SOME EARLY SUNDAYS
All the Sundays of my childhood came to life again when, driving from
T----, we passed the mouth of a grassy by-road, a little way down which
stood the church of my earliest worshippings. We were due to drink tea
at my grandfather's old home, now occupied by one of his
great-grandsons, and had scant time for more lingerings on the way if we
were to keep our appointment punctually; but the sight of the familiar
square, squat tower was too much for me, and I said to M. and Mr B.:
"Oh, I must, I _must_ have just one look!" They drove me into the lane
and, scrambling down, I ran up the path through the churchyard, glancing
from side to side at the same old tombstones and grassy mounds,
numbering baby graves of our own household amongst them, every one with
its memories of Sunday loiterers sitting and standing about until all
friends had passed and the bells had stopped; and my objective was a
rood-screen, which not only had a lively story to it, but had persuaded
me in the course of years that it was possibly a treasure of
ecclesiastical art worth finding by one now educated to know its value.
I might have been disappointed if I had seen it; I certainly was deeply
disappointed at not seeing it. A wicket gate in the porch was locked
against me. I ran along the wall and tried to peer into the windows,
but I could see nothing, except my mental picture of the past--the
three-decker, the carved screen, the two square pews in the chancel, the
open seats outside.
It is rather curious that they were open seats at that time of day, when
otherwise the church was quite early Victorian in its ways. I know that
in the next decade, when the zeal for church restoration became
noticeable, the stubborn defence of vested interests in the hereditary
pews was the greatest obstacle to be overcome, and I have known it prove
insuperable for nearly a decade more. Even the pews in the chancel of
the church here at H----, one sacred to the old-maid daughters of the
rector (when in residence, which was only for a small portion of the
year), the other occupied by one of my uncles and his family, were open;
not like the spacious room, with panelled walls and blue silk curtains
all round above the level of his tall head, in which my maternal
grandfather maintained at public worship the same privacy that he
enjoyed at home. It is true that every seat, except the hard "free"
forms at the back, belonged to a certain house, as legally and
exclusively as the walled box which it had superseded; but there was a
republican aspect, generally abhorrent to genteel persons, in the
uniform open benches, which marked no divisions of caste between the
highest and the lowest; the old box, on the contrary, indicated the
status of its owner almost as accurately as his house. The carpet,
cushions, hassocks, curtains were part of his personal establishment; if
he were a big man, he would probably have a stove within the luxurious
enclosure, by which to doze in comfort when the weather was cold. And
it was usual for the wall immediately above him to be more or less
covered with tablets to the memory of his deceased ancestors. When he
died himself, the blue or red curtains which had preserved his nobility
from the gaze of vulgar worshippers would be changed for hangings of
black cloth, and the mourning hatchment would be put up.
In this little church the organist was the National School master, down
at the bottom of the building, and his instrument in my time was a
concertina. There was no vestry. The parson put his things on in the
chancel (in one church that I knew he first dragged his things out of
the altar, which made a convenient store-chest for the loose
"properties" of the place), his sacerdotal toilet being performed quite
openly before the assembled congregation, in front of a looking-glass
hung upon a chancel pillar; the interest we took in this piece of ritual
was great or greater according as the man was shy and nervous or
self-confident and vain. The canopied three-decker embraced the whole
area of ritual proper, except on the rare occasions--the three enjoined
by the rubric, I suppose--when Holy Communion was celebrated. In the
bottom pen the clerk bawled the responses, in the middle one the parson
recited prayers and lessons, in the upper (having changed his surplice
for a black gown) he preached.
Usually the parson was a curate, domestically familiar to us; sometimes
he was the stout and stately rector. When he came to the beautiful
embowered house that at other times wore blinds over its windows, and
his haughty high-nosed daughters to that chancel pew which at other
times stood empty, then it behoved the parish, literally, to sit up.
