St. Sebastian’s Church, situated in the centre of Mayfair, is justly famous for the beauty of its structure, the excellence of its singing, the splendour of its vestments and the magnificence of its vicar, Mr. Sandow, who might well be taken, as far as superb physical proportions go, to be the show-pupil of his hardly less illustrious namesake. He is ‘Hon.’ and ‘Rev.,’ but he prefers his letters to be addressed to him as ‘The Rev. the Hon. J. S. Sandow’ instead of ‘The Hon. the Rev.,’ for, as he says, the ‘Hon.’ is an accident--not, of course, implying that there was any irregularity about his birth--and that ‘the Rev.’ is the more purposeful of his prefixes. To do him justice, he lives up to this fine pronouncement, and while, if his brother, Lord Shetland, lunches with him he is regaled with the simplest of family meals, he entertains an athletic Bishop who is a friend of his with the sumptuousness due from a Rev. to a Prince of the Church, and takes him down in a motor to Queen’s Club, where they have a delightful game of racquets together.
His ecclesiastical politics, as exhibited in the services at St. Sebastian’s, are distinctly High. But they are also Broad, since for those of his parishioners who prefer it, there is an early celebration at 8 A.M. conducted by two of his curates. Matins, sung in plain-song by an admirable choir, follows at 10 A.M., and this is usually attended by a packed congregation. By eleven, in any case, which is the hour for the sermon, there is not a seat to be had in the church, for Mr. Sandow invariably preaches himself, and from Pimlico and the wilds of South Kensington, from Bayswater and Regent’s Park, eager listeners flock to hear him. This is no quarter of an hour’s oration: he seldom preaches less than fifty minutes, and often the large Louis Seize clock below the organ loft, with its discreetly nude bronze figures of Apollo and Daphne in the vale of Tempe sprawling over it, chimes noon on its musical bells before he has finished. A short pause succeeds the conclusion of the sermon, and the choir enters the church again from the vestry in magnificent procession and panoply of banners, followed by the clergy in full vestments. Clouds of the most expensive incense befog the chancel, and if what is enacted there is not the Mass, it is an uncommonly good imitation of it.