Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How

by William Walsham How

In fact, the sense of humour is a real part of the power of conveying a sense of sympathy. The sympathy may be there in the dullest and heaviest of men, but he has not the power of conveying it. One of Bishop Walsham How's great delights was to share with others the amusement he gleaned from day to day, and it was his wish that after his death some of the stories that he collected should be published. Many of them he frequently told, and they have been repeated from mouth to mouth till they are well known, others were perhaps well known when he first heard them. The following selection has been made with the hope of including all the more original anecdotes, and it is hoped that they may have some small share in keeping alive the memory of one whose sense of humour helped to increase his wide-hearted sympathy for his fellow creatures.

Many of the stories told by Bishop Walsham How centre round Whittington, the Shropshire parish of which he was Rector from 1851 to 1879. In the early days of his residence there superstition was exceedingly rife. There is a note by the Bishop to this effect:

The prevalence of superstition in these enlightened days (as we call them: how our great-grandchildren will laugh at us!) is most marvellous. The following are in this parish generally approved and seriously recommended remedies for the whooping-cough, popularly called the "chin-cough": To be swung nine times under a donkey. To pass the patient three times under and over a briar growing from a hedge, saying, "Over the briar and under the briar, and leave the chin-cough behind."[1] Anything recommended by a seventh son. (One woman cured several people, she tells me, by sending them to meet a boatman who is a seventh son, and to ask him what would cure them.) Anything recommended by a man on a piebald horse. (I have been told of cures being thus effected by gin, honey, cold water, and an ounce of tea taken wholly.)

[1] This process I can remember undergoing at the hands of my nurse in the garden of Whittington Rectory.—Ed.

Soon after I came here [Whittington] an old neighbour, Kitty Williams, was ill, and my wife was ill at the same time. In speaking of the latter fact to an old woman who lived at the hamlet of Babies' Wood, she said she hoped we were good to old Kitty, for she had an evil eye and might have caused Mrs. How's illness. She then told me the following story: When Kitty was young she lived in service near Whittington, but was sent away for some misconduct, and after a time married Jonathan Williams and came to live where I knew her. From the time she left her place nothing prospered there. Cows died, horses went lame, and all went wrong. So they consulted a wise woman, who told them to get a pair of black horses with long tails and to drive them about till they stopped of themselves, and then to give the first woman they saw whatever she asked for. They did so; the horses stopped opposite Kitty's cottage close by Whittington Rectory. Kitty came out, and they greeted their old servant and asked what they should give her. She chose a shawl, so they went to Oswestry and bought her one, after which all things prospered with them. This was told me with the seriousness of profound belief.[2]

[2] The following facts may throw some light on the horses stopping at that exact spot. First, they were probably hearse horses; secondly, there is a public-house on the other side of the road.—Ed.

Scarcely less curious were many of the phrases and sayings which he came across in visiting the old inhabitants of the parish. Here are a few which found a place in his notebook:

A woman from whom I was making some inquiry concerning a neighbour answered me, "I really can't tell you, sir, for I've not much confection of cheerfulness with my neighbours."

Another woman, who had been ill, described herself to me as being "as thin as a halfpenny herring."

A poor woman in the parish, speaking to me of the wonders of the heavens, expressed her astonishment at the sun rising in the east, whereas it set in the west. "I suppose," she said, "it gets back in the night when it is dark."