Part 16

“Assuredly she is a strumpet. I saw her talking to the curate of St. Paul’s, who had promised his rector to be discreet, and run no more after the wenches, or at least that he would abstain during Easter week. But Lord! he hadn’t the patience, and on Easter Monday he spoke to his woman, and the parson saw him. When they met he told him of it, saying: ‘I saw thee speaking to a wench. Where is thy shame? Canst not refrain, at least during the holy season?’ ‘Pardon,’ he replied, ‘I did but make an appointment for next week.’”[125]

[125] Our excerpts are drawn chiefly from Machen’s translation.

We have quoted sufficiently to show that amid this welter of words there is fruit worth the plucking. The general tone of the work, however, is coarse; if the canon desired to refer to what is not usually mentioned in the most Catholic of assemblies, he did so in the crudest language. To our age the grossness of his obscenity seems unnecessary; out of place; unpardonable. Is it so? The conversational atmosphere of a present-day smoking-room would have made de Verville blush. The old canon wrote as men in those times spoke; we of to-day write not as we speak, but as we think we ought to speak. It is this pitiful hypocrisy which blinds us to the fact that in _Le Moyen de Parvenir_ we have some of the brightest tales and sayings ever penned by human hand.

HERE ENDS THE FIRST VOLUME OF ANTHOLOGICA RARISSIMA: THE WAY OF A VIRGIN: PRINTED IN LONDON FOR MEMBERS OF THE BROVAN SOCIETY IN MCMXXII.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

Italics are represented thus _italic_.