"Churchwarden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... itself), a snuff-box, and long pipes serve to recall that respect for the past and for tradition which is one of the most delightful, as it is one of the most successful, elements in Punch's composition. Here you may see Sir John Tenniel's long churchwarden, with his initials marked upon it, and Charles Keene's little pipe—for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of Douglas Jerrold, decorate the mantelpiece or the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... said that if a tower existed and fell, or was pulled down for any reason, some record would have remained; but the records connected with the building are fragmentary, and it by no means follows that the absence of record proves the non-existence of such a tower. In the case of Wimborne Minster the churchwarden's accounts contain no record of the building or of the fall of the spire, yet we know from outside testimony that such a spire did fall in 1600, and that a representation of it occurs on a seal. So here at Christchurch a seal is in existence on which the ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... of old Doby's meerschaum," Westholt said, "pleased me enormously. She managed to convey to him—without hurting his aged feelings or overwhelming him with embarrassment—that if he preferred a clean churchwarden or his old briarwood, he need not feel obliged to smoke the new pipe. He could regard it as a trophy. Now, how did she do that without filling him with fright and confusion, lest she might think him not sufficiently grateful for her present? ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... build castles in the air Mr. Gay," said Dr. Arbuthnot, taking his churchwarden from his lips. "Suppose you come down to terra firma for a brief space. The girl is a singer—that cannot be gainsaid. She may become an actress—good. But now—who is she? Her ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... it is splendid. My husband is in the churchwarden's pew; he left before me; he is becoming a fanatic—he speaks of lunching on radishes ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... Saffron Walden describe the houses as being of "mean appearance,"[16] which remark, taking into consideration the debased taste of the times, is significant. A perfect holocaust followed, which extending through that shocking time known as the Churchwarden Period has not yet spent itself in the present day. Municipal improvements threaten to go further still, and in these commercial days, when combined capital under such appellations as the "Metropolitan Co-operative" or the "Universal ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... like that?" he asked, and pointed to a charmingly grotesque piece of old Staffordshire pottery which made St. George a stunted churchwarden with the legs of a child, his horse the kind of animal that would be used in a green grocer's cart and the dragon a cross between a leopard ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... look upon as my fellow-creatures. Faugh! how it stinks! It doth not smell like a Christian. If I might be so bold to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, and sent out and laid at the churchwarden's door. It is a good night, only a little rainy and windy; and if it was well wrapt up, and put in a warm basket, it is two to one but it lives till it is found in the morning. But if it should not, we have discharged our duty in taking proper care of it; and it is, perhaps, better ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... benevolent man, and he would have been ten times more useful had not his charitable disposition been over tinged with oddity and caprice. His contact with the poor of the parish soon made him overseer, although his religious observances would not qualify him for churchwarden; for he only went to church at funerals, to which he was frequently invited, his staid appearance, and a certain air of gentility of which he was master, being in such cases no mean recommendation. Overseer and select vestryman, he printed the parish accounts, for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 376, Saturday, June 20, 1829. • Various
