The only clergyman in Broadminster who, so far as I have heard, was
fully qualified to take a place in one of the Barchester groups was a
person named Gilliman. He was a small, stout gentleman with a comical
ruddy face and sparse, bristly grizzly hair. He had no benefice, but
was one of those unattached parsons who, in the phrase of the servants'
registry office, was ready to “oblige” either by the day or as locum
tenens for an absent incumbent. He had been left a small competence by
his mother--quite enough for a clerical bachelor to live on, and he was
a bachelor. He never sought for a job, but when he got one he proved
that he held fast to the excellent precept that the labourer is worthy
of his hire. If any brother parson expected that he would take his duty
out of love or zeal, that parson left himself open to disappointment.
I think he would have made a worthy curate to Mr. Quiverful; but Mr.
Quiverful would have felt so chastened in spirit by his proximity that
he would have got rid of him within a month.
He was a zealous patron of the amateur, whether musical or dramatic. He
could always be depended on to buy one of the cheaper, but never one
of the cheapest, tickets for a concert or a comedy, and he seemed as
pleased with the most incompetent amateur as with the best. He was
socially unambitious; no one seemed to invite him to any function, with
the exception of the Dean's annual garden party: he went to this, and so
did every one else.
It was not until he had been a resident in Broad-minster for several
years that people found out why he had settled in that town. It might be
supposed that there were enough clergymen here to serve as a reservoir
for all the neighbourhood in an emergency. I once heard an American lady
who was on a cathedral tour through Europe say just outside Santa Croce
on a feast day: “There are priests to burn in Florence if I do my sums
right.” Her slang meant that there was a superfluity of the clergy in
that city, and perhaps she was right. I will not make use of her slang
in referring to Broadminster, but assuredly it might strike anyone that
there was a sufficient number of clerics in the purlieu of the Minster
to meet the needs of the neighbourhood without making the presence of
so accommodating a person as Mr. Gilliman a convenience. In an unguarded
moment, however, he confessed to some one that years ago, when he had
first come to the town, it was his earnest hope to drop into some vacant
stall in the Minster. He had dreams of being appointed to a canonry by
some fortunate combination of circumstances, and he had gone on
waiting for such an accident, and meantime attending all the amateur
performances in the place.
He was a very good preacher, people said who had heard him, and others
who had not heard him; but few were aware of how he managed to excel in
a direction that seemed just the opposite to the bent of such a man.
The truth was that his father had been a zealous rector of a parish in
Devonshire, and had bequeathed to him a large sackful of sermons that he
had preached to his flock since his ordination; and when the fortunate
legatee was called on “to oblige” for an absent cleric, he simply put
his hand into the mouth of the sack and drew out a sermon, put it into
his pocket, and went away and preached it in due course, dropping it
into his sermon sack on his return. Thus it was that people said he
preached much better than they expected--and he probably did so; but he
could not tell you the next day on what subject he had preached.
That legacy and his impartial system of dealing with it served him in
good stead; but upon one occasion it might have caused him to feel some
awkwardness if he had not been so completely detached from his duty
in the pulpit. The fact was that he had been called away at a moment's
notice to take the duty for a clergyman who had knocked himself up by
umpiring in a cricket match on a very hot Saturday. He had never been
to the place before, so he had to look up trains and connections, and by
the time he had got out of this maze the train that he had selected was
almost ready to start. He hurried to the faithful sack and pulled out a
fat sermon roll, and rushed away for the station.
He was lucky in catching the train and the subsequent connections, and
arrived at the church with nearly half an hour to spare. He went through
the service and found himself in the pulpit with his sermon opened on
the cushion in front of him.
Now it so happened that the discourse which he had drawn in his usual
way from the paternal sack was the valedictory sermon preached by his
father in the church of which he had been rector for forty years, and
there was the son beginning it in a church which he had never seen
before that morning!
He was quite unconscious of any want of felicity in his choice. He began
the sermon and went through with it, feeling no qualm. He had every
confidence in the orthodoxy of his father; he would never get into a
scrape through preaching what the dear old man had preached years ago.
And so he went onto tell his congregation that more than forty years
had passed since he had first stood before them to preach the Gospel
of Truth, and that every year of that forty he had stood where he was
standing to-day, Sunday after Sunday--that he saw before him aged men
and women whom he had known as young men and maidens--that by the favour
of Heaven he had lived to baptize the offspring of those whom he had
himself baptized in their infancy--yea, unto the third generation he had
come, and now he was standing before them for the last time. The hour
of parting had come, and would any among them say that that hour was not
bitter to them all?
