0255
This was the explanation given by the visitor, and it was commented on pretty freely by some of the Committee.
But the consensus of opinion among the audience and the critics was in favour of the belief that the tableaux illustrating scenes in the life of Tom Bowling—and his widow—were the most effective of the whole entertainment.
It must be obvious to the least experienced that such a community as may be found in an artistic neighbourhood like Broadminster will take kindly to amateur theatricals. There are two dramatic clubs in Broadminster, and their performances are highly appreciated by the members and their friends. The rivalry between the two is quite amicable, for one set of amateurs devote themselves to the lighter forms of the drama and the other to the loftier, and perhaps they might be called without offence the heavier forms. It may be mentioned that the former are the more popular, but those persons who attend the representations of the latter consider themselves the more superior—as indeed they are; otherwise they would have accorded the tribute of a sunny smile to a little bit of dialogue, with accompanying action, which took place in a performance ofKing Renes Daughterwhich it was my privilege to attend.
At one place the King and the Moorish physician have had a long scene together, for the physician is certainly inclined to be long-winded. They go out together, and a couple of the courtiers enter the garden and express surprise not to find the others waiting for them. One of them says—
“The King is gone, nor can I see the leech.”
Now, if the amateur had simply said the words, his meaning, I believe, unless I am over-sanguine, would have been understood. But when, after shading his eyes with a hand while he gazed into the distance of stately trees and saying, “The King is gone,” he bent his eyes to the ground and moved a stone or two about with his toe before adding, “Nor can I see the leech,” I am inclined to think he puzzled some of his audience.
I had the curiosity to inquire what was in his mind when he sent his eyes roaming about the ground while he grubbed with his feet, and I learned that he thought it would be quite natural for any one searching for a leech to move the stones about to see if it was concealing itself in the earth.
He was evidently under the impression that the wise physician was habitually followed by a pet leech, or perhaps that he had brought it with him to try what effect it would have upon the Princess's eyes, and that it had escaped through a hole in his waistcoat pocket.
IDO NOT THINK THAT, TAKING THEM all round, the Cathedral dignitaries of Broadminster can be accused of assuming a greater importance than is due to their position; but a story is told about a Canon, lately deceased, which goes far to prove that he at least did not shrink from putting forward what he believed to be a reasonable claim to distinction—relative distinction. It is said that he was in the one bookseller's shop which is still to be found in the town. It was Saturday evening, when a stranger entered and, after buying a book, inquired of the proprietor who was the best preacher in the place: he explained that he was staying over Sunday and was anxious to hear the best.
This was too delicate a question for the bookseller (with a clergyman at his elbow) to answer at a moment's notice; so he thought he would do well to evade the responsibility by referring the stranger to the Canon.
“This gentleman is a stranger to the town, sir,” he said, “and he wishes to know who is the best preacher. I thought that perhaps you, sir——”
“I hope you will pardon me, sir,” said the stranger. “I am staying here till Monday, and I ventured to inquire who is the best preacher.”
“The best preacher, sir?” said the Canon, looking up from the book which he was sampling. “The best preacher? I am the best preacher, sir: I am Canon Hillman.”
The stranger was slightly startled.
“Thank you very much, sir,” he said quickly. “And who do you consider the next best?”
“The next best is my brother, sir, the Reverend Theophilus Hillman.”
The stranger raised his hat and hurried away.
This Canon Hillman had a reputation for that sort of frankness suggested by the story which I have ventured to repeat as it was told to me, and which I have no difficulty in believing, from the example I had of his manner several years ago. I was sojourning at an hotel between Nice and Beaulieu, and he appeared one night at table d'hôte dinner. It was the custom for the proprietor, who, curiously enough, did not speak or understand English, though he was a Swiss, to stand at the entrance to thesalle à manger, bowing out his guests as they passed into the spacious lounge after dinner, and in returning his courtesy, people said a word or two in commendation of his cuisine, to which he responded with further bows.
It so happened upon this particular night, however, that one or two little mistakes had occurred to mar the harmony of the repast as a whole—they were quite trifles—thepré salébeing underdone and a jelly not having set with that rigidity which is expected in such comestibles, but which is not always to be found in them.
