ARCADIA CLERICORUM
“I am one that had rather go with sir priest,
than sir knight.”--_Twelfth Night._
The chief charm of Norwich, which was my headquarters, lies in its
Cathedral. Architecturally it is a delight to the soul of man. Gazing
on arcade piled on arcade; Norman pillars, pointed clerestory, and
triforium; mystic curves and intersections of window tracery; and
the noble vaulted roof above; one could sit undisturbed while the
Canon in Residence took his weekly toll of our time, and discharged
one-thirteenth of his yearly task:
“I ’eered un a bummin’ awaay loik a buzzard-clock ower my yead,
An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to ’a said, an’ I comed awaay.”
The music was remarkable for the perfect training of the boys’ voices
by Dr. Buck, and for the incompetence of the aged men, who, though past
work, could not be dismissed, because they were freeholders and had not
been convicted of felony; as though petty larceny were a graver offence
than singing out of tune! Freehold! always freehold!
To me, however, the great attraction was the Dean, Dr. Goulburn. He had
been my headmaster at Rugby twenty years earlier; and though I had not
had the slightest acquaintance with him, the sight of that familiar
face, and the tones of that sonorous voice were sufficient to call up
priceless memories of bygone days and long-lost friends.
In Norwich the Dean was venerated. In London and Oxford he was famous
as a preacher: as a writer of religious books he had done excellent
work, which, if one may judge from advertisements, still holds its
ground. As a headmaster he had been less successful, and I gathered
from some slight conversation with him as Dean that the very name of
Rugby jarred on his ears. He was a scholar, a divine, a gentleman, a
saintly man, and a good companion: but there was something lacking,
something essential in dealing with boys. I doubt if he ever was a boy.
At Eton, as we learn from his biographer, his short sight debarred
him from games, and his “sapping” propensities made him so unpopular
with the drones that, although _bene natus, bene vestitus_, and _bene
doctus_, his election to the Debating Society, called Pop, was secured
only by the interposition of the headmaster.[15] This was Keate, and
probably he threatened to flog the Opposition.
When he was himself headmaster in after years, this want of sympathy
with athletes and drones must have limited his sphere of influence. In
some way he had failed to assimilate himself to Boy, and Boy saw that
something was wanting. Without boy-knowledge a headmaster is like a
coachman without horse-knowledge: he cannot drive.
I could fill many pages with stories of him, and many pages with
tributes to his excellent merits, but I forbear. As Inspector I had no
dealings with him. Peace be to his memory.
Both in the city and in the county my acquaintance during the three
years that I spent in East Anglia was almost wholly clerical. The
parochial clergy managed the schools, collected the funds, often
supplied a large share of the funds, and entertained the inspector. In
a short time I found that there was infinite variety in the seeming
monotony. Parson A. was literary, and his name was known to all men
of letters. B. was archæological, and had views about ruins. C. grew
bulbs, and the district was so badly arranged (_quâ_ C.) that his
school inspection came in January, when only the noses of his aconites,
snowdrops, and crocuses were visible; but from February to June, and
even later, he lived in splendid happiness.
D. grew coniferæ, a pursuit which requires expectation of long life;
E. grew orchids, and told me of his parlour-maid’s _bon mot_. She
was helping in some stage of the culture, and in amazement inquired
the name of the unsightly vegetable. “Orchids,” she was told. “And a
wera good name far un tew,” said the maiden with wholly unconscious
pleasantry; “awkidest things I ever handled.”
F. was absorbed in schools, and spent half his days there. G. added
to the cares of his life by doctoring the bodies of his flock. A
neighbouring duly qualified practitioner had threatened him with a
prosecution for manslaughter if any more of his patients died. One
likes to see the thing done properly, and _quâ medicus_ the Rector was
a nonconformist; _quâ artifex_ a blackleg.
H. was High and told me of his persecutions; L. was Low and tried to
interest me in the conversion of the Jews.