... has just left the University, comes home to his native town. He is elected churchwarden. He does not believe in God, but goes to church regularly, makes the sign of the cross when passing near a church or chapel, thinking that that sort of thing is necessary for the people and that the salvation of Russia ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... Yes, poets may sing of those terrible shears With which Atropos snips off both bumpkins and peers, But they're naught to that weapon which shines in the hands Of some would-be Patricians, when proudly he stands O'er the careless churchwarden's baptismal array, And sweeps at each cut generations away. By some babe of old times is ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Ambrose Barnes," published for the Surtees Society, under date 1718, appears an entry, "Umbrella for the Church's use, 25s." A similar entry is also found in the churchwarden's accounts for the parochial chapelry of Burnley, Surrey, for A.D. 1760, "Paid for Umbrella 2l. 10s. 6d." Both these Umbrellas were in all likelihood intended for the use of clergymen at funerals in the churchyard, as was that alluded to in Hone's Year-Book (1826) ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... Mr Sharnall, the organist, who under my direction presides over the musical portion of our services; and this is Dr Ennefer, our excellent local practitioner; and this is Mr Joliffe, who, though engaged in trade, finds time as churchwarden to assist me in the supervision of the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... only a part, sir. He also left the clothes he was wearing—in a rather peculiarly constructed heap, as you can see. Among them, by the way, I found this flattened and corroded bullet. That puzzled me. I think I understand it now." Thus Borsdale, as he composedly smoked his churchwarden. "In short, the whole affair ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... kindness, compared with the deeds I did! Never a pitying pang felt I for youth, sex, age, or rank— All who fell into my clutches were doomed to pace a protruded plank! Yet the desperate demon of those days is now a Churchwarden mild, Holding the bag at Collections—and all ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 13, 1892 • Various
... in the household, but could take no part in genteel company," as the lady expressed herself. She could never forget how, at the Reformation Festival, when only the singers sang in the church, aunt began singing with them out of her book, so that the churchwarden was forced to beg her to be silent; but this she took very ill, and declared she had as notch right as the others to praise God, and then sang in defiance. Had she not been "aunt," and not belonged to the family to which she did, she would certainly ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... architectural confectionery, and the criticism is just. The fact that the battlements and pinnacles project a few inches over the walls of the towers, only adds to the air of weakness and instability of the whole. Nowhere else surely has a Gothic architect approached so closely to the ideals of his "churchwarden" imitators of the beginning of ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... which closed the last volume, a churchwarden occupied uncle for about an hour. When he had left off, uncle proposed a walk in the garden. I could see at once what this was meant to lead to, as he almost immediately turned in the direction of the summer house. When we got there he sat down on the couch, and begged me ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... during the troubled years that followed is varied. In the churchwarden's account of St. Giles's Parish is found the entry: "1646. Paid and given to the teacher at the Cockpit of the children, 6d."[613] Apparently the old playhouse was then being ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... evening service being then almost unknown in country places; and between the services the churchwardens and other officials of the church often adjourned to the inn to hear the news and to smoke tobacco in long clay pipes named after them "churchwarden pipes"; many of the company who came from long distances remained eating and drinking until the time came for afternoon service, generally ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... is John Brown, Esq., Director of the Deptford Direct, the Stag Assurance, and Churchwarden of this parish—St. Stiff the Martyr,—a portly upright man; for had he not been so erect, to balance a "fair round belly," he would have toppled on his nose. Everybody said that he was clever, too—and, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... said old William, as they retired. "Never such a dreadful scene in the whole round o' my carrel practice—never! And he a churchwarden!" ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... is an Old French form of marguillier, a churchwarden, Lat. matricularius. The hermit survives as Armatt, Armitt, with which cf. the Huguenot Lermitte (l'ermite), and the name of his dwelling is common (Chapter XIII); Anker, now anchorite, is also ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... Notting Hill—one of the very last of the old taverns, with a tea-garden behind it, and a bar-parlour of a very comfortable sort, where various old fogies of the neighbourhood gather of an evening and smoke churchwarden pipes and tell tales of the olden days—I rather gathered from what I saw that it was the old atmosphere that attracted Mr. Ashton—made him think of bygone England, you know, ...