While we were filing out of the room I was almost immediately behind Canon Hillman, and I heard him grumbling to a man who had been at his table, but who did not seem to sympathise with him; and this went on until they had reached the bowing proprietor, when the Canon stopped.
“I wish to tell you, sir, that I have never eaten a worse dinner at any hotel in my life,” he said. “There was not a dish that any one could eat—I consider it simply outrageous.”
Not one word did the man understand, for the Canon had spoken in English. The proprietor smiled and bowed most placidly, saying—“Je vous remercie mille fois, m'sieur—votre compliment est très distingué—très gracieux; je suis heureux—merci!”
He had too hastily assumed that the clergyman had offered him the usual congratulations upon his cuisine, and he had replied with more than his customary politeness, the visitor having shown himself to be much more enthusiastic than the ordinary run of people had time to be, considering that most of them were counting the moments until they should be in the Casino at Monte Carlo.
I did not know who the very frank clergyman was at that time; but four or five years later I recognised him at Broadminster.
His brother, the second best preacher, assuming the correctness of the Canon's judgment, though perhaps it might have been reversed on appeal, was rector of one of the parishes, and it was rumoured that he was not disposed at any time to take too humble a view of his claims to distinction, however slow other people might be to admit their validity. It is said that upon one occasion, on his return from a visit to the Holy Land, he preached a sermon giving some striking examples of the fulfilment of prophecy in connection with the topography of Palestine.
“My dear friends,” he said, “I was particularly struck with the accuracy of some of the details of the prophecies, when one day I was among the ruins of one of those cities referred to in the Sacred Writings. I had the Book in my hand, and I read that the land should be in heaps: I looked up, and there were heaps on every side. I read that the bittern should cry there: I looked up, and, lo, a bittern was standing there in its loneliness. I read that the minister of the Lord should mourn there. My dear friends,I was that minister.”
The only clergyman in Broadminster who, so far as I have heard, was fully qualified to take a place in one of the Barchester groups was a person named Gilliman. He was a small, stout gentleman with a comical ruddy face and sparse, bristly grizzly hair. He had no benefice, but was one of those unattached parsons who, in the phrase of the servants' registry office, was ready to “oblige” either by the day or as locum tenens for an absent incumbent. He had been left a small competence by his mother—quite enough for a clerical bachelor to live on, and he was a bachelor. He never sought for a job, but when he got one he proved that he held fast to the excellent precept that the labourer is worthy of his hire. If any brother parson expected that he would take his duty out of love or zeal, that parson left himself open to disappointment. I think he would have made a worthy curate to Mr. Quiverful; but Mr. Quiverful would have felt so chastened in spirit by his proximity that he would have got rid of him within a month.
He was a zealous patron of the amateur, whether musical or dramatic. He could always be depended on to buy one of the cheaper, but never one of the cheapest, tickets for a concert or a comedy, and he seemed as pleased with the most incompetent amateur as with the best. He was socially unambitious; no one seemed to invite him to any function, with the exception of the Dean's annual garden party: he went to this, and so did every one else.
It was not until he had been a resident in Broad-minster for several years that people found out why he had settled in that town. It might be supposed that there were enough clergymen here to serve as a reservoir for all the neighbourhood in an emergency. I once heard an American lady who was on a cathedral tour through Europe say just outside Santa Croce on a feast day: “There are priests to burn in Florence if I do my sums right.” Her slang meant that there was a superfluity of the clergy in that city, and perhaps she was right. I will not make use of her slang in referring to Broadminster, but assuredly it might strike anyone that there was a sufficient number of clerics in the purlieu of the Minster to meet the needs of the neighbourhood without making the presence of so accommodating a person as Mr. Gilliman a convenience. In an unguarded moment, however, he confessed to some one that years ago, when he had first come to the town, it was his earnest hope to drop into some vacant stall in the Minster. He had dreams of being appointed to a canonry by some fortunate combination of circumstances, and he had gone on waiting for such an accident, and meantime attending all the amateur performances in the place.
