The Feast

In September, 1947, the Reverend Gerald Seddon, of St. Frideswide, Hoxton, paid his annual visit to the Reverend Samuel Bott, of St. Sody, North Cornwall.They are old friends and this holiday together is the greatest pleasure they know. For Mr. Bott, though he cannot afford to go away, allows himself a kind of vacation while Mr. Seddon is staying with him. He exchanges the cassock, in which he is at all other times to be seen, for a pair of old flannel trousers and a pullover, and he goes for bird watching expeditions along the cliffs. In the evening they play chess. Both are in the late fifties, Anglo-Catholic, celibate, and disconcertingly sincere. They like to be called Father by their parishioners, but they do not enjoy skirmishes with Protestants as much as they did when they were young. Father Bott is grey, stocky, and hirsute; he looks rather like a Scotch terrier and he is not popular in the parish of St. Sody. Father Seddon has the dew-lapped melancholy of a bloodhound; his life is harder and more unpleasant, but his parishioners appreciate him.