DEAN INGE

INGE, Very Rev. WILLIAM RALPH, D.D., C.V.O., 1918; Dean of St. Paul’s since 1911; b.  Crayke, Yorkshire, 6th June, 1860; s. of late Rev. William Inge, D.D., Provost of Worcester College, Oxford and Mary, d. of Ven.  Edward Churton, Archdeacon of Cleveland; m. 1905, Mary Catharine, d.  Ven.  H.M.  Spooner, Archdeacon of Maidstone, and g.d. of Bishop Harvey Goodwin; three s. two d.  Educ.:  Eton, King’s College, Cambridge, Bell Scholar and Porson Prizeman, 1880; Porson Scholar, 1881; Craven Scholar and Browne Medalist, 1882; Senior Chancellor’s Medalist, 1883; 1st Class Classics, 1882 and 1883; Hare Prizeman, 1885; Assistant Master at Eton, 1884-88; Fellow of King’s, 1886-88; Fellow and Tutor of Hertford College, Oxford, 1889-1904; Select Preacher at Oxford, 1893-95, 1903-5, 1920-21; Cambridge, 1901, 1906, 1910, 1912, 1913, 1920; Bampton Lecturer, 1899; Hon. D.D., Aberdeen, 1905; Paddock Lecturer, New York, 1906; Vicar of All Saints’ Ennismore Gardens, S.W., 1905-7; Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, 1907-l1; Hon. Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and of Hertford College, Oxford; Academic Committee Royal Soc. of Literature; Gifford Lecturer, St. Andrews, 1917-18; Romanes and Hibbert Lecturer, 1920; Hon. D.Litt., Durham, 1920.

[Illustration:  DEAN INGE]

CHAPTER II

DEAN INGE

Some day, when I’ve quite made up my mind what to fight for, or whom to fight, I shall do well enough, if I live, but I haven’t made up my mind what to fight for—­whether, for instance, people ought to live in Swiss cottages and sit on three-legged or one-legged stools; whether people ought to dress well or ill; whether ladies ought to tie their hair in beautiful knots; whether Commerce or Business of any kind be an invention of the Devil or not; whether Art is a Crime or only an Absurdity; whether Clergymen ought to be multiplied, or exterminated by arsenic, like rat; whether in general we are getting on, and if so where we are going to; whether it’s worth while to ascertain any of these things; whether one’s tongue was ever made to talk with or only to taste with.-JOHN RUSKIN.

When our day is done, and men look back to the, shadows we have left behind us, and there is no longer any spell of personal magnetism to delude right judgment, I think that the figure of Dean Inge may emerge from the dim and too crowded tapestry of our period with something of the force, richness, and abiding strength which gives Dr. Johnson his great place among authentic Englishmen.

His true setting is the Deanery of St. Paul’s, that frowning and melancholy house in a backwater of London’s jarring tide, where the dust collects, and sunlight has a struggle to make two ends meet, and cold penetrates like a dagger, and fog hangs like a pall, and the blight of ages clings to stone and brick, to window and woodwork, with an adhesive mournfulness which suggests the hatchment of Melpomene.  Even the hand of Grinling Gibbons at the porch does not prevent one from recalling Crabbe’s memorable lines: