No one is more sensible than myself (my dear Burfle), I say no one is more sensible than I am, of the gravity of this schism—for schism it threatens to be. And no one appreciates more than I do how much there is to be said on both sides. The one party will urge (with perfect justice), that the buttoned boot is a development. They maintain (and there is much to be said in their favour), that the common practice of wearing buttoned boots, their ornate appearance, and the indication of well-being which they afford, fit them most especially for the Service of the Temple. They are seen upon the feet of Parisians, of Romans, of Viennese; they are associated with our modern occasions of Full Dress, and when we wear them we feel that we are one with all that is of ours in Christendom. In a word, they are Catholic, in the best and truest sense of the word.
Now, my dear Burfle, consider the other side of the argument. The laced boot, modern though it be in form and black and solid, is yet most undoubtedly the Primitive Boot in its essential. That the early Christians wore sandals is now beyond the reach of doubt or the power of the wicked. There is indeed the famous forgery of Gelasius, which may have imposed upon the superstition of the dark ages,[75] there is the doubtful evidence also of the mosaic at Ravenna. But the only solid ground ever brought forward was the passage in the Pseudo-Johannes, which no modern scholar will admit to refer to buttons. ξύγον means among other things a lace, an absolute lace, and I defy our enemies (who are many and unscrupulous), to deny. The Sandal has been finally given its place as a Primitive Christian ornament; and we can crush the machinations of foreign missions, I think, with the plain sentence of that great scholar, Dr. Junker, “The sandal,” he says, “is the parent of the laced boot.”
So far then, so good. You see (my dear Burfle), how honestly the two sides may differ, and how, with such a backing upon either side, the battle might rage indefinitely, to the final extinction, perhaps, of our beloved country and its most cherished institutions.
Is there no way by which such a catastrophe may be avoided?
Why most certainly yes. There is a road on which both may travel, a place in which all may meet. I mean the boot (preferably the cloth boot) with elastic sides. Already it is worn by many of our clergy.[76] It offends neither party, it satisfies, or should satisfy, both; and for my part, I see in it one of those compromises upon which our greatness is founded. Let us then determine to be in this matter neither sheep nor goats. It is better, far better, to admit some sheepishness into our goatishness, or (if our extremists will have it so), some goatishness into our sheepishness—it is better, I say, to enter one fold and be at peace together, than to imperil our most cherished and beloved tenets in a mere wrangle upon non-essentials. For, after all what is essential to us? Not boots, I think, but righteousness. Righteousness may express itself in boots, it is just and good that it should do so, but to see righteousness in the boot itself is to fall into the gross materialism of the middle ages, and to forget our birthright and the mess of pottage.
Yours (my dear Burfle) in all charity,
Josiah Lambkin.
XV.
Lambkin’s Letter to a French Friend
Lambkin’s concern for the Continent was deep and lasting. He knew the Western part of this Division of the Globe from a constant habit of travel which would take him by the Calais-Bâle, passing through the St. Gothard by night, and so into the storied plains of Italy.[77] It was at Milan that he wrote his Shorter Anglo-Saxon Grammar, and in Assisi that he corrected the proofs of his article on the value of oats as human food. Everyone will remember the abominable outrage at Naples, where he was stabbed by a coachman in revenge for his noble and disinterested protection of a poor cab-horse; in a word, Italy is full of his vacations, and no name is more familiar to the members of the Club at the Villa Marinoni.