Miss Jawleyfords, started, before breakfast, to a meet of the hounds.
We are now introduced to a great county magnate, who is believed to be
a caricature of a noble sportsman, well known in his day--the Earl of
Scamperdale. He had been kept very short by his father, the previous
earl; and, as Viscount Hardup, had acquired very penurious habits,
which clave to him after his accession to fortune. Hunting was his
only expensive taste: and on this he spared no necessary outlay. He
was always well mounted and his hounds admirably chosen; but he would
do almost anything sooner than take his horses through a turnpike
gate. He lived in a sort of back room in his splendid house; and his
food was of the coarsest description. His only companion was a Mr.
Jack Spraggon, who was exactly like him in appearance, rode well, and
was quite content to fare like his lordship, if he could get nothing
better. This well-assorted couple between them possessed a fine flow
of language, though Lord Scamperdale always said that people presumed
on him because he was “a lord and could not swear nor use coarse
language”; and they contrived to keep the field fairly select, by
driving intruders away by their powers of satire and abuse. Now Sponge
was a first-rate horseman, but could only afford mounts which were
unsound or vicious. His horse, “Multum in Parvo,” was the latter. In
appearance he was a low long-backed beast, splendidly made, and as a
rule was a docile and tractable creature; but if he took it into his
head to bolt, he did so with great determination and no power on earth
could stop him. Directly the horse saw Lord Scamperdale’s hounds, this
propensity asserted itself; and he carried his rider into the midst
of the pack, scattering them like sheep and maiming several. Then
the floodgates of the Earl’s copious vocabulary were opened and poor
Sponge was assailed, first by him and, when he sank back exhausted
into his saddle, by Jack Spraggon. If I recollect aright, the latter
on this or some other occasion called Sponge a “sanctified, putrefied,
methodistical, puseyite pig-jobber,” for Surtees is very careful to put
no real bad language into the mouth of his characters. From this time
forward Lord Scamperdale takes a violent dislike to Sponge and plots
with all his might to get rid of him. His determination is increased
when on another occasion Sponge’s horse bolts, not this time into the
hounds, but into the Earl himself and knocks him off sprawling on the
ground. The story, however, is useful to our purpose because it reveals
the different types of country life, and the graduated hierarchy of its
society. The Earl of Scamperdale is, of course, a caricature; but with
all his boorishness and eccentricity, he is quite conscious that, as a
nobleman, he is a great personage. His hounds are not a subscription
pack, but are supported entirely at his own expense; and his bad
language to strangers has at least the advantage of keeping his field
small and select for the benefit of the residents in his neighbourhood,
who put up with his eccentricities partly because they really regard
his rank and position; and also because his lordship shows them the
best of sport. Jawleyford, whose daughter Scamperdale ultimately
married, represents the country squire, not well off but pretentious,
keeping up a sort of pinchbeck dignity, yet a member of the hierarchy
of which the peer was also a member, though more highly placed.
Less reputable, but of the same order, is Sir Harry Scattercash, of
Non-Such Hall, on whom Sponge inflicts himself after he has been
driven out of the Flat Hat hunt, as Lord Scamperdale’s pack was named.
Sir Harry is a young man, who has come unexpectedly into his title
and estate after marrying an actress; and he is engaged in drinking
himself to death and dissipating his money. His house is full of his
wife’s theatrical friends, who make themselves thoroughly at home,
and Sir Harry has apparently inherited a pack of hounds, managed on
a very different system to that adopted by Scamperdale, whose motto
is efficiency with economy. Sponge, who, with all his vulgarity, is
a first-rate sportsman, takes this motley pack in hand and makes
even Sir Harry’s hounds kill their fox in fine style. In fact, on one
occasion, when he has outdistanced the mixed field which attended the
baronet’s meets, he actually changes foxes with Lord Scamperdale,
and a fine scene ensues in which Mr. Spraggon surpasses himself in
the variety of his language. Not that two such adventurers as Sponge
and Spraggon are real enemies; and they meet on neutral ground in
the house of a third type of Squire. Mr. Puffington, the son of a
wealthy manufacturer, has bought an estate and set up a pack of
hounds. The delineation of this character is extremely clever; and
shows how the author realises the change which is coming over country
life. Scamperdale, Jawleyford, and Sir Harry all belong to the old
landed aristocracy. Puffington is a new man. His money is in the
land like theirs; but he is independent of his estate. In his desire
to be popular he allows his tenants to rob him and his labourers
to poach his game. He maintains a pack of foxhounds, and entertains
magnificently. But he is not really liked, and is regarded as an
interloper. Thinking Sponge is a literary man and that he will trumpet
the fame of his pack in the newspapers, Puffington invites him to stay
in his house and entertains him royally.
