The Reverend Lubbocks

Rooting through the attic the other day I came across a printed flier on crumbling yellowed paper written by an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side. It was an advertisement that this gentle and bewhiskered Victorian pastor had written in order to promote sales of his latest book. It read as follows:

The Parsonage,

Nether Prating,

Gloucestershire 

May, 1876

If I may be so bold as to call to the reader’s attention my previous volume - Conundra Futiles Mulieribus - which was designed to alleviate the afternoon leisure hours of frustrated gentlewomen with a tendency towards hysteria by means of a series of mental entertainments, exercises and parlour games with a theological flavour to them. My publishers Barnum and Popsicum have reported good sales.

In the light of the successful sales of the first I am delighted to tell the reader that I have recently embarked on a second volume - Ad Effectus Non Bonum - which contains pursuits whereby the wives of railway magnates confined to the home and the nursery may engage with forlorn and sterile brain-teasers based on the disputes at the Council of Nicaea and the Pelagian heresy in order to while away their time. What will most recommend them to their absent spouses, engaged in serious enterprise in the capital, is that in no way will the riddles lead to their devoted help-meets being troubled by thoughts about the real world as they bear not the slightest relation to it. The new volume will soon be available at good purveyors of literary endeavours at a price of 2/6d.

I am your obedient servant,

The Rev Clarence Obadiah “Fly-fornication-these-bones-shall-live” Lubbocks D.D. (Oxon)

In my more optimistic moments when the lowering clouds clear and the sun strikes through I like to feel that, in my own small way, I do my utmost to maintain the tradition of my pious and observant forerunner.