Monsignor Alfred Gilbey was born 125 years ago today in Harlow, Essex.
He was a venerable figure in the worlds of English Catholicism and London clubland, a charming Edwardian relic, known for his reactionary views, his old-world manners and appearance. Every morning for nearly 30 years, this small, bent figure – looking rather like Spy’s cartoon of Cardinal Newman (Roger Scruton interpreted him as an Anglican clergyman from Jane Austen’s day) – in frock coat, gaiters, gloves and a silk soup-plate hat, could be seen leaving his home at the top of the Travellers’ Club in Piccadilly and making his way, by No 14 bus, to the Oratory, where he said Mass in the Tridentine rite, a singular privilege conferred on him by Cardinal Heenan in the mid-1960s. When he turned 90, the Monsignor was offered a car and chauffeur by a friend to get him to the church on time.