The alphabet becomes wearisome. Suffice it to say that the society
never became wearisome. In their reception of the common enemy, the
Inspector, they varied, as they varied in their pursuits: it is not
every man that can stand being told that his school is bad, and that
the grant will be reduced; and therefore the smiles of welcome varied
a good deal in direct proportion with last year’s school balance: but
we were very good friends on the whole. If old Bookworm compared me to
Gloster--
“the clergy’s bags
Are lank and lean with thy extortions”--
I knew that love of Shakespeare, not hatred of Inspectors, moved him.
If Carker complained that I had plucked his best boy in Arithmetic, he
melted into apologies on seeing the prodigy’s prodigiously incorrect
sums.
The Norwich district barely touched the Fens. That dismal region where,
as a Cambridge man assured me, the inhabitants are web-footed and
speckle-bellied (like frogs) was naturally and officially wedded to
Cambridge; and I regret that I am unable to report on the accuracy of
my friend’s statement. On our side the livings of the clergy in the
’seventies were fat, and the churches were magnificent. I fancy that,
even then, the congregations were not equal to the splendour of the
buildings. There may have been reasons for this. It used to be said in
Cambridge in the early years of the last century, that the incumbents
of the Fen district lived in Cambridge from Monday to Saturday. On
the last day of the week they sought their sphere of labour--where no
gentleman could be expected to _live_--and got through their Sunday
duty with tolerable acceptance. A select band would centre at the
“Lamb” at Ely, and with the aid of the hebdomadal rubber made the
place almost as snug as Cambridge. Freeholders! Freeholders! “O sainte
Église! something divine must indeed dwell in thee, when even thy
ministers have not been able to ruin thee.”
In the ’seventies the Norfolk clergy as a rule were resident. There
was indeed a strip of country in one quarter, where for several miles
the incumbents had “left their country for their country’s good,”
but retained the income of the benefice, only deducting (with much
reluctance) the salary of a cheap curate: and there were others whose
throats and chests were not strong enough to stand the Norfolk winter:
but Providence tempers even the Norfolk wind in certain cases, and I
was assured that the common herd, whose livings were of less value than
£1,200 a year, bore up well. There is a system of compensation in the
distribution of good things.
I still remember one hoary sinner--possibly still alive, for he was
the sort of man who would be likely to live for another thirty years,
to support Mrs. Poyser’s theory, “it seems as if them as aren’t wanted
here are th’ only folk as aren’t wanted i’ th’ other world”--who
boasted that, being entitled to ninety days’ leave of absence from
his flock in each year, he arranged to take the last quarter of one
year and the first quarter of the next, whereby he got six months’
solid holiday. The drawback, he said, was that he couldn’t get another
holiday till October 1 of the third year.
I cannot say what provision he made for the services in his absence,
and it was not for me to ask. But on a visit to a country school in
another parish I found that the incumbent had been away for four months
_by special leave from the Bishop_, because his wife was ill, and that
he had thoughtfully arranged for the Vicar of the adjoining parish “to
come over and give them a service on Sunday afternoons.” The benefice
in his case was valued in the “Clergy List” at over £700 a year, with a
house.
These cases of neglect and the worse cases of evil-livers sounded
strange in the ears of a Civil Servant whose tenure of office was on
a frailer footing. I used to point the finger of scorn at the Bishop,
who might be supposed to intervene. “But how is he to get evidence?”
his defenders would say. I replied that if I were Bishop with £5,000
a year, I should hire a private detective and send him down to old
Boozer’s parish (Rev. O. Boozer, Great Tiplingham) for a month to
collect evidence. But I was told with some warmth that the clergy would
consider that a most ungentlemanly proceeding.
This surely is to put vermin on a level with game.