With him we were comparatively at ease, but confronted with them we
simply shook in our shoes. They did their parish work with vigour while
they were about it. The "poor" were visited all round, scolded for their
injudicious management of households on ten or twelve shillings a week,
which, they were assured, would be an ample income if "crowdy" (a kind
of meal porridge, I think--we never heard of it except from them) were
substituted for the unnecessary luxuries they indulged in; and I believe
the rectory kitchen doled broken victuals to the deserving. My father
nursed a man's grudge against these well-meaning women chiefly on
account of the crowdy suggestion so persistently thrust upon his farm
labourers; the offensive word was so often on his lips that I have never
forgotten it. He was always contrasting the existing régime with that of
the late rector, who used to like to play whist and ride to hounds with
him, and of whom I remember nothing but the fact of his death. My father
and I, driving past the rectory gates, saw a gig slowly moving up and
down before them. "Hullo!" said father, pulling up. "What's the matter?"
The man in charge of the gig mournfully shook his head. "You don't say
so?" father ejaculated, with even greater mournfulness. That was all. It
meant that the doctor was inside, and that the rector was dying.
The existing régime, however, did not leave us out in the cold. The
rector came at least once during his visit to his parish, and his
daughters once, to call on us--cake-and-wine calls--and similarly
honoured the houses of the other village gentry. The old man was as
affable as he knew how to be; the entertaining of the old-young ladies
was the formidable affair. If there was not time to set things in
apple-pie order before they reached the front door, what flurry and fret
and vexation of heart! Well for me if I was not doing punishment on the
stairs at that awful moment!
But the story of the rood-screen that I so wanted to see, and could not,
is the vivid memory of all.
The rector was in residence. He was putting on his robes in the chancel,
before the looking-glass, with the dignified leisureliness that was his
wont. The congregation was coming in. Amongst them was a lady from one
of the farmhouses (called "The Manor," an ancient house which her family
lived, instead of died, in, surrounded by a moat of stagnant water
covered with arsenic-green duckweed--which house, or its site, there was
not time to look for), and she was followed by a domestic pet, a raven.
She knelt to her preliminary prayer. Rising from her knees she beheld
the presumptuous bird sitting on the desk edge of her pew, regarding her
quizzically with his head cocked to one side. I was watching him in
ecstasy, but she--a gentle, fair woman, whose face as I then saw it I
could identify in a crowd to-day--flushed crimson with consternation and
shame. She put out a flurried hand to secure him, but he hopped out of
her reach; further efforts resulted in his free flight through the
church to perch on the top of the screen. There he sat, and defied the
congregation to catch him--to the passionate delight, I am sure, of
every child present. His poor mistress, however, was overwhelmed. She
sat still, trembling and cowering, her cheeks like peonies; and the
rector, when he realised the situation, was furious.
"Brown! Brown!" he shouted down the church.
The stalwart schoolmaster arose from where he sat with his pupils under
the tower, and advanced up the aisle with a pole in his hand. It may
have been the punitive rod with which he could crack the pate of the
farthest National School boy without leaving his own seat to do it, or
it may have been the church broomstick; anyway, it was long enough to
reach the top of the screen.
"Bong on to him, Brown!" commanded the rector in loud imperious
tones--he meant "bang on to him," but his accents as well as his words
ring down the grooves of time as distinctly as if heard but yesterday.
"Bong on to him!"
Brown wielded the clumsy weapon as desired, and it fell with force upon
the spot from which the raven deftly hopped at the last moment. The bird
was quite self-possessed in the midst of the excitement; each time he
measured the direction of the pole, watched its approach, and skipped
over or under it in the nick of time, and he chuckled and jeered as if
it were a game of play. His demeanour, and its contrast with the
increasing wildness of the schoolmaster's blows and of the outraged
rector's temper, made the scene so exquisitely funny that I can laugh
now when I think of it. I suppose I laughed then, for the irrepressible
hilarity of the congregation, confessing its sympathy with the rebel
against high authority, was an aggravation of the bird's offence too
serious for words. I am sorry I cannot recall how the episode ended,
but, of course, the raven was defeated somehow; what I can never forget
is the splendid time he gave us first. He was better than the donkey
which made another red-letter Sunday for us. This animal, grazing in the
churchyard, put his head through the open door in the middle of sermon
time. Not content with a decorous survey of the congregation he suddenly
uttered his raucous bray--hee-haw!--as if in sarcastic comment upon the
preacher's words.
