There is one bit of advice, too, that one might give to the clergy, which is, not to waste too much time in trying to evangelize their betters, but rather to improve their own health by taking a course of moral mud baths in what is understood by the East End of London.
It would cost them less in dress.
Alas! for the West and the East—the gorgeous East changed from the sunny land into the home of the homeless, the paradise of ancient Adam yielding them only a rotten apple off the old tree of knowledge, while the West feeds on golden pippins! The clergy are endowed; they can afford Eastern travel; but less than O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! they love the slums of Shoreditch.
There is something tickling in the phrase, “the fashionable clergy.” One meets them at the receptions of a minister of State; but they do not seem wanted there, and they stand with their hands before them as if they had done preaching. The same congregation will listen to them at a distance in their box at the holy opera. But why do these good men trouble themselves with those gilt-edged Bible-bearers, who are gathered together in unconscious advertisement of the newest fashions from trans-Eastern looms, and the newest feathers from the accommodating bird of paradise, that shed them for their use?
Certainly the clergy waste their time on these delicacies of a perfected race; they are only courtiers, clergy of the bed-chamber, clergy-in-waiting. It is not a nice calling for one who is manly and cultured.
But they are not all alike. Many begin by being honest, and remain so for life.
Among the more recent events which have been of interest to me, I would mention that, in 1885, on the eve of a general election, my son Egmont engaged to deliver a lecture on Gordon in the chief cities; and very efficiently he performed his task. He concluded the work at St. James’s Hall, where I was present. I dined with the Walter Pollocks and we went together to the lecture, at which Lord Cranborne took the chair.
The audience was much moved during the recital of those circumstances which, easy to have been avoided, led to Gordon’s death.
After the lecture, Mrs. Pollock introduced me to Lady Wentworth and then to Lord Wentworth, the grandson of Byron; also to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the worthy daughter of our noblest patriot, Sir Francis Burdett. This lady feelingly expressed to me her regard for Gordon, and invited me to a pleasant luncheon at her house the next day, with Mrs. Pollock and my son and daughter.
But I must not go on talking for ever; my only excuse is, as I have already hinted, I am in my fourteenth year over death-time, and so far belong, in a way, to posterity, in the name of which I have occasionally ventured to opine. With this advantage over many contemporaries, some of whom were once of my own age, and some who were younger, I have a right to consider myself as my own posterity too; indeed, being fourteen years old, as such, I may regard myself as one of the Youths of the Future.