Robert Nurden introduces his grandfather, former Herald deputy editor Stanley James.
A raw young cowboy herds the cattle on a ranch in the foot-hills of the Rockies in 1890s Canada. A private in the Amer-ican army all but dies from yellow fever fighting the Spanish in Puerto Rico. A nonconformist minister preaches passionate socialism from his Walthamstow pulpit. And a 72-year-old convert takes up the post of deputy editor of the Catholic Herald – under Michael de la Bédoyère – during World War II. These contrasting character portrayals belong to the same chameleon-like figure – my grandfather, Stanley B James (1869-1951).
His extraordinary adventures, underpinned by a lifetime’s search for spiritual truth, spurred me to write his biography, Between Heaven and Earth. 2023 marks the centenary of Stanley’s conversion to Catholicism and the trigger for a new career as a leading Catholic author, with nine books to his name. The preface by Ronald Knox to Stanley’s autobiography, The Adventures of a Spiritual Tramp, gives a sense of the rocky road to Rome that my grandfather took: “We converts never walk into the Church; we always stumble into it, tripping over the mat. Mr James has gone one better; he has walked in backwards.”
Stanley’s sense of relief on his conversion is palpable. He wrote: “Of what use is speech, when that for which one has been born, for which one has starved, frozen and wandered north, east, south and west at last breaks on one’s sight? I am conscious that life is only just beginning.” Spiritual tramp is just the right description. Descended from Pembrokeshire farmers, Stanley was the first child of the Rev Daniel James, a Congregational minister. Born in Bristol, Stanley moved as a boy to a series of south London chapels where his father served as pastor. He attended Whitgift School, Croydon, where he won prizes for his poetry and critical essays, spending his lunch money on works by his literary heroes Emerson, Whitman and Shelley.
Rejecting his father’s wish that he, too, should become a minister, he declared himself an atheist and emigrated to Canada in 1893. “It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the sense of desolation with which I set sail for the New World, he said.” Secretly, he harboured the dream of becoming a professional actor. Stanley worked first on a ranch in Alberta as cowboy, shepherd and bridge builder. After an inauspicious start in the saddle, he learnt the ropes and herded cattle with the best of them. His workmates didn’t know what to make of the earnest lad who lay for hours in his bunk smoking his pipe and thinking. But the two riotous farces he wrote for them to perform in the local schoolhouse went off splendidly.
He found another outlet for his writing in the unofficial position of correspondent for the Calgary Herald, for which he reported the local news. Soon the editor offered him a full-time position, which brought his cowboy life to an end. He investigated the dubious recruitment practices of mining companies, but found out too much and was promptly sacked. Penniless, he wandered the prairies looking for work; he found a position as a haymaker, then as a navvy on the railways and did a stint in a general store. Bored of the West, he turned hobo and travelled the 2,000 miles to Toronto jumping trains, Jack London style.
Still destitute, he enrolled as a private in the US army and fought in the Spanish-American War, deliberately firing his rifle above the heads of the enemy to ensure no one was killed: an early sign of his pacifism. He fell desperately ill and spent several months in a New York hospital. It was here, he claims, that the embryo of a Christian faith made itself felt.
With his army pay-off money, he bought his passage back to England but found his father in poor health and unable to perform his duties as pastor. Incredibly, without any qualifications – and perhaps without any real faith – Stanley took over, his sermons being well received by the good folk of Wimbledon.
About this time, he met Jess Heley; they fell in love and eventually married. A fulfilling five-year stint as Congregational minister in Teignmouth, Devon, followed. He finally qual-ified but these happy times were just the lull before the storm. His appointment as minister of Trinity Congregational Church, Walthamstow, came in 1906 and in this bustling, politically-active London suburb, his radical politics found a home. Soon his gospel of socialism was drawing in new worshippers in huge numbers – but the traditional congregants deserted their pews. In sermons there were references to the Rev RJ Campbell’s “New Theology”, as well as to the ideas of Nietzsche. It was a heady mix of ideologies. But it was his outspoken pac-ifism that forced his resignation in 1916, ushering in six restless years of experimentation.
The family, meanwhile – there were now seven children – left London and eked out a living on smallholdings in Somerset, Hampshire and then Hertfordshire.
Stanley became assistant to Dr William Orchard at King’s Weigh House in Mayfair (now the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral), where an experiment with Free Catholicism was taking place. He was given responsibility for the church’s mission at Tower Bridge, where he introduced Mass to the dockers’ social club – with disappointing results. “They preferred billiards to the Bible,” he commented ruefully.
He worked for the No Conscription Fellowship where he shared an office with Bertrand Russell, and later for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, whose Quaker membership he accused of being “elitist and too gentle”. As editor of the Crusader, he hired a glittering array of writers from Bernard Shaw, Jerome K Jerome and Sylvia Pankhurst to Conrad Noel, the “Red Vicar” of Thaxted. But as they sensed their editor’s growing regard for Catholicism, one by one they parted company with the journal.
Meanwhile, the call to Rome was growing louder. After frequent discussions with a priest at St Etheldreda’s in Ely Place, on July 2, 1923 Stanley was received into the Church. Under considerable financial pressure to provide for his family, he turned freelance journalist: secular at first, but soon writing exclusively for the Catholic press. In his garden hut and armed with a dilapidated typewriter, he wrote prolifically, becoming widely admired for the variety of his jaunty articles and extensive knowledge of the scriptures.
I found 22 journals that he wrote for on a regular basis. He imagined the stories that gave rise to the myths surrounding the life of St Fran-cis and incidents in the lives of lesser-known New Testament figures. He wrote extensively on Piers Plowman, as well as penning a novel set in the Rocky Mountains. And by joining the Distributists (Catholics who sought radical land reforms) he became close friends with GK Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.
His range of topics remained wide, but his political vision narrowed into something approaching conservatism. A random look at his Catholic Herald articles in the 1940s reveals headlines such as “The Coming Peace”, “Schoolmasters for Germany”, “No More Charity?”, “Politics Are Dying” and “Mission to the Jews”.
Stanley James died on All Saints Day 1951 and is buried at St Lawrence’s Church, Abbots Langley. He received admiring obituaries in The Times and leading Catholic journals. One might reasonably expect a Christian message to be written on his headstone, but instead we read: “Strong and content I travel the open road”. It is a line from that most pagan of poets, Walt Whitman. On reflection, perhaps the words are fitting: my Catholic grandfather never completely threw off the mantle of the spiritual tramp.
Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey With My Grandfather is available from Amazon, bookshops and robertnurden.com.
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