TSAWTB Section 6 - Interlude - A Miscellany of Items

266 Section 6 - Interlude
Summarising these letters, they claim that; Lady Hope’s visit and the service
in the summer house never took place - they were “a fabrication on the part of
poor Lady Hope”; she incorrectly held to the title of Lady Hope due to her
vanity; she was a terrible trial to her second husband, Denny, and when he
discovered that she was running a “Riverside Club” for the poor, he was
shocked, and died from an illness he caught there; she was made bankrupt and
when she left for America, Fegan refused to give her a letter of commendation.
These letters are certainly an indictment against Lady Hope, but is should be
noted that they are the only personal criticisms of her character. All other
available testimonies spoke most strongly of her honesty and sincerity.
Initially, there seemed to be some strange features. For example, why
should Tiffin take copies of these letters all the way to Australia in 1957, and
keep them for a further twenty years? Fegan had been “appealed to over and
over again” about Lady Hope but we have only two of his letters. Why did
Denny know nothing about his wife’s activities and extravagance? He also
was giving generously to charities for Moore notes that Denny, “having made
his fortune in pork, larded the coffers of many evangelical enterprises” (p43).
In view of this we tried to check the complex route of the letters, but the
outcome was unsatisfactory and unwarrantably tended to deepen the mystery.
The authenticity of the letters was proven by a more direct line, for at a late
stage in the investigation, this writer had been contacted about the Fegan
letters by a correspondent who knew Tiffin’s son. We discussed the letters,
and the reason why Tiffin should have had Fegan’s correspondence in
Australia was explained in a note later received from Tiffin’s son. Tiffin had
been asked to write a history of the Fegan Homes but the war intervened.
When he emigrated to Australia in 1957 to be with his daughter, he took the
files with him. He eventually wrote, not about the Homes, but a tribute to
Fegan’s excellent work with the destitute boys of London. This appeared in a
book entitled Loving and Serving (Tiff).
Fegan and Lady Hope
Moore conjectures that when Fegan fell ill in the summer of 1881, he asked
Lady Hope to take over the running of his tent meetings. This would then
place her in Downe when she could have visited Darwin.
As the examination continued, it became clear that this link between the two
at Downe at this time did not exist. Fegan never mentions that he had asked
her to take his place, whilst in the Bole letter, Lady Hope specifically states
that she was holding cottage meetings in the area, that Darwin heard of this
and invited her to see him (M:87f). At the time, she was living in Beckenham,
only 6 miles (9km) away (M:45). Neither mentions the other. In addition,
Fegan would hardly ask a lady to run these meetings for one writer described
the heat and stench in the tent from the crowds of farm workers there
(Rob:13). It was no place to invite Lady Hope.
In an exchange of letters with Moore, he explained why he made this link.
Lady Hope had written about an evangelist she called “Felix” to hide his
identity and he considered that “Felix” was a thinly disguised reference to
Fegan - their names being not dissimilar. “Felix”, like Fegan, had worked in
tent meetings in Kent. Secondly, Lady Hope was working in the area of
Downe. From these slim connections, Moore assumes that Fegan asked her to
take over his meetings.
It eventually became abundantly clear that everything hung upon Lady