Late Honorary Chaplain to His Majesty’s Embassy.
CHAPTER I.
ROYAL AND OTHER VISITS.
The Daily Press has naturally recorded the visits of Royalty, Members of Parliament, the Lord Mayor of London, etc., to Paris during the period of which I write, but as in each case there were services in the Embassy Church, there are certain facts from the chaplain’s point of view which will, I hope, be of interest to my readers. A clerical friend once said to me, “Everybody who is anybody has been to your Church in Paris.” It certainly was a fact that during my chaplaincy many distinguished people attended the ordinary Divine Service besides the crowds at special times when Royalty was present. I may mention the late Duke of Devonshire, the Right Hon. W. E. and Mrs. Gladstone—who often came twice on the Sunday when visiting Paris—H.R.H. the late Duke of Cambridge, who was many times present. On one occasion the Duke arrived in Paris from a long journey early on Sunday morning, but he was in the Embassy gallery at the 11 o’clock service. Upon his late visits—and he was in Paris not long before the end—he was unable to face the stairs to the gallery, and sat below with the congregation. In the early days of my chaplaincy, the late Sir Condie Stephen was an attaché at the Embassy, and a most regular attendant at both morning and evening services. The late Archbishop of Canterbury was once at service in my time, and sent me a most kind message. Bishops, Home, Colonial, and American, were occasionally seen, and many clergy. I noticed on two or three occasions Mr. Pierpoint Morgan among the worshippers. On one occasion four English dukes were present at morning service. The late Sir G. Stokes, Sir W. Freemantle, Lord Rathmore, and the other members of the Suez Canal Board were regular in attendance month by month, the former a devout worshipper and a kind, genial friend.
Great interest was naturally excited in the English Colony when we had Royal visitors. Her late Majesty was not in Paris during my Chaplaincy, although she was several times in the South of France, being usually met at some convenient station by the President of the French Republic. Whatever may have been the feeling of the French people towards the English before the “Entente Cordiale,” they always had the highest respect and admiration for our beloved Queen, and I never heard that she met with the least annoyance from “the most polite nation in the world.”
RUE DE RIVOLI.
Before coming to the special subject of this chapter, I should like to say a few words about the English Church in the Rue d’Aguesseau, which has always been known as, and is “ipso facto,” the Embassy Church. In former days the English services were held in the ballroom at the Embassy itself, and there was a resident chaplain. I have heard that there was sometimes rather a “rush” after a Saturday night’s ball to get the room ready for divine service on Sunday. This “Chapel” was also at that time somewhat of a Gretna Green, where at twenty-four hours’ notice young couples who had difficulties at home could be united according to English law by a resident chaplain. My friend, Dr. Morgan, of the American Church, kindly sent me a volume of sermons he had picked up on a bookstall, bearing the title “Sermons preached at the Chapel of the British Embassy, and at the Protestant Church of the Oratoire in Paris, by the late Rev. E. Forster, M.A., Chaplain to the British Embassy.” This was in the days when Lord Stuart de Rothesay was Ambassador to the court of France, and the volume bears the date 1828. I believe Lord Stuart de Rothesay was twice Ambassador in Paris—an unusual circumstance. Services are no longer held in the Embassy. The English Colony in Paris having largely increased, it became necessary to provide a suitable building as a church, and at the period when the late Lord Cowley was Ambassador, and largely through his instrumentality, the present Church was purchased, and has from that time to the present been the Embassy Church, where all services of a public and diplomatic character have since been held. Here is a French description of the building, which, while not exactly ecclesiastical, is yet loved and valued by the English Colony.
“L’Èglise Anglicane est située à moins de 100 mètres de la porte de l’Ambassade. C’est un petit monument de style Gothique, aux fenètres ogivales, aux frùes colonnes fleuronnées. A l’intérieur, la chapelle est meublée de deux rangées de bancs, placées face à l’autel. Devant celui-ci se trouve l’aigle de bois doré dont les ailes éployées portent les Livres Saints; à gauche les orgues: à droite, la chaire: une simple tribune de pierre, de forme hexagonale légèrement surélevée. Un balcon court sur les deux côtes de la chapelle, dont le fond est occupé par une tribune.”
The church is in a much better condition than formerly. The congregation during my chaplaincy put a new roof upon it, and decorated it throughout, and constructed a handsome Mortuary Chapel underneath—a sad necessity for the English and American colonies in Paris. I conducted some remarkable services during my time in Paris, which I describe in another chapter—scenes which will not soon be forgotten by those who witnessed them. I was glad to leave behind some £7,000 which had been subscribed towards a Church House, a much-needed establishment, as there is no room for Church purposes or residence for the chaplain. My successor, the Right Rev. Bishop Ormsby, will, I hope, reap the benefit of this effort.