The late Bishop of Truro advised the clergy to read it in several diocesan meetings. He also wrote a long signed article in a great London daily paper about my books, in which he said: —
“A story written by Guy Thorne, who has proved his gift and its purpose, may well touch the sore place of our race with a hand that is more human than statistics and more sympathetic than many organizations.”
Dr. Gott is just dead as I write this. I have many letters from him. In one of them – which again I will not quote, but which I will send my critic for his private reading when he asks for it – his lordship said that the book had helped him greatly.
There have been thousands of personal letters from readers about this one book. Dozens of them were from clergymen, from pastors of the Nonconformist and also the Anglican Churches. All this also I have said before, and the half-dozen letters which I have quoted have their own value, bear their own witness.
One of the greatest Nonconformist divines of England preached about the book.
There – I have said enough. It is sickening to have to say it. But Mr. Roget leaves one no alternative. He is not fair. For some reason or other – I do not know or care what it is, for he is an utter stranger to me – he takes this line. In the same issue of his magazine he writes of the President of the Congregational Union – “Mr. Jowett’s presidential address, as well as the speeches which followed it, were not remarkable, to say the least, for the charity of language used about the Church. All the old sectarian bitterness was expressed in the usual way.”
…I have been writing for many hours. The snow was blowing in from the Channel over the South Foreland when I began. The sky was a great pewter-coloured dome from which Mother Hulda’s feathers were falling, when I took up the pen.
As the day waxed there came a faint, yellow, and almost menacing gleam of sunshine, and as it waned the leaden-grey grew black, and night came silently over the landscape until at last she opened her great funereal black fan.
They brought me lamps and set them on my table. Those who love me and look after me came noiselessly up the stairs, silently into the room and put logs upon the study fire and left me alone once more.
It is nearly midnight, and the winter wind pipes sadly outside this old Kentish house, so remote from other habitations, so renowned in the annals of the Channel cliffs. With all its faults, all its egoisms, take this last essay in my first book of essays, and do not think hardly of me. Forgive what you discern here of petulance, of arrogance, and of conceit. I have done my day’s labour, and I have tried to be sincere. I have done my day’s labour, and now I am going to descend to an old room, with its oaken beams and aroma of the past, to take the supper of a man who has toiled. The dear people, and unfortunate ones! who wait upon the erratic hours of an author are waiting for me there.
And then to bed, and may the humble supplication I shall send up to Almighty God for myself and those I love, for those who read what I have written, have its hearing in the place where “hearts and wills are weighed.” May I become a better and worthier man because I have the opportunity of addressing you who read. And may God grant me to mend a faulty life.
Good-night and Amen.
Wanstone Court,
December, 1906.