I said that the churches were magnificent. It is another instance
of the compensatory tendency of the gifts of Providence, that
ugly countries generally have fine churches. Look at Norfolk,
Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire. There was a time when even Holland
received the benefit of this arrangement, and did not build shanties
round the bases of its cathedrals. The decay of agriculture, the
diminution of the rural population, and, above all, the migration
of the weavers to the coalfields have wrought havoc with the
congregations, charm the Rector never so wisely. Who, outside Norfolk,
knows that “worsted” gets its name from Worstead in East Norfolk, a
village with a noble church that might hold from 800 to 1,000 people? I
see in the “Clergy List” that the population is now 781, of whom 54 per
cent. might be expected to go to church, if they valued statistics--and
our incomparable Liturgy.
Take another case. There was a time when Our Lady of Walsingham had
an extraordinary reputation, not only in England but in the Low
Countries. Five English sovereigns sought her shrine: three Henries and
two Edwards. Erasmus visited it in 1511, and wrote an account of it,
which for wit, irreverence, and general impropriety could hardly be
surpassed.[16] The cult lasted for 300 years, and when it was at its
height pilgrims came over in great numbers to Yarmouth and King’s Lynn,
and made their way along a _Via Sacra_ of noble churches and priories.
The finest of eastern counties’ churches, in my recollection, is at
Sawell, or Sall, within easy reach of Walsingham; and it was suggested
that pilgrims were persuaded to drop a coin or two at churches on the
road, whereon Sall flourished (Sall--profits--yes, I see; I leave it),
as did the Lady Chapel at King’s Lynn, and the churches on the Palmers’
way from London and the South.
When I saw the great church in 1876 it was going fast to decay, and the
sum mentioned as necessary for repairs was alarming. The population in
1901 was 191.
In another of these fine churches I found the Rector in much trouble.
Bats had got into the roof and multiplied. The parish would gladly have
retained the Pied Piper of Hamelin to rid them of their foes; besides
ordinary pollution they had made the church their slaughter-house and
their dining-room--the wings of moths, and all sorts of garbage lay
about.
“Bats!” said the Rector, who was a Biblical scholar; “Isaiah couples
them with the moles, according to our translation, but I doubt whether
_chephor peroth_ refers to moles.”
“Perhaps it was the church mouse?” I suggested.
“Bats,” he went on, after giving me a suspicious glance, “are clearly
indicated by the word _atalleph_.”
“It is _ystlumod_ in Welsh,” I said, not to be overcrowed by a Rural
Dean, “and _Fledermaus_ in German; _flittermouse_ in Ben Jonson.”
But the Rector was intent on murder, and heeded not my pedantic
flippancies:
“Bats,” he repeated, with a far-away look in his eyes.
What a parody Calverley would have made:
“They hunted for moths in the Rector’s garden,
And though they possibly no harm meant,
They littered the pew of the Churchwarden:
They spoiled the gold of the Tenth Commandment.”
That is a bad rhyme: I am not equal to the task. The case was serious:
what did I suggest?
I said it was rather out of my province: bats never built in schools:
had he tried incense?
His eyes were again fixed intently on me, but I gazed at the roof. It
seemed that the good man was Low. How was I to know? Finally
he gave me credit for guilelessness. “But what would the Archdeacon
say?” I inferred that the Archdeacon also was Low. Certainly
the bats were High.
It is sad that I cannot carry the tale further. Did he try the remedy?
I cannot but think that
“good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke,”
such as Browning’s Bishop loved to taste, would have evicted the
cheiroptera. Fear of the Archdeacon might have held the Rector’s hand
when Divine Service was toward, but I suspect he would still have six
week-days undisturbed.
This was not the only instance of want of practical common-sense in
the management of the freehold. Another incumbent remarked to me that
he couldn’t understand why his people didn’t come to church. I thought
it might be that his preaching was deterrent, but politeness suggested
“the singing?”
“Oh no; it isn’t the singing: there’s plenty of that. To be sure,” he
added pensively, as if the thought came to him for the first time, “it
may be that it is because there is no heating apparatus.”
