Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How Part 1

Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How.

by Frederick Douglas How.

PREFACE

On Christmas Day, 1891, my father presented me with his collection of "Ecclesiastical Jottings," as he called them, having previously had them handsomely bound in red leather. When he put them into my hands he expressed a hope that I should some day make a little book of them. Up to the time of his death he made frequent additions to the collection, and I have now gathered most of his stories together in "a little book,"

according to his wishes.

To _read_ them is to lose so much; yet that is all that one can do now.

Half their humour seems to have gone with the sound of his voice, the merry twinkle of his eye, and his own delight in them.

I cannot help hoping that they may serve to brighten the odd minutes of some other lives spent, as his was, in many labours.

There are some people to whom apologies seem due.

First, to those to whom a large number of these stories are already familiar. May I ask them to realise that the contents of this volume have been so familiar to me that it has been almost impossible for me to know which to throw away as chestnuts?

Secondly, I apologise to those whose appreciation of my father's goodness and piety is so great that they shrink from the contemplation of any other characteristics. To them I would, with great deference, suggest that they are putting on one side a large and important part of my father's character. No man, as I believe, walked more closely with his G.o.d, but his influence owed much of its power to the fact that he also walked in closest sympathy with men--sympathy not only with their tears but with their laughter--sympathy which begot, as it generally does, a keen sense of humour.

Thirdly, there are those who, possessing no sense of humour themselves, are fearful lest it should appear derogatory to their stupendous intellects to appreciate that gift in others. I was going to apologise to these also--but, on the whole, I think I won't.

F. D. H.

_February 1900._

LIGHTER MOMENTS

Bishop Walsham How was the happy possessor of a nature essentially sunny. Deeply pious from his childhood onwards, his piety was neither of that morose, narrow, gloomy description met with among some people, nor was it of that gushing, uncertain, hysterical kind occasionally found among others. He was happy because he was good. His simple joyous life was a song of praise to his Creator, like that of a bright spring day.

He rejoiced in the Lord alway. No one who knew him could fail to be struck with this all-pervading note in his character. No matter what the anxiety, no matter what the trouble, he was always ready to turn his face to the Sun and be gladdened by the Light.

A quality on a slightly lower level, but having its own part in helping to sustain his sunniness of disposition, was his keen sense of humour.

He never could help seeing the funny side of things. A visit to some dreary and neglected parish in East London would sadden him, but the ready answer of a street boy, or the good story told him by a fellow traveller in train or tram, would not fail to be appreciated, and would give him something cheery to talk about when he got home.

Surely this sense of humour is in some way closely allied with the power of sympathy. This is apparently true in the case of _men_. _Women_ must be considered from a different point of view, for, while the world would be but a poor place bereft of their sympathy, they have for the most part but little sense of humour. Occasionally one meets with a supposed exception, but even then one is liable to be deceived. It is natural to all women to wish to please, and sometimes an apparently humorous disposition is the result of consummate acting. A lady was staying with a large house party at a country house, and gained a great reputation by her power of telling amusing stories with a vast appreciation of their fun. It was noticed that other people's stories were received by her with remarkable gravity, and seldom called forth her laughter. This was ascribed by some to jealousy, by others to a limited sense of humour. At last the true explanation was forthcoming. An accident revealed the fact that every story she heard was carefully noted, and entered afterwards in a book, with the place and date where it was told. Hence the grave attention with which she listened. It was not the fun that attracted her, but the opportunity of adding to a store of anecdotes from which a selection was carefully rehea.r.s.ed day by day in her bedroom, to be let off like a number of little set pieces for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the company and her own glorification.

Bishop Walsham How entered most of the amusing incidents and stories he met with in a notebook, but his sense of humour was very different from that of the lady mentioned above. There was no lack of spontaneity. It was part and parcel of himself, and he would never have been the man he was, or had the influence he possessed, without it.