— The Middle of Things • J. S. Fletcher
... have known of the parson or the churchwarden turning his cow to pasture in the churchyard, to the sad desecration of the place. It appears, however, that worse than this has been done, if we may judge from the following passage quoted by ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... probably out of sheer perversity, went up to Louis and looked over his shoulder as he read the communication, which was a printed circular, somewhat yellowed, with blanks neatly filled in, and the whole neatly signed by a churchwarden, informing Louis that his application for sittings at St. Luke's Church (commonly called the Old Church) had been granted. It is to be noted that, though applications for sittings in the Old Church were not overwhelmingly frequent, and might indeed very easily ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... firmness in enduring other people's pain, which firmness, he said, was due to his great benevolence; he always did what was good for people in the end. Mr. Chaloner had even selected him as clergyman's churchwarden, for he was a very handy man, and much more of Mr. Chaloner's opinion in everything about church business than the older parishioners. Mr. Freely was a very regular churchman, but at the Oyster Club he was sometimes a little free in his conversation, more than hinting ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... ecclesiastical, charitable, and educational organization has got to be wound up afresh, and set going again for another week. The superintendent of the Women's Mission is waiting with a bundle of accounts, complicated as only ladies' accounts can be. The churchwarden has come with a face full of gloom to consult on the falling off in the offertory. The Scripture-reader has brought his "visiting book" to be inspected, and a special report on the character of a doubtful family in the parish. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... simultaneously held a similar office at St. Luke's Church, Tranmere, where he trained a boy choir that became widely celebrated. For this Church he bought and set up a fine organ. He subsequently served as Churchwarden and was active in many other Church offices. He erected an organ in the Claughton Music Hall and organized and conducted oratorio performances in aid of various Church funds; training a large voluntary chorus and orchestra for the purpose. For Psalms whose verses are arranged ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... bumpkins who knew not the name of Newgate. Still devoted to sport, he hunted the fox, and made such a bull-ring as his youthful imagination could never have pictured. So he lived a life of country ease, and died a churchwarden. And he deserved his prosperity, for he carried the soul of Falstaff in the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... however, wherewithal to seal the letter, until I found in the church a little wax still sticking to a wooden altar-candlestick, which the Imperialists had not thought it worth their while to steal, for they had only taken the brass ones. I sent three fellows in a boat with Hinrich Seden, the churchwarden, with this ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... uncomfortable, it was so very strange. She was quite certain that it was her pocket- handkerchief which was in that loaf just now; and it had been in her own hand not five minutes before. She wondered who had furnished the bread? She was sure it could not be Dakin, because he was the churchwarden. Suddenly Miss Matty ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... subsequent years, there is a constant repetition in the churchwarden's account of "Wooden Baldrocks," from time to time supplied ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... took for a grave was nothing but a continuation downwards of the ancient shaft, as is proved by what has been found in it. But in mediaeval times the puticolus was enlarged and converted into a hermitage, and a hermit is known to have occupied it till the eve of the Reformation, for in the Churchwarden's book of the parish of Bassingborne, under the date 1506, is the entry, "Gyft of 20d. recd, off a Hermytt depting at Roiston in ys pysh" It is true that this entry does not absolutely fix the residence of the hermit at ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. In one of these two houses, sixteen years ago, lived our friend Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land-agent, churchwarden, guardian of the poor, justice of the peace,—in a word, viceroy of Whitbury town, and far more potent therein than her gracious majesty Queen Victoria. In the other, lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor of medicine, and consulting physician of all the country round. These two ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... of time, if the G.O.M. still presides, we shall have the Speaker acting as referee, and calling out 'Time, gentlemen, Time!' Some Gladstonian or other will doubtless accept the post, and in that case we may expect him to sport a long churchwarden and a glass of beer. That is what Mr. Gladstone is bringing on the House, and the tendency has been visible for a long time. When you hear of people continually shouting 'Judas, Judas,' without a word of protest from the Prime Minister, you must admit that the dignity of the House is a thing of ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... sat at the head of his table and puffed at a churchwarden pipe; a small, narrow-featured man, in a chocolate-coloured suit, with steel buttons, and a wig of professional amplitude. On his right sat his sister-in-law, her bonnet replaced by a tall white cap: on his left the Captain in his shore-going clothes. He and the apothecary had mixed ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Chaillot celebrated the return of Bailly amongst them by fetes, and fireworks, and that even the curate of the parish and the churchwardens, unwilling to be surpassed by their fellow-citizens, nominated the historian of antediluvian astronomy honorary churchwarden. I will, at all events, repress the smile that might arise from such private reminiscences, by reminding the reader that a man's moral character is better appreciated by his neighbours, to whom he shows himself ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... Phillotson; after which they expressed their thoughts so strongly to the meeting that issue was joined, the