PROPHET AT HOME

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXIV, Issue 3241, 11 December 1930, Page 6

PROPHET AT HOME

MRS. INGE TALKS OF THE DEAN.

You may not know the Deanery. It does not look upon St. Paul’s, but hides its gaunt, straight face behind a heavy courtyard wall. There is, however, no gloom within, and when Mrs. Inge, or Lady Inge as she is really, came in she brought an added brightness with her (writes Cecil Hunt in the Daily Mail.) Never has the Ddan been interviewed, and never Mrs. Inge until that day. “You must decide yourself,” the Dean had told her when they discussed my request, and perhaps her “Yes” was because, as she said, she is glad that her husband is famous. “I think he has something to say to his generation,” was the way she put it.

And as I watched this frail-looking woman I marvelled at her crystalclear voice, never raised, but always perfectly pitched so that she could address a large number and still talk intimately. I marvelled, too, because she is the mainspring of that great house. “More like an hotel,” she said, “for we both love entertaining,” and she showed the vast rooms, so splendid for the Christmas parties where great men and Cathedral workmen., where vergers and other office-bear-ers have made merry many times. Mrs. Inge told me how she met the Dean, already distantly related by his uncle’s marriage. Her aunt had married the Rev. George Inge, the famous Oxford Blue, and it was at his rectory that Miss Spooner met the man destined to be one of the greatest of the many great Deans of St. Paul’s. “I was electrified,” said Mrs. Inge, “by his wonderful preaching, and saw even then the greatness of his mind.” Some might imagine that such a mind would always be aloof, a mind apart. But no, for twenty-five years the Dean and his wife have been partners in everything. “It has meant much work,” sht said, “but such wonderful happiness. I do not, as I fear some wives do, write the articles and then put the other initials in front. Of course, I help, in the sense that I take every possible responsibility that I can off his shoulders, and act as a kind of liaison officer between him and the hundreds of people who write and say that they don’t want to worry the Dean, but could I just find out so-and-so.”

I asked Mrs. Inge if the Dean’s work did not affect his health, and she revealed his remarkable mental stamina.

“He keeps his brain like beautifully tempered steel,” she declared. “On our honeymoon he worked hard, and he has never ceased since. Yet he always knows exactly how much he can do. He has never taken a holiday

for when we go away the work goes on.”

Mrs. Inge told how she goes beforehand to inspect the house where the Dean proposes to take the locum tenancy. Generally it is in a charming for both are country-born and love the green fields still. “The Dean’s first question,” she told me, “is: ‘What is the library like?’ and if it falls short of his requirements our luggage is supplemented by large packets of books. We talked about the hopfields village where Mrs. Inge was born, hut soon swung back to London. “We both love it, I love it,” she said. “Not the West End so much but the city and the Cathedral above all.” And as this little woman talked so warmly, so enthusiastically, so charmingly about their perfect unity, their wondrous understanding, I sensed at least one reason for their years of great happiness, and why the house hold “would do anything for the Dean."