Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How

A friend of mine met with a timber-merchant one day, who said he thought the Old Testament was not very historical, and contained things no one could believe. He said, for instance, that he had made rather accurate calculations of the size and weight of the Ark, and it was simply absurd to think that the Israelites could carry such a huge thing about with them in the wilderness for forty years, even without the animals.

At a funeral of a wife the undertaker put the bereaved husband in the first carriage with his mother-in-law. When the widower heard of the arrangement he remonstrated with the undertaker, and asked if he could not go in one of the other carriages. Being told that this would be remarked upon, as the nearest relatives always went in the first carriage, he yielded, saying, "Ah, well, if it must be so, it must; but you've quite spoilt my day for me."

A clergyman of very unclerical habits was salmon-fishing in Scotland in 1872, and made use of strong expressions which very much disgusted the ghillie who accompanied him. At last the clergyman, on losing a fish he had hooked, made use of a very improper word when the ghillie could stand it no longer, but broke out with, "I'm thinking there maun ha' been a sair lack o' timber when they made thee a prop o' the Tabernacle."

The Rev. R. Bonner, our late Government School Inspector, hired a gig from Shrewsbury to drive to inspect a school. The driver in the course of conversation informed him that they had got a new clergyman in his parish who did all sorts of strange things. On Mr. Bonner asking him what, he said, "Why, sir, he makes them sing the Psalms all through." Mr. B. answered, "Don't you think the Psalms were meant to be sung?" To which he replied, "I never heard that before, sir." Mr. B. then said, "Surely David wrote them for music." "Who did you say, sir?" the man answered. "David," said Mr. B., "You know they are called the Psalms of David." Whereupon the driver said, "Oh, yes, sir, I was forgetting. Didn't a gentleman of the name of Hopkins help him?"

A former curate of mine, the Rev. G. E. Sheppard, left to go to All Saints, Shrewsbury, where I went to see him. On the wall of his room was a picture with these words underneath:

The Queen was asked upon one day
Where the greatness of Old England lay,
And very soon she was heard to say,
It lays within the Bible.

A sceptical working man told a curate who was talking to him about our Lord's life that he had a curious old book at home by a writer called Herodotus, but, though it was very old it did not even mention any of the miracles recorded in the New Testament.

A young clergyman was accused by his vicar of using too long words in preaching, "felicity" being given as an example. He was sure every one understood the word, so the vicar called up an old woman and asked her if she knew what "felicity" meant. She said, "Beant it summut in the inside of a pig?"

An organising secretary of the Additional Curates' Society told me of a wonderful experience of another secretary of the same society. He was asked to stay at a gentleman's house in Worcestershire, and, when shown in, his host said he was sorry he could not shake hands with him, as he made it a rule to shake hands alternately with the right hand and the left, and he could not remember which he had used last. Then, as they went in to dinner, he told him it was the rule of the house always to make the sign of the cross with the foot on the floor at the dining-room door. After he had gone up to bed his host came in many times to offer him a night-shirt, a razor, &c. At last he thought he had got rid of him and went to sleep. But at midnight his host came and told him it was the rule of the house that at twelve o'clock all should change beds, and he actually had to turn out and go into another bed.

A woman wishing good-bye to a clergyman's wife when they were going to another parish, said to her, "We shall all miss Mr. – 's sermons very much, for, you know, intellect is not what we want in this parish."

A certain rector, who was not a lively preacher, always closed his eyes when saying the Prayers. His curate wrote the following epigram:

I never see my rector's eyes;
He hides their light divine:
For, when he prays, he shuts his own,
And, when he preaches, mine.

A man who had been a great drunkard was persuaded to take the pledge, and some time afterwards a lady went to see the wife, and asked her how they were getting on, to which she replied, "Oh, ma'am, we're getting on right well. He never beats me now, and never swears at me. I say he's more like a friend than a husband now."

A gentleman was invited to a Church function, and wrote and excused himself as he was going to the races, "but," he added, "I shall be with you in spirit."

An old verger whom I knew lost his wife, and a clergyman went in the evening after the funeral to condole with him. As he reached the door he heard very lively voices inside, and on opening it the first words he heard were from the old verger himself who was exclaiming, "What's trumps?" The room was full of tobacco smoke, and as soon as the verger, to his horror, saw his vicar standing at the door he said very humbly, "Oh, sir, I beg pardon; it's only a few friends as helped to put my poor wife underground."