He was a very good preacher, people said who had heard him, and others who had not heard him; but few were aware of how he managed to excel in a direction that seemed just the opposite to the bent of such a man. The truth was that his father had been a zealous rector of a parish in Devonshire, and had bequeathed to him a large sackful of sermons that he had preached to his flock since his ordination; and when the fortunate legatee was called on “to oblige” for an absent cleric, he simply put his hand into the mouth of the sack and drew out a sermon, put it into his pocket, and went away and preached it in due course, dropping it into his sermon sack on his return. Thus it was that people said he preached much better than they expected—and he probably did so; but he could not tell you the next day on what subject he had preached.
That legacy and his impartial system of dealing with it served him in good stead; but upon one occasion it might have caused him to feel some awkwardness if he had not been so completely detached from his duty in the pulpit. The fact was that he had been called away at a moment's notice to take the duty for a clergyman who had knocked himself up by umpiring in a cricket match on a very hot Saturday. He had never been to the place before, so he had to look up trains and connections, and by the time he had got out of this maze the train that he had selected was almost ready to start. He hurried to the faithful sack and pulled out a fat sermon roll, and rushed away for the station.
He was lucky in catching the train and the subsequent connections, and arrived at the church with nearly half an hour to spare. He went through the service and found himself in the pulpit with his sermon opened on the cushion in front of him.
Now it so happened that the discourse which he had drawn in his usual way from the paternal sack was the valedictory sermon preached by his father in the church of which he had been rector for forty years, and there was the son beginning it in a church which he had never seen before that morning!
He was quite unconscious of any want of felicity in his choice. He began the sermon and went through with it, feeling no qualm. He had every confidence in the orthodoxy of his father; he would never get into a scrape through preaching what the dear old man had preached years ago. And so he went onto tell his congregation that more than forty years had passed since he had first stood before them to preach the Gospel of Truth, and that every year of that forty he had stood where he was standing to-day, Sunday after Sunday—that he saw before him aged men and women whom he had known as young men and maidens—that by the favour of Heaven he had lived to baptize the offspring of those whom he had himself baptized in their infancy—yea, unto the third generation he had come, and now he was standing before them for the last time. The hour of parting had come, and would any among them say that that hour was not bitter to them all?
Well, no one did go so far as to assert that the hour was not bitter to them all. I was assured that the congregation were bathed in tears, so affected were they by the thought that the clergyman who had “obliged” for the day was about to vacate the pulpit for ever. They felt the blow deeply—much more deeply than the parson seemed to feel it, for he managed to hold back his tears so long as he was in the pulpit, though his marvellous powers of self-repression may have deserted him an hour later, and he may have broken down utterly in the train when making the return journey; the chances are, however, that he did nothing of the sort, for he had not the remotest idea what the sermon had been about.
And the strangest thing of all in connection with this incident is that the churchwardens expressed themselves as greatly pleased with the sermon, and one of them referring to it the next day in the hearing of my informant, said he had never been so affected in his life as he was under the influence of the sermon, and he hoped that the eloquent clergyman would be able to preach it again in the near future.
It is quite likely that his wish was gratified, though I do not think that any one who had the best interests of the Church at heart would advocate the adoption of the farewell tours system of the popular actor or singer by the clergy. It might hurt the susceptibilities of some members of a congregation to hear a clergyman bid an affecting farewell to a crowd of people who were complete strangers to him, and the sincerity of his sorrow might be called in question when they reflected that an ordinary man can scarcely be broken-hearted at the thought of never seeing again the faces he had never seen before. But that, of course, involves the question of how far the susceptibilities of the weaker brethren should be considered.
My informant, who was present upon the occasion referred to, was also a stranger to the place. He was staying with the doctor's family, and, walking home from the church, the doctor's wife remarked how beautiful the sermon had been.
“Your rector bears his age very well,” said her companion. “He does not look a day over forty, and yet, according to his own account, he must be at least sixty-five.”
“Our rector? But that clergyman is not our rector,” said the lady. “Our rector is ill; the one we had today came to do duty for him. He is a stranger.”
“But why, then, should he talk of having baptized half the congregation and married the other half—of never having been absent from the pulpit for forty years and more?” asked the man.
“Oh, you are hypercritical!” cried the lady. “Some latitude should be allowed to clergymen. He only made use of one of the figures of speech of the pulpit.”
