The Ward Street House

 
Chapter 66.
The house on Ward Street was much smaller than Hillcrest but slightly larger than Chestnut Cottage. It had been a school and there were two large rooms, one on either side of the front door, with a narrow little room behind that had been used as a cloakroom. There were four or five bedrooms. It had been built by a maiden lady who had stood and watched the carpenters as they worked, making them pull out and reinsert every crooked nail; it was extremely well built. The family moved there in February or March, 1902.
(Christopher) I was thirteen when we went into this house. While there we had an Irish terrier named Terrence Mulvaney Wilgress Willis, and then a white Yorkshire terrier, York.
(Somerville) In the spring of 1902 Daddy decided to go to the Old Country to see whether he could make contact with any of his relatives in the South of Ireland. As I was the eldest child still able to travel at half fare, he took me with him. We were away almost three months, sailing on the S.S. Rhineland from Philadelphia, after spending a day in New York. We landed at Queenston, the port of Cork. On the evening of the day we landed Dad attempted to preach on the street in Queenston, with the result there was a riot and he had to be taken to the police station for protection!
Next day we proceeded to Bandon where his mother, Mary Vickery, had been born and brought up, but could find no trace of relations remaining there. The same afternoon we went on to Bantry where his father had lived. We stayed at the “Willis Hotel” and Dad was able to establish a distant relationship with the proprietor, who however evinced very little interest in a distant cousin from Canada—the “wilds of North America”. 1
The following day we drove first to Glengariff by jaunting-car—about seven miles—then by stage coach to Killarney through rugged bare mountains with tiny farms dotted here and there in the valleys and with mud brick cottages with big chimneys where open peat fires burned. Many of the people could speak only Urse. The hills were gorgeous with great patches of golden yellow gorse. I very well remember the first glimpse we got of the famous Killarney Lakes, gleaming blue in the sun of the late afternoon and dotted with small islands, but the whole looked diminutive compared with even the smaller lakes in Muskoka.
We spent a day in Dublin, then almost three weeks with the Annettes at their farm near Portadown. The house was thatch roofed and beautifully kept. It was about five miles from the town and we drove in frequently in a shining jaunting-car2 drawn by a red horse.
Next in turn we visited Belfast, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Durham and at last London, where we spent the final three weeks, staying near Kensington. When Dad wished to go out by himself I spent my time in the Kensington Natural History Museum. We saw the Tower, British Museum, National and Tate Galleries. We visited Great Aunt Helen, sister of our Grandmother. We had expected to be in London for the coronation of King Edward VII but this had to be postponed because of his operation for appendicitis. We returned in June on the Canadian Pacific S.S. Grampian. A fellow passenger was Mr. Douglas Langford, then returning via Canada to India, where he had a promising career as a civil engineer. He loaned me a copy of a book of short stories by Tolstoy, which made a deep impression upon me and I think influenced my outlook on life ever since.
When Somerville returned with his father from England, they found the family spending the summer (of 1902) at Fair’s farm, about five miles from Port Hope at Canton, Ontario. There was a cow, which Somerville milked—his first experience of farm work. His father went in and out to the Bank every day by pony trap. While the family was at this farm, Mr. Rule stayed in the Ward Street house.
In the autumn of 1902 Somerville won a scholarship sufficient to pay the fees for five years at Trinity College School.
There was a terrible epidemic of scarlet fever in Port Hope in early 1903. Little Hope contracted it but there was no rash; she died in three days on 27 March. A week later, on 3 April, old Mrs. Boulton, who had been such a loving grandmother to the family died of a heart attack. Helen contracted scarlet fever about the same time and was very ill for weeks and expected to die. The three boys stayed with Aunt Dora.