Jack Spraggon is also one of the invited guests; and Sponge lends him
one of his horses. They have a famous run with the hounds; and when
they get home, in the interval before dinner, Spraggon tells Sponge
that Puffington, their host, expects to have a flaming account of his
hunt in the newspapers; and that their reception is due to the fact
that Sponge is believed to be a great writer on sporting subjects. As,
however, he does not know how to do it, Spraggon offers to dictate
an account of the run; and Sponge settles down at the table, having
used his friend’s razor to cut the pen. The run is described in true
journalistic style; and, when Sponge, who is an indifferent penman,
exclaims “Hard work authorship,” Jack Spraggon says that he could go
on for ever. Sponge retorts, “It’s all very well for you to do the
talking, but it’s the ‘writing’ and the craning and the spelling.”
However, the manuscript is sent off to the local paper, and falls into
the hands of a daughter of the proprietor. As she cannot make head or
tail to Sponge’s writing, she edits it as best she can, calling “a
ravishing scent” an exquisite perfume; and making the run not less than
ten miles “as the cow goes” instead of as the “crow flies.”
That evening there is a grander banquet than ever; and Spraggon and
Sponge get hold of a rich young fellow, a Mr. Pacey. Spraggon persuades
Pacey, who fancies himself a very sharp blade indeed, that Sponge is
a greenhorn, with the result that at the end of the dinner he buys
Sponge’s horse, Multum in Parvo, at a very low figure. As, however,
that famous quadruped manages to throw Mr. Pacey, and also his
guardian Major Screw, Sponge gets the horse back with a sum of money
as a compensation for the inconvenience to which he has been put, and
generously gives Mr. Pacey a bit of valuable advice: never to try to
trade in horses after dinner! Naturally Mr. Puffington is not pleased
by all this, and when he reads the account of the run with his hounds
he nearly has a fit; and he resolves to take to his bed till Sponge is
well out of his house.
Here we take farewell of our hero; and I will say a few words on the
way in which Surtees, in his sketches of country life, indicates his
appreciation that a change is coming over the land. The Scamperdales,
Jawleyfords, and the older families are disappearing and the new
commercial and moneyed class is taking its place. Puffington and
men of his type are beginning to come to the front. It is getting
more difficult to live on the land, as the older gentry had done;
and estates are becoming rather a tax on a commercial fortune than
the support of an aristocratic family. Surtees represents the old
landowners as somewhat out at elbows, trying in vain to compete with
the new men who are buying up their estates. In one of his novels we
have a great Jewish magnate, Sir Moses Mainchance, who would have
been practically impossible twenty years earlier. Sport changes with
society. The railway has made country and town one, as a few hours
bring all England within reach of London. Hunting is ceasing to be the
old friendly and almost family institution, where the neighbourhood
gathered at the meet, and everybody was known and welcomed. It was
already becoming an affair for the rich from all parts of the world;
and the Scamperdales in vain tried to scare away the wealthy sportsman
of the town by abusive language. The time was close at hand when his
presence would be welcomed eagerly; and rural sport would be at an end.