That is one of the drawbacks of official life. You cannot tell a school
manager what you really think of him. If his church had been a school,
we should have taken a tenth off his grant after a year’s warning; and
the next year, if his school was still uninhabitable, we should have
struck it off the list.
No doubt in Norfolk, as elsewhere, a great change has come over the
country clergy. Most of the valuable livings in that diocese were in
the gift of the Cambridge colleges, and probably at Cambridge, as at
Oxford, clerical fellows hung about the combination rooms for years,
either giving indifferent lectures, or, in the preferable alternative,
merely consuming the college port; while they waited for the shoes of
richly beneficed incumbents, who showed an indecent reluctance to put
them off. It was often discovered, when the long-deferred inheritance
fell in, that there was lurking in the background a virgin, who had but
too often passed the flower of her youth, and who thus tardily became
Rectoress Consort. A strange couple they would be to administer the
affairs of a country parish.
But though too often hampered by lack of training, and sometimes
by lack of zeal, in their ecclesiastical duties, they did much for
education. The traditions of a college living required, long before
the Act of 1870, that there should be a parochial school, and they
built generously, if “not according to knowledge”: strange schools
in the University-Gothic style; externally picturesque; internally
ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, ill-warmed; but no worse than you would
find in the great public schools. And Mrs. Rector looked after the
sewing, and the girls’ ailments; and both husband and wife were
diligent attendance officers, bribing, threatening, persuading parents
and children.
Let me not omit to add that some of these ex-dons were of the salt of
the earth, though not too earthy. I knew them only as school managers,
but it was sufficiently clear that in such cases the school was part of
an admirably organized parish: their acquaintance with the children,
and their complete knowledge of the home life of the children never
ceased to surprise and interest me: the discipline and the school
work were proof of the Rector’s watchful eye; and the greeting of the
teachers showed the affectionate respect in which he was held.
Three great changes have come about in the last forty years.
The abolition of clerical fellowships has cut off the supply of
academical idlers. It is hard nowadays for a college to find men
to take the college livings. “And oh, the heavy change,” the
collapse of agriculture in corn-growing, and the consequent fall in
rental of glebe lands, and in tithe, have all but extinguished the
old-fashioned broadcloth Rector. Thirdly, recent legislation has all
but extinguished the criminous clerk, and made it comparatively easy
to stir up the mere idler.
Are the people grateful? I doubt it. They grumbled at the old style,
and they grumble at the new style; but they made more out of the
old style. A few years ago I happened to be in Wales, and, meeting
a fruit-seller with a cart bearing the name of Llanbeth, I got into
conversation with him, and casually enquired whether my old friend,
the Rev. J. Jones, sometime Rector of Llanbeth, was still living. No:
he was dead, and Reverend Williams reigned in his stead. I expressed
sorrow.
“Fery different gentleman now,” said the fruit man, disparagingly: “I
am parish clerk, and I know: fery different gentlemen eferywhere. Yes,
sure.” And the wretch leered hideously.
“Well, I will tell you,” he continued unasked, “they are men that have
failed at the Institushun (_meaning the Training College, then at
Carnarvon_); that iss what they are.”
“After all,” I suggested, “they are better men now?”
“Well, I will tell you: they are more men of the world: that iss what
they are.”
“But, at least,” I pleaded, “they don’t drink?”
“No-a, indeed; because they can’t afford it: Else----”
“Thou shalt not escape calumny,” said Hamlet. “Did a day’s work?” “Yes:
because he is a man of the world.” “Didn’t get drunk?” “No: can’t
afford it.” And even the wise and (comparatively) virtuous Inspector,
when he meets in school the man of the world, who in general demeanour
compares unfavourably with the schoolmaster, remembers easy-going old
Broadcloth with a sigh, and hopes the new broom will sweep clean.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] See “Memoir of Dean Goulburn,” page 15.
[16] From a professional point of view Erasmus’ Geography was
lamentable. He speaks of “this sea-side saint,” and says that the place
is on “the extreme coast of England on the _North West_.” It is 7 miles
from the Wash.