THE CLERK IN LITERATURE
The parish clerk is so notable a character in our ecclesiastical and
social life, that he has not escaped the attention of many of our great
writers and poets. Some of them have with gentle satire touched upon his
idiosyncrasies and peculiarities; others have recorded his many virtues,
his zeal and faithfulness. Shakespeare alludes to him in his play of
_Richard II_, in the fourth act, when he makes the monarch face his
rebellious nobles, reproaching them for their faithlessness, and saying:
"God save the King! will no man say Amen?
Am I both priest and clerk? Well then, Amen.
God save the King! although I be not he;
And yet, Amen, if Heaven do think him me."
An old ballad, _King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid_, contains an
interesting allusion to the parish clerk, and shows the truth of that
which has already been pointed out, viz. that the office of clerk was
often considered to be a step to higher preferment in the Church. The
lines of the old ballad run as follows:
"The proverb old is come to passe,
The priest when he begins his masse
Forgets that ever clarke he was;
He knoweth not his estate."
Christopher Harvey, the friend and imitator of George Herbert, has some
homely lines on the duties of clerk and sexton in his poem _The
Synagogue_. Of the clerk he wrote:
"The Churches Bible-clerk attends
Her utensils, and ends
Her prayers with Amen,
Tunes Psalms, and to her Sacraments
Brings in the Elements,
And takes them out again;
Is humble minded and industrious handed,
Doth nothing of himself, but as commanded."
Of the sexton he wrote:
"The Churches key-keeper opens the door,
And shuts it, sweeps the floor,
Rings bells, digs graves, and fills them up again;
All emblems unto men,
Openly owning Christianity
To mark and learn many good lessons by."
In that delightful sketch of old-time manners and quaint humour, _Sir
Roger de Coverley_, the editor of _The Spectator_ gave a life-like
representation of the old-fashioned service. Nor is the clerk forgotten.
They tell us that "Sir Roger has likewise added five pounds a year to
the clerk's place; and that he may encourage the young fellows to make
themselves perfect in the Church services, has promised, upon the death
of the present incumbent, who is very old, to bestow it according to
merit." The details of the exquisite picture of a rural Sunday were
probably taken from the church of Milston on the Wiltshire downs where
Addison's father was incumbent, and where the author was born in 1672.
Doubtless the recollections of his early home enabled Joseph Addison to
draw such an accurate picture of the ecclesiastical customs of his
youth. The deference shown by the members of the congregation who did
not presume to stir till Sir Roger had left the building was practised
in much more recent times, and instances will be given of the
observance of this custom within living memory.
Two other references to parish clerks I find in _The Spectator_ which
are worthy of quotation:
"_Spectator_, No. 372.
"In three or four taverns I have, at different times, taken
notice of a precise set of people with grave countenances,
short wigs, black cloaths, or dark camblet trimmed black,
with mourning gloves and hat-bands, who went on certain days
at each tavern successively, and keep a sort of moving club.
Having often met with their faces, and observed a certain
shrinking way in their dropping in one after another, I had
the unique curiosity to inquire into their characters, being
the rather moved to it by their agreeing in the singularity
of their dress; and I find upon due examination they are a
knot of parish clerks, who have taken a fancy to one another,
and perhaps settle the bills of mortality over their half
pints. I have so great a value and veneration for any who
have but even an assenting _Amen_ in the service of religion,
that I am afraid but these persons should incur some scandal
by this practice; and would therefore have them, without
raillery, advise to send the florence and pullets home to
their own homes, and not to pretend to live as well as the
overseers of the poor.
"HUMPHRY TRANSFER.
"_Spectator_, No. 338.
"A great many of our church-musicians being related to the
theatre, have in imitation of their epilogues introduced in
their favourite voluntaries a sort of music quite foreign to
the design of church services, to the great prejudice of
well-disposed people. These fingering gentlemen should be
informed that they ought to suit their airs to the place and
business; and that the musician is obliged to keep to the
text as much as the preacher. For want of this, I have found
by experience a great deal of mischief; for when the preacher
has often, with great piety and art enough, handled his
subject, and the judicious clerk has with utmost diligence
called out two staves proper to the discourse, and I have
found in myself and in the rest of the pew good thoughts and
dispositions, they have been all in a moment dissipated by a
merry jig from the organ loft."
