The Random Thoughts of Henry Holloway
When I first knew Jenny King I was a lad at school. She lived in a parlour house, as it used to be called in those days, in a long street of houses. They were all alike, save for the colours of the woodwork, where amateur painters had indulged their fancies.
She always wore a shawl, a thing almost unknown to the present generation of women. Yet many an honest heart beat beneath the shawls of my boyhood days. But though Jenny lived in a parlour house, it might be more true to say that she lived at ‘The Junction’ in Belfast. As long as I could remember she had a stand there, selling flowers. I never pass by the centre of the city without feeling that Jenny’s spirit lingers on, rather like ‘Molly Malone’ of Dublin’s ‘fair city’. The City Hall, where the flower-sellers had to sell their wares in later years, had none of the romance and glamour we used to find in the centre of the city’s life. It was there we set out for those rides in the tram that seemed endless. It was there we watched the regiments of soldiers marching off to the First World War. It was there we always stood to watch ‘The Twelfth’ procession. And it was there we used to see Jenny King.
In those boyhood days the extent of my acquaintance with Jenny King was slight - only an occasional visit to her home. To me she was just an ordinary flower-seller. Many of the people who passed by and ignored her ‘Flowers, Lady?’ probably thought the same. They were quite unconscious of her charm and of the rugged kindliness of her heart.
It was only when a great artist painted her picture that everybody began to take notice. George Bernard Shaw immortalized a flower girl in his ‘Pygmalion’ and William Conor did the same in oils for Jenny King. His painting of her was hung in the Belfast museum. The great artist had discovered what many people had missed in the flower-seller.
We were very proud of Jenny then, for she had achieved fame almost overnight; if there be fame for such as she. Then she sent a gift of Irish Shamrock to the King and she had a message back, thanking her for her gift. We used to look at her twice after that just to see if she was any different. But Jenny went on her way selling flowers.
It was not always Jenny cared to speak to me, for when I got away from boyhood days and entered the ministry, Jenny seemed afraid that I might be embarrassed by her recognition. Maybe she thought I was ‘a cut above her’. But in one of those rare moments when we talked Jenny proved to be something of a philosopher as well as a flower-seller.
One of the family was going to Australia and she was consoling herself with the thought that -‘It’s the same God there that we have here.’ Then she said, I’ll tell you three things to remember. It’s a far place where God can’t send; it’s a low bush the sun never shines on and he’s bad that can’t mend.’ And every time I pass ‘The Junction’ I feel that there is something lacking for Jenny has long since gone to the gardens on the other side.
But I know that ‘the great divide’ between that other world and this one is not as great as we sometimes think. And though years have passed Jenny’s words still come back to remind me that God is everywhere, that he cares for everybody and that even the worst can begin again. Well, Jenny had a good foundation for her faith, for the ‘old Book’ says, ‘God so loved… that he gave… that whosoever. ..‘And I guess that takes us all in.
I can never think of Jenny King without remembering that one of the greatest virtues in life is to be able to see the real man under his jacket and the real woman beneath her shawl. Jesus had a wonderful way of doing that. He seemed to be able to see something worth saving in everybody. There was an artist once who painted a picture of a beggar who used to stand outside his studio. Then he called the beggar in to see it. He could not believe that the painting was his picture.
The artist assured him that it really was his picture. ‘If that is the man you see,’ the beggar said, ‘then that is the man I will be.”
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