UNDER ONE a ROOF.*
Miss CHOLMONDELEY'S new book is a collection of studies of members of her own family—her father, her mother, her sister Hester, and the old nurse and friend known as "Ninny." All are interesting, but about the first two there is a special distinction. Mr. Chol- mondeley, for many years Rector of Hodnet, seems to have been an attractive member of what is known as the " old school" of country clergy, though no doubt many such are still to be found—to the comfort of their parishes—in rural districts of England. He had no training as a clergyman ; he was not., says Miss Cholmondeley, "a born priest " ; he had no particular gifts of organization for parish work ; his religion "had been taken entirely on trust," and matters of dogma never troubled him ; "lie was a man of small abilities and conventional mind as regards the more important subjects of thought." Yet there was no question of his success. "He was a great power for good as a clergyman. . . . He was the Means of turning many towards a better life. . . . The parish with him at its head had a sort of homely but tough free- masonry. It held together, so to speak, of itself." The secret of his success was largely, as his daughter admits, once more that of personality. He was a man of abounding energy and wide sym- pathies. He would co-operate with the local Nonconformists in open-air missions, or arbitrate in the quarrel between Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones when the former's cap had blown over the hedge and been appropriated, as it was asserted, by the latter. He believed in recreation for his flock as in exhortation. He delighted in the choir dances, "always leading off in the country dance with Mrs. Cross, our principal soprano." His relations with his children and neighbours were as happy as with his parish. The standard of home conduct was high. "Anger was considered contemptible. . . . We never saw violent temper or heard a voice raised in anger in our home." In striking contrast to the genial, exuberant figure of Mr. Cholmondeley is the somewhat austere portrait of his wife. She might have appeared in a novel by George Eliot. "The life of a country clergyman's wife was absolutely uncongenial to her, and she never succeeded in adapting herself to her surround- ings. . . . Her turn of mind was scientific. She ought to have been a bachelor professor in a whitewashed laboratory, instead of the invalided mother of many childien." She was Spartan in her ideas, and had a dislike of the artistic. Her husband loved to sur- round himself with beautiful things ; he had the instincts of the collector. "She craved for whitewashed walls and tables of deal." Yet despite the wide divergence of taste, the union seems to have been a happy one. The tragedy of her life was her inability to under- stand her children. Difference of temperament made an unbridg- able gulf. But in spite of this Miss Cholmondeley gladly admits the great debt her children owed their mother, for she taught them to think, to appreciate truth, to realize the crime of self-indul- gence. The picture of Ninny, the nurse, is very attractive, with her passion for "always washing or furiously scrubbing something " ; her devotion to the children; her violent temper ; and her elegance in dress. We may regret with her sister that Hester Cholmondeley "had no time" to develop the literary power she obviously possessed. " Before she could sharpen her blade, before she could even dis- entangle it from the scabbard, it fell from her eager childish hand." Her verse, in particular, showed much promise.
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