In old Krehl’s time Tennyson resorted to the restaurant during his visits to town. The poet took quite a fancy to the proprietor, and Krehl preserved many souvenirs of the poet—plans of battle drawn on backs of menu-cards, and other trifles whereby Tennyson thought to make his meaning quite clear to a foreign listener.
It was in the old Krehl’s time that I received an invitation to dine with an Australian magnate of British birth, on a visit to the mother-country. The dinner was served in what was then known as the Cameo Room, and the occasion became memorable to me by reason of an acquaintanceship then made, which was destined to ripen into a lasting friendship. It was in this way. I found myself seated next to a clergyman. The circumstance at first caused me to curse my luck, for I have never taken much stock in parsons. But before we had got to the fish I found that my neighbour was not at all of the class of clergyman with whom, to that time, it had been my fortune to get acquainted. He was a man of medium height, about fifty years of age, broad-shouldered, and of portly figure. His grey beard was trimmed and pointed, and he wore a moustache. His name was Bachelor, and he was a gaol chaplain.
At that time I discovered nothing of the life-work of the individual sitting beside me; nor from himself did I ever hear anything, save incidentally, of his services to his generation—services never acknowledged, and services sometimes resented and always neglected by the authorities. I had beside me that night, in fact, one of those who, in their own persons, illustrate the truth of Henry Taylor’s apothegm: “The world knows nothing of its greatest men.” Here, at least, something may be recorded as a memorial to him. And at the same time the narrative may be enlivened by one or two of those stimulating recollections of which he seemed to be an inexhaustible mine. I never sat down to a dinner at which I enjoyed myself more. My new friend was a man of the world, a gourmet, a fine judge of wine, and withal a practical philanthropist, unresting, untiring, and undespairing.
Bachelor, after his ordination, went out to Australia as chaplain to the first Bishop of Tasmania. He passed from that position into the more active situation of chaplain to the penal settlement there. From the beginning he took a strong human interest in his “parishioners,” and he set to work in the grim employment unhampered by traditions or instructions, or preconceived notions of any sort. From the very start, his theory was that the men to whom he had now become ghostly adviser differed from those outside the settlement chiefly in the fact that they had been found out. Of course he differentiated the material with which he had to deal. This the Governor of the settlement discovered during his first interview with the new “sky-pilot.” The conversation between them at length turned on the question of a servant for his reverence—a menial who had, of course, been selected from among the convicts.
“I’ve chosen a first-rate chap for you,” said the Governor. “Capital cook, good valet, nice quiet manner, talks French like a native, and can mend your linen like a needlewoman.”
“What’s he in for?” inquired Bachelor.
“Forgery,” replied the Governor.
“Couldn’t you let me have a murderer?” inquired the new chaplain.
“If you like,” replied the Governor, shrugging his shoulders, and regarding the new settler as a man suffering from a loose tile or so; and a murderer whose domestic accomplishments fitted him for the post was duly allotted to the parson.
“You see,” he said, in relating the circumstance, “I counted on the fellow’s gratitude; and I counted right. The chances of a murderer obtaining the position were about a million to one; and this fellow, knowing that fact, exhibited a dog’s fidelity, a woman’s solicitude, and the devotion of a fanatic to my person. He would at any moment have given his life to save mine.”