“I have great pleasure in committing to writing, according to your request, some of those anecdotes on the practical qualities of our lamented friend, the Rev. Sydney Smith, which you listened to with so much interest last year. Referring as they do to his Gesta as Canon Residentiary of St. Paul’s, superintending more especially the repairs of the fabric, and my agency therein as the appointed surveyor and paymaster; they certainly exhibit the bold originality of his mind, and the integrity of his habits in the common transactions of business, in which duty and fidelity are alone concerned, with as much advantage as the better-known acts of his public life. And you justly insist upon my relation of them, however humble, and commonly considered beneath the dignity of biography; as perhaps more illustrative of conscientious motive and intrinsic merit, than the more striking talents which made him so justly valued and admired by the world, and as exhibiting his character from a point of view not hitherto perhaps taken sufficiently into account.
“The routine and technical conduct of the
current busi-
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“His early communications, therefore, with myself, and I may say with all the officers of the Chapter, were extremely unpleasant; but when satisfied by his methods of investigation, and by a ‘little collision,’ as he termed it, that all was honest and right, nothing could be more candid or kind than his subsequent treatment; and our early dislike was at length converted into unalloyed confidence and regard. As he expressed himself to one of the most valued of our staff, ‘When I heard every one speak well of you, I entertained the most vehement suspicions; and I treated you as a rogue until I had tried you so far, that you could endure such harsh treatment no longer.’
“As nothing was taken upon trust at first,
great were our disputes as to contracts, materials, and prices: with all of
which, from the rates in the market, to those of Portland stone, putty, and
white lead, he armed himself with competent information: every item was taxed,
and we owe several important improvements in the administration of the works
and accounts to his acumen, punctuality, and vigour. Not only did he thus
adjust and scrutinize the payment of works, but nothing new could be undertaken
without his survey and personal superintendence. An unpractised head and a
podagrous disposition of limbs might well have excused the survey of those
pinnacles and heights
| 250 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
“During more than a quarter of a century of my direction of these repairs, I had met with no similar sacrifice or minute attention to this department; and when it is remembered that this duty in no degree affects the funds of the Dean and Chapter, and that these repairs are from a separate fund, the administration of which only is entrusted to one of the Canons, we shall the more admire so conscientious a discharge of this duty. Such was the minor process; but the greater measures for the enduring security of this magnificent cathedral were most important and conspicuous. The disasters of York Cathedral had exhibited the unwarrantable neglect, so general in these sacred edifices, of the common security of insurance; and in 1840, I believe, Canterbury was the only cathedral church insured. St. Paul’s was speedily and effectually insured in some of the most substantial offices of London: not satisfied with this security, he advised the introduction of the mains of the New River into the lower parts of the fabric, and cisterns and movable engines in the roof; and quite justifiable was his joke, that ‘he would reproduce the Deluge in our cathedral.’
“The fine library of the fabric, the
estimation of which was always cited by Dean
Vanmildert, had long suffered by dilapidation and damp; but a
stove, American indeed, and better suited to our slender finances than the
dignity of our library, soon dispelled one evil, and rendered it accessible and
comfortable to the studious at the same time; and the bindings were all
roughly, but substantially, re-
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“A question of law was well suited to Mr. Smith’s acumen and vigour, and he very materially assisted, during the progress of a suit in Chancery, instituted for the purpose of establishing the will, to its being brought to a speedy and satisfactory conclusion, to the lasting benefit of the cathedral.
“These are some of the efficient labours of our valued friend within my own professional knowledge, and they might be greatly increased by that of my colleagues in office at St. Paul’s; in proof of which, I am permitted by Mr. Hodgson, who loved and honoured him, to quote a constant saying of his, ‘That Mr. Sydney Smith was one of the most strictly honest men he ever met in business.’ Thus established in the respect and friendship, I may truly say, of all of us, you will conceive the regret with which I received his announcement, by a note, some years before his lamented departure, that ‘I should hear with pleasure, after so much trouble, that being in the expectation of his first paralytic, he was about to give up his superintendence of my department to abler hands.’
“I have great pleasure, dear Madam, in
offering you these few anecdotes, in testimony of a beloved and honoured
memory, however humble and insufficiently expressed. To
| 252 | MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. |