It is recorded of the same estimable charpson—if a parson who also discharges the duties of a squire has been called a squarson, may not one who goes out like a charwoman by the day be called a charpson?—that upon one occasion he was asked to do duty for an absent clergyman at a village in Hampshire, but the contract was for the morning service only. When he was disrobing in the vestry after preaching the ser mon, a couple of churchwardens approached him on the subject of the evening service also. He said that he would be very pleased indeed to take the evening service, but of course he should have to receive another guinea. The churchwardens demurred. They said they thought that, as he was on the spot——
He shook his head.
“I cannot see that that has anything to do with the case,” said the clergyman. “One service and sermon, one guinea; two services and two sermons, two guineas.”
The officials agreed that the article was marked in plain figures; but still they thought—— Well, would he consent to take the evening service for another half-guinea?
After thinking over the proposal, the clergyman consented to do so; and then one of the wardens suggested that perhaps Mr. Gilliman would not mind saying just a few words—not a sermon—not a regular sermon, of course, but just a few words—to the congregation after the evening service.
After some further thought Mr. Gilliman said he would have no objection to say a few words in this way, and the wardens thanked him and handed him a sovereign, a half-sovereign, a shilling, and a sixpence. They went so far as to pay him for the evening in advance, to show that they had unlimited confidence in him.
On his part he resolved to prove to them that their confidence in him was not misplaced; so, after reading the evening service, he came to the front of the altar-rails and said—
“Dear brethren, I have been asked to say a few words to you at this time instead of preaching the customary sermon. What I wish to say to each and every one of you whom I see assembled before me—and what I think it is the intention of your churchwardens that I should communicate to you—is that there will be no sermon in this church to-night. Let us sing, to the praise and glory of God, the ninety-second Hymn.”
He easily caught the late train to London, though the evening service in respect of trains is much more irregular than that at which he had presided in the church.
The Reverend Herbert Gilliman, B.A.Oxon, never received preferment; but some one remarked to me after his death, when touching on his career, that far less worthy parsons had been appointed to a cure of souls by the patrons of livings, without the parishioners having any voice whatever in the matter.
I agreed with him, and said that I thought they managed these things better in Scotland, where the candidate minister preached once or twice to the congregation to allow of their judging of his powers before they accepted him.
“Yes,” he assented. “I think that the application of the hire-purchase system in these matters is highly desirable.”
“It's not exactly the hire-purchase system,” said a purist in phrases. “It is more of the 'on sale or return' system of business.”
“What was in my mind,” said a third, “was a tasting order for spirits in bond.”
Iprefaced my repetition of passages in the career of the Reverend Herbert Gilliman with an expression of my belief that he was the only cleric in Broadminster who suggested to me one of the slightly shop-soiled clergymen in Anthony Trollope's Barchester novels. Of the ladies of the Close or the ladies of the Palace I have never heard of one who, in the remotest degree, suggested a relationship with Mrs. Proudie.
I have heard, however, of the recent appearance of a lady, who is said to have an intimate acquaintance with the Greek language, at the weekly meeting of the Bible class, presided over by the Dean, who, it is said, has also got some knowledge of the same tongue. The Minster Bible class is one of the most exclusive of lady's clubs. It is understood that no one is eligible for membership who has not been presented at Court—at least so some one, who was not a member, affirmed. Another defined it as a sort of religious Almack's; but it was a man, and a clergyman into the bargain, who said it was an attempt to run an eighteenth-century French salon on Church of England lines.
Without resembling Mrs. Proudie in even the most distant way, the lady of whom I have heard has succeeded, I am told, in changing the whole character of the Bible class—all through her knowledge of Greek. Without being in any way insolent or even self-assertive, she has, I think I am right in stating, openly differed from the interpretation put upon certain passages by the Dean himself; and no human being in Broadminster is recorded to have differed from the Dean on any point whatsoever. But she was a stranger and apparently unacquainted with the best traditions of the town; and, moreover, it was the Dean himself who invited her to join the Bible class. And when she suggests quite a different interpretation of a text from that advanced by the Dean, referring him to certain of the newest “readings” as her authority, he does not seem to be in the least irritated; indeed, on one occasion, when the question arose as to the exact shade of St. Paul's meaning when he made use of the particleôi, the Dean was understood to say that he thought the lady's suggestion well worthy of consideration.
