To err is human, but that was crass

Alfred Ebenezer and daughter? Mabel

I'm just hoping that Great Grandfather, Alfred Ebenezer Wenham, would have gone easier with me than with one of his firm's clerks if they'd made such a crass error as that (21st Sept). My brother Peter sent me an email on Saturday with this seemingly mild comment in it: "I am curious about Hillscourt House. Dad used to talk about the Old Rose and Crown as the family home. So how does Hillscourt fit in?" Well, I protested of course! I don't like to be proved wrong. "I thought he talked about it becoming a union headquarters." 


I looked through all the old family letters, and the address is merely The Lickey Hills, Rednal; presumably everyone knew the Wenhams. I looked up William Dargue, A History of Birmingham Places and Placenames: "The Rose & Crown was a coaching inn which stood near the foot of the dangerous Rose Hill descent. Probably built in Georgian times stagecoaches could change horses here ready for the steep climb up the hill. After 1880 a private house was built on the site of the inn and given the same name. The extensive grounds were landscaped with waterfalls and pools along the River Arrow and with a large numbers of trees which still survive. The building is now a hotel." 


Hmm, I thought, it fits. He might be right....

"The reference is on page 2 of Facing Hell," (his idiosyncratically entitled autobiography - copies available from me, £5 + p&p!!) Peter ripostes. 


My excuse is that most of my books are still in the garage or the loft, and I hadn't wanted to send Jane off looking when my memory was perfectly sufficient, thank you. 


"We've got three copies on the landing...," she tells me. And so here, I believe, is the definitive answer.


"Grandfather, Alfred Ebenezer Wenham, came of a large Christian family. His father, Ebenezer, lived in Highgate and was actuary to one of the big insurance companies. He produced eleven children, one of whom died in infancy, and then proceeded to die himself, leaving his remarkable wife, Mary, to bring up the children. She organised the family into a high-class school in which, with the help of the older children, she educated her own offspring and those of her neighbours. She died in 1907 at the age of 102....


"When I first knew him... my grandfather lived at The Old Rose and Crown amid the Lickey Hills in the village of Rednal on the southern fringe of Birmingham. There were the East Hill and the West Hill,  covering a hundred or so acres, with the inn converted into a very comfortable house in the middle. There was an indoor staff of four or five and plenty of room for visitors - a lovely place for our family of six to visit.


"My grandfather was unashamedly, almost ostentatiously, devout. His parents before him were Congregationalists in a day when it was quite costly to profess nonconformity, and the children grew up with minds of their own... and Alfred Ebenezer developed rather extreme Calvinistic views. He had a mission hall in the grounds of 'The Lickey'....


"Alfred Ebenezer was widowed fairly young and for years had the bitter experience of every night shutting himself in his lonely bedroom. He then invited his parlour-maid Leah to marry him. She, though most devoted to him, was quite shattered by this, not feeling she had the sort of love a wife should have. She left his service and for three years debated the matter in her heart, amidst the clamour of opposing views within her family and his. At last she felt  that she could not live without him and they entered upon a marriage which was blissfully happy to both parties. Such a marriage was hardly the  done thing in those days, so Grandfather sold 'The Lickey' to the Birmingham Corporation and bought a beautiful house near Oban on the Argyllshire coast...."

So there you have it. I hope I've set the record straight. And at least I have the consolation that one of my brothers reads this blog!

The Pope has flown

I woke up this morning wondering whether Pope Benedict was having a lie-in. I sincerely hope so. I trust his private secretary wasn't knocking on his door at 5 am telling him it was time for prayers, and then there was a pile of business waiting on his desk which had built up from his jaunt to the UK - because whatever else it was his state visit here was no jolly holiday. What an incredibly punishing schedule for an 83-year old! And we saw only the public bits - I've no doubt he maintained his spiritual disciplines, had his briefings, and held his private meetings. I don't suppose he had much time for listening to his iPod. How well he stayed the course.

Something I observed about his speeches was how understated they were. He did use emphasis, but there were no rhetorical flourishes either in content or in delivery. He appeared to trust that the truth reasonably presented would speak and convince on its own. Anyway he spoke quietly, but with a gentle passion. A friend of mine recently pleaded for a return of oratory to preaching. I prefer the Papa Benny style!

I have to take my hat off (again) to the BBC for their coverage of the actual events. I suppose it was an official visit, but I thought they did get in very good 'experts' to explain the significance of what was going on and not least of the worship. One of my favourite moments was before the Hyde Park Vigil when the commentator said something like, "And there's the big chair, the symbol of power and authority!" And quietly from stage left came the voice of, I think, Father Jameson, correcting her, "- of service and authority!" In reply to the spluttering of the commentator, there followed a brief explanation of Christ's example and the Church's paradoxical teaching of authority. So although I felt the run-up left something to be desired, the visit itself was well covered.

It's just possible that in the late nineteenth century, a Birmingham accountant might have met an old Cardinal walking on Rednal Hill at the south-west edge of the city. The cardinal of course was John Henry Newman, whose Oratory community had a retreat house there. The businessman was Alfred Ebenezer Wenham who, a few year's before the cardinal's death in 1890, built himself a house a few hundred yards away. He was my great-grandfather. I'd like to think they met, but I suspect Alfred wouldn't have been very keen on the cardinal's faith. He later retired to Oban in Scotland where he was a faithful member of the "Wee Frees", the austere Free Presbyterians. But they might have shared a passion for honesty, justice and conscience.  About six years after Alfred moved to the Lickey Hills, a dying mother and her sons moved into Fern Cottage nearby: they were the Tolkiens and JRR was one of the sons. It's said that Rivendell in the Hobbit novels is derived from Rednal (Wreodan Healh).

So it was with especial interest that I viewed the Beatification Mass of John Henry Newman, in Crofton Park cheek by jowl with Rednal Hill. The venue for the Pope's final mass had been moved from Coventry to Crofton Park to be near Newman's burial place in the retreat house cemetery. Again the BBC had done well with its experts who explained without banality or mystifying such things as relics and beatification. And so Newman was pronounced to be recognised as "Blessed" (as I think all those who have not seen and yet believed - blessed that is). In his homily, the Pope returned to the theme of some definite service - which each individual has. I love the prayer of Cardinal Newman that comes from, which I didn't know before:

"God has created me to do Him some definite service;

He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.

I have my mission - I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work;

I shall be a preacher of Truth in my own place, while not intending it,

if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Therefore, my God, I will put myself without reserve into your hands.

What have I in heaven, and apart from you what do I want upon earth?

My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the God of my heart."

And a final reflection from me - probably! I've seen some sniping at the visit from fellow-Christians in the blogosphere. That for me is a big no-no. For one thing the positives and the positive good done by the four days far outweighs the negatives. The best efforts of the National Secular Society were spectacular own goals as they drew more publicity to it and more interest, bigger crowds and more coverage. For another, the Pope was hugely Christ-centred. In other words, in every service and every sermon he kept talking about Jesus' love for us, and that the heart of faith is loving Him. It reminded me of the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, when asked what his faith was at heart, replying: "Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so." And thirdly I seem to recall reading The Final Quest by Rick Joyner, an allegorical vision in which he sees the embattled church firing arrows which fall on the backs of those fighting in front of them. "Why are they attacking their own side?" Good question.