A former Archdeacon of Gloucester had on his paper of inquiries addressed to the churchwardens this question: "Is your clergyman of sober life and conversation?" One churchwarden answered, "He is sober, but I have had no conversation with him for many years."

An enthusiastic total abstainer had a bit of blue ribbon sewn on his nightshirts, for, he said, if the house was on fire and he had to escape in his night-dress, he would like people to see that he was a member of the blue ribbon society.

A Mr. Manning was curate of my old parish of Whittington at the time the present form of marriage registers came into use, and, not understanding the heading "Condition," he filled up that column in the first entry, "Man lean, woman rather fat."

An Act of Parliament against making false entries in registers, or mutilating them, is bound up with many Registers. The penalty is transportation for ten years. Towards the end of the Act is a short clause (with the word "penalties" in the margin) saying, "Half the penalties under this Act are to go to the informer, and the other half to the poor of the parish."

At a charity sermon a certain nobleman was in a seat with a rich man whom he did not know, but who knew him, the nobleman being furthest from the door. At the close of the sermon the nobleman took out a shilling and placed it on the book-board. The rich parvenu was very indignant, and as a rebuke took out a sovereign and placed it on the book-board. The nobleman looked for a moment and then quietly put down another shilling, the other putting down at once a second sovereign. And so they went on till the nobleman had five shillings and the other five pounds before him. When the alms-bag came the rich man ostentatiously put the five sovereigns in. The nobleman put one shilling into the bag, and the other four into his pocket.

Some Americans managed to get an interview with Mr. Keble at Hursley. He walked with them through the garden, when one of them picked a branch of a climbing rose, and said, "Now, if you will have the goodness to hand that to me I can get five dollars for it in New York."

The vicar of an East London parish was one of the first London clergymen to grow his beard. The then Bishop of London wished to stop the practice, and, as he was going to confirm in that church, sent his chaplain to the vicar to ask him to shave it off, saying he should otherwise select another church for the Confirmation. The vicar replied that he was quite willing to take his candidates to another church, and would give out next Sunday the reason for the change. Of course, the bishop retracted.

The old Mitre Hymn-book had in it a hymn describing the just man, and, among the noble Christian graces ascribed to him, is the following couplet:

And what his charity impairs
He saves by prudence in affairs.

A Professional View of a Church Congress. – At the Bath Church Congress a friend of mine went to have his hair cut, and, finding that the barber had been to a session of the Congress the evening before, he asked him what he thought of it. He replied, "I was greatly struck, sir, with the number of bald heads."

A clergyman travelling in the North of England got into conversation with a fellow traveller, and told him about St. Cuthbert, and then was beginning to tell him about the Venerable Bede, when the other remarked, "I think, sir, you are mistaken. You will find that Cuthbert and Bede were the same person." He was doubtless thinking of "Cuthbert Bede," the nom de plume of Edward Bradley, the author of "Mr. Verdant Green."

Jowett of Balliol was once asked by a friend if he thought a really good man could be happy on the rack. He said, "Perhaps, if he were a very good man, and it was a very bad rack."

One of the speakers at the meeting of the Catholic Truth Society at Bristol (Sept. 1895) told a story of a pious Catholic visiting Westminster Abbey, and kneeling in a quiet corner for private devotion, when he was summoned in stentorian tones to come and view the royal tombs and chapels. "But I have seen them," said the stranger, "and I only wish to say my prayers." "Prayers is over," said the verger. "Still, I suppose," said the stranger, "there can be no objection to my saying my prayers quietly here?" "No objection, sir!" said the irate verger. "Why, it would be an insult to the Dean and Chapter."

In Doylestown, United States of America, cemetery is a square enclosure with four tombstones at the four corners recording the deaths of the four wives of one man. In the centre stands a large monument, with name and dates of birth and death, and the touching words,

"Our Husband."

A certain well-known preacher of somewhat exciting sermons was invited by the Vicar of Willenhall to preach in his church. One of the parishioners afterwards describing the effect of the sermon upon him to his vicar said, "It was a main fine sarment, sir, but he first speak in a whisper like, and then he shouted that loud as made me hop clean off my seat. So the next time I watched him, and when I heerd him a-whisperin' I see it a-comin', and I ketch right tight howd of the seat a this'n" (suiting the action to the word), "and then it didna do me no harm."

Mr. Edward Haycock, jun., the architect, of Shrewsbury, in speaking to a builder about the restoration of a church, was fairly puzzled by the man recommending that a certain addition should be made with a le-anto roof. Mr. Haycock did not like to acknowledge his ignorance of this sort of roof, and he asked the man to describe how he would manage it, when he soon saw that the man was talking of a lean-to roof.