All the higher orders of the clerical establishment—those who are, so to speak, “on the strength” of the Chapter—those to whom the great Lord Shaftesbury would have given, without the reservation of a single finger, his whole hand to shake—are not, however, so meek as Mr. Dean, and it is whispered that two or three of them have recently been keeping the Bible class at a distance, while others, in view of being called on to preside at one of its meetings, have been seen searching on their bookshelves for Liddell and Scott and blowing the dust off the edges.
All the old members of the class are declaring, however, that in future they will make complete ignorance of Greek an essential to membership. The very existence of a Bible class assumes ignorance, and no one has any business to belong to it who is capable of differing from the Dean, or, at least, who is sufficiently tactless to express such a divergence of opinion even though she may be sure of her ground.
Such a show of feeling in this matter goes far to assure Broadminster that there is no chance of Mrs. Proudie being tolerated in the diocese.
When I was walking down the principal street of Broadminster—the street on which the leading silversmith and the leading draper have their premises—there went past a very high carriage. I hesitate to refer to it as “well appointed,” this chapter not being one of a novel, and, besides, I do not quite know what is meant by a well-appointed carriage; but the vehicle to which I refer was high, its horses were well matched and good steppers, and the coachman and footman were also a match pair. The young person with whom I was walking bowed to the occupants of the carriage—a young cleric and an extremely goodlooking and well-dressed lady.
“Nice looking people,” I ventured to remark. “You know them, it would appear.”
“Know them? I should think I do know them: he is our curate,” replied my companion, who was, I may mention, the daughter of a clergyman.
“The Church is looking up when curates sit behind high-stepping bays,” said I.
“He is the best curate we ever had,” said she. “He is the most obliging man ever known. He never grumbles at having to take both services some Sundays and to preach as well—a splendid preacher, too—never longer than a quarter of an hour.”
“Anything else?” I inquired.
“Yes,” she said slowly and with something of awe in her voice. “He is a one bisquer at croquet!”
I tried to catch sight of the carriage and its bays, but it must have been a mile away by this time.
“And he does all that out of the hundred and fifty pounds a year your father pays him?”
“He does indeed, eked out by the five thousand a year his father left him: his father was Sir Edmund Bonnewell, the great contractor. You have heard of him?”
I had.
It is impossible that every one should be fully informed on all points even in so enlightened a community as Broadminster; but there is one clergyman who has a reputation for being the most artful fisherman in the Close, and of being always able to answer any question that may be put to him by the most casual inquirer. I heard him discussing the origin of a fire that had taken place in the town a few days before, and, as is usual in these days, it was said to have been due to a short circuit in the electric wires.
“I have often wondered what a short circuit is,” said a lady. “Can you tell me what it is, Mr. Tomlinson?”
“A short circuit? Oh, it's very simple,” said the fully informed parson. “A short circuit is when—when—oh yes, when it is only a very short way from the electric lamp to where the wire is joined on to the cable.”
“And that causes the fire?” she asked.
“Oh, of course—it is bound to, sooner or later.”
“I wonder why they don't make it longer then.”
“Oh, that's the way they scamp everything nowadays.”
Only a few days had passed before I heard him telling another lady of the good luck that had attended the pottering about bookstalls indulged in by a brother parson in a neighbouring town.
“He wrote to me a few days ago, to tell me that he had picked up a genuine 'Breeches' Bible for sixpence,” he said; “and only a short time before he bought a fine Aldine for fourpence. What luck!”
“Extraordinary,” said the lady. “I'm afraid that I forget what a 'Breeches' Bible is, Mr. Tomlinson.” He laughed good-naturedly.
“Pray, what is a 'Breeches' Bible?” she asked coaxingly.
He was quite ready for her.
“A 'Breeches' Bible?” he cried. “Oh, a 'Breeches' Bible is the one that was carried by Cromwell's troopers in their pockets; it was made specially for carrying about—small, you know, and compact. I remember reading that several of the soldiers had their lives saved owing to the bullets having lodged in the volume in their breeches pocket.”
“Not really?” said the lady. “How very interesting! I do believe that I heard something like that having happened, I forget where.”
I wondered if the Reverend Mr. Tomlinson was not, after all, something of a humourist—if he was not engaged in that delicate dynamic operation known as “pulling her leg.” I had good reason to know some time afterwards, however, that there was no foundation for my suspicion in this direction. He spoke what he imagined must be true, and he was too lazy to verify his own conclusions.
