Journal of a Country Curate

I am reading Journal of a Country Curate, the diaries of the Rev Francis Kilvert (1870-79). A young curate working along the Welsh-English borders, he describes delightfully the countryside and folk among whom he ministers. Yet one episode from ‘Thursday, April Eve’, 1870, had me roaring with laughter. It would have been funny enough in a novel, but this really happened at an Anglican Confirmation service:

In Hadley's shop I met Dewing who told me of a most extra- ordinary misfortune that befell [Rev. Andrew] Pope the curate of Cusop yester- day at the Whitney Confirmation. He had one candidate Miss Stokes a farmer's daughter and they went together by train. Pope went in a cutaway coat very short, with his dog, and took no gown. The train was very late. He came very late into church and sat down on a bench with the girl cheek by jowl. When it came to his turn to present his candidate he was told by the Rector (Henry Dew) or someone in authority to explain why he came so late. The Bishop of Hereford (Atlay) has a new fashion of confirming only two persons at a time, kneeling at the rails. The Bishop had marked two young people come in very late and when they came up to the rails thinking from Pope's youthful appearance and from his having no gown that he was a young farmer candidate and brother of the girl. He spoke to them severely and told them to come on and kneel down for they were extremely late. Pope tried to explain that he was a clergyman and that the girl was his candidate but the Bishop was over- bearing and imperious and either did not hear or did not attend, seeming to think he was dealing with a refractory ill-conditioned youth. 'I know, I know,' he said. 'Come at once, kneel down, kneel down.' Poor Pope resisted a long time and had a long battle with the Bishop, but at last unhappily he was overborne in the struggle, lost his head, gave way, knelt down and was confirmed there and then, and no one seems to have interfered to save him, though Mr Palmer of Eardisley and others were sitting close by and the whole Church was in a titter. It is a most unfortunate thing and will never be forgotten and it will be unhappily a joke against Pope all his life. The Bishop was told of his mistake afterwards and apologized to Pope, though rather shortly and cavalierly. He said, what was quite true, that Pope ought to have come in his gown. But there was a little fault on all sides for if the Bishop had been a little less hasty, rough and overbearing in his manner things might have been explained, and the bystanding clergy were certainly very much to blame for not stepping forward and preventing such a farce. I fear poor Pope will be very much vexed, hurt and dispirited about it.

Poor Reverend Pope. Yet if the service of Confirmation is indeed the imparting of the Holy Spirit several years after one’s baptism, then he cannot have been the worse for it. I find myself to be a leaking vessel, and must seek a re-filling and a refreshing each day, with or without the imperious hands of the late Bishop of Hereford.