Alfred Ainger, 'Temple Reader'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') presents Canon Alfred Ainger—literary cleric, Charles Lamb scholar, and Reader at the Temple Church, London—leaning over a pulpit cushion as though mid-sermon. The composition is intimate and slightly comic: Ainger's white surplice billows around him, a red-and-black academic hood crosses his chest, and his pale eyes fix the congregation with an expression caught between earnestness and mild surprise. The pulpit's stone carving and flanking iron candelabra place him firmly in a Gothic ecclesiastical interior. The caption 'Temple Reader' identifies his office. Ainger was widely admired in literary London, and the plate reads as affectionate rather than satirical.