My cousin said, “You’d much better not, it will only unsettle your history.”
We felt, however, that we had so little history to unsettle that we left him outside and went in.
Dr. Mandell Creighton and Mr. W. S. Rockstro
“The Bishop had been reading Mr. Samuel Butler’s enchanting book Alps and Sanctuaries and determined to visit some of the places there described. We divided our time between the Italian lakes and the lower slopes of the Alps and explored many mountain sanctuaries . . . As a result of this journey the Bishop got to know Mr. S. Butler. He wrote to tell him the pleasure his books had given us and asked him to visit us. After this he came frequently and the Bishop was much attracted by his original mind and stores of out-of-the-way knowledge.” (The Life and Letters of Dr. Mandell Creighton by his Wife, Vol. II, p. 83.)
The first time that Dr. Creighton asked me to come down to Peterborough in 1894 before he became Bishop of London, I was a little doubtful whether to go or not. As usual, I consulted my good clerk, Alfred, who said:
“Let me have a look at his letter, sir.” I gave him the letter, and he said:
“I see, sir, there is a crumb of tobacco in it; I think you may go.”
I went and enjoyed myself very much. I should like to add that there are very few men who have ever impressed me so profoundly and so favourably as Dr. Creighton. I have often seen him since, both at Peterborough and at Fulham, and like and admire him most cordially. [251]
I paid my first visit to Peterborough at a time when that learned musician and incomparable teacher, Mr. W. S. Rockstro, was giving me lessons in medieval counterpoint; so I particularly noticed the music at divine service. The hymns were very silly, and of the usual Gounod-Barnby character. Their numbers were posted up in a frame and I saw there were to be five, so I called the first Farringdon Street, the second King’s Cross, the third Gower Street, the fourth Portland Road, and the fifth Baker Street, those being stations on my way to Rickmansworth, where I frequently go for a walk in the country.
In his private chapel at night the bishop began his verse of the psalms always well before we had done the response to the preceding verse. It reminded me of what Rockstro had said a few weeks earlier to the effect that a point of imitation was always more effective if introduced before the other voices had finished. I told Rockstro about it and said that the bishop’s instinct had guided him correctly—certainly I found his method more satisfactory than if he had waited till we had finished. Rockstro smiled, and knowing that I was at the time forbidden to work, said: