The bishop’s lady
by Mike Oettle
IT takes all
sorts to make the Church. Take Sophy Gray.
A dictionary definition of “saint” reads: “a holy person; one eminent for virtue”. The word holy often conjures up an image of someone like Francis of Assisi or Catherine of Siena – hardly the horsewoman wife of Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town, stern and unmotherly with her offspring.
Sophy was all these things, but I see her as a saint, too. Indeed, without her support, both as wife and as administrative assistant, amateur architect and amanuensis,[1] Robert could never have achieved what he did in his years as “R Capetown” – as he habitually signed himself.
The Church of the Province of South Africa recognised her role – or at least the chapter of St George’s Cathedral did – with her inclusion, near life size, in the window of the north transept, facing Wale Street. Her stained glass image wears a green riding habit and bonnet, and she stands alongside Bernard Mizeki, the martyr of Mashonaland. Robert appears elsewhere in the cathedral; the same
window illustrates his benefactress, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, alongside
Charles Mackenzie, bishop of the ill-fated Central Africa Mission. (These four
are the only modern figures in the window.)
The riding habit was familiar to those who met her on her travels, but in truth she wore it for show, and was happiest on horseback (sidesaddle) wearing a much plainer riding dress and a battered felt hat. (An unseen part of the outfit was a pair of close-fitting chamois riding trousers.)
She was baptised (on 19 January 1815, having been born on the 5th) Sophia Wharton
Myddleton. (The Myddleton was tagged on to the family surname before her birth,
in recognition of her father’s inheritance of a relative’s fortune.) She and her
two sisters grew up in a wealthy family with landholdings in both Yorkshire’s
North Riding and adjacent Durham. Fond of horseriding and books, she and her
sisters proved good companions to the young rector appointed to Whitworth[2] in 1834, by name Robert Gray.
Robert’s claim to fame was that he was the son of Bishop Robert Gray, who in 1831 had defended his cathedral in Bristol against a rioting mob and saved it, although unable to prevent a blaze which destroyed his episcopal palace. The younger Robert was no great scholar, and far from a palace, he did not even have a rectory – he had to walk, later ride, from lodgings in Durham to his duties. But when offered a better living in ’36 he first discussed it with a bewildered Sophy, then proposed to her and, on being accepted, decided to remain at Whitworth.
Their
honeymoon, following a six-month engagement, was a harbinger of things to
come: the rector (now become lord of the manor in a manner of speaking, as
Sophy’s widowed mother and sisters moved out to make way for him) and his bride
went on an extended horseback journey around the family seats in two counties.
They
remained at Old Park and Whitworth for nine years before going on to an urban
parish in Stockton. But their lives were completely overturned when, in 1847,
he was invited to put his name forward for one of three new colonial
bishoprics. The invitation was a surprise; an even greater surprise was that he
was actually picked from a short list of candidates for the Cape of Good Hope.
The move to Stockton was a shock for Sophy – how much more the sea journey to Africa, a vastly expensive enterprise (costing around £1 000) paid for almost entirely out of her and Robert’s personal pocket. Used to a world of bishops who had to maintain certain standards, including a style of dress and an
episcopal palace, they brought out to the Cape an entire household of servants,
plus furniture and equipment including an episcopal carriage.
Not long after their arrival (spoilt by having to move out of a house in Rondebosch
because it was full of bugs and fleas) they took up residence on an estate
known as Boschheuvel, which had once belonged to Jan van Riebeeck.[3] One can easily see the address as evidence of a desire to emulate the bishops of Durham – until Sophy’s childhood the holder of this see had been an ecclesiastical and secular prince, the vastly wealthy earl palatine of Durham.
But her track record as a hostess disproves this. Bishop's Court,[4] as Protea became known, was always more of a free hotel than a palace, kept
“simple, plain and comfortable”[5] by Sophy. A family home it certainly was, with five children plus a nanny and a governess, but there were always clergy visiting, either on their way to parishes in the hinterland or summoned to Cape Town on church business.
In 1849 the cottages in the courtyard were filled for the first time with boys, the nucleus of Robert’s Collegiate School. At the end of that year the school moved to Woodlands, in Rondebosch, where it became known as the Diocesan College (or Bishop’s). Some of the boys would return during the holidays. In 1856 education took over again when four Xhosa chiefs’ sons were landed on the Grays by Governor Sir George Grey – forerunners of what was to be Robert’s “Kaffir College”,[6] which stayed at Bishop’s Court until the purchase of Zonnebloem, above what would later become the town of Woodstock, in 1859.
In an era when the woman’s place was reckoned to be in the home, Sophy preferred to
travel with her husband. Without her presence, he would not have been able to
keep the pace. And while some admired her for her horsemanship, others called
it unladylike. The town of George was scandalised when, while crossing the
Outeniqua in 1856, Sophy and Robert chose to walk (perhaps crawl is a better
word) across the abandoned wagon pass of Cradock’s Kloof while their cart went
safely around on Montagu Pass.
And her administrative work was invaluable. I have said nothing about her efforts to
introduce English church architecture in South Africa (that is another story),
but without her constant letter writing and account keeping, Robert’s work
would never have been done. Indeed, when Robert asked the synod of 1867 to
appoint someone to undertake her work because of her poor health, he was refused.
The burden of her work must have contributed to the failure of her health, and on 27 April 1871 she died, aged only 57.
