A clerical friend of mine, holding strong Evangelical views, and being annoyed, I suppose, by his school report, took some pains to undermine my character by spreading a rumour that I had played whist at a certain convent with the mother superior, the second in command, and the chaplain. I should have been very glad to do so, and I can quite imagine reverend mother playing a very good game, and coming out with small cards from her long suit when all our trumps were gone. But in sober truth I was not asked. My dear friend, Father Rigidus, was much shocked when I told him of the rumour. It appeared that cards are forbidden to holy women. But surely this would not exclude Patience?
It is another instance of the tyranny of man, that he, the man-priest, persuades holy women to regard cards as permissible to him, but wicked for them. I admit that they are forbidden to the clergy by the canons of the Church of England, but I believe Rome is more lenient. And I have known several Anglican transgressors. In this connection a friend tells a story of the great Henry of Exeter, Bishop Phillpotts. He was in residence as Golden Canon of Durham, and in that ancient city was playing an unhallowed rubber. Close by his side was a stray parson, who was telling with some glee how he had buried a Dissenter, or married a divorcee, or what not. Phillpotts turned savagely round on him:
“Sir, are you aware that your proceeding was directly contrary to the canons of the Church?”
The parson was entirely unabashed: “So it is contrary to the canons,” he retorted, “for you to sit there playing whist with the ace of trumps in your hand.”
But I am straying from the point, if there ever was one.
There is, finally, a branch of priestly employment upon which I am peculiarly well qualified to speak: this is the hospitality department: and herein they excel all denominations. Their traditions are partly Irish, partly collegiate, or monastic; a good stock on both sides, if it’s dining you want. There were still remaining in my earlier inspecting days a few country rectories where, before the fall in the value of tithe and glebe, H.M.I. was royally received, and the neighbouring gentry assembled to do him honour. As a rule these dinners were magnificent, but not festive. A modest man (like the present chronicler) soon gets weary of being stared at and listened to. Moreover, the tedium was prolonged beyond the grave of dessert, for there was the drawing-room, and it was always possible that some one would sing.
Far different were the R.C. nights. Clear in the memory is the recollection of that Chester south window looking over the Vale Royal, and the fresh green of the April meadows; the cheerful room where the Provost, newly recovered from the horrors of Lent, made all things smooth; and the well-beloved Canon paced restlessly up and down his quarter-deck, smoking his unfailing cigarette, and bringing out of his treasures things new and old. And never to be forgotten are those wild February nights in the City of the Future, when Monsignore dispensed carnival hospitality, ending in the long, well-stocked library, where we discoursed de iis quae melius sine ulla solennitate tradi possunt—the phrase is academical—till near the midnight hour. Well remembered, too, are the other Presbyteries in that hospitable town, and the genial welcome that began with the smiling parlour-maid at the door—who “remimbered the ould man, when I was in Standard IV. meself, and he pulled me hur, and called me Biddy”—and ended much later at night.
To many other places—Manchester and Salford alone had more than thirty R.C. schools—my duty took me; and in all the welcome was the same. To their credit, moreover, be it said, the priests are singularly free from that professional, unreal manner affected by some clergymen, and by nearly all Dissenting ministers. A good bed-side manner is esteemed in doctors, but a good grave-side manner is abominable in any one but an undertaker.
“Where is that barty now?” Few indeed of my old hosts survive:
“And I the last go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.”