An old lady in Shrewsbury once complained to my father about Christmas Day falling on a Sunday, and said that it never was so in her younger days, and she supposed it was the Radicals that had done it. On my father saying that it had been so sometimes before, she said, "Well, perhaps I'm wrong, for my memory is getting very bad, and I have a distinct recollection of Good Friday once happening on a Sunday."

The Vicar of Highclere once took duty in a church where he thought he had only morning and afternoon sermons to provide. Finding there was also an evening service, and not being prepared with a third sermon, he gave out in the morning that there would be no sermon in the evening, and then immediately gave out the hymn, "O day of rest and gladness," which caused some smiles.

A friend of mine was taking a mission for the vicar of a parish in Bolton. As they were walking together down the street they met an old woman, and the vicar asked her after her husband, who was very ill, saying, "I am afraid he is very ill." "Yes, sir," she answered, "but I do my best for him: I read the Burial Service to him every day to get him used to it."

A certain clergyman was said to be invisible for six days of the week, and incomprehensible on the seventh.

An old gardener, whose master was dead, and who was engaged to continue with his successor, was seen by his new master one day measuring some young trees in the garden. When asked what he was doing, he replied, "Well, sir, I don't think I'm long for this world, and when I go up there the first thing the old master will ask me will be, 'How are the young trees getting on?'"

A Coincidence. – I was once reading the lessons in Kidderminster Church when the organ ciphered, and one note went piping on all the time I was reading. It happened that the lesson was Job xxi., and I quite broke down at verse 12. ("They … rejoice at the sound of the organ.")

When the new vicar went to Cantrip he found Church matters in a very primitive state. After a short time he introduced "Hymns Ancient and Modern." One day one of the farmers met him, and said, "What is this new hymn-book, sir? I don't like it." The vicar, thinking he was in for a theological discussion, said, "What don't you like?" "Why," said the farmer, "I don't like them words." "What words?" "Why, them words as they sing now; I am not used to them." Being pressed as to the particular words, he at last confessed that he never had sung any words at all before, but only "one, two, three, four," and he thought having any words at all a very dangerous innovation.

A Cornish rector had a tickling cough, and was recommended by his doctor to go to Exeter and have his uvula cut, which he did. Some time afterwards another patient, suffering in the same way, applied to the same doctor, who wrote a little note to the rector, asking him who had shortened his uvula, and how it had succeeded. The doctor wrote a very bad hand, and the clergyman read "roller" for "uvula." It happened that he had lately had a stone roller shortened that it might pass through a garden gate, so he wrote back, "Dear sir, it was done by a stonemason in the village. He cut off eighteen inches, and it is now six feet long, and answers thoroughly."

Mr. Burgon had a class of young ladies at Oxford, and had occasion to mention the Targums, when he stopped and said, "By the way, do any of you young ladies know what a Targum is?" One of them replied, "It's a bird with white wings, rather larger than a partridge."

A curate at Witney in 1888 called upon a parishioner for the first time, and found him at home. The man received him with the utmost coolness, proceeded to take down a bust of Disraeli from a shelf, placed it on the table before the curate, and said, "Now, sir, be you for 'im, or be you for t' other un?" This was to determine whether to be friendly or not.

The late Mr. William Lyttelton, Rector of Hagley, told me one day that he had just met an old lady who stammered very badly. She told Mr. Lyttelton that she had just lost a cousin, and, being distressed, had sent for her clergyman to console her. "And what d-d-do you th-think the man d-d-d-d-did, Mr. Lyttelton?" she said. "I'm sure I don't know," he replied. "Why, he read me all ab-b-bout D-d-david and B-b-b-bathsheba! A very g-g-good man, you know, Mr. Lyttelton, b-b-but not j-j-judicious!"

A friend of mine, an Archdeacon, at a dinner of professors at Göttingen, sat by Wieseler, who descanted on the excellence of the English Church, and was especially charmed with what he heard of bishops sinking their personality and becoming known only by the name of their sees. He himself had learnt more from one of them than from any foreign writer: he referred to the great Thomas Carlyle.

The present Vicar of Almondbury went to a barber's shop in Chatham to have his hair cut at the time that he was curate there. The artist asked him if he had known his son at Oxford, and explained that he had meant him for his own profession, but he hadn't the brains for it, so he sent him into the Church.

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