Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How Part 8

A bishop once stayed at a house where they put out for him a set of silver-mounted brushes. When he left, the brushes disappeared, and the master of the house waited some days thinking he should receive them back, but, not doing so, he wrote and inquired if they had got packed up by mistake with the bishop's things. He received a telegram next day saying, "Poor but honest; look in table-drawer."

A young lady sitting by a bishop-suffragan who was also an archdeacon, asked him if it was true that he was an archdeacon as well as a bishop, and when he said, "Yes," she said, "Is not that what they call pleurisy?"

A certain bishop of the old school had a well-known and invariable Confirmation charge, which began, "My dear young friends, we have been engaged in a very interesting, and (as I hold it to be) a perfectly un.o.bjectionable ceremony."

A certain clergyman about to be married is said to have written to his bishop to ask if he could marry himself, as he wished the wedding to be very quiet, and did not want to trouble any other clergyman. The bishop is said to have replied that he could not give him permission to marry himself, but he thought he might allow him to bury himself if he wished and felt able.

STORIES OF THE BISHOP'S OWN EXPERIENCES DURING HIS EPISCOPACY.

These are not very numerous, and occupy a comparatively small portion of the note-book. Some of them have already appeared in the "Life of Bishop Walsham How."

I once visited the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and was going on afterwards for a week's fishing in Dorsetshire. It so happened that my portmanteau, in which were my dress-clothes, was locked, but a carpet-bag containing all my fishing things was not locked. When I went up to dress for dinner at the Palace I found that the butler had put out all my fishing clothes with wading stockings and wading boots for me to dress in for dinner.

I received the following letter during the time that I was Bishop of Wakefield:

May it please your Lordship,

To inform me, my Lord, wether I have a legal right to a grave, or not, supposing my granfather of my mother's side, my Lordship, and the said granfather had no son, and my mother was the eldest daughter, and I am my mother's eldest child and only son, my Lordship, who would become in possession, of the said grave, my Lordship, supposing my father, loeses my mother, my Lordship, has he a legal right to bury my mother, in the said grave, if it is not left, in the aforesaid,--granfather's Will, my Lordship, hasn't the aforesaid granfather granson the Legal Right of the said Grave, my Lordship, has a Son-in-law, a Legal Right before a Granson, to the said Grave, my Lordship, has my sister a Legal Right, to have my Father, buryed in the said Grave, my Lordship, without the concent of her Brother, my Lordship, is that Grave invested with Vicar's Right's, so that no one can interfear with the said Grave, my Lordship, the said Grave has a Head Stone to it and there was a certain amount of Fee's to be paid, before, the said Vicar allows the said Stone to be put over the Grave, my Lordship, would not that Grave devolve and become Freehold Property, my Lordship, may it please your Grace to send me a reply

from yours truly ----

This letter is perfect sense, and was "translated" by the Bishop's legal secretary. Entire repunctuation will be found a great a.s.sistance to any one whose curiosity leads them to attempt to gather the meaning.

I have had a complaint from a layman to say that his rector in a sermon recently preached explained the repet.i.tion of the Lord's Prayer in the Church service by saying as follows: "The prayer occurs three times in the morning service; one is for those who get to church in good time, the second one is for the late, the third one is for the very late." My correspondent did not think this profitable teaching.

A working man in East London being shown some photographs came to one of the Bishop of Bedford (myself), and the clergyman who was showing the photographs said, "That is the Bishop of Bedford, he is a total abstainer you know." The man paused a moment and then said, "Ah, there's reformed in all cla.s.ses, no doubt."

A little girl at Eastbourne was at a church where I was preaching, and in a whisper in the middle of the sermon begged her mother to let her have a pair of sleeves like the bishop's.

An old woman, whom I confirmed lately in a Yorkshire parish, said to the clergyman's wife at the end of the service, "A turned sick three times, but a banged thro'."

I sent a curate to look at a church I wanted him to take charge of, and he found a choirboy in the church who told him the Bishop had been there the Sunday before. "And what did you think of him?" said the curate. The boy replied, "A thought he'd a been a bigger mon."

I have received a letter from a man complaining that, having been recommended to study "Daniel on the Book of Common Prayer," he had read the book of Daniel all through, and could find no mention of the Prayer-book in it.

Our forefathers seem to have had occasion for a curious instrument called a scratchback, which consisted of a small ivory hand screwed on to a long light handle. One of these is preserved as a curiosity at a country house in this diocese. My domestic chaplain, when he first called there, finding himself alone in the drawing-room, took up the instrument, and never having enjoyed the experience proceeded to put it down his back. At that moment the lady of the house entered, and my chaplain hastily withdrawing the machine found the handle had separated from the hand, which was left behind. He had to apologise, and ask permission to retire that he might recover the missing hand.

CONCERNING LUNATICS.

