The word “money” as we all know, has strong magical overtones. Silently, but impressively, we were joined by another figure, and to my experienced eye that figure was a phantom. It was John Strachan, without a doubt, in the full day-dress of an Anglican Bishop—gaiters, apron, squarecut long coat, and above all that peculiar hat like a stovepipe with a wireless aerial on either side, which gives a Bishop the appearance of one who is in perpetual receipt of messages from outer space. His square, granite face was marked with the look of intense disapproval so often seen in the Scot who has risen high in the world. John Strachan, without a doubt. The word “money” had brought him back from the grave.

“Did I hear a suggestion,” he said in a withering tone, “That I contributed nothing to the founding of this institution?”

“No money, at any rate,” said the King, who had no fear of this apparition. “I laid down a sturdy thousand pounds a year, which in terms of today’s money was very handsome. Indeed, I can’t understand, with what must be a hundred and fifty thousand pounds of my money, why this place is in need of money now.”

“As I recall, that money was provided from public funds,” said the Bishop.

But the King did not bat an eye. “I suppose it was,” said he; “I could hardly be expected to fuss about where it came from. The important fact is that I granted it and you got it, so I suppose we may say you had it from me.”

“Your Majesty might say that,” said the Bishop, “but other donors have given from their own pockets.”

“Meaning yourself, I suppose?” said the King.

“A Bishop does not make known his contributions to worthy causes,” said John Strachan.

“That’s gammon,” said the King. “Come along, Strachan, how much real money did you stump up?”

“I must respectfully request your Majesty not to press a question that offends against Christian principle,” said the Bishop, and I thought he seemed uncomfortable.

“Aha! Got you,” said the King; “I’ll wager fifty guineas you gave nothing at all,” and he laughed like a schoolboy.

“Sir, you are disrespectful of my cloth,” shouted Strachan, fire darting from his eyes.

“Pish for your cloth,” said the King. “Your cloth may be well enough, but the cut and fit are abominable. If you mean I don’t respect you as a Bishop, you’re wrong. It is well-known that I was vastly respectful of Bishops, when I chose my own. But you were one of my niece Victoria’s creations, and she had a sentimental taste for Scotchmen.”

Now it was the Bishop’s turn to show hurt feelings. Tears dimmed those stony eyes. “This is a man’s reward for a life of the most stringent devotion to God, to duty and the cause of education,” said he; “how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to meet a thankless Monarch!”

“Fiddle-faddle,” said the King. “What do you need of gratitude from your Monarch. Your name has been whooped and hallooed about this University for the past year, and more. You’ve had more gratitude than you deserve, because much of it was filched from me!”

The Bishop stopped weeping, and roared. “You! Who slaved and contrived to set this University firmly on its feet? Who endured the reproach and ignominy of an ungrateful government and an indifferent populace? Whose hair turned gray under the strain of that shocking and discriminatory Charter you signed—without reading it, I am sure—until I was able to enlarge its scope and make a University that was truly for the people of this great land?”

“A University which you subsequently described as ‘a godless imitation of Babel,’ “ said the King; “and after you had given it that nasty dig you skipped away and founded Trinity, which was much more to your liking. Oh, you were a mighty Founder, and such a tyrant as no King would dare to emulate. Don’t lecture me as if I didn’t know this University’s history. Don’t I remember (after my time on earth, of course) when the greedy Government took it over as an addition to their lunatic asylum, and didn’t they have the ugliness to call it the University Lunatic Asylum? Not such a bad name, when you think of it. And don’t twaddle about your hair going gray. No man needs to endure such things if he has a good valet.” And here King George IV touched his head with conscious pride, and indeed his splendidly curled wig was a work of art.

“Huuut!” said the Bishop. It was his version of a laugh. “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”

“That’s one of the truest things in the Bible,” said the King, quite affably. “If it weren’t for vanity we should still be running about in our skins, painted a horrid blue. Vanity is one of the mainsprings of human progress.”

The King seemed to be getting the better of the argument. I remembered that John Strachan’s motto had been Prudent But Fearless. Now he showed a sudden change of mood toward what, in a character less granitic than his, might be described as soapy.

“As a Bishop,” he said, “it would ill beseem me to show a want of charity toward any of God’s creatures—even toward one whose earthly life was verra far from being a suitable pattern for a Christian King. I am truly sorry that you suppose yourself to have been overlooked by a University in whose founding you played a trifling, purely ceremonial part—”

The King broke in. “How could I have done more than I did? The University of London was being founded that same year, and of course I had a great deal to do with that. The older universities were offended, so I had to found those readerships in mineralogy and geology at Oxford to appease them. And you know how much I was involved in the Literary Fund, granting them a Charter, and as much money as I could scrape up at the time. I was always short. Generosity—it’s a costly indulgence, Bishop. Literature was my real love. Byron—how I admired him; and do you know, for a time at least, he admired me. And noble, generous Walter Scott—a dear friend. I always meant to do something in the way of a Civil List recognition for Jane Austen—dear, ironical Jane, her pretty novels taught me so much about people—even though she was somewhat hard on the clergy. And in all that, I couldn’t do much more than I did for little Toronto, now could I? Was it to be expected? Such a busy life, you see.”

The Bishop looked sour, like a man who has been outbid at an auction. “Busy,” said he; “aye, busy in the pursuit of pleasure.”

“True, true,” said the King, not in the least daunted. “I’ve been called that, you know—the Prince of Pleasure.”

“And where has it brought you?” said the Bishop. “Think, think man, upon your present unhappy state.”

“What unhappy state?” said the King, much surprised. “I’m as happy as—well, as happy as a King. I mingle in admirable society, and I don’t have to be tedious any more about rank. I can see as much as I please of the literary company I always longed for. Instead—of course it’s not proper for ordinary people to kiss and tell, but I am a King—dear Jane Austen has been one of my mistresses for the past—oh, well over a century. No great sensation in bed, I assure you, but a wonderful talker; so I talk to Jane and sleep with other ladies whose talent lies that way.”

The Bishop was furious. “Reprobate!” he roared, quite forgetting what is due from a Bishop to the Defender of his Faith; “dare you tell me that you pursue your dissolute courses unrebuked in Hell?”

“Who said anything about Hell?” said the King, much surprised. “You don’t suppose I’m in Hell, do you?”

“If not Hell, where?”

“In Elysium, of course. Where are you?”

“I am in Paradise,” said the Bishop, like a man transformed. “In Jerusalem, the golden, with milk and honey blessed. Can you believe it, when I arrived, there was not a University, or a good private school, or an Association for the Improvement of Deserving Artisans, or an almshouse for the widows of indigent clergy, or a Society for the Relief of Decayed Gentlewomen, or a Society for distributing trusses to the ruptured poor, or a single evidence of practical benevolence in the whole of Paradise? And it has been my glorious care to found them all. And to found many, many more. And there are persons of wealth, to be cajoled and bullied and shamed into giving me the money to do it. Oh, what glorious tussles I’ve had with some of them! Man, it’s Heaven. Work, work, work, and found, found, found, and beg, beg, beg without cease. I have turned the new Jerusalem into a splendid likeness of modern Toronto. Oh, the goodness of our bountiful Creator! He has even provided Sin—Sin in unlimited quantity and horrendous quality, for his Blessed Ones like myself to struggle with and combat and overcome. At this present moment I am busy with an area of the New Jerusalem where shameless men resort to have their bodies rubbed by unclothed women. Aye, and there is an abomination quite new since my time, a group called The Gays, and it is my resolve to assail their New Sodom. How can a poor lost soul like yourself judge of the holy ecstasy that Paradise is to a man like me?”