Although far more men than women seem to have this sense, yet every one must be familiar with some few of those unfortunate people in whom it is lacking. Let a man think of his schooldays. There were masters who _understood_--who saw the joke underlying a breach of discipline; who punished, indeed, but who did it with a twinkle in the eye which helped to cure the smart. These were the men whom the boys trusted, just because they felt that they were sure of sympathy. But there was probably one at least among the staff, ponderous, dull, and worthy, well-meaning, but a failure simply by reason of an entire lack of the sense of humour. By dint of dogged perseverance he got certain facts into the heads of his cla.s.s, but he never succeeded in interesting them in their work. He took boys out for a solemn walk, but never gained a confidence. What was the good of talking to him? He never had been a boy: he could not understand.

It is just the same in other professions. The clergyman with pale and heavy features, who sees no fun in anything, may just as well stop at home as go round from house to house with his awkward unsympathetic questions. The children run away from him, their parents are simply bored. The doctor or the lawyer loses touch with his clients when he is unfortunate enough to be set down as a man who cannot see a joke.

In fact, the sense of humour is a real part of the power of conveying a sense of sympathy. The sympathy _may_ be there in the dullest and heaviest of men, but he has not the power of conveying it. One of Bishop Walsham How's great delights was to share with others the amus.e.m.e.nt he gleaned from day to day, and it was his wish that after his death some of the stories that he collected should be published. Many of them he frequently told, and they have been repeated from mouth to mouth till they are well known, others were perhaps well known when he first heard them. The following selection has been made with the hope of including all the more original anecdotes, and it is hoped that they may have some small share in keeping alive the memory of one whose sense of humour helped to increase his wide-hearted sympathy for his fellow creatures.

Many of the stories told by Bishop Walsham How centre round Whittington, the Shropshire parish of which he was Rector from 1851 to 1879. In the early days of his residence there superst.i.tion was exceedingly rife. There is a note by the Bishop to this effect:

The prevalence of superst.i.tion in these enlightened days (as we call them: how our great-grandchildren will laugh at us!) is most marvellous.

The following are in this parish generally approved and seriously recommended remedies for the whooping-cough, popularly called the "chin-cough": To be swung nine times under a donkey. To pa.s.s the patient three times under and over a briar growing from a hedge, saying, "Over the briar and under the briar, and leave the chin-cough behind."[1]

Anything recommended by a seventh son. (One woman cured several people, she tells me, by sending them to meet a boatman who is a seventh son, and to ask him what would cure them.) Anything recommended by a man on a piebald horse. (I have been told of cures being thus effected by gin, honey, cold water, and an ounce of tea taken wholly.)

[Footnote 1: This process I can remember undergoing at the hands of my nurse in the garden of Whittington Rectory.--Ed.]

Soon after I came here [Whittington] an old neighbour, Kitty Williams, was ill, and my wife was ill at the same time. In speaking of the latter fact to an old woman who lived at the hamlet of Babies' Wood, she said she hoped we were good to old Kitty, for she had an evil eye and might have caused Mrs. How's illness. She then told me the following story: When Kitty was young she lived in service near Whittington, but was sent away for some misconduct, and after a time married Jonathan Williams and came to live where I knew her. From the time she left her place nothing prospered there. Cows died, horses went lame, and all went wrong. So they consulted a wise woman, who told them to get a pair of black horses with long tails and to drive them about till they stopped of themselves, and then to give the first woman they saw whatever she asked for. They did so; the horses stopped opposite Kitty's cottage close by Whittington Rectory. Kitty came out, and they greeted their old servant and asked what they should give her. She chose a shawl, so they went to Oswestry and bought her one, after which all things prospered with them. This was told me with the seriousness of profound belief.[2]

[Footnote 2: The following facts may throw some light on the horses stopping at that exact spot. First, they were probably hea.r.s.e horses; secondly, there is a public-house on the other side of the road.--Ed.]

Scarcely less curious were many of the phrases and sayings which he came across in visiting the old inhabitants of the parish.

Here are a few which found a place in his notebook:

A woman from whom I was making some inquiry concerning a neighbour answered me, "I really can't tell you, sir, for I've not much confection of cheerfulness with my neighbours."

Another woman, who had been ill, described herself to me as being "as thin as a halfpenny herring."

A poor woman in the parish, speaking to me of the wonders of the heavens, expressed her astonishment at the sun rising in the east, whereas it set in the west. "I suppose," she said, "it gets back in the night when it is dark."