But many funny things happened in church which we did not understand to
be funny, and therefore found no amusement in. The spectacle of the
parson's hat and gloves, perhaps also his overcoat and umbrella, on the
communion-table did not raise a smile, not to mention frowns. A
companion picture of the old clerk holding up the lid of the same table
while he dragged forth from its depths a black bottle and tilted it
before one unclosed eye, to see if it contained sufficient sacramental
wine for an impending celebration, passed almost unnoticed.
Conversations in the vulgar tongue, audible to all, were of almost daily
occurrence--or I should say weekly occurrence, for whoever heard of
non-Sunday matins or evensong in those easy-going times? Oh yes, they
were known of course in cathedrals and the more civilised centres of
life--the "Tracts for the Times" had been stirring up what the writers
called "our afflicted church" for many a year--but not in such
out-of-the-world villages as those in and about which my early years
were spent.
There was no rigid ecclesiastical etiquette, no rigid ecclesiastical
discipline, observed in those days, and the dullness of a child's
Sundays was sensibly mitigated thereby. I remember an occasion when the
parson (not Canon W., of the raven episode) was reading the psalms verse
and verse about with the clerk beneath him. Suddenly the latter, instead
of reciting his verse, remarked aloud: "You've turned over two leaves,
sir." "No, I haven't," was the equally loud and composed reply. "Yes,
you have," rejoined the clerk. They had quite an altercation, carried on
exactly as if they had been out on the road. The rector of the parish
where my maternal grandparents lived was the same sort of free-and-easy
person. I was told that once, with the benediction hardly out of his
mouth, he leaned over the ledge of the pulpit to hail a gentleman of the
congregation before he should get away. "Come home with me," the rector
publicly invited his friend, "I've got a prime haunch of venison for
dinner." I remember his way with candidates for confirmation: "Your
mother can hear your catechism." And it is my belief that the bishops
asked no questions of the men who royally entertained them on their
visitations. You could not imagine a rector dining on venison and waited
on by liveried servants being subjected to the indignity of an inquiry
as to how he performed his duties.
Parsons and squires--Church and State--combined to keep the common lay
person in his place. In league they governed the rural communities, by
whom their authority was unquestioned. It was a benevolent despotism, as
a rule, like that of the majority of the slave-owning aristocracy of
America, who were also in the enjoyment (tempered by "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," and other annoying portents) of their feudal powers at the time;
but, as with the slave system, it took small account of the human rights
of the lower "orders" and in the hands of the naturally arrogant was
often grossly abused.
A squire's wife of our neighbourhood, when she went out of church--and
no one presumed to go before her--used to mount a little rise of ground
near the porch, and there stand to receive the obeisances of "the
poor." One by one they filed before her, dropping the trembling curtsy
with that deprecating, serf-like air which one is thankful to know will
never be worn again by man or woman of British blood; and according as
they performed their act of homage, or satisfied her mind when she chose
to stop and question them, so would they be rewarded in the dispensation
of her doles--doles that might well demoralise poor things whose lives
were all toil from beginning to end, and who perhaps never enjoyed a
full meal until they ate it on Christmas Day in the workhouse, which was
the refuge of their declining years.
This squire's wife (I saw her home and the church in the park again,
still the appanage of her family) was typical of her class. They all
regarded their villages as a queen would regard her kingdom. The squire
looked after the menfolk and saw that his tenants voted Whig or Tory, as
the case might be. But the homes were the care of the lady of the great
house--where there was one. Often she was a second mother to them,
feeling a responsibility for their well-being almost as great as for
that of her own establishment. A godmother to babies, a nurse to the
sick, the kind patroness of girls going out to service, a succourer in
crises of trouble, an indispensable adviser in all-important affairs--I
have known such and heard of more; but whether of this sort or of that
which took the line of the arbitrary schoolmistress, it was invariably
her aim to lead her protégées in the way that they should go. The parson
was her henchman, as she was his backer. He made his reports and she
acted upon them. "You were not at church on Sunday, Jane. How was
that?" The chapel--making its way into the most conservative villages
(but I knew one where the rights of the lord of the manor enabled him to
keep it uncontaminated by both chapels and public-houses--he bracketed
them together--up to the end of the sixties)--was contemptuously ignored
as long as it was possible to do so. Jane had to go to church regularly,
or forfeit the favour of authority and the incalculable advantages that
went with it.
