And, if in looking back on it all I do not wholly regret the weeks I spent there, it is because of my consciously earnest and religiously hearty fellow-workers in the mission field. Chief of them in 1905 was Baxter-Whittingham, or simply "Baxter," as he was known to all Shadwell but myself, sometimes scholar of Lincoln and a man ten years my senior, who had gone from Oxford to the East End and never returned. It was the fashion at Wensley Hall to regard Whittingham as a Latter-Day Saint (I use the phrase in its unspecialized sense, without reference to the school of Brigham Young); and I am ready to believe that in thirty per cent of his character Whittingham was entirely saintly. Admiring disciples told me how he lived in a single room of a workman's cottage on fifteen shillings a week with a supererogatory fast thrown in on any colourable pretext. The first thirty per cent of him compassionately and whole-heartedly loved the poor. Another twenty per cent was given up to an emotionalism bordering on sensuality in ritual, music and art.
And the remaining fifty per cent of Baxter-Whittingham was pure _arrivisme_. He had risen early and cornered the market in poverty; there was no one to equal him on East End Housing Problems, the Drink Question, Sweating and the Minimum Wage. His little "Other Half of London" and "England's Shame" created a considerable sensation and were accepted without criticism. Indeed, who was in a position to criticize the man who knew Shadwell and had lived there ten years? When the disciples prevailed on him to stand in the 1906 election his candidature aroused an interest that spread far beyond the limits of his division. And when he was returned a party was waiting, ready made, in the smoking-room of the House of Commons. Ministers might shake their heads irritably over another Incorruptible, but many a private member felt easier in his mind for the presence of the hollow-cheeked, thin-lipped figure in the loose-fitting, semi-clerical clothes, who seemed to carry England's poor in one pocket and England's conscience in another.
And then, and then came Spring, and, rose in hand, My threadbare Penitence a-pieces tore.
I left Wensley Hall at the beginning of the 1905 Season, lured by cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. Early in April I met John Ashwell at a dinner-dance given by the Sinclairs: he casually elicited my name and address, satisfied himself of my _bona fides_ and went to work like an industrious, dapper, well-fed little mole. Within a week strange cards arrived for me without explanation, within a month they had assumed the dimensions of a moderate snowstorm.