CHARLES H. WELCH
50
In those days no respectable family allowed sweethearts to go off on holiday together, and so mother very
diplomatically catered for her own family and for any associates, which worked out happily for all.
There was one Victorian attitude that I undertook to circumvent, although my sisters feared that I would not
succeed. I was going to get mother to consent (hold your breath) to MIXED BATHING. After much coaxing she
consented to sit like Britannia in the middle of a curve in the beach, while father, who enjoyed the joke, fixed up a
sheet with large stones over a depression in the cliff face. There the `girls' all undressed while the `boys' did the
best they could at a distance. All went `swimmingly' until the time came to dress, and then we remembered the
experience of King Canute. The tide had washed away the sheet, and there was nothing for it but that Dad and I had
to wade in and rescue heaps of underclothing, dump them down at mother's feet and we all got dressed under her
eye. But it was rare fun in which she entered as heartily as the youngest of us.
When the time came for me to make the great decision and give up a craft with an assured wage to take on an
unspecified `Christian service', mother was not at all comfortable. She assured me that the people to whom I was
going would take advantage of me, and some of her fears I must confess were realized, although these good folk had
assured her that they would treat me `as though I were a son'.
However that is all over and past; the good remains and the meanness is forgotten.
* * * * * * * *
The apostle Paul, so far as we can gather from his writings, was a man of culture, and up to the time of his
conversion, a man of independent means. He had, however, been taught a trade, in accordance with Hebrew
custom, and was a `tentmaker'. Opinions differ as to whether this trade involved the process of weaving or not, but
Chrysostom has no hesitation in speaking of the apostle, after witnessing for the truth in bazaar and market, `sewing
together skins of leather' while demons trembled and angels marvelled. Bermondsey at the time of my boyhood had
a worldwide reputation for `leather', and it is not therefore strange that I too should find myself engaged in a craft in
which the apostle himself could have taken an intelligent interest. I passed through the various phases of the craft,
from the most delicate pocket book work to the heaviest hand sewn type, and to this day, I value the balance that an
ability to work with one's hands, gives to anyone who is engaged in purely literary activities. Both the mighty Paul
and his humble follower would say `these hands have ministered unto my necessities'.
One of the strange things in the wheel of time is, that at the age of eighteen I worked at the leather bag makers,
Jacobs & Sons, which is immediately opposite to the Chapel of the Opened Book, but in that period I was so lacking
in interest concerning things spiritual, that I have no recollection of ever seeing that a Chapel stood there. Now, my
name can be read on the Chapel notice board from the very window at which I worked.
About this time I must have driven my mother nearly crazy, with attempts to arrange, rehearse and dress amateur
theatricals. During one bout, the back of the copper in the washhouse assumed the colours of the rainbow, through
the many packets of dye used in preparing these costumes. One attempt stands out from the many which I will
recall. It was planned that the scene from Shakespeare's Richard III where Brackenbury has his interview with