When the lady asked him—
“And what might be the real value of one of those Bibles?” he replied—
“Anything from a thousand pounds up. I believe that one was bought by an American a short time ago for over four thousand pounds.”
“What! Not really? A thousand pounds?” she cried. “Will you kindly give me his address? I must write to him for a subscription for our new bells.”
“For goodness' sake don't tell him that you heard of his good luck from me,” cried Mr. Tomlinson.
0281
The recognised Church charities of Broadminster are numerous and constantly increasing. To be connected in some way with a charitable organisation seems to offer an irresistible attraction to some people, chiefly ladies; and every now and again a new lady starts up in Church circles with a new scheme of compelling people to accept alms or the equivalent, or of increasing the usefulness of the Church. The amount of time these masterful persons expend in reading papers embodying the most appalling of platitudes of sentiment, and betraying even a more astounding ignorance of political economy than a Chancellor of the Exchequer has ever revealed in a Budget speech, is astounding. All these papers, so far as I can gather, assume that only what their patrons call “the lower classes” stand in need of the reforms they suggest. They take it for granted that a cottage-mother, who has had perhaps thirty years' experience of making a pound a week do duty for twenty-five shillings, stands in need of instruction at the hands of a mansion-mother who cannot keep out of debt with an income of a thousand a year.
If I were a person in authority with a voice in framing the conditions which must be conformed with by all ladies who put themselves forward in the advocacy of some of these great social schemes, I would decree that no lady who uses a tortoiseshell lorgnette with a long handle should be permitted to read a paper, or to receive thelaissez-passerof any organisation to a house the valuation of which is less than twenty-five pounds a year. As a medium of insulting patronage, nothing that has ever been invented approaches in power this particular weapon in the well-gloved hands of a well-furred, middle-aged lady who studies with some reason all advertisements addressed to those with a tendency to stoutness. (I have gone a long way about to avoid hurting the susceptibilities of any one.)
Only once did I see an attack with this weapon successfully repulsed. There was an extremely pretty girl in the centre of the drawing-room, when a couple of those ladies whose existence I have hinted at entered and immediately began a frontal attack through the glazed tortoiseshell with the long handles, and the little forced smiles that accompanied the movement showed them to be old campaigners. They brought the pretty girl into focus, conning her from head to foot and exchanging whispered comments upon the result of their scrutiny. The girl saw them, and, to paraphrase the poet, they “by tact of trade were well aware that that girl knew they were looking at her”; but that fact had no effect upon them. They continued their scrutiny and their whisperings, and I saw the girl's face become rosy. But then I saw that she was “limbering up” and would go into action in a moment.
She did. She was talking to an elder lady, who might have been her mother, and the latter had one of the same long-handled glasses lying on her muff. In an instant the girl had possessed herself of it, slipped it off its swivel, and was using it precisely as the others were using theirs, only returning their fire, so to speak. Then she whispered something over her hand to her companion, who laughed outright. That was enough for the attacking force: their battery was silenced; but the girl refused to withdraw, and for quite five minutes, I think, they were well aware that her eyes were upon them. Wherever they went they felt that they were still within her range, and that her innocent smile was playing about them. I never saw two more uneasy ladies in my life, and I trust that they learned their lesson.
The most singular point in this connection is that the girl was known to her friends as shy and retiring by nature—a less self-assertive girl could not be imagined. It seems to me that there is a lesson to be learned from this fact in addition to that which it is to be hoped she taught her elders, who certainly did not possess her shyness: it is the lesson of the rousing of a feminine instinct of defence, which is exhibited in another form when the defence is that of offspring. Even the most timid feminine thing will act in direct opposition to its reputed nature when called on to defend its young; and even the most retiring girl may assume an offensive attitude under the provocation of poised tortoiseshell and elevated eyebrows.
But I am pretty sure that that nice girl, when she went home and was alone in her room, sang no song of Miriam as she recalled her triumph. No, if she did not shed some tears at the thought of how she had behaved in so unaccountable away, I am greatly mistaken.