Dr. Johnson's definition of a parish clerk in his Dictionary does not
convey the whole truth about him and his historic office. He is defined
as "the layman who reads the responses to the congregation in church, to
direct the rest." The great lexicographer had, however, a high
estimation of this official. Boswell tells us that on one occasion "the
Rev. Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, dined with us. He
expressed a wish that a better provision were made for parish clerks.
Johnson: 'Yes, sir, a parish clerk should be a man who is able to make a
will or write a letter for anybody in the parish.'" I am afraid that a
vast number of our good clerks would have been sore puzzled to perform
the first task, and the caligraphy of the letter would in many cases
have been curious.
That careful delineator of rural manners as they existed at the end of
the eighteenth century, George Crabbe, devotes a whole poem to the
parish clerk in his nineteenth letter of _The Borough_. He tells of the
fortunes of Jachin, the clerk, a grave and austere man, fully orthodox,
a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and detecter and opposer of the wiles of
Satan. Here is his picture:
"With our late vicar, and his age the same,
His clerk, bright Jachin, to his office came;
The like slow speech was his, the like tall slender frame:
But Jachin was the gravest man on ground,
And heard his master's jokes with look profound;
For worldly wealth this man of letters sigh'd,
And had a sprinkling of the spirit's pride:
But he was sober, chaste, devout, and just,
One whom his neighbours could believe and trust:
Of none suspected, neither man nor maid
By him were wronged, or were of him afraid.
There was indeed a frown, a trick of state
In Jachin: formal was his air and gait:
But if he seemed more solemn and less kind
Than some light man to light affairs confined,
Still 'twas allow'd that he should so behave
As in high seat, and be severely grave."
The arch-tempter tries in vain to seduce him from the right path. "The
house where swings the tempting sign," the smiles of damsels, have no
power over him. He "shuns a flowing bowl and rosy lip," but he is not
invulnerable after all. Want and avarice take possession of his soul. He
begins to take by stealth the money collected in church, putting bran in
his pockets so that the coin shall not jingle. He offends with terror,
repeats his offence, grows familiar with crime, and is at last detected
by a "stern stout churl, an angry overseer." Disgrace, ruin, death soon
follow; shunned and despised by all, he "turns to the wall and silently
expired." A woeful story truly, the results of spiritual pride and greed
of gain! It is to be hoped that few clerks resembled poor lost Jachin.
A companion picture to the disgraced clerk is that of "the noble peasant
Isaac Ashford[40]," who won from Crabbe's pen a gracious panegyric. He
says of him:
"Noble he was, contemning all things mean,
His truth unquestioned, and his soul serene.
* * * * *
If pride were his, 'twas not their vulgar pride,
Who, in their base contempt, the great deride:
Nor pride in learning--though by Clerk agreed,
If fate should call him, Ashford might succeed."
[Footnote 40: _The Parish Register_, Part III.]
He paints yet another portrait, that of old Dibble[41], clerk and
sexton:
"His eightieth year he reach'd still undecayed,
And rectors five to one close vault conveyed.
* * * * *
His masters lost, he'd oft in turn deplore,
And kindly add,--'Heaven grant I lose no more!'
Yet while he spake, a sly and pleasant glance
Appear'd at variance with his complaisance:
For as he told their fate and varying worth,
He archly looked--'I yet may bear thee forth.'"
[Footnote 41: _The Parish Register_, Part III.]
George Herbert, the saintly Christian poet, who sang on earth such hymns
and anthems as the angels sing in heaven, was no friend of the
old-fashioned duet between the minister and clerk in the conduct of
divine service. He would have no "talking, or sleeping, or gazing, or
leaning, or half-kneeling, or any undutiful behaviour in them."
Moreover, "everyone, man and child, should answer aloud both Amen and
all other answers which are on the clerk's and people's part to answer,
which answers also are to be done not in a huddling or slubbering
fashion, gaping, or scratching the head, or spitting even in the midst
of their answer, but gently and pausably, thinking what they say, so
that while they answer 'As it was in the beginning, etc.,' they meditate
as they speak, that God hath ever had his people that have glorified
Him as well as now, and that He shall have so for ever. And the like in
other answers."
