Now! Then! The Rev. Hook of Leeds (49) tells a Coventry colleague of his popularity among his fellow elderly

13 December 1847: The Rev. Hook of Leeds (49) tells a Coventry colleague of his popularity among his fellow elderly

William Richard Wood Stephens. 1885. The Life and Letters of Walter Farquhar Hook, 7th Ed. London: Richard Bentley and Son. Get it:

Excerpt

I was much amused yesterday, by hearing from one of my curates the high esteem in which I am held by some of my poorer parishioners. He heard two old women talking. First old woman: “I likes to hear Vicar when I be ill.” Second old woman: “Eh! and so does I, he talks so like an old woman.” This is another symptom of old age.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Original

Longings for Rest and Retirement – Dialogue between Two Old Women.

Vicarage, Leeds: December 13, 1847.

My dear [Rev. Thomas Heathcote] Tragett, … I am hard-worked and much bullied, and in all manner of difficulties, not knowing how to sustain the various institutions of the place now that trade is so bad; and my wife says that the only symptom of old age she discovers in me is, that I do not bear up against difficulties as I used to do. Indeed, my longing for rest and retirement is intense. I have worked hard all my life, and I belong to a short-lived family, and I wish now to go into retirement, there to prepare for my latter end. I think I have earned a right to wish this. I find too that I cannot sympathise with younger men as I used to do — they all seem to be Romanising; they view things through different eyes.

226 words.