Mystic London; or, Phases of occult life in the metropolisDavies, Charles Maurice
History
Mystic London; or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis
Davies, Charles Maurice
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Occultism
And first of all, having duly attended to the ladies at the outset, let
there be "Place for the Clergy." There is my dear friend the Rev. Gray
Kidds, the best fellow breathing, but, from a Diogenes point of view,
decidedly eccentric. Gray Kidds is one of those individuals whose
peculiarity it is never to have been a boy. Kidds at fifteen had
whiskers as voluminous as he now has at six-and-twenty, and as he
gambolled heavily amongst his more puerile schoolfellows, visitors to
the playground used to ask the assistant masters who that man was
playing with the boys. They evidently had an uneasy notion that a
private lunatic asylum formed a branch of the educational establishment,
and that Gray Kidds was a harmless patient allowed to join the boys in
their sports. Gray Kidds was and is literally harmless. He grew up
through school and college, innocently avoiding all those evils which
proved the ruin of many who were deemed far wiser than himself. He
warbled feebly on the flute, and was adored as a curate, not only for
his tootle-tooings, but for his diligent presence at mothers' meetings,
and conscientious labours among the poor. A preacher Kidds never
pretended to be; but he had the singular merit of brevity, and crowded
more harmless heresies into ten minutes' pulpit oratory than Colenso or
Voysey could have done in double the time. The young ladies made a dead
set at him, of course, for Kidds was in every respect eligible; and he
let them stroke him like a big pet lamb, but there matters ended. Kidds
never committed himself. He is now the incumbent of a pretty church in
the suburbs, built for him by his aunt, and, strange to say, the church
fills. Whether it is that his brevity is attractive, or his transparent
goodness compensates for his other peculiarities, certainly he has a
congregation; and if you polled that congregation, the one point on
which all would agree, in addition to his eligibility or innocence,
would be that the Rev. Gray Kidds was "so funny."
And now, for our second type of peculiarity, let us beat back for one
moment to the fair sex again. Mrs. Ghoul is the reverse of spirituelle;
but she is something more--she is spiritualistic. She devoutly believes
that the spirits of deceased ancestors come at her bidding, and tilt the
table, move furniture insanely about, or write idiotic messages
automatically. She is perfectly serious. She does "devoutly" believe
this. It is her creed. It is a comfort to her. It is extremely difficult
to reconcile such a source of comfort with any respect for one's
departed relatives, but that is Mrs. Ghoul's peculiarity and
qualification for a niche amongst our originals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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