Cowper's kindliness of heart is abundantly evinced by his treatment of a
parish clerk, one John Cox, the official of the parish of All Saints,
Northampton. The poet was living in the little Buckinghamshire village
of Weston Underwood, having left Olney when mouldering walls and a
tottering house warned him to depart. He was recovering from his dread
malady, and beginning to feel the pleasures and inconveniences of
authorship and fame. The most amusing proof of his celebrity and his
good nature is thus related to Lady Hesketh:
"On Monday morning last, Sam brought me word that there was a man in the
kitchen who desired to speak with me. I ordered him in. A plain, decent,
elderly figure made its appearance, and being desired to sit spoke as
follows: 'Sir, I am clerk of the parish of All Saints in Northampton,
brother of Mr. Cox the upholsterer. It is customary for the person in my
office to annex to a bill of mortality, which he publishes at Christmas,
a copy of verses. You will do me a great favour, sir, if you will
furnish me with one.' To this I replied: 'Mr. Cox, you have several men
of genius in your town, why have you not applied to some of them? There
is a namesake of yours in particular, Cox, the Statuary, who, everybody
knows, is a first-rate maker of verses. He surely is the man of all the
world for your purpose.' 'Alas, sir, I have heretofore borrowed help
from him, but he is a gentleman of so much reading that the people of
our town cannot understand him.'
"I confess to you, my dear, I felt all the force of the compliment
implied in this speech, and was almost ready to answer, Perhaps, my
good friend, they may find me unintelligible too for the same reason.
But on asking him whether he had walked over to Weston on purpose to
implore the assistance of my muse, and on his replying in the
affirmative, I felt my mortified vanity a little consoled, and pitying
the poor man's distress, which appeared to be considerable, promised to
supply him. The waggon has accordingly gone this day to Northampton
loaded in part with my effusions in the mortuary style. A fig for poets
who write epitaphs upon individuals! I have written _one_ that serves
_two hundred_ persons."
Seven successive years did Cowper, in his excellent good nature, supply
John Cox, the clerk of All Saints in Northampton, with his mortuary
verses[42], and when Cox died, he bestowed a like kindness on his
successor, Samuel Wright.
[Footnote 42: Southey's _Works of Cowper_, ii. p. 283.]
These stanzas are published in the complete editions of Cowper's poems,
and need not be quoted here. They begin with a quotation from some Latin
author--Horace, or Virgil, or Cicero--these quotations being obligingly
translated for the benefit of the worthy townsfolk. The first of these
stanzas begins with the well-known lines:
"While thirteen moons saw smoothly run
The Nen's barge-laden wave,
All these, life's rambling journey done,
Have found their home, the grave."
Another verse which has attained fame runs thus:
"Like crowded forest trees we stand,
And some are mark'd to fall;
The axe will smite at God's command,
And soon will smite us all."
And thus does Cowper, in his temporary rôle, point the moral:
"And O! that humble as my lot,
And scorned as is my strain,
These truths, though known, too much forgot,
I may not teach in vain.
"So prays your clerk with all his heart,
And, ere he quits his pen,
Begs you for once to take his part,
And answer all--Amen."
Again, in another copy of verses he alludes to his honourable clerkship,
and sings:
"So your verse-man I, and clerk,
Yearly in my song proclaim
Death at hand--yourselves his mark--
And the foe's unerring aim.
"Duly at my time I come,
Publishing to all aloud
Soon the grave must be our home,
And your only suit a shroud."
On one occasion the clerk delayed to send a printed copy of the verses;
so we find the poet writing to his friend, William Bagot:
"You would long since have received an answer to your last, had not the
wicked clerk of Northampton delayed to send me the printed copy of my
annual dirge, which I waited to enclose. Here it is at last, and much
good may it do the readers!"
Let us hope that at least the clerk was grateful.
Yet again does the poet allude to the occupant of the lowest tier of the
great "three-decker," when he in the opening lines of _The Sofa_ depicts
the various seekers after sleep. After telling of the snoring nurse, the
sleeping traveller in the coach, he continues:
"Sweet sleep enjoys the curate in his desk,
The tedious rector drawling o'er his head;
And sweet the clerk below--"
a pretty picture truly of a stirring and impressive service!
Cowper, if he were alive now, would have been no admirer of _Who's Who_,
and poured scorn upon any
"Fond attempt to give a deathless lot
To names ignoble, born to be forgot."
Beholding some "names of little note" in the _Biographia Britannica_, he
proceeded to satirise the publication, to laugh at the imaginary
procession of worthies--the squire, his lady, the vicar, and other local
celebrities, and chants in his anger:
"There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark!