In common with most people whose names are well known, Bishop Walsham How received many letters from lunatics. He also met with a few and has recorded one or two of his experiences. One of these dates from somewhat early days, as will be seen from the reference to Dr. Christopher Wordsworth. It runs as follows:

Once when I was staying at St. John's Wood I took an early omnibus to Westminster, and as it was fine I got up outside and had for a companion a very gentlemanly looking man of military appearance. He soon began to talk about prophecy and the revelation, showing an intimate acquaintance with the Bible, and at last he asked me if I did not think the time had arrived for the Messiah to be again revealed in the flesh. I of course deprecated all attempts to fix the date of the Second Advent, but he persisted in his attempts to prove that the Messiah would again be incarnate. I saw he was full of wild notions, but I was rather startled when he asked me if I could name any one on earth who seemed to me to answer to all the requirements I should look for in the Messiah, and when I said, "Certainly not," he startled me still more by saying, "Now I should be disposed to say Dr. Christopher Wordsworth" (then Dean of Westminster) "answered most nearly, if it were not for his extraordinary hallucination with regard to the millenium." Of course by this time I saw the man was mad. However, I asked him if he could name any one more perfectly answering to his expectation. He then asked me if I understood the meaning of the Frogs in the book of Revelation, and, on my answering in the negative, he said. "I ask myself what can you predicate of frogs?

Only two things, they croak and they jump. So when I hear any one clear his throat, suddenly putting his hand up to his mouth, I say to myself, 'That is the sign of the frogs. The time is come'." He then said, "You will allow, I presume, that the Messiah must appear from a mountain?" To which I of course a.s.sented, as I did to everything else now. "And that mountain must bear a name equivalent to Armageddon?" "Yes." "Do you know what Armageddon means?" "No." "It is a name of the devil." "Oh!" "Well, such a mountain exists." "Where?" "In the county of Tipperary, and at the foot of that mountain I was born." He then went on with a long rhapsody, saying, "Yes, I am the Messiah, though men won't believe it.

It's a most curious fact that, while the interests of humanity centre in me, each man believes that they centre in himself. Yes, I am the scape-goat. You know that goat was sent into the wilderness by the priest. Ah! that event happened on" (here he mentioned very rapidly some date which I forget). "I was the goat: moral wilderness, you know--commission in lunacy. My brother was the priest--sent me into the wilderness, &c. &c." He was now talking very rapidly and excitedly, and I was glad our journey came to an end.

The other incident recorded in the note-book occurred more recently, when on the Monday before Ash Wednesday the Bishop had been preaching in a London church, and a young man came to the vestry after the service to speak to him. The Bishop having asked him how he could help him, the young man laid one hand on the Bishop's knee, looked him earnestly in the face, and said in a loud impressive whisper, "To-morrow's pancake day, and the next day's salt-fish!"

DREAMS.

Few people remember dreams to the same extent as Bishop Walsham How. It was a very usual thing at breakfast for him to tell some absurd dream that he had had, the remembrance of which often amused him so much as to greatly hinder its recital. In his note-book he has recorded two, one of his own, and one of Bishop Jackson's (of London).

A Dream of Red Tape.--A clergyman is often rather beset with forms to fill up. Probably in consequence of this I dreamt one night that I was walking through a street with a lady, and, it having been raining, there were many puddles. I stopped and said I had got some new forms in my pocket which would be most useful. I then pulled out a large roll of forms, printed as follows: "Madam, allow me to have the honour of a.s.sisting you to----over this----." There was a line below for a signature. I explained that you had only to fill up the first s.p.a.ce with "step" or "jump," and the second with "puddle" or "pool," according to size, sign your name at the bottom and the thing was done.

This is a comparatively recent entry in the note-book, but the dream occurred many years ago. Those who remember the Bishop telling it in old days will not have forgotten that he used to say that he dreamt it after spending a long day signing his name at the Oswestry Savings' Bank of which he was a trustee.

Bishop Jackson's dream was as follows:

The Bishop of London, at the time of one of the great gatherings of Sunday school children in St. Paul's Cathedral, dreamt that he was there, and heard them singing a hymn, one verse of which was as follows:

To our Churchwardens we will tell The wonders of this day, And eke to them will take the bill Of what they have to pay.

YORKSHIRE STORIES.

A Yorkshire clergyman the other day, visiting a poor man who had just lost his little boy, endeavoured to console him. The poor man burst into tears, and in the midst of his sobs exclaimed: "If 'twarna agin t' law a should ha' liked to have t' little beggar stoofed."

A leading layman in the Wakefield diocese went to see a poor old woman whose husband had just died after a long illness. In talking of him she remarked, "Eh, but John's tabernacle tuk a deal o' riving to bits."

The Vicar of Sowerby Bridge met with a woman in his parish who said she could not agree with the Church. On being pressed for particulars she said she could not hold with renouncing the devil and all his works.