* * * * *
We will now turn to another side of country life--namely, the social
as portrayed by Anthony Trollope, who might also have been quoted
as a writer on sport. Trollope, to my mind, has a real genius for
interesting his readers in uninteresting people; because he describes
so faithfully the characters one meets every day, gives their
conversation exactly as they talked to one another, and exhibits them
in the same commonplace attitude, in which we all are for the greater
part of our lives. He wrote not by inspiration, when he felt in the
mood, but regularly and systematically, turning out his novels, when
he had leisure from his duties as a government official, at so many
pages an hour. He says that he had little or no intimate knowledge
of cathedral society; yet, to one who has opportunity of observing it
somewhat closely, his descriptions appear to have the accuracy of a
photograph.
In Trollope’s novels we have English life, especially well drawn; and
though many scenes are laid in London, his characters always gravitate
back to the country whence they derive their influence and prestige.
It is not my intention to elaborate more than one side of this very
versatile and copious writer. His political novels, for example, are
well worth studying, especially “Phineas Finn.” In “The Bertrams”
we have an excellent picture of Oxford life in the opening chapter.
Personal experience gave Trollope unusual insight into the characters
of the government officials of his time. He was wonderfully quick at
seizing on types hitherto unknown in English society who were gradually
becoming forces in the world. Even as a writer on sport he deserves
a place. For what can be better than his description of the young,
popular, able clergyman in “Framley Parsonage,” whose very success
leads him into some very difficult situations? I need not remind you,
for I find he is widely read in this country, of his treatment of
social gatherings in great houses like that of the Duke of Omnium.
All I intend to do is to ask you to examine his clerical types and,
perhaps, to offer some explanations which may be useful.
The state of things we read of in such books as “The Warden” and
“Barchester Towers” has almost, but not quite, disappeared, and I
confess that, although I think I understand it, I find a difficulty in
making it clear to you. The initial problem is to explain why life in
a cathedral city is often rural rather than town life. In the first
place the word “city” in England used to be applied only to places
where there was a cathedral. Ely, though still a town of some 8000
people, is always spoken of as a “city” and so are Llandaff and St.
David’s, which are little more than villages; and, till very recently,
Liverpool and Birmingham were styled “towns.” Leicester, with some
300,000 inhabitants, is still, I believe, technically a “town.” The
older cathedrals are in fact generally in small places which were once
very important “cities,” but have been outstripped by what then were
little better than hamlets, but have long since become great centres
of population. Such are Canterbury, Chichester, Salisbury, Wells, Ely,
and Lichfield. Barchester was emphatically a country town, dominated by
the landowners in the vicinity; and the clergy around it were a rural
priesthood. The society which was centred in any cathedral was and
still is unlike anything else in the world. In the middle ages a great
cathedral, like Salisbury or Lincoln, was designed for a semi-monastic
rather than congregational worship. It was served by a community of
priests, called “canons” because they observed a “canon,” or rule
of life. Joined with these was a veritable army of inferior priests,
singers and ministers, all under the control of the dean, who presided
over the cathedral, as the bishop over the diocese. This vast and
splendid establishment was, at the Reformation under Queen Elizabeth,
reduced to a limited number of canons, or prebendaries, minor canons,
singing men and boys, vergers and bedesmen. As, however, under the new
régime the services were little more than daily morning and evening
prayer, the reduced staff had little or nothing to do. Accordingly the
canons took turns to reside in the cathedral close and usually held
benefices in other places. They married like other clergy; but were
still, nominally, monastic persons attached to the cathedral. As time
went on the estates of the chapters or colleges of the deans and canons
became very valuable; and their positions were much coveted as the
prizes of the church. A cathedral chapter therefore was, as a rule, an
aristocratic body, consisting of the dean nominated by the crown, and
the canons, as a rule, by the bishop. Of course the bishops, in days
when public opinion was not powerful, put their relatives into the
canonries; and there were many ties between the various members of the
cathedral bodies, who kept the rest of the world, and especially the
inferior clergy, at a respectful distance.
With this attempt to explain the situation let me try to set forth some
of the principal characters in “The Warden” and “Barchester Towers”;
remembering that men are living under an order of things which was
beginning to pass away.