The following words are given verbatim as spoken by an old woman in the parish on the occasion of my first visit soon after I became Rector.

"The old man and me never go to bed, sir, without singing the Evening Hymn. Not that I've got any voice left, for I haven't; and as for him, he's like a bee in a bottle; and then he don't humour the tune, for he don't rightly know one tune from another, and he can't remember the words neither; so when he leaves out a word I puts it in, and when I can't sing I dances, and so we gets through it somehow."

Queer letters, too, find a place among the other curiosities of Whittington. Mrs. How received the following remarkable epistle about a poor woman who had been sent to a lady in Oswestry.

There is not a stop in the letter from beginning to end:

I am sorry to send to you Ellen Morris which her his heavy afflicted with the favor on the brain which her is not fit to get her living and her did go to Mrs. G---- and I did write a note to go to her and her said if her had a note from a clergyman her would give her 2 6 [two-and-six] what does it matter who write a note for a person when they are in distress people that can write a note and tell the truth which her has got a pair of boots in a shoemaker's shop which her cannot get them out without two shilling and her his very near barefoot and I hope you will bestow your charity this once for my sake and yours what we give to the poor we never shall want which I do give her what I can give her and G.o.d will bless us all that will give with a good free willing heart my dear Mrs. How which I hope you will bestow you are a very good to the poor and it his a great charity to give to this poor woman yours truly Mrs. D---- which her does beg her living from one or another and her does do very well considering.

The above is the complete letter, no date, and no other word of any sort. Vicarious begging letters are not unknown to the police of our big towns, but the scribe who could not do better than the above would have small chance of employment. A modern London begging letter is often a work of fine art.

A further note on a curious letter tells how, in December 1875, a good widow in the village received a proposal from a man she had never spoken to, couched in the following terms:

Dear Friend, I am a widower with two little girls, and I want some one to take care of them. I think we could live very comfortably together in this world, & afterwards we could rejoin those we have loved who have gone before. If you accept this, please write & say so on the other side of this sheet. If not, please return this letter, & dont make it public.[3]

[Footnote 3: Proposal declined.--Ed]

The famous and eccentric Jack Mytton lived at Halston, a country house in the parish of Whittington, not very long before Bishop Walsham How went there as Rector. Some of the old servants from that house were still living in the village, and wonderful were the stories that they told. One would relate how he was compelled to go out on a snowy night and crawl over the ice to shoot wild ducks with his master, _dressed only in his nightshirt_. Another told how, after Jack Mytton's famous roasting match against a professional roaster in Shrewsbury, his master called for him in his carriage on his way home, and drove him up to Halston that he might _sc.r.a.pe_ him where he was burnt.

Happily such days were over before 1850, and no doubt the stories of these old servants lost nothing in the telling. One of the last to survive was the subject of the following pa.s.sage in the notebook:

Mrs. J----, formerly housekeeper at Halston in Mr. Mytton's time, has long been a sufferer from asthma. She lost a sister, and in speaking of arrangements for the funeral told me she had a vault made for four, in which three, including her own husband, had been already buried, and that she wished her sister to have the fourth place. When I said, "Surely, that is meant for yourself," she answered, "No, I never could breathe in a vault. I must have fresh air. She shall have it, and I'll be buried in the open ground, if you please."

While speaking of Halston a good story may find a place concerning the gentleman who owned the property in Bishop Walsham How's time.

One of my curates, in walking down from Frankton, fell in with a man who startled him by saying what a pity it was that the owner of Halston was not a better man. On being asked what he meant, the man said that no good man would do as was being done on that property, and build cottages in pairs or close together. My curate asked why not, and the man said, "Because it is written 'Thou shalt not add house to house'"; and, on my curate explaining the true meaning to him, he repudiated it entirely, and said he had no doubt the thing was condemned in the Bible because next-door neighbours always quarrel.

Here is an account of a curious interview the Rector had with a local stonemason. Probably the spread of education would make such a thing impossible to-day.

A stonemason one day brought a stone to put into the churchyard, with a verse on it in which occurred the line--