rgymen that I received excited or
enthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how many
parishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and he
alone, could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley? I was frequently
implored to go down and "see for myself." Their most adorable platitudes
were chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it was
too late to insert them in "Red Pottage."[1] For they all fitted Mr.
Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had
been possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright in
platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people
like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a
particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves
continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as
trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the
property and birthright of the race.

Young men fresh from public schools also informed me that Mr. Gresley
was the facsimile of their tutor, and of no one else. I was at that time
unacquainted with any schoolmasters, being cut off from social
advantages. But that fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement of
it had no more effect on my young friends than my father's denial had on
my elderly relations.

I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of "Aunt Anne," I
endeavoured to exculpate myself in order to pacify two old maiden
ladies. Why is it always the acutely unmarried who are made miserable by
my books? Is it because--odious thought, avaunt!--married persons do not
open them? These two ladies did not, indeed, think that I had been
"paying out" some particular clergyman, as suggested in their favourite
paper, _The Guardian_,[2] but they were shocked by the profanity of the
book. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London)
preached on "Red Pottage" in St. Paul's. I sent them a newspaper which
reprinted the sermon _verbatim_, with a note saying that I trusted this
expression of opinion on the part of their idolised preacher might
mitigate their condemnation of the book.

But when have my attempts at making an effect ever come off? My firework
never lights up properly like that of others! It only splutters and goes
out. I received in due course a dignified answer that they had both been
deeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent them ever going