Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How

The first time that Archdeacon Wickham visited this deanery as archdeacon I drove him to a parsonage where the incumbent insisted upon his inspecting everything. In the garden is a little pond, and over this pond we beheld a strange erection of posts and planks, with a sort of saddle-like seat on the top. On the Archdeacon asking the incumbent what it was, he explained with great delight that it was a capital contrivance by which you could take exercise and make yourself useful by pumping water up to the church, where he had just been building a transept. So, saying that he would show us, he clambered up, sat down on the saddle smiling, and began to work the treadles eagerly. Unfortunately, however, the work at the church having been just finished, the pipe which had conveyed the water to the workmen had been cut off just above the surface of the water. The consequence was that he immediately produced a jet of water which shot straight upwards and almost lifted him off his seat, entirely upsetting the archidiaconal gravity. As we returned to the house the incumbent begged the Archdeacon to go into the back yard and smell the pump, which, he said, stank horribly. The Archdeacon protested that he had no authority over pumps, but he would take no denial, and when he got into the backyard he said, "Now, Mr. Archdeacon, if you will put your nose to the spout, I will pump." The Archdeacon was, however, quite equal to the occasion, and said, "No, I depute the Rural Dean to put his nose to the spout, and I will receive his report, and, if needed, pronounce an ecclesiastical censure."

Bishop Walsham How's love of botany took him frequently into the wilder and more mountainous parts of the neighbourhood, and in the course of these expeditions he made friends with the gentleman, since dead, of whom he tells the following story:

The Vicar of the little parish of Criggion, under the Breidden hills, asked me once to come there for a certain All Saints' Day, when he was going to have a meeting of choirs. I could not go, but seeing him a little while afterwards, I asked him how the choral festival had gone off. "Oh! very well," he said. "And how many choirs had you?" I asked "Oh, well, only two," he said; "L – 's from over the hill and my own." "And how many voices had you?" I next asked. "You should not be so inquisitive," he said, "but to tell the truth, there were only his Buttons and my own little maid!"

Before he went to Whittington, he had some experience of another quaint character among Shropshire clergymen, as is related in the following passage taken from the notebook:

Mr. C – was curate of a parish near Shrewsbury when I was curate of Holy Cross and St. Giles' in that town. He was very eccentric in all his ways. Among other peculiarities he, though very High Church in views, adopted a very secular style of dress. Archdeacon Allen undertook on one occasion to speak to him on the subject, and at a Visitation very kindly and pleasantly remarked that his dress was not quite what was usual on such occasions. Whereupon Mr. C – , taking hold of the Archdeacon's coat, said, "Well, Mr. Archdeacon, you know this is not quite the correct thing: I believe it is an old coat made to do!" The Archdeacon could not resist a good laugh, and acknowledged that he was quite right in his supposition.

One day my good fellow curate, the Rev. F. P. Johnson, was walking along the road when he saw Mr. C – approaching, a gaunt figure with long strides, in a striped waistcoat and blue muffetees, intoning at the top of his voice the prayer for the Queen's most excellent Majesty. He slackened pace, finished the prayer, duly sang the Amen, and then shook hands with a hearty "How do you do, old fellow?" On Johnson expressing astonishment at the performance, he said he was only saying Matins as in duty bound, and, since his rector would not have it in church and he had no time in his lodgings in Shrewsbury, he always said it as he came back from visiting the school in the morning. "If you had been a minute or two sooner," he added, "you would just have come in for the anthem. You know 'in choirs and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem.'" "And what anthem did you have to-day?" asked Johnson. "Oh," he replied, "I always have the same, for I only know one. When I come to that place I always sing 'God save the Queen.'"

Another time Mr. C – was spending a day with Mr. Peake, then curate of Ellesmere. At noon he went up to his room, and Mr. Peake heard him whistling very strangely on one note. He went up, knocked at his door, and asked him what he was doing. "Oh nothing," said Mr. C – . "But what are you whistling in that queer way for?" said Mr. Peake. "Oh, well, if you must know," he answered, "I was saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers!" said Mr. Peake, "why, you were whistling!" "Yes, I know," said Mr. C – ; "the fact is your maid was cleaning your room next to mine, and I thought she would think it odd perhaps if I intoned my sexts, as I generally do, so I thought I would whistle them to-day."