First we have two charming characters in the Bishop and the Warden.
Bishop Grantley is an aged man, a gentleman in the truest sense of
the word; but a prelate who had never perhaps in his life been
particularly energetic, and was passing his later days in dignified
ease. He is a little lonely, as very old men often are; and he does
not comprehend the new age in which men have to fight to maintain
their position and privileges; so he fails to understand his energetic
son, who has married the Warden’s daughter. His one friend is the
Warden, a man, younger than himself, though elderly. The Warden holds
one of those anomalous positions not uncommon in the church at that
time. He is head of a hospital for old men, in receipt of a very
comfortable income of £800 ($4000); and he is also the precentor, that
is, leader of the music in the cathedral. He is a modest retiring man,
an exquisite musician, and a kindly friend to the old men under his
charge. Very different is the Bishop’s son, Archdeacon Grantley. The
Archdeacon is a strong man, determined to stand up for his rights, and
what he believes to be the rights of his church. He is thoroughly
efficient, a vigorous administrator, a capable ruler of the rich
parish over which he presides. He cannot understand his father’s
allowing things to drift, nor the placid piety of his father-in-law,
the Warden. The two old men are terribly worried, and when they dine
together they plot feebly how to resist the Archdeacon, but give way
whenever he appears on the scene. But at last the crisis comes. The
newspapers discover that the Warden is overpaid for his nominal work
at the hospital, the old men, who are well lodged, fed, and cared
for, are told that they ought to share in his stipend. A busy lawyer
in the cathedral city takes up the case and the great London paper,
the _Thunderer_, has leading articles denouncing the abuses of the
church in general and the Warden’s position in particular. Finally a
novel appears with a thinly veiled attack on the administration of the
Barchester Hospital for old men. Then the Warden shows himself to
have all the firmness of a man, gentle by nature, but of the highest
principles. He retires to a life of poverty rather than bear the
reproach of being in a false position. The Archdeacon storms, accuses
his father-in-law of culpable weakness in deserting his post, and the
Bishop for allowing him to do so. And then the old Bishop rallies to
his friend’s support. Terribly afraid of his masterful son, he will
not allow the Warden to be bullied out of doing what he thinks right.
So the Warden leaves his comfortable house and takes apartments in the
city, the Bishop gives him a tiny parish; and Mr. Harding, for that is
the Warden’s name, lives in honourable poverty, directing the cathedral
music as precentor and ministering in his little church in the old
city; and he and his old friend, the Bishop, have peace in their latter
days. Thus we pass from “The Warden” to “Barchester Towers,” and find
old Dr. Grantley dying peacefully and his son, the Archdeacon, hoping
to succeed his father. Another man is, however, given the bishopric,
and Trollope introduces his greatest characters, Bishop and Mrs.
Proudie. The new Bishop is a fairly easy-going man, but his wife is
determined to bring things in Barchester into order. Her régime has for
its watchword efficiency. In it there is no room for kindly bishops
and retiring scholars, like Mr. Harding. What is required is awakening
preachers, zealous reformers, capable administrators. The old sleepy
cathedral must become a centre of vigorous life and action, in which
even clergy like Archdeacon Grantley, with their aristocratic notions,
could have no place. Mrs. Proudie is herself a lady of high birth; but
vulgar people have a good deal of influence over her, because they
flatter her vanity. Accordingly she takes up with a clergyman named
Slope, who lets her in for a good deal of trouble by his officiousness
and want of judgment and good feeling. But who am I, that in a brief
lecture I should attempt to describe Mrs. Proudie? Let us turn to a
very typical character in old cathedral life. Dr. Stanhope, one of the
canons of Barchester, would be impossible now, but is easily conceived
in the “fifties.” I should say that he was the sort of man who had
become a clergyman because his family was able to advance him; and had
never had any real vocation for his calling. His wife and children
were a great expense to him; and he had lived long abroad in order
to retrench, getting his work done for him in England. His son was a
thorough Bohemian, and his daughter had married an Italian nobleman,
who had left her. Bishop Proudie had compelled Dr. Stanhope to return
to his duties at Barchester; and the family were thoroughly out of
place in a cathedral city with their foreign ideals and lax views of
propriety. You have to picture the decorous formality of Barchester
society to realise the humour of Trollope’s description of Bertie
Stanhope and his sister the Signora. Throughout Trollope’s novels there
is the background of rural life; and especially that of the clergy.
