I resent this sort of warranty. It has a tendency (firstly) to imply that previous stories were not true: (secondly) to assume that truth is better than fiction. Moved by this feeling I ventured to interpose. If truth was to gain extra marks, I knew a Wilberforce story of such authenticity that it was vouched by a Judge of the Common Pleas, and a Bishop: and I offered this contribution to the chronicles of the evening:
It happened just after the Summer Assizes at Oxford that Mr. Justice Keating was going on to Worcester; and in the carriage with him (among others) was Bishop Wilberforce. Opposite the latter was a seat untenanted, but littered with correspondence. A lady looked in, just before the train was starting, and asked whether the empty seat was engaged:
“Occupied,” said the courtly prelate with a courtly smile, and the lady moved hurriedly on.
He turned to the judge: “‘Occupied,’ not ‘Engaged’; you observe the distinction: I have a great deal of work to do in the train, and the guard is good enough to allow me the use of a second seat for my papers.”
The judge, an Irishman by birth, was much tickled, and told the story to a friend in London. The friend repeated it at a dinner table, where Archdeacon John Allen of Salop was a fellow guest; and concluded with much virtuous indignation, boldly asserting that the distinction was inconsistent with honesty. The Archdeacon was the most excellent and the most combative of men, except his brother Archdeacon of Taunton (Denison). He went to the root of the matter by denying emphatically that the Bishop ever made the remark, and undertook to get his Lordship’s authority for his denial. Accordingly he wrote to Cuddesden that night: told his story in full, and asked for an official contradiction. The maligned man vouchsafed no answer, good or bad: only he forwarded the petition to the Bishop of Lichfield, and wrote at the bottom:
“Dear Bishop of Lichfield,
Can’t you find something for your archdeacons to do?
Yours always,
S. Oxon.”
The man who told me the story had, I believe, heard it from Sir Henry Keating. I repeated it to a clerical friend, who, when I reached the end, said, “Yes, that is quite right: I was examining chaplain to the Bishop of Lichfield, and he told me the story.”
A vehement discussion arose during dessert: some accusing, others excusing, and Mrs. Miller looked anxious. But the Canon broke in, just as she was preparing to retreat to the drawing-room: “Why,” he exclaimed, “do you have two standards of morality? Let me tell you two stories: I cannot tell them in parallel columns, but you must put them side by side in your minds.”