Several stories occur in connection with Oswestry, which was the market town for Whittington.

Extract from a sermon preached by a curate of Oswestry upon the scene between St. Paul and St. Peter at Antioch. The words were taken down at the time [N.B. —Hibernice legendum]: "So Paul seized the banner of the Gospel out of the hands of poor, weak, compromising Peter, and waved it in a flood of light and liberty over the head of the Galatian Church."

Again:

A certain Calvinistic curate of Oswestry met a neighbour who had unhappily seceded to Rome, and thus described the interview to his vicar. "I met – yesterday, and said to him, 'Not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' And what do you think he said? Why, 'And not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' The impudence of the fellow!"

Here is another:

A certain clergyman of this diocese, risen from the ranks, was preaching at Trinity Church, Oswestry, and found in the course of the service that he had forgotten his pocket-handkerchief. As he felt he should require one during the sermon, the weather being very warm, he asked a lady in a pew close to the pulpit, as he went up, to lend him hers, which he duly returned as he went down again!

Whittington being on the borders of Wales, Dissent was extremely prevalent, and the Church's action towards Dissenters was a burning subject. Hence the following story:

At a clerical meeting soon after I came into these parts the subject discussed was, "How to treat Dissenters." After most of those present had spoken, a neighbouring rector said, "I make it a principle never to speak to Dissenters about religious matters. But I have a very good garden with a southern slope, and I send them baskets of early vegetables, and by this means I have brought several over to the Church."

Next come two stories from the same neighbourhood of Oswestry, but of a more unclerical nature:

A relation of Sir Watkin Wynn was one day hunting with those hounds when his horse stumbled in a lane and fell with him. Whereupon Simpson, at that time Sir Watkin's second horseman, jumped off to help him, and thinking him dangerously hurt tried to comfort him with a text of Scripture, saying, "Ah, sir! naked we came out of our mother's womb and naked we shall return thither!"

Dr. B – , of Oswestry, has three horses which he has named "High Church," "Low Church," and "Broad Church." The reason he gives is that the first is always on his knees, the second never, and as for the third you never know what he will do next.

This last story leads on naturally to a number of good things on the subject of Ritualism. A High Churchman was practically an unknown quantity in those parts when Bishop Walsham How first went to be Rector of Whittington in 1851. The smallest innovation or improvement in a service, such as are generally accepted nowadays in Evangelical Churches, raised a storm of protest, and the ignorance displayed by newspapers as well as by private individuals is almost past belief in these days when we have been satiated with articles and correspondence on "advanced practices." For instance:

A Wellington paper, commenting severely on the supposed ritualistic practices at Welsh Hampton, spoke of the Vicar as "practising the most unblushing celibacy."

The same paper describing an evening service at St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, spoke of the vicar as walking in procession with his curate from the vestry and then entering the desk and beginning the evening service, "or, as, borrowing the language of these gentlemen, we ought more correctly to say, evening matins."

A short time ago the Reverend James Hook, Vicar of Morton, was coming to see me by train. There were several women in the carriage, and one of them began to talk to the others about Whittington, asking them if they knew what shocking things were done in the church there. She then said she once went into Whittington Church and saw the host on the altar. There were great exclamations of horror, when Mr. Hook quietly looked up from his paper and said, "I beg your pardon, what did you see?" "The host on the altar, sir," she said. "Oh, and what was it like?" She hesitated and said she could not exactly describe it. He told her not to mind about being very exact, but would she tell him what sort of a thing it was? She then said she did not notice very carefully. So he then said he would tell her what it meant, and having done so, he told her how wicked it was to invent such stories. She was then frightened, and said with some alarm, "Well, sir, I am certain I saw two rows of candlesticks down the two sides of the church."