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk."
The poet Gay is not unmindful of the
"Parish clerk who calls the hymns so clear";
and Tennyson, in his sonnet to J.M.K., wrote:
"Our dusty velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill'd from some worm-canker'd homily;
But spurr'd at heart with fiercest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God's good Sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below."
In the gallery of Dickens's characters stands out the immortal Solomon
Daisy of _Barnaby Rudge_, with his "cricket-like chirrup" as he took his
part in the social gossip round the Maypole fire. Readers of Dickens
will remember the timid Solomon's visit to the church at midnight when
he went to toll the passing bell, and his account of the strange things
that befell him there, and of the ringing of the mysterious bell that
told the murder of Reuben Haredale.
In the British Museum I discovered a fragmentary collection of ballads
and songs, made by Mr. Ballard, and amongst these is a song relating to
a very unworthy follower of St. Nicholas, whose memory is thus unhappily
preserved:
THE PARISH CLERK
A NEW COMIC SONG
_Tune_--THE VICAR AND MOSES
Here rests from his labours, by consent of his neighbours,
A peevish, ill-natur'd old clerk;
Who never design'd any good to mankind,
For of goodness he ne'er had a spark.
Tol lol de rol lol de rol lol.
But greedy as Death, until his last breath,
His method he ne'er failed to use;
When interr'd a corpse lay, Amen he'd scarce say,
Before he cry'd Who pays the dues?
Not a tear now he's dead, by friend or foe shed;
The first they were few, if he'd any;
Of the last he had more, than tongue can count o'er,
Who'd have hang'd the old churl for a penny.
In Levi's black train, the clerk did remain
Twenty years, squalling o'er a dull stave;
Yet his mind was so evil, he'd swear like the devil,
Nor repented on this side the grave.
_Fowler, Printer, Salisbury_.
That extraordinary man Mr. William Hutton, who died in 1813, and whose
life has been written and his works edited by Mr. Llewellyn Jewitt,
F.S.A., amongst his other poems wrote a set of verses on _The Way to
Find Sunday without an Almanack_. It tells the story of a Welsh
clergyman who kept poultry, and how he told the days of the week and
marked the Sundays by the regularity with which one of his hens laid her
eggs. The seventh egg always became his Sunday letter, and thus he
always remembered to sally forth "with gown and cassock, book and
band," and perform his accustomed duty. Unfortunately the clerk was
treacherous, and one week stole an egg, with dire consequences to the
congregation, which had to wait until the clergyman, who was engaged in
the unclerical task of "soleing shoes," could be fetched. The poem is a
poor trifle, but it is perhaps worth mentioning on account of the
personality of the writer.
There is a charming sketch of an old clerk in the _Essays and Tales_ of
the late Lady Verney. The story tells of the old clerk's affection for
his great-grandchild, Benny. He is a delightfully drawn specimen of his
race. We see him "creeping slowly about the shadows of the aisle, in his
long blue Sunday coat with huge brass buttons, the tails of which
reached almost to his heels, shorts and brown leggings, and a
low-crowned hat in his hand. He was nearly eighty, but wiry still,
rather blind and somewhat deaf; but the post of clerk is one considered
to be quite independent and irremovable, _quam diu se bene gesserit_,
during good behaviour--on a level with Her Majesty's judges for that
matter. Having been raised to this great eminence some sixty years
before, when he was the only man in the parish who could read, he would
have stood out for his rights to remain there as long as he pleased
against all the powers and principalities in the kingdom--if, indeed, he
could have conceived the possibility of any one, in or out of the
parish, being sufficiently irreligious and revolutionary to dispute his
sovereignty. He was part of the church, and the church was part of
him--his rights and hers were indissolubly connected in his mind.
* * * * *
"The Psalms that day offered a fine field for his Anglo-Saxon plurals
and south-country terminations; the 'housen,' 'priestesses,' 'beasteses
of the field,' came rolling freely forth from his mouth, upon which no
remonstrances by the curate had had the smallest effect. Was he, Michael
Major, who had fulfilled the important office 'afore that young
jackanapes was born, to be teached how 'twere to be done?' he had
observed more than once in rather a high tone, though in general he
patronised the successive occupants of the pulpit with much kindness.
'And this 'un, as cannot spike English nayther,' he added superciliously
concerning the north-country accent of his pastor and master."
