Remembering Arthur Arnott (Pt 2) – raiser of funds and rescuer of drunks
BY BARRY GITTINS
Arthur Arnott was Christlike in his worldview. Some would call it naïve. A consummate fundraiser, he took joy in seeing people able to eat and sleep safely.
Arthur’s office was often full of drunks sleeping off a rough night. He was constantly hit up for cash and was no doubt taken advantage of, but he didn’t care. He didn’t covet money.
Commissioner James Hay described Arthur as “a humble man with big ideas – the essence of humility and service to the least, yet he was possessed with the most expansive ideas of the place of the Army, the work it could do, the impression it could make and the forces it could release that would travel on through the centuries.
“As a social secretary he was, if anything, too credulous. No one seemed ‘impossible’; an attempted suicide, a prodigal boy, a wanderer from home and family – he got their stories and a hundred times told me of amazing results.
“He firmly believed that many who were far from righteousness had been badly handled by the world. I often wondered what kind of corps he would have formed had he been on the field for 10 years. Many a time his own money was spent freely in helping ‘lame dogs over stiles’.”
The commissioner’s latter phrase, comparing people in need (possibly fraudulent) to lame dogs needing a push over a fence, may well sound harsh to our contemporary ears. It also plausibly reflects how Arnott’s fellow soldiers viewed his nature and mission.
When it came to raising funds, no one did it better. Arthur’s take was this: “Christ bids us feed the hungry and clothe the naked; it cannot be done without money. He bids us go to all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; it needs money to do this. Therefore, raising money is an essential part of the work of the Kingdom.”
Arthur’s day job was largely about raising revenue, and he once said he’d be happy if he could raise 10,000 pounds for the Army in his lifetime. Commissioner James Hay estimated that Arthur had raised “probably ten times that amount” – 100,000 pounds in the 12 years during which Hay had commanded Down Under.
So, multiply that figure. Only God knows how much mission work Arthur funded and sustained in this country and around the world throughout his years. Only God knows how much of his own money Arthur gave to keep things going ‘tickety boo’; money that Arthur could have spent on himself and his own family’s needs.
“When Jesus emphasised that charming incident of the widow and her two mites,” Arthur once wrote, “he lifted the curtain on the real value of things. What we have left it seems somehow to regulate the value of what we give ... as a nation we must learn the great secret that to prosper we must give – give to weaker nations – give to missionary enterprise ... To give is to get. To withhold is to die. We may all be agents in benefaction.”
We all benefit from giving and receiving grace.
Arnott had a genius for raising money from a crowd, and his enthusiasm was infectious.
He must have had charisma and integrity; those two qualities don’t always go hand in hand.
Arthur was also a loving, if unpredictable, husband to the long-suffering Lucy; he married Ensign Lucy Tucker in 1904. They had two daughters, Margaret (‘Madge’) and Florence.
Indeed, with all his strengths and graces, Arthur must have made life chaotic for his good wife. Unpredictable and often absent without leave, the lover of Christ would bring home all sorts of villains and saints for his wife to feed and find somewhere to sleep.
If the pubs were closed, Arthur would be out and about in billiards rooms and picture theatres, having a yarn with blokes who’d popped out for a smoke.
“These protégés occasionally gave the household anxious moments,” writes his biographer, Adelaide Ah Kow. “With one wild-eyed, semi-intoxicated youth, bent on self-destruction, Mrs. Arnott sought to hold till her husband’s return from one of his evening missions, not daring to leave him for a moment lest he should set the house on fire.”
There is a famous quote from Arthur’s daughters to his wife, when his whereabouts were being sought, that has survived for our delectation: “Well, Mum, he’s either in the commissioner’s office or chasing a drunk.”
Flying in the face of our modern understanding of clinical distance, professionalism, duty of care, etc., Arthur often put those individuals up in the family’s small two-bedroom quarters.
To read Part Three, click here.