At times it is amusing, but often it is tragic; and, believe me, in
those parsonage houses in the picturesque villages of England some
veritable tragedies have been enacted. How many a clergyman and his
wife have succumbed before the work of bringing up an enormous family
on insufficient means! How many a man of high culture has found in the
parish he entered with such high hopes the end of his career! How many
have dreariness and isolation led to find relief in habits which have
proved their ruin! The story of the rural clergy of England is the
theme of many a novelist, from Fielding onwards; and there is generally
a tone of sadness about it. And may I commend especially the writings
of Charlotte Young for perhaps the best description of the subject?
Side by side with the comfortable dignitaries, who lived around the
cathedrals,--the Grantleys, the Proudies, the Stanhopes,--were the
Quiverfuls, with the crushing load of children innumerable, and Mr.
Crawley, a famous scholar in his day, who had sunk amid the poverty of
a wretched parish and the weight of utterly uncongenial surroundings.
One of the greatest changes in England that people of my age have
seen is the complete shifting of influence from the country to the
town. And this is peculiarly true of the clergy, who often belonged to
the country families and shared in the ideas, tasks, and pursuits of
their brothers. Now that our young clergy are recruited from a totally
different class, they are perhaps more devoted to their profession but
are unfortunately bred in towns rather than the country and often fail
to understand the people in the way their predecessors had done.
Even in my younger days the possession of land meant power and social
prestige; and people really lived on it. But the change was coming
rapidly; and the writers I have quoted show us the scene just before
it was about to shift. Among all classes there has been a rush from
the country to the towns; and there has been a growing tendency to
regard rural England rather as a playground than as the source of the
nation’s best inhabitants. This tendency has unfortunately, in my
judgment at least, been fostered by a legislation which has refused
to give agriculture the encouragement it requires, with the result
that our villages in England almost all tell the same tale of falling
population. Perhaps one of the most urgent problems before our English
statesmen is how to attract people back to the beautiful country, which
under modern economic conditions has been so much deserted.
I have now brought my lectures to an end. I have tried to place before
you as vivid a picture as I could of English life in a bygone age;
and if I have not made it adequate to the expectation of my auditors,
I have at least a hope that I have aroused sufficient interest to
make some here desire to know more of the subject. For the study of
social life is, in truth, a most important branch of history. It is
almost impossible to form a just conception of the men of any age from
documents unless one can gain an idea what manner of men they really
are. Unless we have this knowledge, no amount of research, no ingenuity
or discrimination will assist us to arrive at an apprehension of the
truth. For it is not possible to understand men’s actions unless
we have that sympathy which makes us realise that under different
conditions they were human beings not, after all, unlike what we
ourselves should have been in their circumstances. And it is in the
novel, the private letter, the caricature, the half-forgotten jest or
good story, that we are helped to depict the men and women of the past.
A pleasing task awaits me; namely, to thank you for the welcome you
have given me as a stranger, when I first appeared before you, for
the patience you have shown in listening to what I had to say, for
the evident sympathy and good feeling you have shown throughout these
lectures. Let me say that I felt deeply the honour conferred on me by
the offer of a Lowell lectureship, that I enjoyed, in these days of
great sorrow and anxiety shared by all my countrymen, the distraction
which I found in preparing for my responsible task; and that though,
I confess, I first entered this room with no little trepidation and
wondered how I could possibly interest complete strangers, I now
feel that I am speaking to friends, who have, by their kindness to
an Englishman with whose very name they must have been unfamiliar,
demonstrated the reality of the ties which bind the two Englands, the
old and the new, each to the other.
Printed in the United States of America.
The following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan
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