A Jubilee Scandal

Canon Fleming
(Vanity Fair)

The anticipation for Queen Victoria's 50th Jubilee, being celebrated in June of 1887, would have seemed familiar to us. The stores were filled with Jubilee flags, brooches, soaps, plates, and framed photographs of Her Majesty for the mantel. For the more devout subjects, one of her favorite chaplains, the Rev. Canon James Fleming, published a small reprint of two recent sermons at St. Michael's, Chester Square, the posh London church where he had been vicar for many years. 

There was a belief in the book world that no one ever reads published sermons. Not in this case as Canon Fleming was soon publicly accused of gross plagiarism. An embarrassing pamphlet made the rounds: "The Stolen Sermon, or Canon Fleming's Theft." Side by side comparisons made it plain that Fleming had copied directly from a sermon given by the American evangelist T Dewitt Talmage of the Brooklyn Tabernacle. Talmage was a Presbyterian, and. a religious celebrity in America known for his "dramatic physical theatrics." During a London visit in 1877, huge crowds came to hear (and see) him preach in Hyde Park and elsewhere. Talmage even met Rev Fleming at that time and found him to be a "most agreeable" gentleman. 

Rev T Dewitt Talmage
(1832-1902)

Ten years later, in Brooklyn, when informed that the gentleman Canon had almost certainly stolen his sermons, Talmadge was quite gracious. Such a "friendly, genial, glorious man" wouldn't be capable of the charge made against him. In London, Fleming confessed that he had read Talmage's sermon in a published collection, Fifty Sermons (now to be found on line at forgottenbooks.com). It obviously made a great impact on him and he copied it out. When referring back to those notes, the canon believed he unconsciously presumed it to be his own work. Critics called the explanation of "unconscious cerebration" worse than the crime. The Pall Mall Gazette asserted that "no apology" could explain the "word for word, sentence for sentence, striking thought for striking thought" theft of another man's sermon. A New York paper said the matter raises "an uncomfortable doubt as to the English canon's moral condition." 

Fleming survived the kerfuffle, for he was "altogether a good fellow" and a royal favorite. But, the scandal was recalled at his death in 1908. "He will not be comfortable when he sees Talmage coming his way across the Elysian fields."