(Helen) Little Hope’s death had a tremendous influence on us all; turned our interests from earth to Heaven. If it had not been for that, we might never have been in China. Mother was never the same again; it was a very sorrowful household for many months. Mother told me that she used to have high ambitions for her boys; when she saw how brilliantly they did at school she dreamed of worldly successes for them. But after Hope’s death she desired only spiritual riches for them. Christopher was wrapped up in his little sister, and I shall never forget his despairing grief at her loss. I was only just ten at the time, but I never really felt a child again. Life had become dark and death was a horror to me. I was not well for some years after. I had scarlet fever and the doctor feared T.B. I had very irregular schooling and almost no companions outside the family, and I retired into a world of story books. But when recovering from scarlet fever I had received the assurance of my salvation from that wonderful verse, the third of the first of Hebrews: “Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power.... by Himself purged our sins”. So I knew the sins were gone. And though a very lukewarm Christian, I had a longing for my Saviour and for His Word. I remember beginning to write a commentary on John’s Gospel.
David was still in dresses (as little boys were in those days) in the Ward Street house. One day, when he was about two and a half, Aunt Dora was taking care of him.
He lay on the floor under the table and kicked his legs up in the air. Looking at her very solemnly, he said: “Aunt Dora, you wouldn’t dare to do this”. In the winter of that year he developed a rash but the doctor could not give it a name, so it was labelled “the Ward Street rash”. The headmaster at Trinity College School thought it might be infectious, so Christopher and Somerville were not allowed back at the school till it was over. 1903 was also the year in which the two boys had the mumps.
(Christopher) My Father was becoming more and more convinced that he should spend his time in evangelism. While at the Bank he sometimes stood on the steps and preached the Gospel. The Bank officials protested and wrote to him to stop, so he sent in his resignation. They would not accept it, so he went on preaching. There was a wealthy man in town who erected a large monument on his lot in the cemetery, before he died, bearing the words “I neither fear nor hope”. Father wrote a letter to the newspaper criticizing this and the man was so angry that he withdrew his account from the Bank. The manager of the Bank in Toronto wrote asking Father to let tombstones alone. I think it was then he resigned again. But it was really Hope’s death which finally prompted him to devote all his time to preaching the Gospel. In his diary for February, 1906 he wrote:
“There are some who hold that we should not voluntarily change our circumstances for the worse, financially. At least, that we should not give up a situation but serve God therein and wait for His providence to change our circumstances ... But I find that God called Abraham to get him out from his country, his kindred, his father’s house. There was no action of providence. Again He called him to offer Isaac, his son, and no action of providence until after it was done; then a ram was provided.”
He was to spend three years away from the Bank, traveling and preaching, including living in lumber camps in his native New Brunswick.
 
1. Extracts from letter to John L. Willis from Jonas Howe of St. John, New Brunswick tell more: “Your mother, Mary Vickery, was born in or near Bandon, where your father, John Willis, was also born. They were married in this city (St. John, New Brunswick) about 1849, by Rev. Dr. Gray, rector of Trinity. Your grandfather, John Vickery, was born at Bantry or Bantry Bay, and married Mary Draper, daughter of Isaac Draper of Bandon. My mother was a younger sister. The Vickery’s were an old family, long established at Bantry. John Vickery and Mary Draper were cousins. Your great-grandfather, Isaac Draper, married Margaret Bennett, and they lived for a number of years on a farm named “Chamcool”, very near Bandon, the property of Earl Bandon. They had a large family, all of whom except one, Nathaniel Draper, came to New Brunswick about 1834. Isaac Draper had been a non-commissioned officer in Lord Bandon’s Corps of Yeomanry during the Irish troubles of 1798. He died in St. John about 1844, his wife having died some years previously and having been buried in the old burying ground opposite the jail. He and John Vickery, your grandfather, with nearly all our kindred, are buried in the church burying ground in one lot with one monument over them. I can give no information about your father’s family, the Willis’, as I was not intimate with your father; besides he died only a few months after my return from the South. Janie, my sister, tells me she thinks your father was born at Bantry. Paul Daly, your uncle, and he were cousins; their mothers were sisters and their maiden name was Kingston. There is, in the northern part of New Brunswick, a settlement and parish called New Bandon, in Gloucester County. It was settled about 1820 by a number of emigrants from Bandon.”
2. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: jaunting-car = a light, two-wheeled vehicle, popular in Ireland, now carrying four persons seated two on each side, with a seat in front for the driver.