Mr. Moss had an intense horror of all sorts of innovations, and, in the case of the first railway, that between Manchester and Liverpool, this feeling was greatly increased by the fact of his being a large shareholder in a certain canal which might be affected by its success. He was in a fever of excitement and almost raved whenever the subject was mentioned in company. He long clung to the notion that the accomplishment of the line was impossible and fabulous. He magnified every difficulty, dwelt upon every obstacle, and concluded every harangue on the question with the triumphant exclamation, “But, never mind, they cannot do it; Chat Moss will stop it; Chat Moss will stop it.” This was said in allusion to that great boggy waste, so called, which for so long a time did really battle with and baffle the skill and efforts of the engineers. On one occasion, when our friend had been holding forth in his usual strain, and finished with a look of defiance at all around him, “Chat Moss will stop it,” Mr. Thomas Crowther, who was one of the party, quietly answered, “Depend upon it, your chat, Moss, will not stop it.” This to us is the purest essence of wit, the very ne plus ultraism of it.
“The force of humour can no further go.”
Like Pitt’s description of what a battle should be, “it is sharp, short, and decisive.” It is brilliant, pointed, telling.
There is a joke of almost a similar kind in Boswell’s Life of Johnson. “I told him” (writes the former) “of one of Mr. Burke’s playful sallies upon Dean Marley: ‘I don’t like the Deanery of Ferns, it sounds so like a barren title.’ ‘Dr. Heath should have it,’ said I. Johnson laughed, and, condescending to trifle in the same mode of conceit, suggested Dr. Moss.” But the wit here is overdone and wire-drawn, until it becomes forced, heavy, and exhausted. Crowther’s extempore retort beats the laboured efforts of Burke, Boswell, and Johnson, all put together, as it bursts forth, sparkling, glittering, dazzling, on the spur of the moment. “Depend upon it, your chat, Moss, will not stop it.” We treasure a good thing when we hear it, and love to embalm it. Mr. Crowther, the author of this unrivalled witticism, had a twinkle about the eye which seemed to say for him, that he had many “a shot in the locker,” of equal calibre and ready for action. We did not know much of him ourselves, but have always been told that his stores of humour and wit were as rich as they were inexhaustible. The specimen, or, as men say in Liverpool, the sample, which we have given amply justifies such an opinion.
We must not forget to mention, in connection with the Rev. G. H. Piercy, that of the sons of Liverpool worthies under his care in 1804, and who thumbed their lexicons with redoubled zeal when promised a holiday to witness the marching and counter-marching of the “brave army” before his Royal Highness Prince William of Gloucester, in Mosslake fields or Bankhall Sands, (where are these now?) the following, although in the “sere and yellow leaf,” are still fit for active service:—W. C. Ritson, E. Molyneux, Thomas Brandreth, F. Haywood, R. W. Preston, and James Boardman. The Rev. James Aspinall, rector of Althorpe, Lincolnshire, was also long a favourite pupil of the reverend patriarch.
CHAPTER XX.
he two rectors of those old days were the Rev. Samuel Renshaw and the Rev. R. H. Roughsedge. They were both men past the meridian of life, at the earliest period to which our recollection extends. There was a tradition among the old ladies, that Rector Renshaw in his younger days had been a popular and sparkling preacher of “simples culled” from “the flowery empire” of Blair. We only knew him as a venerable-looking old gentleman, with a sharp eye, a particularly benevolent countenance, and a kind word for everybody. Rector Roughsedge also was a mild, amiable, good-hearted man of the old school, with much more of the innocence of the dove than of the wisdom of the serpent in his composition. He was, in fact, the most guileless and unsophisticated person we ever met with. His studies must have been of books. Certainly they had not extended to the human volume. He was utterly ignorant of the world and the world’s ways, thereby strongly reminding us of the great navigator, of whom it was said that “he had been round the world, but never in it.” As a proof of this we may mention, that once, when the Bishop of Chester, the present Bishop of London, was his guest, he invited Alexandré, the ventriloquist, to meet him at breakfast. There surely never was a worse assortment than this in any cargo of Yankee “notions.” Alexandré, who had a fair share of modest assurance, was quite at home, and made great efforts to draw the bishop into conversation. The latter, however, rather recoiled from his advances, and was very monosyllabic in his answers. Nothing daunted, however, the ventriloquist rattled away quite at his ease, and, amongst other things, assured his lordship that “he had had the honour of being introduced to several of the episcopacy; that, in fact, he had received from more than one of them copies of sermons which they had published, and which he had kept and valued amongst his greatest treasures;” and then finished up with the expression of a wish that he would himself favour him with a similar memento. This was too much, and prompt and tart and cutting was the bishop’s answer—“Yes; I will write one on purpose; it shall be on Modesty!” Vulcan never forged such a thunderbolt as that for Jupiter Tonans himself. It completely floored Alexandré, overwhelming the chaplain and scorching the rector’s wig in its way.