Morning service was, so to speak, the state service of the day. The
heads of families attended, and the families themselves in force. The
afternoon service was for servants and such, and nursemaids and
governesses could take their charges to keep them occupied and out of
the way; Sunday-schools were not invented, apparently, though we all had
to say our collect and catechism to somebody at home. There was no
service in the evening. The churches had no apparatus for lighting
except with daylight. Sunday evening, in summer, was the time for long
family walks, aimless strolls about the lanes and fields. It was the
great opportunity for love-making with the young couples "keeping
company." There was no visiting from house to house, as might be
supposed, with families so much at leisure and so bored for want of
something to do; it would have verged upon desecration of the Sabbath to
have paid a call for the mere pleasure of it. No toys or story-books,
and, of course, no games, were allowed to relieve the monotony of indoor
hours. "Memoirs" represented the only human element in our Sunday
literature, otherwise composed of volumes of sermons; and as the memoir
was always of a clergyman, or some other saintly person, there were but
two scraps of interest to be found in it--his portrait at one end and
the account of what he died of at the other. Later, we had a servant who
took in a missionary magazine full of pictures of black men swinging on
hooks thrust through their backs, widows burning alive on pyres,
missionaries being horribly tortured, cooked and eaten--all sorts of
interesting things. She used to smuggle them to my bed, and, when my
governess had retired from the room, instead of sleeping I would sit up
and read them in the lingering light of the long days until night made
the page a blank. But just now I am speaking of the years before I had a
governess. A missionary magazine was a Sunday book, and my early Sundays
did not know the joy of them.
However, taking one thing with another, those Sundays of the past were
not so very dreadful. It is, indeed, open to question whether in
essential matters we have greatly improved upon them. Certainly, the
inconsistencies of Sabbatarian practice, as I remember them, were no
greater than they are now. There was a lady of our acquaintance who had
a gift for amateur millinery and a passion for smart bonnets and she
once made one under my eye on a Sunday morning. It was understood that
she would have imperilled her immortal soul by using needle and cotton,
and she did not dream of doing that; she put it together entirely with
pins. It took her twice as long, and disturbed the serenity of her mind
twice as much, but by getting up early she managed to have it finished
by church time, and then to wear it to church with an easy mind. But the
same thing would be done--exactly parallel things are done--under my
eye to-day, any Sunday of the year.
With regard to the moral practices of week-days, which are but those of
Sunday carried over, either there were fewer subtle insincerities
amongst the good people of the last generation or I have a keener eye
for those which I see around me now. I remember that my elders of the
fifties were much addicted to whist, and that a small money stake was
necessary to the dignity of their game. They remained sober, friendly,
gentlemanly, uncorrupted, allowing for the exceptions to every rule.
Nowadays I play a round game with a family party, and one person will
not touch a prize in the shape of a coin, but change the coin into
"goods" and conscience is immediately satisfied. A clergyman once
intimately associated with my household loved whist, but never played
cards on principle; he got over the difficulty by sitting behind someone
who did, and directing the latter's play with zeal. These are little
instances.
At any rate the religious faith of the fifties as to which we were all
children, young and old alike, it had one precious quality that it seems
never likely to have again--it sufficed. Such as it was, we were
satisfied with it. It made for peace and a contented mind. To be sure,
we had heard of the "Tracts," and of a terrible bishop called Colenso;
we ourselves learned Keble's hymns, with Mrs Alexander's, on Sundays;
but we were happily undiscerning of the significance of these portents.
They were no concern of ours. We no more expected them to have practical
developments than he had expected an Indian Mutiny to result from a
little fuss over greased cartridges. The Church of the Fifties, as an
educational agent, is more despised to-day than any other institution of
that date, but the old-fashioned parson had no spiritual worries to keep
him awake o' nights and wear him out before his time; no more had we. Is
it not possible that the despisers would give almost anything to be able
to say the same?