Piccadilly Part 2

"Lord Frank Vanecourt," said d.i.c.kiefield.

"Lord Frank Vanecourt, sir, how do you do, sir?--proud to make your acquaintance, sir," said Mr Wog.

"The same to you, sir," said I. "Pray, where were you raised?" I wanted to show Mr Wog that I was not such a barbarian as he might imagine, and knew how to ask a civil question or two.

"Well, sir, I'm a Missouri man," he replied. "I was a captain under Frank Blair, till I was taken bad with chills and fever; then I gave up the chills and kept the fever--'oil-fever' they call it down to Pithole--you've heard of Pithole?"

"Yes," I said, I had heard of that magical city.

"Well, just as I struck oil, one of your English lords came over there for the purpose of what he called 'getting up petroleum' and we were roommates in the same hotel for some time, and got quite friendly; and when he saw my new kerosene lamp, and found I was coming to have it patented in this country, he promised to help me to get up a Patent Lamp Company, and gave me letters to some of your leading aristocracy; so, before leaving, I saw the President, and told him I would report on the state of feeling in your highest circles about our war. We know what it is in your oppressed cla.s.ses, but it aint every one has a chance, like me, of finding out how many copperheads there are among your lords. My father, sir, you may have heard of by name--Appollonius T. Wog, the founder, and, I may say, the father of the celebrated 'Pollywog Convention,' which was named after him, and which unfortunately burst up just in time to be too late to save our country from bursting up too."

I expressed to Mr Wog my condolences on the premature decease of the Pollywog Convention, and asked him how long he had been in England, and whom he had seen.

"Well, sir," he said, "I have only been here a few days, and I have seen considerable people; but none of them were n.o.blemen, and they are the cla.s.s I have to report upon. The Earl of Broadhem, here, is the first with whom I have conversed, and he informs me that he has just come from one of your universities, and that the sympathies of the great majority of your rising youth are entirely with the North."

"You may report to your Government that the British youth of the present day, hot from the university, are very often prigs."

"Most certainly I will," said Mr Wog; "the last word, however, is one with which I am not acquainted."

"It is an old English term for profound thinker," I replied.

Mr Wog took out a pocket-book, and made a note; while he was doing so, he said, with a sly look, "Have you an old English word for 'quite a fine gurl'?"

"No," I said; "they are a modern invention."

"Well, sir, I can tell you the one that sat 'twixt you and me at dinner would knock the spots out of some of our 'Sent' Louis belles."

In my then frame of mind the remark caused me such acute pain that I plunged into a conversation that was going on between Grandon and d.i.c.kiefield on the present state of our relations with Brazil, and took no further notice of Mr Wog for the rest of the evening; only, as my readers may possibly hear more of him in society during this season, I have thought it right to introduce him to them at once.

We all went to hear Broadhem's speech next day, and whatever might have been our private opinion upon the matter, we all, with the exception of Grandon and Lady Ursula, warmly congratulated him upon it afterwards.

John Chundango and Joseph Caribbee Islands both made most effective speeches, but we did not feel the least called upon to congratulate them: they each alluded with great affection to the heathen and to Lord Broadhem. Chundango drew a facetious contrast between his lordship and an effeminate young Eastern prince, which was highly applauded by the audience that crowded the town-hall of Gullaby; and Joseph made a sort of grim joke about the probable effect of the "Court of Final Appeal"

upon the theological tenets of the Caribbee Islanders, that made Lady Broadhem cough disapprobation, and everybody else on the platform feel uncomfortable. I confess I have rather a weakness for Joseph. He has a blunt off-hand way of treating the most sacred topics, that you only find among those who are professionally familiar with the subject. There is something refreshingly muscular in the way he lounges down to the smoking-room in an old grey shooting-coat, and lights the short black meerschaum, which he tells you kept off fever in the Caribbee Islands, while the smoke loses itself in the depths of his thick beard, which he is obliged to wear because of his delicate throat. There is a force and an ease in his mode of dealing with inspiration at such a moment which you feel must give him an immense ascendancy over the native mind.

He possesses what may be termed a dry ecclesiastical humour, differing entirely from Chundango's, whose theological fun takes rather the form of Scriptural riddles, picked up while he was a catechist. Neither he nor Broadhem smoke, so we had Wog and the Bishop to ourselves for half an hour before going to bed. "You must come and breakfast with me some morning in Piccadilly to meet my interesting friend Brother Chrysostom, my lord," said I.

I always like to give a bishop his t.i.tle, particularly a missionary bishop; it is a point of ecclesiastical etiquette about which I have heard that the propagators of Christianity were very particular.

"If you will allow me, sir, I will join the party," said Mr Wog, before the Bishop could reply; "and as I don't know where Piccadilly is, I'll just ask the Bishop to bring me along. There is a good deal of law going on between your bishops just now," our American friend went on, "and I should like to know the rights of it. We in our country consider that your Ecclesiastical Court is a most remarkable inst.i.tution for a Christian land. Why sir, law is strictly prohibited in a certain place; and it seems to me that you might as well talk of a good devil as a religious court. If it is wrong for a layman to go to law, it must be wrong for a bishop. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; that proverb holds good in your country as well as mine, don't it?"

"The Ecclesiastical Court is a court of discipline and doctrine rather than of law," said d.i.c.kiefield.

