Word: vicars
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Spring Cleaning. It began in 1928 with a series of anonymous letters attacking the vicar, then Canon Desmond Lloyd Wilson, for shooting at birds. Within a few months the letters had driven him from Robin Hood's Bay. His successor, too, resigned under a barrage of anonymous scurrility. One later incumbent of Saint Stephen's got more peace of mind; his wife, without his knowledge, intercepted anonymous letters which arrived for him each week...
...Baby. The vicar's sermon, said one villager, "set the place on fire." Many a poison-pen victim, who had suffered in silence, thinking that he or she alone had been singled out for attack, rushed to the vicar with his story. Within a fortnight he had several hundred letters to take to the police. Burly Storekeeper Richard Knightly Storm boasted of having got his first 15 years ago: "You felt out in the cold if you hadn't received one." Relieved villagers gave the anonymous writer a jeering name: "The Big Baby...
...days after the vicar's sermon, there were no letters. One woman, who didn't think the blight was over, predicted that they would start again with the next new moon. Last week she got one: "You are a fine one to talk about the full moon affecting anyone as you are a daft bitch whether the moon is full, new or waning. ... If the vicar wasn't so dull he would easily find out who is sending these poison letters...
...Brensham, all the thieves and poachers are lovable rogues, all the women quiver with massive bursts of laughter, all the intellectuals are wise, all the drunkards poetic. Natural eccentricity and tolerance leave no place for nasty gossip and nagging. The vicar keeps live bait in the church font and nesting-boxes over the porch ("My dear fellows," says he to his wardens, "can you think of anything less sacrilegious than a pair of spotted flycatchers...
...vicar's wife told me a little owl fell down her chimney, and that he was as black as a sweep; she picked him up and he fainted. She fetched brandy and gave him some in a spoon and he revived. She put him out of doors and his mother flew down and collected him. I once picked up a tawny owl after a gale; he was apparently dead, but he came round after some time spent on hot pipes. It is surprising what warmth will...