The Vicar of Morwenstow: Being a Life of Robert Stephen Hawker, M.A.

Robert Stephen Hawker was born at Stoke Damerel on 3rd December, 1804, and was baptised there in the parish church. His father, Mr. Jacob Stephen Hawker, was at that time a medical man, practising at Plymouth. He afterwards was ordained to Altarnun, and spent thirty years as curate and then vicar of Stratton in Cornwall, where he died in 1845. Mr. J. S. Hawker was the son of the famous Dr. Hawker, incumbent of Charles Church in Plymouth, author of Morning and Evening Portions, a man as remarkable for his abilities as he was for his piety. Young Robert was committed to his grandfather to be educated. The doctor, after the death of his wife, lived in Plymouth with his daughter, a widow, Mrs. Hodgson, at whose expense Robert was educated. The profuse generosity, the deep religiousness, and the eccentricity of the doctor, had their effect on the boy, and traced in his opening mind and forming character deep lines, which were never effaced. Dr. Hawker had a heart always open to appeals of poverty, and in his kindness he believed every story of distress which was told him, and hastened to relieve it without inquiring closely whether it were true or not; nor did he stop to consider whether his own pocket could afford the generosity to which his heart prompted him. His wife, as long as she lived, found it a difficult matter to keep house. In winter, if he came across a poor family without sufficient coverings on their beds, he would speed home, pull the blankets off his own bed, and run with them over his arm to the house where they were needed. He had an immense following of pious ladies, who were sometimes troublesome to him. “I see what it is,” said the doctor in one of his sermons: “you ladies think to reach heaven by hanging on to my coat-tails. I will trounce you all: I will wear a spencer.” In Charles Church the evening service always closed with the singing of the hymn, “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,” composed by Dr. Hawker himself. His grandson did not know the authorship of the hymn: he came to the doctor one day with a paper in his hand, and said: “Grandfather, I don’t altogether like that hymn, ‘Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing’: I think it might be improved in metre and language, and would be better if made somewhat longer.”