"Well, it's a court anyhow you fix it; and your parsons must be a bad lot to want a set of lawyers reg'larly trained to keep them in order."

"Perhaps Parson Brownlow would have been the better of a court of some kind," said the Bishop. "It seems to me that to be a minister of the Gospel at one moment, a colonel at another, and the Governor of a State at a third, ill.u.s.trates the abuses which arise when such courts don't exist. With us, now, when a man once takes orders, he remains in them for the rest of his life."

"Even after he has concluded not to obey them, eh?" asked Mr Wog.

"Ah, Mr Wog," I interrupted, "before you return to the oil regions, you must make yourself acquainted with the enormous advantages connected with a State Church. You must grasp the idea that it is founded chiefly upon Acts of Parliament--that the clergy are only a paid branch of the Civil Service, exercising police functions of a very lofty and important character. The 'orders' come from the Queen, the 'Articles' are interpreted by the Privy Council, and 'England expects every clergyman to do his duty.' As I think some of the late doctrinal decisions of the judicial committee are questionable, I am drawing up a bill for the reform of the Protestant religion, and for the addition of a fortieth article to the existing thirty-nine. If I can carry it through both Houses of Parliament, all the convocations in Christendom cannot prevent the nation from accepting it as absolute divine truth; and I shall have the extreme satisfaction of feeling that I am manufacturing a creed for the ma.s.ses, and thus securing a theological progress commensurate with our educational enlightenment. As long as the law of the land enables a majority of the Legislature to point out the straight and narrow way to the archbishops and bishops who have to lead their flocks along it, I have no fear for the future. It must be a comfort to feel, that if the worst comes to the worst, you have, as in the House of Commons, to lean upon 'my lord.'"

But the "dry ecclesiastical humour" of the Bishop, to which I have referred, did not evidently run in the same channel as mine.

"I don't think," he said, sternly, "that this is either the place or the mode in which to discuss subjects of so solemn a nature."

"I was only speaking of the system generally," I retorted, "and did not propose to enter here upon any doctrinal details of a really sacred character; those I leave to ecclesiastical dignitaries and learned divines with initials, to ventilate in a sweet Christian spirit in the columns of the daily press."

But the Bishop had already lit his candle, and with an abrupt "good night," vanished.

"Really, Frank," said d.i.c.kiefield, "it is not fair of you to drive my guests to bed before they have finished their pipes in that way. What you say may be perfectly true, but there can be no sort of advantage in stating it so broadly."

"My dear d.i.c.kiefield, how on earth is our friend Wog here to understand what his southern countryman would call 'our peculiar inst.i.tution,' if somebody does not enlighten him? I want him, on his return, to point out to the President the advantage of subst.i.tuting a State Church for the State rights which are so rapidly disappearing." Whereupon we diverged into American politics; and I asked Grandon an hour later, as we went to bed, what he thought of my first missionary effort.

"If the effect of your preaching is to drive your listeners away," he said, laughing, "I am afraid it will not meet with much success."

"It is a disagreeable task, but somebody must do it," I replied, feeling really discouraged. "It makes me quite sad to look at these poor wandering shepherds, who really mean to do right, but who are so utterly bewildered themselves, that they have lost all power of guiding their flocks without the a.s.sistance of lawyers. When did these latter bring back 'the key of knowledge,' that one of old said they had 'taken away?'

or why are they not as 'blind leaders of the blind' now as they were then? If I speak harshly, it is because I fancy I see a ditch before them. I shall feel bound to trouble the Bishop again with a few practical remarks. There is no knowing whether even he may not be brought to perceive that you might as well try to extract warmth from an iceberg as divine inspiration from the State, and that a Church without inspiration is simply a grate without fire. The clergy may go on teaching for doctrine the commandments of men, and stand and shiver in a theology which comes to them filtered through the Privy Council, and which is as cold and gloomy as the cathedrals in which it is preached.

But the congregations who are crying aloud for light and heat will go and look for them elsewhere."

"You are a curious compound, Frank," said Grandon; "I never knew a man whose moods changed so suddenly, or whose modes of thinking were so spasmodic and extreme; however, I suppose you are intended to be of some use in the world"--and he looked at me as a philosopher might at a mosquito.

"By the way, we must leave by the early train to-morrow if we want to get to town in time for the opening of Parliament."

"I think I shall stay over to-morrow," I answered. "Broadhem is going up, but the ladies are going to stay two days longer, and the House can open very well without me; besides, Chundango and the Bishop are going to stay over Sunday."

"That is an inducement, certainly," said Grandon. "Come, you must have some other reason!"

"My dear old fellow," said I, putting my hand on Grandon's shoulder, "my time is come at last. Haven't you remarked what low spirits I have been in since dinner? I can't bear it for another twenty-four hours! You know my impulsive sensitive nature. I must know my fate at once from her own lips."

"Whose own lips?" said Grandon, with his eyes very wide open.

"Lady Ursula's, of course!" I replied. "I knew her very well as a child, so there is nothing very sudden about it.

"Well, considering you have never seen her since, I don't quite agree with you," he said, in a deeper tone than usual. "In your own interest, wait till you know a little more of her."

"Not another day! Good-night!" and I turned from him abruptly.

"I'll put myself out of suspense to-morrow, and keep the public in it for a month," thought I, as I penned the above for their benefit, after which I indulged in two hours of troubled sleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

PART II.

MADNESS.

FLITYVILLE, _March 20_.