuel Tricksey – is now the Agapemone gateman. At the sound of the horn he appears from his gatehouse, above which is a tower with flagpole and flag bearing the Agapemone emblem: a lamb, lion and dove on a bed of roses with the motto Oh, Hail, Holy Love. From now on this flag will be flown whenever Henry is at home. As Tricksey and a servant open the gates for the carriage please imagine the Old Hundredth struck up by a mighty cathedral choir and organ: –

  O enter in his gates with praise;

  Approa
ch with joy His courts unto;

  Praise, laud, and bless His Name always,

  For it is seemly so to do.

  For why? the Lord our God is good;

  His mercy is for ever sure;

  His truth at all times firmly stood,

  And shall from age to age endure – as carriage

  and outriders canter up a drive to a front door where all the servants are ranged on each side of the front steps, with the ladies of leisure at the top. Henry and companions leave the carriage; his entourage dismounts. Grooms lead carriage and horses away to the stables as Henry leads everyone else into the house with a radiant smile that seems to shine on all while focusing on none.

  Maybe an hour or two later we see him in the Agapemone church. It has no altar, lectern, pulpit or choir stalls. The only religious symbols are the lamb, lion, dove and roses in the stained glass windows. The interior is furnished like an opulent Victorian drawing room with a large red ottoman sofa in the chancel where the communion table normally stands. On this Henry comfortably sits, right leg cast over left knee, and addresses the gentlefolk standing before him.

  “Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,” he says sweetly, “today we have entered Jerusalem with psalms of praise and now the Day of Judgement is past. The Angel has left the Mercy Seat, and we, the Blesséd, are gathered into the bosom of God. From now onwards psalms, prayers, sermons and services are at an end, and we will live for ever surrounded by all that can delight the eye and satisfy the sense. Only one ceremony remains – that great manifestation of the Holy Spirit’s love for the Body by which he redeems it from sin and death. And just as Satan started the fall of the old earth in Adam’s flesh – that is, in Eve, who was living earth – so will God restore the earth by creating a new consciousness in the flesh of a woman once again. It behoves the virgins among you, therefore, to adorn yourself and await the coming of the bridegroom. The hour is nigh!”

  “Very nigh indeed!”, said Starky, smiling and nodding on Henry’s right with Thomas on the left. Henry stands, places a hand on each of their shoulders and tells the rest, “My witnesses will summon you when the time is right.”