Southworth

Southworth is a Banfield hotelier and parish council member whose response to the reported miracles at St. Joseph’s Church is both civic and commercial. He sees the village’s new fame as a way to reverse its decline, but his enthusiasm for collective prosperity conceals a more personal design: to profit from the pilgrimage boom through tourism, property, and the leverage his growing wealth gives him. His trajectory exposes the close, uneasy alliance between public belief and private gain.

Identity and Economic Vision

Southworth belongs to a family name with a long history in Banfield. In a review of the village’s past, Gerry Fenn notes that Southworth is among the familiar names appearing in local records across several centuries; another two names from the parish council, Backshield and Oswold, also recur in that history. The village had experienced episodes of upheaval and change, but for much of its recorded history it remained modest in scale. Southworth’s ambitions are directed toward changing that condition.

When he and Rodney Tucker discuss investment with Fenn, Southworth argues that Banfield has little to offer visitors and that its existing summer trade brings limited benefit to the community. He is willing to put more money into the village if there is a reasonable return, and he knows other local businessmen are looking for sound investments. The discussion of developing nearby land and allowing the village to spread outward into a town gives his civic language an unmistakable financial edge. Fenn privately recognizes that such growth would also enrich Southworth and his associates.

The Miracles and the Village’s New Public Life

After the Sunday cures at St. Joseph’s Church, Southworth treats the event as a turning point for Banfield. He had witnessed the gathering, though his view of Alice Pagett was partly obstructed and he could not be certain that she had levitated. The five reported cures, by contrast, were supported by the patients’ doctors and hospital records. Their recovery was not uniformly complete: the man whose cataracts had cleared still had imperfect but improving sight, and the boy with a wasted leg still struggled to walk unaided while his muscles regained strength.

The distinction does not diminish Southworth’s excitement. By the following midmorning, newspapers were spread across his desk and media representatives had arrived from around the world. The village, usually quiet, was crowded and newly active; residents who had been living with economic stagnation were responding to the attention and beginning to thrive on it. At the parish council meeting, Southworth saw fellow members listening to expansion plans with an energy he had not previously encountered. He expected St. Joseph’s to become a shrine even if the Catholic Church did not formally recognize it as one, since publicity alone could draw pilgrims, tourists, and thrill-seekers in large numbers.

Southworth seeks cooperation with the Church rather than treating it as an irrelevant obstacle. He approaches Bishop Caines, with whom he has a personal connection, to discuss how the parish council and Church might respond to the expected influx. Bishop Caines is receptive to cooperation, while making clear that it must not involve cheap exploitation or activities that compromise the dignity of the Church. Southworth’s willingness to work through ecclesiastical channels helps present the tourism project as a civic response to a religious event, even as its financial promise remains central to his thinking.

Public Devotion and Commercial Display

At a later outdoor service, Southworth occupies a reserved area near the clergy and civilians, where Sue sees him talking and laughing quietly with Bishop Caines. Their manner gives Sue the impression that they are waiting for an open-air concert rather than a holy service. The scene places Southworth close to the ceremony’s institutional and public center, but the congregation’s expectancy and devotional activity contrast with the ease of his conversation.

The growth he welcomes also takes a visibly commercial form. Along the road, makeshift stalls sell small statues and religious trinkets, while posters of the Virgin and the Pope hang from trees; elsewhere, visitors encounter containers marketed as holy soil, plastic shrines, hastily repurposed images of Alice, and a doll whose mechanical voice recites part of the Hail Mary. The crowds and brisk trade show how quickly the reported visitation has been turned into objects for purchase. The novel does not identify Southworth as the seller of these goods, but their presence gives concrete form to the commercial atmosphere that his plans are helping to cultivate.

Private Ventures and the Cost of Success

Southworth’s private calculations become explicit in the account of his business plans. In less than two months, Banfield’s merchants have gained trade, its pubs and restaurants are crowded, and his own hotel has been overbooked since the miracles began. He expects the shrine’s eventual establishment to increase business still further, and has begun negotiating with the village’s travel agent to create St. Joseph’s Tours. Southworth will supply capital for a fleet of buses; the agent’s foreign connections are intended to secure partnerships with travel companies abroad. The venture promises direct income from tours as well as more guests for Southworth’s hotel, while he also plans a newer, more efficient hotel designed for rapid turnover.

His position is strengthened by property he has quietly acquired over the years. He bought shops cheaply when their owners could no longer make a living in the declining village, using a company name and a solicitor to conceal his ownership from other parish council members. With the boom underway, he plans to double or possibly treble the rents. He assumes tenants will have little practical recourse while business is flourishing, and that others will be ready to take their premises if they refuse the increase. The private landlord’s strategy reveals what his public language of community development leaves unsaid: prosperity will not be shared evenly, and Southworth intends to collect a substantial part of its proceeds.

His satisfaction is sharpened by the death of Father Andrew Hagan, whom he had regarded as a potential obstacle. Southworth regrets the priest’s death, yet immediately calculates that it has removed a difficulty; he considers Bishop Caines more open to persuasion. In Southworth’s account of Banfield’s transformation, religious uncertainty, civic revival, and personal opportunity coexist without resolving into a single motive. He can welcome the miracles as a source of renewed life for the village while measuring that life in bookings, rents, investment, and projected returns. The contrast makes him one of the novel’s clearest embodiments of the pilgrimage boom’s double character: a public response to the sacred that becomes, at the same time, a market.