And having mentioned the name of Bishop Bloomfield, let us give another specimen of his ability to check any improper intrusion upon his dignity and position. He was a very young man when first he came into this diocese, and some of the older clergy rather presumed upon this. There were at that time many among them who would cross the country, and take a five-barred gate as if it were that fortieth article of which Theodore Hook spoke to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford. The bishop one day met a number of these black-coated Nimrods. The scene was not far from Manchester. After dinner, some of the old incorrigibles persevered for a long time, with marvellously bad taste, in talking of their dogs and horses, and nothing else. His lordship looked grave, but was silent. At last, one of them, directing his conversation immediately to him, began to tell him a long story about a famous horse which he owned, and “which he had lately ridden sixty miles on the North road without drawing bit.” It was the bishop’s turn now, and down came his sledge hammer with all the force of a steam-engine. “Ah,” he said, with the most cutting indifference, “I recollect hearing of the same feat being once accomplished before, and, by a strange coincidence, on the North road, too: it was Turpin, the highwayman.” Warner’s long range was nothing to this. It was a regular stunner. The reverend fox-hunter had never met with such a rasper before. He was fairly run to earth, and did not break cover again that night, you may be sure. The idea of a Church dignitary, for such he was, having had Turpin for his college tutor, was a view of the case which he had never studied before, and old Tally-ho left the table fully convinced that his spiritual superior was more than his match even at the lex Tally-ho-nis. The same annoyance was never attempted again. The lesson had its effect upon more than one.
But to go back to Rector Roughsedge; he also once perpetrated a joke, and it was so dreadfully heavy that it deserves recording for its exceeding badness. He was a man of strong opinions, prejudices some people would call them. He did not like the evangelical clergy, who so greatly increased in number towards the latter end of his reign in this locality, and, at their expense, he perpetrated the single jest of eighty years. He was at Bangor, on a tour, and, at the same inn there was a large party of the rival section of the Church. They were in the room exactly over the one in which he was sitting, and, as they moved about with rather heavy tread, the old man suddenly exclaimed, “Sure the gentlemen must be walking on their heads!” We do not say much for this ponderous effort ourselves. But it was, we are informed, duly reported at the Clerical Club, and entered among their memorabilia. The curates especially relished it as a great joke, a very gem of brilliancy, and would persist in laughing at and repeating it for months and months in all companies, parties and meetings; and their mirth, it was observed, was always particularly jocund and boisterous when the rector himself was present. But who grudges them the enjoyment of their laugh? A poor curate’s life is such a career of toil and hardship, that anything which can enliven him, even a rector’s jest, should be most welcome. We, at all events, are not iron-hearted enough to envy their few enjoyments. But it was real happiness to hear the old rector and his old wife talk of their son in India. He was their pride, their boast, their treasure, their idol. We never met with him; but from all that we have heard of him, we believe that there was no exaggeration of praise even in the character which his fond parents drew of him. Everybody endorsed it as fact, not eulogy. But the church of churches in that day was St. George’s. How we used to rush down to Castle-street, about a quarter of an hour before the service began, to see the mayor and his train march to church! We were never tired of watching that procession. It was super-royal in our estimation. Sunday after Sunday we would gaze at it with never-wearying and still-increasing admiration. Such cloaks they wore! There never were such cloaks. And such cocked hats! No other cocked-hats ever seemed to be like them. And one man carried a huge sword, which, in our nursery, we verily believed to have been the identical one taken by David from Goliath, although there was a counter tradition, which asserted that Richard the First had won it from a Pagan knight in single combat when in Palestine. We now rather ascribe a “Brummagem” origin to it. And there were other men who carried maces, and various kinds of paraphernalia, which, if not useful, were supposed to be vastly ornamental and magnificent. The mayor himself held what was called a white wand in his hand, which was intended, we opine, to impress the public with the notion that his worship, for the time being, was a bit of a conjurer. But even we little boys knew better than that. Heaven help those dear, darling, innocent old mayors! They knew how to fish up the green fat out of a turtle-mug, and had a tolerably correct idea touching the taste of turbot and lobster-sauce; but as to doing anything in the conjuring line, they were as guiltless on that head as any babe unborn. They would never have run any chance of being burnt for witches. But, nevertheless, it was a very imposing spectacle to see them tramping along Castle-street every Sunday morning to St. George’s Church. Our impression always was, that the very Gauls who paid such small respect to the Roman senate would have trembled with awe at such a sight. Such was our enthusiasm that, often as we witnessed it, we still, on our return home, assembled all our brothers and sister, and arraying ourselves in table-cloths and great-coats, with the shovel, tongs and poker carried before us as our official insignia, performed a solemn march upstairs and downstairs, from garret to cellar, until interrupted by some older member of the family, who looked upon our imitations to be as sinful as sacrilege or “flat blasphemy” itself.