On weekdays he wore a smock-frock, which he called his surplice, with
wonderful fancy stitches on the breast and back and sleeves. At length
he had to resign his post and take to his bed, and was not afraid to die
when his time came. It is a very tender and touching little story, a
very faithful picture of an old clerk[43].
[Footnote 43: _Essays and Tales_, by Frances Parthenope Lady Verney, p.
67.]
Passing from grave to gay, we find Tom Hood sketching the clerk
attending on his vicar, who is about to perform a wedding service and
make two people for ever happy. He christens the two officials "the
joiners, no rough mechanics, but a portly full-blown vicar with his
clerk, both rubicund, a peony paged by a pink. It made me smile to
observe the droll clerical turn of the clerk's beaver, scrubbed into
that fashion by his coat at the nape."
Few people know Alexander Pope's _Memoir of P.P., Clerk of this Parish_,
which was intended to ridicule Burnet's _History of His Own Time_, a
work characterised by a strong tincture of self-importance and egotism.
These are abundantly exposed in the _Memoir_, which begins thus:
"In the name of the Lord, Amen. I, P.P., by the Grace of God, Clerk of
this Parish, writeth this history.
"Ever since I arrived at the age of discretion I had a call to take upon
me the Function of a Parish Clerk, and to this end it seemed unto me
meet and profitable to associate myself with the parish clerks of this
land, such I mean as were right worthy in their calling, men of a clear
and sweet voice, and of becoming gravity."
He tells how on the day of his birth Squire Bret gave a bell to the ring
of the parish. Hence that one and the same day did give to their own
church two rare gifts, its great bell and its clerk.
Leaving the account of P.P.'s youthful amours and bouts at
quarter-staff, we next find that:
"No sooner was I elected into my office, but I layed aside the
gallantries of my youth and became a new man. I considered myself as in
somewise of ecclesiastical dignity, since by wearing of a band, which is
no small part of the ornaments of our clergy, might not unworthily be
deemed, as it were, a shred of the linen vestments of Aaron.
"Thou mayest conceive, O reader, with what concern I perceived the eyes
of the congregation fixed upon me, when I first took my place at the
feet of the Priest. When I raised the Psalm, how did my voice quiver
with fear! And when I arrayed the shoulders of the minister with the
surplice, how did my joints tremble under me! I said within myself,
'Remember, Paul, thou standest before men of high worship, the wise Mr.
Justice Freeman, the grave Mr. Justice Tonson, the good Lady Jones.'
Notwithstanding it was my good hap to acquit myself to the good liking
of the whole congregation, but the Lord forbid I should glory therein."
He then proceeded to remove "the manifold corruptions and abuses."
1. "I was especially severe in whipping forth dogs from the Temple, all
except the lap-dog of the good widow Howard, a sober dog which yelped
not, nor was there offence in his mouth.
2. "I did even proceed to moroseness, though sore against my heart, unto
poor babes, in tearing from them the half-eaten apple, which they
privily munched at church. But verily it pitied me, for I remembered the
days of my youth.
3. "With the sweat of my own hands I did make plain and smooth the dog's
ears throughout our Great Bible.
4. "I swept the pews, not before swept in the third year. I darned the
surplice and laid it in lavender."
The good clerk also made shoes, shaved and clipped hair, and practised
chirurgery also in the worming of dogs.
"Now was the long expected time arrived when the Psalms of King David
should be hymned unto the same tunes to which he played them upon his
harp, so I was informed by my singing-master, a man right cunning in
Psalmody. Now was our over-abundant quaver and trilling done away, and
in lieu thereof was instituted the sol-fa in such guise as is sung in
his Majesty's Chapel. We had London singing-masters sent into every
parish like unto excisemen."
P.P. was accused by his enemies of humming through his nostrils as a
sackbut, yet he would not forgo the harmony, it having been agreed by
the worthy clerks of London still to preserve the same. He tutored the
young men and maidens to tune their voices as it were a psaltery, and
the church on Sunday was filled with new Hallelujahs.
But the fame of the great is fleeting. Poor Paul Philips passed away,
and was forgotten. When his biographer went to see him, his place knew
him no more. No one could tell of his virtues, his career, his
excellences. Nothing remained but his epitaph:
"O reader, if that thou canst read,
Look down upon this stone;
Do all we can, Death is a man
That never spareth none."