Mandell Creighton - Character

Character

Creighton was a man of complex, sometimes baffling, intelligence. Philosopher Edward Caird, a fellow at Merton during Creighton's student days there, said of him, "Creighton possesses common sense in a degree which amounts to genius." Later, at Cambridge, some colleagues were perplexed by his personality. When teaching or transacting academic business, he displayed a shrewd, canny intelligence. However, at social gatherings, much to the delight of the students present, he was continually outrageous and flippant. His relationship with Louise was not easily characterised. In the months after the Peterborough appointment, husband and wife would frequently quarrel, sometimes bitterly, as a niece would later recall. But the couple could also be surprisingly demonstrative for their times: during this same period, a nephew caught sight of Louise locked in passionate embrace with the Bishop in the latter's study. Creighton could be stern with his seven children, on one occasion tying a daughter to a table's leg with a rope to aid her in recognising her folly. However, he could also romp around the house with them, engage in horseplay, and make up nonsensical stories—all of which, many years later, they would consider the highlights of their childhood.

Throughout his life, Creighton went on long walks (his "rambles," as he liked to call them). When the children grew older, the family's outdoor pastime of choice became field hockey. Many visiting clergy in Fulham Palace found themselves unable to refuse Creighton's enthusiastic invitations to join in. The Creightons were inveterate travellers, spending many vacations in Italy. During their six years in Peterborough, for instance, they made nine foreign trips. Creighton was also a lifelong chain smoker. When author Samuel Butler, no sympathiser of churchmen, received a letter in 1893 inviting him to visit the Creighton family in Peterborough, he was immediately put at ease when he discovered some tobacco thoughtlessly left in the envelope by the Bishop of Peterborough.

Controversy seemed to trail him during his prelacies. He loved pageantry, creating speculation that he had high church views. However, when a high church priest protested that incense was needed for curing souls, Creighton burst out, "And you think that souls like herring cannot be cured without smoke?" His moderate views—equally opposed to radical evangelicals and conservative Anglo-Catholics—endeared him to Queen Victoria. Creighton's work ethic, though, was anything but moderate. He seldom refused offers of additional responsibility, confessing more than once to both an abiding fatalism about being saddled with more responsibility and guilt about shirking from it. Perhaps recognising this, a canon of St Paul's, while welcoming Creighton to the diocese of London in 1897, ominously remarked, "It is a frightful burden to lay on you: I hope you will use up everybody except yourself."