The comedy of the administration of charity has yet to be written; but when such a work is taken in hand I trust that a chapter will be devoted to the self-denying industry of the Misses Gifford. These two elderly ladies are the daughters of a deceased jerry-builder, and they enjoy a large income, the greater portion of which is derived from insanitary house property; and they are devoted to good works, including the amelioration of the condition of the poor. Every year they issue invitations to a show of their good works at their own house, and these are found to take the form of coarsely knitted woollen socks, thick mufflers made of the cheapest materials, petticoats constructed out of blankets that have been consigned to the rag-basket, and aprons out of tablecloths that have been rescued from the dustbin. Some of the articles of clothing seem to represent in themselves the heterogeneousness of a jumble sale, and all are cheap, shoddy, and shapeless. And yet this pair of feminine philanthropists show all comers round the room where they are exhibited with sparkling eyes and faces glowing with proper pride at the result of their industry. They worry the local newspapers for a paragraph that shall make all the world acquainted with their benevolence, and now and again their importunity is rewarded.
What becomes of the conglomeration of horrors which they create in the name of charity no one seems to know; but it is impossible to imagine any self-respecting family so far forgetting what is due to themselves as to wear such things. For themselves, it is well known that the Misses Gifford never forget what is due to them, or to insist on its payment on the day that it becomes due. They have a brother who, without being an active philanthropist, is well worthy of them. He collects the rents from their insanitary tenements, and he does so with a ruthless hand. There is no measure of bluff or bluster of which he is not a master. But there are scores of people in their own town who see the dear old maiden ladies in church and say that they remind them ofCranfordandQuality Street!
But knowing as I did a good deal about them, I was reminded more of an earlier work still in which the devourers of widows' houses were said to be Pharisees as well. Such a pair of feminine Pharisees as those whom I call the Misses Gifford—Gifford is not, of course, their real name—are hardly to be found outside their own town.
NO MENTION OF BURFORD WOULD BE complete unless two-thirds of the account were given over to its croquet ground and its croquet practitioners.
An exhaustive, or even a perfunctory, reference to sport is out of place in any description of the lighter side of life in the provinces, for people in all levels of life take their games very seriously, and croquet, as played nowadays, is the most serious of pursuits. Clergymen who practise it habitually seek for relaxation from the strain its seriousness imposes on them in the pages of the Fathers. It is a matter of common knowledge that a clergyman in charge of a parish in Burford invariably writes out his sermons during the three-ball breaks of his opponents. It is supposed to bede rigueurfor a player who has let his, or her, opponent 'in' to take no interest whatever in that opponent's strokes when making a break. It is supposed that if you pay any attention to your opponent's play you may put him, or her, off; and so scrupulous are some players lest they should put an antagonist off, they occasionally stroll off the court and return with a bored look only when they are sent for. But the chivalry of the habitual croquet players really knows no bounds. Another of their characteristics is absolutely quixotic. It takes the form of walking off the court as if the game were already finished when an opponent has yet to make three or four hoops before pegging-out; the object of such a move being, of course, to give an opponent more confidence at a critical moment.
It is a doubtful point, however, and I have never heard it decided by a referee, if this object is likely to be effected by a losing player breaking the handle of her mallet across her knee when she has failed to shoot in; though one cannot doubt that only a spirit of self-denial actuates such a player as makes a point of placing in the form of pennies on a chair, at the opposite side of the court from where she sits, the bisques to which her opponent is entitled, thus putting herself to the trouble of walking across, interrupting her opponent's play when the latter had taken a bisque, in order to remove one of the pennies.
The people who sneer at croquet are those who have no knowledge of the game as played nowadays on such courts as there are at Broadminster. There is no more scientific game, nor is there one that demands a more unerring judgment, a steadier hand, or a clearer eye.
Croquet seems to be the ideal game for the freak, the cripple, or the aged. One of the best players in the neighbourhood is the chaplain to a lunatic asylum. He has a large amount of practice.
During the past few years the champion lawns have been invaded by schoolboys and schoolgirls, with the result that some of the best prizes have been carried off by them.
I cannot imagine a more melancholy sight than that of half a dozen healthy boys, who should be at cricket or lawn-tennis, solemnly and slowly knocking the balls through the hoops and stolidly going through the operations of “peeling,” “laying up,” “wiring,” and the like.