DOI issue:
July to December, 1850
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16606#0221
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
»
213
REVIVALS.
eeply sensible I am, and ought to be, of the great privilege which I enjoyed a
few days ago, of travelling from the Paddington Station to Didcot, in company
with the Rev. Ingulphus Crabbe. The Rev. Ingulphus and I were school-
fellows, and though our lots in life have been very different—he being now
senior tutor of St. Simeon's, as well as amateur father confessor to the Anglo-
Catholic sisterhood of St. Bennett, and the editor (some think author) of those
very successful Puseyite novels, The Prie-Dieu, Secrets of the Oratory, and The
Stake in the Country, or the Martyrs of Mount Street—while I—but no matter for
that—notwithstanding, I say, the difference in our positions, he is always very
affable when we meet, and does not even scruple to converse with me on the
present state of the nation, of which his views are, upon the whole, gloomy.
But I never remember to have heard him so very dismal as during our
journey on this occasion. He kept drawing the most awful pictures of Infidelity
stalking through the length and breadth of our island, tearing down the
reredosses, putting out the candles, refusing to join in the antiphonies, building
churches without apses and piscina—of a latitudinarian clergy, with shirt-
collars and whiskers—of the dreadful abandonment by the laity of the whole-
some discipline of fasts and floggings—and the general indisposition to auri-
cular confession—until I thought an old lady in the carriage would have gone
into hysterics.
" Where is the holy and child-like faith of our ancestors ? " lie asked. " Who
now endows a monastery, or settles his property in perpetuity on a chapter ?
No, Sir, now-a-days we establish model lodging-houses, and believe in the
unintermitting water-supply and pipe-drainage. What has become of the
blessed practice of pilgrimages ? Instead of them we have excursiou-trains.
In place of praying at the shrine of our Ladye oe Walsinghaw, or walking on
bare knees round the tomb of the blessed St. Thomas of Canterbury, our
artisans are picture-seeing in the galleries of Hampton Court, or going to
Southampton and back for three-and-sixpence."
This was the strain in which the Rev. Ingulphtjs indulged till we shook
hands at Didcot; where he left us, and was received by two young
acolytes, in pale faces, stiff cravats without ties, and long coats, one of whom
meekly shouldered his carpet-bag, the work probably of one of the_ holy
sisterhood of St. Bennett aforesaid (for I observed embroidered on it, in the
early English style of crochet, a saint, with pointed feet and perpendicular hands, and an inscription in the orthodox and illegible character,
familiar to the ecclesiologist on monumental brasses); while the other reverently charged himself with the breviary (bound m purple-velvet,
with Moyen-age clasps, and a cross patinee on the cover) with which the Rev. Ingulpjjus had been beguiling so much of his journey
as had not been bestowed on the edifying discourse I have
described.
After his departure I don't know whether I fell asleep or not,
but I certainly had what Christopher Sly calls "an exposi-
tion" of veneration, which I have no doubt did me much good,
and which I will try to describe for the benefit of some of the
latitudinarian readers of this publication.
My mind took a retrograde flight, in obedience to the impulse
it had received from the Rev. Ingulphus. I felt myself back-
sliding, if I may say so, from present faiths and feelings, into past
beliefs, past royalties, past pietisms.
My first sense was of the iniquity of adherence to the House
of Hanover, and a lively impression of the awful sin of the Act
of Succession, and the wilful wickedness of the Bill of Rights.
I returned to my allegiance and was at the feet of the Pretender,
renouncing "the glorious, pious, and immortal memory," with great
unction. Of course my religious creed changed with my political.
I made a tremendous effort to stick fast at the High Tory, Tantivy,
Church and King Protestantism of Juxon and Laud—but in
vain—I was swept back—back into Queen Mary's blessed reign,
and found myself shaking hands with Bishop Bonner, as we
assisted at the roasting of a batch of heretics, somewhere near the
present site of the Victoria Park, and congratulated each other on
theprospects of the true faith.
Here I thought I was secure. But the impetus backwards was
too strong, and (before I had time to take good note of the
changes), I had already done duty to Woden, and cooked some
scores of British captives a la panier, in honour of that fine old
Anglo-Saxon divinity. But I couldn't stop there either; and
the last thing I was conscious of, was making a desperate effort
to stick a mistletoe bough into my cap, as I hurrahed a march of
original Druids, (the leader singularly resembling Lablache in
Oroveso) round about the gigantic circle of Stonehenge, on our way
to a human sacrifice.
Such was the effect on your humble servant of the Reverend Ingulphus's Theory of Developments—in the wrong direction.
Considerable consternation was excited among the Berlin chorus
at the National Concerts, by the intelligence that all the subjects of
Prussia serving abroad were to return immediately to their allegiance.
The Berlin chorus not being at all pugilistically disposed, would not be
desirous of putting on the Berlin gloves to fight, or taking up the Berlin
gauntlet. It was observed that the choir, while singing at Her Majesty's
WARS, AND RUMOURS OF WARS.
Theatre, exhibited a good deal of Prussian blue in their countenances on
the evening of the rumour in question getting into circulation. We under-
stand that a memorial has been addressed to the_ King of Prussia,
stating that the Berlin choristers are not conspiring in this country,
although they act in concert, but that they are engaged in the promotion
of harmony rather than in disturbing it.
»
213
REVIVALS.
eeply sensible I am, and ought to be, of the great privilege which I enjoyed a
few days ago, of travelling from the Paddington Station to Didcot, in company
with the Rev. Ingulphus Crabbe. The Rev. Ingulphus and I were school-
fellows, and though our lots in life have been very different—he being now
senior tutor of St. Simeon's, as well as amateur father confessor to the Anglo-
Catholic sisterhood of St. Bennett, and the editor (some think author) of those
very successful Puseyite novels, The Prie-Dieu, Secrets of the Oratory, and The
Stake in the Country, or the Martyrs of Mount Street—while I—but no matter for
that—notwithstanding, I say, the difference in our positions, he is always very
affable when we meet, and does not even scruple to converse with me on the
present state of the nation, of which his views are, upon the whole, gloomy.
But I never remember to have heard him so very dismal as during our
journey on this occasion. He kept drawing the most awful pictures of Infidelity
stalking through the length and breadth of our island, tearing down the
reredosses, putting out the candles, refusing to join in the antiphonies, building
churches without apses and piscina—of a latitudinarian clergy, with shirt-
collars and whiskers—of the dreadful abandonment by the laity of the whole-
some discipline of fasts and floggings—and the general indisposition to auri-
cular confession—until I thought an old lady in the carriage would have gone
into hysterics.
" Where is the holy and child-like faith of our ancestors ? " lie asked. " Who
now endows a monastery, or settles his property in perpetuity on a chapter ?
No, Sir, now-a-days we establish model lodging-houses, and believe in the
unintermitting water-supply and pipe-drainage. What has become of the
blessed practice of pilgrimages ? Instead of them we have excursiou-trains.
In place of praying at the shrine of our Ladye oe Walsinghaw, or walking on
bare knees round the tomb of the blessed St. Thomas of Canterbury, our
artisans are picture-seeing in the galleries of Hampton Court, or going to
Southampton and back for three-and-sixpence."
This was the strain in which the Rev. Ingulphtjs indulged till we shook
hands at Didcot; where he left us, and was received by two young
acolytes, in pale faces, stiff cravats without ties, and long coats, one of whom
meekly shouldered his carpet-bag, the work probably of one of the_ holy
sisterhood of St. Bennett aforesaid (for I observed embroidered on it, in the
early English style of crochet, a saint, with pointed feet and perpendicular hands, and an inscription in the orthodox and illegible character,
familiar to the ecclesiologist on monumental brasses); while the other reverently charged himself with the breviary (bound m purple-velvet,
with Moyen-age clasps, and a cross patinee on the cover) with which the Rev. Ingulpjjus had been beguiling so much of his journey
as had not been bestowed on the edifying discourse I have
described.
After his departure I don't know whether I fell asleep or not,
but I certainly had what Christopher Sly calls "an exposi-
tion" of veneration, which I have no doubt did me much good,
and which I will try to describe for the benefit of some of the
latitudinarian readers of this publication.
My mind took a retrograde flight, in obedience to the impulse
it had received from the Rev. Ingulphus. I felt myself back-
sliding, if I may say so, from present faiths and feelings, into past
beliefs, past royalties, past pietisms.
My first sense was of the iniquity of adherence to the House
of Hanover, and a lively impression of the awful sin of the Act
of Succession, and the wilful wickedness of the Bill of Rights.
I returned to my allegiance and was at the feet of the Pretender,
renouncing "the glorious, pious, and immortal memory," with great
unction. Of course my religious creed changed with my political.
I made a tremendous effort to stick fast at the High Tory, Tantivy,
Church and King Protestantism of Juxon and Laud—but in
vain—I was swept back—back into Queen Mary's blessed reign,
and found myself shaking hands with Bishop Bonner, as we
assisted at the roasting of a batch of heretics, somewhere near the
present site of the Victoria Park, and congratulated each other on
theprospects of the true faith.
Here I thought I was secure. But the impetus backwards was
too strong, and (before I had time to take good note of the
changes), I had already done duty to Woden, and cooked some
scores of British captives a la panier, in honour of that fine old
Anglo-Saxon divinity. But I couldn't stop there either; and
the last thing I was conscious of, was making a desperate effort
to stick a mistletoe bough into my cap, as I hurrahed a march of
original Druids, (the leader singularly resembling Lablache in
Oroveso) round about the gigantic circle of Stonehenge, on our way
to a human sacrifice.
Such was the effect on your humble servant of the Reverend Ingulphus's Theory of Developments—in the wrong direction.
Considerable consternation was excited among the Berlin chorus
at the National Concerts, by the intelligence that all the subjects of
Prussia serving abroad were to return immediately to their allegiance.
The Berlin chorus not being at all pugilistically disposed, would not be
desirous of putting on the Berlin gloves to fight, or taking up the Berlin
gauntlet. It was observed that the choir, while singing at Her Majesty's
WARS, AND RUMOURS OF WARS.
Theatre, exhibited a good deal of Prussian blue in their countenances on
the evening of the rumour in question getting into circulation. We under-
stand that a memorial has been addressed to the_ King of Prussia,
stating that the Berlin choristers are not conspiring in this country,
although they act in concert, but that they are engaged in the promotion
of harmony rather than in disturbing it.