Well, no one did go so far as to assert that the hour was not bitter to
them all. I was assured that the congregation were bathed in tears, so
affected were they by the thought that the clergyman who had “obliged”
for the day was about to vacate the pulpit for ever. They felt the
blow deeply--much more deeply than the parson seemed to feel it, for he
managed to hold back his tears so long as he was in the pulpit, though
his marvellous powers of self-repression may have deserted him an hour
later, and he may have broken down utterly in the train when making the
return journey; the chances are, however, that he did nothing of the
sort, for he had not the remotest idea what the sermon had been about.
And the strangest thing of all in connection with this incident is
that the churchwardens expressed themselves as greatly pleased with the
sermon, and one of them referring to it the next day in the hearing of
my informant, said he had never been so affected in his life as he
was under the influence of the sermon, and he hoped that the eloquent
clergyman would be able to preach it again in the near future.
It is quite likely that his wish was gratified, though I do not think
that any one who had the best interests of the Church at heart would
advocate the adoption of the farewell tours system of the popular actor
or singer by the clergy. It might hurt the susceptibilities of some
members of a congregation to hear a clergyman bid an affecting farewell
to a crowd of people who were complete strangers to him, and the
sincerity of his sorrow might be called in question when they reflected
that an ordinary man can scarcely be broken-hearted at the thought of
never seeing again the faces he had never seen before. But that, of
course, involves the question of how far the susceptibilities of the
weaker brethren should be considered.
My informant, who was present upon the occasion referred to, was also
a stranger to the place. He was staying with the doctor's family, and,
walking home from the church, the doctor's wife remarked how beautiful
the sermon had been.
“Your rector bears his age very well,” said her companion. “He does not
look a day over forty, and yet, according to his own account, he must be
at least sixty-five.”
“Our rector? But that clergyman is not our rector,” said the lady. “Our
rector is ill; the one we had today came to do duty for him. He is a
stranger.”
“But why, then, should he talk of having baptized half the congregation
and married the other half--of never having been absent from the pulpit
for forty years and more?” asked the man.
“Oh, you are hypercritical!” cried the lady. “Some latitude should be
allowed to clergymen. He only made use of one of the figures of speech
of the pulpit.”
It is recorded of the same estimable charpson--if a parson who also
discharges the duties of a squire has been called a squarson, may not
one who goes out like a charwoman by the day be called a charpson?--that
upon one occasion he was asked to do duty for an absent clergyman at a
village in Hampshire, but the contract was for the morning service
only. When he was disrobing in the vestry after preaching the ser mon,
a couple of churchwardens approached him on the subject of the evening
service also. He said that he would be very pleased indeed to take the
evening service, but of course he should have to receive another guinea.
The churchwardens demurred. They said they thought that, as he was on
the spot----
He shook his head.
“I cannot see that that has anything to do with the case,” said the
clergyman. “One service and sermon, one guinea; two services and two
sermons, two guineas.”
The officials agreed that the article was marked in plain figures;
but still they thought---- Well, would he consent to take the evening
service for another half-guinea?
After thinking over the proposal, the clergyman consented to do so; and
then one of the wardens suggested that perhaps Mr. Gilliman would not
mind saying just a few words--not a sermon--not a regular sermon, of
course, but just a few words--to the congregation after the evening
service.
After some further thought Mr. Gilliman said he would have no objection
to say a few words in this way, and the wardens thanked him and handed
him a sovereign, a half-sovereign, a shilling, and a sixpence. They went
so far as to pay him for the evening in advance, to show that they had
unlimited confidence in him.
On his part he resolved to prove to them that their confidence in him
was not misplaced; so, after reading the evening service, he came to the
front of the altar-rails and said--
“Dear brethren, I have been asked to say a few words to you at this time
instead of preaching the customary sermon. What I wish to say to each
and every one of you whom I see assembled before me--and what I think
it is the intention of your churchwardens that I should communicate to
you--is that there will be no sermon in this church to-night. Let us
sing, to the praise and glory of God, the ninety-second Hymn.”
He easily caught the late train to London, though the evening service
in respect of trains is much more irregular than that at which he had
presided in the church.
The Reverend Herbert Gilliman, B.A.Oxon, never received preferment; but
some one remarked to me after his death, when touching on his career,
that far less worthy parsons had been appointed to a cure of souls
by the patrons of livings, without the parishioners having any voice
whatever in the matter.
I agreed with him, and said that I thought they managed these things
better in Scotland, where the candidate minister preached once or twice
to the congregation to allow of their judging of his powers before they
accepted him.
“Yes,” he assented. “I think that the application of the hire-purchase
system in these matters is highly desirable.”
“It's not exactly the hire-purchase system,” said a purist in phrases.
“It is more of the 'on sale or return' system of business.”
“What was in my mind,” said a third, “was a tasting order for spirits in
bond.”