Lord _So-and-so_ is, of course, the great banker or brewer; Lord _This_
is the famous picture collector, who has all the Holbeins; Lord _That_
is known to be the best amateur actor, billiard player, or breeder of
bloodhounds in England. In an age when all celebrities are easily
distinguished thus, Lord Huddersfield, was perfectly familiar to
everyone as the great organising churchman. The ordinary person would
say, "Lord Huddersfield? Oh, yes, the great Ritualistic Johnny,"
imagining that he had summed up his man with completeness. Yet, saving
only to churchmen and their antagonists--a very small proportion of the
public to-day--Lord Huddersfield was personally quite unknown. He was
hardly ever caricatured in the comic papers or pictured in the more
serious illustrated journals. His face was wholly unfamiliar; the
details of his private life formed no portion of the gossip papers. To
the vast army of English folk, who are utterly indifferent to religious
questions, he was nothing more than a name.
He had only once excited a really general flicker of interest. On the
occasion of a visit to Italy, like many other distinguished visitors to
the capital, he had been received in audience by the Bishop of Rome. As
usual, the evening papers had published "rumours."
"LORD HUDDERSFIELD AND THE POPE.
WILL HE BECOME A CATHOLIC?"
had appeared as a scare head-line in one enterprising sheet, and the
peer's telegram, stating that he had been one for many years had been
hastily printed as a startling revelation--until some charitable person
had stepped round to the office and explained the joke to a bewildered
Scotch editor, and the paragraph was excised from later editions.
This much for the figure he cut to the outside world. In the English
Church, he was looked upon as one of the leading laymen, if not the
chief of all of them. He was the proprietor of the great weekly paper
known as the _Church Standard_. He was the chairman of many church
societies, the friend and patron of all Anglican movements and
institutions, and a man whose word carried enormous weight and power.
In private life, his two children and his intimate friends found him
true, devout, diligent, winning all hearts by opening his own, where one
found a singular freshness and simplicity. He went as little into
general society as he could, for all his thoughts and aims were occupied
in one endeavour.
On the Monday after the events in Hornham, Agatha Poyntz and her brother
James were in the lovely private backwater of Scarning. Their punt was
moored to the side of a tiny island, set like a gem in the clear brown
water, the red silk cushions of the boat making a vivid splash of colour
on the bank. With these two was Miss Poyntz's great friend and
confidante, Lucy Blantyre, the only sister of the vicar of St. Elwyn's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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