Diary of Rev Edward Stevens

Drove Bell and Frank to a garden party at Brailes Vicarage. Mr and Mrs Smith, Mrs Garrard and two babies came here one day last week when I was out. Brought Mrs Routh back with me to Sibford.

Spoke to Mr and Mrs Smith about George Burdon a Brailes man whom the latter sent over to Sibford last week to offer his services. They both recommended him highly.

Worthy Cole called and asked me to write a testimonial for him to Rev. Vicar, 23 Holland Park Gardens West, who wants Verger for church at Notting Hill, and offers £85 per annum per advertisement in the Guardian. I wrote the same night. Worthy Cole was in Canon Payne’s service over 13 years. The coachman (W. Lyne) had been with him 30 years.

Fine and warm. Miss Dix called this morning about the arrangements for the choir children’s excursion next Tuesday. It appears that Austin Gardner has an Execution in his house and there is some doubt about the arrangements that can be made with him to drive them.

Mrs Maitland, of Ealing, daughter of a former Curate of Shutford, who is lodging at Mrs Hiorns’s for a few weeks, was here to tea this afternoon with three little boys, also Misses E and M Dix, Mrs Shelswell and Miss Clarke.

Mrs Shelswell’s youngest son Arthur has just passed his final examination and been admitted a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons. Thus all her sons are qualified Members of good professions, Oscar and Arthur as surgeons and Henry as a solicitor: all of them were educated at orphan schools, Wandsworth and At Anne’s (with their two sisters, both well and happily married) whilst my son Harry who is as old as Mrs Shelswell’s oldest on whom I have spent much money and to whose instruction I have devoted much time is simply nowhere – without a degree without a profession and over head and ears in debt. And yet to hear him talk, you would think him of the salt of the earth. He used to turn up his nose at the Shelswells who have thus far shown themselves infinitely his superiors.