James Lidderdale was given the charge of the Lima
Street Mission, a tabernacle of corrugated iron dedicated to St.
Wilfred; and Thurston, the Vicar of St. Simon's, who was a wise,
generous and single-hearted priest, was quick to recognize that his
missioner was capable of being left to convert the Notting Dale slum in
his own way.
"If St. Simon's is an outpost of the Movement, Lidderdale must be one of
the vedettes," he used to declare with a grin.
The Missioner was a tall hatchet-faced hollow-eyed ascetic, harsh and
bigoted in the company of his equals whether clerical or lay, but with
his flock tender and comprehending and patient. The only indulgence he
accorded to his senses was in the forms and ceremonies of his ritual,
the vestments and furniture of his church. His vicar was able to give
him a free hand in the obscure squalor of Lima Street; the
ecclesiastical battles he himself had to fight with bishops who were
pained or with retired military men who were disgusted by his own
conduct of the services at St. Simon's were not waged within the hearing
of Lima Street. There, year in, year out for six years, James Lidderdale
denied himself nothing in religion, in life everything. He used to
preach in the parish church during the penitential seasons, and with
such effect upon the pockets of his congregation that the Lima Street
Mission was rich for a long while afterward.
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