result being a general scuffle, wherein a black board was split, three panes of the school windows were broken, an inkbottle was spilled over a town-councillor's shirt front, a churchwarden was dealt such a topper with the map of Palestine that his head went right through Samaria, and many black eyes and bleeding noses were given, one of which, to everybody's horror, was the venerable incumbent's, owing to the zeal of an emancipated chimney-sweep, who ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... of the lucky and generous Pedlar, Blomfield says that the north side of the church of Swaffam (or Sopham) was certainly built by one John Chapman, who was churchwarden in 1462; but he thinks that the figures of the pedlar, etc., were only put "to set forth the name of the founder: such rebuses are frequently met with on old works." The story is also told in Abraham de la Prynne's Diary under date Nov. 10, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... see it, will call you a dashing fellow. When a beggar stops you, put your hand in your pocket, and tell him you are very sorry you have no change; this, you know, will be strictly true, and speaking truth is always a commendable quality;—or, if it suits you better, bid him go to the churchwarden—this you may easily do in a dashing way. Never think of following any business or profession,—such conduct is unworthy of a dasher. In the evening, never walk straight along the foot-way, but go in a zigzag direction—this ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... would not. You see what he was—a portly, pushing, egotistical tradesman. Mark the successful man, the merchant prince with argosies on every sea, the employer of thousands of hands, the munificent contributor to public charities, the churchwarden, the member of parliament, and the generous patron of his relatives his self-approbation struggling with the instinctive sense of baseness in the money-hunter, the ignorant and greedy filcher of the labor ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... bowed windows of the little shop were partly screened by sunblinds; nevertheless the lower panes still displayed a heterogeneous collection of goods—lemons, hanks of yarn, white linen buttons upon blue cards, sugar cones, churchwarden pipes, and tobacco jars. A letter-box opened its narrow mouth low down in one wall, and over the door swung the sign, 'Stamps and money-order office', in black letters on ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... survive the Milles's, the What-d'ye-call-him's, and the compilers of catalogues of topography, it would comfort me very little to confute them. I should be as little proud of success as if I had carried a contest for churchwarden. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... workman, it is evident, whether labourer or artificer, is likely to gain any new settlement, either by apprenticeship or by service. When such a person, therefore, carried his industry to a new parish, he was liable to be removed, how healthy and industrious soever, at the caprice of any churchwarden or overseer, unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a-year, a thing impossible for one who has nothing but his labour to live by, or could give such security for the discharge of the parish as two justices of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... me past the vicarage. Just as I was in sight of it, two figures came out of the gate and waited to let me pass. One of them was the churchwarden, Mr. Townsend, and the other was Mr. Hamilton. It was impossible to avoid recognition in the bright moonlight; but I was rather amazed when I heard Mr. Hamilton bid Mr. Townsend good-night, and a ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... rattled. Rangsley pushed me through the doorway. A side door opened, and I saw into a lighted room filled with wreaths of smoke. A paunchy man in a bob wig, with a blue coat and Windsor buttons, holding a churchwarden pipe in his right hand and a pewter quart in his left, came ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... a wretched state of things!" said Dr. May, who never wanted much provocation to begin storming about parish affairs. "When I am churchwarden again, I'll see what can be done about the seats; but it's no sort of use, while Ramsden goes ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... all,' said the landlord. 'This very morning the folks of our parish made me churchwarden, {116} which they would no more have done a month ago, when they considered me a down ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... going to Cirencester to confirm, he was supplied at the altar with an elbow-chair and a cushion, which he did not much like, and calling to the churchwarden said, "I suppose, sir, your fattest butcher has sat in this chair, and your most violent Methodist preacher thumped ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... and patches," but rather pretty to look at, with an inscription under it which is supposed to be the name of the person in whose honor the window was placed in the church. Smith was a worthy man and a faithful churchwarden, and I hope posterity will be able to spell out his name on his monumental window; but that old English lettering would puzzle Mephistopheles himself, if he found himself before this memorial tribute, on the inside,—you know he goes to church sometimes, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... shows all is fair there too. Thus, with a decisive air, my young man goes on without hesitation; and though from the beginning to the end of his pretty discourse, he has not used one proper gesture, yet at the conclusion, the churchwarden pulls his gloves from off his head; 'Pray, who is this extraordinary young man?' Thus the force of action is such, that it is more prevalent (even when improper) than all the reason and argument in the world without it." This gentleman concluded his discourse by saying, "I do not doubt but if ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... more. - Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below: There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee: No more, O Death! thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer claims his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou! Now to the church behold the mourners come, Sedately torpid and devoutly dumb; The village children now ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe |
