Collections and RecollectionsRussell, George William Erskine
History
Collections and Recollections
Russell, George William Erskine
England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Still, after all, for a bishop to score off a clergyman is an
inglorious victory; it is like the triumph of a magistrate over a
prisoner or of a don over an undergraduate. Bishop Wilberforce, whose
powers of repartee were among his most conspicuous gifts, was always
ready to use them where retaliation was possible--not in the safe
enclosure of the episcopal study, but on the open battlefield of the
platform and the House of Lords. At the great meeting in St. James's
Hall in the summer of 1868 to protest against the Disestablishment of
the Irish Church, some Orange enthusiast, in the hope of disturbing the
Bishop, kept interrupting his honeyed eloquence with inopportune shouts
of "Speak up, my lord." "I am already speaking up," replied the Bishop
in his most dulcet tone; "I always speak up; and I decline to speak down
to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery." Every one whose
memory runs back thirty years will recall the Homeric encounters between
the Bishop and Lord Chancellor Westbury in the House of Lords, and will
remember the melancholy circumstances under which Lord Westbury had to
resign his office. When he was leaving the Royal Closet after
surrendering the Great Seal into the Queen's hands, Lord Westbury met
the Bishop, who was going in to the Queen. It was a painful encounter,
and in reminding the Bishop of the occurrence when next they met,
Westbury said, "I felt inclined to say, 'Hast thou found me, O mine
enemy?'" The Bishop in relating this used to say, "I never in my life
was so tempted as to finish the quotation, and say, 'Yea, I have found
thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work iniquity.' But by a great
effort I kept it down, and said, 'Does your lordship remember the end of
the quotation?'" The Bishop, who enjoyed a laugh against himself, used
to say that he had once been effectually scored off by one of his clergy
whom he had rebuked for his addiction to fox-hunting. The Bishop urged
that it had a worldly appearance. The clergyman replied that it was not
a bit more worldly than a ball at Blenheim Palace at which the Bishop
had been present. The Bishop explained that he was staying in the house,
but was never within three rooms of the dancing. "Oh, if it comes to
that," replied the clergyman, "I never am within three fields of the
hounds."
One of the best replies--it is scarcely a repartee--traditionally
reported at Oxford was made by the great Saint of the Tractarian
Movement, the Rev. Charles Marriott. A brother-Fellow of Oriel had
behaved rather outrageously at dinner overnight, and coming out of
chapel next morning, essayed to apologize to Marriott: "My friend, I'm
afraid I made rather a fool of myself last night." "My dear fellow, I
assure you I observed nothing unusual."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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